by Mona Simpson
Hal had to go to boot camp with Merry still pregnant and that seemed real sad. We thought he wouldn’t even see the baby or only once or twice, before he left. Adele had a fit again, oh ye gods, she was on the phone with us every day with a scheme. First she wanted to get some kind of student deferment, then she heard somewhere that you could get out of it if you had them put braces on your teeth, she thought of everything.
But we didn’t know if it would even be such a bad thing for him to be in the service. Jimmy thought it might make him grow up. I didn’t really know, one way or the other, but he was out of the house and I thought it wasn’t our business anymore, so I didn’t interfere. But this time Hal went along with Adele. He wanted to get out too. They tried the whiplash and the flat feet and the allergies, and whatever else they could say, but it didn’t work. He had to go in.
And after all that fuss, he was only gone nine weeks. He went to the Lackland Air Force Base in Texas at the beginning of the summer. And I guess the boots there didn’t fit him quite right. Hal was always flat-footed. I’ve read now that that could have been helped some if we’d gotten a certain kind of shoe with metal arches when he was little, but we didn’t know about that then. Your mom read up on such stuff. So you and Benny had good shoes, Stride Rites, all the most expensive. But then Shaefer said your arches got ruined anyway with some red pumps, real fashionable, that your mother bought you in Milwaukee. So, she might as well have let you wear shoes from K-Mart. The ones from Milwaukee were just as bad.
I guess in Texas they were all marching along in some field. He was overweight then. And they shaved his long hair off right away and put him in something called Motivation. They made them march and march. He lost fifty pounds in that nine weeks. Hal with his flat feet in boots that didn’t fit him right and pretty soon he tripped over a pothole and I think he even bumped his head with the rifle. So he wasn’t there a week even, and we got a telegram that he was in the hospital, he’d torn a ligament in his leg. And then I guess they let him out and made him march again too soon, before he was really better, and so the leg got worse and he fell again, from walking on that bad leg, and that time he slipped a disk, too. And so there he was in the hospital again. He was in for a week or two and then they had him out marching. Every time the leg got worse. They were doing something wrong or maybe just making him march too soon before it was healed, but he said at night his leg would swell up over the knee, as big as a basketball. Finally, the doctors said they wanted to operate on the leg—that was the same leg he’d broken skiing—and he said no, he wasn’t going to let them. Well, we wouldn’t give permission either, not with what happened to Granny, so he stayed in the hospital there and then they finally let him out. He got honorable discharge, medical deferment. They decided he was costing them too much money.
I often wondered if Hal didn’t feel bad about being home. I’ll tell you, I was glad, and Gram, too. Jimmy was a little ashamed, he didn’t say it, but I knew. I hope to God Hal couldn’t tell anything. But with Jimmy it was that he’d been in the war and that he’d always tried to get Hal going with a sport all his life, and it just never took. Hal probably should have been the bookworm type, but he got off on the wrong track with that, too. We didn’t talk about it once he was home, but I know there were people who probably teased him, because all around here I could tell from the way they asked that they didn’t respect us for it. We told them it was honorable discharge, but they still thought less of us. Chummy had two over there, one in the army, one in the marines. And Bub and Chummy had high school boys planning to sign up right away when they graduated.
You and your mom were gone before our real trouble started. We were worried about you still, thinking you’d be all alone with her in California.
I thought maybe that was where Hal got started with the drugs, down in Texas. You read so much now about the soldiers getting hooked on dope. Lot of them got killed because they were over there high on drugs. The Vietnamese wasn’t high, so he shot our boys first. Sure. And now all those little Vietnamese we were fighting against are here in Bay City getting money from the government.
But Hal says they were already in the drugs before he left. We didn’t see, we just heard about it later. That’s the worst part of being a parent. All the dangerous, important things happen to your children without you. You hear about them later, too late. Apparently, he and Merry were in it together. No, it wasn’t just the marijuana. We didn’t know anything about it. He had his hair long and wore those dirty jeans, but then they all looked like that. And we didn’t go visit the trailer. For one thing, she never invited us, for dinner or a housewarming or anything, so we saw them when Gram had something doing and we all went over there. On Christmas and Easter, we did something. Either at our house or we’d take everybody out. After you and your mom left, there wasn’t much of a family.
I’d seen the trailer once or twice. I always told Merry I’d baby-sit for Tina when she was busy and a few times she called and said could I come pick her up. Merry had a job at the canning factory then and that is hard work. They all say it. Hal was on at the paper mill. I think she had a shift so she was working most evenings, too. I was glad to take Tina. I was glad to get her out of there. The trailer was truly filthy. I don’t think she ever cleaned. There were candles burnt halfway down on the table and they’d just let the wax go right into the wood. And anywhere you’d step there were clothes all over the floor. I bet they just picked their clothes up off the floor in the morning and put them on.
Now Hal says all that time they were in the drugs, so that explains a lot of it. Things got real bad. Hal said sometimes they’d each go out to bars separately, he and Merry, and leave Tina next door with the neighbor. Oh, that still makes me mad. We would have gladly taken her. We would have loved to and I hate to think who those neighbors were, I saw them once, they were no better than Hal and Merry. The husband had such long wavy hair and those tiny little glasses they used to wear on the bottom of his nose. It still makes me mad to think of it.
But he said they’d each find somebody else at one of those bars and bring them home to the trailer. He said whichever got there first, that one got the bed. And the other couple had the couch. So it wasn’t good. And who knows when they remembered to go next door and get Tina—then, in the middle of the night, or in the morning with four people milling around that little trailer. He says when she was still in diapers, just learning to talk, Tina knew the word peyote. I guess they had to tell her when they took her over here or to Gram’s just what she could and couldn’t say. I asked him lot of times if he gave her anything to take and he says no, but I wouldn’t be surprised. Or if Merry did during the day to keep her quiet, while she was tired, from the night shift. They say Bub Griling’s mother used to give Bub whiskey when he was a baby to make him sleep. But Tina’s all right, she’s a smart girl and a good girl, so I guess that’s the main thing, whatever happened.
We didn’t find out until everyone did. You were lucky you weren’t here then. It was all over. Election year and the drugs had been coming in and the kids with the long hair, the hippies, and people got fed up. People had had enough and they wanted to crack down. And wouldn’t you know, Hal was the one who got caught.
He says now he was set up and I believe him. But he admits that he was breaking the law. He was taking the drugs and he was selling them. He says they were in it for the money. He thought he could make money fast. And sure, look what happened. But he always had to have a scheme to get rich quick. He couldn’t just wait and save like everybody else.
We saw it on TV at the store. It was the whole front page of the Press Gazette that night and the big story on the local news. FOUR BAY CITY BOYS ARRESTED IN DRUG TRAFFIC. Hal says one of the people who gave the drugs to him was caught for something else, assault with a deadly weapon, and so they really had him, and he was the one who told.
Gram was down in her kitchen, playing solitaire, and she heard it on the radio and she had the stroke. That was her fi
rst stroke. We found her right away because Jimmy drove over from the store to tell her, we were scared she’d see it on the television. Really, that was one of the worst things of my life, seeing Hal on the television. Jimmy said he thought the same thing. We recognized him and we heard it and we just couldn’t fit it all together. We were really in a daze then.
Jimmy found Gram leaning over unconscious against the counter with the radio still on. I guess she stood up and went closer to the radio, probably thinking the same thing, Could this really be our Hal? But they gave the address and all. Hal Measey of Oneida Parkway, son of James and Carol Measey, Rural Route #1, Lime Kiln Road.
So we had my mom in the hospital, we didn’t know if she was going to make it, we had Hal in jail with a twenty-thousand-dollar bail. And we had to get a lawyer. Well, we mortgaged the house. We did it that same day. Jimmy and I went home, it was three o’clock, we’d left Gram in the hospital, we’d locked the shop, and Jimmy called Shea on the phone. When he got off he looked at me and said, “Carol, we’re going to have to mortgage the house. That’s the only way we can get that kind of money.” I said, “Okay, Jimmy,” and we drove downtown to the bank and did it.
By the next day, everyone knew. The women neighbors came over to say they were sorry about Gram and could they help. They didn’t say a word about Hal. I’ll tell you, they were real funny. And when I think now how long we’d lived there—here we’d been twenty-one years already; they’d known Hal all his life, the way I’d known their kids. It wasn’t nice, Ann, it really wasn’t nice. They thought we were foolish to put up the house and to this day I think it’s the best thing we ever did. That’s what turned Hal around, that his father would do that for him.
Later, Hal found out Chummy across the street had called in to the police and said there was something going on over here and so they already had a record of complaints against him. That was when Jimmy and I went away for vacation, from the water softener bonuses. Hal and Merry and Ben would throw a party. Well, I suppose they were a little wild. I never knew because they always had it cleaned up nice by the time I got home. But Hal said he used to see Chummy standing over there at the window, watching, holding his curtain back with one hand. And can you imagine calling in to the police without ever once saying a word to Jimmy when we came home? And I’ll tell you, I remember when Chummy was in high school, he was one of those with the hot rods and the fast cars. He was a greaser. You wouldn’t know it now, but he went through a period when we were young.
And they all thought we were just crazy to mortgage the house. They said if he skipped town then there we’d be and we wouldn’t even have our house. But we didn’t think twice, we did it and Hal listened to the lawyer. It was someone who worked with Shea. The other boy in with Hal had the trial and he went to prison. He was in the penitentiary for five years. Hal pleaded guilty—the lawyer said with that judge and a jury and here in Bay City, it just wasn’t going to go—but he didn’t tell on anybody else. He said he just wouldn’t do that because that was the thing that made him get caught. They sentenced him to two years in jail, nights and weekends. He had to check in by seven o’clock and they let him out the next morning to go to work.
And that’s when he and Jimmy started to get closer again, because of course, Fort Adams fired Hal when it all came out, and in order to make it so he could leave and work during the day, Jimmy said he’d give him a job at the store. That was around when we were getting out of the water softeners and getting into the pressure cleaners. So Jimmy gave Hal all the soaps. He sold the soaps. And it was a step up for him, I think. He was off the drugs and he had a job again. Merry used to bring Tina in at lunch and they’d sit in the back there and eat. I have to say, she was good. A lot of women would have just let him be, but I suppose she was in on the drugs, too. At least she knew about it. I told them a couple times, I’d give them money so they could go across the street and eat lunch at the Big Boy—he worked so hard all day, he really did—but they didn’t want to. They just stayed in that little back room. I suppose they were so down in the dumps they didn’t want to see anybody. She’d either pack a lunch or stop at McDonald’s and bring them all burgers. So at least he saw Tina every day.
I wasn’t at the store too much then because I was taking care of Gram. She came home from the hospital and she wasn’t so good. She didn’t lose anything, she remembered and she was just like herself, but she shook. She cried more. But that first one wasn’t too bad.
And you know, even then, she was just so pretty. You weren’t born yet when my dad was alive, but then she was really something. How can I describe her? I don’t know, except to tell you that we all knew. It was like a fact of the world and it made a difference. When she came into a room or stepped out onto the porch, you felt special, like something was going on there. And I’ll tell you, Ann, I don’t know what it is, but we’re getting smaller. Granny was a big tall woman with enormous breasts and hips. Her bust was a size D. And Mom was tall too, thin but tall. She was the same size as Dad. That’s why, when he died, she could just wear his clothes. You know, around the house. And I’ll tell you, even in his old overalls that he used to wear out to the mink, she’d be on her knees in the garden, wearing those and an old old shirt and her hair braided and pinned up in the back—and even like that she was beautiful. She was weeding like that once, after the stroke, and the meter reader asked her out on a date. Well, Adele and I were each pretty, I think, but we weren’t either of us what you’d really call beautiful. And we are both smaller. I’m five foot four, she’s only an inch or so taller. And even before the mastectomy, I had no bust, really. And you, you’re the shortest yet, smaller than both your parents. And a figure almost like a boy. Maybe that’s because your mom didn’t have enough to eat when she was carrying you. I remember they had you in an incubator. But still your Granny was so tall.
We really weren’t friendly with them across the street for a long time. And then later, we found out when Dicky and Ralph came back from the service—Jay didn’t go to Vietnam, the war was over by then, he was too young—they brought back dope and they got Chummy to try it once when they were all up north camping. I thought that was something, too. But I suppose that was the difference those five years made. And who knows what we would have thought if it had been one of their boys, or one of Griling’s, instead of ours, who was in the trouble?
Now Hal says he’s glad he didn’t go to Vietnam. It’s the boys who went who are sorry. He still knows quite a few of them, Brozeks, too, they’re pals now, and he and Merry both knew one who died. And they all say that none of the ones who went came back the way they were before.
We got through. Even that first stroke of Gram’s, it sort of all happened and we got over it. It wasn’t so bad after the shock. We still had plenty of good times after that. That’s when my mom and I got close. That’s when I really got to know her and like her as a friend. We used to take a day and drive up to Door County and go in all those little stores. Jimmy doesn’t really like to do that. Most men don’t. And then we talked more like sisters. The age difference wasn’t so much anymore.
And Hal changed. He really did. He grew up. He’s real thin now, he runs. I tell him he looks better than he did ten years ago. I was sorry after all they’d been through together that he and Merry couldn’t make a go of it. And of course, you’re always sorry for Tina’s sake. But a lot of other kids are in the same boat, even at Saint Phillip’s, and some a lot worse off than she is. She has two parents who really love her and she knows it. And they still get along. Merry’s real cute now. She works in town at Echeverry’s. She’s got her hair real short. And the way Hal looks at her, I think he still likes her. But she’s got someone else. She remarried. And when that Bob, he’s the new one, was out of work, Hal gave him cleaning jobs out of the store; he did that until he found something permanent. I see Merry a couple times a year. She comes when we have a party or to pick Tina up. And I like her now.
All those things changed and I was s
orry at the time, but I changed too, and it worked out better than I thought. I had a lot of nice times with my mother after her first stroke, we still had lot of laughs. Hal used to say we were terrible parents, oh he said awful mean mean things when we fought, but he’s taken that back. I think he’s a real good person now. I’m glad to have him around here. I guess you can forgive just about anything, if you’re still nearby, you know.
But with Benny it is just the opposite. It never changed or went away. It’s like a stone. It’s been years now and it’s still there. Now, it’s almost like it always was. Some things you never do get over.
ANN
10
HOME
Once, a long time ago, we had a home, too. It was a plain white house in the country, with a long driveway, dark hedges rising on either side of it. Years before, my thin grandfather, who wore glasses, a white shirt and suspenders in each of his photographs, had built the wooden house for his family. In the photographs, his mouth is delicate and nervous, framed by deep lines, like his wife’s. In summer, they put up green and white striped awnings on all the windows. I can imagine him standing on a clean ladder, my grandmother below in a blue dress, holding the two legs firm, while his white shirt billowed and filled with wind.
My mother and I lived in the house on Lime Kiln Road until I was nine, when she married Ted, the ice skating pro. The years I grew up there, I spent time outside, hidden, where no one could see me, trying to talk to the trees. It seemed then that the land around our house was more than owned, it was the particular place we were meant to be. Sometimes I thought we would stay there forever, that all the sounds of the yard would teach us about the world. But the trees never answered.