And Condors Danced (21 page)

She knew how important it was. She knew perfectly well that it meant that now Famer could plant citrus on the Carlton lowland, and water the apricots and walnuts in dry years, and that the hard times would soon be over for the Hartwicks and Aunt M. too. It meant that the ranch house could have a new indoor toilet and all the other things it needed. And Arthur could go to college and Lila could also, if she wanted to, which she probably didn’t unless Johnny was going too. Listening to Aunt M. and Woo Ying, Carly kept reminding herself that she should be as excited as they were and as happy too.

Later Aunt M. and Woo Ying began to talk about the funny things both of the Quigleys had said. They laughed about the way Henry had announced that God had forgiven him, as if his grandpa had sent God a telegram and got back an answer by return mail. And Woo Ying stood up and stuck out his chest and imitated the grand and lordly way Alfred Quigley had made his announcement about the water company. And Carly laughed as much and as hard as they did, or least she tried to, and for a while she thought she’d succeeded. But after Carly was in bed that night, Aunt M. came into her room, pulled a chair up beside the bed, and sat down.

“Carly, child,” she said, “I’m worried about you. And Woo Ying is too. I wonder—”

“I’m fine,” Carly interrupted. “I’m just the same as always.”

Aunt M. shook her head. “No. You’re not. You’re not my high-stepping little colt anymore.”

Carly giggled. “I’m not a colt. I’m a filly. And look. I can step as high as ever. Just watch.” And she jumped out of bed and pranced around the room in her nightgown, lifting her knees high and tossing her head.

Aunt M. laughed, and when Carly stopped prancing, she tucked her back in bed and kissed her forehead. Then she straightened up with her hand on her back, as she always did, and said, “About those puppies, Carly. They must be just about old enough to leave their mother now, and—”

“No!” Carly shouted. Burying her face in the pillow, she pounded her fists on the bed and tried to smother the sound of her own voice saying “No, no, no” over and over again.

Then Aunt M. was sitting beside her and trying to lift her up, but she kept her head down and her arms up around her face, hiding it from sight.

“What is it, child? Tell me. Please tell me,” Aunt M. said.

She wanted to tell. She wanted to so badly and for a moment she thought she would, but it was too awful, and when she finally rolled over and let Aunt M. brush the hair out of her face and wipe away the tears, she only shook her head and said, “I can’t.”

B
EING A MEMBER
of the water company began to change things at Greenwood, as well as at the ranch, almost immediately. Even when the pipes that would carry water to the Carlton land were still going in, the changes had already begun. Because there would now be water for her land, Aunt M. could get a loan at the bank, and out at the ranch two or three new hired men were soon at work getting the land ready for the first lemon trees. Arthur was still working at the Emporium but he was beginning to write letters to colleges, and Woo Ying was talking constantly about the new motorcar Aunt M. was going to buy before very long.

There were other changes, too, now that Father and Aunt M. were going to the water-company meetings and talking with the Quigley-Babcocks in person instead of through lawyers in the courthouse. Aunt M. said that they’d ironed out some old misunderstandings and that at the meetings Father and Alfred Quigley sometimes actually found themselves on the same side of an argument.

“Always seems to surprise them,” Aunt M. said. “Not to mention everyone else. Disappoints a few people, too, I daresay. What are the gossips going to have to keep their tongues busy, with the Carlton-Quigley feud fizzling out like this?”

Late that March it began to look as if another important change was about to happen when there began to be rumors that telephone lines were about to go up in the Hamilton Valley.

“I must say,” Aunt M. said, “when Alfred Bennington Quigley has a change of heart he doesn’t do it halfway. I hear now that he’s decided to let them run the telephone lines across his valley land. What do you think of that?”

Carly said she thought it was wonderful, and Woo Ying said something in Chinese that didn’t sound nearly as rude as the things he usually said when Alfred Quigley was mentioned. And just a day or two later when Carly came home from school Aunt M. told her to dial 216.

“That’s the new number,” she said, “out at the ranch. Nellie rang me an hour or so ago. Said she wanted to talk to you when you got home.”

So Carly cranked the phone and told Bessie Taylor, the operator, that she wanted 216, and in a minute she heard Nellie saying hello.

“Isn’t it exciting,” Nellie said, and Carly agreed with her, and after they’d talked for a minute or two Nellie said she was just leaving to come into town and could she stop by for a visit. So Carly asked and Aunt M. looked up from the beans she was snapping and said, “Yes, of course,” and for some reason Carly suddenly felt certain that Aunt M. had already known that Nellie was coming and she also knew why. Carly found out why soon after Nellie arrived.

When Nellie came down the path, Aunt M. was out in the garden bothering Woo Ying while he planted the spring flowers, and she only waved to Nellie and told her to go on in. And as soon as Nellie had hugged and kissed Carly, she led her into the parlor and sat down beside her on the love seat.

“Carly,” she said, reaching out to hold Carly’s hands, “we’re all worried about you. Aunt M., Woo Ying, myself, Father—everyone is very concerned.”

“About me? Why?” Carly said.

“Because you’re just not our Carly anymore.” Nellie’s blue eyes were smiling, but it was easy to see the worried pain behind the smile. Nellie had had enough pain. Carly wasn’t going to add to it by telling her the awful, unbearable truth.

“I am,” she said, trying to return Nellie’s smile. “I’m fine, really I am.”

Nellie shook her head. “I know how hard these last few months have been for you. For all of us. But you’re so young and you’ve always had so much—so much—life and joy and—Hartwick spirit, as Aunt M. calls it. And now it’s all dimmed and pale. What is it?”

“No,” Carly said stubbornly. “It’s nothing.”

And then Nellie got mad. “Carly Hartwick! If you’re just feeling sorry for yourself—making up games about your great tragedies—when we’ve all, the whole family has been through so much—I’m going to—I’m just going to…” She reached out and took Carly by the shoulders and shook her, and Carly opened her mouth and wailed and let the secret be shaken out in a great howling rush.

“I didn’t cry,” she wailed. “I didn’t cry when Mama died.”

Nellie’s anger was gone in a second. “Oh, baby. Of course you did. We cried and cried together. In my room. Remember?”

“No. No. That was later. And that was for you. I was crying for you because I saw how you felt. But I didn’t cry before, when they first told me about Mama.”

Nellie put her arms around Carly and rocked her the way she’d done that day in her room. “People don’t always cry when someone dear to them dies. Sometimes there is grief too great for tears. Or sometimes they can only cry much later. Sometimes people feel too much to cry.”

Carly shook her head. “No. Not too much. I felt something—sad—sad for Mama—and for you—and Father, and for myself, too, I guess, but it wasn’t like…” She couldn’t bear to go on.

“Like you felt when Tiger died?”

Carly hung her head. “I howled,” she said. “Or something howled. It was as if I wasn’t there anymore. Nothing was there except the…pain and that terrible noise.”

“I know,” Nellie said, “I know, baby.”

She raised her head then and looked straight at Nellie and said, “And when my own mother died I didn’t even cry.”

Nellie returned her stare for a moment and then shut her eyes and bit her lip and rocked herself to and fro. Suddenly she jumped up and began to walk around the room. For a long time she walked back and forth, shaking her head and frowning, and then she came back and sat beside Carly again. She looked angry.

“No,” she said. “Not your own mother. Anna Hartwick was not your mother, Carly. Oh, I don’t mean she didn’t give birth to you, because she did, but your mother was Aunt M. And Woo Ying. Woo Ying is much much more your mother than Mama ever was.”

“Woo Ying?” Carly couldn’t help smiling at the thought of Woo Ying’s being anybody’s mother.

“Yes. It was Aunt M. and Woo Ying who gave you the kind of love and care that babies need.”

“But I loved Mama. I really did.”

“Of course you did. But not as if she’d really been a mother to you.”

Carly nodded. She looked at Nellie’s bright blue eyes and remembered how they had looked on the day Mama died. “But she was a mother to you, and to Charles and Arthur and Lila?” She didn’t mean it to be a question, but it almost was.

“Yes. When we were little. Mama was good with little babies, I think. At least until Petey died. And then—well, after that I guess things became reversed. After that it was as if I were the mother and she became my child.”

“Oh, Nellie,” Carly said. She was thinking that when Mama died Nellie had lost both her mother and her child. Carly threw her arms around her sister and began to cry.

Carly and Nellie were still sitting on the love seat and crying, with their arms around each other, when a voice said, “Well, if this isn’t a dreary scene. If you two young ladies intend to keep this up, you can just come on out in the kitchen where the furniture is waterproof.” Aunt M. had her hands on her hips and she was frowning.

Nellie jumped up and said, “Aunt M. I—” But before she got any farther Aunt M. had marched out of the room.

“Oh, dear,” Nellie said. “I’m afraid she’s dreadfully angry. She asked me to come down and try to cheer you up. And it must have looked like all I did was upset you even more. I’d best go talk to her.”

Wiping her eyes and gulping, Carly said, “No. I’ll talk to her. It’ll be all right. You know how Aunt M. is.”

“Yes, I guess I do know,” Nellie said. “And I’m sure you can make her understand. So I guess I’ll be getting on into town before the Emporium closes.”

She got out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes and then kissed Carly and hugged her and hurried toward the front door. But in the hall she stopped suddenly and came back.

“I haven’t just upset you more, have I?” Nellie’s freckled forehead was crinkled with worry. “Telling someone that their mother never really loved them is a terrible way to try to cheer them up. Sometimes I think I always say and do the wrong thing.”

“Nellie Hartwick!” Carly said. “You stop that this minute. Stop being such a worry-wart. You did too cheer me up. I promise you did.”

And it was true too. Standing by the window and watching Nellie as she hurried down the garden path, Carly felt sure something was better, and she also felt sure she would understand just what it was as soon as she’d had time to think about it.

At the gate Nellie turned and looked back toward the house, and as she stood there with one hand on the gate and with the bright sunshine making a gleaming halo of her flyaway red hair, she suddenly looked so beautiful that Carly caught her breath in surprise. She’d never thought of Nellie as beautiful before. Lila, yes, but not Nellie. But now suddenly it seemed to Carly that Nellie’s bright stormy beauty was much more exciting than Lila’s, even if Nellie would never look like a pale polished cameo in the moonlight.

In the kitchen Aunt M. was making tea, still frowning. “What in God’s name was going on in there? What did Nellie say to upset you like that?”

“It wasn’t what she said that made me cry,” Carly said. And then she began to tell Aunt M. all about the conversation with Nellie. Her own confession was easier the second time, and she didn’t hang her head as she told Aunt M. about how she’d hated herself for her terrible heartlessness.

All the time Carly was talking, Aunt M. stood perfectly still with the teapot in her hand while the kettle boiled and steamed away on the range. But when it was all told she made a harrumphing sound and nodded her head sharply.

“Heartlessness! Now that’s the silliest thing I ever heard of. There never has been a child with a heart any bigger than yours, Carly Hartwick, and there never will be. Now, what I call heartless is a woman who would hold her own grief and disappointment against a helpless baby. She never wanted you, Carly. She didn’t want to get over Petey’s death. And when your father and Doctor Dodge, too, told her that a new baby would cure her grief she just set herself to prove them wrong. And…well, there, I’ve said enough. Too much, probably,” and Aunt M. clamped her lips together and went to get the kettle off the stove.

She kept her lips clamped like that while she poured the tea water and got out some sugar biscuits, but as she sat down at the table she sighed deeply and said, “Poor child! Poor overburdened, put-upon child!”

“Overburdened,” Carly said, eagerly. “That’s what’s been wrong with me. I’ve been feeling—”

“I didn’t mean you, you silly goose,” Aunt M. said. “You’re not in the least overburdened, and never have been. And if you’re planning to start being dramatic about how your mother never loved you, you can just stop it right now, because plenty of other people loved you from the very start. I was talking about your poor sister. Well, well. I’ve a notion that Nellie’s talk with you may do her as much good as it did you. Seems to me she faced up to some things she should have seen for what they were years ago.”

Carly sat down at the kitchen table and began to poke some biscuit crumbs around with one finger. Being called a silly goose when she’d just made such a difficult confession didn’t seem fair. Looking up at Aunt M. from under angry eyebrows, she decided to get even.

“Nellie said that Woo Ying is my mother most of all. More than anybody else—my mother is Woo Ying.”

“And so he is,” Aunt M. said. “Would you like a cup of tea, dear, or do you just plan to sit there and pout?”

W
HAT NEILIE HAD
said about Mama was on Carly’s mind all the rest of that day and now and then on the next, even during school. On two different occasions she had to ask Mr. Alderson to repeat a question because she hadn’t been listening. After the second time he made some pointed comments about springtime “daydreamers,” and during recess Mavis said that Carly was acting awfully peculiar, almost as if she were in love, or something.