Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Part One
Gone
Pomme de Terre
Going Back Up
Avis’s Cow
Idella’s Dress
Idella Looks Back: The Mail Car
Part Two
The Opera
Panfried
In the Family Way
Part Three
Idella Looks Back: Married Life on Longfellow Street
Avis Looks Back: The Hotel
Barbara Hillock Jensen Looks Back: Cherry Cider
Part Four
Edward on the Road
The Holdup
Wake
Three Sheets to the Wind
Acknowledgments
VIKING
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in 2010 by Viking Penguin, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
Copyright © Jay Silverman, Executor of the Estate of Beverly Jensen, 2010
All rights reserved
“Wake,” “Gone,” and “Panfried” first appeared in New England Review. “Idella’s Dress” first appeared in Sisters: An Anthology edited by Jan Freeman, Emily Wojcik, and Deborah Bull (Paris Press, 2009). “Wake” was also published in The Best American Short Stories 2007, edited by Stephen King (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Jensen, Beverly, 1953-2003.
The sisters from Hardscrabble Bay / Beverly Jensen.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-19024-1
1. Sisters—Fiction. 2. City and town life—Fiction. 3. New England—Fiction.
4. New Brunswick—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3610.E5625S57 2010
813’.6—dc22 2009049272
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To Noah and Hannah
Part One
Gone
Bay Chaleur, New Brunswick
April 1916
They had strung their shoes by the laces from a solitary elm before entering the woods edging the back field. Both girls were glad to shed them, to feel the cool slap of spring mud against their bare soles. Over the long Canadian winter, their feet had grown. The shoes, hand-me-downs from distant cousins, still molded by the shapes of other feet, cramped their toes.
“How much farther in are we going, Della? My feet are cold.”
“You want to find mayflowers for Mother, don’t you?”
“Yeah.” Avis had plunked herself down on a rotting log, her knees splayed before her like grasshopper legs.
“Then come on.” Idella lifted a stray raspberry cane from in front of her face and kept walking.
“I’m stuck all over with damn burrs.”
Idella turned back. “Jesus, you look like a porcupine.” She started pulling the thorny clusters from the folds of Avis’s dress.
The dress, too, had been worn by some cousin—probably one of Aunt Eva’s girls from down in Maine. Avis twisted her skirt all in front of her like a washrag to get at the spines jabbing her skinny legs. “I got enough on me to fill a bucket.”
“You got some in your hair, even.”
“How come there’s none on you?”
“I look where I’m going.” Idella glanced ahead. “Come on. It’s near suppertime.”
“Is Mother going to get much bigger?”
“I don’t think she can. The baby’s due to come now.”
“I won’t be the baby anymore,” Avis said.
“You’re almost six. That’s not a baby.”
They walked along together, lifting back scruffy bushes, stepping over roots and fallen trees and patches of squelchy mud ripe with the smell of spring, until they entered a small clearing. Avis leaned against a large, moss-covered rock. Idella scooched down searching for bits of green beneath the crackly remnants of last year’s growth.
“Mother said to look for them on the edge of clearings.”
Avis squinched up her nose. “Something died around here. Something stinks.”
“Your feet. You stepped in something.”
Avis stuck her foot under her nose and laughed. “Yep. It’s me. You want a whiff?” She pointed it toward Idella.
“Quit it!” Idella scanned the clearing. Raspberry canes took up most of it. She circled the edge, to what looked like blueberry bushes between the low rocks. Then she saw the small white blossoms. “There’s mayflowers!”
Avis ran up behind her. “Where? Where are you looking?”
Both girls crouched over the small patch of flowers that flitted like tiny moths among the vines. “Mother said if they find a little sun, they can be open for May Day. They’re closed up now ’cause the light’s gone.” Idella lightly fingered a blossom. “Little white bits of things.”
Avis reached out to snap a stem. “Let’s pick ’em.”
“No!” Idella grabbed her hand. “They’ll wilt. We’ll get them in the morning. That’s May Day.”
“What if they’re gone? What if they get picked?”
“Who’s going to pick ’em?” Idella stood. “And don’t step on them. There’s not many.”
“What do you think I am, a horse?”
“Sometimes I wonder.”
Avis laughed, raised a foot over the flowers, and held her leg out wider. “Pissssss!”
“Avis!” Idella giggled and picked up her skirt bottom. She galloped ahead. “Or maybe just the horse’s ass!”
Avis snorted. When she got laughing about something, it came out like that. Dad called them “nose farts,” and when he said it, Avis snorted all the more.
“Come on!” Idella called behind her. “We’re late for supper.”
Breathless and laughing, pinching and
poking and calling each other the names they’d heard the men use—“horseshit,” “jackass,” “goddamned Frenchie”—the girls emerged triumphantly from the woods. The sky was a milky expanse. It was dusk. Light drained from the clouds, leaving soft gray streaks and smudges of blacky blue. The girls scurried to get home before the dark set in. They found their cast-off shoes, dangling like drunken crows from their laces, and ran across the flat, scratchy fields, on home to supper.
“Where the hell did you two run off to?” Dad was standing in the middle of the kitchen, tall and straight as a pitchfork. They were good and late. “Five more minutes of waiting on you two and you’d have no goddamned supper at all.”
“Let them be, Bill.” Mother was slowly carrying plates to the table. Her belly was so big that she had to hold them way out in front of her. “Della, finish setting the table.”
Mother’s voice was tired sounding. Dad sat down at the table. Dalton, the oldest at twelve and the only boy, was already at his place, staring down at it, with nothing in front of him. No one said anything. There was a strong feeling not to. Still breathing hard from running, Idella set up all the plates and sat in her chair. Mother, standing in front of the stove, turned to Dad. “Bring this kettle to the table for me, Bill.”
Then she walked into her pantry, an alcove off the main room, and came back with Dad’s big knife. “Here’s your damn knife.” She placed it in front of him. “Now, hand me your plate, Della—Avis’s, too.” Idella handed Mother the plates, and one by one she ladled stew from the pot onto them and handed them back. It was chicken stew with carrots and potatoes. That was special, to kill a chicken. “Now, Dalton, give me yours.”
Dad grabbed the plate as it passed in front of him. “I work all goddamned day, sweating my arse off, and I have to wait like a damn dog? You’d feed that lazy bastard before you give me a pot to piss in.”
“Don’t worry, you’re not likely to starve.” There had been fighting going on. Mother took Dalton’s plate from Dad and heaped it with stew. Idella was afraid their being late to supper had started things off.
“Now give me your plate, Bill.” She spooned ladle after ladle of food onto Dad’s plate. “You damned fool.”
They ate without talking. The only sounds were Dad and Dalton chewing and scraping their forks up against the plates.
“Eat your food, Della,” Mother said quietly.
Idella forked a piece of carrot. She never could eat much when Dad was in one of his black moods. She tried mostly not to do anything.
“Where the hell were you two?”
“Don’t start something, Bill.” Mother’s voice was weary.
“I’m just asking them what in Christ’s name they were doing while we sat here waiting on them.” Dad turned to Idella. “Where were you, Della?”
“We were walking. In the woods.” The longer Dad looked at her, the more she felt she had to keep talking. “We were . . . we were looking for something.”
“It’s a secret,” Avis said, her mouth full of stew that she hadn’t dared to chew since Dad started in. “It’s a secret.”
“A secret?” Dad turned to Avis. “What kind of secret?” Idella thought that Dad might be teasing now, but she could never tell. That’s what made it so hard. Avis could pull him from out of his black moods more than anyone. “Who’s this secret from?”
Mother stood up. “Let them be, Bill. If they’ve got a secret, let them have it. Lord knows they’ve little enough as it is.” She walked into her pantry and returned with a loaf of bread.
Suddenly her face changed; she made a startled noise. She slowly put the bread down, took off her apron, folded it, and laid it across her chair. She looked at Dad, her hand resting atop her swollen middle. “Bill, my water’s broke.” She turned to Idella. “Della, hon, you and Avis finish supper and then get up to bed. The baby’ll be coming.” Idella nodded. Mother went into the bedroom and closed the door. Idella could see a puddle of clear liquid where Mother had been standing and a trickle of wetness following her. She was leaking. Somewhere there was a bag of waters, and it just broke. Dad got up and followed Mother in and closed the door.
“It won’t be long now. Another mouth to feed.” Dalton reached over and took the bread. He tore off a large piece.
Dad came out of the bedroom. “Dalton, go get Elsie. Tell her the baby’s coming. I’ll go for Mrs. Jaegel.” For once Dalton ran to do Dad’s bidding. Dad went out to harness the horse to the wagon and go get the midwife. Mrs. Jaegel lived just up the road.
The sisters sat at the table, not daring to move from their chairs. Mrs. Doncaster, who lived the next farm over, came running back with Dalton. Her arms were full of rags and sheets. The bottoms of old dresses and torn work shirts were all rolled together across her wide front. She looked like she was carrying laundry, but Idella knew it was for the baby. For the waters.
Mrs. Doncaster was smiling. “I just get one baby to sleep and I have to take care of another.” Her baby, Austin, was three months old. Mother’d gone over in the middle of the night and helped deliver him.
Mrs. Doncaster saw the puddle Mother’d left on the floor. “Della, honey, take this rag and wipe that up. That’s a big girl.” She dropped a rag onto the floor and took the rest of her bundle into the bedroom.
The waters soaked the rag a pale yellow. There was still a warmth to it, and a kind of sweet smell.
“What’s that water for?” Avis asked, still seated at the table.
“I don’t know.” Idella mopped the thin trail that led to the bedroom. “Maybe it was for the baby to drink.”
“It looks like pee.” Avis laughed. “Like it was drinking pee.”
Mrs. Doncaster came out of the bedroom. “We’ll have a new baby by midnight.” She stooped and took the rag from Idella. “Now, you girls eat up your supper. Your ma’s goin’ to be busy. Probably the last proper meal you’ll have for a while, if I know your father.” She put all the used rags in the tin dishpan and rolled up her sleeves.
“I can cook.” Idella sat back at the table. “I can make Parker House rolls.”
“I should say.” Mrs. Doncaster was busy at the kitchen pump. She filled the pan with water, then started scrubbing her hands with the lye soap.
“I’ll be eight in July. I’m more eight now than seven.”
“Well, you’re skinny as blades of grass, so you girls eat that supper.” They watched as she scrubbed her arms all the way up to the elbows and then disappeared into the bedroom. Her hearty voice came right through the closed door.
No one ate another mouthful. It was too exciting.
The wagon drew up to the house. Dad came in, followed by Mrs. Jaegel. She was a short, squarish woman. She had a black suitcase with her, the same shape as she was, only smaller. Mrs. Jaegel went directly into the bedroom, nodding to Mrs. Doncaster, who had returned to the kitchen.
“She’s doing fine, Bill.” Mrs. Doncaster smiled at Dad.
“You’re a godsend, Elsie.” Dad walked over to the table and picked up his plate and stood till he finished his stew. “Damn baby’s interfering with my meals right off. I’ll probably lose sleep tonight, too.” He tore off a hunk of bread and headed for the door. “You know where I’ll be.”
“Not yet you don’t, sir. Get the washtubs filled and going on the fire. You ought to be some help.”
“Now, Elsie, let me get the hell out to the barn. You women take care of it best yourselves.”
“Jesus, Bill, fourth time around and you’re still useless.”
“I get things started pretty good.” They both laughed.
“You do know that much. Now, get my water going and then get out to the barn.”
Dad came in with the big tin tub they used to take baths in and a bucket they used for washing floors and such. He put the tub up on the stove, added wood down below, and got the fire going strong. Then he went to the sink pump and started filling up the bucket and pouring it into the washtub till it was mostly full.
“
You girls get on upstairs. Della, get Avis to bed. Do what your mother does. Don’t come running down bothering the ladies.” A sharp cry came from out of the bedroom. “Go on,” Dad said. “Get!”
There was no lagging when he gave an order. The girls ran up the stairs and into their bedroom. They heard the door slam as Dad went out to the barn.
“It hurts to have a baby.” Avis rolled on the bed from side to side with her knees up, making moaning sounds.
Idella sat down on the bed beside her. “Quit that, Avis.”
“I’m going to listen.” Avis sneaked out of the room and crouched at the top of the stairs.
With the door open, Idella could hear Mrs. Doncaster moving about the stove. Suddenly she heard the rapid click of footsteps. “I seen a mouse, I swear it.” Mrs. Doncaster stood at the bottom of the stairs. Avis came flying in and closed the door.
“You’ll get us in trouble.”
Avis plopped back onto the bed.
“Come here,” Idella said, “I’ll brush your hair.”
Avis sat still. Idella brushed her chestnut hair, the same color as Mother’s.
“I have an idea of what we could name it,” Idella said. “If it’s a girl.”
“What do you mean?”
“Mother said that I could maybe help with the naming.” Avis turned and stared at her in that squinty-eyed way she got when she was mad about something. “If it’s born tomorrow, on May Day—” Idella stopped and smiled shyly. “I thought, maybe . . . Daisy May! Like May Day backwards.”
Avis puckered her mouth into a tight wad of wrinkles. “Daisy May! That’s stupid! That sounds like a cow name.”
“Well, what would you call it?”
“Cow Patty!” Avis cackled.
“Be serious. And quit picking the straw out of the mattress.”
“If it’s a girl,” Avis asked, lying back and dangling her legs over the bed, “will she have to sleep in here with us?”
The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay Page 1