The Stories of J.F. Powers (New York Review Books Classics)

by J.F. Powers

  “Would you like me to run through these names with you, Bishop, or do you want to familiarize yourself with the people as we go along?”

  “I’d prefer that, I think. And I wish you’d keep the list, Miss Culhane.”

  “I don’t think Father Early would want you to be without it, Bishop.”

  “No? Very well, I’ll keep it then.”

  BLUE ISLAND

  ON THE DAY the Daviccis moved into their house, Ethel was visited by a Welcome Wagon hostess bearing small gifts from local merchants, but after that by nobody for three weeks, only Ralph’s relatives and door-to-door salesmen. And then Mrs Hancock came smiling. They sat on the matching green chairs which glinted with threads of what appeared to be gold. In the picture window, the overstimulated plants grew wild in pots.

  Mrs Hancock had guessed right about Ethel and Ralph, that they were newlyweds. “Am I right in thinking you’re of Swedish descent, Mrs Davicky? You, I mean?”

  Ethel smiled, as if taking a compliment, and said nothing.

  “I only ask because so many people in the neighborhood are. I’m not, myself,” said Mrs Hancock. She was unnaturally pink, with tinted blue hair. Her own sharp-looking teeth were transparent at the tips. “But you’re so fair.”

  “My maiden name was Taylor,” Ethel said. It was, and it wasn’t—it was the name she’d got at the orphanage. Wanting a cigarette, she pushed the silver box on the coffee table toward Mrs Hancock.

  Mrs Hancock used one of her purple claws to pry up the first cigarette from the top layer. “A good old American name like mine.”

  She was making too much of it, Ethel thought, and wondered about Mrs Hancock’s maiden name.

  “Is your husband in business, Mrs Davicky?”

  “Yes, he is.” Ethel put the lighter—a simple column of silver, the mate to the box—to Mrs Hancock’s cigarette and then to her own.

  “Not here in Blue Island?”

  “No.” From here on, it could be difficult. Ralph was afraid that people in the neighborhood would disapprove of his business. “In Minneapolis.” The Mohawk Inn, where Ethel had worked as a waitress, was first-class—thick steaks, dark lights, an electric organ—but Ralph’s other places, for which his brothers were listed as the owners, were cut-rate bars on or near Washington Avenue. “He’s a distributor,” Ethel said, heading her off. “Non-alcoholic beverages mostly.” It was true. Ralph had taken over his family’s wholesale wine business, never much in Minneapolis, and got it to pay by converting to soft drinks.

  Mrs Hancock was noticing the two paintings which, because of their size and the lowness of the ceiling, hung two feet from the floor, but she didn’t comment on them. “Lovely, lovely,” she said, referring to the driftwood lamp in the picture window. A faraway noise came from her stomach. She raised her voice. “But you’ve been lonely, haven’t you? I could see it when I came in. It’s this neighborhood.”

  “It’s very nice,” said Ethel quickly. Maybe Mrs Hancock was at war with the neighbors, looking for an ally.

  “I suppose you know Mrs Nilgren,” said Mrs Hancock, nodding to the left.

  “No, but I’ve seen her. Once she waved.”

  “She’s nice. Tied down with children, though.” Mrs Hancock nodded to the right. “How about old Mrs Mann?”

  “I don’t think anybody’s there now.”

  “The Manns are away! California. So you don’t know anybody yet?”

  “No.”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t met some of them at the Cashway.”

  “I never go there,” Ethel said. “Ralph—that’s my husband—he wants me to trade at the home-owned stores.”

  “Oh?” Mrs Hancock’s stomach cut loose again. “I didn’t know people still felt that way.” Mrs Hancock looked down the street, in the direction of the little corner store. “Do they do much business?”

  “No,” said Ethel. The old couple who ran it were suspicious of her, she thought, for buying so much from them. The worst of it was that Ralph had told her to open a charge account, and she hadn’t, and she never knew when he’d stop there and try to use it. There was a sign up in the store that said: In God We Trust—All Others Pay Cash.

  “I’ll bet that’s it,” Mrs Hancock was saying. “I’m afraid people are pretty clannish around here—and the Wagners have so many friends. They live one-two-three-five houses down.” Mrs Hancock had been counting the houses across the street. “Mr Wagner’s the manager of the Cashway.”

  Ethel was holding her breath.

  “I’m afraid so,” said Mrs Hancock.

  Ethel sighed. It was Ralph’s fault. She’d always wanted to trade at the Cashway.

  Mrs Hancock threw back her head, inhaling, and her eyelids, like a doll’s, came down. “I’m afraid it’s your move, Mrs Davicky.”

  Ethel didn’t feel that it was her move at all and must have shown it.

  Mrs Hancock sounded impatient. “Invite ’em in. Have ’em in for a morning coffee.”

  “I couldn’t do that,” Ethel said. “I’ve never been to a coffee.” She’d only read about coffees in the women’s magazines to which Ralph had subscribed for her. “I wouldn’t know what to do.”

  “Nothing to it. Rolls, coffee, and come as you are. Of course nobody really does, not really.” Mrs Hancock’s stomach began again. “Oh, shut up,” she said to it. “I’ve just come from one too many.” Mrs Hancock made a face, showing Ethel a brown mohair tongue. She laughed at Ethel. “Cheer up. It wasn’t in this neighborhood.”

  Ethel felt better. “I’ll certainly think about it,” she said.

  Mrs Hancock rose, smiling, and went over to the telephone. “You’ll do it right now,” she said, as though being an older woman entitled her to talk that way to Ethel. “They’re probably dying to get inside this lovely house.”

  After a moment, Ethel, who was already on her feet, having thought that Mrs Hancock was leaving, went over and sat down to telephone. In the wall mirror she saw how she must appear to Mrs Hancock. When the doorbell had rung, she’d been in too much of a hurry to see who it was to do anything about her lips and hair. “Will they know who I am?”

  “Of course.” Mrs Hancock squatted on the white leather hassock with the phone book. “And you don’t have to say I’m coming. Oh, I’ll come. I’ll be more than happy to. You don’t need me, though. All you need is confidence.”

  And Mrs Hancock was right. Ethel called eight neighbors, and six could come on Wednesday morning, which Mrs Hancock had thought would be the best time for her. Two of the six even sounded anxious to meet Ethel, and, surprisingly, Mrs Wagner was one of these.

  “You did it all yourself,” said Mrs Hancock.

  “With your help,” said Ethel, feeling indebted to Mrs Hancock, intimately so. It was as if they’d cleaned the house together.

  They were saying good-bye on the front stoop when Ralph rolled into the driveway. Ordinarily at noon he parked just outside the garage, but that day he drove in—without acknowledging them in any way. “Mr Daveechee,” Ethel commented. For Mrs Hancock, after listening to Ethel pronounce her name for all the neighbors, was still saying “Davicky.”

  Mrs Hancock stayed long enough to get the idea that Ralph wasn’t going to show himself. She went down the front walk saying, “’Bye now.”

  While Mrs Hancock was getting into her car, which seemed a little old for the neighborhood, Ralph came out of the garage.

  Mrs Hancock waved and nodded—which, Ethel guessed, was for Ralph’s benefit, the best Mrs Hancock could do to introduce herself at the distance. She drove off. Too late, Ralph’s hand moved up to wave. He stared after Mrs Hancock’s moving car with a look that just didn’t belong to him, Ethel thought, a look that she hadn’t seen on his face until they moved out to Blue Island.

  During lunch, Ethel tried to reproduce her conversation with Mrs Hancock, but she couldn’t tell Ralph enough. He wanted to know the neighbors’ names, and she could recall the names of only three, Mrs Wagner, one of them, was
very popular in the neighborhood, and her husband . . .

  “You go to the Cashway then. Some of ’em sounded all right, huh?”

  “Ralph, they all sounded all right, real friendly. The man next door sells insurance. Mr Nilgren.”

  Ethel remembered that one of the husbands was a lawyer and told Ralph that. He left the table. A few minutes later Ethel heard him driving away.

  It had been a mistake to mention the lawyer to Ralph. It had made him think of the shooting they’d had at the Bow Wow, one of the joints. There had been a mix-up, and Ralph’s home address had appeared in the back pages of one of the papers when the shooting was no longer news. Ethel doubted that the neighbors had seen the little item. Ralph might be right about the lawyer, though, who would probably have to keep up with everything like that.

  Ralph wouldn’t have worried so much about such a little thing in the old days. He was different now. It was hard to get him to smile. Ethel could remember how he would damn the Swedes for slapping higher and higher taxes on liquor and tobacco, but now, when she pointed out a letter some joker had written to the paper suggesting a tax on coffee, or when she showed him the picture of the wife of the Minnesota senator—the fearless one—christening an ore boat with a bottle of milk, which certainly should’ve given Ralph a laugh, he was silent.

  It just made Ethel sick to see him at the windows, watching Mr Nilgren, a sandy-haired, dim-looking man who wore plaid shirts and a red cap in the yard. Mr Nilgren would be raking out his hedge, or wiring up the skinny little trees, or washing his car if it was Sunday morning, and there Ralph would be, behind a drape. One warm day Ethel had seen Mr Nilgren in the yard with a golf club, and had said, “He should get some of those little balls that don’t go anywhere.” It had been painful to see Ralph then. She could almost hear him thinking. He would get some of those balls and give them to Mr Nilgren as a present. No, it would look funny if he did. Then he got that sick look that seemed to come from wanting to do a favor for someone who might not let him do it.

  A couple of days later Ethel learned that Ralph had gone to an indoor driving range to take golf lessons. He came home happy, with a club he was supposed to swing in his spare time. He’d made a friend, too, another beginner. They were going to have the same schedule and be measured for clubs. During his second lesson, however, he quit. Ethel wasn’t surprised, for Ralph, though strong, was awkward. She was better than he was with a hammer and nails, and he mutilated the heads of screws. When he went back the second time, it must have been too much for him, finding out he wasn’t any better, after carrying the club around the house for three days. Ethel asked about the other beginner, and at first Ralph acted as though she’d made him up, and then he hotly rejected the word “friend,” which she’d used. Finally he said, “If you ask me, that bastard’s played before!”

  That was just like him. At the coffee, Ethel planned to ask the women to come over soon with their husbands, but she was afraid some of the husbands wouldn’t take to Ralph. Probably he could buy insurance from Mr Nilgren. He would want to do something for the ones who weren’t selling anything, though—if there were any like that—and they might misunderstand Ralph. He was used to buying the drinks. He should relax and take the neighbors as they came. Or move.

  She didn’t know why they were there anyway. It was funny. After they were married, before they left on their honeymoon, Ralph had driven her out to Blue Island and walked her through the house. That was all there was to it. Sometimes she wondered if he’d won the house at cards. She didn’t know why they were there when they could just as well be living at Minnetonka or White Bear, where they could keep a launch like the one they’d hired in Florida—and where the houses were far apart and neighbors wouldn’t matter so much. What were they waiting for? Some of the things they owned, she knew, were for later. They didn’t need sterling for eighteen in Blue Island. And the two big pictures were definitely for later.

  She didn’t know what Ralph liked about his picture, which was of an Indian who looked all in sitting on a horse that looked all in, but he had gone to the trouble of ordering it from a regular art store. Hers was more cheerful, the palace of the Doge of Venice, Italy. Ralph hadn’t wanted her to have it at first. He was really down on anything foreign. (There were never any Italian dishes on the menu at the Mohawk.) But she believed he liked her for wanting that picture, for having a weakness for things Italian, for him—and even for his father and mother, whom he was always sorry to see and hadn’t invited to the house. When they came anyway, with his brothers, their wives and children (and wine, which Ralph wouldn’t touch), Ralph was in and out, upstairs and down, never long in the same room with them, never encouraging them to stay when they started to leave. They called him “Rock” or “Rocky,” but Ralph didn’t always answer to that. To one of the little boys who had followed him down into the basement, Ethel had heard him growl, “The name’s Ralph”—that to a nine-year-old. His family must have noticed the change in Ralph, but they were wrong if they blamed her, just because she was a little young for him, a blonde, and not a Catholic—not that Ralph went to church. In fact, she thought Ralph would be better off with his family for his friends, instead of counting so much on the neighbors. She liked Ralph’s family and enjoyed having them in the house.

  And if Ralph’s family hadn’t come around, the neighbors might even think they weren’t properly married, that they had a love nest going there. Ethel didn’t blame the neighbors for being suspicious of her and Ralph. Mr Nilgren in his shirt and cap that did nothing for him, he belonged there, but not Ralph, so dark, with his dark blue suits, pearl-gray hats, white jacquard shirts—and with her, with her looks and platinum hair. She tried to dress down, to look like an older woman, when she went out. The biggest thing in their favor, but it wasn’t noticeable yet, was the fact that she was pregnant.

  Sometimes she thought Ralph must be worrying about the baby—as she was—about the kind of life a little kid would have in a neighborhood where his father and mother didn’t know anybody. There were two preschool children at the Nilgrens’. Would they play with the Davicci kid? Ethel didn’t ever want to see that sick look of Ralph’s on a child of hers.

  That afternoon two men in white overalls arrived from Minneapolis in a white truck and washed the windows inside and out, including the basement and garage. Ralph had sent them. Ethel sat in the dining room and polished silver to the music of Carmen on records. She played whole operas when Ralph wasn’t home.

  In bed that night Ralph made her run through the neighbors again. Seven for sure, counting Mrs Hancock. “Is that all?” Ethel said she was going to call the neighbor who hadn’t been home. “When?” When she got the number from Mrs Hancock. “When’s that?” When Mrs Hancock phoned, if she phoned . . . And that was where Ralph believed Ethel had really fallen down. She didn’t have Mrs Hancock’s number—or address—and there wasn’t a Hancock listed for Blue Island in the phone book. “How about next door?” Mrs Nilgren was still coming. “The other side?” The Manns were still away, in California, and Ralph knew it. “They might come back. Ever think of that? You don’t wanna leave them out.” Them, he’d said, showing Ethel what was expected of her. He wanted those husbands. Ethel promised to watch for the return of the Manns. “They could come home in the night.” Ethel reminded Ralph that a person in her condition needed a lot of sleep, and Ralph left her alone then.

  Before Ralph was up the next morning, Ethel started to clean the house. Ralph was afraid the house cleaning wouldn’t be done right (he spoke of her condition) and wanted to get another crew of professionals out from Minneapolis. Ethel said it wouldn’t look good. She said the neighbors expected them to do their own house cleaning—and window washing. Ralph shut up.

  When he came home for lunch, Ethel was able to say that Mrs Hancock had called and that the neighbor who hadn’t been home could come to the coffee. Ethel had talked to her, and she had sounded very friendly. “That’s three of ’em, huh?” Ethel was tired of tha
t one, but told him they’d all sounded friendly to her. “Mrs Hancock okay?” Mrs Hancock was okay. More than happy to be coming. Ralph asked if Ethel had got Mrs Hancock’s phone number and address. No. “Why not?” Mrs Hancock would be there in the morning. That was why—and Ralph should get a hold on himself.

  In the afternoon, after he was gone, Ethel put on one of her new conservative dresses and took the bus to Minneapolis to buy some Swedish pastry. She wanted something better than she could buy in Blue Island. In the window of the store where they’d bought Ralph’s Indian, there were some little miniatures, lovely New England snow scenes. She hesitated to go in when she saw the sissy clerk was on duty again. He had made Ralph sore, asking how he’d like to have the Indian framed in birch bark. The Mohawk was plastered with birch bark, and Ralph thought the sissy recognized him and was trying to be funny. “This is going into my home!” Ralph had said, and ordered the gold frame costing six times as much as the Indian. However, he’d taken the sissy’s advice about having a light put on it. Ethel hesitated, but she went in. In his way, the sissy was very nice, and Ethel went home with five little Old English prints. When she’d asked about the pictures in the window, the New England ones, calling them “landscapes,” he’d said “snowscapes” and looked disgusted, as if they weren’t what she should want.

  When she got home, she hung the prints over the sofa where there was a blank space, and they looked fine in their shiny black frames. She didn’t say anything to Ralph, hoping he’d notice them, but he didn’t until after supper. “Hey, what is this?” he said. He bounced off the sofa, confronting her.

  “Ralph, they’re cute!”

  “Not in my home!”

  “Ralph, they’re humorous!” The clerk had called them that. Ralph called them drunks and whores. He had Ethel feeling ashamed of herself. It was hard to believe that she could have felt they were just fat and funny and just what their living room needed, as the clerk had said. Ralph took them down. “Man or woman sell ’em to you?” Ethel, seeing what he had in mind, knew she couldn’t tell him where she’d got them. She lied. “I was in Dayton’s . . .”