Nell told her about Harvey, the movie at the Majestic, starring Jimmy Stewart. “Neddy could chauffeur you.”
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could thank everyone who’d ever made us happy?” Eudora said, evading the matter. “Jimmy Stewart made me happy in Born to Dance.”
“He’s even better looking now. Will you please think about it?”
“I’ll think about it.”
Nell knew she was being humored.
What moved Sally Wheeler to throw herself into the Drew Davis tribute, Nell didn’t know. Doubtless her love of him. I really love him. You understand, don’t you? He’d not been a replacement for Stella, but a recompense. In any case, the girl did write a script for Neddy, a playlet titled The Kingdom of Making Sense. Surely, thought Nell, there was a great deal to make sense of in Sally’s life.
A day or two before the tribute, Nell heard someone on the outside stairs and went to the screen door.
“Is it . . . ? Oh, my,” she said. “I can’t believe my eyes. Lark Erhardt.”
Lark and Sally stood on the landing, Beverly trailing them. Nell opened the door. “Oh, my,” she said again, ushering them in.
And now they were sitting in her living room, drinking iced tea and eating the familiar vanilla wafers.
“Oh, my.” She couldn’t quite believe that all three were there. “My three girls together again”—her children who hadn’t gone off to war, to return in bits and pieces. “Did you come for The Kingdom of Making Sense?”
“Didn’t know about it till I got here,” Lark said.
“Well, how do you find Harvester after ten years?” Nell asked.
“A little bigger, I guess, but pretty much the same—wonderful.”
Sally rolled her eyes.
Nell laughed. “You’re still at your grandmother’s?”
“Still there.”
“I think of your mother so often. I hope she’s well.”
Lark shrugged. “She’s in Los Angeles. She works for my Aunt Betty.” This, she seemed to suggest, was no concern of hers.
Nell stared, then changed the subject. College? Yes, Lark was enrolling at the University of Minnesota in the fall, likewise Beverly—Lark to study English, Beverly art. Lark had a notion to write children’s books.
“And maybe Beverly’ll illustrate ’em,” she said, recovering her élan. “You should see the stuff she’s designed for Sally’s show. Amazing.”
“Godsakes,” Beverly swore.
“And you, Sally?”
Sally just wanted to get away. New York, probably. Maybe try acting. She tossed her head. “I’m not good for much.” She sprang up and circled the room, pausing at the bookcase. “You’ve got a ton of books by . . .” She bent to study a spine. “Wodehouse,” she said, mispronouncing the name. “How come?”
“He’s one of my best friends.”
“Really?” Sally said. “You know him?”
“Only through the pleasure he gives me.” Nell flushed, as if she’d spoken of a lover.
“Sounds romantic,” Sally said, straightening and looking hard at Nell. “I might try him.”
Performed on the band-shell stage in the park, The Kingdom of Making Sense showcased Drew Davis’s impact. A dozen of his students were involved in the music, set design, costumes, and lighting. The acting, Sally’s in particular, neared professional quality.
Using birthday money from her Mankato grandmother, Sally had paid for printed programs listing cast and crews and stating in bold letters, “The Kingdom of Making Sense is dedicated to the memory of DREW DAVIS.”
Nell hoped this project was a kind of expiation for Sally. Actually, when she’d visited Nell with Lark and Beverly, Sally did seem less febrile.
Ed Barnstable wheeled his mother to the park for the hour-long program, which included not only Sally’s short play, but also a performance by the dancers of Martha Beverton’s Tap and Toe, plus the high-school band torturing “Bali Ha’i.”
An hour was as much as Eudora could manage but, until Neddy left for Yale, she would hang on, never allowing his mother to ruin him, as Denise had ruined Cole. She still groaned at the thought of Cole.
Nell spread a blanket on the ground beside Eudora’s wheelchair. Getting up again wouldn’t be a cinch, but she still managed. The early August evening was bathwater warm and poignant with the scent of mown grass. From the distance came the jingle-jangle sounds of Harvester Days on Main Street.
Nell recalled those bygone occasions when she’d come to the park on summer evenings to watch the penny movies projected on a fluttery sheet in front of the band shell. Was it here that she, Eudora, and Juliet had enjoyed Jimmy Stewart in Born to Dance? As an old woman, she luxuriated in remembered pleasures. They were that comforting, towel-wrapped brick on a cold night: baby Hilly asleep, cheeks flushed, his innocence almost painful in its perfection; and Elvira, eager, artless, standing at the door gripping an ancient carpetbag.
One of her fondest memories was of John laughing under an apricot moon in Juliet and Laurence’s gazebo; another was of Eudora sitting beside Hilly, a thick book of words and pictures held between them. And of course there had been the countless afternoons of tea and arrowroot cookies with her girls, these three young women now gathered together once more. Such was Nell’s wealth. She recalled a line from Emily Dickinson: “My friends are my ‘estate.’”
Toward the end of The Kingdom of Making Sense, Nell heard Eudora suck in her breath. “He’s here,” she rasped. “The devil.”
“Who? What are you saying?” Nell wasn’t certain she’d heard correctly.
“Cole. That’s him, over there.” Eudora pointed toward a young man leaning against a tree, far from the band shell but intent upon the stage. Even from this distance Nell could see that the boy was good looking—too good looking. As Sally’s playlet ended, he turned, sprinting toward the street where his car was doubtless parked.
Moments later, above the sounds of Tap and Toe, Nell heard an engine gunning and tires squealing away from the curb. So that was Cole Barnstable, she thought. Dark and beautiful as a Caravaggio boy. His turning up had done Eudora no good, though the woman said nothing about it further, but merely shook her head.
As the evening’s program drew to a close, Nell said good night to Eudora and Ed and headed back down Main Street, pausing to greet Agatha Nightingale’s former “girl,” Callie Hennessey. A decent-enough woman, she was nothing so colorful as her employer. Years later, Nell still missed the clandestine romance of editing Agatha’s stories.
Climbing the stairs to the apartment, she wandered through semidarkness to Hilly’s bedroom and pulled the rocker to the window. Outside, the lights of the street carnival flamed into quivering brilliance as the last shreds of milky illumination faded from the sky. On evenings like this, John sat close, and he and Nell talked for hours.
Tonight, she described Sally’s playlet. “I think she’s healing, but she’ll never get entirely past Drew Davis’s death.
“And would you believe, Cole Barnstable showed up. Eudora was upset, of course.” Nell searched for a description of the boy. “In movie ads, they call his type ‘smoldering.’” She sighed. “Maybe this was the last of him.”
Later, she confessed her longing. She was tired, and tired of losing others. “When Eudora’s gone, I’m ready.”
“You sure?”
“I’ve done all the mischief I can do,” she told him, smiling.
“Don’t bet on it.”
chapter sixty-five
IN SEPTEMBER OF 1951, Sally left for New York and its Barbizon Hotel for young women. Her Grandma Elway, who was paying, insisted; the Barbizon was said to be safe, and a friend of Mrs. Elway’s had told her she’d seen ads for the hotel in The New Yorker. Well, that seemed like a good sign.
Beverly and Lark headed for Minneapolis and a dorm at the University. From Lark, a postcard promised, “I’ll be back.”
While the girls were taking flight, Eudora was on a downward Journey.
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The St. Bridget hospital was a revelation to Nell. She’d never been inside one, except for the Dr. Kildare movies. She’d birthed Hilly at home with help from the same midwife who’d delivered young Gus Rabel.
The lobby of the hospital was whispery, and the woman at the desk, with her thin, mistrustful smile, as whispery as the lobby itself. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. With a long, jointy finger and seeming reluctance, she indicated a hallway. “Room 23.”
Nell felt she ought to genuflect before a corridor so wonderfully scrubbed and antiseptic smelling. You could see your reflection in the asphalt tile. The whole place was a little holier-than-thou.
She peeked into Eudora’s room to find her friend sleeping beneath a kind of tent. Nell could sit and wait in the plastic chair by the window, or out here in the hall on a wooden bench—but she was curious. Down there, another hallway ran perpendicular to this. Neither Eudora nor the woman at the desk would be wiser if Nell snooped a little.
The new area was not holier-than-thou, but rang with strong voices, one demanding and imploring, “Do something! It’s coming!” A woman in labor.
Nell backed away, feeling for the bench behind her.
“It’s coming!” the woman screamed again.
“Doctor’s on his way. Hold your horses.” A nurse’s impatient voice.
“Aauugh!” A wrenching cry. “Damn you, it’s coming!”
On the bench, Nell sat, eyes closed, clutching her purse, rocking and remembering how she’d descended snowy stairs, halting twice, bent over with contractions, finally seeing the outhouse ahead of her.
The baby girl was a bloody mass no bigger than Nell’s two fists. She had no way of burying it, even if she’d had the strength. She sobbed and moaned and let it slip into that awful pit.
After three days in the hospital, Eudora died of pneumonia. Nell had taken the train to visit each day, though “visit” was euphemistic since Eudora lay shrouded in the tent, either sleeping or comatose. Still, Nell read to her from Wodehouse, recalled Eudora’s work during the Great War, and described the plantings in the two cemeteries. “You’ve been loved and admired.”
But she didn’t again venture beyond Eudora’s room.
Of course Nell carried a crock of baked beans to the Barnstable house after Eudora’s death, and of course she attended the wake and funeral. And of course she wept, again and again. And yet, none of it was real. Eudora wasn’t dead, not really—not in any satisfactory way. Imperious, she still blew through Nell’s apartment, exhorting, lauding, bemoaning, arranging. That she hadn’t arranged her own wake was a great pity. The one organized by her daughter-in-law resembled a cocktail party and ignored the departed entirely.
Eudora’s body was not on display. In 1951, Harvester people still expected the deceased to be present in the home, in an open casket—provided the body was viewable. Doubtless one could trace this convention to a past when prairie transport had been slow and arduous, and folks might not have seen one another for months or even years. One last look—and not at the funeral home, but in a place where there was food and maybe drink. Those who could not remember such days might find the tradition barbaric, indelicate, but for Eudora’s friends, that past was not distant. And they were affronted that she was not present for them to exclaim over. Adding to the affront, Brenda had already rearranged Eudora’s furniture, hauling some of it away and replacing it with Danish Modern, whatever that was. She had surely begun the process while Eudora lay dying.
The night of the wake, folks clustered in two camps: Brenda’s Circle, and Everyone Else. The St. Bridget Barnstables, minus Cole, and Brenda’s Twin Cities relatives formed Brenda’s Circle; Eudora’s friends made up Everyone Else. Most of the second group felt shabby and out of place, a circumstance that would have scandalized Eudora.
A bereaved Neddy, home from Yale, looked lost as he moved among the guests, carrying platters of hors d’oeuvres. Nowhere in evidence were the hot dishes, cakes, and pies contributed by the locals.
“I’m so sorry,” Nell told the young man. “I know how much you loved your grandmother. And how much she loved you. But she’s left you wonderful memories.”
“A lot of them.” He set aside the tray he’d been holding and joined Nell on the sofa. Ever since the call had come, he’d been remembering. “I don’t know if she ever told you, but when I was little—about two years old, I guess—Grandma started ‘lessons.’ She made it a game, so I thought we were just playing. But by the time I went to kindergarten, I could read. She was pretty amazing.”
“She was kind and she had character. The best friend anyone ever had. And those are traits she’s passed along to you.”
Neddy shook his head.
“But it’s true. I know what it meant to Sally to have your friendship this past summer.”
“You think so?”
“I hate to imagine what could have happened to our girl if you hadn’t been there. I think that program in the park was the saving of her.”
A few minutes later, Nell expressed her condolences to Ed and Brenda, then left. Outside, the night crackled with cold, every star standing out hard and clear.
“I’ll give you a lift,” Larry Lundeen said, stepping out and closing the door behind him. He pulled his gloves from his pocket. “You didn’t wear galoshes. You’ll freeze your feet walking all that way.”
“A lift would be grand.”
“We’ll stop at my place. I have a new painting to show you.”
At the house, Larry made hot toddys, handing one to Nell. Then he left to fetch a gilt-framed and generously scaled oil painting of young athletes—several running a race in the distance, with others in the foreground standing beneath a Russian olive tree, awaiting their heat. Nell recognized the old track at the foot of Bacall’s Hill, where Hilly had first run.
Larry propped the painting against the legs of the console table. “It’s yours.”
“Oh, heavens,” Nell said, using her napkin to blot sudden tears. “Oh, my. I never expected anything like this.”
“Hilly was a superb runner. And I do recall promising you a painting.”
“How can I ever thank you?”
“No need.” Larry raised his mug. “Chin-chin.” Settling back in the club chair, he said, “I’ve owed you and Eudora ever since the day you made lunch for Drew and me. Apart from losing my parents, that was the worst day of my life. Tonight, at Eudora’s, I regretted never finding the proper way to thank her.”
“She didn’t do it for the thanks.” Nell told him about Eudora’s cousin Leonard.
“I didn’t know.”
Later, Larry wrapped the painting in an old quilt, slipped it into the backseat of the Chrysler, and drove Nell home. When they’d leaned it against a wall, he said, “I’ll come over in a couple of days and hang it.”
After he’d left, Nell stood at her usual post, Hilly’s rime-etched bedroom window. Outside, the night was as motionless as a painting, as silent as death.
Death was much on her mind; friends, a lover, even children had abandoned Nell while she stood at a lonely window, waving, as if they were headed to a party to which she was not invited. She resented their going and, even more, she resented her own seeming permanence. Tomorrow she would ask Apollo Shane to draw up a will.
Leaving the lawyer’s the next day, Nell stopped at the post office and found a letter.
January 10, 1951
Dear Nell,
What a faithless correspondent I have been. The older I get, the lazier I become. I’m an old clock that’s winding down, and there’s no hope of winding me up again. I surely never thought I’d live to see sixty-eight—and have a daughter of forty-eight! And her children, Ann and Gregory, are . . . well, for heaven’s sake, I’ve got to stop this.
And you’ll be seventy-five! Oh, darling Nell, that’s not possible. I would like to get back to see you in the fall. I think it’s finally time. I have outlived my sins. It’s very freeing to outlive your sins. We’ll talk more
about that when I see you.
With much love,
Elvira
But then Elvira was diagnosed with rapidly progressing uterine cancer and unable to travel the distance. Well, Nell thought, at least to one another we’ll always be young.
Nell’s girls kept in touch, each in her fashion. Long-distance calls every three or four months were Sally’s signature, though she sent a telegram in 1954 when she landed the role of Millie in a bus-and-truck production of Picnic. “Actually met William Inge! (stop) He looked me up and down. (stop) Said I didn’t have any wrinkles and therefore wasn’t too old for the part!” (stop)
The previous year, Sally had told Nell, “I see Neddy every now and then. He comes into town if I’m in a show. Mostly, my shows are off Broadway. Way off. But he’s always kind. I expect you know he’s studying law.”
“Eudora, think of it! Law, at last,” Nell had exclaimed to her dead friend.
Beverly, of course, stopped by the apartment whenever she was home from the University. She was applying for graduate school.
“I wanta go all the way, get a PhD,” she said. “I’d only need a master’s to teach in the art department, but can you imagine my mom when she tells people that her daughter’s a doctor? God, she’ll pee her pants.”
And Lark penned letters, the last the most welcome. In the spring of 1955, she wrote, “I’m coming home! In September I start teaching seventh-grade English and renting the apartment above Egger’s Drug Store. See you in August. Be on the lookout for used furniture.”
And indeed Nell kept an eye peeled for bargains in Bender’s Second Hand. She went so far as to buy a brown wicker rocker—everyone needed a wicker rocker. And would Lark be interested in Elvira’s bed? “The springs are all right, if you don’t mind the squeak.”
A postcard from Lark begged, “Bookcases, please! Let me know the price, and I’ll send a check.” When Lark finally moved into the Eggers’ apartment, the child was possessed of a single bed, two large bookcases, the rocker, and a student desk.
“All set!”
Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse Page 29