Without Aunt Maude the house felt light, as if it might float away. Eleanor sang as she worked. Papa dared to smoke his pipe in the front parlor. I wore my hair loose around my shoulders instead of in the tight braids Aunt Maude insisted on, which pinched and made my head ache. Carlie stopped wearing shoes altogether. Eleanor baked our favorite chocolate cake with fudge frosting so thick, I could stick my finger into it all the way up to my second knuckle. Since there were only three of us at the dining room table, Papa told Eleanor to join us. She hesitated, but the second time Papa asked, she slipped shyly onto a chair.
One evening after the supper dishes were done, I asked Eleanor if she would stay and sing while I played piano. At first she shook her head and only stood there, listening to me. The music must have been too much for her, for she kept time with her toe, and when I coaxed, she began to sing, quietly at first and then with all her heart. Carlie danced. Papa left his study and after a moment joined in the singing. For the first time since Mama had died, it felt like we were a family again.
After that Eleanor stayed each evening and Papa stopped spending so much of his time on The Closed Door. At first we all sang Stephen Foster melodies and other familiar tunes, but Papa, who loved lieder, which was what he called German songs, taught Eleanor his favorites. Since she knew German to begin with, she caught on quickly. When it was time for Eleanor to go home, Carlie and I walked back to the asylum with her, singing all the way there and back. With Aunt Maude gone, our whole life had turned into music.
Aunt Maude wrote every day, so we were always opening a letter from her to find a long list of what must be dusted and cooked and turned out and scrubbed. Papa and I dutifully read the letters and then folded them up and put them back into their envelopes, the way you might put your hand over the mouth of someone whose words you did not want to hear.
Aunt Maude had been gone a week when Papa gave Eleanor permission to take a day off to visit her parents. The Miller farm was an hour’s buggy drive away. Her brother would pick her up in the morning and return with her after supper. I had heard so many stories from Eleanor of the farm, I longed to see it. When Eleanor suggested that Carlie and I accompany her, I begged Papa to let us go. I knew that after Aunt Maude returned, there would be no going off with Eleanor. Papa, who was never one to hurry into a decision, took a whole day to think about it and then said we might go if we promised to do just as Eleanor said and not be a trouble to anyone.
The following morning Eleanor and I were sitting on the porch a whole hour before her brother, Tom, was expected. We were listening to the cicadas. For days the air had quivered with the insects’ whining song, but when I looked for them, I could never find them. They were all song and no body. Carlie was nearby, chasing a rabbit that had been nibbling on the clover that grew in thick patches on the lawn. Papa had told Carlie that if she caught the rabbit, she might keep it, but the rabbit would not be caught.
It was the first day of August. The daisies had disappeared, and goldenrod grew along the roadside. The leaves on Dr. Thurston’s trees had a dusty look, and in the asylum fields the potatoes had begun to blossom, and the corn to tassel.
Just when I thought it would never appear, the Millers’ buggy with two shaggy, tired-looking horses pulled up, driven by Eleanor’s brother. Tom was eighteen, slim like Eleanor, but tall, and brown as any hardworking farmer would be. He gave Carlie and me and our house and everything else a close, serious look, as if he were a little wary of it all. I could see he wanted to give Eleanor a hug but was shy in front of me. Eleanor ignored his shyness and threw her arms around him. Though they weren’t her brothers, she threw her arms around the horses as well and fed them sugar cubes.
Papa, who had stayed at home to see us off, came out of the house and shook hands with Tom. “Don’t let the horses run away with you,” Papa said. His face was perfectly serious, but I could see he was teasing.
Tom, not sure of how to take Papa, said, “Those horses are steady, sir.”
“Horses are only as steady as the man with the reins,” Papa said.
I laughed. “Papa, don’t be a goose. I’m sure Tom will take good care of us.”
When we were a distance from our house, Tom said, “If I called our dad a goose, he’d knock me down.”
“You mean he would hit you?” I asked, amazed.
“Sure, he would, and it wouldn’t be the first time.”
The four of us were crowded together on the wagon seat, Carlie on Eleanor’s lap. Eleanor asked, “Tom, is Dad still angry with me?”
“Yes, but he doesn’t talk about it much anymore.”
Eleanor breathed a sigh of relief. “That’s something.”
“Why should he be angry with you?” Carlie asked.
“He can’t forgive me for being sick.” She hastily changed the subject and began to point out to Tom the fields of corn that stretched as far as we could see. “That all belongs to the asylum, Tom. They have three silos. They get hundreds of bushels of corn, and they have an orchard with cherry trees and apple and pear and plum trees.”
Tom, who had seemed nervous at first as we drove by the asylum, now took an interest. “How many cows have they got?” he asked.
I knew the answer to that from my visits to the barns. “Four hundred head of Holsteins,” I said.
Tom whistled. “I wouldn’t mind being a little crazy myself if I could work here.”
Carlie said, “Papa says we shouldn’t say the word crazy.”
“Sorry,” he said, and put his arm around Eleanor for a moment. “I’m glad you’re coming home, Elly, even if it’s just for a day.”
When we reached the farm, Eleanor hopped out of the buggy before it came to a stop. Her mother was standing at the back door, watching for us, her hand above her eyes to shield them from the sun. In a minute she had her arms around Eleanor and hung on to her for dear life. At last Carlie and I were introduced, and we shook hands with Mrs. Miller.
She looked closely at us, as if she had never seen children before, which was strange because she had two of her own. “I’m sure you are very welcome,” she said. She had a German accent, and I remembered that Eleanor had said her mother had come to this country as a girl from Germany. “Your daddy is a doctor, I know, and your poor mama died,” she went on. I guessed that Eleanor had written home about us.
“Where is Dad?” Eleanor asked.
“He’s out in the potato field. We’ve got some kind of blight this year. I don’t know if we’ll harvest half the crop. After we put what we need aside, I doubt there will be much left over to sell.”
Eleanor seemed relieved that her father wasn’t there. She dragged Carlie and me along to see the cows, rubbing her face against the muzzle of a new calf. The next minute she was off to the pigpen, where she had a name and a story for every pig. Her mother had to call her twice before she would go in to dinner. As we followed her about, we saw that she was a different person on the farm. Carlie whispered, “It’s like the story where the prince kisses Snow White and she comes alive.”
Dinner was at the kitchen table. Mr. Miller had come in from the potato field. He was a square and sturdy man, with Eleanor’s silver blond hair, but not Eleanor’s big eyes. His were small and darted about all the time as if some biting insect were trying to get at him. He pumped water into the sink and, taking up a little piece of brown soap, scrubbed at his hands as if he were angry with them. When Mrs. Miller introduced us, he only nodded his head, not even bothering to look up. While he dried his hands on the roller towel, he glanced over his shoulder at Eleanor.
“You look about the same,” he said. “How come they let you out? ”
Mrs. Miller quickly said, “You know the doctor told us Eleanor was better.”
“Those aren’t real doctors there,” Mr. Miller said.
Carlie spoke up. “My papa is a real doctor.”
“Does your father let you contradict your betters?” Mr. Miller’s cold look silenced Carlie.
When we sat around the table with Papa, he always questioned us about what we had been doing, and we gave answers. The Millers mostly ate. Eleanor and her mother were up and down, serving the food: roast pork, mashed potatoes, peas, pickles, and for dessert, rhubarb pie and vinegar pie.
Tom glanced at his dad, who looked grouchy. “We’ll be lucky if we get thirty-eight cents a bushel for oats this year,” Tom said. His dad only shrugged.
When Mr. Miller finally did talk, he said something that upset Eleanor. “You better let me have your wages for the month—not that they give you a decent wage. I got a veterinary bill for one of the heifers and nothing to pay it with.”
Eleanor blinked her eyes a couple of times to keep back tears. “I was saving to pay for a coat for the winter.” There wasn’t an ounce of hope in her voice.
“The vet won’t come back unless I pay his bill. You want I should let the horses and cows die so you can buy a coat they’ll probably never let you out long enough to wear?”
“Papa, I go out to Verna and Carlie’s house every day to work.”
“If you can work there, why can’t you come home and give your mother a hand here?”
Eleanor said in a voice I could barely hear, “The doctor thinks I should stay a little longer.”
“Sure he does. The asylum gets help for almost nothing. Why wouldn’t they make you stay? ”
Mrs. Miller cleared her throat as if she were going to say something, but in the end she didn’t, and Eleanor said she’d send the money the next day. After the dishes were done, the table was wiped, and the dish towels were rinsed, Mrs. Miller said, “You wrote how nicely Verna plays piano, Elly. Let’s have some music.”
We all went into the parlor, where the Millers had an ancient upright piano. I played “Old Folks at Home,” and Eleanor sang. Tom asked for “Camptown Races,” and Mrs. Miller for “Beautiful Isle of Somewhere,” whose sadness she enjoyed so much that it made her cry.
Mr. Miller sat through the performance restless as a chipmunk, crossing and recrossing his legs and cleaning out his pipe. He looked as though sitting still were a punishment. At last, with a thankful sigh, he said, “That’ll do. Tom and me have to clean out the cream separator.”
Eleanor led Carlie and me to the back of the farm, where woods sloped gently down a hill to the trickle of a creek. The creek was so narrow that Carlie could jump over it. Water striders skated over the top of the water. “What are the orange flowers?” I asked.
“Touch-me-not,” Eleanor said. “In the fall, if you touch the seedpods, the seeds explode into the air.” She had brought an old chipped bowl with her, and now she began digging up some of the moss that grew along the edges of the creek. “I’m going to take it back with me. Feel how soft it is, Carlie.” Carlie petted the green softness as if it were a kitten.
We sat on the bank of the stream in the afternoon sunshine. A robin darted down for a drink, stayed for a quick bath, and disappeared. “Do you mind giving your money to your dad?” I asked.
“What difference does it make if I mind? ”
“What if you just didn’t give it to him?” Carlie asked.
Eleanor shook her head. I could see that such a thing had never occurred to her. “I’m lucky he lets me come home at all.”
I tried to think what it would be like to have Papa standing by the door, refusing to let us in. I saw myself turning away and creeping off. I wasn’t really frightened, for I knew Papa would never behave like that, but it wasn’t hard to imagine Mr. Miller sending Eleanor away.
When we returned to the farmhouse, Mrs. Miller sent Eleanor off to pick some blackberries for our supper. Carlie ran after her, and I started to follow, but Mrs. Miller stopped me. “Stay and help me set the table, Verna,” she said.
I wanted to go with Eleanor, but I thought it would be impolite not to do what I was asked. When we were alone in the kitchen, Mrs. Miller said in a soft voice, “I wanted to keep you here to find out how my Eleanor is. I mean how she really is. Is the asylum a bad place? Are they good to her? ”
I told her at once how pleasant the asylum was, describing the gardens and the wards with their pots of hanging ivy and vases of flowers. “Eleanor is with us all day. My aunt Maude is a little strict, but Papa and I are so pleased to have her, and I think she is happy with us.”
“It hurt me so to see Eleanor go,” Mrs. Miller said. “She was always the cheerful one around here. Of course she was young. I don’t know too many women who have lived on a farm for fifty years and still find a lot to laugh about. When I was young like Eleanor, I took pleasure in the new leaves on the trees, the apple blossoms, the crops greening. Now I’ve seen spring over and over, and even if it’s the good Lord who has the doing of it, the effort of it tires me out. I think of Him up there with all the thousands and thousands of leaves to unfold and all the trees impatient, waiting their turn.”
I took a deep breath and said, “Mrs. Miller, it doesn’t seem like Mr. Miller is so happy to have Eleanor home.”
“You have to excuse my John. He’s had a hard time of it. He’s got too much land to handle, even with Tom to help, and no money for a hired hand or a machine that could take over some of the work. Every time I spend a penny, John sees a bit of land getting away from him and resents it something terrible, as if it was an arm or leg he was losing. Then, when Eleanor got so sick, he just thought she wanted to get out of doing her share. If it was her father paying for Eleanor’s care instead of the state, Eleanor would never get the help she needs.” Mrs. Miller sighed. “Now I’m worried that Tom might go off. His dad is a hard man to work for.”
Eleanor returned with a bowl of fat blackberries, and we all sat down to a supper of sliced cold pork roast, fried potatoes, watermelon pickles, blackberries, and sponge cake. I was not allowed to help with the dishes but was sent off with Tom to gather eggs that Mrs. Miller insisted we were to take back with us, though Mr. Miller looked unhappy about that.
When we entered the henhouse, the chickens flew off their nests, their flapping wings creating little whirlwinds of dust and straw. Tom said, “This always used to be Eleanor’s job. She loved the chickens. She knew each one by name. She even won some ribbons at the state fair for her pullets.” He carefully laid two brown eggs into the basket I was holding.
“Tom,” I asked, “when did Eleanor become sick? ”
“It was around the time of the deer. Pa never stopped letting Eleanor know things would have been better for the farm if she had been a boy, so she tried hard to help with the work. Eleanor could pitch hay and spread manure and even handle a gun when the rats got too many in the corncrib, but Pa didn’t like it. Kirche, Küche, Kinder. That’s German for ‘church, kitchen, children.’ Pa says that’s all women should tend to. It didn’t matter how hard Eleanor tried, she couldn’t get a kind word out of Pa.
“Eleanor liked to go off into the woods. She knew all the animals. She’d take a handful of lettuce for the woodchucks and apples for the porcupines, and they’d take them right from her hand. She had a deer she’d leave corn for, and after a while she got that deer tamed. She could get him to come to her by calling in a certain way. I could always tell when she’d seen that deer, because she’d come hurrying back from the woods all excited. When hunting season came and Dad and I went off with our guns, she didn’t say anything. She knew we needed the venison. We counted on it to help get us through the winter.
“A couple of days went by, and Dad got glummer and angrier about not getting his deer, and Eleanor watched him. He would help me do the milking; then he’d go off and hunt for an hour or two. By midmorning he’d be back at work empty-handed and mean. The third day Eleanor slipped away in the afternoon and was back at suppertime just as we were sitting down. She walked into the kitchen, carrying the deer rifle, her face all red from crying. ‘I got a deer, Papa,’ she said. ‘You and Tom need to come and dress it out.’
“Dad didn’t believe her. ‘What kind of joke is that?’ he asked, angry at her.
“‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘Come and see for yourself.’
“It was true enough, and I knew how she got it. Nothing but wanting to look good in Pa’s eyes would have brought her to kill that deer she tamed, but all she got from Pa was ‘Not much meat on it.’
“Eleanor just kind of crumbled. She went upstairs into her room and wouldn’t come down; she wouldn’t say a word to anyone. When a week went by and she still wouldn’t talk, Ma and Pa had an argument. Pa said she would get over it, but Ma insisted on calling the doctor. The doctor said she needed help real badly, and so she ended up in the asylum. At first I was worried, but then I figured anyplace was better than here. Now I know it was the right thing to do. She looks happier than I’ve seen her in a long time. It must not be just the asylum that’s doing it. Your people must be good to her.”
I told Tom we loved Eleanor. I didn’t say anything about Aunt Maude. Hearing the story Tom had told made me feel terrible. I didn’t want to believe that someone could be as cruel as Eleanor’s father. I was lucky. I missed Mama a lot, and I wasn’t happy with Aunt Maude, but I knew Papa loved me
It was the night after our visit to the farm when Mrs. Larter came by. Supper was over, and we all were in the parlor. I was playing piano, and Papa and Eleanor were beside me, singing. Carlie was on the floor, tying her hair ribbon on Promise. She was closest to the door, and when we heard a knock, Carlie ran to see who was there. As Mrs. Larter came into the parlor, I took my hands from the piano keys. Papa and Eleanor, standing side by side, closed their mouths. For just a second no one moved; then everyone got very busy. Carlie showed Mrs. Larter the fine effect of the bow on Promise. I jumped up from the piano bench. Eleanor hurried into the kitchen. Mrs. Larter said, “What a cozy scene that was, Edward,” and Papa turned red.
I didn’t understand why Eleanor hurried off and why Papa looked so embarrassed. After all, it was only Mrs. Larter, who often used to call on Aunt Maude.
Mrs. Larter said, “I didn’t know patients were allowed to be away from the asylum in the evening.”
Papa said, “Eleanor has made a great improvement and is hardly considered a patient at this point. However, she has special permission to stay later to keep an eye on the girls while Maude is away.”
“I’m sure Maude would appreciate that.” Although Mrs. Larter was smiling, there was no smile in her words. “I thought you might be missing Maude’s cooking, so I brought some homemade oatmeal cookies for the girls.”
“That was very thoughtful of you,” Papa said.
“Aunt Maude never baked cookies,” Carlie said. “Eleanor always bakes them.”
Quickly Papa said, “Carlie, it’s past your bedtime. Verna, take your sister upstairs.”
From our bedroom window I saw Eleanor slip out the back door and hurry down the path to the asylum. When I got downstairs, Papa was just saying good-bye to Mrs. Larter. He didn’t see me, and as the door closed behind Mrs. Larter, I heard him mumble, “Meddling mischief-maker.”