The Sisters of Summit Avenue

by Lynn Cullen

  Later, he spoke of going down in the mines of West Virginia. He told of watching his pals get crushed in cave-ins, and of being owned by the mining company store. He hinted that he’d done something terrible to get away. That a man would go to extremes to get ahead thrilled Ruth a little. Whatever it was that he had done to arrive at her farm, she was glad that he’d done it. At least he was taking control of his life.

  The clank of cowbells lazed from the pasture. Nick rubbed strands of JoJo’s dull mane between his fingers. “I am happy to help. You should have a nice visit. Have a good time with Betty Crocker.”

  She felt the familiar zing that followed the meeting of their eyes. She was not going to let mention of her sister ruin it. “She’s only one of a bunch of women playing Betty.”

  “I know, Root. You told me. Please tell her thank you from an admirer.”

  Ruth frowned at the windmill clattering next to the barn. Thanks for what? On the radio, America’s beloved and completely made-up (though “Betty” never bothered to tell you that) expert on baking was the patron saint of women on a manhunt. In between giving out recipes, Betty tipped off her followers on how to win a husband and keep him, not only by taking the proverbial shortcut through his stomach, but by keeping themselves attractive and interesting. Betty, with her on-air interviews with bachelors about what they looked for in a wife and her ten-cent booklets full of man-pleasing recipes, implied that men were like dumb beasts running free on the plains, unaware that they were being stalked, until, bang! they were shot down by “Apricot Topsy-Turvy” or “Peeps and Squeals Sandwiches” served by a perky huntress in an apron. She wondered how her sister could live with herself, contributing to this nonsense. Of course, Sister June had always been a big game hunter.

  Nick laid the mare’s mane flat then stroked it. “Anyhow, I told John that I’d take care of everything while she was here.”

  The buoyancy leaked out of her. She was aware that John was in the house, essentially paralyzed in bed, and that she was despicable for yearning for another man while her husband was in such a state. She knew that John had only been trying to be a successful farmer, with the best stock and the best equipment and using the best methods, an ambition that took him to St. Louis eight years ago to purchase an especially fine bull. He had not tried to contract a case of sleeping sickness while he was there. It had not been in his plans to be one of the victims of the worldwide epidemic of what her sister’s show-off husband called encephalitis lethargica or “von Economo disease.”

  Call it what you wanted, it killed millions of people, but those millions who survived often had an even worse fate than death. They became living statues, doomed to fall asleep before they could finish actions as simple as answering a question, raising a hand in greeting, or taking a bite to eat. When John awoke from a five-day coma during which Ruth had barely clung to her pregnancy with the twins, he could rarely do more than open his eyes. He would remain like that, largely helpless, these eight nightmarish years.

  “You ‘told John,’ ” she said flatly. She didn’t know which infuriated her most, Nick talking to John, pretending that John was whole though he lay there like a haybale, or Nick reporting to John like John was the boss when she was the one actually running the place.

  She suspected that she was going out of her mind.

  A hot breeze, oiled with the scent of cattle, kicked up the dirt. “I had a hard time starting the tractor yesterday.” She couldn’t keep the irritation out of her voice. “You might want to look into that.” She turned on her heel. She could feel him watching her walk away.

  “Root.”

  She hesitated, then turned.

  Below his worn chambray shirtsleeves, thick veins snaked under the fine taut skin of his crossed forearms. “Get Betty Crocker to bake me a cake, okay?”

  She was tired. She was lonely. She hurt so bad that she could howl.

  She wiped at her brow, then walked back. “What kind?”

  She was only thirty.

  THREE

  Indiana-Michigan Line, 1934

  In a stuffy upstairs bedroom in Ruth’s house, her mother braced herself against the striped ticking mattress of the stripped bed and got up from the floor, one sore knee at a time. She still wasn’t used to her knees betraying her. They had swelled up and gone bad for no good reason the day after she’d turned sixty last July. And she had just been thinking then how young sixty felt when you actually got there. Felt just like forty only with no sleep. And cracked teeth. And a neck like a used paper sack. And the sinking realization that there really was an end to all this.

  Once upright, she blinked away the tadpoles writhing across her vision to contemplate her quarry: a shoebox from Montgomery Ward’s. Although she had important work to do, she could not resist scraping the dented cardboard lid from the box and then rustling the small brass coffer from the browning tissue paper. The bumps and curves of the cherubs embossed on its surface were as familiar to her fingertips as the bones of her own face. She wound the key on the bottom then pushed the delicate brass knob.

  The oval lid popped open; up sprang a little bird. It twitched back and forth on its stem, jerking turquoise feathered wings and snapping its beak as it whistled metallically.

  A door slammed downstairs.

  She palmed down the lid and shoved the little box under her saggy pillow, instantly regretting how roughly she’d handled it. The automaton was very valuable, the most expensive gift she had ever gotten—her secret nest egg, if she could bring herself to sell it.

  “Hello?” she called.

  When no one answered, she sucked in a long breath, then let it out. Back to work. Junie was coming the day after tomorrow and Dorothy had to move out of the room. She’d already washed the bed, bleaching the sheets then soaking them in bluing, and not stinting on either, just like Mrs. Lamb had insisted upon when Dorothy worked for her. She’d crisp them tomorrow with a set of hot irons. June and her doctor-husband were used to living in a mansion, so everything needed to be nice. She herself would sleep on the davenport.

  Brushing under her chin with her thumb—she was engaged in a running battle with the single stiff hair that had recently begun staking its ground there—she accounted for her nightie, her church dress, her “play” dress (she had her old play dress on to save her newer one), her spare slip, and her bed cap, all folded and in a row on her bed next to her good pair of shoes and the empty Montgomery Ward box. She needed a sack to put them all in. Ruth kept a stack of sacks, an inheritance from her dad’s grocery store back in Fort Wayne, downstairs in the pantry.

  It had been a nice grocery store, although Dorothy thought it should be called “William’s” instead of the more common-sounding “Bud’s”—she never called her husband that, any more than she called him “Rowdy Dowdy,” the ridiculous nickname only he ever called himself.

  How the store worked was how all the good stores did: his customers placed their orders by telephone. The “credit and delivery system” (the official term for it) was the most up-to-date way of doing business in the twenties. William had always kept his eye out for improvements since taking over the business from his sister Edna when she died of a bleeding ulcer the first year of their marriage. It wasn’t a job that William had ever wanted, but it was there when they had needed it and he had made a go of it.

  Dorothy could still see their employee Ned scrambling up the ladder, his jug-ears nearly grazing the rails on either side, as William read off the order. Then away Ned would race in the wagon behind JoJo, or later, in the Ford panel truck. He took payment upon delivery—or not, if customers took advantage of “Rowdy Dowdy’s” tender heart. William would have given credit to Al Capone, if he’d told William that his child was ailing. Few customers felt the need to come into the store and buy their own goods. It just wasn’t done that way.

  Then Piggly Wiggly came to town. It spread like a cancer, first to Broadway, then to Columbia Avenue, then Calhoun Street, until a spoor took root at Crescent
and State—just two blocks away from Bud’s. Piggly Wiggly placed ads in the newspapers and city directory, bragging that they could save you “bushels of money” if you came in yourself and shopped. Self-service, they called it. The modern way to buy.

  Piggly Wiggly claimed that not only was choosing one’s own goods smart, but it was fun. They invited people to come in and find all the foods they had heard about on the radios that were suddenly in everyone’s parlors: Good-to-the-Last-Drop Maxwell House Coffee, Breakfast-of-Champions Wheaties, Carnation From-Contented-Cows Condensed Milk. There was Bing Crosby crooning about the glories of Woodbury Soap. Rudy Vallee swearing by Fleischmann’s Yeast. Even on June’s program, Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air, Betty warned that you’d better use Gold Medal “Kitchen-Tested” Flour if you wanted her recipes to taste right. All of the radio stars were telling you what you just had to have, even before you knew you needed it.

  Already strained from watching customer after customer, neighbor after neighbor, and friend after friend turn their back on him and go to the Piggly Wiggly in search of those recommended brands—even good old Ned with his big jug ears—William’d had a heart attack while installing a checkout counter in his store. People said that Piggly Wiggly killed William, but that wasn’t who. It was the radio.

  Movement outside the bedroom window caught her eye. Ruth was out in the barnyard with that Nick. Dorothy had been reluctant to let Ruth talk her into taking over hanging up the wash, and for good reason. Look at her, smiling as she talked to him, and in her Sunday shoes, too. Dorothy recognized that kind of smile. She’d seen it in her own reflection in the Lambs’ silver teapot as she was polishing it, those thirty-some years ago, when Edward had slid up to her in the dining room and blown in her ear, before slipping away when he heard his mother coming. She knew how this would end, unless it was stopped right now.

  Dorothy bustled downstairs as fast as her bum knees and the heat would allow, rubbing her chest to ease the crabbing inside. Lunch, she could make lunch, get Ruth back in the house that way.

  In the parlor she switched on the radio and turned the volume clear to the right. She didn’t wait for it to finish warming up before trundling out to the kitchen, where she banged the pan repeatedly on the stovetop, making the loudest racket possible—a din Ruth was sure to hear through the screened window.

  Then Dorothy realized that she might be awakening John, who had a view of the barn from his bed. Everyone seemed to think he was too sleepy to see things, but she knew better. He saw.

  Moaning, she cranked open a can of Campbell’s Tomato Soup and then plopped the orange glob into the pitted aluminum pan. She scraped out the remainder with a wooden spoon, irritated by how long it took her to do the simple task, then yanked the pitcher of milk from the icebox. Unlike her daughter June with her “Frigidaire ’34” with its miracle “Ice Cube Trays That Don’t Stick,” Ruth had no refrigerator. The house wasn’t even wired for electricity.

  Dorothy glugged milk into the soup can. When some splashed onto the white enameled tabletop, she plunked down the pitcher and groaned. How could she tell her daughter that relations with a man who can’t promise himself to you could alter your life, when she had never been able to tell her girls even the simplest things? She had never even told them that she loved them.

  The back screen door banged. Dorothy pushed upright as Ruth not so much walked but drifted through the back porch and into the kitchen. Ruth’s radiance dimmed when she noticed Dorothy.

  “Mother, why’s the radio up so loud?” Her frown deepened. “And why are you just standing there?”

  Dorothy dabbed her eye with the bib of her apron. “Got milk in my eye.”

  Ruth didn’t question this. She sighed, then floated from the kitchen.

  Dorothy followed, her cat, Venus, trailing behind her. “Ruth!”

  Ruth stopped at the stairs.

  Dorothy had seen that Nick-person looking down at her daughter. He hadn’t touched Ruth. He hadn’t needed to.

  “Lunch will be ready in a minute!”

  In the parlor, “When the red, red robin comes bob, bob bobbin’ along” chugged from the radio. Ruth pushed away from the stairs, flounced over to the radio set, and snapped it off.

  “I hate that song.”

  “I’ll get John’s tray!” Dorothy exclaimed, hustling behind her to the radio and back. “You can take it to him!”

  “You always feed him lunch, Mother. I always feed him dinner.” She put a foot on a riser and bent down to rub under the strap of her dress pump. “I can’t bear these shoes another minute.”

  “I think it would be nice if you took him lunch today.”

  “Please.” Ruth gripped the cracked wooden ball topping the newel post. “Will you.”

  A strangled yodel slipped from Dorothy’s mouth as Ruth started back upstairs. “Ruthie!”

  Ruth stopped.

  Words jammed in Dorothy’s mouth. Warn her! Tell her!

  “You’ve got to take John his lunch!”

  Ruth drew in a breath. “I can’t.” She hiked on up.

  “Ruthie!” Dorothy sagged against the banister. She had no power over the girl. She never had.

  She straightened slowly, feeling it in her knees.

  But she knew who did.

  FOUR

  Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1934

  Several hours after the mother and daughter had left with dried eyes and a picnic basket containing a dozen signed Betty Crocker publications and a beagle pup, the Bettys went to lunch. Pushing through the brass doors of the Grain Exchange, they emerged into the clear Minneapolis sunlight with their lunch tins and baskets. They set off in chatty twos or threes, their white heels scraping the sidewalk as they aimed toward the benches in the shadow of the pink granite clock tower of City Hall, just across the street. This part of downtown had been swept clean of hoboes and homeless families by the police; now an officer in jodhpurs and polished boots held up the Buicks, Fords, and Hudsons whining down Fourth Street for the Bettys to pass. The girls crossed, waving at him with white-gloved hands and calling their thank-yous.

  June kept walking as they claimed their places.

  “Where are you going?” called Sue from Missouri.

  Janet from Hector, Minnesota, spread her white skirt over the planks of her bench. “Aren’t you going to join us?”

  “Oh, let her go.” Darlene took a sandwich wrapped in wax paper from her tin. “She’s probably going to meet her dreamy husband at the hospital and lock herself in his office with him. I know that I would if he were mine.”

  June laughed as if that were actually a possibility. She continued in the direction of the hospital, her purse and lunch basket hanging neatly from her arm.

  Her car was parked on a side street a few blocks away. Richard had gotten her the Hupmobile for Christmas. None of the other Bettys knew about it. With their husbands not working, most of them could barely afford streetcar fare to and from work, let alone their own automobile. There was no need to rub it in.

  At the car, she heaved herself up from the running board, slid beneath the mahogany steering wheel, and then paused to look out over the enormous black coffin of the hood. What on earth was Odd Dorothy’s daughter doing in such a flashy barge?

  Well, enjoy it. Wasn’t this what she’d always wanted? To be a cut above?

  She started the car then maneuvered the fat whitewalls from the curb. Sealed within the comfort of her glassed-in case, she glided past sign-carrying workers calling for a strike; past the railyards, where a watchman flogged a bony fellow who was trying to hop a train; past a stand of weeds along the river, where a woman killed a turtle with a butcher knife, soup for her family tonight.

  June turned onto a dirt road, then bumped along through brush until she reached the shadowy, hard-packed shore beneath the Lake Street bridge. As cars rumbled across the steel Erector Set expanse overhead, two dirty little girls milled around a lean-to cobbled together from a rusty Model T and corrugated tin. T
heir mother hunched on a folding chair outside of it, nursing a baby.

  June stopped her car. Dust swirled around the fenders as she rolled down the window. She nodded at the mother as the girls trotted up.

  “Hi, ladies!” she exclaimed. “Maeve! Did you lose a tooth?”

  The younger child bared her empty socket to show her.

  “I’ve already lost six,” bragged the bigger girl.

  June handed the younger girl the lunch basket. The lid was thrown open and wax paper torn off before June could pull back into the car. The girls peeled the strips of bacon from the waffles and stuffed them in their mouths.

  June’s chest ached as she watched them eat. “Do you girls like bacon?”

  They nodded, chewing.

  “Apparently so do a lot of men.”

  The older girl wrinkled her nose. “Who cares about men?”

  Little Maeve puffed out the front of her dress. “I don’t care about men.”

  “Well,” June said lightly, “you might care about them, sometimes. Some are very nice. My dad was very nice.”

  “So was mine.” The older one, Ethel, spoke around her bacon. “He bounced me on his legs. He said ‘Heebie, Jeebie, Heebie-Jeebie-Jeebie!’ and then he bounced me off.”

  “He was funny,” Maeve agreed.

  “Girls,” called their mother, “are you bothering Miss Whiteleather?”

  “Nooooo,” they called back.

  “Better leave some for your mother,” said June.

  “Okay,” they chimed in unison.

  She backed the car down the rutted road, plotting how she might take the girls shopping for clothes without offending their mother, who bristled at a whiff of charity. She had noticed the family on her way home from work two weeks earlier, and now visiting the girls was a highlight of her day. Their cheerfulness—and their pride—in the face of their precarious situation was both touching and familiar. She saw herself and Ruth at their age, pretending to speak a foreign language to each other while prancing through the nicest department store in town, hilariously pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes, or so they thought. Was there a pluckier creature alive than a seven-year-old girl?