Torsade Literary Space All Bedlam Courses Past (part ninety-six)
All Bedlam Courses Past
Chapter Three
An Object in Motion
(part ninety-six)
“What if,” she asked.
“Oh, what if?”
“What if I could learn to drive?”
“Learn to drive! Luce, are you changing the subject? Why does it need to be I can’t rely on you…that you can’t make yourself more agreeable to your sister?” It stung, this rebuke, and was thought better of. “No, I understand. Two can be at fault. But Nildie… I’m sure, trying so hard, and having so much disappointment… And she’s ill.”
Because you had children easily, Élucide thought, almost uncharitable. You stumble. And I don’t want them, so neither of us can feel for her, truly.
Wednesday’s first idea, of Robert driving, Mother going with Élucide, Ranilde’s contenting herself with Papa for company—and Geneva, Sarah, even Mary-Lidah, aged fifteen and living her country life under a pall of sorrow, so it appeared… (Ranilde had thought their girl would stay behind and care for Owen. Mother had thought she would not.)
The second idea was this paying of a family call, the dinner at the Columbia they would propose. Which Honoré would say at once he could not join, Clotilde would then not join; therefore Ebrach’s hospitality at Crownhaven be substituted, and their meeting—required, so nothing gained putting it off—of Madame Sartain and small Bertrand, achieved.
They would know each other socially, and from that point on could relax at home…
Mother was asking Papa if there were anything to be done.
“Fit out an apartment. Maybe give up the music room. Just as soon not.”
Needing her father to order the buggy, just as much a disability. She wasn’t Miss Towson; she couldn’t lead a horse out of its stall, yoke it up, and…
Were buggies actually not that heavy? What if Richard saw her, happened to, trying to move one by herself?
“Oh, I’ve heard your father boast how you are with horses! Why can’t you find work, then? Don’t people need stable boys?”
From a grimy hand wresting half-imaginable tackle…
Daydream or no, Richard, forgetting he owed her an apology, deserved this word.
Two years ago, when the second baby had been thought coming, Ranilde in secret session had begged Élucide’s removal. The Misery Compromise, Papa liked to say…the arrangement by which his younger daughter stayed at the Columbia three days and two nights of the week, sorted Ranilde’s post, surveyed her cupboards, and placed her orders. Took notes for her parents on the state of the house.
In future years, to the daughter she wanted to name Deborah (the stillborn boy buried as Michael Joshua), Ranilde would tell her story. Of meeting Owen everywhere, at the Opera House balls, the regattas, the horse fairs, even the Temperance Fellows’ lemonade luncheons. Ready for marriage…so ready, they’d had a foolish, forced, fraught courtship. Today, at twenty-four and twenty-five, both at home with their mothers.
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“I doubt it’ll do, unless we’d like Owen unemployed. And it’ll never do sending Ranilde back to town.”
“It might just do, getting them a housekeeper. You think about that, Fern.”
Papa meant something stronger than think…marvel at, shake your head at. The cost and the trouble.
“Here.” He reined before the bridge. “Luce, climb up beside me. We’ll see what you know about driving.” He raised his voice. “She’s a doer, Fern. You have to look at it like that.”
A gusty sigh from the back. “What am I looking at?”
“This one.” A pat on the driver’s seat, an elbow offered for purchase. “Anytime anyone’s got in mind a thing they want help with, Luce’ll figure out the better way, or the bigger way, or the more roundabout way. She got all the way to Nashville.”
“And I don’t call that a step in the right direction.”
“Well, Owen’s wife is eight miles off. I’m not buying him a rig. I might buy one for my daughter. And she might take that excuse away from him.”
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Bedlam
All Bedlam Courses Past (part ninety-seven)
(2024, Stephanie Foster)