The Daughters of Erietown

by Connie Schultz

  “The end of a dream,” she told her other close friend, Lenny Kleshinski, her eyes red and swollen. “So much for us being just a train ride apart.”

  Sam and Lenny had known each other since kindergarten, when his large family moved two houses down. They became best friends the day Sam decided he was the only friend her father would never ban on a whim because his dad was a union brother at Erietown Electric.

  For years, Lenny and Sam had talked about going to the same college. Now she was headed for Kent, and Lenny was already at Boston College. “Home of the Kennedys,” Brick said, pointing to the framed picture of the president hanging next to one of Christ on the Jack-and-Jesus wall in the living room. “Good for Lenny.”

  “The Kennedys lived in Boston, Dad. They went to Harvard. I read about it in the Rose Kennedy book you gave me last year for Christmas.”

  Her father shook his head. “The point, Sam, is that you’ll sprout where you’re a seed, like your mother always says.”

  Sam groaned. “Bloom where you are planted, you mean.”

  Her father smiled. “See? You don’t need Harvard.”

  Maybe leaving home was like what they say about dying, Sam thought, with snapshots of your life flashing before you.

  She lifted from the train case the small bundle of new underpants, a gift from her mother’s best friend, Mardee. She set them aside and unrolled the picture Reilly had drawn for her. “To hang on your wall,” he’d told her last night. “So you won’t forget me.” Reilly had depicted himself as a head taller than Sam, with his arm wrapped around her shoulders. “Nice try, shrimp,” she had said, pointing to his self-portrait as they sat on the edge of her bed. He’d laughed and bumped against her. “I will be bigger than you by the time you come home.” She’d fluffed his bushy red hair and kissed his cheek. “I’ll be home for Thanksgiving, you boob.”

  She glanced at her sleeping brother. “Thank you, God,” she whispered. “Thank you for helping me protect Reilly from the worst of it.”

  A newspaper clipping and drawing lined the bottom of the train case. She couldn’t part with them, and she sure didn’t want her mother to know she had them. For six years, Sam had held up her end of the unspoken agreement with her parents: That day had never happened to them, even though it had changed all of them.

  She piled everything back into the case and closed the lid.

  Ada Fetters walked to the kitchen table and set down her laundry basket with the sigh of an expired hope. The morning’s conversation with her youngest son grew heavier with each passing hour. I raised that boy to be better than this. I raised him, and I failed.

  She walked to the window over the sink and searched for her husband. Wayne was stepping off the tractor, and she could hear him whistling for Sheba. The dog ran to Wayne’s side and leapt for the last piece of beef jerky in his hand. Wayne rubbed the dog’s head, and both of them turned toward the house with the red sun behind them, two shadows walking into bad news.

  She went over to the stove and flipped the chicken pieces sizzling in the skillet, scraping bits of char from the sides. This pan had helped her raise four kids. She had cooked with it every day for more than forty years, and brandished it countless times to bring a shaky peace to the Fetters household.

  Larry was the problem. Always had been. And now this.

  Wayne pushed open the back door, followed by the tap-tap-tap of Sheba’s nails on the hardwood floor. “Go see Mommy,” he said, chuckling. “Go see what she’s got for ya.” The dog raced across the room and slid to a stop at the stove, her fat tail thumping against Ada’s legs.

  “Sit,” Ada said. “Sit, girl.” She picked up the boiled chicken heart on the stove and popped it into the dog’s mouth.

  Wayne walked up behind her and kissed her neck. “Anything for me?”

  “Supper’s almost ready.” She wiped her hands on her apron and reached for the two plates they used every night for dinner, her mind full of the changes her husband didn’t even know were coming. She’d be stacking three plates soon, setting another place. She looked over at Wayne and let out a long, slow breath.

  “What?” he said.

  “Larry was here today,” she said, avoiding his eyes as she set down the plates.

  “What’d he want this time?”

  Ada almost started to chastise him, as she always did when they talked about their youngest child, but stopped herself. No point. No defense. Not this time. She pulled out two faded napkins from the basket in the middle of the table, slid one beside each plate, and added forks and knives.

  “Ada, I asked you a question. What did Larry want?”

  Ada silently rehearsed her lines one more time as she emptied the pot of boiling potatoes into a bowl and pulled out a tray of biscuits from the oven. She slid them into a basket lined with a checkered napkin, then reached for a platter and started scooping up the chicken with a fork.

  “Larry and Alice are getting a divorce,” she said finally, without looking up. She set the platter of chicken on the table.

  “Well, that’s hardly news, is it?” Wayne said, shifting in his chair. “Even Larry can’t stay married to a woman who’s decided her hobby’s being a whore.”

  “It’s worse than that, Wayne,” Ada said, setting the pitcher on the table. “Alice was arrested. Found drunk and naked in the fountain in downtown Andover.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  Ada pulled off her apron and sat down at the table. She folded her hands and bowed her head. Wayne sighed, put down his fork, and folded his hands, too. “Bless, O Lord, this food to our use and us to thy loving service,” Ada said. She glanced at Wayne. “And keep us ever mindful of the needs of others. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Wayne said as he poked a chicken thigh with his fork and dropped it on his plate. “What did Larry want today? Besides pity.”

  “It’s about Ellie,” she said.

  Wayne bit off a chunk of chicken. “What about Ellie?”

  “Larry wants us to take her in.”

  Wayne stopped chewing. “What?”

  Ada set down her fork.

  “What do you mean ‘take her in’? For how long?”

  “For good, Wayne. Larry wants us to raise her.”

  Wayne slammed a fist on the table. “Raise her! Raise her? We can raise her. And what about his other kids?”

  Ada shrugged her shoulders. “Well, Larry’s got a lady friend, as it turns out. Name’s Florence. They want to get married. She likes little Chrissy and Beth, but she thinks Ellie’s too old.”

  “Ellie is only eight,” Wayne said.

  “Old enough to grow up remembering when Florence wasn’t her mother, I guess.”

  “So, he’s just gonna dump her?”

  “No, honey,” Ada said, locking eyes with him. “We’re going to welcome her into our home. We’re going to raise her.”

  Wayne slammed his fist on the table again, but Ada did not flinch. He was angry, but he was just making noise. In nearly forty years of marriage, Wayne had never raised a hand to her.

  “We’re done raising children, Ada. I’m sixty, and you’re fifty-six, for Christ’s sake.”

  “She’s our granddaughter, Wayne. Either we take her, or strangers are going to raise her. Think about that. Our Ellie with a bunch of people we don’t know. What kind of people adopt a seven-year-old girl? Who knows what they’d do to her?”

  Wayne pushed his plate away and threw his napkin on it. “I’ll be damned.”

  “Eat your dinner,” Ada said, reaching for his hands. He pulled away and stood up. “You spoiled that boy, Ada,” he said. “Always made excuses for Larry, because he was the baby. Twenty-five, and he still hasn’t grown up.” He walked over to the kitchen window and grabbed his Marlboros from the sill. “You want her, you raise her,” he said. “I’m done. I don’t want anything to do with
this.”

  Ada walked over to him and held him from behind. “You don’t mean that,” she said, pressing her cheek against his back.

  He shrugged. “I do right now.” He whistled for Sheba. “C’mon, girl,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.” The dog jumped up and followed him out the door.

  Ada watched Wayne march to the shed in a cloud of cigarette smoke, Sheba at his heels. She’d won, but she could already feel the cost of this victory. She walked over to the telephone on the kitchen wall, picked up the receiver, and waited for the operator’s voice.

  “Yes, Joanie, get me Andover 457, please,” she said. “That’s right. Larry.”

  Ellie leaned into the mirror and waved a finger at the face scowling back at her. “Give him five more minutes,” she said. “Five more minutes, and then Brick McGinty is his-tor-y.”

  She tossed back her dark curly hair and tried again.

  “Five minutes, Brick McGinty. If you aren’t here by then, Arnie Scribner’s name will be in every slot on my dance card.”

  Ellie sighed. She’d never even seen a dance card, not in Clayton Valley, but she loved the thought of it. What sixteen-year-old girl wouldn’t? All those boys lining up to sign a little piece of paper dangling from your wrist, just like in the movies. Acting surprised. Why, Freddie Carpenter, let me see if I can squeeze you in.

  How Brick would hate that. He was a jealous boy, which thrilled her. He made her feel worth fighting over for the first time in her life. And he wasn’t just any boy. He was six-feet-two Brick McGinty, point guard on the basketball team, top scorer in the county, and one of the most popular boys at Jefferson High School. Thirty-seven other girls in their senior class, but he picked her. At four feet eleven, her head didn’t even reach his shoulders. She had to stand on her tiptoes to kiss him, and even then she had to tilt her head back and raise her chin.

  “My pint-size Ellie,” he called her. She loved that, how he used the word “my.”

  She scowled again at the mirror. “Thinking like this is how you lose your resolve,” she said, pointing her finger again. She walked to the bedroom window, pushed apart the curtains, and poked her head out. The frigid air stung her face as she leaned out as far as she could to see the patch of gravel where Brick’s truck always came to a stop.

  Ellie heard her grandmother’s voice before she saw her, standing beneath the window. “Eleanor Grace, have you lost your mind? Get out of that window before you fall and break your neck.” Ellie grabbed her books and flew down the stairs just as a gust of air ushered her grandmother through the door. “Look at you,” Ada said, “waitin’ on that boy like a lovesick hound dog.”

  “I’m not waiting for anybody, Grandma. I was just checking to see if I needed a coat this morning.”

  Ada sat on the bench and pulled off her boots. “I guess you think there’s nothing but corn husks rattling around in this old head of mine,” she said. “It’s snowing, Ellie. And you’re wondering if you need a coat?” She pulled off her knit cap and shoved it into her coat pocket before hanging the coat on the hook by the door. “Brick McGinty’s not picking you up for school today, honey.”

  “Brick always picks me up on Wednesdays, Grandma.”

  “Not anymore. Grandpa told that boy’s mother that Brick is not to come anywhere near this property again.”

  “What?” Ellie said. “Why, Grandma? Why would he do that? I love Brick.” Ellie sank into her chair at the table.

  “You’re sixteen,” Ada said, tying her apron around her thick waist. She shoved a basket of potatoes next to her chair, sat down opposite Ellie, and started peeling. “You don’t know love.”

  “I love you,” Ellie said. “I love Grandpa.”

  “That’s different,” Ada said. Ellie walked over to the counter and yanked open the silverware drawer to grab another paring knife. She slammed the drawer shut and sat down.

  “Grandma,” she said, plucking a potato. “You were sixteen when you married Grandpa. Same age as me. How old were you when you fell in love with him?”

  “I’ll let you know,” Ada said.

  “Grandma.”

  “It was different back then. All the girls married early, except for your aunt Nessa, who was born with a mind of her own. We only had five or six boys to pick from, and two got eliminated for inbreeding.”

  Ellie dropped a peeled potato into the bowl. “Grandpa says it was love at first sight.”

  “Grandpa’s talking about the first time he looked in the mirror, honey.”

  Ellie smiled. “Brick and I have been together for three years now. That’s a long time to get to know someone. He’s smart. And he’s funny, too.”

  “Never trust funny, Ellie,” Ada said. “Your father was always funny. We see how Larry worked out.” Ada regretted it as soon as she said it. Ellie pretended to pick at a tough patch of skin on the potato.

  “I don’t mean your daddy doesn’t love you, Ellie,” Ada said. “He just has a hard time showing it.”

  Ellie tossed another peeled potato into the bowl.

  “Ellie, look at me.”

  “I heard you, Grandma. He loves me. He just didn’t want to raise me. Didn’t want to have to see me much, either.”

  “That doesn’t mean he isn’t your father. He’s still family.”

  “Sure, Grandma.”

  Ada picked up another potato, silently cursing herself for bringing up her son. In the nine years that Ellie had lived with them, she’d seen her father only once a month, at best, and even then he always made it clear that he was just stopping by to say hello. Larry hurt Ellie as only a father could, and it made Ada feel guilty, as if she’d missed something in him when he was little. Something she could have fixed if only she’d paid attention. There was a special kind of guilt for the mother whose child turned out wrong.

  Ada’s chest ached at the sight of her heartbroken granddaughter, whose only sin was to want her father to act like one. “It’s like he doesn’t even remember Ellie’s his daughter,” Wayne said one evening as they were getting ready for bed. “Like she never happened.”

  Ada knew why. With each passing year, Ellie looked more like Alice, her mother. Same thick, curly hair and pale Irish skin. Same big blue eyes, so large that Ellie spent the first two years of her life looking like a child shocked with the state of things. She was built like her mother, too, short and busty, with the tiny hands of a porcelain doll. As a result, Ellie was growing up as an only child, kept from her younger sisters because Larry’s second wife couldn’t bear to look at her. “You know Ellie looks like Alice,” Larry once explained to his incredulous mother. “Makes Florence think about Alice and me together when we were young. We can’t deal with all that.”

  Ada had sometimes worried that, as Ellie grew older, she would become bitter after she understood what her parents had done to her. Instead, she became God’s great apologist. Making excuses for other people’s bad behavior, always granting second and third chances. “We don’t know what happened to them before they got to us,” Ellie always said. “We don’t know what made them that way.”

  “Not a mean bone in her body,” Ada often said to Wayne. “Closest to God and carrying the cross for the rest of us.” It broke Ada’s heart how hard Ellie tried to please everyone, and how skittish she could be, particularly around her grandfather. It was as if Ellie always thought she was just one mistake away from being traded again.

  Ada smiled at her granddaughter as she reached for the half-peeled potato in her hands. “You haven’t touched your toast, and the bus will be here any minute. Go get your books and get your coat on. I’ll wait outside in case Clarence is early. It’ll give me a chance to make sure he’s not drinkin’ and drivin’ that bus again.”

  Ellie stood up. “He’s not.”

  “Oh, really. And how would you know that?”

  “Becca Gilley and I
threw out his bottle of Jameson’s last week. He didn’t even see us reach under his seat and grab it.”

  “You what? Oh, Lord, that man.” Ada pulled on her coat and opened the door. “C’mon, Sheba.”

  Ellie pulled on her coat. Barely 7:30, and the day was already ruined. No Brick. She stared at her face in the mirror by the door, playing her usual game of imagining how Brick might see her.

  “Well, that won’t do.” She stood straighter and smiled. “Someday,” she whispered. “Someday, Brick McGinty, you and I are going to marry and live in our own house, with our own front porch, and lots of kids.” Sons for him, she decided, and a daughter all her own. “And I promise you this, little girl,” Ellie said, weaving the scarf around her neck, “we will never, ever give you away.”

  Brick McGinty had finished feeding the pigs and was washing up at the kitchen sink when he felt his father’s fingers curl around his collar.

  “You stay away from the Fetters house,” Bull hissed into his ear. “That girl’s grandpa came by here yesterday. Says he doesn’t want you or your fancy truck anywhere near their granddaughter again.” He tightened his grip on Brick’s collar, pulling it taut enough to pop the top button. “To hell with ’em. A McGinty doesn’t go where he isn’t wanted.”

  Brick jerked his father’s hand away, unaware of the other fist coming at his head. His forehead grazed the hot-water faucet as his head plowed into the bottom of the cast-iron sink. Brick winced and gripped both faucets, managing to stand despite the next punch to his head. His nostrils flared as he panted. Damned if he’d give the old man the pleasure of his pain. He made a show of lifting his face and sniffing the air. “You stink,” Brick said over his shoulder. “Least you could do is wash her off before you come home to Ma.”

  “You little—” Bull twisted Brick’s right arm behind his back, spun him sideways, and shoved his son’s face against the kitchen doorjamb. He leaned in and growled in Brick’s ear.