The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay (21 page)

 

“What the hell’s the matter with you?” They were finally on their bus. Avis had gone from being all atwitter to stone quiet. Now, by God, she was sitting here on the bus crying, tears rolling down her cheeks. Idella hadn’t seen Avis cry for years. “What has gotten into you?”

“Nothing, just nothing.”

“Are you sick or something?” Idella whispered.

“No, I’m not sick!”

“Well, all right, then!” Idella looked out the window. Avis sat there sniveling the whole time the bus rolled along, picking up passengers and letting them off. “Two more stops,” Idella whispered.

“I know, goddamn it, I’m not blind.”

“Well, you don’t have to bite my head off!” Idella had had enough. She wanted to be in bed and done with all this.

They got out of the bus and walked along in silence, Avis keeping a few steps ahead, as usual. It was so annoying. Suddenly Avis stopped deadbolt under a streetlight and turned around to Idella.

“Yes, I
am
sick! I’m sick, Idella!” She was yelling.

“Why, Avis!”

“I’m sick of being kept in my place. Of being told what to do and where to go and where to sit. Of being out of place and too loud and not good enough. I want to have things like other people—like the people that get to go to the opera when they want to, and take cabs, and wear beautiful dresses like this. I look good in this dress, goddamn it! I look wonderful!” She twirled about under the yellow light. “I want to feel like those singers did onstage. Carmen let herself be big and loud as she pleased. She wasn’t afraid to live, Idella.”

“But it got her into trouble, Avis. She got killed.”

“I want to open my mouth that wide and have no one—not even you—tell me to keep it down, to turn it off, to sit on it, by God! I don’t want to crawl around on my hands and knees and do for everyone else in the whole damned world for the rest of my life. Just because we came down from Canada poor as church mice doesn’t mean we’re not as good as anybody else. That Lawrence dame is a glorified servant. She’s nobody! She wipes her ass like everybody. They all do!” Avis was yelling up to the sky, her arms flung out from her sides. People were crossing the street to avoid her. “They all shit and wipe their asses!”

“Avis, please!”

“Please what, Idella? Please, please, please, please, please! I’m tired of asking for things!” Suddenly she crumpled to the curb and sat, huddled, her knees up under her chin. The air seemed to leave her entirely.

Idella opened her purse and took out the handkerchief. “Here, take this. It floated in this trunk all night. You might as well make some use of it.”

Avis reached for it. “Thanks.” She started to laugh. “That’s you all over, Idella.”

“What?”

“A square handkerchief in a big brown purse.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound too interesting.” Idella took Avis’s hand and helped her up. “If you weren’t my sister, I might hit you.”

“I thought that because I
am
your sister you’d hit me.” Avis was blowing her nose, thank heavens. The storm seemed to be over.

“You’re right.” Idella gave Avis a whack on the behind with the purse. “O-lay!”

Avis laughed and took her coat off her shoulders, swooping it around like a matador’s cape. Idella came charging through it with her head down, her purse in front of her like a shield.

“O-lay! O-lay! O-lay!” They were both shouting it and charging like bulls from streetlamp to streetlamp.

“‘
To
ria-
dori
e
bum
da
bum-bum bum
!’ Sing, Idella, sing! We’ve been to the opera! Let’s sing! ‘
Bum
dum ba
bum
dum, la la la!’”

“‘To market, to market, to buy a fat ho-o-o-o-o-g!’” Idella sang out. “‘Home again, home again, jiggity-joo-o-o-o-g!’”

“Oh, brother.”

“‘To market, to market, to buy a fat p-i-i-i-g!’” Idella let loose. “‘Home again, home again, now we are d-o-o-o-o-ne!’”

“No, no, no, Idella.” Avis laughed. “That’s the plum-bun verse.”

“Oh.”

“Jesus, if you can’t get Mother Goose straight, you’ve got no career in the opera.”

“No.” Idella giggled. “I guess I don’t.”

They jigged and jogged together until they reached the old brownstone and sneaked quietly in, giggling past the sleeping ladies, up to the attic room.

“Home again, home again,” Idella said, thankfully pulling her blanket up to her chin.

“Now we are done.” Avis sighed.

They lay side by side on Idella’s narrow bed. Their bones were familiar, lined up against each other.

“What’s a plum bun anyway?” Idella whispered.

“How the hell would I know?” Avis started to giggle. “A bun with a plum, I guess.”

“Just asking.”

“Go to sleep, Della.”

“Okay.”

“O-lay.”

July 1930

 

Idella and Edward rolled over the hot sand until Idella was dizzy with him, until her hair was gritty and hopeless. Laughing and flea bitten, they rolled toward the water over broken bits of mussel shells and slimy blobs of seaweed. Sand was in her bathing suit and under her nails and between her toes. It clung all up and down her wet legs. The long fingers of a wave slapped over them. “Cold! Oh, God, it’s cold!” Idella screamed. She was as happy as she had ever been.

She squirmed out from under him and ran back to their blanket, splaying herself across it. He followed. “Oh, Eddie, how will I get cleaned up enough? What’ll I tell Mrs. Gray? I’m all over sand. It’s in my ears, even.”

He leaned over her and put the tip of his tongue in her ear. “Did you get sand under your suit?”

Idella leaned up on her elbows. “I’ve got to start the Grays’ supper. I only have the afternoon off, not the whole day like you.”

“I took the whole day. I didn’t have it. I took it.” His mouth was on hers, his lips soft and open and warm. “Mmm,” he said. “I like eating sand like this.”

“We’d better stop.” She disentangled herself, then gathered up their towels and shook them out. Idella loved being with him. Even though he was a full six inches shorter, that didn’t matter. He was still handsome. With Eddie she felt like she was a desirable woman. After all, she was nearly twenty-two. And . . . well, they had gone pretty far in Eddie’s car—farther than she’d ever dreamed of going by choice.

She’d met him at a dance at the Grange. She was dancing with Raymond Tripp, and along came Eddie and tapped him on the shoulder and cut in. She’d been startled—and pleased. That’s when he told her about selling whiskey off the pier at Old Orchard Beach. She thought he was enterprising and bold. Dad would have drunk up all the profits.

The next week Avis came up from Boston and wanted to go out to Old Orchard. It had taken some swishing around on Idella’s part, but finally they got out to the pier. And there was Eddie, coming right up and taking her hand. Avis was madder than a wet hen. She went stalking off. But Idella didn’t mind. They’d walked along the pier and then under it. They’d had saltwater taffy. And they’d kissed, eating that candy, all sandy and melty in their mouths. They lay there under the pier, hearing the waves and the music and the sound of footsteps up above and seeing the moonlight coming down between the boards.

Idella folded her dress and stockings and rolled them into her towel. “The tide’s gone out. Let’s look for sand dollars on the way back. They’re good luck.”

She walked ahead of him, searching for signs of the flat white shells. “They like the tide pools. We used to find them up in Canada when we were kids and make believe they were real dollars. My sister Avis would use hers to play poker with Dad. I kept mine in a cigar box. Most dollars I ever had.”

“What happened to them?” Eddie was walking along behind her, watching as she searched the edges of tidal pools.

“Got thrown out probably.”

Eddie stopped and poked his toe at something white. He bent down and scraped it clear. “Well, now, this isn’t a whole dollar.” He picked out broken bits. “I guess it’s spare change.”

Idella took the biggest piece from him. It had traces of a star pattern, as though etched by delicate needles. She smiled and closed her fingers around it. “You have to start somewhere. Found money. I’ll take what I can get.”

They walked until they came to the point of rocks that jutted out into the water. Mussels and periwinkles, exposed by the tide, were sharp to walk across. Strands of seaweed were slick underfoot. Eddie took her hand.

“Look at that man out there.” Idella pointed to the smooth, steady strokes of a swimmer along the shore. “I think that’s a marvel. Can you swim like that, Eddie?”

“I never learned to swim. Knight’s farm had a pond where the kids would all go, but my mother wouldn’t let me. Said I’d drown. Said it was full of cow dung and I’d get sick and die.”

“Couldn’t you just go anyway?”

Eddie laughed. “You don’t know my mother. She’d of come tearing down to that pond, and I would have jumped in and hoped, by God, to drown.”

“Oh, my.”

“Oh, my, all right.”

“I can’t swim right either. The water is too cold up in Canada. None of us girls were allowed to go in. Men’d go out fishing from the cliffs. And on Sundays we’d all climb down the ladder and have picnics on the little strip of beach. But it was rocks mostly.”

They had rounded the point to the bay side. Here the water was flat and calm. There were many more people. Mothers lined the scalloped edges, holding discarded plastic shovels, their eyes trained on their children.

“One time a couple of boys drowned down by the cliff shore. When I was seven. Mother was eight months along or so with my sister Emma. I remember clear as day seeing her run across that field. She lifted up her skirts, with that big belly, and ran to get to the ladder. Down over the edge she went, down to the beach to try to save those boys. But they were gone.” Idella and Eddie kept walking, angling between blankets and shoes with socks stuffed in them. “Who knew that she would be dead one month later? So healthy she was. Who knew? And me just seven.”

Eddie stopped. Idella was startled by the abruptness. He turned toward her. The sun was behind him, but she could still make out the lovely clear blue of his eyes, prettier than the water.

“I want you to come up to the house for supper this Saturday and meet Mother,” he said. “She’s been asking. You might as well meet her.”

“Do you think she’ll like me, Eddie?”

“No telling.” Eddie smiled and shrugged. “There is no telling with her, Idella. She don’t think right sometimes.”

This was not reassuring.

 

 

July 1930

 

Eddie had come down Fletcher’s Hill to meet Idella at the bus, thank God. She was nervous enough already.

“She’s been sitting there since lunch, watching and waiting.” Eddie helped her down and pointed at the house on top of the hill, where he lived with his parents. “It’s that big gray house, see. She’s on the porch. It’s screened in so you can’t see her, but she’s watching.”

“Goodness! She’s been watching since lunch? Here it is almost supper.”

“She’s been cleaning all week. Starched the curtains. Had them things stretched out on racks all over the house.”

“Oh, that’s a big job. Doing curtains.” Idella wondered if she should mention to Mrs. Jensen how nice the curtains looked. “You mean the sheers, Eddie? She did the sheers?”

“Hell, I don’t know what you call them. The curtains. She borrows them racks from Milly Masterson with the nails all over the edges. I cut myself on them every damn time, bringing them over for her. Look here.” Eddie showed her where he had been scratched as by a cat’s claw across the base of his thumb.

Idella touched her fingers to her lips lightly and patted Eddie’s thumb. “There.”

Eddie smiled, took her arm, and started up the hill, Idella wobbling in her new shoes.

“Your mother doesn’t get out much? She’s not in any clubs or anything?”

“Hell no. She sits on that porch, is all. You’ll like my father, though, and he’ll like you.”

“You mean your mother won’t?”

“There’s no telling, Idella. It’s got nothing to do with you.”

“Oh. I see,” Idella said, not at all sure if she did. She felt like she was being led to market.

Eddie opened the front gate for her. It hung down off its hinges, dragging across the dirt when he pushed it. “There’s another damn thing I’m supposed to fix,” he muttered.

Idella could see Mrs. Jensen now, watching from the porch, from behind her glasses. She didn’t move or wave or anything. As they walked up the path to the house, Idella wished she could give herself one final check and run a comb through her hair.

Eddie opened the porch door, motioning for her to go in ahead of him. Mrs. Jensen was in the act of rising up out of her rocker. A lot of bulk was involved. She had a cane lodged between her two feet, and she leaned all her weight forward and over it. She finally stood, hoisted and hovering, above that little stick of wood.