The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt (3 page)

Dinner is quiet. McGrew hums into his whipped potatoes. Minna's father smiles at Minna's mother and loves her dinner, hamburger wrapped around dill pickles. Soon it will be time for dessert. Then Minna will go upstairs and close the bedroom door behind her. She will practice WA Mozart for the first time in a long time. She will practice and practice until she finds her vibrato, wherever it may be.

T
he telephone call comes that evening at eight thirty, just as Minna is finishing her homework. McGrew answers.

“What!” he says into the phone.

Minna grins. She loves the way McGrew answers the phone.

“Hold still,” he tells the caller. “It's him,” he sings to Minna.

Him. Minna knows who him is, even though it is not the only him who has ever called her.

“Hello.”

“Hello,” says Lucas. “Which quartet do we have for tomorrow? I can't remember.”

“K. 156,” says Minna. She smiles because she does not believe that organized Lucas would forget. “And the andante of 157. And don't forget the Donizetti variations . . . Lucas,” she adds because she has not yet called him by his name. She remembers her mother telling her that for the first whole week that Minna was born her mother called her “baby,” “it,” or “her.” When she was home all alone one day her mother leaned over and whispered “Melinda” and burst into tears because it made her baby real.

“What?” asks Minna. “What did you say?”

“Dinner,” repeats Lucas. “We can walk to my house and eat dinner. Someone will bring you home. We could even practice together. Or not,” he adds quickly.

Dinner with Lucas. It sounds like a book title.
Dinner with Lucas
.

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay,” says Lucas.

Then the phone goes dead. Lucas has hung up without saying good-bye. Minna hangs up and the phone rings again.

“Hello?”

“Good-bye,” says Lucas.

The bus was filled with sunlight and noise. Minna sat next to the window, McGrew and Emily Parmalee in the front seat swapping stories with their favorite bus driver, Lewis. Lewis was a stout pleasant man who had eight stout children who were also pleasant, and another on the way. Minna couldn't imagine having so many children in one house. She pictured them bouncing off the floors to the walls and up to the ceilings and back again like a hot panful of popping corn. Lewis had brought some of them on the bus from time to time. They had non-stout names, like Rilla and Wesley and Blythe.

Minna took out her school notebook and underlined her vocabulary words:
imaginary
,
listless
,
etcetera
,
vegetarian
. She wrinkled her forehead. Her teacher, Miss Barbizon, always made the class write short stories using the words. It was, Minna thought, a very bad idea. The stories were also very bad. “Every story must have a beginning, a middle, and an end, remember,” Miss Barbizon would say with bright surprised eyes, as if the idea had just occurred to her.

Minna took out her pencil and licked the point because it made her write better. She wrote:

Minna smiled. A beginning, a middle, and an end. Miss Barbizon would like it. The class would like it. Et cetera.

Outside the bus Minna stood for a moment on the street, shading her eyes. McGrew and Emily Parmalee climbed down the bus steps behind her.

“We're going to a movie,” said Emily. “A foreign film. McGrew likes to sing the subtitles.”

Minna watched them walk down the street, picturing them fifty years from now doing exactly the same thing: McGrew with gray whiskers, humming, Emily Parmalee, her pockets loaded with jujubes for the movies, great whopper earrings hanging from her ears.

The sound of Mozart came from down the block—Willie on the street corner. The bus started up, sending warm puffs of exhaust after her. Minna picked up her cello and walked to where a group of listeners stood. Someone in the front row tossed money in the open violin case. A small brown dog sidled up, sniffed the case, then lay down and gazed up at Willie. Willie finished and the crowd applauded and slowly, reluctantly, moved off. He smiled at Minna and took a red handkerchief from his pocket to wipe the rosin off his instrument. He wore a matching handkerchief tied around his neck and a dark blue shirt with a button missing; the shoelaces on his boots did not match. Minna thought suddenly of her mother's missing shoelace.

She took a quarter out of her pocket and handed it to Willie.

“Thank you for playing,” she said.

Willie bowed.

“You're welcome.” He gave her back the quarter. “And I thank
you
for listening.”

Minna grinned. It was their ritual, as reassuring as the sounds of her father snoring at night, McGrew's humming, the savage clash of pans in the kitchen when her mother began breakfast. Willie was always there when Minna went to the conservatory, standing on the same corner, like the gargoyles, playing music she loved. They never talked about anything else . . . only music. Sometimes they hardly spoke at all.

Minna left Willie and Mozart and the small brown dog in the sun and climbed the conservatory steps. Small children pushed past her, carrying small cases. She could hear a Suzuki class on the first floor, dozens of fiddlers playing variations of “Twinkle Twinkle” together. She could picture them in footlong skirts or jeans with reinforced knees, with cigar-box-size violins, all standing. She remembered her own quarter-size cello stored somewhere in the attic, a small piece of Minna's past.

Minna pushed open the door to the rehearsal room and Lucas was there, just as Minna had remembered him. He waved to her.

Orson opened his music folder.

“
Ode to Joy!
” he exclaimed, peering at the sheet of music on his stand. “Blah. A lackluster piece. New word, lackluster,” he explained to Porch. “Dull and lacking in radiance. Why can't we play the entire Ninth Symphony?”

Porch smiled wryly.

“You're good, Orson, but you are not a symphony. And if you play it well you will not find it a lackluster piece.”

“Anything worth doing is worth doing well,” quoted Imelda.

Minna unzipped her cello case and took out her cello and bow.

“Speaking of doing things well,” said Porch, his hands behind his back, “did you practice, Orson?”

“I always practice,” said Orson brightly.

“Without your bow?” Porch held Orson's bow in his hands.

There was a silence. Lucas crossed his feet, smiling faintly. Minna stood still, her cello leaning against her.

“I plucked,” said Orson.

“A canny boy,” said Porch. He handed Orson his bow and looked at them. “
That
means shrewd. Now we shall all be shrewd,” said Porch sternly.

Orson sat, a broad grin on his face, his hair wild as if a wren had flown in it and out again.

“Legato, remember,” Porch said, raising his violin. “One note connecting to another; smooth and big and”—he smiled at them—“full of radiance.”

Minna looks sideways at Lucas, who knows she is looking at him. He smiles at his music, his head bent, his hand placed firmly in place on the strings. His hair falls down over his forehead and Minna thinks about radiance. A good word. Minna feels full of radiance. Maybe it's the music that makes her feel that way,
Ode to Joy
, after all. Maybe it's Lucas's vibrato. Maybe. Maybe not.

“
E
levator or stairs?” asked Lucas in the hallway.

Minna wanted to choose the stairs, but after a moment she reached out and pressed the elevator button. Inside she held her cello with one hand, grasping the handrail with the other so tightly that her knuckles turned white. The elevator bumped and began to move. There was no litter today. The wrappers and apple cores and empty soda cans had been removed. Minna read what had been written on the walls.
MARSHA EATS GRASS. MARIO IS AN ICONOCLAST.

“What does that mean, iconoclast?” asked Minna.

Lucas shook his head.

“I don't know,” he said. He smiled at her. “We'll look it up.”

Minna thought suddenly about her mother's messages tacked up on her wall for her to read but not understand. Could she look them up somewhere?

The door opened at the second floor and a herd of small children crowded in, arguing about sharps and flats.

“Is so,” hissed a girl with only a scattering of teeth. “A G-flat
is
the same as an F-sharp.”

“Is not!”

“Is so!”

Lucas grinned at Minna over their heads. The elevator door opened and they ran off down the hall.

It was a short walk to Lucas's house, past apartment buildings and stores: a book shop with a cat sleeping in the window, curled around a thesaurus; another window filled with china and glass. Street vendors sold hot dogs and roasted walnuts from pushcarts, buses and cars streamed by them, a woman pushed a stroller with a sleeping child, a balloon tied to his wrist. They passed a pet store.

“Sometimes I buy frogs here,” said Lucas.

They stopped to peer in. Gerbils slept in shredded newspaper, a parrot sitting on a perch opened its bill at them.

Minna counted twelve trees growing along the streets with twelve black cast-iron fences around them. Two children played hopscotch on the street, the outlines neatly chalked in white. They played with flat stones, and they were very serious. Lucas stopped to watch.

“I've never played hopscotch,” he said.

Minna looked at him.

“Never ever?”

Lucas shook his head. “I don't have any brothers or sisters, you know.”

“But your parents could teach you,” said Minna. She had, until this moment, forgotten that it was her mother who had taught her. It had been a hot windless day, and her mother had drawn hopscotch squares on the sidewalk outside and been fierce about winning. Minna smiled at the memory.

“My parents are not the hopscotch type,” said Lucas beside her.

“What about kick the can?”

“No.”

Minna pushed her hair back behind her ears.

“Well, I'll teach you then,” she said matter-of-factly, making Lucas smile.

They walked past a tall brick building with white pillars.

“This is where I go to school,” said Lucas. “The Academy.” He lowered his voice and intoned solemnly, “The Academy.” Minna laughed.

They passed a fire station with two great yellow trucks inside, a chair set by the door, waiting for a fireman to sit there in the spring sunlight.

“Will you go to music camp again this summer?” asked Minna.

“Yes,” said Lucas thoughtfully. “Or no. My parents want me to.”

Minna smiled.

“So you are the no. Right?”

“Yes and no,” said Lucas. He stopped. “Here we are.”

Minna stands very still, staring. She does not even hear the street traffic, the conversation of the passersby. The house where Lucas lives is tall and brick, like the school, with a courtyard and trees in front. There are white shutters on the windows and window boxes. On the door hangs a shining door knocker, shaped like a dragon.

“Home,” says Lucas with a shrug.

Speechless, Minna follows Lucas up the walk. She knows the house will be clean. It is. The entry room, nearly as large as the conservatory rehearsal room, is tiled and so shiny that Minna thinks it is wet. A winding stairway goes up and up, large paintings of grim well-dressed people lining the walls. There are many rooms with high ceilings, with groups of furniture here and there. In the living room there is a great fireplace. No one fills the gleaming space. It is like a wonderful barn Minna had once seen, empty of cows.

“Home,” repeated Lucas, falling into a chair.

“Quiet,” said Minna, looking around. “And big enough,” she added, “for us to play kick the can.”

Lucas burst out laughing. Then he peered at Minna. “If you died,” he said, suddenly serious, his voice loud, “what would you want to come back to life as?”

Minna frowned. Was this a test? It sounded like a question her mother would ask, and she did not want her mother intruding in this peaceful place. But it was Lucas who had asked the question. She could tell him that she hadn't thought about it, but that would be a lie. She had thought about it often: She was just too embarrassed to tell Lucas that what she wanted to be in her next life was a ferret. She had seen a ferret once on the street, a tiny red collar around its neck, being led on a leash. It was gray-brown with sharp wise eyes and tiny feet, and it was friendly. It was also content. It didn't need a vibrato.

Lucas leaned forward, waiting.

“McGrew . . .” began Minna slowly, “McGrew wants to be a flying squirrel. Or a slug. Slugs drink through their skin, you know.”

Lucas smiled broadly. “Does Imelda know that fact?”

Minna smiled back at him. There was a silence. Minna stared at her feet, then at the border patterns that twisted and turned on the oriental rug.

“Come on,” said Lucas finally with a sigh. He stood up and pulled Minna to her feet. “I'll show you what
I
want to be.”

Minna followed Lucas up the winding stairway, twenty-two steps to the second-floor landing. Lucas started up a second flight, but Minna stopped, staring at a room with glass and plants and white wicker furniture. It was filled with light.

“That's my mother's solarium,” said Lucas from above. “It's where she spends a lot of time, thinking up dinner conversation topics. Come up!”