Baker Towers (4 page)

T
HAT AFTERNOON
they sat in their usual spots—Viola at her desk, Joyce at her smaller one in the front row—eating slices of a lemon cake Viola’s sister had baked. Viola had forgotten to pack forks. Giggling a little, she and Joyce ate the cake with their fingers.

“It was a cinch,” said Joyce, when Viola asked about her geometry test. She sat erect in her chair, a white handkerchief spread across her lap; someone had taught her excellent table manners. “The first proof I wasn’t sure about, but I got the others right.”

They ate in companionable silence. Through the closed door Viola
heard the hum of voices from the lunchroom down the hall. Most pupils went home at noontime. The few who remained were farm children who lived miles away.

“We had a letter from Georgie,” said Joyce. “He’s coming home on furlough.” She spoke often of her older brother; indeed, he was the only family member she mentioned. The war seemed to fascinate her. She was better informed about the latest battles and casualties than Viola was.

“How wonderful,” said Viola. “Your parents must be pleased.”

Joyce didn’t respond. She never spoke of her mother or father; when Viola asked after them, she answered in monosyllables. Still, Viola tried.

“Your mother must be busy with the new baby,” she said.

“I guess so.”

Viola waited for more. She wouldn’t have known about the baby at all if, a few months back, Joyce hadn’t missed several days of school. When Viola asked if she’d been ill, Joyce said she needed to be on hand in case the baby came. “But this could go on for weeks,” said Viola. Her cheeks burned; she felt slightly ridiculous.
As if I know anything about childbirth.

“Can’t your mother simply phone the school when the time comes?” she asked. Joyce had blushed a deep red, and only then did Viola understand that the Novaks didn’t have a telephone.

“His ship stopped in the Philippines,” said Joyce. “The people there eat raw fish and seaweed. It’s a very healthy diet. Some of them live to be a hundred. That’s what Georgie says.” She finished the last bite of cake. “That was delicious, Miss Peale. Thank you very much.”

“You’re quite welcome.” Viola crumpled up the waxed-paper wrapping and tossed it in the dustbin. At that moment there was a knock at the door.
My word,
she thought, her heart racing. She felt instantly foolish. There was no rule against eating lunch with pupils.

She opened the door. A towheaded boy stood in the hallway—hatless, in a shabby winter coat. His hands were crammed in his pockets.

“Can I help you, young man?” she asked.

“Sandy! What are you doing here?” Joyce rushed to the door. “This is my brother, Miss Peale. He’s supposed to be in school.”

Viola studied the child with interest. Curly blond hair, eyes unnaturally blue. His delicate mouth looked painted on, like a doll’s. She glanced at Joyce: the wan complexion, the sharp plain face. It wasn’t fair, the family beauty wasted on a boy.

Sandy took his hand from his pocket. “I cut myself,” he said, showing it to Joyce. “I broke a glass.”

Joyce examined the cut. “It’s not so bad. You came all the way over here because of that?”

“I didn’t go to school,” he said, eyeing Viola. “I had to go find the priest.”

“What for?” said Joyce.

“Come on,” said the boy, his eyes filling. “We have to go home.”

T
HEY DROVE ACROSS TOWN
in Viola’s car, an ancient Ford her father had left her. Joyce had protested when Viola offered to drive them.

“It’s a long way,” she said. “I couldn’t possibly accept.”

“Nonsense,” said Viola. “Of course I’ll drive you.”

They rode in silence, their breath fogging the windows. The boy rode in the rear seat. Joyce sat next to Viola, staring out the window. Her face was perfectly blank.

As it turned out, the Novaks lived just across town, in a company
house in the Polish section. “You can leave us at the bottom of the hill,” said Joyce, but Viola wouldn’t hear of it. When she parked in front of the house, Joyce opened the door almost before she could engage the brake.

“Wait,” said Viola. “I’ll come in with you.”

“Oh, no. That’s all right.” Joyce stepped out of the car, red-faced. She glanced quickly at the house.
Why, she’s ashamed,
Viola thought.

“Thank you for driving us. It was very kind of you.”

“You’re quite welcome.” Viola hesitated. “Joyce, I’m so very sorry about your father.”

“Thank you, Miss Peale.” Joyce took her brother’s hand and climbed the steps to the porch.

A
LL DAY LONG
the food came. The neighbors sent chicken and dumplings, kielbasa and sauerkraut, almond cookies, loaves of bread. May Poblocki brought stuffed cabbage. Helen Wojick sent three kinds of pirogi: potato, cabbage and prune. Years before, when Rose’s mother died, the donated food had surprised her. Downtown, in the Italian neighborhood, the bereaved were given nickels and dimes to buy masses for the soul of the deceased, votive candles to burn in church.

They ate the pirogi for supper; the other dishes Rose packed into the icebox. Stanley had bought it secondhand from a butcher in town. He’d paid in installments, a dollar from each paycheck; whether he’d yet paid it off, Rose wasn’t sure. Every week he gave her money for groceries; the other bills he paid by check, from a ledger he kept in his bureau. Rose had never written a check, herself. It was yet another thing she’d have to learn.

In the evening the men came, carrying bottles: beer and whiskey, elderberry wine. Some had worked the day shift; they came shaved and
showered, in Sunday vests and dark trousers. The Hoot Owl crew brought their dinner buckets; from Rose’s house they would go straight to work. They sat in the parlor with the casket, drinking and speaking in low tones. Rose kept busy in the kitchen. Through the wall she heard their deep voices, hushed and somber, speaking a language she didn’t understand.

“Here,” she said, handing Dorothy a plate of sandwiches. “Take these to the parlor. They shouldn’t drink on a empty stomach.”

Dorothy took the plate, wiping her eyes with her sleeve. She’d come home from the factory at noon; since then she’d wept more or less constantly. Her eyelids looked raw and swollen, her nose shiny and red.

“What about you, Mama? You didn’t touch your supper.”

“Maybe later.” Rose sipped a cup of tea, the only thing she’d managed to keep down all day. She detested tea but kept it on hand for such occasions, as her mother had. Coffee was for normal times, happy times. Tea was for miscarriages, mine accidents, measles, the grippe, a husband’s philandering, the death of a family pet. In the Scarponi household, miseries of all kinds had been swallowed with tea.

At the table Sandy looked up from his history book. “Can we eat the cake?” It had arrived in the afternoon, a fancy hazelnut torte that Andy Yurkovich’s Magyar wife had baked for her twins’ birthday. When she saw the hearse parked out front, she’d sent it over to Rose.

“Later,
bello.
When you finish your schoolwork.”

Sandy opened his mouth to protest, but said nothing. He had no homework to do, having missed the entire day of school. His father, he knew, would have found this excuse unacceptable. He’d made Sandy study every night after supper, spelling and history, whether he had homework or not.

He sat staring at his textbook, the letters blurring on the page. He closed his eyes and remembered the feeling of riding in the undertaker’s
car: the rumble of the engine, houses and storefronts flying past at a speed that seemed magical. The teacher’s car had been slower, and he had told her so. He was proud of knowing this—just yesterday he wouldn’t have known the difference—but Joyce had given him a dirty look. “You were terribly rude,” she told him later. “After Miss Peale was nice enough to drive us.” Alone, he’d taken his sled into the woods behind the reservoir, something his father would never have allowed. His mother hadn’t even noticed. Except for the homework she seemed to have forgotten him entirely.

“Do I have to go to school tomorrow?” he asked.

“Not tomorrow,” said Dorothy.

“The next day?”

“The next day is the funeral.” She swiped at the table with a dishrag. “Why don’t you go upstairs and study? We need the table. Mama wants to set out some food.”

Sandy closed his book and climbed the stairs to his room. Outside the snow was falling. His sled waited in the backyard. He would have the hill to himself while the other boys were in school. In a day the world had become larger. Twice he had ridden in a car. Now, if he was quiet—if he was careful—he might never have to go to school again.

I
N THE PARLOR
the men drank. They lowered their voices when Joyce came into the room. Mr. Wojick switched in midsentence from English to Polish. She avoided looking at the casket. Instead she cleared the empty bottles from beside the chairs. In the morning she would carry them to the Italian market, where the storekeeper paid a dime a dozen. She used the coins to buy Defense Stamps, which cost a quarter apiece. It
took her months to collect enough stamps to buy a War Bond, an exercise in patience.

She rarely had money of her own. At the end of each term, her friend Irene Jevic got a quarter for her report card. Joyce’s parents gave her nothing, even though she earned all A’s and Irene never got higher than a B. Once, timidly, Joyce had suggested to her father that her report card was worth a quarter. For a moment he’d considered this.

“No money,” he said, kissing her forehead. “I give you credit.”

Completely by accident, he had taught her to read. She was tiny then; every night after supper he’d sat between her and Dorothy, the newspaper spread out on the table. He had pointed at the headlines, waiting for Dorothy to sound out the words. His fingernails were black with mine dirt. He was gentle at first, but Dorothy read so slowly that he lost patience. Meanwhile Joyce—so tiny he barely noticed her—learned to read almost without effort.

Only once had she made him angry. That fall she’d decided it was time the family got a telephone; knowing he’d object, she’d gone to the Bell Telephone office herself and ordered the service. When a letter came in the mail asking for a deposit, her father was furious.

“How dare you?” he roared. He had a powerful voice, like a bear’s cry. “You humiliated me in front of those English people.” She had always been his favorite child; he never scolded her as he did Georgie and Dorothy. Even when he was angry, she knew how to make him laugh.

But not that day. “Daddy,” she said. She could barely speak; she willed herself not to cry. “We need a telephone. Times are changing.”

“This is my house,” he thundered. “The times change when I say.”

For days he’d ignored her, refused even to look at her across the dinner table. “Daddy hates me,” she told her mother one night after supper. “He’ll never speak to me again.” Sure of this, she’d left her report card on
top of the radio, where he was sure to see it. In the evening he passed it around the table to Len Stusick and Ted Poblocki, who sat with him in the kitchen on Saturday nights, smoking cigars and listening to the radio. Joyce had laughed the next morning when her mother told her this. She appeared on the steps dressed for church and kissed her father’s cheek.

“Good morning, Daddy,” she said sweetly, as though nothing at all had happened.

Now she approached the casket. His face had changed, softened in a way that made him less handsome.
Oh Daddy,
she thought.
Where did you go?
It seemed impossible that he couldn’t hear her. That he was simply gone.

His hands lay folded across his chest, holding a string of rosary beads. His skin looked smooth and waxy, but his fingernails were still black. Every morning after work, and every night before supper, he had scrubbed his hands with a stiff brush; but it never made any difference. His hands would never be clean.

T
HE CLOCK STRUCK MIDNIGHT
, then twelve-thirty, then one. Rose lay curled on Stanley’s side of the bed. She had done this for years when he worked Hoot Owl, as if keeping it warm for his return.

She lay awake, listening. Outside a dog barked. The baby breathed loudly in the cradle. Rose’s stomach twisted inside her, and she remembered she had not eaten.

She crept downstairs in her bare feet, an old coat thrown over her nightgown. She needn’t have bothered. The men in the parlor were passed out cold.

She turned on a kitchen light. Joyce or Dorothy had returned the
casseroles to the icebox. Rose considered heating some dumplings or sauerkraut, a plate of gray, heavy Polish food. Then she noticed the glass dome sitting on the counter: Madge Yurkovich’s hazelnut torte. She removed the cover. The cake was dusted with powdered sugar, the effect somehow formal, like a bride on her wedding day. She cut herself a slice and sat at the table.

She had never enjoyed sweets. It was Stanley who’d craved desserts, who was always after her to bake a pie or lemon custard. To please him she’d learned to make prune kolacky and apricot horns; his Polish aunts had taught her to pinch the dough and fill the horns with jam. He’d loved her pizzelle cookies, flavored with anisette; he bragged that her cinnamon rolls were the best in the neighborhood. Whether it was true, Rose couldn’t say. She rarely tasted her creations. She baked only to please him, to fill his house with sweetness.

She took a bite of the torte. The powdered sugar hit her palate first. Beneath it was a subtler sweetness, not sugar but cream. She counted six, seven thin layers of cake, one soaked in a dark liquor. She ate quickly, licking her fingers; then stared at her empty plate. The cake was gone before she’d really tasted it. Before she’d identified its components, understood each sweet miracle inside.

She went to the counter and cut a second slice. The complexity amazed her. Between the cake layers, more sweetness: crushed hazelnuts, grainy dates, a smear of honeyed cheese. She cut a third slice, and then a fourth. Finally she brought the entire cake to the table.