The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt (2 page)

Minna smiled. It sounded like the beginning of a nursery rhyme she half remembered:

“Lucas will play viola next to Minna,” Porch went on. “I'll play first with Imelda. Trying hard not to be rebarbative.”

Lucas smiled for the first time.

“That bad?” he asked.

Orson looked up quickly. There was a silence while Lucas unlocked his case and took out his viola and bow. Finally Imelda spoke.

“Have you heard the fact,” she asked, her eyes bright, “that the great wall of China is actually visible from the moon?”

A fact, thought Minna. A mauve fact might follow.

Lucas sat down next to Minna.

“Yes,” he said simply. He smiled a radiant sudden smile at Imelda as he tightened his bow. “Wonderful, yes? A fine fact.”

Minna watches Lucas's long fingers curl around his viola, one leg stretch out, one slide back to hook over a chair rung. There is a grand silence as they all stare at Lucas. Minna does not fall in love quickly. Most often she eases into love as she eases into a Bach cello suite, slowly and carefully, frowning all the while. She has been in love only once and a half. Once with Norbert with the violent smile who sells eggs from his truck. The half with one of her father's patients, a young man who made her breathless with his winks. When she discovered he also winked at her mother, father, McGrew, and the car, she slipped backward out of love again.

“Scales first,” said Porch. “Old, familiar friends, scales. G to start.”

They played scales, staring at nothing, no music needed because Porch was right . . . the scales were old friends.

“Now,” said Porch, “let's begin with something we know. Mozart, K. 156. Presto, but not too presto.” He raised his violin. “An A, everyone.” They played an A, Orson making gagging noises.

Old Back lifted his bow.

The great wall of China, thought Minna. A fine fact.

“Ready,” said Porch.

I wish I'd thought of that fine fact. Then Lucas would have smiled at me
.

“Here we come, WA,” said Orson softly.

“High third finger, Minna,” whispered Porch.

And they play. They begin together and Minna holds her breath. Often they stumble into the music, Porch louder, counting; Imelda scowling and playing too fast; Orson snorting in rhythm. But today is different. They begin on the same note and play together. In tune. Minna looks at Porch and sees that he has noticed the difference, too. Lucas's hand vibrates on the strings. They all hear the strong, rich sound of his vibrato. Lucas peers at Minna and grins. And suddenly Minna realizes that she is smiling. She has never smiled through an entire movement of WA Mozart. Ever.

“Splendid, splendid,” said Porch, gathering up the music. Could they be finished already? One entire hour? “You are a fine addition, Lucas.”

Imelda was smiling. Minna and Orson were smiling. Even Porch smiled.

“Tomorrow,” instructed Porch, “the K. 157 andante. And the mimeographed variations. Practice! You, too,” Porch said to Minna.

In the coatroom, Lucas locked up his viola. His jacket lay behind the case and he stepped around it carefully, gently picking it up, his hand covering the pocket.

Minna felt she must say something.

“You have,” she began. She cleared her throat. “You have a wonderful vibrato.”

Dumb, thought Minna with a sinking in her stomach. It was like saying that he had a lovely skin condition. Or both his legs ended nicely below his trousers.

Lucas nodded.

“I got it at music camp,” he said solemnly. He looked apologetic, as if it might have been a mild case of measles, or worse, homesickness.

Lucas put on his jacket, then pulled a frog from the pocket. The frog was quiet and friendly looking.

“I saved him from the biology lab,” explained Lucas. “I'm going to put him in the park pond. It's warm enough now.” He looked at Minna. “Want to come?”

“Yes,” said Minna quickly before he could change his mind.

Together they picked up their cases, Minna hoisting hers on her hip, Lucas's under his arm. In the hallway Lucas pushed the wall button, and it wasn't until the door opened and closed behind them that Minna realized she was in the elevator. The walls were gray with things scribbled there. The floor was littered with gum wrappers. There was a half-eaten apple in the corner.

The elevator started down, and Minna put out her hand to steady herself.

Lucas looked closely at her.

“Elevators can be scary,” he said in a soft voice.

There was a terrible feeling in Minna's chest. The elevator seemed to drop too fast. There was a loud whooshing sound in her ears, and she looked at Lucas to see if he had heard it, too. But he was smiling at his frog. It was then that Minna knew about the sinking feeling and the noise in her head. It was not the elevator.

The door opened at the ground floor.

Outside there was a slight breeze. McGrew and Emily were still sitting on the stone steps.

“This is Lucas,” said Minna. “My brother, McGrew, and his friend Emily Parmalee, a catcher.”

Lucas smiled. McGrew smiled.
All this smiling
. Emily Parmalee turned one earring around and around in her ear thoughtfully.

“We're going to put Lucas's frog in the park pond before the bus comes,” said Minna.

Behind them the street musicians were beginning to play: a flute on the far corner, Willie, tall and bearded, by the steps playing Vivaldi in the dusk. Willie was Minna's favorite, playing whatever she wanted on his violin, giving her back her money.

They walk down the street, Minna and Lucas with two instruments and a frog between them, McGrew and Emily Parmalee behind, shuffling their feet. The street is crowded but strangely hushed except for the swish sound of cars passing cars. Lucas says nothing. Minna says nothing. Only McGrew breaks the silence.

“Love,” he sings softly in a high thin voice behind Minna.

M
inna Pratt is silent on the bus ride home. Emily Parmalee and McGrew are not silent. They sit behind Minna, making up nonsense songs about the bus passengers.

Minna doesn't watch people or count telephone poles or umbrellas or earrings. She thinks about WA Mozart and high third fingers and the elevator. Mostly she thinks about Lucas, defender of frogs and facts. Lucas with the lovely eye that wanders.

Minna stood outside her mother's room, watching her write. Her mother wore a white oxford cloth shirt that belonged to Minna's father. The sleeves were rolled up, her brown curly hair wild around her face. The typewriter clacked. Papers littered the floor. The television was on.

“Library, my foot,” said Minna's mother to the television. “You were meeting at the YMCA long before the library.” She slapped the eraser cartridge into the typewriter.

By her mother's feet there were laundry baskets, one piled on top of another, clothes pouring out, one basket filled to the brim with striped soccer socks. “One red stripe,” Minna had once heard her mother complain, “one red stripe with a blue stripe, one red stripe with a green, one blue, one blue and green, one tan, one black with a narrow tan, one tan with a narrow black!” Minna sighed, remembering her father saying that her mother was such a bad housekeeper that they were all in danger of death due to lint buildup.

It had been clear to Minna at an early age—maybe seven—that her mother was different. She hated to cook, except for toast and hot oatmeal that she enjoyed stirring into a mass of beige lumps. She avoided cleaning. Minna's feet stuck to the kitchen floor sometimes, making sucking noises as she walked. You could eat off Emily Parmalee's mother's floor next door. Emily Parmalee once did. But all Minna's mother liked to do was write.

Minna once complained to her father about it.

“Mom's in the land of La,” her father had said, smiling, brushing lint off his suit. He stepped over a pile of books and papers to peer in the mirror at his tie.

“The land of La?”

Minna's father was a psychologist. She had read some of his psychology books and thought he should be using words like “obsessive” and “deviant.” But her father didn't use these words. Orson Babbitt would use these words, but Minna's father didn't.

“The land of La,” he said.

Minna saw his smile. She watched the way he looked at her mother. And Minna came to realize that her father didn't care that her mother was in the land of La. The fact was, he
liked
her there.

Minna sat on the chair by her mother's desk waiting for her to stop typing and begin to ask insane questions. Other mothers asked, “How was your day? Did you pass your math test? What did you have for lunch?” Not Minna's mother. Minna's mother peered into Minna's eyes and asked such questions as, “Do you ever think of love?” Minna longed for her mother to ask something normal, but it rarely happened. “What is the quality of beauty? Of truth?” she would ask, her pencil poised. “Have you ever been in love with an older man?”

Today Minna waited patiently as her mother typed and muttered. At that moment she wished more than anything in the world for her mother to turn around and ask, “Did you fall in love today?” Today Minna could tell her. Minna waited. She looked over her mother's head, reading the letters pinned on her bulletin board. Letters from her readers.

Her mother loved the letters and she answered every one. Tacked just below the letters, at eye level when her mother wrote, were her mother's messages. Messages to herself, she called them. They changed often, though one had been there ever since Minna could remember, staring at her every day as if challenging her to understand what it meant.

Minna frowned. What did that mean? Facts were true. Wasn't fiction invented? Untrue?

Today there were two new messages.

Minna sighed. She didn't understand those messages either, and she felt a sudden surge of annoyance with her mother for tacking them up. She looked down at her mother's bare feet, watching them tap nervously on the floor as she typed. Her mother's sneakers lay nearby, one without a shoelace. Minna looked at her own feet, her one sock, and wondered if what her mother had was catching, or inherited, like short fingers and low blood sugar.

“Ah! I see you there.” Her mother turned off the electric typewriter and slumped back in her chair, smiling at Minna.

Ask me. Ask me about love
.

“How was chamber group?”

Minna stared. Of all times, a normal question.

“Fine. There's a new violist. A boy,” said Minna. “Lucas.”

She waited.

“Lucas?” Her mother leaned on her typewriter.

Ask me
.

Her mother wrote the name on a notepad.

“Lucas. A good name,” said her mother thoughtfully. She looked at Minna. “Do you ever think about . . .” she began.

“Yes?” Minna leaned forward eagerly.

“Names,” finished her mother. “Do you ever think about the importance of names?”

Minna stared at the written name. Lucas. She didn't answer. She knew her mother wasn't really asking her a question. She was thinking her own thoughts out loud this time. Answering her own questions.

Seeing the name written on paper was startling, almost as if Lucas were here in her mother's writing room, sitting next to Minna. She looked around, trying to picture him here, sitting in the clutter of her mother's room, surrounded by crumpled papers with bits and pieces of stories written there like coded messages. Minna shrugged her shoulders. It was not to be imagined. Lucas was neat and efficient. He wore two socks, one on each foot, and they matched. He was organized. Organized enough to have a vibrato. Organized enough to have a vibrato
and
to have a frog tucked safely inside his pocket. Was that the answer? Organization? No. There was a time when Minna had been organized. She had written in a journal, keeping track of herself on paper, reading herself from time to time. No, that was not all there was to Lucas's vibrato. That was not all there was to
Lucas
.

Minna's mother began typing again, slowly at first, then gathering speed like a ball rolling down a long hill. Minna sat for a while on the edge of her chair, watching her mother work. Her mother never saw her leave the room.