The Daughters of Erietown

by Connie Schultz

  The children watched Mrs. Babcock for a sign of what they should do, but she was still sitting on the piano bench with her face in her hands. Sam thought about what she would do if that were her mother sitting there, looking so sad and alone. She stood up, and when Mrs. Babcock didn’t tell her to sit down, she walked up to her teacher and stood behind her so that she could wrap her arms around her back and lay her head on her shoulder. Mrs. Babcock pressed her cheek against Sam’s hand.

  Leroy Riley was next. He was wearing his Cub Scouts uniform, which made him look serious even when he wasn’t. He sat down on the bench and scooted up against Mrs. Babcock, taking her hand in his. “Leroy,” she said, softly.

  Patty Hairston was the first black girl to walk up. She stood next to Sam, draped her left arm over Mrs. Babcock’s shoulder, and placed her right hand on top of Sam’s.

  The room filled with the screech of chairs against the wooden floor. One by one, the children gathered, building a hive around their teacher. They waited, silent and warm, until the last bell of the day sent them into a world that would never be the same.

  * * *

  —

  Ellie and Mardee stood in front of the television with their arms wrapped around each other, waiting. Less than an hour ago, Walter Cronkite’s faceless voice had interrupted As the World Turns to announce that three shots had been fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in Dallas, Texas. “The first reports say that President Kennedy has been seriously wounded by this shooting,” he said.

  “Who can watch this now?” Mardee said, pointing to the soap opera. “When are they going to let us know?”

  Cronkite reappeared on the screen a few minutes later, surrounded by phones and the sound of clicking wire machines. He held up a grainy photo and described it as a picture of the president’s motorcade. “From Dallas, Texas, the flash apparently official,” he said, removing his glasses. “President Kennedy died at one P.M. Central Standard Time—two o’clock Eastern Standard Time—some thirty-eight minutes ago.”

  Ellie and Mardee gasped in unison as Cronkite slowly put on his glasses.

  “He’s stalling,” Ellie said, her voice trembling. “He’s trying not to cry.” She walked over to the television and turned off the volume. “I can’t,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “I can’t listen to another word. Not now.”

  Mardee pulled her into a hug. “My God, El.” Ellie pulled her hankie out of her pocket and frowned at the soggy, crumpled wad. “I’ve got to get another hankie. You want one?” Mardee nodded.

  Ellie walked up the stairs and stopped at Reilly’s crib to pull his blanket over his shoulders. So much had changed in the hour and a half that he’d been sleeping. When she’d put Reilly down for his nap, Caroline and John-John still had a father.

  She walked over to her dresser and pulled out the top drawer, tearing up again at the sight of her grandmother’s embroidered hankies. Grandma was the only person who could have helped her see God’s plan in this. In all of it, in everything that had happened in the last six weeks.

  Ellie snatched several hankies and tiptoed back downstairs. She handed one to Mardee, who ran her fingers along the faded lavender French knots clustered to look like lilacs. “Your grandmother?”

  Ellie nodded. “I wish she were here.”

  Mardee wrapped her arm around Ellie and pulled her close. “I know you do, El. I wish I’d known her. She sounds like such a strong and kind woman.”

  “Oh, boy, was she,” Ellie said. “Better on both counts than I am, particularly the tough part.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I think you’ve been real tough lately, giving Brick the boot.”

  Ellie laid her head on Mardee’s shoulder as they stared at the silent screen. Walter Cronkite was talking again, but neither of them wanted to hear what he had to say.

  “I keep telling myself this was the right thing for me to do, Mar, but I miss him so much. I’m either crying or trying hard not to. If I’d been stronger, maybe I could have seen another way through this. I just couldn’t take it. I couldn’t take knowing he’d been with another woman.”

  “Let’s sit down,” Mardee said. Ellie slumped down beside her on the sofa.

  “El, it was awful what Brick did. I know he broke your heart. But he’s a man, and he made a man’s mistake. God knows he regrets it. Remember how happy he was the day Reilly was born?”

  Ellie nodded. “He was. But he was scared, too, after seeing that nurse’s aide in the room. Sometimes I’m glad she told me, but a lot of the time I hate her for ruining my life.”

  Mardee patted Ellie’s thigh. “She’s as bad as her sister, if you ask me. You lying in that bed, just hours after delivering that enormous baby, and she’s telling you your husband had an affair.”

  “I tricked her into telling me.”

  “You can only trick someone who has a secret she wants to tell,” Mardee said. “It was a hateful thing she did.”

  Ellie leaned forward and started rifling through the stack of Life magazines on the coffee table. She pulled out the March ninth issue and held it up for Mardee. “Did you see this one?”

  Mardee nodded. “Who didn’t? Astronaut John Glenn is ours, Ohio born and raised.”

  Ellie pointed to the photo of his wife sitting next to him in the open convertible. “Annie is, too.” She reached back into the stack and pulled out the March second issue, which also had John Glenn on the cover. “Look at this,” she said, pointing to the top right-hand corner. She read the headline aloud: “The Glenn Story Nobody Saw. At home with Annie and the kids while John orbited the earth.” She turned to the dog-eared page. “This is a whole story about what Annie went through, waiting for him to circle the earth and return to her back on earth. Imagine that.”

  “I guess I never thought about how hard it was for her,” Mardee said. “All that worry. I’d be scared out of my mind.”

  “She was so strong,” Ellie said. “Look at her here.” She pointed to a black-and-white photo of Annie Glenn sitting at a desk with a stopwatch and her finger on a map. “She tracked his entire flight. She had to be as brave as her husband—and with her two kids sitting there, and a magazine guy photographing her every move.”

  She closed the magazine and set it back on the table. “I think about her a lot, especially lately,” she said. “Makes me feel a little braver. If Annie Glenn could keep her cool while her husband was way up there in space, I can keep it together with Brick living at his sister’s.” She took a deep breath and glanced at Mardee. “You probably think I’m crazy.”

  “Nope. I think you admire Annie Glenn,” Mardee said, sliding her hand across Ellie’s back. “And I think you miss your husband.”

  Ellie stood up and walked into the dining room to look at the framed portrait of the president. The Jack-and-Jesus wall. Ellie usually pretended to be annoyed at Brick for calling it that, but secretly she was amused. When did she stop feeling that way? she wondered. When did she become so irritated with her husband?

  Even after Sam was born, she got that fluttery feeling in her stomach in the hour before he came home. Brushing her hair, refreshing her lipstick, changing her blouse—when had she stopped doing all that? Long before Reilly was born. She searched her memory for an incident, a moment, when Brick’s arrival was no longer the highlight of her day. She couldn’t name any one thing he’d done that had flipped the switch. Whatever had changed had happened inside her, in increments. Something had chipped away at the initial freedom she’d felt to have her own life, her own house, a husband to call her own.

  Early in their marriage, Ellie used to walk around her house after Brick left for work and name out loud her possessions. “My table.” “My couch.” “My living room rug.” Now they were just stuff she had to clean. Her new beginning had turned into work that never ended, every minute of her life, it seemed, spent taking care of somebody else or
some other thing. Where was the freedom in that?

  Ellie looked again at the president’s face and winced. What was wrong with her? How could she stand in front of this important man, who looked so tanned and intelligent, still so very much alive, and feel sorry for herself?

  Ellie traced the outline of his face with her finger. Jackie would never see him again, never hear his laugh, never feel him lying beside her. She dropped her hand and grabbed the back of Brick’s chair at the table.

  Mardee walked up beside her. “El, honey? You all right?”

  Ellie stared at Jesus’ soft brown eyes for a moment before answering. “Yes. I will be.”

  * * *

  —

  Brick pulled into the parking lot at Sardelli’s and turned off the ignition. The lot was as empty as the roads. Everybody he knew just wanted to be home right now. Home with their families.

  Brick had stopped at Sardelli’s only twice before, preferring Flannery’s, where he wasn’t the only mick in the joint. But he had stopped going there after he broke it off with Kitty.

  He still hadn’t heard from any lawyer, which made him think Ellie might be having second thoughts about the divorce. Maybe she just needed some time. Or maybe she had wanted to scare him. She sure as hell had. He’d learned something about his wife the day that deputy came to the door. Ellie had her limits.

  He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. John F. Kennedy was dead. Some fucker had shot him. Carl Malone, the shop steward, had waited until the guys were in the locker room before telling them. Several of the guys had slumped down on the benches, their faces twisting in disbelief as they held their hard hats in their hands and listened. Brick had frozen in place, staring at the floor as Malone told them what he knew. Brick remembered only phrases.

  Shot in the head.

  A convertible.

  Jackie next to him.

  Dallas. Fucking Dallas.

  They had been stone silent after that, the locker room echoing only with the sounds of running water and slamming lockers. After his shower, Brick reached for his Brylcreem and walked over to the mirror. Christ, he looked ancient. He raked the comb through his wet hair and decided to skip the Brylcreem. Fuck it. What did it matter how he looked? Jack Kennedy was dead.

  Did Ellie know yet? God, she loved the Kennedys—as much as he did. Loved everything about them. The way they all played touch football, how they stuck together as a family. She worshipped Jackie. She wore little white gloves to church, and got her thick, curly hair teased into a bouffant to look like Jackie’s.

  How many times had he heard Ellie tell Sam, “You and Caroline Kennedy are the same age. Born the same year, less than four months apart.” Sam always grinned, as if her mommy and the First Lady had planned it that way.

  Sam.

  He lowered his head against the steering wheel, his chest heaving. What’s it like to be a six-year-old kid hearing that somebody shot your president?

  Brick noticed some movement on the restaurant’s roof. A man was standing in the center of the flat roof, pulling on a cord to lower the American flag to half-mast. After he’d finished and refastened the cord, he pulled off his ball cap and placed it over his heart for a moment.

  Brick looked at his watch. Almost five. He’d been sitting in his car for nearly an hour. The man on the roof was gone, and the sun had set.

  Brick started the car. It was time to go home.

  Rosie Russo walked out of the school and stopped at the sight of them. Jesus, there they were. Next year’s whole goddamn homecoming court for William Jennings Bryant High School. What were they doing walking her way home? None of them lived anywhere near her.

  She walked slowly, keeping her eyes on the gaggle of girls as they rounded the corner of Briar Road, their chorus of voices undulating between low hums of gossip and bursts of laughter. Rosie rattled off their names in her head: Laurie Kornemann, Mary Dawn Slack, Gail Kruckberg, Beverly Sewell, and Laurene Edmond. Every last one of them with a mother who volunteered at the school. Two of them, Laurene and Mary Dawn, had dads who helped coach, football and basketball respectively. On assembly days, they showed up at school in suits and ties.

  These were the special girls, with their fair skin and light hair that flickered in wisps around their faces. So pretty and perfect. So not like Rosie. She reached up and unleashed her thick black hair from its ponytail, ruffling it with both hands to shake off where her mind was going with that. “Bitches,” she whispered.

  She kept walking behind them, certain of her invisibility. If Rosie were hit by a car right this minute and lay dying in the street, not one of them would be able to say her name to console her in the last moments of her life. Not that they would try.

  Not hard to imagine that tombstone:

  HERE LIES ROSEMARY RUSSO

  UNKNOWN BY MOST

  IGNORED BY ALL

  They were born lucky and never alone, the kinds of girls who held court in the middle of any room as their fans gathered around them. Only Mary Dawn had ever spoken to Rosie on purpose, and that was the second worst day of Rosemary’s life, rivaled only by the day her father left.

  Rosie had been in Home Ec with all of them, seated alone at the foot of the long oak table. Mrs. Shepherd stood at the head of the table as she delivered her annual tutorial on “foods of the world.” This was Italy Day, and when Mrs. Shepherd said something about the “pungent power of Mediterranean spices,” Mary Dawn leaned toward Rosie and wrinkled her nose.

  “Your people like garlic, right?” she said.

  Rosie couldn’t believe she was talking to her. “Yeah,” she said, sliding her elbows off the table and sitting up straighter. “For sauce, mostly.”

  “Uh-huh,” Mary Dawn said, her voice growing louder. “My mother refuses to cook with it. Says garlic has a way of staying with you. Seeps out of your pores.” She flashed an exaggerated frown of sympathy as the girls started exchanging glances. “It must be so embarrassing to smell like your mother’s kitchen all the time.” All of them started flapping their hands in front of their noses, pretending to wave away the stink.

  Rosie stared straight ahead. I will not cry. I will not cry.

  “Okay, girls,” Mrs. Shepherd finally said. “Quiet down.”

  No defense of Rosie. No detention for them.

  Why couldn’t her mother cook ring around the chicken or Boston baked beans like the other mothers? Why didn’t she ever use Crisco, like they did in class, instead of smelly olive oil? At the sound of the bell, she dashed out of the room.

  Now, she squinted her eyes at the girls as they rounded the corner onto Matthew Avenue. She was not going to walk another inch behind those witches. She crossed the street and headed south on Route 41, which would add at least a half hour to her walk. She was fine with that. Nothing but trouble was waiting for her at home.

  On her walk to school that day, she’d had one encounter too many with Alan Fletcher. Her fist had landed squarely in his right eye, but her joy was short-lived. His squeals had summoned Greta Marino to her kitchen window, robbing Rosie of her victory.

  Mrs. Marino was widowed and loved to commiserate with Rosie’s mother in their mutual loneliness. “So young to be without our men, Lucia. So unfair.”

  Mrs. Marino also enjoyed raising the stakes of Lucia Russo’s suffering. “And poor you, Lucia. Your husband runs off and sticks you with raising that handful of a girl all by yourself. I’m sorry you don’t have a son like my Salvatore to take care of you. You have it so much harder than I do.”

  Rosie always looked at her mother and rolled her eyes. If Sal Marino was the best his mother could count on to take care of her, she’d better plan to work the rest of her life and learn karate. Laziest boy in the school, and scrawny as a street dog.

  “I could take him,” Rosie had once bragged to her mother. “I could wrestle Sal to
the ground and use him for a lawn chair.”

  She had expected her mother to laugh in solidarity, but nope. “How are you ever going to get a husband, talking like that? A boy wants someone who’s soft, Rosie. Who makes him feel like a man.”

  Her mother was a pile of contradictions. For months, Rosie had been begging her mother to let her bleach the fuzz on her upper lip, and to lighten her hair. “To make me look prettier, Mama. Like the other girls.”

  Every time, her mother refused. “Those girls will be invisible by the time they’re thirty, they’re so pale,” she’d said last weekend. “You’re exotic, Rosie. Men like that. You’re like Sophia Loren.”

  Rosie shook her head and sighed. “Nobody knows who she is, Mama.”

  “Scandal in Sorrento?” Lucia said, shimmying from the kitchen to the sink. “Lucky to Be a Woman? You watch, Rosie. Everyone is going to know who Sophia Loren is.”

  Rosie imitated her mother’s dance as she made her way to her across the room. “Okay, Mama,” she said, wrapping her arms around her waist. “If you say so.”

  Her mother was going to be furious with Rosie for punching Alan Fletcher, and Rosie had no doubt she already knew about it. Mrs. Marino would have taken care of that.

  Telling her mother the truth wouldn’t help. If Rosie explained that Alan had gawked at her breasts and said, “Nice titties, Rosie,” her mother would blame her for her neckline. If she told her mother that Alan had poked a finger into her bra, she’d blame Rosie for that, too. “Why’d you get close enough to give him the chance, Rosie?”

  What she would never tell her mother, what she could barely admit to herself, was how much she had liked that kind of attention. She wasn’t offended by Alan’s finger slowly circling her nipple. How could a girl object to that bolt of lightning? It was Alan’s lack of permission, and that stupid-ass grin of his as he made her weak in the knees. That’s why she’d slugged Alan Fletcher.