We Hope for Better Things

by Erin Bartels

  The fire was dead again when I woke up. I pulled back my hair, which was grimy from two days with no shower, and went outside to see if I could locate the source of the noise from the night. There were a number of branches down in front of the house. One had narrowly missed the porch, another rested uncomfortably close to my car. The snow had stuck to the ice-covered branches, piling on more weight, flake by delicate flake, until it was just too much.

  I walked around to the backyard. Then I saw it. The two great trunks of the catalpa tree had finally parted ways for all time. One leaned at an odd angle, the other lay on its side, its topmost branches reaching into the herb garden. Part of the fence had been smashed. A few broken branches lay scattered around the space, some stuck in the rosebushes, others flattening the oregano and the lavender.

  All of my hard work lay beneath the wreckage of the tree Nora could do nothing to save.

  The whine of a chainsaw echoed across the open field as Tyrese dismantled the fallen catalpa. When I had broken the news to Nora about her devastated tree, I’d expected her to grieve for the loss. She only said, “Tell William. He’ll take care of it.” Then she got back to work. I began to wonder whether I should be marking the frequency of her slips on a calendar.

  Now Tyrese was replenishing our diminished woodpile with the real William’s tree. “Most of this has been dead for some time,” he said, “so it should already be dry enough to burn. But I wouldn’t keep stockpiles of it in the house if I were you. Dead trees are favorite homes for carpenter ants and termites. The cold will keep them dormant, but when the wood warms up inside, they’ll wake up. So just bring in what you’ll put in the fireplace right away. It’ll mean a lot more trips in and out, but you don’t want those in the house.”

  I nodded and imagined with some distaste the last sizzling moments of all the tiny bodies I would be feeding into the fireplaces. Did carpenter ants scream?

  “Been pretty busy?” I said.

  “Yeah. It’s a mess out there. News is saying half the Lower Peninsula is without power. Says it’ll be a week for some people. Do you two need somewhere to stay?”

  “Do you have power?”

  “No. But there are a couple churches that already have it back on, and they’re taking people in.”

  “I doubt Nora would be interested. She’s been obsessed with a sewing project. I don’t think I could get her to drop it for even a day.”

  He went back to his chainsaw. I stacked the smaller logs and gathered sticks into bundles for kindling. Another hour went by before Tyrese had done all he could do. I was exhausted and my toes and nose were numb. I followed him back to his truck to see him off when it occurred to me that this special service was probably not included in the landscaping package Mr. Rich had devised for Nora.

  “What do I owe you?”

  He shook his head. “C’mon. Nothing.”

  “This isn’t mowing the lawn.”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m happy to do it for you.”

  He was looking at me with such kindness in his eyes I wanted to cry. “Okay.”

  “Hey, what’s wrong?”

  I shook my head.

  He put a gloved hand on my shoulder. “Don’t say nothing. Because I know something’s wrong.”

  Of course something was wrong, but I couldn’t say what it was. How do you put into words the feeling that you’re an adult and yet you are utterly lost and confused? How do you say that you don’t know what to do with your life? That it feels like everything you’ve worked for is worthless and yet you don’t know what else to do but more of the same? How do you explain the feeling that your life is over when there’s nothing wrong beyond the fact that you lost a job? How do you say that out loud when innocent people are shot and killers go free and it feels like the very fabric of society is unraveling?

  So I didn’t say anything. We just stood there in the snow surrounded by sawdust, and a tear froze on my face.

  “Let me take you out for breakfast tomorrow morning,” he said. “Will Nora be all right on her own for a bit?”

  I nodded and rubbed my raw cheeks. “Yes.”

  “Okay then. You meet me at the Roadhouse Diner—they do have power—at eight o’clock. And let’s talk this out. Whatever this is. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  As I watched him drive away, I decided to tell him everything—about Nora, about Mr. Rich, about the camera and the photos, about Vic Sharpe, about the interview at the Beat—everything. And maybe if I could just say it all out loud, I’d know what to do with it.

  thirty-eight

  Detroit, April 1965

  Nora stepped around the open paint can on the porch. “Ugh. I’m glad this will be dry by the time I get back tonight.”

  “The smell might still hang around.”

  “But it won’t be this bad.”

  William sat back on his heels and looked at the front door. “You sure about this color? It looks like raw salmon.”

  “It will dry orange. Look at the sample on the top of the can.”

  “You sure about that color?”

  She smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “It will grow on you.” It was the brightest orange she could find. She didn’t normally gravitate toward orange, but somehow that was the color that had called to her at the hardware store. Her mother hated orange.

  “I guess. At least it’s on the outside where we don’t see it much.”

  She laughed and walked to the car.

  “Drive careful,” he called after her.

  Nora waved, pulled out of the driveway, and headed south. The drive was pleasant until she hit the traffic snarls of Metro Detroit. Except for Christmas when she and William visited the Riches, Nora hadn’t been back to the city. In December it had been covered in clean white snow. Now in early April the city was brown and dirty. Soggy paper bags and newspapers and discarded bottles congregated at the mouths of the storm drains as rivulets of last night’s rainwater dribbled in beneath them. The sight made Nora yearn for the rebirth of the garden and the field of wildflowers around the farmhouse, but she thought wryly that William would find beauty amid these grim streets.

  He had been taking his camera to Flint each day to photograph urban life and the people he worked with or saw around town. Nothing came of it. His ambition of selling photos of newsworthy things to the papers seemed all but forgotten. He and Nora read about the tumultuous events happening all across the nation as spectators rather than participants. For her part, Nora preferred it, but she wondered if she had somehow inadvertently snuffed out her husband’s dreams.

  “Do you like it here?” she had asked him one evening as they lay in bed.

  “Of course I do.”

  “You know what I mean. Sometimes I feel like I completely derailed your life.”

  “You did. And I derailed yours.”

  She turned onto her side. “Do you miss living with your family?”

  “Sure. Sometimes. Sometimes a lot. I miss my friends. Don’t you?”

  She knew the correct answer was yes, but she didn’t feel it.

  “Anyway,” William went on, “this is where I belong. Here with you. This is where I want to live out my days. And when we’re both old and gray and finally leave this earth, they can bury us in the backyard alongside Old Mary.”

  That was what he called her. Old Mary. Old Mary Balsam, laid to rest beneath the weathered gravestone in the garden. And in a matter of minutes, Nora hoped to discover who she really was.

  She pulled into a parking spot in front of a drab brick building. The nurse at the front desk directed her down a long corridor lined with doors. At room 127, she stopped and knocked lightly, then a little harder when there was no response.

  She pushed the door open and poked her head in. “Hello? Margaret?”

  Inside the institutional room, a shriveled woman sat hunched in a vinyl easy chair. Her white hair was so thin it looked like someone had set traces of cotton candy upon her freckled scalp. She squinte
d out the window at something Nora could not see.

  “Margaret?”

  The woman turned toward the sound.

  “Who’s that?” she said, her voice crackling like brittle paper left too long in the sun.

  “I’m Eleanor Ri—Balsam, your great-niece. I’m Daniel’s daughter.”

  “Daniel?”

  Nora walked into the room and took an empty chair. “Your brother George’s son.”

  “Oh, George!”

  “I’m his granddaughter, Eleanor.”

  “Are you?” she said with palpable delight. “Well, isn’t this a treat.”

  The old woman lifted a trembling hand, and Nora caught it in hers. Margaret held on even after the handshake was over, as though if she let go Nora might rush off to something else.

  “Eleanor. I’m sorry, dear, but I don’t remember you.” Margaret’s watery blue eyes looked past Nora as she talked.

  “I don’t know that we’ve ever met before. But you may know my older brothers, Warner and Richard.”

  “Oh, yes. Daniel’s boys.” There was a pause. “Who did you say your father was, dear?”

  “Daniel Balsam. But I was born much later than my brothers and I have a different mother. My mother’s name is Mallory.”

  The old woman shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t keep it straight.”

  “Well, no matter. We don’t have to know each branch of the family tree to have a chat, do we?”

  She laughed. “No, we don’t.”

  “I wanted to visit you to tell you I’m living in your old house.”

  “My house? On Kensington? With Ben’s son? Oh my. You seem a little young for him.”

  “No, not that one.” Nora stifled a small laugh. “Your childhood home in Lapeer.”

  “My heavens! Is that house still standing? No one’s been taking care of it at all since Father died.”

  “Well, I’m taking care of it now.” Nora gave Margaret’s hand a reassuring pat. “Your father was Nathaniel Balsam, right? And your mother was Mary?”

  “Yes, dear, yes.” She paused a moment. “Though I didn’t know my mother. She died not long after I was born.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Nora said. She waited for Margaret to speak again, but the old woman just stared into empty space. “Do you know if she quilted? I found a crazy quilt there and I am wondering who made it.”

  “Oh, yes. She made that. That was on my father’s bed until my brothers moved him out of the house. She made that when he was in the war. Sewed it by hand.”

  “I found it in a trunk in the attic.”

  Margaret smiled. “I put it there, you know.”

  “You did?”

  “Yes. When my brother George was closing up the house, I hid it away in the trunk. Men don’t appreciate things like that. He would have just thrown it away or used it to cover some furniture and left it open to the moths and mice. So I put it in the trunk to keep it safe.”

  Nora smiled. “I’m so glad you did. It will probably please you to know it is being used again. It’s on a bed in one of the guest rooms.”

  “Oh, that’s lovely, dear. I’ve always preferred quilts to blankets. Especially now that I can’t see so good. I can still feel the patterns. I used to spend hours running my fingers over Mother’s quilt to find the bird tracks and the flowers and the spiderwebs. All the little secrets.”

  Nora looked down at Margaret’s warm, gnarled hand in hers and imagined her as the sole girl among boys, bereft of a mother. She thought of the rift between herself and her own parents, and her heart ached.

  “I’m so very sorry you never knew your mother.”

  “Influenza that year was very bad. But that’s not what all of them died of.”

  “All of who?”

  “The men in the field. I got it as a baby, but I survived. It made me weak in the eyes. But that’s nothing, I guess, compared to all those men. And anyhow, I’m still here.”

  “What men?”

  “The men who worked the farm. A lot of them got sick because they all slept together.”

  A light bulb flicked on in Nora’s mind. “Did these men sleep in the attic?”

  “Yes, yes!” she said in excited recollection. “The boys would play hide-and-seek up there. It wasn’t fair to me because I wasn’t allowed in the attic. That was the men’s quarters. You didn’t mix so much then as people seem to nowadays.”

  Nora considered this. “Was it common for farmhands to live in the boss’s house?”

  “It seemed common enough to me until those men came bothering us about it. They came once before I was born and again when I was just a little girl. I remember the one time. There was a lot of yelling, and they set the barn on fire again. The barn that’s there now is the third one, you know.”

  “I hadn’t realized that.”

  “It was very sad. I was very small, so it’s hard to remember. I remember the animals screaming, though. I wish I could forget it. George got them out. Big George.” She laughed. “Not my brother! He never wanted anything to do with Big George.”

  Nora tilted her head as though the motion might make all the parts of Margaret’s scattered story line up into some sort of sensible arrangement of facts. “I’m sorry, but I’m having a little trouble following. Why would someone be so upset about people living in your house that they would set your barn on fire?”

  “That did puzzle me too. My brother Jonathan said it was because they were Negroes. He had to explain to me what Negroes were, but I didn’t understand. They were just my family. I figured out a little later that they had been slaves. Escaped from the South during the Civil War. When my father came home from the war and the farm was doing so well, I guess he employed quite a few of them. Some would stay for a season, collect their pay, and move on. Others stayed for years. Eventually the only one left was Big George. Everyone else moved out. That’s who your grandfather is named after, you know.”

  Nora struggled to connect the dots. Her father had said that black people had ruined the family. But Margaret spoke of a family that seemed to embrace them. One generation was all it took to go from her grandfather being named after a former slave to her father disowning her for marrying a black man? It made no sense.

  “Aunt Margaret, I hardly know what to say. I had no idea.”

  The old woman nodded slightly. “I’m not surprised. My brothers resented them—especially Little George. We got teased at school on account of it. As the boys got older, they seemed to think that the men in the attic were making off with money and land that should have been theirs. Father was very generous. Always giving them extra. He always made sure they all had nice presents at Christmas. I know George didn’t like that at all. But then, George never seemed to like anything. Sourest person I’ve ever known. Once he moved to Detroit and the other two followed, they never came back to visit much. Just wanted to forget about the place, I suppose.”

  “What happened to all of those men who worked the farm?”

  “Some saved enough to buy their own farms. Lots of them moved to Detroit during World War I. Lots of jobs then. But Big George stayed on. He ran the farm for Father. And there was a light-skinned Negro boy about my age who came around now and then. He’d help out in the fields sometimes. Steered clear of the house. Odd-looking boy. He had blue eyes. I’d never seen a Negro with blue eyes.”

  Margaret stopped to let out a raspy cough. Nora handed her a cup of water from the table near her bed.

  “I stayed with Father until he got very old. Then the boys came up to the house and brought Father and me back to live with Benny in Detroit. Big George had died by then. Stroke, I think. Or heart troubles. We were heartbroken about the move. Couldn’t stand the city.” She sighed and licked her dry lips. “Wasn’t much we could do about it. Being the youngest and a girl, I had no claim on the house. I couldn’t live on my own with my bad eyes. I think my brothers wanted to sell it, but it was the Depression, you know. No one could afford a big house and all th
at land, and I don’t think they wanted to let it go for a pittance. Then I guess they just forgot about it. Got busy making their money during World War II, building their own big houses. I’m glad it’s being used.”

  After all her storytelling, Margaret looked worn-out. She coughed again and sipped from the cup. Nora felt a little guilty. She’d come for information and had certainly gotten more than she’d bargained for. But here was an old woman, her own flesh and blood, alone in a home, forgotten.

  “I think I should let you get some rest now, Aunt Margaret, but I’d like to visit you again if you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Not at all, dear. It’s been nice chatting with you.”

  Nora pushed back her chair. “Would you like me to help you into bed for a nap?”

  “No, no. I’ll just rest here in my chair.”

  “Okay.”

  She started for the door but Margaret stopped her. “Eleanor, do say hello to the men in the field for me. It’s been so long since I talked to them.”

  Nora frowned. “Of course, Aunt Margaret. I’ll be sure to do that.”

  thirty-nine

  Lapeer County, July 1871

  Mary took Nathaniel’s proffered hand and stepped down to the platform at Lapeer Station. Seven-year-old George followed close behind, grasping Jonathan with one hand and Benjamin with the other. The train ride between Detroit and Lapeer was not an arduous one, but it had been taxing for Mary. The boys required constant watchfulness and frequent correction. Growing up on a farm had not prepared her boys for the more refined city life that Detroit had to offer. But when Catherine Balsam had invited her grandsons to the festivities surrounding the long-anticipated dedication of the new City Hall building on the Fourth of July, she couldn’t refuse. The prospect of getting away from it all, even for a few days, was enticing.

  The boys had seen little of their grandmother of late as she no longer traveled well. Illness had weakened her constitution, if not her tongue, and this limitation on Catherine’s mobility had proven beneficial for the restoration of Mary’s relationship with Nathaniel. Mary felt sufficiently chastened for her disloyal thoughts and temptations. She didn’t require assistance from her mother-in-law to feel regret and humility. What she needed was to take control once more of her wayward passions.