The Truth According to Us (56 page)

Sol paused in the hectic lobby of Sprague's Palladium. “Dr. Averill! Good to see you, sir. And Mrs. Averill.” There was a flurry of pleased surprise, a dispensing of benignant smiles.

“May I introduce my fiancée, Miss Romeyn? Jottie, Mrs. Averill and Dr. Averill.”

Wider benignant smiles, exclamations of polite joy. “Your fiancée! Sol!” Dr. Averill proffered the obligatory nudge. “You sly dog! Here I thought you were a confirmed bachelor!”

Mrs. Averill leaned forward, her eyes sparkling. “Why, Sol! I had no idea! How long has this been going on?”

Sol threw a proud look at Jottie. “Well, Mrs. Averill, we were childhood sweethearts, Jottie and me, but we just recently were, um, reunited.”

Childhood sweethearts? Jottie struggled against the launch of an incredulous stare at Sol. Childhood sweethearts?
That's
what you're telling yourself? When you know the only one I ever loved was Vause? Helpless outrage choked her. How dare you throw him away like that? How can you? But she knew the answer; she'd heard it weeks before:
Vause would be out of the way, and Sol'd get what he never had in his whole life—the chance to edge out Vause Hamilton with a girl
.

“Isn't that lovely! Childhood sweethearts reunited!” Mrs. Averill
turned in sentimental ecstasy to Jottie. “You never stopped caring for him?
So
sweet.”

Jottie smiled coyly and twined her arm through Sol's. “I certainly remembered him fondly,” she said. “But it was only after I was widowed that, well, my thoughts
turned
to him.” She sent an adoring glance up into Sol's startled face.

—

Hours later, after Sol had retreated, unenlightened, from her house, Jottie took off her shoes and stockings and went to stand in the dark, cool grass. A few final, hardy fireflies cycled around her, pursuing their impenetrable rites, oblivious to their approaching doom. Not, after all, an honest man, she concluded. But it's himself he lies to. She watched a firefly gleam and lapse and tried to endure her growing certainty that if Sol had been in Felix's place, he would, after a time, have come to believe that what he had told her was the truth.

Anybody else besides Jottie would have been mad. Bird was. She said it wasn't fair she had to go to school and I didn't and Jottie should make me. “You ain't sick,” she said.

I lay still on the bed and didn't say anything.

Bird bent over and searched my face. I watched her blue eyes. “Maybe you are sick, though,” she said. She touched her finger against my cheek. “Willa?”

It was a struggle, but I spoke. “I'm tired, is all.” I sounded like the inside of a pipe.

She put another finger against my cheek.

“I'll be back at that damn school before you know it,” I said.

Bird giggled. “You swore.” She didn't say she was going to tell.

My eyes shut against my will, and I shook my head to jostle myself awake. Bad enough to dream once a day. If I had to go through it twice, I didn't know what I'd do.

Jottie took me to Dr. Ecks, just to make sure, she said. He looked
down my throat and banged my knee and thumped my back and listened to my heart. He even peered with a little funnel into my ears, which I enjoyed. Then he looked at me for a long time, tapping his gold pen against the table. “Willa, go on and get dressed and sit out there in the waiting room,” he said. “I'm going to talk to Jottie a minute.”

I didn't care very much what he had to say, but it was a reflex by now, just like my leg jumping when he smacked it with his rubber mallet. I got dressed and stood outside his office door and listened. It was pathetic the way grown-ups believed their word was law.

“She sleeping?” he asked.

“No,” said Jottie. “She goes to bed, but she doesn't sleep much.”

“I could give her something,” he said, “but it'll make her pretty woozy.”

“She's already pretty woozy,” Jottie said.

He tapped his pen some more. “All right. Let's leave her alone,” he said. “Let her be.”

“She won't go to school,” Jottie said.

“That's all right,” he said. “Let her stay home.” I loved Dr. Ecks. “It'll give the other children a chance to catch up.”

“Won't do them any good,” said Jottie proudly. She was wrong, of course. I could never do a thing about angles, not in my whole life, because of that time.

“She'll be all right,” he said.

In some little part of myself, I was relieved to hear that. I was beginning to think I maybe was dying. I had never heard of anyone dying of tiredness, but that didn't mean it didn't happen. Leprosy was the only disease I really knew about.

So Jottie and I spent the first two weeks of school driving around, looking at apples. She and Miss Beck were writing a book for the Apple Growers Association of the Eastern Panhandle, all about apples. Jottie said she was doing fieldwork—I think she just liked to say the word—so almost every day we drove to this orchard or that, looking at Golden Delicious or Grimes Golden or Winesap, and along the way Jottie
would tell me about the farms we passed and all the things that had happened there. Floods, mostly. She talked and we both ate apples. Sometimes, when the drive was long, I'd fall asleep, but that was all right because I never dreamed in the car. I felt safe in the car, which was funny, considering what a terrible driver Jottie was. I liked to wake up, slumped against the car door, and realize that we had covered miles without my knowing it. I didn't want to know everything anymore; I didn't want to know anything. Once, I woke, more or less in a heap on the floor of the car, and I saw through my tangled eyelashes that Jottie was crying. I watched her wipe her tears with one hand while she gripped the steering wheel with the other and then switch when her hand got wet. I watched her, and I thought about how, just a month or so back, I would have driven myself distracted wanting to know why she was crying. But now I didn't want to know. I didn't ask. I just felt sorry. Sorry and tired.

Miss Beck stayed on. She didn't do fieldwork with Jottie and me, and I was glad. Instead, it was Emmett who took her around to look at apple farms, even though he didn't have anything to do with it. They went on the weekends, because he was teaching school the rest of the time.
The History of Macedonia
was done. Five copies arrived in a box, and Jottie baked a cake to celebrate. Emmett came to supper that night, still wearing his schoolteacher suit and tie, and afterward, on the porch, Jottie and Minerva and Mae took turns reading pieces of it aloud with dramatic emphasis, while Emmett and Miss Beck applauded like crazy. Bird tucked a book under her arm and sashayed down the street to impress Jun Lloyd with it, which it didn't. Mr. McKubin stopped in for a moment and said it looked real official, but he couldn't stay, because something was happening at the mill. He was the president of it now and he was busy. Harriet came by; Richie was down at the mill, too, she said. She talked on and on, and I watched the sky grow dark, even though supper was barely over. Marjorie Lanz came in and sat down with a thump, and Mrs. Fox, too.

I went inside. Father's room was still hot, but not like it had been a
few weeks before. I slid down the wall and stretched my legs out in front of me. I checked the place where the penny had been, out of habit, and then I closed my eyes. I wasn't so comfortable I was in danger of falling asleep. I let myself drift away. I had plenty of time. Nothing was going to change.

Layla peered over the rim of
Apple Cultivation Practices
, trying to track the source of her nervy awareness. Suspiciously, she scanned the humid expanse that stretched from the heavy trees behind her to the dark mud at the river's edge. Nothing. Her eyes moved from the blue sky down to the lumpy, shaded grass where she sat.

“It's the cicadas,” murmured Emmett. He was stretched out on the blanket beside her, his eyes closed, a battered copy of
Our Constitution
face down on his chest.

It was the cicadas. They were silent. In the whole world, she could only hear a soft, occasional swirl of wind and the light lapping of the water. The summer's sound, the frantic orchestra that had sawed behind every scene—it was over. She relaxed against the gray bark at her back. In the quiet, she watched Emmett take even breaths, the minute ripples of his dark eyelashes telling her that he was awake. She wondered at his stillness. His hands were perfectly still. His mouth, too. How could he be so still?

She leaned away from her tree trunk, fascinated by his repose. Carefully, she shifted closer to him, the better to see the straight line of his forehead; the shadows over his deep eyes; his firm, even mouth.

She reached out and brushed her fingers across his lips. As his eyes flew open, she smiled and bent over him.

Some time later, she broke away.

“Mm-mm,” he murmured, “no. Don't do that.”

She leaned on one hand, watching him.

“No,” he said again. “Come back here.”

“Would you
ever
have kissed me?” she asked.

Smiling, he reached up to explore her curls. “No.”

She pulled his hand around to her mouth. “Why? Scared of me?”

He frowned. “Of course I am,” he said. “I've been trying not to care about you ever since the day I met you.”

“Oh,” she said, deflated.

He watched her for a moment. “I didn't succeed,” he said, and reached for her.

—

The sun was low and pink in the sky when they drove back to Academy Street. Emmett stole another glance to his right.

“What?” she said, catching him.

“I'm marveling.”

She blushed.

“Was it a dream?” he asked. “Maybe I was really asleep all afternoon. Seems like it might be a dream.”

“You were awake,” she said. “We were both awake.” She touched the back of his hand.

He glanced sideways again. “You're so beautiful. Every time I look at you, you're just as beautiful as I remembered. It's not fair.” He laughed. “I might drive off the road, you're so beautiful.”

“You're going to feel bad if you kill me,” she said, smiling.

“I won't,” he promised. “I won't kill you. I'm going to keep you safe with me.” He sent her another sideways look. “Did you know that? Did I mention that before?”

“Which?”

“That I want to be with you forever. Did I say that already? Because I've been thinking it for a long time. Don't know if I said it.”

She shook her head.

“Well, hell!” He slapped his forehead. “Must have slipped my mind. You know, in the press of events. I'd better pull over.” He drew the truck to a stop. “You got to pull over if you're going to propose,” he confided, shutting the engine.

“Propose?” Layla exclaimed. “You're going to propose?”

“Watch,” he said, turning glowing eyes to hers. “Watch this.” He took her hands in his. “Will you marry me? Please?” He bent to kiss her fingers. “Please.”

“But Emmett—”

“Do I need to get on my knees?” he interrupted. “I'll be glad to.”

“No, sweetheart—”

He recoiled, his eyes wide. “Oh shit.”

“Oh shit?” she repeated, baffled.

“Are you going to turn me down?” He stared at her. “Is that what you're about to do?”

“Emmett, please, will you let me get a word in?”

He winced, pressing his hand over his heart. “I was so happy. I'm a jackass, I was so happy—”

“Emmett!” Layla cried. “I'm not saying no!”

He looked up, still wincing. “You're not?”

“No. Honestly.” She rolled her eyes. “I'll marry you, for heaven's sake. I just want to know you before I do.”

“You'll marry me?” he demanded. “Say it again.”

“I'll marry you,” she repeated, “once I know you.”

“You know me plenty,” he said. After a second, he added, “What do you want to know?”

“Everything,” she said. “I want to know everything.”

“Everything?”

“Everything that ever happened to you. And what you thought about it.”

“That'll take forever!” he roared. “We'll both be dead before we're done.”

“Then you'd better get started,” she said. “What's your first memory?”

“Oh, for God's sake. Jottie trying to stuff me into a doll buggy.”

Layla laughed. “That's good. That's exactly the kind of thing I want to know.”

“Why?” he groaned. “Why do you want to know that?”

“Because it made you,” she said. “And I love you.”

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. He reached across the seat to grip her hand.