The night before June’s wedding, Aggie came tapping on her bedroom door, holding something behind her back and looking a little shy. “Are you excited, June?”
Excited? Yes; trembling, in fact, with anticipation of change. Herb Benson. Mrs. Herb Benson. June Benson. Tomorrow she would leave this house, go down that stone walk on the arm of her husband. For years she had seen herself doing this, and turning at the end, waving a dignified, adult farewell to her mother. Never mind that her new house was only blocks away. It would be hers.
“I was thinking downstairs about the night before my wedding.” June waited, but no unpleasantness seemed to be implied. “I do hope it works out for you. I hope you’ll be happy.”
“I do too. I’m sure I will.”
And she was sure. Herb Benson was beautiful. Of course, one did not refer to a man that way, and he wasn’t really beautiful. Good-looking enough, but that wasn’t what June meant. She meant that he was everything: slim and outgoing and well-turned-out. He liked everyone. Everyone liked him. It was something, just going out with him, much less marrying him. All sorts of people said hello to him on the street. True, he was just a salesman. He travelled, selling wholesale lines of furniture to stores in different towns. But he was good at it; it would be different if he were not. He was the sort, people said when she announced they were engaged, who could sell ice-boxes to Eskimos. “I know I’m only a salesman, Junie,” he told her, one arm slung carelessly around her shoulder as they walked — daringly, she felt — along the main street after a movie, “but that’s a talent too. I know it’s not like being a teacher or a lawyer or whatever, but a person should do what he’s good at, shouldn’t he?”
Why, he was so good at selling (and he told her, “The first thing about being a salesman is selling yourself. People have to like you”), he was so good at it he even won Aggie. “Of course I like him, June,” she said. “Why wouldn’t I?”
Oh, this was a man in a million: the one who really saw. Who said, “You have gorgeous cheekbones, you know, Junie,” and ran his fingertips over them. “And a pretty good body, too,” and poked a finger at her ribs. She hadn’t thought of it that way before, had thought she was merely thin. But no: “You could be a model, except of course you’re too smart.” He seemed to like it, that she was a teacher. All in all, they found things to admire about each other.
Tomorrow, in a mere twenty-four hours, she would be another person. Meanwhile, on this last evening of her girlhood, here was Aggie, looming large, spoiling the anticipation a little, but also reminding her how great an event this was: getting out.
“Do you remember our talk years ago about being married?”
Oh yes, indeed she did. But these were things she wasn’t actually thinking about yet.
“You remember me saying it should be a pleasure for you?” That, too.
“So I made this for you.”
What Aggie pulled from behind her back and held out, an offering, was really quite extraordinary, like nothing June had ever thought of, much less owned. A delicate pink hand-embroidered nightgown, little vines and flowers stitched around the throat, the sleeves, and the hem, all a filmy, gauzy, flimsy sort of material. She was supposed to wear this? “But you can see right through it,” she said, astonished, holding it up.
“I know. Try it on. I had to guess about the size.”
Well, it fit, shaping itself around June’s small bosom and her waist, falling in folds to the floor; it fit, but heavens, surely it didn’t suit. It did add something: allure, perhaps? Or glamor? It was slinky, like a movie gown. Like something Myrna Loy might wear for William Powell. But like a movie gown, it was not quite decent, not quite her. It revealed too much, and seemed to promise someone she was not.
Still, consider how many hours Aggie must have spent, how many books she must have put off reading, how many loaves of bread had gone unbaked, or how many hours of sleep were given up, so she could do this. What had she been thinking, sewing away in secret?
“Thank you. It’s lovely.” June had a momentary impulse to put her head down on her mother’s shoulder, except she could not imagine what would happen then, how they would manage to end such a clumsy embrace.
“You wear it tomorrow night,” said Aggie. “I hope you enjoy it.” She patted June awkwardly on the shoulder and left.
This was June’s last night in her old room. She looked around, trying to feel the significance of that, but tomorrow kept getting in the way. She could barely even feel her father here tonight, although for years she’d kept him hovering up in a corner of the ceiling, or just above the house. Heaven, although of course he would be there, too, seemed too far away. What would he say to her tonight? Something like, “Be well, bunny, do your best.” Not “Enjoy.”
He would put his arms around her. She still missed that, being touched with affection. Well, Herb touched her with affection, of course, but it wasn’t the same. His hands seemed aimed at something else, purposeful and therefore not quite pure.
What she liked best was being seen with him: on the street, at a movie, in a restaurant. There she was, little skinny June, or the daughter of the fat woman who ran the bakery, or Miss Hendricks the teacher — all those versions of her that people saw, out with this man. That was really something.
Especially considering his choices. This nightgown, now, put her in mind of women who were quite different.
He knew by name the cashiers and usherettes at the theatre, the waitresses in restaurants. Those women who said hello to him were like foreign objects, shiny and flashy, like the jewellery in Woolworth’s. They seemed to say things with their bodies. A waitress with dyed blonde hair, dark roots showing, jogged his shoulder with her elbow and threw back her head, laughing at his jokes. “She’s a bit — cheap-looking, don’t you think?” June asked him later, and he laughed. “I suppose. You now, you’re the expensive type. You’re the kind that really costs.” She had no idea what that meant, but laughed anyway, because he did.
His hands went around her, although she kept him away from certain places he would have liked to explore. “Look,” he said, stepping his fingers down her spine, “I can count the bumps.” She’d never really thought about her bones. Alone in her room she peered in the mirror, examining these cheekbones and collarbones he admired. Another foolish thing she did alone was pick petals off daisies, like a child.
His parents were dead, and his only sister lived out west, married to a wheat farmer. “Coming here is like having a family again,” he said, “you and your mother.”
And she had worried about introducing them, what he would think of Aggie, now badly overweight. “Look at the mother to see the daughter,” people said, although how anyone would look at Aggie and see June was hard to imagine. She worried, though, that he would take one look and bolt.
“It’s too bad you never met my father,” she told him. “He was quite different. People always say I take after him.”
But when she did take him home, and Aggie came to greet them in the front hall, and June said, “Herb, I’d like you to meet my mother, Aggie; Mother, this is Herb Benson,” he didn’t even blink. They got on, in fact, quite well. Aggie asked him about his work, his routes, the people he met, and he spoke admiringly about the courage it must have taken for her to start the bakery, making a living for herself and her child after her husband died.
“Well, I had to, you see. It was that or go back to my family, and that wouldn’t have done at all.”
“But why a bakery?”
She laughed and slapped at her body, setting the loose undersides of her arms flapping. “Mainly because, as you see, I’m fond of food. But also, I was never trained for anything, not like June here. All I knew was cleaning and sewing and cooking, and since I don’t like cleaning particularly and I’m not that good at sewing, it only left a bakery, really.”
“It must have been hard.”
“You bet. Still is, for that matter, but it’s mine and I like it.”
That was about how she’d explained it to June, too, after a very brief period of mourning that looked more like a state of suspension than grief. “I have to do something, June; your father didn’t leave us much.” As if he’d been worth only money.
This was after some weeks of coming home from school to find Aggie sitting — just sitting — at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, looking out, sometimes not even any supper ready. And then a day she came home and found Aggie whipping around making lists, surveying rooms, standing around regarding various walls, her finger on her chin, looking as if she were seeing things that weren’t there. It was as if she’d swept him, and his death, and a whole past life, right out of her head. Mysterious, but of course quite typical.
And suddenly there were carpenters in the kitchen, and new shelves and counters, and two new stoves, and a bigger ice-box, and the cellar was all cleaned up and cleared, and two new windows were being punched into the front-room walls — every day when June came home, changes had occurred, and it was like finding a different house. There was sawdust tracked everywhere, and now they ate in the dining room, at her father’s old table, because there was no room in the kitchen any more for a table and chairs. A sign went up at the front, with an arrow: “Aggie’s Bakeshop, please use rear door”. Not even “Hendricks Bakery,” not even that much dignity. “I want it to be my own,” her mother explained. “Anyway, June, he wouldn’t have liked his name used.”
This was true. It was also true that it was difficult, becoming the daughter of a woman who baked for a living, instead of being the teacher’s daughter. And on top of that her own grief, missing him. He’d vanished so abruptly there was no chance to say things she might have told him if she’d known; his home, her home, was utterly transformed; and her mother was a whirlwind: planning and adding rows of figures, ordering workmen about, and shouting at the manager of the bank. “It’s a gamble, June,” she said. “You must see, I’ve got to make it work. Otherwise I don’t know what we’ll do.”
Well, what did other widows do? Surely something more decorous, more subdued.
June pretty much lived upstairs in her bedroom. She often did her homework there, and said her prayers. She held long conversations with her father, who after all must still be watching. She kept him up to date on events, although of course he would know everything anyway. His mother, her grandmother, wrote from England (sending her letters, curiously, to June and not to Aggie). “He was a lovely little boy, your father,” she wrote. “I’m sure you’re very much like him.” June read the letters aloud, so that he could also hear, and kept them in the top drawer of her dresser, with a lilac sachet. She took from his room a few important things: his mother’s picture, and one of him as a little boy, smiling at the camera.
It was not hard to notice that her mother never cried. She avoided Aggie, but also tried to keep an eye on her. It was tricky, but there was no trusting a woman who could cause a man to vanish.
At least she was unlikely to present June with another father. Other widows might remarry, but even a child’s eye could see that no man was apt to enter voluntarily into a union with such an overbearing, selfish, determined, and unsentimental woman as her mother. A man would more likely be looking for the opposite. (Although that did not explain that awful Barney, who eventually started hanging around the kitchen in the mornings. He, however, was already married, and so perhaps saw Aggie differently.)
As for June, she would be a teacher and a lady.
The second time they met, Aggie invited Herb to supper. At the table, his hand slipped into a pocket inside his vest and pulled out a silver-plated flask. “Would you have one with me, Aggie? June won’t, but I thought you might not mind a drink.”
“Sure, I’ll try it.” Aggie sipped, her face wrinkled, and they both laughed. “My, it’s warm all the way down, isn’t it?”
(Thank heaven she didn’t take to liquor the way she did to food. “That’s because I like a clear head,” she has explained, “and that’s not easy at the best of times. As you know so well, June.” She still occasionally enjoys, however, “getting a little buzz on”, which was one of Herb’s expressions and one of the few things besides his wife and daughter that he left behind him here.)
“Aggie’s a great old girl, isn’t she?” he said to June, and she didn’t trouble to correct him. It was just as well they got along, she supposed; and anyway, when they had their own place it wouldn’t matter.
“It’s funny,” said Aggie, “he’s not at all what I would have pictured for you.”
“What did you expect?”
“Oh, somebody more serious, maybe from the church, or another teacher, something like that. Someone more like your father, after all.”
“But you like him?”
“Well, yes, it’s just — he seems so unlikely to be your type. Don’t you find there’s something — oh, what do I mean? — fleshy about him?”
“Not at all. He’s very slim.”
“No, not that. Physical. He’s a bodily sort of man.”
Yes, in a way. He liked to have his arm around things, or his hand resting on a shoulder, or slapping someone’s back. If that’s what Aggie meant. But it was nice to cross a street with his protective hand cupping her elbow, even though she’d never considered needing help to cross a street before.
Other times, however, his hands frightened her; when he got a little carried away kissing her good night and tried to reach inside her dress. Then he was strange, demanding, like a different person, and not, for the moment, gentle and respectful. She had to wonder at those times just who he thought she was.
When Aggie had told her, years ago, about what she might expect, alarming changes already were occurring. June had glanced furtively at other girls and noticed breasts developing, but could not make out if hidden, more unpleasant changes were also taking place.
She saw that the man who delivered eggs and milk and butter at the door had hair poking from his chest, the back of his neck, and heavily down his arms. Where else? It was dark and curly, whereas June’s was blonde — but still. She, too, was growing odd sprouts of hair, under her arms, down her legs, and even, and this was quite horrifying, at the base of her stomach. Was she becoming a man then, getting hairier and hairier until she’d be as bushy and brawny as the man from the dairy? Well, that was one thing Aggie’s little talk accomplished: reassuring her she was being transformed into a woman, not a man.
Even so, much of it struck her as mysterious and disgusting. Aggie accurately predicted hair, breasts, blood, and the possibility of cramps. Then she spoke of the real event, for which all this was only a preparation. Seeds and eggs, and parts of bodies meeting. It seemed to June, listening, that her own body was very far away and foreign, all these peculiar events going on internally, outside her grasp.
“But the important thing, June, is to be proud, becoming a grown-up woman, not a child any more. And then when you’re really grown up there’ll be pleasure in it for you and your husband. It’s not just something you do for him, or to have children, it’s for your pleasure, too. Do you see?”
No, but she wasn’t about to ask. The big question might have revealed the lie behind all this. Because if what Aggie said was true, June’s slim, fastidious, and gentle father must have performed this act, and with this sloppy, ravenous woman. If they had not even touched or spoken unless they had to, how could they have done what Aggie described?
Still. The hair flourished, the blood flowed and even the cramps came true. How could she tell how far the truth would go?
And how could Aggie have talked of being proud of these events, which as it turned out were often nasty little surprises, coming at awkward moments, like in class, resulting in stains?
As June developed small breasts and her hips broadened somewhat, the gangling angularity of her childhood grew into a sort of grace. She was not exactly pretty, and boys didn’t tease her the way they did some of the other girls, but then, she would have been insulted if they had. It was not crude jokes she dreamed about, but arms. Not even hands. Just, lying in bed, she felt the lack of a simple pair of arms. Also perhaps a shoulder.
Waiting took sturdiness of spirit. Slowly, slowly, the bakery made money. At first Aggie told her, so many times, that they couldn’t afford things — a new dress, a trip, or anything June particularly wanted. “I’m sorry, but we just can’t.” That did not mean, however, that Aggie had no money for ovens, a proper bathroom, or new windows in the front room, all the changes she was making. “But you see, June, I have to change the kitchen so I can run a business here. And while the carpenters are in, I might as well have the other work done.”
Her mother seemed — unleashed, somehow. More sprawling, as if she’d taken off a girdle, and less capable than before of order and moderation (except in the kitchen, where she was efficient and brisk). She sailed around the house devouring words the way she devoured food, sometimes both at once. She left books open, face down on the floor or across the arm of a chair, cracking their spines. Finding them this way, June would rescue them, slipping in bookmarks and closing them carefully, putting them neatly on a shelf. “Where the hell did you put my book?” Aggie would demand. It was not like this elsewhere. In other houses, daughters did not have to tidy up after their mothers. They did not have mothers who sometimes swore, and ran their own businesses, and made an awful racket, clattering pans and banging bowls all the time.
June went to church on Sundays, alone now, and found the hard wooden pews a comfort, offering a stiffening of will. First she’d thought God was to blame for her father’s death. She’d thought He must be cruel. But it took only a moment to realize it wasn’t God but her mother’s neglect. June would not have said it was deliberate, but something more typical of Aggie: plain ignorance.
And God, admiring her father’s gentle spirit, had taken him. She could see why He would do that, desiring the presence of a loving soul. God’s purposes, needs, and plans would be greater than her own, that was natural. And He loved her, too. It was dark and quiet in church, an hour of suspension. It was never hard to go there; the hard part was leaving to go home.
She particularly liked the song from her Sunday-school days: “God Sees the Little Sparrow Fall.” It was good to know that both God and her father were keeping their eyes on her; and she was much larger than a sparrow, after all. God’s voice spoke through songs and also through the new minister, who arrived in town when she was fourteen, replacing the man who had buried her father.
He was new here, but also nearly old, with white hair that shone in contrast to his black Sunday robes. Swift, powerful, and righteous, his voice, rising and falling, shouting and whispering, must be, she thought, something like what Moses heard, receiving the commandments. When he smiled, his teeth glittered, as white as his hair. Sitting in the congregation each week, she waited, tense, for the moment his eyes — extraordinary, piercing blue eyes — would seem to seize directly on hers, before moving on. Like God’s eyes: stern and impersonal and harsh, and also measuring and challenging. In church, she sometimes felt things shifting inside, in the rhythms of his voice. There were moments when even the soles of her feet prickled.
Sometimes she dreamed about God. On judgment day, when she was called to the right hand of the altar, loving arms were placed around her. The heat of the embrace was a miracle, a special grace, and God wore a face she recognized, although when she woke she could never quite remember whose face it was.
Some Sundays he spoke of the joys of heaven, the reward for goodness, the pure peace of it. Other days he spoke of hell, quite graphically. “Some of you,” he said, “have no doubt watched a burning barn and heard the cries of tortured animals meeting their deaths inside. Or maybe you’ve held your own hand too close to a stove or a flame. You know how much that hurts. But can you imagine pain a thousand times greater than that, and lasting for eternity? Imagine knowing that pain will never, ever end.” June’s arms sizzled, as if the little hairs on them were burning.
Some people disapproved of him. Not sufficiently dignified, they said; too evangelical, too emotional, not suitable. June could not find the words to defend him, to say what it meant to be told that God loved her, and found her soul beautiful. It seemed to put into perspective a number of questions, including some of those raised by Aggie. If June’s soul was beautiful, what did blood matter, or flesh? Also, it was good to know there was a purpose to all this, reassuring and comforting, this sense of a sort of helpless destiny about events.
This was something June tried to keep in mind when the war came. The gleaming white-haired minister moved away then, to be a chaplain in the services, and while she struggled to maintain her faith, successfully for the most part, she did feel the loss of some of its brightness, and its sharp vividness.
Also, all the young men were being sent off to war, and dangers no one could imagine. It was important to remember that there must be a purpose to this, however hidden to the human eye, because not only might these young men die, but they were also going thousands of miles away, just when she was getting old enough for them to be of some importance to her future.
She went down to the train station after school to watch them leave. Partly she went from curiosity, to catch a glimpse of their peculiar joy in the bravery they seemed so sure of. It brought great events up close. But also she went because one of them might be hers; maybe even one of those kissing another girl goodbye with an embrace that was both sad and somehow impatient. June looked closely at eyes and mouths, lines and shapes of bones, but could not identify the one she might be losing. Whichever it was, he would no doubt be back, if that was God’s will. Everyone wondered how long the war would last, but no one imagined it would be very many months.
If everyone had a purpose, then that applied as well to those who didn’t go off to fight. They, too, had contributions they could make. Maybe only small things, but according to the men and women who came to town making speeches, encouraging enlistment and various other sorts of patriotism, small things could be vital, tip the balance. June went to hear the speeches partly because the meetings reminded her of church. What the speakers said was much the same as faith: that small, unseen, or apparently unimportant things could add up to something large.
There was no estimating, those speakers said, the difference between the will to fight of a lad with cold feet and that of a soldier with a good pair of heavy grey socks under his boots.
She joined a group of girls from school who were getting together two evenings a week with their mothers (except Aggie) to roll bandages and knit socks, scarves, and whatever else might be needed by those boys in the trenches so far away. The brothers and sons of some of those in the group were overseas, which gave their presence special meaning. And there was June, not only without a soldier in the family, but with an absent, selfish mother.
What Aggie said was, “Surely if you’re going to knit those wretched things, you might choose different colors. Why not yellow socks, or a red scarf? Why does everything have to be grey?”
Imagine the dismay of a soldier unwrapping a red scarf. Would he not feel that the people at home found his mission frivolous? And imagine dying in yellow socks. No. Everyone said how important it was to reassure the boys, keep their spirits up. There was self-interest here, the safety of home depending, as it did, on their morale and strength. Lists were circulated of soldiers who would like letters, even from strangers. June chose three, and wrote each one weekly.
Aggie said, “No thank you, I have no interest in knitting socks or rolling bandages.” She might, she thought, work up some enthusiasm for writing letters, but lost interest when June told her they’d been advised to steer clear of the subject of war, the intent being to cheer them, not remind them.
“Oh, well, then,” said Aggie, and went back to her books. Apparently she’d only wanted first-hand reports, and was not interested in providing comfort.
“Do you know why there’s war, June?” she asked idly.
“Of course, don’t you?” Everyone knew that, and surely it should be obvious, even to Aggie. There were young brave men fighting and dying for them, and her mother sounded as if it was only a matter of academic interest.
“Well, you know,” said Aggie, turning a page, reaching for another cookie, “I can’t understand it at all.”
“Dear Charles,” June wrote her Tuesday soldier, “things are going well here. It’s almost Christmas, which means examination time at school, so I’m quite busy studying as well as knitting. Perhaps you will find yourself wearing a scarf I made, although of course you wouldn’t be able to tell it was one of mine.” She sighed. These letters were very difficult to write. Still, perhaps the dull, daily details of life at home were helpful, a reminder of normal times.
Aggie took pictures of her so she could send them to the three soldiers. This was recommended, so that the men would have an image in mind when they wrote letters or received them. In her photographs, June was standing outside the front door wearing her best church dress: tailored dark blue with narrow white collar and matching cuffs, and her low-heeled black patent leather shoes. She thought it was a grown-up sort of outfit and was surprised, when she saw the pictures, that she looked like a dressed-up child. Also she found she had been squinting a little.
Only one of the soldiers sent a picture of himself in return: a blond, grinning young man whose features were indistinct. She struck it in the frame of her mirror on the bedroom dresser. “When you come home,” she wrote, “my mother and I would be pleased to have you visit. We have a very comfortable home, and you would be welcome.” This was rash. However would she explain three soldiers turning up on the doorstep? Still, it was unlikely.
People had turned out to be wrong, expecting the war to end quickly. It went on and on. They said, “It can’t go on forever,” but it seemed to. And now she really was old enough for one of those boys. It was all very well to go on to the town’s new teachers’ college for a year, and graduate, and spend evenings still knitting and rolling bandages, and get a job at her old school, which was desperate for teachers with the men gone, and have all that part of her life going pretty much to plan. But now what?
There she was, still living with her mother, standing in a classroom in front of small children, wielding her pointer at numbers and words. She walked to school and back, and avoided Aggie as much as possible, which wasn’t difficult, and waited. She read with a keen and speculative eye the lists of casualties carried in the newspaper. Wounded men were sent home, and she regarded them, too, considering. She thought she might not mind one who was on crutches, or missing some organ or limb. She could take care of him, although it would require some alteration of plans. There would be virtue in it, and purpose. It might be the sort of thing God would like. The thought of some sacrifice was warming, if only to the spirit.
Instead, she met Herb Benson one evening in a restaurant, where she had stopped with friends after one of their bandage-rolling evenings. Herb Benson, whose limbs and organs were all present and accounted for; who, after all her letters and socks and scarves sent overseas, had never been there himself. Still, she was astonished and charmed by his attention, and thought that, after all, it was more than she could have hoped for.