None of the other kids seem to pick up on what is going on. I just follow my separate path, and try not to call any attention to myself. From the discussions, I learn about the struggles of a Chinese peasant farmer in a time of change. At the same time, I am allowed to venture into the realm of the short story. I read Jack London’s “To Build a Fire,” Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game,” Willa Cather’s “Paul’s Case,” O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi,” Henry Sydnor Harrison’s “Miss Hinch,” and Saki’s “The Open Window.” Here, linguistic elements—like the delicate escapement of a watch—engage, release, engage, release, carrying the reader forward at a measured pace. Tick, tock, tick, tock. These writers, like master watchmakers, have perfected their skills, and are meticulous in executing them. Rather than grinding and shaping and turning stainless steel, gold plate, gold, and platinum to produce elegant timepieces, these writers place, arrange, rearrange, conjugate, manipulate, craft, and polish language to create jewels of irony, intrigue, and humor. Like mainsprings, their narratives unwind, pulsing with flashes of setting, wisps of unforgettable character, quick-moving twists of plot, heart-opening epiphanies. The mechanism of the short story is as satisfying for me as the precision of a watch is for Daddy.
To catch the high school bus, we have to walk seven-tenths of a mile to the nearest intersection. Following behind Spence on the road’s narrow shoulder, trying to keep up with his long strides, I glance at the new tribe of children, elementary school kids from the modern suburban houses, gathered at the end of the communal driveway for Cory’s Ridge, waiting for their school bus—kids dressed, every day, in the latest styles that Spence and I could never afford to wear, not even on Sunday. Blithely, these children swing shiny new lunchboxes; the boys indulge in lighthearted tussling; the little girls trade self-satisfied giggles.
One of the older girls calls out to me, “Hey, you! Is your house haunted?” I try to be a brave soldier. I just keep on walking.
As I hurry past, I overhear her tell another little girl, “My mother thinks her house is an eyesore. It ought to be torn down.” I just keep on walking.
Sometimes, the Cory’s Ridge kids poke fun at Daddy. They think he’s my grandfather. When I tell them he’s my father, a little redheaded boy pipes up, “You’re a liar. My parents say he’s too old be your father.” I try to shut my ears, go inside myself, and just keep on walking.
One of the friendlier mothers stops by Daddy’s workshop to ooh and aah over his craftsmanship—his inlaid lamps and wooden plates and jewelry boxes—but she isn’t willing to pay for the time and effort he put into them.
A year of un-ironed clothes, burnt bacon, and too many macaroni and cheese suppers passes. I find out the hard way, in winter, that if you hang wet clothes on the line when the temperature goes down below freezing, the clothes will freeze solid—so solid that a pair of pants can stand up on its own—and you will have to thaw them out on the radiators. Gradually, as spring and summer come and go, I learn to do the things Jimmie didn’t have time to teach me—cooking ham, potatoes, and string beans in a pressure cooker without having the top blow off; spritzing clothes with water to make them easier to iron; separating colors from whites in the washing machine so Spence doesn’t wind up with pink underpants.
Daddy’s most reliable source of income has always been making cams for the gas and electric company. When the order comes in, he gets to work on the special machine he invented. He turns the cams, makes the brass bushings, and gets Spence or me to help him operate the small mechanical presser that pushes the bushings into the centers of the cams. Daddy makes us wash our hands after handling the freshly worked brass. He says it’s toxic. Spence just runs a little water over his hands and wipes them on his pants, but I want to be safe. I do what Daddy does after handling the bushings. I wash and scrub, really scrub, my hands and under my fingernails, over and over again with Daddy’s Boraxo powdered hand soap.
Daddy inspects each cam to make sure it is perfect, and that the bushing is flush with the cam’s surface; but this year, something goes wrong, and Daddy gets the cams sent back to him in the mail. The enclosed letter says the cams are “eccentric,” and that the gas and electric company will be doing their business elsewhere in the future.
Daddy’s hand shakes as he holds out the rejection letter. Then he goes off by himself to work on something else in his woodshop. A half hour later, he comes rushing back inside, his finger bleeding. “Get me a Band-Aid, Lissa! I’ve cut myself.”
I wash his hand in the kitchen sink and watch the diluted blood run down the drain. It’s not a bad cut. I’ve seen Daddy cut his hand many times before. It’s part of the kind of work he does. But this time, Daddy looks forlorn and bewildered in a way I’ve never seen him before.
Daddy says we need to “economize.” He has us turn off any lights we’re not using to save electricity; he turns the thermostat back to conserve fuel oil; we chink the cracks in the downstairs doors and windows with folded newspaper. When wind blows through the newspaper, it fills the house with an eerie whistling. At least we have the storm windows upstairs that Jimmie got Uncle Frantz to install about a month before she died. Daddy teaches us to warm ourselves on cold winter evenings by jumping up and down and slapping ourselves. “Keeps the circulation going,” he tells us.
Daddy starts to worry again about keeping up with the property taxes and taking care of Spence and me. Finally, on the first warm day, he swallows his pride, overcomes his shyness, and walks from door to door, carrying a clock he made years ago, a clock shaped like a French cathedral. Its walls and flying buttresses are varnished mahogany, its spires intricately carved on the jigsaw.
I can see how hard this is for him. In preparation, he puts on his only suit, his blue wool wedding suit—now frayed, shiny, and crusted black at the wrists and elbows. He has shrunk over the years, so the suit is way too big for him. The pants droop, and the hems drag on the floor at the backs of his shoe heels.
At the bathroom sink, he shaves, practices smiling at the mirror with his lips pressed together so as not to show his yellowed, rotting teeth. He ties on his best red-striped silk tie, which has a grease stain near the bottom. He dons his downtown fedora, sets the brim just so, and walks door to door.
He tries to get one of the new homeowners to buy the cathedral clock, or perhaps place an order for another of his wooden “creations.” He pulls from his pocket photos he’s taken of his inlaid plates and jewelry boxes, a lighthouse lamp, a wooden cigarette box—pull one of the four plastic knobs at the front of the box, and out comes a cigarette from one of four holes.
Word gets back to me at church that some of our new neighbors are complaining at the bank and at Sweeney’s store about an unkempt old peddler. One of the kids brags that his father, who is a lawyer, might just have the old man prosecuted for soliciting.
School starts again. Spence and I are both in high school. I’m in junior high (ninth grade); Spence is in senior high (eleventh grade). Negotiating high school without a mother is tricky for Spence and me. Daddy keeps insisting that we need to economize. He buys us a seven-piece haircut kit at the local five-and-dime—an electric clipper, barber scissors, comb, and four comb-like attachments to vary the length of the cut.
Spence is definitely in need of a haircut. His hair, black like Jimmie’s but straight like Daddy’s, is thick and unruly. It has grown over his ears and way too far down his neck.
I get Spence to straddle a backward-turned kitchen chair. Then I tie a bathroom towel around his neck, drape it down his shirtfront, and attempt my first haircut. Standing and facing my unsuspecting victim, I snap on the clipper’s longest attachment (to be on the safe side), and switch on our new money-saving gadget. At first, Spence sits patiently, lightly grasping the chair back in front of him, as I propel the first cuts from front to back. Moving around the chair, I sheer up the right side, up the back side, then up the left side, comb out the entire head of hair, and inspect my work. Then I hand Spence the or
nate handheld mirror, retrieved from Jimmie’s old vanity set. “What do you think?”
“It looks the same to me. Did you cut anything off?”
“Sure. Look at the floor. There’s a pile of your hair.”
“Well, maybe cut a little more off.”
“Okay.” This time, I go to town with the medium-length attachment, gaining confidence and enthusiasm. “I think I need to taper it some.” I apply the shortest attachment, then take that off to achieve an even shorter, razored layer at the neckline. I finish up by adding a few creative clips directly with the barber scissors.
“Ow!” Spence jumps. “You cut me.”
“Just a little nick. Sit still, you’re making me cut steps in your hair. Now I have to even it out.”
But the more I try to fix the mis-cut hair and even it out, the worse it gets. I have to admit that the next day, Spence is pretty good about going to school with hair that looks as if it had been chewed on by a dog with dull teeth. Before we set out on our walk to the bus stop, he does a quick comb-over to cover some of the rough spots. Of course, he can’t see all the jagged chops and bald spots in the back the way I can when I walk behind him to the school bus.
I seem to live in a world apart from my high school classmates—an old-fashioned world that adheres to Daddy’s rules. No bathing or shampooing in cold weather—it would, according to Daddy, give me a catarrh. Daddy doesn’t want me to wear makeup or shave my legs. According to Daddy, those are not things that ladies do.
“You must always be a lady, Lissa,” Daddy says. “Not like those women who primp and preen and try to get men to fight over them like those saloon girls on the TV.” Daddy gets upset when he sees cowboys getting into a fistfight over one of Miss Kitty’s girls at the Long Branch Saloon on Gunsmoke.
I’m not allowed to go to school dances or participate in after-school activities. Because he’s a boy, Spence does get to spend the night at his friend Mark’s house sometimes. But I’m a girl, and according to Daddy, girls are supposed to stay at home, especially at night, and be protected.
“You need to stay home and take care of me,” Daddy tells me.
I still do have my one friend at school: my best friend, Paloma. We are still in most of the same classes. More and more, she sees how shy I am, how serious, how I have to deal with lots of things most of the other kids in our class don’t even think about.
Paloma decides I need to get out more. She invites me to spend the night at her house.
“I don’t think my father will let me do that,” I tell her.
“Where do you live?” she asks me. “What’s your address? I think my mom would like to meet your dad.”
I tell Paloma my address, and the next weekend, she and her mom pull up in our driveway in her mom’s Volkswagen bus. Paloma’s mom has brought my daddy a knife with a broken handle to repair. She’s very polite to Daddy, and she smiles a lot. Daddy warms up to her right away. He even shows her around his woodshop.
“I sure do admire your craftsmanship, Mr. Power,” she says. “My dad was a cabinetmaker, so I can appreciate the skill and care you put into your work. And, you know, Paloma just can’t say enough good things about Lissa.”
“Lissa is my best friend,” Paloma tells Daddy. Her words come out, as usual, in a rapid burst of feeling. “Lissa has a brain, and she’s a good listener, and she doesn’t fit in with the other girls any more than I do.”
“Well, any friend of my little girl is a friend of mine,” Daddy says, and he shakes Paloma’s hand.
After that, Daddy surprises Paloma’s mom by making her a whole new rosewood knife handle. He winds up letting me spend the weekend at Paloma’s, and her mom kind of takes me under her wing.
Paloma’s father is a professor and researcher at Johns Hopkins, and her mother comes from an old Ruxton family. Paloma lives with her parents and siblings on a big horse farm in the northern part of the county, not too far from where I live. We have dinner at a long table. It’s very formal and elegant. The china has gold trim, and there are more forks and knives and spoons than I know what to do with. Paloma’s older sister, Phoebe, sits across from me and just stares at me as I fumble with the silverware. Paloma’s father presides at the head of the table, dominating the conversation, booming out strong opinions, telling razor-edged jokes that I don’t get, laughing harshly and raising his eyebrows at the punchlines. With dessert, Paloma’s mom distributes fingerbowls, and Paloma has to show me how to use them.
After dinner, Paloma’s mom clears the table, Phoebe goes off to her room to do homework, and Paloma and I follow her dad into the living room. Here, the walls are lined with bookcases, and a baby grand piano dominates one corner of the room. There’s no TV. Paloma tells me later that they don’t own a television. “Dad says only idiots watch TV!”
“Paloma tells me you play the piano,” her dad says to me. “Play something for us.”
I’m only just learning, and I don’t really want to perform in front of Paloma’s dad, but he insists. I play Beethoven’s Für Elise, the only thing I know from memory. Paloma’s dad is standing right behind me, so close I can feel him breathing and smell the smoke that’s coming off his pipe. He is a huge presence, and seems to give off some kind of menacing power there behind me. I’m so nervous, I lose my place, but I keep repeating the opening passage until I find my way forward, and finish with a strong chord.
“Not bad,” he says, between puffs at his pipe. “Do you play chess?”
“Well, my brother taught me how to move the pieces.”
“Fantastic!” He sets up a chessboard at a small round table. “Here. You can challenge Paloma.” Paloma’s dad hides a pawn in each hand and holds out his fists to me. “Pick one.” I tap his right hand, and he opens it to reveal a white pawn. That means I get white, and get to move first.
I don’t really want to challenge Paloma, but there’s no escaping her father’s wishes here. He towers over us, breathing heavily, watching each move. I don’t know what I’m doing. I just start playing. After a few moves, I look up at Paloma. Her face is flushed, her lips pressed so tightly together they are white, her chin clenched in a knot. I realize that Paloma is scared. The one who always stands up to everyone at school is scared of her own father!
“I don’t want to play anymore,” I say, and lay my king on its side.
“You can’t resign,” Paloma’s dad growls. “You were winning!” Paloma bursts into tears and runs out of the room. Her father doesn’t say anything. He just folds his arms across his chest and watches her leave. He has a funny kind of crooked smile on his face.
I follow Paloma up to her bedroom and hug her. “I wasn’t winning, Paloma. I didn’t even know what I was doing.”
“I know,” she says. She tugs on my pigtails, and her sobs start to subside. “My dad is very competitive with me. He loves to see me lose. He tells me I’m clumsy and ugly and stupid. And did you notice? He had a white pawn in both hands. He rigged it so you would have the advantage.”
“Oh, no!” I say. “I’m so sorry, Paloma.”
“It’s not your fault, Lissa. You just don’t know how lucky you are to have a dad who loves you.”
On Saturday, Paloma lets me get on one of her horses—a nervous young thoroughbred filly. “She’ll let you mount her. You’re skinny and light like a jockey. That’s what she’s used to.” Paloma gives me a boost into the saddle. I’ve never been on a horse before. I didn’t realize how high up they are. I don’t really know how to ride, so I get off after a few minutes. “Next time you come over, I’ll teach you how to ride. You look good up there, Lissa!”
After that weekend, Paloma and I start to talk for hours on the phone.
Daddy just teases me and says, “You teenagers. Always on the phone. Just like Penny Pringle in the funny papers.”
CHAPTER NINE
UNWITTING VICTIMS OF FALLEN ANGEL SWAMP
DADDY and I spend a lot of time together in the evenings, now, after supper. We both miss Jimmie.
To escape the sadness, Daddy tells me stories about his childhood in Southern Maryland.
Tonight, I start by saying, “Tell me what it was like when you were a little boy, Daddy.” And he goes on to tell me about a time when there were no cars, no electric lights, a time when folks moved more slowly, with the rhythm of nature. A much quieter time, but not an idyllic one.
“You remember me telling you about my Cousin Urchie, Lissa?”
I nod, and he continues.
“Many generations ago, my cousin Urchie’s family settled on a small parcel of land in what the locals called Fallen Angel Swamp, a wetland in the Potomac River Basin that ran the length of Charles County, more than twenty miles along a braided stream, and eventually emptied into the Loco Moco River. Even though their property—a mosquito-laden strip of land rising only a few feet above the wetland—was not much good for farming, it belonged to Urchie’s family, free and clear—or so they thought.
“And so, generation after generation, Urchie’s progenitors were born breathing the fetid swamp gasses. Some died in childhood. Some lived long enough to reproduce. Some died giving birth. Eventually, all of them fell mysteriously and terribly ill, and died.
“Now, while the local doctor—who was not much more than a pill peddler—dispensed his new-fangled patent medicines, the swamp kept on nurturing hordes of mosquitoes. And they went about breeding and biting and spreading an inventory of diseases as long as your arm. Fouled, stagnant water. No electricity. No indoor plumbing. All this worked in cahoots with people’s ignorance of the simplest tenets of sanitation and personal hygiene to unleash furious demons. Cholera. Dysentery.
At the Far End of Nowhere Page 11
