The Daughters of Erietown

by Connie Schultz

  Nine of the ten McGinty girls were married now, all of them living within ten miles of the house. Only Lillian had managed to get away, running off to Cleveland as soon as she graduated from high school to work as a live-in maid for a wealthy family on the city’s east side. As soon as Bull found out the family was Jewish he declared Lillian dead to him and to the whole family. “You tell her to stay away from here,” he yelled at Angie. “She is no longer a member of this family.” Lillian hadn’t been back for a visit since, but she was in constant touch with her mother. Every Saturday morning, Angie kept watch for the mailman. Lillian had learned to time her letters to arrive when Bull was reliably hungover and unlikely to snatch them out of Angie’s hands and burn them over the stove.

  Sometimes Brick thought about what it’d be like if his father were dead. Not murdered, just fall-in-the-mud dead, face-first, from a heart attack, maybe, or a stroke. Maybe drive into a telephone pole after a late-night binge in Erietown, taking his latest whore with him. Brick imagined his father’s truck sliding out of control on the ice, the crunch of steel and glass as it slammed through the railing and soared into the night sky before dropping like a bomb into the black river below. His mother would finally be free. She could sell off the farm and all of its bad memories. Buy a little place near his sisters, and paint every room in her favorite colors of lavender and robin’s egg blue.

  Brick stood at the bedroom window and closed his eyes against the tears trying to break free. “I didn’t pick him, God,” he said. “You’re the one who made him my father, and then where did you go?” He tossed the blanket onto Patch. “C’mon, old man,” Brick said softly. “We’re going for a ride.”

  He pulled on his jeans and sweatshirt and grabbed his letterman’s jacket. He ran his fingers across the large felt letter—a green “J” for Jefferson High School—that his mother had stitched on the front. Twice, on two jackets, she’d done that for him. He fingered each blanket stitch as if he were working the beads of a rosary: 164 stitches. Every time he performed this ritual, he could see his mother sitting next to him in his truck, his first jacket draped across her lap as she hummed and pulled through one stitch after another.

  Brick was the first freshman in the history of Jefferson High to letter in varsity basketball. The green “J” sat on his dresser for months because he couldn’t afford the jacket. In early August before his sophomore year, he was about to leave to help bail the second cutting of hay at the BeBouts’ farm when his mother pressed a wad of bills into his palm. “Get that jacket, Brick,” she said, closing his fingers around the money. He handed it back to her. “That’s a year’s worth of your egg money,” he said. “You know I earned money all summer working on three different farms. As soon as I help Tag McHenry finish his barn next week, I’ll have enough money to buy it on my own.”

  Angie shook her head. “I don’t want you missing August practices because you’re helping Tag McHenry, and I want my son to wear that jacket he has earned.”

  “Ma, if Dad finds out he’ll go crazy.” Angie shoved the money back into his hand. “He has no idea how much I make on the eggs. Never has.”

  Twice, at her insistence, Brick drove his mother to Otis Outfitters in Erietown. First, to get measured for his jacket, then to pick it up. His mother had tucked needles and a spool of green thread into her purse so that she could stitch the letter onto his jacket on the drive home.

  It had been nearly eighty degrees on the first day of school, but Brick wore the jacket anyway. His freckled face was sweaty and red as a radish as he walked through the halls, but it was worth every second of suffering. People treated Brick differently when he wore that jacket, from Pastor Culver at Sunday service to Mr. Simpson at the dry goods store. Best of all, Ellie swooned the first time she saw him in it. “You look even bigger, Brick,” she said, and then leaned in and whispered, “Makes me feel things.” He flexed his biceps and pulled her in closer.

  The following summer, Brick grew four inches and his shoulders ballooned, fraying the seams of both of the good shirts he owned. It got to the point where he couldn’t even raise his arms when he wore his jacket, but he refused to part with it and he couldn’t replace it. The drinking was catching up with Bull, and every cent Brick made was going to his mother now. No one dared make fun of how Brick looked in his jacket, but he knew what everyone had to be thinking. His face burned whenever he walked past a gaggle of girls and heard them giggle. Maybe they were laughing at him, maybe they weren’t, but once you think you’re the butt of everyone’s joke you see mocking in every smile.

  In mid-October, Coach said, “Why don’t you come by for dinner tomorrow night? I need to pick your brain a bit about Friday’s game.” Brick figured Coach was doing what he always did, which was to make sure he had a decent meal with no Bull-drama on the night before a game. This time, though, after Brick thanked Mrs. Bryant for dinner and backed away from the table to leave, Coach laid his hand on his shoulder and gently pushed Brick back down into his seat.

  “Wait here just a minute,” he said. “Got something for you.” He walked out of the kitchen, and Mrs. Bryant set down a second slice of rhubarb pie in front of Brick. “It’s a special occasion,” she said, patting his back. Brick wolfed down the pie in six bites and stood up. “Thanks, Mrs. B,” he said, handing her the plate at the sink. “I’ve got to get home.” He pulled his jacket off the back of his chair and had already tugged it on when Coach returned to the kitchen and tossed a new letterman’s jacket to him.

  “I—I can’t accept this, Coach,” Brick said, staring at the jacket in his hands. “I don’t have the money to pay you back. I appreciate the thought, but no McGinty accepts charity.”

  “That’s your father talking, Brick,” Coach said. “He won’t help you, and he doesn’t want anyone else to help you, either.”

  “Sam, honey,” Mrs. Bryant said, shaking her head. She draped the washrag over the faucet and untied her apron. “Excuse me, boys, but I’m in the middle of The Story of My Life and I want to finish it before it’s due back at the library.” She smiled at Brick. “It’s Helen Keller’s autobiography. She is blind and deaf, you know, but her teacher, Miss Annie Sullivan, helped her learn how to communicate with the world.” She walked toward her husband and squeezed his shoulder. “Imagine,” she said, pausing in the doorway. “Imagine how sad Helen Keller’s life would be if she’d been unwilling to let that Miss Sullivan help her.”

  Coach waited until his wife left the room and then grinned at Brick. “My Loretta isn’t the most subtle of women.”

  Brick nodded. “No, sir. But she sure is smart.”

  “Look, Brick. This isn’t charity. Mrs. Bryant’s going to remove your letter and we’re going to give your old jacket to Curly Jackson. You know him. That little guy, the freshman running back. He doesn’t have any jacket at all and winter’s just around the corner. I guarantee you he won’t let pride get in the way.”

  Brick stared down at the jacket and ran his hand along the back of it. “Tell you what,” Coach said. “You take the jacket, and in return, you help me build a first-floor bathroom.”

  Brick looked at him and laughed. “I don’t know the first thing about building bathrooms. And I sure don’t know anything about plumbing.”

  “Guess it’s time you learn,” Coach said. “My father was in construction. He taught me how to build just about anything from scratch. As soon as the winter breaks, you’re mine every weekend until we finish.” He pointed toward the living room. “That way, Mrs. Bryant gets off my back about her precious powder room, and your delicate ego survives the injury of a good deed. Deal?”

  Brick tried not to smile, but he couldn’t help it.

  “Go give Mrs. Bryant your old jacket so she can pull out the stitches on that letter. I’ve known your mother for more than twenty years. She’s going to want to stitch it on your new jacket before you leave the house tomorrow.”

>   Brick smiled again. “Yes, sir, she surely will.”

  Several weeks later, on the first weekend thaw, Brick was at the Bryants’ door. Mrs. Bryant clapped her hands at the sight of him. “Thank you for this, Brick,” she said. “I don’t know how I would have gotten him to finally do this if it weren’t for you.”

  For three months of weekends, Brick and Sam Bryant worked side by side. Brick learned how to pour concrete and lay tile, install plumbing and wire for electricity. He loved watching the room take shape, one task at a time, and spending time with Coach, who never raised his voice no matter how many mistakes Brick made. “I feel like I’m learning how a house works,” he told Coach one day when they broke for lunch. “I understand what’s going on behind the walls now. I can see its heart.”

  “Yep, that’s the beauty of building with your own hands,” Coach said, handing him a sandwich wrapped in wax paper. “You’ll have that over the city boys for the rest of your life.”

  They finished before the cherry trees bloomed in late spring. Mrs. Bryant taped a strip of pink crepe paper across the doorway and made a show of handing the scissors to Brick instead of her husband. “I know who was the muscle behind the brains,” she said. “Sam’s been bragging about you like the son we never had.”

  Brick glanced at her and then looked at the floor. “I just want to say. I just want to thank you—”

  Mrs. Bryant patted his arm. “Go ’head, honey. Cut the ribbon. Think of it as a christening.”

  “You’re the only boy on my team that earned his jacket twice as an underclassman,” Coach said. “I’m real proud of you.”

  Now, whenever Brick visits the Bryants, he washes his hands in the powder room and excuses himself at least once during dinner. Not to use the toilet. He just quietly lowers the seat and sits on it, remembering every piece of wood and tile he installed with his own two hands.

  Just before school let out for the following summer, Coach handed Brick a business card for Blade Construction in Erietown. “Guy’s a friend of mine. He’s looking for top-notch workers, ones with muscle and experience, so I gave him your name. Give him a call.” Brick earned more money in one summer of construction than his father had made all year as a mediocre mechanic. He planned to do it again this summer and sock away every cent before leaving for college.

  Maybe.

  Brick grabbed his keys off his bedside table. “C’mon, Patch.” He tiptoed down the two flights of stairs with Patch behind him and eased open the kitchen door, slipping out into the darkness. They walked side by side, Brick and Patch, their breaths clouding around their heads as they made their way through the falling snow to Brick’s truck. Harry’s truck, Brick always called it, because as long as it was still Harry’s, he wasn’t really gone.

  The day after Harry’s funeral, Brick’s brother-in-law Luke walked into the kitchen and asked Brick for the keys to Harry’s truck. “Your brother planned to give it to you when you’re old enough to drive,” Luke told him. “We need to get it out of here before your father tries to sell it.” Brick looked out the screen door and saw his sister Irene sitting behind the wheel of the truck. She locked eyes with him and nodded. Brick stood on tiptoes to grab the key ring off the hook by the door and tossed it to Luke. “It’ll get better, little buddy,” Luke said, hugging him. “One of these days, you’re going to get in that truck and drive away from here for good, just like Harry wanted you to do.”

  For so many years now, Brick had clung to those words. Like Harry wanted you to do. Maybe that was who he should be praying to.

  Brick scooped off the wet snow piling up on his front window and side mirrors. He slowly opened the driver’s door, but it still creaked like hell. Brick looked up at his mother’s window. No light. He scooped up Patch and slid him across the front seat before climbing in. The door creaked again when he pulled it shut. Still no light in his mother’s window. He didn’t worry about his father. He wouldn’t wake up if the place were on fire. Brick shook his head free of the fantasy and turned the key.

  Brick drove about forty minutes before hitting Erietown’s city limits. He pulled into the empty parking lot at Erietown Plaza and cruised past the darkened stores. So many businesses, all in one place. Hills department store, Lawson’s Dairy, Kroger, Jerome’s Paint Store. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d driven his mother here. She used to love to put on one of her Sunday dresses and climb into his truck for an afternoon of shopping. Lately, though, she always begged off when he suggested they go into town. “Not up for the crowds, honey,” she’d say, handing Brick her errand list. “You do it for me, will you?”

  Brick pulled back onto Route 20, which became Erie Road once he hit town. He drove past Antonio’s Pizza and Grant’s Bakery, and the new burger joint that had opened just two months ago. He’d promised Ellie he’d never eat there until they could do it together.

  He slowed down as he drove past the cluster of houses lining Erie Road a few blocks before the town square. They were all built right after World War II, each of them with a front porch and neat squares of yard in front and back. For some reason they always made Brick think of Harry. How, had he lived, he would have married Rachel Skidmore and they would have lived in one of these houses. Harry always talked about moving to Erietown one day, and how he and Rachel were going to buy a house big enough for his mom to come live with them. “Just you, Ma,” he’d say, winking at Brick. “Maybe take this rascal with us, but only until he’s old enough to buy his own house down the street.” Living on the same street as his brother. Wouldn’t that have been something. He pulled to a stop in front of Cecil’s gas station and cut his headlights. A light was on in the house across the street. The snow had slowed enough for him to make out two shadowy figures moving in the kitchen, in the back of the house.

  The woman wore a nightgown and was helping the man button his coat. He grabbed a lunch pail off the counter, then turned toward her, lifting her face for a kiss. They looked to be laughing, the way she tossed her hair and arched her back as he leaned in. From this distance, they could have been Harry and Rachel. They seemed happy in each other’s company. The woman turned the man around, patted his back, and pretended to shove him out the door.

  Brick watched and waited. He could make out the woman’s figure in the front window, waving as her husband pulled his car to a stop at the edge of the driveway and waved. It was a Buick Skylark. Even in the snowfall, Brick could tell by the sheen of its paint that the man took good care of it. A match flared in the driver’s seat, and for an instant Brick could see the man’s face as he lit his cigarette. “Shit, Patch,” Brick said. “He doesn’t look much older than me.” Patch raised his head and inched closer to Brick’s thigh.

  Brick’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel and he ducked from the beams of the man’s headlights as he pulled onto the road. The Skylark headed east. Brick waited until it was a quarter mile away before flicking on his lights and easing his foot on the gas to follow.

  The Buick turned at the intersection and headed north, toward the harbor. Three miles later, Brick guessed his destination. “EEI,” he said softly. The man was a utility worker. First shift.

  The Erie Electric Illuminating Company was a plant with three smokestacks on the shore of Lake Erie. Brick knew what it looked like because his sister Virginia’s husband worked there, in maintenance. Brick followed the man until he pulled into the gravel driveway, and then he looked at his watch: 5:50 A.M. Just enough time to park and punch the clock by six. He turned in to the plant driveway and drove slowly past the guard shed. The guy in the window waved him through, and Brick pulled into the plant parking lot. The man he’d been following was getting out of his parked car with his lunch pail in his hand. He wore a yellow hard hat now, and he paused to cup his bare hands around his face to light another cigarette. He tilted his head to blow the smoke high above him, then leaned against the car door to slam it shut.
He started to walk, joining a stream of men swinging lunch pails and blowing clouds of smoke until they reached the entrance. One after another, they tossed their cigarettes onto the gravel and disappeared behind the large metal doors.

  “You’re right, Harry,” Brick said, staring at the plant. “It’s time to get away from here.”

  Wayne Fetters paused at the top of the stairs to listen to the debate in the kitchen. His granddaughter was lobbying Ada, but Ellie was no match for the household budget director.

  “The fancier it is, the less use it will be to you after,” Ada said. “Why spend money on a dress you’ll never wear again?”

  “But you don’t know that, Grandma. Maybe I can wear it to my friends’ weddings. Becca’s marrying Johnny Whipple right after graduation.”

  “So I heard,” Ada said, her voice flat. “How in the world did she manage to get that announcement in the Erietown Times?”

  Wayne smiled. They only subscribed to the Clayton Valley Gazette. Becca’s grandmother must have brought the Times in to show off for the Thursday busybody Bees.

  “Her daddy went to school with the editor,” Ellie said, sighing. “Celia Brownstone’s getting married, too. She said she expects Alan Uitto to propose by Thanksgiving.”

  “She does, does she? Has anyone told Alan?”

  “C’mon, Grandma. Please? Just this once?”

  The stairs creaked under the weight of Wayne’s feet as he walked down, triggering a sudden shuffle of paper and a “shhh” from Ada. By the time he entered the kitchen, Ada was at the stove and Ellie was sitting on her hands, eyes wide. “What’s all the fuss about?” he said.

  “Girl talk,” Ada said, flipping sausage patties. “Nothing you need to bother yourself with.”