No Certain Home

by Marlene Lee

  Ernest ground the cigarette under his heel and replayed scenes from El Centro in his mind, as he did most days

  “Don’t call me Mrs. Brundin!” Agnes had shouted once to the landlady. “My name is Ayahoo Smedley!”

  When Mrs. McCutcheon had telegraphed him at the canal site in the desert to come at once, his wife was ill, he’d borrowed a car and driven to El Centro in the cool darkness of the night, though he felt as hot as if the sun were beating down on him.

  “She’s been trying to get rid of her baby,” Mrs. McCutcheon said when he’d arrived. He hadn’t known anything about a baby.

  “Has she seen a doctor?”

  The landlady nodded. “But he won’t abort her unless it’s a medical emergency.”

  Ernest started toward the stairs.

  “She tried to kill herself in the bathtub,” Mrs. McCutcheon said, panting slightly. “I heard a lot of splashing and I ran upstairs.” Her faded eyes came alive, glowed, and she whispered as one whispers about mortal sin. “She said she hated herself and she hated the child. She’s taken poison this time. I called the doctor—”

  Ernest shifted position on the porch steps and lit another cigarette. From near Agnes’ garden a mourning dove called. He looked at his pocket watch. Three o’clock. He didn’t know what time to expect her. She, for that matter, wasn’t expecting him at all, as he hadn’t told her he was coming. But she was his wife and he was paying the rent. Whether she wanted him or not, he belonged here. Thorberg’s voice haunted him, cool and reproachful. “She left you, Ernest. She left you. She will always leave you.”

  In any case, Thorberg, I’m here. I’ve come off the canal project with money in my pocket. I’ve made my decision. I’ll make a life in San Diego.

  He stood, his long, lean body brown and hard from more than a year of work in the desert. He dropped his half-smoked cigarette in the burn can and returned to the front yard where he sat down under a eucalyptus that shaded the house. Leaning back against the white bark, he stretched his legs out in front of him and ran a hand through his light brown hair, high and wavy on top and parted in the middle. This might be his last quiet moment for a while; when Agnes got home it wouldn’t be quiet anymore. That was one reason he was here, he supposed: life without Agnes was too quiet.

  “She will never enjoy sexual intercourse,” the Mexican doctor in El Centro had said. Ernest perfectly remembered the small, white moustache riding the dapper, nut-brown man’s upper lip. The abortion had cost $100. Afterwards, in the doctor’s back room, Agnes had cried hysterically, thrashing her head from side to side until he was afraid she would roll off the table. He’d tried to comfort her. He’d held her firmly and talked to her. But apparently he’d smiled once—he cursed himself, how could he have smiled?—because she yelled at him not to smile when she’d nearly died. A man has no idea of the danger a woman passes through just because she’s a woman, she’d screamed at him. She would pay for the abortion herself. No man would buy her body.

  Yet, Ernest thought, sifting the mulch of dead eucalyptus leaves through his long fingers, she let him pay for her school and train trip to San Diego, not to mention the rent. Her savings from secretarial work paid the doctor.

  “You’ll have to come to San Diego if you want to stay married to me,” she’d said. So here he was in San Diego. The doctor in El Centro had smelled of hair oil as he leaned close to Ernest and said, “Some women are not made to be wives and mothers.”

  But the doctor was wrong. Time and love was what Agnes needed. Only Ernest knew the self-doubt she carried at her core, only he understood her bright cover of bravado. He would give her confidence. She would come to love him as he loved her.

  A woman passed by on the sidewalk. She looked once at Ernest leaning against the tree, then walked on without speaking.

  When Agnes still hadn’t returned by four o’clock, he set off in a northerly direction until, to his surprise, he stood at the edge of a cliff overlooking mud flats far below. He couldn’t see the ocean to the west, but he could smell salt and seaweed. It was unexpected, this abrupt ending of the neighborhood. He followed the rim of the bay for several city blocks, then turned back toward the bungalow.

  She was outside on the porch with her back to him, washing the front window.

  “Agnes?”

  She wrung the rag out into a pail of water. “Hi,” she managed to say offhandedly, but he could tell she was shocked. Color came to her face, perhaps because she was bent over the pail. Such a pretty woman, he thought. Such frank, receptive, wide-set eyes. In spite of her flinty spirit, she looked soft and feminine. He was just getting ready to tell her how beautiful she was, how much he’d missed her, when she said,

  “They’ve made me supervisor of beginning typing, and secretary to the faculty.” She stared at Ernest, then grinned. “They pay me to edit the alumni news. I’ll be able to bring Myrtle out from Oklahoma pretty soon and pay you back for my ticket and the rent.”

  “You don’t have to pay me back,” Ernest said. “You’re my wife.” He watched Agnes wash the same window twice. I’ve missed you, he was getting ready to say. Have you missed me?

  “Come see the garden,” she said. She dropped the rag into the bucket and reached for his hand.

  “I’ve seen it,” he said. “It’s a fine garden.” But she pulled him through the side yard, her hand still wet, until they were standing at the back steps. She eyed the rows critically. “I planted late. Still, everything came up. You can take some tomatoes and peppers back with you.”

  “I’m not going back.”

  “You quit the canal?”

  “I quit.” He patted his back pocket. “I’ve saved money.”

  “I get paid every two weeks,” she stated. A breeze came up carrying dampness from the ocean, lifting the curls from her forehead. Ernest touched her hair. He kissed her. For a moment she leaned against him, but then, as if aware for the first time that her hand was still wet, made a point of drying it on her skirt.

  “There’s a student recital tonight at the school,” she said. “Do you want to come with me?”

  “All right,” he said.

  They went to the concert and listened to three violinists, four pianists, and a tuba player.

  “Come and meet some of the professors,” Agnes said. Her folding wooden chair clattered to the floor as she jumped to her feet. Ernest set it right again. She took his hand and pulled him through the crowd. He noticed that people liked her bright expression and smile; that they, too, were uplifted by her quickness and enthusiasm.

  At the reception she introduced him over and over again as “my husband.”

  In the bungalow that night she talked and talked, perched on the edge of the broken-down sofa in the living room. Later, drinking tea at the kitchen table, she still talked.

  “When I went to Tempe Normal I was afraid of everything. Now it’s different. Schoolwork doesn’t scare me anymore. I’ve signed up to audition for a play. Shakespeare!” Her laugh was part hoot, part music. “Me in a Shakespeare play!”

  “You’ll be good,” Ernest said. He’d seen her exaggerate, heard her build on a story until it was far more interesting than the actual occurrence.

  “My father was a natural actor,” she said. “He told wonderful stories. Mother always accused him of lying. Accused me, too.” She stopped talking and lit a cigarette. “And you know what?” She shook out the match. “She was right. Father did lie, and so do I.” She dropped the match in the ashtray. She looked forlorn.

  “Wait here,” Ernest said, not wanting to know about the lies. He brought his grip in from the porch and set it on the kitchen floor where it made both of them nervous. Agnes jumped up from the table and refilled the teakettle at the sink, not looking as he unstrapped the grip and felt around the edges of shirts, socks, and underwear. He found the bottle of wine and held it out to her.

  “To celebrate,” he said.

  “Celebrate what?”

  “Being together again.”
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br />   Agnes took the bottle, set it on the table between them, and turned off the flame under the teakettle. “I guess I’ll try some,” she said. “I’m not much of a drinker. My father drank for all of us.”

  “Sit down, Agnes,” he said. She took the other chair without speaking while he filled water glasses with red wine. He’d made up his mind. After months of being confused, he knew what to say and what to do. “I’ve come to live here.”

  She looked at him over the rim of her glass. “I know,” she said, and took a swallow.

  “I want to sleep beside you,” he said. He felt steady now. The bedroom down the hall seemed to Ernest as real as a person. “But I won’t touch you until you’re ready.”

  Agnes lifted her glass and studied the color of the wine against the hanging light bulb. “I will never have a child,” she said. “And I will never have another abortion.” She set the glass down hard and picked up her cigarette.

  “Never,” agreed Ernest. He lit a cigarette of his own and blew the smoke toward the dingy ceiling. “I am very sorry about what happened in El Centro.”

  “I’m moving to a boarding house,” she said. She tapped her cigarette against the ashtray. “A house is too expensive. I can wait tables for my meals.”

  Ernest straightened. “I’m paying the rent,” he said. “Didn’t you hear me? I’ve come here to live. We need a house. I don’t want to live in one room and eat with a bunch of boarders.”

  “Even before you came I’d decided to move to a boarding house.”

  “Then why didn’t you just move to a boarding house in the first place?” he snapped. Agnes said nothing. “That was when you thought you might still need me,” he said quietly.

  She ground out her cigarette. “I don’t have time to be married right now.”

  Under the bare bulb she looked older than Ernest remembered. He laughed bitterly. “Whether you like it or not, you are married. Anyway, people don’t marry or not marry because they have enough time.”

  He stood up from the table and walked to the front of the house. From the porch he had a good view of the moon. It was neither full nor new, sickle nor wedge. It was misshapen, spongy, and it was the first time in his life he hadn’t thought it beautiful.

  He returned to the kitchen. Agnes still sat at the table, drinking.

  “I came here to live,” he said. “This is where I belong.”

  She put down her glass and looked him in the eye. “I have a lot of work to do. I can’t be cooking and cleaning.”

  “You don’t have to cook and clean.”

  “Good! Because I don’t intend to!” She left for the back of the house. Ernest followed. Without an invitation he found the bedroom and lay down on the bed, careful to keep his shoes off the spread. She turned out the light and he heard her undressing. She seemed to have lost her fear. A triumphant sense of having done the right thing began to warm him again. The mattress shifted as she pulled back the cover and slipped into her side of the bed. They lay without moving.

  “What will you do if you live in San Diego?” she asked after a while.

  “Look for a job.”

  “There’s a filling station for sale on El Cajon Boulevard.”

  “I’ve never worked in a filling station.”

  “You could buy the station and hire somebody else to work the pump.”

  He considered the statement in light of Thorberg’s and, to a certain extent, his own politics. “But that’s capitalism.”

  Agnes laughed. He reached for her hand. While the shadows of the eucalyptus in the front yard wavered on the window shade, he slipped his arm under her head and urged her to face him. She hesitated, then turned beneath the covers. They lay that way for long minutes. She touched his shoulder. He took it as a sign and kissed her on the mouth, but it was too much. She gave a phony yawn, turned away, and imitated sleep.

  Somewhere in the neighborhood a cat began to moan. The moan turned into a wail, edged with lust, absurdly human. Ernest could hardly bear to listen. He wondered how many weeks, months, years he would have to lie beside his wife without touching her.

  His arm under Agnes’ head had gone to sleep. His belt bound him. Even the elastic of his socks constricted. He got up and went into the bathroom. The bridegroom in his chamber, he thought. Satire at least prevented him from seeing how pathetic he was. Despising himself, he relieved his obstructed passion. Then he walked into the dark living room where he took off his shoes and padded to the window, his eyes damp from humiliation and anger.

  Agnes was not the only actor in the house. He, himself, had play-acted well. He’d actually believed he could be married without sex. Now he knew he couldn’t. Thorberg was right: this marriage had been a mistake. He cursed himself for his stupidity, for his fully dressed state in the middle of the night. Cursed himself for purchasing a one-way ticket to San Diego. He lay down on the sofa to wait for daylight. The ugly, lop-sided moon shone in through the window that Agnes had washed twice.

  15

  Fresno, California 1916

  Ernest laid down the letter-opener and pulled out a single sheet. Agnes had started off in shorthand, scratched out the strokes, and started over.

  “Dear Ernest, I’m arriving by train this week. I’m not sure when. I’ll wait on your steps. Something terrible has happened. I’ve been fired from teaching at San Diego Normal. President Hardy found out that I am a Socialist. Agnes.”

  She arrived two days later, pale and nervous, her eyes red from weeping. She had not slept since Monday, she said, when President Hardy found her lost purse on the steps of the administration building, looked inside for a name, and found her pink Socialist card.

  She stood in the middle of Ernest’s rented room, her valise at her feet, and began to cry. “He called me into his office. He said they couldn’t have a Socialist on the faculty.” Ernest led her to his single bed where she perched on the edge and rocked back and forth as if she had a massive stomach ache. He sat down beside her and did not know how to comfort her.

  “What will I do? I have no place to go! No job!”

  “What about Myrtle?”

  Through her tears, Agnes’ face lightened. She’d brought Myrtle to San Diego and enrolled her in the normal school. It was the one bright spot in her general hopelessness. “Myrtle has a scholarship. She’s in the dormitory now. She’s going to be a teacher.” But darkness put out the light. “People think there’s political freedom in America,” she muttered.

  They went to bed that night without question, without awkwardness. Agnes let him make love to her and came close to responding. But he knew the difference now. A woman in Fresno had taught him to know the difference. He felt a pull on the taut line between this other woman and himself. With her he wasn’t left to throw out the line and then, alone, try to haul it in. At last he understood that Agnes held her sexuality in contempt and, in one form or another, would wage war against it all her life.

  “Ernest,” she said, “I want to be married now. I want to stay here. I can find a job in Fresno.” She stroked his hair and his face. She reached for his hand. It struck him as strange and unfair that at the instant she wanted him, he no longer wanted her. It struck him as odd and remarkable and perfectly true that he should now know this and be able at last to say, “I will always love you. But we will never be happy together.”

  He said no more. Later they would get the divorce he wanted. He held her through the night as she cried, dozed, and cried again. But this time the blackness of night in their bedroom was not so deep, not so empty as it had always seemed to him. Now he felt himself drawn toward a faint light, a light of his own. Outside of his will, he felt himself moving away from Agnes.

  16

  Brooklyn 1917

  Agnes could see the family resemblance in Mrs. Brundin’s slender, bony nose and blue eyes. But the woman in the doorway untying her apron was only slightly taller than Agnes and had a stocky solidity about her. Mrs. Brundin picked up the valise and Agnes stepped into the
house where Ernest and Thorberg had grown up.

  “Thorberg said you’d be here sometime today. We’ve been expecting you.” In her speech Agnes heard the Swedish inflection that she’d grown so accustomed to over the past four years. She was led into the parlor and introduced to the man who had been her father-in-law. Here was the height and slimness of his children, the blond hair and cool temperament. Mr. Brundin nodded once and said nothing.

  “Thorberg will be here soon,” said Mrs. Brundin, filling in her husband’s silence. “She is eager to see you.”

  “I want to see Thorberg.” Agnes’ words sounded rough. Too strong and direct for this quiet house. Without looking at her, Mr. Brundin picked up the valise and carried it upstairs ahead of her.

  “Thorberg will be here soon,” Mrs. Brundin repeated when Agnes returned from changing her dress in the guest room.

  “Where is she?”

  “Greenwich Village.”

  Agnes sat down beside a small table that held cups and saucers and a plate of cookies.

  “I thought you might be hungry.” Mrs. Brundin poured coffee and offered cream and sugar, then settled into her chair where she fell silent and abstracted. Mr. Brundin’s shifting weight on the floorboards above their heads made an uneasy background to the silence.

  “Thorberg makes these cookies,” Agnes said. “Swedish cookies.” It was meant to be a compliment but didn’t sound right as spoken.

  “Did you have a pleasant trip?”

  “I sat up for six nights.”

  It should have been a fine trip, seeing America sweep by, but the land had been hard and cold with snow, and she’d felt hard and cold, herself. Coffee and Swedish cookies could not warm her, not when her marriage to this woman’s son had finally ended. Not when she’d been fired from her teaching job.

  “Did you change trains?”

  “I got off in Colorado and Ohio,” Agnes answered. “And I changed in Chicago.”

  “That must have been restful.”