The Driest Season Page 6

  “Okay, good,” her mother said. “Very good.” She patted Cielle’s thigh. “Very good.”

  A curtain parted in a downstairs window but she couldn’t tell who was looking out at them.

  “Well, let’s get their mailbox back to them,” Cielle’s mother said. “Whether they come out to greet us or not.”

  Helen and Cielle pulled the mailbox from the flatbed. The long, square wooden base was heavy. They each took an end and walked toward the porch.

  Cielle’s mother leaned out her window. “Prop it up against the rail there,” she said, “and easy on that foot, Cielle.” They righted the post and made sure the mailbox opening faced outward.

  Cielle looked back into the mailbox. She liked the look of the script on the letters. They hardly ever got mail from anyone other than relatives for birthdays or Christmas.

  Helen looked at her hands, brown with dirt, and raised the red flag on the mailbox. “Go knock on the door, Cielle. I want to see inside.”

  The curtains to the right of the porch pulled back again. Cielle waved and the curtains quickly fell shut.

  “Go knock.” Helen pushed Cielle toward the steps.

  Cielle stumbled up the stairs, wiped a line of dirt from her black dress, and knocked on the front door. There was rustling and footsteps, and a woman’s voice from the other side of the door said, “Oh, hell.”

  Cielle looked back at Helen and raised her shoulders.

  “Is that you, Mrs. Olsen?” Cielle asked.

  “This is Mrs. Olsen.”

  “This is Cielle Jacobson, Mrs. Olsen. We found your mailbox on the side of the road by Five Points Cemetery.”

  “I know who you are,” she said. There was the metal click of a lock, and the door opened a crack. Mrs. Olsen hid her body behind the door and all Cielle saw were her eyes, bloodshot and as dark as night. “I know who you are, Miss Cielle. I’ve seen you play your violin in the school concert.”

  “You have mail in there,” Cielle said. She had never spoken to or seen Mrs. Olsen up close before yesterday. She’d only seen her from afar in the supermarket, or while she waited for Darren in her Cadillac outside of school. Cielle smelled scrambled eggs and brewed coffee and cigarette smoke.

  Mrs. Olsen’s hand wrapped around the edge of the door. Her nails were long and shiny; she had a French manicure. “You play the violin very well,” she said. The lapel of her silken ruby robe fluttered in the wind.

  “Thank you,” Cielle said. She wanted to touch Mrs. Olsen’s fingernails. They were perfect.

  “The violin is my favorite instrument.” Mrs. Olsen sniffled and wiped the edge of her eye. She wasn’t crying, but her eyes leaked. She reached out and touched the wooden bird pin Cielle wore on her dress. She traced the wing.

  “Isn’t that pretty,” Mrs. Olsen said. “That’s lovely.”

  “My father made it,” Cielle said.

  Helen came up behind Cielle and leaned her head toward the crack to see Mrs. Olsen. Mrs. Olsen startled, drew her arm back, and held her robe together at her chest.

  “I’m sorry about your father, girls.”

  “I’m Helen Jacobson, Mrs. Olsen. You have a lovely home.”

  Cielle held her dress down at her sides so the wind wouldn’t blow it up. “She’s my older sister.”

  “We found your mailbox, Cielle found it, on the side of the road outside the cemetery,” Helen said.

  “We don’t go to church,” Mrs. Olsen said. “So thank you for finding it.”

  Helen stood on her tiptoes and leaned in for more of a look. “We just had our father’s burial.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m very sorry.”

  “If you ever need someone to watch your house while you’re gone . . .” Helen said, and stood up straight, as if she were interviewing for a job. “I’m going to Madison for college, but I’ll come back to take care of it.”

  “She wants to see what your house looks like inside,” Cielle said.

  A phlegm-filled cough came from the kitchen, a smoker’s cough. He coughed deep in his throat over and over, cleared his throat, and spit. Mrs. Olsen leaned her face into the crack between the door and the frame, and a tear leaked out of her left eye. She didn’t bother wiping it away and it trailed down her cheek. “Come over another day, girls,” she said. “Your mother’s waiting.” She tapped her fingernails on the door, waved to their mother in the truck, and then shut the door.

  Cielle’s mother pulled back onto County Road KK. “What did she say?”

  “That the violin is her favorite instrument,” Cielle said.

  “She seems flighty,” her mother said.

  “She seems nice, but sad,” Cielle said.

  “What’s there to be sad about with a house like that?” Helen asked.

  “Everyone has something to be sad about,” Cielle’s mother said. “Don’t ever forget that.”

  Cielle knew that was true, but thought it might be easier to recover from sadness if you didn’t have to worry about money or losing your home and farm, that maybe then your loss felt like a sting rather than a long, dark tunnel with no end in sight.

  Her mother passed the road to their house and headed toward Richland Center. “I don’t feel like going home and looking at that mess of a barn and tiptoeing around while your grandmother sleeps. Let’s do something nice after this awful week. How about Sunday brunch?”

  “An omelet,” Cielle said. “A strawberry tart.”

  “French toast with extra maple syrup,” Helen said. “Bacon and pineapple juice.”

  “Now we’re talking,” her mother said. “And waffles, sausage, coffee, and chocolate cake.”

  She parked in front of the Bredahl Inn on Main Street, where inside there were pretty patterned Oriental rugs and high ceilings with ornate molding and chandeliers. “We could eat here more often if we lived in town,” her mother said.

  “You can’t leave the farm,” Helen said. “We can’t move.”

  “You hate the farm,” Cielle said. “What do you care?”

  They slid out of the truck. Nothing in town looked touched by the tornado. Pots full of deep purple and yellow pansies lined the inn’s porch. Pleated and fanned American flags draped from the railing, not one out of place. Colorfully illustrated war effort posters that read ARE YOU DOING ALL THAT YOU CAN?, and DO WITH LESS SO THEY’LL HAVE ENOUGH, and WE HAVE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT! hung from lampposts and in windows. Helen walked ahead of them and stood in front of the inn’s door, her arms folded tightly across her chest.

  “Mother, are you going to sell the farm?” Helen asked.

  “You want to discuss this right now?” Her mother raised her eyebrows.

  “Will I have a place to come home to at Christmas?”

  “You will have someplace to come home to, but I can’t promise you it will be the farm.”

  Helen widened her stance. “You can’t sell the farm.”

  “It’s not mine to sell, honey. Mr. Olsen owns it.”

  “What is it with you?” Cielle said. “You’ve been yammering nonstop about how you’ll never live on a farm again and how you can’t wait to go to college.”

  Her mother put her hands on Helen’s shoulders and moved her to the side of the door to let people walk out of the inn. The smell of breakfast wafted out—coffee, eggs, cooked meats, and pastries. Her mother pulled Helen into her so they were almost nose-to-nose. “Our options are limited,” her mother said softly. “With the barn gone, and your father gone, we might not have a choice. Things are different now.”

  “Too many things,” Helen said.

  “You’re leaving,” Cielle said.

  “I could stay,” Helen said. “Maybe I should.”

  Her mother bit her bottom lip, and then walked past Helen, inside. Cielle didn’t know if her mother wanted Helen to stay but wouldn’t say it, or didn’t want her to stay. She couldn’t tell.

  Helen looked at Cielle. “I could stay and help.”

  “What would you do that for?” Cie
lle asked.

  The Bredahl Inn was crowded with the after-church crowd. Glasses and plates were clinked and scraped, waiters scurried, floral and spicy perfumes lingered in the air. Vases with white and yellow roses sat on the tables. They ordered and sat quietly.

  “We haven’t eaten out in a long time.” Cielle’s mother flapped open her linen napkin and smoothed it over her lap. “It’s nice to see people.”

  “Do you recognize anyone?” Cielle asked.

  Helen craned her neck. “The Sullivans, in the corner.”

  The waiter delivered their juices and a coffee for Cielle’s mother. Then came waffles with strawberries and whipped cream and sausage for Cielle’s mother, an omelet with bacon and toast for Cielle and French toast with maple syrup, bacon, and roasted potatoes for Helen.

  “Bon appétit,” the waiter said.

  “Merci,” Cielle said.

  “Listen to you,” Helen said. “Well done.”

  “Thank you for treating us today, Mother,” Cielle said.

  “Yes, thank you, Mother,” Helen said.

  Cielle’s mother extended her arms to the girls, and they all held hands. “I love you both. Let’s be thankful for each other, and for the time we had with your father.” Her mother bowed her head and Helen bowed hers as well. Cielle kept hers up, her eyes open, and watched her mother and Helen, looked at their hands that linked them together. How did people forgive and move on? What mattered and kept anyone caring about what they did, how they did it, or with whom they did it if in the end they would die and it would all be over, gone, forgotten, dark, dust in the ground, a name on a headstone?

  “Helen,” her mother said. “We need to start thinking about what you’ll need in Madison. What you want to take from home for your dormitory room.”

  “Mom,” Helen said, “I—” She breathed in and then coughed, and her eyes widened. She held her hand to her throat and waved her other hand in front of her face as if she were hot and needed to be cooled.

  “She’s choking. Are you choking?” Cielle asked.

  Helen nodded yes. Helen tried to force air, tried to push out what was caught in her throat. Her face reddened and was close to maroon.

  Cielle’s mother stood fast and knocked over her chair. She slapped Helen on the back. “Somebody help,” she said.

  Cielle felt every inch of her body, but didn’t know which way to move. Her mother made a fist and hit Helen’s back so hard it sounded like a deep drum. The room quieted and people sat still at their tables. It was a summer brunch crowd of butter-yellows, sea-foam-greens, charcoal-grays, and poppy-reds.

  Cielle stood and nudged her mother aside. She reached her arms around Helen, who was wheezing and a shade darker, close to violet. She once saw someone punch a choking person’s stomach, which made the food come up. She made a fist under her sister’s rib cage and pulled as hard as she could. She felt the softness of Helen’s middle, the bone of her rib cage, the density of her insides. But her sister was still choking.

  “Why don’t you people do something?” her mother yelled.

  A waiter in a bow tie ran out from the kitchen. Cielle stepped aside when she saw him rushing toward their table. He steadied himself behind Helen. “What’s her name?” he asked.

  “Helen,” Cielle said. The waiter had frosting on his hand and smelled like butter cake.

  “Here we go, Helen,” he said. In one motion he pressed the palm of his hand into her stomach and hit her back, and a piece of potato came up. It flew out of her mouth and landed in her juice glass. The crowd clapped. The waiter rubbed Helen’s upper arms and leaned toward her ear. “Okay?”

  Helen gasped and her breaths were rough. She touched his hand on her arm and then her chin bunched and she cried. She shook and cried and her red face was wet with tears. The waiter stayed close, his hands on her arms. “You’re okay,” he said, and pointed to the glass of juice. “That was a nice shot.”

  Helen laughed and the crowd clapped again. Cielle heard whispered words: Of all days, their father, poor things, and Can you imagine?

  Everyone had turned toward them with crooked smiles, soft eyes, heads shaking back and forth, hands clasped. Cielle felt the way she had in anxious dreams—late someplace and standing naked in the middle of a room full of strangers, lost.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THAT WEEK THEY went about their chores of collecting eggs, feeding animals, cleaning pens, and milking cows. The hay needed to be cut and baled. The mess of the barn had to be cleaned up and cleared away. Cielle still had her father’s note folded up in her pocket.

  On Friday, before school, Cielle watered and weeded the garden while it was still cool outside. She picked whatever was vine-ripe for later: zucchini and yellow beans, tomatoes and beets. She dressed for school and looked at the note. She unfolded it and left it right-side down. She could see it wasn’t long, and it seemed too few words to explain everything. She wasn’t ready, so she folded it back up and carried it in her pocket for the time when she felt ready. She told herself any normal person would read the note and move on. If she wanted the truth so badly, there it was, and all she needed to do was look at it. But she didn’t. She wondered if she was like her mother and Helen. Maybe to survive you had to be able to look beyond ugly, dark things in the world, even if it meant pretending. Maybe the people who could do that were the happy ones.

  That afternoon, Cielle walked home from summer school and as she neared the turn for Kanton Street she heard Bodie yell her name out from behind. She turned and Bodie nodded and jogged to catch up. A corridor of late-day sunlight shone out in front of him like an aisle of gold.

  “Afternoon,” she said.

  “It is,” he said, “and hot.” He threw a peach up and caught it behind his back.

  “Show-off,” Cielle said. He bit into the peach. Juice dripped and he wiped his chin on his shirtsleeve. His hair lightened every summer and it was close to white, and curled around his ears and at the base of his neck. He was strong, and lines of muscle defined his forearms like small gullies. He had graduated with Helen, but had to finish classes with tutors from his four weeks out in February with the measles. Cielle thought of Helen running her hands over his arms, or his arms wrapped around Helen, and she thought of Darren and it gave her goose bumps.

  “You’re walking better,” he said.

  “My foot’s an awful shade of yellow and green, but the hurt is gone,” she said.

  They walked the dirt road, and cornstalks stood a foot away. Cielle yanked an ear of sweet corn from one of the yellowing stalks.

  “It might not taste right,” Bodie said.

  “We’ll see.” Cielle shucked the casing and picked the fine silk from the corn. The kernels were light yellow and not as plump and full as they should be, but when she bit in, it was still sweet.

  “It’s good enough,” she said. She didn’t know why anyone cooked corn when it was delicious raw.

  “Summer school’s over,” Cielle said.

  “It’s over,” Bodie said. “And that’s the last time I’ll ever think about chemistry. You want to cut over the hill?”

  Cielle’s house was two miles one-way from school, but there was a shortcut up a steep wooded hill that went through the Gundersons’ farm.

  “Not today,” Cielle said. “Not in this dress.” The wooded section had blackberry brambles and she didn’t want to snag the fine cotton of her sundress on a thorn.

  He dropped the peach pit and kicked it. It spun through the air and hit a tree with a loud crack.

  “Are you and Helen going to the lake?” Cielle asked.

  “I thought I’d stop by to see her. Helen said you’re going to the fair tonight with Darren Olsen?”

  Cielle felt the heat in her face, and ate her corn.

  “I like Darren,” Bodie said.

  “I like the Ferris wheel ride.”

  “That’s a good ride,” he said. “Darren is nice too.” Bodie poked his finger into her shoulder.

  “You’re a
nnoying.”

  He poked her again and she raised the corncob at him.

  “Cielle Jacobson,” Bodie said. “Little Cielle Jacobson.” He swiped her corncob, threw it far into the field, and put his arm around her shoulders.

  They walked down the road as it sloped and curved to the right toward her house. His arm kept her tucked into his side, and she felt safe there.

  “I need you to show me how to cut and bale the fields,” Cielle said. “We need help with the farm.”

  “I can help you,” he said.

  Her father had told her to never expect anything from anyone, and that if you asked favors you had to be prepared to return favors, but that it wasn’t good to owe anything to anyone. Keeping people at a distance in that way seemed harsh and unnecessary to her. She believed people wanted connection, and wanted to be relied on and be reliable when needed. She hardly asked for help, but it felt good to ask Bodie for help.

  “I don’t know what to say about your dad. I don’t want you to think I’m avoiding it,” Bodie said.

  “You don’t have to say anything.”

  If she read the note, then maybe there’d be something to say, but there was nothing she or anyone could change. She kept it in her pocket during the day and under her pillow at night because writing it was one of the last things her father had done while he was alive. The note was like those unopened letters in Darren Olsen’s mailbox; it held the possibility of news yet to come. They were words, good or bad, her father had not yet spoken to her. She was afraid to read it—afraid they’d be words she didn’t want to read and remember him by.

  Bodie cleared his throat. Cielle matched her stride with his so their steps moved in unison. His hand was rough and callused on her shoulder. He cleared his throat again.

  “I joined the Army Air Corps,” he said. “Last November, when I’d just turned eighteen. Training was deferred until school ended, and my letter came a week ago.”