1926
Stack of letters from C. and A.L. It’s like Christmas morning!
Both wrote, but mostly A.L. Scores of pages filled with big, round letters and optimistic spelling. She told me all about the mountains and deserts, about riding horses with the “dood ranglers,” about eating chili con carne until her tongue burns. She sounds so happy. It makes me happy. I think.
C.’s letter was shorter. He apologized, mostly. And if that isn’t a hopeful sign, I don’t know what is.
|
Camp |
50¢ |
|
Gasoline |
$1.40 |
|
Postage stamp |
2¢ |
I didn’t know she was writing to them. Honest. But I should have. Of course she misses her girl up and down. Of course she’d write letters, even unanswered, if only to feel near to AL when she’s not.
But Carl? She hardly ever talks about him. Every now and again, but not with the hurt and longing and great sobs that she did on that very first night. I’d kidded myself that she wasn’t thinking about him. How stupid I am. How stupid to suppose Ethel’s thinking about anything or anyone but the husband she’s going after.
Later
Only lunchtime and already today is too long. E kept up chatter the whole drive this morning, all about AL and her horses, all about C and his apology. I haven’t seen the letter, but to hear her talk, C’s is as touching as any of Abelard’s. He regrets leaving the way he did, she said. And regret brings people back.
I know regret. It pierces you right between the ribs and doesn’t budge. I felt it the moment E told me she and Carl were getting married, felt it when she walked into that courthouse in a dress of baby blue crepe, have felt it each and every day since. Regret for years of things unsaid. But it just gnawed at me all those years. It didn’t bring me back to her.
We stopped for lunch. She’d made cheese sandwiches, buttered on both sides just the way I like them. But I couldn’t eat, not with her sitting there so happy and hopeful. If this works out, she told me, and I get Carl back, it’ll be all because of you, and I had to walk away. A good friend wouldn’t sulk. A good friend wouldn’t let anyone see what was really in her eyes.
Later
Couldn’t concentrate on driving, couldn’t concentrate on E. Feigned a stomachache as an excuse to stop early. I deserved a stomachache, the way I sat there begrudging E her happiness. After a while, I began to believe it myself.
E made me lie down in the car while she set up the tents. While she was outside, I lifted C’s letter from her purse.
I don’t know why I did it. I really don’t. Maybe it was to tear it into a million pieces. Maybe it was to see what he had that I didn’t. Maybe it was to catch a glimpse of the address so I could send a letter of my own. Maybe all three. But I read the letter and I suddenly didn’t know what to do.
“Dear Eth,” it said, and it was brief. “I shouldn’t have left like I did, with nothing but a note on the table. I regret that. I should’ve waited for you to come home, told it to you straight, but I’m a sap and a coward. Anything I said would’ve been feeding you a line. Eth, I’m just so balled up and needed to escape. Away from you, from our house, from our life. Away from everything but Al. These days, she’s the only part of me that feels honest.” Like I said, it was brief.
It’s certainly cryptic. C always knew how to talk circles around what he really wanted to say. But it wasn’t the apology E made it out to be. It wasn’t begging for forgiveness or promising to make things right. Did she not see that? Or maybe she did, but tried to convince herself otherwise?
I don’t know if I should tell her what I think. It would crush her. And, to do so, I’d have to admit I’d taken the letter from her purse. Is there anything wrong with a bit of hope? I don’t know. Until yesterday, I thought maybe I’d had some.
F. restless today. As kids, she used to get like this. Fidgety and impatient. Always whenever she had something to talk about that she didn’t want to. When her dad lost his job. When her family moved too many blocks away. When I told her C. and I were getting married. She never did talk about that last one.
|
McCracken’s Camp |
25¢ |
|
Gasoline |
$1.20 |
|
Postage stamp |
2¢ |
Tonight E forgot to make dinner.
She went into town to buy a chicken, but instead came back with lipstick, a pot of kohl, and the news that there was a speakeasy nearby. It almost made me smile, to hear her talk as though she were a flapper instead of a housewife, as though middle-of-nowhere Illinois was all that interesting. But maybe there is more to E than I know. The way she bee-stung her lips—garnet red, like Clara Bow’s—and rolled down her stockings, she looked like she went to speakeasies every day of the week. She waved me into a seat, pulled a tiny brush from her paint kit, and did up my lips and eyes without even asking. It was so much like the old Ethel—sparkling, dynamic, assuming—that I couldn’t resist.
She made me close my eyes, but she was near and warm. I heard her inhale and knew her tongue was caught up between her teeth, the way it always was when she was concentrating. Her breath smelled like Sen-Sen. It was like we were back at the watch factory, painting each other’s lips and eyelids with the paint meant for the luminous dials. I always wore more. It was the only way I could glow like Ethel always did.
I reminded her of that, of those days painting at long tables in the factory, washed over in sunlight and her singing. I thought to make her smile with my reminiscing. I’d feel the Sen-Sen laugh on my face. But she didn’t laugh. She stopped and sat back. Though my eyes were still closed, I could sense it. The air felt empty. I opened them and she was looking at me. She was so serious, so quiet, with nothing showing except in her eyes. The corners were pinched in panic.
I knew then that she knew. That she was dying too. And that she was terrified of anyone finding out.
I wondered how long she’d known, how long she’d kept the secret from C and AL, how long she had left. Though I’d been going to dentists for months with loose teeth, blinding headaches, a sore jaw, I’d only known for two weeks. In the end, that might be all I had left. I hadn’t told E about the two teeth I’d lost just since we set out or the pain that had spread down to my shoulder. I hadn’t even admitted it to myself.
She blinked, and the panicked look fell away. I’ve done your eyes up all wrong, she said, and there was something thick and sad in her voice. You look like a corpse. She reached up with a handkerchief to wipe away the kohl from around my eyes, but I caught her hand.
Forgetting the pain, forgetting the picnic, the letters, the chocolate on my lips, I pulled her tight against me. She felt like a daffodil stem, bending, green, impossibly thin. For that moment, I didn’t care what she thought. I didn’t care what anyone thought. I just wanted to hug her the way I used to, back before we grew too old, back before it became more than a schoolgirl crush, back before I walked away from our friendship. I wanted her to feel me, to know that I was here, that I would be, no matter what she needed. To stay with her until the end, or only as far as it took to bring her back to her family.
I held her for maybe a moment longer than I should have, a moment more than was friendly, held her until she tensed up in my arms and I let go. That’s when she finally gave a little laugh. Gee, Florrie. I forgot how fierce your hugs always were. She turned to fuss with her makeup and I pushed my hands against the canvas of my seat. Because, oh, they were shaking.
I hadn’t done that in years. Hugged her. Touched her, even. Not even a brush on the shoulder. I used to, the way schoolgirls did. We’d been friends for eons. We walked with linked arms, touched fingers across the aisle between our desks at school, lay hip-to-hip on the sidewalk looking up at the clouds. But then one high school day, at a football game of all places, she called my name across the crowded bleachers. She was wearing a cherry-red scarf and her cheeks were pink. I’d only just arrived and was searching for an empty seat. She called my name, she waved, and my heart flipped. In that moment I knew. It wasn’t an empty seat I was looking for. It was, and always had been, her.
My heart did that flip again, as I sat on my shaking hands and E fiddled with the makeup. I swallowed it down and said, Let’s get zozzled.
Later
E’s fast asleep in her tent and I’m still out here, sitting by the fire. We didn’t go to the speakeasy after all. I bought a jar of gin off the fellas a couple of campsites over. At least they called it gin. I’d been to a juice joint or three. I’d tasted hooch. This was gin of the most literal bathtub variety. They charged me forty-five cents for it, which just about made Ethel spit, so he said he’d give it to me for forty and a kiss. The very idea made me blush. As cool as a cucumber, I handed over two quarters and told him that real ladies never shop the sales. It was worth it just to see E laugh.
So we stayed in, just the two of us and our jar of moonshine. We sat in E’s tent, with the side rolled up, and played rummy by lantern light. E won fifteen times in a row. I didn’t mind one bit. I’ve never done this before, she confessed. Drink moonshine? Play rummy? Visit Greenville, Illinois? All of that.
After a while, the two fellas from down the way stopped by. From their grins, they’d had a fair amount of moonshine themselves. The speakeasy hadn’t been worth the trip, they said, and anyway, we were probably better company. I was half under myself and cheerfully dealt them into the next hand. Dale (the one with the mustache) gave me my ten cents back, no kiss required, and Boyd (the one without) gave us a bag of peanuts. Which was perfect. We’d forgotten dinner, after all.
They asked how long we’d known each other. Eighteen years, we said at the same time. It was a silly play I’d written, I said. Wonderfully silly, she agreed. I told them, Ethel played the part of King Henry, and was rewarded with a blush.
They stayed to play three hands of rummy. Dale did a lot of winking at me from across the table. I’d drunk enough that I was halfway flattered. I wondered if he’d ask to kiss me again. Not that I’d let him. But it’s still nice to be asked. E stopped talking and she stopped winning. Just played quietly and twisted her wedding ring around her finger.
After Dale and Boyd left, we ate peanuts and listened to the fire crackle. E tossed a shell into the fire and asked why I hadn’t just given Dale a kiss. I laughed. I didn’t answer. The whole idea was too absurd. Didn’t she see that? She drank another swallow of gin, even though her cheeks were already flushed pink. She asked, softly and suddenly, why I never married. You’ve never said. My hands started shaking again at her question. Had she been wondering? I pushed them into my pockets. She watched, at me fidgeting on my camp stool, at my hands balled up in my pockets. Why didn’t you marry?
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. She stood and brushed peanut shells from her lap. I thought I knew, she said. Maybe I didn’t after all. She crawled into her tent, leaving me alone out by the fire.
Awful, bumpy, queasy ride. Last night was perhaps not the best of plans. Ankle aches besides. All the way up to my hip. Been forgetting to take my Parson’s Vigor Tonic. Every day, Dr. Glass said, to help with the anemia. At St. Louis, we decided to stop over and make a day of it.
Found the general post office. Only one letter waiting from A.L. None from C.
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Bungalow Auto Camp |
50¢ |
|
Gasoline |
$1.00 |
|
Frankfurters |
2 for 5¢ |
|
Lemonade, 2 |
10¢ |
|
Movie tickets, 2 |
10¢ |
|
Popcorn |
5¢ |
|
Postage stamp |
2¢ |
E was quiet all morning. Not that I knew what to talk about today, not after last night. Maybe she didn’t either. She sat still, staring straight ahead at the road and not saying a thing.
I worried, of course I worried. My night hadn’t been so drink-clouded that I didn’t remember the moment I mentioned the radium paint and her eyes tightened in panic. I hadn’t forgotten. I understood that look. I knew she was sick too. So to see her so still and quiet in the car, right hand clutching the edge of the seat where she didn’t think I could see, I knew. Something wasn’t right.
I wasn’t feeling my best either. I had a sore molar and knew I’d lose the tooth soon. Impromptu meals of peanuts and chocolate probably weren’t helping. I wondered if E noticed me cutting up my food into the tiniest of pieces, if she noticed me taking aspirin after aspirin.
But I remembered, now, her surreptitious handfuls of aspirin, her limps in the morning, her occasional cold compresses in the evening. There’d been signs all along that something wasn’t right with her. I’d been too worried about my flighty heart to take it all seriously.
Do you want to stop at St. Louis? I asked. We’ll be there by lunchtime.
It might be nice, she said, to see people and streetcars, to sit on a park bench, to go into a real store. She let go of the car seat. Yes.
We reached the city and found a bench in a leafy park. E said she wanted to just sit still for a moment with her eyes closed, listening to the birds. I left her there cradling the jar of our leftover breakfast coffee and walked into the city.
I found a druggist and restocked on aspirin. I asked if he had anything stronger. He did, of the back alley variety, so I bought some of that too. E seemed happy enough with the hooch last night, and I knew it just might help when the aspirin didn’t.
Truth be told, I was feeling a bit delicate this morning, in a way that had nothing to do with the radium lingering in my bones. It had been a while since I’d drunk that much. But I couldn’t admit that to E.
Last night she’d said that it was her first time drinking moonshine. I suppose in all those years she’d played housewife, I’d done more. I’d had a string of jobs after the watch dial factory. Rubber factory, department store, florist’s shop, newspaper office, lunch counter at the five-and-dime. I had my very own apartment, a cold-water flat the size of a hatbox. I ate from lunch carts and pushcart vendors. I took the train into New York when I had a little left over at the end of the week. Twice I’d been to the sorts of speakeasies in the city that had nothing but women.
I tucked my purchases in the car; it wouldn’t do to be caught walking around the city with booze. E was leaning back on the bench with her hands on her lap and her eyes closed. I bent close, close enough that I could smell the cocoanut oil that she puts in her hair, but her breathing was regular. She’d just dozed off.
I left her napping on the bench by the car and went to find the general post office. There were two letters waiting for Ethel Wild, one in Anna Louisa’s round handwriting, the other in Carl’s. I’d half been hoping that he wouldn’t write again. I tucked them both in my pocket and went back to the park.
She was awake, her hat off, repinning her hair. The jar of coffee sat empty beside her on the bench. The sandman snuck up on me, she said, smiling. Where did you go?
The post office, I said, and slipped my hand in my pocket.
She straightened on the bench, suddenly looking so bright and hopeful. Oh! Were there any? Florrie, were there any for me?
From AL, I said, and took one of the envelopes out of my pocket.
Oh, my little dear! She took it, touched all four corners, as though reassuring herself that it was real and it was here. She flipped it over and back, then looked up at me. But none from Carl?
In my pocket, the other envelope crinkled, betraying me, but she didn’t seem to notice. No.
I tried to convince myself that what I saw in her eyes was a smidge of resignation. Of relief. Of satisfaction. But I knew that’s just what I wanted to see. I knew that what was really there, what she really felt, was disappointment. And all it would take to dispel it would be the envelope hiding in my pocket. But I said, No, I’m sorry. It was horrible, but that was that.
She looked down to the one in her hand, turned it over, and then sighed. When she looked up again, it was with a smile. At least I have this. At least one someone is thinking of me.
More than one someone. I hope she knows that.
We lunched on frankfurters bought from a gent with a street cart (I’ve never done this either! she said) and then splurged on a movie, like the old days. That’s My Baby, with Douglas MacLean and Margaret Morris. E roared through the whole thing. We shared a nickel bag of popcorn, smuggled into the theater inside my umbrella.
Later
Whether it was the nap in the park, the letter from AL, or the movie and popcorn, something revived E for the afternoon’s drive. With our long stop, we only got as far as St. Charles, but the camp was clean and cheerfully crowded. The next campsite had five young women sleeping like canned sardines in a wall tent. They had a great pot of mutton stew that they were happy to share. E made a batch of pan biscuits and a quick pot of custard to add to the spread.
It was nice to have a tableful of conversation. E was livelier than I’d seen her in a while. When one woman said that she was headed back home a new divorcée, they all cheered. E bit her lip, and I wondered if she was going to say something about Carl, about Nevada, but she didn’t. They all started singing “Wild Women Don’t Have the Blues.” When they got to When my man starts kicking I let him find another home, they practically shouted the line. Though I’m sure E had never heard it before, she joined in for the second round.