Anywhere But Here (42 page)

That afternoon we met Adele at the bakery we liked and we stayed a long time after lunch. It was their last day. Kids came over from the mainland to work the summer and they were all going home, back to school, I suppose, their regular lives.

Adele had made up a little paper chart and we were figuring out her schedule of courses. She switched back and forth every which way and we went over and over it. It seemed like a game to me. Economics on Wednesday mornings, English from four to six. And people would walk by and look at Hal and I’d take him up out of the stroller. It was the end of the summer and we had suntans. Adele and I were both young.

We sat there for so long we got hungry again. It was outside, in a little area closed off with a wrought-iron railing. We sipped ice water with flowers frozen in the cubes. Those glasses, I don’t know what it was, they were thick maybe, they just felt good in your hand. We ordered coffee and blueberry tarts.

The coffee tasted strong and they brought real cream. And those blueberry tarts were delicious. I remember taking mine out of the little wax paper ruffle and slipping it on the plate. They printed the wax paper with gold and they made the tarts with mounds of blueberries under a currant glaze and custard—then a thick layer of chocolate just above the crust. I wish I had the recipe for those. Adele could probably tell you, just from tasting, what was in it, what spices. But she would never remember anymore.

The paper doilies from under the pastry blew onto the brick patio in a little breeze, they were white with gold fluting. They had gray marble tabletops, with dark green iron chairs.

Hal stood up in his stroller blowing soap bubbles. These were really the last few summer days. At the curb under a tent of green
leaves, I watched an old man put his hand under his wife’s elbow and ask if she wanted an ice cream. They crossed the street in a diagonal, slow, to the cart on the other side. Michigan chills early. They get the Canadian winds.

That chocolate in the blueberry tarts was such a surprise. Oh, they were good. I’ve meant to try and make them like that a hundred times, but it would be a lot of work. I even bought those little tart pans, I have them here somewhere. I think they put in something special, nuts, I’m sure, and maybe a little lemon in that crust.

People walked past us and some at other tables stood up and left. We just stayed. Behind Adele, a girl who worked there sat with her legs crossed. Their uniforms were red and white, like candy stripers’. She had her hair pulled back off her face in a plain rubber band and she took a long time smoking a cigarette.

Adele would every once in a while bend down and try and teach Hal something. She’d wave her fingers in front of his face to make his eyes move and say This Little Piggy on his toes.

“He’s very bright, Carol,” she said. “He’ll be a bright, bright boy. You’ll see. I’ll bet he’s reading at two or three.”

That meant a lot to me from her, but I tried not to show it. Even being sisters, we were shy sometimes.

“So, you think he’ll be all right?” I laughed a little. “Smart like you?”

“Smarter.” She sighed. “The boys always are. The lucky dogs.”

“So you don’t think I did too much the wrong thing marrying Jimmy and staying home.”

She nodded her head real slowly. Hal stood up in his buggy. We’d bought him that bottle of soap bubbles with the wand. I held his hands, trying to get him to sit down.

“No, I don’t think you did the wrong thing, Carol. I think you’ll have a good, happy life.”

I never forgot that. My chin swelled, I could feel the blood coming there and my lip was doing something funny—I’d had no idea before I cared so much what she thought. I glanced over to see if she was noticing, but she looked away. I suppose she was worried about herself.

“And I think you will, Adele. You’ve done so much already, at your young age. You’ll get your degree, maybe even go to graduate school. I think you’re going to have an exciting, exciting life. You’ll go places. I know you will.”

She smiled at me, but one of her distant smiles. I suppose she thought there was a lot I didn’t know. And there was. Plenty I couldn’t understand. She hasn’t had the easiest time. I suppose even then she must have worried. You could see. A girl that pretty and nervous, beautiful, really, looking all over, scattered, putting on lipstick there at the table.

“Should we go?” she said.

“No, let’s stay.” For once I acted like the leader. You’d think I always would have been, but even eleven years older, I never was with her. The waiter strolled by and all of a sudden I felt in a festive mood.

“We’d each like another tart,” I said. “Two more. And two more cups of your good coffee.” That brought us both back to normal. We laughed and laughed. Adele lowered her voice the way she does when she’s joking around, trying to be stern, saying, “Carol, you really shouldn’t have,” but we both wanted more. She slapped her behind. “Why not?” It was our last day of vacation. We were going home tomorrow and then Adele would leave for college. We had plenty of money, extra. We felt like rich girls. And we didn’t worry about weight or health or any of that yet either. We were young. And we were both pretty enough the way we were, we knew that. I was married already. That was the least of our worries.

He brought the coffee first in nice china, with pink morning glories painted on the cups. We poured the cream in, it was that old-fashioned heavy cream, almost brownish, and it just swirled and swirled. We watched it a long time, longer than ever needs be. But then we had the time.

For a while everything seemed to be going good with us. Hal really did seem okay, except in school. We had the trailer at Pine Mountain and we went up every weekend skiing. For once, Hal and Jimmy agreed on a sport and Hal could do it. Ted and your
mom drove up, too, and stayed in the lodge, we’d always end up there together. You got to be a good little skier, you had your white bunnyfur jacket, remember your mom bought you that? She took a lot of flack for it, believe me. Gram, everybody, thought she would spoil you.

She and Ted and Jimmy and I were all drinking in the lodge bar the night when we found out Hal broke his arm. Your mom and Ted tried to keep apart a little and have their own social group, but they really couldn’t. It was small enough so everybody knew everybody. We each sort of liked someone else. I sat on Paul Shea’s lap in that cocktail lounge. Jimmy flirted too, with Barbie Shea. That’s really as close as we ever got to anything risqué. But we were all there together, so nothing too much could ever happen.

And one of those nights in the bar, they came and told us Hal broke his arm. Safety patrol was up bandaging him on the slope and they’d have to take him to the hospital for a cast. It was that night skiing—I never liked it. It wasn’t safe.

So Hal couldn’t ski that whole winter he had the cast. We still drove up every weekend, we had a whole social life there by then, and Hal moped around in the trailer. You were a little wizard. You were a real good skier, jumping down those moguls. Well, Ted was good, and he’d taught you. Benny really couldn’t keep up and he was always naturally so good at any sport. But I remember him maneuvering his snowplow. You used to dare him onto the tough slopes with you.

One night we were in the lounge and you came in to find your mother because you’d hurt your nose. You kids had been playing on those metal bars for the lines in front of the lift pass windows. You used to twirl on them like monkey bars and I guess you were turning and you just smacked your nose, hard. You had your hand over your face when you ran in.

Of course, your mom got hysterical. “Oh, no, what did you do to yourself? You’ve ruined your nose.”

She held your face to the side and cried, it was ridiculous, we hadn’t been near so upset with Hal’s broken arm. She was sure your nose was broken and your whole life was down the drain
because now you wouldn’t grow up to be pretty and no one would want to marry you.

“I TOLD you not to play on those bars,” she kept saying.

“You did not.” By that time she had you crying, too, she’d convinced you that you’d ruined your chances for a decent life.

Ted and Paul Shea inspected you. They thought it wasn’t broken. Ted ordered your mom another drink. She wanted to call an ambulance and take you twenty miles to a hospital. Paul said they didn’t do anything for broken noses, anyway, they just had to heal. It’s a good thing Ted was there or God knows what she would have done. I told her, too, it probably wasn’t anything but a bump, but she didn’t listen to me. With your mom, you really had to be a man for her to listen.

She still thinks you broke your nose that night and that’s why she wants to get you a nose job. She blames us for not letting her call the ambulance. She begged me, Carol, tell her, tell her
you
did it and tell her how crooked her nose is. She doesn’t believe me. Well, it doesn’t seem crooked to me. I told her that and she just sighed, ogh, you know, like everyone’s against her.

We skied three winters and the year Hal broke his arm was the last time. That March, towards the end of the snow, when we thought there’d be one or, at the most, two more weekends, Hal skied. He knew he wasn’t supposed to. The doctor had told him time and time again. He still had the half cast and a sling on that arm. But he had to ski, he had to show he could do it with one arm.

We all saw him at about the same time. Your mom and I were in a chair lift together going down. We went on the high slope where I was scared to ski, but there was a lodge at the top and I’d wanted to go and have hot chocolate. So your mom had talked the lift man into letting us take it up and back again. We were the only ones on the whole lift going down, all the rest were empty chairs. That’s one thing your mom is great at, if you ever want to do something that’s not allowed, she can talk the person into it. She gets a kick out of it. Behind us, going up, Jimmy sat in another chair with Barbie Shea. Ted was giving a lesson at the top of the mountain, demonstrating the pole. He punched both poles
hard into the snow. Across from him a row of skiers copied. First we saw you and Benny, standing where the moguls were way too high for you. They were just a little smaller than you were.

“Oh, my God, look where they are, Carol,” your mother said, grabbing my arm. She leaned so far over the chair tilted and swung and we practically fell out.

You seemed to know you were over your heads. You both moved real slow, snowplowing around the moguls, leaning in so your skis were almost horizontal. You looked like you were afraid to look down. You were going first and Benny followed behind you.

“Now, don’t yell. Or they’ll get scared and then something
will
happen.”

“They should take their skis off and walk down. I’m going to tell them to do it. Ann,” she shouted. “Ann. Benny.”

The chair lift moved pretty quick though. You looked like you heard us but didn’t see where we were. All of a sudden, you were staring somewhere else and then we stared too.

There was Hal on an orange stretcher, with his cast on his chest and the other arm out in the snow. Three Red Cross Safety Patrol boys knelt bandaging his leg. We had to keep riding down the chair lift, we couldn’t get out. Ted was skiing down to him, neat smooth slalom jumps. He’d left his class, with their poles stuck in the snow, at the top of the mountain. You and Benny looked down and tried to steer towards him, but you could barely move as it was. Then I looked over my shoulder and I saw Jimmy. He was the only one who didn’t know. I saw his hat and the back of his head. He was getting ready to jump off the chair lift.

So then Hal had a broken arm and a broken leg and we didn’t ski anymore. He really had a hard time of it. That leg was in a cast eight months. He stayed out of school all that spring and I stayed home from the store, too. He mostly read and I’d watch television in the breezeway, but we would eat together. I liked having him home again. Sometimes Gram would walk over and have a cup of coffee with us. She’d bake a cinnamon ring or a blueberry buckle and carry it over warm, covered with a dish towel.

Then when Hal went back to high school, they took his
crutches away and kicked him down, those big boys. They could really be mean. And I don’t think he ever caught up after the time he missed for the leg. Then when he finally had the cast taken off, he got in with a bad crowd.

When Hal was a freshman he stopped writing his name. At first it just seemed like some stunt a teenager would pull—but he kept to it so darn long. Then pretty soon he didn’t write at all—even those tests with the little blue circles you fill in with a pencil, he turned them all back empty.

So they called us, they said specifically that both parents were supposed to come, so Jimmy and I went, one morning, and talked to the principal. They said Hal should see a psychiatrist and they wanted us to both go, too, the psychiatrist wanted the whole family. Now you read about that a lot, but I’d never heard of it then. Well, that was just too much for Jimmy. He banged his fist on the table and said, “No son of mine is going to any psychiatrist. There’s nothing the matter with him. The only thing wrong with him is he’s stubborn. And he’s lazy.” Jimmy took the truck and drove back to the water softener store. I apologized for him, but it didn’t really do any good. I walked down those halls and the sound of my heels echoed so. But Jimmy’s mind was made up. And when he gets like that, it’s no use trying to talk to him. What I remember now about that day are those stone hallways and that I was wearing a hat with a feather on it.

He started up with that Merry. We weren’t happy, no family would have been, really, I don’t think, if it was their son. It wasn’t just that she was poor, that wasn’t it. But she was dirty. That was really the thing. When Ben went out with Susie, it was a completely different story. We wouldn’t have said a thing if he’d decided to marry her. We would have been glad. And her parents weren’t rich either. They both worked. But they were nice people. Clean.

But with Merry’s family, it really wasn’t so good. You know, you hear things. Her mother was gone somewhere, I don’t know where, but she wasn’t dead. She lived somewhere up north, Escanaba maybe, working as a waitress. And the father drank. I
drove by the house once or twice on the way to the cemetery. They lived on Spring Street and their house was one of the worst. It was an old, gray house and all the basement windows were cracked. We heard that Merry had a sister who was sixteen or seventeen that the father had kicked out. She was living on her own, in an apartment above a store, and still going to the high school. Some at church said she was pregnant. So it wasn’t all the nicest.