The ace poker players have stacked the deck—actually the laundry basket. We’re about to “play cards” with Dot.
The basket—or as Dr. Nesbitt calls it, “the bait”—is on the back porch waiting for her arrival.
Marie plays possum beside it. Dr. Nesbitt is at work and Mrs. Nesbitt and I are positioned behind the blinds in her bedroom. I’m on my knees and Mrs. Nesbitt sits in her old wheelchair rolled to the window. I have just cleaned her glasses so we both have a perfect view of the washing machine. My stomach is a double knot. Mrs. Nesbitt swears she swallowed her tea bag at breakfast.
Dot plods up the driveway in a flimsy checked dress, mopping her forehead on this Indian summer morning. Her expression is sour as usual. She does not have one clue that she is about to make the biggest choice of her life. She can free herself from Cecil’s grip, take her fate and her baby’s future into her very own hands.
But will she?
Dot peers through the back door with a “where is everybody” look. She scowls, no doubt disappointed I am not handy to spit on. She stretches her back. Scratches her big belly.
Inside we strain at the window to detect one tiny bit of softness in her touch, a gentle pat, a reflective sigh.
Nothing.
Dot yanks one, two, three towels off the pile in the basket. She inspects and sniffs each one and stuffs them in the tub. I know she’s figuring out which towel each of us used during the week.
Mrs. Nesbitt takes my hand as we watch Dot peer deep in the basket. Her eyes shift. She stops, scratches her behind, looks again. She slowly pulls out her mother’s dingy lavender-gray nightgown, the way someone would remove a person’s bloody bandage.
She shakes it out and just stares and stares. I swear I see Marie open one snake eye. Dot crushes the gown in her fists, then raises it to her nose.
C’mon, Dot. Keep going. We shift to try and see her expression, but all we get is that pug profile.
Dot claws through the next level of clothes. Stops short at Pansy’s shawl.
Mrs. Nesbitt holds her hands in prayer point. “Put it on, Dot. Wrap up in it.”
Instead Dot drops it on the floor and bangs a fist on our back door.
We stay silent and absolutely motionless.
She bangs again. “Shit!”
Dot turns and marches off the porch. Her face is fiery, like her father’s. She scans the yard, yanks open the shed, then the coop. She struts and stirs the chicken yard into a meringue of feathers.
She’s after me. Next she’ll stomp right in the house, waving the gown and screaming, “What’re you doing, you bitch?”
Instead Dot plops down on the porch step, her back to us. We want desperately for her to sob. We want her to smell her mama in the shawl, stroke her own cheek with it. “Dust the shawl,” Mrs. Nesbitt and I coach softly. We ache for her to put two and two together, to realize this answers her cry for help.
More than anything we want her to not run home.
Marie rouses, pads across the porch, and places her paws on the laundry basket. She whines as though it’s her empty supper bowl. Dot stands, turns, still holding her mother’s clothes, and shoos Marie off. She eyes the basket with a suspicious sneer that is pure Cecil.
“Okay, Dorothy, find the money,” Mrs. Nesbitt barely whispers from the bedroom.
Dot claws down through the basket, her eyes darting this way and that. I think she senses it’s a trap, and she’s right. She’s used to being hunted.
Find the money.
Find the money.
Dot lifts the hankie full of silver dollars and pulls open the knot. She sits cross-legged on the floor and lines up the coins, which we have polished to an irresistible shine, across her lap.
She examines each coin, even tries to bite one. Dot unfolds the little paper we put inside that reads: For more $ go to Olive’s.
The dollar sign jolts Dot like smelling salts. She hurriedly pockets the silver, then wraps the nightgown and shawl into one of our towels and ties it. She looks this way and that, clutching her Mama’s belongings, and hurries down the driveway.
Don’t go left. Don’t go home. Go right. Go to Olive’s. Please… turn right to Olive’s.
Mrs. Nesbitt elbows me. Smiles. Dot has stopped long enough to wad the note, pop it in her mouth, and swallow it.
Brilliant!
Dot takes off running toward Olive’s without so much as a backward glance, her heavy pocket clanking against her stomach.
I let out the breath I have been holding for at least an hour. Mrs. Nesbitt shakes her head and says, “Pansy knows her girl. Money talks.”
“Where do you think the two, uh, three of them will go?”
“Anywhere without a forwarding address. That excludes Pansy’s sister, and they obviously can’t stay at Olive’s. What we don’t know can only help us. Especially if we get the third degree from You Know Who.”
“All we did was fill the laundry basket, same as every other Monday,” I say. “But what’ll Dot and Pansy use for money? Ten dollars isn’t enough for expenses and train fare for two.”
Mrs. Nesbitt raises her eyebrows. “I have an inkling Olive’s pocketbook is deeper than it looks. That’s probably the reason she never lets it go!”
All day we imagine Dot and Pansy on the train, on the road, on the run—two hobos with the sheer force and funding of Olive Nish behind them.
Despite my permanent case of nerves, and the fear that Cecil’s going to spring out of the closet at me, there is also a new and true feeling.
I am a part of something important.
“Haven’t you noticed,” I say to Marie later in my room, “that when you truly belong somewhere, there’s more to do?”
She nudges me with her nose.
I scratch her back. “I wish I had known your mother. She must have been quite a gal to have a daughter like you!”
“The stamp is upside down. Better not open it.” The postman winks when he hands me the mail. “Bad omen.”
Of course I can already see that. It’s a letter from Celeste.
Dear Iris,
I have no one to tell but you.
I’m blue.
I try every which way to cover it up, to not smear my face. I keep my stiff upper lip painted red. But my apartment feels as big as Union Station.
What are you doing for your birthday? I’d tell you what I am not going to do on your birthday, but I’m sure you’ve not forgotten that was to be my wedding day.
I see your father everywhere—that jaunty smile and his knack for sweet-talking even shaggy old four-legged goats into a new pair of pumps. Such flair he had. I don’t know—if I saw your face at this moment, I’d drown in tears, the way you resemble him.
Without your father’s tutelage… well, suffice it to say, I owe him everything. What a one-of-a-kind human being. I miss him with all my heart, as I am sure you do.
My mother and sister promise and repromise a visit, but it’s just window dressing, a tactic to cut our conversations short. Not that I’m opposed to stylish window displays, mind you, but only if they’re sincere!
Could you consider a visit to Kansas City? Please? Pretty please?
I’d get you a birthday present and you’d get to see all the hard work I’ve done on the Bootery. Why, everyone, no matter how bereaved, cannot help but be buoyed by a new pair of shoes. I have a pair, just arrived, with your name on them. They’re not gaudy. Nothing I’d wear. But I perceive your quiet style better than you think I do.
Dinner out. A new pair (or two) of fall shoes. The big city. ME!!!
Say you’ll come. I promise I’ll not snivel and sniff.
Most sincerely,
Celeste Simmons, Proprietor
P.S. Thank you again for the store.
P.P.S. I’ve finally mastered the cash register.
P.P.$ $ $ Ching-ching!!!!!!!!
I lower the letter to my lap, shake my head.
Celeste.
Her letter was terrible and also okay—even the tiniest bit sincere, in a Celeste kind of way. My face feels brushed by a magician’s wand.
I smile.
Birds chatter on our telephone line. I wonder how our spindly phone pole can support all that gossip. I picture Celeste chattering to her customers, projecting herself, trying so hard to make that store a home.
Why wouldn’t I go visit her? I can’t help it if my feet are over-dressed. It’s my fate!
I slap the letter off my palm, thinking for the second time today that the more you belong with people, the more there is to do.