The Book of Story Beginnings

by Kladstrup, Kristin

  In the front seat, her parents were having a conversation about Lucy’s uncle Byron and aunt Helen and whether they would have dinner ready. Lucy’s father was sure they would. Her mother didn’t want them to make a fuss. “Are we almost there?” Lucy asked again, louder this time.

  “Not far now,” said her father. “Look at the hills out the window. They’re called bluffs.”

  The bluffs made Lucy think of their new house, which she knew was built on top of a hill. Of course, it wasn’t a new house at all. Aunt Lavonne’s grandfather had built it in the 1800s. His family had lived there. And then Aunt Lavonne, with her parents and Oscar and her little brother, Morris, who had grown up to be Lucy’s father’s father. Lucy had seen a photograph of the house before, a large brick house with a wide porch in front, a house for families, a house that even had a name. People had been calling it The Brick for over a hundred years.

  Were she and her parents the sort of family who belonged in The Brick? Lucy looked at her father and mother and wondered. Her parents were so different from each other that they reminded her of a bedtime story her father used to tell, about a king who loved cats and a queen who loved birds. The king loved his cats so much and the queen loved her birds so much that they couldn’t get along with each other. They fought all the time. The story was really just the beginning of a story, because Lucy would always ask what happened next, and her father would shake his head and say, “I don’t know. Not a very pretty situation, was it?”

  That was how it was with her parents, who always seemed to disagree more than they agreed. Sometimes it was hard to remember they had fallen in love once upon a time. The Brick, thought Lucy. Our house, The Brick. It sounded funny.

  Looking down the highway, she saw a town that looked the same as all the others she had already seen — a small cluster of houses, stores, grain elevators, and a tall water tower. The car slowed as it passed through the town. Then, just outside it, Lucy saw a sign that said MARTIN: 8 MILES.

  “That’s it!” she cried. The town near their new house was named after Lucy’s family. Aunt Lavonne’s grandfather had been one of the founders of the town. Lucy liked being connected to history. She liked sharing her last name with the town. It made her feel that she and her parents might just possibly belong there.

  Looking out the window, Lucy saw cedar trees gripping the sides of the hills and cottonwood trees shimmering in the valleys. She glimpsed cattle grazing around a small pond. The station wagon rolled downhill, crossed over a little creek that had etched itself into the land, and began to climb again. At last it came up over a rise, and Lucy saw that the farmland to the west was completely flat. “That’s the Missouri River valley,” said her father.

  The station wagon curved north, following the edge of the bluffs, climbing even higher. Down below the road, Lucy saw several large white barns grouped together. A white farmhouse stood nearby. “That’s Helen and Byron’s place,” said her father. “See that mailbox up ahead? That’s us.”

  As the car slowed, Lucy saw the name Martin stenciled on the mailbox. Then, as her father turned onto a long gravel driveway, she rolled down her window and leaned out of the car to get her first look at The Brick.

  The house was set back from the highway, and in the light from the setting sun, its bricks looked almost pink. Two tall spruce trees grew close to the left side of a long white front porch. Lilac bushes, their purple blooms weighing down their branches, leaned into the other end of the porch. Five tall windows looked out over a balcony on the porch roof. Without knowing how she knew, Lucy was sure that the two on the left would be her windows.

  Her father stopped the car beside the spruce trees just as two people came around from the back of the house: a man who looked like a shorter, sturdier version of Lucy’s father, and a smiling woman with dark, graying hair cut short.

  “It’s Byron and Helen!” Her father threw open the car door.

  In the bustle of chattering and introducing that followed, Lucy found herself held at arm’s length, hugged, then held at arm’s length again as Aunt Helen exclaimed, “Look at you! How old are you now? Twelve? My goodness! You’re practically grown up.”

  Meanwhile, Uncle Byron was quietly herding everyone toward the back door of the house. “The table’s all set, and I’ve got a casserole warmed up in the oven,” said Aunt Helen as they came into the kitchen. “I know you folks must be hungry.” Then Aunt Helen noticed that Lucy was poking her head through a tall doorway leading from the kitchen. “Goodness! It looks to me as if Lucy is too excited to eat right away,” she said with a laugh.

  “Can I go look around?” said Lucy.

  “Of course, dear. It’s your house.”

  Our house. Lucy passed through a dining room, then another room filled with old furniture: tables with curly legs and clawed feet, a faded red velvet couch, and an enormous leather chair. There were lace curtains at the windows. In any other house, the room would have been a living room. In this house, it was clearly a parlor, Lucy thought.

  “I made up Lavonne’s bed for you, dear,” she heard Aunt Helen’s voice call. “I thought you’d like her room. It’s upstairs at the front of the house. Not the room with the big bed — I made that one up for your parents. It’s the other room.”

  The front stairs were in a hallway just outside the parlor. There was a glass-paneled front door at one end of the hallway and a grandfather clock at the other, and two doors in between. One of these was closed. Peeking in the other door, Lucy saw a few chairs and a baby grand piano. Then she hurried up the stairs, admiring their threadbare magenta carpeting. It made her think of the plush seats in an old movie theater.

  Upstairs, she found Aunt Lavonne’s room. My room, thought Lucy. She was sure it was the one she had chosen from outside. The wallpaper was old-fashioned, with faded vines twisting around faded tree branches. Between the two windows that faced west stood a spindle bed, much higher than her old bed. There was a tall wooden dresser and a funny little vanity table. Lucy looked at herself in its folding mirrors. She made her brown eyes and round face serious, like a face in an old photograph. She let her long, dark brown hair fall over her shoulders, just like an old-fashioned girl might do. Only her T-shirt and jeans looked out of place in the room. Aunt Lavonne must have worn dresses when she was a girl.

  Seeing the remains of the sunset reflected in the mirror, Lucy turned and moved to the window. The plains were growing dark, and she saw the gleaming silver threads of a four-lane highway cutting across them. Except for the highway, which couldn’t have been there in 1914, she might have been looking back in time. She wondered if Lavonne had been looking out this very window when she had seen Oscar standing at the edge of a great, magical sea.

  Lucy closed her eyes, picturing the sea in her mind. She imagined Oscar standing beside the rowboat, turning around to look at Lavonne. No — he wasn’t looking at Lavonne. He was looking at her, as if to say once again, “Lucy will explain!”

  When Lucy came downstairs the next morning, Uncle Byron was sitting at the table having coffee with her parents. Aunt Helen was standing at the stove pouring pancake batter onto a griddle. There were sausages sizzling in a pan. “I came up to cook breakfast for you and your folks,” Aunt Helen told Lucy.

  “I love this kitchen,” said Lucy’s mother, looking around with pleasure. “Look how old it is. It reminds me of my grandmother’s kitchen when I was a girl.” The walls of the kitchen were pale green and the floor was polished wood. The cabinets were so tall that there was a little stepladder under one of the windows so you could reach the top shelves.

  “Lavonne liked old things. I’m just glad she replaced the coal stove,” said Aunt Helen. “Now, who gets the first pancakes?”

  They ate in comfortable silence for a while. Aunt Helen hovered between the stove and the table, making sure everyone had enough to eat. Then Lucy noticed that she was looking at Uncle Byron and wagging her head toward Lucy’s father.

  Uncle Byron set down his coffe
e. “Bill Parker says they’re looking for someone to teach a chemistry class at the community college over in Onawa this summer,” he said, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “Thought you might be interested, Shel.”

  Her father put down his fork. “It’s good of you to think of us, Byron. But Jean and I have talked it over. I think I’ll be taking the summer off.”

  “I bet this summer position could lead to something in the fall,” said Aunt Helen. “You never know. The college would be so lucky to have you, Shel.”

  “What I really want is to take some time off from teaching chemistry. Maybe try my hand at something else.”

  “I don’t mean to interfere, Shel, but jobs around here are few and far between,” said Uncle Byron.

  “I think we’ll be all right,” said Lucy’s father.

  Lucy noticed that her mother was cutting her pancakes into precise, even pieces. She didn’t look very happy. Lucy wondered if her parents really had “talked it over,” as her father had said.

  “What kind of job would you get, Dad?” she asked. She had a hard time picturing him doing anything but teaching chemistry. Could he raise cattle, like Uncle Byron?

  Her father smiled, then winked at her. “Oh, I don’t know, Lucy. Maybe I’ll take up alchemy, like Aunt Lavonne.”

  “What?” said Aunt Helen, a blank look on her face.

  “Just a joke, Helen,” said Lucy’s father. “But I did think I’d take a look at her laboratory up in the attic — maybe read over her notes. I haven’t been up there in years. Byron and I used to help her out with her experiments when we were boys. Remember, Byron?”

  “I remember you and Aunt Lavonne nearly blowing the roof off the house,” said Uncle Byron.

  Lucy’s father laughed. “I hope I know a little more about chemistry now.”

  “What’s alchemy got to do with chemistry?” asked Lucy. “I thought it was all about making gold out of lead.”

  “There’s a little bit more to it than that,” said her father. “The alchemists experimented with all sorts of chemicals. Their work is pretty interesting, especially from a historical point of view.”

  “I never did understand what Lavonne was doing up there in the attic. Now you tell me she was making gold!” said Aunt Helen.

  The laughter that followed this comment made Lucy want to defend Aunt Lavonne. “She was trying to find out what happened to Oscar.”

  “Oh, poor Lavonne!” said Aunt Helen. “I think she believed that ridiculous story about her brother sailing away in a rowboat right up until the day she died. Sometimes I wonder if she wasn’t a bit touched in the head.”

  Lucy gave her father a questioning look. Wasn’t he going to defend Aunt Lavonne?

  Instead, he cleared his throat and said, “What a fine breakfast this has been, Helen. Thank you! And now I think Lucy and I had better start unloading that trailer.”

  Outside, Lucy sat on the front porch while her father talked with Uncle Byron. At last she heard Uncle Byron’s pickup truck start, then watched it roll out the gravel driveway. Her father came around the corner of the house and sat down beside her.

  “How could you let Aunt Helen say all those things about Aunt Lavonne?” she asked.

  “Oh, Lucy. She didn’t mean any harm.”

  “Was Aunt Lavonne crazy? Touched in the head, like she says?”

  “Of course not.”

  “But how could it have happened the way Aunt Lavonne said?” Lucy looked out across the front lawn. Last night at sunset, it had been easy to imagine a magical ocean appearing around the house. In the light of day, the wide expanse of land beyond the crest of their hill looked perfectly ordinary. “Maybe she just dreamed the whole thing.”

  “Probably,” said her father.

  Lucy didn’t like that answer. “Maybe she didn’t dream it,” she argued. “Just because you can’t explain something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

  “You sound like Lavonne,” said her father. “She used to say that some things simply defied explanation.”

  “Well, something happened to Oscar, and I want to find out what,” said Lucy. “Dad, why did Aunt Lavonne study alchemy?”

  “Good question. For one thing, the alchemists believed there was a strong connection between the human spirit and the natural world. The work of changing a base metal like lead into gold was supposed to mirror a person’s journey to greater understanding. And I think some alchemists thought that the chemical reactions they were observing were in some way influenced by their own thoughts and desires.”

  “Sort of like magic,” said Lucy.

  “Sort of, I guess. At least that’s what Lavonne thought.”

  “Sort of like making an ocean appear where there isn’t one,” said Lucy.

  “Maybe,” said her father, smiling. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

  They walked around the house, past the spruce trees, past the back door. Lucy heard the clink and murmur of Aunt Helen and her mother washing dishes and talking.

  “Look there, Lucy,” said her father, pointing to a crowd of bushes growing up against the porch screen. “Gooseberry bushes. Lavonne used to make jam every summer.”

  “That’s what you wanted to show me?”

  “No.” Her father strode past the bushes. “I want to show you the smokehouse.”

  “The smokehouse?”

  “Well, it used to be the smokehouse back in the 1800s. They used it to preserve meat. By the time Byron and I were kids, it was just a storage shed. We used to play in it.”

  The smokehouse, a small square building made of the same brick as the main house, stood in a grove of elm trees not far from the back porch. A chimney poked up from its pointed roof. Lucy’s father pushed open a green door with a black knob. He stepped over the threshold, and Lucy followed. The wooden floor creaked under their weight. Lucy brushed a cobweb away from her face with a shudder.

  There was another door in the wall on their right. Her father pushed it open, and a stripe of bright morning sun poured across the floor.

  “Dad! It’s the boat! Oscar’s boat!” Lucy cried.

  Along the far wall, a small rowboat lay tilted on its side. A pair of oars was propped against it.

  Together, they laid the boat flat on the floor. Lucy climbed in and sat down on one of the two seats. Her father handed her the oars, and Lucy rubbed her hands down the length of them. She thought of Oscar holding the oars in his hands, pulling them through water that shouldn’t have been there. Was that a faint smell of the sea coming up from the old boards beneath her feet? “This must be the real boat, Dad,” she said. “It smells like it’s been on the ocean.”

  “Your Aunt Lavonne thought the same thing. She used to say —”

  Lucy never found out what Aunt Lavonne used to say, because at that moment she gave a shriek and leaped out of the boat. Something had brushed against her arm. Something alive.

  “What is it?” she gasped.

  Two golden eyes flashed from the shadowy corner. In the dim light, Lucy saw the outline of a cat. It stared back at her, then jumped down and strolled over to rub against her father’s leg.

  “Just a farm cat,” said her father.

  “What’s it doing here?”

  “Farm cats hang around farms, killing rats and mice.”

  “I thought it might be a rat.”

  “I could tell.”

  The cat followed them as they left the smokehouse. In the full light of day, he turned out to be a large gray tabby.

  Lucy’s mother waved from the kitchen window, then came outside to meet them. “Did you find a pet, Lucy?” she asked.

  “I guess so,” said Lucy.

  “That cat for a pet?” said Aunt Helen, joining Lucy’s mother on the porch. “Why, he’s just a stray. Showed up a couple of months ago. You never saw such a scrawny-looking thing. I must say he looks better now. Must be the milk I keep leaving out for him down at our house. He’s all over the place, that cat. If you let him inside, Jean, h
e’ll rip the furniture to shreds!”

  “Well, the furniture’s so old it can’t matter.” Lucy’s mother opened the door. “Look at him! He wants to come in,” she said as the cat darted past her ankles into the kitchen. “I love cats,” she confided to Aunt Helen. “Sometimes I think I must have been a cat in another life. But we’ve lived in an apartment for so long. No pets! Lucy’s never even had a goldfish.”

  When Lucy went to look for the cat, she found him in her bedroom, sniffing delicately at a suitcase. As she approached, he darted under the bed. She leaned down to coax him out, and he ran out the other side of the bed into the hallway.

  This time she was quick enough to see him disappear into the room just down the hall. Oscar’s room — her father had said so last night, only she had been too tired to look at it.

  She ignored the cat as she came through the door. Instead, she wandered over to the dresser to look at the photographs displayed on top of it. Some were new — Lucy’s school photo from last year, a picture of Uncle Byron and Aunt Helen and their two grown-up boys. Lucy picked up an old photograph in a tarnished silver frame. A young woman in a white lace dress was holding a chubby baby in her lap. Standing on either side of her were a tall boy wearing a jacket and tie and a girl with a big white bow in her hair. It must be Oscar and Lavonne, Lucy realized. And the baby must be Morris, her own grandfather. The photograph must have been taken just before Oscar disappeared.

  Oscar had light brown hair. Lucy studied his long, solemn face, as if she might find some hint that he knew what was about to happen to him. Then she looked around the room. Perhaps Oscar’s composition books were here. She scanned the titles on a bookshelf that stood against one wall. She ignored the newer-looking books. Those surely couldn’t have belonged to Oscar. But some of the older ones — perhaps he had read those. Lucy recognized Huckleberry Finn and Treasure Island. She opened the cover of Treasure Island and read the inscription on the flyleaf:

  A Merry Christmas to Oscar, 1912

  With Love from Ma and Pa