Prairie Evers (14 page)

NOTHING VENTURED, NOTHING GAINED

I grabbed
that letter out of the mailbox and read it on my way up the driveway, and then ran and got Mama and Daddy. I dragged Daddy out of the barn and hustled him into the living room, where Mama was stitching at her sewing machine. “Listen,” I said, waving Grammy’s letter in the air. I told them everything Grammy had told me.

“Oh, honey,” Mama said, taking the letter and reading it over for herself. “I just don’t think I can do this.”

“Please, Mama! You have to.”

“Can you really see me pulling off a stunt like this?”

“Yes!”

Mama smiled sadly. “I appreciate your confidence, but really— I don’t see Mrs. Blake’s answers necessarily lining up the way we’d want them to. People rarely are that simple when it comes right down to it.”

“But you could try, Mama. Couldn’t you? Didn’t you always tell me ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’? Didn’t you always say you can’t fail if you don’t try?”

“She has a point there, Loren,” Daddy said.

“Yeah, I have a point,” I said, nodding with excitement because Daddy was on my side. I could see the whole thing in my head. I needed Mama to do this in the worst way. I really did not think Daddy going to talk to Mrs. Blake would be the same. “Please say you’ll try. I’ve been good about school, haven’t I? I couldn’t see myself going, and didn’t believe it would ever work out, but it’s okay. I don’t mind it anymore. You were right when you told me to give it a chance, just like I might be right about this. Please, Mama.
Please
.”

Mama read Grammy’s letter again. She tapped her fingertips on the sewing table. She looked over at Daddy, who just lifted his eyebrows. He meant to tell her that it was all up to her, that she was the only one who could decide this particular thing.

“Oh, all right,” Mama said all of a sudden. “What the heck. We’ll give it a try.”

THE INS AND OUTS OF IT

Mama and I
discussed it, and we agreed we’d better talk everything over with Ivy. Ivy got permission to come home with me after school that Friday night—finally her mama had relented on the grounding, but really I think she just didn’t want to have to stay home with Ivy instead of going bowling with George—and while Mama was fixing supper, she introduced the subject.

Ivy and I were working on our homework at the table, and Mama was fixing a big vat of stew, which required all kinds of chopping and sautéing and stirring. We thought that would be the best way to
bring up the topic—if Mama was busy, but a calm sort of busy, and if Ivy and I were busy, but an easy sort of busy too. Plus I knew how Ivy loved to hang around while Mama was cooking—probably because her own mama hardly did it at all.

“So, Ivy,” Mama said. She sounded nervous. “Prairie told me you might be moving over to Poughkeepsie pretty soon.”

Ivy had been happily marking off answers in her reading workbook, but she stopped short at that. A blank look fell over her. “Yes.”

Mama cleared her throat. “Well, now this might be out in left field, but we just had this crazy idea—you tell us what you think—that maybe there’d be some chance your mother would let you finish out the school year here, and stay with us.”

Ivy’s mouth opened. A look appeared on her face. It was complicated. It wasn’t just happy and it wasn’t just sad, but a mix of those two.

Mama went on chopping and sautéing and stirring and she explained what we were thinking, and I put my two cents in every now and then too.

We did not exactly tell Ivy the ins and outs of the plan, because that seemed sad and mean—showing too clearly how her mama seemed to us. Mama summed it up by saying, “We’d love to have you come and live with us, at least for the rest of the school year, if that’s what you’d like.”

IVY’S ANSWER

I held my breath
to see what Ivy would say.

“I would like that,” she said. “More than anything.”

“All I can do is ask your mother. We can only see what she says.”

“Okay.” Ivy looked nervous.

“Is there a good time? A time when she’s—” Mama trailed off.

“She’s usually in a good mood on Friday afternoons,” Ivy said. “Like today. She and George always go bowling on Friday night, and she loves bowling.”

The next Friday afternoon, Mama sent me and Ivy to the Miss New Paltz with enough money for chocolate malts and hamburgers, and she went to see Ivy’s mama.

It was agony while we waited. I could only eat half my hamburger and Ivy couldn’t get a bite down of hers at all.

THE LONGEST MINUTES IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD

It was forty
minutes before Mama returned. They were the longest minutes in the history of the world. Finally she came in the door.

She walked up to the counter and put an arm around each of our shoulders. Her voice was calm. “Well, Ivy, I hope you think you can put up with us for the next little while, because your mother said she guesses it would be all right if you finished out the school year here.”

“Hooray!” I yelled. “Hooray, hooray, hooray! Isn’t it great, Ivy?”

“Yes. It is. It’s great.”

Her face was smiling, but her eyes were not, and all of a sudden I wished I’d given a little more thought before I belted out those hoorays. It dawned on me that while Ivy did want to stay with us, at the same time she couldn’t have exactly wanted her mama to say it was okay. That would be like having your mama say she didn’t really want you. I took Ivy’s hand then, and gave her a little upside-down smile to show that I understood, even though I was slow about it. I kicked her toe with the toe of my boot. After a moment, Ivy kicked my toe back.

“Well, come on then.” Mama was brisk and businesslike. “Pay up for your lunch and let’s get home. You two have chickens to feed. And you’ve got a cat to look after, Ivy. Pup sure does know who his mistress is, he doesn’t come when anyone calls but you.”

“Okay.” The sad look lightened from Ivy’s eyes a little. “But—am I moving in with you today then? Or when? What did my mom say?”

Mama hesitated. “Well, your mother and I thought next weekend would be a good time. That would give you—and her—some time to get ready. And to change your mind if you want to.”

“I won’t change my mind,” Ivy said quietly.

Mama nodded. She looked solemn. “You know we’ll take you down to Poughkeepsie whenever you want to go. I imagine your mother and George will be up to visit you too.”

Ivy was looking straight at my mama with a grown-up expression that gave me some pause. For the time they looked at one another, Ivy was an adult like Mama, and I was not, and I didn’t want to be either. “Yes, I suppose they might,” Ivy said.

Mama nodded. She put her arm around Ivy and steered her toward the door.

Just as I was turning around from paying our bill, the nice one of the coffee-drinking ladies got up too and followed Mama.

“Loren? I’ve been wanting to say hello to you.”

Mama frowned with her forehead furrowed. Her hand was still on Ivy’s shoulder, and Ivy was looking up at her anxiously. I knew what Ivy was thinking. She was hoping this woman wasn’t going to try and get all the particulars of the Blakes’ lives right there on the spot. “I’m sorry,” Mama said. “I don’t think I remember you.”

“Oh, that’s all right. I’m Erma Phillips. We were your neighbors for a while when you were growing up. My husband had the idea he was going to raise horses, and we bought a place out along your road. Your mother brought over a casserole the first day we moved in, and I was so grateful. She was a good neighbor.”

Mama smiled sadly. “Yes.”

“I tried to sell Tupperware to make a little extra money after we first moved out there. Your mother always came to the parties and found something to buy. And then my husband died—it was so unexpected—and no one could’ve been kinder than
your mother. I spent more than one afternoon at her kitchen table crying before you got home from school. I thought a lot of her.”

“Thank you,” Mama said, stroking Ivy’s hair. “I wish I’d have appreciated her better when I was younger. I was a little wild, I guess.”

“Everyone goes through that,” Erma said kindly, and I thought there was hope for her after all. “It’s nice to have you back. I hope you’re planning on staying.”

“Thank you. We are.”

I gave the woman a little smile then, to show I forgave her a little for having such no-account friends, and she smiled back at me and nodded as if she understood.

THE AIR DURING A THUNDERSTORM

Ivy and I
decided right away to share my room, even though Ivy could’ve taken the one that was Grammy’s. It seemed more cozy to us that way. More like sisters is how I thought of it. Ivy’s bed was a twin just like mine. Daddy wedged it in between the wall and the dresser the day Ivy moved in. It just barely fit, but we liked it that way. It made it easy to talk softly in the dark about the day just finished or the one coming up. It was like a slumber party every day of the week. There wasn’t room for
anything but our beds and dressers—I even had to move my bookcase into the hall—but I loved having someone to share the upstairs with me again.

One night when it was storming, with big crashes of thunder and bolts of lightning, I sat propped up in my bed with a book, thinking extra hard of Grammy. She always did love a storm so. I looked over at Ivy, but she was busy scribbling in the notebook she had taken to carrying everywhere with her.