by Beth Kephart
The sun was at Anna’s back, the sky was her frame. When at last she looked up and saw Katherine standing in the third-floor window, she freed one hand and waved. “He’s singing for you,” she called out, and began running, her hem down near her feet. Her hands were tight about the box—that strange magenta hatbox that Anna had found one day at Dewees.
Don’t run, Katherine almost called. You’ll fall. But she was mesmerized by the sight of Anna, by the question, Where had she gone without her?
There was a penny-toss game getting under way across the street—Marty Bell and his cousins. There was a milk cart trotting by, a tabby in the gutter swatting fleas, the smell of bleach coming from a neighbor’s basement. There was Jeannie Bea in the kitchen. Neither her mother nor father were home. Katherine had lost the day.
Anna was a block off, a half block, up the marble stoop. She was running up both flights of steps; she was out of breath, Katherine could hear her. When she opened their bedroom door, her face was flushed. She shut the door behind her. Laughed.
“A bobolink, Katherine,” she said. “Hurry. Close the window.” Speaking as if Katherine hadn’t just been roused from a fever, as if she hadn’t only but recently summoned the strength to stand at all. “Oh, honestly,” Anna said when she saw Katherine not moving, watching her. “Darling.” She slipped the box onto her bed, then crossed the room and shut the window. “You’re looking well,” she declared, staring deep into Katherine’s eyes.
“I’ve been sick all day. Where were you?”
“Jeannie Bea knows all the cures. I only know how to amuse you.”
“Amuse me?” Katherine repeated. “Where did you go?”
“I’ve been trying to tell you. Stop asking questions, and I will.”
Anna crossed the room again and collected the box from her bed. She held it firmly with both hands, but gently, too. “A bobolink,” she said. “For you.” And now like an illusionist with a practiced trick, she freed the box of its slightly askew lid—such a strangely hued box, Katherine thought, so like Anna to be out there toting a bigheaded color. Into her free hand, Anna scooped up the bobolink and let the bird stretch one wing and settle, let the bird flaunt the bright coal-blackness of its feathers, the drifts of snow-white across its small, proud back, the straw-colored drift down its back. The bird cranked its head right, and blinked.
“Come on, bird,” Anna encouraged. “Show Katherine what you’re made of.” Katherine could see the pulsing heart in the bird’s elastic chest, the cinders of fear in its eyes. Quietly, sweetly, Anna began to hum until the bird gave up its song, which wasn’t shrill and wasn’t haunting, just a daylight summer song.
“He’s a soprano,” Anna said.
Katherine closed her eyes and took a long, dry breath. She thought of Cape May, just a week before, and the promises she’d thought the sisters had made to each other. “Where did you get him?”
“By the river. The Schuylkill. Oh, Katherine. It was such a day!” Anna moved toward Katherine and brought the singing bird closer. It spread and settled its wings but made no move to fly.
“By yourself?” Katherine leaned away from Anna and against the window harder.
“No,” Anna said, her words growing sharper. “Not actually. Bennett was with me.”
“Isn’t that nice?”
“Yes. In fact it was.”
The bobolink was growing restless in Anna’s hands. She turned from Katherine, slipped across the room, and lowered the bird into the box. She slid on the lid, leaving enough room for air, then turned back around to Katherine, hands on her hips. There were dull green stains on one elbow of Anna’s dress. The choker she often wore was missing.
“I thought Bennett was working,” Katherine said flatly.
“I went to the bakery to find you something sweet. I thought that maybe it would help, maybe it would make you feel better. But Bennett said that maybe you’d like wildflowers instead, that the shop was slow, that he could come with me. I came home. I got the hatbox. You were sleeping. He met me in the park.”
“You came in and out and I didn’t hear you?” Astonished, Katherine searched her memory, but the morning was oceanic, elastic, a blur. The morning had been Jeannie Bea, and her mother’s voice in the hall, her father’s dark suit, a cool compress on her head. The morning hadn’t been Anna.
“You were talking to yourself in your sleep. Katherine. Darling. You had a fever.”
“Wildflowers,” Katherine said unhappily. “In a hatbox.” She turned and stared out the window, where outside Marty and his cousins were gathered on his stoop, their game of penny toss over.
“It was the biggest box I had.”
“Weren’t you afraid someone might see you?”
“See me?”
“Out and about with your baker’s boy?”
“I’m never afraid, Katherine, except when you want me to be.” Anna laughed but Katherine didn’t. She walked to her own bed, sat down on the stale sheets, didn’t trust her spine to hold her. “If only you’d come,” Anna said appeasingly. “There was a kite, an orange one, above the river. And there were turtles, Katherine. A herd of them. We went all the way to the boathouses, hunting for your flowers.”
“Isn’t that nice?” Katherine said again, dully.
“They’re painted so pretty.”
“The flowers?”
“No,” Anna said. “The boathouses. And the scullers and coxswains and crews were out, and the shade beneath the pines was blue. Blue, Katherine. I was wishing you could have seen it. I swear that I was.”
She sounded defensive and small, but Katherine wasn’t in the mood to forgive her. Anna had never told the truth to Pa. She had not stayed home when Katherine, her protector, her secret keeper, was ill.
“Don’t say what you don’t mean.”
“We went to get you flowers.” Anna’s cheeks were flushed now, her eyes sharply accusing. “But Bennett found the bird. The bird was better.”
“Bennett found it.”
“It seemed lost.”
“I see.”
“It fit nicely in the hatbox.”
“Yes?”
“You’re being horrid, Katherine. I brought you a gift.”
“Hardly,” Katherine said. “Seems I gave you one.”
“Listen to you.” Anna turned, collected the hatbox, stood.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m not amusing you. That’s clear. It’s rather tedious, actually, to be here with you.”
“You just arrived.”
“And now I’m going.”
“Anna?” It was Pa, calling up from the bottom of the stairs.
“Yes, Pa?”
“Katherine okay?”
“She’s resting, Pa.” Anna shot Katherine a look. “I was just going out to get some air.”
She threw a little curtsy. She spun on her heels. She was gone. It wasn’t until so much later that night that Anna came to bed—she slipped into their room, threw open the window, stood by the moon. It was as if she was waiting for Katherine to talk, giving them both a second chance. But Katherine wouldn’t turn. She wouldn’t look her sister in the eyes. A while later, Anna was gone—across the floor, out the door, and down the wide-planked steps. Into the darkness with Bennett.
“What a stupid thing to do,” Katherine accused Anna, the next morning, near dawn. She’d been lying there in their room through the whole night alone, her fever gone, her mind restless. She’d been willing herself to stay where she was, to not go running after her sister again; to let Anna take the consequences, let Anna be damned. Katherine had lain in bed, her heart loud and ugly in her chest, her thoughts teetering between revenge and regret, and for the longest while there were only the acrobatics of a squirrel up on the roof, and then the early morning finch set in. The skies were scored with lemon and pink before the latch slid back on the wide front door, and the footfalls rose, and Anna arrived, breathless, her boots in her hands.
“Don’t call me stupid
.”
“You are. Look at you. Like a cat in the night.”
“For God’s sake, Katherine,” Anna said. “Be civilized.” Anna raised her hand to her ruined hair and primped it ineffectually. She ran her fingers down the buttons of her thin overcoat, fondly, absentmindedly, the trace of a smile still caught on her face, not a single ounce of remorse.
“And are you civilized? Sneaking out to a river by day, to a park at night, to wherever you’ve just come from—with a baker’s boy, Anna? Alone? You could be dead. Who’d know where to find you?” Katherine heard her voice rising, and she didn’t care. She knew she was in danger of blaring her sister’s affair to the world, and frankly, why shouldn’t she? Anna was treating Katherine as if she were their elder. Treating her as if she couldn’t be trusted. Which was the same thing, absolutely.
“You’ll wake Mother, Katherine. Please.” Anna walked to her side of the room and sat down. Perched on the edge of her bed with a straight back, that infuriating smile still on her face, as if no argument could dislodge her from her pervasive happiness.
“And I’m supposed to care? I’ll wake the whole of Delancey, if I wish. You’re ridiculous. Everything you’re doing is selfish.” Katherine wouldn’t turn in her bed. She lay stiff, furious.
“You ought to give him a chance before you start accusing. Get to know him. Stop being such a snob.”
“I’m not talking about Bennett. I’m talking about you.”
“This is about you, and you know it. You were always jealous. Always so grim, Katherine. Never acting your age, and boys see that. Bennett does.”
“So you’ve been speaking of me, then. To him.” Katherine felt flattened, the betrayal final.
“Not a lot. Just some.”
“You’re worse than I thought, Anna. You’ll stop at nothing.”
“Where’s your heart?”
Katherine didn’t answer, didn’t know how. Soon the silence was worse than any accusation, and now Katherine turned and saw how Anna was slipping her boots back on, buttoning each button with a frightening calm.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
“I’m going out.”
“You just came in.”
“I won’t waste the day fighting with you.”
“Anna.” Katherine pushed off the bed now. She stood, her bare feet on the rose-colored rug. “Don’t. Please don’t. I’m sorry.”
But Anna had made up her mind. She was across the room and out the door and there was the sound of her boots going down, words with Jeannie Bea, the unlatching and latching of the front door, and now the pattering away on the walk. All that summer morning Katherine remained in their room, looking out as the day became itself, thinking Anna might return. When Jeannie Bea called for breakfast, Katherine excused herself. When Pa knocked on the door, she said she was lying in bed with a book.
“What happened, love?” he said. He stood above her, blocking the rise of the morning sun. She couldn’t meet his eyes. She turned.
“Anna was bored.”
“She seemed agitated, not bored. There’s a difference, honey.” As if her father could bring his math to this, his economics and his rule book.
“Why don’t you ask Anna, Pa? Please. Leave me out of it for once, will you? It’s Anna’s turn to speak.”
“Your sister’s elusive.”
“My sister isn’t me.”
“But whatever she’s doing is affecting you. I asked you what happened. I’m asking after you.”
She looked up and she saw all the care in his face, the solemnity of responsibility, a trait they shared. She felt tears welling within her. She turned again, her father’s shadow still saving her from the sun.
“I can’t talk right now, Pa.”
“All right, then,” he sighed.
“I think I’d like to stay in bed awhile.”
“Moby-Dick,” he said.
“I’m trying.”
“It’s a good book,” he said, “once you get in thick with it.” He touched Katherine’s forehead with one finger and stayed hovering above her for a long time. Finally she turned and looked him squarely in the eyes.
“Thank you, Pa,” she said, and he leaned down and kissed her where his finger had been.
Later there was sun, too much sun, everywhere. There was an entire blast of morning heat in a room hollowed out but for one.
THE SUN SPILLING IN THROUGH THE STAINED-GLASS windows daubs hatbands and dresses with diluted colors—red gone slightly copper, blue like the final hour of a bruise, green like the eyes of a cat. From the nozzles of the Venus fountain, water geysers toward the ceiling struts then collapses into iron basins and pools, and now Katherine, opening her eyes with a start, feels a trickle of heat run down her cheek, past her ear.
She plays the scenes of her sickness back across her mind’s eye, this time more slowly. She stands at that window in that bedroom on Delancey Street, looking down and waiting for Anna, and studying, as she does, that boy with the oversize boots and the pig, that boy with the gentle hands and the way of speaking, and now at last she knows precisely who he is. The boy with the pig is the boy with the mutt who was there, this very morning, near the streetcar. The boy in the chattering chaos of the Centennial, who had seemed to know who she was. Who had watched her and dared her to speak, to say hello.
It was the same boy—not just from that day with the pig, but from another, in November—a brisk, unnerving day that had started out all wrong and had only grown worse, and had borne, within itself, more seeds of the coming disaster.
The seeds, in fact, of today. Katherine allows herself to remember because she won’t ever again. Maybe the Centennial Exhibition is the story of the future. Today is the story of Katherine’s past, which was also Anna’s.
That day, last November, had begun with breakfast. It had begun with Anna sitting directly across from Katherine, a million miles away. Anna had been running her spoon over the side of her egg like the egg was a clay sculpture she was smoothing. She’d been sitting there, saving her best thoughts for Bennett, leaving Katherine out in the cold. Time apart from her baker’s boy was a torture for Anna. Still, on that day Katherine desperately wanted to be with her sister. She’d overlook her sullenness. She just wanted company.
So they’d gone out, that Saturday, shopping. They had a list of things that were to be bought, and Katherine, tentative, linked her arm with Anna’s, and Anna let her, dutifully, though they both, Katherine realized, remembered the bruise of Cape May. “We’ll get some ice cream,” Katherine said, but then Anna, of course, had a better idea.
“No. We’ll get shortbread for free at Bennett’s.”
“I’d rather have ice cream.”
“We can have that, too.”
“Do we have to go to Bennett’s?”
“Yes. We do.”
They did their chores. They went out and about, buying buttons for Jeannie Bea and a new kind of tea for their mother and tobacco for their father, and then they stopped at a corner shop to look at ready-made coats, to each try one on for the winter. They left Wanamaker’s with two pairs of muffs instead. Anna’s was white and Katherine’s silver. And then they were on Walnut Street and past Broad, and the puff of bakery flour was floating aimlessly overhead, like the last blow of a train stack. They were there, at the baker’s, where Anna said, “Please, dear. Watch the door.” And so Katherine stood as Anna told her to stand—her face toward Walnut Street, her back to the bakery, her near happiness of just a few moments before threading itself into a black hole.
“Tell whomever asks that the shop is closed,” Anna had instructed Katherine, sliding in through the door, and Katherine had glared at her, and yet she stayed, a sentinel on that mild November day. The skin against her brow and cheeks felt taut. Her new muff hung from her neck; her hands were nervous. She shuffled back and forth in polished boots, waiting for Anna to finish.
And then, from down the street came the young man with wheat-colored hair, his trouser pocke
ts bulging as if stuffed with eggs, his arms filled with a hen so still that Katherine at first concluded that it was someone’s unplucked dinner. The closer he came, the better Katherine heard the click of eggshell against eggshell, an odd, sweet sound. The nearer he came, the better she saw how the hen in his arms blinked, perfectly calm, perfectly still. Now he was a few feet off and slowing his pace. He dared to stop, to ask Katherine a question.
“Cream biscuits today?” he asked, thrusting his chin in the direction of the shop and waiting for the answer, casual, as if a hen were not sitting squat in his arms, twisting its neck, proudly displaying its comb. As if a breeze had not just now blown in, ruffling the old hen’s feathers.
He had no business speaking with her.
He knew it. So did she.
He was from another side of town. He was from another place. Dangerous neighbors, her father had said.
“Baker’s stepped out,” Katherine informed him. “Come back tomorrow.”
His eyes were the color of a river at night. He smelled like straw or hay, like the tang of a goat’s warm hide, like the eggs warming in his pocket. Katherine studied him, decided against deciding he was handsome, though he was—undeniably he was. This close up he was even more handsome than he’d seemed from her bedroom window, for this was when it struck her: he was the boy with the pig. My name is William. She ignored him, best as she could. She stared back out toward the street. Anyone passing might have thought she’d known him—that a poor boy and a banker’s daughter had gotten themselves into a tangle. Not possible. She felt him studying her face, the fade of freckles across the bridge of her nose, the space between her two front teeth. Her unwillingness to be charmed or to be charming. The lie she was so obviously keeping.
“Warm for November,” he said, almost a game now, to see if he could force a conversation, get her to say something, at least, about the wisdom of a muff in warm weather.