“Willa!” Her mother’s voice, calling, brought her back to now. “Can you help?”
Her mother stood in the doorway.
“We need to make some casseroles. Some dinners.” Her voice came from somewhere far away. “This, I think, will be the week.”
Willa looked up. The week?
Her mother smiled at her, and Willa realized that her mother meant the baby. The week the baby would be born.
“Are you feeling all right?”
Her mother nodded.
“Just needing to sew up loose ends,” she said.
Me too, thought Willa. If anyone could use sewn-up loose ends it is me. We are all, let us hope, unclaimed treasures. Willa stared at her mother as they worked in the kitchen. Her mother an unclaimed treasure? Nicholas walked into the room then. Nicholas an unclaimed treasure?
“You had better pick all the ripe tomatoes, too,” her mother instructed Nicholas.
“Mother,” he said, “it is not a hurricane coming. It is only a baby.”
“Is that so,” said his mother, smiling faintly. “The expert, eh?”
There was, for the next few days, an air of waiting. Waiting for something about to happen. The baby. The show. The painting unveiled.
And there was more that would happen, too. Things unexpected that have a way of appearing and changing all that comes after. As is the way of things ordinary. Things extraordinary. Both.
There was great excitement in the hopscotch kitchen.
“There will be wine and cheese and punch and cookies and cakes at the show,” said Aunt Lulu. “And music,” she added.
Old Pepper sat at the table fluting seven pie crusts with a fork.
“Relax everything will be fine,” he croaked.
“I, for one, cannot relax,” twittered Aunt Crystal, stirring a pot on the stove. “I feel faint already. I may be falling into a decline.”
“No problem if you do I can take care of that,” said Old Pepper, eyeing Bella-Marie, who was perched on top of the kitchen cabinet watching for cats. “Bella fell into a decline once quite a bad one after being stuck up a chimney. She fainted dead away. I revived her nicely. Mouth-to-beak resuscitation.”
Willa and Nicholas and Horace burst into laughter, though neither of the Treasures even smiled.
“That’s unnatural,” said Aunt Crystal, who now looked as if a decline was upon her.
“And unsanitary,” added Aunt Lulu matter-of-factly, causing the three to shriek.
“What is funny?”
Matthew stood in the kitchen doorway. It was the first time Willa had seen him since their last morning in the attic. He reached out his hand to touch the top of Willa’s head.
“What’s funny?” he repeated, and to Willa’s relief they began to laugh all over again as Old Pepper told his mouth-to-beak story. A bad moment passed. A step ahead, thought Willa, sighing. A page turned. For a moment, she longed for Ted and Wanda, safe in their “witless love.” Willa smiled at her father’s words. And then she took a breath.
“Tomorrow,” she said, sounding wiser than she felt, “is the day when everything comes together.”
Later, they would all remember those words.
Willa found Horace in the apple shed. It was dark and cool and damp inside, a haven from the afternoon heat. Willa could hear the sounds of the Treasures’ last-minute practicing outside.
Horace sat, leaning against the dark barn boards, reading, his hand curled around an apple in the basket beside him. Willa smiled. He looked up and blinked. He smiled.
“Nicholas said you were looking for me,” said Willa, sitting down beside him.
He handed her an apple.
“I have been waiting to see you alone,” said Horace steadily. “I wanted to tell you a story. Two nights ago, this story starts, once upon a time. It concerns an attic room with a painting of someone whose name begins with W. And a man, the painter, who suddenly sees a note that he can hardly believe . . .”
“That’s enough, Horace,” said Willa, sighing. She stared at the apple in her hand, turning it over and over.
“And the man runs down the stairs,” Horace went on, “and into his room and makes a phone call and talks for two hours.” He turned to look at Willa. “Two hours, can you believe it?”
“Is that the end of the story?” asked Willa.
Horace nodded beside her.
“Maybe.”
“How did you know?” Willa’s voice was soft.
“It is like something Old Pepper once said,” said Horace. “‘You may not see the horse in the barn,’ he told me once. ‘But you can tell he’s been there.’”
Willa felt herself smile.
“My father never noticed,” said Horace very softly, his breath on Willa’s ear. “But I know the horse’s printing.”
Willa turned to look at him. And Horace kissed her. Straightforward and honest and calm, thought Willa, her lips smiling under Horace’s, her eyes watching his. Then Horace leaned back. There was a silence in the cool apple shed.
Horace shrugged.
“Shall we kiss again?” he asked finally.
“Yes,” said Willa. And they did, Willa closing her eyes at last. It was, Willa thought, lots better than a mahogany bedpost. A warm pair of human lips, she must remember to tell Nicholas. Extraordinary.
14
The day was clear, with a slight breeze. The four of them sat on the curbstone, watching the men move Matthew’s paintings from the attic to the truck to the museum.
“Will there be Popsicles there?” asked Porky, who had been invited.
Horace shook his head.
“Bring some with you,” he suggested. “I’m bringing apples.”
Nicholas and Willa smiled for different reasons: Nicholas, because he loved the way Horace ate apples; Willa, because she loved Horace.
They got up, walking slowly up the walk, past the movers, who cursed under their breath at the awkward canvases.
“Careful!” called Matthew from the front porch, his hair mussed.
Inside the kitchen the Unclaimed Treasures were bustling and twittering. “Blathering,” Horace called it, whispering in Willa’s ear.
“Take the music stands,” commanded Aunt Lulu. “And the music.”
“And then the instruments,” added Aunt Crystal, taking a last-minute cake out of the oven.
The cats, caught up in the excitement, chased each other violently, streaking across tables and whipping around corners. Blue, eyes wild, mouth agape, clung to the kitchen curtains, looking down on them all.
Bella-Marie had taken to the top of the apple tree outside, shrieking “Holiday!”
Willa found Old Pepper sitting on the back steps, taking his pulse.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, alarmed.
“Making sure I’m alive that’s all don’t worry I do it all the time,” Old Pepper reassurred her.
“How do I love thee . . .” sang Bella-Marie from the treetop.
Willa saw her mother in the garden, lovingly tending her melons.
A window went up in Willa’s house.
“Where are my paper clips?” yelled Willa’s father.
“Probably in the left-hand drawer,” Willa called back, suddenly remembering the dozens that lived in the vacuum cleaner bag. “Under your typewriter paper.”
The window slammed shut again, but not before Willa heard the cries of her father as papers were caught by the breeze.
“Don’t take the painting on the easel,” Willa could hear Matthew calling up the stairs. “I’ll take that one myself.”
Willa looked up at Horace standing above her.
“Will she be there?” she asked.
Horace smiled faintly and shrugged his shoulders.
“If she is, it is your doing,” he said.
Willa heard the side doors of the van bang shut, the motor start. Matthew came out, balancing three pies, the flute case under his arm.
“Grab the viola, Horace.” His eyes looked wild,
like the cats’. “The Treasures will help hang the paintings. You all are in charge here. The last painting is still upstairs.”
Aunt Lulu and Aunt Crystal came out then, handing packages and tins of cookies and pies to everyone.
“Good-bye, Wanda, good-bye, Ted,” called Bella-Marie, making them all laugh.
And soon the car was packed, the doors shut on the Unclaimed Treasures.
“Peace at last,” murmured Nicholas, collapsing under the apple tree.
But Nicholas was wrong. The worst of it happened soon. Soon, amid all the peace that Nicholas had proclaimed.
“Fire!”
Willa heard it from the kitchen, where she was mixing a casserole. She ran outside, her hands still greasy.
A small wisp only. Fire.
Horace ran out from his kitchen, Willa’s father rushing past him into Horace’s house.
Horace’s face was pale.
“The attic,” he said hoarsely. “Smoke is coming from under the door. It’s so hot,” he said, staring up at Willa’s mother, whose arm was around him.
Willa’s father came running out the kitchen door again.
“Call the fire department,” he shouted. “I’m not sure we should open the door. The fire could spread.”
And then, as if they had all been struck by the thought at the same time, they looked at each other.
The painting.
Horace said it first, his face shocked at the thought.
“The tree,” said Nicholas with a slight smile. How could he smile? But the words came to him as if they were his lines in a play. Spoken at exactly the right time.
And before anyone could stop him, he ran to the apple tree, swinging easily up into and through the impossible branches. The dangerous branches. The ones forbidden.
“Nicholas, stop!” Willa’s father called to him. They could hear, so soon, the sirens far off in the distance.
Nicholas was on the roof, moving to the windows, peering in. Suddenly he pulled his shirt over his head, wrapping it around his hand.
“Let the cats out, Horace” came a calm voice beside Willa. And it was Old Pepper, his arm around her mother. Willa saw the brown, wrinkled hand pat her mother’s arm.
Horace opened the kitchen door, calling the cats. And Nicholas broke a pane of glass, reaching in to unlock the window. The fire engines came up the street and Nicholas disappeared inside while Willa held her breath. The first truck turned in the driveway, the sounds of the siren deafening. The cats were wild around her ankles. And then Nicholas was out on the roof carrying the painting, slipping slightly down the shingles to the roof edge.
“I’ll have to throw it down,” he called, his chest sweat marked and gleaming. And Willa saw her father run to the house as the painting, so large in the air, sailed out and over the grass to her father’s feet. And then Nicholas fell, crashing noisily through the branches of the apple tree.
“Nicholas!” Willa’s mother screamed.
Nicholas fell slowly, so slowly it seemed, and he landed on the ground beneath the tree.
“Watch your mother,” said Old Pepper, his voice steady. He handed Willa her mother’s hand as if giving away the bride. I take thee . . .
And then they were all looking down at Nicholas, who lifted his head a bit.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Except,” he added sadly, almost regretfully, apologetically, “I seem to have broken my leg.” And Nicholas fainted, as gracefully as Willa had always practiced in the privacy of her room, lying back softly in the grass, closing his eyes.
15
The hospital corridor where they waited was clean and white and quiet, the silence so horrible that Willa wanted to scream. The nurses and doctors moved like white shadows up and down the hallway, in and out of doors, never looking at Willa and Horace and Old Pepper. Willa felt sick. She wondered if she threw up whether the nurses would step over it or in it or through it unnoticing. They had, she knew, not seen Bella-Marie yet, leashed to the table leg, peacefully chewing a Newsweek magazine. It was a year old, Old Pepper had informed them.
Horace held Willa’s hand and she sat close to him, the apple in his side pocket jammed against her hip. Willa wanted her mother and father, but they were upstairs on the maternity floor.
“Of all times,” muttered Willa fiercely.
“It was the excitement that always happens,” said Old Pepper, close to her on the other side, reading her thoughts. “She did not pick the time, you know.”
Willa sighed and nodded, leaning her head back on the plastic chair. Her mother and father and Nicholas had all gone in the ambulance. Leaving her there. With Horace, who had held her hand as though she might run away. And Old Pepper, who insisted that he could drive.
“It’s my father’s car,” said Willa weakly. “Are you sure?”
“Of course nothing to it,” said Old Pepper. “Except for a key I think is necessary.”
Willa had found the key beside the back door and, out of old habit, began a note, “Dear Mother, dear Dad,” to let them know where she was going. And she had stopped, nearly bursting into tears then. They were, after all, where she was going.
“A key,” said Old Pepper. “Very good a key.” Then, with Willa between Old Pepper and Horace, Bella-Marie in the back, they had bumped and lurched and lunged out the driveway and over the curb into the street.
“Steering’s fine,” grumped Old Pepper, “but what are these little pedals down here on the floor?”
They were, explained Horace calmly, a brake and clutch. And without words he had changed places with Willa. They drove all the way to the hospital this way, Horace working the brakes and clutch, legs all tangled, Old Pepper happily steering and making wild hand signals out the window.
“There’s a directional lever there,” said Horace pointing. But Old Pepper had shaken his head, preferring an arm out the window.
“Right! Turn right!” yelled Horace as Willa covered her eyes.
“Right!” shrieked Bella-Marie, flapping in the backseat.
And miraculously they turned into the hospital parking lot. Old Pepper scraped along a large black car in a space marked DOCTORS ONLY, then veered off until they came to rest against the wall of the hospital. Only a slight bump.
And now, Willa wished she were back in the car again, with the yelling, cars passing, people on the streets staring at them. It was too quiet here. And nothing was happening. And everything was happening.
Suddenly, Bella-Marie stood up straight, shrieking.
A nurse stopped, horrified.
“Birds of any kind are not allowed in the hospital,” she said sternly.
“She is a patient,” said Old Pepper just as sternly. “And I am Dr. Pepper.” The nurse had stared at him for a moment, then left.
It was, finally, when Old Pepper began taking his pulse again that Willa burst into tears.
“Stop!” she cried. “Not you, too.”
And Old Pepper, bony and brown and wrinkled, took Willa into his arms as Horace held fast to her hand. And Bella-Marie, slipping her leash, wandered into the hall to pronounce each doctor to be Ted and each nurse Wanda. And the other way around.
Nicholas was pale and still. His lashes were dark against his cheeks.
“He is all right now,” said the nurse, ushering them into his room, “though we had some trouble with his breathing.” She eyed Bella-Marie, who eyed back.
“Nicholas,” whispered Willa.
“The fire,” said Nicholas, opening his eyes.
“Out,” said Horace, relieved to see that Nicholas was alive. He sat on the far side of the bed and took out his last apple.
“Everything is fine everything,” said Old Pepper.
“Mother?”
“Upstairs,” whispered Willa, taking Nicholas’s hand. “The baby’s not here yet.”
“Was she,” began Nicholas, closing his eyes again, “in the ambulance? I didn’t know. I couldn’t tell.”
“Yes,” said Willa. “You went together
.”
Nicholas smiled. “I wondered. We held hands.” His eyes flew open. “Not to make you jealous,” he added, making Willa smile, because she had been jealous. Fiercely.
“Come back and tell me,” said Nicholas.
“I will.”
“I will,” said Bella-Marie, sitting solemly on the foot of the bed.
“You’ll see her first,” he murmured just as the nurse came in.
“What? Who first?” asked Willa, leaning close.
“It’s time to go, all of you, please. You too, Dr. Pepper.”
As they left they could hear Nicholas begin to laugh. “Dr. Pepper,” he said, laughing. “Dr. Pepper.” And it was only then that Willa realized that he had meant she would see the baby first. Her sister. Their sister.
“And then what?” asked Willa’s mother, lying back on the white sheets.
“And then Father skidded down the hall and yelled, ‘It’s a girl!’ and we all got excited and then very bored because we knew it would be a girl. We’d forgotten.”
Her mother laughed. Her hair was caught back in one of Willa’s ribbons. She looked as young as Willa, which made Willa frown a lot.
“And they said we could see the baby but not you right away because you were tired,” said Willa. “And everyone looked through the window at her. All except me because I didn’t want to see her before Nicholas.” She looked over at Nicholas, who sat in a wheelchair, his great white leg up in front of him. “They said she looked red and wrinkled like a hot prune. And then we had to go because parrots made the nurse very nervous.”
“And then,” said Willa’s mother, turning to look at Willa, “what about the show? Matthew’s.”
Willa sighed.
“There were lots of people there who walked around trying to look smart and talk about paintings and colors and line and form.”
“That’s good,” said Nicholas. “Talking of color and line and form.”
“And then,” Willa went on, “the Unclaimed Treasures played. But not just the two of them. There was another one. Another Unclaimed Treasure. Horace’s mother, playing the violin.”
“Three in a trio,” said Nicholas, “after all.”