The Painted Table(34)

When Nels receives a pay raise in September, mercurial Joann brightens.

“Your daddy makes ten thousand dollars a year now!” she whispers to the girls. “But don’t tell anyone. Money is a family secret, you know.”

Saffee knows. She remembers the day Joann, resembling last year’s rummage sale, took her and April to the doctor to update vaccinations. When Saffee looked in dismay at Joann’s faded housedress and unraveling laundry-day sweater, Joann said the doctor would “soak them good” if he thought they were even a little prosperous.

But now, with more income and savings from the rentals, Joann decides it is time to put appearances of poverty aside and build a new house. Five years has been long enough to put up with snoopy tenants. Secure in his career with the dairy, which is rapidly expanding across the state, Nels, a man of easily summoned good nature, agrees to at least look for land. Two miles north of town they find a spacious lot in a newly subdivided area of Miller’s Ford called Cottonwood Point. It sits high, overlooking a wooded valley that currently wears radiant colors of autumn.

“We’ll have an absolutely marvelous view from picture windows in the back!” Joann exclaims as the family walks the property. She whirls in the opposite direction. “And the front will look onto that wonderful grove of cottonwoods. Look how the yellow leaves glitter in the sun!” Her enthusiasm rivals that of when she had found their current house.

To the south is an old apple orchard. Fallen fruit litters the ground. “Our own orchard!” she gushes.

Nels grins. “Does that mean apple pie?”

Saffee and April, comfortable on Second Street, are adamantly against the move. Saffee doesn’t want to give up the convenience of ice skating across the street and roller skating on the bridge. April is disappointed to leave neighborhood friends for a place with few houses in sight. The move also means they will suffer the humiliation of riding a school bus.

“Don’t be whiney, girls,” Joann admonishes them. “It’s still the same town, but just far enough out so it won’t seem so hoi polloi.” Joann has continued to study her dictionary.

The girls appeal to their dad, but he commends Joann’s enthusiasm. It seems to confirm his belief that she is stable, merely “nervous” at times. If building a new house will bring her happiness, he says, so be it.

There might be one consolation. “Will I get to have my own room now?” Saffee asks. “I’m thirteen, you know.”

“No.”

Saffee is so indignant that Joann dismissively agrees to compromise. “All right, we’ll put twin beds in your room.”

All winter Joann draws house plans. When she shows them to the contractor, he is surprised at their precision and says there will be no need for professionally drawn blueprints. Pleased by his approval, she summons the courage to select brick, fireplace stone, and the right windows to frame the “exquisite” views. She can hardly wait for the excavation to begin come spring.





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE



GONE WITH THE WIND





1955





In January, Hollywood’s rerelease of Gone with the Wind finally arrives in the small town. The Gazette touts the classic film with a half-page review. On a blizzardy evening, Joann suggests that she and Saffee go uptown to see it. Nels says they should wait a day and hope for better weather.

“No, now is a good time to go,” Joann insists. “On a night like this there will be good seats available.” Saffee knows this means she hopes to avoid an intimidating crowd. Saffee is not sure she wants to be seen at the Roxy with her unpredictable mother, and she knows Joann would not go without her. Because she too is very eager to see the popular film, she agrees to go. Ordinarily, they would have walked the three and a half blocks to the theater, even in winter, but because Nels put tire chains on the car that afternoon, and enjoys overpowering snow-packed streets, he drives them uptown through the white flurry.

Ever since she skipped down the yellow brick road of Oz at her first movie, Saffee has determined that flashes of Hollywood magic would ornament her life as often as possible. Over the years, the Roxy has become a retreat where Saffee escapes a humdrum existence and feels very much alive. An assortment of schoolmates often sits on the right side, near the front. With that in mind, Saffee routinely chooses a seat in the middle section, farther back. In the dark, licking a Holloway, she’s danced in the rain with Gene Kelly, perplexed the King of Siam, swum with Esther Williams, dressed as stylishly as Audrey Hepburn, and ridden in James Dean’s Corvette—all the while looking like Grace Kelly.