The Sisters of Summit Avenue

by Lynn Cullen

  “Mmm,” John murmured. Within moments, he was breathing softly with sleep.

  “See?” said Richard. “Piece of cake, Betty.”

  Cake! She dropped down on the chair, annoyed, only to jump up when the screen door slammed in the kitchen. Out the window, she could see Nick striding off toward JoJo in the pasture, his lantern a blue glow in the falling green light. Ruth, with her own lantern, stalked to the machine shed, a sudden gust whipping her dress around her knees. She threw open the doors as Richard approached, medical bag in hand, his badge of importance.

  June sagged onto the chair next to John. Don’t be so hard on Richard, she told herself. Everyone needs a badge of importance, some way of being special. Everyone craves respect, whether we realize it or not.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Chicago, 1922

  It was ninety-one degrees, hot for early summer in Chicago. The sun drew sweat to the faces of the people milling on the beach in bathing suits, street clothes, or coveralls, and radiated from the dirty sand baking June’s bare feet. She glanced at John, toeing the sand next to her, and shivered.

  He had shown up at her Three Arts Club rooms that afternoon, where she had been packing. She was to stay with the Whiteleathers for the rest of the summer, an arrangement to which she’d agreed only when Mrs. Whiteleather had offered it. She had taken the train from St. Paul the previous week to get her things. Richard would be collecting her tomorrow.

  “Knock, knock,” someone had called through the half-open door. “I hear that there’s a famous artist up here.”

  The blood left June’s head. John. She hadn’t spoken to him since the night at the Dil Pickle. She didn’t think that she ever would again, nor did she think that she ever wanted to, not since Ruth had let drop that she was corresponding with him.

  Her traitor body tingled at the sight of him filling her doorway. Levelly, she said, “Why are you here?”

  He ducked his head. “Ouch. Well, I guess I should have expected that.”

  His black hair was raked to perfection; his white shirt ironed and buttoned to his chin in spite of the heat; a new fedora hung from his large, slender hands. An edge of her heart softened to see him trying so hard.

  Her roommate, Norma, sashayed over in her kimono. “Want me to get the house mother?”

  “No. That’s not necessary. I think he’ll do the right thing and leave.”

  “June, could I please just talk to you?” He stopped, his face earnest. “Just as a friend.”

  Somehow, several howlingly awkward minutes later, she and John were walking down the frying sidewalks of Tower Town. And somehow—June didn’t really know how—several minutes later, in the course of which she’d shed her filmy jacket (a present from Mrs. Whiteleather) and he’d unbuttoned his collar and removed his hat in the heat, they had made their cautious amends. Somehow, by the time they passed bony children flinging themselves into the blast of a gushing fire hydrant, they were giddy with relief. By the time they’d reached the Oak Street Beach, they were good old friends, if by good old friends one meant friends who kept touching each other’s arms as they reminisced, friends who laughed a lot at nothing, friends of which one was engaged to Richard.

  At the beach, it was as if the skyscrapers looming over the neighborhood had been split open and both sand and humans had come tumbling out. Men in trunks and singlets flirted with women in headwraps and bathing dresses. Old women in flowered frocks knelt over picnic baskets, doling out sandwiches. Little children hopped about like toads.

  Directly before the wall that the two good old friends had found at the edge of the beach where they could sit and dig their bare toes in the sand, a drama was unfolding. A policeman had stopped two young women and, his jacket straining over his portly belly, was now on his knee, huffing and puffing as he applied a tape measure to the bare thigh of first one girl then the other.

  “What’s going on?” John whispered to his good old pal.

  Do not let yourself be so happy. “Decency law. Six inches are allowed between the bottom of a woman’s bathing suit and her knees.”

  From the feet up, the women were covered with bathing slippers and sheer knee socks. But above their knees, their bare thighs—one set thin and stringy, the other chunky with muscles—gleamed like beacons in the dark sea of wool and cotton worn by the other women on the beach.

  “I think they’re in trouble.”

  If only I could burrow into his arms. “Oh, he’ll just send them home. I’ve seen it before. The offenders are given blankets, then they usually run off, giggling.”

  As if June’s words had ordered her up, a police matron in black dress, stockings, and prim pumps struggled across the sand with a holey green army blanket opened to receive the miscreants. The commotion attracted a crowd, whose excitement grew as the girls dodged the blanket like bulls through a matador’s cape.

  The burly officer laid fingers thick as cow’s utters on the skinny girl’s arm. She wriggled from his grip as the matron grasped the other girl and fought to cover her.

  “You want to dress like a man?” A bystander tossed a frankfurter into the melee. “Be one.” The wiener bounced from the skinny girl’s arm, leaving a smear of mustard.

  “Hey!” yelled her friend.

  The policeman took advantage of his quarry’s momentary distraction to lock her in a squeeze hold and hoist her off her feet. To the cheers of the crowd, he carried her kicking from the beach.

  John caught up with June as she stalked away. “That was ugly.”

  When he could see her face, he said, “Hey. Hey, I’m sorry. We should have left sooner. I can see that it really bothered you.”

  She couldn’t keep the words in. “She reminded me of Ruth.”

  He winced.

  What had she been thinking, imagining that they could be friends—or whatever they were. Ruth would always be between them.

  “June. I said I was sorry.”

  “Let’s forget it.” She started back to her apartment.

  “Look, I bunged things up six ways to Sunday. I know that. But we can do something about it. That’s why I came to see you. We don’t have to just go along with the way things are going. We can be honest with Ruth and Richard right now. Let’s tell them. As soon as we get back.”

  She stopped. “Why do you have to tell Ruth? I thought she was just your pen pal.”

  He took off his hat, and then fit it back on. “I don’t understand. Don’t you want to get back together? Isn’t that why you came out here with me?”

  “The fact is, Ruth kissed you. And you kissed her.”

  “That was nothing. It was stupid. I told you that.”

  Ruth had seen something in him that had encouraged her to kiss him that night. Ruth was smart. She wouldn’t have imagined that.

  “I don’t think she thinks it was stupid. I don’t think she thinks that at all.”

  She pushed ahead, past two little girls holding hands and skipping, past a mother steering a rubber-wheeled baby buggy, past a man selling ice cream from a cart.

  “June,” he said, following, “is this punishment? Are you punishing me because of a meaningless kiss? Because if so, it worked. I’ve been miserable since then.”

  “That’s not why.”

  “How many times have you kissed Richard? My having to picture that—now that’s punishment. You can really dole it out.”

  She slowed. There was some truth to that. She was punishing him. He’d not paid enough for having hurt her and she was making him bleed. Deep down, she could be terribly cold. She didn’t know why. She hated this about herself.

  “June, let’s not be like this. If I can get past your getting engaged to a rich guy, then you can get past me talking to your sister.”

  She stopped again. “The problem is, I admire Ruth. She’s the most honest person among us.”

  “I admire her, too, but—June, I’m in love with you. I love you, June. You know that I do.”

  She glanced up at the mansion behind
him, then at the seagulls lined up on the peak of its roof. She would never live in a place like this with him. But maybe it didn’t matter. Maybe that was the least important thing in the world.

  “I love you, too. I really do. You’re all I think about.”

  Relief, then gratitude, then joy dawned across John’s face, mirroring June’s own growing elation. He was stepping toward her, his eyes rich with affection, when a horn blasted.

  Richard puttered his open roadster to the curb. “Junie! Your roommate said I might find you out here. Johnny, what are you doing in town, old man?”

  He didn’t wait for John’s answer—he might not have gotten one in any case. John was staring at the idling car with disbelief.

  Richard hopped out and opened the door for June. “I left last night and just drove straight. I about hit a deer in Wisconsin!” He kissed her on the cheek. “I couldn’t wait to see you.”

  Every nerve was screaming as she got in the car.

  “How are you, darling?” Richard jumped back into the car. “Here, let me help you put on your jacket. You coming?” he called up to John.

  She put one arm into the sleeve of the filmy wrap and then the other. She looked up at John. Claim me. I’m yours. But you have got to claim me.

  “Not coming?” Richard let out the clutch. “Whatever you say, friend.” He applied the gas.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Indiana-Michigan line, 1934

  Ruth treadled the floor pedals and wrestled the wheel as the wind pummeled the Model T. She squinted her eyes. Was that a crate tumbling through the beams of the headlights? What in the world was she doing out in weather like this—with June’s big-shot husband, for crying out loud? Blasts were whistling their way through the seam of the windshield, snatching at the flared fenders, shoving the flivver off course. At least her brother-in-law, jouncing against the fraying gray-and-white-striped upholstery next to her, had the sense to shut up and let her drive.

  He straightened his fedora and raised his voice over the ruckus. “Do you normally have weather like this down here?”

  The car’s lights swept across a field where tiny tornadoes of dirt were rising up from the furrows like gritty spirits. So much for the seed she’d planted! She leaned over the metal dashboard to look up through the windshield. Her headlights caught birds huddled together on the electrical lines, dozens of them. Gusts blew off stragglers, who then beat their way back to safety.

  She threw herself back. “Not really!”

  The lights illuminated weeds thrashing in the ghostly light along the road, then lit a mass of hips and hooves—a herd of huddled cows. Squibb should be getting them in the barn. Ruth wished she’d grabbed John’s old jacket at the door. The temperature must have dropped twenty degrees in the past fifteen minutes. Richard had better get his phone-calling done quick.

  He raised his voice over the wind. “I thought you’d be glad about John!”

  She raised hers, too. “I am!” She thought about it. “Thank you!”

  Headlight beams approached. The Model T lit up an expanse of chrome grill, coming on fast. Another touring car? Out here in this mess? You had to be kidding!

  When its long hood slid close, Ruth peered inside the windows. The driver appeared in the shadowy light, hat pulled low. Ruth waved as they passed. He kept his face pointed forward.

  “Who’d have a car like that out here in the dark,” she wondered aloud to Richard, “in this weather? He can’t be up to any good.” She swallowed. “Did you know that Dillinger has been around here? He was in Auburn, not twenty miles away, recently.”

  She looked at Richard when he didn’t answer.

  “I didn’t know about the hired hand,” he said.

  Her anxiety dropped like a curtain; heat leaped up in its place. So that’s what this was about. Well, he sure picked fine weather to chastise her in.

  “I suppose it was natural,” he said.

  Richard cut into people for a living. She supposed he’d seen it all. Maybe storms didn’t scare him, or crooks out on the roads, or adulterous sisters-in-law. All right. Let him ask her what he wanted, if that made him feel better. Get it over with. Just let her get back to her kids.

  “He and I haven’t done as much as you think.”

  He clutched at the door as a blast shook their vehicle. “That’s not what I was getting at.”

  She glanced at him. “If you’re trying to make me feel bad, forget it. Trust me, you can’t make me feel any worse than I already do.”

  “I’m not trying to make you feel bad.” He bumped along on his seat. “I’m not trying to make you feel anything. What I’m trying to tell you is that I understand.”

  She turned to face him, swerving the car. “Are you cheating on June? Because you’d better not be.”

  “Say—be careful! No. Although I’m not sure if she would care.”

  Good grief, she did not want to talk about whatever was eating him. Especially if it was problems with his pecker. Not out in this ridiculous weather—not ever, to tell the truth. “She loves you.”

  “Loves me? She doesn’t even talk to me.”

  The Squibbs’ dog Scraps bounded out to chase the flivver as Ruth muscled their way nearer to the Squibbs’ house. “Don’t take it personally.” Darn dog! It was going to get itself hit. “June has never talked to anyone about her feelings much. Not even me. She’s the most bottled-up person I ever saw.”

  “Most bottled-up, or the most angry?” He rocked with the car as the wind buffeted it. “I am not a psychoanalyst. But I do know that the most suppressed people are some of the angriest. I sometimes worry that she’s angry at me.” He laughed. “I suppose at times I can be a little irritating.”

  Ruth gave him a baleful eye.

  “But I’ve come to see that she’s not really miffed at me. She keeps to herself with everyone, including our friends and the women at her work.” The wind splatted a newspaper against the windshield, then ripped it away. “Now you say that includes you, too? She loves you more than anyone.”

  She didn’t want to hear that. She surely did not believe it. Not anymore. Not after what she’d done with John, and all the years that had passed. “That’s just June for you. She’s always been that way.”

  “Why? Why has she always been that way?”

  With Scraps in the lead, Ruth turned off the road and onto the wheel ruts in the grass that constituted the Squibbs’ drive, then along a tall hedge of privets that noticeably buffered the wind, reducing the racket within the vehicle. She neared the house, a tall white board affair skirted with latticework. A light was on in the kitchen.

  With a metallic gnash of levers, she shut down the car. She lowered her voice with the reduction of noise. “It’s because of my mother, I guess. She wasn’t a talker, either.”

  “Then why aren’t you that way?”

  “You mean not angry?” she said. They both laughed, which made her a little mad.

  He took a handkerchief from inside his suit coat then offered it to her. When she shook her head, he dabbed his own brow. “I just thought if I cured John—” He tucked back his hanky with a flash of stitched monogram. “—that she’d be happier with me. Silly of me, I know.”

  She stared at him. He was scared. This man, brazen enough to slice up people for a living, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, dripping with looks and charm and smarts, used to getting his way in everything, was scared. If this man was scared of June, there was no hope for anyone.

  She wanted to change the subject but she had never been nimble at polite conversation, so she just scowled at the key in the ignition. Why wasn’t he getting out?

  “You know that we’ve wanted children,” he said.

  “Ha, take all of mine that you want.”

  He smiled as if he understood why Ruth would say such an outrageous thing that she obviously did not mean, which burnt her up.

  “It has been a painful subject,” he said. “One of the reasons I leaped when your mother called was
that I thought if I could do some good for you and John, it would lighten June’s heart. I had been keeping an eye on the work my colleagues were doing with sleeping sickness, so when they had their recent breakthrough, and then Dorothy rang, I took it as a sign. And now John is well. Everything is meshing.”

  “Mother phoned?” Mother never used a phone due to the expense, whether a collect call or otherwise. She must have been desperate to see her favorite.

  “Ruth, I’d do anything for June—”

  “Ha, I’ve been hearing that line all my life.”

  “—especially since I’m the reason we can’t have children.”

  Wait a minute. They were having two different conversations, and his had just become the more interesting.

  “What?”

  He wouldn’t repeat what he said, just looked at her. What kind of fool would expose his underbelly like that?

  “Does she know?”

  He put his doctor bag on his lap. “No.” He drew in a breath. “I should have told her a long time ago.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know. Ashamed. Guilty.” He tugged at his hat. “Afraid that she’d leave me.” He slid his gaze at her. “I think you know that I was never the one she loved the most. I’ve always been the second-best.”

  Behind his head, the Squibbs’ porch light came on.

  She scowled at the house. “Aren’t you going to make your call?”

  He looked over his shoulder, then turned back. He drew in a long breath. “She has a right to know, Ruth.”

  What’d he expect her to do about it?

  He exhaled loudly. “I had better go help the sleepers. Think how this cure will change lives.”

  She grabbed the door handle. “Oh, trust me, I have.”

  * * *

  Dorothy opened her eyes. She’d only meant to rest them after the kids had come up. Fear froze her heart—the kids were still awake. For the love of Mike, had she talked in her sleep?

  Wrapped in the patchwork quilt like the wiener in Betty Crocker’s “Pigs in a Blanket” concoction, she kept her eyes shut and let her ears do her walking. She listened to dice being rattled in small cupped hands before bursting onto the wooden floor, followed by the tapping of tokens against cardboard and her granddaughters’ exclamations. Junie had brought them what was called a Monopoly game—brand-new and all the rage in Philadelphia, according to her doctor son-in-law, who had received it from a patient. People were so enthusiastic about things being all the rage these days. They just chucked out the old without a second thought and brought in the new.