I meet her round the back door, and follow her silently to her room. She closes the door and helps me out of my coat.
She loans me nightclothes and tucks me into her bed. I pretend to fall asleep before she joins me. I don’t want to explain. Not tonight. Maybe not ever.
I lie awake for what feels longer than any of the days I spent inside my New Jersey classroom, listening to the strange clicks, creaks, and squeaks of the Abbott house. It’s been forever since I slept next to Mary’s warm body, but the familiarity of her can’t dispel how out of place I feel.
Where do I want to be right now? Claverack? The old cabin? Across the room from Ethel? The trouble is, I don’t want to be in any of these places, including the one I’m in.
But I will go home. I have to. For her.
* * *
I wake while it’s still dark.
“Maggie?” Mary asks sleepily.
“Go back to sleep.”
She doesn’t listen, just climbs out of her warm bed and we dress together. She hands me a clean towel, and I wash my face with cold water from a basin on her dresser. I don’t bother with my braid.
She lets me out the same door I came in. “I’ll stop by tonight,” she says.
“No,” I tell her. “I’m fine.”
She doesn’t say anything, but I know she’ll be by tonight. I know my sister.
The walk down the hill wakes me up. The door is unlocked. I’m boiling the water for coffee before anyone is even out of bed.
He is the first one awake.
He stands in the kitchen behind me while I work. I know he is there. And he knows I know he is there. Yet we say nothing to each other. The door to the connection we shared has been closed for so long, and now, I have bolted it shut.
Rosemary and Rainwater
“More?”
It’s the first time she’s finished an entire bowl of broth since I’ve been home. A good sign.
“No, thank you,” she says, weakly, but not in a whisper. And not followed by a coughing fit.
I remove the bowl to the kitchen and put on the kettle.
It’s raining. The laundry is hung all over the tables and chairs around the house since there’s no little one to tug it down, as Mary has taken Arlington out for the day with the Abbotts’ youngest. Clio, Richard, and Ethel are at school, and Father and the boys are at the factory.
I bring her tea and sit down beside her.
“I’ve been invited up to Buffalo for Easter weekend by my friend Minerva from school,” I tell her. “I could attend the liturgy at St. Mary’s on Friday morning, and then take the noon train up. I’d be back on Sunday evening.” I know it will make her happy if I attend Good Friday service. “Mary said she could come Friday night through Saturday, and Nan from Saturday until I arrive home on Sunday.”
She pats my hand. “You should go.”
I’m glad she’s given me permission. I’ve been stuck in this house for almost a month. I need a couple of days away from here. Away from my father.
We sit together listening to the rain drum on the roof.
“Nice,” she says.
“It is, isn’t it?” I smile.
“Do you have the buckets out?” she asks.
“We have running water, Mother.”
“You know I like the rainwater.”
I get up and collect a few buckets, and set them out the back door. She’s asleep when I return.
No matter, I have work to do.
It seems I’m forever either on my knees before a grate or leaning over the sink. I’m sweating like a blower dog by the time I’m finished turning the mattresses and making the beds. I come downstairs, put the kettle on again, and then check on my mother.
When I enter the room, she’s sitting up in bed with a bit of life in her green eyes.
“Hi,” I smile.
“Are the buckets full?”
“I’d completely forgotten about them. Let me check.”
The rain has been falling steadily all day and each of the buckets has a few inches in it. I report the amount to my mother.
“That’s enough,” she says. “Bring them in.”
“Am I to wash your hair?” I ask.
“I’m to wash yours,” she says.
I roll my eyes. But I haul in the buckets. There is nothing she asks of me I won’t do. I can’t stop the pain or the coughing or the course of this accursed disease, but I can fetch rainwater.
I pour all three buckets into the large cooking kettle and start to warm it on the cookstove. Then ready the porcelain basin, soap, and towels.
I hear the bed creak.
“Don’t get up, Mother. I’ll bring it to you.”
“I’m right here,” she says, scaring the wits out of me at the door to her bedroom.
I rush to her. She waves me away. “Let me be. Let me be. I’m fine.” Although the word fine barely makes it from her lips.
“Please,” I beg.
She inhales, but does not cough.
“At least sit.”
She listens.
Once the water is hot, I pour the basin full.
She gives me a look. I sigh. “All right, all right.” I remove my dress, unbraid my hair, and sit back at the table. She rolls up her sleeves.
The rain beats on the roof as she works the soap into my hair. “I love how soft the rainwater is,” she says, so quietly that I’m not exactly sure I didn’t hear it right through her fingertips.
My scalp tingles from her gentle scrubbing and my feet throb from being off them. The smell of rosemary surrounds me from a sprig she steeps in the hot rinsing water. The sleeve of her nightgown slips back and forth across my nose, and I can hear her gentle breathing as she works. I’m in the kitchen sitting at the marble-topped table, but I’m also drifting off. To the old bedroom in the cabin. On an imaginary day long ago—a day without croup. Without O’Donnells. I am lying comfortably warm in the bed beside her. Finally.
“I feel your protuberances,” she says, her words bringing me back to the table. I know what she’s doing. She wants me to forgive him. Like she has, all her life.
“What good are they?” I say, not looking at her . . . or for an answer.
“Margaret Louise,” she says. Just my name. As usual. But for the first time in my life, I’m not sure I understand its meaning.
A Beautiful March Morning
Friday comes and my mother insists she’s well enough for me to leave. Joseph, Ethel, and I corral the boys, including a complaining Clio, and head to St. Mary’s. The boys usually don’t attend Mass, but it’s Good Friday, and we can’t leave them at home with just my father to care for them. Joseph carries my suitcase. Thomas carries his fishing pole, as he is only tagging along until the turnoff for the brook.
At the last moment, I allow Clio, Arly, and Richard to go with Thomas. Why not?
I’m highly praised for my decision before the boys jog off, something I haven’t had from any of them . . . ever.
Joseph, Ethel, and I continue on for another few paces, but I can sense Joe’s desire to be with his brothers.
“Why don’t you go fish, Joe? I can carry this. It’s only got my nightclothes.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Not at all,” I tell him.
While Ethel and I watch him trot off, I spot a patch of pretty white trillium. I make a plan to return for the wildflowers on my way home on Sunday evening. Mother will love them.
It’s a beautiful March morning—the last day of the month. The sky is clear and blue. The air is light and not fogged over from the furnaces of the factory. It’s cool enough to make you feel happy to be out, but not in the least bit uncomfortable. It’s the kind of morning that has you looking forward to a hundred more just like it.
Nan, Ethel, and I sit in the back by the beautiful statue of Mary. Our Mary sits with the Abbotts up front, as usual. We will see her at the end of the service.
It’s my first time in St. Mary’s since I’ve returned to
Corning, and when I catch sight of Father Coghlan, I’m shocked at how much older he looks. Although I find his stamina for the service undeterred by the aging process, and thus have plenty of time to wander about in my head, as well as take in the familiar faces of Corning. I hate them all a little less this morning. Maybe it’s the beautiful weather, and summer on its way. And Nan sitting next to me, with Ethel on my other side. And that my brothers are fishing. And my hair smells of rosemary and rainwater.
* * *
It is folklore that a consumptive who survives through the month of March will go on to continue living. My mother dies on the thirty-first.
When Minerva meets me at the station, it is not to pick me up for a lovely weekend of planning our futures, but to return me to Corning with the horrible news. She had packed me dinner, bought my ticket, and placed me on the first train home with more hugs than I’d ever thought possible in an hour. Not that I felt any of them.
I had not been at my mother’s side, just like the day Richard was born. And just like that day, I would be the last one to her. I’d gotten on the train. Why had I gotten on the train?
On the ride west, I had daydreamed of returning to school and catching up with my classmates. Minerva’s letters had even spoken of the group of us heading to New York City after graduation and becoming nurses. It seems Esther’s mother has a contact.
On the ride east, I sit stiffly in my seat with a dinner on my lap and a suitcase by my side, feeling as though I exist out of time, and therefore, as if anything is possible . . . like finding out all this is a misunderstanding.
Thomas is waiting for me at the station, and the faraway look in his eyes tells me there’s been no mistake. We rattle through the streets of Corning, every clank and shout penetrating me like a dagger. The closer I get to her, the more deeply I feel every rut in the road.
Thomas drops me off in front of 308 East First Street for the second time in a month, and for a second time, I stumble through the gate and up the flags. Clio and Richard sit clumped together on the front steps, a dark heap of boys I barely glance at as I pass. Nan meets me at the front door. Always Nan. She takes my hand and leads me toward my mother’s room. My sisters have already laid out her body. Just as they had Henry’s. And on the very same bed.
It has happened. She has died. She is dead. Her body lies still on top of a perfectly made bed. Her hair is brushed and braided into a crown. She is wearing a dress I recognize only from seeing it folded up in her bureau. She is wearing her boots. They’ve been shined. The warm, wet messiness of life has been replaced by the cold, dry neatness of death.
Mary closes the door, closing the five of us in, and I go to my mother . . . grab her cold hand, but then drop it. Touching the dead is always a mistake. I hear Ethel sob behind me. My mind swims in the quiet of the room, and before I can stop myself, I think it. Did she love me? I wanted her to love me. More than anything. It’s normal to want your mother to love you. Everyone wants this. Everyone needs this. But is it normal to wonder if she had? Did most people just know the answer to this question? Maybe a mother said the words “I love you.” Maybe she’d thrown her arms around you, kissed your cheek. Maybe she had long conversations about her life. About yours. Maybe you just knew. And I didn’t. I didn’t know.
Margaret Louise, she’d said. With sadness. So much sadness.
Where It Ends
We bury her two days later. Inside the churchyard. My father says nothing about this decision, but stands crumpled beside us.
Afterward, wearing borrowed black dresses from the Abbotts, we serve an angel food cake Mary had baked for the parish bazaar to Father Coghlan and his assistant, the O’Donnells, and a host of hush-speaking women from church. So many people. So many dirty dishes.
That evening, Ethel and I stand shoulder to shoulder at the sink late into the night. The next morning, we pack up the dresses and say good-bye to Mary and Nan, as they need to return to their jobs. And just as if it were any other day—and strangely, it is—we prepare the lunches for work and school.
“Don’t worry about mine,” Ethel says.
“I’m making yours,” I tell her. “You should go.”
Ethel sits down at the marble-topped table, too tired to move, while I wrap up potato bread and cold ham. I want her to go. I want them all to go. I want to be alone here, at least alone with my own thoughts, as Arly is going nowhere.
Ethel staggers off to school with Clio and Richard, while Joseph and Thomas head out to the factory. Father remains in his chair, where he stays for weeks.
He is inconsolable. Although none of us try. Because there are groceries to buy, meals to prepare, boys to feed, trousers to mend, and laundry to wash. As there always is. And I throw myself into these things. Even going well beyond the usual cleaning by washing the windowpanes, dusting the mantel, greasing the knives, trimming the lamps, and polishing the silver.
I spend my days in the same filthy dress, my braid pinned up and under a scarf, for what feels like months. I don’t bother to wash, but simply sleep in my dirt. The more he sits with his face in his hands, the harder I work. I want someone to stop me. Someone to tell me to wash myself. To rest. Of course, no one does. So, I keep cleaning. Feeling empty inside. The lightness of it making it easier to whisk around the house.
He does not return to the factory. He makes camp in his chair. Irritable and demanding. Whatever I do, it can be done better. Ethel, as well. We work harder and harder, giving him more to complain about, more to criticize. We attempt to keep Clio, Richard, and Arlington away from him, sending them off to help Joseph, or on some errand . . . even early to bed.
We settle into our new life, Ethel and I a team—a tired and beaten team—and my father against us, growing stronger every day in his discontent. This is the way we mourn her. Through anger and despair.
Is there any other way?
* * *
When summer comes and school lets out, Ethel is home, and my team is fortified. We throw the boys out of doors every morning with Clio to watch out for his younger brothers. They often bring back a bucket of pike, or a few freshly killed hares, and I amaze myself at how easily I can now crack the legs of a rabbit and rip its skin from its back. When I describe these successes to Amelia, Esther, and Minnie through my letters, I can almost hear their horrified laughter through the post. Although when I describe my successes to Mary and Nan after Sunday Mass, Mary shrugs. “Anyone can skin a rabbit, Maggie.”
Minerva couldn’t. Ever.
“Allow her some pride in her work, Mary,” Nan says.
“I’ll be proud when she skins her first bear.” Mary snorts.
“Mary!” Nan gasps.
“She’s joking, Nan,” I say.
It’s been months since Mother died, and I haven’t missed a single Sunday . . . it’s the only time I’m able to visit with Mary and Nan.
In these small moments with my sisters we talk about cooking, the little dramas up the hill at the Abbott house, speculating on how John is getting along out west, or how annoying Clio can be. We never mention Mother. We never mention Father. And we never mention becoming actors or writers or doctors, or even speak the word “school.” Until Mary finally mentions it, but in context of Arlington, not me.
“I’ve registered Arly at St. Mary’s for the fall,” she says.
With this single line, I know. My education is over. This is it. This is as far as I go. And I should have known this already. Of course I should have known. I’m so angry at myself for not knowing. For not seeing.
“Where is Ethel?” I snap.
I need to leave. To be alone. Or at least to be with just Ethel, which is almost as if I’m alone, we’ve been together so long.
“She’s always running off somewhere these days, isn’t she,” laments Nan, without much thought.
Nan’s right. Ethel has been running off lately.
“Well, I’m finished waiting for her. Tell her I’ve left.”
Nan recognizes my anger . . .
my pain, and grabs my arm. But I can’t look at her. I remember her moment, on the way home from school, when she realized that was it. That was where it ended for her. Where it ends for every one of us. My mother, Mary, Nan, Emma . . . and now me. The moment we realize our life has become someone else’s laundry.
“Maggie,” she says.
“I have to go.”
This is my moment. And I want it alone. I squeeze Nan’s hand and walk off. She deserves at least this.
Neither of my sisters will chase me down, burst out in emotion, tell me I’ll make it, that I’ll become the doctor I’d always thought I’d be. There is no reason now, anyway. My only reason to study medicine is dead. We’d both lost our battles.
“Maggie!” Ethel calls.
At the sound of my little sister’s voice I stop and turn. I’m a couple of blocks ahead of her. I wait for her to catch up, thankful she’s here.
“Where were you?” I ask as we turn and continue walking.
“I’m seeing someone,” she says.
“What?” I say. “You’re only twelve.”
“I’m almost sixteen, Maggie.”
“Almost.”
“It’s Jack Byrne,” she reports.
I stop walking and stare at her. “Jack Byrne!”
“Oh, Maggie. You know it doesn’t matter whose name I say; you’re just horrified because he’s a Corning boy.”
The truth stings. I quickly bury it under further outrage. “But Jack Byrne? Ethel!”
“He’s got a nice . . . smile.”
I roll my eyes while I attempt to remember Jack Byrne’s “smile” from Mass. “What could you possibly talk about with that boy?”
“We don’t do much talking.” She laughs.
“Ethel!”
“Maggie, you’re behaving just as Nan would. I swear, I thought you’d be happy for me.”
“I am acting like Nan. And I am happy for you.” I smile.
“Oh my,” she says. “Now you’re not behaving like Maggie.”
We laugh, and she takes my arm and we start for home. Ethel and I, shoulder to shoulder, elbow to elbow. I sigh and lean in to her. If I am to be chained to Corning, I am chained in good company.
What Every Girl Should Know Page 16
