The Reading Lessons (30 page)

The bandstand in question was
not
of Crump’s making. Rich Rich and Guido had hammered the stage together to contribute to the party, and Nina’s first thought was that Rich Rich had purposely built it to implode.
I’m going to beat that little monster to death with a broken two by four,
she said to herself. 

It happened that the words of this particular week were: 

Pungent. 

Perilous. 

Plot. 

Nina had recently adopted a system for word-picking that involved using words that began with the same letter. Next week all her words were going to be B’s, and she already had braunsweiger slated for the notebook. So far the Ps were proving remarkably easy to use. She stared at the hole above her head. “Mother?”

“I’m here,” Mother answered from somewhere in the rubble.

Quick as that, boards were being slapped away, and two arms reached in, grabbed Nina, and lifted her free of the disaster. Carrying her like a baby, Crump sped through the petunia garden, propped her up against the plum tree, and began peeling off his shirt to use as a bandage. His face was as white as a white man’s. 

“There’s so much blood,” he said, and it was only then that Nina noticed that her chin was dripping. “What hurts?” he said.

“Everything,” Nina moaned.

Mother let out a peel of dismay, and Crump looked toward the disintegrated stage. “Get her out of that bandstand,” he snarled at George Vinegar as he blotted Nina’s chin with his shirt. “Your foot looks funny.”

“It hurts,” Nina said. 

George Vinegar stumbled over with Mother and dropped her next to Nina. “Are you all right, Mother?” Nina asked.

“Don’t mind me,” she snarled at Crump. “I only fell through the god damn bandstand.”

Nina’s blood streaked his arms. “Get Miss Nina into the kitchen and wash her up,” he said to George Vinegar. “I’ll get Dr. Mangrove.”

Then came the argument. 

Nina’s ankle had been broken in the fall, and her chin needed stitching, too. Mother got off with some bumps and bruises, though she didn’t seem happy about it. In all the chaos, Nina had been brought into Crump’s kitchen to be washed off, and afterward, she was put in Crump’s bed to wait for the doctor. 

The gardener’s quarters were next to the petunias and therefore the most convenient. Nina had never set foot inside the place before. Rich Rich had climbed up on the roof last summer on a dare, but Tilly caught him before he could make the most of this, and she made him clean out her grease pots in exchange for keeping quiet about what he’d done. Another time, Nina and Rich Rich boosted Guido up to a window to see what was inside, but the most exciting thing he had to report was that the kitchen had a sink. 

For the most part, Nina had ignored the place, much as she’d ignored Crump. George Vinegar dropped her down on the bed and looked around, his old yellow eyes round with curiosity. It occurred to her for the first time that Crump was the only servant to have his own little house. Tilly and Narcissa occupied a room off the kitchen. George Vinegar, Lymas Polk, and Hurd the Turd lived over the garage. Nancy, the housekeeper, went home to her own family every night. Only the gardener warranted a place of his own. 

Unfortunately, Crump’s house was about as revealing as his face. Nina might have hoped for leopard skin on the bed or a naked woman on a calendar. What she got instead was bright, headache-white everywhere she looked. His bath towel was white and his bedclothes, too. The onions in the white bowl on his white sink were white. The only thing she saw that was not white was a pink bottle of bleach. 

George Vinegar said, “He sure do like things white, don’t he?”

The plan was for Crump to carry her up to her own bed after the doctor left, but Nina fell asleep and woke up in the middle of the night, still tucked in the gardener’s big white bed. Because she was in Crump’s bed, Nina was able to hear the argument going on in his kitchen. 

 “ . . . leave me lying there like a damned sack of sugar!” Mother trilled. “For all you knew, I might have been dead.”

“I would have thought you’d want me to see to your daughter first,” Crump said. “She
was
bleeding, after all.”

Nina could hear the clop clop clop of Mother’s cork-wedged sandals pacing the kitchen tiles. “You see to her too much. What about me? Just because I’m a grown woman, don’t I count? Couldn’t I have broken my foot, too? She wasn’t the only one bleeding.”

“But you’re okay. She wasn’t.”

Nina heard the sound of skin slapping skin. 

“Go to hell,” Crump muttered, and those three words were so shocking to Nina, they about shocked her half to death. She’d never heard a servant speak that way to anyone, much less their employer. It was a lucky thing that Nina could hear through the walls like they were made of paper. As a matter of fact, this was one of the biggest complaints about
Worther-Holmes
homes. Thin walls. Lately Father had been taking a lot of flak for his thin walls.

“Don’t you
ever
ignore me like that again,” Mother hissed. “I won’t play second fiddle to anyone, not even my daughter. I deserve more from you than that.”

“I’m done talking about this,” he said, and five seconds later, Nina heard the sound of breaking glass.

“Oh! I’m sorry, Hadley. I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

“No,” Crump said.

“Look at all that blood,” Mother said.

Nina sat up like a shot, wondering if all this business was about to end in murder. 

A chair scuffed across the floor. Shoes crushed glass. 

“Get away from me,” Crump said.

Nina swung her legs off the side of the bed. What if Mother was killing Crump? 

“Like you don’t want it, too,” Mother jeered. 

Nina froze beside the bed. There was something about her mother’s tone that reminded Nina of the icky things she’d heard in the window seat.

“Mmmm. That’s good. Isn’t that good, honey?”

His voice was still angry. “It hurts, Lucinda.”

“What about this?” she asked, and on the other side of his thin white walls, Crump gasped. 

Mother said, “I bet you aren’t thinking about little girls now, are you Hadley Crump?” 

I can steal him,
Nina thought. First there was the flower, then the accident, then the argument. No one had ever picked Nina over her mother.
She’s scared I’ll take him away from her! 

Nina lay awake in Crump’s bed, her head on his pillow, her face in his bedclothes, thinking about how nice it would be to feel his dark curls sliding over her fingers like shiny rings. 

There was a glass jar on his windowsill with the word
WHOOPS
painted on it, and inside were three nails and a little woodpecker-shaped spoon carved with the word
Alabama
. On the nightstand was a book.
The Meaning of Flowers.
The flowers were listed in alphabetical order, and Nina thumbed through the pages until she found the L’s: 

Convallaria maialis Lily of the Valley – 

You’ve made my life complete. 

She rattled the jar as she formed her plot—the perfectly pungent and perilous plot to seduce Hadley Crump. 

“Would you mind it if I call you Hadley?” she asked. 

It was the next morning, and Crump had a gash on his head that severed his left eyebrow directly down the middle. He was carrying Nina upstairs, but he stopped mid-step, and the look he gave her was like the look she got when she asked what happened to his eyebrow. 

“I suppose that’s up to you, Miss Nina.”

Nina had stayed up all night, rubbing the soles of her feet on his white sheets and feeling him in the wrinkles. She prayed that when he rubbed his feet on the sheets, he would feel her in the wrinkles, too.

Crump proceeded up the steps, his arms hooked sturdily beneath her as if she were ten rather than seventeen. She pressed her fingers against his collar, willing him to feel her the way she felt him. She let her thumb brush through the hair on the back of his neck. 

“Then I believe I’ll call you Hadley, Hadley.”

Nina had discovered that most people looked less beautiful the closer you got to their face. Maybe their teeth were more jumbled than they appeared from far away. Maybe they had hair sprouting out of their nose. Crump was
more
beautiful up close. Up close, his lashes were as long as a lady’s, and he had perfect teeth that were as straight and white as the shiny tiles that formed his kitchen floor. How could she have missed his beauty for all these years? The maple syrup eyes. The strong arms. The gentle hands that rescued her instead of her mother. Even with a sliced eyebrow, Crump was a beautiful man.

“Thank you, Hadley,” she said when he put her on her bed. 

It would be hard to remember to call him Hadley, but she felt a bit more even-steven with her mother just saying it out loud. She wanted to say it again and again, so she did. 

“Could you open the window, Hadley?” “Bring me my book, Hadley.” “Oh Hadley, I’m going to need a glass of water.” “Gracious, Hadley, aren’t I a pain?” Calling a grown man by his first name felt cozier than a kiss. “I sure hope I didn’t hurt your back, Hadley?”

“It’s no problem, Miss Nina, but I need to pick up Mr. Rich over at the Buxleys by one, so I need to get going.”

Rich Rich? Nina was furious. Until she spotted the vase of Lily of the Valleys waiting on her bed table.

Father wouldn’t like it if she married a gardener, and an older man at that. Never mind that he was a sambo. He would probably kill poor Hadley Crump, which wouldn’t be hard to do, seeing how the man had let Mother bash him around with barely any fuss. Nina had spotted a sickle-shaped scar on his neck, too, when he was carrying her. She managed to graze it briefly with the ball of her hand and was overwhelmed by the heat she discovered there. And then there were those scars she’d noticed on his back. Nina liked to think his scars were secret doors into his white walls. Just thinking about them, she felt an overwhelming urge to heal him. And to leave her own mark as well. 

The best way to get his attention was to have him fix things. Her bedroom light was crooked and
needed
fixing a few days later. Crump set his toolbox down by her bed. He had a sunburned glow about him, and his hair was powdered with whiting. 

“How’s the ankle today, Miss Nina?”

Unlike Mother, he always remembered that it was her ankle, not her foot, that had been injured in the stage mishap. “Its better, Hadley, thank you for asking.” 

He laughed when she called him Hadley. Then he got to work. His nimble fingers knew exactly which tools to use. “I heard the party has been put off until you get back on you feet again,” he said.

“Oh, I’m not in the mood for a party anymore.”

Crump took off his shoes, laid a piece of newsprint on the velvet seat of her vanity chair which he’d pulled up next to the bed, and stepped up on the face of Mrs. Eleanor Brandywine of First Presbyterian who was holding her prize-winning peanut pie proudly aloft on page 12c of The Dispatch. He was not a tall man and was forced to reach in order to get to the light. As he reached, Nina noticed something just below his bellybutton. Another mark of some kind. His trousers sagged, and his shirt rode up just enough that she was able to catch sight of it twisting down the front of his waistband. 

“What’s this?” she asked, touching the mark. 

At first only his skin jumped away. Then all of him jumped, and he kicked over the chair. 

“It looks like you’ve got some sort of picture on your skin,” Nina said. 

Crump stepped back further still. 

I’m bothering him,
she thought. His eyes followed the strap of her nightgown as it slid off her shoulder. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

His tongue darted over his lips. “Umm. I forgot. I’m supposed to pick up the boys at Miss Maple’s.”

“They’re not done for another hour,” Nina said. “I really do need my light.”

His hands hung stiffly at his side, screwdriver dangling forgotten in his fingers. 

“What do those funny marks mean, Crump? Hadley. Where did you get them?”

He tossed the screwdriver down, hiked up his pants, and tucked in his shirt. “Hurd can finish for you if I don’t get back to your light today.” 

They both knew he wouldn’t get back to her light today. 

“Does that mean you don’t want to tell me?”

He slipped on his shoes. “It’s not a thing to talk about with a young girl, Miss Nina.”

“I’m seventeen.”

The toolbox clattered shut. “Just a child,” he said. 

“How old are you?”

“Old,” he grunted. “Old as your mother.”

“Mother is thirty-five.”

“Well, there you go. I’ll send Hurd up.”

He was running away, and Nina couldn’t think how to stop him. “What about my bookshelf?”

“What about it?” he asked.

“It’s cracked.”

He waded up the newspaper and brushed off the velvet cushion on her chair. “I might be able to get to it sometime in September.”

“I’ll be back to school in September.”

“September it is then,” he said. 

He sounded so damned relieved to be going, Nina could only feel pleased.
He thinks I’m a child, but I’ll show him.