Tree By Leaf (6 page)

Clothilde knew things looked different to Nate, after the year away, but she had thought he wanted to be home with them for the summer. She had thought he would stay home for the whole long summer.

She looked around the big table. The pine shone golden and the utensils were steel, but it was beginning to feel like the table in Grandfather’s house. Mother ate small, unhungry mouthfuls. Lou sat with Dierdre beside her, watching Dierdre’s manners to be sure she mopped her mouth and spooned up her chowder neatly. Lou buttered Dierdre’s biscuits, giving her a half at a time, not letting her have any jam until she’d cleaned her bowl. While Nate waited for Mother to answer his request, Dierdre said, “I can go too.”

Mother ignored Dierdre, just as the aunts would have, so it was Lou who shushed her.

“Do I have permission to go?” Nate asked, not looking at any of them.

Clothilde didn’t think he should be allowed. He’d been gone all year. At first, the first few days, he’d said he was glad to be back, especially glad to be away from the Old Man, which was what Nate now called Grandfather.

“You know that I can’t give you permission,” Mother said.

“Why not?” Clothilde asked. If Mother couldn’t, who could?

“This doesn’t concern you, Clothilde,” Mother said. She didn’t sound cross, she didn’t sound anything. She brushed Clothilde away as if Clothilde were a fly. Everything was calm with Mother these days. She didn’t hurry, she didn’t dawdle, her voice was always the same smooth voice and her face was always the same smooth arrangement. Even if she was an orphan, Mother knew how a lady acted. “We’ll have to see what your father says,” Mother said.

“I can ride a boat,” Dierdre said. “I’m pretty. I want to go.”

“Hush,” Lou told her, moving Dierdre’s cup of milk out of reach of her waving arms.

Dierdre gave Mother an earnest, begging look. Clothilde thought that her sister probably really did think she had a chance to go with Nate. Thinking she had a chance made Dierdre want it even more.

“You weren’t invited, Dierdre,” Clothilde explained.

“I have too,” Dierdre said. “Did too.”

She could probably tell them when, too, and what Dolly Molly said about it.

“Will you ask permission for me?” Nate asked Mother.

Mother shook her head. “I can’t. He doesn’t want to see anybody.”

“But—” Nate started to protest. Then he leaned back in his chair and smiled around at all of them. “They’re leaving tomorrow. I won’t need anything I don’t have, there’s no difficulty about clothing, just the one suitcase.”

“Me too,” Dierdre said, leaning back, smiling around.

Nate leaned over to put his big hand under her chin. “Ladies don’t go on long cruises,” he said gently to her. “It’s only men who go. The life isn’t nice enough for ladies.”

This was the Nate Clothilde couldn’t look at without her heart feeling soft and her smile spreading over
her face, the Nate who could say no to Dierdre by giving her a reason she would like.

“I’m a lady,” Dierdre told him. “I’m going to have a party dress.”

“You’re a fine lady,” Nate agreed, then smiled at Mother: “I guess I’m going to go, so you might as well give me your permission.”

Clothilde waited for Mother to lose her temper. But Mother’s mouth didn’t purse out, the way it did when she was getting angry at one or the other of them for being saucy. Mother’s mouth stayed in the same pretty little smile, not really a smile so much as a pleasant expression, like a doll’s painted face.

Clothilde knew then that Nate would be going.

“Grandfather would like to hear that you were making the right sort of friends,” Mother said. She said that as if it were important. “You must do what you think best,” she said.

“She means no, Nate,” Clothilde told her brother. “That’s what she means, and you know it.”

“There’s no need to shriek, Clothilde,” Mother said.

“I’m not shrieking,” Clothilde answered back. Mother didn’t say a word. “He shouldn’t go. He’s always going away.” But she couldn’t make Mother
hear her words. Mother just shook her head calmly.

“He’s nearly a grown man, dear.”

“I know, but—” Clothilde wanted to say all the things she’d been thinking about Nate and what was different, how he’d changed, but one look at Mother’s face told her it wouldn’t be any good. Mother wasn’t even really looking at her. Clothilde gave up. It was no use. Mother’s behavior was because of the man in the boathouse, somehow, but knowing that didn’t help Clothilde any. She couldn’t count on Nate anymore, and she’d learned that, learned to do without him. She couldn’t count on Mother, either, she guessed. She couldn’t imagine this woman climbing up to prune old overgrown limbs from apple trees, sawing until sweat stained her armpits; she couldn’t imagine her calling down to them sharply to stand clear and then hurry in to drag the branches to the brush pile; this woman couldn’t have sent Lou’s father packing. Clothilde looked at Lou’s worried face.

“Me too, I’m going with Nate,” Dierdre announced. “Grandfather says,” she said.

Fury burst up inside Clothilde. “You can’t go, didn’t you hear them?” she asked. She knew she shouldn’t be so angry at Dierdre, who was still a baby, but she couldn’t stop herself. “You don’t know anything.”

“Do too,” Dierdre said.

“You’re a baby,” Clothilde reminded her.

“Am not,” Dierdre denied it, and burst into baby tears. “Am not! Am not!” she cried, and splashed both hands into her bowl of chowder.

“I don’t know why you can’t control these children, Lou,” Mother said. She rose from the table, drawing her long skirt back as if she didn’t want it near them. At the kitchen door she turned around. “You know I can’t listen to this—fighting,” she said to all of them. She went calmly into the parlor.

Clothilde got up to take the bowls from the table. Lou had a cloth and was mopping up Dierdre’s mess. Nate just sat there.

“I didn’t have a biscuit,” Dierdre protested, as Clothilde took away her bowl. “I want a biscuit and I want jam.” Clothilde let her scream and cry. Lou didn’t say anything. Nate just sat there, like the king of Persia, waiting for the table to be cleared.

Clothilde stood beside him, with her hands on her hips. “Nobody all of a sudden goes off on a cruise.”

“You don’t know anything about it,” Nate said.

“You’re just running away,” she told him, wanting him to deny it.

“From what?” he asked, smiling up at her. “If
you re so all-fired smart.” His eyes smiled too, gray-blue and distant, as if he knew things she didn’t.

“From—you know—from him.”

“Clothilde, you’re such a child. You don’t know anything.”

“Anyway,” Clothilde switched back to the point, “people don’t.”

“You don’t know anything about that, either. You’re just jealous, because nobody invites you.”

“I am not.”

“All right. All right. Take it easy.”

“Why would I be jealous?”

Nate leaned his elbows on the table and just grinned her. Because he was a boy, Clothilde thought, and could fight, and got sent away to a school. Because he could run away, he had friends to run away to. “Well I’m not,” she said, and wanted it to be the truth. “Not a bit.”

“Me too,” Dierdre said, coming to stand with her little hands balled up into fists, on Nate’s other side. She was so short and so positive and made so little sense, that both Nate and Clothilde burst out laughing. Laughing with her brother, Clothilde wished he weren’t going to go away again. She wished he wanted to stay home.

She looked up then and saw Mother standing in the doorway. “Aren’t you the silly ones,” Mother said. Mother had dressed her hair for church, and it puffed away from her in smooth, light billows. Her eyes, blue as a June sky, looked serious, but her lips smiled, as if she didn’t mind them being silly. Clothild studied her mother, tall for a woman and with the narrow waist that was part of a woman’s beauty, her skirt hanging smoothly to just above her dainty ankles. “If you would all come to the parlor? I need to talk with you,” Mother said. “You as well, Louisa, the dishes will have to wait.”

Lou dried her hands on the apron, then took it off and hung it on its peg beside the sink. There was something in Mother’s voice that said this was not the time to wear an apron. When Lou got to the parlor, she didn’t sit down. Instead, she stood by the door, the way the servants in Grandfather’s house did, the way Mother had asked her to before they all got used to working together and sitting down together. Mother put Dierdre on her lap, holding the chubby ankles still with a hand so Dierdre wouldn’t kick. Clothilde sat on one of the two black chairs that matched the sofa where Mother sat. She put her feet neatly together and folded her hands in her lap. She sat up
straight. She didn’t know why she was afraid of what Mother was going to say.

“I’ve been told that we are facing some difficulties,” Mother said. “Something to do with money. I’m sure that when he is better, Father will take care of them, but until that time—”

“What do you mean better?” Nate interrupted.

“Don’t interrupt, Nathaniel.”

“He’s been sent back,” Nate pointed out, “so they thing he’s better already. This is better.”

Mother ignored him. “There is difficulty about money. I don’t understand it,” she went on, as if it didn’t matter that she didn’t understand it, as if it was right that she shouldn’t. “As a consequence, however, we will have to practice economies.”

But why was Mother saying she didn’t understand, when it had been she who had overseen everything in all the years they had been living here? It was Mother who ordered food and paid the money owing to Mr. Grindle, who had determined and paid out Lou’s wages. It was Mother who had hired Tom Hatch to turn over the ground for the vegetable garden, who had brought the apple trees back to fruitfulness. It was Mother who had run the household, overseeing the meals and cleaning, the washing and mending, the
schoolwork, who had chased after them to do their chores properly. Why did she now claim not to understand? Clothilde didn’t understand.

“What about the check from the army that comes every month?” she asked.

Mother shook her head. “Now that he’s back that won’t be sent. So that, among other economies, we can no longer offer you employment, Louisa. I want to express my gratitude to you, for your years of service. I am sorry to have to let you go.”

What would they do without Lou, Clothilde couldn’t think. She didn’t know how to stop what Mother was doing.

“Please, Mrs. Speer,” Lou asked. Her face was even paler than usual. “Who will do my chores?”

“Clothilde will,” Mother said.

But how could she go to school and still do all of Lou’s work? And, if she didn’t go to school, how could she go to a college and be able to find employment when she grew up? What would her future be? The questions rose up in Clothilde’s mind, like waves under a stormy wind, but when she spoke her voice was small, and weak. “I’m supposed to go to school,” she said.

Mother shook her head, No.

“But can’t you do Lou’s work? Or some of it,” Clothilde pleaded. She could do more than she had, she thought, she just couldn’t do all of it.

“Father wouldn’t want his wife doing household chores,” Mother said, as if that was something there could be no question about. But that made no sense. Hadn’t Mother been his wife before, and done the work? Even if he wasn’t there, she was still his wife. Did the man in the boathouse want his daughter to do it even though he wouldn’t want a wife to? Was Clothilde supposed to become a servant so that Mother could be a lady?

She couldn’t think, couldn’t answer the questions, couldn’t imagine—she could only sit there with her feet neatly side by side and be afraid.

“But Mrs. Speer, ma’am? I could stay on without the wages,” Lou said.

“We couldn’t ask that of you, Louisa. How would your family manage?”

“I can’t go back and live there, ma’am. When he has money, he—” She looked at Clothilde for help, but Clothilde couldn’t give her any Lou was afraid to go live at home, Clothilde thought. She remembered bruises she had seen on Lou’s arms when Lou rolled up her sleeves to do the Monday washing, and a
swelling once that Lou had said was a bad tooth. She thought of what Lou said about Mr. Small taking too much to drink, and sailing on the boats that smuggled in black market whiskey from Canada. Mr. Small had to be a bad man, because if he earned money on those boats, why didn’t they move into a decent house, a house with room for the large family? Lou was trying not to cry.

“You shouldn’t make Lou go,” Clothilde told her mother.

“Don’t be so selfish, dear,” Mother said.

“Please, ma’am. He’ll hire me out to one of the summer cottages, I know he will. I don’t need wages, ma’am, just a room of my own and I don’t eat much.”

“It’s not right for a family to keep servants without paying them,” Mother said. “It’s a shame on the family. I’m sorry, Louisa. You’ll have a good recommendation, of course.”

“Nate?” He was just sitting there. Clothilde asked him, “Do something.”

“Is this your idea, or—his?” Nate asked his mother.

“Your father leaves the domestic details to me,” Mother answered, which didn’t answer the question at all.

“Why are we so short of money when we
have the income from Father’s trust?” Nate asked.

“Grandfather has been taking care of that, while your father was away. Father says Grandfather has used that money to keep you, Nate, at Phillips Academy, and to clothe you properly for your position in life.”

“That’s not true,” Nate said. “He told me—” Nate bit down on the words and fell silent again.

“Anything left over, Grandfather has invested into the factory, which is Father’s inheritance after all. Father won’t let us starve.”

Dierdre had finally figured out what was happening.

She squirmed off Mother’s lap and ran across to throw her arms around Lou’s legs. “Don’t go away,” she cried. “I’ll cry,” she said, starting to cry already. “I’ll cry and cry.”

“Please, ma’am,” Lou said. “I could stay until September. Or just through this month.”

Mother flapped her hands helplessly around in her lap. “No more than a week or two, then,” she gave in. “People always give a week or two notice, so that’s all right. There’s no need for you children to be so upset. If need be, Father says, we can sell Speer Point.”