The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt Read online

  “They are not family,” says Mrs. Ellerby firmly.

  “They are family to me,” says Lucas. “They feel like family. Look at Uncle Morton’s portrait in the hallway. He even looks like a frog.”

  This is taken by Mr. and Mrs. Ellerby as an insult. Their faces close up tight.

  “We are trying very hard,” says Mr. Ellerby in a soft voice, “not to lose our tempers. The frogs must go.”

  There are no angry words, no raised voices, no tears. It is the worst argument Minna has ever heard.

  Lucas bounds up the stairs, leaving Minna and Twig standing silently in the hallway.

  “I am truly sorry for this disturbance,” says Mrs. Ellerby to Minna. “You should have told us about the frogs,” she tells Twig.

  “We have a meeting, Melinda,” says Mr. Ellerby. He shakes her hand. “So lovely to have had you for dinner.”

  The door opens. The door closes. A disturbance?

  Minna and Twig stare at each other.

  “What now?” says Twig. “The pond, I suppose.” She looks up the stairway. “Poor Lucas,” she murmurs. “I tried to keep the frogs a secret. I knew how it would be.”

  Dear Mrs. Pratt, Minna begins automatically. She stops, her hand on her cheek.

  “Minna?” asks Twig.

  Minna smiles. Dear Mrs. Pratt.

  “I know what to do,” she says. “Not the pond. Not today, anyway. I know Lucas doesn’t want to let them go yet. Could Willie help carry the tanks?”

  “Of course,” says Twig. “Where are the frogs going?”

  Minna takes a deep breath and begins walking up the stairs.

  “We’ll see,” says Minna without turning around.

  Lucas is in his room staring at the frogs.

  “Don’t worry,” says Minna in the doorway. “I have thought of something.”

  She picks up the phone.

  “What something?” asks Lucas. “What?”

  Minna shakes her head and dials.

  “You’ll see.”

  Minna waits.

  “Hello,” says her mother.

  “Mother, I need your help. Without questions.”

  Minna hears the small clicking sound of her mother turning off her electric typewriter.

  “Yes?”

  “Lucas has to move his frogs. Tonight. Can we keep them for a while? Until he can find the right ponds for them?”

  Silence. Lucas peers at Minna.

  “May I ask one question?” says her mother.

  “What?”

  “How many frogs?”

  Minna takes the phone away from her ear. How many frogs, she mouths. Lucas shrugs his shoulders.

  “A great many,” Minna says into the phone. “Mother?” she adds suddenly.

  “Yes?”

  “I wrote you a letter.”

  “I know,” says her mother. “Eliza Moon, what a fine name. No matter. Bring the frogs.”

  FOURTEEN

  Minna sleeps a dream-filled sleep. Scenes crowd in on her: Willie arriving at Lucas’s house to help carry the tanks, eight in all, filled with frogs. “Why are we doing this?” asks Willie, whose practice has been interrupted. He pauses on the stairway. “And who’s the man here in the picture who looks something like this big one?” Willie points his chin at the largest frog. “Who told him?” says Lucas, laughing. “I didn’t,” says Twig. “Honestly!” The taxi driver, wide-eyed, as they load four tanks in with Minna. Lucas goes with Twig and Willie and the rest of the tanks in the big car, Minna laughing out loud at the look of terror on Willie’s face as Twig speeds out into traffic. “She’s something, isn’t she?” says the taxi driver admiringly, whistling between his teeth, one hand on a glass tank beside him. The moon is up, a large yellow globe above Minna’s house, when they reach there. Minna’s mother and father, McGrew, and Emily Parmalee help carry in the tanks. Willie exclaims over her father’s record collection; the taxi driver fixes the drip in her mother’s kitchen faucet and shows her how to make coffee with a pinch of cinnamon added to the grounds. Lucas puts his hand on the back of Minna’s neck as they watch the frogs in her mother’s writing room. “I like the frogs,” announces Minna’s mother. “Each has a different character. You see, that one’s morose, and that one has a sly look. Morose and Sly, a good title.” McGrew tapes an old headline he’s been saving over a tank: SCIENTIST SAYS MADNESS PASSED BY VIRUS. All of them crowd into the dining room. There is a smell of cinnamon in the air. “Thank you,” says Minna to her mother, who, like Willie, returns the gift. “Thank you,” says her mother.

  “Call me if you get your vibrato,” whispers Lucas as they leave.

  The next few days pass quickly, blending into one another like the layers of Mrs. Pratt’s trifle dessert. Miss Barbizon does not like Minna’s sentence of vocabulary words. She passes it back with a tight mouth, raised eyebrows, and a low grade. Minna doesn’t mind. Her head is filled with Mozart.

  McGrew and Minna’s father come to an agreement about baseball.

  “I can’t help you anymore,” says Minna’s father, slowly, painfully lowering himself onto the couch in his study. He looks at McGrew. “It is not, after all, my chosen profession.”

  “It is not mine either,” says McGrew happily.

  “It may be mine,” says Emily Parmalee thoughtfully.

  The frogs splash contentedly in her mother’s writing room. When her mother types they are quiet, as if they wait for words to be strung together into a story. Once, when Minna looks in, her mother is reading out loud. Dozens of eyes watch her.

  Minna practices. Though she knows the music well there are times when Mozart surprises her, moments when he creeps up with a phrase like a whispered secret that she has never before heard. Aha, Wolfgang, you rascal.

  “How are you?” asks Lucas on the phone.

  “No vibrato,” says Minna.

  “What about the frogs?”

  “They don’t have vibratos either,” says Minna.

  Two days.

  Silently they file into the concert hall for rehearsal, following Porch and Mrs. Willoughby-Fiske down the main aisle, through the stage door, and into the cavern behind.

  “Here is the waiting room,” announces Mrs. Willoughby-Fiske in a ponderous tone. Serious business, this. “One hour,” she tells them, raising one finger in the air as if the word “one” is not sufficient.

  They open their cases. Lucas takes out his rosin and tightens his bow. Imelda tunes nervously. Minna wipes her cello with a cloth. Orson fingers his strings.

  “You’re a bit flat,” says Porch to Imelda. “Up a little.”

  Then they walk onstage.

  The stage is lighted, but there is a vast blackness where there will be faces in two days. The chairs and music stands are arranged in a semicircle.

  “I think it is time to meet each other again,” says Porch with a smile. “Though I’ll admit,” he adds, “that you played great Mozart in your corners.”

  They sit, looking at each other nervously, as if together for the first time. Minna places her music on the stand. She searches for a crack in the floor for her end pin.

  “Now.” Porch stands in front of them. “I will not be here yelling at you, or stepping on your foot.” He looks sideways at Orson. “Imelda, you will begin them.”

  Imelda looks up with a start.

  “And remember,” warns Porch, “play no matter what. Someone may cough, or a child may cry. A string may break. Your music may fall off the stand. Play on!”

  Silence.

  Porch grins suddenly. Then he jumps off the stage, disappearing into the seats.

  Minna looks out into the darkness. She sees only tiny lights above the exit doors. She looks up into the balcony and decides to make her peace with Mozart.

  Are you there, Wolfgang? I have come to know you very well, better than you know me. If you knew me, after all, you would have sent me a vibrato. But, no matter, as my mother Mrs. Pratt says. Your music doesn’t really need a vibrato.

&nbs
p; Minna

  P.S. If you do send one, make it during the andante.

  Imelda lifts her bow and looks at them.

  “This is not cozy,” she says suddenly. “I now know why Paganini could only compose music with a blanket over his head.”

  There is silence, then laughter.

  “Play,” says Imelda softly.

  It is startling to hear the music in this space. The sound does not bounce about as it does in the rehearsal room. It does not escape into the carpet and curtains of Minna’s room as it does when she practices at home. Here it seems to lift and then disappear, the notes gone, one after another, into the dark.

  An hour passes quickly. They play through once with Porch’s voice calling from the dark, even though he has said he won’t.

  “Legato, there, Minna . . . Crescendo, remember! . . . Pianissimo for the last three bars of the coda, Orson. You’re too loud.”

  Then they play it through alone. When they are finished Porch’s face appears below them over the edge of the stage.

  “Splendid. You could play the presto with your eyes closed, I bet.”

  They smile at each other and do it for Porch then, as a final gift, their eyes clamped shut, Minna grinning.

  Porch teaches them how to stand and bow from the waist together. He conducts them like a symphony.

  “You play well together. You must take your final bow well together.”

  He beams.

  One day.

  FIFTEEN

  “I will miss them,” says Minna’s mother about the frogs. “Especially these two.”

  “They like music,” says Minna’s father.

  “They love my stories,” says her mother wistfully.

  Lucas smiles.

  “It’s time they went into the pond, where they’ll be happy. They’re growing up.”

  Minna’s mother lifts her eyebrows at him.

  Lucas has this day freed most of the frogs. Minna counts nine remaining, counting Morose and Sly, her mother’s favorites. Minna, Lucas, and Willie have driven with Twig to park ponds around the city, Willie refusing to sit in front.

  “Slow down here, Twig,” he calls out from the backseat. “For heaven’s sake!”

  “My mother says Twig drives in a brisk manner,” says Lucas.

  “Hush up, the two of you, or drive yourself,” answers Twig, having it out with a taxi driver who suddenly looks over, brakes, and grins at her.

  Three park ponds in all they’ve visited, Lucas gently pushing the frogs to the edges. He does not seem sad, not even angry at his parents.

  “They’re going to give us a reception backstage after the competition,” he says. “Win or lose, they say. That’s a bit of a fuss, don’t you think? For them.”

  Minna nods.

  “Lucas?” she says, staring at the water. She can see their reflections there. “You wanted them to find the frogs. Didn’t you?”

  There was a pause.

  “Maybe,” says Lucas finally. “I knew they would someday.” He pushes a frog to the edge of the grass. “Go on. Into the pond, you alien creature.”

  The frog jumps in, making a small splash. Their reflections turn wavery.

  “Only one alien creature left in your house now,” says Minna, her arms around her knees.

  “Who?” asks Lucas.

  “You,” says Minna.

  Lucas smiles and takes the last two frogs out of their glass aquarium. Morose and Sly.

  “Not so,” says Lucas. “My father and mother yelled at each other this morning.” Lucas looks pleased. “My father threw a book in the living room. My mother said the frogs had heard me play more than they had.” Lucas puts Morose and Sly on the grass by the water.

  “They said I could keep these two,” he says after a moment.

  Minna looks up, surprised.

  “But it is time to let them go,” says Lucas, turning to look at Minna. “My choice,” he adds.

  Lucas smiles and in the silence, one after the other, the last of his frogs slip into the water and away.

  The day. Minna has wished for sunlight, but the day is not sunny. It is not even nice. Minna wakes to sheets of rain against her window. Wind whips the small trees outside. She can barely see across the street. Minna slips out of bed, padding barefoot down the hall to her mother’s writing room. The room, clean after the frogs’ departure, is beginning to look cluttered again. Minna sees a laundry basket with an array of socks inside. She bends down to look more closely. She smiles. All the socks are white. No stripes. There is a strange comfort in that, and in the beginnings of another mess.

  “Minna?” Her mother comes into the room. “Dad’s driving you early. Nervous?”

  Minna shakes her head.

  They look at the shelves where the frogs have been. Then Minna looks at her mother’s sign: FACT AND FICTION ARE DIFFERENT TRUTHS. There is something here I almost know, thinks Minna. I am beginning to remember.

  “Minna,” says her mother softly, holding out a folded paper. “Read what came in the mail today.”

  Minna unfolds the letter and reads:

  Dear Mrs. Pratt,

  I love your stories. I am wondering, are they all lies?

  Regards,

  Robert

  Minna smiles.

  “What did you answer?” asks Minna after a moment.

  “Dear Robert,” begins her mother, “some of them are and some of them are not. But they are all true.”

  Minna nods. She looks at her mother’s typewriter for a long time. She reaches out to touch the keys.

  “How did you know?” she asks after a moment.

  “A crooked r,” says her mother. “I know my typewriter very well. I also,” she adds, putting her arm around Minna, “know you and your truths very well. Whatever name you use.”

  There is more comfort in the kitchen. Minna’s father has lost his glasses. He searches through the rubble of the kitchen counter, in the drawers among the silverware, as Minna’s mother bangs into breakfast.

  McGrew hums at the table as he eats his cereal. On his lap, out of sight of his parents, is a newspaper with the headline: HOUSEWIFE CAN’T STOP EATING CATERPILLARS.

  The phone rings. McGrew answers.

  “What?” he says, folding his newspaper into his literature book.

  “It’s Emily Parmalee,” he says to them. “She wonders if she can wear cleats to the concert. They’re new,” he adds.

  “No,” says Minna’s father, joyfully rescuing his glasses from the dish drainer. “Tell her plain old shoes will be fine.”

  “No,” sings McGrew into the telephone and hangs up.

  Breakfast is scorched scrambled eggs and orange juice with frozen lumps that haven’t dissolved. Minna smiles all through it.

  There are rumblings of thunder and lightning as Minna dresses for the concert. Minna bends down to give her cello a pat before she zips it into its canvas case. She hoists it on her hip and goes to meet her father.

  Downstairs Emily Parmalee is wearing a blue dress to which she has sewn sequins in odd places. She wears old shoes and the largest diamond stud earrings that Minna has ever seen. Minna peers closely at them.

  “Fake,” says Emily. She hands Minna a sealed envelope. “McGrew and I have a special message in this envelope that you should read just before you play.”

  Minna smiles at both of them and puts it in her skirt pocket.

  “Remember,” sings McGrew.

  “I’ll remember.”

  “Ready?” asks her father. He takes her cello and picks up an umbrella.

  “Ready,” says Minna.

  And they race outside into the storm.

  Backstage is filled with noise and instruments and musicians wandering nervously with music in their hands. Mrs. Willoughby-Fiske is not smiling, though Porch is. He herds Minna over to Imelda, who is peering over someone’s shoulder at the music.

  “Oh my dear,” says Imelda. “Haydn’s Opus 20. Four flats!”

  Lucas comes wearing a
suit with the sleeves a bit short. He looks at Minna.

  “Well?”

  “No,” says Minna. “No vibrato.”

  Orson appears with his hair sleeked and shiny like a bowling ball. Minna can see the shape of his head for the very first time.

  The big windows of the waiting room rattle in the wind, and the lights dim for a moment, then are bright again. Everyone quiets.

  Mrs. Willoughby-Fiske arrives with their numbers, a long tumble of pearls falling over her chest like a mountain climber’s rope.

  “You are number ten,” she says, looking intently at each of them. She holds up two hands, ten fingers, then disappears to hold up other numbers to other quartets.

  “Last,” says Porch happily as he tunes Imelda’s violin. “Good position. Memorable. Make sure that last chord is in tune!” He finishes with Imelda’s violin and reaches for Minna’s cello. “This weather is not terrific for tuning,” he mutters to her. “I’ll tune you now, but I’ll be out front. You’ll have to make sure that you stay tuned.”

  A rush of wind and rain hits the windows and they all look up. Someone laughs nervously. Another in the corner bursts into tears. She has lost her music. There is a flurry of talk. Someone rushes out.

  “Good-bye, good luck,” says Porch, and before they can say anything he is gone.

  “Number one,” intones Mrs. Willoughby-Fiske and the room quiets. She holds up one finger.

  It is time.

  The room is eerily silent except for the wind and rain and the crashes of thunder with lightning afterward. The lights flicker.

  “There was lightning and thunder just as Beethoven died,” says Imelda as they all walk to the window. “It is said that he arose from his deathbed, shaking his fist at it, then he fell back dead.”

  “Thank you for that,” says Orson, and they laugh.

  Slowly, one after another, the quartets leave and return with bursts of talk.

  “You were flat,” says a violinist.

  “I know,” moans the cellist. “My end pin slipped. I nearly fell over my cello into the audience.” Laughter.

  “Lucas?” says Minna. They are leaning against the wall by the window, Minna’s cello lying at her feet.