That September, not long after school started, Jesse’s sister Jean told him a secret. “What do you think? She’s going to have a baby!”
“Who?”
“Oh, you dope! Ma, of course! Ma is going to have a baby!”
Jesse stared. He could think of nothing to say.
Jean clapped her hands. “It’s a secret right now but she told me … I’m not supposed to tell anyone else.…”
“… going to have a baby?”
Jesse felt panic. A baby? Another baby?
Bob, the five-year-old, ran over to them and Jesse was startled, thinking for a moment that this was the new baby. Jean picked Bob up and swung him. The flesh of her upper arms was solid and warm. “There’s a surprise coming, a surprise coming,” she crooned. She winked at Jesse over the boy’s squirming shoulder. “Remember, it’s a secret,” she said.
Her happiness stung him. His mother was going to have another baby. In this little house, all of them crowded together.…
“How do you know?” he said angrily. “You think you know everything!”
“I know because Ma told me,” Jean said.
“Why did she tell you?”
“Because she trusts me. Because I’m a girl.”
“I suppose she told Shirley too?”
“No, not Shirley. Shirley would blab it everywhere.” Jean let Bob down and Jesse saw that her face was hectic with this news, as if the baby were her own. He felt a pang of jealousy at the look of her face, that bemused female secrecy; as if conscious of his feelings, Jean lifted her chin so that she seemed to be eyeing Jesse over the full curve of her cheeks, through her thick brown lashes. “Listen, kid, don’t say anything about it right now. Pa doesn’t know that Ma told me. He’s mad.”
“Why?”
“Because he doesn’t want a baby.”
Jesse stared. He wanted to turn away in panic and disgust—as if Jean had exposed him to something ugly, opening a door and exposing herself, exposing a secret of womanhood he did not want to know.
“There’s trouble over money. Again,” Jean whispered.
“What trouble?”
“Oh, to pay the doctor, you know, the hospital … buying food and all that.…” Jean said vaguely. “You know how Pa gets.…”
You know how Pa gets.
Jesse put his hands to his head. Confused. Frightened. He felt the hard substance of his skull beneath his wavy hair. He could remember the soft, delicate skull of his little brother, when Bob had been just a baby … so precarious, so dangerous.… And now another baby. Why another baby? Why was she having another baby? Jesse knew what to expect; he could remember everything from last time: his mother would waddle around the house, enormous and self-pitying and tender, her eyes filming over with pain and love, her hands dropping onto her belly, caressing herself. That baby had turned out to be Bob. Robert Harte. He himself was Jesse Harte. He had two sisters, Jean and Shirley, and soon he would have another sister or brother, all of them crowded into this house, this shanty, with its two back rooms and its “front room” and its kitchen. Jesse wanted to yell into his sister’s rosy, pleased face that they were all crazy—
Instead, he tried to smile.
“Yeah, isn’t it great?” Jean said at once. “I kind of like babies. I told Ma I’d help her with it, you know—get in practice.…”
She giggled and Jesse laughed with her breathlessly.
“It’s going to be next March,” Jean whispered. “I want to take the whole week off from school. I’ll take care of the house and make all the meals.”
“Next March.…”
“Don’t look so strange,” Jean said, poking him.
Jesse smiled shakily. There was still something about Jean’s face, her expression, that alarmed him. The tip of her tongue appeared between her lips, moist and pink. Secrets. Whisperings. Sometimes Jean and their mother whispered together, and if Jesse came near they would go silent. Whisperings, secrets, then silence. Were all the secrets about this new baby, or about other things …? He wanted now to ask Jean about the baby. He wanted to know more. And why was their father unhappy, what was the trouble about money? Always there was talk of money, of not having enough. The gas station was not making enough money, there was a mortgage on it, and before that there had been other ventures—a partnership in a lumberyard, a partnership in a diner on the Five Bridges Road. Jesse had heard the word “mortgage” often. Interest payments. Partnerships. If his father and mother whispered together, it was often about these things, kept secret from Jesse.
And now, on this Wednesday, on the day before Christmas recess, Jesse stands in the corridor of the high school, miles from home, and hears this conversation again. It is so clear to him, so strangely clear. Will he never forget it? Jean’s terse whispered words: Because he doesn’t want a baby.
He will never forget it. He will never forget this Wednesday.
He walks quickly down the hall. Strange, to be the only person in it. On either wall there are lockers, dented and rusty, and everywhere the smell of wet wool, wet rubber. Galoshes are lined up on the floor. Someone has kicked a pile of them around. The floor is slightly warped, but it has a smooth, pleasant, dreamy look to it, as if it were hundreds of years old. High above, the ceiling is cracked in many places. Spider webs of cracks. They are dreamy, too, the kind of frail formal pattern that dreams suggest. An editorial in the Yewville Journal complained about the high school being a firetrap. Jesse thought that was an interesting expression: firetrap. Every week, at odd times, the fire bells rang and all the students filed out into the halls, down the stairs, and outside onto the walk, preparing themselves for a real fire. It was exciting, a rowdy half hour. But no real fires ever came.
Many of the girls had decorated their lockers for Christmas. Cutouts from magazines of Santa Claus, cutouts of Christmas trees and angels.… Jean’s locker, at one corner of the hall, was decorated in green and red ribbons, pasted onto the locker in the form of a Christmas tree. When Jesse saw his sister around school he was startled—her adultness, the authority of her firm little legs and her frizzy red hair, her lips, her eyes, her manner of being in a hurry, always amused, always with other girls. If she dawdled after school with a boy, other boys teased them, hung around them, but Jean paid no attention. Jesse heard boys whistle at his sister on the street, but Jean paid no attention. She would turn away gravely and stare at something distant, sighting it along the curve of her cheek.
In the distance the chorus is still singing. A song Jesse can’t recognize because the words are blurred this far away, and only the hypnotic, light sound of the music itself comes to him.
He hurries to the boys’ lavatory. The smell of this place makes him gag; suddenly he knows he is going to be sick.
Yes, he is sick.
He gags and chokes, his eyes closed. Tears stream out of the corners of his eyes. Hot, everything is hot, stinking.… He spits into the toilet bowl, trying to clean his mouth. The bowl is not very clean. Oh, everything stinks, everything is dingy and pressing upon him, stretching his skull out of shape.… That morning his mother was sick. Vomiting into a basin. The sharp acrid smell of it: now he is vomiting himself. He spits again and again, running his tongue around his mouth over the hard ridges of his teeth. Tiny particles of vomit, like particles of food. Slimy, clinging, a film inside his mouth.… When he is finished, trembling, he reaches up to pull the chain and the water begins to flow noisily, lazily. He has a moment of panic, thinking the vomit won’t flush away.
Jesse has not been sick for years, so this is a surprise to him. Nausea: the internal trembling, the weakness, the panic. A panic located in the stomach. He does not remember having felt so sick before, ever in his life, so helpless and frightened. Shirley is often sick to her stomach, and their mother takes care of her in the kitchen, with the basin. It is too cold to go to the outhouse to be sick. Too nasty there.
That morning, by accident, Jesse came upon his mother when she was being sick. She was hunched ove
r and, turning to him surprised, her face was pale, her thin, arched eyebrows too severe in her delicate face; she seemed a stranger, with a forlorn, witch-like beauty that struck him. Her beauty. Her face. The odor of vomit, a streak of vomit on her bathrobe. Both she and Jesse were embarrassed. She said quickly, “There’s more privacy in the barn with the cows!”
It was an expression of hers from her girlhood. Barns and cows. Her father owned a farm.
“I’m sorry,” Jesse said, backing away.
That had been about seven-thirty in the morning. His father was still out walking. Don’t you know, don’t you want to know, where he has gone? Why he can’t sleep anymore? But he said nothing, standing aside for her to pass, and followed her out into the kitchen. More bickering there—Jean and Shirley. Jesse sat at the table. Bob was snuffling, his eyes watering. Talk around the table was edgy, musical, teasing. Jean was always teasing someone. There was a kind of rhythm to her teasing—a cruelty, then a tenderness. She had a quick, high yelp of a laugh, which was a surprise in her because it was boyish and abrupt. But her smile was slow, teasing. Bob was asking when the Christmas tree would be put up, and Jean was saying there might not be any tree this year. “If you’re bad, there won’t be any tree,” Jean said. “Just because of him?” said Shirley. “Why him? He’s not the only one that counts!” “Be quiet, baby,” Jean said. Jesse thought with pleasure of the Christmas tree. His father would bring it home, tied to the front fender of the car. It would be put up in the front room, inside a small metal tripod with a basin of water beneath, and they would decorate it with things from the two big cardboard boxes kept in the attic—very light glass globes, spirals that looked like icicles, strings of frizzy silver material, colored bows and papers, and figures in Biblical dress. Two or three birds, with feathers that seemed real. An angel. A star of tarnished gold. Candles drawn on cardboard and colored in crayon, which Jesse himself had made years ago. Beneath the tree they would put their presents for one another.
Their mother made breakfast for them. She still looked pale, shaky. Jesse wondered if the girls noticed. Her bathrobe was damp from where she had wiped off the vomit—a large damp stain in the blue material. But no one else would notice. She put plates on the table, gave them hot oatmeal in spoonfuls. She avoided Jesse’s eye. He hated himself for seeing so much, always seeing so much. He couldn’t help it. They lived so close together, he could not help noticing the straps that sometimes slid down Jean’s shoulder, the flushed, mottled flesh of his mother’s chest if her bathrobe swung open. Sometimes he found himself staring at his father—that strong, large face, the strong jaws, the grinding, relentless motion of his teeth as he ate. He wanted to see, and yet he did not want to see. He wanted to see the underclothes Jean kept in her bureau drawer, the top left-hand drawer, and yet he did not want to see.… He couldn’t help noticing his sister’s breasts. Her firm legs, the hint of her thighs. At school, he saw other boys watching Jean. The boys even watched his mother when she came to town in the summer, wearing slacks, sometimes with her hair done up in a bandana, looking like a gypsy, Hotly, warily, his eyes took in these sights. The moist out-sides of his eyes became seared with such sights. His father going out to tramp in the woods, hours before dawn.… Once, in the Brennans’ woods, he had come upon a heap of cigarette butts and ashes, and he knew this was where his father had sat, unable to stay in the house or in bed. Unable to sleep. He had kicked at the pile with his foot, as if this were a secret that embarrassed him.
His mother pulled a chair out and sat down. Wiped Bob’s nose. Now Shirley wanted something; her whining. Jean went to the cupboard and stumbled over Jesse’s feet. “Biggest feet in the world,” she muttered. Jesse drew his feet under his chair angrily. “Watch out for yourself,” he said. “You two,” said their mother, sighing. The table was crowded with things. Now his mother must sit down, with a bowl for herself, a spoon, a glass, a cup filled with hot coffee. Everything was crowded. Jesse wanted to knock things off, clear a path—He wanted to shout to Jean to let him alone. Who did she think she was? But he ate in silence, sullenly, quickly. Too much sugar on his oatmeal; he’d spilled a teaspoonful on in one place. Sickening sweet on his tongue. He glanced up to see Bob wiping his nose with the back of his hand. If his father were to come in now, they would have to make room for him. Another chair. Another place at the table. No hiding here. His father’s coarse, discolored teeth, the grinding, rhythmic motion of his chewing, his swallowing. Hypnotizing Jesse. Jesse’s stare, his habit of staring, would get him into trouble. Must not stare. Must not notice. His mother’s bathrobe, loosely tied at the waist. He could hear his mother and Jean and Shirley talking, talking about Christmas. The Christmas tree. Presents for Grandpa Vogel. The three voices blended together, mingling and clashing, drawing apart, easing together. Disagreeing. Agreeing. Switching sides. It was like music. The radio was turned on to the morning news, but the station must have shifted, most of the sound was static. Why didn’t Jesse’s mother notice that and fix it? Jesse ate fast, gulping his food. Since he had seen his mother being sick, he felt a little sick himself. And what was behind that static, what was behind the noise of the radio and his mother and sisters? Was there something he should be listening to?
He said abruptly, “Where’s Pa?”
His mother did not look at him.
“He’s gone out already,” Jean said.
“Why?” said Jesse.
“How do I know why?” Jean said.
“Where did he go?” Jesse asked his mother.
She was picking at something on the edge of the table. Picking it off the faded oilcloth.
“He couldn’t sleep, so he went for a walk,” she said finally.
“It’s cold out to take a walk,” he said strangely, staring at his mother.
“He couldn’t sleep,” his mother said.
They were silent. Shirley sucked at her milk, oblivious to their silence, not understanding. Jesse and Jean and their mother sat so close together that their faces were like balloons hovering close, about to knock together lightly. The windows were frosted with ice on the inside—a very thin, flaky, delicate coating in odd designs. Jesse stared at the window behind the stove. What if his father appeared there suddenly, staring in at them? He must be hungry, out walking in the woods for so long. His breath coming in puffs of steam. His breath smoking about his mouth. Walking with his head down, bowed, his dark hair spiky and wild, uncombed, his eyes straining in their sockets to see, to make sure nothing was being kept from him, hidden from him—that was Willard Harte. Everyone knew Willard Harte. He was from Yewville and everyone in Yewville knew him.
Jesse felt his father’s presence, as if that face was really in the window, spying on them. So he said daringly, hoarsely, “What is he going to do now? Are we going to move?”
“Go ask him yourself,” Jean said quickly.
Their mother did not reply. She was wiping Bob’s mouth.
“Ma,” Jesse said deliberately, “are we going to move again?”
“Are we going to move?” Shirley asked, surprised. “How come? When?”
“Shut up,” Jean said. “You keep out of this.”
“Where are we going?” Shirley asked. She had a full, moonish face dotted with freckles. She gaped at Jean. In this family, Jean often knew secrets; what passed between their mother and father, unvoiced, might be put into words by Jean.
“He’s going to ask some people … maybe ask around.…” their mother said evasively.
“Ask around what?” said Jesse.
“To see if he can sell it,” their mother said.
“All it says is Closed. Nothing about being for sale,” Jesse said.
His mother glanced up at him. Pale, transparent, fed by tiny glowing veins, her face seemed to be confronting his boldly. Her eyes were a faint gray, a faint green, slightly slanted, almond-shaped, their playfulness now gone stern.
“Jesse, if you want to know so much, go ask him yourself,” Jean said angrily. “Go on o
ut, you’re so smart—big goddamn loudmouth!”
“Jean,” their Mother said.
“Don’t ‘Jean’ me, Ma. Listen, Ma, don’t ‘Jean’ me,” Jean said quickly. “I’m not a goddamn little baby like these two. Don’t look at me sideways like that. Today is Christmas assembly and he tries to start a fight right away, and he is acting crazy like always—outside tramping around, what if somebody sees him! I heard him drinking last night. Stumbling around in the dark. Why’s he always going out like that, out late and up early, roaming around like a bum—the kids ask me about him, they say they see him as far away as town, on foot—Now he put that goddamn sign up and boarded everything up, and the kids are going to ask me about it—just in time for Christmas assembly—”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” their mother said.
“I wish I was dead!” Jean said.
She began to cry. The dog ran in from the other room, barking. Bob stared at Jean, amazed, and struggled to get down from his mother’s lap.
“You hate me! I wish I was dead!” Jean cried, jumping up.
“Sit down and be quiet. Who hates you? Who the hell hates you?” their mother said in a light, hot, sullen voice. She was brushing at the front of her bathrobe. Short fluttery motions of her hands, as if brushing off crumbs. She eyed Jean sideways, turning her head sternly, severely aside. Jesse saw how her eyes pinched at the corners.
“Cut out that sniveling. It’s only more trouble,” their mother said.
Jean’s face, streaked with tears, was not so pretty now.
“Do you want more trouble?” their mother said.
“Jesse started it,” Jean said.
“I only asked if we were going to move. If he was going to sell the gas station,” Jesse said. He felt shaky, uncertain. The tension in this room was between his mother and Jean; it seemed to exclude him. By raising his voice, by avoiding their eyes, he was able to blunder into it, to capture some of it for himself. He said recklessly, “Sure, this morning the kids on the bus will see the sign—why’d he have to put a sign up anyway? And they’ll kid us about it, they’ll want to know what happened—”
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