Tree by Leaf

  “She means no, Nate,” Clothilde told her brother. “That’s what she means, and you know it.”

  “There’s no need to shriek, Clothilde,” Mother said.

  “I’m not shrieking,” Clothilde answered back. Mother didn’t say a word. “He shouldn’t go. He’s always going away.” But she couldn’t make Mother hear her words. Mother just shook her head calmly.

  “He’s nearly a grown man, dear.”

  “I know, but—” Clothilde wanted to say all the things she’d been thinking about Nate and what was different, how he’d changed, but one look at Mother’s face told her it wouldn’t be any good. Mother wasn’t even really looking at her. Clothilde gave up. It was no use. Mother’s behavior was because of the man in the boathouse, somehow, but knowing that didn’t help Clothilde any. She couldn’t count on Nate anymore, and she’d learned that, learned to do without him. She couldn’t count on Mother, either, she guessed. She couldn’t imagine this woman climbing up to prune old overgrown limbs from apple trees, sawing until sweat stained her armpits; she couldn’t imagine her calling down to them sharply to stand clear and then hurry in to drag the branches to the brush pile; this woman couldn’t have sent Lou’s father packing. Clothilde looked at Lou’s worried face.

  “Me too, I’m going with Nate,” Dierdre announced. “Grandfather says,” she said.

  Fury burst up inside Clothilde. “You can’t go, didn’t you hear them?” she asked. She knew she shouldn’t be so angry at Dierdre, who was still a baby, but she couldn’t stop herself. “You don’t know anything.”

  “Do too,” Dierdre said.

  “You’re a baby,” Clothilde reminded her.

  “Am not,” Dierdre denied it, and burst into baby tears. “Am not! Am not!” she cried, and splashed both hands into her bowl of chowder.

  “I don’t know why you can’t control these children, Lou,” Mother said. She rose from the table, drawing her long skirt back as if she didn’t want it near them. At the kitchen door she turned around. “You know I can’t listen to this—fighting,” she said to all of them. She went calmly into the parlor.

  Clothilde got up to take the bowls from the table. Lou had a cloth and was mopping up Dierdre’s mess. Nate just sat there.

  “I didn’t have a biscuit,” Dierdre protested, as Clothilde took away her bowl. “I want a biscuit and I want jam.” Clothilde let her scream and cry. Lou didn’t say anything. Nate just sat there, like the king of Persia, waiting for the table to be cleared.

  Clothilde stood beside him, with her hands on her hips. “Nobody all of a sudden goes off on a cruise.”

  “You don’t know anything about it,” Nate said.

  “You’re just running away,” she told him, wanting him to deny it.

  “From what?” he asked, smiling up at her. “If you re so all-fired smart.” His eyes smiled too, gray-blue and distant, as if he knew things she didn’t.

  “From—you know—from him.”

  “Clothilde, you’re such a child. You don’t know anything.”

  “Anyway,” Clothilde switched back to the point, “people don’t.”

  “You don’t know anything about that, either. You’re just jealous, because nobody invites you.”

  “I am not.”

  “All right. All right. Take it easy.”

  “Why would I be jealous?”

  Nate leaned his elbows on the table and just grinned her. Because he was a boy, Clothilde thought, and could fight, and got sent away to a school. Because he could run away, he had friends to run away to. “Well I’m not,” she said, and wanted it to be the truth. “Not a bit.”

  “Me too,” Dierdre said, coming to stand with her little hands balled up into fists, on Nate’s other side. She was so short and so positive and made so little sense, that both Nate and Clothilde burst out laughing. Laughing with her brother, Clothilde wished he weren’t going to go away again. She wished he wanted to stay home.

  She looked up then and saw Mother standing in the doorway. “Aren’t you the silly ones,” Mother said. Mother had dressed her hair for church, and it puffed away from her in smooth, light billows. Her eyes, blue as a June sky, looked serious, but her lips smiled, as if she didn’t mind them being silly. Clothild studied her mother, tall for a woman and with the narrow waist that was part of a woman’s beauty, her skirt hanging smoothly to just above her dainty ankles. “If you would all come to the parlor? I need to talk with you,” Mother said. “You as well, Louisa, the dishes will have to wait.”

  Lou dried her hands on the apron, then took it off and hung it on its peg beside the sink. There was something in Mother’s voice that said this was not the time to wear an apron. When Lou got to the parlor, she didn’t sit down. Instead, she stood by the door, the way the servants in Grandfather’s house did, the way Mother had asked her to before they all got used to working together and sitting down together. Mother put Dierdre on her lap, holding the chubby ankles still with a hand so Dierdre wouldn’t kick. Clothilde sat on one of the two black chairs that matched the sofa where Mother sat. She put her feet neatly together and folded her hands in her lap. She sat up straight. She didn’t know why she was afraid of what Mother was going to say.

  “I’ve been told that we are facing some difficulties,” Mother said. “Something to do with money. I’m sure that when he is better, Father will take care of them, but until that time—”

  “What do you mean better?” Nate interrupted.

  “Don’t interrupt, Nathaniel.”

  “He’s been sent back,” Nate pointed out, “so they thing he’s better already. This is better.”

  Mother ignored him. “There is difficulty about money. I don’t understand it,” she went on, as if it didn’t matter that she didn’t understand it, as if it was right that she shouldn’t. “As a consequence, however, we will have to practice economies.”

  But why was Mother saying she didn’t understand, when it had been she who had overseen everything in all the years they had been living here? It was Mother who ordered food and paid the money owing to Mr. Grindle, who had determined and paid out Lou’s wages. It was Mother who had hired Tom Hatch to turn over the ground for the vegetable garden, who had brought the apple trees back to fruitfulness. It was Mother who had run the household, overseeing the meals and cleaning, the washing and mending, the schoolwork, who had chased after them to do their chores properly. Why did she now claim not to understand? Clothilde didn’t understand.

  “What about the check from the army that comes every month?” she asked.

  Mother shook her head. “Now that he’s back that won’t be sent. So that, among other economies, we can no longer offer you employment, Louisa. I want to express my gratitude to you, for your years of service. I am sorry to have to let you go.”

  What would they do without Lou, Clothilde couldn’t think. She didn’t know how to stop what Mother was doing.

  “Please, Mrs. Speer,” Lou asked. Her face was even paler than usual. “Who will do my chores?”

  “Clothilde will,” Mother said.

  But how could she go to school and still do all of Lou’s work? And, if she didn’t go to school, how could she go to a college and be able to find employment when she grew up? What would her future be? The questions rose up in Clothilde’s mind, like waves under a stormy wind, but when she spoke her voice was small, and weak. “I’m supposed to go to school,” she said.

  Mother shook her head, No.

  “But can’t you do Lou’s work? Or some of it,” Clothilde pleaded. She could do more than she had, she thought, she just couldn’t do all of it.

  “Father wouldn’t want his wife doing household chores,” Mother said, as if that was something there could be no question about. But that made no sense. Hadn’t Mother been his wife before, and done the work? Even if he wasn’t there, she was still his wife. Did the man in the boathouse want his daughter to do it even though he wouldn’t want a wife to? Was Clothilde supposed to become a servant so that Mother
could be a lady?

  She couldn’t think, couldn’t answer the questions, couldn’t imagine—she could only sit there with her feet neatly side by side and be afraid.

  “But Mrs. Speer, ma’am? I could stay on without the wages,” Lou said.

  “We couldn’t ask that of you, Louisa. How would your family manage?”

  “I can’t go back and live there, ma’am. When he has money, he—” She looked at Clothilde for help, but Clothilde couldn’t give her any Lou was afraid to go live at home, Clothilde thought. She remembered bruises she had seen on Lou’s arms when Lou rolled up her sleeves to do the Monday washing, and a swelling once that Lou had said was a bad tooth. She thought of what Lou said about Mr. Small taking too much to drink, and sailing on the boats that smuggled in black market whiskey from Canada. Mr. Small had to be a bad man, because if he earned money on those boats, why didn’t they move into a decent house, a house with room for the large family? Lou was trying not to cry.

  “You shouldn’t make Lou go,” Clothilde told her mother.

  “Don’t be so selfish, dear,” Mother said.

  “Please, ma’am. He’ll hire me out to one of the summer cottages, I know he will. I don’t need wages, ma’am, just a room of my own and I don’t eat much.”

  “It’s not right for a family to keep servants without paying them,” Mother said. “It’s a shame on the family. I’m sorry, Louisa. You’ll have a good recommendation, of course.”

  “Nate?” He was just sitting there. Clothilde asked him, “Do something.”

  “Is this your idea, or—his?” Nate asked his mother.

  “Your father leaves the domestic details to me,” Mother answered, which didn’t answer the question at all.

  “Why are we so short of money when we have the income from Father’s trust?” Nate asked.

  “Grandfather has been taking care of that, while your father was away. Father says Grandfather has used that money to keep you, Nate, at Phillips Academy, and to clothe you properly for your position in life.”

  “That’s not true,” Nate said. “He told me—” Nate bit down on the words and fell silent again.

  “Anything left over, Grandfather has invested into the factory, which is Father’s inheritance after all. Father won’t let us starve.”

  Dierdre had finally figured out what was happening.

  She squirmed off Mother’s lap and ran across to throw her arms around Lou’s legs. “Don’t go away,” she cried. “I’ll cry,” she said, starting to cry already. “I’ll cry and cry.”

  “Please, ma’am,” Lou said. “I could stay until September. Or just through this month.”

  Mother flapped her hands helplessly around in her lap. “No more than a week or two, then,” she gave in. “People always give a week or two notice, so that’s all right. There’s no need for you children to be so upset. If need be, Father says, we can sell Speer Point.”

  Clothilde didn’t want to believe her ears.

  “Who would you sell it to?” Nate asked. “Has someone made an offer?”

  “A lumber company would want it for timber,” Mother explained.

  “But you can’t do that. It’s mine,” Clothilde protested. “Its mine and I wont let you.”

  “You’re only a child,” Mother answered, brushing her away.

  Nate was more patient. “Look, Clothilde, if the Old Man’s putting money into the factory—because, its these cheap gasoline models, and that Henry Ford, don’t you see? Electric is better—didn’t President Wilson get an electric automobile? But we have to compete harder right now.”

  Clothilde looked, but she didn’t see why she had to give up the peninsula. It was hers, even if she was a child. There was a will. “I won’t let you,” she repeated.

  “You can’t stop it, dear, not if Father decides it’s best. He’s your father. Little girls don’t know anything about property, so their fathers take care of it. Don’t you want to help your family?”

  Clothilde shook her head, No. She wasn’t saying no to Mother’s question, but to everything, to Father being able to sell the Point, to not being able to stop him, to Lou going away and Nate going away, to not being able to do anything about any of it. “No,” Clothilde said. She said it around the room to everyone, “No.”

  “Yes,” Dierdre yelled back. “Yes. Yes.”

  Clothilde got up and left the room, ignoring Mother’s voice. She went upstairs to her bedroom. She kept saying it inside her, No, No, No, as if by saying it she could keep things from happening. She heard her feet slamming down on the stairs and on the floorboards of her room, which she and Lou had painted that winter. She heard her feet hit the floor of her bedroom, but it felt like the floor was gone out from under her. Clothilde sat down at the little table that made a writing desk in her room, tucked in under the low slanting ceiling, with the window off to her right.

  She wasn’t crying and she didn’t even want to cry. If she was a grown-up, if she was a boy, she’d show them, she wouldn’t let them. She wished she were Nate and had friends to go stay with. She wished she were Dierdre who didn’t understand. She wished—if she were God—

  Outside, the light shone and the leaves hung motionless. Clothilde got up to close her window. She sat down again, and thought she’d never get up, she’d just sit there until she died. In the silence, silence from downstairs, silence from outside, there was a rattling, as if the window shook in its frame. As if the window was knocking.

  But it was a knock on her door, which was repeated before Lou opened it and stood in the doorway. “I’ve been thinking,” Lou said, not coming into the room. “I could he’p my ma, with better wages from one of the summer cottages. I’m fifteen, and your mother has paid my wages to me, not to him, so we’ve got a little set aside. And it’s not like having to go back to the mills, Clothilde, it’s not the worst it could be.”

  “I don’t care,” Clothilde said. She didn’t get up, and as soon as Lou had closed the door behind her, she turned back to the wall.

  Chapter 5

  The wall had been painted blue, years and years ago, in her great-aunt’s time, a blue the color of a robin’s egg. The wall angled down from the ceiling and then straightened out just at Clothilde’s eye level. The paint was faded with time, and little cracks ran along it, like pencil lines, making a design she couldn’t see the order of. Clothilde stared at the wall. The feelings—anger and fear and misery—which had carried her up the stairs and given her voice, dropped her. She was like some fish dropped by a wave onto a rock, a rock alone in the middle of the ocean. There was nothing she was going to be able to do about anything.

  The window knocked again.

  Clothilde turned her face to it, without curiosity. She wasn’t looking at the window, or through it. She just turned her face to it. The frame of wood held flat glass in place; beyond the glass was a view of leaves and branches and sky, as unmoving as a picture. Clothilde turned her face to the wall again, leaned her elbows on the tabletop, and covered her ears with her hands as she stared at the cracks on the wall.

  She should have known that the peninsula couldn’t be hers. Children didn’t own things, girls didn’t, people like her family didn’t. People like Grandfather owned things and could decide how to use them. She wished she’d known that all along, because then …

  The sound the window made, making it again, was like the knock of a giant hand. If it were a hand, it would be so huge and heavy … the sound was like such a hand making itself as gentle as possible. The sound of that knocking echoed in Clothilde’s bedroom and sounded as if it must be rattling the whole side of the house. If it was a hand, knocking …

  Clothilde opened the window. Nothing came in. She hadn’t expected anything to come in. She had probably imagined the sound, too, even though she could still hear it. She was probably going crazy, hearing things that weren’t real. If you were crazy, like Jeb Twohey, then people would take care of you and you’d never have to know anything. You’d just be crazy unti
l you could die and be done with being frightened and helpless.

  Clothilde left her room. There had been that knock and it had to be answered, so she went down the stairs and out the front door. Not that she wanted to go answer, not that she didn’t want to, not that she’d decided to: she went to answer it. She walked to the vegetable garden, where the early peas were growing taller and the lettuces curled delicately in upon themselves. The knocking wasn’t to be answered there, nor among the apple trees of the orchard. It was crazy, she was crazy, the knocking that filled her skull was driving her crazy.

  As if she were being pushed from behind, Clothilde moved slowly along the rutted driveway, into the trees. No sound broke the stillness. She walked under the branches of trees, which seemed to wait, listening in the silence. She followed the dirt roadway up beside the fields where Mr. Henderson’s crop of mixed timothy and alfalfa sprouted up through the ground in thin green blades. She kept her shoes on the dirt track, one foot following the other, when the road reentered the woods. There pines stood at attention and even the birches seemed to have halted, in midgesture, like girls photographed at a dance. When the road looped around to the right to go to a ruined cottage, Clothilde left it and went on through the woods to the headlands. She moved slowly, as if she were being pulled.

  When she stepped out onto the headlands, the sky and sea spread out before her, reflecting each other. The tide was out, but even with the knocking at last silenced, the water lay dark and still at the foot of the heavy rockfalls. The sunny air spread out all around her. Clothilde stepped out onto a flat chunk of granite. Sunlight fell over her. Her shadow lay curled at her feet.

  “Clothilde,” the Voice named her. “Child.”

  But she was alone. Clothilde spun around to see who had spoken, her heart beating fast. She saw no one. She didn’t expect to see anyone, because nobody could have a voice like that. It was a huge, rich voice, rich like Mother’s chowder, rich with pungent clam broth and sweet silky milk, with soft chunks of bland potatoes and sharp bits of onions, rich with the springy, nutty clams and crisp slivers of fried salt pork. She recognized the Voice, which she had never heard before. Her heart beat with painful slowness.