All Bedlam Courses Past (part ninety)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Three

An Object in Motion

(part ninety)

Clotilde had a baby, and Ranilde did not.

Ranilde’s miscarriage left her anemic; lethargic, and in a female state of down-spiritedness their doctor could find in his medical books, but couldn’t say he knew. Bosom of the family, perhaps. Change of scene.

The scene became her old bedroom. A month’s rest, and Ranilde, up and walking, wanted her house and husband. You couldn’t fault her for that. The family were trying to fault her for nothing whatever, mum even through talk she would have a baby next year…but how could she do anything then or ever, if she wasn’t allowed to go home?

No, she did not want any treat Ysonde might fix; no, she did not like a cake with afternoon tea. She did not like a doughnut with a cup of coffee (“You have a healthy appetite, Miss Luce, you won’t get thin like your poor sister!”) She did not like a piano sing, or a leaf through Fannie’s magazines, or Papa to take her on a country drive, or her godparents stopping by…with encouragements from the Bible, true.

Ranilde wanted Owen, wanted to be told what he was doing, had a jealous dislike of Élucide’s knowing what he was doing, grew pale and mute when Mother confirmed her sister’s rational point—that he owned no horse and had to work six days a week.

Ranilde in time came down to the table. The month was October, and they all, but Honoré, had celebrated their birthdays, older by a year. A Christmas cloth, Mother, Élucide, and Geneva crocheting panels for it, sprawled over the parlor cushions. At the foot of the steps Ranilde looked, and when she had sat to toy with her food, the Subject came back.

“You don’t want Owen to see me. You wish he’d forget I ever lived! Or you just want him to come begging, because you know he won’t. He is too much of a man for that.”

From a book. Possibly…and a silence fell, while Élucide blushed a little, embarrassed at the picture. Owen was a dandelion puff in the wind, lucky he did not live in war times. The silence was, in its excruciating way, condemning, and Ranilde held her ground long enough to add: “He can’t divorce me.”

Then a burst of tears.

Papa left the room.

“Try the experiment,” Fannie said. “I know Eugene thinks…” The motherly eye hobbled her mid-sentence. “Luce is growing up, maybe she’s growing out of headaches. She’s done fine in town, hasn’t she?” Pause. “Eugene is a doctor.”

“He is. I think I was the one who told you that, a year or two ago. He is not our doctor. I don’t think I can approve Luce becoming his patient.”

“Oh, I wasn’t…”

“But it is an answer. I can’t say Mary-Lidah is of no use. Mrs. English has trained her, rather than her mother. Lidah at least can swing a broom without losing track of the handle, or dust a picture frame without knocking it flat.”

95

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part ninety-one)

(2024, Stephanie Foster)