One Hundred Years of Marriage Page 9

  Without a warning sound, Alice appeared in the doorway like a little ghost. “Alice, what on earth? You are supposed to be in bed asleep.” Victoria went on stitching, pulling her strongest needle through the pelt.

  “I need to tell you something.” Alice’s voice was very weak and shook with the cold.

  “What did you want to tell me?”

  “It’s an idea.”

  “An idea? That you have to tell me in the middle of the night?”

  “There isn’t much time.”

  Victoria stopped stitching. “What is it?”

  “You need to tell Daddy to get a job, so he will get pay every Friday. That’s how it works for families.”

  What families? Which children had she been talking to about their situation? She stared at Alice.

  “This would fix all our problems, wouldn’t it? Tell him that you’ve set your heart on it.”

  Victoria pulled in a long shaking breath. “No, sweetheart. I never tell him I’ve set my heart on anything having to do with money.”

  “Why not!” Alice’s voice was sharp, and her face twisted with anger. “Why?”

  “Alice! Hush! I’m surprised at you, using that tone of voice.” Then she put her arm around Alice and spoke very softly. “Your daddy is a wonderful man, but he just will not venture out in worldly matters.”

  Alice nodded. Victoria knew she didn’t understand and would have run upstairs having had her say, but Victoria pulled her daughter into her lap and covered the child with the delicate warmth of the opera cape.

  As she rocked Alice in Grandmother Hale’s little armless rocker, she felt again how much she missed Dan’s mother. That dear old Quaker. When Dan had asked her about their bringing his mother to live with them, Victoria had said, “Of course. Bring her now.” Dan’s father had died the year before, and they were alone and in love in the house, but she had agreed to this in spite of her fear that a woman with Mrs. Hale’s past might forever alter their new life together.

  Victoria sighed and laid her cheek on the head of the sleeping Alice. Horrible though Olivia Jane Hale’s past had been, she was like a quiet ballast in this house where things had a tendency to wobble. Her frail bones always cold, she sat in this rocker near the stove in the kitchen. After her eyes were too dim to read from her precious books of poetry, her tiny fingers darned and mended. When Felicity was born grandmother Olivia Jane could quiet that colicky baby better than Victoria herself. Victoria sniffed in a long, shaky breath. Her girls’ grandmother lived here less than four years and then, just after Alice was born, she quietly died. Washing her motherin-law’s body and preparing her for the coffin, Victoria had felt an end to the pain she’d borne for so long over not being able to bring the same tenderness to her own mother.

  *

  Monday morning Alice was awake even before the gray light started between the curtains. She was tired of waiting for her sister Felicity to wake up. They needed to make a plan. Three times she’d bumped her with her bottom, but Felicity just snuggled deeper under the quilt.

  One of the problems was school. She’d never missed school except when she had the dust pneumonia or her tonsils out or a few half days when she felt iffy in the stomach or Mother thought she might be a little feverish. She’d spent some of her thinking time in the dark figuring out what she’d tell anyone who stopped her on the road and asked why she wasn’t in school. I have to rehearse for a play. My school dress had to be mended. My mother needs us to take this pig to the farmer. Us because she’d have to have Felicity, a ten-year-old, to help her. But Felicity loved school. She skipped fifth grade and was now the smartest pupil in the sixth grade. She must walk along the other side of Lillian Gish.

  She gave Felicity a kick. “Mornin’.”

  Felicity sat up and looked around their bedroom as though she were still inside a dream. She slid off the bed and walked to the pot in the corner, pushed down her long johns, gathered her nightie into her lap and sat down. Alice, who had already used the pot two or three times through the long night, knelt on the floor in front of Felicity. “I’ve got a real good idea,” she said.

  Felicity frowned, her dark hair hanging like a tent from her middle part down over her shoulders. Alice handed her a page from the catalog, farm machinery, and clanked the lid on the pot for her. “We’ve got to do something this morning.”

  “Before school?” Felicity pulled her nightie over her head and unhooked her school dress from the back of the door. Alice did the same and started buttoning up Felicity although she herself usually got buttoned up first.

  “How about you and me taking Lillian Gish to Mr. Brandt?” Alice asked Felicity’s back. “I will tie a rope around her neck to lead her, but she might get afraid and run off if an automobile backfires. She needs us beside her, so she feels like we’re taking a walk as usual.”

  Felicity whipped around. “Not sell her? You can’t.”

  Tears stung Alice’s eyes. “We need money for that box.” She twisted Felicity back around and continued buttoning.

  Speaking over her shoulder, Felicity said, “No, Alice, Mother wouldn’t want you to do this. Lillian Gish is too young to sell. You can get a lot more for her in a couple of years.”

  “If Mother doesn’t have china to paint—”

  “Don’t think about that. Lillian is your pet. Besides, we were gonna have bacon after she got big.”

  “I don’t want bacon. The postman comes at three o’clock. Are you coming with me or not?”

  “And miss school?”

  “I can. No one will care.”

  “They’ll send the truant officer.”

  “Don’t be silly. They’ll just think I have a cough. I’m doing this. I don’t care what you say. It’s my pig.”

  “You can’t go by yourself.”

  *

  Alice kept her left hand laid gently between Lillian Gish’s ears and held the rope across in her right hand. Felicity walked on the left. Alice watched the toes of her shoes walk along the road. They passed Mrs. Waggonard’s house, and the dairy farm’s pastures and all the long stretches of field waiting for spring.

  Felicity kept looking behind them. “What if the truant officer comes?”

  “Don’t say that again!” Alice cried. She could already see Mr. Brandt’s windmill and his silo and now the roof of his barn coming fast over the rise. Her heart pounded.

  “Mother wouldn’t want you to do this.”

  Alice didn’t answer back this time. In the muddy barnyard she saw Mr. Brandt with his big bucket, dumping corn into a trough where dozens of pigs grunted and snorted and pushed against each other to get to their breakfast. Alice felt sick. She’d taken Lillian Gish her own mush this morning and tried to explain everything, but Mother had called her to come get her books, and she hadn’t said it right—how happy Lillian Gish would be back with her sisters on a real farm. But now she saw the rude hogs didn’t care about each other.

  “Good mornin’, girls. You taking the pig to school?”

  “No sir,” Alice said. Felicity had stopped back at the gate and just stood watching now.

  “So?” Mr. Brandt said, and Alice could tell he was mad they weren’t in school. She looked back for help, but Felicity was getting red in the face. “Go on then,” Mr. Brandt said. “I’ve got another hundert hogs to feed.”

  “I need to sell her,” Alice whispered and stepped away from her pig.

  “Dat skinny shoat? Naw. You got to wait two years.”

  “She’s very clean and nice.”

  “You’re not old enough to sell a pig.”

  “You said I was a big girl when I bought her with my prize money.”

  Mr. Brandt pushed back his hat showing his white forehead.

  “My mother needs the money.”

  His face screwed up, all the sunburned furrows twisting around his angry mouth. Alice was shaking. Her shoes were sinking in the muddy barnyard. She couldn’t do this. Mr. Brandt’s pigs were just animals. She would take Lillia
n home where she was happy, but her feet were stuck, and her head was stuck too and couldn’t turn now to get help from Felicity.

  “Your ma can’t wait till it’s fattened?”

  “She needs the money this afternoon, please. Her heart is set on it.”

  Mr. Brandt looked even more angry and turned without speaking and headed back to the house.

  As soon as he put the money in Alice’s hand, Felicity turned and ran on down the road to school. Alice didn’t try to stop her. Felicity had been crying so hard, Alice knew she was worried about disappointing her teacher. But Alice couldn’t go to school yet. Her shoes were caked with smelly mud and felt terribly heavy. The wind swept up the grit from Mr. Brandt’s empty field and Alice covered her nose. She’d had dust pneumonia last summer when the sand storms made the sky dark. Mother and Daddy had carried a wet sheet between them through the house, each one holding high a corner. Like a pageant, room to room, they carried the sheet, but they stayed especially long in her room, letting the sheet ripple between them to collect the dust, cleaning the air, so she could breathe.

  She’d done the right thing to sell her pig, but she began to cry hard now, sobs shaking her chest and shoulders and pulling her face out of shape. The wind whipped every which way, and it took a long time for her to get back home. Mother wouldn’t want her to go to school, anyway, her stomach feeling so iffy.

  When she got to the house, Daddy was just opening the door to let in Mr. MacGaffin. Alice didn’t like him and dashed around back to find her mother to make sure she didn’t send back the box. She stopped at the corner of the house. Mother was in the side garden digging for potatoes.

  *

  Victoria had found only three, small potatoes, and she was surprised even to find these in this dirt she’d searched before. She sat back on her heels and looked at her dirty hands then out at the spindly rows of fruit trees she’d planted, still too young to bear. Sometimes, like now, when she was desperate for help, she thought of Hortense Winberg, a squarish woman on a cane, who had come to the ice cream social that day long ago to make her son’s case to Victoria Jenkins. Swinging majestically across the wide lawn, necklaces and lorgnette chain jingling, old world black dress and huge out-of-date pocketbook swaying with her old lady gait, she approached her milliner. Her son Karl, on the edge of the lawn had shyly lifted his hat to Victoria.

  “Darlink, Miss Jenkins, how is the judge’s daughter?” Mrs. Winberg puffed, always full of motherly concern. “Show me vich is yours.”

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. Winberg. I tried meringues this time,” she’d nodded to the table.

  “I will go before they are all wasted on the ruffians,” Mrs. Winberg said with a twinkle but did not start toward the desserts. “Your hat, as usual, is the best one. Shall I see if my Frieda likes?”

  “Oh, of course.” If she could sell the hat and the cake stand too, it would be a good week and this was only Sunday. She’d pay the bill at Sawyer’s and order some hat frames. She smiled at Mrs. Winberg.

  “Howdy,” Wendell had come up behind her. His collar button was undone and he smelled a little sweaty from grinding one of the ice cream churns.

  “Oh. Mrs. Winberg, have you met my brother, Wendell Jenkins?”

  “Ah, I see this fine young man at church.”

  “How’d ya do,” Wendell said and lifted his white straw. He turned to Victoria. “Vic, I saw— this morning I saw Father give—”

  “He gave me a nickel to go buy him a newspaper.”

  Wendell tipped his hat again and left. Victoria felt the heat of humiliation in her face. Why hadn’t she thought fast enough to send Wendell off on some errand, anything to postpone his pathetic begging until they were out of earshot of Mrs. Winberg? He was old enough to know better. Of course, he only wanted to have a root beer with the other boys, and she, the big sister should have had a nickel in her pocket, and now Mrs. Winberg, a good customer, knew she hadn’t even that.

  “Miss Jenkins,” Mrs. Winberg said, seeming to have taken no notice of her embarrassment. “I have a great favor to ask.”

  “Of course.” Ah well, even if the cake stand didn’t sell, this might be a good week.

  “I want you to walk with me around to Station Street.”

  “Now? Certainly.” She offered her arm to Mrs. Winberg who took a good grip on it, and they moved swaying through the crowd out into the road.

  “You have such good eyes, Miss Jenkins. Artist eyes. I want you to give me a frank opinion on a house.”

  There was only one house on Station Street they could be going to see. One of the oldest houses in Chisholm, it had once belonged to a doctor and had been standing empty for years. This house was so surrounded by overgrown evergreens, it had nearly vanished from sight of the street. The rumor was the price was too high, so after awhile the public had condemned the house as too dark for habitation.

  To Victoria’s surprise when they reached the house, Hortense Winberg pushed through the cedar bows, continued right up onto the porch and reached into her huge pocketbook to withdraw a key. As she worked the key in the old lock, she spoke as though the ideas were just coming to her. “This might make a nice house for Karl, you think?”

  “It’s awfully large,” Victoria murmured hoping they could turn back.

  “He needs his own house vonce he takes a vife. A new vife should have her own house. This is so, Miss Jenkins?”

  The lock was jammed.

  “Perhaps we should go,” Victoria said, but Mrs. Winberg kept twisting the key. Finally the lock relented and Mrs. Winberg burst into the front hall with a great Germanic, “Ach!” The air was musty, but not as bad as might be expected. The woman leaned on her cane and held out her free hand. “Such a vide hall. You wouldn’t expect.” Mrs. Winberg lumbered toward the back of the house. Victoria quietly closed the door and followed.

  The butler’s pantry and kitchen were large but smelled like an old well, and Mrs. Winberg, squinting and sniffing about in the dark green light looked like an underwater creature, bumping here and there, counting cupboards and drawers. “The moldy drain boards, ve don’t vorry. Replace mit soapstone.”

  Victoria followed her into the paneled dining room, trying to take as little interest as her natural curiosity would allow.

  “Now the parlor. This is why you are here. Its light. Almost none.” Mrs. Winberg stood in the dimness beside the beautiful carved mantelpiece, more grand than any Victoria had seen. “Up and down. Four sides of the property, those evergreens blocking. I vouldn’t vont people to laugh. Hortense Winberg valls up her boy on Station Street. You have alvays been my friend. Is dark?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Winberg, it’s dark.”

  “Ah, well. So ve look upstairs, while ve’re here.” And with great effort, Mrs. Winberg hoisted herself, step by step, up to view the four empty bedrooms on the second floor and then on up to see the three little ones on the third.

  “Ach, Miss Jenkins, let’s sit,” she puffed and almost fell into the window seat of a narrow front dormer. Victoria placed herself carefully upon a handy apple crate, the only loose object in the entire house. Though Mrs. Winberg made a sizable obstruction, the afternoon light streamed into the little room creating a silhouette at Victoria’s feet.

  “There’s a lot of light up here above the trees,” Victoria said, her first positive comment on the house other than her yes’s and no’s.

  “Oh, you noticed that, too?”

  How could she not notice the wonderful possibility here in contrast to a dim corner of the kitchen in which she sketched at home in the judge’s house. She could paint here in any weather instead of winters painting in her coat and gloves on the back porch.

  Mrs. Winberg tapped her finger against the windowpane. “Look, look, the social. We look over the mayor’s house.” Then abruptly she turned back to Victoria. “You know, Miss Jenkins, I married very late Mr. Winberg.”

  “Oh?”

  “When I was twenty-five my poppa gave up on me and sent me to c
are for his old aunt who was dying on a farm outside Munchen. Four years I stayed on that farm caring for that old lady, seeing all my dreams go up the chimney. At last she died and before I can even go back to my poppa, a boy on the next farm said to me, ‘Hortense, I’m going to America, go with me.’”

  Mrs. Winberg placed a hand on each great knee, and leaned toward Victoria. “Miss Jenkins, I never would do such a thing, but when I telegrammed to my poppa that his aunt had died, he did not come. He sent back telegram saying, ‘You bury her!’”

  The look on Mrs. Winberg’s face had changed; anger tightened the eyes and caused her jowls to shake. “He had told me this aunt vas his favorite, but now after I work four years, I discover this old lady vas nothing to him! Nothing! And I, her servant, vas less than nothing.” As suddenly as it had come, the tightness left Mrs. Winberg’s soft face and she said, “So I said yes to Mr. Winberg, and I haf a good life in America.”

  Hortense slapped her knees and leveled her gaze at her listener. Victoria felt herself sway on the apple crate. Mrs. Winberg was saying you too are old, left on the vine, as everyone knows. And there was no denying that she was now past thirty. But what was unbearable was to have it made clear that the whole town, even the immigrant baker’s widow, knew in what low esteem she was held by her father.

  She watched Mrs. Winberg’s eyebrows slant up in the middle of her forehead like little praying hands. All Victoria had to do right now to make this dear woman happy was show a little enthusiasm for this house—just suggest that lilac bushes could hold down a property line as well as a bunch of shaggy evergreens. But she must not raise any hopes, unless, perhaps—

  The glories of the house could not be denied. She should keep an open mind. And heaven knew it would be the right thing for poor Wendell whom Father squelched every day. If she married Karl Winberg, she’d always have change in her pocket for her younger brother. And Hortense Winberg would help her furnish the house. They’d do it together, making curtains, searching for second-hand pieces, and it would be so good to have this loving mother for herself. It was not the house on Station Street or being married or even the possibility at this late date that she might have children. What she craved was Hortense Winberg herself, not just to be a good customer, but to treat her as a mother would. Maybe a little bossy, very confident—Ve don’t vorry about the moldy drain boards—a woman who cared only for her children and had money to help them.