“You sure? You don’t look all right.” His expression darkened, and he said, “Has someone . . . been . . . after you?”
“No, no, I just need my grandfather,” I blubbed, but he didn’t look convinced. I pulled my hankie out of my pinafore and soaked it in seconds. I couldn’t stop wailing.
“Here you go,” he said, handing me his handkerchief. “You look like you need this more than I do. You keep it. Let’s go home to your ma.”
I could see that Mr. O’Flanagan wasn’t going to leave me alone until I calmed down. I blew my nose and with a great effort got a tenuous grip on myself.
“I’m okay,” I sniffled. “I’ll go home. I’m all right. Thank you. Good-bye.” Reluctantly he let me go. I trudged into the street and turned toward home.
My grandfather had given me Mr. Darwin’s book to read. He had given me the possibility of a different kind of life. But none of it mattered. Instead, there was The Science of Housewifery for me. I was blind; I was pathetic. The century was about to change, but my own little life would not change with it. My own, little, life. One I had better get used to. I erupted in tears again like a fountain, a running tide of tears and snot soaking Mr. O’Flanagan’s hankie. There was only one last Question left for the Notebook before closing it and putting it away forever, and that was the telegram: Yes? Or No? My grandfather would have to tell me that. I would make him tell me. He owed me that much.
I scrubbed my face with the last dry piece of Mr. O’Flanagan’s hankie and glanced back. There he was, fifty yards behind me, seeing me safely home, trying to look like he wasn’t following me. At least somebody cared about me.
He saw me to the end of the drive before turning around. I collected myself as best I could in an attempt to avoid further interrogation.
My mother was still in the parlor with Mrs. Purtle, pouring tea. Viola came in wearing a clean white apron and bearing a lemon pound cake on a silver tray. Mr. Fleming sat on a spindly chair with one of the good teacups perched on his knee, his delivery pouch at his feet. He looked like he was dug in for the duration and wasn’t going to leave until he knew what was in the only telegram he’d ever delivered from Washington.
My mother looked up. “Calpurnia, whatever’s the matter? Did you find your grandfather?”
“Nothing’s the matter,” I said, my voice flat. “And no, I didn’t find him.”
“Excuse me, ma’am,” said Viola, “I believe Captain Tate is working in the shed out back.” Viola refused to call it either the laboratory or the former slave quarters.
In the shed out back? The laboratory?
Mother frowned. “I could have sworn he went to the river. Calpurnia, go and fetch him, please. We can’t keep Mr. Fleming waiting all day.”
“Oh, that’s all right, ma’am,” he said and nudged his cup an inch or two in the general direction of the teapot, “quite all right.”
Not at the river?
“Will you have more tea, Mr. Fleming?”
“Why, thank you kindly, ma’am. I believe I will.”
He was not at the river collecting without me. He was in the laboratory working without me.
“Calpurnia? Did you hear me? Go and fetch him. Mrs. Purtle, do try some of this excellent cake. It’s Viola’s special recipe.”
Numbly, I nodded. “I guess I’ll go and get him.”
I went through the kitchen, where Viola was starting on dinner. She looked up. “What you up to? You look funny.”
“I’m not up to anything.” I pumped cold water over Mr. O’Flanagan’s hankie and pressed it to my face. “And I am funny,” I muttered through the cloth. “That’s the reason I look funny, okay?”
“What?” she said over the noise of the whistling kettle.
I dried myself with a scrap of towel and looked in the cracked mirror at the back door. I was still flushed and swollen, but at least I no longer looked completely crazed. I scrutinized myself. Was this the face of a child who bored an old man or an idiot who jumped to conclusions?
“Viola. Do you think I’m boring? Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“Huh. You may be many things, girl, but idiot? Bore? Not those.”
“Are you sure?”
“Where do you come up with this stuff?”
“Viola, it’s important.”
“Not those,” she said, and turned back to her cooking. I looked at her narrow shoulders and wiry arms working over our dinner, and I realized that I had always counted on her for other things besides food. Viola had never lied to me. She would not lie to me now. I went over to her and put my arms around her waist and hugged her. I was freshly amazed at the lightness of her person, her tiny bird bones. It was interesting that such a slight frame could contain so large a person.
“Go ’way,” she said. “I’m busy.”
“Yes, ma’am.” And grumpy, as usual, which was reassuring.
“I told you not to give me no ma’am stuff. I ain’t no ma’am in this house, girly,” she called after me as I closed the door behind me. I threaded my way through the Outside Cats milling on the back porch and headed for the laboratory. My feet were leaden ingots. The short walk took a lifetime.
I pushed back the gunny sack hanging in the doorway and there he sat in the sprung armchair, staring at a flask of something on the counter. He looked up at me, his expression inscrutable.
“It’s come, Granddaddy,” I said.
“It’s come?”
“The word about the Plant has come.”
He was silent.
“A telegram from Washington,” I said.
“Ah.” He tilted his gaze to the ceiling and said quietly, “What does it say?”
I was stupefied. “I don’t know,” I stammered. “I didn’t open it. I’d never open it. It’s for you.”
“Heavens, Calpurnia, I thought you might have opened it because we’re partners in this endeavor, are we not? Are you all right?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“Well, then. We must look our best when we get a telegram from Washington.”
He stood up and straightened his disintegrating coat and then reached for me, smoothing my hair with his big hands and adjusting my bow. “Are you ready?”
I nodded again. He held out his hand. “Shall we?”
I took his hand, and we walked together to the house, not saying a word. We were about to go up the back steps when I said, “Wait.” We stopped and he looked at me. “Yes, Calpurnia?”
“I think,” I quavered, “that we should go through the front door today. Don’t you?”
“Absolutely right,” he said, and we promenaded slowly around the house on the walk, passing the parlor window where three curious heads swiveled after us. All my senses sharpened as we headed for the porch. The lilies had died back to the ground; the bark of the crepe myrtles had all peeled away; there was a mackerel sky. I could feel the press of something important in the atmosphere, the pressure of chill air against me. Hand in hand, we walked up the wide front steps, and my grandfather opened the door for me, bowing me through. My heart raced like a rabbit’s.
“Captain Tate.” Mr. Fleming snapped to attention in the parlor. “I am glad to find you, sir. I have a telegram here for you all the way from Washington. That’s District of Columbia, sir. Not state of.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fleming. I am most grateful.”
“I figured it was important, so I rushed it right on over.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fleming. Most grateful.”
“I couldn’t trust it to one of the boys.”
“Thank you, Mr. Fleming. Grateful.”
“Oh—don’t get me wrong. They’re good boys, or I wouldn’t have ’em working for me. But sometimes they get sidetracked, and I figured—”