For the first six months in Brooklyn, Leenie was sympathetic to Aldine’s dismissals of Mormon men who wanted to date her and convert her at the same time. “Too ancient,” she agreed about Anton Buchreiter, who was at least fifty. “A bit dim,” she admitted about Harold Coombs. But Floyd Gerg, to Leenie’s mind, was perfect: young, good-looking, solid, kind. Floyd Gerg was, in fact, handsome in a stiff, Nordic way, though he seemed about as animated as a tree. He’d called Aldine Sister McKenna until she made him stop, reminding him that she was not strictly a sister, not yet (nor ever, she added in her mind). Leenie had several times pointed out that Brother Gerg had a good job at the Steinway factory and would soon have his own flat. Aldine pointed out that she had never heard him laugh.
“He wants to marry you,” Leenie said.
“How could you possibly know that? He never speaks!”
“He told Will.”
“I can’t marry him.”
“He’s going to ask you. He’s working up the courage.”
“Tell Will to tell him I haven’t made up my mind to be baptized.”
“You’re too picky, Deen. He’d be a good father.”
No, she couldn’t picture it. They were stiff as dead plants with one another. And yet Leenie had invited him to Sunday dinner again, probably after telling Will that Floyd needed to talk more and draw Aldine out.
By this point it was August and sweltering. Aldine sat on a bench in Fort Greene Park craving a cup of Fortnum’s and a lick of Silver Shred on toast. Maybe she should quit boxes and try for a job in a shop, where at least she could look outside now and then. She stared crossly down at a newspaper someone had left on the bench. It was folded to the part that listed jobs and opportunities.
Culturally-inclined Country School in beautiful Loam County, Kansas, seeks forward-looking primary teacher with musical skills. Fair salary, room and board included. Apply to Ansel Price, Dorland, Kansas.
She was as forward-looking as the next girl. She could sing, play the piano, and fiddle. She had memorized every poem her father knew, and every poem in the eighth reader. She knew her times tables and wrote with what examiners (and Dr. O’Malley, too) called a “beautiful hand.” Perhaps Kansas was not too far by train, and she could visit Leenie and the baby on weekends.
She folded the newspaper section until it would fit in her pocketbook and went looking for a stamp.
7
In a car parked on a side street of Dorland, Kansas, the wife and three children of Ansel Price sat waiting in heavy silence. The street was oiled; the town was hot and still. The car had been parked in the shade, but that was before shopping and banking and visiting with Mrs. Odekirk and Mrs. Eichely and Reverend Bakely’s wife, and now the afternoon sun glared down on the old Ford. The heat was stifling and when Mrs. Price touched the edge of her finger to her upper lip, it came away moist. “Wait here,” her husband had said. “I won’t be ten seconds.” And then had hurried across the deserted street for the post office.
She’d known it wouldn’t be ten seconds, but she didn’t expect it to be ten minutes, either. Ten minutes and counting. She turned to the backseat, where her three children sat squeezed sullenly together. Clare, fingering a recent outcropping of acne at his chin, seemed to anticipate her thoughts and said quietly, “He told us to wait here.”
“I’ll go!” Neva said. She was out the door before more could be said about it. She disappeared into the post office, a small brick cube featuring a sidewall of glass blocks near the entrance. Clare watched the liquid blur of Neva’s small body as she dashed behind them. Once he’d seen a woman passing behind these glass blocks and for an enlivening second or two had imagined this woman would emerge naked, but she had not, of course. It was just Mrs. Rackham, wearing beige.
Another minute or two passed without anyone coming out. That man, Mrs. Price thought. Then, after looking up and down the street, she thought, This town. She closed her eyes, then opened them again and said, “Clare, go fetch Neva.”
As he went, Charlotte called after him. “And tell His Highness that we’re about to combust out here!”
“Don’t call your father that,” Mrs. Price said but Charlotte noticed she didn’t put any starch into it. Charlotte stretched her legs onto the vacated backseat and hitched her skirt a few inches, not that it helped much. Another minute or two passed but it felt longer to Charlotte. Her father did not appear, nor did Neva or Clare. “God!” she said. “Is there a troll in there picking them off one by one?”
Her mother said nothing. But she was thinking things. Charlotte knew that much. In her journal she’d written of her mother: She thought it all and said not a thing.
Beyond the train station, Mr. Tanner’s wagon turned onto Main Street pulled by two mules. Whenever her father saw Mr. Tanner in his wagon, he said, “He likes two good mules.” That’s what Mr. Tanner always said when neighbors advised him to invest in something motor driven. I like two good mules. As the wagon slowly approached, Mr. Tanner kept his gaze cast forward. Charlotte stared at him hard, willing him to turn his eyes toward her, but he didn’t. He passed by looking like a statue of himself.
“Okay, that’s it. I’m going in,” she said, and waited for her mother to say something, almost daring it, but her mother stared straight ahead.
When she got inside the post office, Charlotte found Neva sitting on the counter with her toothpick legs dangling, Clare standing close to the opposite wall studying the wanted posters, and her father, pencil in hand, bent over the counter staring at a sheet of paper in front of him so intently that he didn’t notice her approach. When she said, “What’re you writing?” he jumped in a way that interested her. It almost seemed that she’d just glimpsed her father as he might be when his family was not around, as a grown man without wife and son and daughters attached.
“Oh,” he said. “Just an advertisement. Terence Tidball said he’d put in a notice for us free of charge if I’d send him the text.”
Terence Tidball, who worked worlds away at the Herald Tribune in New York City. A lunatic idea if ever there was one. But, still, she leaned forward to see what her father had written. He’d made a number of false starts and erasures; what remained was this: Country School in Loam County, Kansas, seeks primary teacher. Salary, room and board included. Apply to Ansel Price, Dorland, Kansas.
“Oh, that’s sure to work,” Charlotte said. “We’ll probably need a wheelbarrow to carry all the responses.”
Her father was a tall, stately man who could often see the funny side of things, but he didn’t see the funny side of this.
“Huh,” Clare murmured from his position some feet away, but only to himself, evidently in response to one of the posters he was reading. Neva, who had been tenderly but intently working her front teeth between thumb and forefinger—both teeth were loosening—withdrew her hand to say, “What, Clare?” but Clare was too intent on his poster reading to reply.