Laura's Shadow, page 11
Trixie stood on the landing, tapping her middle finger to her thumb—her personal ritual for summoning something lost—eyes closed, turning in a slow circle, muttering, “Where is it? Where is it? Where is it? …” until it came to her. She stopped, opened her eyes, and screamed. There stood GG, looking every bit like a silent apparition—a pale figure in her white gown, her hair loose and wild.
“I’m not a ghost, but greet me like that and you might kill me.”
“I’m sorry GG,” Trixie said, heart still pounding. “You startled me.”
“What were you doing just then?” GG tilted her head and gave Trixie a suspicious look. “You aren’t on drugs, are you? You look like one of those people I saw on TV. Hippies.”
Trixie suppressed a laugh. “No, GG. Not even close. Just trying to remember where I put something.”
“Wait until you’re my age. You’ll be trying to remember where you put everything. Did I miss church?”
“I’m afraid so. Mom and Grandma left.”
“Good.” She rubbed her hands together. “Did I miss pancakes?”
“I can make you some. Let me help you back to bed, and I’ll bring you a tray.” She put a hand on GG’s shoulder, ready to lead her back, and was surprised by the strength that resisted.
“I’m sick of eating in bed. Because I’m not sick. I’m old. It’s not the same thing.”
“From what I hear, you had a rough couple of days.”
“And now I’m having a better one. I want to go downstairs.”
“All right,” Trixie said, knowing that arguing would be useless. “But let’s get you changed first. I don’t want you to trip on your gown going down the stairs.”
To this, GG agreed and steadied herself on Trixie’s arm as they turned back toward her bedroom. She sat on the edge of her bed while Trixie fetched a pajama set with Bermuda-length shorts and a top that buttoned down the front so GG wouldn’t have to raise her arms. But between the gown and the pj’s, Trixie was faced with the full revelation of GG’s body. Wiry, still, and strong. She’d always been tall and thin—somewhat gaunt, as if her years of hunger decided to become her defining feature. Her breasts were small—a feature Trixie was more than happy to have inherited.
GG opted to remain barefoot, a decision that seemed safest for her uneasy steps, and together they made a careful descent. Once in the kitchen, Trixie pulled out a chair and set a cup of coffee cooled with cream in front of her while the skillet warmed. There was enough batter left in the pitcher for two pancakes if she made them small, and she whisked in a spoonful of sour cream to add her favorite bit to the family recipe.
“I was thinking,” Trixie said as she pulled a plate down from the cabinet, “that table might be as old as you, since it came with the house.”
“It didn’t come with the house.” GG was running the pads of her fingers along the table’s edge.
“Really? Why did I think it did?”
“It’s the oldest piece here. But I brought it with me. It was mine when I lived with my brother, Charles. It was our kitchen table, the first piece of furniture I ever owned. Bought it brand-new from a local carpenter. I’d wanted scrolled edges, but that doubled the price and Charles wouldn’t have it. I brought it with me.”
“When you married Great-Grandpa?” Trixie had never met the man, and the term great-grandpa never felt comfortable whenever she had reason to use it. GG Mariah’s husband was as much a stranger to Trixie as any man in the street; for that matter, any man in a history text.
“I brought this table, my clothes, and all of my books. It was all that I had.”
Trixie flipped the pancakes. “What more does a woman need?”
GG’s chuckle was soft, almost inaudible under the sound of the batter sizzling in the pan. GG opted for butter and jelly rather than syrup, and Trixie quickly fixed an egg to have on the side. She made herself a second—no, third—cup of coffee and sat at GG’s elbow, ready to assist if needed. For light breakfast conversation, she filled GG in on the wonder of the Egg McMuffin and felt the warmth of the memory rival the warmth of the coffee as she spoke.
“Cheese has no place at breakfast,” GG said, unimpressed with the idea of a breakfast sandwich.
Trixie pictured sharing that statement with Ron and then decided it might be a fun caption for a Lost Laura cartoon. She’d done one a few months ago featuring Laura, barely visible behind a stack of pancakes piled up to her nose, saying, “As long as I can see over it, it’s a short stack.”
GG ate steadily, quietly, while Trixie rolled Lost Laura and McMuffin punch lines through her mind. Her thoughts were teetering on the edge of something brilliant when a knock rattled the kitchen door and she looked over to see Cam smiling through the screen.
“Well, good morning,” she greeted, rising, coffee in hand. She opened the door and took a moment to appreciate the sight of him in a summer-weight suit and calico tie. “Don’t we look spiffy.”
“Sunday best,” he said, leaving a waft of clean as he passed by.
“More like Sunday goin’ to church,” Trixie said.
“That too. I dropped Samantha off at Sunday school and thought I’d come by and check on Mariah. How is she doing?”
“Before I answer, what’s the charge for a Sunday morning house call?”
He breathed deep. “One cup of coffee.”
“In that case”—Trixie stepped away from the door and swooped her arm like a circus ringmaster—”here she is. Up, dressed, and eating pancakes.”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m some exhibit,” GG said, never cutting her gaze their way.
“And feeling sassy,” Trixie whispered.
Cam set his black medical bag on the counter and took the seat lately occupied by Trixie. “Good morning, Mrs. Gowan. You look like a new woman this morning.”
“And your words would make the corn grow ten feet tall,” GG said, but Trixie could tell she was pleased by the way her eyes crinkled at the corner and her thin lips contorted in an effort to suppress a smile. She was glad she’d taken the time to brush GG’s hair and secure it at the nape of her neck. Any woman would want to feel her best sitting at a table with Campbell Carter.
“Can I get you something to eat?” Trixie asked, knowing her mother would chastise her for waiting this long to ask. “Toast? Or oatmeal?” Oatmeal? She was so bad at this.
“No, thanks,” Cam said. “I’ve had breakfast. The coffee’s great.”
“Good, good,” Trixie said. “Then, since you’re here, would you mind sitting with GG while I check on something upstairs? I won’t be a minute.”
“We’ll be fine,” he said, but GG gave a suspicious look over his shoulder.
“What are you looking for?” Her voice not sounding the least bit feeble.
“Who said I was looking? I said checking, GG. Checking.”
“Well, I hope you’re checking on a bra,” GG said before calmly taking her last bite of eggs.
Trixie had never been so thankful to be staring at the back of any man as she was at that moment when she and Cam could pretend the old woman hadn’t said what she said. Refusing to rush, she climbed the stairs and went straight to GG’s room. A bench had been built beneath the six-pane dormer window, its hinged top upholstered with a soft cushion topped with pillows. For Trixie, this had always been her favorite place to read, overlooking the yard where the seasons changed beyond the glass. GG claimed she could never get comfortable there, and so she was generous in granting Trixie permission to plant herself for hours on end with a book or a sketch pad. Sometimes entire Sunday afternoons would pass with Trixie in the window seat and GG, in her rocker, the room filled with the sound of sighs and turning pages.
And this was where she’d hidden the book.
Trixie went to her knees, unlatched the seat, and lifted it high enough to fit her head and shoulders in the cavernous space. There were layers of blankets and quilts, the smell of moth balls almost a physical touch to her face. She rummaged with one hand, letting her fingers search for the book, remembering the day she’d sat right here, reading it within sight of GG, who would have snatched it out of her hand if she’d bothered to take a close look. How old was Trixie then? Twelve? No. Thirteen. A rainy spring Saturday at the end of eighth grade, and here she’d sat, reading about her own beloved GG Mariah at almost the same age.
Beneath the strata of wool, she finally touched the cool, smooth paperback and gingerly drew it out.
“There you are,” she whispered.
The cover was just as she remembered. Laura and Almanzo, hand in hand beneath a tree, buggy in the background. They were looking into each other’s eyes with a solemnity that—to Trixie’s adolescent heart—depicted the life-lasting depth of their love.
She lowered the seat, latched it, stood, and walked to the tall dresser where she had to open three different drawers—starting from the top—before finding GG’s first edition copy. Figured the old woman would have hidden it away again. The vast difference in the cover image was startling, but it was the fanning through the pages of her own abandoned copy that made Trixie’s breath catch in her throat. She hadn’t looked at this book—any of these books—in well over a decade, but the impact of the Garth Williams illustrations on her own artistic style was undeniable. The soft edges and shading. The details rendered with pleasing precision. And yet her Lost Laura strips were much cleaner. Stark, almost, like the originals by Helen Sewell.
Mindful of the passing time, she turned the pages and felt her knees give out when she found the page depicting Laura Ingalls’s first five students huddled around a stove on that first wintry morning of school. She knew for a fact that the illustrator had never met GG Mariah, and yet, there she was. Somehow she was captured as precisely as if she’d sat for a portrait. Her long face, her lank hair, her perpetually distant and dour expression.
Had GG ever seen this?
The sound of voices coming up the stairs spurred her into action, returning the first edition of the novel to the drawer in which she’d found it and casually slipping her own edition under one of the window seat pillows. She was in the hall just in time to see Cam walking up the stairs, his steps matched to GG’s beside him, his hand resting on the small of her back. Trixie met them at the top step and took GG’s arm and resisted asking, Do you want to lie down?, knowing she’d never be able to disguise her eagerness at having an afternoon alone to indulge in a little disobedience. Instead, she asked, “What do you want to do now, GG?”
“Need a pit stop,” GG said, “which I can still manage by myself, thank you.”
“Alrighty.” Trixie kept a careful eye on GG’s slow but stable steps until she was on the other side of the bathroom door. Then she turned to Cam. “Thanks for stopping by. I’ll get in trouble if I don’t invite you to come to dinner after church.”
“Thank you, but I promised Samantha a picnic.”
“That sounds like much more fun.”
“She took a shine to you, Trix. I’ll get in trouble if I don’t ask you to join us.”
“Trixie?”
GG’s voice sounded thin and reedy behind the half-closed door, and Trixie immediately ran into the bathroom to find her in need of assistance with the elastic-waist shorts that had dropped to the ground. Trixie helped GG dress and wash her hands before bringing her out into the bedroom, glad to see that Cam had made a discreet exit, but hoping he was waiting somewhere in the house.
“I think I will take a little rest,” GG said, showing her age and fatigue for the first time that day.
“Of course,” Trixie said. She propped and fluffed pillows, arranged GG’s comfort, and—for no reason other than ornery bravado—took an afghan from the storage space in the window seat and laid it across GG’s already snoozing form. “Can we talk more, later?” she asked, wanting to capture the final moments before a sleep that might last all day. “About what you showed me yesterday? About being in the book?”
But GG’s lips were already muttering the kind of words that narrated a drift between worlds—”She … she … stupid … stupid …”—before her breathing became steady and silent, her body motionless with sleep. Trixie bent to give a kiss to the wrinkled brow, grabbed her book from its shallow hiding place, and ran downstairs, arriving in the kitchen as Cam was lifting his medical bag and heading for the door.
“Hey.” She leaned against the doorframe, book cradled to her chest, hoping she looked cooler than she felt.
“I’ve got to get to church. Samantha will be sitting with my mom, and they’ll both be mad at me if I’m late. Invitation is open to join us later. Washington Park around one o’clock. We’ll be the ones with a kite and pimiento cheese sandwiches.”
“That sounds great, actually. I’ll find you. Can I bring anything?”
“Yourself. We can catch up.”
She saw him to the door and closed it behind him, trying to conjure the feeling she had every time they enacted this ritual in high school after an evening of studying (or some other ruse to justify a few hours spent together at the table or on the couch). On those nights, there’d always been a kiss at the door, then another in the mudroom, then another on the back porch, and if the night was warm enough, another at his car. If it was cold and her mother was already in bed, a few more in his car until the windows were steamed as solid as blackout drapes. She remembered living in a perpetual state of churning, waiting for the moment she’d see him at school the next day or on their date the next night. The longing always kicked in the moment he left her presence, taking on a deeper quality whenever he was close enough to touch. There had never been enough of him. Enough of his voice, his touch. She’d been thrillingly unfulfilled. Off-balance.
But there was none of that now.
Yes, he was still devastatingly handsome, pleasant to look at, to talk to. Yes, she looked forward to a Sunday afternoon sprawled on a blanket under the summer sun, but if she was truly honest with herself, what she really wanted was the story. All the stories from the time he drove away to college, leaving her a crumpled mass of tears, until the day she walked in to find him stalwart in the midst of her family’s death watch. In between, besides a sprinkling of awkward conversations during visits home, there’d been a war and a baby girl named Samantha. For the sake of their lingering, long-snuffed love, Trixie wanted to share Cam’s experience with both.
Until then, she calculated having about an hour—maybe ninety minutes if the sermon proved soul-searching—to read and discover why her great-grandmother might be the only person on the planet to hold a slow-burning grudge against America’s pioneer sweetheart, Laura Ingalls Wilder. She considered reading here in the kitchen, slowly filling with the scent of the chicken roasting in the oven, but decided to go back upstairs where she wouldn’t be tempted to snack her way from meal to meal. She grabbed two glasses of water (one for GG should she wake up), tucked the book under her arm, and went back upstairs.
This is how people stayed thin in the old days, she thought, feeling the slightest burn by the time she got to the last step.
She could have gone to her own room, but a sense of responsibility tinged with an air of mystery brought her into GG’s. She took a sip of water before setting both glasses on the dresser, then went to the window seat. The sense of nostalgia for her old reading spot could not compete with the decided lack of comfort for her older body. The cushion that had once seemed so lush now felt thin, and the pillows refused to hold any shape or support. Channeling her inner Goldilocks, Trixie moved to what seemed to be the next most comfortable spot: GG’s bed. She piled pillows at the footboard and climbed up, careful not to disturb the sleeping woman, if indeed she could be disturbed at all. Once settled, she opened the book and began.
Sunday afternoon was clear, and the snow-covered prairie sparkled in the sunshine. A little wind blew gently …1
Trixie found herself drawn into the simple, image-specific prose just as she had been when she read the books as a child. Even more so, perhaps, now that she had an overarching purpose. Soon she was absorbed in this tale of the blizzard-defiant courtship of Almanzo Wilder, braving the dangerous, bone-chilling cold to rescue Laura from the equally dangerous Brewster family each Friday afternoon. She tried to imagine the tedium of those school days—the silence of study and the timid voices of recitation. The soft-key romance thrilled her as much today as it had when she read it as an adolescent, wondering what it would be like to have a beau who would risk so much for a girl’s happiness. (Also, wishing the word beau was still a common term, as boyfriend lacked an air of commitment.)
In all of her reading, Trixie never lost track of her purpose: to find the seed of GG’s lifelong antipathy. Was it because Wilder had changed her name? But she’d changed everybody’s, GG said. Except Charles’s. She pondered a moment when, having to break a path for over a mile in knee-deep snow, Charles and Martha were marked tardy after being only minutes late to school. Pages later, and the insufferable schoolmate Clarence had pinned one of Martha’s (Mariah’s) braids to the desk; the illustration showed Laura Ingalls with a stern expression, grasping the hilt of the knife to pull it out. What followed were long, listless days, the students not knowing their lessons, not spelling their words correctly, not knowing their history details. Putting that together with what she knew of GG’s childhood, the reason for their lackluster academic performance was perfectly clear. They were cold. They were hungry. They’d been cold and hungry the night before and faced yet another evening of cold and hunger. With no mother in the house to provide maternal warmth and a father disinclined to do so, GG and her brother’s basic physical and emotional needs simply weren’t met.
Plus, at every given opportunity when Laura Ingalls was asked if she enjoyed teaching school, the answer was “No.” She was homesick, ill-prepared, and uncomfortable with the authority of leading a classroom, even if the classroom held only five pupils. Trixie read the scene where, in the middle of the night in the home where she lodged during her teaching, Laura was faced with a delusional, knife-wielding Mrs. Brewster. The accompanying illustration gave her the same chills now as it ever did, but it also sparked an empathy for Laura that Trixie could only imagine came with reading that scene as an adult.
