At the sink Frank left his back unprotected, as if to say, “Go ahead and try it, boy.” He reached for his beer glass with his left hand, rather than the one that he had just used on his son. The punch had cost him something; this pleased George.
“I know what I saw,” George said. He spread his stance a little wider and lifted his fists waist high. When his father replied, his voice was a low growl. It floated back over his shoulder.
“Do you?”
“I seen that woman around, at the mill, down to Hurley’s. With lots of guys, but never the same one twice. And not at church either, but maybe she sits up back, huh?”
Frank’s right shoulder twitched. Glass in hand, he turned to face his son.
“You don’t know a goddamned thing,” he said.
“I know you weren’t going to Bible study with her at ten o’clock last night.”
Frank’s voice was lower, harsher. “All you need to know is I put a roof over your head and food on your plate. What I do is none of your business, boy.”
“No? What would the other deacons think about your business? Or Reverend Quigg? Or Mother?” George’s breath was coming fast. With each question his voice rose, turning shrill and thin, and he was ashamed of the sound of it.
Frank snorted. “Christ almighty, almost six feet tall and you’re still a little kid. You’ve got no idea—”
His words were interrupted by the rattle of the bedroom door from the other side of the house. George’s head turned toward the sound.
“You leave her out of this,” Frank hissed.
Ethel Lawson’s fingers emerged from the gloom of the hall and curled around the kitchen doorframe. Once she’d steadied herself, she stepped halfway through and leaned on the jamb, squinting against the midday sun. Her dressing gown was undone; she held it closed with her free hand.
“I can’t find my spectacles.”
“Right there,” George said, and indicated the delicate gold frames on the table.
At the sight of her son’s blood-streaked face, Ethel lurched across the kitchen and grabbed for it. Her robe flapped open, revealing a dingy cotton nightgown with an L-shaped tear over her left breast and not much underneath.
“Georgie! What happened? Did you fall?”
The odor of cigarette smoke mixed with talcum powder drifted past George’s nose, and he closed his mouth to keep from swallowing it. He shook her hand off his cheek, but Ethel persisted.
“Close your robe, Ethel,” Frank muttered from across the room.
She grasped at the garment but couldn’t seem to find the belt and gave up. “Not deep but it’s messy. It’ll leave a scar.”
“It’s nothing,” George said. He was almost seventeen; he didn’t need mothering, even the sad scraps Ethel offered.
“Frank, the plasters, do you know where the plasters are?”
“Like he said, Ethel, it’s nothing.” He ran his free hand through his hair, smoothing it flat to his head, then said, “Boy’s getting ideas. Thinks he’s a big man.” Frank didn’t seem to be talking to anyone but himself, so George didn’t bother to answer.
When Frank passed them on his way to the icebox, George and Ethel both stepped back. Frank took a beer, set it on the table next to his glass, and pulled his jackknife from his pocket, wincing as he used the blade to prize the cap from the bottle. Sallow foam oozed up the bottleneck, over his fist, and onto the floor. He let the cap drop and watched it roll under the stove, then licked the back of his hand.
Ethel didn’t admonish him for his carelessness; she hardly seemed to notice. George imagined grabbing his father by the scruff, flinging him to the floor, and forcing him to clean up his mess, then hated himself when he didn’t. Just before Frank crossed the threshold, he muttered, “It’s me runs things here, and don’t you forget it.”
Loud enough for his father to hear, George said, “Don’t worry, I won’t forget.” His jaw had begun to ache, but he forced himself not to touch it. He edged away from his mother, shoved his fists into his pockets, and walked out the back door.
* * *
Outside it was cooler than it had been in the kitchen, but still hot for Maine, even in July. George bent over the garden spigot and splashed his face, drying it on a stained dishrag draped over the porch railing. He flicked a chip of gray paint off the fence post next to the half-dead Victory Garden his mother had planted in a mad rush in the spring, then abandoned a month later, after her mood swung from crazy bright to black.
Depression and mania, Doc Howell told them it was, said it had started after George was born. No one knew the cause, and the only thing for it was shock treatments up to the state hospital, but the old man said no, said she’d come out of it sooner or later, like always. George wasn’t so sure. He looked down at the dead leaves and withered vines. A single half-ripe tomato lay nestled in a tangle of dying plants. George’s heel crushed it into the soil on the way to the sidewalk.
Kicking pebbles as he wandered, he kept to the shady side of the street and canted his face toward the buildings, relieved not to see anyone he knew. He came to the library. Its granite walls offered respite from the heat; the dark stacks promised refuge. Hiding there meant he’d go back home eventually, but George was as tired of hiding as he was of home, so he continued on, past LaViolette’s lunch counter and Hanley’s bar, which reeked of stale beer and tobacco from half a block away. Ten doors down, at the end of Main Street, the immaculate whitewashed face of the Methodist church his family went to contemplated the street and its many sins, doors bolted against the unworthy, the week’s devotions unsullied and safe behind them.
Until he turned onto Pelham Alley, he hadn’t really thought about where he was going. Up ahead, on the unpaved lane that ran behind the courthouse, a paddy wagon kicked up a veil of yellow dust. Across the street, Jimmy O’Connell sat on his rickety front steps, absorbed in a Superman comic. He looked up when George flopped down beside him.
“The hell happened to you?”
“Nothing.”
“Whole lot of nothing.”
“Aw, you know, the old man. Busting my chops.”
Jimmy snorted and said, “Pretty crummy.”
“Yeah. Can I stay here?”
“Sure.” Jimmy folded the comic and stuffed it between the slats of the steps. “So whatcha gonna do?” he asked.
“Don’t know. Been thinking about the navy. Get out of town. See the world. Wanna come?” George knew his friend would never bite.
“You kidding? Claudette’d kill me before the Japs ever got a chance. You think your old man’s a hard case? My ma’s a lot more scarier than any kamikaze.”
George grabbed the baseball cap off his friend’s head and pulled it low on his own, then set off for downtown. The recruiter would be at the post office until three. He had time.
* * *
The next day, while the morning service was going on over at church, George slipped through the back door of his house. The kitchen was just as when he’d left, the surfaces tidy, clean, and respectable. In his pocket were the enlistment papers. The day before, the recruiter had glanced at his face several times but hadn’t asked. He said George would need his father’s signature to join up, otherwise he’d have to wait thirteen more months until he turned eighteen.
George was surprised to see the blue percolator sputtering on the stove. Next to it, on the floor, sat his father’s maple shoeshine box with his unpolished oxfords on top. Every Sunday morning Frank spent half an hour cleaning, blacking, and spit-shining those shoes before church. George’s parents seldom missed a service. It was the one event his mother still managed to get up and dress for. She usually dozed through the sermon, but she liked the music.
In the parlor at the end of the hall, George could see his father’s head above the back of his easy chair. He was listening to the radio in a haze of smoke so thick he must have been lighting each Camel from the butt end of the last. When the morning news program gave way to an ad for Moxie, the old man’s sli
pper tapped the carpet in time to the jingle.
His mother was probably still asleep. The thought of having to see her in the gloomy rat’s-nest bedroom and breathe in her despair made him want to run for the door. Instead George walked up the back stairs to the attic. He had to hunch, and despite his careful steps, they creaked at every tread. In his whitewashed bedroom, it took only a few minutes to pack his clothes and grab his book, a dog-eared collection of Hornblower stories Mother had given him two Christmases ago. She’d been in a bright phase that year and served eggnog and fruitcake after the midnight Mass.
From downstairs came the sound of his father shuffling up the hall to the kitchen. George’s stomach turned over. He patted his pocket; the papers crackled. Bag in hand, he drew in a long breath, exhaled hard, and walked back down to the kitchen.
“Where the hell’ve you been?” Frank asked, closing the flame on the stove. He wore only his undershirt tucked into his trousers; his suspenders hung lifeless below his hips. When his father faced him, George noticed his blue eyes were red-rimmed, his face unshaven.
“Jimmy’s.”
“That madhouse?” Frank disapproved of the O’Connells. Jimmy’s mother had been known to haul her husband off his stool at Hurley’s on a Friday night, or worse, join him there. They weren’t churchgoers.
“Tell Mother I was here.”
“Tell her yourself. She’s still abed, she’ll want to know you’re all right.”
Frank seemed to be waiting for a response. When none came, he said, “Oatmeal on the stove. I made extra, but she won’t eat. Go ahead.”
“I’m not staying. Just come to get my things. I got enlistment papers from the recruiter. Navy. Says you have to sign. ’Cause I’m underage.” His voice sounded mechanical and flat in his ears, but at least it wasn’t shaking.
Frank lifted his cup to his lips and blew the steam away. A tremor in his hand sent the coffee slopping over the side, and he set the mug down on the counter without drinking.
“What makes you think I’m going to do that?” His tone was mild, as if he were asking George’s opinion of a movie.
“Because you don’t want me in this house. And even if you did, I wouldn’t stay.”
“It was just a punch, George. Time you learned to take one. Christ, I was brawling before I was out of knee pants. Got more scars than I can count.”
“I’m not sticking around for more.”
“No need, ’long as you mind your manners.”
“And you mind yours.”
“Who the hell do you think you are?” Frank asked.
George dug the form and the pen out of his pocket and set them on the table.
“Just sign the enlistment papers and I’ll be on my way.”
“For Christ’s sake, boy, there’s a war on.”
“It’ll be over before I’m out of basic.”
“You’ll never get anywhere without a diploma.”
George shrugged his response.
“You’re only sixteen.” Frank presented this information as if it were news.
“Seventeen in three weeks.”
“What about your mother?”
George didn’t want to think about his mother. This was between him and the old man.
“Just sign the papers, and we’ll be done.”
Frank picked up his coffee, but instead of drinking it, he dumped it down the drain, then hurled the mug into the pitted slate sink. The cup exploded and the wall above was splattered in oily black. George flinched. His father snatched the pen. When he signed the form, he nearly tore the paper with it.
* * *
In the bedroom, his mother’s Sunday hat, the dove-colored one with the navy-blue net and two turquoise feathers, lolled on top of the dresser, impaled on a hat pin, affixed to nothing but air. His mother stubbed out her cigarette. She was propped against a couple of rumpled pillows; the drapes were drawn against the day, just as they would be against the night.
When he crossed the room to open them, she protested and switched on the bedside lamp. A pool of light the color of sickly flesh illuminated half of her face, casting the rest in shadow. Another dark day. George couldn’t remember the last bright one. She patted the bed near her knees; he sat at her feet.
“I was crazy worried when you didn’t come back, Georgie, but now you’re home again so everything’s all right.” The words came in a tumble, followed by an unconvincing smile. Ethel reached for his hand, and he let her take it.
“I’m joining up, Mumma. Navy.”
Ethel’s grip tightened.
“No.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper. “I won’t let you.”
“He signed the paper.”
“He wouldn’t, he was so worried about you last night he never slept.”
George shook his head.
“No, Georgie, what’ll I do?” she asked, eyes closed. She seemed to be melting into the pillows. “Who’ll be here with me?”
George clamped his jaws tight and beat back the urge to scream, to haul her the hell out of bed and tell her to get dressed like other mothers, like the one he remembered. Instead, he said, “You’ll see, it’ll be better this way.” He wasn’t even trying to be kind.
“Better than what?” Her eyes opened, unfocused and wet. She repeated the phrase in a whisper. Toward the half-open door, she called, “Frank, come tell George he can’t go.”
There was no reply from the parlor, just the squeak of the swivel chair. Ethel called to him again. George pictured his father padding across the carpet and slipping into a shirt and his old shoes before opening the front door. He heard a soft thunk when it closed. The house was still for a second or two, and then the Goodyear announcer’s voice came crackling through the static on the wireless.
“And to our employees in the armed forces, good work in Europe and good luck in the Pacific. Let’s keep punching hard till the Japs get theirs.”
Ethel released George’s hand and slid down in the bed. She rolled over, away from the lamplight and into the shadows. Her low moan rose and built to a stuttering wail he felt in his chest. She was weeping so hard her body shook. He looked over at the poor old hat and tried to think of some way to pull out the knife he’d just driven into his mother. There was only one, but he couldn’t bring himself to say he’d stay. So he sat on her bed and tried to recall the smell of the sea. After a while he fetched a glass of water, then slipped away when she turned out the light.
* * *
By the time George arrived in the kitchen the next morning, his father was already at work and Ethel, washed and dressed, sat sipping coffee at the table, the paper open to the obituaries. Her eyes were puffy and her hair hung in damp ringlets below her shoulders. It was grayer than he remembered.
She smiled a greeting, and he sat down.
There was a slice of bread with rhubarb jam on the plate before her. She slid it across the table to George, saying she’d already eaten.
“You don’t have to go, Georgie, I’m feeling better now.”
He knew it wouldn’t last and figured she did, too.
“It’s him, not you,” he said.
“I won’t ask what happened, that’s between the two of you.” She blinked half a dozen times, very fast. “It’s natural for boys and their fathers to get cross with each other and even fight sometimes, but I know he wants you to stay, we both do.”
“I can’t. Just come to say goodbye.”
“George, please, no. Every day of this war I’ve asked God to keep you from it, safe at home with me. I prayed and prayed and I thought I’d saved you from the bombs and the guns, the fires, and those crazy men who crash their planes into the boats.” As she spoke she dug at the cuticle of her left thumb with her index finger, gouged it until it bled; the flesh around her nails, which had been chewed to nubs, was torn and raw. Her breaths came fast and shallow.
“You can’t. Please, Georgie,” Ethel said just before her features crumpled into a tangle of clashing lines and disappeared behi
nd her hands.
George peeled the crust from his bread while she cried, tried to say he’d stay, couldn’t force the words. He’d lived in this house, eaten breakfast at this table, slept upstairs under the eaves since he was eight years old. Back then his mother read to him most nights, and his father almost never shouted. Back then, his mother’s dark times were less frequent and briefer, usually just a day or two. Back then it hadn’t occurred to George that his father somehow blamed him for his mother’s illness. Back then. He tried to imagine what life would be like without the agony of watching her collapse in on herself, without feeling the horrible, addictive pleasure of needling his father.
“I’m sorry,” he said. And he was, for all of them.
* * *
Later that day, on the way to the train station, George stopped at the baseball field. He gathered up a handful of fresh-cut grass from his spot in center and crushed the blades against his palm to try to force the smell into his skin. Then he walked to first base, Jimmy’s position, right in front of the bleachers where the O’Connells watched every game. His mother sat with them sometimes, but his father never came, said he couldn’t take off work during the week. George unclenched his fist and raised the wad of grass to his face, then opened his hand and let the breeze blow it clean. His finger traced the cut on his face, still jagged, but crusting over and itchy; it was beginning to heal.
The station was just down the road from the ball field. He stepped to the platform and took a seat on the bench, opened his book but couldn’t read. George had only ever ridden a train once, must have been about seven at the time. The lines on the page dissolved and ran together, replaced by memories: the feeling of his hand safe in Mother’s firm, kid-gloved one; the excitement of boarding the great, steaming train; the locomotive smell of hot metal and burning oil; the soft, even nap of the velvet seat covers; the anticipation of a visit to Portland, where his father was working on the docks.
The Northern Reach Page 6