Reeve remembered everything about that morning. He remembered the scratchy wool of his short pants. His stiff collar and bow tie making it hard to swallow. The branches of the willow tree whipping against the window. The women sitting in the parlor, the air around them saturated with their homemade herbal fragrances.
But mostly he remembered his mother. So still. Lying on a table—and in the middle of the morning when everyone knew it was the time she snapped beans from the garden. Her eyes were closed, her lips turned down, her skin a funny color.
Father shifted Reeve farther up his hip. Leaning over, Reeve reached for her. Her chin was as hard as the rocks Father skipped across the creek, and as cold, too. He jerked his hand back and looked at his father in question.
Father didn’t make a sound, but tears streamed down his cheeks.
“Poor child,” someone sobbed.
Turning away, Reeve buried his face into Father’s neck, the smell of his shaving soap sharp, his neck moist from sweat, or maybe tears.
Within three months Father’s dry goods store had failed.
Within six, he’d taken Reeve to the doorstep of his grandparents’ house. Grandparents he’d never even known he had. Grandfather motioned him inside with a jerk of his head, then latched the door, cutting off the sight of Father.
Reeve stood in the entry hall, its walls bare, its air stale.
Grandfather’s flinty eyes took in his mismatched stockings, his threadbare jacket, his stained hat. Reeve didn’t need to touch him to know he was hard as the rocks by the creek and just as cold.
Flossie used to love this room, with its northern light and view of Stuyvesant Park. Its mauve floral walls and Baghdad rug had hosted many a happy occasion,”
“Your father has decided to withdraw you from the School of Applied Design.”
Flossie Jayne looked up from the muslin in her hands, her fingers pausing, her needle protruding from the cream-colored fabric. “What do you mean?”
Mother secured a porcelain button to a short basque waist of a Louis Seize brocade in rich shades of burgundy and claret. The buttons had miniatures painted onto them. Miniatures Flossie had put there with her own brush.
“I mean,” Mother said, “when your current winter session at the design school is over, you will not be going back.”
Flossie lowered the bodice lining to her lap. The whalebone sandwiched between the two pieces of muslin slipped. “But, why? The painting classes won’t be complete until next summer.”
“Your father is aware of that.” She snipped the end of the thread, then picked up another button.
“Has something happened?”
Mother said nothing. Her hair was no longer as black as Flossie’s, but had softened with silver strands and was pulled up into a twist.