Dear Celeste,
How are you? I am fine.
I am going to give the Bootery to you. I sure hope you like it.
Dumb.
After consulting the attorney regarding my father’s Last Will and Testament, I constitute, devise, and bequeath the Bootery to you.
You may also have any of his appurtenances and trappings, except his slippers. As the sole proprietor of the store, perhaps slippers would be a lofty accouterment to incorporate into your inventory.
Dumb, with spelling problems.
Dear Celeste,
I’m very sorry you are all alone and lonely, but remember, you are also young and vibrant. You will come out just fine even though I am not living with you.
After searching my soul, I have decided to stay at the Nesbitts’ and raise chickens. I hope you understand.…
I sit at Mama’s little secretary desk. Balls of crumpled stationery dot the floor. It’s hard to concentrate. Instead of clucks and the wind whining through the window casements, I hear the drips and murmurs of Atchison. A different house, a different song.
Henry taps up behind me.
“The most horrid letter is still better than the telephone or telling her to her face. The sooner she gets this, the better,” I say, turning around to Mrs. Nesbitt. “I truly think she could do a good job with that store. Dr. Nesbitt thinks so too. She’s got the personality. Daddy was really successful, and he had that same type of personality. I don’t think she’s going to mourn and moan for long, unless…” I lower my voice. “Unless she figures out a way to cash in on sympathy customers.”
Mrs. Nesbitt sniffs.
“That was awful,” I say. “I’m sorry. I…”
“I thought it the moment she climbed up the train steps with a twisted ankle. She’s tougher than I’d first thought. Determined.”
“It would be awful tripping around on a sprained ankle pretending you are okay… always hurting and pretending you are okay.”
“We all do it,” Mrs. Nesbitt says.
August 25, 1926
Dear Celeste,
I have several things to say.
First, I am not moving to Kansas City. The Nesbitts have agreed to be my guardians and I am going to live with them in Wellsford.
Secondly, I have gone over my father’s Last Will and Testament, and even though it was not signed, I want you to have the Bootery. Shoppers will like your handsome display windows and your enthusiasm.
The attorney will send you a letter about some money to help you get on your feet for the next six months. Carl, the manager of the Atchison store, has agreed to talk with you about business issues if you want his help.
I will rent out the house in Atchison for now, until I decide if I am going to sell it. You can have any of Daddy’s belongings you want, except his slippers and agate marbles and pen.
Best regards,
Iris
P.S. Mrs. Nesbitt says she thinks you will be a fine career woman, an example to modern young girls who wish to manage a business of their own. She says the Bootery will be the most successful retail establishment on Petticoat Lane!!!
There’s only one shady spot in the letter: the part about Carl. But I know he’d help her if I asked him to. Carl has been great at managing Baldwin’s Shoes since he came out of the back room. Proof, he says, that customers truly do trust somebody—even with stained fingernails—who knows shoes from the inside out.
Leroy leans on the back fender of Dr. Nesbitt’s car. He has removed the legs from Mama’s secretary desk and wedged it, wrapped in a quilt, onto the backseat, leaving a small spot for me to sit on the way back to Wellsford. We lashed the drawers and the sliding compartments shut. Mama’s old papers and even a few books are still inside.
“So what’s next?” he asks. He looks ready to lift the whole house with me in it.
“Let me think… dead weight being your specialty and all.” He smiles, but I know down deep he hates for me to go. He called me a “complex animal” like it was a regal compliment. He also said that his mother said she remembered my mama was just beautiful.
I check my list, then point toward the house. “I need you to get the recipe card off the kitchen table, and Daddy’s marbles and slippers.”
We step onto the front porch. Leroy points up. “Did you want me to load that cobweb too?”
“Nope. The spider stays. But I do need you to get Mama’s hair.”
“Pardon me?”
“Unless it’s too heavy. It’s in my room wrapped in a dresser scarf.”
I grip the side of Mama’s secretary desk. Panic sprouts in me. “I need to go to the cemetery before we leave!”
Dr. Nesbitt slows the car, pulls to the shoulder.
“I’m sorry. I just… I can’t…” The engine hums. The desk vibrates beside me. I search out the car window, my stomach full of crows. “Which direction is it? Where? It’s… can anybody remember?”
Dr. and Mrs. Nesbitt exchange a look. He nods, cranks the steering wheel, and heads south out of town. I tuck in corners of the desk quilt that have blown loose and stare through the front windshield.
They wait in the car while I run through the wrought iron gate to the mound of dirt over Daddy’s grave—pebbles and clods covered with a pile of dead funeral flowers. There are ants and roly-poly bugs in it. So many busy creatures unearthed just to make room for him.
Mama’s headstone is low and settled. It says: ANNA JANE KOHLER BALDWIN, 1885–1916.
I look from plot to plot. “It’s me. I just wanted to say that I’m so sad to leave Atchison. But I have to.” I glance back at the Ford waiting for me in the golden afternoon. “The house will be okay. I’m taking care of it.” I turn to Daddy’s side. “I gave Celeste the store, like you wanted. And Mama… we haven’t spoken in a long time. Thank you for the desk. I have more of you yet to dust.”
I look up at the clear sky and then at the headstones all around, mossy perches for ground squirrels and sparrows. I straddle the graves—a foot on each. I shift my weight side to side. The three of us together again.
My tears water the dirt. I’m not exactly like Mrs. Nesbitt, I think. Mama and Daddy and I didn’t have the connection she describes with her husband and Morris, but… I am a moment they loved each other. I know that now.
I feel full and unexpectedly powerful. I wish I had something—not dead flowers and ribbons, but a real and lasting thing to leave for them. I step away, then turn back and take off my shoes. There is something permanent I can leave: my footprints—one in Daddy’s dirt and the other a swirl in the fine dust over Mama.
The Nesbitts watch me walk to the car barefoot. “There’s no hurry,” Mrs. Nesbitt says out the window.
“I’m ready.”
The sunflowers watch us turn around. Sun sparks off the weather-polished iron gate like a lightning strike. A choir of locusts tunes up.
We’re all together too. Heading back north.
Homeward bound.