All the signs point at each other.
I somersault in muddy water.
We trip on the tracks.
Mama’s crying.
Money burns.
I’m falling.
I sit on our porch swing, let its squeak grind my dream fragments away. It’s early Friday morning and I have already made a mistake. I have awakened a spider. My rocking has shredded her lacy home, spun overnight between the ceiling and the swing chains. I miss Marie, her yipping enthusiasm at the beginning of every day. I miss the way my fussy chicks need me at dawn. I’m glad we voted for one of Dr. Nesbitt’s patients to feed them while we’re gone, not Cecil… or Dot.
I sat out here, just like this, on the afternoon of Mama’s funeral visitation. Just six-year-old me with a piece of chocolate cake on a blue-flowered plate, and the cold, boney-white November sky. My fancy church shoes didn’t reach the floor, so I couldn’t push off to swing. I remember scooting to the edge and scraping them back and forth across the cement floor until the toes were scuffed the color of chalk.
This morning the FOR SALE sign in the front yard looks crippled, with grass tufted around its bent stake. A wall builds between me and the day ahead—a whirlpool of impossible decisions and undoings. Everything will need selling, or moving, or rearranging. But there’s no right place for any of it, including the most awkward piece of furniture: me. I’m too empty to sell. I’m too replaceable to stay in Wellsford, and I’m too big for Celeste’s apartment.
Mrs. Nesbitt and Henry come out. I help her onto the swing. She’s light as a feather in her ivory silk robe.
She points to the yard, squints. “Do you find that sign… distracting?”
I wipe my eyes. “It’s horrible.” I rattle off the swing, rock the pole out of the dirt, and put the sign facedown in the side yard.
“There. Now we can think more clearly,” Mrs. Nesbitt remarks. “How’d you sleep?”
I shut my eyes. “I was busy all night being morbid—drowning and tripping. I swear, I could cry at a broken toothpick this morning.”
“Did you dream you were naked in a hailstorm?” she asks. “Did you get hit by a rolling snake?”
I half smile. “I’ll save those for tonight.”
Someone next door has started cooking sausage. Squirrels skitter across our picket fence. “I ruined her web,” I say, pointing to an elegant black spider hanging above us. Her legs are drawn in. She looks like a mighty little upside-down cage.
Mrs. Nesbitt studies the spider a long moment. “She’s protecting herself,” Mrs. Nesbitt says, “but you wait; spiders are industrious. They take care of what’s theirs. Once she copes with losing her web, she’ll open up and weave another one.”
We move in rhythm with the rusty chains. Although it’s early, the locusts start their loud singsong chant. “Our squealing must have inspired them,” Mrs. Nesbitt says above the noise.
“I can’t oil the locusts, but I can stop the squeak.” I go inside, return with a little oil can and a rag.
“There! Good for you. You did something unmorbid,” Mrs. Nesbitt says. “Better than I would have done under the circumstances.”
I raise the tiny can to her. “This swing has needed oiling my whole life.”
She smiles.
Before I lose the strength of the moment, I add, “I spoke with Daddy yesterday.”
Mrs. Nesbitt registers the meaning of my remark, holds me in a long look and nods. “That was brave.”
I smile. “Yep.”
Dr. Nesbitt steps outside with a cup of coffee. “How are you, ladies?”
Mrs. Nesbitt taps her fists together. “Moving forward… one link at a time.”
Dr. Nesbitt sits on the porch step. He’s already dressed for the day, one of the few he has spent without seeing patients in a long while. “Mother and I were talking yesterday, Iris. I plan to drive home today after we see your father’s attorney. You and Mother call me when you’re ready to come home. I suspect it’ll be a full car.”
Mrs. Nesbitt turns to me. Her tone is serious. “I told Avery that we have lots of dusting to do here. It simply can’t be rushed.”
In the afternoon we consult Daddy’s lawyer about his last will and testament. We learn that he planned to leave the Bootery in Kansas City to Celeste Simmons Baldwin and everything else to me. “A curious decision,” the attorney says, “the way it’s divided up. But… it’s of no consequence.” He slides the document across his desk. “It has not been signed and witnessed.”
“So there is no will?” I ask.
“Your father’s earlier will, written after your mother’s death, still stands.” He gives me a deep look. “You are the sole beneficiary of both stores, the house, all the property, all the assets. Since your father and Miss Simmons were unmarried at the time of his demise, you have no obligation to her whatsoever.”
I sense the lawyer has met Celeste. I imagine the attorney detected a sour petal in Mrs. Baldwin-to-be’s Jungle Gardenia perfume. “Does Celeste know it was not signed?” I ask.
“Yes. Your father planned to take care of it during his”—he looks down—“ill-fated trip to Atchison.” He turns to Dr. and Mrs. Nesbitt. “Until the age of eighteen, Iris will need both a legal guardian and a conservator of her estate. Someone trustworthy must be assigned to manage her assets and help with her life decisions. I imagine Celeste Simmons wants very much to be that individual.”
I look up at the Nesbitts, but they stare at the wood grain tabletop as though I’ve already moved to Kansas City.
They don’t talk all the way home. My heart wilts. My bad dreams have come true. I am tripping right into the muddy water rising around the former Mrs. Charles Baldwin-to-be.
Dr. Nesbitt loads his grip in the car. “If you don’t mind a bit of advice, Iris, I’d keep the will quiet until you get your head above water. I’m going to stop by the store, tell Carl goodbye.” We wave from the porch as he drives off with the file on the seat.
The phone rings inside. Mrs. Nesbitt and I don’t move. We exchange a look. I say, “He means, don’t talk to Celeste.”
“I feel married to her now,” I tell Mrs. Nesbitt over supper. She smiles. “No wonder she wants me in Kansas City—the store, money, belongings.” We’re quiet for a moment. “But there’s more… that makes it harder.”
“What?”
“Celeste is a hobo. She’s desperate. She’s counting on me. Part of me can’t stand her, and the other part feels sorry for her.”
Mrs. Nesbitt sighs. She’s got the same intense expression she gets puzzling out one of her crosswords. “Kansas City is a lively place, Iris—lots of young people, opportunity, fun. Celeste would keep it… jazzy. Plus, Cecil and Dot don’t live there, and it’s not dusty like Wellsford. The schools are excellent.”
I sink into my cellar inside. Why doesn’t she just come out and say there’s no room for me with Gladys Dilgert in Wellsford?
I hear the unexpected edge in my voice. “Mrs. Nesbitt, Celeste won’t waste a minute luring another husband, and I’ll be stuck with them forever at the Bootery.” I picture myself sweeping foot powder off the floor, dizzy from staring at the crooked seams in our customers’ stockings. “Plus, I already have enough credits to graduate from high school.”
The kitchen swims. I can’t swallow. “I’m sorry. I’m as mixed up as her.” I look away, tears streaming down my cheeks. My mind escapes to Leroy wrapping himself so completely around me that I disappear.
Mrs. Nesbitt wipes her mouth, straightens her silverware. “Between the lines of that will I learned something about your father this afternoon that is quite remarkable.”
“Yes?”
“You didn’t trust him, with good reason… but his will, even the revised one, made one statement loud and clear: He trusted you.”