17

IRENE FOLLOWED her father and sisters down the corridor of the Sandborn Nursing Home. Usually she walked beside him, her long legs falling into pace with his stride. But this time she dropped behind to observe her family as they made their way along the hallway like blinkered horses, not turning their heads to look into the rooms with the senile old people and the veterans in their wheelchairs. Her father wore his Sunday suit of Harris tweed and carried a bouquet of her mother's dark red roses. Ina and Isobel trotted after him. Normally those girls would have been pushing and chasing each other one minute, then giggling the next. But in the nursing home they behaved like obedient little wind-up dolls, their patent leather shoes echoing faintly as they trod the waxed tile floor. They didn't even hold their noses at the smell of urine, especially strong that day.

Like a dutiful soldier, Father led them down that stinking corridor to Mother's private and dearly paid-for room. Before he could reach the door, Irene shot out in front of him and threw him a quick look, just to see the forbearance in his eyes. His gaze slid past her as he shuffled into the room and put the roses into the water-filled vase the nurse set out for their visits. Hitching up his trouser legs, he sat on the stiff metal chair at Mother's bedside. With pinched smiles, her sisters assembled at the foot of the bed, about as close as they dared to come to Mother, who lay utterly still. Her eyes were open but unblinking, her face a rigid mask. She smelled of urine, talcum powder, and her favorite perfume, which the nurse sprayed on her before their visits.

Irene watched her father take her mother's unresponsive hand. She listened to him talk to her with rehearsed cheerfulness. "Hazel, your roses are still blooming. All the way into September. Not bad, eh? I'm getting Lars Lilja to prime them again. He did such a good job last year." Father's wedding ring glinted in the weak sunlight coming through the narrow window that looked out on the red brick asylum next door. At his prompting, Ina and Isobel told their mother about their week in school. Their voices were strained and hushed. All the while Mother lay there, frozen like an enchanted princess in a glass coffin. Irene had to admit she felt sorry for Ina, who was only eight and could hardly remember Mother being well.

A stream of spittle ran down Mother's chin. Irene remembered the doctor telling them that excessive saliva was one of the symptoms of her illness. Father's hand trembled as he wiped it away with his handkerchief. Mother did not react to his touch. According to the doctors, she was unaware of the things and people around her. She couldn't recognize her own family, or so they said. Irene refused to believe that. Beneath her immobile face, Mother was still Mother. She couldn't be completely dead inside.

"I have to go peepee," Ina confessed, her eyes big and imploring.

"Me, too," Isobel said, a little more boldly.

"Irene," said Father, "will you go with your sisters?" It was against the rules to have young children wandering down to the washroom on their own.

"I want to be with Mother," Irene said icily. She glared at him. Then she noticed a long black hair clinging to his lapel. "Look," she said loudly, reaching over to pluck it off the tweed. She held the hair aloft for her sisters to see. "It's black. How did you get a black hair on you?" She and her sisters were blond like their mother.

Ina gave her a frightened look, then edged closer to her father.

When he finally met Irene's eye, he looked at her not in anger or shame but in bewilderment, as if she were a stranger and no daughter of his at all. A cuckoo who had hatched in his nest. "Well, come on, girls," he said, rising clumsily from his chair. Irene watched him put his hands on her sisters' shoulders, guiding them out the door. As though they were his children and she wasn't. The girls followed him unquestioningly.

Taking her father's place in the bedside chair, Irene clasped her mother's stiff hand and tried to warm it. "It's me," she whispered tenderly. "Irene." Did she imagine it, or did her mother's fingers move imperceptibly in response to her touch? She kissed her mother's cheek and stroked her pale gold hair, spread out on the starched pillow like an aureole. Mother was still beautiful, her skin translucent and rosy. She hadn't aged a day during the four years of her illness. Irene liked to think of her as Sleeping Beauty. Sometimes she asked the nurse to hold her mother upright so she could brush her hair, the way she used to when she was no older than Ina. When she was a little girl, her mother's loosened hair had swept over her like a golden shawl when she held her in her lap and told her the old Scottish tales. Irene's favorite had always been "Tam Lin," the story of how young Janet rescued the boy she loved from the Faery Queen. When Mother first fell into her long sleep, Irene had thought the fairies had stolen her away, too, and left this changeling in her place. There was a distant world where her mother lived in enchantment, drinking wine from acorn cups.

"This is your daughter, Irene." She delicately ran her fingers over her mother's brow until her persistence paid off. Mother blinked. The ghost of a smile played at her lips. That made Irene cry, her hand covering her mouth. She knew she was the only one who still loved her mother. Father and her sisters only pretended. Every Sunday afternoon they went through this ritual to absolve themselves for their lack of enduring love. Like Catholics going to confession, she thought spitefully. As far as they were concerned, Mother was already dead. When they returned home, they would go on with their lives, forgetting her until next Sunday. Father would go on with his filth and lies. He would be covered in black hairs. Irene grasped her mother's hand and confided to her what she would tell no one else. "I hate him."

 

Laurence hardly said a word to his daughters while he drove back to Minerva. He feared that if he started talking, he would break down in tears. They would think he was going crazy. Hands gripping the steering wheel, he kept his eyes on the road stretched out before them. The nursing home left such a chill on him. Each time he entered Hazel's sickroom, he felt something inside him die. He had never gotten over what had happened to her.

Today when he held her hand and talked to her about the roses, he had nearly choked up. The awful emptiness in her eyes did him in. She used to be a vital woman, always thinking up jokes to make him laugh. Then one morning in April, 1919, she hadn't woken up, despite his panicked attempts to rouse her. When she finally opened her eyes, she stared blankly without seeing him, as though she were in a trance. She could not speak. There had been no reaching her after that.

In the beginning Dr. Lovell said she was suffering from catatonia. Had she experienced some shock, he asked. He prescribed bed rest, saying she would probably snap out of it in a week or so. But Hazel had never snapped out of it. The illness had turned the wife he had cherished into a thing that was neither dead nor truly alive. When visiting hours were over, the nurses fed her with tubes, changed her diaper, turned her over to prevent bedsores.

Sometimes he feared the grief would turn him into a dried-out husk, the lifeblood drained from him. He would end up as vacant as Hazel. If it weren't for Barbara, he thought he would be trapped inside that vacuum forever. Barbara had raised him up like Lazarus; he had been dead until she gave him life again. He thought of the heat that rose from her body, the way that heat engulfed him when they made love. The strength in her grip when she took hold of him. The rich musk that rose from her skin, unmasked by perfume. The way her eyes softened when he spoke her name. His thoughts of her lifted him far and away from the nursing home. His skin tingled, blood pulsing beneath the surface.

 

Father parked in the garage off the alleyway. He and her sisters trundled through the back door into the kitchen, where Barbara Niebeck was keeping their dinner warm. If Irene turned her plight into one of her mother's old stories, it would go like this: Father had fallen under the enchantment of an evil witch. There she was, framed in the lit-up window and bent over some pot she was stirring like a cauldron. Her long black hairs slipped loose from her bun to fall in her face. With a red hand, she pushed them away. Irene imagined those hairs tumbling into the food she would serve them.

Steering clear of the kitchen, Irene cut through her mother's rose garden, where she paused to rub her nose into the last remaining blooms. Then she made her way to the front door and let herself in, only to be slapped in the face with the stink of roast beef and Brussels sprouts. She found Father and her sisters already seated in the dining room. Ina exclaimed how hungry she was, then squealed with happiness as Mrs. Niebeck carried in the plates. Her blouse, damp from the kitchen's steam, clung to her breasts. Irene saw the way her father gawked. Isobel and Ina might be too young and unsuspecting to notice, but Irene's eyes were sharp enough to observe the way Mrs. Niebeck leaned too close when setting his dinner plate in front of him. When she came with Irene's plate, Irene turned her head so she wouldn't have to look at her.

The food was getting worse these days. Mrs. Niebeck was slipping up. Slicing the meat, Irene discovered how rare it was, blood dripping from the dead flesh. And there was too much butter and cream in the Brussels sprouts. The rest of them went on talking and eating as though nothing were amiss while Irene cut her food into smaller and smaller pieces, lifting it to her mouth without tasting it, then putting it back on her plate and moving it around until it looked as if she had eaten something. She got up and asked if she could be excused, fleeing upstairs to escape the smell of undercooked meat. Hunger was a thing she could get used to if that's what it took to avoid the witch's cooking. Nobody complained about how thin she had grown. Dr. Lovell had just clucked approvingly and said, "I see you're losing your baby fat." It was the new fashion to be scrawny down to the bone, with gaunt cheeks and big staring eyes that popped right out of their sockets.

She stole into her mother's old dressing room to bury her face in her dresses. It was her mother's scent she longed for, the essence of her when she had been healthy and whole. Her mother who had rolled up her sleeves every Tuesday to bake shortbread. Mother had smelled of the rose bushes she planted, of spicy perfume and orange blossom hand cream. But when Irene nuzzled the folds of her blue voile tea dress, she breathed in something vulgar and rank—armpit sweat and household vinegar. Smothering a cry, Irene held the dress at arm's length. Then, with unsteady hands, she unfastened it to find a long black hair clinging to the inside.

She cornered her father in his study, where he sat at his mahogany desk with his papers from the pop factory spread out before him. On the wall behind him was her mother's photograph, a thin film of dust obscuring her face. That witch had let her mother's photograph go dusty. Irene held the dress out before him, showing him the black hair that dangled from the inner lining. It was evidence, just like the ruined bicycle. "Mrs. Niebeck has been trying on Mother's dresses!"

"Now Irene," he said, adopting his overly patient tone. "I think you're jumping to conclusions. Mrs. Niebeck has to air out the closet now and then, and move the clothes around so they don't go mildewy. You wouldn't want your mother's clothes going moldy, would you?"

"But she's been wearing them! And she's been inside Mother's writing desk. The stationery's all mixed up."

"Irene, I think you have an overactive imagination." Her father sighed. His face was so strange that she turned away to stare at his old hunting rifle locked in its glass case. "Sit down, sweetheart." His tone was gentler now. He pulled out a chair for her. "Those clothes have been collecting dust in the closet for years now. I think we should give them away, don't you?"

Eyes smarting, Irene hugged her mother's dress. "You can't."

"She's never coming back." His voice broke. Avoiding her gaze, he rubbed his forehead. "You know that. We have to stop pretending. She ... she would have wanted us to give those clothes to the needy."

Irene rose from her chair. "Well, you're not giving them to Mrs. Niebeck!" It was hard to keep from screaming in his face. "You better not."

Slumped in his chair, her father looked weary. "I don't want to hear any more of this."

She was about to protest when Isobel tiptoed into the room. "The doorbell rang," she announced in an unnaturally quiet voice. "It's Miss Ellison. She wants to talk to you about starting piano lessons again."

"You girls go down and talk to Miss Ellison," said Father. "I'll join you in a minute."

As they went down the stairs, Isobel seemed half scared of her. "Why were you yelling at Daddy? We could hear you downstairs. Why do you have Mother's dress?"

 

Late that night Irene awakened to the smell of Barbara Niebeck's cigarettes. This time she heard her father's hushed footsteps. Head buried in the pillow, she trembled with hate. As much as she despised Penny, she longed to ride her bicycle out to the Van den Maagdenbergh farm so she could ask her the questions that no one would answer. Penny had known all along. Penny was the only one who had ever told her the truth about it, and now her absence proved that Irene's deepest fears were real. Her father had told her to stop pretending, so Irene decided to take him at his word. Instead of ignoring the clues or looking away, she would pay close attention.

***

The evidence that people knew about her father and Mrs. Niebeck was revealed in things like the way people gathered on the corner of Buchanan and Main. They whispered among themselves, only to straighten up, the men tipping their hats as Irene and her father walked past. It was reflected in the oily smile on Mr. Timmerman's face when they went into his hardware store to buy a new bicycle.

Hands in his pockets, Father whistled to himself while Mr. Timmerman wheeled out the ladies' bicycles and let Irene take her pick.

"Used to be if the hired help wrecked a bicycle, they'd be thrown out the door," Mr. Timmerman said, rubbing his mustache. "I guess your daddy's kinda soft, huh?"

Father had stepped outside, out of earshot.

Mr. Timmerman edged closer and winked slyly at Irene. She didn't like him standing right next to her. Only a year ago, she would have called for her father and backed away. Instead she commanded herself to stand her ground, stiff and unflinching as a soldier, while she made her choice. She pointed to the Schwinn with the white leather seat. Its frame was shiny dark green like a beetle's hard shell. Mr. Timmerman turned to take the bicycle out of the row and held it by the handlebars. He grinned, showing his teeth, stained brown from chewing tobacco. "Here, let me show you how the gears on this thing work." He lifted his hand, which would have brushed her left breast if she hadn't stepped back just in time.

Father wandered into the shop again, his eyes clouded and oblivious, and paid for the bicycle.

 

A few days later she was cycling at the edge of town one night after dinner. It was time to be heading back, but something inside her that felt dark and awful tugged her toward the Timmerman house. She could hear men's laughter and loud voices from the street, though she couldn't see them—overgrown bushes surrounded the yard. Crouching down low, she listened. Their talk held her captive. She couldn't help it, could only listen to their stories, which made her feel sick. They talked about things that girls like her were never supposed to hear. They discussed where to get dirty pictures. Roy Hanson knew of a mail-order place in Saint Paul. They went on and on about little Rosie Lansky, who was Father Bughola's housekeeper.

Just as Irene was about to creep away, they started in on Barbara Niebeck. About her new Sunday dress that was so short, it showed off her knees. When she sat down in church, you could see an inch or so of thigh. The men said it was a miracle the church didn't collapse when she stepped in the door. They talked about how she should sit in the raised back row of the picture house with her legs apart so the people in front could get a good view of her crack. They speculated what color garters she wore, if she wore panties or just went bare, her naked thighs rubbing together as she walked down Main Street in her high heels. They spent a good five minutes discussing how they all wanted to take her. But mostly they tried to guess what land of antics she and Irene's father got up to. She probably went down on her knees, they said, to suck Laurence Hamilton off on the kitchen floor.

Irene forced herself to listen to their talk until she was ready to double up and spew. Knowledge is power. Some famous philosopher had said that. She couldn't remember his name, but it was one of Father's favorite quotes. Father always said that if you looked at things squarely, you had power over them and they couldn't hurt you.

But they could, she discovered, tossing in her bed at night as that hussy's cigarette smoke seeped under her door. Irene couldn't look at her anymore without thinking of her lifting her skirt and spreading her legs to show Father her crack.

 

During her piano lesson the following afternoon, Irene couldn't concentrate on what Miss Ellison was saying. The exercise book was open before her, but when she tried to play, her fingers slipped all over the keys as though she had lost control of her hands. "I can't do it," she said.

"What's wrong, dear?" Miss Ellison touched her arm. "I can tell something's on your mind."

Miss Ellison was Father's age. She lived alone in a tiny bungalow near the Civic Park and supported herself from the piano and voice lessons she taught. She was also the director of the church choir in which Father sang. Every year she somehow scraped together the money to go to the Chicago Opera. As a trusted family friend, she often stepped in to have female-to-female chats with Irene, telling her the things a girl usually heard from her mother. When Irene got her first period, Miss Ellison had explained everything to her.

"Isobel told me you quarreled with your father the other night." Miss Ellison spoke mildly, her fingers toying with the thin gold chain around her neck. A tiny jeweled cross hung from it. At first Irene couldn't speak. Miss Ellison touched her hair, smoothing it back from her face. "You don't look like yourself anymore. If there's something upsetting you, honey, you can tell me."

Irene looked down at the black notes jumping all over the sheet music. "I hear all kinds of talk about Father."

"Talk?" Miss Ellison stiffened. Everyone said she had a secret crush on him, that one day, when he was free again, she hoped to be the second Mrs. Hamilton. Sometimes Irene suspected she was only being kind to her as a way of getting closer to Father. "What kind of talk?" She sounded alarmed.

"About him and ... and Mrs. Niebeck." She realized she couldn't say the name without her voice slurring in hate.

"Rumors." Miss Ellison seemed to regain her composure, her fingers stroking Irene's hand. "Don't pay attention to that kind of talk. People can be so mean-spirited."

"But what if it's true?"

Miss Ellison shook her head. "Irene, don't..."

"I have reason to believe that those rumors are true." Irene spoke decisively. Miss Ellison was sweet on her father. Maybe she had the power to make it stop, make him fire Mrs. Niebeck. Biting her bottom lip, she waited for Miss Ellison to say the words that would bring her solace. The parlor closed in around them. The knickknacks that had been there for as long as Irene could remember suddenly seemed sinister, as though the glass-domed anniversary clock could fly through the air, hit the family photograph over the mantelpiece, and shatter.

When Miss Ellison finally spoke, her voice was quiet but curt. "Your father's a good man," she said. "But he is a man." She held Irene's gaze with admonishing eyes. "It's not your business to be listening to those who speak ill of him."

Irene considered how those two statements contradicted each other. Then, with an angry swipe of her hand, she knocked the sheet music to the floor. "But it's true. You even know it's true." She stood up and shouted so loudly that her throat hurt. "You didn't say it's not true!"

Miss Ellison sat there tight-mouthed and unblinking. "Calm down, Irene. Your father's not hurting anyone."

Irene stumbled out of the room, then ran to the bicycle shed. Jumping on the new bike her father had bought her, she took off. Turning the corner from Lilac to Main, she saw Ned Fisk. Last year she had followed him around like a puppy and he'd hardly looked at her. Now he waved and called out her name, but she sailed right past him and cycled on until she was winded. That night at dinner, she told her father she was finished with piano lessons.

There would be no more heart-to-hearts with Miss Ellison. No more intimate discussion at all. There was nothing left of her old life. When her friends talked to her, their voices passed right through her head. To fill the hours after school, Irene joined the Minerva girls' archery team. She had wanted to join last year, because Ned Fisk was on the boys' team, but she hadn't been good enough to get in. So she had practiced all summer at camp, where she had discovered how calming it could be. Drawing her bow and concentrating on the target allowed her to empty her mind, the only peace she'd had during that whole strange summer. In the meantime, she had become so adept that everyone called her a natural. These days she had Ned's attention without even trying. He liked to walk her home from practice, her archery bag slung over his shoulder, his arm around her waist. Once they kissed, his lips smooth and warm against her mouth. Yet even as she tried to kiss him back, it was hard to rekindle the crush she used to have on him before her father had sent her away to camp and her world fell apart. Now, when she examined her heart, she felt nothing for him in particular. The things that used to bring her joy left her empty and cold.

 

She still played piano an hour a day, every day except Sunday, when they went to visit Mother. After Miss Ellison stopped giving her lessons, she put away Beethoven and Chopin and started playing the Scottish ballads from her mother's songbook. "Prince Charlie Stuart," "The Bonny Boy," "I Live Not Where I Love," and "Sir Patrick Spense." Hammering the piano keys, she sang the odd lyrics she only half understood.

O long, lang may the ladies stand,
Wi their gold kerns in their hair,
Waiting for their ain dear lords,
For they'll see them na mair.

Everything was crumbling to pieces. Why could no one see that but her? Another Sunday dinner dragged on. They sat with dead slabs of pork on their plates, Irene not eating, Father lost in his other world, Ina and Isobel prattling on and on, pretending that everything was all right. Sometimes her sisters' trust in him just tore her up. The way they seemed to believe that he could do no wrong and that he would always be there to protect them. What would happen when they woke up to the truth? Who would save them then?

Drawing her knife through her mashed potatoes, Irene racked her brain. Somehow there must be a way, an opening in the stone wall, a way to bring Father back from the realm he had wandered into, abandoning them all. She had to work fast before he wandered too far away and was lost to them forever.

When she started speaking, she sounded younger than her years, as young as Isobel. The innocence in her own voice jarred her. "Remember how we used to have sing-alongs on Sunday night? Back when Mother was here?"

Ina looked at her blankly. Isobel shrugged. Father smiled at her with that expression of unease he put on whenever she opened her mouth these days.

"We could do it again. We still have the songbook," she said.

Their expressions remained unchanged.

Pushing her plate away, she left the table without excusing herself and went to the piano. This time she left the parlor door open so they would hear. Opening the songbook at random, she chose "Fear a' Bhata." Though she didn't understand Gaelic, she knew the plaintive melody and remembered how the words had sounded when her mother used to sing them. She played and sang as though she could summon back her mother's spirit from the dark forest she was lost in, calling her home. The piano chords made the floorboards tremble. She willed her song to fill the whole house—she knew her singing voice sounded just like her mother's. She was calling them to her until at last they stood in the doorway, Father with his arms around her sisters. When she caught his eye, he looked at her as though she was his daughter once more, a talented, intelligent girl who made him proud. The look he gave her said he was sorry for everything she'd had to go through.

They gathered around the piano and she played "My Bonny Lies over the Ocean," which was easy and familiar enough for her sisters to join in. Ina hopped up beside her on the piano bench and swung her legs excitedly as she began to sing. Isobel sang more shyly. Standing at Irene's side, she turned the pages of sheet music for her. In the second verse, Father joined in, singing in harmony as he had once sung with her mother. She had done it, drawn them back into the circle, her fingers dancing in perfect patterns over the keys. Mrs. Niebeck was banished to the kitchen, and Mother smiled in her photograph over the piano that Irene had dusted herself.