Crossing the Tracks (9781416997054) (7 page)

“How'd you get along today?” he asks, kneeling beside Marie on the floor. He feels her ribs, parts her fur and
examines her stitches and her tail. “Looks like we missed a spot on your ear, but, all in all, you look beautiful.”

“And strong,” I say.

Dr. Nesbitt sorts through the mail. Marie sighs—a long, satisfied sound—and falls asleep. Mrs. Nesbitt suggests we plant marigold seeds by the front stoop. I don't mention Cecil or the cranky washing machine. I just listen to a soft summer rain drum the back porch roof.

I've lost track of the days. Sunday slipped into Monday
before I caught hold of it.

“We used to go,” is all Mrs. Nesbitt has said about church.

But this morning we've got the
very reverent
Dorothy “Dot” Deets here instead of a minister.

“I knew you were at the Nesbitts now, but who cares? Their laundry is
my
job,” she hisses, sizing me up the moment I step out into the yard. She stands, hands on her hips. “Your kin as gangly as you?” She's short and roly-poly like her name, with springy red hair and chapped cheeks. She wears a sack dress and worn out lace-up boots. She's like girls at school who let the catty comments in their
heads exit right out of their mouths. “So are you just gonna stand there starin' or what?” She bugs her eyes at me. “I ain't wantin' your help.”

I had been watching her from the kitchen window, and what she really means is,
I ain't needin' your help snooping through the Nesbitts' laundry.

But something tells me to just keep
starin'
while Dot digs through the dirty clothes. After a minute I ask casually, “So, what're you finding in that basket?”

Dot scowls. “Where you come from?”

“Atchison.” I know she's trying to piece together where I fit with her and why there's none of my laundry in the basket. “Where do
you
live, Dot?”

“A mile that way,” she points with her head, then returns to her digging and sniffing. I guess she's decided to continue the laundry investigation with me watching. She holds one of Mrs. Nesbitt's hankies to the light, smells it, and frowns. “Why's the old woman wearing perfume all the sudden? And look…” She glances toward the house, then shoves the hankie toward me. “It'll take all day to get this damn lipstick out. Most folks I have the acquaintance of think she's a”—Dot pinches her nose—“
snob
. But I say more like a witch… the way she just gave up her wheelchair and started walking.” Dot snaps her chubby fingers. “How can somebody do that? You're either lame or you ain't.”

“When was that, that she started walking?”

“A few weeks ago. I saw her practicing back and forth on the porch with a cane. She's plain strange.”

Dot plucks out a dinner napkin and sniffs a stain. Her eyes light up. “Whiskey!” She waves it like a white flag. “Here, smell. Imagine him doctorin' people with a gut full of moonshine.”

“How do you know what whiskey smells like?”

Her voice is hushed. “All I know is that Dr. Nesbitt keeps liquor in the dining room closet in a fancy bottle.” I nod, barely stopping myself from asking exactly how she knows
that
.

Dot pokes at an ink stain on the pocket of Dr. Nesbitt's shirt. “Still writing those fancy letters.” She rolls her eyes. “He's got somebody in New York City—you know,” she wags her head, “corresponding back and forth every single week, but the lady never visits.” Dot's eyebrows shoot up and stay there. “Because I bet she's already married to somebody else! All these folks just love Doc Nesbitt.” Dot sniffs. She's clearly not a passenger on
that
ship of fools. “But one thing he can't do is count. He pays me per piece, never checks my numbers. My daddy don't understand why he's still livin' with his
mama
.” She scrubs a spot of Marie's blood with a brick of lye soap. “Where's your things?” she asks, reaching the bottom of the load.

“I do my own.”

She curls her lip. This tidbit will fuel theories about the snotty, too-good-for-regular-country-washing girl the Nesbitts hired. “You like 'em?” she asks.

“Who?”

“Who you think I mean? Miz Nesbitt and him.”

Marie hops off the porch, sending chickens onto the
driveway. She tilts her nose, walks past Dot, and whines at me. “Looks like Mrs. Nesbitt needs something,” I say. Dot's eyes darken. I walk inside and sit at the kitchen table with Mrs. Nesbitt, who is figuring her crossword puzzle. Next to it is a postcard. She slides it over to me, message-side down. It's from Leroy.

June 5

Iris,

How are you?

I am writing this at our spot.

It has been 99 / hours since you left.

Wellsford sounds real interesting, especially the dead hobo and the eye test. Did you pass it?

Atchison is buggy.

My ice job is either too hot or too cold.

Warmly (!)

LP

I smile at Mrs. Nesbitt, put the card in my pocket. I can't help but wonder if she has already read it.

“What's a word for halo, Iris—six letters, starts with
‘n'?” she says, pointing to the puzzle.

I think a moment. “Try ‘nimbus.' I remember the word from Sunday School.” She nods. I write the letters in the squares for her.

“How about an ‘r' word for embarrassed. Eight letters, hyphenated.”

“Uh… hmmm… Give me a minute.”

Mrs. Nesbitt holds up her hand. “Don't worry. We'll think of it.”

I take our kerosene globes out on the back porch to scrub with Dot's old wash water while she hangs the laundry. The wet soot runs down my arms. I grip the glass. I do not want to break one in front of her. “I can take the clothes off later,” I say, “if you want to go on.” I study the clotheslines. “How many pieces today, Dot?”

“Thirty-eight,” she says, the way someone might say
shut up
.

Dot waltzes past me and pops her head in the back door. “Forgive me for interrupting your puzzle, Miz Nesbitt, but you need Borax Powder, ma'am. Oh, and I told Iris that it is a pure pleasure washing such fine things as you and Dr. Nesbitt own. It'll be thirty-eight pieces today, ma'am, and thank you.”

“Thank you. I'll inform Avery.”

I watch Dot flounce off down the driveway, her hair blazing like a lit tumbleweed.

I dry the globes, then go in and sit with Mrs. Nesbitt. We study the crossword from an old edition of
The Kansas City Star
newspaper. “How's Dot?” she asks.

“I told her I'd take the wash down, so she could go on home. She didn't look happy, but she left.” I don't tell Mrs. Nesbitt that Dot uses a bushel barrel too much soap in the tub, or that she charged for thirty-eight when it was only thirty-five, or that she
reads
our laundry like a diary. “How long has she been doing the wash?”

Mrs. Nesbitt shifts in her chair. A shadow crosses her face. “Since her mother, Pansy, left. Not quite a year.”

I look up from the crossword. “Pansy Deets
left
? Cecil told me his wife passed on.”

Mrs. Nesbitt nods. “You'd better make us some tea.”

I light the stove and fill the kettle.

“Dot also claims her mother passed on, but she didn't. She's not dead.” Mrs. Nesbitt drops silent. Sets her mouth.

I put tea bags in our cups and wait for the water to boil. It's so quiet, it seems even the chickens are listening. Marie curls up at Mrs. Nesbitt's feet.

She shakes her head. “When Avery and I moved here seven years ago, I was in an awful way.”

I look over at her. “Ma'am?”

“Melancholia. That's why we came—Avery thought it might help me. This was my other son, Morris's, farm. We moved after he was killed. Avery leased the land to tenants and we kept the house. His widow didn't want it.” She looks up. I wonder if she's picturing his widow's face. Water
drip
,
drip
s in the catch pan under the icebox. Tears begin to drain down the creases in Mrs. Nesbitt's cheeks. She covers her face, bows her head, and sobs.

The teapot pings and creaks on the burner. I've never seen an old person cry like this. The sadness from life is supposed to be folded inside an old person, not streaming out. I trace the wood grain pattern on the table with my fingertip, feeling helpless, hopeless to know what to do. My eyes start to burn and now I'm crying too, over I don't even know what. After a moment Mrs. Nesbitt slides her hankie to me.

The kettle whistles. We look up at each other. Mrs. Nesbitt smiles sadly. I wipe her glasses, wondering how many times she's had to recover from feeling bad—hundreds of times more than me.

She pats stray hairs back into her bun, clears her throat. “Avery established his medical practice and got busy with his office out here and his clinic in town. I was in particular need of company when Pansy happened along, ready to do housekeeping and cooking. Despite our age difference, I could tell we both had hollow spots inside.” Mrs. Nesbitt suddenly looks up at me—right through me really, and nods as though she knows I have those very same holes in me. “Anyway, I knew the reasons for mine, but Pansy was tight-lipped. She was full of steam with no vent.”

“Steam?”

“Fury at her husband, at herself. She lacked backbone. I think Cecil had bruised it one time too many.”

“You mean he hit her?”

“Like I said, she was tight-lipped. Stoic… or maybe paralyzed in fear. I saw the marks.” Mrs. Nesbitt brushes her fingertips over a spot below her ear. “Pansy didn't try to cover them up—I guess she let her bruises speak for
themselves. But she wouldn't allow Avery to examine her, even when I'm sure she had broken ribs.”

I pour the water. Steam releases around us.

“I knew things were getting worse with Cecil. One afternoon last fall she announced she wanted to take Dot and go to her sister's.”

Mrs. Nesbitt grips the edge of the table. Her hands look tiny and withered. “I was all for it. Gave her money for their train fare.”

Marie sighs in her sleep. Dr. Nesbitt's night shirts wave at us from the clothesline.

“By dawn Pansy was gone. She had walked the four miles to the depot, bought a one-way ticket to Chicago, and there's been no trace of her since.”

I hold my cup with both hands, imagining Pansy trudging alone in the dark.

“Cecil didn't say a word. He just referred to Pansy as ‘
passed on,
' which is partly correct I guess.”

“So Cecil doesn't know about your talks with Pansy or the money?”

“I'm sure he suspects it. Pansy didn't have a penny to her name, or so she said. She told me he took everything she made.”

“But how could she just leave Dot?”

“Maybe a trade for her freedom—Dot was always ‘daddy's special girl.' Pansy's heart was just one big bruise, not working right.”

“Maybe Dot refused to go.”

Mrs. Nesbitt lifts her cup, takes a sip. “Maybe.”

Mrs. Nesbitt glances out at the clothesline. “That's when I hired Dot to do the laundry—so she'd have some income and, I don't know, maybe I could keep an eye on her somehow. But she's shifty like her daddy, and closed-mouthed like her mama.” Mrs. Nesbitt shakes her head. “I was stupid to get involved with them. I needed somebody to need me. But a wise person would have stayed away. A wise person wouldn't believe a word they say.”

I stand on a chair by the clothesline, furious that
Pansy used Mrs. Nesbitt, lied right in her face, and left her daughter in Cecil's hands. I see Dot's curled lip and her ruddy cheeks.

Red-faced.

That's it!

“Red-faced!” I yell, jumping off the chair. “The crossword for embarrassed is ‘red-faced,'” I say, running in the kitchen door.

Mrs. Nesbitt claps. “Ah, yes! Thank you, dear.”

I write the word on the squares, then stand a moment, weighing whether to say the next thing that has popped into my head. I don't. But I have figured the perfect eight letter word,
hyphenated
, to describe Dot and her mother.

Two
-faced!

But then, Dot must need a hundred faces to survive living alone with Cecil. I felt two-faced the instant I met him—trying to mind my manners, trying to act polite to the devil.