Anything but Still Lives: The Worlds of Edward Hopper

by Anne Gambling

Mission book of Chinese proverbs.

  Back and forth she swung, higher, higher, looking up through green summer leaves and ripening fruit to sparkly sunlight and blue-blue sky. Not too blue, no sir, just the right amount of blue-blue. She laughed, happy, here in her memory, a green tree in her heart. Jake stopping in for a lemonade and a slice of cake and her coming in to make polite talk, smoothing her dress, rubbing grass stains from her knees.

  Jake.

  No, she didn’t want that memory. That memory connected then to now. No. And pushed off again on the apple tree swing.

  Squeak went the swing, its ropes trailing long and languorous from a sturdy branch. A happy squeak, not strident, rather melodious, chatty even. Still, she slowed her passage to let other sounds enter the space of their conversation, she and the branch – of the breeze shifting leaves, of singing birds twitting about up high in the crown, of her father calling instructions to the farm boys, which field next to plough.

  Opened her eyes and again saw Jake – couldn’t help it. He was part and parcel of life back then as much as all the rest of it. Fine muscled body, tanned and fair-bursting out of his work singlet, beaten-up old hat shielding his eyes. Blue-blue, not too blue, no sir, her Jake’s eyes. He was the one. He’d be the one. Watching him talk things over with the boss, her father, respectful he was, and considered were his responses. Verily could she watch his thoughts form before replying. With wisdom, she expected.

  But her Mama full of reproach. She shouldn’t be having such thoughts yet. ‘You learn all these good-wifely things first and then a man’ll come a-courting you,’ she’d say as Maddy sat over her sewing, unpicking the mistakes from the day before.

  She’d sit in the old front room to sew. Mama in the rocker, Maddy on a stool at her feet. The windows wide in here, wide and high. Only past nightfall would they draw the curtains, cosy up the old farmhouse a tad. But in the afternoons they would sew and darn and patch and mend. The linen, socks, farm clothes. All these things that needed sewing and darning and patching and mending. All the while seeing what there was to see out beyond those high wide windows. The porch with its flower pots, the corner of garden set aside for vegetable-growing, past it the orchard. Which in turn gave way to the wide-wide fields of Papa’s corn and wheat, and their placid herd of dairy cows dappled against Vermont’s green hills.

  Sometimes, though, she looked beyond this beyond. Into the blue of sky. Such a blue-blue. And air so fresh. Such a fresh-fresh, that she drank in, in huge grand gulps. Sweet, so sweet it was, living with all this blue and all this green. With squirrels and hares and foxes and deer and birds all round, and their farm smack-bang in the middle.

  Jake.

  Jake too in the middle of it all. To watch him pull an old flannel on over that work singlet, wash his hands at the pump in the garden before coming up onto the porch and into the house, a fine smile always set on his fine-fine face. His hands big – big as a bear’s, too. And Maddy always trying to sneak a peak at his broad chest, its hair and muscles no shirt wanted to hide.

  Soon enough he was eating with the family every night before heading back to his lodgings in the village. Soon enough he was walking Maddy out to the orchard, a shy hand placed over her own as he rocked her back and forth on the swing. Soon enough warm sweet breath was in her ear, its love talk all tender and soft. Soon enough that warm breath was in her mouth, on her neck, at her breast.

  The wedding was a simple affair, times were getting hard by then. But that was of no concern or consequence to happy lovers. The pastor rode out from Stowe, and a three-piece jig band came to make the dancing. Mama did the cake, a sweet confection of cream curls and rich fruit, and everything took place in the orchard. Maddy had even managed to concoct a dress out of some old ivory curtain ticking, with a little lace for the sleeves and bodice courtesy of Aunt Peggy’s sideboard runner. And there was Mama’s wedding sampler, all rolled up in crepe paper and tied with ribbon, to take her breath away – a cross-stitch of her favourite things. Hares and deer, a sugar maple and red clover border, bride and groom placid under an apple tree at its centre.

  Jake had shaken her own apple tree till its pink-white blossoms filled her hair and carpeted the ground with springtime joy. My, she looked a picture. There was enough happiness for the whole world to be smiling that day.

  Late in the evening, when things were quiet, everyone tired out from the dancing, the laughing, the feasting and the drinking, the band had played Vermont’s own ballad, The Legend of Margery Grey. The audience hushed, she remembered, in the face of this melancholy air, though she had to admit she hadn’t taken so much notice. Then.

  In her arms a laughing baby

  With its father’s dark hair played,

  As he lingered there beside them,

  Leaning on his trusty space,

  ‘I am going to the wheat lot,’

  With a smile said Robert Grey,

  ‘Will you be too lonely Margery,

  If I leave you all the day?’

  It wasn’t long till the milk soured for want of a buyer, and the apples rotted before being sold. No money for anything. All because of some crazy men, and something called stocks and bonds, and President Hoover not knowing what the darned heck to do.

  That was when he’d said one night, tucked up in the slim bed they shared in her childhood bedroom, ‘Maddy, it’s time we went searching for work.’ That was when the swing stopped altogether, the apple bough squeak fell mute. And her eyes wide in the dark, hand pressed to a stopped heart, while his cigarette glowed with each silent draw.

  He had argued the case well. Mama and Papa couldn’t keep supporting them, the farm brought in nothing nowadays. All was wasting away, wasting away, the land as fallow as a sucked-dry river bed. And what was Mr Hoover doing about it? Hadn’t he failed the man on the land? On and on.

  She looked to the window, uncurtained this evening the better to see the moon once risen. But look what else had crept in through the glass – the now, the now of this life, a now where no apple tree bough supported her heavy heart, a now where she sat in Mama’s chair, rocking, instead.

  ‘New York,’ he’d said. ‘There’ll be work in New York.’

  And more. ‘We’ll come home, don’t you worry none. We’ll come back, Maddy, when we’ve made some money to help your Pa run the farm again. You know, proper like. When the market picks up again. It’s gonna have to, Maddy. This ain’t a forever thing. I’m sure of it. But we gotta do our bit to help. And the best way is to make some money. Somewhere there’s money to be made.’

  New York, he’d said. There’ll be work in New York.

  ‘Remember Mickey O’Connor? He wrote his parents that he found work in the naval shipyards in Brooklyn. Every day they come out to the gate and tell how many men they need on the works. Some days it’s more than others … but always the young strong ones are likely in. Scrawny city tykes have nothing on us mountain farm boys.’

  Oh, so convincing he made it sound! Oh, how she and Mama cried while Papa nodded his assent! He said there was a good governor looking after the state of New York – a Mr Franklin D Roosevelt. ‘He’s got some grand ideas and if he makes it to President, then we’ll be sharing in the good fortune too,’ said Papa.

  There was nothing for it but to pack the trunk and wrap up Papa’s side table, Mama’s rocking chair. Mama said she’d keep the wedding sampler safe, though. It’d be all framed and waiting for them by the time they got back. ‘Just you wait and see!’ Down to the train station at Waterbury-Stowe in the old buggy. No tears left by then, but she and Mama sure hugged tight till their breath gave out.

  Oh, how many state lines they crossed! New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York. Till finally into Pennsylvania Station, New York City. Where everything was so big and tall and dirty and cold.

  Where no birds sang. Where people walked grey-faced and sombre. Where bread lines stretched round blocks, for blocks. Where the sun had a hard time peaking between buildings to b
ring a little hope to chill limbs and sad hearts. Where Jake told tales of nineteen shoe shiners in just one street, all hankering after a penny. Where the grocer told tales of fights breaking out at the neighbourhood dumpster over scraps of putrid maggoty meat. Where she answered the door a dozen times a day to grimy-faced youngsters with bruises on their arms selling newspapers, or hawkers peddling anything from cheap neck-ties to rubber balls. Till she answered the door no more –didn’t want to see it, face it, their sadness no more. Nothing for it but to sit in Mama’s chair and rock, just rock and rock the days away.

  Soon enough, this day, the sky turned that ruddy stain of a city-lived dusk and Jake’s key was in the door. This time he smelt of tar and oil and was tripping over his words with news of a couple of hours spent in the yards on a cruiser called New Orleans. There he was at the kitchen sink, stripped to the waist, washing up. ‘Tomorrow, tomorrow I’ll be back again. There’s sure to be more going on tomorrow.’

  So she listened, and looked at that fine muscled body, into those blue-blue eyes. Believed what he told, because she wanted to, because she knew he wanted her to. What did it matter? What did any of it matter? Here was now, there was then. All the same – what you believed, what was real. What you believed was what was real, she decided, pulling the green tree out of