The Girl from Charnelle (4 page)

“Where you been?” her father asked.

“Outside. Cooling off.”

She wiped her forehead, as if wiping away sweat, then faced the dance floor. She was afraid if she looked at her father, she might say something she would regret.

“You ready to go?” he asked. “Or do you want to come home with Manny?”

The dance floor had thinned out. But moving in a slow two-step were John and Anne Letig. Mrs. Letig had her head on his shoulder, and she was smiling. She was nice-looking, with dark red hair, almost auburn, plump across the middle and in the hips. Laura liked her face—a warm, generous smile. Mrs. Letig and her mother had been friends. Not close—it seemed no one was ever very close to her mother—but they had spent some time together and liked each other's company. Laura watched Mr. and Mrs. Letig turn slowly. Although she'd baby-sat for the Letigs, she'd never thought about them as a couple. She rarely thought about her parents' married friends that way. But she wondered now. What was it like for them? She felt like she
knew things now about Mrs. Letig that she shouldn't know, as if her husband had whispered secrets about her behind her back, an intimate knowledge that made Laura's stomach knot. At that moment, Mrs. Letig caught Laura's eyes. The whole night, she realized, she had felt off balance, knocked over, suddenly caught—the boy on the bass, Dean, John Letig, Bob Cransburgh, and now Mrs. Letig. She didn't know what to make of it.

She nodded at Mrs. Letig, as if they had been in conversation, but the woman only smiled and turned away.

“Laura,” her father said again.

“Yes, sir?”

“Do you want to come with me or with Manny?”

“I'm ready to go,” she said.

“Well, we better get a move on. I told Mrs. Ambling we'd pick up Rich by one.”

She grabbed her coat, and they walked toward the door, people calling good-byes to them. She told herself not to look at the dance floor, whatever she did. She wasn't going to look. But at the front door, her father and Gene already outside, she turned back for a split second, and there was John Letig, standing at the edge. His wife was leaning over a table, talking to another couple. He stared right at Laura, as if he'd been waiting for her to turn around. Or willing it. She didn't know. She didn't wait. She lunged out the door, jumped from the deck toward her father and brother.

The snow was coming down hard and fast now, big flakes eddying in a white confusion. It felt cold through her shoes, and the draft whipped around her legs. She trotted to the truck before turning back to the Armory. The snow swirled around it like a cloud, the flakes silver and glistening in the light. She watched the Armory door, people starting to mill in and out, a few men smoking cigarettes on the deck.

Her father honked the horn, and she jumped. She opened the truck door, hopped in.

“Do you want to stay?”

“No, I'm ready.”

He started the engine and turned the wipers on to slash away the powdery snow. He backed up, and they slowly eased from the parking lot, following the tracks left by the early departers. She looked over her shoulder and saw Mr. Letig standing on the deck, under the awning, the snow seeming to circle him. He raised his beer, as if toasting her.

Her father turned onto the snow-covered road, and the Armory disappeared through the trees. Within seconds Gene was asleep, his head bobbing on his chest. It began snowing harder as they drove along the old highway back toward town. The snow blew harmlessly in front of them. The slow rocking of the truck and the falling snow began to calm her. That fluttering feeling was fading now. Within a few minutes, she felt surprisingly as if all that had happened tonight, even in the last hour, had happened long ago and to someone else, someone in a book or movie. It felt exaggerated, silly. A white blanket covered the trees and fields and roads, except for the tire marks ahead of them. Charnelle lay hidden beneath, she thought. Laid to rest. The fifties gone from them now. The only time she really remembered. An amazing thought.

“It's gone,” she said.

Smoke slipped from her father's lips and nostrils. “What's gone, honey?”

“The fifties,” she said.

He nodded, sighed. His mouth curled around the cigarette, and he inhaled deeply, the end brightening in the cab. “Good,” he said. “I'm ready for a new world.”

That was an odd thing to say: “a new world.” She supposed he meant a new year. A new decade. Or a new era. That's what the newspapers and radio stations called it. Maybe he'd had a few too many beers. But she liked “a new world” better. It was somehow appropriate. And slightly exotic. The last few years had been difficult for him, no doubt. For them all. Maybe they all were ready for a new world.

She closed her eyes and, leaning her head back, listened quietly to her own breathing and the hum of the truck engine. She thought she would always remember this night. What did it mean? She didn't know. What had happened had happened. And yes, she'd liked it. Some part of her had wanted it to happen. Was that possible? She breathed heavily.
Foolish
. She watched too many movies, read too many novels. She could picture Mr. Letig—Letig? John?—standing there on the deck, his beer bottle raised to her, the snow coiling around him like her father's cigarette smoke in the cab.

“Did you have a good time?” her father asked.

She opened her eyes. “Yes, sir.”

He nodded. “I'm glad.”

I
t snowed a foot in Charnelle on New Year's Day, 1960, and then the temperature dropped into the teens, so the snow didn't melt and the roads were slick with black ice. School was canceled the following Monday, which elicited a hurrah from the four Tate kids, even Rich, who didn't go to school yet but was excited by the enthusiasm of his siblings. As usual, Mr. Tate left early for work that day but was home by lunch, because the power lines were down at Charnelle Steel & Construction. The generator wouldn't be up and running until the next day, and with the acetylene torches not working, there wasn't enough light or heat to do anything except get in the way of those trying to fix the problems. He was happy to have another day off, especially at the company's expense, though it wasn't clear yet if this would be counted against his vacation days. Charnelle Steel wasn't unionized. “So you never know,” he said, and went to take a nap.

Manny had trudged through the snow to Joannie's house. Gene and Rich wanted to build snowmen, so Laura helped bundle everybody up, and
they went outside. Soon they had constructed a big three-tiered figure in the front yard, and without their talking about it, the snowman became a snow
woman,
sticks outlining an apron, dead branches the hair, black pecans and rocks the eyes, mouth, nose—definitely a woman. They just kept building and adding, and then they all stood back, sweaty now around their cap lines, their coats and gloves and scarves drenched from the snow. They stared at it for several minutes, and then Gene took the broom out of the hand of the snowwoman and whacked the center ball. Twigs cracked and fell. The wooden apron dropped to the ground. Laura and Rich opened their mouths in astonishment. Gene swung at the head, and it flew off.

“Hey!” Laura shouted.

But Gene struck again, and Rich ran and jumped at the two remaining balls, and the whole thing toppled over, with Rich buried face-deep in the mounds, his short arms wrapped in a wrestling hug around what was left of the body. Gene and Laura guffawed and then pulled him out of the snow and brushed him off, and as soon as they did, he dove back into the squashed remains of the woman. Gene jumped on top of Rich and shoved snow in his face, and then they turned on Laura, pelting her.

“Okay, you've had it now!” she shouted. And by the end, they were all soaked and lying in the snowy yard amid the ruins, giggling.

Her father opened the door. He wore his blue long underwear and his “home” overalls. “What happened to your snowman?” They looked at one another guiltily, then broke into laughter. “What's so funny?” he asked.

Gene and Rich couldn't stop laughing. Mr. Tate shook his head, smiling. He was glad to see them laughing. “Laura,” he said. “Telephone call.”

“Who is it?”

“Anne Letig.”

She stopped laughing.
Had he told her? Would she know without him telling her? Did Bob Cransburgh say something?

“What does she want?” she asked, as offhand as she could manage.

“Beats me. Said she needed to talk to you.”

 

“Hello,” Laura said tentatively.

“Hey, honey. John said he asked you to watch the boys this weekend.”

“Yes, ma'am.”
Was that all he said?

“Well, change of plans. We're not going skiing, which I'm thoroughly
disappointed about, but we're hoping to get out to eat and play some pinochle with the Brewers if you can come for a few hours on Saturday.”

“I'll need to talk to my father about it,” she said, relieved.

“Okay, you get back to me. You can bring Gene and Rich if you need to, or I can drop the boys by your house instead.”

“I'll check.”

Maybe it would be best if she dropped her boys off here, Laura thought, but something in her rebelled against that idea. And she didn't want Gene and Rich over there either. She wanted to be in their house by herself.

 

By Saturday evening, the snow was mostly cleared. Walter Clemons, the Charnelle deputy mayor, ran his plow all week. Laura thought the walk would be more treacherous and take her longer, but she made it, without slipping much, the mile to the Letig house, which was closer to the heart of the town and on a nicer street with bigger, more carefully groomed homes. She was nearly forty-five minutes early, so rather than knock on their door, she walked one more block to the downtown square.

The red granite courthouse still sported Christmas lights and large foam candy canes and wreaths, though these looked ragged and droopy from the bad weather, and Laura figured everybody had been so busy with the ice and snow that they hadn't had time to take down the decorations. Spenser's General Store and Thomason's (both owned by Glenn Thomason and connected by a brass-lined revolving door in the wall) were open until seven on Saturdays. Laura ate a couple of caramels and sucked on a sourball as she strolled through Spenser's. At Thomason's she tried on a pair of shiny black high-heeled shoes and a trim green wool collarless dress; the front of the dress fell just below the knees, and it came with a wide silver-buckled black belt. She'd seen a woman at the dance wearing one just like it, and she now felt that her own dress, with its stripes and satin bows and lacy hem, was old-fashioned, too girlish. This dress cost twenty-two dollars and the shoes another eight, which was way out of her league, but it was fun to try them on just the same. Cathy White, who worked at the store but also substitute-taught art classes at the high school, said that the dress made Laura look much older. “Twenty at least.”

Cathy shook her head admiringly and whistled, saying, “You'd have to
be careful walking down the streets in that, darling,” which made Laura wish she had the thirty bucks for such luxuries.

She stopped in at the Ding Dong Daddy Diner, spun around on the bright red counter stool, and got a free cherry soda from Dean Compson. Under the bright lights of the diner, his faced seemed more ravaged with pimples than usual, as if he'd suffered a recent eruption, and he scuttled about sweatily busing tables and refilling hot teas, hot chocolates, and coffee mugs. He wanted to know if she would come back later, near closing. He'd be happy to drive her home.

“Can't,” she said, slurping her straw noisily.

When she arrived at the Letigs' house, on time, she was disappointed to find Mr. Letig gone. He had run some errands and was going to swing back by and pick up Mrs. Letig. Laura wondered if it was an excuse, if he just didn't want to see her. Maybe he was embarrassed or ashamed of what had happened on New Year's.

Mrs. Letig looked spiffy in a nice paisley dress, which fit her loosely enough so as not to make her hips or stomach appear too thick; in that dress, Mrs. Letig looked a little like Laura's mother, though younger, prettier, even if a little heavier. Her dark red hair was pinned up in back, however, which made her face seem severe. But when she smiled, it was the same smile, generous and friendly. Laura had worried all day that maybe Mr. Letig had broken down and told his wife what he'd done. When he wasn't at the house, fear suddenly pierced Laura. She thought that maybe Mrs. Letig had kicked him out of the house, and Laura, too, would be in for a harsh scolding, or that something more terrible might happen. Just last Thursday she read that in Amarillo a woman had found her husband with another woman and shot him in the stomach, though he didn't die. But Laura's worries were not grounded, and she felt both relief and an odd disappointment. It had meant nothing, it seemed. And hadn't she spent just a little extra time in the bathroom, brushing her hair? And why had she worn her nice dress? her father wanted to know. “It's freezing outside,” he'd said. “What's wrong with your overalls?”

When she arrived, Mrs. Letig said, “Now don't you look pretty.” Laura blushed.

Mrs. Letig gave her the usual instructions—no dessert, easy on the liquids close to bedtime, under the covers by eight—and said they'd be back by ten or eleven. Then Mr. Letig was in the driveway honking, and Mrs.
Letig was out the door, the boys at the big window waving good-bye, Laura behind them, waving, too, smiling, feeling slightly foolish with Mrs. Letig holding her palm up, wiggling her fingers, and Mr. Letig looking behind him as he backed out. She kept waiting for him to turn around and see her. But he didn't.

 

John Jr. went by Jack, and the younger boy's name was William, but they called him Willie. They were good boys, not as wild as her brothers, very polite. Which must come from having Mrs. Letig for a mother—or just having a mother around, period. They played Go Fish, and the boys wrestled, and then they watched a quiz show on the Letigs' new television set. The Letigs' house was nicer than her own, newer, and it seemed bigger, though maybe it was because there were fewer people living here. Laura's father had told her that Mrs. Letig “came from money,” and so while Letig didn't make a hell of a lot of money at Charnelle Steel, Anne Letig provided “the frills”—the decorations and furniture, the ski trips. “A mixed blessing,” her father called it. And Manny said he wasn't sure he'd want to marry a woman who had more money than he had: “You'd be pussy-whipped for sure.” Manny talked like that more and more around the house. Her father didn't seem to mind. Manny'd never say that if their mother were still at home.

By eight-thirty, the boys were asleep. Laura turned the television back on, but she wasn't really interested. She wanted to look around, didn't she? She'd been thinking about it all week, the thoughts hiding slyly at the corners of her mind. She'd been planning it. She was sneaky. She didn't want to take anything, nothing devious or mean. Just curious, curious about…well, just curious. It's why she didn't want Gene or Rich to come with her, wasn't it? Why she'd said no when they asked. “You can't come,” she'd told them, though Mrs. Letig had said just the opposite.

She checked on the boys again, shut their door tight so she'd hear if it opened. She just wanted to take a peek. The bedroom wasn't forbidden. The door was open. No one had said, “Don't go in there.” And what was there to see? She flipped on the light. Two dresses laid out on the bed, a blue cotton one and an olive green linen. Discards. She touched them, the fabric soft in her fingers, much nicer than her own dresses.

Mrs. Letig's vanity table: lipstick, rouge, an orderly array of makeup,
hair spray, a red velvet jewelry box. One of her drawers was half open. Laura could see a white girdle, the big cottony bras like her mother left behind, and something red and shiny underneath, something black too. Frilly. Is this what her father meant by “frills”? She thought of the woman he'd brought home that one time. But never again. A kind of frill he didn't allow himself anymore, it seemed.

And his dresser. Nothing much there. In fact, not much different than her father's. A work watch, the face scratched. Some scattered pieces of folded paper. A pack of Wrigley's gum. A white handkerchief. What was she hoping to find? The top drawer was ajar. She could see inside: T-shirts, socks. She felt funny, her heart racing. Okay, she'd open it just a bit. She put her hand on the drawer, eased it slowly out. The wood scraped. She held her breath, then peeked in. Behind the shirts were a couple of pairs of boxer shorts. One white, the other with little red diamonds, like on a deck of cards.

She heard something. She froze for a second, terrified, then shut the drawer quickly, skipped out of the room, flipping the light. The boys' door was still closed. She raced to the living room, jumped into the chair. Her heart thundered in her chest, in her neck. She could feel heat spreading over her face. She pretended to watch the television, Nat King Cole crooning on some variety show. But no, it wasn't them. No car. She listened again. Just a branch blowing against a window shutter. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. She got up and looked out the window, then went back in the bedroom and made sure the drawer was closed except for the small opening, everything left in exactly the same place it had been. The dresses exactly as before. Nothing disturbed. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then she returned to the kitchen, washed the dishes left in the sink, picked up the toys. The sort of thing that might earn you a little extra, if you were lucky.

 

Mrs. Letig took a dollar from her purse and handed it to Laura, light electricity passing between them when their fingers touched. “Thank you,” Laura said, putting on her jacket and starting for the door.

“Oh, honey, you can't walk in this cold. John'll take you.” She called toward the bedroom, “John, are you ready to run Laura home?”

There was no answer.

“Really, it's not so bad. I don't mind walking at all.”

“Nonsense. Your father would have my hide if you caught cold. It
won't be a second.” She walked back to the bedroom. Laura could hear her muffled high voice. “Sweetie, Laura needs you to run her home.”

Laura wished Mrs. Letig hadn't said it that way. It made it seem like Laura's idea. She heard the low register of his voice but couldn't make out the words.

“Stop that,” Mrs. Letig whispered. “Now put your shoes back on.”

A minute later they both emerged from the bedroom. Mrs. Letig had pulled out the pins, and her hair fell over her shoulders in soft ringlets. It was prettier that way, beautiful even, which surprised Laura.

“Ready?” Mr. Letig asked without looking her in the eye. His hair seemed unusually blond in the light, his mustache a sandy brown. Those red lips. But he was avoiding her, she could tell.

“Yes, sir,” she said deliberately. But he didn't acknowledge the joke.

“Go hop in the car. It should still be warm inside. I'll be right there.”

“Thank you again, honey,” Mrs. Letig said.

“You're welcome.”

From the car she saw him kiss his wife good-bye. It was a long kiss, and he did something else with his hand that Laura didn't quite see, but Mrs. Letig pushed him away playfully, smiling, her head tilted. The front door opened and out he came; Laura looked through the side window, agitated. She had the strange feeling that he had been carrying on for her benefit.