Maude

  “He would live at the school for a while, until we could give him some tests and see if his learning difficulty is physical or disciplinary.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know if his father would allow that. I’ll have to talk to him.”

  Dr. Goodwin stood and held out his hand. “Fine, I’d like to talk to him myself if he would agree to come in for a meeting. I’ll be here with Miss Spencer, next Monday, at the same time.”

  I shook his hand. “Thank you, I’ll let you know what he says.”

  That night I waited until we were in bed before I brought up the subject. When I explained about the special school, George sat up in bed and shook his head. “No! I’m not letting them take my boy and experiment on him. Tell them to forget it.”

  “But George, he can barely read and write. Maybe they can help him.”

  “I said no, and that’s the last I want to hear of it!”

  I let the subject drop. The next Monday, I went to the school and told them what George said, and added, “I gave up arguing with my husband about it a long time ago. Maybe if you come to the house and talked to him, he’d see that he isn’t doing the boy any good.”

  Doctor Goodwin shook his head angrily. “If he won’t let us help him at my school, there’s nothing else I can do.”

  Miss Spencer looked like she felt sorry for me. “Can’t you get Mr. Foley to at least come to school and talk to us?”

  “I’m afraid not. He’d have to miss work, and we can’t afford it.” The truth was that George wouldn’t mind at all to miss work, but I knew he’d never change his mind, and we would just wind up losing a day’s pay.

  I walked home thinking about the situation. Paul wasn’t right, anyone could see that. I wished George would let the doctors take a look at him, but I knew it was hopeless.

  Chapter 38

  All the time Gene was away at the CCC, George and I received regular letters from him describing the important work he was doing for the country and how much he enjoyed the life of a ranger. He was paid thirty dollars a month, and twenty-five dollars was sent home to his family. Gene told us that he didn’t need much money anyway. His meals were provided, and he’d never taken up tobacco. The only real expense he had was when he could get into town to see a movie. He loved the movies, especially the character actors, he said. He didn’t go to see Roy Rogers, but rather to see Gabby Hayes, and wouldn’t miss anything with Ward Bond, Victor McLaghlen, or Edward Everett Horton, who he thought was the funniest man in Hollywood.

  Bud only wrote home once or twice a year, usually when he was in the stockade for some trouble he was in. After three years in the army, he had been busted for bad behavior so many times that he was still a private.

  Early one afternoon in the fall of 1940, there was a knock at the door. I wasn’t expecting anyone, and it wasn’t Tuesday, the day the insurance man came to collect his dime. I turned down the gas under the meal I was cooking and went to the door, wiping my hands on my apron and growing irritated. It had better not be a salesman, like the Fuller Brush man who came by from time to time. I’d already told him I wasn’t interested.

  I jerked the door open and nearly fainted when I saw the tall, handsome young man standing there. He’d grown another two or three inches and put on at least forty pounds since I’d last seen him. He was deeply tanned, a reddish brown, and stood there with a look of expectation and a big grin on his face.

  It was my precious boy, my Gene. He grabbed me in a big hug, lifting me right off the floor and rocking me right and left. Tears ran down my face and his. When he finally let me down, I wiped my cheeks on my apron. “What are you doing here? Are you all right? You didn’t quit the CCC, did you?”

  “Let’s sit down, Mom, and I’ll tell you what happened.”

  This scared me, but there he stood, looking perfectly fine. So, whatever it was, it didn’t matter. If he’d gotten fired or was in some sort of trouble like his brother, I didn’t care, as long as he was all right.

  I took his hand and led him to the kitchen. “Let me fix you something to eat,” I said, in the language of mothers, “and we can talk about it.”

  I poured him a cup of the strong coffee that always sat on the stove, and took some cold fried chicken and potato salad out of the icebox and sliced a big tomato on a plate in front of him. I got a cup of coffee for myself and sat across from him so I could watch his face.

  “Tell me about it,” I said, holding on for what I knew would be news I didn’t want to hear.

  He nodded. “I’ll just start out that I’m going to be just fine. The doctor said all I have to do is rest up a few days, and I can start to look for work.”

  My heart lurched at the word, doctor. “What happened?’

  “Well, I was helping some of the other boys to put a new roof on the barracks, and I fell off. I landed on my back on top of some of the bundles of shingles. Doc said I’d be all right, Mom. Don’t worry so.” He reached out and patted my hand, then picked up another piece of chicken. It eased me some to see that he had a good appetite.

  “If you’re going to be all right, why did they send you home?”

  “Now, don’t go getting all upset, but he said that I hurt both of my kidneys, falling on that stuff. I had blood when I passed my water. That made me disabled, so I had to come home. I’ll be just fine for regular work.”

  “How much blood?” I felt faint at the thought of his pain, but I went to the stove and kept my eyes on the pot of stew I was stirring and steeled myself so my worry didn’t show.

  “Quite a of blood bit for the first few days. Then it kind of tapered off, and when there wasn’t any more, they put me on a train and sent me home.”

  I felt the need to pray about this later. I didn’t want to bother Gene with my worrying over him, so I changed the subject and asked about the work he’d been doing. We talked for the rest of the afternoon. I went back to my cooking and listened, asking a question now and then, while Gene sat in his chair, telling me all about what his life had been like for the last two years. We laughed and talked, and I pressed more food on him, making him eat two pieces of my special apple pie. It didn’t take a lot of pushing to get him to take the second piece.

  When Betty Sue and Paul came home from school and saw who was there, they whooped all around the kitchen. Betty Sue flung her arms around her brother and then held his hand and made him tell some of his stories again. After a quick hug, Paul stood in the corner of the kitchen and listened, but didn’t have anything to say.

  When we heard John’s truck pull into the garage next door, Gene hid behind the door. George came in, carrying his lunch bucket.

  “Some man is here to see you, George,” I said.

  His brow wrinkled, but when he heard Betty Sue giggle, he caught on. “Really? It wasn’t a special messenger from President Roosevelt, was it? He’s been after me to come to Washington and help out.”

  “It’s Gene,” Paul blurted out. “He’s hiding right behind the door.”

  George turned his head and caught sight of his middle son. He grabbed him in a bear hug. I was surprised to see George moved to tears by the homecoming.

  We took Gene next door to show him off to Bessie, John, and Maxine, who’d never met him.

  I was so proud of my tall, handsome boy. He looked like a movie star in the Silver Screen magazines that Betty Sue was always reading. We all talked for a while and then went home for supper only to talk more after we ate. Gene put away another big meal. It made me happy to see his appetite.

  My prayers that night had many thanks for Gene’s safe return, and I begged God for his health to be restored. I lay awake in my bed until George’s breathing told me he was fast asleep, and then I crept down the hall to Gene’s room, carrying a quilt. He was sleeping on several blankets that had been folded on the floor in the empty fourth bedroom. I watched him for a long time, taking pleasure in the regular rise and fall of his chest. Then I spread the quilt out over him and walked as softly as I could ba
ck to my own bed.

  There was peacefulness to my sleep that night that I hadn’t felt since the day he left. I knew that my precious boy was safe. I knew where he was, and what he was doing.

  Chapter 39

  In Detroit, a boy on a bicycle brought me the Detroit News every day. It was a wonderful treat, another one of the miracles of big city life.

  I read in the paper about the wars in Europe and Asia. It was horrible, so many being killed. I remembered the young men coming home from the last war, with limbs missing and hearts broken. I also remembered the awful flu they brought home with them that took my little girl away from me.

  I was glad America wasn’t fighting. I gave thanks that it had nothing to do with me and my family, and I asked God to bring it to an end and put Hitler out of business. I didn’t pray for him to die, that wouldn’t be Christian, but that he would somehow be stopped. It didn’t seem that my prayers were having much effect. Every day the news grew worse.

  The government put out a lot of orders for goods, and Gene had no trouble finding work. He was hired on at a small factory the first day he went looking. George had met the foreman through John and wrote Gene a note of recommendation. When the foreman read that Gene was George’s son, he slapped him on the back and put him to work. Just like in Missouri, everyone liked George, and as time went on, I realized that Gene had inherited his father’s charm. Everyone seemed to like Gene, too. I was glad that he had his father’s way with people, but not Bud’s wild streak. I felt proud he’d inherited my own habit of hard work. A favorite saying in my family was that the Lord loves a working man. I often wondered how the Lord felt about George.

  Gene brought home his first week’s pay envelope, counted out the bills at the kitchen table, and handed half to me. When I didn’t reach out to take it, he pressed it in my hand. He said, “I’m a grown man, Mom, almost twenty years old. I have to pay my own way.”

  I felt my throat close up, and a tear ran down my cheek. We’d just barely been getting by on George’s pay and what money came home from Gene’s pay in the CCC. Some weeks we ate a lot of beans.

  “I didn’t expect you to do this,” I said.

  “I know you didn’t, but I eat more than anyone, and I use the lights, and you do my clothes. I’m just giving you what I owe you. What else am I going to do with it?”

  “Go down to the bank and open a savings account. Put a little aside every week. You never know when you’ll need some money.”

  “That’s a good idea. I wanted to save up for something special anyway. I guess the banks will be all right now. I haven’t heard about one going under for a long time.”

  “What are you saving for, Gene?”

  “You’ll see,” he smiled.

  He went to the bank the next day. They gave him a little passbook, and every week he made a deposit. He liked watching the teller write in the amount, total it up, and stamp the line in the book.

  I thought about the box in the bottom of my sewing box where I was still saving what money I could and wondered if I should start my own account. George wasn’t one to snoop, but Paul was into everything. What if he found my money and told George about it? I went to the bank and opened my own account and hid my passbook inside my Bible. That was the one place where I could be sure Paul wouldn’t bother it.

  On my forty-ninth birthday, in 1941, I found out what he was saving up to buy. No one had made much of a fuss of my birthday since James died.

  Bessie baked me a special cake, and they lit the candles and everyone sang to me. Maxine gave me a blue headscarf. Betty Sue used baby-sitting money and bought me a pretty housecoat. Even Paul made me a card. George ate two pieces of the cake and gave me a smile and a wish for a happy day. Then they all looked at Gene, who smiled at me and nodded his head at John. They both went out of the house. I didn’t know if I should be upset or curious.

  A minute later, John’s truck backed up the driveway all the way to the back porch, and he and Gene lifted off an electric washing machine and carried it down to the basement.

  They put a chair where I could sit and watch while they hooked it up and gave me a demonstration. It was amazing. They ran hot water through a hose into it. It had come with a box of powdered soap. No more cutting up a bar of Fels-Naptha. They measured out the soap, poured it in, and added some clothes. When they turned it on, a shaft in the center of the tub churned back and forth for a while, then they turned it off, took the clothes out one at a time and ran them through a wringer on the top. Gene waggled a finger at me and warned me, “Now, you’ve got to be careful when you do the wringing so you don’t stick your fingers right through the rollers and mash them all up.”

  The clean, wrung-out clothes came out the other side of the rollers and fell into the wash sink, which Gene had filled with cold water for the rinse. He swished them around with his hand and then ran them back through the wringer. “Ta-da, all ready for the clothesline.”

  Then he showed me how to empty the machine. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Bessie already had one that I was too proud to ask to use. I’d been secretly looking at the electric washers at Sears Roebuck. I even thought about spending my little secret savings if I ever got that much built up, but didn’t dare dream I might have a washing machine so soon.

  I sat and cried. I’d washed clothes on a washboard since I was eight years old, sometimes for six people. I hauled the water from the well to fill the tubs, and when I was finished, hauled the water out in the yard to pour on the plants in the garden to kill the bugs and water the crop. Gene had a tear in his own eye. I could see that he understood how much this meant to me.

  I gave special thanks for him that night, for the best son any woman had ever been blessed to have.

  I hadn’t been so happy since before James died. My children were happy. For all his nonsense, Bud liked being in the army. Gene had a good job, seemed to have recovered from his fall, and his kidneys gave him no trouble. Betty Sue loved her friends and was doing well in school. George and Gene were working steady and bringing home enough money between them to pay the bills and buy all the groceries we needed. I loved my modern home, with running water, an inside toilet, a gas stove, and now, an electric washing machine.

  The only worries I had were for Paul. He was a moody boy who refused to go to school and sat and stared out the window for hours at a time. He didn’t have a single friend. Whenever I tried to force him to go to church or to school, George would just tell me to leave him be, and I mostly did.

  Gene worked first shift at his factory, getting up at five in the morning and coming home at three in the afternoon, the same time Betty Sue got home from school. I would make them a snack to tide them over until supper, and they would sit in the kitchen and talk about their day. Except for her occasional temper tantrums that always made me think about her grandmother, Betty Sue was a happy girl with her own share of her father’s charm, making friends easily, excited about school and her lessons.

  Chapter 40

  In the summer of 1941, President Roosevelt brought back the draft. At the prime age of twenty, Gene hadn’t been called. I held my breath when the first rounds of numbers came out. Several of the neighbors’ sons had to report. The thought of my precious boy going into the army was awful to me. Bud was already serving, and I felt that was enough.

  I read about the war in Europe every day. The President was sending all kinds of help to Britain and he loaned them a billion dollars. I couldn’t even imagine how much money that was, but they were supposed to pay it back when the war was over. I loved President Roosevelt and knew he had to be doing the right thing. Wasn’t it better to help fight Hitler this way than to send our boys over there like we did before?

  I hoped the money and supplies America sent overseas would be enough. If Gene had to go away from home again, I thought, it would upset my whole life. What I didn’t know then, was that the thing I had to fear the most wasn’t across the ocean at all.

  Gene came home fr
om work one day and sat at the table while I cut some slices off a ham to make him a sandwich. Sixteen-year-old Betty Sue came bouncing into the room, followed by the most beautiful human being I’d ever seen. She was prettier than any of the movie stars in those books Betty Sue was always reading. Betty Sue grabbed the girl’s hand and pulled her into the kitchen. “Mom, this is my friend, Evelyn, she’s in my class at school. Evelyn, this is my mom and my brother Gene.”

  “Hi,” the girl said, smiling almost shyly, with her head down.

  “Hello, Evelyn,” I said. “Can I make you something to eat?”

  “No, thank you, Mrs. Foley, I’m fine. I can only stay for a minute. I have to get home and help my mother with the other kids.”

  I realized I was staring. Evelyn looked to be about five-feet-four inches tall and was large busted for a girl so slim. She had slightly rounded hips, and a tiny waist. Her chestnut hair had deep red lights where the sun hit it, and it curled almost down to her waist in the back. Her eyes were the deepest blue I’d ever seen, and her lashes were long and thick. She had an oval face, with a small, full-lipped mouth and a perfectly shaped nose. I had to force myself to look away, and when I did, I saw something that scared me.

  Gene stared at Evelyn with a look on his face like he’d gone into some kind of a trance.

  Chapter 41

  After that, Betty Sue brought Evelyn home with her once or twice a week, and Gene hung around her like a puppy. He tried to talk, but could barely put two words together. I could tell it was hard for him to hide his feelings. By the end of a month, he was hopelessly in love.

  As the months went by and Gene fell more and more in love, I made sure they were never alone for a minute, keeping them in the kitchen or on the porch. Maybe I was jealous. I told myself that they were both too young.

  The only hope I had was that Evelyn didn’t seem to see how he felt. She came to our house to spend time with Betty Sue, to read their movie star magazines or sit on the porch and laugh and whisper teen-age gibberish to one another. Gene would hang around as much as he could without Betty Sue complaining that she never had any privacy. Paul was in love with her, too, and would stand at the kitchen window, staring at the girls outside on the porch.