“No, it wasn’t.”
Kathe snorted. “Like you care, Edna.”
“Of course, I do.”
“You took Jake’s side.”
“That’s nonsense.” A second passed. “Tell me, how did Jake react when he learned Frana was sneaking out to see some older man, if she actually did that.”
The rain picked up, streaking the windows, turning the room chilly. I glanced outside, and Kathe followed my gaze. “He ain’t sitting in the park now, you know.” Then she added, “Of course, he knew about the man. I made sure to tell him. Me. God, even Frana told him. I could see he didn’t like that.”
“But Jake was seeing you, Kathe.”
She bit her lip. “He used me. I was the other pretty girl, but not the favorite. Second best. I was the dress”-she pointed to a pattern of fabric spread on the table-“that you wear, maybe not to the ball, but to a hayride. That’s what I was. You don’t care if it’s wrinkled a little and…and…” She faltered.
“You still have feelings for Jake?” A blunt question.
“No. Yes. I don’t know. I don’t think he’s nice to me and I don’t think…”
“Kathe, certainly you don’t think he’d hurt Frana, do you?”
A long silence. “He’s a football player.”
“What does that mean?”
She spoke in tinny, nervous voice. “He’s strong, ain’t he?”
“Kathe, really.”
Kathe, hands on hips, spat the words out, deliberately. “And he went to Ryan High School, ain’t he? He ain’t no stranger to those hallways.” She thought about what she’d said, arching back her head, and suddenly seemed happy with her words.
“You’re accusing him of murder?”
“No, no, I ain’t saying that.” She dropped her shoulders, ducking her head.
A liar, I thought, a dissembler, a sloppy girl without moral boundaries. “Just what are you saying?”
“You’re attacking me, Edna. Like you always do. You get me all rattled.” She looked outside. “Now I have to walk home in the rain.”
“I’m merely…”
“You just won’t leave me alone.”
“I need to know…”
“No, you don’t. Maybe you think you do, but nobody ain’t made you God here.”
“Kathe…”
She slipped into German. “I should have stayed to home.” Zu hause. She tossed the scissors down, swiveled around, and snatched her jacket, cradling it against her chest. “Just tell Fannie I left.” I didn’t move so she had to walk around me, nearly dropping her jacket as she edged out of the room. She collided with Fannie, who was rushing in.
“You’re leaving?” Fannie took in her furious face.
“Your sister won’t stop asking me questions.” She swallowed a sob. “She’s treating me like a criminal.”
I kept my mouth shut.
Her wailing intensified. “I shouldn’t be treated this way in your home, Fannie. She makes me feel like I’m the one who murdered Frana. Frana was my good friend.” She choked out big sloppy tears, brushing by Fannie, and flew out the front door, slamming it.
Fannie whirled. “Edna, how can you interrogate her?”
“I merely…”
Fannie cut me off. “Don’t play reporter in your own home.” She surveyed the unfinished dress pattern on the table and squinted at the wet windows; she was ready to cry.
“Play?” I took a step back.
“Whatever you do.”
“I have a job.”
“Not in these four walls you don’t.”
We two sisters squared off.
“Fannie, there’s been a murder in this town, and Kathe is somehow a part of it…”
Fannie threw up her hand inches from my nose. “For heaven’s sake, Edna, you’re talking just like a character in a novel by The Duchess.”
I didn’t step back. “Kathe is making accusations against Jake Smuddie.”
“What?”
“Accusing him of murder.” I was steaming. “She virtually called him a killer.”
Fannie gave an elaborate sigh. “Edna, for Lord’s sake, are you writing a story in your head? Some melodrama…”
A fight was brewing, one of our bloody battles born out of the nagging, grating resentments that scraped at our workaday life till it tore open; Fannie, the serene homebody who flounced around the house like a butterfly and me, the literalist, uncomfortable with idle time or pretty fripperies.
Fannie hurled the first deliberate salvo. “Edna, the fact is that I overheard a few of your comments to Kathe. I was listening, purposely.”
“So?”
“And you seem to have forgotten how a person behaves politely in her own home. You do not harangue the guests. My God, you went at her like a dentist’s drill.”
“She’s not a guest, she’s an employee,” I insisted. “And minimally competent.”
“Even more reason to be kind…”
“I need to get some answers…”
“Perhaps you should not even be asking questions. Perhaps this is none of your business. Edna, this…job has turned you into a shrew.” Fannie drew her lips into a thin line. “You’ll do anything to disrupt this household.”
“For God’s sake, Fannie.”
“I mean it. You gallivant out there”-She pointed toward the center of Appleton, unseen-“and have allowed yourself to be…coarsened by life there. You’re not a man, Ed.”
“And you’re not a lady, despite the finery.”
“You’re jealous because I’m pretty…”
“And I’m not?”
She made a great show of chuckling. “Oh, please, Edna. In Cinderella, we know which sister you’d be.”
“Yes, the intelligent one.”
“Men don’t want intelligence.”
My turn to smile indulgently, as if she were stupid. “Of course, they do. They just don’t know it. That’s why women have to be smart. They have huge jobs to do, starting with the men in their lives.”
“No man seeks out a sassy reporter.”
“You say it like it’s a perversion.”
“No one’s going to marry a girl reporter,” Fannie finished. “Especially one that looks like you.”
“Marriage is a trap women fall into, like children toppling into an unprotected well.” I regretted the words because I knew my father, sitting in the parlor, was hearing his daughters in battle again. I added, “For some girls,” but hesitated. I never liked to qualify my statements.
My mother stood in the doorway, for a moment hypnotized by the rain battering the windows. Her voice was high pitched. “Enough of this. I deal with crazy housewives and smelly farmers all day long, and come home to warfare. Enough. The food will burn…the…” She closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. “Will you two come into supper? Stop this nonsense.”
My father banged into the edge of the table, a purposeful gesture because he maneuvered his sightless way easily through the rooms. He was telling us something.
“Supper?” he called.
We three Ferber women nodded.
After a stony meal I lingered in my upstairs bedroom, trying to read that F. Marion Crawford romance that made no sense. Bejeweled countesses in elegant Roman society; whispered intrigues on the Via Venetto; drawing room infidelities and alliances. I looked around the room that I purposely kept Spartan, save for the rich velvet counterpane I’d sewn for the four-poster red oak bed. A hand-carved black walnut chair with plush leather seat occupied one corner, positioned so that I could look out on the backyard, directly onto the blooming cherry tree. On the dresser a lace antimacassar, given to me by Fannie last year.
On the walls two pictures: one-a sepia-toned scene from a maudlin stage production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the scene in which Uncle Tom is pontificating to frail little Eva. I’d won the gilt-edged print as a prize for second place in the oratory contest in Madison three years ago. First place had been a gold chalice, engraved. This lackluster print reminded me that there was only one place I allowed myself in any contest: first.