The Painted Table(31)

When Mr. Mason teaches the class how to do a simple research paper, Saffee writes about the Battle of Gettysburg. “Well done!” Mr. Mason writes atop her paper. “Gripping! You made me feel like I was there!” Saffee hugs the handwritten pages and determines to keep them forever.

However, when school resumes after Christmas break, the bubble bursts. Mr. Mason announces he has been asked to join the school’s administration. He introduces Miss Reynolds, who will finish the year in his stead. In shock, Saffee scans Miss Reynolds: tall and slender, long red hair, very high heels, and, worst of all, fluttering eyelashes. It is hard to miss that Miss Reynolds also is smitten with Mr. Mason.

Saffee walks home in a frozen daze. The first adult in the world to show her respect as a person—gone. For a few months, Mr. Mason had brushed a tint of color onto the dull canvas of her life. Now, the color is expunged. Betrayed, she sits on the edge of her bed and sobs.

Curious, Joann comes into the bedroom. Saffee can hardly speak. She manages to sputter enough information so that Joann realizes, with surprise, that Saffee is experiencing the bitter taste of lost first love. Mother stands staring at daughter.

Finally, she says, “You’ll get over it soon enough.” She begins to leave the room, then stops.

“It’s time to burn the trash, Saffee. Collect everything that’s paper and go out with it. Take some matches from the drawer.”

Saffee swipes both her hands across hot wet cheeks. “Daddy does that. I’ve never started a fire.” Neither has Joann.

“He’s not home. If you’re old enough to have a ‘flame’ at school, you’re old enough to light a match.”

Saffee cringes at the pun. Still crying, she dumps wastepaper into the oil drum in the backyard near the alley, then timidly strikes match after match against the rough, rusted inner side. Finally, one ignites. She stands still, holding her coat tightly against the winter air, staring through tears at the spreading fire . . .

We saw it far off, whipping in the wind, coming . . . coming . . . an inferno . . .

Newspaper becomes cinnamon brown and curls, crackles and turns black.

Heat dries the tearstained face.





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE



VOICES ON THE STAIRS





1953





Why don’t they stop yelling?” April whimpers.

“Give them time.” Saffee masks her own nervousness with big-sister superiority. Her first week without Mr. Mason is finally over, but as she and April sit tensely, halfway down the chilly basement stairway, life heightens its gloom. Their parents’ strident, garbled voices ricochet in the kitchen above, fade as deliberate footsteps take them into the living room, rise once again as they return.

Nels is no match for Joann’s verbal skills. She skewers him in every argument. Saffee recalls that when she did research for her “gripping” paper for Mr. Mason, she read about President Lincoln’s volatile wife and thought of her mother.

Catching a word here and there, Saffee realizes this argument is related to Joann’s demands that Nels give her another child. A boy, for him, she says. But it is apparent that the desire is more for herself; April is growing up. Saffee has heard Nels tell her mother that her “nerves” couldn’t take having another baby.

For some time, Nels has been sleeping on the foldout couch in his den. Of course, no explanation for that has been made to the daughters, but Saffee has speculated. His move from their bedroom has increased Joann’s accusations of infidelity. Saffee has seen the hurt in her father’s eyes when she hurls barbed remarks. He is a simple, transparent man who lives by a rigid moral code. Her mother’s imaginative claims are ridiculous.

Even though it is January, the stairway heat register is closed. Higher up the wall, black windows of night are frosted over. A slit of light comes from under the kitchen door, giving scant illumination. The girls could turn on the back hall ceiling light, but semidarkness seems more comfortable, protective. Saffee stares hard to distinguish the back of her sister’s head. April’s blond curls pooch out on both sides where her fingers try to stop her ears.

Ever since “April’s car accident,” Joann has been more diligent than ever to put metal curlers in her hair. The doctor said that she had had a concussion and that those curlers may have saved her life.

Joann’s doting has multiplied. April can do no wrong and her every move is reason for applause. At the same time, it seems as if Joann detects some ominous handwriting on the wall. She says because the accident must have done irreparable internal damage, fragile April will need protection forevermore.

“I didn’t mean to drop my ring down the sink,” April laments. “My hands were soapy—it just slipped off. Why did that make them so mad? Will Daddy have to take the sink apart?”