The Sisters of Summit Avenue

by Lynn Cullen

  Richard pushed away his plate. When Adela strode to the table, he drew in a long breath, then grinned up at her. “What are you making over there?”

  “Mincemeat pie, sir.”

  Richard shook his head in admiration. “Adela, where have you been all my life?” He caught June looking at him. “What?”

  Do you feel it, Richard? Are you on the cliff, too? She tried to smile. “Nothing.”

  FIVE

  Indiana-Michigan Line, 1934

  Dorothy was picking up the tray with John’s bowl of tomato soup when she felt a touch on her leg. She jerked with a bleat and a slop of tangerine. Venus glared up at her, as if it were Dorothy’s fault that the cat was hanging from Dorothy’s stocking by a claw.

  “Don’t scare me like that.” Her heart still pumping, Dorothy put down the tray, bent her balky knees, unhooked the cat, then lifted the animal to her face. She forgave Venus for putting a hole in her cotton stocking, just as she then forgave her for immediately twisting around and sinking her talons into the meat of Dorothy’s shoulder.

  There was little for which Dorothy wouldn’t forgive the animal—maybe walking across a photo that Dorothy had just tinted for Cryder’s Photography Studio in Fort Wayne. For good reason Mr. Cryder gave Dorothy all his important brides. She spent whole days painstakingly perfecting each picture and you didn’t get those days back. Yet, she did not mind buckling down at her little desk with her Marlene solution, tubes of paint, and cotton swabs each day. Making her tinting money was important. That, and doing the family laundry, cooking the meals, washing the dishes, mending the clothes, canning tomatoes, carrying bathwater, picking up lint from the floor, sweeping the porch, and all the other things that made her yearn for rest, kept Ruth from throwing her out. She had a contribution to make.

  Dorothy kissed the cat’s cross face as she extracted her claws from her shoulder. She prized the kitty, and not just for her remarkably long tail, which Venus laid across her front paws like a passenger settling on a ship deck with a lap rug. She treasured how the cat so clearly favored her, flitting off at the sight of anyone else, the white tip of her outrageous tail bobbing over her head. Yet each night in bed, she put her arms around Dorothy’s neck like a real live baby and curry-combed Dorothy’s cheek with her tongue. Nobody knew what a good cat she was. That pained Dorothy.

  Truth was, Dorothy was more comfortable in the company of her cat than anyone else. She seemed to have lost the ability to be around her own species, save for her son-in-law John, who only tolerated her because he was paralyzed in bed. Maybe she’d never had it. Ruth’s little girls would be home from school soon. They’d skip right past her, chattering and making plans, as if she were no more significant than the pole propping up the clothesline. Her own girls had been the same, only interested in each other. They had their own secret jokes and their own little language, and though they squabbled, they would pull together to side up against Dorothy more often than not, which tickled her to no end even when they were looking up defiantly at her.

  Truth was, she wanted them to band together. She could not have them be dependent on her. What if she got caught for what she’d done? She had looked it up in the library soon after marrying William—her crime carried a sentence of fifteen years to life.

  Back when the girls were little, a single knock on the door would send her sailing through her skin. How her heart would roar as she squinted through the keyhole! It took all of her nerve to call out, “Who sent you?”

  Once she knew she was safe and finally opened up, and the Fuller Brush man, the California Perfume Company woman, or the neighbor selling raffle tickets showed her what they had to offer, she’d hop up on the piano bench to retrieve the framed photos of her daughters from atop the twangy old upright that no one ever played.

  As if a dam had broken, she’d flash her girls’ pictures and gush about their accomplishments. She told herself as the visitors retreated with their wares that she was weeding out the truly interested from mere entrepreneurs. She was separating the wheat from the chaff.

  Problem was, all her visitors were chaff. By the time she dared to venture out, when the girls were well into elementary school, she had no friends. She became part of no group except for the Methodist church, where they had to let her in because William tithed. There she’d laid permanent claim to the last row, the better into which to slide her habitually late-arriving family unnoticed every Sunday morning. (The Gloria Patri, a quarter of the way through the service, seemed to be their personal entrance song.) She never gathered with the rest of the congregation on the sidewalk in front of the church after the service, but left during the last hymn, hurrying home in her typical head-down fashion, avoiding interaction. Her daughters and William walked home together when everyone else did.

  As the girls got older, and her fear of being found continued to ease, William managed to coax her out of the house for the weekly Wednesday Night Supper in the Fellowship Hall in the church basement. To those, she brought her pink pressed-glass dish of fruit cocktail in Jell-O, her ticket to eat the good food that others had cooked. While William talked to friends and store customers over baked chicken and scalloped potatoes, she tucked into her meal undisturbed. Nor would she be disturbed for the rest of the evening, through the Cherryingtons’ travelogue from their visit to the Holy Land, or a program about a mission trip. Often she’d doze off, weary from the day’s laundering and tinting—perfection took its toll, even back then. William would touch her on the arm to wake her.

  She would go through the roof. “Don’t scare me like that!”

  He’d pull in that chin and smile apologetically. “Sorry, Dorothy. But what do you expect from a fellow called ‘Rowdy Dowdy’?”

  Eavesdroppers would chuckle as they gathered their empty serving dishes. Everyone knew he was as rowdy as a fuzzy duckling. He was liked. And by their forced smiles and turned backs, she knew that she was not. Though she’d brought herself up on her own and so had missed out on learning the secret unsaid code people used to get along with one another, even she could see that.

  Now, in Ruth’s kitchen, as Venus struggled in her arms, a wave of homesickness for William surged over her. She hugged the wriggling cat until the longing ebbed away, leaving behind a hollowness that felt an awful lot like guilt. She’d never appreciated William enough. She’d been too busy thinking about someone else.

  * * *

  Holding John’s lunch tray, Dorothy winged the doorjamb with her elbow. “Knock, knock.”

  He was asleep, as usual. Eight years hadn’t lessened Dorothy’s shock in seeing him, a tall man, flat on his back, felled across the twin bed like one of those giant trees out in California. He slept with his head thrown back as if he’d just been shot.

  “John? I got your lunch.”

  She let her gaze travel over his face. It had sunken slightly from all his years on his back, making his strong cheekbones even more prominent. His head tipped back with his mouth ajar only added to the effect. His skin had gone as translucent as a slice of onion, but his hair had held on to its color and was still as black as her husband’s had been. She had always liked William’s hair. It was just like her father’s, fine as a baby’s and so brown it was black. All three men were kind. She liked to tell herself that.

  “John?”

  Rubbing the single stubborn hair under her chin, she watched her son-in-law for a sign of consciousness. He kept on sleeping.

  “John, I’m going to feed you now.” She sat down and picked up the spoon, a genuine silver-plate piece in the Friendship pattern, courtesy of a bag of Gold Medal Flour. She wondered if June, as an employee of the flour company, could get Ruth a complete set. Ruth had so little, compared to her sister, which always hurt Dorothy. Dorothy didn’t like to think that she might have contributed to that.

  She dipped the spoon in the soup. “Okay, John, open up.”

  He obeyed, although his eyes were closed. Funny how he could open up just like a baby bird at her command,
yet appear to be out cold.

  Well, looks could be deceiving. John was listening, even when he seemed to be sleeping. She could tell by the quieter way he breathed when she talked. She knew that he appreciated her talking to him. She knew this in the way that lonely people understood other lonely people.

  She doled out a spoonful the color of muskmelon. As John swallowed, she told him more.

  DOROTHY

  You are making good progress on this bowl. Halfway done! Campbell’s makes a very good soup, don’t you think? Though I wrote to the Campbell twins once and they didn’t write back. Well, I guess they’re just kids and can’t be held accountable.

  Anyhow, as I was saying, I was used to Edward leaving me, back when we were tots. Oh, we might have spent all day playing hide-and-seek in the Lambs’ garden, or throwing sticks in the Lambs’ goldfish pond, or showing each other our tummies in the stables, but evening always put an end to it. Off Edward would go, to change into his velvet short pants and floppy bow, and then to his dinner in the mahogany-paneled dining room, served by my parents. Off I went, up to the attic, where I would eat my bread and butter alone and then put myself to bed. There, in my cot, as my parents worked downstairs, I would gaze up at the stars out my little round window and imagine what Edward was doing. Was he building a ship in a bottle in the library with his father? Being bathed by his mother in his claw-foot tub? Sleeping on a satin pillow in his four-poster bed?

  Still, it cut me deep when he was sent off to boarding school, then to college in the East, and then on long tours of England and Europe. When he came home on holidays during those years, he’d be friendly to me, inquiring about my activities, though I had a feeling that he wasn’t really listening for my answer. His father had always treated me in the same vaguely pleasant way when I crossed his path, asking jovial questions and then not waiting for a reply. I had little experience with his mother. Mother warned me to stay out of her sight.

  Dad would make a joke of it when she did. “Watch out for Mrs. Lamb!” He’d gnash his teeth. “She’ll eat you up!”

  Mother’s face would go sour. “Shut up, Bill.”

  How old was I when Edward returned from the last European tour? Twenty-seven? I had given up on marrying by then. I had been working full-time for the Lambs since I left eighth grade, doing their laundry, and you don’t meet husbands while running sheets through a mangle in the basement.

  It was on a warm sunny day in late June, a Sunday afternoon, the only day of the week that my parents, as the butler and housekeeper, had a half day off. I was alone in the Lambs’ garden, enjoying the scent of the blooming roses as I pushed a needle with chapped fingers through stretched gauze, when a gentleman wearing a straw boater stepped inside the gate.

  I could only give him a quick glance, being in the middle of a stitch. I applied the same care to my needlework that I gave to the laundry and later to my photo tinting. “The Lambs are at the seashore.”

  “How have you been, Dode?”

  I pricked myself. “Dorothy” had been too much for Edward to pronounce as a little child, when he would come to stand at the base of the service stairs. His shout of “Dode!” would send me flying down three flights.

  How had I not recognized at first sight his golden skin, the color of the inside of a plum? As children, we would hold our arms next to the other’s and compare their color: they were a surprisingly similar ivory-gold in winter but his got an enviable richer gold in the summer. How I loved his clear green eyes shaped just like a cat’s—“leonine” is the actual word for them. And that golden hair that grew backward from its platinum roots in the whorl on his hairline, his mane magnificent on his large head. I often wondered how anyone could be so beautiful.

  “Looks like life has treated you well,” he said.

  My heart felt too big for my chest. “Not particularly.”

  He laughed. “Just as blunt as ever. How refreshing you are.”

  I didn’t know what to say about that.

  “How is it that you aren’t married,” he asked, “as pretty as you are?”

  “I’m not that pretty.”

  “And there you are mistaken.” He took my hand and kissed the back of it. I could still feel the pressure of his lips as he strolled away.

  The next day, he stopped me on the back stairs and asked me to accompany him to the art museum.

  How would it look for the heir to a Cincinnati beer fortune to be strolling the galleries of a museum with his housekeeper’s daughter? “We can’t do that.”

  “Whyever not?”

  I noticed that he had an English accent since coming home from his tour.

  “I’m—”

  “—beautiful,” he said. When I frowned at his flattery, he added, “Just a little beautiful, if that makes you feel better.” He winked. “And only in your heart.”

  Oh, I loved the art museum. I have always admired the smart use of color. I could have strolled through those echoing rooms forever, grit crunching on the marble floor under my Sunday-best shoes. But it is hard to focus on the Old Masters when a young man has his hand on the small of your back.

  SIX

  Indiana-Michigan Line, 1934

  Mother’s voice floated from John’s bedroom out to the kitchen to where Ruth jacked the pump at the sink. How could anyone gab so much to a man who was fast asleep? She spoke so little to everyone else, just tinted, tinted, tinted all day. That’s all Ruth could remember Mother doing since she was a kid, just tinting. And washing clothes. Not being much of a parent.

  Ruth caught a jelly-jarful of water and, plucking her dress from her sweaty skin, drank it. A fly rammed against the rusty window screen, each furious buzz a protest at being denied the freedom that seemed so clearly at hand. Outside, chickens muttered as they strolled under the clothes on the line. Black and white cats slept on the sunny dirt by the barn, serenaded by the clank of cowbells and the groans of the cattle grazing in the pasture on the other side of the wire fence. Crickets chirped from the weeds at the base of the outbuildings, from one of which could be heard the chime of tools in use, and Nick whistling.

  Ruth swelled with anticipation—until she remembered that her sister, June, was coming. She unhooked the screen one-handed and swept out the fly.

  She refilled her glass. She did not understand the urgency of June’s visit. Why did she insist upon coming now? It wasn’t as if they kept up with each other. When was the last time Ruth had visited June, four years ago? June had paid to have her and the kids take the train to St. Paul. Ruth had been miserable the whole time, skulking through June’s marble mansion, the hayseed mouse visiting her sophisticated relations.

  The kids had thought the place was a fairyland. They didn’t mean to, but they drove a dagger into Ruth’s heart each time they packed into June’s big peach-colored bathtub and scooted up and back on their bellies, singing and laughing, their bare bottoms shining in the water like porpoises. It killed her to see them crowd around the toilet, four dark heads watching the water gush into the bowl when they took turns flushing, and when they gathered around the refrigerator just to open the door and see the light come on.

  She felt even worse when June last visited her, before John got sick, the gracious queen pretending that the peasant’s lowly sticks of furniture were lovely. They weren’t lovely. They were worn, hideous, and not at all representative of Ruth’s taste. What she would buy if only she had the money! But no one would ever know her excellent taste. She was doomed to be the poor sister, lesser in all things.

  It had always been this way. Even back when Ruth was six and June was eight, Mother had entered them in a beauty pageant held by the Sunbeam Bakery in Fort Wayne. All the contestants had to do was eat a slice of bread. Of course, June and her yellow ringlets won. She even ate cute. All Ruth got was a loaf of Sunbeam bread and a long stare from her mother followed by the pronouncement: I never worry about you.

  Ruth thought that Mother should.

  June topped her at everything. Jun
e had wavy blond hair; Ruth’s was brown and straight. June had golden skin; Ruth’s skimmed-milk flesh was shot through with veins. June developed curves in her early teens; Ruth was still waiting for hers at thirty. June was popular and busy and held the only high school class officer position available to a girl—secretary; Ruth could only manage one best friend, the ever-loyal Barbara. Ruth saw the way boys looked at her sister when she and June were walking downtown or went to a theater together. The boys would get loud and act silly, but June would ignore them. Meanwhile, Ruth stared right at them, daring them to see her, though she might as well have been a fire hydrant.

  Yet, away from June, Ruth had her male admirers. Before she had been married and cloistered on the farm, she had known how to get the attention of the boys in high school, if she really truly wanted it. Mainly, she just had to act like she was interested in what they thought. Sometimes it wasn’t too much of a ruse. She was interested at times, if they were smart. She liked clever boys who made her laugh. John had made her laugh. She could make him laugh, too. And other important things.

  She remembered some years back, in the early days of their marriage, when on a hot afternoon in late May, she’d insisted that John dig in the lilac cutting she’d gotten from a neighbor. He’d already spent hours putting in new fence posts and was filthy and exhausted.

  Oh, the sight of him when he had come back inside the house after planting the lilac, stripped to the waist, unselfconsciously muscular, dirt streaked, and grumpy. She had been swamped with desire. Her mother was visiting, so Ruth lured him out to the milking shed by saying the cream separator needed fixing. He groused all the way out there, complaining that she should have told him that morning, but once he started fiddling with the separator, she seized his face and kissed him mid-grumble. His bad mood soon improved.