Baker Towers (18 page)

“We didn’t,” he said at last.

“The point is, I told her about the stunt you pulled at the train station. Scared her half to death.”

“You told her that?”

“She had a right to know. As far as she knew, you were coming to school every day like a model citizen. She couldn’t believe how many days you’ve missed.”

Sandy avoided his eyes.

“The thing is,” said Hauser, “we don’t want any surprises. When you flunk the tenth grade, at least your family will know it’s coming.”

Sandy kicked at the ground with his shoe. “I turn sixteen next month. I can quit then, if I want. You can’t do anything about it.” A smile tugged at his mouth. For a moment he looked like a little boy.

“That’s true,” said Hauser. “But the mines won’t take you until you’re eighteen. That’s the law now. And you can’t join the air force like your sister did. You need a high school diploma.”

His smile faded. “You do?”

“That is correct.” Hauser wasn’t sure about this, but it sounded right. “Look, I don’t care if you quit. I’ve got five hundred other kids to worry
about. But your sister wants you to graduate. You could do it easily, if you cut out the funny business. All you have to do is show up.”

Sandy waited.

“Can you do that much, Novak? Come to school every day and get yourself to class on time. You do that, and I’ll make sure you pass.” He paused. “Do we have a deal?”

Sandy shrugged lazily. Then grinned, a million-dollar smile.

“Sure,” he said. “It’s a deal.”

T
hey sent Sandy to the butcher’s uptown, and he came back with a twelve-pound turkey. Rose stationed Joyce at the sink to peel potatoes. Dorothy, home from Washington for the holiday, sat at the table chopping onions for stuffing.

“That’s some mighty wasteful peeling,” Sandy teased, looking over Joyce’s shoulder. “You’re throwing away half the potato.”

“Let’s see you do any better.”

“Don’t look at me. I’ve done my part.” He thumped his chest, caveman-style. “That bird’s heavier than it looks.”

He was in unusual spirits. Joyce couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him smile, let alone clown around in the kitchen. She had tried talking to him about his problems at school; he’d cut her off with a rare apology.
I’m sorry, Joyce. I’ll straighten up. I promise.
Since then he’d been pleasant, even affectionate, the way he’d been as a boy.

“Is this enough?” Dorothy asked. She had accumulated a pile of chopped onions.

Rose clomped over to inspect them, in the new house slippers Joyce had bought her. “Try to get them all the same size,” she advised.

Sandy frowned. “Mrs. Novak, these females have no business in the kitchen. No wonder they can’t find husbands.”

“Who says we’re looking?” said Joyce.

“Well, what are you waiting for? That’s what I’d like to know. Neither one of you is getting any younger. I’ll bet Lucy beats you both to the altar. There will be two of you dancing in the trough.”

“Eeee, the trough!” Rose clapped a hand over her mouth. “When your aunt got married I couldn’t believe it. Her sister in the trough like a pig.”

“Not an ordinary pig,” said Sandy. “A
dancing
pig.”

“She must have been humiliated,” said Joyce. “To think her own family put her through that, just because her sister got married first.”

“Them Polish, they crazy people,” said Rose.

“I think it’s a splendid tradition. I’m already looking forward to Lucy’s wedding. Dorothy and Joyce will bring down the house.” Sandy rose and performed a little jig, daintily lifting an imaginary skirt.

“Stop!” said Dorothy. She was flushed from laughing. “You’re a terrible boy.”

“I’m never getting married,” said Lucy.

Sandy raised an eyebrow at Joyce. “You see the example you’re setting?”

“Oh, honey,” said Dorothy. “Why not?”

“I don’t want to go away. I want to stay here.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Do you ever hear from Georgie?” Dorothy asked.

“Once in a blue moon,” said Joyce.

“He’s not much for writing,” said Dorothy. “Maybe I should get a telephone.”

“He don’t like the phone neither,” Rose observed. “He call maybe once a month.”

“He must be very busy,” said Dorothy. “The baby and all.”

They had never seen the child, Arthur Quigley Novak, but several times a year George sent photos. The first few had been dutifully framed and placed on a bureau in the living room. More recent shots were tucked into a drawer. In Bakerton Arthur remained an infant. In actual fact he was nearly four years old.

Rose’s face darkened. “It’s that girl he marry. She don’t like it here. She get a headache that time they come.” After that first visit, Georgie had always come to Bakerton alone. The family hadn’t seen Marion in years.

Silence fell over the kitchen. Joyce glanced at Dorothy. Her eyes were moist.

“What’s the matter?” said Joyce.

“Onions.” Dorothy rose, dabbing at her eyes with her wrist. “I should wash my hands.”

Joyce watched her head upstairs. Dorothy had always loved Georgie too much. Every year she was devastated when he didn’t come for Christmas, though by now no one else expected him to show. She didn’t understand that Georgie had left Bakerton completely, as Sandy soon would; that neither love nor obligation nor concern for their mother would be enough to keep the Novak boys in Bakerton. It seemed to Joyce that men were made differently, that love and guilt didn’t work on them in the same way. She didn’t blame her brothers for this. She envied them. She herself had tried to leave. She probably would have succeeded, if she had been born a boy.

A
FTER DINNER
Joyce and Dorothy stacked the dishes beside the sink.

“Blick,” said Joyce. “A heavyset fellow, with a red face.”

“That’s the one. I still have nightmares about him.” Dorothy swiped at a plate. “Joyce, how can you stand it? I know what that place is like.”

“It’s not so bad.”

“Did you ever think of coming to Washington? Mag Spangler is a supervisor now. She’s the one who got me in at Interior, after all those wartime jobs were eliminated. Maybe she could find you something.” She stacked a roasting pan in the drainer. “I wouldn’t mind the company. It gets lonely down there.”

Joyce studied her. Dorothy’s face had aged. The skin beneath her eyes looked thin and bluish, as though she slept poorly. “Maybe you should find a roommate. Didn’t you have one once?”

“I did, years ago.” After the deaf schoolteacher retired and moved back to Georgia, Dorothy had taken over her tiny single room. “Never again. Let me tell you, living with a stranger isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” Dorothy hung her towel on the rack. “We could get ourselves a little apartment. It would be a treat to get out of the boardinghouse.”

Joyce had visited Dorothy the summer before, on a brief furlough from North Carolina. Dorothy’s cramped little room had struck her as grimmer than the barracks. It seemed impossible that she had lived there almost ten years.

“I know you hate to leave Mama,” said Dorothy. “But she’s got Lucy and Sandy. It’s not as if she’s alone.”

Joyce smiled, thinking of Sandy’s dance in the kitchen. He was no
help, but at least he was company. Meanwhile Rose had become more vigilant about her diet. Most days she wore her slippers without prompting. After dinner she’d refused a slice of pie.

“Maybe,” said Joyce. “We’ll see what the doctor has to say.”

J
OYCE AND ROSE
left early the next morning with a lunch Dorothy had packed, sandwiches of stuffing and leftover turkey. Afterward Dorothy sat alone in the kitchen. She heard movement overhead. Lucy appeared on the stairs in her nightgown.

“Where’s Mama?” she asked.

“She just left,” said Dorothy. “Joyce took her to the doctor.”

“Is she sick?”

“No, honey.” Dorothy rose and poured her a glass of milk. “She went to get her eyes checked.”

“Does she need glasses?”

“Maybe so,” said Dorothy.

“I don’t think she does.” For as long as Lucy could remember, her mother had been perfectly healthy. She had eaten whatever she wanted. There had never been anything wrong with her eyes. All these problems had begun when Joyce came.

“Mama’s getting older, honey. These things happen when people get older.”

Lucy didn’t respond.

“Come on,” said Dorothy. “Let me make you some breakfast.”

I
N THE WAITING ROOM
, Joyce flipped through a two-year-old magazine:
Reds Sign Pact with China.
Rose glanced nervously around the room, her pupils dilated from the eyedrops the nurse had given her. In one corner, a boy sat next to his mother, his eyes covered in bandages. An old man walked awkwardly with a white-tipped cane.

Finally the nurse called Rose’s name. She clutched Joyce’s arm as they walked down a long corridor.

The doctor, a wizened old man named Lucas, shined a flashlight in Rose’s eyes, then turned off the lamp and had her read a backlit chart on the wall. He made her look into a large machine and asked her what she saw.

“How long have you been diabetic?” he asked.

“We found out last month,” said Joyce.

“Are you controlling your blood sugar?”

“She’s working on it,” said Joyce.

He turned on the light. “You are suffering from a condition called diabetic retinopathy. Your blood sugar has been high probably for years and in that time an important nerve has been damaged, the nerve that connects the eyes to the brain.” He paused. “When did you first notice a change in your vision?”

Rose hesitated. “Maybe last year,” she said. Then considered. “Maybe two years.”

Mama!
Joyce wanted to cry.
Why didn’t you say anything?
She thought of the broken windows at the house, the rotten floorboards on the porch. It was just like Rose to ignore the problem, and nobody else had been around to notice. Joyce gone. Dorothy and Georgie gone. Left to her own
devices, Rose had simply pretended. That nothing had changed. That she wasn’t going blind.

“This is a degenerative condition. Once it has begun, its tendency is to progress. How quickly, we do not know.” The doctor paused. “Mrs. Novak, how old are you?”

“Fifty-three,” said Rose.

His mouth tightened. “It’s hard for me to judge. I can’t see precisely what you’re seeing. But it appears that your condition is quite advanced for a woman of your age. Do you live alone?”

“No,” said Joyce. “I live with her.”

“Good,” said Lucas. “She’ll need your help.”

T
HE TREATMENTS
, called radioactive retinography, would be fourteen in all. Lucas scheduled them two weeks apart, which meant seven months of trips to Pittsburgh. The morning after the doctor’s visit, Joyce sat at the kitchen table with pencil and paper, calculating the cost of bus tickets. A single round-trip ticket was ten dollars. But Rose’s vision had deteriorated dramatically; she could not travel alone.

There was no way around it. Joyce would have to buy a car.

She walked to the dealership that Friday night, with fifty dollars in cash withdrawn from her savings account. The same salesman was on duty, the pimple-faced boy in the ill-fitting suit. “I’d like that car,” she said, pointing. Her voice held a certainty she did not feel. “That Rambler.”

The boy’s eyes widened, stunned by the ease of the sale. He hadn’t even said hello. “Don’t you want to take it for a test drive?”

“No, thank you,” she said. “May I use your telephone?”

Sandy answered. She knew he would; he always raced for the phone on Friday nights.

“It’s Joyce,” she said. “I need your help.”

H
E TAUGHT HER
in six lessons. She drove hesitantly, with much grinding of the gears, but well enough to pass the licensing exam the second time out. The first failure, a mercifully brief humiliation at the hands of an avuncular state policeman, she did not allow herself to register.
Brush it off,
she repeated each time the engine stalled. She had never failed a test of any kind.