The Hollow Ground: A Novel (25 page)

We’d hear about Mrs. Hoppe’s or Mrs. Straumonger’s or Mr. Kryzak’s homes that had been in their families for generations and had been built by ancestors who’d come to Barrendale to help dig the canal. And of course we’d always hear from Mrs. Schwackhammer, who’d quietly weep over losing the house her Otto had lived and died in.

One time even Daddy sat in on a meeting. It was a Saturday afternoon. He was up earlier than he usually was and dressed as nicely as he had been on the Saturday Gram accused him of running around. Gram looked at him and managed to smother a flinch of surprise. Her shoulder merely twitched. Daddy didn’t seem to notice or care. He talked with Mr. Wurm about the cost of the dig out and the possibility of getting more federal funds and Gram and Mrs. Schwackhammer loudly debated the best ways to clean filth off furniture.

An explosion jittered the floorboards and put everyone in an upset. “They’re supposed to warn us when they blast, for God’s sake,” Miss Henley said, her voice as sour as the rhubarb pie she’d brought with her. “It’s a Saturday,” Mrs. Pasternak accused. “They’re not supposed to blast on Saturday.”

“That was so close it nearly shook the house off its foundation,” Mrs. Schwackhammer declared.

Gram pressed a hand to her chest and her face went as slack as Gramp’s had when he died.

“Gram!” I cried, rushing up to her. I put a hand on her hump and peered into her eyes, relieved to see the hazel of them was still clear and bright.

“I’m fine, girl,” she said. She stared up at the ceiling as if she was amazed by its off-whiteness. “You got a point, Edna Jane,” she said. “You got a point indeed. It did almost take the house off its foundation!”

She turned a daffy smile on Mrs. Schwackhammer and we all shifted around uncomfortably, afraid Gram had finally lost it. But then Gram made a grand gesture like she was Mr. Lawrence Welk himself conducting his orchestra and she started us off on a novena to Saint Jude, which sent all of us scrabbling for chairs and Daddy scrabbling for the door.

Gram waited for everyone to leave and for all the dishes to be washed and dried before telling me what had happened to her that evening.

“I had me a vision, girl,” she said. Gram spread her hands before her face as if the vision was coming into focus right there in the kitchen. “It came to me as soon as Edna said the house had almost shook off its foundation. I saw it all—the house up on one of them flatbed trucks movin’ down the street as smooth as if it glided on water. Must have been my guardian angel showin’ it to me.” Gram turned her head back toward her hump as if her guardian angel were right there casting the vision. “We can lift the whole house up, floors and all, right off the foundation and plunk it down on the property I got over on East Mountain. Alls we need is the land cleared! What’s to stop us?”

I was drinking a mug of hot bitter coffee, the like of which I’d taken to recently. I felt the burn of it down my throat and didn’t say anything. I imagined there was a lot to stop us.

“How could I not have thunk it before? Your ma livin’ under the same roof must have clouded my brain! What do you think, girl? What?”

Gram sat down across from me and looked me clean in the eyes, the way she hadn’t since Daddy spilled the beans on the way he’d got made. I put the mug down and felt my mouth twitch toward a smile.

“I think it’s great, Gram,” I said. “It’s a great idea.” And that’s what me and her came to call Gram’s plan to move the house, the Great Idea, and it wasn’t long before I believed as much as Gram did that she could pull it off.

Twenty-two

Once Gram had her Great Idea she spent all her time working on it. She switched her weekly shift at the mill to the early mornings so she could use afternoons to make phone calls and write letters to this or that office and agency requesting that she be allowed to move the house. Then she spent her evenings planning how to adapt the house for country living.

The first change she wanted to make was to turn the pantry into a mudroom and cut a back door in one of the walls. “We’ll get started straight off,” she said to me and when I balked that we could never do it, she said, “Who in heck you think closed in the porch? That was me and Frank done that and believe me
he
was the helper, not the other way ’round.” Then she drew one after another sketch of a possible mudroom explaining to me that any new construction had to fit in with what she termed the “architexture” of the house. “It’s got to
feel
right, girl. Know what I mean?”

You’d think having a vision sent by God would make her pray more but it didn’t. She prayed less and picked on Daddy hardly at all and it was almost as if Daddy needed Gram ragging on him because once she stopped, he stayed out later and drank more. Though we never talked about keeping the Great Idea a secret from him, both me and Gram did, on instinct I guess. Probably it was our newfound hope that blinded me a while to how much more Daddy was out, especially on the weekends, and how much care he was taking with his looks, making sure his hair was kept trim and his face shaved. More likely though, I just didn’t want to know what he was up to when he was away from the house, not until Marisol told me that she knew where he’d been.

We were in the playground of our new school. The week before a sinkhole had opened up in the playground of our old school in the fire zone, forcing the county to condemn it and the east side school to take all of us in. Marisol and me stood within a cluster of birch trees in the far corner of the playground, the only area that wasn’t packed full of kids. The school was so overcrowded from taking all of us that there wasn’t even room to play ball. We all just sort of milled around looking to get into or out of trouble.

“Bet your father doesn’t come home as often as he used to,” Marisol said. “That’s because he’s with that idiot everybody calls Star. She lives in my building. Every time I see them I laugh right in their face.”

Part of the playground fence was dented in like a car had rammed into it and I stared at that dent a while trying to take in what she’d said about Daddy and Star. Would she say something like that only to be mean? Cagily I said, “Just because your daddy had a girlfriend doesn’t mean mine does.”

“No,” Marisol said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that your father
does
have a girlfriend.”

“You know just because the Ouija spelled out Howley doesn’t mean anything,” I countered. “It could have been wrong or it could have been trying to tell us something else.” I did my best to glare at her, hearing the advice Ma had given me countless times—“Any lie can sound true so longs as you tell it right”—but then my gaze softened. “I’m sorry about your daddy. Real sorry. I don’t know what I’d do if I ever lost mine.”

But then the bell rang and Marisol walked away and continued ignoring me with the same vacant stare she’d been using on me for months.

Later that afternoon I found Star’s apartment by looking for the name Beatrice Kettering, Star’s real name, on the doorbells of Marisol’s building and for nearly a week I hung around outside her door. I’d sit in the hallway and do homework for a good hour or so at a time. Nobody seemed to care. Occasionally I’d get the nerve to put my ear to the keyhole, but I never heard much beside a radio playing rock ’n’ roll and once I heard Star on the phone saying, “You bring that up every time I call. I can’t change the past, Mama.”

Sometimes while I waited there in the dusky light of that hallway, I’d think of all the different ways Daddy had described the disaster to various journalists. I’d think of our long-ago “exploring walks” and the sweet way he’d talked about Uncle Frank and then I’d think of the bitter, ugly way he’d talked about Uncle Frank taking bribes and I started to think that maybe nothing Daddy said was true. Maybe he
had
stolen the money from Uncle Jerry and not taken it as a lend. Maybe Ma was right that surviving the disaster had put something mean and cruel in him. Maybe she was right to go away. Maybe she really had no other choice but to leave me behind.

And then on one of those days as I sat outside Star’s door the thing that I’d been dreading would happen happened. I heard Daddy’s joking voice, the loud somewhat gruff voice he used whenever he was teasing or telling jokes. My chest tightened as if my ribs were squeezing in on me. I pressed my ear to the door and stared down at the rhinestone clips on my shoes, the same clips Daddy had stolen more than a year ago when he was fired from Kreshner’s department store.

“I’ll start the shower,” Star said.

“Be there in a minute,” Daddy said. And then the apartment quieted and all I heard was the sound of running water. Slowly I turned the knob and pushed the door open. Slowly I stepped inside. The apartment was mostly just one large room with an unmade sofa bed at its center. Daddy’s shirt lay sprawled on the green carpet. His pants were neatly folded over a chair. A silky embroidered bathrobe had been cast off onto a pillow. On a side table draped over a tissue box was Star’s star pendant necklace.

There was a small kitchenette against the far wall and, in the corner, a partially closed door to the bathroom. I could hear their voices in and out over the fast, hard spray of the shower.

Star laughed a deep throaty laugh that gave way to a long throaty moan. I picked up the necklace, gripped it in both hands, and yanked with all my strength until the catch broke. Then I dumped it back on the table, my breathing coming in such gusty huffs I was afraid they’d hear me. Quickly I moved for the door but my foot caught on the sofa leg and one of my rhinestone clips snapped off. Looking down at that clip the idea just came to me to take off the other one and plunk them both down on the table next to the necklace. So that’s what I did. I put the clips next to the broken necklace and then I ran like hell from the room. I ran right out into the hall and down the stairs. But as I fled into the vestibule someone gripped my hair, pulling me up short. I hissed in pain, not wanting to scream and draw attention to myself.

It was old Mrs. Novak, the crazy lady, who said Gramp had killed her son. The shoulder of her dress was ripped and her brassiere strap showed. She let go of my hair. “What did your grandpa do to my boy?” she said. “You tell me, girl.”

“Your boy died jumping off a bridge,” I said. “My grandpa had nothing to do with it.” But in the hallway my words echoed with their untruth. After all it was Gramp blinding him in one eye that probably led him to want to kill himself and for all I knew Daddy had lied about Jack Novak jumping off that bridge.

Mrs. Novak clawed at a button on her dress. “Wasn’t just my boy he killed. Was that Billy Sullivan too. All because both them boys knew about the bribes that Frank Howley was taking. Wasn’t just my boy taking bribes. Was that Frank too.
He
let all them men die. Wasn’t just my boy.”

The old lady took a step toward me and I backed up to the wall. Her eyes had a suspicious cast to them as she turned her gaze to the stairs. “Bet that daddy of yours knew about the bribes them boys were taking. Wouldn’t put it past him to have killed my Jack neither. Them Howleys act like their own shit don’t stink, but it does. It does!”

“My grandpa and daddy didn’t do a thing,” I said weakly.

“Then this is for them not doing nothing,” she said and spit straight in my face.

I grunted like I’d been slapped and glanced down the hall, embarrassed someone might have seen.

“Now I’m all alone,” she said, “with not a soul to look out for me.”

Cautiously I circled around her to the front door.

“All alone, all alone,” she chanted as I opened the door and stepped out. Even once I was down the block I swore I could hear her singsong voice calling, “Not a soul, not a soul.”

Twenty-three

School ended abruptly due to the heat and Ma invited me to spend a week in Allentown. It was her and Brother who met me at the depot, and as soon as I stepped off the bus Brother hugged me hard and wouldn’t stop. Ma had to actually peel his arms from my waist.

“Where’s Daddy?” he said.

“He’ll be coming,” I said. “Eventually.” Then me and Ma looked away from each other but not before I saw a fleck or two of regret shimmering in the dark auburn of her eyes.

It was Sunday morning and we were all invited to a breakfast at Uncle Jerry and Aunt Janice’s church, but it wasn’t a Catholic one, it was Baptist. When I complained that we’d be sinning against God going to a Baptist church, Ma said “Church smurch,” and then she stood in the pew in her white gloves and her pretty blue pillbox hat, belting out songs, saying afterward as we all sat at a table in the church basement that any church that was her Bropey’s church was her church too.

Aunt Janice wiped at some egg at the corner of her mouth. “Just so long as you realize we don’t take any orders from the pope.”

“Shut up,” Uncle Jerry growled.

“I meant it as a joke, Jerome,” Aunt Janice said. Then she added, “It’s just so strange you’re Catholic, Dolores. That’s all I meant.”

Ma looked like her girdle had squeezed all the air out of her. Her mouth opened and her eyes bulged. Eventually she cleared her throat and her voice came out louder than it should. “Well, you got to remember Jerry ain’t really Baptist. He was brought up Catholic first. Ain’t his fault that bitch raised him Baptist after.”

Ma lifted her chin proudly and nodded at the nice-looking blond family who was seated farther down the table pretending they hadn’t heard what she said.

Aunt Janice’s face turned the same yellowish white as the eggs on her plate. Ma nodded at Uncle Jerry who kept busy shoveling food into his mouth. “You was just a little baby, Jerry, so how could you remember, but you was baptized Roman Catholic. One of my earliest memories is being by the fountain in the back of the church and both of us wailing. I guess I thought they was hurting you with the water the way you cried.”

Ma wiped at a smear of something on her white gloves. “You being baptized is probably the earliest memory I got and I read once in the
Reader’s Digest
that your earliest memory tells something.” Ma tapped at the lace trim of her collar. “It tells about who you are. Inside, I mean. I guess that memory tells how much you meant to me, right from the start. Before I even got took away.” Ma’s eyes opened wide as she stared at Uncle Jerry almost in wonder.