The Daughters of Erietown

by Connie Schultz

  “Soon, I promise. I’m meeting Lenny for a Coke.” She pointed to the book in Ellie’s hand. “I’ll bet you see yourself in The Women’s Room.”

  “Is there a nurse’s aide with a know-it-all daughter in it? Does it have the part where she tells her mother that Jesus wasn’t white?”

  “C’mon,” Sam said, pointing to the framed picture on the wall. “Jesus was Middle Eastern. He had brown skin.”

  “And you were there.”

  Sam laughed. “Mom. Honestly.”

  That had been barely a week ago. Now, Ellie couldn’t wait to come home from work each day to read another chapter or two of The Women’s Room. She pulled out a folded piece of stationery marking her place and opened it to reread the two sentences that had taken up residence in her head: I’ve known for a long time that hypocrisy is the secret of sanity. You mustn’t let them know you know.

  “My life,” she’d told Mardee over coffee last Saturday, pointing to the page after reading it out loud to her. “I hate to admit that Sam was right, but it’s like Marilyn French was writing about me.”

  “You’re not a hypocrite, El,” Mardee said, pouring another cup of coffee from the carafe Ellie had bought years ago with her first paycheck as a nurse’s aide. “You’re private. Nothing wrong with that. Nobody needs to know all your business.”

  “This isn’t about what other people know,” Ellie said. “It’s about what I’ve had to ignore. All the stuff Brick has done, I mean. And it’s never really gone away. Remember when that nurse’s aide Lavelle trained me? The sister of Brick’s first affair?”

  “You handled that with such class.”

  “It was humiliating. And I couldn’t even tell Brick, because then it would be all about how upset he was. Instead of him saying, ‘Geez, Ellie, I’m sorry you had to go through that,’ I’d be trying to make him feel better. Nothing is ever his fault. Even when Rosemary showed up.”

  Mardee reached for her hand. “Nobody knows about all that.”

  “Oh, please,” Ellie said, pulling back her hand. “Everyone knows about her. And then she had to go drive off that bridge and die, so people just felt sorry for her.”

  “You don’t think she did that on purpose?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not,” Ellie said. “It does make me wonder if things would have turned out differently. If we had agreed to raise her son, like I bet she’d wanted us to.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “I’ve thought about it a lot over the years. I was so upset that day. But when I found out she had died, I couldn’t stop thinking about that little boy, and how she’d kept saying she didn’t want him to grow up without a father.”

  “You sound as if maybe you do think he was Brick’s.”

  Ellie picked up the tiny pitcher of milk and poured some into her cup. “I think I’ve spent my whole life pretending things are different from what they are. Even when I was a little girl, I wanted to make everyone think I was happy. So no one else would leave me, I guess.”

  Ellie stirred her coffee. “Do you ever think about how much difference money makes?”

  “You mean, buying a bigger house? Owning a brand-new car, instead of a used one? Sure. Who doesn’t?”

  “I don’t mean that stuff,” Ellie said. “I mean the kind of money that lets you solve the big problems. Like that little boy. If we had been rich, Brick could have paid her a lot of money to go away, and I would never have known about it.”

  “Oh, that kind of money,” Mardee said. “Like the Kennedys.”

  “Or the Rockefellers.”

  “And movie stars,” Mardee said. “You just know they’re getting women pregnant all the time, but we never read about it.”

  “Same mistakes as us,” Ellie said. “Same problems.”

  “Well, maybe,” Mardee said, “but I don’t think anyone’s going to be comparing our husbands to Frank Sinatra anytime soon.”

  Ellie looked at her. “I know people think I’m a fool for sticking it out with Brick all these years. I just pretend I don’t see that. I pretend I don’t see any of it. That’s how I keep all this going.”

  “No one’s marriage is perfect, El. I give you a lot of credit for never pretending yours was. You never bragged about your marriage or your kids to make other people feel bad about their lives. That’s why so many people like you. Life is already so damn hard. No one could ever accuse you of making another person feel even worse.”

  Ellie sat in silence for a moment, twisting her paper napkin as she took in the words from her oldest friend. “I never thought of myself that way,” she said finally. “I’ve never thought I was someone who made anyone feel better.”

  “Well, you do. All the time. I’ve lost count of the number of our friends who’ve said something over the years about how you got them through something awful in their lives.

  “And you know what else? Nobody feels sorry for you. You didn’t get bitter, you got busy. You got a job, you got this new house.” Mardee grabbed Ellie’s hand. “You have never been a quitter, Ellie McGinty.”

  That evening, long after Mardee had left, Ellie picked up The Women’s Room and wrote another passage inside the folded piece of stationery:

  You have never been a quitter, Ellie McGinty.

  Mardee Jepson

  December 3, 1978

  Henry pulled the blanket off Sam’s head. “C’mon, I know you heard me.”

  “Hey,” she said, pulling it up to her chin. “I’m naked here.”

  Henry sat on the edge of the bed. “Yes, I know. Just as you were ten minutes ago when we—”

  Sam leaned across the bed to pick up her T-shirt and pulled it over her head. “Why do we have to talk about this right now?”

  “You never want to talk about it. We’ve been together eight months. We’re practically living together.”

  She sat up straighter. “Number one: We are not living together. I stay at your apartment because you have only one roommate, and I have forty.”

  “Four, you mean.”

  “It feels like forty, with all the guys sleeping over.”

  “And number two?”

  Sam raked her hand through her hair. “There’s no predicting how my father is going to react to you. Why ruin a good thing?”

  Henry stood up and pulled on his jeans. “What’s the worst he could do?”

  “Oh, Henry, what you don’t know.”

  Henry crawled onto the bed and sat facing her. “Sam, you’ve already met my dad.”

  “Well, after a point it was just going to look rude for me to not join the crowd gathering around his Mercedes-Benz.”

  “It’s a Porsche.”

  “Whatever it is, it looks like a cartoon baby buggy with big eyes.”

  “Insulting my father. Nice.”

  “Why would any man think I’m insulting him if I make fun of his car?”

  “Oh, Sam,” he said. “What you don’t know.”

  Sam kicked him from under the covers. “Why does it matter so much to you? Meeting my parents.”

  “It’s the next step.”

  “To what?”

  “Seriously?”

  Her face softened. “I love you, too, Henry the Third.”

  “We graduate in June. We’ve got to start planning what comes next. You’ve applied to three elementary schools in Shaker Heights. You still want to teach there, right?”

  “Well, are you still planning to move back to Shaker Heights?”

  “You know I am,” he said. “Dad wants me to clerk at his firm over the summer before I start law school in the fall at Case, which is a fifteen-minute drive.”

  “Then, yes,” Sam said, reaching over and mussing his hair. “I want to teach in Shaker. Your high school classmate Beverly Wilson and I are going to share an apartm
ent on Winslow Road with a ridiculously low rent payment. Like all good Shaker parents, hers own the building.”

  “That’s not fair, Sam. How many times have I told you not everyone in Shaker Heights is rich?”

  “You mention it every time you brag about how deliberately integrated it is. As opposed to Erietown, where we were all accidentally thrown together.”

  “You’re a working-class snob.”

  “You don’t think about class because you’ve never had to.”

  Henry reached for Sam’s hand and smiled at her scowling face. “Have you told your parents that you’re moving to Shaker?”

  “Nope.”

  “What are you waiting for?”

  “I was thinking maybe a tornado could lift them up and transport them to Oz. Or somewhere in Oregon.”

  “I’m serious. Why haven’t you told them?”

  “This is going to be hard for my mom,” she said. “She has always thought I would move back home to Erietown.”

  “Well, that’s hardly fair. When are you supposed to have your own life?”

  Sam threw off the covers and stood up. “Henry, I wish you’d quit pushing me,” she said, tugging on her jeans. “Why can’t you be happy with what we have right now?”

  “I am happy,” he said. “I’m so happy I want to spend the rest of my life with you.”

  Sam reached for her hairbrush and bent at the waist to flip her hair. “We have to take it slow, Henry,” she said, brushing in long strokes. “It’s too soon to be talking like this.”

  When he didn’t say anything, she stood up and pushed her hair from her face. “What is it?” She sat on the bed and pulled him down next to her. “Why do you look so sad?”

  “It’s because I’m your first, isn’t it?”

  “My first what?”

  He sat up straighter and folded his arms across his chest. “It’s because I’m your first boyfriend. You think there’s got to be someone better out there.”

  She bumped up against him. “You are not my first boyfriend. You know that.”

  “Three guys—all dumped within a month. That’s hardly a relationship.”

  “Henry, I am the first in my family to get the chance to go to college. I wasn’t going to waste my time sleeping around and getting drunk all the time. I didn’t want to be distracted.”

  “So that’s what I am?” he said. “A distraction?”

  She got up off the bed. “Obviously not. It’s just, you don’t know as much about me as you think you do. About my life, before I knew you. Before I ever got here to Kent State.”

  “Then tell me. Tell me what I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “There’s nothing you can tell me that will change how I see you.”

  She walked over to the window. A handful of girls were laughing and clapping as three guys played Frisbee. “Must be nice.” Sam looked at her watch. “I have to be at work soon.”

  “Sam? Look at me, please. What haven’t you told me?”

  “She knocked on the wrong door,” she said softly.

  “What?”

  Sam slowly turned and looked at him, her eyes already glistening. “In August 1969, a woman came to our house. She knocked on the front door. Her name was Rosemary. I was twelve years old.”

  “Who was—?”

  “She had a baby on her hip.”

  “Sam,” Henry said softly. “Come here.”

  “He looked like Reilly.”

  He climbed off the bed. “Sam,” he said, reaching for her.

  “He looked just like my dad.”

  * * *

  —

  Henry raised his empty glass over the stack of books in front of him. “More, please,” he mouthed. Sam picked up the pitcher of Coke and strolled to his table. “This is your sixth glass,” she said as she poured. “You’re never going to sleep tonight.”

  “Have I never mentioned that I’m Clark Kent? Superman is caffeinated for the night.”

  “You in tights,” she said. “There’s a picture.”

  “Calm yourself,” he said.

  “Henry, you didn’t have to stay here the whole time. I’m fine.”

  “I never said you weren’t. I just wanted to be near you. After everything you told me. It helped me see why you always act so tough.”

  “I am tough.”

  “You’re strong, Sam. I don’t know how you got through that time.”

  She stuck her finger in his hair and coiled a curl around it. “I had to keep it together. For Mom. One Saturday morning, weeks after, I woke up and it was pouring rain. It was October, and cold outside. I knew Dad and Reilly were at the diner, but I couldn’t find Mom. I ran through the house, calling her name. I was panicked.”

  “Where was she?”

  Sam released his curl of hair and sat down next to him. “Standing in the middle of the yard. No umbrella, no jacket. Her hair getting completely soaked. She had never done that before.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went out and tried to talk her into coming back in. She kept talking about Jackie Kennedy, and how lucky she was that her husband had died a hero.”

  “Jesus.”

  “She didn’t come into the house until Dad pulled into the driveway. I’ll never forget the look on his face. How he wrapped his jacket around her and led her up the stairs like a little girl.”

  She leaned back and crossed her arms. “You know what they don’t tell you about these big, bad things that happen in your life? They’re like tornados that pick you up in one place and drop you off somewhere else. And there’s no turning back, no undoing it. You aren’t who you used to be because the most important people in your life are not who you thought they were. And they can’t help you figure out who you’re going to be.”

  “You don’t always have to go it alone, Sam.”

  “Maybe,” she said, “but it’s always good to know how.”

  He closed his book. “Ready to go?”

  “Bruiser said he’d close for me,” she said. “He thought I looked ‘stressed.’ ”

  Henry grabbed his stack of books and slid out of the chair. She kissed his cheek and whispered, “Easter.”

  Henry leaned back to look at her. “Is this code for something?”

  “Easter weekend,” she said. “On that Friday, come meet my parents.”

  “Ah, Good Friday,” he said. He held out his hand for an imaginary handshake. “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. McGinty. I’m Henry, and I’m here to take your daughter away.”

  Sam patted his back. “Maybe work on that.”

  Sam held up a blouse covered in giant red poppies and waved it in the air. “How about this one?”

  Ellie blanched and shaded her eyes. “Something less memorable, maybe.”

  “What’s wrong with it?”

  “Sam, I am four feet eleven”—she looked around and lowered her voice—“with a forty-DD bra. I’d look ridiculous. It’s all everyone would talk about for the next six months.”

  “Who’s everyone?”

  “Every woman I know who wouldn’t be caught dead in that, which is every woman I know.” She tugged on the sleeve. “My head on top of all those flowers? I’d look like a corpse popping out of a fresh grave. Like Night of the Grateful Dead.”

  Sam laughed. “Living Dead, Mom. Night of the Living Dead. Or have you dumped Engelbert Humperdinck and become a Dead Head?”

  Ellie stared at her daughter. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Sam slid the blouse back onto the rack and pulled out another one. “This is cute.”

  “Horizontal stripes? Are you out of your mind? That’s for a convict who gave the neighbor a poisoned rum cake.”

  “Which neighbor? I vote fo
r Mrs. Ballsy.”

  “It’s Halsey, and Virginia can’t help it that she has to yell at Vern. He’s practically deaf and refuses to get hearing aids.”

  “Like Dad, you mean.”

  “You father is not deaf, Sam. He’s just stopped listening.”

  Sam returned the striped blouse to the rack. “Mom, the whole idea is to get you something new and different.”

  “Anything new will be different, Sam,” Ellie said. “I haven’t had a new top in ages.” She pulled out a bright blue blouse and held it against her chest. “Like this.” She raised it higher to her face. “Blue makes my eyes pop.”

  “And then what happens?”

  Ellie ignored her and looked at the price tag. Sam grabbed the blouse out of her mother’s hands. “Lady, know your place. I told you, this one’s on me.”

  Ellie smiled. “You sounded like Arnie. Remember him?”

  Sam nodded. “Your old hairdresser. I loved him. He used to give me all of his New Yorkers after he was done with them. Back then, I never understood the cartoons. Now I realize I’ve been living them.”

  “Right, Sam,” Ellie said, smiling as she shook her head, “our life is just like The New Yorker, right here in Erietown.”

  * * *

  —

  Ellie pulled on the new blouse and stood in front of the mirror as she started buttoning it. Brick stood behind her and smiled at her reflection. “That’s a pretty color. Is it new?”

  “An early birthday gift from your daughter. You wouldn’t believe our conversation this afternoon. Did you know Sam thinks we’re practically New Yorkers?”

  Brick combed his wet hair and patted the sides in place. “Dressing you for the big occasion, huh? Sounds like our daughter’s nervous for us to meet Henry the Turd.”

  Ellie frowned at him in the mirror. “Brick, you have to stop calling him that.”

  Brick grinned and tossed the comb onto the dresser. “No, I don’t.”

  Ellie turned to look at him. “What if you slip and say it when he’s here?”

  “You know how hoity-toity he’s going to be. We can’t even call him Hank. What Henry doesn’t want to be called Hank?”