‘‘She never wanted more than a half cup. She’d send me to spill it out if there was more, and it had to be hot as blazes. Then she’d let it cool off before she drank it.’’
‘‘She wanted you more than she did the tea,’’ Mary told him.
Denny shrugged. If it was so he didn’t understand it.
Mary did not lie long abed on these harvest days— or many others, for that matter—but with morning tea and afternoon tea and the cup she would say she was perishing for in the evening, she learned enough about Denny to know why he had come to her. The last of four boys and by ten years the youngest, he could remember his father saying he should have drowned him the day he was born, the runt of the litter. Until he discovered, when Denny started to school with the sisters, that he had a voice the nuns called sacred. ‘‘He’d hire me out for weddings or funerals for a dollar or two. He’d give me a nickel and spend the rest before my mother got her hand out.’’
It was not the first time Mary had heard a story like it.
‘‘Would you like to hear me sing the ‘Dies Irae’?’’ he offered.
‘‘I would not.’’
Most of Mary’s necessities were obtained through barter, and while she was frugal she was not miserly. But Denny wasn’t long with her before she began to calculate the toll it took of her preserves and garden produce to bring home a pound of bacon. The first time Donel Rossa stopped by after the night of Dennis’ arrival, she broached the possibility of finding a job for Denny in the valley.
‘‘So you’ve decided to keep him,’’ Rossa said. ‘‘You’re a soft touch, Mary.’’
Mary caught something in his tone too intimate for her taste. ‘‘Did you have something to do with him coming, Donel?’’
‘‘Whatever makes you ask a question like that?’’
‘‘It struck me he might be something else that came with my pension.’’
Rossa found a place clear of their feet to spit. ‘‘You’re sharp as a tack this morning, Mary.’’
‘‘I should be. I’ve sat on a few.’’
Rossa laughed. He toed the spittle into the ground. ‘‘You know, Mary, the holy water is going to run dry. I’m not saying the state’ll go dry. God forbid. The Dutchmen have a powerful thirst for their beer, and they’ve a throttle on the legislature.’’
Mary pulled him over to the bench and hung on to his arm. ‘‘Sit down here and tell me what you’re saying.’’ She was never long on patience.
‘‘It’s time I’m thinking about, time and change. I have a horse that climbs the fence whenever I start up the truck. He goes wild. But any day now I’ll go out and see him nuzzling the radiator and the next thing you know, he’ll be willing to go tandem with it. It’s what the wear of time does to man and beast.’’
‘‘You’re an old fart, Donel.’’ Only Mary could say it with affection. She pointed to where Denny was crawling from one currant bush to another, at the bottom of the field. ‘‘He’ll be coming up from there any minute. I sent him back to strip them clean. Now he’ll be counting every currant he puts in the basket.’’
‘‘Have you sent him around the town to make inquiries?’’
‘‘He’ll need more starch in him for that,’’ Mary said.
‘‘Well, there isn’t a hell of a lot of that in the family . . . Ah, now, Mary, I’ve offended you,’’ Rossa said, for her chin shot out. ‘‘Michael had the heart of a lion. What about Norah? Isn’t there work she could put him to?’’
‘‘She’d eat him alive!’’
Rossa changed the subject in a hurry. ‘‘The nuns brought him up pretty well, didn’t they?’’
‘‘He can do his sums,’’ Mary said. ‘‘He’s not a child, you know, and he’s strong as a bull. He was digging ditches for the city of Chicago till they ran out of money.’’
‘‘I hate to tell you what that qualifies him for on the farm, Mary.’’
She grunted. ‘‘And isn’t the world full of it?’’
Denny came up as Rossa was about to leave. His face was as red as the currants. ‘‘Do you want to do a day’s work for me on the farm now and then?’’ Rossa asked him. ‘‘A dollar a day and your grub.’’
‘‘On the farm,’’ Dennis said, as though to be sure.
‘‘Didn’t I say on the farm? Would I be sending you to Australia? And you’ll have to walk the five miles or hitch a ride on the road.’’
‘‘I could pay Aunt Mary for my keep,’’ Denny reasoned aloud but in no hurry to take up the offer.
Why? Mary wondered, when half the country was out of work. And why the ‘‘Aunt’’ Mary, which had been dropped after the first day?
‘‘That’s the idea, lad,’’ Rossa said as though to a child.
It wasn’t starch Denny needed. It was yeast. But Mary was pleased, too, at the prospect of getting him out from under her feet now and then, as long as it wasn’t to Norah.
Norah had no great opinion of herself, though most people thought the opposite. Trying to get Denny out of her mind, she kept at the sewing machine until her eyes were bleary and her foot going numb on the treadle. She excused her back-and-forth trips to the window as the need to relieve cramps in her leg. She said the Hail Mary every time but she knew very well that her true intention was to catch sight of Denny going about his chores. She even numbered his trips to the outhouse, and noted when he carried Mary’s pot with him, though it turned her stomach to think of it. Not often, but often enough to give her a surge of pleasure, and only when Mary was not in sight, he’d send a little salute her way—the tip of his fingers to his forehead to her. Sometimes she left the window open and sang while she worked, harking back to songs of her childhood even as Margaret had to ‘‘The Last Rose of Summer.’’ It wasn’t true that she despised Ireland. That was Mary belittling her. It was Ireland that let her go. Mary was the one with a passion for America.
But this was Norah’s busiest season. The hand-me-downs were patched and freshened at home, but in most Hopetown families the oldest child got a new outfit at the start of the school year, and as often as not Norah was chosen over Sears, Roebuck to provide the girls’ dresses. No one, at least to Norah’s knowledge, ever remarked on the similarity between Norah’s new dresses and last year’s fashion in the Sears catalogue.
The morning Rossa came by and talked with Mary and then with Denny, Norah guessed rightly what it was about. She intercepted Denny on his way into town for Mary that afternoon. ‘‘Will you be going to work for Donel?’’ she asked outright, to be sure of a yes or no before Mary interfered. ‘‘He’s a hard man, Dennis.’’
‘‘I was thinking that myself and I’ll have to walk five miles before starting the day’s work.’’
‘‘Doing what, do you know, Denny?’’
‘‘It’s on the farm. I made sure of that.’’
Where else? Norah wondered, but before she could ask, Mary was at the barn door shouting to him.
‘‘Amn’t I waiting for the sugar? Get on with you, man.’’
Dennis went on and Norah sought out Mary in her kitchen. ‘‘I’ve sugar enough to let you have five pounds, Mary.’’
‘‘He’ll be back in time.’’ She was picking over a great basin of currants, her hands stained bloodred. ‘‘Thank you, anyway,’’ an afterthought.
Norah settled on a kitchen chair she almost overflowed. It creaked with her weight.
‘‘You’re fading away to a ton,’’ Mary said with pleasure.
Where the inspiration came from Norah would never know. The thought just came up and out. ‘‘I’ve decided it’s time to get rid of all those things of theirs in the cellar.’’ ‘‘They’’ or ‘‘theirs’’ always referred to the couple who had brought her over from Ireland. ‘‘There’s some I kept for you, if you remember, when you first wanted a place of your own. You might want to take a look at them now.’’
A little twitch of Mary’s nose betrayed her interest and Norah pressed on. ‘‘The wash boiler—pure copper—I
ought to have sold it,’’ she began, ‘‘and the mirror. It wouldn’t hurt you to take a look at yourself now and then.’’
As soon as the jelly was sealed in jars, Mary took Dennis with her to Norah’s. They went first to the cellar door, but Norah waved them around. It was his first time in her house, and she didn’t even ask him to wipe his feet.
Dennis’ great dark eyes took in everything Mary gave him time to see. She nudged him on with the knob of her cane. He wasn’t a dumb animal, Norah thought, but she smiled and bit her tongue. Above all she wanted him to see the piano. Mary shoved him past the parlor door.
Norah had to lift the door to the storage room where it sagged on the hinges and scraped the floor.
‘‘Maybe I could fix that,’’ Denny said.
‘‘Some rainy day when Mary has nothing for you to do.’’
‘‘That’ll be the day,’’ Mary said, but by then her curiosity was picking up and she was the first into the room, where there was only a whisper of light from the ground-level window. Norah pulled the electric switch. Mary let out a squeak of pleasure at things she thought on sight she had a use for. Then she settled down to a careful selection. One glance at her own reflection eliminated the mirror. Nor did she want Norah’s junk. Denny figured the most in her calculation, of course. The clothes wringer, for example, would have to be fastened to the sink board in the kitchen, where the only running water in her place came in. She’d not have needed it for her bits and pieces, but laundering a man’s wear could put a terrible strain on her knotty hands. Denny carted the wringer to the cellar door. Norah, her arms folded, watched. With an eagle’s eye, Mary thought. ‘‘Couldn’t you go and sit down somewhere?’’
‘‘I’d be willing to help,’’ Norah said.
‘‘Isn’t that what I’m talking about?’’
On Denny’s next trip between the storeroom and the cellar door, he brought back an old kitchen chair he’d seen near the furnace. He even dusted it with his bare hand. Norah sat.
‘‘God save the queen!’’ Mary cried.
Norah’s eyes and Denny’s met, even as at the party, but not this time by accident. What she felt was like an electric shock. She was sure they had struck a bond.
Mary thumped her stick against a humpbacked trunk that stood beneath the window.
Norah snapped out of her reverie. ‘‘Leave that!’’
Mary all but clapped her hands. ‘‘Is it the bones of a lover?’’ She’d read the story long ago. ‘‘Watch out for yourself, Denny!’’
She was enjoying herself, Norah thought, making fun of her. That was Mary. Her own thoughts turned to what she could do or say that might engage Dennis. There wasn’t much left in the room—the big wardrobe, the mirror, some picture frames she’d thought she’d use, but hadn’t, the trunk, full enough, but not of bones, and the rusted garden tools even Mary wouldn’t want. And here among them, half shrouded by an old umbrella, where she herself had hidden it one winter’s night, was the old man’s shotgun.
Mary hobbled to the outside door with a yardstick to measure whether they could get the wardrobe out that way. She had begun to think of making a room of his own for Denny. There was room enough in the barn, sure.
Norah got up and took the chair back herself to where it had come from. When she returned she saw that Denny had discovered the gun. He was bent over, trying to see it better, but not daring to touch. ‘‘Aunt Norah?’’ He looked round, his eyes jumping out of his head.
‘‘Not now,’’ she said, and chanced a wink.
He winked back.
There was no way Denny could transport the big cupboard from house to barn without help. Mary cursed the rheumatism and Norah refused to make a fool of herself trying. It was decided between the sisters that the wardrobe could wait till Donel Rossa’s next visit. Mary and Denny left by the cellar door. Norah locked it, turned off the light, and went upstairs. She wasn’t sure what had happened to her, but whatever it was had never happened to her before.
Mary put up her first crop of tomatoes by the end of the week. Dennis kept the kitchen range at top heat under the copper boiler, and though Mary denied her need for the clock, just to be sure she set the alarm for each step. The sweat ran down both their faces, and when a great drop fell from the tip of Mary’s nose into a bowl of tomatoes she cackled, ‘‘Sure, they needed more salt.’’
In the evening they sat at the kitchen table where Mary marked labels ‘‘Mary’s Best’’ for the jars she would seal with a final turn before bedtime. Hope Valley Market would take all she could provide. Through the open window they could hear an occasional car go by and the singsong chatter of katydids, and closer overhead, the frantic buzz of an insect caught on the sticky tape that dangled from the light. Sometimes music wafted their way from Norah’s radio.
Dennis tilted back in his chair though she’d asked him not to do it. He sat upright suddenly and, pinching his nose, began to sing, ‘‘ ‘I’m just a vagabond lover . . .’ ’’
‘‘My God,’’ Mary said, ‘‘where did you learn that?’’
‘‘From the radio. Didn’t you ever hear Rudy Vallee?’’
‘‘I’d just as soon not,’’ Mary said. ‘‘Try it without the clothespin.’’
He grinned, cleared his throat, and sang it in his own voice. The voice of the child she remembered was gone, but there was a deep, sad music in what she heard.
‘‘Do you miss the city, Denny?’’
‘‘No.’’
‘‘Neither do I,’’ she said. It seemed many yesterdays since she’d come out from Chicago on the train with Donel Rossa to Norah’s chilly welcome.
Both sisters were alongside the road when the threshing combine on its way to Rossa’s came rattling through town and stopped for Denny. Men aboard the last rig gave him a hand up, and all of them waved at Norah and Mary, who watched until the blinding sunrise washed them out of sight. Children, up at dawn to follow the caravan through town, went home to breakfast and the sisters turned into their own walkways. Mary resented Norah’s being there, but it was not in her heart to part without a word.
‘‘Will you have a cup of tea? The kettle’s on the back of the stove.’’
Norah would rather have gone home. More and more she felt the presence of Dennis to be everywhere in Mary’s house. She even avoided seeing the cot where he slept in the back kitchen. But what she said was, ‘‘Let me close the front door and I’ll be over.’’
‘‘Oh, for the love of God,’’ Mary said. Doors were anathema to her.
Norah pulled a chair out from the kitchen table.
‘‘I’m leery of that one,’’ Mary said from the stove. ‘‘I can’t break him of the habit of teetering on the back legs of a chair. You’d think they were rockers.’’
‘‘I won’t teeter,’’ Norah said. The chair creaked when she sat down. ‘‘And I won’t be staying more than a minute.’’
Mary brought the teapot and swirled the tea before she poured it. It was on the tip of her tongue to say This’ll put hair on your chest, but she held it back. She was trying to cure herself of saying the common things like it she had picked up God only knew from where.
Norah helped herself to sugar. Whatever milk Mary had was always on the turn in summer. She could have kept it in the well like the couple used to. ‘‘Did you want the old trunk in the storeroom badly, Mary? I could empty it out.’’
‘‘What would I be putting in it?’’
‘‘And what will you put in the cupboard when you get it over?’’
‘‘Won’t he be getting clothes one of these days and needing a place to hang them?’’
Norah was sure now she shouldn’t have come. She felt hurt, pushed out. She wanted to push back. ‘‘I’ve been going through the things I’ve kept in the trunk all these years—I was thinking I’d make a rag rug of them someday but I never did—her petticoats and his flannel shirts. The shirts would fit Denny, you know. I could shorten the sleeves for him.’’
Ma
ry’s face shriveled up like an old woman’s and the spittle sprayed from her mouth before she could speak. ‘‘Keep his filthy shirts to yourself. They’re all yours. Do you think I’d let him put them on his back?’’
‘‘It was a long time ago, Mary.’’
‘‘If it was forever, would I forget it?’’
‘‘I know how you feel.’’
‘‘You know how I feel! There’s more feeling in this teapot than in you.’’
Norah struggled to get up. ‘‘I don’t have to take this from you, Mary. I could turn you out if I wanted and nobody’d say I did wrong. It wasn’t my fault he made a strumpet out of you. Didn’t you beg them to bring you over? ‘I’ll do anything that wants doing,’ you wrote. I read them your letters—she couldn’t read—and I remember him sitting there laughing to himself. ‘Isn’t she the lively one now?’ he’d say. He treated me like dirt from the day you arrived. The two of you making fun of me behind my back. I never told on you. I never complained to her, but she knew. She’d sit at the sewing machine and cry to herself.’’
At the mention of tears her own eyes filled, not at what she remembered, but at the feeling of emptiness building inside her. ‘‘I’m trying to help you if only you’d let me. I’ve tried ever since the day you came back. Even Father Conway says I could not have done more.’’
‘‘Nor cared less,’’ Mary said. ‘‘Will you go home out of here, Norah? You’re like a great, fat hen, scratching everything into your nest. Cluck, cluck, cluck. Can’t you leave him and me alone?’’
‘‘You think you own him body and soul,’’ Norah blurted out. ‘‘You’d hire him out to your bootlegger friend, but you wouldn’t let him wash a window in my house.’’
Mary put her hand up to shield her face. Norah looked about to strike her. And Norah had never wanted more to hit her across the mouth. But she pulled back and made her way toward the door. She stopped and looked round at a burst of laughter from Mary.
Sisters On the Case Page 30