Until She Comes Home (22 page)

“You two have no business in my yard,” she says. “No business at all.”

Arie tucks her chin, sorry that she dragged Izzy over here because now they’re going to get in trouble, and Aunt Julia is going to know they snuck out of the house when they were supposed to be upstairs in their room.

“We think there might be a dead cat around here,” Izzy says, lifting her chin to make up for Arie’s drooping one. “Have you seen it?”

“Yes, that cat is dead and I did see it with my very own eyes. Dead as could be. Now you two can go away, back to that grandmother of yours, and stop running around this neighborhood in search of that godforsaken animal. You stop or you’ll end up just like Elizabeth Symanski.”

“You ruined these flowers and you’re going to blame us.” Izzy pokes Arie in the side so she’ll agree.

Mrs. Herze presses both palms flat on the ground, pushes herself off her knees, and brushes pink and white blossoms from her skirt.

“I’m doing no such thing,” Mrs. Herze says. “I imagine you two will have some explaining to do. I suspect your aunt will be ever so interested to see this mess. And I know she’ll believe me because you two have been nothing but trouble for that woman since you arrived.”

“You’re a liar.” Again, Izzy is the one to speak up.

Mrs. Herze smooths the apron that hangs at her waist. “My word against yours,” she says.

“Not quite,” Arie says, then reaches over the fence, flips the slide-bolt latch, and scoops up the hammer lying in the grass. Finally, she is the brave one, the quick-thinking one, the one who will make everything better.

Izzy lets out a cheer, claps her hands, and the two run away, leaving the gate hanging wide open.

S
tanding in her entryway, her cheek resting on James’s chest, Julia inhales. The air around Grace’s husband is warm. He’s thick and solid, what a man should be. This could be her life before. Before Maryanne died. Before Elizabeth Symanski died. Before Bill drifted away. Before.

She draws up her hands to James’s neck, weaves her fingers into the ends of his hair where it curls, tilts her face, and pulls him toward her. The clock over the stove ticks. A fan in the front room squeals as it rolls from side to side. In the distance, a car door slams. Julia presses against him. Raising one hand to the back of her head, James rests the other on her waist. He makes a sound as if clearing his throat, pulls back before their lips touch, drops both hands, lifts them out to the side, and stumbles away. They stand, neither of them moving. The doorknob rattles, and the front door swings open.

Wearing the same double-stitched work shirt as James, Bill walks into the house. No one would notice the way his steps are just off center, but Julia does. Soon enough, his face will swell again from the drinking, and his skin will take on a yellow cast. He’s later than all the other husbands but has made it home in time for supper. He doesn’t notice James and Julia as he fumbles with the lock on the door. His keys rattle and he steadies himself by holding on to the doorknob. With one good tug, his key comes loose. He straightens and turns. Saying nothing, he crosses his arms and his eyes come to rest on James, who has dropped his hands back to his sides.

“Didn’t expect to find you here,” Bill says.

James is almost ten years older than Bill and holds a higher-grade job at the factory. He was Bill’s first supervisor and helped him keep his job during that difficult year after Maryanne died.

“James came to check in on the girls,” Julia says. “He wanted to see to it that they were all right. That we were all right.”

With the back of her hand, Julia wipes her mouth even though her lips never touched James’s. The pulse of her beating heart carries to her eardrums, making it difficult to hear. She hugs herself with both arms.

“Can see to those girls myself,” Bill says.

“Grace asked that I check in on them,” James says. “Will be on my way now that you’re home.”

Bill takes a small backward step, giving way to James.

“Good enough,” Bill says.

The men stand face-to-face, filling up the small entry.

“Good enough,” James says after a long silence, and reaches for the doorknob. “I’m sure Grace will be checking in real soon, Julia.”

Julia looks up from the floor at the sound of small feet running up the stairs and across the porch. The twins stop short, one bumping into the other, both of them stumbling across the threshold. One of them, Arie, lifts a hammer with both hands as if it’s a trophy. She lowers it at the sight of Bill and James staring at each other.

“Leave that outside,” Julia says, and waves at the girls to hurry past and go straight to their room.

Outside the door, Arie sets the hammer on the porch, wipes her hands on her shirt, and follows Izzy upstairs.

“All right, then,” James says, reaching out to pat Bill on the shoulder. “You all have a nice evening.”

•   •   •

The walk back home is slow for Grace and Orin. When the colored men have reached the intersection of Alder Avenue and Woodward, Grace hurries Orin along because James will stay only a short time at Julia’s house and no good will come from him finding the twosome out on the street. After walking a few yards, Grace has to carry the rifle for Orin. With the barrel pointed down, she hugs it to her side where a passerby won’t notice what is cradled in her arms. When they have neared the house, Grace hears the twins. They are out and about again even though Grace tried to warn Julia to keep a closer eye. The street is otherwise silent. Grace stops every few yards to give Orin a chance to rest and to look over her shoulder for any sign of James. Orin says his shoes are pinching his feet and Grace says they’ll soak them when he gets home. At Grace’s house, they step onto her driveway and continue to shuffle toward the alley. Once there, Orin points at his chair. Still holding the rifle, Grace steadies the rusted seat, but before Orin can lower himself, James appears at her side, reaches for the rifle, and yanks it from her.

“What in God’s name?” he says, holding the gun in one hand and grabbing Orin by the arm with the other. “How did you get this back? Good Lord in heaven, what are you doing?”

Orin drops into his chair, pulls a yellowed kerchief from his pocket, and mops his forehead. “Taking care,” he says between breaths. “Taking goddamn care.”

“James, please,” Grace says. “Don’t fuss. There’s been no trouble.”

“I see trouble written all over this gun. You get inside. I’ll see to Orin.”

From her bedroom window, Grace again looks down on the alley as James helps Orin home. When they have disappeared, she slides open her closet door to hang up James’s freshly ironed shirts. She is always precise as to how she hangs them. White ones first, because he wears those on Sundays, and then his darker shirts for evenings at home and weekend projects. The tip of every collar is pressed to a sharp point and the cuffs hang down stiff. On weekends, when James tinkers with his car or mows the lawn, he rolls his sleeves, ruining the sharply pressed cuffs. After a few moments, the kitchen door opens. Footsteps on the stairs.

“Gracie?”

In one hand, James carries his work boots. He rests the other on Grace’s shoulder, leans in, and kisses her cheek. She covers his hand with hers, squeezes.

“Orin told me something happened,” he says. “You were talking to some colored men? He says you wanted him to shoot one of them? Is that true, Gracie? I told him that couldn’t be true.”

“Do I seem at all different to you?”

James lets out a long breath, probably tired of nothing going as it should, tired of something always being troublesome. “Well, sure,” James says. “You’re bigger.”

“But I’m different,” she says, letting her gaze float from the lifeless shirts to James. “Don’t I seem it?”

James squats in the open closet and slips his boots onto the shoe rack. He stands and unbuttons his shirt. Since this heat settled in, he stopped wearing an undershirt. Dark, wiry hair forms a long triangle on his chest that disappears below his brown leather belt. He turns toward the closet as if looking for something, pulls off his shirt, lets it slip first off one shoulder and then the other. He tosses it behind him so it lands on the bed and bends down again. When he stands, Grace’s white shoe dangles from one finger as it did the day he first discovered it in the closet.

“You’re fine, Gracie,” he says, staring at the shoe and not Grace. Something will be gnawing at him, though he might not be certain what it is. Maybe he’ll be wondering how one shoe found its way into the garage, where he crushed it with his car, while the other found its way safely to the rack in his closet. “You’re beautiful. Now, tell me what happened out there? Orin said one of them spoke to you. What did he say?”

“It’s no never mind,” Grace says, backing away from James to sit on the edge of the bed. She rests her hands in her lap.

“Orin told me. The man said you didn’t tell. What did he mean?”

Grace folds her hands together. “When will the funeral be? Do you know?”

“Not yet.” The shoe still dangles from one finger. “Don’t you worry about that. Please, Gracie. What aren’t you telling me?”

“The fire,” she says. “It was the fire in the garage. I told you it was probably just the girls playing with fireworks.”

“And?”

“I didn’t really think that. I only told you it was the girls so you wouldn’t worry, so you’d think it was a harmless accident. I think it was the men from the alley, the ones who leave the broken glass. I thought you’d be angry, maybe get into an argument.”

James nods as if he understands but his brow sits low over his eyes and he chews on the inside of his cheek the same way he does when he reads in the newspaper about another factory closing its doors. He slips the shoe over the rack and walks up to Grace.

“Do you know what happened to Elizabeth, Gracie? Was it one of those men? Was it the one you pointed out to Orin?”

Grace fingers the narrow lace that trims the hem of her full blouse.

“Someone killed Elizabeth, Gracie. It wasn’t an accident.”

Grace shakes her head and continues to run her fingers along the rough lace edging.

“They shot her in the back of the head,” James says and points to a spot above his ear. “Here, they shot her right here. If you know something, you have to tell me.”

“James, stop,” Grace says. “Stop saying these terrible things.”

“What do you know, Gracie? Tell me now.”

“Orin is confused,” she says, sliding a few feet toward the end of the bed so she can stand and walk past James to the bedroom door. “Orin’s confused, is all.” She walks into the hallway. “I have supper for Mr. Symanski. You’ll run it down to him? This is all so awful. Who would do such a thing to Elizabeth?”

“Gracie?”

“Wash up,” she says. “Supper in fifteen minutes.”

Day 7

T
he first two times Julia tries to wake Bill, he doesn’t stir. Now he will definitely be late to work. All the men will be returning to the factory today, and Bill should be among them. Behind her, the twins’ door is closed; their room, quiet. She checks her watch.

After James left the house yesterday, Bill had stood in the entry and stared at Julia. He didn’t speak, didn’t ask her to explain, didn’t notice the mess in the kitchen. Just stared. What had happened between James and Julia left something tangible in the room, something concrete enough that it filled up the entry and pushed Bill and Julia apart. By the time Bill left, slamming the front door behind him, he knew the truth even though Julia hadn’t uttered a word. She had waited up for him, but at some point during the night, she fell asleep on the sofa and didn’t wake when he came in.

“Bill,” Julia says, pushing open the bedroom door. She kneads her neck with one hand where it’s tightened up from sleeping without a pillow. “You’re late to work.” She leans into the room but doesn’t cross inside. “You need to get up.”

The bed creaks and Bill throws back the top cover. He is fully dressed in the clothes he wore the day before and still wears his black boots. Both are untied. Black laces dangle across the white sheets. Pushing himself into a sitting position, he swings his legs over the side of the bed. Even from across the room, Julia smells the liquor. Black-and-white scotch. He drinks it over ice.

“Figure I’d better get my house in order first,” he says, his voice rough from cigar smoke.

“What do you mean by that?”

Julia crosses into the room but stops at the foot of the bed. She leans over and tugs on the quilt, straightening Bill’s side.

“What did he do?” Bill says.

“What did who do?”

“James Richardson. In this house. What did he do to you?”

Feeling as if she’s naked from the waist up, Julia folds her arms over her chest. “Don’t be ridiculous. Why aren’t you going to work?”

“Asked you a question. Plain and simple.”

“And I’m telling you, it’s a silly question.”

Bill groans as he stands from the bed. He often comes home from the factory rubbing his lower back or the thick muscles at the base of his neck. He walks over to the window that overlooks the street.

“He touch you?”

“Keep your voice down. You’ll wake the girls.”

“Answer me, then. He touch you?”

Julia backs into the doorway and leans there. “Why aren’t you going to work, Bill?”

“You going to tell me what I walked in on last night?”

“You didn’t walk in on anything. James was . . . he was comforting me. He was being kind.”

“He was comforting my wife?” Bill says slowly, thinking about each word as if not quite certain what they mean.

“Yes, he was.”

Julia stares at him. His rounded shoulders hang, his hair is mussed on top, his jawline droops. He has lost more of himself than Julia has in the years since Maryanne died. Studying him now, she realizes how weak he’s become. So weak that all he remembers of their daughter is that she cried. All he remembers is her small red face and the tiny, rigid body. All he did during those few short months she lived was complain. He needed more sleep. Couldn’t be expected to work a full day if he couldn’t get a decent night’s sleep. No one else’s baby cried so much. Why theirs?

Bill unfastens the small buttons on the front of his shirt. Next, he unbuckles his belt, pulls it from his waistband, and tosses it on the bed.

“He lay his hands on you?”

Maybe Bill got so tired of all the crying he decided to stop it himself. Maybe that’s what has weighed so heavily on him all these years. When he mumbled about being sorry, he wasn’t talking about some woman down on Willingham or Elizabeth Symanski. Julia hadn’t considered it before. Never. Now it’s so obvious. The doctor was wrong. Babies don’t die for no reason. It’s not the grief that has made Bill so weak. It’s the guilt.

“I asked you a question. Did he lay his hands on you?”

“Only after I laid mine on him.”

Peeling off his shirt and tossing it on the bed, too, Bill lifts his eyes. “Excuse me? You want to repeat that?”

Though she’s gone too far, Julia can’t stop. She swallows and lifts her chin. She knows it now. Bill did something to Maryanne the night she died. He must have gone to the nursery while Julia slept. He must have decided he couldn’t live with it another day. All those nights after Maryanne died, he walked through this house as if Julia weren’t living in it alongside him. He looked past her, around her, through her. He was numb. He must have forgotten his guilt in these recent years, forgotten Maryanne. He became playful again, almost seemed to love Julia as he did in the beginning. But then came Grace’s baby, Betty Lawson’s baby, Elizabeth’s disappearance—one of them reminded him, drew his guilt to the surface. She knows he did it, knows that’s why he can’t live with the thought of another child.

She had overslept the morning it happened. When she woke, startled by the silence, she threw back the covers. She stood on the cool oak floors, curled under her toes, and as she rubbed her feet together to warm them, she listened. Inside the nursery, the weight of the air lifted. The temperature dropped. It was as if a window opened. Or someone shook a blanket. She walked across the wooden floor, slowly, hoping it wouldn’t squeak underfoot. At the crib, she placed one hand on the top rail, reached inside with the other. Maryanne’s tiny leg was cool.

The pain of it took two weeks settling in and then it stayed. The doctor rubbed his thick gray eyebrows and said it happens sometimes. No good reason why. Don’t go thinking you’ll find one. Then he patted Bill on the back.

“After a time, she’ll be ready again,” the doctor had said.

In the beginning, people offered privacy. A soft touch on the shoulder. A hug. They brought casseroles and lemon squares. Grace came every day, slipping silently through the front door to do the laundry, push a broom, scrub the pots and pans. She was the only one brave enough to wade through it day after day. James worked outside. He raked leaves and cleaned gutters. When a few weeks had passed, Bill thanked Grace and James, sent them away with a handshake and a hug, and closed the door to Maryanne’s room.

“Got to put it behind us,” he had said.

When a few more months passed, people began to talk about time. They said it would heal Julia and Bill. Not to worry, it always healed. But the pain continued to sink in, deeper one day than it was the last.

She’d asked Bill, “Do you feel it’s easier now?”

She needed to remember Maryanne, to talk about her. Julia needed to feel like she had been a good mother. Needed to feel like it wouldn’t happen again.

“All the talk in the world won’t bring her back,” Bill had said, and slowly he came home from work later and later. He would drive himself down Alder Avenue, stagger through the door. Other nights, someone from the bar would bring him home and help him up the stairs. Strangers stumbling through her house, dropping her husband on her bed.

And finally, signaling the grief should be over, when almost a year had passed, people began to say Julia and Bill should try to have another baby. Such a shame that a lovely girl and a good man shouldn’t have a child. Julia held out her arms to Bill, told him they ached. It started after Maryanne died, her shoulders and forearms and joints aching because she couldn’t hold her baby.

“You want to say that to me again?” Bill says. His chest swells. He squeezes both hands into fists.

“It’s been a long time since a man’s touched me,” Julia says. “James is as good as any other.”

Bill crosses the room in two long strides and, grabbing Julia’s upper arm, he slams her against the wall. Her head bounces off the doorframe. With one forearm across her chest, Bill holds her there. Standing over her, he smells like smoke from Harris’s Bar. He seems larger again, like he was before Maryanne died. His chest pumps up and down as he breathes through his nose, his mouth closed tight.

Barely able to speak because of the weight of Bill’s arm on her chest, Julia says, “Get. Out.”

•   •   •

Today is the first day the men have gone back to work and Mr. Herze and the others will resume a normal schedule. Within the half hour, Mr. Herze will come home and Malina has yet to set supper on the table, mix his Vernors, or deal with the trampled flowers in the backyard. Perhaps she’ll yank those snapdragons out entirely. Perhaps that would be best. But not until Julia has seen them. All day, Malina has kept watch for Julia, even knocked on her door a few times. Not even those twins have shown themselves. Checking the street for any sign of Mr. Herze’s car and knowing she’ll need to get home soon, Malina knocks one last time on Grace’s door. From inside the house comes the sound of footsteps and the front door finally swings open.

“Thank goodness,” Malina says, fingering the string of pearls at her neck. “You are home. I hope I didn’t interrupt your supper.”

Grace wipes her hands on a dish towel. “Not at all. James isn’t home yet. Please, come in.”

“No time, really,” Malina says, crossing over the threshold. “Are you ill? It’s so dreadfully dark and dreary in here.”

“How may I help you, Malina?”

“A hammer,” Malina says. “I’m in need of a hammer.”

“A hammer?” Grace says.

“I’ve been all over the neighborhood. Perhaps James has one?”

“In the garage, I imagine.”

No bulb hangs from the ceiling of the Richardsons’ garage to light Malina’s way. She pauses until her eyes adjust to the dim light and then she sees it—a large green metal toolbox pushed up against the back wall, where James won’t accidentally run it over with his car. Next to the toolbox, several bags of clothing, shoes, purses, and belts have also been stored against the wall and out of the way. With one finger, Malina flips up the latch on the toolbox and opens the lid. Two hammers lie on top. Each has a rounded head and no clawed end. They are a different kind of hammer, not at all what she needs.

“What are these clothes here?” Malina shouts from the back of the garage. “Are they meant for the clothing drive?”

“Mr. Symanski brought them,” Grace shouts back. “Mostly Ewa’s things, I imagine. He asked that I get them to you, to the thrift store.”

“Let me take them off your hands,” Malina says. She gathers the three bags filled with clothing and leaves the belts, purses, and shoes for another time because they won’t need to be laundered. Stepping back into the sunlight, the three bags cradled in her arms, she smiles at Grace. “I’ll see that these get to the thrift store. You shouldn’t be bothered with them. The news of Elizabeth must be especially difficult for you.”

Grace lingers inside the shadow thrown by the house and smiles in lieu of proper thanks. “Did you find what you need?”

“It really isn’t important,” Malina says, tired of constantly concerning herself with Mr. Herze’s hammer. He’ll have no reason to take notice of his tools during these hot months. Before he sets about winterizing the house this autumn, she’ll buy yet another hammer to replace what the twins stole from her, one with a red handle. “Why, Grace,” Malina says, noticing how Grace’s eyes flick from side to side and how she clings to the railing with both hands. “Are you frightened? Has something frightened you, dear?”

Grace shakes her head, but Malina knows fear when she sees it.

“You’ll come to supper one night soon,” Malina says, bracing the bags against her hips. “You and James. I’ll spoil you before your little one comes along. That would be nice, don’t you think?”

Grace really is a lovely person. A little young for a man like James, but that isn’t for Malina to judge. She is, after all, much younger than Mr. Herze. She likes to tell people she was seventeen when she married, but really she was fifteen. Only thirteen when they first met. Perhaps this fear is something else Grace and Malina share in common.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Malina says. “A warm supper served up by someone else for a change.”

But before Grace can answer, Malina notices the cars driving past the house, more than normal for a lazy afternoon, and the sound of engines shutting off and doors slamming. For the first time in several days, husbands are coming home from work. A commotion rises up in the back alley—rocks spraying across a wooden fence. A black sedan slows behind Grace’s house and rolls into the dark garage—James Richardson already home from work.

“I’ve got to run,” Malina says, hurrying past Grace toward the street. “Very soon you’ll come to supper. You and James. Won’t that be lovely?”