The story of Beth, the parts Lou didn’t know, Nana Beecher filled out like they were subplots in a novel. It made Beth seem terribly famous to me, a real, live American orphan living in Canada, the product of romantic youth, geography, and war. As Nana Beecher recounted Beth’s journey, she might as well have been talking about something that happened to someone else on the other side of the planet, which she was of course.
She told us Nell met Sam Drysdale in San Francisco. Like a million other kids who staggered blinking from the darkness of the fifties and into the diamond skies of the sixties, my mother had long straight hair, a talent for socialism, hatred for Nixon, a guitar, and a crush on George Harrison. Against Nana Beecher’s highly vocal wishes, after graduation, Nell had hitchhiked west to San Francisco to live in a city park with other damp hippies. That’s where she met Sam, a gangly Oklahoman, whose nickname was Tooey, though no one knew how he’d earned it.
“He was one of the arresting officers during a raid on some park where she lived. One of the nicer ones, apparently,” said Nana Beecher.
Just after learning she was pregnant with Beth, Nell tried to talk Tooey into coming to Canada instead of going to Vietnam, but he said he was a born soldier. Even after Beth was born he couldn’t be talked out of his commitment. They said goodbye at a dock in San Diego. Three weeks into his first tour of duty, Tooey was shot in the back and killed, a victim of friendly fire.
For the next few months Nell went into a kind of critical shock. Friends were worried for the safety of the baby, whom Nell would often forget to feed or change. Nana Beecher convinced her to bundle up the baby and move to Florida for a while, even though Nell was worried she’d lose Beth to Nana Beecher.
Nell packed the Dart and planned on driving across the country alone. But then Lou stuck out a thumb north of Tyler, Texas, having just received his own draft papers. He was heading for call duty in Macon, Georgia. According to Nell, God was giving her another opportunity to save a man’s life, something she wasn’t able to do for Tooey. Lou too saw it as a sign from God, someone he’d gotten a lot closer to since he’d stopped drinking a year and a half earlier. It didn’t take much for him to fall for his sad Canadian savior and her lively baby. Before they even crossed into Louisiana, they’d decided that Lou’s reply to the draft board (“Fuck you”) would sport a Canadian stamp.
When they reached Georgia, Nell called Nana Beecher and broke the news. Needless to say, no mother wants to hear that their daughter plans to marry a recently recovered alcoholic hitchhiker, but she wired the couple some money. Nell and Lou were married in Marietta, the town in which they’d later learn I was conceived, after which I was almost named, but Nell didn’t like the sound of Mary.
They camped for two days, then took another two days to reach the Detroit border. When they showed the guards their marriage certificate, no one asked about the baby, whom Nell kept wrapped in Tooey’s old army blanket. It wasn’t uncommon for hippies to skip steps on their way to forming their ridiculous families, so as far as the border guards were concerned, Beth was simply no longer Lou and Nell’s bastard child.
Since Nana Beecher had retired full-time to Florida, the house hadn’t been properly lived in, so it needed a lot of work—a new septic tank, for starters, which couldn’t be installed until the thaw. They used an outhouse Lou built from scratch, and though most of the land was still brush back then, the working land was fertile. He tried to grow soy, then corn, but farming wasn’t in Lou’s blood. So they leased a chunk of land to the bachelor brothers next door and lived off the proceeds. After I was born, Lou took up truck driving for a few years, so long as the routes kept him on the friendly side of the border.
Beth had relatives in Oklahoma. After they were notified of Nell’s death, they sent their condolences, best wishes, and a half-dozen pictures of Tooey. They’d also promised to put money into trust for Beth, whatever the army had given him, whatever he might inherit, and what he had had in savings. It wouldn’t be much, they said, but it might matter around college time if she decided to go. They sent Christmas cards for a few years, and Lou returned their queries with photos. Plans to visit were recycled but never fulfilled. As a draft dodger, Lou wasn’t allowed into the United States, and he’d never put Beth on a plane alone. But even after the presidential pardon, he had long washed his hands of the American part of his life, especially after Ronald Reagan became the president.
Two weeks after Nell’s suicide Lou called the bachelor brothers and coaxed a conversation out of them. Then he picked up an ax and walked across the street to the Rosarios to introduce himself. Nell never spoke to the neighbors, had avoided them since her return to Canada. We were told it was because of her depression, so when I was younger, I thought sadness was contagious, like colds. Lou told his new neighbors and eventual friends that in exchange for pulling down the willow tree they could help themselves to the firewood until it was gone. And that’s when it began, when our farmhouse evolved from being a dark place to a light place. People drove up with gifts of day-old donuts, casseroles, carpool offers, and kittens. Behind our backs they referred to us as the Archer Girls, those poor Archer Girls, did you hear what happened to the Archer Girls? They talked to Lou while petting us, everyone hoping for an update, an explanation. How are you faring? How’s little Peachy? What’s the situation with Beth? How’s having June back from Florida? Is she still, you know, cuckoo? Not long after, Lou started up his men’s meetings on Sundays, much to Nana Beecher’s consternation.
“It’s fine now, Lou, but when the girls become teenagers, I don’t want these drunks hanging around the house ogling them,” she said.
“They’re sober drunks, June. There’s a big difference,” he said.
“You confuse me, boy.”
Beth did change rapidly after Nell’s death. The first symptom of her motherlessness was that our sisterly scrapes turned biblical. Beth’s sharp kicks and well-landed punches were accompanied with screams so high-pitched they’d deafen dogs. Her skills arrived almost overnight as though Beth had been replaced by a tiny ninja. You could see the transformation on Beth’s face. I once compared her school picture from the year before with those taken the year after our mother died, and she had definitely become weary-looking and stiff, her very cuteness sucked from her cheeks, taking her dimples along with it.
For the few months she was with us, Nana Beecher did her best to dismantle Beth’s bombs. She’d often stumble into one of our arguments brandishing a spatula, or a spoon, which she’d use to pry Beth off of me. She’d send Beth to her room and take me aside, her favorite granddaughter, and say: “If you feel like crying, don’t. Tears are energy and they’re a waste of time on someone like your sister. Turn them into something useful. But don’t just sit there and bawl, Georgia Peach, it is of no use.”
Lou took great umbrage with her no-crying rule.
“June, that’s wrong. All’s depression is is uncried tears. Don’t listen to Nana Beecher.”
Poor Lou. The man fell asleep with more self-help books than dates splayed across his white-haired chest; books with anthemic titles featuring low ordinals, hard steps, and easy promises, and always the A.A. Big Book, the consistent tent under which we’d find him snoring.
Just before Beth’s adoption was finalized, she began to call our father Lou, and he didn’t mind. “Call me anything that makes you feel natural,” he said. “You’re both still my girls.”
Nana Beecher disagreed.
“Technically speaking, Lou, Beth’s an orphan.” She was sitting on the love seat wrapping an elastic around her long, damp braid. Once a week she washed her hair with Dove soap, then gave it an expensive hot-oil treatment. “You might as well stop pretending otherwise, because the damage of keeping the first secret is evident enough.”
“What do you mean by that?” Beth asked.
“I just mean, Beth Ann, for a little girl who’s almost nine, you have a lot of anger on account of people never telling you the truth. I am trying
to change that, which I know sounds mean, but it is for your own good.”
Beth had been using a heavy pair of pinking shears to cut out duplicate hearts and crosses for an Easter art project. “Nana Beecher, are you trying to kill me with depression?”
“No, Beth Ann, I am not. I am trying to cure you with the truth. Now come here and sit next to me and I’ll help you cut your stuff,” she said, patting the cushion on the love seat then splitting open one of her fresh romance novels. The cover featured a hunky slave ripping the dress off a deliriously busty woman.
Beth ignored Nana Beecher and walked over toward Lou, who was reading the paper on his La-Z-Boy. She put her heavy head on his chest and he patted her spine.
“June, don’t ever say that again,” Lou muttered over the top of his bifocals. “No one’s an orphan here except me. And these girls are all the family I got. Why do you have scissors, lovey?”
“Because, I have to make hearts and I don’t want to have depression,” Beth whimpered.
“You won’t have depression, Bethie. Who told you that?”
“Nana Beecher.”
“June, stop saying stuff like that, she’s just little. You’re scaring the heck out of her.”
“Lou Archer, I cannot tell what my daughter saw in you. Now Beth, you come over here and give your Nana a kiss. I don’t mean to make you depressed.”
Beth collected herself and walked over to the coffee table, where I was bent over a coloring book. She regarded my work with phony awe, gently lifted and dropped one of my anemic braids. Then Lou and I watched as Beth moved closer to her intended target, lifted up then cut off Nana Beecher’s long blond braid with one metal bite of the scissors. There was a split second where Lou could have stopped Beth had he really believed she was going to do it, which he did not.
“There!” Beth screamed, dropping the braid and the pinking shears on the table next to my book. I stared at the long tail of hair which must have represented at least twenty years of this old woman’s life. I was only six, but even then I was quite aware that this thing was much, much older than me. And there it lay cruelly detached from its maker’s head.
“What in the fuck!” Lou yelled, trying to propel himself off his saggy chair. He never swore at us like that.
Nana Beecher struggled to stand up too, but it was as though losing her hair had somehow affected her balance. She grabbed her braid with one hand, Beth’s arm with the other, and yanked her out of the living room. Beth tried to sink to the floor, to make herself too heavy to drag, but Nana Beecher moved with the strength of a lioness carrying a limp jackrabbit in her jaw. Lou followed them out to the yard, and I followed Lou, nervously putting the ends of my braids in my mouth.
“Lay a hand on her, old woman, and I will lay a hand on you!” Lou yelled, keeping a slight distance from Nana Beecher, who still gripped one of Beth’s arms. She raised her other hand at the ready for a slapping.
“Are you threatening me with bodily harm on my property, Lou Archer?”
“It is not your property. You gave it to Nell, who gave it to me. Now you let go of my daughter right now and leave this farm.”
“This child is sick, Lou. Sick, damaged, and angry. If you don’t beat it out of her now, she’ll grow up rotten and spoiled and depressed like Nell. You mark my words, mister. Nell was just like this, and I shoulda been a lot harder on her when I had the chance. Running away like that. Making me look like I had done something wrong. Getting herself knocked up—not by one but by two feckless men. Wandering around with dirty hair, the neighbors said. Years like that and you didn’t tell me. And then she goes and takes those pills and I swear, I don’t know. I just don’t know what I did wrong. I just don’t know why this all happened to me,” she said, the geyser of tears shocking her more than us.
Finally, she let go of Beth and daubed her wet face with her braid. Then she flung it into the high grass and stomped back into the house. Beth remained crouched in a ball, flinching slightly when Lou tried to approach. Maybe she thought he’d finish the throttling, but instead he scooped her up and carried her onto the porch, dropping her on the wicker swing.
“Stay outside, both of you,” he said. “Keep an eye on Peachy.” Then he disappeared into the house. We braced ourselves for more yelling, but it remained dead quiet inside. I was too afraid to talk to Beth, to find out what she had been thinking when she cut off Nana Beecher’s hair. I left her on the porch swing, arms wrapped tight around her torso. From there she watched me comb through the grass looking for the lost braid.
Twenty minutes later, Nana Beecher burst out the front door holding two of her suitcases. Lou followed behind carrying the rest. Neither of them spoke as they packed up the car, putting some of the suitcases in the trunk, the others in the back seat. Her remaining hair had fanned out into an uneven bob, which looked quite lovely, actually, more age-appropriate than those ridiculous buns.
“Peachy, come here, dear, and say goodbye to me,” she said, her voice hoarse with pride.
I became aware of the downside of being the favorite, how things could turn disastrous when the person who put you on the pedestal suddenly crumbled herself. I looked toward Lou, who stood leaning against the carport, placing his body between Nana Beecher and Beth. He nodded for me to meet her at the car, so I did.
“Peachy, how would you like to come live with me in Florida?” she asked, bending over to take my wrists in her hands. She spoke loud enough for Beth and Lou to hear. “Would you like that someday soon?”
I still can’t imagine why she thought she’d get a different answer out of a six-year-old. Especially one who had only lost her mother a few months earlier. And though I did feel a certain tug toward Nana Beecher, I would have felt that way toward a cow or a bush or even a large piece of furniture if it had given me any solace.
“No, I wouldn’t like that,” I said. “I want to stay here.”
“Well then,” she said, straightening up and smoothing down her shirt. “You think about it some more, okay?”
I nodded, then ran to Lou and took his hand. She climbed into her car and without saying another word to Beth, she backed out of the driveway, honked once, and drove off.
I might have begun to hate Beth for scaring off the first of many people at least partially devoted to my happiness. But when Nana Beecher’s car disappeared into the horizon, Beth’s face went ashen, then completely slack, then her whole body rolled forward off the swing, fainting into a pile on the porch from the pain of clutching a broken ulna to her chest.
EVERY YEAR FOR about ten, Nana Beecher would send a Christmas or birthday card, addressed to me, stuffed with a twenty-dollar bill and an invitation to visit Florida. (“I’ll pay for the ticket. You can fly by yourself and I’ll meet you at the airport, Peachy.”) Whenever I asked about taking the trip, Lou would say, “Later, another time, when you’re older.” Then he’d file the cards away, urging me not to tell Beth, imploring me to buy something for Beth when I rode my bike into town to spend the money. Poor Beth, he’d say, adding that the wrath of that old woman was a rotten thing to visit upon such a troubled head. Then he’d tell me to pray for Nana Beecher, but mostly, he said, pray for Beth to not absorb any of Nana Beecher’s awful words or deeds.
Soon after, memories of my mother started to fade by the day, by the hour. Suddenly, I’d forget her middle name, or that she was afraid of dogs, or what her favorite color was, and I’d have to look hard for something of Nell’s to smell or touch to bring her back, hiding these attempts from Beth, my only female constant in the house.
At first Lou could only awkwardly mimic the way his wife had tried, and his mother-in-law had excelled at, running the house efficiently. He’d stiffly organize our arms and legs into flannel pajamas pulled straight out of a hot dryer. He’d carefully comb out the knots on our wet heads, cultivating a future affinity for playing with hair. The soundtrack of those early days was always an AM radio playing something soothing and country on the kitchen counter, Beth’s cryi
ng and yelling turning to talking and humming, something awful in her temporarily lifting. For a few years we lived in a peace-filled, drowsy diorama, until Beth’s legs began swinging off the crusty vinyl kitchen chairs with a newfound angsty rhythm.
BEING RAISED BY a man did not stunt our femininity; in fact, it brought out Lou’s as he fell in love with fixing our hair, a skill that did not go unnoticed by other mothers and their daughters. I was never jealous of the few women who came around to get their hair done, who tried to hold Lou’s gaze as he administered perms, or cut a straight set of bangs, all while marveling at our house with its acres of brush and big airy rooms, marveling at these motherless girls before them. Oh, you poor things, their eyes would say. Got no mom to clean this big old house, with two bathrooms, carport, mortgage fully paid for, no doubt, in this blue-collar town full of divorced drunks, deadbeat fathers, and unemployed jerks. And we knew if they reached for Beth’s cheek or her hair with that look on their faces, their coats would mysteriously appear strung between two fingers. This was followed by a quick ride home to their rental over the florist’s, or wherever they shared space with their own brats, or absentee husbands, or lazy roommates, Beth and I watching them from the passenger seat we’d scramble into, always making them take the back seat. I’d turn and wave weakly while Lou pulled fast away. Another one bites the dust, Beth would say, and it would be just us for a great long stretch.
After Lou decided his affinity for hair was a God-given skill, he went to school in Windsor for nine months of training. He found us a live-in sitter named Teresa Tran, a Vietnamese refugee who spoke very little English, so we never got the whole story, just bits about a farm she grew up on and the war that killed her dad and two brothers. Lou tried to explain to Teresa that he was a draft dodger, an almost Vietnam vet, pointing to his chest as though he expected her to pin something shiny to it. She just smiled and nodded. Despite her size, she also proved to be a formidable wood splitter, often joining the men helping Lou clear the brush where he would drop the trailer for his riverside hair salon.
The Almost Archer Sisters Page 9