Dreadful Sorry (13 page)

Clementine let the children pull her around the glass conservatory full of ferns and potted aspidistras, and up onto the back porch. In the kitchen Janie was washing the children's snack plates. "The baby's with his mother for a bit. Do go up, Clem, and make sure he hasn't tired her."

Clementine climbed the stairs, trying to shake off her small cousins. The hallway stretched before them, doors on either side. The room at the end was Aunt Ethel's. Officially, Uncle Wallace slept there, too, but Clementine knew he spent most nights in the small room next door, or down in his study.

She stopped outside her aunt's door and knocked. "Come in," came the soft, weak voice.

Clementine opened the door and peeked inside. "Excuse me, Aunt Ethel, but I've come to get Augustus. Is he ready?"

Clearly he was. He held out his arms to Clementine as soon as he saw her. The other children crowded in at the door, and Aunt Ethel seemed to shrink back into her pillows. They were always eager to see their mother, although their visits with her never lasted more than a few minutes—just long enough for her to hear about their day and to hold the baby for a kiss or two. They then were sent back to their playroom, which doubled as a schoolroom.

"Go on now, dears," murmured Aunt Ethel. "I'll see you again tomorrow." They moved away reluctantly. But Clementine, holding the baby, lingered in the doorway. She didn't miss the look of annoyance on her aunt's face but asked boldly, "May I stay a moment, Aunt Ethel, and talk to you?"

"I'm very tired, dear."

"Oh, I'll only take a moment. It's about school again, Aunt Ethel."

The Eternal Invalid closed her eyes and leaned back on her white eyelet pillows, looking alarmingly weak. "You aren't going to start in about going away to study, are you? I can't bear any more discussion, Clementine."

"I don't want to go against Uncle Wallace, Aunt Ethel," begged Clementine, "but I know my own parents would want me to go on to college!" Her father as well as her mother, who had been Aunt Ethel's own sister, had valued education for girls as well as boys, and for women as well as men.

"Your father was a bad influence on my sister, I always thought," Aunt Ethel said. "Poor Bess married beneath herself."

Clementine, standing at the side of her aunt's bed, bit back her angry retort. "I just wanted you to talk to Uncle Wallace." It would be far more pleasant to leave with her uncle's blessing than to be forced to sneak away like some common criminal.

"Oh, Clementine," sighed Aunt Ethel, "you know we've always tried to do our best for you."

"Yes, I know. And you have. But now—"

"Now you're a young girl nearing maturity, my dear, and there is a lot you need to learn about running a household and managing a family before you get married."

"But Aunt Ethel, don't you understand? I don't want to learn about housekeeping. There's so much else to learn! I was thinking about—well, geography. It's fascinating, Aunt Ethel. I want to travel, to learn different languages, to know all about other places on earth! And college will help me do that! I don't think I'll ever want to get married."

Aunt Ethel pressed her lips together. "Such unseemly notions you have, young lady! I'm sure your mother would be appalled."

"She wouldn't, Aunt Ethel!" Clementine's eyes filled with tears. She blinked them back, then wondered if they might help her after all. She let them well in her eyes again and drip onto her cheeks. One tear plopped onto Augustus's head and he gurgled up at her, intrigued.

Aunt Ethel tried to reach a handkerchief on the bedside table, but her arm fell weakly back onto the coverlet. "Please compose yourself, my dear," she murmured. "I wish I could help you, but I do feel you are striving for something entirely inappropriate for a young lady."

Clementine sighed.

Her aunt lay back and closed her eyes. "You're a good girl, Clementine. You'll do what's right. We've brought you up to know your duty to your family and your duty as a woman."

"Yes, I hope I do know my duty. But—"

"Please don't bring this up with your uncle again, dear. It only upsets him."

"Yes, Aunt Ethel."

"Then I trust there will be no further argument." Her aunt reached up a thin arm and adjusted the pillows. "Please take the baby away now. He tires me so."

Hoisting chunky Augustus up against her shoulder, Clementine dragged her feet down the hallway. She peeked into the playroom and saw Aaron pretending to be a pirate, chasing Amity and Alice around the room. Andrew was pulling Abner around the perimeter of the room in a small wooden wagon, even though Janie, the hired girl, said the wheels made marks on the floor. Anne, who disdained childish play these days, had no doubt retreated to her bedroom to read. Clementine listened to the laughing and shrieking and decided no one was coming to any particular harm. Miss Finch was nowhere to be seen. She was firm about her hours and was "on duty" only during the school day. It was then up to Clementine to take charge, settle the children down, read some stories, play some games, and get them ready for their baths and dinners.

But until that minute came she would try again to make Uncle Wallace see reason. She stopped the wagon and settled Augustus in with Abner, cautioning the boys not to treat the baby roughly. Then she slipped back down the stairs. She crossed the library and stood for a moment outside the door to her uncle's inner sanctum. Then she knocked, hard.

Uncle Wallace, a large man with a black beard, frowned when he saw her. "Aren't you supposed to be looking after the children, Clementine?"

"Yes, but I wanted to ask you to reconsider, Uncle. I am determined not to stop my education. I want to ask whether, since you are so convinced I must remain here as a governess, I might be paid for my work. That way, you see, I could save up the money, and when the children are older, I could leave for college."

Uncle Wallace stood and came around the side of his desk to face her. "Pay you! My dear, you are not a servant. You are a member of this family. Your place is here with us. You will stay with us and help your aunt with the children, and then in the future, when you marry, you will have children and a house of your own."

"But—," she objected, clenching her hands tightly in the folds of her ankle-length skirt.

He scowled at her, eyes fierce under bushy black brows. "My dear Clementine, surely you don't object to helping out the family that has sheltered you and cared for you all these years?"

She lowered her eyes. "No, sir." But she
did
object! She did! She had never asked to come live with them in the first place.

"All right then." He smiled at her. "Perhaps you don't realize we have already given you far more comforts and luxuries than your own parents ever could have—no disrespect to the dead, of course." Clementine gritted her teeth. She knew Uncle Wallace and Aunt Ethel always enjoyed the notion that their niece had risen to new heights since coming to live with them. Their high opinion of themselves had long annoyed Clementine, but she never let on.

Now, sure of her obedience, Uncle Wallace smiled broadly, teeth gleaming white in his black beard. "In any case, dear Clementine, let us hear no more of this nonsense. Ladies' seminaries, indeed! We don't want you becoming one of those ridiculous suffragettes! Now, please go back up to the children. I do not want them pestering their mother."

 

Clementine slipped into the bedroom she shared with Augustus. She could hear the children laughing and shrieking in the playroom, but she couldn't face them, not just yet. She knelt by her narrow bed and pulled out from underneath it a large hatbox patterned with roses. She sank onto the mattress and lifted the lid, lost in memory.

Her father, Jacob Horn, had been the manager of the coal mine. He left early every morning for work after kissing Clementine and her mother good-bye. He carried his lunch in a wicker basket and walked with a spring in his step that Clementine said made him look like a wind-up toy. He would come home at night tired and often blackened with the coal dust that could ruin the lungs of miners who breathed it in, though Jacob himself worked most of the time in the office at the head of the shaft.

One day was different. Bess had packed his lunch as neatly as always and covered it with a clean white napkin. As always, she left it for him on the bench by the front door. But when Jacob left for work, he forgot to take it with him.

That morning Clementine was high up in the fork of the apple tree with her doll, Mollydolly. She was eyeing a branch higher up than she'd climbed before. The doll was delicately crafted and only ten inches tall. In its painted eyes was a look of mischief almost exactly like the expression in Clementine's own eyes. The doll had a pink-and-white china face and brown yarn hair tied back in braids. Jacob had bought the doll on a trip to Philadelphia, and Bess had sewn a blue gingham dress just like Clementine's own. For Christmas, Bess had outfitted the doll with a complete wardrobe—hat and coat, tiny knitted sweaters, little shoes made of felt, a long white cotton nightgown, and, best of all, a party dress of lush green velvet. Clementine took her doll everywhere.

Clementine waved good-bye to her father as he walked out the gate. She didn't notice he had left his lunch behind.

Later, Bess ran out of the house carrying the wicker basket. She stopped at the white gate and smiled at her daughter.

"I'll be back as soon as I take your dad his meal," she told her, holding up the basket covered with a crisp white cloth. "Be a good girl."

"Bye!" called Clementine, bracing herself to climb higher up onto the next branch.

"Climb down now, Clementine." Bess opened the white gate and stepped out into the road. "You can play just as nicely on the ground as up in trees, I should think."

And then her mother's famous last words as she looked up at her little girl: "Or will you come along, too, Clementine?"

What if she had answered yes and scrambled along at her mother's side? Clementine often wondered if anything would be different now, if maybe she could somehow have kept her mother from arriving at the mine. After all, Clementine walked more slowly than her mother. Wouldn't her shorter legs have kept them out of danger in the end?

But that day Clementine had only just reached her perch on the higher branch and didn't want to climb back down right away. "No, I'll wait here," she said.

She watched through the leaves as Bess walked away down the street.

It seemed only minutes later that she heard a strange booming thud and felt the earth rumble from way down deep. The leaves of the apple tree rustled around her face, and Mollydolly fell from the tree into a pile of leaves. Clementine slid off the branch, back into the fork, then lowered herself carefully until she could jump down into the pile of leaves, too. She stood with her arms out for balance. The apple tree bowed and waved its branches beguilingly, as if inviting her to dance. After a few seconds everything seemed oddly silent. Even the birds in the apple tree were mute. But soon they started chirping again, and people came streaming out of their houses,
shouting and running toward the mine, and Clementine pushed open the gate and was swept along in their tide.

She could smell the burning and knew intuitively the explosion had come from the mine. Nearing the shafts, she tried to run and began calling "Mama! Dad!" at the top of her voice. But she was hemmed in on all sides by the townspeople. She felt she couldn't breathe. Then someone lifted her high and turned swiftly, walking back toward town. She recognized him vaguely as a man who worked at the general store. "Wait—my mama!"

"I'm sorry, sweetheart." The man's voice was low against her ear. "There's nothing you want to see back there." She had protested, even tried to kick, but he held her firmly and carried her away from the scene of the explosion, back to his home, where his wife made her a cup of cocoa in the kitchen. The man and his wife held a conversation with their eyes—exactly in the same astonishing way her own parents were able to—and then the man left again and the woman sat at the table with Clementine. "There's been a terrible accident, my dear," she said finally and bowed her head. "You're going to have to be mighty strong."

After the funerals, Clementine was sent to Hibben to live with her mother's sister. Aunt Ethel seemed a shadowy copy of Bess—the shape of her face was the same, and the soft brown hair pulled back in a bun at the nape of her neck—but while Bess's blue eyes shone, Aunt Ethel's clouded over. And while Bess sang as she went about her housework, telling her little girl stories of fairies and giants and magical spells, or stopping to sit at the table and help with a puzzle, Aunt Ethel, heavy with pregnancy, sighed on her chaise longue and sipped a tisane. Jacob Horn had been warm and indulgent with his daughter, but Uncle Wallace, though kind, was a stern presence in the big house and always distant from his many children.

Clementine often lay in bed at night and remembered her other life. She thought of her parents, how Bess taught her to cook, showing her how to be careful with the hot stove. How Jacob, home from the mine in the evening, took her on his lap to tell her tales from all over the world by the fire until bedtime. His beard tickled the top of her head as he talked about children in places called Russia and Germany and China and Iceland and Peru. Bess sewed in the lamplight, listening. Sometimes Jacob would get out his special
Atlas of the World,
with its beautiful red leather cover. They would gather around the table while he turned the pages and showed them the maps of far-off places. Maybe someday they could all take a trip together, he had said. Wouldn't that be fun?

But Jacob and Bess had gone on a terrible trip of their own. And the only trip Clementine had ever taken was on the train to Bangor, Maine, and then by wagon over to the rocky coast, to Hibben. Along with the trunk containing her clothing, she brought with her a hatbox that once contained Bess's elaborately trimmed Sunday hat. But now it held Clementine's treasures. There was Bess's gold necklace with a locket. The locket opened, containing minute curls of soft hair Bess had clipped from Clementine's head when she was a baby. There was Jacob's red-bound
Atlas of the World.
And there was, of course, Mollydolly and her wardrobe. These few things were all Clementine had left of the family she had loved so much.