Almost There and Almost Not, page 2
There wasn’t anybody to give that signal to in Aunt Monica’s guest room, so I had to give myself an errand of going back outside to the garden, where, if I did shout, probably I wouldn’t scare Aunt Monica so much.
The yard was dark, but enough neighbors had porch lights on for me to see my way down the back steps and out to the cool grass. I wondered if it was dark in Alaska, too. And if the grass there was cool, or if there’d be snow on the ground even though it was June. I was standing there, wondering that, when that dog showed up again—this time so quiet I didn’t even notice until he was already lying at my feet, his little gaspy dog breath shuddering on my toes.
“Well, hey, Dog,” I said. I said it quiet so I wouldn’t spook him.
Dog wagged his tail and looked up at me like I was the best person he’d seen in forever. It’s a nice thing being looked at like that. Could even make you cry if you were that kind of person.
Mostly, though, it made me want to pet him.
I wanted to scoop him up and hold him tight and pet him like Dorothy Gale does her Toto when she finds him after her house crash. But instead, real slow, I put my hand out for sniffing again and made myself as small as I could.
He sniffed.
“Good dog,” I said, real soft. “Good dog. It’s good to see you again.”
Saying stuff like that is how you make somebody feel welcome.
Dog did feel welcome. I could tell. His tail wagged and he crawled himself closer. I put my other hand out for sniffing too, and Dog kept on wagging.
“Could I pet you, Dog?” I asked. “Would that be okay? Would it be okay if I pet you?”
Like I said already, he can’t talk and I didn’t expect him to, but when he scooted even closer, I felt like he was saying, Sure. We could try that. Why not?
I kept my left hand in sniffing range and slowly moved my right up over his pointy white ears. His eyes tracked me, but he didn’t flinch. “I’m not gonna hurt you,” I said, and he knew I was telling the truth.
Slow and careful, I lowered my hand down gentle to ear level—but I didn’t feel any ears. Or fur. Or any doglike sensations.
What I felt was something I’m still trying to find words for.
Have you ever been in a car with the window rolled down and you stick out your hand and you can feel the air rushing past and you push just a little against it and it feels almost solid and almost not?
It felt like that.
And you know how it is when the car stops and that feeling disappears on you?
I mean, I couldn’t help but be startled by an almost-there dog, and I must have gasped or shouted or done something that scared him, because he bolted. Which is how I knew he was smart, that dog. Stepping away when somebody touches you wrong? That’s smart, and I didn’t blame him for it, even though I wished he’d stayed.
I called for him a couple of times just in case he was still in hearing range, but he didn’t come.
I stood quiet, but he didn’t come then, either.
Eventually the cool of the grass got cold and I turned around to head inside, and something crunched under my bare foot. It was another paper scrap, which it seemed like Dog must have brought special for me.
“Thank you, Dog,” I said. Told you I have manners.
Back in Aunt Monica’s no-color guest room, I unfolded that scrap and found the sentences on it. Understood them on the first read, too.
Dear Pa,
I’m leaving this letter with Mr. Van Hoeven, who won’t be happy to see you. Believe him when he says he doesn’t owe you any of my wages. I only took what I earned and I’m not sorry about it. I am sorry that I can’t see Mama one last time, but if I’ve learned anything from you, it’s to take advantage of opportunities when they come, and now is the opportunity for me to do better for myself. Maybe you could take this opportunity to do better too.
Tell Mama not to worry. The other thing I’ve learned thanks to you is that I can take care of myself.
Elsie
7
You know what’s even more distracting than wondering about Alaska? Having a ghost lady reading over your shoulder.
Aunt Monica had found a bag of freezer bagels tucked behind the meatloaf wall, and I toasted some up for our breakfast, which we ate on paper towels so there wouldn’t be dishes to wash. Aunt Monica doesn’t say much at breakfast, but I don’t mind. I’m used to quiet mornings. Noises always felt louder to my dad in the mornings.
I had that copy of Proper Letters for Proper Ladies with me, and I was trying to make my way through the first sentence again when I got that feeling you get when someone’s standing too close behind you.
“Preposterous.” (If you want to imagine hearing it like I did, say it British, so there’s three syllables instead of four: “Pre-POS-struss.”)
It was Eleanor, back from the dust. Aunt Monica either didn’t see her or was pretending not to, but I couldn’t help it. Eleanor had on a long strand of pearls, and as she bent to get a closer look at Proper Letters, they swung right through my shoulder, which seems like kind of a rude invasion of my personal space, now that I think about it.
Anyway, Eleanor looked different that morning than she had the night before. Before, she’d been wearing a pale purple dress, but this time she was in something dark, which made her transparency a lot more noticeable. I could see the cupboards behind her better than I could the details of her face or hands.
“You must understand. I did not write that ridiculous foreword. That is the work of my peacock of an editor. I can only imagine how many readers he will frighten away with his pomposity.”
I looked up “pomposity” later. It means something like “show-off” and something like “acting super important.” Sort of like using a British accent when you don’t come by it naturally.
“But allowing him his say was the only way to assure publication. I haven’t seen a final copy yet. Where did you get this?”
“From the bookshelf in the study,” I said, which made Aunt Monica jump.
“What?” she asked, reaching to pick her bagel up off the floor. “Were you talking to me?”
I’m getting better about answering questions right, and it was coming clear to me that Aunt Monica didn’t know she had a ghost lady in her house, so I just said, “Who else could I be talking to?”
Aunt Monica said she was sorry and that she’d been living on her own for almost a year and wasn’t used to people being around. “I guess I was off in my own world,” she continued. “What did you say?”
“You have a lot of books in your study,” I said. It wasn’t exactly the truth, but it was next door to it. “I was wondering if they were all by this same lady, Eleanor Fontaine?”
Eleanor stood up straight when I said her name, like she was interested in the answer too.
“Most of those books are biographies or history. My husband, Milton, loved history. The top shelf has the Fontaine books.” Aunt Monica stood up, tossed out her floor bagel, and headed for the study. I guessed I was supposed to follow, so I did, and Eleanor ghosted right behind me.
“The first of Mrs. Fontaine’s books was Proper Parties for Proper Ladies,” Aunt Monica said. She steadied the gray shoe box with her good hand and told me to fetch a copy down for her. “It is the pink one. Top right. It was published—”
“In 1917,” said Eleanor.
“In 1917,” said Aunt Monica.
“I did not believe that the country would join Europe’s war when I was writing it.” Transparent or not, I could see Eleanor’s face good enough to know it made her sad to think about. “It published two days after Congress declared war against the Germans.”
“The dove-gray one”—Aunt Monica nodded for me to take down another book—“is the Proper Manners book. That came out in 1920.”
“Written between bouts of sock knitting,” Eleanor said. “So many of our boys were still overseas. We needed… with the influenza, too… we needed to hold ourselves together.”
Having seen Eleanor turn to dust once before, I could see why holding together was of particular importance to her.
“And then, of course, Proper Letters for Proper Ladies,” said Aunt Monica.
“Published in 1922,” I said. I might not read fast, but I remember what I read.
“Milton was quite proud to have a published author as a relative, and it was his plan to write her biography once he retired. He hadn’t started research on her yet, but he had inherited a few documents and knew a little about her life in New York society and how, once her sons moved west, she filled her time writing these books.”
“Filled my time?” Eleanor straightened so much that if she’d had a live-person spine, it would have snapped. “I have plenty to fill my time. There’s the Ladies Aid, and the library board, and club responsibilities, and while it is true that there is less of the party bustle with the boys away, there are still some weekends at the Ransomes’, and Mrs. Everest called just yesterday and…”
Eleanor went on.
So did Aunt Monica.
“Proper Letters for Proper Ladies was Mrs. Fontaine’s most popular book,” my aunt said. “Unfortunately, she never saw its publication.”
Eleanor stopped listing time-filling things. “Why did she say that? Ask her why she said that.” She tried poking my arm but just sorta poked through it.
I don’t like being poked, whether I can feel it or not—but I asked anyway. “Why didn’t she get to see her book?”
Aunt Monica took her hand off the shoe box and put it to her heart. “Just as the publication was about to reach bookstores, the poor thing passed away.”
Pffft, like that, Eleanor dusted. Not even a proper good-bye.
“Whoa,” I said.
“It is sad,” said Aunt Monica, returning her hand to the shoe box. “To go before you’re ready. Before the people around you are ready.” Aunt Monica seemed to go to that world of her own again, but she came back as quick as Eleanor had disappeared. “But we can continue the work they left behind, can’t we?”
I said I guessed we could.
“That is my purpose.” Aunt Monica patted the shoe box. “And, for a little while, our purpose, I suppose.”
It sounded okay to me, having a purpose. Even felt a little good, if you want to know the truth. Good enough, I decided, that if Eleanor ever came back, I might even tell her she could be a part of our purpose too. Who knew? Maybe having a purpose would help her hold herself together for a while.
8
Eleanor was still a dust pile on the study floor when Aunt Monica suggested we start fulfilling our purpose by me learning about bread-and-butter letters, which, I feel like I should warn you, are not as delicious as they sound.
“I don’t suppose you’ve read that section of Proper Letters yet?” asked Aunt Monica.
I told her I wasn’t there quite yet, no. So Aunt Monica had me open to the bread-and-butter page, and then she read out loud from it.
Aunt Monica isn’t as good at reading out loud as Miss Tenzing is. Miss Tenzing reads so you feel like the words are coming straight from your own imagining, not a smidge of space between you and the people in the book. With Aunt Monica’s reading there’s a whole backyard’s worth of space, but I can’t blame her for that entirely. Eleanor’s writing is pretty old fashioned, like in the part where she says she must “acknowledge the fortitude required to show appreciation for a weekend of cold platters, tiny rooms, and little Chester’s violin recital, yet proper manners nonetheless demand an expression of gratitude at least as warm as the ill-timed fish course may have been.”
When she was done reading, Aunt Monica told me to sit at the brown study desk and try writing a bread-and-butter of my own.
Perhaps to Aunt Isabelle.
I guess my face didn’t look so happy about that idea, but Aunt Monica handed me a pen. “Fortitude,” she said.
Dear Aunt Isabelle,
This is a bread-and-butter letter. Do you know about those?
Your aunt Monica says they are simple thank-you notes. She says I have to learn how to write them if I am going to be any use to her whatsoever.
In a bread-and-butter letter you say thank you for your hospitality even if things weren’t really all that great and you would rather not have been carted all the way to a town you’ve never heard of to stay with some lady you’ve never met, to help with some project you know nothing about.
Aunt Monica says you also have to mention one specific thing that was nice, so if the food at the dinner table was nasty, for example, you have to say how delicious it looked on the plate or how lovely the napkins were. She says you have to tell the best truth possible.
So, thank you, Aunt Isabelle, for how you turned on the radio and stopped talking so much during the last half hour of our drive to Aunt Monica’s. The music was good and I appreciated it.
Sincerely,
California Poppy
* * *
Dear Aunt Isabelle,
Thank you for driving me to Aunt Monica’s. I enjoyed the music you finally played in the car.
Sincerely,
California Poppy
PS—Did you know that when you write a bread-and-butter letter, you are not supposed to say it is a bread-and-butter letter? Because that makes the person feel like you had to write it and not like you were really grateful? Believe me, I was really grateful when you turned on the radio.
* * *
Dear Aunt Isabelle,
Thank you for driving me all the long, long way from Minnesota to Michigan. I especially liked the part of the drive where you played the music. Aunt Monica said she was sorry you had to leave so soon. I did not think I would be sorry about that, but after two days here I almost am.
Sincerely,
California Poppy
PS—You didn’t happen to see a little white dog in Aunt Monica’s yard while you were here, did you?
9
Tonight we tried one of Aunt Isabelle’s defrosted meatloaves for dinner.
The best truth possible is that I have developed a new appreciation for ketchup.
Once we’d swallowed all the meatloaf we could, Aunt Monica showed me how to load her dishwasher and reminded me I had some reading to do and said she knew it was early but she hadn’t slept so well the night before and would I mind if she went to her room for the evening. Would I mind being alone?
I told her I was pretty good at being alone.
Truth is, I was hoping she’d go to bed early so I could sneak outside and see if Dog was there, which I did. It was a cool night for June, and the sky was growing dark.
“Dog?” I called. “Dog? You out there?”
“There’s not been a soul out here for the last quarter hour.” It was Eleanor. She was sitting on the porch swing, looking out into the weedy garden. She didn’t have her pearls on anymore, and it looked like maybe she was wearing a different dress than she had been earlier in the day, but I wasn’t sure. Like I said, it was getting dark.
“Come, sit. Keep an old woman company,” she said.
I’d been keeping an old woman company most of the day, I wanted to tell her, but I didn’t, and when she patted the spot on the swing next to her, I sat down on it. What else could I do?
“So, what brings you here?” she asked.
“Aunt Isabelle,” I said. I guessed with all her dusting in and out, she’d missed a few things. “She dropped me off yesterday. I was getting in the way of her meatloaves.”
Eleanor tried patting my arm. I understood she meant it to be comforting, but having an old ghost lady’s hand slip through you is kind of the opposite. Seemed like it startled her, too, but she recovered okay. “It is difficult to be relocated. I try to imagine what it is like for my boys, so far away from civilization. They are in Denver, my sons. Both of them recently married. To western girls.” Her face, when she said “western girls,” looked a lot like Aunt Monica’s face at dinner right before she remembered having ketchup available for dousing the meatloaf in.
“Not a proper letter from any of them about the matter either,” Eleanor continued. “A telegram. That is how they informed their mother of the news. A telegram.”
“That’s bad?” I asked.
“It is impersonal. And it just is not done,” she said. “They, of all people, should know that.” And then she went on to say a bunch of other things they should know and that their wives, if they had any manners at all, should know too.
“They should read your books,” I said.
“You know my work?” asked Eleanor. Her face seemed to get just the tiniest bit more solid for a second.
“They’re all right there in the study, remember? Proper Parties for Proper Ladies, Proper Manners for Proper Ladies,” I said. “Proper Letters—”
Eleanor interrupted, which I have to say now was pretty rude. “How do you know about Proper Letters? Have you been snooping? Do not lie to me. I was a… I’ve known a lot of cleaning girls in my day. I understand the urge to spy.”
Cleaning girls? “I’m eleven,” I said.
“Eleven is young,” she admitted. “But not unheard of.” She squinted, like she was trying to see the eleven in me. Miss Tenzing said it wasn’t fair, but I might have to let people do that. Might have to give them a chance to understand I’m just a kid, no matter what my outsides look like. She said the same thing about me being smart, but I’m less sure about that one. Anyway, Eleanor did see the eleven in me enough to excuse my snooping—which I feel the need to remind you, I did not even do. “Did you find my writing helpful?” she asked. “Was it useful to you?”
I told her that it had been, that Aunt Monica said I had written a passable bread-and-butter letter and we’d already put it in the mail for Aunt Isabelle.
“Eleven, and already more responsible than my sons or either of my daughters-in-law,” she said. “They are the reason I have started writing the letters manuscript. No understanding of their social obligations.”
