Tree By Leaf (12 page)

That evening, Clothilde sat in the parlor unstitching the cloak. What a long day it had been, she thought, although she couldn’t think why the day had seemed so long. Yesterday seemed like a hundred years gone. The minutes of this Monday had lined up like the hundreds and thousands of tiny stitches along the seams of the cloak. There were so many stitches she couldn’t count the ones behind her, or ahead of her, as if there was no end and no beginning to them. That was the way this day felt to her.

That thought didn’t make her unhappy. In fact, Clothilde was feeling content. The red parlor curtains were pulled closed against the weather. Warmth spread out from the pot-bellied stove. Deep reds and blues were braided in concentric circles to make the rag rug. The lamplight fell warm on her hands. Lou had put Dierdre to bed and was finishing up the kitchen. Clothilde picked out stitch after stitch. Now
the cloak would be a farewell gift for Lou. The wool, cleverly cut, would make a warm dress, the lining would make two good blouses. As her hands worked, separating the long seams, she reminded herself that two fine pieces of cloth were better than nothing, as a gift. Across from her, Mother’s head was bent over a square of silk, onto which she was embroidering red and yellow flowers. The threads gleamed in the lamplight, and Mother’s hair shone.

They were a houseful of women now. There was something peaceful about that idea. Boys, men, were forever going out and doing things, disturbing the quiet with the demands of their important businesses. Girls, women, stayed home, performing their small tasks. Even if the whole world crumbled around them, or fell away from beneath them, they worked patiently away. On a night like this, Clothilde thought, she didn’t envy Nate his cruise, the new places, the adventure. A slow, foggy rain fell through the darkness outside. She was glad not to be out in this night.

Oddly, she remembered that strange dream. Really, it was a wonderful dream to have had, especially the way of seeing things that happened at the end of her dream. Such colors and shapes—each leaf
on every branch of all the trees. It was like being in a magic land, where everything was more perfectly itself. She smiled to herself. She kept forgetting it and then for some reason remembering. Maybe she remembered now because she was sitting quiet, like some wild animal in its den, like a rabbit snug in its hole. She wondered if it was possible to see people in that magical way—and then thought of Jeb Twohey, and the black fog that swirled around inside his head, and how it was as if he himself were huddled in there, like a rabbit waiting in the darkness of its burrow. It was Jeb Twohey who needed dreams like the one she’d had. She could just imagine what his dreams were like, poor soul. Her dream, now—and it wasn’t just trees, it was the rocks too, it was everything she had looked at; remembering, Clothilde smiled.

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” Mother asked.

Recalled from her own thoughts, Clothilde didn’t understand at first what her mother was asking. Instead of looking at the needlework Mother had spread out over her lap, she looked at her mother, at the oval face under a dark cloud of hair, at eyes the blue of a summer sky, which shone there like the sunlit sky. Mother was prettier even than Polly Dethier—by far. Mother was waiting, holding up the work now
for Clothilde’s approval. In her eyes, Clothilde saw how much Mother wanted Clothilde to approve. “What?” Clothilde asked.

“It wasn’t anything,” Mother lay the piece down, her eyes clouded.

“It is lovely,” Clothilde finally understood. “It’s very pretty. I don’t see how you get such fine stitches,” she said, knowing that was what Mother wanted to hear.

“I had good teachers,” Mother explained, cheered. Her hands smoothed the fabric. Her fingers traced the stitched flowers. “I always liked pretty things. And flowers, too. The shop where I worked sold flowers.”

“You worked in a shop? You worked in a flower shop? You never told me.”

“It was before I married, so—everything changed when I married.”

“Why did you work in a shop?” Clothilde hadn’t known Mother could surprise her.

“We had to support ourselves,” Mother said. “The orphanage couldn’t take care of us all our lives. The woman who owned the shop—Mrs. Peters, Mrs. Mary Peters—she was a widow and a good churchgoer. She liked orphanage girls. I was fortunate to have that employment offered to me. She had no children of her
own. She gave me my own room, in her apartment over the shop, and I’d never had my own room before.”

Clothilde couldn’t imagine it. She had never thought about her mother’s life. She had a hundred questions she wanted to ask. She wondered what wages Mother had earned and what it had been like to work behind the counter, serving customers. She wondered what kinds of customers there had been and if it had been in a city, a city store. She had never thought her mother could be a shopgirl. “What kind of work did you do?” she asked.

Mother shook her head. She didn’t want to answer. Why didn’t she want to answer? Before Clothilde could ask again, there was a knock at the door.

The sound seemed to boom through the quiet house. Clothilde stared at her mother: She couldn’t begin to think of who it might be, unless it might be the man from the boathouse. She didn’t want to answer the door. But Mother wasn’t getting up either. They never had visitors at night, or during the day either. The knocking at the door—which was repeated now, more loudly—sent the quiet flying out of the house.

“Louisa?” Mother called. “Answer the door.”

Clothilde wanted to protest, to say Lou was busy and she could see who was there, but she didn’t know who it could be and she didn’t want to be the first to find out. From her chair, she watched Lou hurry to the door and step back, opening it.

A man stood there, dressed in yellow oilskins. He took off his jacket and shook the water off it before he would step into the hallway. It was Tom Hatch.

Tom Hatch stood inside the door with his jacket in his hand. He wore high black rubber boots and the waterproof trousers were held up by wide suspenders. “Is Mrs. Speer in?” he asked Lou.

“Yuh, they’re in the parlor.”

“It’s Tom Hatch,” Clothilde told her mother. Her mother’s large eyes looked even larger; she too was surprised and anxious at this visit.

Her voice, however, sounded calm. “Come in, Mr. Hatch.”

He came no farther than the door, so he wouldn’t drip onto the rug. What news had brought him out, Clothilde wondered. She didn’t think she wanted to hear it, but she wished he would hurry and speak, to get it over with. Tom Hatch wore a heavy sweater and he was fumbling in the trouser pockets, under his oilskin pants.

“It’s a bad night to be out in,” Mother said.

“It’ll do,” Tom Hatch answered. “I’m here because—this came for you.” He reached over to hand Mother a yellow envelope, a telegram. “Mr. Grindle didn’t know but what you should have it right away. They sent it over from the Western Union office in town, but the delivery boy didn’t want to risk the road out here, in this weather and at night.”

Mother held the envelope in her hand. “I thank you for your trouble.”

“It was no trouble. When a man has no family, it’s no trouble for him to go out of an evening. Besides, I thought I’d tell Lou—” he turned then, to look at Lou’s pale face—“There’s no news, no sign. We went out as far as we could before the fog started coming in too thick. I thought you might be wondering.”

Lou nodded her head.

“I’m sure Mr. Hatch would like some hot cocoa, to warm him before he goes back outside,” Mother suggested. She was still standing with the telegram in her hand. Clothilde just sat quiet in her chair, the cloak spread out like a black blanket over her knees. Telegrams carried urgent news, bad news.

“Would you like that, Tom?” Lou asked.

“I’d like it fine,” he said. “I could use a warm drink.”

When they had gone into the kitchen, Mother sat down. She folded her needlework neatly onto the table. She opened the yellow envelope with careful fingers, then pulled out the folded flimsy paper, with the strips of words glued onto it.

Mother took a long time reading. The message was only one line long, as Clothilde could see by staring at the back of the paper. Mother read it.

“It’s from your grandfather,” she said, at last.

“Grandfather? What’s the matter? Why should he send us a telegram? What does it say? Mother, tell me.”

Instead of answering, Mother passed over the paper. Clothilde read: NATHANIEL HAS COME TO LIVE AT HOME PERMANENTLY STOP AGSPEER. She read it again, as if she couldn’t understand what it said. But she understood.

“Nate was lying,” she said to her mother. “It was all a lie, about the cruise, and the friends who wanted him to come, wasn’t it.” She felt too sad to be angry. She never thought Nate would lie to them that way, and it was all somehow her grandfather’s doing. “I hate him,” she said, thinking of Grandfather.

“You musn’t hate your brother,” Mother said. Her hands were back at work, the needle drawing its bright yellow tail behind it, as if nothing had happened.

Clothilde didn’t bother correcting her mother’s mistake. She pushed the cloak off of her lap, letting it fall onto the floor. She got up and went over to pull aside the curtain. Foggy darkness closed around the house. From the kitchen she heard Tom Hatch’s voice, speaking slowly. She thought of how Grandfather had set about his plan to take Nate away from them, by sending him to a fancy school, buying him good clothes, letting him live in the big house in Manfield. Grandfather’s plan had worked and now he had Nate. Ugly, it was an ugly thing Grandfather had done to them. She turned around and looked at her mother’s profile. “It’s ugly,” she said.

“Don’t be so quick to judge what you might not understand, Clothilde,” her mother answered. But she didn’t look up. “You’re only a child.”

Mother didn’t understand at all, but Clothilde didn’t want to explain. She hadn’t thought how her mother must feel about this, how it might feel to have your son go away from home and never want to come back again. Now she thought of that.

“I’m sorry,” she said, meaning sorry that Mother was being made unhappy.

Mother didn’t understand this, either. “I’m glad to hear it, and I hope you’ll strive to do something to
correct that habit of judging people. Sit down, dear. You’ve got a task to accomplish. You musn’t be so excitable.”

Clothilde sat down, not because she thought she was being excitable, and not because she wanted to finish her task. She sat down so as not to cross her mother. She picked up the cloak and lay it across her knees again. Her fingers began their patient picking out of the stitches, because that was what Mother wanted.

Poor Mother—Grandfather had always been her enemy and now he’d won Nate over to his side. Clothilde thought of how Nate had looked, telling them about the cruise, lying to them. Grandfather had turned Nate into a liar.

But that wasn’t it. What it was was worse than that. It was so much worse—and it was why she kept hating Grandfather. Because it was Nate who’d turned himself into a liar. Grandfather just tempted him, with the big house and the clothes, with the factory to inherit and the kind of life where you could have all the things you wanted, with going to boarding school. Nate was tempted. What you did when you were tempted was up to you.

“He should have told us,” she said to her mother. “Whatever you say, he should have.”

Mother couldn’t think of any answer to that, and Clothilde was immediately sorry she’d spoken.

“Anyway, he should have told
you
the truth.”

“I’m sure your brother feels unhappy enough about it,” Mother said. “That’s probably why he didn’t tell me. Boys don’t like saying unhappy things. Men don’t. Nate probably didn’t want to hurt my feelings,” Mother explained.

Clothilde opened her mouth to protest, but stopped herself from speaking.

“And I’m relieved—no, that’s true, dear. I didn’t like to think of him out at sea for such a long time. I didn’t want to say anything, but—you never know what might happen. People treat it like a holiday, but a cruise can be dangerous. I’m glad to know he’s somewhere safe,” Mother said.

“Why didn’t you tell him?” Clothilde wondered.

“Oh, he didn’t want me worrying at him. Boys like to have their adventures. It’s part of their growing up. If mothers worry, they should keep that to themselves.”

Clothilde would have asked about that, since Mother seemed to be in the mood to answer questions, but she had just then remembered, once again, her strange dream. She’d gotten one of the things she’d
asked for, and she hadn’t even noticed: because Nate wasn’t going away on the cruise. It wasn’t what she’d wanted but it was what she’d asked for.

Clothilde didn’t want her dream to be true. She especially didn’t want it to be true if you got what you asked for in some twisted way. She hoped it was just a peculiar dream. “Mother, remember that story you told us, about the French girl, Joan?”

“Jeanne,” Mother corrected her. “Jeanne d’Arc.” One of the orphanage nuns had been French, so Mother had learned how to read and speak French in their school. Even the aunts had to admit she knew that, when they asked her how to pronounce the name of some fancy dish, or a new fabric.

“That girl heard voices, didn’t she?”

“Yes, you remember. Whatever brought her into your mind?”

“It wasn’t just one voice.”

“No, it was voices. Remember? She was told to lead her people in battle, to free the dauphin and crown him. She did those things, remember?”

Clothilde remembered. She remembered also what had happened to the girl, in the end. “Did anyone ever hear just one voice?”

“What odd thoughts you have, Clothilde. I can’t
answer that, dear. My schooling wasn’t complete. You’d have to ask your father something like that.”

“But he—” Again, Clothilde stopped herself; the aunts had often chided Mother because Father hadn’t finished school, as if that were her fault.

“We must hope,” Mother said gently, “that some day he’ll want to come back to live with us.”

“No, I didn’t mean that.” Clothilde didn’t want to talk about that. She didn’t even want to think about the man in the boathouse. “I meant, Grandfather said he was expelled from school.”