“You kids wipe your feet?” Jessie never let up.
“Ma, they’re hungry. Leave ’em be.” It was unusual for Ethel to give her mother even that much lip. Idella looked over at her. She had closed her eyes and rested her head against one of the doilies she’d crocheted and pinned all over the furniture arms and backs. Ethel tried to make old furniture look good by pinning them over the bald spots and cat-torn arms, but the straight pins she used were always finding their way into the back of your neck or wrist.
“This damned thing is coming apart like shoestrings.” Eddie hunched over the turkey. The knife looked so dull it wouldn’t cut butter. The blood was rising up to his ears.
“Get me a leg, Eddie,” Jessie called. “That don’t need slicing.”
Everyone watched Eddie wrestle the turkey’s leg. He was starting to fume. Jens quietly stepped forward and held down the body with two firm hands. With an angry jerk, Eddie pulled the leg free. He stood frozen, the leg held aloft like a prize.
Idella brought a plate of food, featuring the leg, over to Jessie.
Jessie sat looking down at the drumstick. “That looks chewy. I’ll have a slice of breast.”
Eddie scraped off enough shreds of meat for everyone. Jens volunteered for the one drumstick; the other stayed firmly attached. Idella dolloped vegetables and handed out plates. Ethel took hers quietly, not eating much.
“Everyone got what they need?” Idella surveyed the plates.
“I’d like some gravy,” Eddie muttered.
“There isn’t any.” Idella looked straight at him so that he knew not to say another word. She leaned toward him and whispered, “There’s no stuffing either, so don’t ask.”
“Is there pie?” he muttered, his face red. “Will I get my pie?”
Idella nodded to keep him still.
They ate in strained silence. Idella didn’t have the strength to comment on how good it all tasted. “Weary” was not the word. At least they were near the end here. Pie, wash and dry, then home like a bandit, that was her plan.
“You know, I hate to be the one to say it, Ethel.” Jessie’s voice broke the stillness. “But you’re getting thick. Right down through your middle. Your body’s matching up with them heavy legs of yours.”
“Ma” is all Eddie could get out.
“Well, it happened to you, too, Edward. Why you two couldn’t have taken after your father in body, I’ll go to my grave regretting.”
As long as she gets there, Idella thought. “I’ll start cutting up the pies.” She motioned to Eddie to come and help.
“When I was a girl, I had a trim figure. Isn’t that right, Jens? I was admired. Here, take my plate. I had three young men after me at the same time. Jens was the fourth. I liked his accent, from so far off. Denmark. I didn’t want a local boy.”
Jens gathered up dinner plates, and Idella set about slicing the pies. She saw that Ethel’s cheeks were turning bright red. Thick like pudding. Jesus. She handed Eddie a plate with three kinds of pie. “Give that to her directly.”
“Now, when do I get mine?” he asked.
“When everyone else has theirs.” She handed him more plates.
“Is this pumpkin from the can, Idella?”
“Yes—I think it’s good.”
Jessie spoke with her mouth full of pie. “You know, speaking of getting thick, I been noticing more and more lately, that little Goyette girl. . . . You know her, Idella?”
“I don’t believe so.” Idella loaded three triangles of pie onto Eddie’s plate and handed it to him.
He smiled and took it.
“Well, that little girl is a woman now, I can tell you that. Eddie, bring me a second piece of mincemeat.” Eddie, halted halfway to his chair, grabbed her plate and shoved it toward Idella.
“She is carrying a child . . . a
bastard
child!” Forks stopped. Idella, pie in her mouth, was unable to swallow. Ethel was looking down into her plate, her shoulders quivering. Idella didn’t see how she could hold tight much longer.
“Have you seen her, Ethel?”
Eddie, intent on eating his pie, sat in the cushioned chair and leaned back onto one of Ethel’s lace doilies. His mouth was already open for his first bite.
“Jesus H. Christ!” He lurched suddenly and slapped at the back of his neck. “Goddamn it all to hell!” The pie spewed from his plate. “I’ve been bit. There’s a bee, goddamn it! I’ve been bit!” A mound of mincemeat landed on Jessie’s foot. Globs of pumpkin stuck to the blowsy roses on Ethel’s sad, dark wallpaper.
Idella could see the sharp glint of a straight pin sticking through the white doily it was meant to hold in place. Eddie’s neck had landed on it full force.
“Now, this is like that time you lost everything in your stomach over at Aunt Sema’s, Eddie.” Jessie reached down and scraped the mincemeat off her foot with a finger. She held it out for inspection. “She’d made chocolate cake and strawberry shortcake for Fourth of July. It all came back up on you, as you’d had too much of both. Come out of you like a mud slide. Terrible smelling. I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life. Brown and red, it was. Some orange.”
Idella dipped her napkin into a water glass and gave it to Eddie for his wound. She bent down and scooped up the splotches of pumpkin and smears of cream from off the floor and cushions. She licked her finger. The bit of sweet apple tasted good.
“Sema wasn’t a good cook. Could have been her cooking. Course, I had food poisoning the one time. Remember, Jens? It was the fish you brought home. I had things coming from both ends at once.”
Idella took a deep breath. There would be no more talk of the Goyette girl. Or thickening. Not today. She had heard this story often and long, but she had never enjoyed it till now.
Idella was alone in the kitchen up to the old house. She was standing at the table slicing cabbages for a boiled dinner. Beets and carrots and potatoes from last year’s garden were piled about, waiting to be pared. On the stove the corned beef was simmering. Jens had brought it up from the cellar for her this morning. It’d been soaking in the crock of brine for two days.
There had been three dead mice on the cellar floor and signs of recent activity among the potatoes down there, so Jens and Eddie were looking for holes and nailing them over with tin or stuffing them with plaster. Every now and again, she’d hear pounding from below. These old houses were impossible, and of course there was a whole field of mice wanting to come in from the cold. Idella thought they were probably well established, making more and more babies. She sighed at the thought. Poor Ethel, making her one.
Thank God February was the shortest month and they were almost through it. There was still sloppy snow on the ground. One day it’d be sunny and melt, then it’d be cold and all turn to ice. Walking was treacherous, so they’d driven the short ways up from their apartment on Haskell Street.
Lately they’d been coming to help every Saturday, since Ethel was now in her ninth month and not up to any of it. They told Jessie she had a bad cold or one of the kids did, and she didn’t question it because she didn’t want to catch it. Idella didn’t know how long they would get away with excuses. It was turning into a day-to-day trial of endurance.
It felt good to bang the knife hard down into the cutting board and watch the convoluted slices fall away. Even a cabbage was beautiful if you had a good look at it—such a pale green, with all those designs hidden inside.
It was nice being alone in this big kitchen. The house and garden and big field behind it were all so pleasurable in the afternoon quiet. You could even hear birds outside. There were lots of little songs going back and forth across the field and in the trees. Chickadees. Winter birds.
Jessie was attending a lunch party down at the church for Clara White, who’d been living in Florida the past year with her husband. The poor husband had died within six months from two heart attacks, and Clara hated the hot weather and moved right back to Prescott Mills as soon as she could arrange it, which was last Tuesday. Idella’d gotten all the details from Jessie before her ride had come to get her, and she was sure there’d be plenty more details after she got back.
Idella took up a beet. The earth still clung roughly to its outside, and she held it up and breathed in the raw, comforting smell before starting to peel it. It was good for Jessie to get out. She so rarely went anywhere, and she would be stoked up with gossip. That made her happy, if anything ever did.
Idella heard a car drive up and stop outside the gate. Oh, well. She’d hoped to have another hour at least. She wiped her hands on her apron and went out to the porch. Jessie would need help getting through the yard and up the steps.
Walking carefully over patches of ice and wet snow, Idella got to the car just as Jessie, helped by Abigail Wynn, emerged from the back seat. She gripped her two canes, said not a word of greeting or good-bye, and started marching stoutly toward the house.
“I’m sorry, Idella,” Abigail said, getting back behind the wheel. Her motor was still running. “You’d best make sure she doesn’t fall, honey.” Then Abigail waved and pulled out and down the road. Idella, frozen for a moment between arrival and departure, hurried up behind Jessie. “Was it a nice lunch?” she called, trying to sound cheery.
Jessie said nothing. She placed one cane and then the other in front of her and walked with small, deliberate steps over the sloppy ground. Idella reached over to take an arm, but Jessie flinched and pulled away.
Oh, dear, Idella thought. The cat is on the roof.
She scooted in front of Jessie and held the door open. Jessie plowed past her and clumped steadily up the front steps, through the porch, and into the kitchen. Eddie and Jens were just coming up from the cellar. Eddie had a hammer and Jens a trowel covered with plaster. Both men stood still at the cellar doorway when they saw Jessie’s near-to-bursting face.
She clumped over to the table and sat down. “I don’t have a daughter.” She lifted one of her canes and banged the floor with it. “I’ve got one son living and one son passed on at one month old. My Albert. But I don’t have a daughter.”
Her voice ricocheted around the kitchen. “It is a wonder I didn’t fall over and die right there in the middle of the luncheon. ‘When’s that baby due?’ Clara White come up to me all smiles—and evil. ‘What baby might that be?’ I asked her, thinking she meant that Goyette girl up the hill, the only baby being born soon that I knew about.” Jessie clutched the tops of her canes like her fingers were claws. Her knuckles looked yellow. “‘Why, Ethel’s baby, of course! I saw her on the street.’ She laughed like I was making a joke. ‘She must be within one month.’ I managed to nod. I’d done all the speaking I was going to till I got myself home.”
No one moved. All three stood speechless, staring at Jessie’s rage. Idella could feel her heart trying to get out and fly.
“So that’s all the thickening in the middle that’s been taking place.” Jessie now turned and spoke to them accusingly. “And I thought Ethel was just getting fat like her mother. I’ll never show my face outside this house again.”
She leaned forward onto her canes and hoisted herself to standing. “I attended my last outing today. And I lost a daughter.” She started to walk out of the kitchen. “I need to lie down.” In the doorway she stopped and looked over at Jens. “That woman is never again to enter this house. She is not welcome. And neither is her bastard.”
Idella looked over at Eddie, who stood pressing the hammer head against a palm and twisting it, like he was going to twist it right through his hand. He stared down at the floor. “Eddie, let’s get home.” He nodded.
They left the boiled dinner as it was. Idella turned off the flame under the corned beef. Jens sat slumped at the kitchen table, his hands smeared with dried plaster. “She’s so stubborn,” he said softly as Idella put a hand on his shoulder. “Stubborn through the bones.”
Eddie and Idella left the house, got into the car, and pulled out onto Longfellow Street.
“Seems like you could have said something.” Idella looked out her side window. It was clear and cold out now. The afternoon was harsh with light against the battered piles of snow. “Seems like you could have spoken up then for your sister and that poor baby.”
“What am I supposed to say, Idella?”
“Seems like you could have said something. To keep that old lady quiet.”
“There is no keeping her quiet, Idella.”
Idella sighed. “I suppose not. Still, you could have tried.”
Edward kept his eyes on the splay of cards before him. “Della, get me them nuts out of the cupboard, will you? Them mixed nuts I brought home.” He didn’t even look at her while he gave his orders. “I see your three, and I’ll raise you two.” He threw more poker chips onto the pile in the middle of the table. Idella was trying her best to carry on as though this was just a regular Saturday-night card game with the Martins from downstairs.
She went into the kitchen to find his damn nuts. She was so restless inside she was glad to get up and move around. How could he play cards and eat nuts and drink beer and carry on like nothing in the world was happening, nothing at all—when he knew perfectly well that Ethel was practically all alone, down in that little house of hers, trying to deliver a baby? His own sister! He was ashamed. He was afraid of what people might think or say—just like that goddamned mother of his. Idella wanted to let out a scream that would wake the dead.
“Get me another beer while you’re at it, Della. And one for Harold.” She wanted to pour the beer on top of his head and put the damn nuts down the back of his collar and under his fat ass.
“You want anything more to drink, Cora?” Idella asked.
“Oh, no thank you, Idella. Unless you’ve got some ginger ale. I wouldn’t say no to a ginger ale.”
Idella sighed and opened the fridge again. “We’ve got root beer left, is all, Cora. And an Orange Crush. You want one of them?”
“Oh, Orange Crush sounds good.”