News From Heaven

by Jennifer Haigh

  Viola loved him on sight.

  He was their own age, their own blood, but stirringly different. Since birth Viola and Edgar had resembled each other, fair and slender, with fine blond hair that turned almost white in the sun. Bronson was not tall, but his body was thick and powerful. She loved his square shoulders, his curly hair, his cultivated accent. He was the first boy she’d ever met who could drive an automobile. On summer evenings the three cousins raced along the back roads in his father’s Maxwell touring car, the only automobile for miles.

  Each morning Viola watched the boys play tennis. She’d never realized—Edgar was too kind to let her see—that she was a weak player; now, watching him with Bronson, she understood how patient he’d been. With Viola he’d never kept score, but now each point was fiercely contested. Edgar played with grace and precision, Bronson with fury: explosive speed, a blistering serve.

  In a trance of longing, Viola sat on the grass, hugging her knees to her chest.

  She wished desperately for Bronson to approach her, though how a boy did this—with words, a look, a touch?—she couldn’t begin to say. She had never been alone with him. Playing cards or croquet or riding in the Maxwell to the new picture show uptown, it was always the three cousins together. All her life, Edgar had been Viola’s dearest companion. Now she found herself wishing—shockingly, horribly—that he would disappear.

  Instead the opposite happened. Viola herself became invisible. Once or twice, when the moon was full, the boys set off on horseback to camp on Garman Ridge in an old canvas tent. On hot afternoons they went swimming in Deer Pond, an activity unsuitable for females. Miserably she watched them set off in the Maxwell.

  “I won’t go if you don’t want me to,” Edgar said sweetly.

  “Oh, I don’t mind,” Viola answered, hating him and Bronson both.

  The summer marched on toward its inevitable conclusion. America had joined the war in Europe. It was known, though not discussed, that the boys would be called up to serve. One morning in early August, the three cousins set off on a long hike, Bronson’s idea. All summer long, he’d been itching to climb Indian Hill.

  “Why?” Viola asked, genuinely curious.

  “Because it’s there,” Bronson said.

  The strongest by far, he carried their supplies in a rucksack strapped to his back. They attacked the hill and found a path into the wood. Bronson led the way, armed with a compass, Edgar a few paces behind. Viola struggled to keep up, encumbered by her skirt.

  At noon they reached the summit. The view was picturesque: an alternating pattern of forest and farmland, the fields laid out like a patchwork quilt. To the north and west were two mine tipples, Baker One and Baker Four.

  On a flat rock they ate their sandwiches. Viola rose and dusted off her skirt. The air had grown muggy; the woods hummed with insects. She wished herself at home in a cold bath.

  Bronson pointed in the distance, toward Deer Ridge. “We can get there in an hour, if we pick up the pace. The first half is all downhill.”

  Edgar frowned. The downslope was steep and rocky, he pointed out, with few trees to grab on to.

  “We’ll go one at a time,” Bronson said. Military school had taught him to give instructions; to all three, his leadership seemed inevitable. “Otherwise, if the first man stumbles, we could have a pileup. You first,” he told Edgar. “When you get to the bottom, give a whistle and stand clear.”

  “I should stay with Viola,” Edgar said. “In case she needs help.”

  More and more, the boys spoke of her in the third person, as though she weren’t actually there.

  “I’ll go with her,” Bronson said curtly. And then: “If she fell, what would you do about it? You can’t carry her. You aren’t strong enough.”

  Edgar flinched.

  Why, he’s insulted, Viola thought. She hadn’t, herself, considered the words harsh. She’d been distracted by the thought of Bronson carrying her, his thick arms beneath her, pressing her to his heart.

  Edgar set off down the slope, agile as a cat. As his white shirt disappeared from view, Viola was aware of Bronson beside her, so close she could hear his breath. “I hope he’s all right,” she said to fill the silence.

  Without warning, he grasped her shoulders and kissed her hard on the mouth.

  It wasn’t at all what she’d imagined. She was conscious of their teeth colliding, his wet tongue pushing into her mouth, his hands grasping through her skirt. Later, undressing for her bath, she would see where his fingers had clutched her, a constellation of small bruises on her backside.

  He pulled her roughly to the ground.

  His body seemed heavy enough to kill her. Her lungs were panicked, useless. Her rib cage, surely, would shatter under his weight. Edgar, she thought, where are you?

  She felt rough hands beneath her skirt and then a breathtaking, searing pain, his fingers up inside her. This isn’t happening, she thought.

  Finally he let her go. He rolled off her, breathing heavily. Her blouse was dirty, her skirt torn.

  “Wipe your eyes, for God’s sake.” He got to his feet. “That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? You’ve been after it all summer.”

  The truth of the words cut her open. That, of course, was the shame of it: everything he said was true.

  “I fell,” she told Edgar when they met him at the bottom of the hill.

  “I can see that.” He took her hand. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

  Viola shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

  “This hill is too rugged for you. For me, too. I say we stage a mutiny.” Gently he brushed some debris from her hair. “Come on. Let’s get you home.”

  At the end of August, Bronson left for Camp Lee, Virginia. Viola and Edgar rode with him to the train station; they stood on the platform waving goodbye. In September Edgar was drafted. Viola stayed behind and waited. Nothing happened for a long time, and then everything did.

  Edgar returned in May, as usual. Or so Bakerton was told. In truth his body was never recovered. Chester Baker arranged for a closed casket, an empty box to be buried in the family crypt.

  As Viola had once wished him to, Edgar had simply disappeared.

  The morning of the funeral, she bathed and dressed; at least she must have. Her memory was blurred like a photograph ruined by water, the endless flood of her own tears. She attended the funeral with her parents and Clara. At St. John’s Episcopal they sat in the second pew, behind a row of Bakers. The service had already begun when Bronson Baker crept in through a side door, an old woman—his mother?—clutching his arm.

  For a moment it seemed that Viola was dreaming. She’d believed him still in France, still fighting; no one had said a word about his return. Later she would understand the reason, but in that moment she felt she’d lost her mind. She hadn’t forgotten what he’d done to her in the forest, the secret mutilation that would not heal. And yet the sight of him affected her as it always had. For an entire summer she had studied him hungrily, stirred by his beauty. She couldn’t, now, see him any other way.

  At the graveside she watched him, the old woman at his side. Mourners crowded beneath a black tent. Bronson himself stood a few feet from the coffin. During the hymns, the blessing, he seemed overcome by emotion. He bawled loudly, unself-conscious as an animal, his eyes streaming tears.

  The other mourners stared at the ground.

  The service ended; the coffin was lowered. The old woman took Bronson’s arm. He was led away weeping, docile as a child. Viola hurried after them. Suddenly her wild grief had a focus: Edgar was gone forever. But Bronson, by some miracle, had returned.

  She called his name. Later she’d wonder what exactly she’d hoped for. His arms around her, a word of comfort? A journey backward to another summer, when the road belonged to three cousins in a Maxwell, the only automobile for miles.

  Bronson turned. He stared at her without recognition, his eyes glazed. His mouth twitched spasmodically.

  “It’s no use, mi
ss.” The woman was younger than she’d looked from a distance, too young to be his mother. She explained in a hushed voice that she was Bronson’s nurse, hired by the family. His mind had been affected by the shock of battle. Among other things, he had lost the power of speech.

  Viola watched her lead him away, toward the Maxwell parked at the cemetery gate. He climbed in on the passenger side. A moment later his father approached and got behind the wheel.

  She never saw Bronson again. He was sent back to England to be looked after by his mother, and in the fall Viola enrolled at the State Normal College. A year later she stood at the front of her own classroom, at Fallentree Primary School.

  The pupils were in high spirits, vacation in the air. The girls filed in, chattering excitedly. Alan Spangler stopped at Miss Peale’s desk. He wore a handsome sweater, red for the holiday, cashmere possibly. He sucked a lemon drop. “For my throat,” he explained. “You’ll be at the concert, won’t you?”

  “Of course.” She had promised to come early to hand out programs for Edna O’Shane’s big night.

  “I have two solos.” Alan grinned, showing his dimple. “I’ve been practicing for months.”

  Viola called the class to order, no easy task, and took attendance. Only one pupil, Helen Lubicki, was absent. Looking over the day’s announcements, Miss Peale understood why.

  “We at Bakerton High are saddened to report the death of Private First Class Peter Lubicki,” she read. Helen’s brother had been killed in action, his body sent home from Italy. A funeral Mass would be held Saturday at St. Casimir’s.

  She glanced up from her mimeographed sheet. A few of the girls looked ready to cry, and even the hoodlums were silent. In five short months they would be turned loose into the world, beyond the daily tending of Miss Peale, the protection of Bakerton High.

  After the second bell she crossed the hall to Edna O’Shane’s classroom. At the school Edna was an oracle of sorts, an authority on town gossip. Peter Lubicki, she told Viola, had not attended Bakerton High. He’d come of age before Roosevelt’s law and gone into the mines at fourteen.

  “We should go to the wake,” Viola said, surprising herself. “To pay our respects. We can stop by after school.”

  Edna gaped as though Viola had proposed a safari in Africa. “Viola, why on earth?”

  It was a difficult question to answer.

  “His sister is in my homeroom,” Viola said, as though that explained it. That she’d never, in her memory, exchanged a word with Helen Lubicki seemed beside the point.

  There were no streetlamps on Polish Hill. The only light came from interior windows, the company houses alike as matchsticks. The Lubickis’, at the bottom of the dead-end street, was no different from the others, except that the family owned—or had simply appropriated—the land adjacent. In summer they planted every inch of it—not a garden but, with nine children to work it, a small subsistence farm.

  The road was unpaved. Viola looked in vain for a flat place to park. Finally she pulled off the road, scattering gravel. There were no other cars in sight.

  She stepped out of the car and approached the house. A cluster of men stood smoking, not speaking. Two blue stars hung in the front window: another Lubicki son was serving overseas.

  The mean little house was crowded with people—large women serving food, a flock of unruly children underfoot. A wooden casket stood in a corner of the parlor, its lid closed. Two women in babushkas knelt before it, their lips moving silently. Viola knelt beside them and bowed her head in prayer.

  She drove home carefully, grateful for the empty roadway. Snow was falling, the pavement frozen in spots. The night was moonless, the road lost in shadow. The air seemed filled with ghosts.

  A male figure limped alongside the road, heading in Viola’s direction. She felt a sudden chill.

  The boy held one arm close to his side, as though it pained him. His left arm hugged a large box. The car’s headlamps picked out blond hair, a red sweater. Viola rolled down her window and stepped hard on the brake.

  “Alan? Is that you?”

  He shielded his eyes against the headlamps. In the strange light, his mouth seemed to be covered in blood.

  “For heaven’s sake, what happened?” She threw open the car door. “Are you all right?”

  He nodded mutely, his eyes streaming. Gingerly he touched his face.

  “Come with me. You’re bleeding,” said Viola, her heart racing. “You need to see a doctor.”

  He got into the car without protest, setting the box in his lap. Viola groped for the light switch. His right eye was swollen shut, his cheekbone scraped, his lip split. She saw that his mouth was covered not in blood but red lipstick. “My God, Alan. Who did this to you?”

  “I’m going to miss the concert.” He stared straight ahead at the lights of the high school blazing in the distance. “Strange, isn’t it? To see the school open after dark.”

  Viola started the car. “I’m taking you home. Your parents can call a doctor.”

  “No! My father can’t see me like this.” His voice broke. “Take me to the store, Miss Peale? I have a key. I can clean up there.”

  They rode in silence. Alan directed her to an alley behind the hat shop. Viola parked and engaged the brake.

  They sat a moment, not speaking. He would not meet her eyes.

  “I brought this for you,” he said softly. “I was going to give it to you after the concert. It’s ruined now.”

  They both stared at the box in his lap.

  “I was walking to the concert,” he said. “It was dark. I didn’t even see them coming.”

  “Alan, why?”

  The question hung in the air.

  “They hate me,” he said in a low voice. “They’ve always hated me.”

  “Who? Who hates you?”

  “Boys.”

  Viola reached for his hand. “They’re just jealous,” she said, “because all the girls like you.”

  Almost imperceptibly he shook his head. “I’m leaving,” he said. “I’m eighteen now. I don’t need a diploma. I can go live with my sister in Washington and get a job.”

  No, Viola thought. Alan was a good student, and his family owned a profitable business. Unlike his classmates, who’d be swallowed up by the mines or the steel mills, he had an actual reason to stay in school.

  “You can’t,” she said.

  “What choice do I have? I can’t live in this town.”

  The words had the terrible bite of truth.

  “Alan, listen to me. If you drop out of school, you’ll be drafted immediately.”

  He shrugged. “Now or six months from now, what’s the difference? At least I’d get out of here.” He opened the passenger door. “Thank you, Miss Peale. You’ve been very kind to me. I wish I had something to give you.” He held the hatbox to his chest. “I won’t even show you what they did to your hat. It would break your heart.”

  Viola watched him climb the back stairs to the shop.

  In a daze she drove down Susquehanna Avenue—past the Polish church, the company store, the sign her cousin Chessie had erected, with typical grandiosity, near the train depot, so that no visitor could avoid seeing it. BAKERTON COAL LIGHTS THE WORLD.

  I can’t live in this town.

  Viola’s cousins were the only boys she had ever loved. One August afternoon they’d abandoned her to go swimming. Lonely, dejected, she had taken Edgar’s horse on a hard ride. She rode out to the end of Deer Run Road, to where the Maxwell was parked. Through dense trees she’d watched them, naked but not swimming, Bronson and Edgar as tender as girls.

  She was unsure what exactly she’d seen, or if she had even seen it, until the day of Edgar’s funeral: Bronson standing at their cousin’s grave, weeping like a widow.

  Classes resumed the second day of January. In homeroom Miss Peale took attendance. Two desks were conspicuously empty. Joseph Poblocki had turned eighteen; now beyond the grasp of Roosevelt’s law, he’d dropped out to work in the mine
s. Peggy Schultheis had dropped out, too, to do God knew what on the family farm. It happened every year: seniors disappearing in the final semester, a few short months before graduation; young people pulled away by family obligation or need, constraints Miss Peale would never understand.

  To her relief, Alan Spangler was present. His eye had healed, his lip nearly so. He sat a little apart from the pretty girls—off to the side, in the desk abandoned by Peggy Schultheis. At the final bell he rose without speaking, the first pupil out the door.

  In May the school year ended, and one by one, the boys were drafted: Henry Eickmeier, Chauncey Hoeffer, Richard Dickey, Jerry Bernardi, John Quinn. Bakerton, more and more, became a town of women—a place that might have suited Alan Spangler, except that he, too, was called up to serve. Like Edgar and Bronson, like Viola, he was a child of the century. Silently Miss Peale blessed him, and hoped.

  Broken Star

  I met my aunt Melanie in the summer of 1974, an August of high bright days, so dry that my father had to oil our front lane to keep the dust down. I was fifteen, midway through high school and deadened by its sameness. I could scarcely remember what had preceded it, or begin to imagine what might follow.

  “You don’t remember me, do you? You were so little when I left.” Melanie climbed into the front seat of our station wagon, next to my father. It was my mother’s usual place, surrendered out of courtesy since Melanie was a guest. She had arrived with her stepdaughter, Tilly, on the Greyhound bus from Pensacola, Florida. Tilly, who was eight, shared the backseat with me and my mother.

  “Not exactly,” I said, though I had heard about Melanie my whole life: my mother’s sister, the youngest of seven, the midlife baby who’d surprised my grandmother after two miscarriages. I was an “oops,” Melanie would tell me later, a confession that shocked and thrilled me. I’d never heard an adult allude to such matters. We were not that kind of family.

  There was a rustling as she rifled through her shopping bags. “For Regina,” she said, handing me a small unwrapped box. Inside was a pair of earrings, the dangling kind I admired, decorated with tiny seashells. These were made for pierced ears, so I wouldn’t be able to wear them.