The Daughters of Erietown

by Connie Schultz

  At first, she’d been relieved when Brick wasn’t waking her up most mornings to have sex. She had needed time to get over what had happened, losing a baby that had already started moving inside her. By the time she started feeling better, though, Brick was absent even when he was home. In his place was a brooding man who often stopped at a bar after work, and drank more beer at home. Stroh’s or Schlitz, whichever was cheaper that week, Ellie bought it by the case so that he could walk through the door, set his lunch pail on the counter, and pull out an ice-cold beer.

  She patted her stomach. She was pinning all her hopes on this baby. If she could give Brick a son, he would be a happier, better husband. She was sure of it. “Be a boy,” she whispered, rubbing herself with the palm of her hand. “We need you to be a boy.”

  Brick yanked open the car door, threw his metal lunch pail across the front seat, and rolled down the window before climbing in. Christ, it was hot. Fresh out of the shower and he was already soaked with sweat.

  He pulled the door shut and looked in the rearview mirror, raking his fingers through his wet hair. He looked at his watch. He’d been held up by a union matter, which meant he was already late getting home from work even without stopping at Flannery’s on the way. Ellie would be pissed.

  She had no idea what his days were like, and it bothered him sometimes: whenever she bitched at him to take out the trash, or complained about him falling asleep on the couch after dinner. Most of the time he was glad his wife never saw what he had to do for a living. Taking orders from assholes half his size, no matter what they told him to do. His skin turning black from the coal that fueled the plant, day in and day out.

  She’d almost started an argument this morning over his leaving for work before dawn. “It only takes you seventeen minutes to get to the plant, but you always leave here an hour early. Why are you always in such a hurry to go? I miss you so much.”

  She’d worded it just right, making it about wanting him around longer, so he kept his temper. “Ellie, I can’t let anything make me late. If I get a flat tire or have to wait for a train to pass, I still have time to get there and clock in by seven.”

  She had responded with the softest smile, grabbing his shoulders as she rose on tiptoes to kiss his cheek, her swollen belly bumping against his. He’d kissed her forehead, which was already damp with sweat. Summer was hot and humid in Erietown, but these last few days had been the worst he could remember. He wasn’t sure if that was a reflection of the weather or of his mood. He was simmering all the time lately.

  Sometimes Brick couldn’t quite believe how much his life had changed in the last five years. In the first six months of his marriage, he’d buried his mother, rented his first house, and welcomed a baby into his life. Now he had another on the way. He also became a dues-paying member of Local 270 of the Utility Workers Union of America.

  What did it say about him that he was most proud of his union card? It wasn’t that he didn’t love Ellie and Sam. Everything he did was for them. But all he had to do was look at every asshole around him at the plant to know it didn’t take any talent to make a baby.

  His job at the plant was different. He’d had to earn his union card during his first months on the job, and he’d had to earn every increase in his pay grade. He started at Level 1 like every new guy in maintenance, but by year five he’d left a lot of them behind. He was in line soon to be promoted to specialist, which came with options. He could become a lead worker, making him one of the few guys at the plant who could repair just about anything, or he could apply to help train new guys. The latter held no appeal. Just trying to teach Sam how to tie her shoes had revealed Brick to be a man of limited patience. He’d rather be known as the expert, the guy summoned after someone else had fucked up.

  Brick pulled out of the plant parking lot and thought about his early days on the job. Competition was stiff for union jobs. If he hadn’t worked in construction his last two summers of high school, he would never have gotten the chance, even with his brother-in-law’s pull.

  Coach’s reference had to have helped. Using the names Sam Bryant and Brick McGinty in the same sentence had reminded the hiring supervisor of happier times. “Some of the best high school basketball I’ve seen in northeast Ohio,” he had told Brick after glancing at his application. “I was a referee back then. You were top scorer in the state three years in a row, am I right?” Brick had nodded, his smile tight.

  Brick had known so little about power plants when he started. Every day for the first year or so, it seemed, he was fucking up something. Just remembering to return the tools he checked out during the day was a constant source of irritation. He was used to his own tools in his own toolbox, the one Coach had helped him stock after he got the construction job. At the plant he had to use company-issued tools, which required a series of steps every time. He had to figure out which tools he needed for each job, then stand in line at the toolshed counter to check them out. So much wasted time, standing there listening to everyone’s bullshit as he stared up at the dark green and white steel sign hanging overhead:

  THE BEST SAFETY DEVICE

  IS A

  CAREFUL MAN

  In his third week, he was standing in line in front of Carl Malone, a fifteen-year veteran of the plant and a union steward. “Isn’t that the dumbest-ass thing you’ve ever seen?” Malone said.

  Brick turned around and Malone pointed at the sign. “As if our being careful is the only problem in this shithole. Like it’s Pete Keller’s and Lenny Mulholland’s fault that they can’t breathe anymore, their lungs are so ruined. Or Johnny McHenry’s fault that the company hadn’t replaced that bent fuel shutoff valve on the power boiler. Blew him sky-high and took off his fuckin’ arms. Because Johnny wasn’t a careful man.”

  It wasn’t long before armless Johnny McHenry started showing up in Brick’s dreams. He had never met the guy, but he always woke up drenched in sweat after seeing the shadow of an armless man flailing at the plant entrance, banging his head against the doorframe as he laughed at Brick.

  He’d made the mistake once of mentioning these nightmares to Ellie. Instead of comforting him she’d started to cry and begged him to quit. Better to keep the hazards of the job to himself.

  In the beginning, Brick was terrified of injuries. The first time he accidentally splashed a drop of acid on his face he ran to the eye wash so fast that he tripped over the steel toes of his new boots and fell headfirst into a nearby pole. The two guys who saw him howled with laughter, and by the time he was in the showers everyone was calling him Bumble Brick.

  He took it for almost two weeks, until it came out of the mouth of Ronnie Spinoza, another scrawny new guy who’d started on the same day as Brick. The locker room was full of men drying off and getting dressed when Spinoza yelled over his shoulder, “Hey, Bumble Brick, careful about tripping and bending over in the shower.” Brick finished buckling his belt and planted a fist in the face of Spinoza, who fell against the wall and slid to the floor. Brick grabbed the front of Spinoza’s shirt to yank him up, but three other guys pulled Brick back.

  “I understand he pissed you off,” Carl Malone said as he escorted Brick to his truck. “But Spinoza’s in the union, and you don’t punch a brother. You’re lucky Prick Kennedy didn’t see you.”

  He was referring to Dick Kennedy, the shift supervisor and a man who had the misfortune of reminding Brick of his father. Same small build, same way of sneering every time a word came out of his mouth. Brick hated him on sight after watching him scream at a secretary outside the front office, near the break room. She kept apologizing through sobs, but he wouldn’t let up. “I said I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I’m sor-ry, I’m sor-ry,” Kennedy said, mocking her in a high-pitched squeal. That’s what tipped Brick off about Kennedy. He liked to beat up on people who had to take it, constantly reminding everyone that he was the boss. Brick had
learned early from his feelings for his father that fear wasn’t respect, and Brick wasn’t afraid of anyone.

  Brick started flexing his hands as he watched Kennedy go after the woman, and felt Malone suddenly standing next to him. “Watch yourself,” Malone said softly. “He ain’t worth losing your job.”

  Kennedy turned to look at Brick. “What are you staring at?”

  Brick felt Malone squeeze his elbow, so he held out his hand to introduce himself. Kennedy waved it off. “Come to me when you’ve been here six months. If you can last that long.”

  Malone slapped Brick’s shoulder. “Aaaand that’s Prick Kennedy, your new boss. He gives you any trouble, you come to me.”

  Brick was everything Kennedy wasn’t, and Kennedy knew it. Over the next five years, he circled Brick like a wolf on the prowl, but Brick remembered his mother’s long-ago pleas, and trained himself to ignore the bully looking for a fight.

  Brick had been at the plant for almost four years before he started joining the guys at the bar after work. He didn’t want to do it until he no longer felt like a newbie, and by that time he had already moved from second to first shift and was one of the best troubleshooters. He’d cringed when he first heard his job was classified as maintenance, but he ended up liking the variety, and being needed. Wherever there was a problem, he was the guy to fix it. He liked the look of relief on the guys’ faces when he showed up, and how they nodded their thanks after he’d finished.

  One wintry afternoon, he’d just come in from a cigarette break, his face red and wind-burned, when Bobby McIntire came up to him and punched his arm. “Hey, how come you never stop with us after work?” he said.

  “No reason, Mac. I just like to get home.” He propped one of his boots on a pipe to tighten the lace and then adjusted his hard hat. “Ellie always has beer at the house for me. I like to see the kid before she gets cranky. You know how they get around bedtime.”

  “Do I,” Mac said. “We have four boys, and Maggie’s pregnant again. Jesus.” He grinned. “And she wonders why I drink.”

  Brick smiled and tried not to hate him for his good luck. After all that blood in the bed following Ellie’s second miscarriage, he had been half-afraid to touch her. He had thought she was going to die that night. Scared the shit out of him for months.

  “You guys stopping tonight?” Brick said.

  “Sure. Flannery’s. Why don’t you come? It’d be good for you, Brick. And I might have an ulterior motive.”

  Brick cocked his head. “Yeah. Like what?”

  “We’re going to talk about our roster for the softball team. I hear you’re quite the athlete.”

  Brick shrugged. “I was better at basketball.” Mac smiled, and Brick answered the obvious question. “Right field. Pitcher in a pinch. Okay at the plate, I guess.”

  Mac slapped him on the back. “I heard you could hit that ball to Canada. We need you. Artie O’Connor says you’ve gotta be a power at the plate. We just don’t know if a guy your size can run.”

  “If you hit it far enough, you don’t have to run,” Brick said, smiling as Mac laughed. “I’ll be there. But when Ellie finds out, you’re taking that call at the bar.”

  Playing softball with the guys made Brick feel younger, less tied down. None of the guys seemed to resent him for who he was or what he could do. They were just glad he was on their team. They saved his seat for him at the bar, and at games they shouted themselves hoarse whenever Brick rounded the bases and headed home. They were the closest he’d come to having brothers since Harry had died.

  He loved the growing crowds, too, and the way they rose to their feet whenever he hit another homer or hurled a ball from right field to throw out a runner at home. “Brick, Brick, Brick,” they’d cheer whenever he was at the plate. A sportswriter for the Erietown Times compared him to one of Brick’s favorite movie characters.

  Just like Shane, Brick McGinty is steady as he goes. Every time he hits another home run, he quietly trots off the field like it’s just another day on the job. No slapping hands with other players, no verbal replays of his magnificence. He just nods his thanks to his fellow players and then reaches into his back pocket for a fresh strip of gum before he sits down on the bench.

  “I read the story out loud to the girls at coffee this week,” Ellie told him, gesturing to the large newsprint photo of Brick taped to the fridge. “They swooned.”

  Brick pretended to be embarrassed by the fuss, but he never corrected Ellie when she told Sam that he was the best softball player in Erietown. It was a good example for his daughter, he told himself. When you’re good at something, you let others do the bragging.

  Ellie’s eyelids fluttered as the nurse tapped on the back of her hand. “Mrs. McGinty. Mrs. McGinty.”

  She could feel tiny pricks of pain on her hand, but the effort required to raise her eyelids struck her as an impossible proposition.

  Another tap, this time harder. “Mrs. McGinty, don’t you want to see your new baby boy?”

  Ellie floated to the surface and opened her eyes. “My what?”

  The nurse lifted the blanketed bundle in her arms. “Congratulations. You have a son.”

  Ellie rose up on one elbow and pushed a damp curl from her eye. “I’m sorry,” she said, squinting up at the nurse. “My manners. What is your name?”

  “I’m Mrs. Bertha Drake. I assisted your delivery.”

  “Thank you,” Ellie said. “May I hold my son, Mrs. Bertha Drake?”

  The nurse lowered the baby into Ellie’s arms. “Shall I go fetch your husband?” Ellie looked down at the sleeping baby and touched his chin. “Brick’s here? I didn’t know if anyone had been able to reach him.”

  Mrs. Drake slid a palm under Ellie’s neck to raise her head just high enough to plump her pillow. “Your friend called the power plant. Mrs. Kelshinski, is it?”

  Ellie smiled. “Ruby Kleshinski. She lives two houses down. I called her when my water broke.”

  The nurse eased Ellie’s head back onto the pillow. “Well, she’s a good friend to you. She took care of everything, let me tell you. Brought you here and held your little girl’s hand until we wheeled you back, then called your husband at work. She called the desk later to make sure we told you your daughter could spend the next few nights with her.”

  Mrs. Drake’s salt-and-pepper hair and horn-rimmed reading glasses dangling from the cord around her neck reminded Ellie of her grandmother. “Was it always like this?”

  Mrs. Drake was tucking in the sheet at the foot of Ellie’s bed. “Was what always like this?”

  Ellie traced her son’s tiny eyebrows with her finger. “Did we always depend on each other like this? On other women?”

  Mrs. Drake stood up straight and pressed her fists into her hips. “Hmm. Now there’s a question no one’s ever asked me.” She smiled at Ellie. “A woman’s world has always revolved around children and other women. At least as long as I’ve been around, and I’m almost sixty.” She smoothed the sheet draped across Ellie as she talked, tucking it in around the sides of her body like a cocoon.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” she continued. “We love our men, and the idea of a husband is a good thing. What woman wouldn’t want that?”

  Ellie thought of her brave, independent Aunt Nessa, teaching until she was seventy and dying in her sleep on a train bound for New Mexico. She’d never wanted to marry, and she was the happiest woman Ellie had ever known.

  Mrs. Drake plucked a tissue from the box on Ellie’s nightstand and blew her nose. “Men need us more than we need them,” she said, and then lowered her voice. “Including the doctors around here. They walk around acting like God, but you should see the panic when one of them has to buy a birthday present for his wife. They have no idea what women want.”

  She washed her hands in the small sink in the corner. “That’s why we need our women
friends. We’re with each other from the beginning to the very end, and everything in between. We understand each other. It’s instinctual.”

  She nodded toward the baby in Ellie’s arms. “You don’t have to worry about any of that right now. You have a daughter, and now you have a son. He’s yours for a while, but she’ll be your best friend for the rest of your life. Way of the world, I guess. Our boys grow up to become men who leave us.”

  Ellie wriggled to inch herself higher in the bed. “Would it be possible to see my husband now? Could someone please send him in?”

  Mrs. Drake smiled. “Of course. Listen to me go on. If there’s ever a time when your husband is all yours, it’s right after you’ve given birth to his first son. I’ll go fetch him.”

  Ellie didn’t have a mirror, but she could easily imagine how bad she looked. If she could get to her purse, she could at least dab her nose with powder and put on a little lipstick. Her eyes scanned the room until she spotted it in the chair in the corner, on top of her folded clothes. She was trying to decide whether she could slide out of the bed with the baby in her arms when a nurse’s aide walked into the room. Ellie was relieved to see that she looked to be about her age. Ellie smiled sheepishly as she pointed to the chair. “I’m sorry to ask, but would you mind bringing me my purse? I’d like to put on a little makeup before my husband walks in.”

  The aide grabbed the purse and handed it to Ellie. “I’m Lavelle. You’re one of my patients for the evening.”

  Ellie nodded her thanks. “Hi, Lavelle. I’m Ellie.” She looked down at her baby and then smiled at Lavelle.