Fall froze into winter. The Monday after Thanksgiving, men donned their orange vests. The firemen held a 5 A.M. pancake breakfast. At the high school, Viola Peale taught Latin grammar as usual, despite the empty desks. All the boys, and a few girls, were absent on Opening Day. Some teachers gave up and held study hall. A few called in sick and went hunting themselves.
Deer appeared in the beds of pickups, trussed and hanging upside down from trees. Vic Bernardi bagged a ten-point buck; he was shown holding its antlers on the front page of the Herald. Leonard Stusick shot his first deer, a respectable six-pointer. Excitement gave way to boredom, his sisters’ complaints: endless meals of deer sausage and venison stew. Taxidermists worked overtime the month of December, to mount all the heads in time for Christmas.
THAT WINTER, without fanfare, Baker Brothers closed its company store. A small notice appeared on the back page of the Herald; when Joyce read it aloud, Rose was astonished. She hadn’t been inside the store—any store—in years, but Baker’s remained clear in her memory: the green tiled floor, the window displays of pots and china, the fabric samples hanging from hooks on the wall. The dark wooden counter lined with spice jars and medicines, earthenware vats of pickled cucumbers and peppers and cabbage and beets. From childhood on, the store had seemed to her a complete universe, containing everything a person could want, however fanciful her tastes or exotic her interests. Baker’s stocked the everyday things Rose needed—flour and soap powder, cooking oil and salt—plus other, more glamorous items—beef roasts, a trestle sewing machine, sugar cubes decorated with tiny rosettes—she coveted but couldn’t afford. That left plenty—musical instruments, a typewriter, crystal figurines shaped like animals—she couldn’t imagine finding a use for, even if she had a hundred dollars to spend.
Years before, the Pennsylvania Railroad had built a siding to Baker’s back door, to accommodate shoppers arriving on the local. Now a few widows went to Baker’s out of habit, but the miners’ families hadn’t shopped there in years. The union had done away with company scrip, and big grocery chains—Acme, Quaker, A&P—had moved into town. Joyce shopped at the A&P every Saturday; the new store was cool in summer, brightly lit. You could take your time browsing, she told Rose, and fill your cart with what you wanted. There were no officious McNeelys behind the counter, reminding you when you’d charged too much.
That year, the Novaks got rid of their coal burner. The new electric furnace was a Christmas gift from Georgie. Since Sandy had left for Cleveland, the sisters had taken turns stoking the fire and hauling in the coal, chores nobody would miss. A few months later, Joyce replaced the coal cookstove. An electric one would heat faster, she explained. Dinner would be ready in half the time.
The old stove was hauled away. Sitting on the porch, Rose watched it go. Stanley had bought it from Friedman and Sons, the Jewish furniture dealers in town. Izzy Friedman had given him a special price and delivered the stove in the middle of the night. Rose had lain awake with a pounding heart, furious with Stanley for taking such a risk. Miners who lived in company houses had been told to buy their furnishings from Baker’s. Shopping elsewhere was a firing offense.
The new electric model sat in the corner of the kitchen. Leaning close, squinting, Rose could make out letters on the dials: MED LO, MED HI. The words meant nothing to her. For the first time in her life she burned the polenta. Black bits of onion floated in her tomato sauce. Her meatballs came out of the oven raw in the middle. Bread rose too high; the slices resembled Swiss cheese, shot through with holes. It was as if she had forgotten everything she had ever known.
By springtime there were no more treats for Lucy: no popcorn balls stiff with molasses, no homemade macaroons. Her lunch bag contained apples and Fig Newtons, sandwiches made from store-bought bread.
The electric stove required no stoking, no nightly polishing with paraffin wax. Rose’s life had been filled with work; now, absurdly, there was nothing to do. Her daughters took over the cooking, slipshod meals of casseroles, vegetables thawed from the freezer. She began to believe the doctors. For years she had ignored them; now she felt old and sickly.
She cursed the stove and waited to die.
The funeral was held at St. Casimir’s, where Rose and Stanley had been married. If anyone had asked her, Rose would have chosen Mount Carmel, the church of her girlhood: its ceiling painted salmon pink, like a tropical sunrise; its profusion of Madonnas like a collection of dolls. Years ago, the parish had maintained a funerary band; when Rose’s mother died, a uniformed trumpeter and drummer and accordionist had followed the hearse to the cemetery, serenading the casket with hymns. No one knew where the custom had originated. “In the old country,” they all assumed. Rose had found the music comforting, a joyous wave of sound to carry her mother away.
It was George who remembered this, standing at his mother’s grave. He was the only Novak old enough to remember his Nona, and the aged Italians who’d played music at her funeral. He wished he’d brought his clarinet along; he hadn’t played in years but was sure he could muster up something. It would have seemed an absurd gesture to everyone but Rose. Rose, he knew, would have been delighted.
Afterward, walking back to his car, he watched his three sisters make a beeline for the hearse. They all seemed determined to ride in the front seat. The driver had graduated high school a few years ahead of George. A loudmouth, not too bright, the oldest of the Bernardi boys.
“What’s that all about?” he asked Sandy, who was riding shotgun in the Cadillac. He was glad to have a passenger. Marion had declined to come, and there hadn’t been time to fetch Arthur from his school in Connecticut. “I’ve got plenty of room, and they have to ride in the hearse?”
“Beats me,” said Sandy. He’d come in from Cleveland on the Greyhound bus; he was between jobs and didn’t have a car. He’d gotten rid of his teenage pompadour, and his suit cost more than George’s. He looked like a million bucks.
That fall Lucy started at St. Joseph’s, the parochial high school, a long walk from the center of town. Walking to school, she sometimes spoke to herself in her mother’s voice: Lucy, it getting cold out. Bella Lucy, you got to wear your gloves. She supposed this was how it began, how crazy people first went crazy. She didn’t care. Going crazy was better than forgetting. She would not forget her mother’s voice.
St. Joe’s was larger than her grammar school, larger even than Bakerton High. Parochial students were bused there from all over the county. Lucy had been the oldest in her eighth-grade class, but at St. Joe’s she felt like a child. The upperclassmen seemed to inhabit another world entirely. The girls wore lipstick; some, engagement rings. The senior boys drove cars to school.
In the crowded hallways she felt invisible. Strange faces everywhere, girls from Kinport, Coalport, Fallentree. They paid her no attention, a nameless fat girl. Lucy didn’t mind; in fact, she preferred them to the Bakerton girls—Clare Ann Baran, Connie Kukla, the prissy blondes who’d tormented her childhood. They watched her now with silent pity, as though they knew everything about her: the fat girl whose mother had died.
The house felt empty when she came home from school: no Rosemary Clooney on the radio, no heavy footsteps on the stairs. Sometimes Dorothy was home, but to Lucy it made no difference. Dorothy seldom spoke; her presence was insubstantial. Her footfalls barely made a sound.
After the final bell, Lucy sat on the back steps of the school, bare-legged in her uniform, shivering in the cold. She looked often at her watch: three o’clock, three-thirty. At four o’clock Joyce would come home from work; Lucy would sit in the kitchen and watch her prepare supper. She still disliked Joyce intensely; that had not changed, would not change. The unchangingness comforted her; that, at least, could be counted on. Sturdy, unlikable Joyce could be counted on.
For the first time in her life, she slept alone. She understood that this was normal, that everybody else—her classmates, her sisters—had slept alone their whole lives. Still her sleep was shallow and anxious. She dreamed often of being lost. Always in these dreams she was looking for her mother.
The days were quiet and sad. Only Fridays were different. When Lucy came home from school, Angelo Bernardi would be sitting at the kitchen table. Knowing this, she did not linger on the school steps. She walked briskly, resisting the urge to run.
He sat at the table across from Dorothy, a glass of beer at one elbow, an ashtray at the other. He wore a black shirt, open at the throat, showing dark hair. The house filled with his generous laugh, the smoky buzz of his voice.
“Hey, Miss America,” he’d call when she came in. “Staying out of trouble there at St. Joe’s?”
His attention made her shy, a sensation she’d rarely felt. Seldom could she think of anything to say, but it didn’t seem to matter. It was enough to be in the room with him. Like Dorothy she was dumbstruck, a silent moon in his orbit.
Only one thing could break the spell. Joyce came home on Fridays with a great commotion. “Hello, all,” she’d call, plunking down a bag of groceries in the middle of the table, blocking their view of one another. She turned on the overhead light and made a big, noisy show of starting dinner: chopping celery, opening soup cans, putting water on to boil. After a few minutes of this Angelo rose and excused himself. Dorothy walked him to the door.
“What’s the hurry?” Lucy asked Joyce once, after Angelo had left. “You’re running around like a chicken with its head cut off.”
“Ed’s picking me up at six. We’re seeing the early show.”
This ended the conversation. Joyce must have known it would. Nobody, Lucy reflected, wanted to hear about stupid Ed.
Ed Hauser was waiting for Joyce in the car. As they did every Friday, they would see the early show at the Rivoli. Joyce liked to be in bed by ten. On Saturday morning she had an eight o’clock class at the Penn State branch campus, an hour’s drive away. Ed had urged her to complete the paperwork, and to her surprise, he was right: her military service entitled her to the same educational allowance as any other veteran, a hundred and ten dollars a month. After Rose’s death, she had enrolled in summer school. She hoped to become a teacher. She was six semesters away from a bachelor’s degree.
“Dorothy has company,” she fumed, slamming the car door. “He was sitting there when I got home.”
“He must have Fridays off.”
“Ed, that’s not the point.”
He shrugged. “I saw Dorothy uptown the other day. She seemed relaxed and, well, normal. Maybe it’s good for her. You know, having someone.”
“Good for her?” Joyce stared at him. “He’s a married man.”
“Divorced.”
“That’s even worse.”
“You sound like your mother,” he joked.
Joyce didn’t laugh.
Ed started the car. It wasn’t like her to be so narrow-minded. Then again, he tended to underestimate the Catholic craziness on the subject of divorce. Though he attended St. Casimir’s each Sunday with Joyce, he’d been raised a Methodist. Divorce struck him as unfortunate and disheartening—not evil or tragic, and certainly not sinful. It was, he thought, an odd wrinkle in Joyce’s character: for all her intelligence, she was as Catholic as they came, susceptible to the same superstitions and ancient prejudices as the rest of her tribe.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “If Bernardi were married and cheating on his wife, that would be better than being divorced?”
“He’s got four children.”
She hadn’t answered his question. He was tempted to point this out, but he understood they weren’t having a rational discussion. On most days, and nearly all subjects, Joyce was as logical as a man; but when it came to Bernardi she couldn’t think straight. He thought of her behavior at Rose’s funeral, piling into the hearse with Bernardi and Dorothy and Lucy as though she’d temporarily lost her mind. Ed knew Joyce as he knew himself; he’d understood, then, that she was making a point. It would have been inappropriate for Dorothy to ride alone with Bernardi. He was merely the driver, paid by the mortuary. Joyce wanted everyone—Dorothy especially—to remember that.
Bernardi. The mention of his name brought an edge to her voice. She referred to him alternately as a womanizer, an ignorant lout and once, memorably, a jackass. Memorably because Joyce never cursed; her speech was prim as a Sunday school teacher’s. Ed found the transformation astonishing. And, he had to admit, rather attractive.
“My mother had his number,” Joyce said. “If she were alive, Dorothy wouldn’t be carrying on like this. I hate to think of her looking down from heaven, watching him hold court in her kitchen like some kind of sultan. Drinking and smoking in her own house.”
Ed sighed. This was another problem with Catholics: nobody ever died. Joyce often spoke of her parents looking down from heaven—sometimes with pride or amusement, but usually with disapproval or downright horror. This struck Ed as a terrible burden, this sense of being watched by all your dead relatives, by numberless saints who’d been dead a thousand years but still kept a hand in things, interceding for the sick, finding lost objects, looking out for coal miners and whoever else had a dangerous job. Ed believed in God, but he also believed in death. He’d been fond of Rose Novak and saddened by her passing, but the poor woman, God love her, was dead. And that was the end of that.
“Look,” he said, “you don’t like Bernardi, and your mom wasn’t crazy about him either. But Dorothy is a grown woman. If she wants to date a divorced guy, that’s her decision. There’s nothing you can do about it.”
“But what about Lucy? What kind of example is this setting? She looks up to him, heaven knows why.”
“He pays attention to her,” Ed said. “Girls her age are starved for that.” It was a phenomenon he witnessed daily at school. Once or twice each term, a particular girl would hang around his office for no good reason, and the secretaries would tease him about it: She has a crush on you. Always he denied it, in equal parts flattered and uncomfortable.
Joyce stared at him. “She’s a child,” she said, clearly appalled.
Ed didn’t respond. Lucy was fifteen, a young woman. She certainly didn’t look like a child.
“Anyway,” said Joyce, “it bothers me that he and Dorothy are alone in the house all afternoon. Who knows what she might walk in on.”
Aha, Hauser thought. Here’s the real issue. Joyce didn’t really care that Bernardi was divorced—or if she did, it was a secondary concern.
“Why?” he said slyly. “What do you think they’re doing?”
“Never mind,” said Joyce, her cheeks scarlet.
He’d never known a woman so easily embarrassed.
THEY HAD DATED for years—steadily, eventlessly, with few arguments and none of the petty squabbles he’d suffered with other girls. Early on they’d even worked together, a potentially awkward situation that Joyce, being Joyce, had handled with professional grace. After Helen Bligh returned from maternity leave, Joyce had taken a clerical job at the junior high. Now Ed saw her mainly on weekends, years of movies and dinners and dances at the Vets. He looked forward to these evenings, the hours spent in her company; he’d never felt so comfortable with a woman, so accepted and understood. He admired her strength and intelligence, the fierce way she tended her family. She was in every respect the woman he wanted to spend his life with. In every way, perhaps, but one.
He wondered if they’d simply waited too long. In the beginning he’d been cautious, tentative. She was a resolute creature, with firm views on everything; he feared there would be no second chances, that one false move would alienate her forever. She’d had bad experiences with men in the air force. She didn’t elaborate, and Ed didn’t press, but the knowledge made him even more careful. When he kissed her, she didn’t pull away; but neither did she warm to him. Her response was oddly neutral. She did not object to his touch; she might possibly have found it pleasant. Sometimes she smiled at him in a friendly way. Her attitude—he hated even to think it—was cordial.
For her thirtieth birthday he’d given her a ring, but Ed was in no hurry. He wanted to wait and see.
AFTER THE MOVIE he suggested a drive. The night was clear, the moon full. He drove westward out of town, the Towers glowing in the distance.
At the top of Saxon Mountain he rolled down his window. A few snowflakes had begun to fly. There was a rich, leafy smell, dark and fecund. He parked the car and flicked on the radio.
“It’s cold,” said Joyce, hugging her arms.
“Come here.” He loved the smallness of her, the tiny bones of her shoulders and neck. She nearly disappeared in his embrace, but he could feel her, birdlike, a delicate warmth against his heart.
He kissed her, softly at first. Her eyes closed; he felt her relax in his arms. Deeper then, pressing her to him. Fingers splayed, his hand was nearly as wide as her back.
At one time or another he had touched her everywhere, always outside her clothes. She had not touched him at all. Lately he’d felt keenly the inequity of this, but it had been their unspoken agreement, as far as they would let themselves go.
Still kissing, he took her hand and placed it on his groin. She stiffened in his arms.
“Shh,” he said, pressing her hand to him.
“Ed!” She pulled her hand away as though something had burned it. “What’s the matter with you?”
“Joyce, come on. We’re not schoolkids.”
She retreated to her corner of the seat. “Can you take me home, please?”
“Fine,” he said, hating himself. He wasn’t sorry, not for a minute. He thought of Bernardi and Dorothy, who spent Friday afternoons alone in the house, doing things Lucy might walk in on. Angelo Bernardi would not have taken her home. He’d have thrown her over his shoulder and carried her into the woods.
“Let’s not argue. You know how I feel about this,” Joyce said, fumbling with the buttons of her coat.
“I know.” He started the car. “Don’t tell me again. I think we’ve covered it.”
AT HER DOORSTEP they said a stiff good-bye. Later he regretted being cross with her. She would spend all Saturday in class; in the evening he’d call and apologize, take her to dinner as though nothing had happened. More and more, their weekends followed this pattern. They had reached an impasse. Nothing would free them, it seemed, but marriage; and that posed its own set of dangers. He feared marrying a cold woman, as his brother had. The term, frigid, Ed knew from his reading. Apparently there was no telling beforehand. His sister-in-law was an attractive girl, charming and vivacious. There was simply no way to know.
He had dated loose girls, but not often and not for long. For love he had chosen a girl of admirable character; he hadn’t wanted any other kind. Now, with marriage looming, he wished for a change—no, nothing so drastic; just a slight moderation of her temperament. Joyce had proven her virtue. Now he wanted her to relax, to metamorphose into the passionate creature she would be in their married life.
But Joyce didn’t relax. She didn’t change in the slightest. Engagement wasn’t the same as marriage, she insisted. Certain things would have to wait.
He’d tried reasoning with her. “You see the problem, don’t you? It’s like buying a car without a test drive.”
“I did that,” she said, without a trace of irony. “My Rambler. It runs fine.”
“But, honey. How are we supposed to know if we’re compatible?”
“Of course we’re compatible. If we had any more in common we’d be the same person.”
This was true. They were both churchgoers, Democrats; on bank holidays they flew the flag. They believed in education and personal responsibility, fair trade and equality for Negroes. Senator McCarthy, they felt, had taken leave of his senses. On books and movies they had lively discussions, but their deepest values were utterly the same.
“I mean sexually compatible.”
Joyce blushed violently. “Oh, Ed. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She meant it sincerely; he could see that she did. She was a thirty-year-old virgin, her sexual experience limited to kissing in his front seat. The rest—things they would do at some vague time in the future when the ban had been lifted, the danger removed—had been set apart in her organized mind. For now it was a murky abstraction, impossible to think about. That the act could unfold smoothly or awkwardly, rapturously or disastrously, hadn’t occurred to her. She was like a dispatcher of trains whose entire attention is directed toward scheduling arrivals and departures. The actual driving of the locomotives she had never even pondered.
In the spring Lucy began to disappear.
She was still a big girl, but no longer a fat one. Food tasted wrong now, or didn’t taste at all: Dorothy’s oatmeal, the cafeteria slop, Joyce’s bland casseroles. The daily trek to St. Joe’s was a brisk half hour each way. Lucy walked in all weather, in rainstorms, in snow. It was better than riding with Joyce.
The weather warmed, and she returned to her spot on the school steps, joined, now, by a junior named Marcia Dickey, a freckled girl who smoked menthol cigarettes. Marcia talked, and the two girls smoked.
Marcia was a farm girl. Her father raised dairy cows on a tract west of Moss Creek. Lucy had seen the name stamped on neat aluminum boxes on porches all over town—DICKEY’S DAIRY—and felt as though she were meeting a celebrity. The Dickeys’ farm was so remote the school bus didn’t come near it, so every morning Marcia rode into town on one of the milk trucks. For two hours she sat in the cafeteria with the other farm kids, waiting for the classrooms to open. After school she rode home with her boyfriend Davis, in his father’s car. Davis played on teams: baseball in the spring, football in the fall. While the teams practiced, Marcia waited on the steps.
Lucy had seen Davis around school, a lanky boy with hair like an Irish setter. He was as quiet as Marcia was talkative; they looked so alike they appeared to be related. Once he’d walked by the steps when the girls were smoking, and Marcia had introduced him to Lucy. It was as close as she had come all year to talking with a boy. At St. Joe’s the classes were segregated by gender. Boys and girls saw one another only in the halls. They were permitted to sit together in the cafeteria, though only the steady couples did. Couples like Connie Kukla and Steven Fleck, a senior with comically large shoulders. Connie wore his class ring on her engagement finger, heavy as a penance on her tiny hand.
The cafeteria was as large as a train station. Girls filled the tables at the front of the room, while the boys gravitated toward the back. Lucy liked the noise of it, the bustling anonymity. She and Marcia Dickey sat with their backs to the wall, watching. One by one the students filed through the line, holding their trays, looking for a place to sit. In that moment, they all wore a panicked, baffled expression. In that moment they were all the same.
Sometimes boys stared at Lucy. She had not noticed this herself; Marcia had pointed it out one day in the cafeteria line. The school uniform, a plaid jumper, was designed for petite girls like Connie Kukla. The snug fit, the busy pattern, made Lucy’s chest look enormous.
“It’s not my fault,” Lucy said, her cheeks reddening.
“Who said fault?” Marcia smiled. “I’d kill for a figure like yours.” For a moment Lucy heard her mother’s voice. Lucy is beautiful. She’ll always be beautiful.
“This lunch is disgusting,” she said, covering her meat loaf with a napkin. She busied herself with not eating, afraid she was about to cry.
THEY WERE SITTING on the steps when Davis pulled up in his car. Music on the radio, a song Lucy recognized.
“Ready?” Davis called out the window.
Marcia looked up at the sky. “It looks like rain. Can we give Lucy a ride?”
“Oh, don’t worry about me,” she said quickly. Two boys were already sitting in the backseat. “I don’t want to take you out of your way.”
“You won’t,” said Davis. “I’m already taking these jokers into town. Hop in.”
The back passenger door opened and a tall boy stepped out, wearing gym shorts and a damp white T-shirt. Lucy recognized his broad shoulders, his shiny black hair. He was Connie Kukla’s boyfriend, Steven Fleck.
He nodded toward the car, and Lucy slid over to the middle of the seat, next to a small, blond boy she didn’t know. Marcia got into the front seat, leaned in close to Davis, and kissed him on the mouth.
They peeled away from the curb, and Davis turned up the radio. Frankie Avalon backed by hushed female voices, a song Lucy heard everywhere that spring: Venus, make her fair/A lovely girl with sunlight in her hair.
Oh, brother, Lucy thought. Even Frankie Avalon was in love with Connie Kukla.
“Whew. It stinks in here.” Marcia rolled down her window. “Carful of sweaty guys. Ew.”
Steven Fleck laughed, so Lucy did, too. His face and neck and arms looked moist and flushed, as though he had been running hard. In the gym shorts his legs looked thick and muscular. She was relieved to see that his thighs were wider than hers.
Davis drove fast and carelessly, like her brother Sandy. The first time he made a left turn, Lucy lurched to the right, directly into Steven Fleck’s lap.
“Sorry,” she said.
“That’s okay,” he said, laughing.
It was amazing what you could learn about a person without talking, just by sitting close. His hands were large, the nails bitten low. (She bit her nails, too.) His legs were dirty, the skin scraped raw and bleeding a little at the knees. You had to take a game seriously to slide that hard at practice. Lucy had played the same way: kickball, dodgeball, she had always wanted to win. Baby games, she knew; that was a long time ago. She hadn’t played anything in years.
Davis stopped at a traffic light. “Where to, Lucy?”
“Polish Hill,” she said.
The blond boy piped up. “Fleck’s girlfriend lives up there.”
Lucy had forgotten he was there; she looked at him now with intense dislike. She often felt this way toward small, blond people: Connie Kukla, her sister Joyce. Steven Fleck was big and dark—like her mother, like Angelo Bernardi, like Lucy herself.
Davis looked over his shoulder. “Fleck, you want me to let you off at Connie’s?”
“Nah, that’s okay.” He glanced sideways at Lucy. “I just saw her at school. That’s enough for one day.”
In the front seat Marcia burst out laughing. Lucy, too, started to laugh. They were still laughing when Davis pulled in front of her house. Steven Fleck stepped out of the car and Lucy slid out, holding down her skirt with her hand. The seat was warm where he had sat. The vinyl stuck to her bare thighs.
“See you in school,” said Steven Fleck.
“Sure,” said Lucy. “See you.”
She stood in front of her house a moment, watching the car drive away. Then Leonard Stusick rode up on his bike, his book bag and lunch box tied to the rear fender. He wore his navy blue pants and sweater, the grammar school uniform. He was twelve but looked ten. “Who was that?” he asked.
“You wouldn’t know them.”
“How do you know?” Leonard squinted, shielding his eyes from the sun peeking through the clouds. “The big one is Steven Fleck. He plays in the Pony League, for Reilly Trucking.”
“He does?”
“Watch this.” Leonard spun a fast circle in the road, wheeling up on his back tire.
Lucy ignored him. “How’d you know that?”
“You didn’t even watch.” Leonard stopped suddenly, spraying gravel. “What? Is he your boyfriend now?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“That’s guy’s an idiot,” said Leonard. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Trust me.” Leonard popped a wheelie and pedaled into his driveway. “I know what I’m talking about.”
IN THE KITCHEN Joyce stood at the sink, rinsing lettuce for salad. “You beat the storm,” she said. “I was about to come and get you.”
“I got a ride home.”
“I see that.” Joyce shut off the water. “Who are your friends? I didn’t recognize the car.”
Lucy’s cheeks heated. “Nobody. Just some kids from school.”
“Well, I figured that much.”
Joyce waited.
“Marcia Dickey,” Lucy said finally.
“What about all those boys?”
“You were watching?”
“I heard a car come up the hill.” Joyce dried her hands on a towel. “The radio was playing full blast. I’m sure the whole neighborhood heard it.”
“It wasn’t that loud.”
“Lucy, who were the boys?”
Am I under arrest? Lucy thought. She wished she had the nerve to say it.
“Davis somebody,” she said instead. “He’s Marcia’s boyfriend. And Steven Fleck. The other boy I didn’t know.”
“You don’t know him?” Joyce crossed her arms. “Lucy, do you think that’s wise? Getting into a car with a boy you don’t know?”
It was just like Joyce: asking questions when she didn’t really want to hear the answers. Obviously, Lucy thought. Obviously I think it’s wise.
“I know the others,” she said. Her face felt hot.
“David somebody?”
“Davis. He’s Marcia’s boyfriend,” Lucy said, exasperated. “She’s my best friend.”
“Well, excuse me, Lucy, but I’ve never met this Marcia, or heard a word about her, as far as I can remember. And I’ll thank you not to take that tone with me.”
Lucy dropped her books loudly on the table. Without another word, she went upstairs to her room.
JOYCE LISTENED to her go, her tread heavy on the stairs. If I’d stomped around that way when I was fifteen, she thought, Daddy would have had my head. She often had such thoughts about her sister, who balked at even the gentlest sort of correction. The older Novaks—Georgie, Dorothy, and Joyce—had been scolded, lectured and worse; Georgie in particular had been slapped and swatted and, on one memorable occasion, chased around the backyard with their father’s belt. Lucy had never had so much as a spanking, as far as Joyce knew. She’d never been sent to pick scrap coal at the Number One tipple, never slipped a coat over her nightgown on a winter night and trudged through the snow to the outhouse. It was as if she and Sandy had been raised in another family entirely.
Joyce dried the lettuce and shredded it for salad. Her questions, she knew, had been perfectly reasonable. She tried to picture herself at fifteen, riding home from school in a car full of boys. It was hard to imagine. Few families had had cars back then, and those who did would never have entrusted them to teenagers. Even at school she had seldom spoken to a boy. Her nervousness had made her timid—a problem Lucy seemed not to have.
She stood over the sink peeling a cucumber, thinking of a Saturday afternoon a few weeks ago, when she’d taken Lucy shopping for an Easter dress. Since her weight loss, none of her old clothes fit properly; twice her school uniform had been taken in at the waist. The day had been unseasonably warm, a blast of summer in late March. They’d left their coats in the car and walked a few blocks to the store, the sun warm on their bare arms. Joyce wore a crisp white blouse, Lucy a cotton sweater borrowed from Dorothy; later Joyce noticed that it fit her snugly across the chest. As they walked past a building under construction, a chorus of wolf whistles followed them down the block. The realization had hit Joyce like a physical blow: the men were whistling at her little sister.
“Ignore them,” she said, her cheeks flaming.
Lucy said nothing, but a tiny smile pulled at her lips. Later, as she waited outside the changing room, Joyce remembered that smile. Lucy wasn’t embarrassed by the crude attention. She had actually enjoyed it.
That summer, men campaigned for president. Joyce and Ed scrambled to register voters. They canvassed Polish Hill and Little Italy, the new developments of West Branch and East Branch, nearby Coalport and Fallentree. From house to house, Ed expressed his enthusiasm for Kennedy’s Peace Corps. Joyce’s approach had more success: Elect the first Catholic president.
Another presidency was also at stake: Bakerton Local 1450, United Mineworkers of America. For twelve years the incumbent, Regis Devlin, had run unopposed. Regis was silver-haired and silver-tongued, ready with a joke, trusted by the Bakers and well liked by the men. On his watch the union had demanded little of management. His few requests were promptly granted: bonuses at Christmas, hot coffee at the tipple, an on-site shower room at the Twelve. The men felt appreciated; their jobs were secure. For the first time in their working lives, they went home clean.
Everyone was surprised when Gene Stusick declared himself a candidate—sheepishly at first, with apologies to Regis; then with increasing confidence. Gene was a poor politician; he lacked Regis’s quick wit, his Irish charm. What he did have were numbers.
He outlined his position in a mimeographed letter, as blunt and unappealing, as thorough and informative, as Gene himself. The miners’ contract was up for renewal that spring. Except for an annual cost-of-living adjustment, the men hadn’t had a raise in six years. In the same period, profits had grown 40 percent. The Twelve was the largest bituminous mine in the state, and the company still hadn’t touched the ten thousand acres to its north. If, as planned, the reserves were tapped the following year, Baker would make money hand over fist. Meanwhile the miners would be locked into another meager contract, the same sweetheart deal Regis Devlin had given Baker Brothers for years.
NEITHER OF THESE elections interested Lucy. All summer she brooded over another race, the contest for Fire Queen.
She hadn’t entered, herself; she was too aware of the potential for humiliation. Years of name-calling, of Joyce taking her shopping in the Chubbette Department, had taught her that much.
Dozens of girls competed for Fire Queen. The contest happened behind closed doors; the firemen themselves judged. From a window booth at Keener’s Diner, Lucy and Marcia Dickey watched the girls arrive at the hall. Clare Ann Baran and Connie Kukla in pale pink gowns, their blond hair teased into identical flips. Girls in strapless shifts, in satin, in tulle.
“Look at that one,” said Marcia Dickey. Two streams of smoke shot out her nostrils. “The strapless. A padded bra would have been a good idea.”
Lucy giggled. “Her dress is going to fall down.”
“That’s the only way she’s going to win.”
It helped to have someone to watch with. Marcia was as unlikely to be Fire Queen as Lucy was. Both treated the whole thing as ridiculous, but Lucy wondered if Marcia secretly felt the same way she did. She would have done anything to be Fire Queen. Anything in the world.
The girls said good-bye on the sidewalk. Davis’s car idled at the curb; he was taking Marcia to see Please Don’t Eat the Daisies. “Have a good time,” said Lucy, with something like longing, knowing that no boy would ever ask her to the drive-in.
A moment later, crossing the street, she heard a voice behind her—“Hey, Miss America! Wait up.” She turned to see Angelo Bernardi coming out of the hall.
“I thought that was you.” He fell into step beside her, a little out of breath. “We had the contest tonight. Where were you? I was saving my vote for you.”
Lucy flushed with pleasure. “Me? Oh, I don’t think so.”
“What, you don’t think you’re pretty enough? Trust me. That girl we gave it to, she couldn’t hold a candle next to you.”
Lucy smiled. It was enough that he’d said so. It didn’t need to be true.
“Who won?” she asked.
“Connie something. Pretty little blonde. Said she knows you from school.”
Two calamities competed for her attention: Connie Kukla winning Fire Queen. Angelo and Connie talking behind her back.
“You talked about me?”
“She said she went to St. Joe’s. I said I knew you.”
Lucy’s stomach lurched. She thought of Connie Kukla leading the parade in her pink dress, waving to the crowd with her saccharine smile. No, she thought. It isn’t possible.
“But she’s only a junior,” she said. “They always pick a senior.”
Angelo shrugged. “She’s cute. The guys liked her. She looks like Sandra Dee.”
Lucy couldn’t speak. Hate bubbled up inside her, the grilled cheese she’d eaten at Keener’s turning sour and liquid in her stomach. Connie Kukla with her skinny legs, her perfect flip, her saddle shoes as tiny as a doll’s. She was as different from Lucy as any girl could possibly be. If Angelo thought she was cute, then he must find Lucy hideously ugly. She must be an absolute monster.
“Whatsa matter?” said Angelo. “You don’t look so good.”
It was the last thing she needed to hear.
“I have to go,” she said.
SHE RAN THROUGH THE TOWN, past the pool hall and the five-and-ten. On Baker Street, she heard hammering noises: men were building the concessions booths. In the lot behind the Quaker, carnival trucks were parked. A crew was assembling the Ferris wheel. Normally Lucy would have stopped to watch. Now anything to do with the festival—Connie’s festival—was repulsive to her.
She crossed the railroad tracks. The sun had set along the river; the windows of the dress factory glowed orange pink. Drums in the distance, the high school marching band practicing for the parade. Connie would be everywhere this week—inescapable, infectious, like a sneeze during flu season, spraying deadly germs. Her picture in the paper; then the street dance, the parade on Saturday night. By then Lucy would be dead from envy. It seemed impossible that she could survive that long.
She ran over the footbridge. Water bubbled deep beneath it, a hollow sound. A few cars were parked at the ball field. An occasional thwack in the distance, the brittle crack of bat and ball. The late summer evening hummed with bugs.
Lucy slowed. Her side ached; she had not run in a long time. She bent at the waist, gulping air. At the ball field a small crowd had gathered. Boys stood behind home plate drinking from cans. The other team was spread across the outfield, socks and sneakers glowing in the twilight. The white letters on their T-shirts spelled REILLY TRUCKING.
Dusk was falling; in half an hour the sky would be dark. Lucy shooed a mosquito away from her ear. She thought of her silent house: Dorothy holed up in her room. Joyce at the movies with Ed. The empty chair where her mother used to sit.
She climbed the bleachers and sat on the top row. She had never played at this park; girls’ games like dodgeball were not allowed. The ball field was reserved for the municipal leagues: Little League, Ponies, all boys.
“What are you doing here?”
She looked up. Steven Fleck stood on the bottom bleacher, a can of Iron City in his hand.
“Nothing. Just sitting.” For a moment she remembered what she was wearing: Bermuda shorts, a sleeveless blouse stained gray under the arms. She fumbled with a stray bra strap.
“We won tonight,” he said. “We beat Nicastro’s Tavern. I had three hits.”
“Congratulations.”
“There was a guy in the stands. I think he was a recruiter for Baker.”
“Really?” said Lucy. “How could you tell?”
He shrugged mysteriously. “Well, he could have been. There are three seniors on the team.” His older brother had been recruited right out of high school, he explained. He played third base and worked at the Number Eight tipple.
He sat down beside her. “Were you over at the fire hall?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Connie won.”
“Good for her. It’s a big deal, right?”
“Sure,” Lucy said miserably. She swatted at a mosquito. A giant welt was rising on her thigh, between her kneesock and the hem of her shorts.
“I figured. She’s been talking about it for months. Between you and me, I’m glad it’s finally over.” A soft hiss as he opened his beer. “What about you? You didn’t enter?”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“I wasn’t interested.”
The words just sat there. She sounded like a bad actress on television.
“That’s not why,” she said. “I knew I wouldn’t win.”
“Why not? You’re pretty.”
He said it so easily, the thing he would say a thousand times in her memory. Each time Lucy would ask herself the same question: Was he stupid, that Steven Fleck? Or was he just so sweet?
“Not like Connie,” she said, smiling a little.
“Well, no. You’re a different type.”
She waited for him to elaborate.
“Some girls aren’t pretty at all, and that’s too bad,” he mused. “But the rest are. Connie, and Clare Ann, and you, and so on. So in a way, from a boy’s perspective, one girl is just as good as another.”
He chewed thoughtfully at a thumbnail.
“That’s where it gets complicated. That’s where other things start to matter.”
“Like how nice a girl is?”
“Sure,” said Steven Fleck. “And—other things.”
Lucy nodded. These were questions she had long pondered, questions she would have asked years ago if she actually knew any boys. She understood that something remarkable was happening: Steven Fleck talking to her like this, the two of them sitting on the bleachers, night falling softly around them. An hour ago, eating sandwiches at Keener’s with Marcia Dickey, she never would have imagined it possible.
He had moved closer to her; their thighs were touching. When she looked up she saw the other boys were gone.
“It’s late,” she said. “I should go home.”
Steven Fleck stood and offered his hand. “I’ll walk with you.”
They didn’t walk far. Under the bleachers, grassy and damp, a place that hadn’t seen the sun. Trash around them: pop bottles, newspaper. A phone number was carved into the wood of the bleachers. The last two numbers were the same as hers.
“You’re tall,” he said when he kissed her. She didn’t ask if that was good or bad. She felt the raised letters on his back: REILLY TRUCKING. His mouth was wet and beery, somehow familiar. He tasted the way Angelo smelled.
Her hair was loose; she had lost her barrette. She held her breath when he unbuttoned her shirt. His mouth pulled gently at her breasts. Did he do this with Connie Kukla? She looked down at his bent head, his shiny hair, and thought, Mine.
He put her hand on him, taught her the motion. It was like petting an exotic animal: she was scared, then delighted, then a little bored. After a while his eyes closed. She wished he would kiss her some more.
Hand in hand they walked through the town. Her other hand was sticky, as though she’d been eating candy. He walked her to the bottom of Polish Hill, then stopped. He lived across town, he explained, and it was almost midnight. She walked the rest of the way alone.
That week the Herald was full of news. The lead story on page one: TOWN HOSTS FIREMEN’S FESTIVAL. In smaller type, below the fold: New Fire Queen Is Crowned. On the social page: Hauser, Miss Novak Announce Engagement. A winter ceremony was planned.
It would be a small wedding, Joyce explained at the breakfast table. After five years, Ed was suddenly in a hurry. Fine by her: weddings were a waste of money, and she didn’t like a fuss. Still, she couldn’t imagine what had gotten into him.
She eyed the front page. There was a large photo of the Fire Queen and her court. The girl wore a satin sash and a rhinestone tiara. Joyce sighed.
“Fire Queen! That poor child. It’s disgraceful, making those young girls parade themselves in front of the whole town. And those cavemen gawking and cheering. They’re grown men, for heaven’s sake. It ought to be illegal.”
Dorothy rose and poured more coffee. She saw no point in defending the cavemen. It was a Friday morning. In a few hours Angelo would arrive.
“I suppose the girls don’t know any better, but what are their parents thinking?” Joyce folded the paper and tossed it into the trash. “Someone should put a stop to it.”
For once Lucy might have agreed with her, but she wasn’t listening. She stared out the window, lost in thought. Beneath her elbow was the sports page. Reilly Trucking had won its final game, the top-ranked team in the Pony League. Lucy wondered if Connie Kukla had cheered from the bleachers. She wondered if Steven Fleck had scored.
In November, elections were held. Joyce and Ed’s efforts paid off: a record number of voters came to the polls. Nationally, it was a close race; in Saxon County, a landslide. Levers were pulled at the VFW, at Bakerton High School, at the Grange hall in Fallentree. Down Susquehanna Avenue and halfway around the block, voters waited in line to elect the first Catholic president.
A week later, Gene Stusick was voted president of the local. He’d spent election day at the Legion with his son Leonard, handing out hundreds of mimeographs.
At the Baker offices on Indian Hill, the company lawyers prepared for a fight.
JUST AFTER CHRISTMAS, in the middle of a snowstorm, Joyce and Ed Hauser were married. The altar at St. Casimir’s was laden with poinsettias. Georgie drove in alone from Philadelphia to give the bride away. Sandy had promised to come, but begged off with a late phone call, claiming his flight was grounded. He was living in Los Angeles, a fact the family had learned secondhand, from Dick Devlin’s brother. His Cleveland number, when they tried it, had been disconnected. They hadn’t heard from him in months.
A reception was held in the church hall. Most of Polish Hill attended, plus the bride’s Italian cousins, the groom’s few relatives and his colleagues from the high school. Without Sandy to insist upon it, nobody danced in a trough. His absence from the reception was remarked upon.
“North Hollywood, California,” Joyce said when anyone asked.
“My goodness,” said Evelyn Stusick.
Ted Poblocki grinned broadly. “That figures, don’t it?”
Joyce never lied, but it was her wedding day; she permitted herself this one dance with the truth. Her whole life she had been convinced of Sandy’s specialness, the unique promise that he, growing older, had failed to demonstrate in any tangible way. She’d worried for years what would become of him, watched with dismay as he wandered from job to job: salesman, bartender, taxicab driver. She only wanted the neighbors to think well of him, and now they did.
California.
She never claimed he was a movie actor. Nobody could say she’d lied on purpose. She had simply told them where he lived.