The Star Garden (28 page)

Days later, after two people read their essays on “What I Want,” and the whole class discussed them, I decided to write mine again. Then I went to Professor Fairhaven’s class early one day, and sat clear to the back to watch and see if folks filled in around me or moved away like I was a snapping turtle thrown in their fish pond, just like in Brownie’s class. I took out my Latin primer and the notes I had, for I’d translated the lessons for the rest of the week.

Fairhaven closed the door, fiddled with things on his desk then walked around the room. I shifted my feet as he stopped in front of me and sat on the desk across the aisle. “Afternoon, Miss Elliot—Mrs. Elliot—so easy to forget. Doing well in this class?”

“I like your class fine, sir.”

“You haven’t made many friends, though.”

“I ‘spect not, sir.”

“Well, count me as one, would you? I find you are quite the student, after all.”

After all? Had I struck him as a lunatic before I took his tests? He kept talking but I quit hearing what he said. Others came in and I felt glad for the interruption, for he was just too smiley. They did sort of shift away from my seat, but eventually the seats filled because there were so many students.

After class, Professor Fairhaven asked me to ride him in my buggy downtown after school. He said, “Since you’ve been sick, I’d be happy to provide extra tutoring.” Well, a nervous blush rose on my cheeks, the way he stared at me. After a nice talk he shook my hand when I left him at the bank.

As I drove, I made a decision. It wasn’t so bad I couldn’t handle this just like I’d handled every other mountain I’ve come across. I would write Udell and tell him to wait until I had all the school I wanted. He could wait for me and I’d find a way to keep on going to school until there were no classes I hadn’t tried. I planned to stay in town this weekend to study, so he would have time to think on it before next we met.

When I got home, Harland’s household exploded in sheer pandemonium. Story and Honor had Truth’s picture book and dangled it out the attic vent just as Blessing fell off the back porch rail where she’d been trying to walk with her eyes shut. Rachel called the maid who broke into tears and nearly swooned at the sight of Blessing’s bloody neck and pinafore. I got Blessing on Baldy and jumped on behind, and told Rachel to follow us to the doctor. Yet Rachel didn’t ride, couldn’t hitch a harness, couldn’t leave the three little ruffians without them burning the place to the ground, so I, along with two nurses and a doctor, held Blessing down until they could give her a breath of chloroform while they put two stitches in her chin. The poor child felt in a terror when she awoke, and both of us were wringing wet with blood, but we had no choice but to ride through town looking a mess. The nurses were kind and gave us sheets, so we wrapped our bloody dresses in white sheets. I told Blessing we looked like we were wearing big tortillas, and she laughed, holding her chin. To keep her mind off anything sad, every few minutes I’d give her a squeeze and call her
burrito,
or ask her if she was a tortilla filled with beans. All the terror was over when she proudly displayed her war wounds to her brothers. The boys gaped in awe, begging permission to touch the stitches, which of course she denied.

I got Blessing to bed that afternoon by promising to do my reading in her room while she slept. I stared at the stack of books and papers I trucked into her room and spread across the dresser. I stood lost in a dust storm of schooling and family, a constant panic at being so far behind in some areas, so yearning in others.

The next day after two tests in mathematics to catch up with the class, I knew even if Professor McGinty turned my scores upside down so that 17s were 71s, I’d still not pass numbers. I felt more akin to my boys’ sentiments when they let themselves out of school than I ever thought possible. When Miss Alice asked me to stay behind the other students, I sat at my desk as they tiptoed out, feeling childish and scalded. Well, we had a good long talk. By mutual agreement, I have now let out of Mathematics, too. That leaves only General Science, Composition, and Latin. I never knew you could take part of school, but Miss Alice says to go ahead and finish the rest, and try again next term, so I promised I would. Next term? Of course. I’ll take it next term. By the time she and I finished, I’d missed half of Brownie’s class again, so I went to the library to study.

I sat amidst row upon row of books. I ran my fingers across some leather bindings. I pulled out
The Life of Major General Andrew Jackson,
by John Henry Eaton. Why couldn’t I drop Brownie, too, and take up some good history class? I sat and read and read, until I’d missed Osterhaas’s class and half of Fairhaven’s. I slipped in just before class let out, purely numb with indecision.

Professor Fairhaven asked me to ride him downtown again. He told me I was clever, and quite charming. Purely filled my ears with flattery. If he’d tried that when I first met him, I’d have scorned him good, but I found myself lapping it up as if I longed to hear more. I left him at the barber shop with a wave and went on home. That evening, when I carried a letter to Udell to the stand by the front door where Rachel would take it with her own letters the next day, I passed a mirror hanging by the entry and paused. The face that looked back at me appeared startled, and not for want of Magnolia Balm.

From inside looking out, I had no sensation at all that I looked or spoke differently than other students. More than that, my clothes were not stylish, Magnolia Balm did not change the fact that I had passed eighteen some years back. That boy Foster had awakened memories with a story he knew nothing about. I fought Ulzana before some of those students were born, never mind that I had been just a child then, myself. Sitting in the classroom, I had felt sure I belonged in the company of like minds. I tried to be one of them, forgetting the miles traveled, miles that must have contributed to having failed equally at aprons and mathematics.

I slipped my letter back into the pocket of my apron. I went to the kitchen, and dropped it into the stove. I should just go home, back to what I understand. From upstairs, Blessing’s voice called me.

Rachel was beating eggs for a cake. Aubrey Hanna will join us for supper. He came early to visit while she and I put food on the table. He must resemble his mother, for he was very different from his father. When Harland, Aubrey, and Rachel went to the parlor to talk after supper, I asked them if they’d excuse me so I could study my lessons and write a letter for Aubrey to take to the ranch tomorrow.

I held my pen above the paper for a great while. I wanted to quit school and go home. I wanted to run to Udell and at the same time to hold him at arm’s length—make sure no more cows got killed, no more old folks had shot at the clouds—I wanted to stop time so I could go to school, but only the way I wanted it, not the way they gave it. I was not a schoolgirl.

I said to the bureau, “I shall write this: ‘My Dearest Udell, your gift of the one thing I’ve spent my life hanging all my wishes on, a University education, cannot be more appreciated by another living soul, and yet I would like to throw it away because the students shun me, and I am in sure peril of failing this semester due to having learned at my mother’s knee the difference between pan drippings and churned butter. I have unnaturally enjoyed the attention of a professor on an innocent buggy ride although I appear to be somewhat over the age of all students, and I have lost my backbone. I feel as childish as Blessing Prine, who is even now pitching a fit in her bedroom, being made to go to bed at half past seven, even though the doctor told her to rest.’

“Or this. ‘Dear Udell, I cannot go back, as I am unpopular as a goat in church and between General Science, Mathematics, and Domestic Science, this school has reached a level of unpopularity
with me
that is beyond measure, therefore I plan to act an ungrateful wretch and waste your gift and quit and come home and marry you if you’ll still have me and forget this nonsense.”

Blessing slipped into my room without a word, stared at me for a moment, then crawled up on my bed and wiggled herself into the covers, from which she faced me. I put down the pen, blotting the tip, and waited.

“Who were you talking to, Aunt Sarah?”

“Myself, I reckon.”

“Did she answer you?”

“No, not directly.”

“Story pinched my arm. N’ I have stitches in my chin, n’ ever’thing.”

“You’ll have a scar,” I said, forgetting her age.

“I will?” A smile formed as she touched the threads with her fingertips.

“Your first.”

“I’ll get more,” she said, rather than asked.

“Likely. Are you going to sleep in here with me, punkin?”

She nodded. “May I?”

“Stay there and keep it warm for me.” I hurried to the parlor. “Aubrey,” I said, “if you’re going tomorrow, will you be back before Monday morning at nine?”

“Yes, ma’am. Is there something I can get for you?”

“Take me with you. I had been going to stay in town this weekend but I need to go home, even if it’s just for a few hours.”

He smiled and his eyes flickered toward Rachel. “At your service, Mrs. Elliot. Miss Rachel wanted to visit her folks, too. We can make it a fool’s run and back.”

I saw them chance another look at each other. I drew in a breath. Sparks flew through the air between Rachel and him! For Mary Pearl’s sake, I’d better be sitting in the front seat next to Aubrey Hanna, I could see that.

After I said enough to be polite to Chess and Granny and the boys, I rode to Udell’s place, my heart heavy and my backside sore after the ride from town. When that stone house came into view, I threw back my shoulders and took a deep breath as if the sky opened above me. That big, lumpy gray house seemed a kind of castle. I know Jack always loved me, but we each carried our own loads. He always expected me to be strong enough for my own, and sometimes for his, too. Udell expects me to crumble, and seems surprised when I don’t, and yet, I believe in many ways he may be closer to knowing my mind than Jack had been. No matter what happened around me, at that moment I looked upon that house, that hill, and that man, as a refuge. I planned going to tell him so. Tell him I’d chosen him over the university after all.

I found Udell standing on a ladder around back, putting up the double-hung windows that had come in at last. A stack of them leaned against the house below him and for a moment I had a real dread that he might slip off the ladder into that pile of glass. I dared not call out and startle him, so I waited, watching two men moving around the place. They were putting a door on, drilling bolts into the rock-and-mortar walls.

Udell saw me and his face lit up. As he came down from the ladder, he called, “Oh, Mrs. Elliot! My friend and scholar! What a fine morning
this
is,” and stood in front of me. I’d have rushed to his arms, but both those workmen were in plain sight and propriety kept us from even shaking hands.

“I see you’ve got work going,” I said. He nodded, so I went on, “How is your—
our
—garden?” One of those fellows came up and asked if Udell had any more cement, then left us. The other man, though, stayed within earshot. Heat flushed up my neck and my face burned. I said, “I’ve been meaning to talk to you, and I’d like to sit a spell. Would you take a walk with me?”

Udell stepped over the feet of the man mixing a can full of cement to patch some holes, and opened the front door, sweeping his arms toward the room inside. “Come on in first. I want to show you how I’ve got some of the furniture in. Things Frances’s mother left behind. You’re going to like this. It’s real fine.” I stepped through the opening into a fine, large room. Stuffed chairs and couches nicer than in a hotel lined two walls. Tables—with lamps on every last one—filled every corner. Beyond the front room in the parlor, a big square piano crouched like an animal waiting to jump forward on fat carved legs. He said, “You’ll want to move things around, I suspect, to suit you. Just point and I’ll push and carry them wherever you want. There’s her square Chickering there in the parlor. Frances always wished she had that piano she’d played when she was a girl. Don’t know how we’ll get it tuned up. Maybe someone out of Tombstone.”

“I don’t play a piano. It won’t matter.”

He climbed halfway up the stairs, looking toward the higher landing, waving his arms. “Come on up. Of course, you have your own furniture you want to bring, but we’ll have plenty of chests and all. This one here is full of linen sheets and embroider-ied pillow coverings. Some of them are the best ones Frances ever made. Lace all around.”

I stood at the foot of the stairs, looking into a small room off the front parlor while he peered into the open chest of Frances’s needlework. “What is this room?” I said. It was too small for a parlor or a kitchen, and a fancy mahogany bed sat against one wall with a tiny washstand near it. A mirror perched above it and across the room hung a framed picture print of cows grazing under a tree. The only rug in the house covered the brick floor in there. A delicate lace counterpane lay across the feather bed.

He fairly galloped down the stairs in his excitement. “That’s for your mother. That’s a good heat stove in the corner, with the damper built right into the wall. See this crank? Rock walls, small windows. Cool in the summer, and safe as she can be. See that bed? Metal-spring frame. No ropes. It’d make her real comfortable. ‘Course, we’ll need blankets and such, but she might want to bring along the fine quilts she’s got now.”

I followed Udell through the house he’d built, looked in every room and at his prodding inspected the insides of every chest of drawers. With each opened door I felt smaller and smaller until I nearly disappeared into my own shoes. On one wall by the stairs hung a framed doily with a carefully woven and knotted hair wreath all done up like flowers. Frances’s hair, no doubt. From the piano she’d always wanted to the lace curtains in the bedrooms and the gilt-framed daguerreotype of her in the hallway, this wasn’t a bower house for me.

He’d built himself a house … for Frances.