October Suite: a Novel by Maxine Clair

Author:Maxine Clair
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Agate Publishing
Published: 2014-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

chapter 14

On the weekend following the funeral, October made herself comfortable on the side of Aunt Maude’s bed, wondering about her—what she would do without Aunt Frances. She remembered the photograph of the Cooper sisters and wondered what she and Vergie would look like in a few years.

Right now somebody would have to pick through Aunt Frances’s things, and she didn’t think Aunt Maude was up to it. At the funeral they had had to give her smelling salts. No more scares like that. Gene had taken David to watch the high school band practice and left the women to punctuate the sentence of mourning.

October heard Aunt Maude’s cane-and-hobble above her, heard her hesitate at Aunt Frances’s doorway, then hobble around up there in that forsaken space, stopping, probably shaking her head, probably weeping, shuffling on.

After a while, Aunt Maude called downstairs and October went up. Vergie, too, came to hug and soothe.

“What are you doing up here by yourself?” Vergie asked her. October saw that Aunt Maude had pulled the chest and other boxes from beneath Aunt Frances’s high-up bed.

“You-all might as well start going through her things,” Aunt Maude said. “I can’t do it by myself. Besides, she already gave me what I wanted most. I’ll put away her quilts for the grands, or at least for David when he’s grown. I’m keeping her brooch.” She stood fumbling with the antique pin, shook her head too sadly, and left them to shake their heads, too.

October and Vergie dragged the wooden step over the floor and climbed into the high bed with one of the paper-stuffed boxes between them.

Vergie pulled out a few handfuls of paper.

“What do you think we ought to do with all this stuff? She kept everything we ever did.”

“I don’t know,” October said. She couldn’t see herself hauling any of it back to Missouri.

Vergie began to make piles, sorting. “For instance, here’s my old report card from eighth grade, and yours, too.”

“You don’t want them, do you?” October asked. Vergie didn’t answer, meaning that maybe she did.

“I used to wonder why people kept this kind of junk,” Vergie said. “Posterity, I guess.”

Vergie was fingering a piece of dark blue construction paper, aged to shreds. October watched her unfold the creases and reveal the dried and flaking white flour-paste print of a small hand.

It looked familiar. “Whose was that?” October asked her.

“Yours,” Vergie said. “Don’t you remember it?”

October took the piece of child artwork and spread it on her lap. She stretched her hand over it, trying to believe that this was how small her hand had once been and to remember how she must have dipped it in flour paste and pressed it against the paper.

“Imagine that,” she said. “I was once this small.” No big deal—just a fondness she felt for the little girl who had made the print.

Vergie said, “You should take it home with you, frame it.” She was kidding.

“Yeah, but it seems like a shame to throw it away. In a way it’s better than a photograph.

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