The Daughters of Erietown

by Connie Schultz

  Then she started noticing changes in Sam. The way she hovered over Ellie, offering to bring her food, to run a bath for her. How she kept checking on her, gauging her mother’s mood.

  Ellie looked into her six-year-old daughter’s eyes and recognized the same fear of abandonment that had choked off her own childhood.

  It had been a mistake to leave Sam alone, waiting for Brick that day. It had never occurred to her that Sam would answer the door to the deputy. That Brick would fall apart right in front of their daughter.

  Twice, Sam’s teacher had sent a note home expressing concern. In the first one, Mrs. Babcock asked if there was anything that might have changed in Sam’s day-to-day life. Ellie had responded with a terse note assuring her that Sam was fine and just adjusting to sharing her mother with the new baby.

  The second note, mailed rather than delivered by Sam, was more direct.

  Dear Mrs. McGinty,

  I understand that Mr. McGinty is currently not living at your house. This has upset Sam a great deal, and understandably so. She worries that her father may go away for good, and that she will never see him again. Perhaps you and her father could sit down with her and reassure her. Your little girl is such a sensitive child, and she is very sad. We should do all that we can for this child in this difficult time.

  Sincerely,

  Patricia Babcock

  Ellie slammed the letter down on the dining room table and called for Sam, who was making Reilly giggle in his playpen.

  “What do you think you’re doing, telling your teacher about our private business?”

  Sam’s chin started to quiver. “She asked, Mommy. She asked me why I was sad.”

  Ellie pulled Sam onto her lap. “What happens in this family stays in this family. Is that clear?”

  Sam nodded, biting her lip to keep from crying. Ellie reached for her daughter’s hand. “Sam, honey,” she said, her voice softer, “you’re only six. The world can be very confusing to a little girl. But I’m a lot older than you.”

  “You’re twenty-three,” Sam said.

  “That’s right,” Ellie said. “I’m sorry you’ve had to learn so early that you can’t depend on the men in your life. They’ll disappoint you.”

  “You mean Daddy.”

  “What I mean, honey, is that men just don’t have it in them to be everything they promise to be.”

  The sad look on Sam’s face made Ellie wish, for the first time, that she’d had only sons. God made the world for men. Women were an afterthought, just like Eve. No matter what she did, Ellie would never be able to save her daughter from that heartache waiting to ambush her.

  That night, Sam woke up again to her mother’s sobs and crawled into bed with her, as usual. Feeling her daughter’s warmth against her back, her little arm draped across her shoulder, stirred such guilt in Ellie. She had to fix this. She wiped her face with the edge of the sheet and turned to face Sam, stroking her cheek until Sam closed her eyes. Maybe she wasn’t cut out for this new life of hers.

  Who was she if she wasn’t Brick McGinty’s wife? She had no idea, and with an alarming clarity, she realized that she had no interest in finding out. Her train case, the gift from Aunt Nessa, was on the top shelf of her closet, wrapped in tissue and packed away with the high school dreams of Ellie Fetters. She was Ellie McGinty now, the mother of two children who needed her—and their father.

  The next day Walter Cronkite interrupted regular programming and Ellie’s life. When she heard the car door slam in the driveway that evening, she ran to the back door and into Brick’s arms, breathing in the scent of her husband.

  That had been months ago. She had not kept her promise to God, to make the most of this second chance. She had to start by making things right with Sam.

  That evening, Ellie stayed in Sam’s room long enough to pull the covers taut and wedge them under her armpits. Sam beamed, lifting her arms as Ellie tucked, and then lowering them to clasp her hands over her chest for her bedtime prayer.

  “Dear God, now I lay me down to sleep…”

  “Sam, honey.”

  Sam opened her eyes. Ellie smoothed her daughter’s bangs from her forehead. “Remember when I said men will always disappoint us?”

  Sam nodded.

  “Well, I forgot to tell you something else about that.” Ellie turned to look at the empty doorway before continuing. “I forgot to tell you that a woman’s greatest power is forgiveness. If we can find it in our hearts to forgive the men, the people, who hurt us, it will all be okay.”

  Ellie stepped out of her housecoat as she walked into her bedroom. She opened the bottom drawer of the dresser and pulled out the filmy black negligee Brick had given her three Christmases ago. She stood in front of the mirror and held it up against her naked body. Her face looked shy, and hopeful.

  Someday, Ellie vowed, she’d tell her daughter about this power, too.

  Brick walked into the house and heard the sound of his daughter’s voice as the dining room filled with light.

  “Thank you, Daddy.”

  He shot a curious look at Ellie, who was stirring a pot of beef stew at the stove. “What exactly did I do?”

  Ellie raised her cheek for his kiss and nodded toward their daughter, who was standing by the light switch, holding Reilly’s hand. Brick set his lunch pail on the counter and walked into the dining room, simultaneously cupping their heads and mussing their hair. “What are you thanking me for, Sammy?”

  She turned around and grabbed his hand. “For the light.”

  “Come again?”

  “Mommy says every time we turn on a light we should thank you. ’Cause you’re making it for us. You’re making the electricity.”

  “And just how do you think I make electricity?”

  Sam shook her head with impatience. “You already know. You throw a big bolt of lightning high into the sky”—she raised her arm and sliced the air—“and it flies straight to our house.” She pointed to the switch plate on the wall. “This plastic keeps us from getting electrocuted.”

  “Like this!” Reilly said, making shooting sounds as he thrust his arm into the air. “With a big boom.”

  Brick laughed and picked up Reilly. “It’s a little more complicated than that, Sammy. But I’m glad that you think your daddy can harness lightning.”

  “You mean that’s not how you do it?”

  Brick looked over his shoulder at Ellie. “El, you have a pen?”

  “On the telephone stand,” she said, leaning away from the stove just far enough to see them.

  He grabbed a ballpoint pen imprinted with Reddy Kilowatt, the Erietown Electric mascot. The jagged caricature was supposed to resemble a current of electricity, but Brick could see how Sam saw it as lightning. He walked to the dining room table and sat down, propping Reilly on his knee as he pulled a paper napkin out of the plastic holder. He clicked the pen and looked at Sam. “Do you want to learn how Daddy really makes electricity?”

  Sam sidled up next to Brick as he spread the napkin open on the table. “Okay, this is what Daddy does all day to make sure you have electricity.”

  “And a paycheck.”

  “That’s right. A paycheck.”

  “Every other Thursday.”

  “Yep.”

  Sam propped her elbows on the table. “We celebrate with Jones’ chips and Lawson’s French onion dip on Fridays.”

  He laughed. “Okay, let’s talk about electricity.” He drew a square in the left-hand corner. “You know what coal is, right?”

  “It’s black, and dirty,” Sam said. “It’s what Great-Aunt Nessa used to put in her furnace with a shovel.”

  “That’s right, Sammy. Coal is fuel, and we use big machines to unload tons and tons of it every day out of railroad cars that roll right into the plant.”

  “You hav
e trains at your work?”

  “Yep.” Brick pried Reilly’s hands off the pen and tapped the bottom of the square. “There’s a giant furnace there. Big as this house.”

  “Wow.”

  “Wow,” Reilly echoed.

  Brick grinned. “That’s where the coal, the fuel, is burned to give us lots of energy.”

  “You mean like the energy we get when we get a good night’s sleep?”

  “Well, sort of,” Brick said, unaware that Ellie was now standing in the doorway with her arms folded, watching. “Except we’re talking about an energy out there that’s much stronger than all of us.”

  “Like God.”

  “Okay, yeah,” Brick said, smiling at Sam. “Like God. Think of it as God’s energy.”

  “That’s big,” Sam said.

  “Weally, weally big,” Reilly said, spreading his arms wide.

  “That’s right, buddy.” Brick drew an arrow from the bottom of the box to the top. “Now, see these?” he said, tapping the pen on the napkin. “These are pipes above the furnace, and they are full of cold water. The heat boils that water.” He looked at Sam. “What happens when Mommy boils a pot of water on the stove?”

  “Clouds!”

  “Right. We call those clouds ‘steam.’ ” He drew a circle and filled it with a series of slashes.

  “That looks like a flower, Daddy.”

  “It’s called a turbine. It’s full of these blades, and it spins really fast.”

  “Does the electricity come out of that?”

  “Not yet.” He drew three long cones that stood close together. “You know those towers at the plant you saw when Mommy brought you to the park on the lake?” Ellie stood up straighter. Brick had remembered that story.

  Sam shot her hand in the air. “We waved at you and yelled, ‘Hi, Daddy!’ But Mommy said you probably couldn’t see us.”

  Brick leaned down to grab one of Sam’s hands, and one of Reilly’s hands, too, and pressed their palms against his chest. “I felt you here. In my heart.”

  Brick tapped his pen again on the napkin. “Well, those are called cooling towers. And there’s a generator, too. It’s connected to that turbine, to that windmill, by something called an axle. The generator spins around the blades of the windmill, and the energy from that—it’s called kinetic energy—makes the electricity.”

  Sam leaned into him. “Daddy, you are so smart.”

  “Not smart, Sam. Just used to doing the same job, over and over. For the rest of my life.”

  “That’s forever, Daddy.”

  “It sure feels that way,” he said. “But you and Reilly? You’re never gonna carry a lunch pail to work, I promise you that. You two are going to college.”

  “I don’t want to move to college,” Sam said. “I want to stay right here, in Erietown.”

  He kissed her cheek and laughed. “Don’t worry. It’s a good thing, Sammy. It’s where dreams come true.”

  “All right, you guys,” Ellie said. “Dinner’s ready.”

  Brick turned to smile at her, but she was gone.

  Rosemary Russo looked out the diner window to the sight of Aunt Lizzie trying to wedge her red Cadillac between two pickups. Bursts of male laughter erupted inside the diner as Lizzie repeatedly lunged forward and then plowed in reverse.

  “Hey, Rosemary,” Glenn Fisher yelled. “Someone should go out there and tell your aunt those trucks ain’t moving, even for her.” More laughter.

  Lizzie finally gave up and parked the car with a foot and a half of its rear sticking out. She pried herself out and inched her way along the narrow path between her car and the pickup on her driver’s side, tossing her half-smoked cigarette into the truck’s flatbed on the way.

  “Goddamn,” Frank Mericka said, his nose pressed against the window. “That’s my truck.”

  Lizzie smoothed her skirt with both hands and hobbled on high heels across the gravel lot.

  Rosemary stood up and waved to her. “Over here, Aunt Lizzie.”

  “Woman, you are a danger to the civilized world,” Frank said to Lizzie.

  She flipped him the finger, and the men laughed again as she plopped down in the seat opposite Rosemary. “I swear Louie keeps making those parking spaces smaller and smaller. He’s got that whole back lot full of weeds, but he’s too goddamn cheap to pave it.”

  “And good morning to you, too, dear auntie.” Rosemary grabbed one of Lizzie’s hands and kissed the back of it. “Maybe you should think about getting a smaller car. Uncle Danny says he’s had to repair your front bumper twice already. Says you don’t ‘comprehend the length of your front end.’ ”

  “That’s a boob joke, sweetie.” She turned toward the counter and waved. “Hey, Louie, you got anyone serving coffee in this joint?”

  The burly man standing behind the counter grabbed the pot off the burner. “Aw, Lizzie Martinelli is in the building.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Why, God? What did I do now?” He walked over and turned her coffee cup upright in its saucer. “For you, your highness. Marjorie’s having a smoke. She’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Those things’ll kill your wife, Louie,” Lizzie said. She pointed to Rosemary’s plate. “I’ll have that. Eggs over easy and some toast.”

  She reached for the front section of Rosemary’s Erietown Times. “Anything happening in this town?”

  “Dear Abby says you should always give up your bed for your mother-in-law when she comes for a visit.”

  “And leave your husband in it, or does mama’s boy get to sleep with his poor wife?” Lizzie jabbed her finger at the newspaper. “See? Right there. That’s why her and her sister don’t get along. When you got a sister getting paid to give so much dumb-ass advice, it’s embarrassing. You know what I mean, with that crazy mother of yours.”

  Rosemary lifted the sports section to hide her face. Lizzie reached across the table and pulled down the corner far enough to see her niece’s eyes. “I’m sorry, sweetie. That wasn’t nice of me. I shouldn’t say bad things about your mother. She loved you a lot. She just never got over your father leaving her. If I’d known then—if any of us had known—that she had that cancer growing in her, things would have been different.”

  Rosemary nodded. “I think about her a lot. How she cried when I first called her from Erietown. How she said she always knew I’d leave.”

  “She knew you had to, honey.”

  Rosemary wiped her eyes with her napkin. “Aunt Lizzie, I can’t stand to think about what I’d be like now if I hadn’t gotten away. I owe everything to you and Uncle Danny.” She smiled. “And that black lady, Mrs. Colbert. The one who drove me to Sardelli’s.”

  “Pretty gutsy of a black woman back then,” Lizzie said, picking up the front section and leafing through it. “It’d still be gutsy. The only black people down here in the harbor work in the plants. Danny said they stick to themselves. Do everything together. They walk in and out of the plant together. Sing their own songs. Sounds to me like they don’t like us any better than we like them.”

  Rosemary shrugged. “Maybe they’re afraid of us. Look at what’s happening to those blacks at the lunch counters down south. In this decade. Police hosing down women and children. Just because they want to vote. And those Ku Klux Klan goons. They killed those three northern boys in Mississippi. And bombed that church in Alabama. Killed four little girls. Everybody knows it was the Klan. If I was black, I wouldn’t trust white people either, no matter where I lived.”

  Lizzie shook her head to hush Rosemary as Marjorie set down the plate of eggs and toast. “You girls need anything else?” she said, looking only at Lizzie.

  “Not from you, Marjorie.”

  Rosemary smiled as Marjorie stomped away. “I thought you didn’t agree with me. About black people.”

  Lizzie flipped open a napkin and spread it
across her lap. “Those little girls,” her aunt said. “I’ll never forget Walter Cronkite reading that white guy’s column about how it was white people’s fault.”

  “No, that’s not what he meant,” Rosemary said. “He was talking about white people in the South, and about how they weren’t doing anything to stop the Klan. How all of them were holding that little girl’s shoe. Flew right off her foot in the explosion.”

  “Imagine being her mother finding that.” Lizzie waved her fork in the air. “Look, maybe they are scared, those black guys at Danny’s plant. So they don’t mingle. So what?”

  Rosemary looked down at the open newspaper and tapped the half-page picture before sliding it toward Lizzie. “I’ve seen this guy before.”

  Lizzie looked at the picture of the man in the softball uniform and laughed. “Honey, everybody’s seen him before. That’s Brick McGinty. Hell, even Danny and I have seen him play ball. In the tournament last fall.”

  Rosemary pushed away her plate and leaned forward on her elbows. “What’s he like?”

  “I don’t know,” Lizzie said. “I didn’t meet him. I just watched him play softball. He’s got that red hair, and even from a distance you can see he’s covered in freckles.”

  Rosemary picked up the picture of him. “I think he looks handsome. I’ve seen him in Sardelli’s. Looks like he has a soft side to him, too.”

  Lizzie took a sip of coffee. “Well, all I know is he can really hit a ball, and he’s married to a cute little thing with a big beehive. Everyone seems to like her.”

  Rosemary leaned back against her seat. “How do you know she’s his wife?”

  “The way everyone went over to tell her what a great ballplayer her husband was, how they hugged her. She’s got a great laugh, I recall. After the game”—she tapped her finger on the picture of Brick—“she ran over to him and he picked her up and swirled her around.”