Five

The Bakerton Volunteer Fire Company sat at the corner of Main Street and Susquehanna Avenue, the busiest corner in town. Across the street was Keener’s Diner, a bowling alley and a pool hall. Weekend evenings, after dances or football games, these places were crowded with teenagers. On warm nights the firemen set up folding chairs on the sidewalk and watched the girls go by, calling to the pretty ones who walked in pairs or threes down Main Street. Long shadows in the summer evening, a shimmery trail of female laughter.

The firemen were mostly single, mostly young. During the late forties and fifties they were all veterans, as if having once presented themselves for danger, they now did so routinely, without ceremony, as a matter of course. By day or night they worked in the mines; in their off-hours they congregated at the fire hall (far hole), playing pool or Ping-Pong, drinking coffee or Coca-Cola, sober always, just in case. They came from Little Italy, Polish Hill, the outlying farm country; from nearby towns like Kinport or Coalport, too small to support companies of their own. Even a volunteer company had expenses: clothing, equipment, upkeep on the trucks. To raise money they held Saturday-night dances in the hall. Two weekends a month, the floor was cleared. A band set up in the corner. Teenagers waited in line at the door.

For several months in 1941 and ’42, George Novak’s band had played the fire-hall dances, until the drummer and the trumpeter and finally the whole combo was drafted. For a few years Bakerton made do with phonograph records. It seemed that every musician in the county had been taken away.

At eight o’clock the dancing began. First the steady couples. Then pairs of girls—giggling, spunky girls who refused to stand by and wait. For a long time the boys did not dance, just walked in a slow circle around the dance floor—boys like Sandy Novak, slouching a little, a plastic comb peeking out the back pocket of his dungarees. Week after week they walked the Bakerton Circle, eyeing the girls on the dance floor. The circle moved counterclockwise, an orderly parade, as though someone had planned it that way. In nearby towns people laughed at the Bakerton boys: could you beat it, paying a quarter to walk in circles all evening? Nobody knew how the custom had started. Some things would always be.

In the second week of August, Bakerton hosted the Firemen’s Festival—to the men, Holy Week in a year of Ordinary Time. For three days the firemen came, volunteer companies from across Saxon County, to drink and game at the booths set up along Baker Street. Friday night was the Battle of the Barrel. Men from two companies squared off, tug-of-war style. Above their heads was a rope tied between two telephone poles; hanging from the rope was a barrel filled with water. Each man was given a long wooden pole, to swat the barrel toward the other side, dousing his opponents with cold water. By the time the contest was over, both sides were soaked. The men wore their wet clothes proudly. For the rest of the evening they were regarded as celebrities—greeted with laughter and slaps on the back, treated to cups of yellow beer at the booths all over town.

Saturday afternoon was the firemen’s parade. Up front, in a shining convertible, sat the Fire Queen: the prettiest girl from Bakerton High, handpicked by the firemen themselves. Next the pumpers came. Bleary, liquor-sick, wearing full equipment in the August heat, the men waved to the spectators from atop their trucks, hundreds of them, standing three deep along the parade route. Each truck stopped briefly at the judging stand, a platform of wooden risers stacked before the fire hall. Two or three men dropped down from the truck and opened all its doors. A voice over the loudspeaker gave its weight and dimensions and pumping capacity. For each engine, polite applause—for the fortieth truck, the fiftieth; to the untrained eye indistinguishable from the ones that came before. Shouts and whoops were reserved for the local boys, and in one unforgettable year, a standing ovation for Bakerton’s brand-new Mack ladder truck, a slick red monster with bulging wheel wells and gleaming chrome. The truck cost $2,500, what a miner earned in a year. A sum raised through five years of fire-hall dances, ten thousand teenage nights walking the Bakerton Circle.

In the spring of 1954, defying all predictions, Sandy Novak graduated high school. A photo was taken at his commencement: Sandy in cap and gown, his mortarboard slightly askew; Sandy surrounded, as always, by women. Joyce in a summer suit and pearls, her lips pursed; Rose stout and white-haired, clutching her pocketbook. Lucy round-faced, suntanned, her black hair in braids. Dorothy’s eyes closed, her hat askew. Only Sandy is smiling, showing beautiful teeth; the Hollywood version of a high school graduate.

The photo, like all photos, raises a question: Who took the picture? Who, in those days, even owned a camera? Georgie, Dorothy would later claim. Joyce disagreed: he hadn’t even attended the ceremony. Lucy suspected one of Sandy’s girlfriends. No one remembered that the photographer was Ed Hauser, the high school principal; that he and Joyce had started dating that spring. He was the sort of man whose actions are forgotten, a mild but capable man whose sins and virtues alike go unnoticed.

After graduation Sandy moved to Cleveland with his buddy Dick Devlin, whose brother was a foreman at Fisher Body and got them jobs on the line, building chassis for Pontiacs and Chevies. For the first time since Dorothy was born, the house on Polish Hill had an empty bedroom. Joyce spent a Saturday painting the walls lavender, Lucy’s favorite color. She bought a matching rug and a flowered spread for the bed, and at the age of eleven, nearly twelve, Lucy moved into her own room. Her parochial school jumpers were hung in the closet. Under the bed she stacked her board games—Monopoly, Parcheesi and Candy Land, which she had outgrown but secretly played when she was alone. She went to bed every night at nine-thirty and lay awake for hours, waiting for the house to quiet. Then, when her sister was asleep, she tiptoed across the hall and climbed into bed with her mother.

In later years, a number of people would ask Dorothy why she’d left Washington. If she responded at all, she would answer vaguely, airily—I can’t remember, exactly. With a wave of the hand, an absent smile. Still a young woman, she had acquired a spinsterish charm.

Her mother and sister asked; her brother Georgie; a woman sitting beside her on the train back to Pennsylvania. Mag Spangler’s mother—in the late fifties, when Dorothy went into the shop to buy a hat for Rose’s funeral. Doctors, again and again, old men in dark suits, in white coats; men who wore spectacles or whiskers or vests and shirtsleeves. To all of them, but to the men especially, she would find the truth unspeakable: that she had left because of the bleeding.

If only it had come on schedule, the same time every month. Her sister’s cycle was as brisk and efficient as Joyce herself. Her periods had begun when Dorothy was in high school, and for a brief time, as if by magic, Dorothy’s bleeding became regular, too. The same thing happened while she lived with Patsy Sturgis. On its own, her body seemed uncertain what to do; she needed another girl close by to show her the way. She needed someone to follow. It was a sensation she had felt all her life.

She had learned to sense it coming: pain in her breasts, a certain taste in her mouth. Agitated, perspiring, she lay awake waiting. A day, two days would pass. Then something inside her would uncoil, and out of her a deep peace would flow.

 

HER LAST WINTER IN Washington she could not bleed. Months passed. A strange anxiety gnawed her stomach. She imagined a mass growing inside her, a soft cancer filled with blood.

It came furiously, as in her nightmares, a hot lick of blood trailing down her leg. It was a Monday afternoon in February, a crisp rain turning to sleet. She’d returned from lunch and was sitting at her desk. When she rose she felt wetness between her legs. She looked down and saw a dark pool on her chair. She sat down quickly, her mind racing, her face hot and full of blood.

Around her the office ticked away: thundering typewriters, a ringing telephone, a chirping voice answering hello. Finally she rose, taking her coat from the rack near her desk. She put it on quickly and hurried to the washroom.

She closed herself in a stall and sat there bleeding. Winter light grayed the frosted windowpanes. Women came in and out, and she thought about the stain on her chair. Someone would see it, perhaps already had. There was nothing she could do.

She listened to the hiss of the boiler, phones ringing in the office beyond. At last chairs scraped the linoleum; a hundred pairs of shoes shuffled down the hall. Behind the wall the elevators groaned. She counted the trips up and down, up and down: the office emptying out, the workers carried to the street below. At last the building quieted.

She cleaned herself with rough paper towels from the dispenser on the wall, then buttoned her coat as though she were simply leaving for the day. As though she would soon return.

 

YEARS LATER she would try to remember, to identify the precise moment she decided she would never go back. The next morning the alarm clock woke her as usual. She shut it off, rolled over, and went back to sleep. She slept for most of the day. In the evening she went downstairs to dinner.

She was surprised by how easy it was, simply to stop. The struggles of twelve years, the daily gauntlet of loneliness and anxiety—deciding what to wear each day, knowing from long experience that whatever she chose would be wrong; waiting for the bus in the rain; the elevator full of strangers’ smells; stilted conversations with the new hires, impossibly young, who chattered in the powder room about dates and weekend plans. All that she had endured in those years, thinking she had no choice. Then one day she stopped, and no one even noticed.

She stopped setting the alarm. In the morning she heard noises overhead: footsteps on the stairs, the other boarders setting out into the world, to live another day in the city. She drifted back to sleep. She had surrendered everything. Her sleep was deep and peaceful as a child’s.

For the first week she went downstairs each night to dinner. I’m on vacation, she said when Miss Straub inquired. Soon she was no longer hungry. She left her room only to use the toilet, to take a bath.

She bathed during the day when the house was empty, lying in the tub while the water slowly cooled. Afterward she crept downstairs to the kitchen and foraged through the cupboards, taking what she could find: crackers, bread, a piece of fruit.

Two weeks passed, then three. After that she lost count. Toward the end she heard knocking at the door. Once, Miss Straub’s voice; later, Mag Spangler’s. Finally her sister came. For God’s sake, what happened? Joyce demanded, looking around the room. If she’d said something else, Dorothy might have responded; but that one unanswerable question had paralyzed her. And so began her time of quiet.

Joyce was astounded by how long her sister could sleep. She hadn’t noticed at first; she had been preoccupied with details: getting Dorothy from boardinghouse to taxicab to train station, from train to automobile to her mother’s house in Bakerton. Simple enough. But Dorothy was so weak she could barely stand; so confused or addled, so something, that she couldn’t follow the simplest instructions. And now that the crisis was past, she would not stay awake. Joyce did the cleaning and shopping and laundry, paid the bills and helped Lucy with her homework. Now that Sandy was gone, she raked leaves and shoveled snow and cut the grass with the old reel mower. Every night, bone-tired, she banked the coal furnace and fired it again at dawn. All this in addition to her actual job at the high school. What reason Dorothy had to be tired, she could not imagine.

“Dorothy.” Joyce gave her a gentle shake. “Dorothy, wake up.”

Dorothy sighed. A moment later her eyes opened. They had put her in the lavender bedroom, which Lucy had surrendered without complaint. Facing north, the room stayed dark all morning. Unless someone woke her, she’d stay in bed until suppertime.

Joyce sat on the edge of the bed, willing herself to be patient. “Dorothy, I have to leave now. Ed’s brother is getting married. We’re going to the wedding.”

Dorothy sat up, dazed.

“I need you to put on some clothes and get Lucy her breakfast. Can you do that?” Joyce made an effort to keep the edge out of her voice. “I have to run. Ed is waiting in the car.”

Dorothy blinked. “When will you be back?” she asked softly. Her speech had returned, but her mouth was clumsy, as though she’d forgotten how to form the words.

“Suppertime. Maybe sooner.” Joyce rose and took a dress from the closet. “Here. Put this on.”

Dorothy raised her arms like an obedient child.

“Lucy’s in the kitchen,” said Joyce. “Have some breakfast with her. Then you can take a bath.”

She hurried downstairs and out the front door. Ed Hauser was waiting in the car.

“Sorry I’m late,” said Joyce, a little breathless. “I had to wake Dorothy.”

“That’s okay.” Ed kissed the cheek she offered. “We’ve got to get that girl an alarm clock.”

 

WHEN EXACTLY it started—when her sister lost her footing—Joyce never knew. By the time the family was notified, it was too late. Dorothy had already begun to slide.

That year, like every year, she had visited at Christmas. Later Joyce would remember that she’d seemed distracted, her attention elsewhere, as though she were listening for sounds in the next room. “Too skinny,” Rose added, as though that clinched it. To her, thinness was always a sign of trouble.

Later, after the thing happened, Joyce would blame herself for not noticing. She’d been preoccupied that Christmas. Baker Brothers had put its company houses—Rose’s included—up for sale. Joyce couldn’t afford the down payment. If another buyer came along, the family would lose the house. Rose was seeing a new doctor, a diabetes specialist several towns away. The laser treatments had failed to save her eyesight, but there was her heart to worry about, her kidneys, a sore on her foot that refused to heal. More, and still more, that she might lose.

The call came late on a Friday evening, after Lucy had gone to bed. In the parlor, Rose sat dozing in her chair. Joyce stood at the kitchen sink, drying the last of the supper dishes. The ringing startled her. Since Sandy had left, the phone seldom rang. Georgie had already made his monthly call.

“Joyce?” A female voice. “I don’t know if you remember me. This is Mag Spangler.”

It took her a moment to recognize the name. They’d met years before, when Joyce spent a weekend visiting Dorothy in Washington. They had toured nearly every monument and museum in the capital. Mag had led them around town like a drill sergeant.

“I hate to call so late,” said Mag, “but this is an emergency. Something is terribly wrong with Dorothy.”

“Is she sick?”

“Not exactly. I got a call this afternoon from the landlady at the boardinghouse. She said Dorothy hasn’t come out of her room in weeks.”

Joyce thought of the tiny room, cramped and dark, its one window facing an alley lined with trash cans.

“When I went over there, she wouldn’t open the door. The landlady had to let me in with her key.” Mag hesitated. “Joyce, I don’t know what to say. I think she’s had some kind of nervous breakdown. Someone really should come and get her.”

 

JOYCE TOOK THE TRAIN the following day. At the boardinghouse she was greeted by Miss Straub, who’d inherited the place from her mother.

“Your sister’s room is a disgrace,” she said. “This is a respectable establishment. I can’t allow this sort of thing.” She was a pale, fleshy woman, tightly corseted. Her hair was teased in the elaborate style of ten years before.

“How long has she been in her room?”

“Honey, I don’t know. A few weeks, maybe. I’ve got a dozen people living here. I don’t keep tabs.” She knocked briskly at the door. “Miss Novak. Your sister is here.”

They waited. Miss Straub knocked again, then opened the door with her key. The room was dark, the shades drawn. It smelled dankly of mildew, an odor sweet and dark, like rotting fruit. Stiff towels covered the radiators. The mattress was bare. Dorothy lay curled on her side, facing the wall.

“Dorothy?” Joyce stepped around the piles on the floor—sheets, towels, dirty clothes.

“I tried talking to her. She acts like she doesn’t hear.” Miss Straub sounded annoyed.

Joyce sat on the bare mattress. Dorothy’s forehead was cool to the touch.

“Has she seen a doctor?” she asked.

“How would I know?”

Joyce took a deep breath. “Well, could you call one, please?”

Miss Straub crossed her arms. “First things first. She hasn’t paid rent in three weeks.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Joyce reached for her pocketbook. “I’ll pay whatever she owes, but she has to see a doctor.”

Miss Straub took the money.

“Has she been eating?” Joyce asked.

The landlady shrugged elaborately.

“Well, I just paid you room and board,” said Joyce. “So could you please bring her something to eat?”

Miss Straub’s heels clicked away down the hall. Joyce took Dorothy’s hand. It felt cool and very light, as though it were filled with air.

“Come on,” she said softly. “We need to get you out of bed.”

Dorothy frowned slightly, as though she had forgotten something. Her skin had a greasy shine.

Joyce rose. “Let’s get some light in here.”

She raised the shades. The disorder of the room astonished her. Clothes were piled on the floor. The wastebasket overflowed: blackened banana peels, an apple core astir with ants. Everywhere were piles of old magazines. Silver Screen. Backstage Gossip. Screen Stars.

Dorothy mumbled something, a single syllable. She covered her head with a pillow.

“Ready?” said Joyce. “We’re going to get you cleaned up.”

She slipped an arm around Dorothy’s waist. Dorothy moaned softly but didn’t resist. She wore an old cotton slip, decorated with stains. Through the thin fabric Joyce could feel her ribs. She picked a ratty plaid bathrobe off the floor and draped it over Dorothy’s shoulders.

Slowly they made their way down the hall, Dorothy leaning heavily on Joyce’s shoulder. The corridor was empty; so was the washroom. Joyce ran a bath and eased Dorothy into the tub. Her neck was ringed with grime. Her oily hair clung to her head like a cap.

“Sit and soak a while,” she said. “I’ll be right back.” She closed the door behind her and hurried down the hall. Straight ahead, she thought. It was a phrase she’d picked up in boot camp and repeated in her head while she marched: in the mornings, half asleep; in the afternoons, in the heat.

She found a clean dress in Dorothy’s closet, a comb and toothbrush in the bureau drawer. She laid them on the bed, then attacked the room with the broom and dust cloths Miss Straub had provided. She filled a trash bag with magazines, then a second. The clothing on the floor had a fungal smell, as though it had been dropped there soaking wet. The stiff towels smelled strongly of soap.

The doctor arrived an hour later. Dorothy sat waiting for him on the bed, bathed and dressed, her hair curling damply at her shoulders. He took a stethoscope from a leather bag and listened to her heartbeat. He took her blood pressure, then examined her ears and eyes and throat.

“She’s a little weak,” he told Joyce. “Underweight. Her blood pressure is low; she may be dehydrated. But she isn’t running a temperature. Physically, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with her.”

“But why won’t she talk?”

He closed his bag. “Has she experienced some kind of emotional trauma? Trouble with a boyfriend, that kind of thing?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Problems at work?”

“I don’t know,” said Joyce. Dorothy rarely phoned; lately her letters had been erratic. They hadn’t heard from her in more than a month.

In the end they went home to Bakerton; there was nowhere else to go. They made it to the station in time for the last train—thanks to Mag Spangler, who’d promised to send the rest of Dorothy’s things. Dorothy still hadn’t spoken, but she ate the sandwich Miss Straub had packed and slept peacefully the whole way home.

Back in Bakerton, Joyce told her mother as little as possible. “Dorothy was sick,” she said simply. “She needed to come home and rest.”

 

LUCY WAITED in the kitchen. She was twelve and would have preferred to make her own breakfast—bacon and eggs, fried toast with syrup—but there were rules about what she could eat. Each morning she made the best of it, doctoring her oatmeal with butter and brown sugar. Still it went down slowly, the flavors bland and gray.

The pot of oatmeal simmered on the stove. Joyce had told her to wait for Dorothy, but there was no telling when she would get out of bed. Lucy would have been perfectly happy if she stayed there all day. Dorothy made her nervous. Once, at night, she’d come downstairs for a drink of water and found Dorothy sitting on the porch swing, humming softly to herself. She looked up, but didn’t speak, when Lucy said hello.

She glanced at the clock. Space Patrol would begin at nine, followed by Captain Midnight and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. She carried the Saturday-morning schedule in her head; it was the best television of the week. Having Joyce gone on a Saturday morning was a rare gift. She disapproved of television watching during the day. If she caught Lucy at it, she’d come up with a list of chores that needed doing immediately: sweeping, dusting, ironing a stack of pillowcases; though why a pillowcase had to be ironed, Lucy couldn’t imagine. Her mother was more tolerant, although she sometimes told Lucy to go out and play. Lucy didn’t know how to explain that girls of twelve did not play, that even if she’d wanted to, there was nobody to play with. The boys spent Saturday mornings at baseball practice; they’d all joined the town league that spring. What the girls did Saturday mornings, Lucy didn’t know. The nicer ones simply ignored her. The mean ones called her Jumbo—almost, but not quite, behind her back.

She rose and scooped her own oatmeal from the pot. The last bite was the sweetest, caramel-flavored and slick with butter. In the parlor she turned on the television. The set was a gift from her brother Georgie; each Christmas he sent a wonderful present from Philadelphia. The television had arrived two years ago. It hadn’t worked at first, until Sandy fiddled with the antenna and wrapped its branches in tinfoil. Then they watched television every evening, Lucy and Joyce and even Sandy, when he had nothing better to do. Her mother stayed in the kitchen, where the old radio now sat. She preferred it to television. Lucy suspected that for her there wasn’t much difference.

She waited for the set to warm up, then adjusted the antenna. Her mother’s eyesight was something they never talked about; it was hard to know what she could see and what she couldn’t. She could still bake bread—every Friday she made four loaves. She moved from room to room with relative ease, but she seldom left the house. A few times Lucy had used this to her advantage, claiming the weather was bad when her mother sent her outside to play. Afterward shame overcame her. She vowed never to do it again.

It terrified her to think that her mother couldn’t see her, a dreadful foretaste of the day she would leave them forever. Yet in one way—a horribly selfish way—it was a relief. Lucy’s fatness was on display to the rest of the world, but her mother would never see her that way. She’d remember Lucy small and perfect, as she’d been at her First Communion, the prettiest one in her dress and veil. And as long as her mother didn’t know, Lucy could pretend it wasn’t happening: the rapid fleshing of her thighs, the rolls at her middle, the new clothes that fit for a month or two and then never again.

She didn’t eat all that much. An average amount, in her estimation. An average person would eat more than Joyce, who took tiny helpings and then pecked at her food like a bird. Lucy ate only oatmeal for breakfast, though she sometimes stopped at Bellavia’s on the way to school. (Mrs. Bellavia baked bread every morning. With the leftover dough she made a special, tiny loaf for Lucy.) She ate lunch in the school cafeteria; the cook, an old Polish lady who liked her, gave her extra helpings of her favorites: mashed potatoes with gravy, thick noodles with buttered bread crumbs and cheese. After school she walked to McClanahan’s for a bag of penny candy. Joyce kept a jar of change in the kitchen cupboard. Lucy had learned to fish out the coins without making a sound.

More, but not much more. It didn’t seem fair.

The water pump chugged in the basement. Dorothy was running a bath. Lucy went into the kitchen and returned with a slice of buttered bread. Joyce had a strict rule about not eating in the parlor, but Joyce wasn’t home. Lucy sat back and ate it, luxuriously, on the couch.

“Well, she looks all right,” said George.

He and Joyce sat at the kitchen table drinking black coffee. Brown, really: he could almost discern the flowered pattern at the bottom of his cup. The family brew was famously weak, hot water faintly flavored with coffee. In truth he preferred it to Marion’s espresso, to date the only thing she’d ever concocted in their kitchen.

“She’s a little better,” Joyce agreed. “A month ago she couldn’t get out of bed on her own. Really, Georgie. She scared me half to death.”

“What I can’t figure out is why she won’t talk.” When he arrived from Philadelphia the night before, Dorothy had greeted him warmly, clinging and a little weepy; but that was nothing unusual. He’d tried talking to her at dinner, but she had simply smiled. When she did speak, her answers didn’t make sense. How nice, she said when he asked how she was feeling.

“She’s been alone a long time,” he said. “Maybe she just got out of the habit.”

“Don’t be silly. There’s more to it than that.” Joyce rose and washed her cup at the sink.

“You’re looking good.” It was, he thought, different from good-looking. Joyce’s hair was carefully set, her blouse tucked neatly at her waist. The kitchen, too, was immaculate. His sister ran a tight ship.

“I’m tired.” She said it matter-of-factly, as though it were just a piece of information. “Mama had a doctor’s appointment yesterday, and Lucy has parent-teacher conferences on Monday. It’s always something.”

“You need a vacation,” he said automatically. Marion’s friends went to France or Italy every summer, Palm Beach or Bermuda in the winter. The moment he said it, he realized it was a ridiculous suggestion. In Bakerton nobody took vacations.

“The front porch is starting to settle,” said Joyce. “Would you mind taking a look?”

He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “What about Baker? They’re the landlords, after all. They’re supposed to maintain the place.”

“I’ve talked to them already. Daddy built the porch. They say it’s not their problem.”

“I forgot.”

“Oh, Georgie.”

His sister didn’t waste words, George reflected; her tone said everything. Her weariness and disappointment, the countless ways he had failed the family, the deep sadness his selfishness would have caused their father, if only he had lived to see it.

He drained his cup. “I’ll go take a look.”

He went out to the porch. Joyce was right: the floor listed to one side. A few boards had been replaced recently, but most of the wood was original, the planks his father had cut nearly thirty years ago. A boy then, George had watched him cut the wood with a handsaw. His father had been proud of the porch, the first on Polish Hill. It had set their house apart: a company house, yes, but different from the others. He had painted the boards forest green, a handsome color. The paint was blistered now, peeling in strips.

Gingerly he tested the floorboards. A few gave slightly with his weight. He imagined driving across town to the lumberyard, buying nails and two-by-fours. There his vision faltered. No way could he fit the lumber into his Cadillac. He could bang a nail as well as the next guy, but the finer points of leveling and cornering were beyond him. He was as helpless a carpenter as Marion was a cook.

He glanced across the street. A truck had pulled up to the Stusicks’ house, and two portly, balding men—Gene’s older brothers, he realized—were struggling with a brown plaid sofa. The house had been empty since Gene’s mother died. Now, apparently, someone was moving in.

“Hey there,” he called. “Need a hand?” He jogged easily across the street, grabbed a corner of the sofa and helped heft it up the front steps. “Who’s the new tenant?”

“No tenant.” The taller brother—Fred—wedged his end through the front door. “You didn’t know? Baker’s has the whole hill up for sale.”

“No kidding.” George glanced over his shoulder, wondering who would buy a company house on Polish Hill. Cheap little cracker boxes, even when they were new; and the houses hadn’t aged well. His mother’s windows leaked cold air. One day soon the roof would have to be replaced.

“Gene bought it,” Fred said, as if answering his question. “He’s rolling in the dough now. He’s a boss over at the Twelve.”

They wedged the sofa through the front door. The house was as familiar to George as any he’d ever known; his whole childhood he’d traipsed through its rooms. Most of the old furniture had remained: the braided rug, the worn armchair where Mr. Stusick had read his Polish paper, the telephone table draped with a crocheted doily. On the wall, the same photographs found in every house on the Hill: Pope Pius and John L. Lewis, the legendary president of the Mineworkers, a face as familiar as family. Apparently Ev would inherit these items. George supposed she would keep them; how else would you furnish a house on Polish Hill? Marion’s abstract art would look ridiculous here, as utterly misplaced as Marion herself.

They set down the sofa.

“Think that’s where she wants it?” Fred asked.

The other brother shrugged. “That’s Gene’s problem.”

“True enough.” Fred wiped his hand on his trousers, then offered it to George. “Thanks for the hand, George. Stop over tomorrow, if you’re around. Ev and Gene’s girl is making her First Communion. They’d be glad to see you.”

“I will,” said George.

Again he crossed the street. His mother was sitting on the front porch. “Georgie?” she said as he climbed the stairs. A question in her voice. The realization hit him like a sucker punch: she couldn’t see. At least, not well enough to recognize him.

“Hi, bella.” He called her this rarely, hadn’t done so in years. He’d known her eyes were bad, but still.

“Where you been, Georgie?”

“Across the street. Looks like you’ve got some new neighbors. Gene and Ev bought the old homestead.”

“Eee!” She clapped her hands. “I always love that Evelyn. That’s a nice girl.”

George waited.

“Georgie,” she said. “How come you never marry her?”

He laughed uneasily. “That’s ancient history, Ma.”

“How come?” she persisted.

“It was Ev’s decision. I was overseas, and somewhere along the line she decided she liked Gene better. Good choice, if you ask me.”

“But how come? If he was here, I could understand. But he was in the war, too. How come she like him better?”

“Maybe he wrote better letters.” Across the street Gene’s brothers were moving a kitchen table. George lowered his voice, hoping his mother would take the hint.

“I guess it was my fault,” he admitted. “I stopped writing.”

“You stop?” She clapped a hand over her mouth, as outraged by his behavior as if it had happened yesterday. “Eee, how come?”

He shrugged. “Ev was all hot to get married. I had my doubts, but she couldn’t wait. I had a furlough coming up, and without telling me, she went and talked to the priest. That burned me up.” He paused. “Remember that time I was supposed to come home?”

“That furlough!” she cried. “And then they don’t let you come.”

“That’s right,” he said. “And you know what? I was relieved—that’s how bad I didn’t want to get married. After that I never wrote to her again. I guess she got the message, because the next time I came home, she and Gene were engaged.”

His mother eyed him for a long moment. A flush crept over his cheeks. What does she see when she looks at me? he wondered.

“I’m not proud of it,” he said. “It’s just about the most cowardly thing I’ve ever done. But there you have it.”

Still his mother said nothing.

“It worked out for the best, though. For both of us.” He forced a cheerful tone. “Gene’s a good man. And I’ve got Marion now.”

Across the street Gene’s brothers got into the truck.

“Georgie,” she said, “are you happy?”

“Sure. Sure I’m happy.” He rose, feeling his heart. “You don’t know Marion; you haven’t had the chance. But trust me, Mama.” He bent and kissed her. “She’s a wonderful girl.”

 

THEY’D BEEN MARRIED seven years. Compared with other periods in his life—adolescence, the navy—his marriage seemed much longer, though in fact little had happened. The first year passed in a haze of sex and alcohol. He was working for Marion’s father, at the flag-ship Quigley’s store downtown. The old man had put him on the sales floor. To learn the engine, he’d explained to George. If you want to know how a machine runs, you’ve got to watch the gears grind. Quigley’s own son was spared this indoctrination: Kip, when he showed up at all, spent his days behind a desk. Meanwhile George hawked furniture and appliances, menswear and ladies’ shoes. No one told him so, but he understood that he would have to prove himself. A son-in-law was not a son.

He started in Men’s Furnishings. Long days on his feet, a tape measure around his neck, fitting trousers to grumpy old codgers with balding legs and gin-blossom noses. The customers resembled his father-in-law; George had an unwelcome mental picture of how Arthur Quigley must look in his shorts. Yet he didn’t mind the old coots; he’d have enjoyed their company, if not for the misery of his daily hangovers. Every evening, Marion waited for him with a pitcher of martinis. They drank for an hour or two, then tumbled into bed. Afterward they drank some more. Often they fought bitterly; though the reasons for the disputes, or how they resolved themselves, he rarely remembered in the morning. Sick, red-eyed, he struggled out of bed. Even in top form, he was not a natural salesman; with dry heaves and a splitting headache, even less so. Marion slept late and looked fresh and lovely when he returned in the evening; but George wondered how long he could sustain the pace. His marriage stretched eternally before him, fifty years of nausea and crippling migraines. Something would have to give.

Something did. Marion became pregnant. She blamed George—silently at first; later with streams of invective, acrimonious and profane. She spoke of traveling to Switzerland, “to have it taken care of”—a procedure she’d apparently undergone before. Then her father suffered a stroke, and for reasons George didn’t wholly understand, Marion changed her mind. The baby was born a month premature, so small George might have held him in one hand, if he’d dared. They named him Arthur, for Marion’s father.

The birth changed her. Once an insomniac, she now spent whole days in bed. She wept easily, an astonishing development: in all the time he’d known her, George had never seen her cry. At night he came home to the house they’d bought—a large colonial in Newtown Square, a few miles from his in-laws’—and mixed himself a drink. Upstairs his wife and baby cried, indifferent to each other and to any ministrations he might offer. He had hired a temporary nanny. Arthur was small and terrifyingly fragile. Until Marion was ready to look after him, George reasoned, his care was best left to a professional.

How to care for Marion, he had no idea. With increasing frequency, doctors came. Once she overdosed on sleeping pills—accidentally, she later claimed; though George had his doubts. Her obstetrician was no help, and neither was the Quigleys’ family doctor. Marion dismissed them as idiots, and refused to see a psychiatrist. Then George found Ezra Gold.

Gold was an internist with offices on Park Avenue. George paid him extra to come to Philadelphia; later, when Marion was well enough, she took the train into New York for her checkups. She returned from each visit with a new prescription: for anxiety, insomnia, an underactive thyroid. Amber plastic bottles lined her bathroom shelf. She swallowed pills with breakfast, at bedtime. And in the space of just a few weeks, she got better.

The transformation was astounding. For the first time George could remember, she slept through the night. She rose when he did, dressed and smiled at him across the breakfast table. She did not paint—she’d stopped during her pregnancy when the turpentine nauseated her, and had no desire to resume. She didn’t read, or play with Arthur, but her demeanor was sane and pleasant. In the afternoons she shopped or had lunch with old schoolmates from Miss Porter’s and Bryn Mawr. That, too, was new: she’d never shown the slightest interest in girlfriends. Her oils and canvases gathered dust in the attic. The temporary nanny moved into a spare bedroom upstairs.

At first he was filled with relief. Only later, when the crisis was past, did he understand what he had lost. At night, with the new, changed Marion sleeping peacefully beside him, he remembered the mysterious, voracious woman he’d married, her unpredictable passions, the shocking detour his life had taken when they met. He wondered where she had gone.

He didn’t miss her; not at first. The old Marion had fascinated him; but he couldn’t remember being happy in her presence. His memories were tinted like an old photograph: yellow with anxiety, red with anger, green with drunkenness, blue with lust. But at least he had known her. The new Marion—a polite, remote woman, carefully coiffed, who stared absently at the television while he read the newspaper, who clutched his arm as they crossed the street, who poured herself a single drink at bedtime and fell dead asleep on the couch—was a stranger to him. A different woman had led him into this Philadelphia life with its invisible codes of behavior; a place where he would forever remain a stranger. She’d regarded Main Line society as an elaborate maze constructed for her amusement, and she’d enjoyed leading George through it, laughing at its provincialism and pretense.

Shortly after they’d bought the Newtown house, new neighbors moved in across the street, a pleasant young couple named Peter and Libby Hill. Peter was an attorney with a year-round suntan; he played golf every Saturday and had once asked George to come along. Though George didn’t golf, he’d have liked to learn. But he had refused the invitation, because while Marion found Libby merely tedious, she despised Peter Hill. He was perfectly vacuous, she said; smug, venal and nearly illiterate—though how she’d gleaned all this from the occasional pleasantries they exchanged, George had no idea. The invitation had never been repeated; like the rest of his well-heeled neighbors, Peter Hill remained a stranger. Now, without Marion’s ironic commentary, these people no longer struck George as ridiculous. He found them exotic and utterly intimidating, and felt himself completely alone.

He had loved to make her laugh. He was an excellent mimic, a fine physical comic. Working at Quigley’s had provided him an abundance of material. At the end of the day, with a few drinks in him, he’d entertained her by impersonating the boozy customer who couldn’t fasten his suspenders, the stout woman in the shoe department who refused to step on the fluoroscope because she thought it revealed her weight.

“It’s an X-ray machine,” George had explained. “It shows us the bones in your feet, so we can fit your shoes properly.”

“Don’t tell me, young man,” the woman huffed. “I know exactly what it shows.”

Tipsy herself, Marion had shrieked with laughter; and somehow—who knew how these things happened—it had become a private joke. In bed, or at her parents’ dinner table, or at First Presbyterian as Kip exchanged rings with a very pregnant bride, George had only to whisper the words into Marion’s ear to send her into peals of laughter. Don’t tell me, young man. I know exactly what it shows.

A few years later, toward the end of Marion’s illness, they had attended an exhibition of abstract art at the Metropolitan. She had begun seeing Dr. Gold; for the first time since Arthur was born, she and George were spending an evening out in public. At one time she would have spent hours at such an event, but the new Marion moved quickly from canvas to canvas, clutching George’s arm. Ahead of them, a scraggly bohemian type critiqued each painting, in exhaustive detail, to a suntanned old woman in a pink Chanel suit. Without thinking, George leaned close to Marion.

“Don’t tell me, young man,” he whispered. “I know exactly what it shows.”

She stared at him blankly.

“Remember, honey? The lady in the shoe department?” Thinking Jesus, she’s lost her memory, too.

“Oh, yes,” Marion said vaguely. “I remember. But I don’t understand, George. What does it mean?”

By midmorning, the road was lined with cars, parked at odd angles on both sides of Polish Hill. The Stusicks’ porch was crowded with neighbors and relatives. In the living room, card tables were loaded down with food: the usual Polish favorites, plus a hodgepodge of casseroles. A ceramic basket held ornate psanky—hand-painted Ukrainian Easter eggs. Children picked through a mountain of cookies—some store-bought, some homemade. There were cupcakes and Bundt cakes, a rhubarb pie, green and yellow gelatin salads studded with fruit.

“Beep beep,” said Ev’s sister Helen. George stepped aside, and she set down a plate of deviled eggs dusted with paprika. “Georgie. We didn’t see you in church.”

“Hi, Helen.” George didn’t know her married name; she lived at the top of the hill and was a notorious gossip. “We went to the first mass. Joyce is an early riser.”

“How’s your other sister? I heard she came back from Washington a little under the weather.”

“Who told you that?”

“Ida Spangler, at the hat shop.” Helen lowered her voice. “Nothing serious, I hope.”

Goddamned small town, George thought. “Bronchitis,” he said. “Turned into pneumonia. She’s still recuperating.” He spied Gene heading out the back door. “Excuse me. I want to say hi to Gene.”

He wove his way through the crowded kitchen to the back porch. Gene stood at the kettle grill digging at the charcoals, a bottle of Iron City in his hand. He was still in his Sunday clothes, suit trousers and a short-sleeved shirt.

“Eugenius,” George called.

“Georgie.” He had thickened around the middle, but otherwise looked much as he had in childhood: fair hair standing up in a cowlick, glasses repaired at the temple with electrical tape. “Glad you could come.”

They sat in folding chairs overlooking the small yard, which had been taken over by children playing a noisy game of tag. “So you’re a homeowner now,” said George. “Congratulations.”

“Can you believe it?” Gene handed him a bottle from the cooler. “I wish my dad had lived to see it. He hated living in a company house. It about killed him, having that money taken out of his pay every month.”

George nodded. You pay rent, you never have nothing: his own father had said it a thousand times.

“They’re solid houses, Georgie. Nothing wrong with them a little elbow grease won’t fix. It’s hard to believe Baker’s letting them go.” Gene took a pull on his beer. “What about your mom? Any chance she’ll buy her place?”

“She hasn’t said anything. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know it was for sale.”

The screen door opened and Evelyn appeared, carrying a plate of snacks: celery stuffed with cream cheese, more deviled eggs. “Well, look who’s here.”

“How are you, Ev?” He embraced her quickly, avoiding Gene’s eyes. The three of them had spent their adolescence at Keener’s Diner: George and Ev on one side of the booth, hip to hip; Gene on the other side, alone. Ev had felt sorry for him, George remembered. A few times she’d offered to set him up with one of her girlfriends, but Gene wasn’t interested. Always it had been the three of them.

Ev sat, smoothing her skirt. “How’s life in the big city, Georgie?”

“Not bad. Good to be back here, though. There’s no place like home.”

“It must be hard, being so far away. You must worry about your mother.”

“Joyce takes good care of her,” said George. “But yeah, I do.”

“If you’re interested,” said Gene, “we’re hiring over at the Twelve.”

“Oh, Georgie’s not looking for a job.” Ev pulled up a chair. “Aren’t you about finished with medical school?”

“Oh, I gave up on that a long time ago.” George took the beer Gene offered. “I work in retail. Marion’s father has a department store.”

“He sell Caddies at that store?” Gene asked, a twinkle in his eye.

George grinned. “Oh, that. My brother-in-law has a dealership.” After a series of accounting missteps that would have landed anyone else—George included—in prison, old man Quigley had given up on teaching his son the family business. He’d bought Kip a Cadillac dealership, a business so foolproof that even a proven fool couldn’t run it into the ground.

“Told you,” Gene said to Ev. He grinned. “My wife here was ogling your Eldorado.”

Ev blushed to the roots of her hair. “It’s beautiful, Georgie. And so clean.”

“What do those go for new?” Gene asked. “Four grand?”

More like six, George thought but didn’t say.

Ev gasped. “Four thousand dollars? For a car? That’s more than we paid for this house!”

George shifted uncomfortably. He’d felt guilty about spending the money—his wife’s money—on such a luxury; but on some level he felt entitled. The car made him happy. Except for his son—a clever, hyperactive five year old, sweet-natured and affectionate—it was the only thing in his life that did.

“Georgie’s no fool,” Gene said, laughing. “I told her you must have got it at cost.”

“Gene!” Ev protested, her cheeks flushing. “Ignore him, Georgie. He’s got no manners. Never has.”

George watched her. Later—days, months, years later—he would replay the moment in his mind, the flush creeping up from her throat. He had always loved her skin, its utter transparency. She’d never been able to keep a secret; her feelings were written on her face, all over her body. There was no mystery to a redhead. A redhead was incapable of deceit.

“Sure,” he lied. “I got a nice discount.” He turned to Gene. “I hear you’re doing well for yourself, Mr. Crew Boss.”

Gene beamed. “It’s a hell of an operation, Georgie. Right now we’re bringing up eight thousand tons a day. That’s enough to heat eight hundred homes for an entire winter.”

He adjusted his glasses, which had slipped down his nose—a gesture George had seen him perform a thousand times. Despite his swagger, Gene hadn’t changed at all. Underneath was still the same boy who had rattled off the list of presidents, who could multiply and divide in his head.

“Eugenius,” George said, raising his glass. “It’s good to be home.”

 

AFTERNOON STRETCHED into evening. Cold bottles of Iron City appeared from the cooler; empty bottles were whisked away. George watched the children chase one another across the yard: red-haired Lipnics, blond-haired Stusicks, a few girls still in Communion dresses, like tiny brides. Adults crowded the living room—young couples, old women. Past a certain age the men seemed to disappear. The lucky ones, like Gene’s uncles, hobbled around on canes, crippled by Miner’s Knee, Miner’s Hip, Miner’s Back. The rest were at home breathing bottled oxygen, their lungs ruined from years of inhaling coal dust. You’d have to call them moderately lucky, George reflected. The unluckiest were like his own father, keeled over in his own basement. Dead at fifty-four.

He watched Gene flip hamburgers at the grill. Smarter than me, George thought, and what is he doing? What is this life he’s signed on for? In his boozy state, his old buddy seemed to him a kind of bookmark, holding his place in a life he himself had started but decided not to finish. The company house, the redheaded children, the woman George could have (and maybe should have—probably, definitely should have) married. Eugenius would be the one who finished that book. Eugenius would let him know how it all turned out.

He watched Ev carry plates back and forth to the kitchen. She wore a yellow dress cinched at the middle. He was aware of breasts and arms, a round behind. She had been his first, and he’d been hers. One time only, the night before he left, but enough to qualify for the title. I love you. In my heart we’re already married. At the time he’d meant it—at least he thought he did. And she had taken him at his word.

She pulled up a chair next to him. “Whew. I’m beat.”

“Are they all yours, Ev?” George asked, pointing.

“Gosh, no. Leonard’s in fourth grade.” She pointed to a boy in striped trousers. George would have recognized him anywhere: his father’s thick glasses, his mother’s red curls. “You met him when he was a baby. Then the two girls. Gene wants to try for another boy, but I’m ready to retire.” She laughed. “How old’s your boy, Georgie? I don’t even know his name.”

“Arthur. He’ll be six in July.”

“Just the one, Georgie?” She smiled; again the hint of a blush. “You’re not planning on more?”

“Marion’s awfully busy. I’m not sure what she’d do with another one.”

“Is she—a career girl?” She used the phrase hesitantly, as though she weren’t sure it applied. I could kiss her, George thought.

“I guess,” he said. And then, because an explanation seemed necessary: “She’s a painter.”

“A housepainter?”

“Oh, no. She’s, you know, an artist.”

Ev blushed a deep red. Again he felt his heart quicken. His own cheeks heated, as if warmed by hers. I’m drunk, he thought.

“Well, she sounds fascinating. I’d love to meet her someday.”

He let himself imagine this: Marion in Ev’s living room on Polish Hill, eating deviled eggs, swapping recipes for gelatin salad. Marion’s recap afterward: My picnic with Evelyn Picnic. Her progeny screaming in the next room. Her milkmaid’s arms as big as my thighs. The old Marion: skewering Ev with a few turns of her vast vocabulary, in the bored, flat tone that let you know how little she cared.

“Oh, sure,” he said miserably. “You two would hit it off.” He rose, a bit unsteady, and began clearing plates from the table.

“Georgie, sit! You don’t have to do that.”

“It’s the least I can do.”

She gave him an odd look: he’d said it with more feeling than was appropriate. He couldn’t help himself. Picturing Ev at Marion’s mercy unsettled him deeply. As though he himself were sadistic and cruel, as though he’d imagined her violent death.

 

THE STREET was dark by the time the party broke up. George crossed the street, feeling guilty. He’d spent the whole day—a third of his visit—at Gene and Ev’s. Now his mother’s windows were dark.

He climbed the porch stairs on tiptoe. The old floorboards creaked beneath his weight. The porch, he remembered: he had promised to help Joyce with the porch. But he was due at the store Monday afternoon. He would have to leave first thing in the morning.

He glanced over his shoulder at the Cadillac gleaming beneath the street lamp. He’d stopped along the highway and paid a dollar to have it washed. Now the small extravagance shamed him. He’d always been vain about his cars.

He closed the screen door quietly behind him; feeling along the wall, he climbed the stairs to his room. His suitcase sat at the foot of the bed; he hadn’t even bothered to unpack it. Shame prickled his skin. Had his mother noticed? Did she know he was in such a hurry to leave?

He clicked open the suitcase. In the pocket of his trousers he found his checkbook. Why not? he thought. For God’s sake, what is money for?

His hand shaking, he wrote a check for $5,814, the exact sticker price of a ’55 Eldorado ragtop, payable to Joyce Novak. On the memo line he wrote, in wavy letters: You pay rent, you never have nothing.

He left the check on top of the bureau. By the time she found it, he would be halfway to Philadelphia.

Every year, in the third week of July, Mount Carmel Church held its annual festival and spaghetti dinner. Tents were raised on the church lawn. In the street, a bandstand and rides for the children: chair swings, a miniature carousel. Susquehanna Avenue was closed off with sawhorses, causing a tangle of traffic on the street below. Every year the local merchants grumbled. Might as well shut down for the weekend. No one does business on Dago Day. A few wrote letters to the mayor. But John Mastrantonio chaired the town council. Every year the requisite permits were issued, and Dago Day was celebrated as planned.

Every Italian in town worked at the festival. When Rose Novak was a girl, her aunts fried sausages and rolled meatballs in the church basement. Before he went away to war, her brother had helped build the gaming booths—darts, ringtoss, chuck-o-luck—and hammered the posts into the parish lawn. Her uncle Vincent had built the wooden platform used in the procession, to carry Our Lady of Mount Carmel through the streets of the town. Each year the platform was decorated with fresh-cut roses, the statue draped in a long cloak of sky blue velvet. Carried, always, by six young men, and followed by the Legion of Mary, the Knights of Columbus and the church choir. The procession wound its way through Little Italy, a slow-moving beast sluggish in the afternoon heat, easily caught by the small dark-eyed children who pursued it, carrying dollar bills punctured with safety pins. The bills were pinned to Our Lady’s cloak. The sign of the cross was made.

The festival ended with a pyrotechnics display; for many years, Rose’s father had driven his wagon to Punxsutawney to buy the firecrackers. All of Bakerton watched the fireworks, but the Italians had the best view, from the steep hill behind the church.

As a girl of eleven, Rose cleared tables at the spaghetti dinner. She had just come over with her mother. Starting fifth grade at the grammar school, she had learned, cruelly, that her English was poor; but at Mount Carmel that didn’t matter. The patrons spoke to her in Italian. The women in the kitchen called her bella, gave her anisette cookies and exclaimed over her long hair. As a teenager, she helped decorate Our Lady’s platform. During the procession she sang in the choir.

After her marriage, Rose stopped working at the festival. Her children were baptized at St. Casimir’s, and she acquired a collection of dowdy hats, which the Polish women favored over mantillas. Her life was in all ways Polish except for one day each summer: on the third Saturday in July, Stanley stayed home alone; Rose and the children trekked across town to the festival. There, Georgie and Dorothy chased around the churchyard with their Scarponi cousins. Rose sat under an awning with her aunts, playing bingo and drinking Sambuca, speaking Italian and breaking out periodically in cawing laughter. Years later, her children would remember that Rose laughed more on Dago Day than on all the other days of the year combined.

THE THIRD SATURDAY in July was the hottest day of the year. At eleven in the morning the temperature reached a hundred degrees. “It’s not so bad,” Rose told the girls, in defiance of all evidence. She could still distinguish light from dark, could recognize certain shapes; but her feet were swollen, a sign her heart was failing. Still she would not miss the festival.

Joyce drove them into town and dropped them off at the church—the nearest parking space was blocks away. Dorothy led Rose to a chair under the canopy, where her aunts were playing bingo.

The aunts—in their seventies now—greeted them with hugs and shrieks. “You looking good, honey,” said Aunt Marcella, kissing Dorothy loudly. “You hang in there, you be good as new.”

Dorothy guided Rose to a folding chair. She did feel well. She had regained a little weight; her daily walks had improved her appetite. Little by little, her speech had returned. She’d set her hair and wore a new dress. Joyce had taken her shopping for her thirtieth birthday that spring.

“Dorothy,” said Aunt Bruna. “Come here, bella. I got a job for you.” The kitchen was shorthanded, she explained; the second seating had begun, and there weren’t enough waitresses. “We need some girls to pour coffee. Pretty girls,” she said, winking. “Keep the men occupied while they wait.”

In this way Dorothy found herself in the church basement, an apron wrapped around her waist. Long tables stretched from wall to wall, set with folding chairs. Families sat close together: grandparents, young couples, children in Sunday clothes. There was no telling where one family ended and the next began. The same features repeated up and down every table: brown eyes, black hair, sharp noses, square chins. The overflow crowd waited in line at the door. The room seemed to Dorothy very full—perfume, cigar smoke, laughter, all tightly contained by the cinder-block walls.

There was no room for shyness, no time. She hurried from table to table pouring coffee; the simplicity of the task reassured her, the impossibility of making conversation in the loud room. Men laughed and called to her. Hey, coffee girl. Another refill here. Good thing you so skinny, get between them tables like that. Old men, strongly perfumed, in pink shirts and pastel slacks. Some bald, with oiled scalps; others with low hairlines, graying pompadours beginning just above the eyebrows. Dorothy smiled back; it was impossible not to. She filled their cups and returned to the kitchen for a fresh pot.

For an hour or more she raced and poured. Packed full of bodies, the room grew close. The heat of the kitchen astonished her, the enormous pots of boiling macaroni, the steaming vats of tomato sauce. She wiped her brow. Around her the room began to spin.

“Whatsa matter?” someone called. The voice seemed very far away.

“She gonna pass out,” said another.

“I got her.” Someone took the coffeepot from her hands; she felt herself lifted, briefly, off the floor. A man’s arms beneath her. I’m swimming, she thought.

“Hey, you okay? Lights still on in there?” He was her age, perhaps older. He looked like the others: the eyes, the hair.

“Poor girl, she need some air,” a woman crowed. “Angie, be a good boy and take her outside.”

 

THEY SAT on the back steps of the rectory, shaded at that hour by a gnarled cherry tree.

“That was a close call,” he said. “You almost hit the deck.”

“I don’t know what happened.”

“Hotter than hell in there.” He fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette.

“I’ve been ill. I’m still getting my strength back.” She leaned against the brick wall, slightly cooler than her skin. “Thank you for helping me. I’m sorry to take you away from your dinner.”

“That’s all right.” He loosened his tie. His neck looked thick and powerful; his white shirt was damp under the arms. “I’d rather sit here with you.”

“I should get back,” she said, rising.

“Easy.” He laid a hand on her leg. A large, handsome hand, the wrist covered with black hair. “Sit a minute. I’ll get you some water.”

He returned with a paper cup and a piece of garlic toast. “Here. Eat this.”

She took the bread, warm and buttery. It left an oily film on her fingers. She realized she hadn’t eaten all day.

“My mother says you’re too skinny. I said I like you the way you are.” He said it simply, as though it meant nothing.

“She asked me your name,” he said.

“Dorothy Novak.”

“Angelo Bernardi. They call me Angie.”

“Angelo,” she repeated. It was a beautiful name.

 

“BERNARDI,” SAID JOYCE. “The undertakers?”

The sisters were sitting on the front porch, drinking glasses of lemonade. Up and down Polish Hill the neighbors were doing the same. The fireworks had finished; the children had been put to bed. It was too hot to sleep.

“There were three of them that I remember,” said Joyce, ticking them off on her fingers. “Jerry was two years ahead of me. Plus there were two older boys, twins. They were all in the service.”

“Victor and Sal,” said Dorothy, who had graduated with them. “I remember Victor and Sal.”

It was an exercise performed in small towns everywhere: the tracing back through generations, the connecting of in-laws and distant cousins, names familiar from church or school. Rose and her sisters were masters of the art; Joyce and Dorothy had grown up listening to their aunts exchange information over coffee and cake. It could not accurately be called gossip; there was nothing malicious in the talk. It was simply the female way of ordering the world, a universe where everyone was important and all activities worthy of notice.

“Angelo?” Joyce frowned. “There was another cousin, older, but he got married a few years ago. A Scalia girl. Her sister was at the factory with me.”

“I know he said Bernardi.” An exotic name, lovely in her mouth. Already she had said it a dozen times. He had asked for her phone number but hadn’t written it down. Right here, he said, tapping his temple. I got it right here.

“Wasn’t one of the Bernardis a ballplayer?” Joyce asked. “Do you remember this? He played for Baker, and then got drafted by one of the professional teams.”

Dorothy frowned. “You’re thinking of Ernie Tedesco. That was a long time ago.”

“Could be,” said Joyce. “I don’t know why I thought Bernardi. Why don’t you just ask Mama? She’s an expert on the Italians.”

Dorothy nodded. It would have been logical to ask Rose first, but something had stopped her.

“Don’t say anything just yet,” she said. “He might not even call.”

HE DIDN’T CALL.

Weeks passed. In the afternoons she walked through Little Italy, glancing at parked cars, peering into shop windows. Above every store were two floors of apartments, their windows covered in lace. He might live anywhere. She might walk past his window every day. She would never know.

(On those long walks she did not think of her mother, the summer Rose spent looking for Stanley Novak, before he wandered into the seamstress’s shop to order his wedding suit. The way she had hunted him, the nakedness of her need. Stanley himself had never known. Rose would carry the secret to her grave.)

One afternoon Dorothy bought a pastry at Bellavia’s and sat there a long time eating it, at a tiny table facing the window. An old woman passed, dressed in black. At the end of the block the parochial school had let out for recess: shouts and squeals, the singsong voices of girls jumping rope. Across the street, cars idled in front of the funeral parlor; at the head of the line, an old-fashioned black hearse, chrome gleaming in the sun. Mourners filed out of the building, stopping to shake hands with the old man who stood at the door. The man was thin and very stooped. He looked a hundred years old.

The mourners got into their cars. One by one the doors slammed shut. The old man picked his way, roosterlike, across the sidewalk, and got into the passenger side of the hearse. The car rolled forward, its lights flashing. Dorothy squinted into the sun. A moment later she caught her breath.

The driver was Angelo Bernardi.

“Where are they going?” she asked Mrs. Bellavia.

“St. Brigid’s,” the old lady explained. “A McDonald died.”

After that Dorothy passed the funeral home every day. Each morning she checked the obituaries; in the afternoon she walked the Catholic cemeteries: St. Brigid’s, St. Casimir’s, Our Mother of Sorrows, Mount Carmel. When she spotted the hearse, her heart quickened; but always the wrong cousin was driving. Most days the driver was Jerry; a few times, Victor or Sal.

She did not give up. And on a windy afternoon in early October, she saw Angelo Bernardi.

An Italian child was to be buried: a boy, Nicholas Annacone, crushed by a car as he chased a ball into the street. Dorothy set out at noon under a clear sky, the vibrant blue of early autumn. An hour later she climbed the hill to Mount Carmel. The service had ended; the mourners were returning to their cars. A canopy had been erected at the grave site. Two men in overalls struggled to refold it, the canvas flapping loudly in the wind. Cars cruised toward the cemetery gates. At the grave site a man stood leaning against the hearse.

For once she did not hesitate. She had missed too many chances already: Walter Parish, a young clerk at Treasury who’d spoken to her at the watercooler; men who’d tipped their hats or smiled at her on the bus. Chick Rowsey in the pool at Glen Echo: his arms around her on the train platform, his mouth on hers. Each disappointment had weakened her; losing hope was like losing blood. She could not survive another failure. Already she was hemorrhaging from regret.

She walked toward him. The wind blew petals and loose dirt. A car horn blared. Later she realized she hadn’t even looked; she could have been run over like Nicholas Annacone. She had forgotten everything: her fears, her self-respect, what her sister called common sense. All she could remember was a name, Angelo Bernardi.

He reached into his pocket for a cigarette and lit it. Then he saw her.

“Hey,” he said, tossing away the match. “I know you.”

“Dorothy Novak,” she said quickly, before he could ask.

“From the festival. What, you think I forgot? I’m kidding,” he said, flashing her a smile. “What are you doing here?”

“Just walking.”

“In the graveyard?”

“My grandmother is buried here. I put flowers on her grave.” I’m lying, she reflected calmly. Just then it didn’t seem to matter. She watched his hands.

“What a beautiful day. Makes you glad to be alive.” A stream of smoke shot out his nostrils. “Did you hear about this kid?” He nodded toward the fresh grave. “Eight years old. Those parents, my God. You shoulda seen it. Out of their minds with grief.”

“It’s horrible.”

“Makes you think. Beautiful day like this: How many of them are you gonna get? I haven’t seen the sun in a week.” He noticed her frown. “I work at the Twelve. It’s my day off. I’m helping out my uncle for the day.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“Tell me about it.” He inhaled deeply. “Nah. Tell him. I’m tired of hearing how I never lift a finger. I been hearing that song my whole life.”

He flicked a cigarette ash from his lapel.

“I’m sorry. I got no manners, running at the mouth like this. But I don’t mind telling you, I got frustrations.” He tossed away his cigarette. “I got the car all day. You feel like taking a ride?”

 

THEY TOOK THE BACK way out of town, a winding road that cut through cool acres of forest, connecting Bakerton to the neighboring towns: Coalport, Fallentree, Moss Creek, towns too small for even a post office. A hand-lettered sign—U.S. MAIL—hung above a walk-up window on somebody’s front porch. Dorothy had seen these towns from a train window, the slow local. She’d imagined them much farther away.

He drove fast and expertly. Wind rushed through the open windows, ruffled the silky curtains, and Dorothy remembered she was riding in a hearse. At first the speed delighted her. Then her stomach churned. Closing her eyes made matters worse. She clutched helplessly at the seat.

“Whatsa matter? You carsick?”

“A little dizzy,” she admitted. “Can we stop for a minute?”

He signaled and pulled off the road. “You okay? You look a little green.” He leaned across her to roll down the window. For a moment his head was level with her breasts. His black hair looked dense as moss.

“My fault,” he said. “I drive too fast. The old man is always on me about it. Good for the engine, though. Cleans out all the shit. Excuse my French.” He looked at her closely. “You don’t talk much, do you?”

Dorothy flushed.

“That’s unusual in a girl. I got four sisters, they never shut up.” He reached for her hand. “I thought about calling you. I could kick myself. Things got complicated. I don’t know what to say.”

His hand was broad and heavy in her lap, his skin warm to the touch.

“Kiss me,” she said.

 

HE DROPPED HER OFF at the bottom of Polish Hill. “Bunch of busybodies in this town,” he explained. “You can’t take a crap without somebody knowing about it.” She knew he was right. She’d be curious, too, if she saw one of her neighbors step out of a hearse.

At home her mother and sisters were sitting down to supper.

“Where have you been?” said Joyce. “We were starting to worry.”

“I took a walk. I lost track of time.” Dorothy tore into a hunk of Rose’s bread. She was suddenly ravenous. “It was a beautiful day.”

Joyce peered at her. “Looks like you got some sun.”

Dorothy ate in silence. She often ate in silence, but that day it weighed on her. For the first time in months she was dying to speak. Instead she shoveled in chicken, potatoes, her mother’s fried eggplant. It was the only way she could keep quiet, until she could be alone with the memory of him.

Her boldness had surprised him. You’re something, aren’t you? Then he pulled her close, wrapping her in his smell—cigarettes, garlic, cologne.

They had kissed a long time. His cheeks were rough as sandpaper. Later, in her bedroom mirror, she saw that Joyce was right: her mouth and cheeks looked sunburned; her neck, her ears, her throat. Even her chest was flushed, down to the top button of her blouse. She had stopped him there.

I should go, she said. I have to be home for supper.

His mouth had felt warm and alive. Eyes closed, she had imagined herself swimming. Now she wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t stopped him. She wondered if she would be red all over.

“I ran into someone when I was walking,” she blurted out. “That fellow from Mount Carmel Day. Angelo Bernardi.”

Joyce set down her fork. “Wasn’t he supposed to call you?”

“He lost my number,” Dorothy lied.

“Bernardi?” said Rose. “Eeee, I know him! That one that got divorced.”

“Divorced?” Dorothy repeated. “Oh, Mama. You must be thinking of someone else.”

“No, it’s him! He marry that Scalia girl. She living at her mother’s now, with them kids.”

“Children?” Dorothy’s voice quavered; for a moment she thought she might cry. “Oh, that’s impossible. It simply can’t be.”

“He don’t tell you?” Rose’s face darkened. “Bad enough he get divorced, but how come he lie about it?”

Dorothy rose, clearing the plates. She was unable to sit still.

“Mama, I’m sure you’re mistaken,” she said evenly. “He has so many cousins. You must be thinking of one of them.”

 

THE THING WAS, it didn’t matter.

They met four days a week in the municipal park on Indian Hill. The park was deserted in the fall; the swimming pool drained, the chain swings taken down from their frames. Late afternoon, the sky a deep blue; they walked a slow circle around the park as Angelo told her about his day. A new boss the men despised, jokes he’d heard—the clean ones only—from a fellow on his crew. She smiled and waited. She sensed he was waiting, too. Finally he led her to his car, parked discreetly behind the pool house. He smelled of soap and hair oil, his after-work shower. His shirts were freshly laundered, his hands clean as a priest’s. Once, thinking of her father, she asked how he got his nails so white.

“Gloves,” he said bashfully. “The guys have a good laugh over it, but goddamn if I’m going to go through life with black fingernails.”

His mouth covered more of her. One day he led her to the backseat of his car. “More room back here,” he said softly. He eased her backward onto the seat and stretched out on top of her. For a moment she panicked, but his weight reassured her. The world seemed very small, no wider than the confines of his car. For once it seemed a manageable size.

Afterward he dropped her at the bottom of Polish Hill. She noticed curtains moving in the windows—her neighbors wondering where the Novak girl was coming from. Let them wonder, Dorothy thought.

They didn’t go out on dates. Her mother wouldn’t have stood for it. Other girls might have minded, but Dorothy felt secret relief. She couldn’t imagine sitting across from him in a restaurant, making conversation; or navigating the crowded dance floor at the Vets, surrounded by strangers. A date would mean wearing stockings, fixing her hair, inviting him inside to chat with her family. Joyce did these things every week, when she went to the movies with Ed Hauser; but to Dorothy they seemed impossible. She came to Angelo in her natural state. She wore no lipstick; she spoke only when she felt like it.

It seemed too good to be true.

The three girls crossed the railroad tracks and started up Polish Hill. Clare Ann Baran and Connie Kukla, with their look-alike pageboy haircuts, their skinny legs in navy blue kneesocks. Behind them, a head taller, was Lucy Novak. The girls had stayed after school to practice their presentations for the science fair. Clare Ann and Connie had done a project together, a complicated experiment involving bacteria and petri dishes. Lucy had worked alone, observing different types of cloud formations and sketching them in a journal. All scientific research, Sister had explained, began with a hypothesis. The hypothesis was tested by conducting experiments. The class had written out their hypotheses on index cards and handed them to Sister. Lucy’s hypothesis was, Different cloud formations predict the weather. She had determined that her hypothesis was correct.

“He didn’t do it himself,” Clare Ann was saying. “I know for a fact that his dad made it for him.” They were discussing a fifth grader, Leonard Stusick, who’d built a papier-mâché volcano. No one had been impressed until it exploded with foamy lava, a chemical reaction of vinegar and baking soda.

“I knew it!” Connie cried. “He never could have figured that out by himself. He’s only in fifth grade.”

“It isn’t fair,” said Clare Ann. “He isn’t even supposed to compete until sixth. Those are the rules.”

Lucy said nothing. Leonard Stusick had moved into the house across the street from her, and the two sometimes played together, even though Lucy was two grades ahead. She would have been ashamed to admit this to Clare Ann and Connie, who weren’t really her friends. They were the only other Science Club girls who lived on Polish Hill, and every Monday after practice they allowed her to walk home with them. This, too, was embarrassing, but not nearly so humiliating as walking alone.

The girls climbed the hill, their poster boards rattling in the wind. The sky had darkened. Cumulus, Lucy thought, eyeing the horizon. Cumulus and nimbus. Headlights flashed behind her: a hearse was climbing the hill. It passed the girls, then idled a moment. The driver stepped out. He was tall and handsome, with curly hair like Rock Hudson; he moved with an athlete’s grace. He went around to open the passenger door. Out stepped Lucy’s sister Dorothy.

Clare Ann and Connie seemed not to notice.

“He ought to be disqualified,” said Clare Ann. “That’s what happens when you break the rules.”

 

LATER, AT SUPPER, Lucy watched her sister closely. Dorothy was her odd, distracted self, speaking little, staring vacantly out the window. After supper she skittered around the kitchen clearing plates, wiping counters, scraping leftovers into Tupperware containers. She did whatever Joyce told her to do, even though Joyce was five years younger. This struck Lucy as horribly wrong, a clear violation of the family hierarchy.

Now she studied her sister in a scientific way. Dorothy was round-shouldered and flat-chested, plain and dreary in her pilling sweaters and baggy skirts. She had a pretty face, though. Her eyes were beautiful, deep brown flecked with gold. Rock Hudson might have noticed her eyes. Maybe pretty eyes were enough.

Maybe so; what did Lucy know? She’d been raised by women, and her teachers were nuns. Her whole life her brothers had ignored her, and she had no memory of her father. Leonard Stusick didn’t count; he was only ten, a little boy. The man Lucy knew best was Ed Hauser, who showed up every Friday night to take Joyce to the movies. Ed was tall and ungainly, nearly bald; his trousers an inch too short, as if a flood were coming. After supper Joyce would monopolize the bathroom for an hour. She’d emerge in one of her schoolmarmish dresses looking no different than before, except for the dash of red lipstick at her mouth. For cripe’s sake, Lucy wanted to say. It took you an hour to do that?

When the doorbell rang, Joyce answered it in a sugary voice. She made a big show of inviting Ed into the kitchen, where he shook hands with Dorothy and Lucy, like the Fuller Brush salesman. Then Joyce took him into the parlor to say hello to Rose. For reasons Lucy didn’t understand, her mother was crazy about Ed. He sat beside her on the couch and tried speaking to her in Italian, which he had learned in college. His Italian was so bad that it made Rose laugh. This, Lucy supposed, was Ed’s best quality. As pitiful as he was, as awkward and unattractive, he could make her mother laugh.

When Joyce and Ed came back from the movies, Lucy was always awake. Lying in bed, she heard their footsteps on the porch, Ed’s clumsy shuffle, the quick tick of Joyce’s pumps. There was a pause before the door opened, and Lucy knew they were kissing good night. The very thought of it turned her stomach.

Now she watched Dorothy stack the plates in the sink. Her boyfriend was handsome. Lucy liked his dark hair, his big shoulders, the elegant way he’d opened the car door. She could imagine them dancing, even kissing. She didn’t mind the thought of Dorothy being kissed. Dorothy wasn’t mean like Joyce; she simply lacked a backbone. Now Lucy wondered if it were all an act, a way of deflecting attention so that she could do as she pleased.

 

AFTER SUPPER Lucy took her marbles across the street and knocked at the Stusicks’ back door. The supper dishes were stacked in the drainer. Leonard sat at the table hunched over his homework, his glasses sliding down his nose.

“Whatcha doing?” Lucy asked.

He looked up from his book. For a second you could see how happy he was to see her. Then he rearranged his face into a more reasonable expression.

“How’d you like the volcano?” he asked.

Lucy wondered, for a moment, if he’d heard what Connie and Clare Ann had said. She’d been aware of him some distance behind them—walking alone, carrying his volcano in a shoe box. She hadn’t dared to say hello.

“I liked the explosion,” she said. “Wanna shoot some marbles?”

“Sure,” said Leonard. “But you have all of mine from last time.”

“That’s okay. I’ll let you win them back.”

Leonard rose. “We could play on the front porch. The light is better out there.”

Lucy thought about the picture they would make, sitting on the porch steps: the little boy with glasses, the fat girl twice his size.

“Nah,” she said. “Let’s go out back.”

They went out the back door and crouched over the sidewalk. It hadn’t rained all week; faint chalk lines were still visible from the last time they’d played. Carefully she redrew the lines.

“Was that your sister?” he asked.

Lucy nodded.

“Did somebody die?”

“Nope.”

“Then why was she getting out of a hearse?”

She let him shoot first. “I don’t know. I think he’s her boyfriend.”

“She has a boyfriend?” He looked dumbfounded, as though she’d told him Dorothy could fly.

Lucy gave him a dirty look. “Why shouldn’t she?”

“How should I know?” He took another shot. He had small, careful hands, like a mouse’s paws. “I just wouldn’t have thought so, is all.”

“Me neither,” she admitted. “Anyway, I’m not even sure it’s true. It’s”—she captured one of Leonard’s marbles—“a hypothesis.”

She tested her hypothesis over the next few weeks. Dorothy came home from her walks in a shapeless wool coat, a plaid muffler wound around her throat. One night after supper, Lucy examined the coat pockets (empty); she sniffed the muffler for perfume (none). She studied Dorothy at breakfast, lumping out bowls of oatmeal; in church, her lips moving silently as she fingered her rosary. She waited for a knowing look, some hint of secrecy. None came.

In November, All Saints’ Day fell on a Wednesday—a free day for the parochial students, although the public school was open. Joyce went to work as usual; Lucy spent the morning in front of the television. In the afternoon Dorothy left for her walk. Lucy waited a few minutes, then followed behind.

They walked through the center of town, past the fire hall and St. Brigid’s, to where the road climbed Indian Hill. Dorothy moved briskly; Lucy, breathing heavily, could scarcely keep up. At the base of the hill were the coal-company offices; at the top, a custard stand and the municipal swimming pool, both closed for the season. The hill was steep; there was no sidewalk. Still they climbed.

At the top of the hill Dorothy stopped. She smoothed her hair and unbuttoned her coat. Lucy had fallen far behind; she was sure Dorothy hadn’t seen her. Still she stepped back from the road, behind a clump of teaberry bushes. She heard deep rumbling in the distance, a car’s engine. A moment later, a shiny Pontiac climbed the hill. Lucy blinked, confused. She had expected the hearse.

Dorothy turned at the car’s approach. She smiled and gave the driver a wave. Lucy ducked lower, grateful for her hiding place. Her legs trembled weakly, exhausted from the climb, but now she didn’t care. Things were getting interesting.

The car disappeared behind the pool house, shuttered for the season. A moment later the engine died. Lucy heard a car door open and close. Then Rock Hudson appeared. He wore dark trousers and an Eisenhower jacket. He ran a hand through his curly hair.

He said something in a low voice. “Oh, I think so!” Dorothy answered brightly. She fell into step beside him; they strolled the path that snaked through the park. They did not touch. They’re walking, Lucy thought. Big deal.

She looked up at the sky. Cumulus clouds, gray underneath; rain was coming, or maybe snow. Her left foot hurt across the instep, blistered by the strap of her Mary Janes. She wished she had worn her tennis shoes. Who knew Dorothy would walk so far?

She breathed on her hands to warm them. The two figures strolled the perimeter of the park—the man talking, Dorothy nodding agreement. Finally he took her hand, and they disappeared behind the pool house.

Lucy rose from behind the bushes, her legs stiff from crouching. The grass was marshy. Her feet were silent as an Indian’s.

She peered around the building, as she’d seen the Hardy Boys do on television. She watched Dorothy step daintily into the backseat of the Pontiac. The man followed, closing the door behind him.

Lucy squinted. The sky had darkened; she could barely see inside the car. Dorothy’s head disappeared from sight. Then the man’s. They’re lying down, Lucy thought.

A raindrop struck her cheek. She stood in the rain, watching.