by Mona Simpson
Then, after that, every time anyone walked into the house, they had to see my picture. Why sure. I was big stuff then for a week or two. And that’s when they all got the idea that I was pretty. I was just a little runt before, but now they all thought I was swell. I could tell, because they treated me a little different. Even my mother, she was careful. She looked at me more. It made her think of me better. Everyone but Milton. It didn’t make one bit of difference to him, one way or the other. He didn’t care what I looked like.
But what I worried about was with Art. You know, at that age, you don’t think so much about your family. You think they’ll always be around and you can forget about them for a while. Art was the one I wanted to look at the picture. And he finally did. All that summer, I palled around with Art and his crowd of older kids. They were from big families most of them and they had to work—they picked strawberries for Swill, the nurseries could hire kids cheaper then than the migrants—and after their day, we’d all do something. They’d be tired from kneeling under that hot sun, so we’d just walk around town, maybe buy an ice cream if we had a little money. Then ice cream was more of a treat, they made it in molds, like cookies, so you’d get a new shape every time. A clover or a heart or a flower. And each one would be a different flavor.
And then on the weekends we had our real fun. We went swimming in the quarry or down by Baird’s Creek. We’d each take a sandwich and a towel and we’d wear our bathing suits under our dresses and hike out there. We hung our dresses on the branches alongside the creek. I loved to swim, that feeling of getting all wet and drying off so quick in the sun, and then sliding in again.
We could have gone on like that forever. We didn’t worry then, like kids do now. Both my daughters worried so much about themselves. More than I ever did. And the granddaughter is the worst, yes you are, it’s the thighs one week, and of course the breasts aren’t big enough, next thing you know, it’s the knees or the ankles. Pretty soon it’ll be the ear, you just wait.
We were too shy to think about our bodies. And we wore bathing suits that came almost to our knees, so you couldn’t see much anyway. I still have mine; it’s a blue with white buttons, I don’t know why I keep all such stuff.
And in the country, there where we were, it was quiet. Quieter than it is anywhere now. We didn’t have the cars and the trucks or the highways. Once in a very long while we’d hear a train go by and you’d stop whatever you were doing and listen because it was a change. It always seemed sort of sad, a train, but an everyday sadness. To me it did. It made you think of the things you didn’t know. Most of all day it was silent, except what noise we made ourselves, diving in the water, splashing. I remember lying flat on a rock for hours under a tree that would sway, just the littlest bit, in the breeze. We could have gone on like that for years, and it was my fault that we didn’t. That was my one big mistake, but what did I know?
For my seventeenth birthday, I made a big cake and we had a party. It was just girls, that was the way they did it, with ribbons hanging from the ceiling, and all the aunts came. My mother’s old steamer trunk sat in the front parlor, repapered inside, and they each brought something for me to take along to college. I’d already gotten in for the next year, at the Catholic college in Marquette, it was all set I was going to go.
I suppose I was so puffed up from the party and everyone giving me something that I said yes when I really shouldn’t have. When Art came that night and gave me his present—it was a black pin, I still have it—he asked would I go swimming with him the next day and I said yes.
And wouldn’t you know, sure, that was when it happened. He was young, too, just eighteen, he didn’t know any better. He’d never been alone with a girl before, except maybe his sisters. First we swam and then after, it was still morning, we were lying on that rock, under the tree. The way the branches moved, the air went on your skin like from a fan. All of a sudden he came and lay on top of me and I didn’t know what was what. All the time I was growing up, I thought a soul lay in your chest, I even thought I knew what it looked like. It was a wide, horizontal triangle like a yoke, made out of white fog, like clouds are. I thought married people had babies by somehow pressing their chests together so their souls touched. That’s how dumb I was. That was as much as I knew. I was pretty sure it had something to do with kissing, and so I was careful we didn’t kiss. I hadn’t really pictured more than that—but there it was, our chests felt real warm and pressed next to each other, so I could feel his sharp bones. It was uncomfortable, but not an altogether bad feeling either.
Then the other began. Neither of us said anything. I was afraid to move, I was ashamed of how much I didn’t know. That’s how dumb I was. And he was different, too, I was afraid of how his face looked, stern and sealed like a stranger’s, like a profile of a man you see a distance away, working up on a power line.
He started rubbing me all over and I knew you weren’t supposed to let them touch you. I didn’t know exactly why and to tell you the truth, I didn’t know how to stop it. Then he reached under my back and opened my swimsuit. Then all of a sudden, I was a little smarter, because I knew enough to know it shouldn’t go much below the waist. At first it didn’t. Then he reached down by my left leg and went up under the band around one thigh. It hurt, like something sharp, the edge of a thing. I kept hoping nothing more would happen. Then he pulled the suit down so above my waist was bare. Right away, I thought, all right, that’s done now, just as long as he doesn’t pull it down any further. I kept thinking like that, nervous, until it was all off. Then when he was right there, over me, I understood more. I cried a little, I suppose most people do, especially like me when they don’t know what’s coming and feel that first burning, oh it hurts, but then it went on and on and I closed my eyes and all I thought of was my mother.
I thought of her room. I could exactly picture the furniture. The high bed, square and neat, with the white chenille spread, the tassels just touching the floor, the mirror, the white bureau, the one fern and then the white curtains, blowing at her windows. I had gone into my mother’s room alone in the afternoon. The white walls had a bluish color, like light around an egg. I thought of my mother with my father in that room and the white cotton nightie she wore to bed and how she must have wanted to touch her soul to his and I tried to feel that way and be that way with Art, my chest pressed right under his, collapsing, so we could both feel the warm.
And that’s when I got pregnant with Carol, from that one time. We did have bad luck, that I’ll say. I had wanted it, though, I was thinking of it. Wanting it made the pain seem important, for that one second the whole thing seemed holy, like a sacrifice. Maybe you get pregnant easier when you think like that.
My mother and father sure weren’t happy. Oh, no. My mother had worked hard saving and fixing up my college trunk and she never liked Art so well anyway. She wanted Milton and I both to marry better families, families she knew. Cousins even.
I got married in a dark blue dress. My mother didn’t come, but I went home after, alone, she wouldn’t let him in the door again. She was just wearing a housedress. She was sweeping when I came in. I half kissed her, she moved her cheek away and for a long time I remembered her face inside the oval glass of the door. I felt my braid swish on my back as I walked down the path. She was watching me and I left that day. Art met me down the road. Art was scared too, but there we were married. We had no choice but to do it.
For him it was a kind of adventure. And he never did have to go to a war. He went and tried to enlist for the first one. They sent him back because he was too young. Then, by the second, he was too old already. I was born in May 1900, Art in 1899, so between us, one was always the age of the year. And he had an idea that we had more fun somehow because it was the beginning of a century. He told that to Adele once and oh, was she mad. We had the whole century in front of us. He always liked gadgets, balloons, fireworks, everything new. See, I didn’t learn all his crazy ideas till then when I was stuck with him.
We moved sixty miles to Bay City and at first we lived on top of a store. It was all new people. I wrote to my mother and dad, one letter a week for more than a year before she would even answer me. I don’t think she ever really forgave me. She had to some later, when she was sick and living with me. But she never liked Carol because of it. As if Carol could help what we did.
Then a year after we left, Milton ran away. That must have been hard on my mother. He went off to San Francisco to join the merchant marines. From what I heard after, we were the only ones in Malgoma who were the least bit surprised. And when I knew, it seemed right, it made sense. He had always wanted to get away. Even when he was a little, little boy and I had to watch him, he’d crawl off the blanket, under the fence, out of the yard, away from where he was supposed to stay.
Milton’s birthday is September first, the same as our Adele’s. And they are a lot alike, so I’ve often wondered if there isn’t something to that. There’s one such a one like Milton in every family. One who thinks he has to get away.
We lived above a little grocery store, which was a help to me with the baby. Art was gone all day and some at night, too, he was just starting up, trying to make a go of it, and he was still young enough to want some fun. So I took the baby downstairs and sat in the store with Mrs. Sheck. She knew babies, she had three schoolchildren of her own. She’d hold Carol, too, and we’d talk all day about babies, she’d show me one little product or another. We got through.
Art began as a photoengraver just when they were starting up the newspaper. He worked Sundays and all night sometimes to get it out when he was supposed to. I still have the first year of newspapers all bound up in such a book, this big. I should call the museum, see if they want the old thing. I just haven’t wanted to lug it out to the dump.
Then, when we’d saved a little money, after the first few years, we bought the land for this house. We rode all over, looking at land. I picked out this spot for the oak tree. I liked that big tree in the front yard. The land was cheap then and this was nowhere. We were the first on Lime Kiln Road. Art bought past where the barn is now and all the way down to the tracks.
“That swamp?” I said. “What are you ever going to do with that swamp?”
I should have kept my big mouth shut, because now that land is worth a lot of money. It was outside of the city limits, part of a new little town, Ashland they were calling it then. Art was already thinking he wanted enough land so when Carol grew up she could build and live here, too. He was hoping if we built a nice house, others who wanted to live in the country and were just getting a start would move out. He thought we could all pitch in and help with the work, women and men. The newspaper gave him his ideas. He started town meetings and they drew up a plan for every house to have sewer and water and electricity.
Then he got into the mink and was that a lot of work. He built that barn in back prettinear by himself. And they were temperamental, those mink. If you didn’t do every little thing just right, they could die and then you were out.
By that time, too, other people built on our road like Art wanted. Mack Griling moved in down where they are now and he built a house, and the Brozeks came across the road. They built a house and that little apartment above the garage, for her brother who was in the navy, for when he came home.
See, all the time Carol was growing up, we were so busy, thinking of other things, trying to make a go of it.
And we were still so young. Lot of other people our age didn’t have children. I made friends with the other mothers, though, even if they were older. Amber Brozek across the street—she had Chummy—and I was even friends with Mack’s first wife. Tinta was her name and ooh, was she a pack rat, every inch of that house was full of junk. And she painted paintings too yet, all of them landscapes from around here. So every little spot on the wall that wasn’t full already, she covered with one of her paintings. Some were so small like a postcard. That end of the road was never any good. I was sorry they moved there, I still am. Ugh, I didn’t like going with Carol into all that dust and dirt, you knew there were plenty of germs. I don’t think Tinta ever cleaned. And when she opened a drawer once, I saw she had her clothes all rolled up in little balls. But, still, she was a neighbor too, and we didn’t have very many. Amber and I went with our babies once a week or so for tea. We’d dress Carol and Chummy in their oldest clothes before we walked down and then, after, we’d let them play in the dirt. That’s when they made their mud pies. They loved that, sure. And then we plunked them right down in the tub.
Art hired two men to help him out with the mink. Only one was married, the other still lived at home. Art palled around with them, after work too. They used to go to the Morley Meyerson Building, it’s not there anymore, but it was one of the first old buildings, right along the river. They climbed up to the top, five stories, and they jumped off the roof into the Fox River. The Fox River was clear in those days, cold, but you could swim in it. The bay, too. People swam all over in summer. And they had the nice beaches. Now that’s all gone because of those darn paper mills. But they give the people the jobs, that’s the thing. I didn’t like to hear it, Art taking risks like that, five stories, and me with a daughter barely walking at home, but I knew he had to get it out of his system somehow, being young. And so I didn’t say anything. We wives didn’t say too much. I suppose he had to have his fun, too. He worked very hard for his money. And we were lucky. Lots weren’t as lucky as we were.
When my father died, we hired detectives to go find Milton. We had to hire detectives when Dad died and then again for my mother. They found him in a one-room over a tavern in San Francisco. The detectives had a picture we gave them and they said right away, coming off the ship, they knew it was Milton. He still had those yellow curls. But I hardly recognized him anymore, he changed so. He was a real solid man at the funeral, people looked and wondered, is that Milton? He had to borrow one of Art’s suits and it hardly fit him. He wasn’t thin anymore. But he did still have those curls. If we hadn’t found him and sent him money to come home, he never would have known his father was dead. He stayed for a while and worked on the mink farm, but that didn’t go. He didn’t like that. I suppose he’d been around the world prettinear by then, he’d seen all kinds of things. He was used to more excitement. And he drank. As soon as he had a little money saved up, he’d go blow it in the taverns. I remember once it was Thanksgiving. He had gone the night before, from tavern to tavern by taxi, and when we were just sitting down for Thanksgiving, he staggered up the road. He was shaking when he came in and he asked Carol to get him a glass full of whiskey. She was eight or nine then and she did it. She got him a water glass full and he just gulped it down. And the way he ate, he was a nervous person. He ate real fast and greedy. He never used to be like that. I suppose on the ship maybe they had to be. Then, after us, he went home to Malgoma and lived with Granny for a while and that was a disaster, too.
A year or so later, after he’d left again, he sent us a big coconut, with painting on it. That gave Art the idea for the Polynesian bar in the basement, oh ye gods. Yes, we have Milton to thank for that, the colored lights and all. The fish was our fault, that was from Florida. I wanted to go to Florida, and he caught it there and had it stuffed. And every once in a while, we got a postcard from Milton. I stopped reading them because I found out things I didn’t necessarily want to know. He went on about the Silver Slipper, oh, he ranted, he must have been drunk when he wrote some of those. I wouldn’t be the least surprised.
Carol was eleven years old by the time we had Adele. Everything was different by then. Adele was born in 1929, she was a child in the depression years, but she was too little to tell. By the time she was old enough to know anything, we had some money again. And she got plenty, much more than Carol.
Carol was like a little mother, such a help to me. Those years, for a long time, we had hamburger every night and we did all kinds of things with it, Hamburger Surprise, Hamburger Supreme, Hamburger Royale. We
mixed in potatoes and ketchup, different canned vegetables, anything to stretch out the meat. I still have that metal box of recipes we used then, things we cut from the paper.
Carol changed Adele and watched her, everything. Carol was always serious. I thought because we had her so young, she stayed afraid of things. I was afraid when I was pregnant with her. That Tinta said her mother took up mail-order watercolor lessons only once in her life, when she was pregnant with Tinta, and here Tinta turned out to be a painter! And I suppose, too, when Carol was little, she could tell how scared I felt. She always kept quiet, that didn’t worry me because I was like that, too, but really, I think she had a hard time of it. She was always short and dark, and then she would have Art’s big nose. Neither you or Adele have that nose but Carol sure enough got it.
And everything Carol didn’t get, Adele did. When I think of it it makes me mad. Because we were older then and then we really wanted a child. We were the right age then for one. And we had more money. Art never really took the time to spend with Carol when she was little, he was building up the business and those years we were so poor, scraping and saving, but later, when Adele was born, he could like a baby, he’d come in and play with her, oh, for hours. When she was still in diapers, he’d carry her out to see the mink.
And of course Adele would just be pretty. She always had blond, blond hair—she got that from my mother—and such perfect creamy skin. Just like Milton. She didn’t get the freckles until later. She’s the only one of all of us who got my mother’s long legs. And dimples. And so you can imagine she had the clothes and the kids over and the parties. Able Hansen had moved in by then and they had kids she could play with. And Amber had Phil and Lacey, where when Carol was growing up, there was only Chummy, and Carol was always too shy to play much with a boy. Carol used to stay inside by me.
