The Daughters of Erietown

by Connie Schultz

  Brick turned to look at her. “How do you know her name?”

  “I answered the door and let her in. Mom was in the back hanging laundry.”

  “She talked to you?”

  Sam shrugged. “Not much, really. She isn’t very friendly.”

  Brick inhaled deeply, and started rocking on his heels. “Where’s your brother?” he said, shoving his hand into his pocket.

  “He’s at the Kleshinskis’,” she said. “He’s having supper there. Mom told him to be home by dark.”

  Brick looked out at the car in front of their house again, and then over at Sam. He pulled his hand out of his pocket and slid a single finger across her forehead, brushing a wisp of hair from her eyes. “You stay out here,” he said. “Keep your brother out here, too, if he comes home.”

  Sam nodded, and her father climbed the stairs and pushed through the screen door. “Dad,” she said, “who is Ro—” He slammed the big door behind him. Sam stared at the peeling strips of gunmetal gray paint. They never closed the big door in summer.

  She sat down on the bottom step and picked the dirt out from between her toes. It had never occurred to her to paint her toenails. She stretched out her tanned legs and heard her mother’s regular refrain in her head: What I wouldn’t give for those long legs. Her mom was always imagining her new and improved life with body parts from her daughter. What she “wouldn’t give” for Sam’s hair, Sam’s waist, Sam’s five feet, seven inches. Sam looked in the mirror and saw nothing but problems. Ellie looked at her daughter and saw God’s second thoughts.

  She rubbed her arms again, and for the first time in years thought about that other knock on their front door. She had been a little girl then, sitting on their couch alone and waiting for her father to come home. “A man’s going to have an envelope for Daddy,” her mother had told Sam before she left with Reilly. “I want you to stay here and be with him.”

  Sam remembered sitting nervously on the sofa, staring at the clock as she counted down the minutes until her father came home. The man at the door was a deputy. Her father stood in the kitchen crying, telling Sam, “Mommy doesn’t love me anymore.”

  She had been Reilly’s age when her mother left her alone to wait for her father, to hold him as he sobbed. Maybe that was why she had always felt so protective of Reilly. Who does that to a little kid?

  She walked around to the front porch, tiptoed up the steps, and sat cross-legged next to the screen door. She leaned in to hear over the din of traffic. “Ellie,” she heard her father say. “Ellie. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  Rosemary was yelling. “A man’s got responsibilities. He’s as much your son as that boy on that wall.”

  The screen door rattled with a loud thump. Sam jumped up and ran down the stairs before turning around to look. The little boy’s face was pressed against the screen, his hands spread like bat wings as he howled, “Bik. Bik.”

  Sam stared at Paull. Pick him up, she thought. Somebody, pick him up. She tried counting to ten, but by six she couldn’t wait any longer. She went up the stairs and opened the door just wide enough to pick him up. She reached back and pulled the big door shut.

  “C’mon, Paull-two-els,” she said as she carried him toward the stairs. He was whimpering, instead of crying, and he wrapped his arms and legs around her. “You’re a little monkey,” she said, cupping her hand around his sweaty head and sitting down on the top step. She started rocking as she sang a made-up song about little boy Paull on a pony named Peter. The third time she sang it, he hummed along through sniffles. By the fourth time, he was sound asleep, straddling her chest.

  She kissed the top of his head. “Oh, Paull-two-els,” she whispered. “Try to remember this part of today, instead.” She leaned against the banister, her hand still on his head as she closed her eyes and attempted to focus on the slowing buzz of evening traffic. Her shirt was soaked with sweat, but she didn’t dare move him. She started to time her breaths to the heave of the boy’s back under her hand, her eyes drooping.

  The streetlights had clicked on by the time the door opened and Rosemary shook Sam awake. “Give me my boy,” she said, pulling Paull out of Sam’s arms. Sam felt a rush of cold air against her damp chest. She blinked and looked up. The woman’s hair was a wild cloud around her face, which was pale with black circles of mascara pooling under her eyes. Like a ghost, Sam thought.

  Paull started to cry as Rosemary marched with him to her car. “Shhh, shhh,” she said, patting his back. “Mommy’s here.”

  “You’re welcome,” Sam shouted.

  Rosemary opened the passenger side of her car and leaned in to drop Paull into the seat. She walked around the front of the car and yanked open the driver’s door with a force that made her drop her purse.

  “Goddammit,” she yelled.

  Sam saw her start grabbing the scattered contents from the street. Normally, she would jump up to help, but she’d already picked sides.

  The woman slid behind the wheel and slammed her door shut. The engine growled, and stopped. Paull started to cry. Rosemary turned the key again. Nothing. “Come on,” she yelled, turning the key in the ignition again. Nothing.

  Sam was about to cock her head and smile until she saw the look on Rosemary’s face. She was terrified. Sam looked away.

  Rosemary turned the key again. This time, the engine caught and Rosemary peeled off into the night.

  Sam counted to a hundred before she stood up. She looked back at the screen door. The house was dark, and silent. She walked to the curb and spotted something metal gleaming under the streetlight. She wrapped her fingers around a silver lighter. She flipped it over in her palm and read the inscription: LOVE, PINT.

  Sam looked at the house. Still dark. She tucked the lighter into her shirt pocket and tried not to think about what it meant. She had just started to stand when her knees buckled from a sudden force against her back.

  “Gotcha!” her brother said.

  “Reilly,” she yelled, jumping back onto the curb. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  He laughed again. “Why’s the back door locked?”

  Sam grabbed him and spun him around so that his back pressed against her stomach. She pulled him in tight and slapped her hand over his mouth.

  “Shut up, Reilly,” she said, wrapping her arms around him. “Just this once. Shut. Up.”

  If her husband hadn’t looked so afraid, maybe Ellie could have told herself for a little while longer that the red-haired boy in the arms of the woman standing in her dining room was not Brick’s child.

  As soon as Brick walked into the room, though, Ellie knew.

  “Ellie,” he said, softly, walking toward her.

  She held up her hand. “No.”

  “Ellie,” he said, more loudly.

  “No, Brick.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “No. No.”

  The little boy started to cry. Rosemary shifted him on her hip. “Not now, Paullie,” she said. “Please, not now.” Paull cried louder and tried to wriggle out of her arms. He started to fall, and Ellie rushed forward, catching him.

  “There you go, sweetie,” Ellie said, lowering him to the floor.

  She looked up at Rosemary. “Oh,” Ellie said, as if she’d forgotten Rosemary was there. She looked at Brick. His eyes were wide with terror. She’d seen that face only once before, after he’d almost hit her.

  “El.”

  She felt suddenly calm, as if someone had flipped a switch and turned off something inside her. Brick pulled out his handkerchief and handed it to her. “Here, honey,” he said. “For your nose.” Ellie unfolded it, dragged it across her face, and threw it to the floor.

  Paull was standing at Rosemary’s feet, whimpering. Ellie watched as he walked toward the door and pressed his hands against the screen, wailing.

  “Oh, Brick,”
Ellie said. “Look what you’ve done.”

  Rosemary cleared her throat. “I just wanted to ask—”

  “Shut up, Roe,” Brick said.

  “No, Brick,” Ellie said. “Let her finish. Let Roe finish.”

  “I wouldn’t have come,” Rosemary said. “I would have stayed away if he hadn’t stopped helping me with Paull.”

  Ellie started blinking. “What? What do you mean?” She looked at Brick. “Have you been living with them, too?”

  “No. Absolutely not.”

  “What does she mean, then?”

  “What I mean,” Rosemary said, “is that he stopped giving me money to help raise our son.”

  Ellie stared at her. “Oh my God. All that overtime.” She looked at Brick. “For our new house, you said. To give our kids a better life. It was all a lie.”

  “Ellie,” Brick said, his voice breaking. “Ellie. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

  Rosemary tossed back her hair. “A man’s got responsibilities,” she said, pointing toward the door. “He’s as much your son as that boy on that wall.”

  Ellie looked at the boy again, and then at Rosemary. “I remember you,” Ellie said.

  Rosemary nodded. “At the Hills depart—”

  “No,” Ellie interrupted. “You were at Brick’s game. I saw you. I heard your boy say Brick’s name.” Ellie looked at Brick. “It all makes sense now. Why you didn’t want the kids and me to come to any more games. You were afraid I’d figure it out.”

  “She never came to another game.”

  Ellie rolled her eyes. “That night when I told you I still loved you? When I said I believed you loved me, too? You were already with her.” She counted on her fingers. “And she was pregnant with your baby.”

  “Ellie, I didn’t—”

  “He didn’t know,” Rosemary said.

  Ellie looked at her. “What?”

  “He didn’t know I was pregnant. When he ended it with me, I didn’t tell him. He didn’t know about Paull until a few months ago.”

  Ellie shook her head and looked at the floor. “Why are you telling me this?”

  Rosemary started to cry. “I don’t want you to feel worse than you already do, I guess. And I’m not here to break you up. That’s not it at all.”

  Ellie turned to look at the door. Paull was gone. She looked out the window and saw Sam sitting on the porch steps, holding Paull in her arms.

  Ellie turned back to Rosemary. “Why are you here in my home?” Ellie said. “What could you possibly want from me?”

  On the drive home, Rosemary kept looking down at her sleeping son. “I’m out of options, Paullie,” she said. “I’m all played out.”

  What had she been thinking? Of course Brick and Ellie McGinty would not raise him, and not because of Ellie. She had surprised Rosemary, the way she’d been with Paullie, so tender and concerned. “Brick, though,” she said.

  Paullie was a reminder of the worst thing Brick had ever done, and she could see now that he wasn’t the type of man who took responsibility for his mistakes.

  Rosemary felt a new camaraderie with Ellie McGinty. They were both victims of Brick McGinty.

  Initially, Brick had made Rosemary feel like the woman she’d always wanted to be, beautiful and confident, and desired by a man who was willing to risk it all to have her. She was so sure Brick’s lust for her would evolve into love, and that getting pregnant with Paullie would seal the deal.

  Meanwhile, Ellie was doing what good wives do, trusting her husband to manage the money and believing his promises to take care of her for the rest of her life. She had believed Brick when he said he was working all that overtime for her and the kids. What must it be like right now to know that her husband had spent all of those nights in Rosemary’s arms?

  Rosemary could tell by how Ellie was with Paullie that she was a good mother, and capable of separating the child from the crime. Rosemary would never be able to do that. Just looking at their family photos on the wall had filled her with rage, and blinded her to the harm she was about to inflict on Ellie.

  We gave up so much of ourselves for the same man, Rosemary wanted to say to Ellie now. Were we naïve, or just needy?

  “I’m sorry, Ellie,” Rosemary said as she drove. “I should never have put you through this.”

  She drove back to the harbor, where she had lived in Erietown all of her adult life. Across the bridge and into “the land of her people,” Aunt Lizzie liked to say. So ridiculous, really. Why shouldn’t the Italians live with the Irish, and the blacks and Puerto Ricans, for that matter? The men worked together, and sometimes drank in the same bars. They all cheated on their wives, too, and the women kept putting up with them no matter how you pronounced their last names.

  For the first time in years, Rosemary thought of Mrs. Colbert, the black woman at the Greyhound bus station who had driven her to Sardelli’s the day she arrived. “You’re a nice girl, Rosemary,” she had told her. “Don’t let anyone tell you anything else.” Rosemary had clung to those words in the early days here in Erietown. It was one thing to have your aunt say you’re wonderful. It was something else to have a complete stranger see the good in you.

  Mrs. Colbert had been wrong. Rosemary wasn’t a nice girl. She had come to Erietown pretending to be someone else, but she’d ended up being exactly what Aunt Lizzie had tried to prevent: an unwed mother working at a bar and flirting with men to make more than minimum wage.

  Those tips were getting lighter, too. There was a new girl working the bar with her. Cindy. Blonder than Rosemary, and almost a decade younger. Rosemary was no fool. She noticed the regulars now called over to her rival when they sat their fat asses down on those stools. Her best years were behind her, and her little boy deserved so much more.

  She reached down and smoothed Paull’s damp face. The one thing she had done right tonight was to let him slip out that front door when she saw Brick’s daughter reaching for him.

  “That was your sister, holding you tight,” she said as she drove. “She sang to you and she rocked you to sleep.”

  She kissed the tip of her finger and touched his cheek. “Remember that, Paullie.”

  Rita Taylor elbowed Sam as she snatched her time card out of the rack and punched it in the clock. “Better get out there, Sammy girl,” she said, slipping her card back into the rack. “The dining room is filling up and Bert’s already yelling for you.”

  Sam rolled her eyes and punched her time card. “Bert can kiss my ass.”

  Rita tucked a pencil in her hair. “Still mad at him for last night?”

  Sam put her hands on her hips. “As you should be, too. It’s a ridiculous policy.”

  “You knew when you started here at Otto’s Tavern that we get charged for any dish we break,” Rita said, tugging on her sneakers. “What do you care about pol-i-cy? Three more weeks, you’re gone.”

  Sam plunked down beside her. “It’s not about me, Rita. This is a workers’ rights issue.”

  “Listen to you,” Rita said, laughing. “Sam McGinty, union organizer. Your dad put you up to this?”

  “My dad doesn’t even know about this.”

  “Good thing. He’s expecting you to leave for college in September, not stick around here and organize a union.”

  Sam stood up and tied her apron. “What hurts one of us, hurts all of us. The owner of this restaurant deducts the cost of dishes we break from our puny wages. As if we mean to. As if we’re throwing them across the room for the fun of it.”

  “Calm down, princess. This is your summer job, that’s all it is. Soon, you’ll leave.”

  “That doesn’t mean I’m going to forget all of you.” She pointed at Rita’s sneakers. “Sexy.”

  “Turn fifty-five and get back to me. You can laugh at my bargain alley Adidas all you want, but at least I’m not
limping home.”

  “Bert hates them.”

  “Well, to quote a famous waitress I know, ‘Bert can kiss my ass.’ Get out of this town. Go to college, and don’t ever come back.”

  “Couldn’t you act just a tiny bit sorry to see me go?”

  “I’ve known a lot of girls your age,” Rita said. “They walk in here for a summer job with all their big plans and end up working as a cashier or waitress. It’s 1975, Sam. A different world, but it’s not here in Erietown.” Rita started walking toward the dining room. “Let’s go. Our fans await.”

  “When you were my age, what did you want to do?”

  Rita kept walking. “Doesn’t matter, Sammy girl. There’s nothing more boring than a story about a dream that died on the grill.”

  * * *

  —

  Sam was busing tables at the back of the dining room when Jeanine, the hostess, walked up to her and said, “The lady and her grandson at table seven asked for you.”

  Sam set down the stack of plates and turned to look. The woman was wearing high heels and a skirt she didn’t bother trying to tug to her knees after sitting down. The boy had bright red hair and was swinging his long, lanky legs. Ten years old, Sam figured. She studied his face for a moment. “I don’t know them,” she said. “I don’t think they’ve ever been here before.”

  “They stopped here last Sunday,” Jeanine said. “She walked in and asked if you were working. When I told her you were off she grabbed her boy’s hand and said she just remembered she had an appointment. An appointment. On a Sunday night.”

  “She knows my name?” Sam turned to look at them again. “Huh.” She pulled out her order pad. “I’m on it.”

  She walked over and greeted them with a smile. “Hi, I’m Sam.” The little boy glanced at the woman before returning Sam’s smile. “I’m Paull.”

  “Well, hi there, Paul. How old are you?”

  “Eight and three-quarters.”

  “Wow. You’re tall for your age. I thought you were almost in high school.” He giggled.