Crossing the Tracks (9781416997054) (14 page)

I don't know the nature of your connection with the Nesbitts, but if you wish, please invite them to the nuptials. I doubt the elderly mother could come, but it's the proper thing to do, unless you think they'd feel out of place. My land, what an experience you've had in Wellsford. We're dying to hear all your folksy farm stories.

Enough of my rambling. Less than a month until Labor Day and your debut in Kansas City.

Au revoir!

X O X O

Celeste “Baldwin”-to-be!!

I drop the letter on the table, grab the sides of my head, then wipe my fingers on my skirt as though Celeste's personality has rubbed off on them. I flip the pages to the blank side, grab Mrs. Nesbitt's crossword pencil, and scribble a reply:

Dearest Celeste,

Here's my list. It's not things, it's advice for living with my father.

1. Project yourself! Wear bright colors, strong perfume, and heels that click. Otherwise he will forget you are there.

2. Don't cough. He'll be mad that you have tuberculosis.

3. Remember your shoes are more important to him than your eyes.

4. Learn to drive yourself.

5. Advertise your upcoming birthday, or else you will buy, wrap, and open your own presents.

6. Find a friend who will listen to you. That person is not me.

7. If you need to know something, read his mail.

8. Pretend you are a virgin no matter what.

9. Collect thousands of exclamation points inside you—you will need them to stay excited about him!!!!

10. Get rid of your question marks??? He will not answer your questions.

11. He'll expect two sugar lumps in his coffee. He will not remember if you drink coffee.

12. Don't tell him about this advice. He hates anything cheap, much less free!

P.S. For more luck, spit on a horseshoe and lick the hind leg of a white mule every day. Avoid whistling in graveyards and cross-eyed people.

P.P.S. I am bringing my chickens to live with us. More folksy advice: If you swallow a raw chicken heart on your wedding day, it'll bring good luck in love.

I slump at the kitchen table, shake out my writing hand. My heart sinks. For a strange moment I truly want to protect Celeste from the future with him. She's counting on so much, and she wants me to be happy for her,
with
her.

The ghosts crowding my cellar and all the goddesses
know about Daddy by now. So do Carl and Leroy. But the Nesbitts don't. They don't know I am nothing to him. Celeste will find out she's nothing too. I wonder if Mama knew. Did she get gritty and ground up inside every time he opened his mouth? Did she ever dig in the heels of her Baldwin's boots?

I hear Henry scraping across Mrs. Nesbitt's floor. She's up from her nap.

I fold the two-faced letter that I won't mail to Celeste. But I could leave it right here on the table for Mrs. Nesbitt to find. She's curious and meddlesome enough to read it, at least until Gladys Dilgert arrives full of blabber about
her
storybook family.

I know how Mrs. Nesbitt would answer the question: Does Iris ever tell stories about her mama and daddy?

Never.

Marie and I carry the letter to my room, put my brilliant advice and Celeste's enthusiasm about her whatnots in my Kotex drawer.

Marie curls up on my coverlet, then sits up suddenly, perks her ears. I hear the knock. She hops from the bed and races to the front door, barking her head off. I wipe my eyes, cold fear zipping through me. Who else could it be but Cecil, with his habit of showing up when Dr. Nesbitt's gone?

I walk into the hall wishing I had the shotgun, even though I know nothing about using it. Why is he at the
front
door? I pull back the sheers. Neither Cecil's wagon nor his car is in the driveway.

Marie is fit to be tied, frantically circling the front hall.
Mrs. Nesbitt and Henry tap up behind me. I open the door and squint at a man. He's broad-shouldered, his arms and neck suntanned, his face shadowed beneath a hat.

Marie darts out, sniffs his scuffed work boots and knapsack.

A flame of rust-colored hair catches the sun when he removes his hat. He looks down in my eyes, his face deadly serious.

“Leroy!”

He stays planted on the stoop, looking from me
to Mrs. Nesbitt and back. “Have you gotten the telegram?”

I shake my head. Mrs. Nesbitt grips Henry in both hands.

“It's your dad.” Leroy's eyes match Mrs. Nesbitt's jade earrings. “He was in his car. He got hit… by a train.” Leroy shakes his head, his eyes bolted to mine.

“Where is he?” I ask.

I watch crows quietly collect on the telephone wire behind Leroy. Marie pads across the carpet runner and sits by Henry. Even my cellar ghosts are silent.

Leroy's voice is husky and soft. “He didn't beat the
train, Iris.”

“Was he alone?” Mrs. Nesbitt asks softly.

“Yes, ma'am.”

Mrs. Nesbitt leads us into the front room. I think of the day I arrived, perched on the divan, sure that Mrs. Nesbitt was dead. It's still terrible in here, dust-choked and dark. Mrs. Nesbitt must feel it too. She and Leroy raise the shades, open the stuck windows. They pull chairs up to the sofa so we form a little ring.

“I was delivering ice to the rail crew when they got the news,” Leroy explains. “It happened late this morning. He was outside Atchison, coming over from Kansas City.”

I picture the pages of advice for Celeste I just tucked away in my bottom drawer. It seems a hundred years ago. I try to remember the last time my father wrote me himself. Did I save the letter? Where's my picture of him?

I re-create the accident in my mind. I see Daddy's shiny new Cadillac racing down the road toward Atchison, a tornado of dust in his wake. I hear the engine grind and the flap of his shirtsleeves in the open window. He eyes the approaching train and speeds up. I hear the long frantic train whistle, the slashing and screeching.

A wall comes in my mind. I realize I've been holding my breath.

I remember that nice little paper doll family on the train and the peppermint they gave me. After a long moment I ask, “Was it a freight train or a passenger train?”

“What?”

“That hit Daddy.”

“Passenger…” Leroy says.

“Was anybody on the train hurt?”

“I don't know. I hitchhiked here the minute I heard.”

I remember the squealing brakes and lurch when we hit that hobo. I hear the frantic barking of his dog before she arrived here and became Marie. Their nice little hobo family of two was broken up just like mine.

Mrs. Nesbitt excuses herself to call Avery. Marie follows her out.

Leroy and I stare at the piano across the room and the shrouded painting above it. I say, “Do you remember Mrs. Andrews' husband before he died? He was so…”

Leroy nods. “Tired.”

“The end of his old life crept up on him. So did the end of Mama's young life. Sickness. They knew it was coming.” I look up at Leroy. He looks right back. “What was Daddy racing this time? Himself?”

We watch dust twirl as though we've shaken it from a long, dull dream. “Mrs. Nesbitt keeps this room in memory of her son who was killed. She still loves him so much.” I sit silent a long moment. “A moth could fly right through me, Leroy. I don't feel anything.”

Leroy plays with a divan pillow. Lifting all that ice and being in the sun have made him look like his old self plus someone new. But his voice and eyes are the same. So is the way he turns his feet in and rests his arms across his knees when he sits.

“It was fine of you to come here and tell Iris in
person,” Dr. Nesbitt says when he gets home. He claps Leroy on the back. Everybody helps me make dinner. Mrs. Nesbitt insists on setting the table. Dr. Nesbitt bastes the roast chicken, then stirs and seasons the lima beans. Leroy chops sweet potatoes and sprinkles them with butter and brown sugar. We eat and eat. When the telegram arrives, Dr. Nesbitt answers the door. I nod for him to go ahead and read it to himself. After a moment he folds it back in the yellow Western Union envelope, gives it to me, then clasps the paper and my hands in his. I notice how long and clean and smooth his fingernails are despite all the human bodies—dead and alive—they have touched.

The conversation spinning between Leroy and the Nesbitts is like a bowl I can just float in tonight. But I feel their eyes on me, in case I start to drown.

It's dark with a sliver of moon. Leroy and I sit on the
bench in the yard long after dinner.

“You wanna talk?” he asks.

“Not now.”

“Okay.” Leroy bends down to Marie. “How about you, girl?”

We stroke her back with our bare feet. “It's stupid. I don't ever come out here at night,” I say, looking up. The longer we look, the more stars come out. “Why do you think they chained them up into constellations? All those animals and Greek gods. Outside of Orion and the Big and Little
Dippers, I can't make out any of them.”

Leroy clasps his hands behind his head. I hear him stretch. He smells of soap and shaving cream. “Me neither.” He points into the infinite twinkling net. “What about the dim, gold ones?”

“They're orphan stars, not part of constellations.”

“Hmmm…”

“They need dusting.”

“Dusting?”

“And polishing. Here. See?” I reach up, capture one in my hand and rub it against Leroy's cheek. His skin is soft and close. It's so dark I can't tell the look on his face, but I hear his breathing change.

“I'm so sorry, Iris… It's…”

“You can tell me all that tomorrow.”

“Okay.” He releases a long breath. “It looks like the stars are moving instead of us.”

“They're hobos sailing home.”

“That's nice.”

The house sparkles. Dr. Nesbitt has lit lamps in the parlor. Through the window we see him shaking out sheets, fluffing a pillow. He's concocting a sleeping pallet for Leroy. No doubt it will be as tight and crisp as a hospital bed.

I take Leroy's hand in the same way I hold Mrs. Nesbitt's. It's callused and strong. I push my thumbs into his broad palm. I lock my fingers with his, then pull them away. Dr. Nesbitt's voice carries from the house. He's talking to someone on the telephone.

Leroy pulls me up. “Let's get out from under these branches, where we can see the sky better.” We step our way over curved, bare tree roots and onto the lawn.

There's a steady sweep of breeze that smells like warm land and moonlight. We sit and look up. Without a word Leroy reaches over, gently feels for my bone hairpin and just pulls it out. My hair flops down my back in a long lazy knot. He leans back on his elbows. “The clouds look like shreds of the Milky Way.”

“Or lace on midnight blue velvet.” I lie on my back. The damp grass spreading in every direction soaks through my dress. “I am
on
earth. Not buried.”

“Right, Iris.”

Leroy lies down, slides his arms around me.

“This okay?” he asks.

I can't think, can't speak over the blood noise in my ears.

“Tell me to move away,” he says deep in my ear.

I reach my arm around his side. “Move away, Leroy,” I say in a voice not my own.

“No.”

He moves closer, presses the small of my back. The full length of him is against the full length of me. We're chained. An earthly constellation of two.

“I take it back about not feeling anything,” I say.

We lock our feet. Breathe together, Leroy's heart on mine.

The feeling sweeps through my breasts, down my legs and spine, deep into the root of me, and out my fingertips.

We've arrived somewhere new.

The rhythm of a faraway train rocks the field mice and
Orion and Ruthie's baby brothers. I am just like them, I think, a night creature pressed hard against life.