Summers at Blue Lake

by Jill Althouse-Wood

  Lena turned white. Even though his letter had been full of friendly banter, this was the last thing she ever expected to hear from Hank’s lips.

  Hank continued. “I wanted to write to you from that hospital, but I didn’t want you to come see me all helpless in my bed. I wanted to come to you as a man. I wanted to walk into your house, look down at your face, and ask you to be my wife. I’ve bought a little house in Norristown. Just like we talked about, remember? And Guy Chambers has promised me a job supervising his draftsmen.”

  Lena clamped her hands together, as was her custom when she was nervous. She had stopped listening to him and started staring at the window at a bird on the window ledge. It had a worm in its beak.

  “Lena?”

  She turned to look at Hank.

  “Lena, I am asking you to marry me.” His blue eyes implored her far more than his words.

  Lena did not move. The silence that followed was awkward. After what seemed like an eternity, Hank put his hat on his head.

  “I don’t expect an answer today. I’ll let you think about it for a few days. I’ll come back again on Thursday for your answer. If your answer is yes, we’ll go get our license, because, Sweet Lenie, I’ve wasted too much time already.”

  “Hank?” Lena spoke at last. “Hank, I. . .”

  “Please, wait. Whatever you decide. I have to know that you’ve thoroughly thought about the possibilities—even if it is only a fraction of the time that I have thought about it.”

  And with that Hank Littlehail hobbled out of the house.

  As if in a trance, Lena watched him go. When she heard the car door, Lena tiptoed to the window. The stateside soldier helped Hank into the car. As the driver turned to saunter to his side of the car, he waved to Lena behind the curtain. Hank lit a cigarette and drew a long drag. He did nothing to acknowledge Lena, just flicked a few ashes out the window. The soft scent of tobacco reached Lena’s nose, and she inhaled deeply. As the car pulled away from the curb, Lena waved. Finally aware of her, Hank nodded.

  The sound of the engine faded. Lena ran upstairs to the room we shared and went to the dresser where she pulled open the top drawer. She reached behind her nightgowns and unmentionables and retrieved a small box from its hiding spot. I knew all about the ring, where it was hidden. I know how she tried that ring on and watched the light dance off the gem. I know the movements she made when she twirled her fingers in the air. She filed her nails where they were rough from work. She hummed to herself. These things I know. I know all of it because when I came home late that night, she was asleep on our bed. The engagement ring was still on her finger.

  I woke her immediately.

  “Lena, I’m home.” I turned on the bright light beside her sleeping form.

  She roused slowly, not registering my worried look. Casually, without intention behind the gesture, she shielded her eyes with her left hand. “Oh, I had the most unbelievable dream. I dreamed that Hank came back, and he wanted me to marry him. Can you fathom that?” Her face had the look of a little girl.

  I lifted her hand from her face and threw it on the bed in disgust. “Fathom what? You are wearing his ring.”

  Lena was quiet then. She didn’t like to see me angry. She scooted up until she was sitting in a little ball against the backboard of the bed.

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” she said.

  “Why should you upset me? It isn’t like you are going back to that bastard.”

  The room went silent. I swallowed and waited for Lena to reply. The silence grew until it was fabulous in its presence, like a lounge singer with a pink boa wrapped around her neck, scatting into the microphone. Then the scatting silence turned into a baby’s cry. My maternal instinct rose within my chest, and I pivoted toward the door. As I held the knob, I looked at Lena sitting on the bed. She looked like such a child, like the older sister of the baby who was calling to me from the next room.

  “Does he know?” The cries from the next room were getting louder.

  “No, I haven’t told him about the baby.”

  “I suppose he apologized and told you that he loves you.”

  Lena did not hear the challenge in my voice. She falsely assumed I was relinquishing her from any bond we may have shared.

  “He said he couldn’t stop thinking of me,” she said.

  “Hmmm.”

  I PUT THE OPEN NOTEBOOK on my lap and turned off the lamp. I sat in semidarkness. The window was open, but there was no breeze. The night air, moist and hot, blurred the light from the lamppost. I closed my eyes to better concentrate on my own thoughts. Thoughts of the past swirled together with thoughts of the day. Lena had been approached with a proposal in the very kitchen in which Bryce had made his case. We were both being made to choose between the fathers of our children and the ones we truly loved. And the ones we loved were not those ordained by the populace. Why was it that history always repeated itself? Had Lena felt the same searing pain that was ripping through me now? I knew the outcome of the scene Nonna described. Lena turned away from Hank Littlehail, my mother’s father—my own grandfather, and lived happily ever after with Nonna. But why would Lena do that? Why would she choose the hard love, the one that challenged society? Maybe there wasn’t a choice. Maybe there was only love. If that were the case, if this letter was speaking directly to me, it reinforced my choice to turn down Bryce’s offer of reconciliation and run straight into Travis’s arms. But what if Nonna had written this letter as a way to issue a warning to the next generation? I could not read any more of Nonna’s letter until I had the answers in my own heart. Whatever decisions I made had to come from within, not some omen from the grave. I closed the binder and let it slide from my lap.

  I fell asleep on the sofa, but the sound of an engine startled me awake. Peeking through the curtains, I saw a truck turn the corner and go down Mulberry Street. Was it Travis? The light colored pickup was a later model than the one that Travis drove, or was it? My mind was playing tricks on me.

  You must know the whole truth. Nonna’s voice penetrated my mind. I heard the creak of boards and listened to hear if Bryce or Sam were awake. The noise stopped. It had been the musings of the house, echoing Nonna’s sentiment. The truth, Barbara Jean. Both comforted and terrified, I turned on the lamp to help me find the notebook, which had fallen on the floor next to a sleeping Jules.

  I touched the smooth cover of the notebook. My last communication from Nonna, and I didn’t want to end. But I knew that somewhere in the end of this notebook was a beginning—my beginning. I continued to read.

  ♦ 52 ♦

  HANK DID NOT COME Thursday as he had promised. We both waited expectantly until the late afternoon made us skittish around one another. After dinner, Lena took a drink to the porch swing. I put the baby down for the evening and joined her out on the swing. We swayed a little; I reached across for her hand.

  “I love you,” I said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  Lena took her hand away.

  “I want you to stay here with me, for always,” I continued.

  Lena didn’t look at me when she talked. “This isn’t exactly the kind of family a baby should have.”

  “You’d rather a rapist parent for our daughter?”

  “He’s apologized for his mistakes.”

  “Has he?”

  “Anja, this is not even about Hank. It is about us.”

  “What about us?” I asked. “You were the one who pursued me. I thought this was what you wanted.”

  “Yes. I did. But was it what you wanted or were you just using me to get over Charlie?”

  “NO!” I said. “No.”

  “Really, Anja? Think again. You don’t like the fact that I am wearing Hank’s ring, but you have Charlie’s photo standing on your bedside table. Everywhere we go, you’re always saying, ‘Charlie this,’ or ‘Charlie that.’ And going to his grave every Sunday…”

  “I didn’t know it bothered you,” I said.

  “How could yo
u be so oblivious?” she said.

  The swing came to a standstill. We stayed in that motionless place, waiting.

  “I’m sorry,” I said finally.

  “Anja, I don’t want your apologies. All I am asking for is my chance at happiness.” Lena looked at me with surprising directness. “You suffered a great loss, but I promise you will get another chance, too. I’m sure of it.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Anja, the men are coming back. It’s a new world. Don’t you want a house full of children and a man to take you to the movies? Don’t you want to sit down to a family dinner and host cocktail parties with other couples? Don’t you want those things?”

  “Do you?” I asked her.

  Hank Littlehail showed up at ten o’clock the next morning. I did not want to see him, and I did not want him to see the baby, so with you balanced on my hip I hid behind the closed door of the stairwell. I held my breath, and listened as Lena greeted your father, the rapist, the man who murdered my husband. I knew his intentions since the hour I felt his letter in my hand. He didn’t love Lena as much as I did; he simply wasn’t capable of it. Of that I am sure. Before I sat listening to their exchange, I didn’t fully believe that Lena would actually go with him. I heard him tell her once again that he forgave her for her past and wanted to marry her.

  “There is something I need to tell you first,” Lena said, and I realized she was going to tell him about the baby.

  No! No! I wanted to shout. She couldn’t be doing this. If I had considered the possibilities that she might leave, I had not fully accepted she would take my baby from me. Lena, don’t. This man wronged you, wronged us. Don’t let him tear us apart.

  “I should have told you sooner…” she began. Lena’s voice reverberated sweetness through the wall, and I could no longer stay hidden. I pretended I had just come down the stairs, and I opened the door with a good deal of commotion.

  “Mrs. Graybill, Anja. Lena, you didn’t tell me Anja was home.”

  “Hello, Hank.”

  “I’ve been meaning to come visit with you and express my condolences for your loss.”

  “I understand you were the last one to see Charlie alive.”

  “Yes. That’s true.”

  He might have offered something to me, a crumb of kindness. He could have told me that my husband’s last words were of me, or that he owed his life to Charlie, but he said nothing. He stood there, or rather, propped himself there, in his casual attire. He was holding his hat, and his hair, overgrown for a military man, was dressed with something slick. Around his crown there was an indentation where his hat had been, and his eyes still haunted me. I directed my gaze away from them, downward to where his leg had been. It was too soon for a prosthetic, I mused at the time. Looking back on the incident, it was more likely that he was using his handicap to attract Lena’s sympathy. He wasn’t crippled; he was spineless.

  The space beneath his thigh hexed me for a moment. I would personally cut off his other leg to have my Charlie come back alive. I would butcher this man into ever smaller pieces of repentance. So engrossed was I in my mental knife-work, I almost didn’t see him raise his arm to touch you, Judy, the babe in my arms.

  “How sad that this little one will never know her father.”

  How could I dream of knives and axes and still hug a child? Judy, I pulled you away before he could touch you— before he could taint any more of my brain with thoughts of hatred. “She will never know her father, but at least she will always have her mother.” I hugged you close to me, and I looked at Lena in a way that told her with no uncertainty that I would not surrender the baby. In those days there were no paternity tests. My name was on the birth certificate, as Lena was well aware.

  “A woman’s love can heal when nothing else can,” I spoke my words to Hank, but Lena knew they were for her.

  Lena looked from Hank to me and then finally to the baby in my arms. I knew I had to leave Lena alone to make her decision, but I had to make my last plea. I boldly walked over to her and kissed her on the cheek.

  Lena remained at the farm. I never asked her why because I never wanted to hear her say that it was solely because of you. It never would have occurred to her to fight over you or to take you from me. I do think that she was happier with me than she would have been in the world where men swallow women like Lena. Whether or not Lena shared that awareness, I don’t know. We have been blissfully content over the years. Ours was a great love. I don’t want you to ever doubt that, but, in all honesty, this was not the life that either of us had planned.

  As for you, dear Judy, I am not assured that our loving home ensured your well-being. What can I say? I don’t know what kind of a father Hank Littlehail would have been, though I can imagine. I imagine he would have been tough and that the freedoms he fought for would not necessarily belong to you as his daughter. He would have made you walk a narrow line of self that is often imposed on girls. Dick can run. He can throw. Jane says, “Run, Dick, run.” She says, “Throw, Dick, throw.” But this compressed view of girlhood, with spartan paternal authority, was what your generation knew. It was the solidifying force among your friends, many of whom rallied to break down those barriers. I know that you needed to escape from the home we gave you and move toward normalcy, whatever that meant.

  I watched you become a nurse, marry a steady man, and mother a rebellious daughter. I could see you holding back your own passions for fear that they would lead you to more ridicule. Remember when we quit our church after you had completed one year of catechism classes? You had asked to quit the classes and to your amazement we let you. The real reason was that Rev. Carroll asked if Lena and I would stop attending the same service together. Some of the parishioners were talking. We thought we were shielding you from the cruelties of the world, but I know that you shielded us from many more. You kept the taunts to yourself.

  Maybe I should have let you and Lena go to live out your days as Littlehails. Maybe then, your body would have rejected disease instead of welcoming it. Sanity dictates that I believe I made the right choice to keep you and Lena in my love. I didn’t invent Hank’s crimes, but maybe I garnished them with my jealousies and my losses.

  ♦ 53 ♦

  June 15, 1991

  I wish that were the end of my deceptions and the pain I inflicted on Lena’s family. Do you remember the day that Barbara Jean turned fourteen? I spent all day working on the perfect cake. This was the first time she had spent her birthday at our house, and I wanted it to be special. I wanted to give her the loving memories of a grandmother that I never had. More than that, I was competing with Lena for a legacy.

  I remember the smell of the air as it turned to rain. My fears escalated. You arrived safely from Virginia, but the kids were out there in the storm. When the power went out, it nearly drove me mad. Margot tried to call us, but the telephone lines were down, so she drove over to the house to tell us that her father had died.

  I felt no sadness for that man’s passing. I spit on the ground. Lena told Margot that under no condition would she attend her stepfather’s memorial service. You were shocked, but too worried about the kids to pay much attention to us.

  Margot. How we worried about her when she was small. She was living under the same roof as Lena’s abuser, and there was little we could do about it. We might have told Lena’s mother Lydia, but she died when Margot was five. Then, it was just the word of the good Reverend against the word of two women, who may or may not have been living an immoral life. We invited Margot over to play with you as often as we could. We watched her in play to see if she seemed like a little girl who was in trouble.

  Sometimes we invited the Reverend Ernie Platz over for dinner to watch the two of them interact. How I hated to sit at the table with that man. I listened to his slippery stories and watched him smoke his cigarettes. Lena turned herself to stone each time he came, and I needed to coax her to come out again after he left. It was like feeding a wounded bird.

  O
ne day when you girls were nine, Lena had taken you both to the park when Ernie arrived for dinner. I had never been alone with him before. He made a pass at me. Not just with words, but with his hands on my buttocks. I was astonished, but I still had my wits. I asked Ernie for a cigarette. He took one out for himself as well. Lena smoked until she turned sixty, but I never did. Ernie lit my cigarette. He was practically drooling.

  “Reverend, do you believe in praying for souls?”

  “Well, yes.” He was puzzled.

  “Well, then you’d better pray for mine.”

  He just blinked at me. I walked over to where he was seated. He had a look of sweet anticipation on his face. I blew smoke in his face, and then I positioned my cigarette right beside his white mustache.

  “Reverend, you pray for my soul because if you so much as lay a finger on me or do the things to Margot that you did to Lena, I won’t wait for the law to step in. I have friends from the old country. I will have you hunted down and dismembered. Your pulpit will be adorned with your body parts.” I took his sweaty palm and turned it to the heavens. “And lest you forget we had this conversation, just look at your praying hands.” With that said, I extinguished my cigarette into his hand.

  I don’t know if my performance was enough to keep Margot safe. We had little opportunity to ask her such delicate questions. She never understood Lena’s hatred of her stepfather, so I have to believe he never gave her reason to hate him personally.

  That July day, Margot went out into the rain to find Travis. She was angry with all of us because we could not absorb some of her grief. A half hour later, Barbara Jean came walking through our door with wet hair and a lustful gaze. We heard your sharp inhale as you noticed the graying love bites on her neck. I looked at Lena with horrified eyes. You, Judy, were afraid of your little girl becoming too adult before her time, but we knew something uglier, a story of our family’s incest repeating itself for the generations. We were sick with our own secrets.