All Bedlam Courses Past (part eighty-five)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Three

An Object in Motion

(part eighty-five)

v.

Given the nod

Mother had never liked Uncle Henry.

She had not liked leaving Indianapolis for Cookesville; she scorned the reverse. Of the hand that engineered these upsets—

Possibly Grandmother Armour’s phrase, Mother’s for her daughters’ bickering: “That is not a necessary thing to express”, was all she would say to Papa regarding Nachfolger.

But when your habits are disordered by someone you blame on instinct, you might, even Mother, unbridle that hint of mood. Mother hadn’t, for the first time before Élucide’s eyes, fully tamped every chin-set, every catch of the voice. She had couched them in pretexts…if ever she left a room on Papa’s entering, without, “I’d better get that letter in the post, before I forget”, the rift would be strong indeed.

The horse had been a pacer, Uncle Henry at that moment denying nerviness (“Spirit, Sam! You won’t mind a little fire in the clinch”), when some impulse to check a lagging rear foot felled the senator. Sam McManus was understood to approve at bedside W. A. Gremot’s finishing his term. He was understood to bear no grudge against either Mr. Nachfolger or Cannoneer.

The seat, of course, was Uncle Henry’s to dispense—and use for another of his tried-and-true runners.

“We can hardly assume your cousin Honoré plays…” Sigh.

“Checkers? Badminton? The piano?”

“I hope you aren’t humorous with your father’s friends, Walt. Table games, yes. Cards.” (Cards inflected as it will be no picnic if he does.) “We don’t know what Honoré may feel up to. We know nothing at all about Clotilde.”

“I can talk to Clotilde.”

“Oh, can you? Mr. Ebrach has it she’s a country girl…and there’s a difference there, from the book French you’ve been studying. Mrs. Metz has patience, Luce. She enunciates for you.”

Mother had quashed them both, a tonic. She had the grip of it now, and quashed a third thing, that as cousin-nearly-of-age, Élucide might call on Honoré’s wife in her own name, Walter to tag along. (The two of them plotting to comb all of Ebrach’s house Clotilde could be cozened into showing them.)

“Wednesday, we’ll go. After shopping, and before lunch, and Luce… We haven’t got accounts here nowadays, so I’d better give you a few dollars. You’ll pick out some sort of gift. It’s no trouble offering a luncheon, at say, the Jefferson Hotel. But if she won’t come out with us…”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“Well, Walt, if you like to interrogate people, you may ask her yourself.”

90

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part eighty-six)

(2023, Stephanie Foster)