Free The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt by Patricia MacLachlan Page A

screeches to a stop in front of Minna’s house. On the sidewalk stand McGrew and Emily Parmalee, their mouths slightly open as they stare at the car. Twig shuts off the motor and the engine rattles on a bit, then stops. Silence fills the car. Minna begins to count her breaths.
    â€œShould I bring in my viola?” asked Lucas on the street. “We could practice some after dinner.”
    Minna hesitated, then nodded.
    â€œI suppose.”
    Emily Parmalee and McGrew were playing hopscotch on the front walk.
    â€œSee?” said Minna to Lucas. “Hopscotch.”
    â€œI’m Emily,” announced Emily, shaking hands with Twig. “That’s McGrew about to step on a line.”
    â€œNo, I’m not,” sang McGrew. “Most often I win.”
    â€œWell,” said Twig, “the opera’s not over ’til the fat lady sings.”
    McGrew looked up from square three.
    â€œIs that a headline?” he asked.
    Twig shook her head.
    â€œIt’s a saying,” she said. “It means the game’s not over yet. It means there is more.”
    A fact, thought Minna.
    McGrew smiled and moved slightly, stepping on a line.
    â€œNow, for the fat lady!” said Emily Parmalee, tossing down her stone.
    â€œI’ll pick you up later,” said Twig, her hand on Lucas’s shoulder.
    They watched her roar off, straight out from the curb, leaving a honking of horns behind her.
    â€œYou never told me about her driving,” said Minna after a moment.
    Beside her, Lucas lifted his shoulders in a half shrug.
    â€œThat is because,” he said, “there are no words for it.”
    â€œIt is true, very true,” sang Emily Parmalee behind them, sounding very much like McGrew, “that the fat lady is winning.”
    Laughing, Minna and Lucas walked inside.
    Lucas loves Minna’s parents on sight. Minna can tell. He follows her mother and father around like Dog follows Willie. Verdi composed his favorite operas, he tells Minna’s father. Her father beams. He looks over her mother’s shoulder in the kitchen, reading the cookbook. Her mother is actually cooking something out of a book, a meat and potato dish with a “garnish” of parsley, as the book says.
    â€œI don’t have fresh parsley,” her mother complains. “Things I cook never look like these pictures.”
    â€œNo,” agrees Lucas kindly, and Minna suddenly thinks of how beautiful Twig’s dishes are, like small paintings ready to be framed in gilt. “I heard,” Lucas continues, “that they prop up the vegetables and meats in stews with toothpicks or old rags before they’re photographed.”
    Minna’s parents laugh. Minna can see that her mother likes Lucas for that alone.
    The dining room has been packed into boxes along one wall. At least the clutter that is usually the dining room table is in boxes and there are candles and two extra places, one for Lucas, another for Emily Parmalee. If Minna squints her eyes just right it looks like a nicely set table in a room where someone is either moving in or moving out.
    Dinner conversation is as always, though no one “shoots” the potatoes. Lucas spends a good deal of the meal with his fork suspended in the air, turning his head from one end of the table to the other as if he is watching a long rally in tennis. He has a dazed, dim-witted look on his face. When dessert is finally served, it is amidst a heated argument between Emily Parmalee and McGrew about their favorite headline of the day. Emily likes TALK SHOW HOST FINDS LIFE’S MEANING IN A FORTUNE COOKIE. McGrew prefers RACCOONS DELIVER $ 100,000 IN COINS TO POOR MINNESOTA WIDOW. Lucas loves the raccoon headline.
    Dessert is something Minna doesn’t recognize, a hodgepodge of something.
    â€œTrifle!” exclaims Lucas happily as Minna’s father sets it on the table. He smiles at it as if greeting an ancient friend from a past