“I can’t do it, Idella. I can’t get involved.”
“You are involved! Goddamn it, Edward, you are involved!” Idella reached across the table and grabbed the deck of cards from Eddie’s hands. “And let me tell you another thing.” They looked straight at each other. “If you treat Ethel any longer the way that you have been treating her, acting like she has committed the first and biggest sin since time began—if you don’t welcome this child into the family with open arms . . . then I am not going to stay with you.”
Eddie looked as though she had slapped him hard.
“You and I both know that the same thing could have happened to me as happened to Ethel.” She stood above him and leaned closely toward him, her hands spread flat on the table. “We got carried away more than once before we were married. And that could have been me at Christmas dinner, seven months along with your baby. Now, you get your keys, by God, and you get me to your sister.”
Edward sat for a long time, clenching his fists into tight wads and releasing them. Suddenly he crumpled forward, his head falling onto his chest, his arms like heavy ropes before him on the table. He began to sob. Idella had never heard these sounds from him. She stood before him, unable to move.
“I’m sorry, Idella.” Eddie gasped. “I’m ashamed.” He lifted a heavy hand and started to pound it against his chest. Idella reached over and took his hand in both of hers. He put his head up against her stomach, like a child, and sobbed.
“Come on, Eddie,” Idella whispered. “Let’s go get a new baby born into this family.”
When they got to Ethel’s, the doctor was still there. Mrs. Olsen from across the street had come over to help. Ethel’s three kids were upstairs in their bedroom.
As soon as Idella walked in, she knew she’d missed it. Lying next to Ethel’s bed was the cradle, and Idella could see right away that it was occupied. A bundle no bigger than a loaf of bread lay quietly under a flannel sheet. Ethel, pale and worn out, was asleep, one hand resting on the baby.
“She worked hard,” the doctor said. “She’s spent. Fine baby boy she’s got. All the parts in all the right places. Let her rest. See to the kids upstairs. I expect they’re curious and hungry. Mrs. Olsen here has been a great help. Maybe she can go home now.”
“Oh, yes,” Idella said. “You go on home. We were delayed. But we’re here now.”
Eddie walked over and looked down at the sleeping figures. He couldn’t help but smile. “For God’s sake. Look at them little fingers. He’s making a fist already.”
Idella came and stood next to him. She reached down and touched the top of the baby’s head. It was still damp. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, my.”
Ethel stirred and opened her eyes. “Eddie?”
“I’m here.”
“You seen him, Eddie?”
“He’s fine, Ethel.”
“I am shamed till the day I die!” Idella heard Jessie harping all the while she and Eddie opened the front gate and walked across the yard. She looked miserably at him as he held the screen door open. For more than four months, Jessie had refused to have anything to do with Ethel or the baby. But she never did stop talking about it. She gave them all no peace whatsoever.
Jessie had taken the picture of Ethel and Eddie as children down off the living-room shelf and cut it in two. It made Idella sick. “Look,” Jessie’d said, pointing proudly, “look what I done.” She’d stopped going to her women’s club. She refused to leave the house. Every day she sat out on the porch, cold as it was for the end of June, all wrapped up in afghans Ethel had made for her, and watched people walking by.
“Let’s get this over with,” Eddie whispered to Idella as they entered the kitchen. She and Eddie continued to come up to the house every Saturday morning to help out. Then they’d go down to Ethel’s and try to help her get to the store for groceries or to the doctor’s or what have you. It was a strain on everyone. Jens would slip away when he could to see the baby. He had to do it on the sly and never for more than thirty minutes at a time, or she’d rake him over the coals with her questions.
When they entered the dining room, they saw Jessie leaning over her two canes in front of the big table. Her special dishes and her few pieces of silver were spread out in rows before her.
“What’s all this?” Eddie asked.
“They’re yours now, Idella. I don’t have a daughter now, except you. I want you to have it all. I wanted to show you what you’ve got.”
“I don’t want these things,” Idella said.
“Look here, these blue cups and saucers were my wedding presents. See the tiny silver spoons that go with them? I keep them wrapped special and polished. They are real silver.”
Eddie shook his head. “These things are for Ethel, Ma. You always told her that. I don’t want them spoons—I’d swallow one.”
Jessie did not seem to hear what they were saying. She went excitedly from one treasure to another. “Here’s the pink glass pitcher. From my mother. She poured eggnog from it at her own wedding. And I got it, not my sisters, because I loved eggnog more than anyone. My mother’d make it just for me. Hold that pitcher up to the light, Jens, so’s she can see it. She gave me that pitcher before she died. I want you to take it home with you, Idella.”
“We don’t want that stuff, Ma. We don’t want the pitcher or the spoons or the little teacups. I don’t care about any of it!”
Jessie placed the pitcher down on the table. “You don’t care about it, you say? I give you my most precious things, and you don’t care about them? You don’t care about me, then. That’s what you’re saying. You don’t care about me. No one does. No one.” She took her two canes, clumped on out to the porch, and huddled into her blankets. “Are you too good for them?” she called back without turning her head. She was sniveling, Idella could tell.
Jens, still holding the pink glass pitcher, slowly placed it back onto the table. His whole frame was bowed and bent and sad looking. Idella glanced over at Edward, who was shaking his head.
She spoke quietly. “Will you look at how upset and miserable that woman has made everyone? We’re all of us unhappy.” Eddie gazed at her helplessly. “You go get her.”
“Who?”
“You go down there right now, and you get Ethel and bring her up here with that baby.”
“Are you crazy?”
“This cannot go on. Everyone is miserable. And look out there and see for yourself how lonely she is. What is the point of that?”
“What if Ethel won’t come?”
“You’ve got to make her. Go get her and walk up here.”
“What if it doesn’t work?”
“How can we be any worse off than we are now? Tell me.”
“Okay. I’m going.”
Idella paced and twittered about in the kitchen, waiting. She knew they’d have to walk up Fletcher’s Hill and that Jessie would see them coming a long time before they got to the top and turned in at the gate.
Idella peeked out onto the porch. Jessie was sitting there, woolen throws pulled up all round her shoulders, like a turkey sunk into its own feathers for warmth. She wiped at her eyes and blew her nose, feeling sorry for herself. Idella glanced warily down to the bottom of the hill. There they came. She could just make out the two figures, brother and sister, Ethel pushing a baby carriage. They were walking slow, but steady and onward. Jessie was looking over at Mr. Graveline’s house across the street.
“That house needs a painting.”
Jens looked up from the newspaper he’d been pretending to read. “This house could do with a new coat, too, but I don’t see us doing it.” He yawned and stretched and looked down the hill. His arms held stiff in midair. He saw them. He watched the two approaching figures, then looked at Idella. She put her finger to her lips and shrugged. Jens nodded, got up, and stepped in from the porch to stand silently beside her in the kitchen.
“Where you going to? Bring me a glass of—” Her voice stopped in midsentence. They were more than h
alfway up now and easily seen.
Jessie was stilled completely. No one moved or spoke. All three watched Eddie and Ethel plodding up that hill with the baby carriage. Eddie had his hand on Ethel’s elbow and was helping her along.
When they got to the front gate, Idella could see how frightened Ethel looked, staring glassily out from under her crocheted woolen hat. Jessie stared straight out the screen-porch door, watching them come up the walk. The carriage wasn’t rolling too smoothly across the muddy path. Eddie had to take it from Ethel and shove.
None of them breathed for what seemed like minutes. Idella watched Jessie looking at her two children. Her features softened, and a kind of light came into them. Idella sensed that Jens noticed, too.
For a moment no one moved. Then Jessie pulled her shawl tight, planted her canes in front of her, and heaved up out of her chair.
“Jens!” she called. “Jens, go help Eddie with them wheels. They’ll jolt the baby.”
“Yes, dear.”
“And don’t bang the door going out. It might be sleeping.”
Jens held the porch door open. Idella rushed forward and helped Eddie lift the carriage onto the porch. Ethel came quietly up the steps. Idella motioned her to go to her mother, then took Eddie’s elbow and pulled him back toward the kitchen.
Jessie leaned forward onto her canes and looked down at the sleeping baby. “He’s so dolled up with clothes I can’t get a good look. Let me sit back, and you get him unwrapped, and I’ll hold him. He’ll get held by his grandma.”
Ethel reached into the carriage and removed the baby’s hat and sweater with her clumsy fingers. Both were crocheted, Idella saw, smiling.
“Keep the blanket around him so his legs don’t get cold.” Jessie was reaching for the baby with hunger. “You just hand him over to me now. Let me get a good look at him.”
He squirmed awake from all the handling, rubbing at his eyes with tiny fists. Ethel handed him to Jessie, who looked down at him, quietly, for a long time. No one moved. “Well, well,” she whispered. The baby started to whimper. “Now, now,” she cooed. Idella had never heard her use such a soft voice. “Now, now. He’s got Albert’s eyes.” She nodded. “Yes. Albert’s eyes.” She looked up. “And your mouth, Ethel.”
Ethel smiled. Jens walked over and put his hand on her shoulder.
“What about me?” Eddie said, smiling. “Don’t I show up in him somewhere?”
“Get my pitcher there, Idella—the pink glass—and make us up some eggnog. We’ll use my silver spoons there to stir it.”
Idella sighed. That was one crisis over with. She supposed there would be more. She squeezed Eddie’s hand, then picked up the pink glass pitcher and set about making eggnog. She’d always liked that pitcher. And them little spoons would have been nice to have.
Part Three
Idella Looks Back: Married Life on Longfellow Street
Now, this is how we come to live with Jessie. We had our own rent, you know, over on Haskell Street, when Jens had a heart attack. He was over there mowing around the gully, and then he was down on the ground, and some people brought him home. The doctor said it was a slight heart attack and for him to take vitamin pills and take it easy. But he shouldn’t do no more mowing and all that business, you know. So Ethel was going to live up there and take care of them. She took her kids and went up there, and we just kept our fingers crossed, because we knew we’d be the ones that would have to go, in the long run. She stayed three weeks, and she packed up and went home. She couldn’t stand it any longer. “All while I’m up there, I have butterflies in my stomach. Every minute I’m there in that house. Butterflies in my stomach.” She had moved a few little things up there, and she moved them all back. So then we were the ones had to go.
That was in June. And in November he died, of his heart attack. And we lived with Jessie—or she lived with us—for eight years. She had her good points, but she was so hard to live with. She was impossible. You could spend the whole day making her favorite dish, say, something she’d been talking about for weeks—strawberry shortcake, maybe, from the first of the berries. You could wait and watch—I know because I did this, see—I tried to please her. I waited and watched for the berries to be just right. Real sweet. I picked just enough for her to have strawberry shortcake, and I made biscuits and whipped up the cream and got it all good and ready and surprised her with it for supper one night after she’d been feeling poorly for a spell—I brought it into the bedroom on a tray all dolled up with flowers and everything—and, by God, she sat there, had the nerve to sit there in bed leaning against the pillows that I got her, for God’s sake, in the sheets I’d cleaned—and she looks at it and says, “Them biscuits look dry, Idella. You’ve wasted them berries on the likes of them biscuits.”
Well, I wanted to kill her. They were perfect biscuits. Perfect! She couldn’t stand that, see. She was jealous of my biscuits. You could not win in that house with that woman. No one could.
So I took that shortcake away from her. I didn’t say a word. I wasn’t going to argue. I took it, and I went out to the back step, looking out over the garden there, and I sat down, and I ate it. I ate every bit. I wasn’t even hungry. I didn’t enjoy it really, even though the biscuit was perfect. But I’d be damned before I let her get a second chance at it. And I would not give her the satisfaction of getting upset. Though of course I was. Plenty. The nerve! After I tried so hard to be nice to her and to give her what she wanted.
Now, the night before Barbara was born, Ethel came up to help and stayed all night. She brought her kids. And when I got up at about seven o’clock, my water broke. So I told Ethel, and she got right up. Then her kids started coming downstairs one by one. They were little boys, nine, ten years old. We were sitting around the breakfast table, and they knew something was going to happen. Eddie drove us into Portland. Ethel went with us, and all day long Eddie and Ethel came in and out of the hospital, waiting for that baby to come. Fourteen hours.
But they’d put me out. I remember, the last I knew, the nurse said, “Now, you tell me when a pain commences to get a little worse.” So I said it, and then I never knew any more than that. Ethel told Eddie I was awful squeamish, but I only did what the nurse said. And when I came to, somewhere along the line, I said it again.
It was away round the clock till two in the morning, and I was alone in the bed, and I got up. I wanted to go to the bathroom—as it happened, there was a bathroom in the room. I had to pee, you see. And as I sat on that toilet, I thought, Have I had the baby? I must have had the baby. Finally I went back to bed, and pretty soon a nurse came in, and I said to the nurse, “I walked on that cold floor.” Why I said “cold floor” was that Jessie always harped about someone walking on a cold floor after they had a baby, and they got consumption, and they died. So I thought, My God, I walked across that cold floor. It was linoleum. What’s going to happen to me? I wondered. I’ve had it now.
But the nurse said, “That won’t do any harm.” She told me I had a little girl and what time she’d been born and so on.
Then they brought the baby in to me. She had a small scar on one side of her face. Forceps, you know. Her forehead was kind of red there, but it went away. She weighed over eight pounds. A lovely baby.
Now, Donna and Paulette and Beverly came much quicker, just a few hours. I didn’t do too much suffering. When the pains got to be a little bit bad, they gave me something. And I had good, healthy babies. Four girls, all seven years apart.
Of course, when Paulette was coming, Eddie was hoping for a boy. When he found out it was a girl, he went up to Haskell Street to Mrs. Graham’s, right across from the hospital, to tell her. He was so disappointed. She said, “He rang the bell, and I went to the door, and his face was long, and I thought, Oh my God, something’s happened to Idella or the baby. Something awful has happened.” And she said, “Mr. Jensen, what is the matter?” “Well,” he said, “I got another goddamned girl.” She talked him out of it, you know. She was a motherly
person. She said, “Well, it’s a healthy baby, isn’t it? The baby is good?” and he said, “Yes, it weighs ten pounds,” and she said, “Well, that’s all right. Maybe the next one will be a boy.” And when he saw the baby, he couldn’t help but love that little girl.
It was after Paulette was born that we started the store. They were building houses all around us, and we thought, Gee, if there was a grocery store here, it might be good. So I said, “Why don’t you take that old chicken house and fix it up and make it a store?”
Eddie’s parents had the chickens. Eddie could not stand to clean them and feed them and do what had to be done. Who could blame him? Working all day and then come home to that mother and those chickens. And me, of course. So I did the most of it.
Well, finally we got rid of the damned chickens. It was too much. And that’s when we made the store—out of the chicken house. That was my idea. Eddie took the credit, but it was my idea. We moved the chicken house over across the field and cleaned it out, of course, and remodeled and added quite a bit onto it, and we set it up on the Gorham Road and made it into Jensen’s Drive-In Store. And I stood there in what was the old chicken house, behind that counter, for many years. Eddie said I stood there clucking. He thought he was so funny saying that “Idella’s in the old chicken house clucking away.” If he was to get any sort of joke going, he always drove it into the ground. “I suppose that makes you the rooster,” I finally said. Course he liked that.
Jensen’s Drive-In Store. Eddie was proud of that name. He thought it was real catchy, ’cause drive-in movies were big at the time we opened it. I saw so many people day after day, year after year. And I got to know them some, to know what was happening. If someone got a new baby or a cat or the like, they were as apt to tell me as anyone. I was a known figure! “Mrs. Jensen,” I was.
I was at that store every morning to open up and every closing time. It’d be after ten at night. And many an afternoon as well, many, standing at the register in that store. Course, I had George to help. He lived across the street, and he worked for me in the afternoons. George . . . he was, well, what is the word? It’s all the rage now—they have a term for it. He liked men, if you know what I mean. Though of course Eddie never knew. It went right over his head. Thank God from all of us.
The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay Page 22