The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt

  “I did that well, don’t you think?” he asked her, smiling.

  Minna nodded.

  “Could we, do you think,” she began slowly. She paused.

  “Clean up the house?” her father finished for her.

  “Could we?” asked Minna eagerly. “Could you?” she added because she was off, it suddenly occurred to her, to play Mozart, whom she could never play as right, as perfectly, as her father’s recordings. “We’re having Lucas for dinner tonight, Papa.”

  Her father got up and came over to her. He put his arm around her.

  “I hope,” he said.

  Minna knew what he was about to say.

  “That he is . . .” her father went on.

  “Plump and tender,” whispered Minna before her father could finish.

  Her father smiles at her. Minna does not smile back. She is weary of his smiles. She suddenly wishes that she had a letter in her pocket to mail to her father, return address and name unknown. Then, at the door, she decides on something better. She turns.

  “You should, you know,” she says in a high clear voice, “teach your son McGrew how to catch a fly ball.”

  Surprised, her father looks up. Before he can speak she is gone.

  Minna carries her cello outside, where Emily Parmalee is hitting fungoes to McGrew in the side yard. She watches McGrew miss every ball that comes to him. Unexpected tears sting her eyes.

  Emily has startling rhinestone earrings on today, shaped like chandeliers.

  “They belonged to my great aunt Lila,” she calls to Minna, who admires them from the steps. “She died in the bathtub with them on.”

  Minna believes that. They are huge and long, swaying heavily as Emily swings the baseball bat. They probably pulled Aunt Lila to the bottom of the tub, under the water.

  The bus pulls up to the curb, the doors opening for her. Minna leans her cello on the seat next to her and practices her vibrato on her knee. She can do it on her knee and on the dining room table and on her night stand. After what she has just done—mailing a letter to her mother, telling her father what she has always wished to tell him—perhaps she will suddenly and magically be able to do it on her cello. Minna sighs. Right now the only place she can’t do her vibrato is on her cello. She feels like a surgeon who can only carve turkeys, or a prima ballerina who only dances in her dreams.

  Willie and Dog were playing Schubert. Rather, Willie was playing and Dog was looking smug and patient as he waited for Mozart. When Willie finished he nodded, and the listeners applauded and tossed coins. One man had brought Dog a biscuit.

  “Nice,” said Minna. She handed Willie thirteen cents from her pocket.

  He dropped it back into her hand.

  “We thank you, Dog and I,” he said solemnly. “Any luck yet?” he asked. She knew what he meant.

  “Nope. No light over my head.”

  “Don’t work so hard,” said Willie, wiping rosin from his violin. “Think about the music, not just the notes. It will creep up on you, like moonlight.”

  The music, not the notes. Weren’t they the same? Minna frowned. Everyone she knew spoke words she did not understand. Moonlight? No moonlight here, thought Minna.

  “Good-bye, Willie.” She leaned down to touch Dog. “Good-bye, Dog,” she whispered.

  Willie tuned and began to play again. Minna pushed the great door open and trudged up the stairs after a quick glance at the elevator. Old habits, the stairs. Wasn’t there a saying about that? About old dogs and old habits? Or was it old dogs and new tricks? Minna felt like an old dog. Sadly she climbed the stairs, for the first time forgetting to look up at the gray gargoyles. She remembered halfway up the stairs, hesitated, then, leaving her cello stranded on the landing, dashed down and out to look at them for luck.

  Upstairs Porch was cross, out of sorts in a great oppressive, sighing kind of way.

  “Porch’s in a bilious mood,” whispered Orson, barely moving his lips as he spoke. “Irritable.”

  “You’re on time,” said Imelda in a soft voice. “It is said that punctuality reflects an orderly mind.”

  Hush, said Minna in her head as she smiled at Lucas.

  “Now,” said Porch, “in all honesty have you practiced?”

  “In all honesty I have practiced,” said Lucas, smiling broadly.

  “In all honesty I have practiced,” said Imelda smugly.

  “In all honesty I have practiced,” said Minna, grinning at Porch.

  “In all honesty I have practiced and it has made little difference,” said Orson, making them laugh.

  “Three weeks,” announced Porch, sitting down. “Let’s have an A, then a G-major scale. Then we’ll begin with K. 156. You know it well.” He peered over his glasses. “Therefore you can play it bee-uu-tee-fullee.”

  There are times, more often lately, that Minna feels she knows Mozart better than she knows herself. Mozart is everywhere, like the wind. She catches one of his phrases in her teacher’s voice, in the rhythms of the jump rope rhymes when the neighborhood children play. One morning, early, the garbage men outside bang their way into the Hunt Quartet, causing Minna to sit straight up in bed, wide awake.

  She slips into the presto of K. 156 as easily as sliding into her shoes without looking. The adagio in its slow sweet walk into the minuetto is as close and familiar to her as her skin.

  “Now that is good!” says Porch dramatically when they are finished.

  “Then why can’t we play this for the competition?” asks Imelda.

  “Because you know it so well that you don’t work at it,” says Porch promptly. “You play it with a yawn. That was catsup. Now let’s see blood. K. 157, everyone. Second position in the andante, Minna. Blood, remember!”

  Minna places her bow on the strings.

  Dear Mrs. Pratt, she composes in her head. Help. My life is full of parents and sharps and flats and high third fingers. And other messes, too, she adds. Like blood.

  ELEVEN

  The elevator, to everyone’s surprise, was not working. A small sign taped to the door read “Out of Odor.” Orson unearthed a pen and squeezed in an r, satisfied. “Out of Ordor.” Imelda surprised them all. “There is often,” she said, “no room for perfection in an imperfect world.”

  They trooped down the flights of stone stairs out into the light, where Willie was playing a piece that Minna didn’t recognize. She poked Lucas.

  “Bach,” he said.

  They sat on the steps to wait for Twig to pick them up and drive them to Minna’s house for dinner. Minna leaned back against the building and watched Willie. He had a smile on his face and he played without looking at the strings. Minna knew he was not even aware of the crowd listening, or of Dog leaning up against his legs. It was peaceful and the music seemed to close them all in, capturing them. Minna thought of Mr. and Mrs. Ellerby and their conversation at dinner, soft and serene, like Debussy. Willie’s fingers vibrated on the violin strings. Dog closed his eyes.

  Suddenly Twig arrives with a screech of brakes. She is driving a long black car and she runs up on the curb, knocking over a wire trash basket. The crowd turns around. Willie stops playing. Willie never stops playing in noise and confusion. Minna remembers a car catching on fire once, Willie playing through the sirens of the fire truck.

  Twig appears from the depths of the car.

  “Are you all right?” calls Willie.

  “Certainly,” says Twig. She frowns. “Though I think I have torn a fender.”

  “This is Twig,” says Lucas, introducing them. “Twig lives at my house.”

  “I am the Ellerbys’ housekeeper,” says Twig.

  “And . . . ?” says Willie.

  Twig cocks her head to one side.

  “Surely there’s more,” says Willie. He grins at her suddenly. “I’m William Gray.” He extends his hand. “Willie.”

  Twig smiles.

  “Yes,” she says, taking his hand. “There is more. I’m housekeeping to earn money to finish school. My family live
s in Vermont, and I’m thinking about art school.”

  Lucas looks at Minna.

  “I never knew that,” he says softly.

  Minna nods.

  After a moment Willie drops Twig’s hand to pull Dog from the trash basket, where he has found half a cupcake. Twig turns to Lucas.

  “Why don’t you put the instruments in the car. Yourselves in the front. I’ll be there in a moment.”

  She turns back to Willie.

  “My family has a farm; they raise sheep for wool, you know.”

  “I didn’t know she came from Vermont,” grumbles Lucas as they put the cello on the floor of the car, the viola on the seat.

  “I didn’t know about the sheep, either,” he mutters as they climb into the front seat and watch through the window. “Or art school!”

  “My mother would have known,” Minna says suddenly. She turns to look at Lucas. “She asks questions. My mother does.”

  Lucas sighs.

  “Mine doesn’t,” he says so sadly that Minna reaches over to take his hand.

  Outside Twig leans against the hood of the car. Willie smiles and brushes hair off his forehead. Dog watches them.

  “I wonder where Willie lives now,” says Minna. “He talked about his mother once. I wonder where she lives.”

  Beside her Lucas shakes his head. They stare out the window for a long time. Finally, Willie goes back to his Bach, lifting his violin good-bye to them. Twig climbs in the car.

  “Nice man,” says Twig. “Lives on Fourteenth Street. Has six sisters. His mama lives on a farm in Iowa.”

  Lucas nudges Minna and she grins as Willie begins to play, and suddenly the peace is over. Twig is a terrible driver, speeding up behind cars and stopping so that Lucas and Minna are rocked back and forth. Twig slams the car into gear, reminding Minna of her mother slapping the eraser cartridge into her typewriter.

  “Road toad!” yells Twig. “Move it or park it!”

  She weaves in and out of traffic and Minna glances quickly at Lucas. His eyes are closed. Minna closes her eyes and clenches her hands in her lap, but it doesn’t help. She pictures Twig housecleaning with the same fury, shoving aside tables and chairs, the vacuum cleaner like a sword cutting swatches through the furniture and mounds of dirt. Death to dust balls! Down with detritus! A new word, detritus, that Orson has taught them. It refers to all the clutter in his violin case: the papers and cookie crumbs, rubber bands, half-eaten apples, and the old T-shirt that he uses to cover his instrument.

  It would take Twig about forty-seven minutes, thinks Minna, to put her mother’s house in order, sucking up dust balls and crumpled pages that surround her mother’s desk like mushrooms growing randomly on a lawn. A vision of gleaming pots and pans and furniture smelling of lemons makes Minna open her eyes again. They’ve nearly reached her street.

  “Turn left here,” says Minna quickly, and Twig wheels left through a yellow light. The viola case falls off the backseat and hits the floor with a thump.

  “On the right there,” says Minna. “The front porch with the green trash bags. . . .”

  Twig nods and whips around a car that is double parked and screeches to a stop in front of Minna’s house. On the sidewalk stand McGrew and Emily Parmalee, their mouths slightly open as they stare at the car. Twig shuts off the motor and the engine rattles on a bit, then stops. Silence fills the car. Minna begins to count her breaths.

  “Should I bring in my viola?” asked Lucas on the street. “We could practice some after dinner.”

  Minna hesitated, then nodded.

  “I suppose.”

  Emily Parmalee and McGrew were playing hopscotch on the front walk.

  “See?” said Minna to Lucas. “Hopscotch.”

  “I’m Emily,” announced Emily, shaking hands with Twig. “That’s McGrew about to step on a line.”

  “No, I’m not,” sang McGrew. “Most often I win.”

  “Well,” said Twig, “the opera’s not over ’til the fat lady sings.”

  McGrew looked up from square three.

  “Is that a headline?” he asked.

  Twig shook her head.

  “It’s a saying,” she said. “It means the game’s not over yet. It means there is more.”

  A fact, thought Minna.

  McGrew smiled and moved slightly, stepping on a line.

  “Now, for the fat lady!” said Emily Parmalee, tossing down her stone.

  “I’ll pick you up later,” said Twig, her hand on Lucas’s shoulder.

  They watched her roar off, straight out from the curb, leaving a honking of horns behind her.

  “You never told me about her driving,” said Minna after a moment.

  Beside her, Lucas lifted his shoulders in a half shrug.

  “That is because,” he said, “there are no words for it.”

  “It is true, very true,” sang Emily Parmalee behind them, sounding very much like McGrew, “that the fat lady is winning.”

  Laughing, Minna and Lucas walked inside.

  Lucas loves Minna’s parents on sight. Minna can tell. He follows her mother and father around like Dog follows Willie. Verdi composed his favorite operas, he tells Minna’s father. Her father beams. He looks over her mother’s shoulder in the kitchen, reading the cookbook. Her mother is actually cooking something out of a book, a meat and potato dish with a “garnish” of parsley, as the book says.

  “I don’t have fresh parsley,” her mother complains. “Things I cook never look like these pictures.”

  “No,” agrees Lucas kindly, and Minna suddenly thinks of how beautiful Twig’s dishes are, like small paintings ready to be framed in gilt. “I heard,” Lucas continues, “that they prop up the vegetables and meats in stews with toothpicks or old rags before they’re photographed.”

  Minna’s parents laugh. Minna can see that her mother likes Lucas for that alone.

  The dining room has been packed into boxes along one wall. At least the clutter that is usually the dining room table is in boxes and there are candles and two extra places, one for Lucas, another for Emily Parmalee. If Minna squints her eyes just right it looks like a nicely set table in a room where someone is either moving in or moving out.

  Dinner conversation is as always, though no one “shoots” the potatoes. Lucas spends a good deal of the meal with his fork suspended in the air, turning his head from one end of the table to the other as if he is watching a long rally in tennis. He has a dazed, dim-witted look on his face. When dessert is finally served, it is amidst a heated argument between Emily Parmalee and McGrew about their favorite headline of the day. Emily likes TALK SHOW HOST FINDS LIFE’S MEANING IN A FORTUNE COOKIE. McGrew prefers RACCOONS DELIVER $100,000 IN COINS TO POOR MINNESOTA WIDOW. Lucas loves the raccoon headline.

  Dessert is something Minna doesn’t recognize, a hodgepodge of something.

  “Trifle!” exclaims Lucas happily as Minna’s father sets it on the table. He smiles at it as if greeting an ancient friend from a past life.

  “Right-o, you betcha, luv,” says Minna’s mother, smiling, switching on the overhead light to illuminate the room in all its horror.

  At that moment, Minna abandons all hope of serene candlelight dinners, soft talk, and meaningful conversation with topics and subtopics. Forever.

  It was quiet, dinner finished, Minna’s father gone to his study. Lucas followed Minna’s mother into her writing room to read the first three pages of her new book. Minna sat next to Lucas and listened to their discussion of names. In an absentminded gesture Lucas reached into the laundry basket and matched a pair of socks, then another.

  “I would have liked the name Luther better than Lucas, actually,” he said to her mother. “It’s something about the r at the end.”

  “You may be right,” said Minna’s mother. She leaned over to write the name “Luther” on a notepad.

  Lucas placed the sock balls on the table and looked at Minna’s mother apologetically.

  “There are no more mates here,” he an
nounced.

  There was a silence.

  “None at all?” asked her mother, surprised.

  Minna stared at the two of them, fascinated. It was as if they were discussing the plotting of a book, or a character. Or where to set the story. In the forest? By the sea?

  “As I see it,” said Lucas matter-of-factly, “these can simply be thrown out. Unless, of course,” he added, “there is another basket just like this one somewhere.”

  Minna’s mother smiled a great smile and stood, as if she might be about to knight Lucas.

  Thrown out. Who else but Lucas could have unearthed such a simple solution for the tumble of socks? Had they all been waiting for them—the socks—to be reunited after years apart? To mate, perhaps, and have small matching offspring? Minna sighed. Something was wrong. Lucas should live here. And I should live in the grand house where dinner conversation can be divided into headings on three-by-five cards, all lined.

  1. Oil

  A. Origins and location of

  B. Transportation of

  C. Price of

  Minna’s mother dumped the entire basket of socks in her tall wastebasket.

  “There! Thank you, luv,” she said to Lucas.

  Down the hallway there was music from her father’s study. Lucas peered in at Minna’s father from the doorway.

  “Don Giovanni?”

  Minna’s father, in a frenzy of conducting, nodded and smiled without missing a beat.

  “Shall we practice?” Lucas asked Minna as they walked on down the hallway.

  Minna sighed.

  “The andante, maybe?” she said wistfully. “Slow and peaceful?”

  “Right-o, you betcha,” murmured Lucas, opening his viola case. “Luv.”

  They sit across from each other, singing the parts they don’t play. It is quiet and strangely eerie, the two parts playing, the ghosts of Imelda and Orson and Porch lurking nearby. WA Mozart “hoovering,” as Twig would say it, above them all.

  If this were a story, thinks Minna; if this were fiction, this is where I’d finally get my vibrato, sitting across from Lucas, who has just called me “luv.” But it is her mother who is the writer of fiction, not Minna. And it does not happen.

  “Nice,” says Lucas when they finish. “And in tune.” He leans back in his chair.