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

life.
    â€œRight-o, you betcha, luv,” says Minna’s mother, smiling, switching on the overhead light to illuminate the room in all its horror.
    At that moment, Minna abandons all hope of serene candlelight dinners, soft talk, and meaningful conversation with topics and subtopics. Forever.
    It was quiet, dinner finished, Minna’s father gone to his study. Lucas followed Minna’s mother into her writing room to read the first three pages of her new book. Minna sat next to Lucas and listened to their discussion of names. In an absentminded gesture Lucas reached into the laundry basket and matched a pair of socks, then another.
    â€œI would have liked the name Luther better than Lucas, actually,” he said to her mother. “It’s something about the r at the end.”
    â€œYou may be right,” said Minna’s mother. She leaned over to write the name “Luther” on a notepad.
    Lucas placed the sock balls on the table and looked at Minna’s mother apologetically.
    â€œThere are no more mates here,” he announced.
    There was a silence.
    â€œNone at all?” asked her mother, surprised.
    Minna stared at the two of them, fascinated. It was as if they were discussing the plotting of a book, or a character. Or where to set the story. In the forest? By the sea?
    â€œAs I see it,” said Lucas matter-of-factly, “these can simply be thrown out. Unless, of course,” he added, “there is another basket just like this one somewhere.”
    Minna’s mother smiled a great smile and stood, as if she might be about to knight Lucas.
    Thrown out . Who else but Lucas could have unearthed such a simple solution for the tumble of socks? Had they all been waiting for them—the socks—to be reunited after years apart? To mate, perhaps, and have small matching offspring? Minna sighed. Something was wrong. Lucas should live here. And I should live in the grand house where dinner conversation can be divided into headings on three-by-five cards, all lined.
    1. Oil
    A. Origins and location of
    B. Transportation of
    C. Price of
    Minna’s mother dumped the entire basket of socks in her tall wastebasket.
    â€œThere! Thank you, luv,” she said to Lucas.
    Down the hallway there was music from her father’s study. Lucas peered in at Minna’s father from the doorway.
    â€œ Don Giovanni ?”
    Minna’s father, in a frenzy of conducting, nodded and smiled without missing a beat.
    â€œShall we practice?” Lucas asked Minna as they walked on down the hallway.
    Minna sighed.
    â€œThe andante, maybe?” she said wistfully. “Slow and peaceful?”
    â€œRight-o, you betcha,” murmured Lucas, opening his viola case. “Luv.”
    They sit across from each other, singing the parts they don’t play. It is quiet and strangely eerie, the two parts playing, the ghosts of Imelda and Orson and Porch lurking nearby. WA Mozart “hoovering,” as Twig would say it, above them all.
    If this were a story, thinks Minna; if this were fiction, this is where I’d finally get my vibrato, sitting across from Lucas, who has just called me “luv.” But it is her mother who is the writer of fiction, not Minna. And it does not happen.
    â€œNice,” says Lucas when they finish. “And in tune.” He leans back in his chair.
    There is, at that moment, a squeal of brakes outside, a sound of scraping metal. Lucas and Minna sit silently.
    McGrew pushes the door open.
    â€œI think Twig might be here,” he whispers. “What’s funny?” he asks as they burst into laughter. Minna drops her bow and leans, breathless, over her cello.
    â€œMozart?” asks McGrew, mystified. He moves quickly into the room to peer at their music. “Mozart’s funny ?!”

TWELVE
    O n Wednesday three bad things happen. At school Miss Barbizon praises Minna’s vocabulary story and puts it up on the bulletin board.