The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay (28 page)

Idella never enjoyed these card nights all that much. Cora was kind of touchy. Finicky. And Harold took winning as seriously as Eddie did, so there was always at least one sore loser. Idella poured the nuts into a bowl. Eddie had been into the bag. Most of the cashews were missing.

She didn’t want to be standing here pouring out cold drinks. She wanted to go to that house and do what she could to help that poor woman have that baby. She wanted to see a baby get born. Things could happen, delivering a baby at home like that. It had killed her own mother. At least the doctor would be there by now. Ethel had gotten Arnie to run to the store and make phone calls. Poor kid.

Idella put the bottle of soda down half poured. She stood in the kitchen doorway, still holding the cold bottle, and looked as faint and poorly as she could muster. She leaned against the frame. “You know, this is unusual for me, but I am suddenly struck with a terrible headache.”

“Why, Idella, come sit down.” Cora was up and over there, taking the drink from her hand.

“You left your cards up, Cora. We know what you’ve got.” Eddie flipped her fan of cards over.

“Well, we’re not staying.” Cora led Idella by the hand over to her chair and sat her down. “Do you want a cool cloth, Idella?”

“I always heard ice on the back of the neck.” Harold smiled at Idella.

“Eddie.” Idella stared over at him until he looked her in the eye. “Eddie, I am afraid that I need to lie down. I hate to break up the party.”

“Oh, shush, Idella. We’ve played enough already. We’ve lost five dollars, me and Harold. I think our luck’s run out. Get your hat, Harold. It’s time to go.”

“How about finishing out this last hand? I got something here.” Eddie was holding his cards close. He smiled at Harold and Cora. “Maybe it’s not as good as I think, see, and you’ll get your five dollars back.”

“Next week, Eddie. Let’s go, Harold. Idella needs to rest.” Cora gave Idella a peck on the cheek, and Idella opened her eyes and nodded ever so slightly. She managed a wan smile, then put her hand to her forehead.

“You get her to bed, Eddie. Harold, let’s go. Now.”

Harold reached over and patted Idella’s knee. “I hope you feel better soon, Idella. The boss is calling. I’ve got to move. Good night, Eddie.”

“Night.”

They left, closing the door softly behind them, like they were leaving a sickroom.

Eddie sat stacking the poker chips by color and slipping them back into the wooden holder. He didn’t say anything. Idella sat in the chair with her eyes closed and waited until she heard the Martins all the way down the stairs.

She listened to Eddie riffling the cards, sliding them smoothly between each other again and again. Suddenly she stood. “Get your hat and keys. We’re going to Ethel’s, and we’re leaving now. I am not going to leave her in that house to have that baby all by herself with no family present.”

“I’m not going, Idella.” Eddie kept moving the cards through each other. “She got herself into this.” He stopped and looked up at her. “She’s having a bastard.”

“I am beyond angry! Beyond!”

“If I go help Ethel, Mother’ll disown me, too.”

“Oh, wouldn’t that be too bad! Wouldn’t that be a sad, sad thing! To have that goddamned mean old woman out of our lives!”

“But it’s for my father! How do I cut off my father? If I don’t mow the lawn and plow the field—if you don’t pull the weeds from her garden—then he’ll do it. And she’ll be cackling at him the whole time to get it done faster.”

“You can’t let her run things. That woman is not right in the head. She is not capable of thinking one thing after another in a straight line. And you people let her run all over you. I’ve been keeping my mouth shut since joining this family. But I’ll be goddamned if I’m not going to help Ethel. My God, I would help any woman in her situation. And a baby is a baby. A poor, innocent little bit of life that deserves to be welcomed into this world.”

“It’ll be Dad that pays.”

“Why can’t he stand up for himself?”

“I don’t know.” Edward shook his head. “He never did. He says she’s sick and don’t know any better.”

“Imagine, her forbidding him to see his own pregnant daughter! And him obeying! Sneaking and worrying and trying to see her on the sly! What is the matter with you men? Where is your backbone?”

“I can’t do it, Idella. I can’t get involved.”

“You
are
involved! Goddamn it, Edward, you
are
involved!” Idella reached across the table and grabbed the deck of cards from Eddie’s hands. “And let me tell you another thing.” They looked straight at each other. “If you treat Ethel any longer the way that you have been treating her, acting like she has committed the first and biggest sin since time began—if you don’t welcome this child into the family with open arms . . . then I am not going to stay with you.”

Eddie looked as though she had slapped him hard.

“You and I both know that the same thing could have happened to me as happened to Ethel.” She stood above him and leaned closely toward him, her hands spread flat on the table. “We got carried away more than once before we were married. And that could have been me at Christmas dinner, seven months along with your baby. Now, you get your keys, by God, and you get me to your sister.”

Edward sat for a long time, clenching his fists into tight wads and releasing them. Suddenly he crumpled forward, his head falling onto his chest, his arms like heavy ropes before him on the table. He began to sob. Idella had never heard these sounds from him. She stood before him, unable to move.

“I’m sorry, Idella.” Eddie gasped. “I’m ashamed.” He lifted a heavy hand and started to pound it against his chest. Idella reached over and took his hand in both of hers. He put his head up against her stomach, like a child, and sobbed.

“Come on, Eddie,” Idella whispered. “Let’s go get a new baby born into this family.”

When they got to Ethel’s, the doctor was still there. Mrs. Olsen from across the street had come over to help. Ethel’s three kids were upstairs in their bedroom.

As soon as Idella walked in, she knew she’d missed it. Lying next to Ethel’s bed was the cradle, and Idella could see right away that it was occupied. A bundle no bigger than a loaf of bread lay quietly under a flannel sheet. Ethel, pale and worn out, was asleep, one hand resting on the baby.

“She worked hard,” the doctor said. “She’s spent. Fine baby boy she’s got. All the parts in all the right places. Let her rest. See to the kids upstairs. I expect they’re curious and hungry. Mrs. Olsen here has been a great help. Maybe she can go home now.”

“Oh, yes,” Idella said. “You go on home. We were delayed. But we’re here now.”

Eddie walked over and looked down at the sleeping figures. He couldn’t help but smile. “For God’s sake. Look at them little fingers. He’s making a fist already.”

Idella came and stood next to him. She reached down and touched the top of the baby’s head. It was still damp. “Oh,” she said. “Oh, my.”

Ethel stirred and opened her eyes. “Eddie?”

“I’m here.”

“You seen him, Eddie?”

“He’s fine, Ethel.”

 

“I am shamed till the day I die!” Idella heard Jessie harping all the while she and Eddie opened the front gate and walked across the yard. She looked miserably at him as he held the screen door open. For more than four months, Jessie had refused to have anything to do with Ethel or the baby. But she never did stop talking about it. She gave them all no peace whatsoever.

Jessie had taken the picture of Ethel and Eddie as children down off the living-room shelf and cut it in two. It made Idella sick. “Look,” Jessie’d said, pointing proudly, “look what I done.” She’d stopped going to her women’s club. She refused to leave the house. Every day she sat out on the porch, cold as it was for the end of June, all wrapped up in afghans Ethel had made for her, and watched people walking by.

“Let’s get this over with,” Eddie whispered to Idella as they entered the kitchen. She and Eddie continued to come up to the house every Saturday morning to help out. Then they’d go down to Ethel’s and try to help her get to the store for groceries or to the doctor’s or what have you. It was a strain on everyone. Jens would slip away when he could to see the baby. He had to do it on the sly and never for more than thirty minutes at a time, or she’d rake him over the coals with her questions.

When they entered the dining room, they saw Jessie leaning over her two canes in front of the big table. Her special dishes and her few pieces of silver were spread out in rows before her.

“What’s all this?” Eddie asked.

“They’re yours now, Idella. I don’t have a daughter now, except you. I want you to have it all. I wanted to show you what you’ve got.”

“I don’t want these things,” Idella said.

“Look here, these blue cups and saucers were my wedding presents. See the tiny silver spoons that go with them? I keep them wrapped special and polished. They are real silver.”

Eddie shook his head. “These things are for Ethel, Ma. You always told her that. I don’t want them spoons—I’d swallow one.”

Jessie did not seem to hear what they were saying. She went excitedly from one treasure to another. “Here’s the pink glass pitcher. From my mother. She poured eggnog from it at her own wedding. And I got it, not my sisters, because I loved eggnog more than anyone. My mother’d make it just for me. Hold that pitcher up to the light, Jens, so’s she can see it. She gave me that pitcher before she died. I want you to take it home with you, Idella.”

“We don’t want that stuff, Ma. We don’t want the pitcher or the spoons or the little teacups. I don’t care about any of it!”

Jessie placed the pitcher down on the table. “You don’t care about it, you say? I give you my most precious things, and you don’t care about them? You don’t care about me, then. That’s what you’re saying. You don’t care about me. No one does. No one.” She took her two canes, clumped on out to the porch, and huddled into her blankets. “Are you too good for them?” she called back without turning her head. She was sniveling, Idella could tell.

Jens, still holding the pink glass pitcher, slowly placed it back onto the table. His whole frame was bowed and bent and sad looking. Idella glanced over at Edward, who was shaking his head.

She spoke quietly. “Will you look at how upset and miserable that woman has made everyone? We’re all of us unhappy.” Eddie gazed at her helplessly. “You go get her.”

“Who?”

“You go down there right now, and you get Ethel and bring her up here with that baby.”

“Are you crazy?”

“This cannot go on. Everyone is miserable. And look out there and see for yourself how lonely she is. What is the point of that?”

“What if Ethel won’t come?”

“You’ve got to make her. Go get her and walk up here.”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“How can we be any worse off than we are now? Tell me.”

“Okay. I’m going.”

 

Idella paced and twittered about in the kitchen, waiting. She knew they’d have to walk up Fletcher’s Hill and that Jessie would see them coming a long time before they got to the top and turned in at the gate.

Idella peeked out onto the porch. Jessie was sitting there, woolen throws pulled up all round her shoulders, like a turkey sunk into its own feathers for warmth. She wiped at her eyes and blew her nose, feeling sorry for herself. Idella glanced warily down to the bottom of the hill. There they came. She could just make out the two figures, brother and sister, Ethel pushing a baby carriage. They were walking slow, but steady and onward. Jessie was looking over at Mr. Graveline’s house across the street.

“That house needs a painting.”

Jens looked up from the newspaper he’d been pretending to read. “This house could do with a new coat, too, but I don’t see us doing it.” He yawned and stretched and looked down the hill. His arms held stiff in midair. He saw them. He watched the two approaching figures, then looked at Idella. She put her finger to her lips and shrugged. Jens nodded, got up, and stepped in from the porch to stand silently beside her in the kitchen.

“Where you going to? Bring me a glass of—” Her voice stopped in midsentence. They were more than halfway up now and easily seen.

Jessie was stilled completely. No one moved or spoke. All three watched Eddie and Ethel plodding up that hill with the baby carriage. Eddie had his hand on Ethel’s elbow and was helping her along.

When they got to the front gate, Idella could see how frightened Ethel looked, staring glassily out from under her crocheted woolen hat. Jessie stared straight out the screen-porch door, watching them come up the walk. The carriage wasn’t rolling too smoothly across the muddy path. Eddie had to take it from Ethel and shove.

None of them breathed for what seemed like minutes. Idella watched Jessie looking at her two children. Her features softened, and a kind of light came into them. Idella sensed that Jens noticed, too.