Anywhere But Here

by Mona Simpson

  Adele, when she was old enough, trouped out there with the worst of them, a real tomboy. She was always a regular dickens, into everything, in the swamps, all full of coal from the tracks, whatever they could find to collect dirt and tear their clothes, they found. Of course, those years I had a wash machine already, in the basement, back of his Polynesian bar. When Carol was little she had to be careful to keep whatever she had nice, because if that went, there wasn’t the money for new. Adele had a horse when she was thirteen, fourteen, that’s what that shed in back was from. That’s where Adele kept her horse. It wasn’t fair and I know it. It just never was fair. Adele got more.

  But even with that, there was always something not quite right with her. I remember there was something far back, I think even when she was a baby. She was never all there. She did odd things even when she was real, real little. I often feel bad that we spoiled her and I know we did spoil her, but I think there was something else the matter, always.

  Of course with two daughters so far apart in age, you have to expect they’ll be different. And we had some good times, too, the family. When we first got the car, we’d drive to Kewaunee and stop at the old dime store and buy the girls those little wax bottles with syrup in them. They made them to look like little Cokes. And we’d have picnics on the beach all day long. Once we sent the girls off to Mackinac Island. They took the train up to Michigan and then a ferry—it was a big trip for them. I remember them all dressed up with their lipstick on, going. I’m still glad we planned that, that was nice for them. There haven’t been too too many times when they were close, as sisters.

  Adele was alone then for a long time when Carol went into the army. She was my only one at home. Of course, when she was that age, out of high school, Adele went to college, the works. These days they go to graduate school and get so smart you can’t even talk to them anymore. But when Carol finished with high school, we didn’t have the money for college, so she had to stay home and work. I still feel bad about it. Because she would have liked that, too, she would have gotten something out of it. I’ve told her many times, I’d pay for her now to go, but she doesn’t want to be in with those young kids.

  When the war came, she went into the Waes and she was overseas, so I suppose she saw something there, too. I know there was a fellow she liked over in France. Both of my daughters went in for the foreigners. I suppose they wanted something a little different. I always wonder if it wasn’t from Milton that they got the idea.

  Oh, it was a shock for me when I first found out Carol had signed up. She was twenty-four, but I wasn’t ready yet to lose a daughter. I was home baking one day in the kitchen, I had a sponge cake in the oven and I went out to get the mail. And there was a summons for Carol. It was wartime already, but they didn’t enlist the women. She must have signed herself up and never said a word. Well, there was no more deciding about it, like it or not. It said she had to report, with her clothes, to boot camp in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, December 18. Before Christmas. Carol worked downtown then, at the Harper Method Beauty Shop, and I called her on the telephone. And I said, “What in heavens did you do?”

  But she just kept still. That’s the thing with the quiet ones. They can do it to you, too. Finally, she said she’d written away because she wanted information.

  And here she was stuck, before she knew it. And wouldn’t it just be Art’s Elk night. He joined with a couple other fellows from the mink. I called the Elk Lodge and they wouldn’t tell me where he was, only that the men had gone out to have fun. Oh, that made me mad. Well, I had an idea. There was a house on Irwin Street that was never any good. I’d heard the men out by the mink cages talk and laugh about it and then they always hushed up when I came near.

  So I took the bus and then walked the eight or ten blocks towards the bay. That neighborhood has never been good and it still isn’t. That house is still there, it’s a supper club now. Small’s Paradise. Then, it was for the men to go and see a show. They had a stage in the living room. Lan-knows how much they paid to get in and then I suppose they got stuck for drinks too. Well, I looked in at the window and I couldn’t see anything. The grass came up to my knees, they must never have cut it, and I tore my stockings on a thistle. Then I just walked right in. I’m still sorry I did. That taught me a lesson. I’d never seen the things that I saw that night on the stage. There was a woman up there with a donkey. Yes, a donkey, and they were doing just what you’d think, the worst you could imagine. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible. It made me sick just to see it. They did that here in Bay City. Carol’s Jimmy says they still have stuff like that going on down in Mexico.

  I saw Art’s face for a moment before he saw me. He was leaning forward from a table with two other fellows, laughing.

  Well, sure enough, Carol went into the army—there was nothing we could do—and I got myself used to the idea. Art and I never talked about it. I went on, same as usual, but after that I kept the whole business of the Waes between Carol and me. We talked about it, we got her clothes and cosmetics and toiletries packed. It was the first time I had a project like that alone by myself—before we’d done everything together. And I didn’t want him getting funny with me anymore either. Not after what I saw. Not if that’s what he thought of me.

  But then after a while you forget. Carol went away and we got letters home, from camp first and then from the base. Adele was getting to be a teenager, lovesick around the house. She went with her girlfriend to see Gone With the Wind and they were fits and sighs and giggles in every corner, after, all secrets.

  Pretty soon we were back to the usual, but then sometimes at night in bed, he’d be breathing on top of me, I’d have my chin tucked over his shoulder, looking at the ceiling, the way we did, and I couldn’t think of my mother anymore. Our room now looked just like hers, the same white everywhere. I’d think of the girl with the donkey, she had such dark legs, like an Indian almost or a gypsy, and she was wearing something like a red girdle. Her eyes the way she looked straight ahead without blinking, opened all the way open, I wondered if she could be blind.

  I was glad enough never to have more children. Two was enough, and then the grandchildren. I suppose when you have daughters, you end up with the families. I think when you have boys, they go off and make a start by themselves, but your daughters always come back to you. They bring their children home.

  Carol is like me. She went into the army, then pretty soon after the war, she came home and went back to work at the beauty shop. And we had some fun then too. We miniature golfed and we gave each other manicures. Then she met Jimmy at the country club and not too long after they were engaged. When they got married, we had the reception right here, we put tables out in the backyard. They built the house next door. Ambers Chummy did the same thing when he got married; he and June built on the lot next to the old Brozeks. So Chummy and Carol ended up both next door to their mothers. Carol always worked, she kept the books for Jimmy at the water softener store and she was a very good mother with her sons. The only thing I wonder is if she didn’t make the same mistake I did, having them too far apart. But she and I get along. We still do.

  Adele I will never understand. She was seventeen when Jimmy and Carol got married, old enough to be jealous.

  But then Adele went away to college and did she have the clothes. And shoes and furs, you can’t imagine. And they needed formals and she could never wear the same one twice. Oh, she got plenty, believe me. And even in college with all that she had—and she was in a sorority, she won some beauty prize, she was the lilac queen of this or that, she was on the dean’s relief committee, her picture in the paper—all that wasn’t enough for her. She got in with that Lolly, and sure enough they got themselves in trouble. Oh, it was a big scandal, I’m still ashamed. They went up and posed half-naked for a fellow who put out topless bathing suits. They wore them in pictures for a mail-order catalog. Someone Jimmy worked with saw it, Carol didn’t even want to tell me. Now, why would she want to do a thing like that?<
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  Then after college she wanted to stay and get her master’s degree. She went out to California, the first time in 1954. I remember because that was the year Art got sick. He had cancer of the colon. I thought it was because he wouldn’t take the time, when he was out with the mink, to come and go to the bathroom when he had to. He worked so hard, he would just wait and hold it. But now his brother and two sisters died of it too, so it must have been in the family. He was young to be so sick, only fifty-five.

  We had to go to the Mayo Clinic and the doctors there did what they could. But they told us it wouldn’t be long. They couldn’t say just how much, but less than a year, they were almost sure of it. So right away, we called Adele—we had a hard time getting her, too—and we asked her to come home. And she wouldn’t. I never understood why she didn’t then—because she and Art were always close, he did loads for her. She was just like Milton. So far away and her own father dying. She kept postponing and postponing, she said she had a test, then her orals. I was scared she wouldn’t make it before he died, and oh, he wanted to see his Del. And for months there at the end, he wasn’t so good. But she did make it. That’s one thing I have to say for Adele. She is lucky.

  Then right after Art passed she wanted to marry this Hisham. I probably should have stood up to her more, but I didn’t know either. I was just plain tired after a year of nursing him. And it’s not easy to stand up to her. She gets mean when she doesn’t have her way. I’ll tell you, many times I’ve been afraid of her.

  That last summer before Art died, Carol and I drove out by the bay and picked a stone. He had worked very hard all his life for his money and I wanted to get him a nice stone. I was glad that I could. So then after I spent lot of time planting flowers. I went out almost every day to water. And it is a nice stone. I always think that pink granite is the prettiest. It stays.

  You want to know about your mother and I suppose that’s natural, sure, a person wants to know about their family and you haven’t had too too much of one. But I don’t know what I can tell you. She’s always been a mystery to me, too. I just don’t know about her.

  Well, after they were married, they moved around for a while, here in Bay City, always renting. They got a lot of Granny’s nicest furniture and her good china dishes and I’d like to know what they did with it all, because Adele hasn’t got any of it anymore. Then they were flying back and forth from his family in Egypt, too, I think for a while they thought they might live over there. But your mom couldn’t take it. She couldn’t eat the food. The food that was their equivalent to butter, she couldn’t keep down.

  I was there once too, oh, she wanted me to go and see his family. When I went on the tour with Em, I stopped on the way back from Austria. I’ll tell you everything was so dirty, everywhere was dust and they just sat outside in their dirt. She said his parents were real wealthy like kings over there, but not that I could see. It was just so very very dirty.

  Your mom got pregnant over there. I’ll tell you, Ann, you’re lucky to be healthy, because your mom was real sick when she came home. I didn’t believe her when she told me she was seven months. She was down to nothing, eighty or ninety pounds. She said she couldn’t eat the food over there, she couldn’t keep it down. I suppose that’s why you turned out small, because your dad was tall, six foot something. And then you were early, in an incubator. Your dad made it just a few weeks before you were born. I remember him down by the sidewalk and the little bit of lawn outside Saint Peter and Paul’s. He was smoking a cigarette and looking up at the windows, I suppose trying to see in your ma’s.

  He was a funny one, the things he said. You couldn’t always understand him. “So congratulations,” I said to him. “How does it feel to be a father?”

  And he was always shaking his head. “Beauty is a betrayal,” he said. “It’s always for itself, never for you.” Now do you know what that meant? I didn’t either. I still don’t.

  For a while when you were a baby, they lived in one of those little cottages by the bay. Well, I don’t suppose you’d remember, you were real small yet then. You lived in that red cottage at the end. He taught classes over at Saint Norbert’s College, but he couldn’t make a go of that. He made a speech out there once and they all said it sounded just the slightest little bit on the communistic side and they didn’t ask him back the next year. Then, he was selling Volkswagens and pretty soon, Jimmy got him started with the vacuum cleaners.

  Once I went over to visit your mom in that cottage. It was during the day, and your dad wasn’t there, he was out working, I suppose. Well, here it was middle of winter and you were toddling around in just a diaper. On that bare floor. With no socks or shoes. And there was hardly any heat in those cabins, either. Well, we went to the bureau and got a little jumpsuit to put on you. But when we came to the feet, Adele told me she didn’t have any shoes for you. She told me, “Hisham says that babies don’t need shoes.” Well, over there, the babies probably don’t get any shoes.

  So I don’t think you had the easiest time. But then I suppose it didn’t hurt you. I went out that day and bought you socks and shoes, three or four pair. I thought that would last a little while.

  Then it wasn’t too long and you all moved in by me. I suppose they couldn’t keep up with the rent on that cabin. And the house wasn’t so empty anymore then, the way it was with Art gone. I think it was better for you, too. We had Benny right next door, he was just a year ahead, and even when you were both babies, you always played together nice.

  How old were you, three or four, when your dad left? He came and went a couple of times—Adele gave him money to fly back and forth from Egypt, they thought he could get money from his parents, but I don’t think that ever came to much. Then, the last time, he charged up all those bills. That time he went to California. I guess he thought he could get famous there. He was a handsome man. For a long time, I watched for his face on the television. The bills started coming a couple weeks after he left. Then we knew he wouldn’t come back. Expensive luggage, tailored suits, shirts, shoes, socks, hankies—I suppose everything he thought he’d need for a big, fancy trip. He and Adele were good for each other that way—they both liked to live high on the hog.

  Well, I just paid the bills, we didn’t want the talk. We paid it all, and it was steep, and then that was the end of it. And not too long after, my own mother got sick, your granny. So I had to go down to Malgoma and settle her things and move her up to my house. Oh, was I mad. Before I got there, just the week before, two such antiquers, young men, came and cleaned her out. She gave them her best pieces for almost nothing. Between what Adele got and sold Lan-knows where and those antiquers, there was hardly anything left. But there were two things I wanted. The piano was still there, that I used to practice on when I was a girl, and it had such a nice round bench. I wanted that bench. And above the piano hung one frame with eight oval holes cut out of the paper and pictures of the eight sisters inside.

  Well, my mother was a tough one, such a one. Two things I wanted, neither worth much, and she wouldn’t give them to me. She made sure the piano and the piano bench and that picture stayed with the house when she sold it. That was the way she wanted it to be, and what she wanted she got. When she came to live with me, she was the boss, even sick. You probably don’t remember her much because those years she stayed to herself. She didn’t like kids anymore. She just didn’t have the patience. I used to buy presents for Ben and you at Christmas and try and say they were from her, but she shouted from the den, no, no, they’re not from her, she didn’t buy you anything. And she wouldn’t come in and see the Christmas tree. She stayed alone in her room. Do you remember we had goose for Christmas? Granny always liked goose.

  Then Carol’s Hal got that horse. Oh ye gods. Hal always had a scheme and it never went right, ever. He was sixteen years old and we went to a church bazaar, here at Saint Phillip’s. They were auctioning off a pony. I remember I fought that day with your mom because once we got there and each gave in what we
brought, your mother and that Lolly started giggling and giggling. Oh, they thought something was so funny.

  “Well, what are you laughing at,” I said. “Why don’t you let us all in on the joke.”

  It turned out those two had baked a pie and when they were done and it was in the oven, they figured out they’d forgot to put in sugar. They each thought the other had put it in. But then when they took it out of the oven, it looked just fine, and so they brought it and gave it in anyway.

  I told them that wasn’t at all nice and that just made them giggle some more. Ugh, when they got started, watch out. I was thinking, Well, what if a poor family bought that pie, one that really couldn’t afford it, but just said, oh, the money goes to the church and it would be a nice dessert for Sunday supper. And then they got that sour thing. Well, I let them laugh and I went all over, to all the booths, and tried to buy that pie back. But I couldn’t find it, no, somebody must have bought it already. I just hope to God it was a family that could afford to throw it out.

  For years already, Hal had been collecting silver dollars. Whenever any of us got one in our change, we’d save it for Hal, for his collection. When they announced the winner of the big auction that day at the bazaar, they said Hal’s name for the pony. Carol almost fainted. “What am I going to do with a horse?” she said. He’d spent all those silver dollars on that pony, seventy-three of them. He thought he’d take the neighborhood kids on rides for a nickel or a quarter and that way earn some money! He always had a scheme. I told him, if he’d just once hold on to his money.

  It was a brown and white spotted pony, not trained or anything. Some farmer must have donated it. We called him Silver Dollar. Well, pretty soon, when it didn’t all pan out the way he’d thought—there weren’t many kids in the neighborhood and they didn’t want to pay to ride that pony, it was slow, they could go quicker on a bike—Hal lost interest in it. We had to nag him even to feed it and brush its hair. It lived in that old shed where Adele’s horse had been.