Though she still had not emerged from her shock, Tante took up the challenge. “I know much!”
“And do you have to wear that thing?”
Step-and-a-Half nodded at the metal-buttoned suit, but Tante reared back and folded her arms and shut her astonished mouth. Her need for work smacked up against her pride and drove hard against the impossible image of this tattered and flamboyant scrap hauler now mysteriously turned respectable business owner. And potential boss. Things were turned right over in her mind. Her social pride was upset. And yet she could have stood that. It was the slight of her clothing, the specific suit, which she yet wore with honor and offended loyalty, that she couldn’t bear.
“This is a good suit, and most costly,” she informed her. Step-and-a-Half waved away her stiff words and kicked her foot at a graceful, womanly, black enamel electric Singer with delicate gold flower trim and an optional wood cabinet that fit beautifully beneath.
“If you can work the thing, you can sell the thing.”
“I’ll learn to work it,” was Tante’s promise. She couldn’t take her eyes off the gleaming instrument, the very latest model, streamlined and yet familiar. The whole room seemed to narrow to that machine, as though a spotlight were turned upon it. All else fell into blackness and insignificance, even the idea of working under Step-and-a-Half, a surprise so grave that the potential humiliation hadn’t even sunk in or truly registered with Tante. The lustrous, compact little businesslike machine with its sparkling needle and shining chrome flywheel was enough, for the moment, to still the larger picture. For it made sense of her dilemma. Tante touched the cool curve where the arm accommodated the cloth, ran her hand curiously over the carved oak of the cabinet.
“Sit down at it,” said Step-and-a-Half. “Mrs. Knutson can give you the rundown.”
Charmed and fascinated, Tante sat down at the machine and accepted instructions. Even when the person she despised most in the town, Roy Watzka, stepped past her bearing in his arms a bolt of purple felt to place in the window, she hardly acknowledged him. She was learning to thread the needle.
THE COLD DEEPENED but the snow remained sparse, disheartening the sledders and the snow fort builders, though the skating was fine. The ice was dark and clear. You could see straight through the quartz gray surface into a frigid depth where leaves and air bubbles swirled, trapped in silver cracks. Franz had agreed to meet Betty Zumbrugge for a date once the school let out for Christmas holiday. On that first evening of vacation, she drove up to the shop in the big black car, parked it outside and kept the motor running, but did not come in. Franz took off his apron and hung it up. He’d told his father when he was leaving, but not with whom. Fidelis, peering out the window while he absently sharpened a knife, said, “That’s Zumbrugge.”
“It’s Betty,” said Franz.
“Why don’t she come in?”
“She’s picking me up.”
Fidelis looked hard at Franz, and his son flushed, but shrugged on his father’s worn old jacket. “Don’t get polluted,” Fidelis warned. Franz waved him off. He wasn’t much of a drinker. He went outside. There were swirls of snow in the air, bright flakes biting his cheeks. He jumped into the car and leaned his elbow on the window, held the hand strap on the passenger’s side. Betty turned the car around with a screech of the wheels and they barreled out to a little roadhouse that had once been a Prohibition blind pig. Betty jolted to a halt, laughing, and lighted a cigarette. For a while they sat together in the car just looking at the place.
“You ever been to one?”
Franz just shrugged. He never had been. The roadhouse was a low clapboard building with a thin porch tacked on all around. Betty told him about her family, her plans for nursing school, her sisters and their boyfriends, her father and his problems. Franz tried to listen with careful attention, but his mind kept drifting. At last, they got out of the car and walked up to the door of the roadhouse. They could hear someone playing a slow Canadian waltz on the accordion. Inside, the place was lit and warm, the walls full of advertisements. The chairs and tables were made out of thick, worn, battered wood. They chose a table toward the back of the room where they could see whomever came through the door, but not be spotted at once. They were served two neat whiskeys with chasers of beer.
The beer wasn’t much, but the whiskey, that was different. The taste was harsh and golden, the burn sweet. The stuff hit Franz’s stomach, bloomed through him with an amber warmth. He looked into Betty’s bright blue eyes and smiled at her with an indulgent pleasantness. In spite of her grown-up clothing and makeup and car, she seemed younger than Mazarine. He waited for a while as Betty told him something she obviously considered serious—her look was urgent and, once, she passed her hand through her careful yellow curls, messing them a little, so their smoothness divided into rings. They had another whiskey and the rings blurred into an icy halo. He refused a third whiskey, but Betty drank it, and then they walked out to the car.
The cold had deepened, and the skin of their hands and faces numbed in the wind, but the car was very modern and the inside heated up a little as they drove. Betty turned down a road where they would not be bothered—it dead-ended at a farm foreclosed last spring. Her father had foreclosed it, Franz remembered. She stopped the car and turned off the lights. Gradually, their eyes adjusted to the snow light outside the car and the world turned a distinct blue with black shadows pooling in the ditches. They could see the faltering sprinkle of town lights through a haze of windbreak, but all around them it was very calm. Betty pulled some blankets from the backseat, and said, “Let’s talk.”
“What about?” said Franz, reaching toward her. He held her face in his hands, kindly, as though he really meant to ask this question, but he was teasing her. Betty was serious.
“About us,” she said.
“Well, what about us?”
“Aren’t you going to kiss me?” asked Betty. “I’m starting to wonder what’s wrong with you.”
“All right,” said Franz. With his finger, he smoothed her lips, then he used his thumb to rub the lipstick off. He didn’t mean to keep her in suspense, but what he did seemed to mesmerize her and she tipped back her head. He put his mouth on hers and then he knew, right away, that he had made some sort of terrible mistake. He expected her to kiss like Mazarine, but it was all different. Her lips were plump, fruity, then wet. She opened her mouth so wide he had to creak his open, too, and when he touched her tongue it was a stiff, little, fast-talking tongue. He didn’t like her tongue, her teeth, the smoky way she tasted, the way she smelled, even though it was probably expensive perfume. There was too much of it, too much of her, and he fell away from her side of the car, dizzy. But she fell with him across the seat and then his hands were inside her coat. He was surprised to find that suddenly her dress was open, and without any warning at all his hands were on her breasts. Her brassiere was made of something warm and tight, a smooth fabric. He put his hands underneath and lifted it off and when her breasts filled his palms he drew a ragged breath. His hands stopped moving. He pulled her brassiere down and closed her coat, sat up and turned away.
“I’ve got to get out,” he said, opening the car door. “I’ve got to walk.”
Because of the scarcity of snow that year, he knew that he could get to Mazarine’s across the fields.
HE WAS HALF FROZEN by the time he reached the Shimek house, hardly more than a shack, really, with a boot-shaped tin chimney and an outhouse near the back alley. That part of the town was divided into blocks, cut with dirt roads, now frozen but usually all dust or mud. There were scraggly sweeps of woods all around Mazarine’s house, and her mother kept chickens and an old cow that gave a bit of milk. All the way there, outdoor dogs, mostly chained to their houses, took turns barking at Franz as he passed, so he was sure she’d have heard him approach and come to the door. But that was just the lingering effect of the whiskey, perhaps, a lapse in perspective. Franz was so filled with the mission of his walk, and the drama of leavin
g Betty, that he became convinced that Mazarine would know and understand that he was due to arrive, even though he hadn’t talked to her for weeks. She would be waiting. She would know all that had happened. Instantly, things would be as they were before. When he stepped up to the unpainted door, which was almost level with the ground, knocked, and waited for her to answer, he was slowly bubbling up inside with the excitement of a man about to be rescued.
Her mother opened the door and filled the doorway. She squinted at him, touched strings of gray-brown hair away from her face and groaned a little in recognition but said nothing. Shut the door and left him standing outside. After a while, he knocked again. This time, Mazarine opened the door. The dim light inside outlined her, slim in her summer dress, her hair as always alive and curving around her shoulders and trailing down upon her breasts. Her face was completely in shadow, but he could see that her features were calm, and, he thought, sad.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“To come in,” he answered, now understanding this would not be the way he’d imagined it, but very different, “just for a minute.”
Mazarine glanced behind, and Franz saw the great, naked white pillars of her mother’s legs in the gloom. Mrs. Shimek had hiked up her dress to sit on a wooden kitchen chair and watch the door.
“Please don’t come in,” said Mazarine.
“I’m half froze,” said Franz. “I walked here across the fields. It was maybe six miles.”
“Why were you out there?” Mazarine asked. A light wind came up, terribly cold, and swirled the hair around her shoulders. Oblivious to the biting air, she stared at him, waiting. She could smell the alcohol he breathed, and the thought of him drinking faintly shocked her, then wounded her. She’d never known him to drink, although some of the boys did. Mrs. Shimek cried out for her daughter to shut the damn door. Mazarine began to shut it once again on Franz, but in his desperation he stepped forward and she had to fall back a little and let him in. It wasn’t the first time that he’d ever been in her house, but somehow things looked worse. Maybe her father had really gone off on the boxcars the way he’d threatened. Or maybe her mother had gotten sick for real. Mrs. Shimek sat there, strangely monumental on the small chair, staring at him with a solemn, owlish opacity. There wasn’t another chair, he realized, so he just stood there as Mazarine walked over to the woodstove and stirred it up and put in two pieces of wood.
“Don’t use it up,” said her mother.
Mazarine ignored her and spoke to Franz. “Come stand over here.” She beckoned him to the stove, and he understood that he was cold, now, deep down and not just surface, because he began to shake so hard his bones knocked inside as his body warmed. The whiskey had provided a false warmth and energy during the long walk across the fields. He’d tramped the iron clods, even run across the wavelets of windblown snow so fine and hard it resembled a fine plaster on the ground. Now his blood was cold and thin; his bravado sank away and he felt lost, foolish. The fire blazed up in the iron stove and the heat finally began to penetrate his clothing, then his skin. It radiated into him so that he almost controlled the shakes. From time to time, his body still shuddered. He stood there, silently waiting for what came next. Mazarine stood next to him. And her mother sat watching them from her chair.
Mazarine didn’t move once she found a still place inside of herself. What should she feel, she wondered, knowing it was odd that Franz’s presence in this house should leave her so indifferent. She couldn’t muster the correct gratitude for his return, if that’s what it was. He hadn’t said so. She couldn’t feel gladness, nor could she feel the proper anger. Her friends had said, “Don’t you just hate him now?” But she hadn’t. She’d felt patient, even when her first grief turned to the lassitude of despair, and she had shrugged off their avid sympathy. After she’d lain with her cheek against him on that November afternoon, and turned once, twice, and kissed him there long and smooth and slow, she had to erase him from her mind. She had bricked up all thoughts of Franz in a cold little room. He was nothing. Because the next thing she knew, he was with Betty. If she thought of those afternoons underneath the pine, she’d die of the shame of his abandoning her. So even though he stood right here, right now, she couldn’t really see him. Things were utterly changed, weren’t they? Shouldn’t they be? She poked up the fire and stood there, watching him for signs that would tell her what she should do.
There was no word spoken. Nothing but the fire’s simple crackle. As he warmed, Franz became increasingly unnerved by the dead silence, and once he felt capable of leaving he said, “Thanks,” in a subdued voice. Mazarine walked with him, the few steps to the door. As he reached out to open it, he asked in a low voice, “Do you want me to come back?”
The no came out automatically, her voice a white scratch on the tiny syllable.
* * *
JUST IN TIME, everyone agreed, the snow began to fall. It came in picture-postcard flakes that sifted down straight through a windless day. Everyone came out of doors, exclaiming with pleasure. The children caught flakes on their tongues and planned great doings, dug tunnels in the drifts, fought snowball wars. At last the sleds could be used. The Christmas trees had a backdrop. The carols and the church nativity scenes made sense. The wind so rarely stills on the plains that the singular piling of light flakes was a marvel. Fence posts grew caps. Tree branches were outlined and pine trees were dressed in puffy shawls. The people of Argus went out walking just to marvel at the odd shapes that the new snow gave everyday objects as it landed gently and stuck atop automobiles, doghouses, trash bins, bleak grape arbors, the statue in front of the courthouse, steps, and ornate railings. Argus suddenly looked sweet and amusing, like a village in an old fairy tale.
Clarisse, emerging from the back of the funeral parlor, had this very thought as she buried her hands in a knitted fleece muff and walked home. She thought of the house made of gingerbread, deep in the forest, the roof made of iced ladyfingers trimmed with sugar gum drops. She thought of the quaint Swiss hut pictured on the tin of chocolate she’d bought for herself. When she got home, she decided, she would treat herself to a great pot of cocoa. She would scald the milk and drizzle sugar into it, then shave the chocolate into the pan and stir until it melted. There might even be enough cream left in the bottle she’d bought at Waldvogel’s, from Delphine, to whip for a fancy topping. The question she now confronted was whether she should ask Delphine to join her, and maybe bring along some extra cream. She reached her house. Suddenly, there was more to think of. In the new snow leading up to her front door, there were tracks, great and solid tracks, a man’s tracks. And there he was, waiting on her porch.
AT LAST, on the strength of his associations, and after dogged application and reapplication to Judge Zumbrugge, Sheriff Hock had obtained a warrant permitting him to search the home of Clarisse Strub. He was a very neat man, meticulous and fussy about his surroundings. His house was immaculate; everything he owned was stored and filed, his clothing was neatly folded in his dresser or hung in his dusted closet. He kept his badge, well polished, in a small wooden bowl just beside his bed. He could have told anyone whether such a thing as a red tubular gleaming glass bead was wedged into the crack of the floor of his closet. He would have noticed. In contrast, Clarisse saved her precision for her calling and let her house go, kept her rooms in a state of feminine disarray. After Delphine had removed the dress from her closet, some time ago, she had swept the floor. But she hadn’t examined the cracks between the boards with a powerful lamp and a shrewd, scanning eye, the way Sheriff Hock did now.
“This won’t take long,” he said to Clarisse with a firm and even kind formality. “I apologize for discommoding you and impinging on your privacy.”
“With all due respect to your office,” said Clarisse, in despair, “go to hell.”
“I’ve been there,” Sheriff Hock said, looking up at her with deadening simplicity. “You put me there, Clarisse.”
“I didn’t mean to.” Tears s
tarted into her eyes. She held them back, then let go. Maybe, if he felt sorry for her, he’d leave. “I don’t want you to feel badly—”
“Then,” said Hock, setting down his lamp with a surge of unruly hope, turning toward her, “you must feel something.”
Clarisse stared at him, paralyzed, hearing fuzzy noises as though wires in her brain had just crossed.
“For me,” he pursued.
“I’ve always felt that we could be friends.” Clarisse felt her voice rising, higher, higher, toward a shriek. She tried to take a deep breath. She got some air, but a red tide was choking her. Sheriff Hock shook his head with sorrowing gravity and aimed his beam back at the floor. Clarisse watched him, thoughts swirling. Of course, he’d find a bead, a thread, a bit of cloth, something to implicate her. Then he’d have her cornered and she’d have to decide between him and a murder charge, wouldn’t she?
“Leave,” said Clarisse. “This is my room. Get out of here.”
Hock rose and though he didn’t move toward her she felt his energy, a menacing and self-righteous energy, surge at her in a wave. She stepped back. With a small, pursed smile and a low, disarming whistle, Hock turned away. Arms folded, lips set, Clarisse leaned in the doorway of her bedroom and watched the awful, strained, cheap, twill material that stretched across the buttocks of the kneeling sheriff. His belt cut into his belly. Above that, his torso filled his shirt in a way that made it look like it was wadded with heavy quilting, not flesh. But there was flesh beneath, a body, make no mistake about that! A body that had decided it owned her. Clarisse let her thoughts go. Why not just murther ‘m. . . . It would be so simple to slip a knife beneath those padded ribs. Her fingers shook slightly on the door frame.
“Please go away,” she whispered, and when he didn’t respond she said something that her mother used to say. “Don’t make me lose my temper.”
Master Butchers Singing Club Page 27