The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay (44 page)

Idella had left this Canada far behind and gone to find a better life. It was just being a maid, after all, and a household cook, but it had led to meeting Edward and marrying and having the children and the store and a house in Prescott Mills. She felt rich by comparison, wrapped in her squirrel coat, knowing she had a nice house to go home to down in Maine and a grocery to run. She’d set out, launched herself forward as best she could, and felt both relieved and saddened to have done so.

When the last “amen” rang all up and down the rows, Idella stood with everyone else, giving the whole ceremony an ending. She looked out the window. It wasn’t quite light yet, but it was going to be soon. The storm had finally stopped. Now it was time to get Dad to the grave site. Two of Uncle Sam’s sons had gone on ahead to prepare it. The hole had been dug sometime yesterday morning and covered over with canvas.

Idella watched as Dad’s brothers and Dalton and Stanley all lifted the casket to their shoulders and started for the door.

“All aboard that’s going aboard,” Dalton muttered as he passed Idella. He looked terrible, just terrible, but Idella figured she couldn’t blame him.

 

“I’ve never seen anything close to it,” Idella said as she sat in the back of Sam’s car with Avis and Emma, gazing at the landscape that was revealed with the gradual coming of light. They were taking Dad on to New Bandon to be put in the ground with Mother. The sky had gone from a foggy gray shroud to yellow and pink, and then the sun showed up and brought out a morning of cold, crystal glaze that shone blindingly in every direction, the light bounced off the ice so. It was remarkable, like an entire new world had moved in overnight. Nothing seemed familiar. Every inch of anything was coated thick with ice. Little nothing shrubs and bushes and roadside weeds were transformed into delicate ice sculptures. Everything drooped, as if in prayer, or was snapped off completely, sticking up at odd angles, like farm implements—rakes and scythes and spades—tossed into the air to fall where they might when the farmers abandoned their duties.

“What’ll the little birds do?” Idella asked suddenly.

“Fall on their little asses, I suppose,” Avis said, laughing. “Like us.”

“Jesus, Idella.” Emma laughed from up front, wedged between Dalton and Uncle Sam. “Leave it to you to worry about the birds.”

“I was just wondering,” Idella said. “Just making conversation.”

“Well, don’t,” Avis said.

They sat in silence, each looking out her own window, all the way to the cemetery.

 

Everyone stood huddled around the grave site and watched, quietly, as the men bailed out the water. They bailed and bailed. The steady slosh filled the air. There was no getting it all out.

“We’re just going to have to lower him in,” Uncle Sam finally said. “This here’s a spigot to the bowels of the earth.”

“Let’s have a last drink with Dad,” Dalton said, taking a new fifth of whiskey from his coat pocket with ceremony. Idella didn’t know where he’d come by that.

“Hell yes,” Avis said.

It did seem appropriate, Idella thought. Even it being morning would suit Dad.

“Gather round, Bill’s children,” Dalton called out, like he was a preacher. “Let’s open him up and do it proper.”

Stanley and Dalton unscrewed the clasps of the coffin and pulled back the lid. Idella looked in. Dad didn’t look so good in the clear light of morning. His face was more sunken than ever, and the bits of makeup they’d used on him at the funeral parlor—he would have kicked and screamed if he’d seen that coming—well, it had gotten to looking waxy and garish.

“It doesn’t look like him anymore,” Avis said, staring down.

“Those are his hands,” Idella said. “Those long fingers. The hands are his.”

“Yep.” Emma nodded.

The four of them—Avis, Idella, Emma, and Dalton—pressed up against the side of the coffin. Stan kept a hand on the open lid from down at the feet end. People stepped away a bit and let Bill’s children say their last farewell.

“It still don’t seem right,” Emma said, “to see him in a suit. One of them red flannel shirts he wore would have been more like him.”

“He could spruce himself up pretty well when he wanted,” Avis said. “He was a handsome man.”

“I’ll start the toast,” Dalton said. “Let’s do it in birth order.”

He lifted the whiskey bottle. “To Dad!” He swallowed a mouthful. “To the old bastard!” He handed the bottle to Idella.

“To Dad,” Idella said, taking a swallow. “To Dad.”

The bottle went to Avis and Emma in turn, each raising it up to toast Dad before taking a swig. Dalton took the bottle from Emma and capped it.

Avis stood pressed up against the coffin, staring down into it. Then she stepped away. “I hate sticking him in the cold water.”

“Put this whiskey in with him.” Dalton handed the bottle down to Stan. “Under his feet there. That way he can have a drink if he needs one when that water starts seeping in.”

“There’s room.” Stan placed the whiskey bottle in the coffin. “Let’s seal him up and set him down.”

Everyone watched as the coffin got slowly lowered. There was an unmistakable splash when it hit bottom. No one commented. Uncle Sam’s boys and some of the Smythes grabbed their shovels and started breaking off lumps from the mound of displaced dirt beside the grave. They had to crack down through the ice that lay on top like a hard candy coating. It’d be quite a job, but there were enough of them, they said, and they’d take turns. Everyone else should go on back to their homes.

“Well,” Dalton said, helping Emma down the hill to the car, “that’s that.”

“Mother and Dad are together.” Idella looked back once more as the men chipped and shoveled. She turned to her brother and sisters. “We’re orphans now—all alone in the world.”

“Oh, we’ve been that for a long time,” Avis said.

“Christ, yes,” Dalton said.

“We’ve been orphans all along.” Avis was already lighting a cigarette.

They climbed into Uncle Sam’s car and drove the two miles to the little ramshackle house on the cliff where they’d all got born.

December 1986

 

Avis stood in the lobby, taking it all in. “Piss Pot Palace, by the smell of it,” she said. She waved her hand in front of her face.

“You get used to it,” Idella said. “I’ve got some Evening in Paris in my purse. You want a spritz?”

“I want a cigarette. Half these people look dead, Idella.”

“Well, they’re just waiting. Some nod off. Because of the drugs, you know. Medications.”

“What are they waiting for? Departure?”

“Social hour!” Idella said. “We hit the jackpot, Avis. It’s Friday afternoon. At three o’clock the staff bring in refreshments.”

“Do they haul out fire hoses, that sort of thing?”

“Look, there’s Eddie. He’s trying to do one of them word puzzles, and he don’t see us. They got him all wheeled into place for me.”

“Is that Eddie? Holy Christ, Idella. A wheelchair?”

“His legs don’t go yet, since the drive-in.”

“He’s such a damned fool. I can’t believe he got you to go there.”

Idella sighed. She hadn’t wanted to go, but he just had to see that movie—
Miss America Goes Down.
It was because of those pictures in
Playboy
—he thought he was going to see the real Miss America. And then, when it wasn’t her, he had to go tearing out of there, pulling the damned speaker out of its post, and going straight at the screen. His foot got stuck on the gas pedal, he couldn’t move it—another one of those spells he got. He shouldn’t have been out driving at night in the first place. And he’d just about driven into the screen, veered left scraping those little cement posts they have, and veered left again and whacked into three or four cars before she finally reached over and turned off the key. Lord! And when the police came, his foot was still stuck on the gas pedal. They’d taken him straight to the hospital and then the nursing home.

It had been more than a month now, and all Edward talked about was going home. The first night here, he’d gotten a nurse to call Paulette at work, and he’d offered her one hundred dollars to get him out. It about killed Idella to hear that.

All this week he’d been at her to take him home. He pestered the nurses, too. They’d asked her to talk to him, explain about his walking. The doctor said he was probably here to stay, but she dreaded telling him.

They had him in his Posey, a big padded strap to keep him from falling out of the wheelchair. His feet just barely reached the pedals. He was wearing a blue sweat suit and running shoes—the soles were brand-new, no dirt.

Avis still couldn’t get over the changes in him. “Even his belly is gone,” she said. “A landmark disappeared.”

“Let’s let him be a minute.” Idella held on to Avis’s arm and took a breath.

Avis began to read aloud from a blackboard by the door. “ ‘ Welcome to Orchard Near the Shore.’ They’re near the shore, all right. ‘Friday, December 5, 1986. Cloudy / Chance of Snow.’ That’s tricky.”

“It’s nice for the residents to know what day it is and the weather,” Idella said.

Just then Eddie saw them. He started right in. “You was supposed to be here at noon. I was all packed—then you never showed up. They made me put everything back in my drawers.”

“I said I was coming at three,” Idella said. “It’s not even. Eddie, look who I brought! Avis drove me over.”

“Sisters teaming up on me, eh?”

Across the room an aide was setting up for social hour.

“Look,” Idella said. “Everyone’s rolling in. That’s Gladys, in them big slippers. She’s a schoolteacher—well, she don’t teach anymore—and Mr. Davis, he’s an accountant. Was. I’ll bring us some treats.”

The little bar was just across the room. While the girl loaded up a tray, Avis tried to make conversation, which for her, with Eddie, was like cleaning ashtrays with her tongue. Or so she used to say.

“So, Eddie. How you doing?”

Eddie shrugged, then opened and closed his hand. “I’m stuck in this damn chair,” he said. “Soon as I can walk, see, I’ll get the hell out of here. I’m going to get me a new car.”

Idella could see that Avis was antsy, opening her purse and taking out a compact mirror and lipstick, starting to “refresh” herself.

Eddie piped up, “My father had a wooden car.”

“I’ve heard you speak of it.” She rolled her eyes at Idella, watching from across the room.

“You know how much he sold that car for? Five dollars! He sold that car to some crook who come around buying, for five dollars!”

“Be worth more today,” Avis said.

“That car’d be worth a lot of money! I still have the bell. You stepped on it with your foot. No steering wheel on her. It had a lever. I remember driving that car through the field! Goddamned crook! He come one day when I was at work, see, some junk dealer. And my father sold it for five dollars!”

Avis was doing her best, but Idella knew what it was like. It was odd here, sitting day after day. She and Eddie didn’t talk much, little dibs and dabs of nothing, usually about a meal he’d just had, was about to have, or wished he could have. Her lobster stew usually. God, didn’t he love that. She’d made many a lobster stew for that man over the years and fried many a fish.

So much of the time he seemed out of it—but then he’d look up suddenly, as if he was searching, and see her, and she’d wave a little and smile, and his whole face would light up. He’d nod, a tiny nod of recognition, and she’d be glad she came. It comforts him, she thought, to see this old face he’s been looking at and listening to for over fifty years. A little bit of home.

She carried over the tray, handing a plastic bowl of Tater Tots to Avis and putting one on Eddie’s lap.

“If someone had told me I’d be sitting here eating Tater Tots and chatting up Eddie, I’d have asked them to shoot me point-blank,” Avis said.

Eddie was still brooding about that car. He gripped his hands like he was holding a wheel. “You think I can drive home?”

“I don’t know, Eddie,” Idella said.

“Where would you really like to go,” Avis said, “if you could drive?”

“Old Orchard Beach,” he said. “To Toby’s. Get me some onion rings.”

“You used to go out to Old Orchard for a lot more than onion rings, eh, Eddie?” Avis said.

He smiled. “Pretty girls.”

“Yeah,” Avis said. “Me and Idella.”

“Oh, Lord,” Idella said. “That reminds me. Look, Eddie, I have a surprise for you. I come across it changing over my purse. Must have been tucked in there for years.” She held up a little tattered photograph. “Here, Avis, have a look.”

“I’ll be damned,” Avis said, laughing. “It’s the three of us. Where are we?”

“Old Orchard Beach. Out on the pier. Our hair is blowing something wicked, see? And our dresses are blown back by the wind, all billowy. We’re all happy, Avis.”

“You look shitfaced, Idella.”

“Read what’s on the back. ‘Three Sheets to the Wind.’ That about says it.”

“Let me see it,” Eddie said.

Idella stared at the picture. “What are you holding up there, Eddie?” He laughed. “That’s a plastic lobster. I got it for Avis’s boyfriend. We took him out to Old Orchard for a Maine lobster. He took the picture.”

“Why, he was the one who
didn’t
drink,” Idella said. “He was peculiar.”

“We was all eating lobsters,” Eddie said, “and he got up all of a sudden and ran out. He was sick on the lobster over the pier. I asked if he needed help, and he tells me to keep my hands off Avis! Christ. Saying I’m after Avis.” Eddie studied the picture. “He’s not the gangster boyfriend, is he? That went to jail?”

“Edward!” Idella said.

“That one got you in all the papers, didn’t he?”

Avis gave him a look. “No, not him.”