Saint Brigid crosses hung above every window to protect against fire and evil, and in every room she’d positioned Saint Joseph statues to protect the house. There was hardly a place you could stand where you weren’t fixed with his eerie painted-eye stare. Twice a day she said the rosary when she used to not say it at all and she started holding prayer meetings in the living room, all in an effort for God to deliver us free of the fire and save the house from destruction.
I came to learn there was a patron saint for pretty much anything. A patron saint for stomachaches and one for headaches. There was a patron saint for different types of animals as well as for bakers and brewers of beer. There was a saint to pray to if you were accused wrongly and one to pray to if you were accused rightly. There was a saint to pray to if you wanted children and one to pray to for unwanted children. There was a patron saint of children. I also came to learn there were multiple saints for mothers and orphans and that some saints had more than one specialty. Saint Monica, for instance, covered both mothers and drunks and it was she who Gram said I should pray to “every second of every minute of every day for both your ma and daddy.” But I couldn’t do it. I’d had enough of praying with no good ever coming from it. For the first time I felt for the people in Auntie’s story “The Great Forgetting.” I used to think their belief that God ignored them made them foolish, but I’d come to realize that it made them wise instead.
The unusually humid and breezeless afternoons put a glaze on everything. Distances looked like you were seeing them through a filmy glass. Anything that could shone and sweated, and the still glossy surfaces of the lakes reflected sky and made you feel the world had turned upside down. At Pothole Park numerous springs shot out from crevices in the pothole, carving the hole further, the water seemingly spiraling down to the center of the earth.
The heat had its effect on me, Gram, and Daddy too. It was like all our worst feelings rose to the surface, clinging to us as damp and sticky as sweat. The lack of spring weather didn’t stop Gram from spring-cleaning and as she and I took down storm windows and washed curtains we were snippier with each other than usual. Daddy, who’d normally lecture about the origins of spring-cleaning or the various uses for baking soda or aluminum foil as a cleaner, didn’t say anything except correct Gram when she pronounced the word perennial as peri-en-ul and shake his head when he saw us dibbling holes to plant bulbs that would bloom in the fall. I thought it was sad and silly to plant flowers that would bloom after the house had been wrecked too, but I didn’t tell Gram that, not when she was so busy praying to Saint Fiacre, the patron saint of gardening.
As much as I hated doing the spring-cleaning I was glad for it because when Gram wasn’t cleaning or praying she was ragging on Daddy, wanting to know what kind of man would let his wife leave and would drink and gamble his life away. Then Daddy would rag on Gram, pointing out all the ways she spoke or thought wrong and then he’d say the word mother like it was the worst word in creation. And it would get so I’d want to be anywhere but in that house.
Of course Gram also had her opinion about Ma leaving. “Don’t she think we all want to just up and go? Who’d be around if we all just acted on our impulses?” But she said it imp-pulses and when I laughed she wagged her head at me. “I’ll tell you one thing, Mama might not have won no awards as a mama, but she’d never have just ditched one of us kids. She knew her ’sponsibilities and if your daddy’s got any ideas about just stickin’ you with me, he’s got another thing comin’.”
Fast as a whip I snapped, “Daddy would never leave me anywhere. And certainly not here.”
“You watch yourself, girl. I’m hearin’ your ma in your voice. I’ve opened up my home to you, haven’t I? Now that’s no small thing, am I right?”
I stared at her, chastised but unwilling to admit it.
“Now tell true, girl,” she asked one day, “ain’t livin’ easier without her?”
I didn’t say anything. Ma was still my ma and I couldn’t bring myself to speak against her, but I knew guilt showed on my face and gave away the answer. Mostly it was easier living without Ma, but that didn’t change the hurt me and Daddy felt. Most days Daddy drank, rousing himself only for his part-time evening shift as janitor at the mill. After all the crotch sewers and side seamers and appliquérs left for the day, Daddy cleaned the toilets and swept up and took out bin after bin of garbage to the huge Dumpsters in the back. Often I’d find him out there standing at the cliff, looking down through the trees to the brown river that flowed sometimes as thick as melted chocolate. Sometimes he’d put his good arm around me and sing “Cockles and Mussels” or “The Wild Rover” and then he’d let me pick through the Dumpsters where I’d fill a paper bag with leftover bits of trim and lace and ribbon that Gram would then use to spruce up hand towels and my dresses.
Those evenings when I’d visit Daddy at the mill he’d send me on my way saying he’d see me in a few hours, but as the weeks passed he often didn’t come home until the middle of the night. Sometimes I’d hear him talking to Mr. Smythe at 3:00 A.M. or later. Daddy liked to talk when he’d drunk too much and I could tell during those late-night chats with Mr. Smythe that he’d been drinking because his voice had a clearness to it that it only got from liquor. Daddy liked to say that drinking helped him see his thoughts better and I suppose as long as he wasn’t drunk that was true.
Those nights when I’d listen to him and Mr. Smythe talk, I’d find myself wondering what Mr. Smythe thought about the fact that Ma and Brother were suddenly gone. I wondered what other things he’d noticed and seen in the many fire zone houses that he went into in the middle of the night. Sometimes I even comforted myself by imagining this or that awful scenario that had taken place in these homes. I’d picture daddies who beat their wives and mas who beat up their own mas or starved their kids even though they could afford to buy enough to eat. Sometimes I pictured houses that had instruments of torture in their basements, the like of which I’d read in my historical romances. I’d see an iron maiden beside a furnace or a rack at the bottom of dark stairs, but I always left those devices empty, never wanting to picture anyone in them—not even Ma. Though once in a while I’d think about sticking her skinny body into the chamber of the iron maiden, I never let myself go so far as to actually see her in it, as if just the image itself might have power. And it must have had some because merely trying to keep it from my mind made me feel so terrible that it became its own form of torture.
“I speak to Dolores every week, Mother,” Daddy told Gram when she was on him about allowing his wife to leave. He’d add, “She’ll be back.”
And then Gram would complain about the cost of the phone bills until Daddy’s face would turn so ugly that even Gram knew to stop. But I knew Daddy didn’t speak to Ma each week. He called each week when he knew Uncle Jerry wouldn’t be there and Aunt Janice would tell him that Ma wasn’t home, even though Ma was.
Ma told me about Daddy’s calls each time she called me, which was usually once a week at times during the day when she figured both Daddy and Gram wouldn’t be around. “I ain’t speaking to him or her ever again and I’d a hung up now if either had answered!” But then she’d ask how Gram’s house repairs were going and if Daddy was eating well enough and I came to suspect that Daddy was right both that Ma would eventually be coming back and that Ma had always wanted Gram’s love.
On one particularly muggy Saturday afternoon Gram came back from her morning shift at the mill in a particularly sour mood. Edna, she said, had jabbed her finger so bad with a pin that she couldn’t keep up with her totes so Gram had had to work double to cover for her. The extra work had made Gram’s vision blurry and she sat at the table for a while rubbing her shut lids to get the blood flowing. Then she pushed back the chair, stuck a pair of Gramp’s old underdrawers on her head to keep her hair from getting dirty, and went about dusting the living room in preparation for that afternoon’s prayer meeting. Normally one of my chores was to dust but she didn’t trust the jo
b I’d do for the prayer ladies’ visit so on those days I got stuck with snack prep.
Gram stood in the entry from the kitchen to the living room and barked orders at me to make the iced tea and wash the watercress real careful to make sure I got all the snails and muck out. Though I loved wading through the creek and picking the watercress, I hated cleaning it and I felt put upon to have to both pick and clean it and make the sandwiches with the crusts cut off.
I stood at the sink lamely rinsing the greens, making sure my glances at Gram were as surly as possible.
“Don’t go givin’ me that look,” she said and pushed at the underdrawers that had sagged over her left ear.
“Do you really have to wear that on your head?” I said, horribly embarrassed even though there was no one else but me and her to see it.
“Don’t you mind what I’m wearin’,” she said, but then her mouth slouched into a frown that trembled as she added, “Makes me feel close to him is all.” Slowly she raised her hand and pointed her finger at me as she called on Saint Lawrence, the patron saint of cooks to give her patience. “I can see a snail stickin’ to that cress from all the way over here! Forget it, girl. I’ll do everything, just like I always done. All the cleanin’! All the cookin’! And I’ll do all the prayin’ for this house too!”
“What a racket,” we heard Daddy say from down the hall. I turned off the faucet and dried my hands on a dish towel, annoyed that Gram’s words stung the place inside me happy to get out of doing the work.
“Looking lovely as ever, Mother,” Daddy added as he came up behind Gram and passed her with a look that was all vinegar and salt.
Neither Gram nor me said anything, we were so surprised to see Daddy up that early in the afternoon. Usually he slept till two or three. But that day he was not only up but dressed and looking better than he had in a long time. I guessed there was some special horse bet or craps game he was headed to and I was reminded of how handsome he’d been back before the strain of working in Allentown had thinned him out.
Gram looked at Daddy like he’d stepped in the room naked. “You’re a married man,” she said, “and don’t you forget it!”
Daddy put some water to boil for his coffee and then he sat in a chair with his arms folded, waiting for the kettle to whistle.
“Don’t you think people talk?” Gram said with a shifty glance at me. “You think you can go runnin’ ’round and people don’t know. Shameful enough to have your wife leave you, but now you’re puttin’ your soul in the devil’s hands, Adrian Howley. Even Dad must be rollin’ over in his grave!” And with those words Gram stepped forward and slammed her hand on the table and a Saint Joseph statue eyeing us from the Hoosier cabinet jumped.
I was leaning with my back against the sink and I balled up the dish towel and threw it on the table in protest at what Gram was hinting at.
“I’m sure he is rolling over in his grave,” Daddy agreed, “seeing you with his underwear on your head.”
I laughed extra hard, wanting Gram to feel as hurt as I did at what she was saying and I expected Daddy to meet my stare with an appreciative one but he didn’t. When he looked at me, his eyes were as steamy as the East Side Pit. “You want to talk about shaming the family, Mother? You really want to talk about that?”
Gram’s head tilted back as far as her hump would allow and she looked at Daddy out of the corner of an eye.
“That’s right,” he said. “I know. I’ve known all these years.”
Daddy unfolded his arms and tilted back on the two hind legs of the chair, something Gram strictly forbade. Gram’s eyes lowered to the floor. Slowly she eased the underwear off her head. Then she pat at her curls to fluff them. “What you know, Adrian, could fit into a thimble and there’d still be room to stick my pinky in.” Gram wriggled her pinky at him. “It’s what you think you know, that’s what there ain’t no room for in the whole darned city of Barrendale!”
Daddy inspected his fingernails, which were trimmed short and looked almost polished. “Didn’t you have to get married, Mother? Isn’t that why you resented me all these years?”
Gram said nothing and merely felt at the wall to steady herself. I felt off-kilter too and gripped at the counter until I could feel the edge of it press into bone.
Daddy pushed back his chair and walked out the door, not bothering to close it. We watched him through the screen door as he stood on the lawn and gazed out on West Mountain. Then he walked off to wherever he’d been headed to in the first place and me and Gram didn’t speak again until all the church people had left and it was time to get supper ready. But then our conversation was full of pauses and uneasy glances, like what Daddy had said about Gram was there between us as poisonous and invisible as the gases seeping up through our pipes and walls.
Twenty-one
After school on those hot May afternoons I took to hanging out in Saint Barbara’s, the way I had when I first met Marisol. Every day as I walked up the hill toward that pretty stone church, I hoped to find Marisol sitting on one of its worn wooden pews. Yet each time she wasn’t there I was almost glad. I didn’t know what I could ever say to her that would let us once again be friends, and every time I looked for her and didn’t find her, I felt spared the hardship of having to try.
Often after I’d leave the church I’d go up onto East Mountain and walk the creek beds where me and her used to hunt for gold. Other times I’d walk the blocks me and Daddy used to walk in our “exploring walks,” almost always ending up down by the mill, amazed that there once was a time when I couldn’t wait to visit Ma there to hear stories about her and Daddy’s pasts. Now I was almost afraid to hear of their pasts. It was like them not talking about the years before they’d had me had made those years bigger and darker than they had been to begin with. Even Gram’s past had its own terribleness to it and as I’d sit in Saint Barbara’s I’d stare at Saint Barbara’s statue, at the expression on her face that was so sweet it was almost dumb, and I’d think of all the words that I now knew referred to Gram: loose, fallen, easy, floozy, harlot, whore. But none of those words even hinted at who Gram was and I didn’t know how to make sense of that. Gram was, well, Gram. The furthest thing from a loose woman imaginable and then I’d feel a twinge, afraid that the rumors she’d heard about Daddy might be true. And if they were, what was he? I thought of words I knew from church: fornicator, adulterer. And though those words rang with the judgment of God, they were meaningless to me. If Daddy was messing around with another woman there was no word I could think of to express the hurt it would make me feel.
At home, we all sort of went about our business even as we ignored each other. Gram and Daddy hardly spoke to each other and though they each spoke to me, neither one of them looked me in the eye. I think it was right around then that we all realized that by the time the spring-green leaves turned brown and fell, the house would be destroyed and we’d have no place to live. It was like an hourglass of time was running out on us with each day that greened the leaves up more. It was hard to look at a blooming flower without thinking that soon it would be just dried-up petals mucking up the ground.
Now when I’d overhear Daddy’s late-night talks with Mr. Smythe there’d be a slur to his speech that told me he’d drunk too much and in Gram’s prayers to this or that saint there was a feverish quality that scared me and got me to sit in on her prayer meetings, even though I no longer believed in prayers.
“So you’re not the only one of us praying,” I said to her, thinking back to the scolding she’d given me while I poorly washed the watercress. She nodded and the million wrinkles on her face softened as she bared her teeth in a smile.
But what I came to discover about those prayer meetings was that they were more talk than prayer. It was about Mrs. Pasternak sobbing that her blind son wouldn’t be able to find his way around a new house. “He knows every inch of our home,” she’d wail. “I don’t have to worry about him when he’s there.” It was about Miss Henley’s concern for her senile m
other who might, as she put it, lose all her marbles in an unfamiliar place. She’d grimly add, “The house is one of the few things she remembers, for God’s sake.” It was about Mr. Wurm’s anger over the amount he was to be paid for his house. “They’re paying me what I paid for it fifteen years ago. Fifteen years. What do they think I can buy for that now?”
We’d hear about Mrs. Hoppe’s or Mrs. Straumonger’s or Mr. Kryzak’s homes that had been in their families for generations and had been built by ancestors who’d come to Barrendale to help dig the canal. And of course we’d always hear from Mrs. Schwackhammer, who’d quietly weep over losing the house her Otto had lived and died in.
One time even Daddy sat in on a meeting. It was a Saturday afternoon. He was up earlier than he usually was and dressed as nicely as he had been on the Saturday Gram accused him of running around. Gram looked at him and managed to smother a flinch of surprise. Her shoulder merely twitched. Daddy didn’t seem to notice or care. He talked with Mr. Wurm about the cost of the dig out and the possibility of getting more federal funds and Gram and Mrs. Schwackhammer loudly debated the best ways to clean filth off furniture.
An explosion jittered the floorboards and put everyone in an upset. “They’re supposed to warn us when they blast, for God’s sake,” Miss Henley said, her voice as sour as the rhubarb pie she’d brought with her. “It’s a Saturday,” Mrs. Pasternak accused. “They’re not supposed to blast on Saturday.”
“That was so close it nearly shook the house off its foundation,” Mrs. Schwackhammer declared.
Gram pressed a hand to her chest and her face went as slack as Gramp’s had when he died.
“Gram!” I cried, rushing up to her. I put a hand on her hump and peered into her eyes, relieved to see the hazel of them was still clear and bright.
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