Anywhere But Here (23 page)

Milton’s birthday is September first, the same as our Adele’s. And they are a lot alike, so I’ve often wondered if there isn’t something to that. There’s one such a one like Milton in every family. One who thinks he has to get away.

We lived above a little grocery store, which was a help to me with the baby. Art was gone all day and some at night, too, he was just starting up, trying to make a go of it, and he was still young enough to want some fun. So I took the baby downstairs and sat in the store with Mrs. Sheck. She knew babies, she had three schoolchildren of her own. She’d hold Carol, too, and we’d
talk all day about babies, she’d show me one little product or another. We got through.

Art began as a photoengraver just when they were starting up the newspaper. He worked Sundays and all night sometimes to get it out when he was supposed to. I still have the first year of newspapers all bound up in such a book, this big. I should call the museum, see if they want the old thing. I just haven’t wanted to lug it out to the dump.

Then, when we’d saved a little money, after the first few years, we bought the land for this house. We rode all over, looking at land. I picked out this spot for the oak tree. I liked that big tree in the front yard. The land was cheap then and this was nowhere. We were the first on Lime Kiln Road. Art bought past where the barn is now and all the way down to the tracks.

“That swamp?” I said. “What are you ever going to do with that swamp?”

I should have kept my big mouth shut, because now that land is worth a lot of money. It was outside of the city limits, part of a new little town, Ashland they were calling it then. Art was already thinking he wanted enough land so when Carol grew up she could build and live here, too. He was hoping if we built a nice house, others who wanted to live in the country and were just getting a start would move out. He thought we could all pitch in and help with the work, women and men. The newspaper gave him his ideas. He started town meetings and they drew up a plan for every house to have sewer and water and electricity.

Then he got into the mink and was that a lot of work. He built that barn in back prettinear by himself. And they were temperamental, those mink. If you didn’t do every little thing just right, they could die and then you were out.

By that time, too, other people built on our road like Art wanted. Mack Griling moved in down where they are now and he built a house, and the Brozeks came across the road. They built a house and that little apartment above the garage, for her brother who was in the navy, for when he came home.

See, all the time Carol was growing up, we were so busy, thinking of other things, trying to make a go of it.

And we were still so young. Lot of other people our age didn’t have children. I made friends with the other mothers, though, even if they were older. Amber Brozek across the street—she had Chummy—and I was even friends with Mack’s first wife. Tinta was her name and ooh, was she a pack rat, every inch of that house was full of junk. And she painted paintings too yet, all of them landscapes from around here. So every little spot on the wall that wasn’t full already, she covered with one of her paintings. Some were so small like a postcard. That end of the road was never any good. I was sorry they moved there, I still am. Ugh, I didn’t like going with Carol into all that dust and dirt, you knew there were plenty of germs. I don’t think Tinta ever cleaned. And when she opened a drawer once, I saw she had her clothes all rolled up in little balls. But, still, she was a neighbor too, and we didn’t have very many. Amber and I went with our babies once a week or so for tea. We’d dress Carol and Chummy in their oldest clothes before we walked down and then, after, we’d let them play in the dirt. That’s when they made their mud pies. They loved that, sure. And then we plunked them right down in the tub.

Art hired two men to help him out with the mink. Only one was married, the other still lived at home. Art palled around with them, after work too. They used to go to the Morley Meyerson Building, it’s not there anymore, but it was one of the first old buildings, right along the river. They climbed up to the top, five stories, and they jumped off the roof into the Fox River. The Fox River was clear in those days, cold, but you could swim in it. The bay, too. People swam all over in summer. And they had the nice beaches. Now that’s all gone because of those darn paper mills. But they give the people the jobs, that’s the thing. I didn’t like to hear it, Art taking risks like that, five stories, and me with a daughter barely walking at home, but I knew he had to get it out of his system somehow, being young. And so I didn’t say anything. We wives didn’t say too much. I suppose he had to have his fun, too. He worked very hard for his money. And we were lucky. Lots weren’t as lucky as we were.

When my father died, we hired detectives to go find Milton. We had to hire detectives when Dad died and then again for my
mother. They found him in a one-room over a tavern in San Francisco. The detectives had a picture we gave them and they said right away, coming off the ship, they knew it was Milton. He still had those yellow curls. But I hardly recognized him anymore, he changed so. He was a real solid man at the funeral, people looked and wondered, is that Milton? He had to borrow one of Art’s suits and it hardly fit him. He wasn’t thin anymore. But he did still have those curls. If we hadn’t found him and sent him money to come home, he never would have known his father was dead. He stayed for a while and worked on the mink farm, but that didn’t go. He didn’t like that. I suppose he’d been around the world prettinear by then, he’d seen all kinds of things. He was used to more excitement. And he drank. As soon as he had a little money saved up, he’d go blow it in the taverns. I remember once it was Thanksgiving. He had gone the night before, from tavern to tavern by taxi, and when we were just sitting down for Thanksgiving, he staggered up the road. He was shaking when he came in and he asked Carol to get him a glass full of whiskey. She was eight or nine then and she did it. She got him a water glass full and he just gulped it down. And the way he ate, he was a nervous person. He ate real fast and greedy. He never used to be like that. I suppose on the ship maybe they had to be. Then, after us, he went home to Malgoma and lived with Granny for a while and that was a disaster, too.

A year or so later, after he’d left again, he sent us a big coconut, with painting on it. That gave Art the idea for the Polynesian bar in the basement, oh ye gods. Yes, we have Milton to thank for that, the colored lights and all. The fish was our fault, that was from Florida. I wanted to go to Florida, and he caught it there and had it stuffed. And every once in a while, we got a postcard from Milton. I stopped reading them because I found out things I didn’t necessarily want to know. He went on about the Silver Slipper, oh, he ranted, he must have been drunk when he wrote some of those. I wouldn’t be the least surprised.

Carol was eleven years old by the time we had Adele. Everything was different by then. Adele was born in 1929, she was a child in the depression years, but she was too little to tell. By the
time she was old enough to know anything, we had some money again. And she got plenty, much more than Carol.

Carol was like a little mother, such a help to me. Those years, for a long time, we had hamburger every night and we did all kinds of things with it, Hamburger Surprise, Hamburger Supreme, Hamburger Royale. We mixed in potatoes and ketchup, different canned vegetables, anything to stretch out the meat. I still have that metal box of recipes we used then, things we cut from the paper.

Carol changed Adele and watched her, everything. Carol was always serious. I thought because we had her so young, she stayed afraid of things. I was afraid when I was pregnant with her. That Tinta said her mother took up mail-order watercolor lessons only once in her life, when she was pregnant with Tinta, and here Tinta turned out to be a painter! And I suppose, too, when Carol was little, she could tell how scared I felt. She always kept quiet, that didn’t worry me because I was like that, too, but really, I think she had a hard time of it. She was always short and dark, and then she would have Art’s big nose. Neither you or Adele have that nose but Carol sure enough got it.

And everything Carol didn’t get, Adele did. When I think of it it makes me mad. Because we were older then and then we really wanted a child. We were the right age then for one. And we had more money. Art never really took the time to spend with Carol when she was little, he was building up the business and those years we were so poor, scraping and saving, but later, when Adele was born, he could like a baby, he’d come in and play with her, oh, for hours. When she was still in diapers, he’d carry her out to see the mink.

And of course Adele would just be pretty. She always had blond, blond hair—she got that from my mother—and such perfect creamy skin. Just like Milton. She didn’t get the freckles until later. She’s the only one of all of us who got my mother’s long legs. And dimples. And so you can imagine she had the clothes and the kids over and the parties. Able Hansen had moved in by then and they had kids she could play with. And Amber had Phil and Lacey, where when Carol was growing up, there was only
Chummy, and Carol was always too shy to play much with a boy. Carol used to stay inside by me.

Adele, when she was old enough, trouped out there with the worst of them, a real tomboy. She was always a regular dickens, into everything, in the swamps, all full of coal from the tracks, whatever they could find to collect dirt and tear their clothes, they found. Of course, those years I had a wash machine already, in the basement, back of his Polynesian bar. When Carol was little she had to be careful to keep whatever she had nice, because if that went, there wasn’t the money for new. Adele had a horse when she was thirteen, fourteen, that’s what that shed in back was from. That’s where Adele kept her horse. It wasn’t fair and I know it. It just never was fair. Adele got more.

But even with that, there was always something not quite right with her. I remember there was something far back, I think even when she was a baby. She was never all there. She did odd things even when she was real, real little. I often feel bad that we spoiled her and I know we did spoil her, but I think there was something else the matter, always.

Of course with two daughters so far apart in age, you have to expect they’ll be different. And we had some good times, too, the family. When we first got the car, we’d drive to Kewaunee and stop at the old dime store and buy the girls those little wax bottles with syrup in them. They made them to look like little Cokes. And we’d have picnics on the beach all day long. Once we sent the girls off to Mackinac Island. They took the train up to Michigan and then a ferry—it was a big trip for them. I remember them all dressed up with their lipstick on, going. I’m still glad we planned that, that was nice for them. There haven’t been too too many times when they were close, as sisters.

Adele was alone then for a long time when Carol went into the army. She was my only one at home. Of course, when she was that age, out of high school, Adele went to college, the works. These days they go to graduate school and get so smart you can’t even talk to them anymore. But when Carol finished with high school, we didn’t have the money for college, so she had to stay home and work. I still feel bad about it. Because she would have
liked that, too, she would have gotten something out of it. I’ve told her many times, I’d pay for her now to go, but she doesn’t want to be in with those young kids.

When the war came, she went into the Waes and she was overseas, so I suppose she saw something there, too. I know there was a fellow she liked over in France. Both of my daughters went in for the foreigners. I suppose they wanted something a little different. I always wonder if it wasn’t from Milton that they got the idea.

Oh, it was a shock for me when I first found out Carol had signed up. She was twenty-four, but I wasn’t ready yet to lose a daughter. I was home baking one day in the kitchen, I had a sponge cake in the oven and I went out to get the mail. And there was a summons for Carol. It was wartime already, but they didn’t enlist the women. She must have signed herself up and never said a word. Well, there was no more deciding about it, like it or not. It said she had to report, with her clothes, to boot camp in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, December 18. Before Christmas. Carol worked downtown then, at the Harper Method Beauty Shop, and I called her on the telephone. And I said, “What in heavens did you do?”

But she just kept still. That’s the thing with the quiet ones. They can do it to you, too. Finally, she said she’d written away because she wanted information.

And here she was stuck, before she knew it. And wouldn’t it just be Art’s Elk night. He joined with a couple other fellows from the mink. I called the Elk Lodge and they wouldn’t tell me where he was, only that the men had gone out to have fun. Oh, that made me mad. Well, I had an idea. There was a house on Irwin Street that was never any good. I’d heard the men out by the mink cages talk and laugh about it and then they always hushed up when I came near.

So I took the bus and then walked the eight or ten blocks towards the bay. That neighborhood has never been good and it still isn’t. That house is still there, it’s a supper club now. Small’s Paradise. Then, it was for the men to go and see a show. They had a stage in the living room. Lan-knows how much they paid to
get in and then I suppose they got stuck for drinks too. Well, I looked in at the window and I couldn’t see anything. The grass came up to my knees, they must never have cut it, and I tore my stockings on a thistle. Then I just walked right in. I’m still sorry I did. That taught me a lesson. I’d never seen the things that I saw that night on the stage. There was a woman up there with a donkey. Yes, a donkey, and they were doing just what you’d think, the worst you could imagine. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible. It made me sick just to see it. They did that here in Bay City. Carol’s Jimmy says they still have stuff like that going on down in Mexico.

I saw Art’s face for a moment before he saw me. He was leaning forward from a table with two other fellows, laughing.