Anywhere But Here (44 page)

Jimmy found Gram leaning over unconscious against the counter with the radio still on. I guess she stood up and went closer to the radio, probably thinking the same thing, Could this really be our Hal? But they gave the address and all. Hal Measey of Oneida Parkway, son of James and Carol Measey, Rural Route #1, Lime Kiln Road.

So we had my mom in the hospital, we didn’t know if she was
going to make it, we had Hal in jail with a twenty-thousand-dollar bail. And we had to get a lawyer. Well, we mortgaged the house. We did it that same day. Jimmy and I went home, it was three o’clock, we’d left Gram in the hospital, we’d locked the shop, and Jimmy called Shea on the phone. When he got off he looked at me and said, “Carol, we’re going to have to mortgage the house. That’s the only way we can get that kind of money.” I said, “Okay, Jimmy,” and we drove downtown to the bank and did it.

By the next day, everyone knew. The women neighbors came over to say they were sorry about Gram and could they help. They didn’t say a word about Hal. I’ll tell you, they were real funny. And when I think now how long we’d lived there—here we’d been twenty-one years already; they’d known Hal all his life, the way I’d known their kids. It wasn’t nice, Ann, it really wasn’t nice. They thought we were foolish to put up the house and to this day I think it’s the best thing we ever did. That’s what turned Hal around, that his father would do that for him.

Later, Hal found out Chummy across the street had called in to the police and said there was something going on over here and so they already had a record of complaints against him. That was when Jimmy and I went away for vacation, from the water softener bonuses. Hal and Merry and Ben would throw a party. Well, I suppose they were a little wild. I never knew because they always had it cleaned up nice by the time I got home. But Hal said he used to see Chummy standing over there at the window, watching, holding his curtain back with one hand. And can you imagine calling in to the police without ever once saying a word to Jimmy when we came home? And I’ll tell you, I remember when Chummy was in high school, he was one of those with the hot rods and the fast cars. He was a greaser. You wouldn’t know it now, but he went through a period when we were young.

And they all thought we were just crazy to mortgage the house. They said if he skipped town then there we’d be and we wouldn’t even have our house. But we didn’t think twice, we did it and Hal listened to the lawyer. It was someone who worked with Shea. The other boy in with Hal had the trial and he went to prison. He was in the penitentiary for five years. Hal pleaded guilty—the lawyer said
with that judge and a jury and here in Bay City, it just wasn’t going to go—but he didn’t tell on anybody else. He said he just wouldn’t do that because that was the thing that made him get caught. They sentenced him to two years in jail, nights and weekends. He had to check in by seven o’clock and they let him out the next morning to go to work.

And that’s when he and Jimmy started to get closer again, because of course, Fort Adams fired Hal when it all came out, and in order to make it so he could leave and work during the day, Jimmy said he’d give him a job at the store. That was around when we were getting out of the water softeners and getting into the pressure cleaners. So Jimmy gave Hal all the soaps. He sold the soaps. And it was a step up for him, I think. He was off the drugs and he had a job again. Merry used to bring Tina in at lunch and they’d sit in the back there and eat. I have to say, she was good. A lot of women would have just let him be, but I suppose she was in on the drugs, too. At least she knew about it. I told them a couple times, I’d give them money so they could go across the street and eat lunch at the Big Boy—he worked so hard all day, he really did—but they didn’t want to. They just stayed in that little back room. I suppose they were so down in the dumps they didn’t want to see anybody. She’d either pack a lunch or stop at McDonald’s and bring them all burgers. So at least he saw Tina every day.

I wasn’t at the store too much then because I was taking care of Gram. She came home from the hospital and she wasn’t so good. She didn’t lose anything, she remembered and she was just like herself, but she shook. She cried more. But that first one wasn’t too bad.

And you know, even then, she was just so pretty. You weren’t born yet when my dad was alive, but then she was really something. How can I describe her? I don’t know, except to tell you that we all knew. It was like a fact of the world and it made a difference. When she came into a room or stepped out onto the porch, you felt special, like something was going on there. And I’ll tell you, Ann, I don’t know what it is, but we’re getting smaller. Granny was a big tall woman with enormous breasts and hips. Her bust was a size D. And Mom was tall too, thin but tall. She was the same size as Dad. That’s why, when he died, she could just wear his clothes. You know, around the
house. And I’ll tell you, even in his old overalls that he used to wear out to the mink, she’d be on her knees in the garden, wearing those and an old old shirt and her hair braided and pinned up in the back—and even like that she was beautiful. She was weeding like that once, after the stroke, and the meter reader asked her out on a date. Well, Adele and I were each pretty, I think, but we weren’t either of us what you’d really call beautiful. And we are both smaller. I’m five foot four, she’s only an inch or so taller. And even before the mastectomy, I had no bust, really. And you, you’re the shortest yet, smaller than both your parents. And a figure almost like a boy. Maybe that’s because your mom didn’t have enough to eat when she was carrying you. I remember they had you in an incubator. But still your Granny was so tall.

We really weren’t friendly with them across the street for a long time. And then later, we found out when Dicky and Ralph came back from the service—Jay didn’t go to Vietnam, the war was over by then, he was too young—they brought back dope and they got Chummy to try it once when they were all up north camping. I thought that was something, too. But I suppose that was the difference those five years made. And who knows what we would have thought if it had been one of their boys, or one of Griling’s, instead of ours, who was in the trouble?

Now Hal says he’s glad he didn’t go to Vietnam. It’s the boys who went who are sorry. He still knows quite a few of them, Brozeks, too, they’re pals now, and he and Merry both knew one who died. And they all say that none of the ones who went came back the way they were before.

We got through. Even that first stroke of Gram’s, it sort of all happened and we got over it. It wasn’t so bad after the shock. We still had plenty of good times after that. That’s when my mom and I got close. That’s when I really got to know her and like her as a friend. We used to take a day and drive up to Door County and go in all those little stores. Jimmy doesn’t really like to do that. Most men don’t. And then we talked more like sisters. The age difference wasn’t so much anymore.

And Hal changed. He really did. He grew up. He’s real thin now, he runs. I tell him he looks better than he did ten years ago. I was sorry after all they’d been through together that he and Merry couldn’t make a go of it. And of course, you’re always sorry for Tina’s sake. But a lot of other kids are in the same boat, even at Saint Phillip’s, and some a lot worse off than she is. She has two parents who really love her and she knows it. And they still get along. Merry’s real cute now. She works in town at Echeverry’s. She’s got her hair real short. And the way Hal looks at her, I think he still likes her. But she’s got someone else. She remarried. And when that Bob, he’s the new one, was out of work, Hal gave him cleaning jobs out of the store; he did that until he found something permanent. I see Merry a couple times a year. She comes when we have a party or to pick Tina up. And I like her now.

All those things changed and I was sorry at the time, but I changed too, and it worked out better than I thought. I had a lot of nice times with my mother after her first stroke, we still had lot of laughs. Hal used to say we were terrible parents, oh he said awful mean mean things when we fought, but he’s taken that back. I think he’s a real good person now. I’m glad to have him around here. I guess you can forgive just about anything, if you’re still nearby, you know.

But with Benny it is just the opposite. It never changed or went away. It’s like a stone. It’s been years now and it’s still there. Now, it’s almost like it always was. Some things you never do get over.

ANN

10
HOME

O
nce, a long time ago, we had a home, too. It was a plain white house in the country, with a long driveway, dark hedges rising on either side of it. Years before, my thin grandfather, who wore glasses, a white shirt and suspenders in each of his photographs, had built the wooden house for his family. In the photographs, his mouth is delicate and nervous, framed by deep lines, like his wife’s. In summer, they put up green and white striped awnings on all the windows. I can imagine him standing on a clean ladder, my grandmother below in a blue dress, holding the two legs firm, while his white shirt billowed and filled with wind.

My mother and I lived in the house on Lime Kiln Road until I was nine, when she married Ted, the ice skating pro. The years I grew up there, I spent time outside, hidden, where no one could see me, trying to talk to the trees. It seemed then that the land around our house was more than owned, it was the particular place we were meant to be. Sometimes I thought we would stay there forever, that all the sounds of the yard would teach us about the world. But the trees never answered.

My mother had been born there, on an old kitchen table, but she saw it as an ordinary house on a dusty dead-end road off the highway, with a tavern on one side and the Land Bank on the other. It was out of the way, surrounded by unused land. She thought it was chance, bad luck that brought us here. She always meant to move.

For a while though, we rested. We lived with my grandmother.

One afternoon, like so many others, my mother and I lay together on our backs. The room was warm and swimming with light. I propped myself up on an elbow, watching her because I wasn’t tired. It took willpower for me to keep still. A smile formed slowly on her face until she was asleep and it seemed as unconscious and without meaning as a dolphin’s smile. I knew I shouldn’t wake her so I just waited, watching for her to blink her eyes open and remember me again.