The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt

  They walked past a tall brick building with white pillars.

  “This is where I go to school,” said Lucas. “The Academy.” He lowered his voice and intoned solemnly, “The Academy.” Minna laughed.

  They passed a fire station with two great yellow trucks inside, a chair set by the door, waiting for a fireman to sit there in the spring sunlight.

  “Will you go to music camp again this summer?” asked Minna.

  “Yes,” said Lucas thoughtfully. “Or no. My parents want me to.”

  Minna smiled.

  “So you are the no. Right?”

  “Yes and no,” said Lucas. He stopped. “Here we are.”

  Minna stands very still, staring. She does not even hear the street traffic, the conversation of the passersby. The house where Lucas lives is tall and brick, like the school, with a courtyard and trees in front. There are white shutters on the windows and window boxes. On the door hangs a shining door knocker, shaped like a dragon.

  “Home,” says Lucas with a shrug.

  Speechless, Minna follows Lucas up the walk. She knows the house will be clean. It is. The entry room, nearly as large as the conservatory rehearsal room, is tiled and so shiny that Minna thinks it is wet. A winding stairway goes up and up, large paintings of grim well-dressed people lining the walls. There are many rooms with high ceilings, with groups of furniture here and there. In the living room there is a great fireplace. No one fills the gleaming space. It is like a wonderful barn Minna had once seen, empty of cows.

  “Home,” repeated Lucas, falling into a chair.

  “Quiet,” said Minna, looking around. “And big enough,” she added, “for us to play kick the can.”

  Lucas burst out laughing. Then he peered at Minna. “If you died,” he said, suddenly serious, his voice loud, “what would you want to come back to life as?”

  Minna frowned. Was this a test? It sounded like a question her mother would ask, and she did not want her mother intruding in this peaceful place. But it was Lucas who had asked the question. She could tell him that she hadn’t thought about it, but that would be a lie. She had thought about it often: She was just too embarrassed to tell Lucas that what she wanted to be in her next life was a ferret. She had seen a ferret once on the street, a tiny red collar around its neck, being led on a leash. It was gray-brown with sharp wise eyes and tiny feet, and it was friendly. It was also content. It didn’t need a vibrato.

  Lucas leaned forward, waiting.

  “McGrew . . .” began Minna slowly, “McGrew wants to be a flying squirrel. Or a slug. Slugs drink through their skin, you know.”

  Lucas smiled broadly. “Does Imelda know that fact?”

  Minna smiled back at him. There was a silence. Minna stared at her feet, then at the border patterns that twisted and turned on the oriental rug.

  “Come on,” said Lucas finally with a sigh. He stood up and pulled Minna to her feet. “I’ll show you what I want to be.”

  Minna followed Lucas up the winding stairway, twenty-two steps to the second-floor landing. Lucas started up a second flight, but Minna stopped, staring at a room with glass and plants and white wicker furniture. It was filled with light.

  “That’s my mother’s solarium,” said Lucas from above. “It’s where she spends a lot of time, thinking up dinner conversation topics. Come up!”

  Minna turned and walked up twenty-two steps to the third floor. Lucas opened a door and beckoned to her.

  It was Lucas’s room, Minna could tell. There were boxes and books, a music stand in the corner, a stack of music on a shelf. A small violin leaned in the far corner, left over from a time when Lucas was little. A bit of Lucas’s history, his past. And then Minna saw the glass tanks, at least a half dozen of them lined up along one wall, all filled with frogs. There were small frogs, large frogs, some jumping in the water, some sitting on rocks and mossy places. One tank was filled with water and tadpoles.

  “A frog,” said Minna, smiling. “You want to come back as a frog.” She thought of the first time she had seen Lucas, the frog he had saved from biology lab hidden in his pocket.

  Lucas nodded.

  “See,” he said softly. “You didn’t laugh.”

  “No,” said Minna.

  “You know what I’d really like to be someday?” Lucas went on before Minna could speak. “A biologist, or a naturalist.”

  “Not a musician?” asked Minna, surprised. “Not a violist?”

  “No.” He turned his head to look at her. “I’ve never told anyone this before. Never ever. My parents don’t even know about the frogs.”

  “Why not?” whispered Minna.

  Lucas shrugged his shoulders. “They never come up here. They say that children need room and space to grow in. Room and space of their own.”

  “Well,” said Minna, “there is space for all of us to grow here.”

  She walked to the windows. Lucas’s world here. His all alone. My parents spill out and tumble all over my house. She turned.

  “But you play so well.”

  “So do you,” said Lucas. “Do you want to be a professional musician?”

  Minna was silent. For a moment she thought mean thoughts. Traitorous thoughts. What a waste of a vibrato. Or was it? Her father had once told Minna that nothing was a waste. She doubted it. She looked out the window over the buildings across the street, to the park and the pond where they had walked to free Lucas’s frog. She could see the peaked roof of the conservatory in the distance, the familiar gargoyles lurking underneath the eaves. It was like living above the world here, looking down at everything in its proper place; the “eternal fitness of things,” her father called it. For the first time in Minna’s life she knew what he meant.

  She took a deep breath.

  “Lucas?”

  “What?”

  “I want to be a ferret.”

  She turned around just in time to see his smile.

  There was a silence, the only sounds in the room the splashes of frogs in the water, a steady hum of the fish tank. At last Lucas took her hand.

  “Come on,” he said.

  Lucas pulled her out the door, down the forty-four steps not counting the landings, past the solarium, through the entry way, and through double-swinging doors with brass edges into the kitchen. The room was huge and clean and white. A girl stood at the sink washing lettuce. She was dressed all in white with white stockings and shoes, like a nurse.

  “Twig,” said Lucas, breathless, still holding Minna’s hand. “This is Minna.”

  The girl looked at Minna. She turned off the water and shook the lettuce in the sink.

  “You can tell Twig,” said Lucas.

  Minna, confused, looked at Lucas.

  “You mean about being a ferret?” she asked.

  “Ah,” said Twig thoughtfully, “a good choice, ferret. I myself devoutly wish to be a penguin.”

  A penguin, a ferret, a frog. Minna was seized by verse.

  A penguin, a ferret, a frog, tra-la,

  Sing sweet happy songs in a bog, tra-la.

  Minna stared at Twig, who looked less like a penguin than anyone Minna had ever seen. She was tall and thin with pale straight hair and large eyes. She looked more like a fish on its feet than a penguin.

  “Twig is our housekeeper,” said Lucas.

  “A housekeeper? I’ve never known a housekeeper,” said Minna.

  Twig moved silently about the kitchen from refrigerator to countertop to sink.

  “And now you do,” she said in a soft voice.

  “Your new soft-soled shoes really work,” said Lucas admiringly.

  Twig nodded.

  “Quiet, you know. To sneak up on thieves and killers and kids,” she confided to Minna. She waved her hand. “And other lowlifes as well. You never know who or what will hover about.” Twig pronounced the word “hoover.” Minna smiled.

  “Twig could sneak up on a cockroach,” said Lucas.

  “Twig has,” said Twig ominously, disappearing into t
he dark cave of a dining room with some dishes. “But,” she stuck her head back in the kitchen, “don’t tell your Mum and Dad.”

  Lucas gave Minna a level look.

  “And that is Twig,” he said.

  And that is Twig. Minna walked to the dining room door and opened it with one finger, peering in. Just what I need. Another wish. I wish I had a vibrato. Minna sighed. Now I wish I had a Twig.

  Lucas’s parents arrive late and are very polite. They are short with high foreheads, and though they do not look like Lucas, they look very much like each other. They speak, thinks Minna, in the manner of kings and queens.

  “Am I to presume you are Melinda Pratt?” asks Mr. Ellerby, shaking her hand.

  “Yes,” says Minna.

  “Delightful,” pronounces Mrs. Ellerby. “And you are a cellist?”

  Minna smiles. She likes that. She has never before thought of herself as a “cellist”; until this moment she has only played the cello.

  “We are honored to have you here,” says Mr. Ellerby. “You must plan to come again.”

  Minna loves their talk; she is hypnotized by it.

  Dinner is chicken by candlelight and good china with no chips. Over dinner the Ellerbys’ conversation changes; it becomes soft and legato, like music; like a small quiet stream with no rocks. Little punctuation, no outbursts.

  The street will be repaved soon, dear, says Mrs. Ellerby.

  Is that so? says Mr. Ellerby.

  The price of eggs, I hear, is up, says Mrs. Ellerby.

  Oil, too, says Mr. Ellerby.

  Twig drifts in and out of the room on her soft-soled shoes, creeping up on conversation, sneaking in on thoughts. Minna cannot stop looking at her.

  You will be fine musicians someday, Melinda and Lucas, pronounces Mrs. Ellerby.

  Lucas’s foot touches Minna’s under the table.

  That is so, says Mr. Ellerby, without looking up from his braised chicken.

  Lucas grins across the table at Minna, and Minna smiles into her plate.

  Maybe, maybe no, thinks Minna. You are quiet and polite and clean people, Mrs. Ellerby, Mr. Ellerby. You know lots about the price of eggs and oil. Your conversation is splendid and organized. But there is something you don’t know. I know it, though. Lucas knows it.

  Minna looks up as Twig slips her plate away, one entire congealed serving of cold creamed onions still there, hidden by a lettuce leaf. She winks at Minna.

  Twig knows it too, Mr. and Mrs. Ellerby. Maybe we’ll be fine musicians one day. But there is more.

  I will be a ferret. Your son will be a frog.

  And that is so. Tra-la.

  SIX

  For the first time in Minna’s life she is on time for something. It is not a mistake. Minna has planned it, an early cello lesson before chamber group. She has wakened at dawn, even though it is a Saturday, in order to begin plans for the rest of her life on a sheet of notepaper. Minna’s early life has been strung out in ordered sentences on paper, like an outline for her life.

  MINNA, AGE 7:

  Ware plad skirt to school.

  Punch Richard.

  MINNA, AGE 8:

  Do not forgit spelling list.

  MINNA, AGE 10:

  Plan to be a movie star.

  Learn to faint.

  MINNA, AGE 11:

  Living by the sea is preferable.

  Minna stopped planning her life all of a sudden. Now it is time to plan again. Minna sits on her bed with a blank sheet of paper. Thoughts of Lucas’s peaceful clean house fill her mind: quiet dinners, soft lights, polite and kind parents, murmurs. And Twig, like an orchestra conductor, leading them all calmly through a symphony dinner, from beginning to end without mistakes, without interruption, without clutter. “Is there anything you wish?” Lucas’s mother asks her. “Anything at all?” After dinner, each person goes to his place: Mr. Ellerby in his study, Mrs. Ellerby in her solarium, Lucas in his third-floor room by the attic door. Boundaries, thinks Minna. There are boundaries there. Minna sighs and leans back on her pillows to dream a dream without sleeping. She is the only musician in an orchestra. It is a solo symphony, but there are many conductors: Twig in soft-soled shoes, her mother directing with an eraser cartridge, her father smiling and waving his glasses, Porch frowning. “Play,” they whisper to her, “play.” When her daydream ends it is too late to plan her life. She hears her mother crashing about the typewriter. The blank sheet of paper remains empty.

  Minna rode the bus alone, leaving Emily Parmalee and McGrew at home surrounded by books and papers as they worked on their science reports. Emily was writing on the decline of maple trees. Emily had always been interested in trees. McGrew’s report was titled “The How and Why of the Beaver.”

  The streets were grimy with spring. Willie played Tchaikovsky on the corner, music that made Minna feel sad and peaceful at the same time. Next to the violin case the small brown dog slept, curled like a sausage on Willie’s jacket. A woman in a fur coat with worn elbows stood in front of Minna, a baby peering over her shoulder, his head bobbing as he stared at Minna. The baby grinned suddenly and drooled down his mother’s back, leaving a wet trail of fur where his mother couldn’t see. A slimy secret between Minna and the baby. Minna touched his hand and moved off through the crowd, standing on the steps for a moment, watching Willie. She sighed and looked up at the gargoyles. Willie on the street comer has a vibrato. Where is mine?

  Inside it was dark and quiet and cool. Porch beckoned Minna in and unzipped her cello case. Minna slumped in a chair.

  “Min?” asked Porch. He sat down next to her. “Problems?”

  “It’s my vibrato,” said Minna, looking at him.

  “What about it?”

  “Where is it?” Minna’s voice was loud in the empty room. “I mean,” she leaned forward, “Lucas has a vibrato. Even Willie has one. Where is mine?”

  Porch frowned at Minna.

  “William Gray?” he said sharply. “What do you mean ‘even’ Willie? What do you know about Willie?”

  Minna’s face reddened. She had not even known Willie’s full name.

  “Nothing, except that he’s always there, playing on the street corner. He always gives me my money back,” she added softly.

  Porch’s face softened.

  “He does, does he? A gift. Willie is a fine musician, Minna. And he was a fine musician before he got his vibrato. Did you know he plays in the symphony chamber group?”

  “But why does he play on the street?” asked Minna, surprised.

  “For his own reasons, Minna,” said Porch. “You might ask him that yourself.”

  “We never talk about anything but music,” said Minna.

  “Well,” said Porch, sitting down and leaning back in his chair, “life and music are not separate, you know.”

  There was a silence.

  “Min,” said Porch, “your vibrato is not something that is there, I mean that exists, like fingernails, or hair about to grow longer. It is something you can work at, yes, and think about, yes, but it is much more like . . .” Porch folded his arms, “like understanding something for the first time, or suddenly knowing what a book you’re reading is all about.” He peered at Minna. “It is like a light going on over your head. Do you know what I mean?”

  “No,” said Minna, staring at Porch. She was thinking about her past life; the moments along the way when she needed something to make things right. When she was seven it had been a plaid skirt, at ten it had been a bicycle. Then it had been her first full-size cello. Now it was a vibrato. Would it end there?

  “You will understand,” said Porch. “You will.” He tapped her knee. “Ready for Mozart?”

  Minna sat up, gripping her cello by its neck. She stared at the music, thinking about Willie and her mother and father. Did she know them at all, even the slightest little bit?

  “I’ll never be ready for Mozart,” said Minna.

  “Ah,” said Porch, “but Mozart is ready for you, Minna Pratt. Come on, let??
?s do K. 158. Your favorite key.”

  Minna couldn’t help smiling. Porch was right, it was her favorite key. Sometimes, most of the time, Porch knew Minna as well as anyone else did. Except for McGrew; McGrew who knew, for instance, that in spite of Minna’s grumbling, in spite of her complaints, Minna played the cello because she wanted to.

  Porch picked up his violin.

  “Let’s play the repeats,” said Porch. He turned to look at Minna. “And we will play it wonderfully. In tune. With or without a vibrato.”

  And they did.

  “Hey!”

  Porch and Minna looked up, startled. Imelda stood in the doorway. She pointed to Minna.

  “She’s here. Am I late?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” said Porch. “Just come in and tune.”

  Orson skidded in behind Imelda, Lucas behind him. Minna could tell that Lucas had frogs in his pockets, just by the way he took off his jacket. He held up two fingers. Two fingers, two frogs. He smiled slyly at her.

  “The whole caboodle,” commented Orson. “That means the whole pack of us,” he told Minna. He unlocked his case and took out his violin, running his fingers up and down the strings to make wailing sounds.

  “Do you know,” said Imelda, “that Mozart once fainted because of a horrible noise? It’s a fact.”

  Porch sighed.

  “I can believe it,” he said. “Let’s get to it. Music, that is.” He raised his bow. “The whole caboodle.”

  After scales they begin the Mozart, the dreaded one that Minna does and does not love. The allegro goes well, but the andante looms and Minna frowns as she waits. She has eleven measures of rests, the longest time in the world, the mournful, wonderful eleven measures as the violins and viola wind about each other. She lifts her bow and slips in, pianissimo, fine for a while until she comes to the sixteenth notes that are hers. Hers all alone. She can hear that her fingers are not stretching, not reaching. Porch nods at her encouragingly. “Repeat now,” he says, and she bites her lip and repeats, trying to force her fingers to obey. Better. The repeat is better. Nearly in tune. Is there such a thing as nearly in tune? At last there is the coda, peaceful and solid. And then, with sudden wildness they fall into the presto, Orson bowing so vigorously that the bow shoots from his hand, retrieved by Lucas, handed back with laughter. Imelda sits primly and makes soft mistakes. Lucas plays calmly, eyeing his jacket on the floor. It moves a bit, two frogs in the pocket. Minna plays in tune. No vibrato. She looks up quickly. No light over her head.