Chapter 9

Charlotte’s mother had struck her just four days after Thanksgiving. It was the first time she’d hit her in Charlotte’s fifteen years and she was still a little rattled. Holy smoke, had that been a shocker. Right in the back of the head as she’d been storming out of the kitchen; away from the argument. SMACK! Open-handed and sharp. The cartoon stars spinning before Charlotte’s eyes.

If Charlotte had had to pinpoint when her relationship with her mother started to show strain she’d have guessed it was a few years earlier; around middle school. When she really started to get excited about what she was learning. Although she didn’t really figure it out until high school. That was when it dawned on Charlotte that there seemed to be a direct correlation between her bubbling enthusiasm over Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, or anything by the Brontë sisters, and her mother’s scowling. Fifteen issues of Movie Stars Parade, stacked one on top of the other, measured up to the height of Mansfield Park as it sat on the side table next to the sofa, but there was no convincing Charlotte that anything in those magazines could measure up to what was inside the Austen book. She’d bet her mother hadn’t even bothered with a glance at the book’s title, and there was a small part of her that worried her mother might think Jane Austen was the president of Wooster’s Trowel & Trellis Garden Club. Oh, yes, Jane Austen. I think I’ve seen her at Beulah Bechtel’s. The one with the chin mole and the blue rinse.

Smart, Aunt Vera had said. Charlotte had overheard Aunt Vera discussing her with Aunt Violet. Aunt Vera never had any of her own kids, but doted on Charlotte like she was her own. Doted on, but didn’t coddle. The rest of that comment to Aunt Violet had been, A little naïve, though. Charlotte had gasped in indignation at that, and then folded her arms with a frowning pout, wondering what Aunt Vera meant.

She’d admit, she’d felt naïve about certain things, like when she hadn’t understood why Rosie Gianetti’s family hadn’t been reimbursed by Wayne Building & Loan following the embezzlement scandal. Charlotte’s parents had been reimbursed. Rosie’s parents had not. “Why do you think they’re not getting their money back, Charlotte?” Rosie had shouted, her fists clenched and face red, because the word around Rosie’s neighborhood was that none of the Italian families were going to be reimbursed.

Charlotte had stood, dumbfounded, unable to answer what was really a rhetorical question. She remembered that Mrs. Betty Miller had organized an event in Wooster’s Public Square to honor her father, who’d said he’d reimburse people who’d lost their money. The day had been a sweltering summer one and there’d been loudspeakers and Mrs. Miller was calling out to the crowd about this “celebration of simple human decency,” saying that her father’s generosity was the kind of thing all local communities should celebrate. Charlotte had even heard Margie Miller saying her mom thought there ought to be a statue of him in the square, and a special “J. Ellis Reed” holiday, which was a big eye-roller.