July 1987
Eddie stirred in his chair.
Well, he thought, I guess I’ll ring my bell. Claire give me this steering wheel for my birthday. Goes with my bell, for my wheelchair here. No gas pedal. Then there’s this little car, my Cracker Jack prize. Idella left it for me the day she died. Heart attack. Left it for me, then went home and died.
Remember them bus trips we took, Idella? Maine Line Tours. Never thought I’d want to go somewheres if I wasn’t the driver. But them buses had good drivers. We’d go up to the White Mountains or to Popham Beach. You was always the last one back to the bus. “Here comes the caboose,” I’d say, “the end of the line.” We went to nice restaurants on them bus trips, whole busload of us. We’d get deals—all you can eat. Get your money’s worth, that’s what I liked. Yokum’s we’d go to a lot, down to New Hampshire. Nice restaurant. And the Silent Woman up to Waterville. There’s a name. The sign had a woman holding her head out in front of her on a plate. “That’s a good name,” I said to Idella. I tried to buy one of them signs in the gift shop, but she wouldn’t let me. She wanted me to be silent. She’s silent now. . . . Christ . . . she’s silent. But I hear her in my head. All them years, listening, you keep hearing, like a radio in there.
That chair there, that green one—she sat there. Her throne. Queen Idella, she’d say. I fall asleep in this goddamned wheelchair. They drug me. I used to wake up and look over there at that chair, and she’d be sitting in it. She’d smile and wave to me. “I’m here, Eddie,” she’d say, “I’m here.” Now when I wake up, I look over and I still see her. I talk to her. I tell her I love her. I never said it, ’cause she was. Just was. Over fifty years.
I met her first at the Grange. They had dances out there. She was a wallflower—shy, but pretty. Sitting in the corner with her hands on her lap. She never knew I paid Raymond Tripp one dollar to ask her to dance so I could cut in. I thought she’d like that, me cutting in. I arranged it, see, made a deal.
Next time I seen her, I was selling whiskey out at Old Orchard. The Prohibition. I’d come out on the pier to sell pints, and she was sitting there with Avis. “Eddie Jensen,” she says, “what a surprise!”
Well, we got rid of Avis. Avis was mad! I got Idella saltwater taffy. She wanted to try it. We stood on the pier, waves coming down below. Made me sick to my stomach, but Idella liked watching them come in under us. Then we walked under the pier, in the shadows by the pilings. Idella wasn’t so shy there. We had ourselves some fun. Taffy kisses. We walked along the water. I don’t like getting my feet wet, but Idella was in past her knees, all wet and happy—pretty. We walked till we come to a place with no lights. Must’ve been Pine Point. The lights from Old Orchard was way down the beach. Like diamonds, she said. Like I give her all them diamonds to look at, them lights twinkling.
We sat in the dunes. It was nice. Real nice. Nice as it gets. Didn’t need no whiskey that night. I had all I needed the whole time. That dollar to Raymond Tripp was the best deal I ever made.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deep thanks go to a number of writers and editors—true allies to Beverly and to me—who were devoted to bringing Beverly Jensen’s work to the world after her death. Especially generous were Beverly’s writing teacher, the novelist Jenifer Levin; the novelist Howard Frank Mosher; the editor and author Katrina Kenison; my old friend Larry Richman, founding editor of the Sow’s Ear Press; Stephen Donadio, Carolyn Kuebler, and Joshua Tyree at the New England Review; Stephen King and Heidi Pitlor, who selected 2007 Best American Short Stories; Michael Eckersley of Digital Design; our agent, Gail Hochman; Christopher Russell at Viking Penguin; and finally Carole DeSanti, our editor, who recognized this book’s potential and guided it to publication.
Our children, Noah and Hannah, made many contributions big and small, and other friends played important roles: Jennie Torres, Beverly’s college roommate; Andrea Vasquez, Beverly’s cousin and fellow writer; and above all Beverly’s sisters, Barbara, Donna, and Paulette.
—Jay Silverman
The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay Page 36