Crossing the Tracks (9781416997054) Read online

  I know how Mrs. Nesbitt would answer the question: Does Iris ever tell stories about her mama and daddy?

  Never.

  Marie and I carry the letter to my room, put my brilliant advice and Celeste’s enthusiasm about her whatnots in my Kotex drawer.

  Marie curls up on my coverlet, then sits up suddenly, perks her ears. I hear the knock. She hops from the bed and races to the front door, barking her head off. I wipe my eyes, cold fear zipping through me. Who else could it be but Cecil, with his habit of showing up when Dr. Nesbitt’s gone?

  I walk into the hall wishing I had the shotgun, even though I know nothing about using it. Why is he at the front door? I pull back the sheers. Neither Cecil’s wagon nor his car is in the driveway.

  Marie is fit to be tied, frantically circling the front hall. Mrs. Nesbitt and Henry tap up behind me. I open the door and squint at a man. He’s broad-shouldered, his arms and neck suntanned, his face shadowed beneath a hat.

  Marie darts out, sniffs his scuffed work boots and knapsack.

  A flame of rust-colored hair catches the sun when he removes his hat. He looks down in my eyes, his face deadly serious.

  “Leroy!”

  CHAPTER 16

  He stays planted on the stoop, looking from me to Mrs. Nesbitt and back. “Have you gotten the telegram?”

  I shake my head. Mrs. Nesbitt grips Henry in both hands.

  “It’s your dad.” Leroy’s eyes match Mrs. Nesbitt’s jade earrings. “He was in his car. He got hit… by a train.” Leroy shakes his head, his eyes bolted to mine.

  “Where is he?” I ask.

  I watch crows quietly collect on the telephone wire behind Leroy. Marie pads across the carpet runner and sits by Henry. Even my cellar ghosts are silent.

  Leroy’s voice is husky and soft. “He didn’t beat the train, Iris.”

  “Was he alone?” Mrs. Nesbitt asks softly.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mrs. Nesbitt leads us into the front room. I think of the day I arrived, perched on the divan, sure that Mrs. Nesbitt was dead. It’s still terrible in here, dust-choked and dark. Mrs. Nesbitt must feel it too. She and Leroy raise the shades, open the stuck windows. They pull chairs up to the sofa so we form a little ring.

  “I was delivering ice to the rail crew when they got the news,” Leroy explains. “It happened late this morning. He was outside Atchison, coming over from Kansas City.”

  I picture the pages of advice for Celeste I just tucked away in my bottom drawer. It seems a hundred years ago. I try to remember the last time my father wrote me himself. Did I save the letter? Where’s my picture of him?

  I re-create the accident in my mind. I see Daddy’s shiny new Cadillac racing down the road toward Atchison, a tornado of dust in his wake. I hear the engine grind and the flap of his shirtsleeves in the open window. He eyes the approaching train and speeds up. I hear the long frantic train whistle, the slashing and screeching.

  A wall comes in my mind. I realize I’ve been holding my breath.

  I remember that nice little paper doll family on the train and the peppermint they gave me. After a long moment I ask, “Was it a freight train or a passenger train?”

  “What?”

  “That hit Daddy.”

  “Passenger…” Leroy says.

  “Was anybody on the train hurt?”

  “I don’t know. I hitchhiked here the minute I heard.”

  I remember the squealing brakes and lurch when we hit that hobo. I hear the frantic barking of his dog before she arrived here and became Marie. Their nice little hobo family of two was broken up just like mine.

  Mrs. Nesbitt excuses herself to call Avery. Marie follows her out.

  Leroy and I stare at the piano across the room and the shrouded painting above it. I say, “Do you remember Mrs. Andrews’ husband before he died? He was so…”

  Leroy nods. “Tired.”

  “The end of his old life crept up on him. So did the end of Mama’s young life. Sickness. They knew it was coming.” I look up at Leroy. He looks right back. “What was Daddy racing this time? Himself?”

  We watch dust twirl as though we’ve shaken it from a long, dull dream. “Mrs. Nesbitt keeps this room in memory of her son who was killed. She still loves him so much.” I sit silent a long moment. “A moth could fly right through me, Leroy. I don’t feel anything.”

  Leroy plays with a divan pillow. Lifting all that ice and being in the sun have made him look like his old self plus someone new. But his voice and eyes are the same. So is the way he turns his feet in and rests his arms across his knees when he sits.

  “It was fine of you to come here and tell Iris in person,” Dr. Nesbitt says when he gets home. He claps Leroy on the back. Everybody helps me make dinner. Mrs. Nesbitt insists on setting the table. Dr. Nesbitt bastes the roast chicken, then stirs and seasons the lima beans. Leroy chops sweet potatoes and sprinkles them with butter and brown sugar. We eat and eat. When the telegram arrives, Dr. Nesbitt answers the door. I nod for him to go ahead and read it to himself. After a moment he folds it back in the yellow Western Union envelope, gives it to me, then clasps the paper and my hands in his. I notice how long and clean and smooth his fingernails are despite all the human bodies—dead and alive—they have touched.

  The conversation spinning between Leroy and the Nesbitts is like a bowl I can just float in tonight. But I feel their eyes on me, in case I start to drown.

  It’s dark with a sliver of moon. Leroy and I sit on the bench in the yard long after dinner.

  “You wanna talk?” he asks.

  “Not now.”

  “Okay.” Leroy bends down to Marie. “How about you, girl?”

  We stroke her back with our bare feet. “It’s stupid. I don’t ever come out here at night,” I say, looking up. The longer we look, the more stars come out. “Why do you think they chained them up into constellations? All those animals and Greek gods. Outside of Orion and the Big and Little Dippers, I can’t make out any of them.”

  Leroy clasps his hands behind his head. I hear him stretch. He smells of soap and shaving cream. “Me neither.” He points into the infinite twinkling net. “What about the dim, gold ones?”

  “They’re orphan stars, not part of constellations.”

  “Hmmm…”

  “They need dusting.”

  “Dusting?”

  “And polishing. Here. See?” I reach up, capture one in my hand and rub it against Leroy’s cheek. His skin is soft and close. It’s so dark I can’t tell the look on his face, but I hear his breathing change.

  “I’m so sorry, Iris… It’s…”

  “You can tell me all that tomorrow.”

  “Okay.” He releases a long breath. “It looks like the stars are moving instead of us.”

  “They’re hobos sailing home.”

  “That’s nice.”

  The house sparkles. Dr. Nesbitt has lit lamps in the parlor. Through the window we see him shaking out sheets, fluffing a pillow. He’s concocting a sleeping pallet for Leroy. No doubt it will be as tight and crisp as a hospital bed.

  I take Leroy’s hand in the same way I hold Mrs. Nesbitt’s. It’s callused and strong. I push my thumbs into his broad palm. I lock my fingers with his, then pull them away. Dr. Nesbitt’s voice carries from the house. He’s talking to someone on the telephone.

  Leroy pulls me up. “Let’s get out from under these branches, where we can see the sky better.” We step our way over curved, bare tree roots and onto the lawn.

  There’s a steady sweep of breeze that smells like warm land and moonlight. We sit and look up. Without a word Leroy reaches over, gently feels for my bone hairpin and just pulls it out. My hair flops down my back in a long lazy knot. He leans back on his elbows. “The clouds look like shreds of the Milky Way.”

  “Or lace on midnight blue velvet.” I lie on my back. The damp grass spreading in every direction soaks through my dress. “I am on earth. Not buried.”

  “Right, Iris.”
/>   Leroy lies down, slides his arms around me.

  “This okay?” he asks.

  I can’t think, can’t speak over the blood noise in my ears.

  “Tell me to move away,” he says deep in my ear.

  I reach my arm around his side. “Move away, Leroy,” I say in a voice not my own.

  “No.”

  He moves closer, presses the small of my back. The full length of him is against the full length of me. We’re chained. An earthly constellation of two.

  “I take it back about not feeling anything,” I say.

  We lock our feet. Breathe together, Leroy’s heart on mine.

  The feeling sweeps through my breasts, down my legs and spine, deep into the root of me, and out my fingertips.

  We’ve arrived somewhere new.

  The rhythm of a faraway train rocks the field mice and Orion and Ruthie’s baby brothers. I am just like them, I think, a night creature pressed hard against life.

  CHAPTER 17

  All night long the goddesses guard me from my ghosts.

  Tuesday I wake up to the smell of coffee and Leroy’s easy laugh coming from the kitchen. Patches of sun shuffle across the rug. I stretch, roll to my side, and reach out, back in the moonlit grass floating up and up.

  The phone rings. I hear Dr. Nesbitt say, “Celeste,” and “Yes, I’ll tell her.”

  I wash my face, sprinkle powder under my dress, and walk down the hall barefoot.

  When I come in the kitchen Dr. and Mrs. Nesbitt don’t do any of the things I would hate. They don’t stop talking. They don’t tilt their long faces and pat me on the shoulder, sorry that I’m not part of their club for folks who understand God’s whim. No one explains that for some mysterious reason He needed the last of my family to get smashed by a train.

  In fact, Leroy looks up at me, like he’s still gazing at a star. I see my hairpin in his pants pocket. He puts his hand over it—his way of saying he’s not giving it back.

  Dr. Nesbitt stands at the stove. “I told Leroy that today, I wear the apron in the family. Do you want bacon and eggs, Iris?”

  Marie’s stumpy tail taps the linoleum at the word bacon. She gives me a pleading look.

  “Yes, thank you.”

  Mrs. Nesbitt sparkles, a ruby in her fiery Japanese jacket and slippers. Leroy straddles his chair. His pale blue shirtsleeves are rolled back. He looks as if he could reach over and lift Mrs. Nesbitt and her chair in one hand. I straighten my back. Have I changed that much too?

  We discuss how everybody slept and how Leroy needs a tour of the chicken house. I glance at the telephone on a triangle-shaped table in the corner. “I have got to call Celeste back,” I say flatly. “She’s tried to reach me, hasn’t she?”

  “Twice,” Dr. Nesbitt says.

  It takes forever for the operator to make the connection. I haven’t given a thought about what to expect or what to say.

  “Iris?”

  “Celeste.”

  There’s silence. I cautiously step onto the gaping, rickety bridge that connects us: my father. “I’m so…”

  Celeste interrupts, her voice panicky, bossy. “We’ll sit together at the service. We’re a family now.”

  No.

  I focus on my group still rooted around the breakfast table. Dr. Nesbitt lowers his coffee cup. Leroy doodles on Mrs. Nesbitt’s crossword. I know they can hear Celeste’s every word.

  She sniffs and whines. “I wanted you to catch the bouquet.”

  “Bouquet?”

  “At my wedding! Oh, God. Everything… I’m… except…” Celeste dissolves into sobs.

  Mrs. Nesbitt hands me her hankie. Leroy shakes his head.

  “You need to come to Kansas City right now,” Celeste pleads. “Please.”

  “Don’t you mean Atchison? I thought the funeral would be in…”

  “You’ve got to move before our Labor Day weekend sale, Iris. You’re good with numbers, and we’ve got so much to do at the store.”

  I start coughing. Celeste has sucked my breath right through the phone.

  Her voice gets wobbly. “My sister promised to come from Oklahoma! I wanted her to see my store, our new apartment. Of course, she already has a rich husband and three perfect children.” Celeste’s tone becomes confidential. “But so what? She’s lost her figure and she’s only twenty-six!”

  “She’s coming for the memorial?”

  “No! The wedding.”

  “But…”

  “Please, Iris…”

  There’s a long impossible pause. I imagine every ear between Wellsford and Kansas City listening on the party line.

  “I’ll call you back,” I say.

  “Iris. Please come. You know your daddy would want you to.”

  “I’ll call.”

  I hang up. Marie looks up at me. I toss her a bite of bacon.

  Mrs. Nesbitt folds her hands. Dr. Nesbitt pours more coffee. I take a long sip, let the steam fill my nose. “God! Celeste is…” I shudder. “Mixed up. I need to call Carl about the arrangements before she does.”

  Leroy explains Carl to the Nesbitts. They help me think through Daddy’s funeral details. I decide I don’t want a visitation like Mama had. We can’t get the house ready for it. The services will be Thursday at the church in Atchison with another at the cemetery.

  Mrs. Nesbitt holds my hand while I call Carl. “Yes, I know you are.… Thank you. Could you please call Reverend Wolver for me? Set the service for Thursday afternoon? And, Carl, would you pick out a casket? It needs to be the glossiest black they have, with polished silver handles… and expensive.”

  Leroy smiles.

  “You know exactly what I mean. Nothing cheap.”

  We hang up with the promise to talk again this afternoon.

  I pace the kitchen. Celeste’s dizzy desperation shoves at me all the way from Kansas City. I imagine us bumping around her little apartment together. A wall, not a bridge, grows inside. I erupt to the group at the table. “Celeste was all dolled up to marry my father and give birth to a shoe store. That’s all the family they wanted… not me. What am I supposed to do with her? I’m not her housekeeper, or her bookkeeper, or her sister, either. She’s already got a living, breathing sister, even if all they do is project their two-faced perfectly phony selves at each other!”

  The Nesbitts’ stunned looks make me feel like I just spit on everybody, including Daddy. I burst into tears and out the door.

  Leroy follows me to the stinky chicken house. “I’m gonna move in here,” I sputter. “There’s room for one more chicken.”

  Leroy stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Why can’t you stay out here with them?”

  “Because they need somebody to help them instead of a hateful, crazy person who is only good at hurling raw eggs.”

  Leroy screws up his face. “What?”

  “Never mind, Leroy. The Nesbitts didn’t know much about Daddy or Celeste… until now. They probably thought that they were… well, they probably wondered what he was like, because I never… But, anyway, they haven’t offered, and they’ve hired somebody else.” I roll my eyes. “Gladys Dilgert. So, la-di-da. Here she comes… and there I go.”

  “So? Have Gladys go live with Celeste and you stay here.”

  Leroy sneezes. The chickens fuss and peck. “You’re making them nervous, Leroy.” I grab the basket and gather eggs—so wound up I could break one in my fist.

  I hear footsteps crunch across the driveway. “Iris?” Dr. and Mrs. Nesbitt gingerly step in, fanning their faces. I turn to them, blinking in the dusty light. Dr. Nesbitt still wears the red-and-white checked apron. “Does your father have a will?” he asks.

  “Sir?”

  “A will.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Would he have changed it yet, to include Celeste?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Mrs. Nesbitt covers her nose with her hankie. I worry about her satin slippers in the chicken manure.

  “Does he have any living rel
atives besides you?”

  “No, sir. His brother, Marion, died.”

  “Do you plan to go to Atchison tomorrow?”

  “Yes. I need to check the train.” I hear the phone ringing in the house. Celeste.

  Dr. Nesbitt says firmly, “We know Leroy has to leave today. Mother and I would like to drive you to Atchison tomorrow, stay overnight, and go to the services on Thursday. In fact, Mother can stay longer, to help you sort through what needs doing at your house.”

  “Thank you.” My mind reels. “I guess I should pack everything. My trunk…”

  Mrs. Nesbitt’s voice is solemn, official. “Iris, our contract with you goes through Labor Day, so you will be unavailable to Celeste until then. I trust you will tell her as much.”

  Leroy and I sit on the stoop. I shiver in the August heat. “I think Celeste gave me permanent poison ivy.”

  He moves close, rubs my arms. “Here, give me the poison ivy. I’ll get rid of it for you.” He cups my hands. I feel the pulse in his thumbs and wrists.

  “Sit next to me,” I say.

  “I am.”

  “On Thursday.”

  “Okay.”

  We take Leroy to the depot. “We can all stay at my house in Atchison, although it will be kinda musty,” I tell Mrs. Nesbitt on the way back.

  “And dusty,” she adds. “Don’t worry about that now, you’ve got enough on your mind.”

  “I guess Daddy will be buried by Mama…”

  Tears well up. I blot them on my sleeve and try to remember the two of them together in their living lives. I have only one memory of it, on the porch at the sanatorium. Daddy sits in a rocker, reading Mama a letter. She has her eyes shut, but you can tell she’s listening. His head is bent, the afternoon sunlight making his hair look silver, then black, then silver as he rocks. I wonder who wrote that letter. A friend maybe? Did she write back? What would she have said? Was she strong or funny or snooty or kind? Was she fumbly like me? Was she good with numbers?

  What will she do with Daddy when he shows up in heaven?