The Sisters of Summit Avenue

by Lynn Cullen

She stewed about it as she sat in her classes by day, and took care of her assorted animals and rearranged Dad’s shelves in the store by night. John’s reply came with the last freak snow in the beginning of April. She ran with it to the bedroom, where she scanned the contents.

  It’s still unseasonably cold here . . .

  Turned the far field . . .

  Three new calves . . .

  I want June back. Could you help me?

  She wadded up the letter and speared it into the wastebasket by her desk. Had he no idea how offensive that was?

  Later that night, she dug it out. With it uncrumpled on the table next to her, she wrote back.

  June is seeing that fellow she’d met in Chicago. Remember him, big hair? Wise mouth? Fur coat? It turns out that he is a doctor in Minneapolis. She spends a lot of time with him and his family—they have a lake house and loads of money. From the looks of her letters to Mother and Dad, they are serious.

  Weeks went by. A month. She graduated from high school; relined all the shelves in Dad’s store with fresh butcher paper; bled the Tecumseh Branch of the library dry to the point that in early summer, she had to break down and spend her savings on a book. This Side of Paradise it was called, by a newcomer named Fitzgerald.

  She locked herself in the room that she had once shared with her sister and read, the high-pitched screech of Mother’s paint swab on a photograph coming from the other side of her door. Her heart pounded as she turned the pages. She knew this story. She knew another midwestern boy who was knocking his head against the wall while wooing an unattainable beauty. So what if the boy in the story was rich and John was not? F. Scott, whoever he was, had obviously grown up rich, and was disguising his life in fiction. Well, John was every bit as clever as F. Scotty Fitzgerald. Why didn’t he just write a love story that was set on a farm? He had all the material he needed—people were forever wanting what they cannot have, no matter where they were. The grass is always greener, be it on a farm, in the city, or in a jungle.

  She finished the book in two sittings. Then, although she was furious at John, she wrapped the book in brown paper, tied it with a string, and mailed it.

  Under his address she wrote, You could write this.

  He showed up on the porch a week later. Across the street, State School kids were creaking away on their swings.

  Without any prologue, he demanded, “Do you really think so?”

  She knew exactly what he meant. “Write that book? I wouldn’t have said so if I didn’t.”

  “But he and I have nothing in common.”

  “Are you kidding? You’re from the Midwest. You’re clever. You’re wise.”

  “He’s rich!”

  “You’re interesting.”

  “I’m a farmer.”

  “Well, make that interesting. It will be interesting, because that’s what you know. Make us know it, too.”

  They talked for hours after that, spilling out their real selves as they walked streets lined with tall wooden houses and small green yards staked with a single tree. They passed horses pulling carts, shuddering Model-Ts, women hanging clothes, and children booting cans and running. Ruth saw them and loved them all.

  When they found themselves in the Lakeside Rose Garden, they wandered paths dense with floral perfume. Velvety veined blooms drooped from arbors and strained from flower beds as latticed shadows netted John’s earnest face. They settled next to a reflecting pond, where John talked and Ruth dunked the rubbery lily pads until molten drops shimmered on top. He shared his dreams of writing, and she thought about hers, until the shadows of the arbors cast dark towers over the grass.

  John said, “I guess it’s getting late.”

  It occurred to her with a start: “Where are you going to stay tonight?”

  “I’d better get moving. I was going to thumb a ride home.”

  “It’s too late for that.” She threw down the rose leaf she’d been shredding. “You should stay at my house.”

  “I feel a little odd.” He frowned at the grass. “I can’t do that.”

  “You can stay in our stable, then. Unless you mind bunking up with a horse. It’s just a few blocks from here. Behind Dad’s store.”

  “Thank you, but I shouldn’t.”

  “Do you have a better plan?”

  He drew in a breath. “No.”

  They started walking again but their conversation came now with difficulty, as if they had just met after a very long time, or were strangers.

  When they got to Dad’s store, its awning had been lowered for the day and a “closed” sign hung on the plate-glass door. They peered through the windows. Not even Ned was there.

  “There’s a sink out back,” she said, “if you need it. Let me fix up a place for you in the stable.”

  There, with trembling hands, she lit a lantern, spread an old blanket over the straw, then waited. When she couldn’t bear it anymore, she buried her face against JoJo’s warm neck.

  Do it. This is your only life.

  He entered the stables. She nearly fainted at the sight of him in the lamplight, upright and strong from labor on his farm.

  “I put out a blanket for you.”

  They gazed through the soft yellow light to the coarse blanket lying on the straw.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Really.” He drew in a breath. “Thank you. I’ve never had a friend like you.”

  Her heart sank as she raised her eyes. Friend?

  She turned away.

  He stepped close. “Hey. What’s wrong?”

  She shook her head.

  He sighed, then put his arm around her with brotherly ease. “What am I going to do about you, little sister?”

  She drank in his smell, then squeezing her eyes closed, turned and pressed herself against the length of his body.

  He held her away from him. “Hey! This isn’t right.”

  “It’s right if I say it is.”

  “Ruth.”

  “Don’t I get to say what I want? Don’t I get to say how I feel?”

  “This isn’t right.”

  “Why is it always so wrong for me to want something?” She stepped up to him. She could feel the warmth radiating from his flesh as she lifted her face.

  They kissed, gently at first, and then with such hunger that it frightened her. When she grappled to release him from his clothes, she thought, This should be June. But it’s me. It’s me. It’s me.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Indiana-Michigan line, 1934

  In the kitchen, as Mother clanged a pan on the burner, Ruth’s twins, June’s eager guides, had grabbed June’s hands and pulled her up the creaking stairs to what was to be her boudoir. They crowded behind her now as she unpacked her suitcase, the heat of their young bodies adding to the stuffiness of the room. What kind of oven would this be by night?

  Ilene, the twin with the bigger gap between her saw-edged new front teeth—the only way June could tell the little girls apart—darted a finger to a dress. “Pretty!”

  “Thank you.” June let her caress it, the child’s hot, grubby-sweet musk catching at her heart. She smelled like Ruth as a kid.

  From the start, June’s feelings for Ruth had overwhelmed her. Just the smell, the sight, of baby Ruth released a warmth in little June that was so powerful that she had not known what to do with it. When baby Ruth had taken her first steps, her proud grin forming three chins against her neck and her diaper saggy over chunky plodding legs, June had darted forward and gripped her baby sister’s arm, squeezing it, hard, until Ruth had squawked and Mother had screamed.

  Dad had whisked June off. She was confused, ashamed, and scared of her own self. She had only wanted to love the baby. After that, whenever she squeezed her little sister’s arm, teeth and body clenched with the force of it, her insides hot with love, she made sure her mother was not around. But she loved that little baby. She did.

  Now she took a dress from the suitcase and shook it out.r />
  “Our mother never wears pretty dresses,” the other twin, Irene, said matter-of-factly.

  “You shouldn’t say that,” June said.

  Irene hopped on the bed next to the suitcase. “Mother tells us to always tell the truth.”

  “She does?”

  Irene peered into the bag, a cat inspecting a chipmunk hole. “Yes. She says to never lie.”

  “That’s good.” June wondered if by not lying her sister meant that as long as no one asked, she could carry on with her blue-eyed farmhand. No wonder Ruth had not seemed thrilled to see her, even after Mother had written and begged her to come because Ruth “missed her so.” That was obviously not the case. “Could you get me a hanger, please?”

  Irene ran over to the wardrobe and threw open a door carved with a preschooler’s all-head-and-rickety-stick-legs scrawling of a person. She unearthed a hanger from the bottom of the wardrobe, and with it, Mother’s cat.

  The animal shot under the bed as Irene brought back her wooden trophy. “Here you go!”

  Not to be outdone in helpfulness, Ilene rooted around the suitcase and pulled out a pair of pumps pilloried on shoe-trees. “Want me to put these away?”

  Her twin, Irene, apparently the dominant one, elbowed her sister out of the way. “What else can I get?”

  June held up her jewelry case. “You can put this on the dresser, please.”

  Irene snatched the box and popped it open. Both girls gasped at the contents, as if the mostly costume jewelry were golden treasure.

  “No fair!” Ilene cried.

  “Girls!” Ruth called, trudging up the stairs. “Leave Aunt June alone.”

  “We are helping her!” Ilene said when her mother entered the room.

  “She said we could!” cried the other.

  “They are helping,” June lied.

  Ruth dropped on the other side of the suitcase. “I know what sort of help they are.”

  June thought that wasn’t kind to say about her daughters. She was surprised when Ruth allowed Ilene to come over and root her way onto her lap, then let her coltish legs dangle to the floor. The child put her thumb to her mouth then took it away when she saw her mother watching. June bet Ruth was a tough mother to please.

  Irene snapped the jewelry case open and closed. “Aunt June, why do they call you ‘Betty Crocker’? Why don’t they call you by your real name?”

  “ ‘June Whiteleather’ doesn’t sound as catchy, does it?” June said lightly.

  Ruth wrapped her arms around the daughter in her lap. Up came the thumb again.

  “The problem is,” Ruth said, “there is no Betty Crocker.”

  “That’s not you on the radio?” Irene’s voice went high, as if she didn’t want to believe it.

  “Nope,” said Ruth. “Not her. I told you that, nut. The radio Betty Crocker is one of the bunch of ladies who pretend that they’re her.”

  June felt a prick of annoyance. This must be one of the instances when the truth must be scrupulously told. “My job is to help Betty.”

  “But if there’s not a Betty Crocker,” Ilene said around her thumb, “how can you help her?”

  “You have a very good point.” Ruth tickled her daughter’s ribs. “What Aunt June does,” she said over Ilene’s giggles, “is works for a company that made up a woman to sell their flour.”

  Irene kept flipping the jewel case open and closed. “Why don’t they just use a real woman to sell their flour?”

  The twin on Ruth’s lap agreed. “Yes, you should sell it, Aunt June.”

  “Your aunt was pretty good at selling a bathing suit in high school.”

  June looked up sharply.

  “I’m being complimentary, June.”

  “Thank you,” June said, uncertain. Ruth was even more sour than she remembered her. She reminded herself of the hardships her sister had to bear.

  Ruth removed her daughter’s thumb from her mouth with a pop. “The company made up Betty Crocker because a make-believe character can say anything they want her to say. She’s not beholden to the truth, you see.”

  “Huh?” Irene wrinkled her nose.

  “But I like Betty Crocker,” said her twin. “We hear her on the radio.”

  “Made-up,” said Ruth.

  Such a stickler when it suits her, thought June. She wondered what Ruth’s policy was with her children on Santa Claus.

  “Girls, I want you to know that there are real people behind Betty. Like me. There are twenty-one of us ‘Bettys.’ We try out recipes and write cooking publications and make suggestions for the radio show. One of my favorite parts of the job is to answer letters from people. We get thousands of them every day, can you imagine?”

  “You do?” they breathed. “About flour?”

  “About everything. No one tells me what to say in my letters. I have to answer from my heart.”

  “You mean people write to you about more than how to frost a cake?” Ruth held away her daughter on her lap then fanned her own face. “Geez, you’re a little hotbox!”

  June took a dress to the wardrobe. “The other girls and I have become regular agony aunts. I suppose women—it’s mostly women who write, although we do get our share of marriage proposals from men—believe Betty can solve their problems, which is rather astonishing to me.”

  “Really? Isn’t that what you Bettys are working so hard for, to get women to think that they can fix anything with a cake and a smile—just be sure not to stint on the flour.”

  “We’re just trying to help people, Ruth. These are terrible times.”

  “Ha. I’m not the one you have to convince how hard these times are. But I’m not sure that lying to people helps them.”

  “I don’t know, maybe it does—not lying, I mean by giving them someone who they can turn to. I suppose many women don’t have a soul to sound off to, so they unburden themselves on perfect strangers. You wouldn’t believe what they tell Betty Crocker! I’ve had to become an amateur psychoanalyst.”

  “I’m sure you’re perfect at it.”

  June leveled her brow at her sister. Was it too much for Ruth to acknowledge that June was trying to do something good? All right, Ruth was less fortunate. All right, she was in a terrible situation. June was absolutely sick about it—even more ill now that she had seen John. But did she have to be punished for her own good luck every waking moment she was around Ruth, when she was not the transgressor here?

  Around her thumb, Ilene asked, “Mommy, is Daddy awake yet?” She looked up at her mother.

  “No.”

  The child slouched back against Ruth.

  Irene closed the jewelry case with a final pop. “Mommy and Daddy used to sleep in this room. Now it’s Grandma’s. Stinks like her baby powder.”

  “And her throat lozenges,” Ilene added around her thumb.

  “And her girdle.” The twins tittered.

  “Girls,” Ruth said.

  June felt terribly weary all of a sudden, flattened, as if the oppressive roar of the airplane propellers were battering her ears again.

  “Thanks for helping me to unpack. Uncle Richard and I shall be quite comfy in here.”

  “Not exactly what you’re used to,” said Ruth.

  “It’s lovely. It’s wonderful to be out in the country.”

  “We have twenty-one cats!” piped up Ilene. “Out in the barn.”

  June smiled. “You are in heaven!”

  Ruth rolled her eyes.

  This was going all wrong. Everyone should be thrilled—John had a chance to be cured. Their family was reunited. The sisters were back together again. She touched Ruth’s arm. “I really am glad to see you.”

  Ruth’s eyes flew open. They were brown, like Dad’s, and fierce. “Why?”

  June had squeezed this woman’s arm as a baby, not knowing what to do with the love surging through her. “I just am.”

  Ruth blew a breath out her nose, then looked away, before resting her chin on her daughter’s head. Suddenly, she said, “
Why are you a Betty, anyhow?”

  “What?”

  “Why do you work as a Betty? You don’t need the money.”

  “I don’t know. I suppose because I get to use my creative side.” She would not admit that she loved how the girls looked up to her. Ruth would have a field day with that.

  “Well, don’t stop. I need the money.”

  When June didn’t answer quickly enough, Ruth said grimly, “That was a joke, June. Ha—what I would give to be the one supporting you for a change.”

  “Lunch!” Mother yelled up the stairs.

  “The can’s on, ready to be served.” Ruth stood up, letting her daughter slide from her lap. “Come on, girls.”

  The twins sidled over to June. The worship on their faces was obvious even to her.

  Ruth shrugged, then sauntered out of the room, leaving them behind.

  June clasped their warm hands. “Ladies, let’s go eat.”

  She still didn’t know what to do about Ruth.

  THIRTY

  Minneapolis, 1922

  Mrs. Whiteleather was having June draw her portrait that golden October afternoon. They were in the Whiteleathers’ magnificent Tudor house on Summit Avenue, in the bright sunroom from which one could almost get a glimpse of the Mississippi if one stood in a certain spot. Richard would purchase a house for June and himself just up the block in the following months. It had been Linda Whiteleather’s idea for June to do the portrait, a gift for Dr. Whiteleather, she said.

  The sturdy German maid brought in gingerbread squares, still wafting faint steam on their plate. Linda nodded to her, then said to June, “Why the rush to get married?”

  June lowered her drawing pencil and took a sip of coffee, waiting until the maid padded away on spongy heels. She was uncomfortable with an audience.

  “Richard’s in a hurry.”

  It was the truth. He was tired of taking her to the family lake “cottage” alone, only to have their lovemaking on the sofa stop with caresses under clothing. He wanted complete access. And since getting Ruth’s latest news, June was ready for it, too.

  Mrs. Whiteleather pushed back a swoop of silver blond. “Oh, Richard’s always in a hurry.”

  “I can look into art school and finish my degree here.”