Charlotte imagined herself alone on the bridge of a ship, a storm raging and the sea flinging itself over the deck. Sailcloth ripped, lines snapped. And toss in a few splintering planks for good measure, why don’t we? The sun bled a cold, colorless light that made Charlotte feel as if she had already drowned.
“Mommy,” Rosemary called from the living room, “Joan and I have a question.”
“I told you to come eat breakfast, chickadees,” Charlotte said.
“September is your favorite month of autumn, isn’t it, Mommy? And November is your least favorite?”
“Come eat breakfast.”
The bacon was burning. Charlotte tripped on the dog, sprawled in the middle of the floor, and lost her shoe. On the way back across the kitchen—the toaster had begun to smoke now, too—she tripped on the shoe. The dog twitched and grimaced, a seizure approaching. Charlotte prayed for a false alarm.
Plates. Forks. Charlotte put on lipstick with one hand as she poured juice with the other. It was already half past seven. Where did the time go? Anywhere but here, apparently.
“Girls!” she called.
Dooley shuffled into the kitchen, still in his pajamas, with the greenish tint and martyred posture of an El Greco saint.
“You’re going to be late for work again, honey,” Charlotte said.
He sagged into a chair. “I feel awful puny this morning.”
Charlotte supposed that he did. It had been after one in the morning when she heard the front door finally bang open, when she heard him come bumping and weaving down the hallway. He’d taken off his pants before he came to bed but had been too drunk to remember his sport coat. As drunk as usual, in other words.
“Would you like some coffee?” Charlotte said. “I’ll make you some toast.”
“Might be the flu, I’m thinking.”
She admired her husband’s ability to keep a straight face. Or maybe he really believed his own lies? He was a trusting soul, after all.
He took a sip of the coffee and then shuffled back out of the kitchen, into the bathroom. She heard him retch, then rinse.
The girls climbed into their seats at the table. Rosemary, seven, and Joan, eight. To look at them, you’d never guess that they were sisters. Joan’s little blond head was always as sleek and shiny as the head of a pin. Meanwhile several tendrils of Rosemary’s unruly chestnut hair had already sprung free from the tortoiseshell band. An hour from now, she’d look as if she’d been raised by wolves.
“But I like November,” Joan said.
“No, Joan, see, September is best because that’s the one month every year when we’re the same age,” Rosemary said. “And October has Halloween. Halloween is better than Thanksgiving, of course. So November has to be your least favorite month of autumn.”
“Okay,” Joan said. She was ever agreeable. A good thing, with a little sister like Rosemary.
Charlotte searched for her purse. She’d had it in her hand a moment ago. Hadn’t she? She heard Dooley retch again, rinse again. The dog had flopped over and then settled. According to the veterinarian, the new medicine might reduce the frequency of the seizures or it might not. They would have to wait and see.
She found her lost shoe beneath the dog. She had to pry it out from beneath the thick, heavy folds of him.
“Poor Daddy,” Rosemary said. “Is he under the weather again?”
“You could certainly say that,” Charlotte conceded. “Yes.”
Dooley returned from the bathroom, looking less green but more martyred.
“Daddy!” the girls said.
He winced. “Shhh. My head.”
“Daddy, Joan and I agree that September is our favorite month of autumn and November is our least favorite month. Do you want us to explain why?”
“Unless it snows in November,” Joan said.
“Oh, yes!” Rosemary said. “If it snows, then it’s the best month. Joan, let’s pretend it’s snowing now. Let’s pretend the wind is howling and the snow is melting down our necks.”
“Okay,” Joan said.
Charlotte set the toast in front of Dooley and gave each girl a kiss on the top of the head. Her love for her daughters defied understanding. Sometimes the sudden, unexpected detonation of it shook Charlotte from head to toe.
“Charlie, I wouldn’t mind a fried egg,” Dooley said.
“You don’t want to be late for work again, honey.”
“Oh, hell. Pete doesn’t mind when I come in. I might call in sick today anyway.”
Pete Winemiller owned the hardware store in town. A friend of Dooley’s father, Pete was the latest in a long line of friends and clients who’d done the old man a favor and hired his wayward son. And the latest in a long line of employers whose patience with Dooley had been quickly exhausted.
But Charlotte had to proceed with caution. She’d learned early in the marriage that the wrong word or tone of voice or poorly timed frown could send Dooley into a wounded sulk that might last for hours.
“Didn’t Pete say last week that he needed you bright and early every day?” she said.
“Oh, don’t worry about Pete. He’s full of gas.”
“But I bet he’s counting on you. Maybe if you just—”
“Lord Almighty, Charlie,” Dooley said. “I’m a sick man. Can’t you see that? You’re trying to wring blood from a stone.”
If only dealing with Dooley were so simple or so easy as that. Charlotte hesitated and then turned away. “All right,” she said. “I’ll fry you an egg.”
“I’m going to lie down on the couch for a minute. Holler at me when it’s ready.”
She watched him exit. Where did the time go? Only a moment ago, Charlotte had been eleven years old, not twenty-eight. Only a moment ago, she’d been barefoot and baked brown by the long prairie summer, racing through swishing bluestem and switchgrass as tall as her waist, leaping from the high bank of the Redbud River, cannonballing into the water. Parents always warned their children to stay in the shallows, on the town side of the river, but Charlotte had been the strongest swimmer of any her friends, undaunted by the current, and she could make it to the far shore, to parts unknown, with hardly any trouble at all.
Charlotte remembered lying sprawled in the sun afterward, daydreaming about skyscrapers in New York City and movie premieres in Hollywood and jeeps on the African savanna, wondering which of many delightful and exotic futures awaited her. Anything was possible. Everything was possible.
She reached for Joan’s plate and knocked over her juice. The glass hit the floor and shattered. The dog began to jerk and grimace again, more forcefully this time.
“Mommy?” Rosemary said. “Are you crying or laughing?”
Charlotte knelt to stroke the dog’s head. With her other hand, she collected the sharp, sparkling shards of the juice glass.
“Well, sweetie,” she said, “I think maybe both.”
SHE FINALLY MADE IT DOWNTOWN AT A QUARTER PAST EIGHT. “Downtown” was far too grand a designation. Three blocks square, a handful of redbrick buildings with Victorian cupolas and rough-faced limestone trim, not one of them more than three stories tall. A diner, a dress shop, a hardware store, a bakery. The First (and only) Bank of Woodrow, Oklahoma.
The photography studio was on the corner of Main and Oklahoma, next to the