“We’re going to forget about it. For now.” He kissed her, and she kissed him back.
“Well, ladies, I think the October meeting of the Ladies’ Townsend Club is adjourned.” Abigail Wynn banged her wooden gavel lightly onto the card table. Many of the ladies, all members of the Universalist Church on Main Street, had already begun tying kerchiefs over their hairdos and pulling gloves from their coat pockets.
Idella breathed a sigh of relief. This meeting could not end soon enough. They’d all managed to get through it without incident. She’d get Jessie bundled up and back to the house in time to fix Eddie’s parents some dinner, then go down to Ethel’s and help do her laundry and get her kids fed, before getting home to fix something for her and Eddie to eat.
“Come on, Jessie, I’ll help you with your coat. Arlene offered us a ride home.” She leaned over and helped Jessie heave her coat up over her shoulders. She handed Jessie her hat. Out of the corner of her eye, Idella saw Agnes Knight approach. “Put your hat on, Jessie.”
Agnes walked right up to Jessie and leaned over her, smiling. “How’s Ethel getting on, Jessie?” Idella breathed in quick, as if an ice cube had been slipped down her back.
“Ethel?” Jessie looked up, her hat on but not secured.
Oh, Lord. Idella felt her stomach ball up inside of her. The meeting was almost done, she was almost out the door, and that Agnes Knight and her big mouth had just asked the question that everyone had been avoiding during the entire October meeting. Agnes’s head was even thicker than Jessie’s.
“Oh, Ethel’s all right, I guess. I wish she’d come up to help me finish with the garden, but that’s always been true. There’s pumpkins that need going over, and the end of the squash.”
“She’s feeling all right? No complications or anything?”
“Complications? Ethel? No, that girl is as simple as mud.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that.”
“Glad?” Jessie looked at Agnes. “I think I’d have preferred a little more spark. But what can you do? You get what God gives you.”
“It’s getting on time to head home now, Jessie. Are were finished with the business?” Idella looked pleadingly around the circle of women.
“Oh, yes.” Abigail nodded at Idella. She understood. “I’m putting my gavel away till next month. We’ll be discussing the church Spring Fair booths next time. And the theme for decorations. I know it seems early, with Halloween just upon us, but we all know how much time it takes to get the Spring Fair up. So keep thinking of decoration ideas.”
The women took their cue and started reaching for hats and purses. Barb Jackson headed into the bathroom with her lipstick in her hand. Jessie kept talking.
“Course, I’ve noticed Ethel is putting on the weight lately.” Jessie’s voice rose up suddenly above all others. “It’s the Scoullar body coming out. I was born a Scoullar.” There was dead silence in the room, save for Jessie’s voice scraping the air. “Eddie’s got it, too. Starts in the belly and works its way down. A thickening, like pudding. It’s our lot. Nice faces, every one of us. And thick bodies. At least she’s not pregnant.”
All movement stopped. Barb Jackson did not make it to the bathroom. Coats hung on the shoulders of some women with sleeves dangling loose.
“Time to go home now.” Idella was near to panicking.
“Not like that Goyette girl up the road from me. I’m sure you all know she’s in the family way. No husband anywhere from here to China. She’s having a bastard baby. Walking up and down the hill out in front of our house like as if she had nothing to be ashamed of. Why, she said good morning to me the other day and waved! Imagine!”
“Jessie, it’s time we were all going on home. Arlene Roberts has offered to ride us up to the house.”
“Oh. Oh, yes. Well. Help me up here, Idella. Been a nice meeting.”
Idella helped her to stand and balance on her two canes.
“Hand me my purse there, Idella. I’m ready. Are you?”
“Oh, yes,” Idella said. “I’m ready.” She waved at the stilled women as she steered Jessie out of the church meeting room. Abigail waved back, shaking her head just enough to give Idella some comfort.
“Do you mean to tell me the old bat still doesn’t know?” Avis was sitting across from Idella at the kitchen table, smoking. She had arrived the night before from Boston. They had been passing one of Eddie’s bottles of beer back and forth.
A huge Hubbard squash from the Jensens’ garden lay between them, pale blue-gray and shaped like a sitting partridge. They were supposed to be hacking it open and scraping out seeds, but once Avis asked if anything new was happening in the burg of Prescott Mills, with little hope of reply, and Idella had said, “Well, as a matter of fact, yes,” not much had gotten done, though the beer was almost finished.
“She does not know. That’s what I’m telling you.”
“She notice that Ethel’s getting a big belly?”
“Just enough to rant that she’s getting fat.”
“How big is she?”
“She’s getting on to the size of this squash here. By Christmas she’ll be bigger.”
“Jesus.” Avis choked on her cigarette.
“I am beside myself with the intrigue of it. I’m pretty sure everyone in the greater Portland area knows—except Jessie.” Idella upended the bottle of beer and drank the last of it. She put it down onto the table with a clunk and a sigh.
“And the father?”
“Oh, Mr. Jensen goes down to see her whenever he can. He brings her little things from the garden. And I’ve seen him slip her some money. But it’s all on the sly, so Jessie won’t find out.”
“I mean of the baby, the father of the baby.”
“Oh. Him. Well. He might as well be killed in action for all the army will tell us. He don’t want to be found, and they’re not going to make him be. It’s shameful.”
“Did he know about the baby?”
“Ethel told him. That was the last she saw of him, the absolute last. Eddie went down there, you know. He went storming down to New Hampshire to the army base. He caused quite a stir. You can imagine.”
Avis nodded. “Only just.”
“He was at fit peak! But they still wouldn’t tell him anything.” Idella paused. “I think he might have done more harm than good.”
She reached out and put her hand on the firm curve of the Hubbard.
Avis kept smoking, watching Idella’s fingers play over the squash. “Where is he in all this?”
Idella shook her head. “Oh, it’s a mess. Eddie tries to help Ethel, in small ways, but he doesn’t want to be involved. He’s ashamed. You know. He’d like to wash his hands of the whole thing.”
Avis narrowed her eyes and gave Idella one of her looks that she had seen many a time. She could feel it boring into her. Idella put her hand up. “Don’t say it. Whatever you are about to throw out about Eddie, you can keep to yourself.”
“I don’t have to say anything. You think it yourself. Not involved, my ass. Embarrassed. Jesus.”
“No more, Avis.” Idella pointed a warning finger at her. “And you are to keep your mouth shut about it at all times.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Avis stubbed out her cigarette and slapped her hand on top of the squash. “How are we going to get into this damn thing anyway?”
“Throw it on the floor and crack it wide open.” Idella was feeling a slight trill from the beer she’d drunk. “Stand out of my way.” She took up the gray squash, lifted it over her head, and threw it onto the kitchen floor. It landed with a thump and cracked into three large, jagged pieces, revealing bright orange flesh. A mass of pale white seeds spewed out onto the floor like big, slippery buttons.
Idella reached down and picked up the largest of the pieces. “Let’s break it even more!”
“Jesus, Idella.” Avis was laughing. “I’m getting out of your way.”
“You better, by God.” Idella raised the jagged hunk of squash and plunged it to the floor to splat and crack and spew more seeds. “This is just November,” she said. “Imagine what state we’ll all be in by Christmas.”
“I’ll be in Massachusetts,” Avis said. “I think you might want to park your wagon in one of the Dakotas, Idella. Or maybe the North Pole.”
“Where’s my glass of cold cider? I asked Ethel, and nothing’s come of it.”
Jessie sat the middle of Ethel’s couch. Her two black canes were on either side of her short legs, and she leaned back against one of those afghans Ethel was always making, this one a checkered yellowy green and orange. Jessie sat, bursting the seams of her black dress, looking for all the world like a fat spider, dead center of her garish web.
“She’s got her hands full with the turkey going so slow.” Idella headed into the kitchen for cider, glad to be out of the stuffed chair. She gave Mr. Jensen a pat on his knee as she passed. That he hadn’t even attempted to get Jessie’s drink was a sure sign he was at his limit.
Ethel’s house seemed so dark and crowded. Even the little Christmas tree Eddie had managed to set up in the corner only added to the confusion and jumble. Paper stars and wallpaper chains dangled and overlapped from the tips of the branches. Ethel’s boys had done the trimming without her. She was too heavy and swollen to bother.
Idella walked between the dining table and the card table, set up for Ethel’s three half-grown boys. She wasn’t at all hungry. This was the damnedest Christmas dinner she would ever live through—if she did live through it.
Ethel, a full seven months along now, leaned against the front of the stove, gripping the oven handle. An apron was tied around her middle, over the loose housedress she wore to hide the pregnancy from her mother.
“Your apron’s kind of tight there.” Idella came up behind and loosened the bow. “You go sit. Sit.” Ethel nodded limply and started to shuffle out of the kitchen. “How much longer do you think it’ll need?”
“I don’t know, Idella.” Ethel was at the end here, Idella could tell.
Eddie came lumbering into the kitchen. “Christ, Idella, will you get her that cider?”
“You get it, Eddie. I’m going to see this turkey through.” All the while she spoke, Idella was getting the glass and pouring out the cider. She handed it to Eddie.
“Pour me one, too.”
“Honestly!” Idella got another glass and handed it over. She motioned silently to him to help Ethel sit down.
Left alone for a minute, Idella put her hand to her forehead and took a deep breath. Mother of God. What a circus.
The smells in the kitchen were thick, unpleasant. They had a weight to them that hung in the air and pressed on her face. The turkey reeked. Ethel’d put too much sage into that bird. She must have used a child’s shovel’s worth. Idella opened the oven door. The bird looked like bare rock: It was bald and naked and unbasted. Whatever juices it might have had had left this earth an hour back.
She lifted the cover on the brussels sprouts. They were sogging up in the kettle, more yellow now than green. They smelled like the paper mill. She covered them. The potatoes, glopped into a serving bowl, were cold already.
At least the pies would be good. Idella’d made them—two apple, a mincemeat, and a nice little pumpkin. She’d used the canned filling to make it but did not consider that cheating in the face of all the other things she had to do.
She opened the oven again. Hell—that turkey must be done enough. She reached in and jostled a leg. It had a little give. It’d have to do. She walked into the living room. “I’d say five minutes till the turkey can come out. Ethel, you stay where you are. Me and Eddie’ll get it all out on the table.”
Ethel nodded. That woman was at rock bottom. She never let someone else take over hostess duties in her little house.
“Eddie, go call the boys in for dinner. They’re out in the snow still.”
“Bring me my plate of food, Eddie.” Jessie was plumping the pillow behind her, leaning forward and beating it with her fist. “Right over here. I’m not up to sitting at the table.”
“I can’t be three places at once, goddamn it!”
Jens headed to the door. “I’ll call the boys. They’ve been having fun out there throwing snow.”
“Them kids are staying out as long as they can,” Idella whispered to Eddie as they lugged the roasting pan to the counter and hoisted the turkey onto a platter.
Eddie stared at it. “Why isn’t it brown?”
“Your next challenge is to carve it. By rights it should wait twenty minutes.” Idella looked at the turkey. “For the juices to absorb.” She shook her head. “But there aren’t any.”
Eddie carried the turkey to the table while Idella hauled out bowls of food. “I thought we’d eat buffet style,” she said brightly, looking over at Jessie.
“Yes, I’m so nice and settled. Ethel, get me a little stool of some sort, will you? To put my tired feet up. And bring me a plate with extra potato.”
“I’ll do that, Jessie.” Idella gave Ethel a direct look that planted her back into the chair she was half out of.
The three boys came bursting into the house, bringing a swoop of cold air behind them. It felt refreshing to Idella.
“Close that door!” Jessie screamed, before they were even done opening it.
Idella looked at Eddie. He had the knife and was going at the turkey like it was a tree he was cutting down. Ethel’s boys got out of their boots and snow pants and coats. Jens helped line the wet mittens along the top of the radiator in the hall. They sat themselves at the card table.
“You hungry?” Idella smiled down. They were good kids. They all nodded back at her and put their elbows on the table. Arnie, the oldest, reached over and grabbed a roll. The other two protested, and he smiled and tossed one to each of them. Their cheeks were so red and full of life. Crusty bits of frozen snow still clung to their sweater cuffs. They’d been making snowballs. Idella wanted to reach out and feel the freshness of their skin, rub her hand over their impossibly round cheeks.
She didn’t know just what they understood about their mother’s situation. They sure knew enough not to breathe a live word of it in front of Grammie Jensen. They talked of nothing but snowballs, sleds, and hunger.