Cascade

by Maryanne O'Hara

  “Indeed, I would be quite interested in this as a story,” he said, his voice cordial and crisp, like biting into apples, “but I must say that photographs are what would interest people.”

  “For curiosity’s sake, possibly, but what can you show now except what is? How can you show what was and what will be gone? You can do so much more, dramatically, with an artistic rendition, Mr. Washburn. You can convey, you can portray history as well as the present, you can convey what will be in store for the town when the destruction happens.” She looked to Abby’s postcard. “I’m proposing something different, a series of postcards.” She suggested a “now” and “if” pair of two to start, describing the “if” illustration of the drowned town as horrifically as she could. “There will be a submerged church, only the steeple showing. Library books floating away, drowning tombstones. We can call it Postcards from Cascade.”

  The line went quiet. She thought she could hear the sound of papers rustling, the scratch of a fountain pen. When the pause went on too long, she said, “I can draw and paint in the kind of detailed, realistic manner you see in Norman Rockwell’s work, though of course I have my own style. You will see for yourself. You know people get such a kick out of illustrations that are realistic.”

  “I wouldn’t have time to send a writer out there,” he said slowly.

  She was quite capable of writing, she said, her heart beginning to race. “I can set the right tone: the years of threats now coming to a head. If we start right away, we’ll build tension as the town waits for the state’s decision.”

  “Well, my dear, you interest me, your idea interests me. Of course, I’d need to see a sample,” he said. “Of your artwork, your writing.”

  He asked her to hold the line and this time she heard the mouthpiece thump against something hard. When he returned his voice was firm. “Listen. I’m going with my instinct here. We’ve had to shelve a Yankees article and I’ve got a hole to fill. I’ll give you a chance—if you get your work to me by Wednesday afternoon, and I like it, I’ll run it in the Sunday issue. And maybe I’ll consider a serial. Postcards from Cascade. I like the sound of it.”

  Getting a package to him by Wednesday basically meant that she had the rest of the day to do two brand-new watercolors and write the accompanying text, but if she stayed up all night, she could manage. She would do it, she said. And then figure some way to get a package to New York.

  “We were just saying we need something new to capture the public’s interest. Will the melodrama play out over the course of the summer, do you think?”

  “It absolutely will.”

  They discussed how many words each card’s caption would have to comprise—35 tops, but the overall text could run to 350, which they would spread across the bottom of both pages. She didn’t have to worry about it being perfectly written, they could edit, but it did need to be accurate. As for the illustrations, each postcard would be seven inches across by five and a half down—larger than true postcard size, a size that would reproduce well. She could make the illustrations larger if she liked; they could scale them down. Just make sure, he said, to leave at least two inches of white space around each illustration. When he rang off, she replaced the earpiece and stared at it.

  She had done it. She had succeeded not just in getting someone interested, but in getting the editor of The American Sunday Standard interested. Her thoughts began to soar—ridiculously, ambitiously—she couldn’t help it. She imagined her postcards capturing the imaginations of readers everywhere, gallery dealers from New York calling her up. She knew, even as she fantasized, that she was being silly—fine art dealers wouldn’t seek out an illustrator, a woman illustrator at that, but the Standard was an incredible start. It was New York. It was The American Sunday Standard. She let herself bask, then she called up the expressman, who said that getting a package to New York for Wednesday meant he would have needed it in hand hours ago.

  That would be fine for future weeks, but did her no good now. She felt the first fluttering of panic, then, Abby, she thought. She could wire Abby, ask her to meet the Connecticut train at Pennsylvania Station. She could ask Boydie Shaw to ask his brother, the Connecticut conductor, to deliver the package to Abby on Wednesday. That was a lot of relying on other people, but if it didn’t work, she would get on the train herself if she had to. She called Lil back, gave her Abby’s address, and dictated a simple telegram that explained the situation. WILL SEND DETAILS TOMORROW.

  She called the drugstore but Asa was out on a delivery, so she got to work. She owned exactly two Strathmore illustration boards and she really didn’t have time to soak and stretch paper and wait for it to dry—but just in case of any mistakes, she had better prepare some paper. She carried two sheets of her smoothest and heaviest paper upstairs to the bathroom. She unfolded a clean towel, set it on the floor, set the paper on the towel, and filled the bathtub with a couple of inches of water. She pressed each sheet of paper into its own half of the tub to soak, and went straight downstairs to look over the sketches sitting on her worktable. She would use the same perspective for both scenes, she decided—a slightly elevated, all-encompassing view of the town common. Using the faintest lines, she reproduced the two sketches onto the two illustration boards.

  Back upstairs, she removed two white pillowcases from the linen closet and laid them on the floor. Then she lifted each piece of paper out of the water and set it to rest on the clean cotton until each piece of paper seemed drained and evenly saturated. She carried them, one in each hand, fingers pinching each pillowcase to each piece of paper, down to her worktable and stretched each one on a wooden board, pushing a line of thumbtacks around the four sides.

  They would take a few hours to dry taut, but they were backup, and hopefully she wouldn’t need them.

  She began to paint. She worked quickly, efficiently, with great focus, but the afternoon passed quickly, sunlight shifting east to west across the walls. Don’t panic, she told herself. She could stay up all night if she had to. When Asa came home for supper, she didn’t even hear him come in until he knocked on the studio door and asked what was going on.

  She blinked, disoriented. The room had dimmed. Then she told him, and his response made it real, his shock, his “The Standard,” his “My God, that’s a big deal,” made it real.

  “It is a big deal, isn’t it?” She stretched back in her chair, conscious of how stiff she was from sitting in the same position for so long.

  It took a moment for him to collect himself. “But why didn’t you call me?”

  She had, she said, but Mrs. Raymond said he was out on a delivery, and then she just got busy.

  He stood over her to look down on the paintings. She felt him shake his head. He rested his hands on her shoulders and massaged where they were tight from sitting. He would get himself dinner at the Brilliant, he said. In fact, he could hardly wait to get to town and tell everyone what his wife had managed to do.

  By the time he returned, a little after eleven, she’d moved only twice, once to brew tea and grab a slice of toast, and once to go to the bathroom. Enough work was done that she could stretch again, talk to Asa a bit before he headed up to bed.

  By one, the paintings were complete, but she had to push on and write the text. She sat down, pen in hand, body buzzing with fatigue, and stared at the lined paper. It was like being in school and waiting until the last minute to write a report—a terrible stuck feeling. Stuck, a perfect word, sounding how it felt. Stuck. She closed her eyes, remembered a teacher’s writing advice. Think clearly about what you want to say, then say it.

  She wrote the “now” postcard’s text first, something similar to a postcard Zeke had been selling for years at the Handy: Greetings from tiny Cascade, Massachusetts, where summer welcomes are extended to visitors seeking cool breezes, clear waters, A-class golf, and cultural diversions like the renowned Cascade Shakespeare Theatre.

  The “what if?” postcard was somber, and she gave the text the overly dramatic
tone that the popular magazines liked, starting with: Cascade, Massachusetts, is no more. The thirsty city of Boston has carved its own drinking bowl far west of the city limits.

  As introduction to both postcards, she summarized the long-standing threat—Boston’s water demands taxing the local supply, the water commission created by the legislature in 1927, the House and Senate passing the water bill back in 1928, the months of drought. That came to 339 words.

  It was two a.m. when she finished. She was pleased. The words set the right tone, and the paintings were compelling and attractive, full of the kind of tiny detail that entertained the eye. The “now” postcard depicted Cascade as a desirable, archetypal summer town. Boats sailed the river, pennants flapped in the breeze. A milk wagon rolled through town. There was a concert on the common, a church picnic, children flying kites above the Cascade Falls, and actors in Elizabethan costume on the lawn of the playhouse.

  The “what if?” postcard was meant to frighten: roiling waters at window level; rising tombstones, the foremost stone embellished with an angel holding its head in its hands. A king’s crown bobbed near the playhouse, and books floated from the open windows of the library. She signed both paintings “Desdemona Hart,” a tribute to her father, a toss of a coin into a wishing well. Who knew? These simple works might save the playhouse.

  “They’re wonderful,” Asa said next morning. “They really are, Dez.” He was somber, studying them, and when she stood beside him to look at them again, he put his arm around her. “You showed it as bad as it will be.”

  The colors had dried overnight but she worried over them anyway, and waited until the last minute to parcel them up. Then she placed them securely in between thick cardboard and taped the sides all around. She double-wrapped the entire package in brown paper, tied it with twine, and addressed it, the big black letters more solid proof: her work was going to the Standard. The Standard was expecting her work.

  There was some bustle at the train station, the arrival of more men from Boston, the ones who would be setting up the water board office out at the boys’ camp, on the north side of river. Dez counted six of them—thin men with loose wrists and baggy trousers, peering up from under the brims of their caps, careful not to look too long at anyone. But no one really blamed them. You couldn’t blame a man for taking any job he could get.

  Dez found Boydie Shaw out on the platform smoking a cigarette. What would she have done if he had not been working? You’d have gotten on that train.

  Not a problem at all, Boydie said, when she explained the situation. In fact, it was an honor. Everyone he met, up and down his route, he said, had been talking about one thing and one thing only—the absolute unfairness of it all. He took the parcel and held it close to his chest. He assured her he wouldn’t part with it until he put it into his brother’s hands, and that Frank Shaw would deliver it himself to Abby if she would just meet him under the big clock at Penn Station at exactly ten o’clock tomorrow morning, and if by chance Abby did not meet the train, Boydie said Frank would arrange for one of the porters to take it on up to the Standard’s offices. “You can make that good with me later on, if that happens.”

  Next door at the telephone exchange, Alma Webster was tucking into a jelly donut when Dez walked in. Alma jumped up, wiped her mouth with a Kleenex, and brushed her hands together, beaming. William Hart must be smiling down, she said. Smiling down from heaven.

  Dez found herself ducking her head in mild embarrassment. She wasn’t accustomed to people in town thinking she was anything special. And she was quick to point out that nothing as yet was published. Hopefully the editors would like what she had done, she said, but in the meantime she needed to make sure her work got into their hands. She filled out a telegraph blank for Abby and passed it to Alma.

  “That’s sixty-five cents to New York, plus yesterday’s, if you want to pay it now. So one dollar thirty.”

  As Dez dug in her wallet, the teleprinter began to churn out an incoming tape. Alma turned away to remove, cut, and gum the message to a blank telegram form. “Will that be all today, hon?”

  Dez started to say yes, then hesitated. Why not? “Actually no. I think I’ll send one more.” Her hand trembling with the boldness of her decision, she filled out a second blank for Jacob, a brief announcement of her news. She had never sent him anything before, but she knew his address by heart. West Bishop Street, Springfield.

  “One-fifty total,” said Alma.

  Dez pushed a dollar bill and two quarters across the counter. She just wanted him to know, that was all.

  In the morning, she bolted up from sleep, certain that Abby never received her telegrams, that Boydie’s brother lost the package, that Jacob—she had no idea what Jacob might be thinking. She was a bag of nerves all day until the doorbell rang at one and she raced to greet the Western Union boy—Popcorn’s brother, she could never remember his name—waiting on the porch. She tore the telegram in half in her eagerness to open it and had to hold the two pieces together to read the message. Abby had picked up the package and walked it up to Forty-third Street to deliver it directly into Mr. Washburn’s waiting hands. SHOWED SAMPLES OF MY OWN WORK TOO. HOPE YOU DON’T MIND.

  Dez reread the last sentence, wondering exactly what kind of samples Abby had shown. She didn’t think she minded, no, but Abby lived just blocks from the Standard’s offices; she was primed to insert herself into any particular opportunity that might present itself.

  She spent the day upstairs, washing the winter’s dirt from the windows, waxing the floors, scrubbing the bathroom with a bleach-and-powder combination. She tried not to visualize New York, or the Standard’s offices, or Mr. Washburn unwrapping and reviewing her work. She wished it was possible to have copied what she sent so she could look it over. In her mind’s eye, the paintings were not as wonderful as they seemed when she first finished them. She wished that Jacob could have looked at them, advised, judged. Had he even received the telegram, and if he had, what had he thought?

  At four thirty, when the telephone jangled twice, she slipped on the stairs in her race to answer it, landing on her knee, hard. She scrambled up and into the kitchen.

  “Hold for Gerald Washburn,” Lil said, the initial, foolish prick of disappointment swept away by the enthusiasm she heard in Mr. Washburn’s voice when Lil put him through.

  He liked the work, he said, very much. In fact, their entire editorial team was quite enthusiastic. “I’m thinking, Miss Hart, that your idea for a serial might be a good one. We’ll build the tension and when the time comes for Cascade to be chosen, we’ll have the country biting its nails.”

  And that was the hitch. His publisher, Mr. Washburn said, was willing to go along with the serial if the imminent destruction of Cascade was certain.

  “I thought our slant might be one that would root for saving Cascade.”

  “Well, you made that sound unlikely. You drew it unlikely.”

  Had she?

  “Is it? Because it’s a great human story. The fact that our readers will be able to say to themselves, well, we may have lost our jobs, our daily bread, but we still have our homes, our towns, beneath our feet. That’s the angle we want to take.”

  “I see.”

  “If it’s not really a threat, if it’s all going to blow over, then we’d rather not invest the pages in it. Because if they take the other town, well, there’s obviously not the same kind of drama, as you yourself implied, what with library shelves emptied, and a hotel abandoned. I’m a bit confused here.”

  The late-afternoon sun cast long shadows on the linoleum. She rubbed her knee where a bruise seemed already to be forming. He was waiting for her response. Of course the chances were high that the water board would choose Cascade—and of course she didn’t want it to, but if Cascade was fighting a losing game, there really was no sense in her losing an opportunity like this.

  She hoped no one was listening in on the line. No Lil, no Alma. “Actually, Mr. Washburn, I know someone inside th
e water commission,” she said quietly, too quietly. She was forced to repeat herself when Mr. Washburn asked her to speak up.

  “This man I know on the water commission. Well, he said that the state is just going through the motions.” Stan had practically said so.

  “Well then,” Mr. Washburn said. “I’m making a gut-level decision here to go with this, but I like what you did. I think it’ll be a great feature. I’ll be in touch with you, probably on Monday—let you know the reaction we get. Assuming it’s well received, we’ll go ahead. All right? In the meantime, draw the next set and get them to me. We’ll pay you no matter what. And if it’s all a go-ahead, then when the time comes that the town is dismantled, we’ll dispatch a photographer, too. Expand the story, make it even bigger.”

  She placed the receiver back on the box. It was all happening so fast. Her paintings, even now, were being rushed into production, printed and duplicated, ready to be shipped off all over America. In three days she would see her work in The American Sunday Standard. But the Standard’s slant on the story of Cascade was going to be one of impending doom.

  14

  The days leading up to her issue’s release were the days that would, in retrospect, be hard to remember distinctly. Dez would remember agitation, and pacing, watching the sun rise over Pine Point. She would remember the banjo clock chiming the hours, the morning milk delivery turning into the morning mail delivery turning into the afternoon mail, the afternoon paper, and then the sun setting all over again. Thursday there was a slight, foolish hope that lessened as the day wore on that Jacob might show up. At sunset, she escaped the stuffiness of the kitchen and stood on the porch. A breeze blew up from the water, a strong, head-clearing breeze. It was just as well he never came, she thought. She was a foolish woman with a good husband, a husband who had suggested a celebratory meal at the Brilliant on Saturday evening, a husband who was so busy taking care of the town that he had called to say he couldn’t make it home for supper.