Baker Towers (26 page)

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.

E
d 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.

T
HEY 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.

A
FTER 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.”

A
T 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.