"She doesn't look too happy there," I said.
"Unhappiness followed Lenore all the way up to her adult life," Cornelia Tell said, "though lately she seems less unhappy, which bodes well. Anyway, who in their right mind would ever say a person was supposed to be happy? In your life happiness is either cut to your length or isn't."
"Thanks, Cornelia, for all the this-and-that about Lenore Teachout, whom I'm about to share lunch with," I said.
"You're very welcome." She noticed that I had a few bites of scone and half a cup of coffee left. "Let's see, what else?" she said. "Well, Lenore had a year at Dalhousie University. The first in her family to go to college. Too bad Halifax proved to be all distractions. Lenore made a whirlwind marriage to a fellow student, then just as whirlwind a divorce. Have to hand it to her, though, she fit a lot into that month of February! I remember Lenore saying, 'True, I failed my academic course work. But I kept my ears open and got highly educated in the thoughts of men and women.' According to rumor — I suspect a rumor started by Lenore herself — during her time in Halifax she kept over a thousand pages of a journal full of conversations. I don't know where she got the moxie, but she didn't merely eavesdrop, she actually wrote down what she'd overheard!"
"A thousand pages," I said. "That's impressive."
"I once asked her, 'Lenore, don't you annoy people, writing down their every word like that?' And do you know, she got all huffy and said, 'Well, Cornelia, aren't you grateful someone took down all those actual conversations found in the Bible? What if nobody had bothered? Where would we all be then?'"
"I'll have to think about that one," I said.
"You do that," Cornelia Tell said.
I paid for my scone and coffee, stepped outside the bakery, smoked a Chesterfield and then drove back to the house. In the shed, while my uncle measured and cut crosspieces, I sanded planks for an hour or so, trying not to respond to his sidelong glances or deep sighs, which were judgments of my work. It didn't much bother me. Finally, he said, "You go on in, Wyatt. I'm skipping lunch today, I'm pretty sure. Aggravated stomach. Maybe bring out a thermos of tea when you come back, okay?"
"Sure thing, Uncle Donald."
"You're doing fine, by the way. Honestly, better than I expected."
"Damning with faint praise, but thanks."
When I entered the house through the back door, I heard Tilda talking to someone in the kitchen. Taking off my work shoes, I listened in.
"— what with Wyatt sleeping in the room next to mine, I don't feel nearly as comfortable walking around in my birthday suit, eh? Not that he can see through walls or anything. It's just that I like to be — how's Mom say it? 'Elegant in my dailiness.' It just wouldn't feel right somehow. From now on I'll have to change directly from clothes to nightshirt, no lingering in between. Hardly a sacrifice, is it, considering how grateful Wyatt must be to have a home with relatives, employment, not having to go it alone in Halifax. Wouldn't you agree, Lenore?"
"Fully agree with everything," Lenore said.
"Did you catch every last word?" Tilda asked.
"I think so," Lenore said.
"Read it back to me, then."
Lenore began, "'You know, Lenore, what with Wyatt sleeping in the room next to mine—'" But I shuffled loudly, on purpose, into the kitchen. Tilda turned toward me, holding a tray, which held two cups of tea, a porcelain hippopotamus full of sugar, two cloth napkins and a spoon. "Oh, Wyatt!" she said. "Speak of the devil."
I looked away. Tilda must've thought it was out of embarrassment.
Then I glanced at Lenore. Factoring in her ten-year-old self from the yearbook, I thought, Yes, she appears to be about thirty-seven or thirty-eight. She had a lovely face, including deep worry lines, cascading brown hair. She was wearing the same sorts of clothes that Tilda wore, dungarees, sensible shoes, flannel shirt. But Lenore wore eyeglasses. Tilda set the tray on the table. "Wyatt," she said, "I'd like you to meet our friend and neighbor Lenore Teachout. She's here quite often to practice her stenography. Or the stenographic art. Didn't you once call it that, Lenore, the stenographic art?"
"Just the word 'stenography' does the trick," Lenore said. "Glad to meet you, Wyatt."
"Take a close look, Wyatt," Tilda said. "You'll see authentic shorthand, which at first might look like children's squiggles and doodles, but it's a method." I leaned over to inspect Lenore's notebook. "Is this your first opportunity to see shorthand?"
"Yes, it is," I said.
I stared at Tilda, and she stared right back and held her stare. She looked ravishing. (I'll later tell you why I used that word.) Tilda was about an inch taller than me, "shapely and mostly modest about it," as my aunt later said. Tilda had green eyes, the only student who did in her elementary and high school career. A lovely mouth, slightly tilted smile, only slightly, though. "Rambunctious, with a mind of its own" is how she described her thick black hair. Mornings before school she'd attempt to discipline her hair with a hundred strokes of a brush, tightly combed and organized it with no fewer than eight bobby pins and two barrettes, yet still there'd be unruly precincts. At table, Tilda always sat like a marionette held stiffly upright on a string. At age eleven, she'd injured her back in a spill off one of my uncle's sleds. A patch of ice hidden under the snow had spun her every which way and finally into a tree. Once out of hospital, she'd been trussed up and assigned to bed for several weeks. She had to see a specialist in Halifax. He prescribed exercises to keep her limber, one of which was to sit as upright as possible at each meal, let alone at her desk in school. "At first she cried and cried, the pain worse for sitting up so straight," my aunt had said. "But our Tilda impressed us all, what with the diligent work it took to hold her posture."
My aunt walked in carrying a Grundig-Majestic radio, which she placed on the kitchen table, stretched the cord and plugged it into the outlet near the sink. When she looked at us, Tilda's and my eyes were still locked. "Great glory's sake, Wyatt," she said, "cat got your tongue?"
I snapped out of whatever I was in. "Oh, hello, Aunt Constance," I said. "I just came in out of the cold rain into this warm kitchen." No doubt, I'd obviously just described how I'd felt while looking at Tilda. But it must've sounded loony.
"Interesting, since it's not raining out," my aunt said.
I tried to regain some balance and said, "Uncle Donald's not feeling well enough to eat. He'd like tea later, though."
"Well, sit yourself down, then," my aunt said. "How's my husband treating you out there, anyway?"
"I'm learning a lot," I said.
I noticed Lenore writing away, taking down everything she heard.
"Don't let him bend over your work and hurry you," my aunt said. "You're not a sewing machine."
"No, I won't."
I sat down opposite Lenore. Once she had served carrot soup and bread, my aunt sat opposite Tilda. I ate too fast, which my aunt noticed. "Wyatt," she said, "in this house, if a meal's not satisfying, you want it over with fast, one way or the other."
Tilda and Lenore exchanged glances, and I said, "No, no, the soup's delicious. I think I just need some air. The shed's close quarters, Aunt Constance, that's all. I think I'll take a short walk down the road and back."
"It's a nice day for a walk," my aunt said.
"The soup was delicious," I said.
"You've said that twice. The second time convinced me less, but thank you," my aunt said.
I stood up from the table and started toward the front door. "You don't have any shoes on," Tilda said.
"Maybe in Halifax they take walks in stocking feet," Lenore said.
"Don't trip on the dog porch," Tilda said.