The Daughters of Erietown

by Connie Schultz

  “Out of my way.” She shooed him aside and opened the closet door.

  He sat on the bed, watching her. “I doubt you need that girdle for this,” he said.

  “This is not a girdle,” she said, sliding one hanger of pants after another. “These are control-top pantyhose. No panty lines. And why am I explaining this?” She pulled out a pair of black polyester slacks and held them up to the window’s light. “Toss me the lint roller, will you?”

  He picked it up off the bedside table and lobbed it gently to his wife. “So, what did our daughter say that has you so worked up?”

  “Who said I was worked up?”

  “I can tell by your voice. What did she say?”

  Ellie pulled on the pants and tucked in her blouse. “Did she tell you where she’s planning to live after graduation?”

  “That’s months away. First she has to get a job.”

  Ellie zipped up her pants. “She has one. She’s going to be a teacher in Shaker Heights. She’s going to live in an apartment with that Beverly girl she’s always talking about.” Ellie turned to look at him. “She’s moving away, Brick.”

  “El, we knew this could happen.”

  She sat down in front of her makeup mirror and flicked the setting from “day” to “evening.” “We’ll never see her if she moves away.”

  “Sam will always be close to us. To you, especially.”

  She picked up the pencil and started filling in her brows. “And Reilly? He’s going to move to Cleveland, and he’s not going to college first. You’d better get used to it, Brick. As soon as they graduate from high school, Reill and Craig Kleshinski are going to work at that steel plant where Craig’s brother Ronnie works.”

  Brick walked over to the chest of drawers and pulled on his watch and wedding ring. “The hell he is. We’ve got college savings for both of our kids, and both of our kids are going to be college graduates. I didn’t work all that overtime so that my son could carry a lunch pail.”

  Ellie looked up into the dresser mirror. “Honey, I don’t think you need to wear a tie tonight.”

  “His father, Henry the Second, is a partner at the largest law firm in Cleveland,” he said, holding up his two ties. “This kid already thinks he’s better than us. We owe it to Sam to make a good impression.”

  Ellie set down her tube of mascara. “Brick McGinty, you have always told our children that money is not the measure of a man, and that no one is better than they are. You have nothing to prove to this twenty-one-year-old boy from Shaker Heights.”

  “Blue then,” he said, tossing the red tie on the bed.

  Sam and Lenny sat back to back in the dark on the Kleshinskis’ porch floor, their knees pulled up to their chests. “Man,” he said, “Good Friday sure lived up to its name this year.”

  Sam sniffled and dug her hand into the cloud of wadded-up tissues on the floor beside her. “I just didn’t see this coming,” she said, squeezing the tip of her nose with a tissue. “I never thought Henry would be like this.”

  “Sam, I don’t think it’s fair to blame Henry for everything. He meant well. You seem so much bigger than Erietown to him. He wasn’t expecting this. This town, this life.”

  Sam flipped around and caught Lenny as he teetered backward. “I walked three miles to your house because I needed to look into the eyes of the only person who understands me.” The moonlight softened her face, but it couldn’t hide the damage. Her eyes were red and puffy, her nose rubbed raw.

  “I came home to meet him,” he said. “That’s the only reason I’m here.”

  “I know.”

  “And because of you, I am now going to have to go to Easter mass with Mom.”

  She looked down at the floor and said nothing.

  “Okay, bad joke,” he said. “Sam, I’ve known you all of my life. You’re like a sister to me. Henry has known you for less than a year, and he wants to spend the rest of his life with you.”

  “Not anymore,” Sam said.

  “That’s not true, Sam. You’re the one who’s changed your mind.”

  “Lenny, you had to be there. Mom and Dad, walking onto the porch all dressed up. Mom was wearing the new blouse I got her, and Dad was in a tie. A tie, Lenny. When’s the last time you saw Brick McGinty in a tie?”

  “Well, there was the funeral for Scotty McGuire,” he said. “After he was killed in Vietnam. All of us union families went to that one. Even us boys wore ties.”

  “Nineteen sixty-eight,” Sam said, pulling her knees to her chest again. “We were eleven.” She looked at him, her eyes welling again. “Henry doesn’t know a single person who served in Vietnam.”

  “He can’t help where he grew up, Sam.”

  “I know. But it was one of those things that should have warned me. He doesn’t understand who we are. Your girlfriend—Linda, right?—she grew up in a mill town. You don’t have to explain things to her. Henry’s never even thought about people like us. He’s never had to.”

  “He’s thought a lot about you.”

  “He knows the college Sam. But that’s only part of me, and college will never change who I am. Kent State was my chance of a lifetime. For him, it was slumming. It was his big act of defiance, refusing to go to Harvard, his father’s alma mater.”

  “How did he explain what happened today?”

  Sam stretched her legs in front of her and leaned back on her hands. “Oh, you know,” she said, imitating an Appalachian accent. “He was just trying to be like us plain folk. His exact words: ‘I was trying to fit in.’ ”

  “It’s not like he showed up in a tank and cutoffs.”

  “He wore a T-shirt and jeans to fit in with my parents in their own home. The arrogance of that. And the look on Henry’s face when he walked into our house. He kept looking around like he was inspecting a crime scene, and I started seeing our house the way he was seeing it. The ancient linoleum in the kitchen. The afghan with the big hole in the middle on the couch. That ridiculous cat clock with its ticking tail.”

  “You love Kit-Cat.”

  “When I was six. Henry just stood and stared at it.”

  “I find it calming,” Lenny said. “Maybe he does, too.”

  “So, you think this is funny.”

  “What do you like about Henry?”

  “Let’s not do this.”

  “No, really, Sam. What is it that you liked about him, before he drove to Erietown?”

  “His sense of humor,” she said. “He always makes me laugh. And his confidence. He never seems to doubt his place in the world.”

  “Not like us,” Lenny said. “We’re people in transition, no matter where we are. We go to college, and our dorms look nicer than the houses we grew up in. I was amazed at how the showers always worked and the dresser drawers never got stuck.”

  “I could always tell the wealthier students by how they treated the housekeepers in our dorm, as if they were invisible,” Sam said. “And all that complaining about the littlest things, like having to do their own laundry. You would not believe how many people I’ve had to teach how to use fabric softener.”

  She turned to look at him. “Are we ever going to fit in, Lenny?”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere. I’ve always felt different. When I was growing up, all the other white girls wanted to play with Barbies and grow up to be Laura Petrie. I wanted to read books and be Emma Peel.”

  “And then there was your white-girl Afro phase in seventh grade,” Lenny said. “My mom still talks about that.”

  “My one and only Toni home perm,” Sam said, wincing. “I looked like a human Q-tip.”

  Lenny laughed. “You and I got out of Erietown, but only sort of. Every time we come home we see the reasons we wanted to leave, and then we feel guilty about it.”

  They sat in silence for a moment a
s two semitrucks rumbled past. “What about your parents?” Lenny said. “What did they have to say about all this?”

  “Mom worked hard to be polite. Dad barely said a word through the entire dinner. As soon as we finished dessert he stood up, shook Henry’s hand, and said, ‘Lot of trucks on I-Ninety at night, so be careful driving back to Shaker.’ Then he walked out the back door and that was that.”

  “He would do that to any guy dating his daughter,” Lenny said. “You and Henry will talk more when you get back to campus. Things can work out.”

  “No,” she said softly. “I realize now I’d have to change too much to be with him. He’d never say that, but over time I’d squash a big part of myself to keep him happy, to fit in with his friends. My mother never got to be who she wanted to be. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

  “So, what will you do?”

  “I’m not moving to Shaker Heights,” she said, standing up. “In three months I graduate, and I’ll come back here to Erietown.”

  “Sam, there are more places to live than Erietown. It’s not your only option.”

  “I’m not a big-city girl.”

  “You don’t know that,” Lenny said. “You’re tougher than anyone else I know.”

  “I’m strong,” Sam said, standing up. “Not tough. Why doesn’t anyone understand the difference?”

  She hugged him and stepped back. “Look at you, Lenny Kleshinski. Contact lenses. A steady girl from Maine who wants to marry you. And now you’re starting law school in the fall.”

  “At Ohio State. Just three hours away.”

  She nodded. “I love you like a brother. I always will. But you cannot be here for me. You are already gone.”

  Sam hesitated at the end of the driveway and looked down at her watch. Nearly midnight, but the dining room light was still on.

  It had all been too much. Her nervousness before Henry’s arrival, watching her mother check every tabletop for dust, her father fiddling with the vase of daffodils he’d picked from his garden. The look on their faces as Henry stepped out of the car looking like he’d just spent the day at the beach. His smiling face morphing into a look of horror as Sam approached him.

  “Sam,” he’d said, louder than he intended. “I had no idea your dad would be wearing a tie.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “You have no idea.”

  Her mother had tried to rescue him. “What a relief,” she’d chirped from the porch. “Now we can get out of these silly clothes and get comfortable.”

  Sam had known her father’s first impression from the sound of jingling coins in his pocket. She gave Henry credit for this: One look at her father’s face, and he knew he’d already blown it.

  She stared at her parents’ front door. This was not her home. She’d lived in it only a year or so before leaving for college, where she’d spent most of the last four years. Three hours ago, she’d thought she was moving away. This felt too familiar, this sudden unraveling of a life outside her parents’ front door.

  She squinted at the light in the window. The last thing she wanted to do right now was sit through one of her mother’s heart-to-hearts. She started to walk backward in the driveway, but stopped when she heard the front door open. “Shit,” she whispered.

  “Sam?”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  She heard him shut the door quietly behind him and walk across the porch. The streetlight brought his face into focus as he grabbed the railing and groaned when he lowered himself onto the top step. He patted the space next to him. “Give those feet of yours a rest.”

  She walked slowly up the stairs and sat down next to him. “Dad, I’m so sorry about what—”

  He knocked the side of his knee against hers. “You don’t owe anyone an apology, Sam.”

  “I don’t know why he did that, Dad,” she said, unbuckling her sandals. “Why Henry acted so weird.”

  “I think maybe you do,” he said.

  “I broke up with him.”

  “You sure you want to do that? Over a pair of blue jeans?”

  “It’s not about the clothes, Dad. It’s about who he thinks we are.”

  Brick shifted slightly. “Sam, he was trying. Brought flowers for your mother, showed good manners. Took an interest in the house, too.”

  “That’s one way to put it.”

  “He was surprised, Sam. You’d better get used to that. Your life is changing, but some people will always see you as a kid from Erietown. You’re going to spend the rest of your life straddling two worlds. That’s what happens when people like us go to college.”

  She turned to look at him. “How do you know that?”

  “Coach,” he said. “Coach Sam Bryant, the man you’re named for. He told me when I was a senior in high school that if I went to college, I would always be a stranger in both lands.”

  “What a discouraging thing to say.”

  “Nah,” Brick said. “He wanted me to go, to play basketball for—” He shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Didn’t happen. Ancient history.”

  “I know, Dad. I know what happened. I know that you and Mom had to get married. Because of me.”

  “I suppose you know about Kent State, too. About my scholarship.”

  She lied. “Yeah. Sure.”

  “Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like. But I wouldn’t trade you and your brother for anything. Your mother feels the same way. You need to know that.”

  She leaned forward to touch his arm, then decided against it. “Guess you could say I was your biggest mistake.”

  “No, Sam. I know my biggest mistake, and you’re not it.”

  She held her breath and waited. They had never talked about that day. If he would just mention him, she’d tell him. Paull-two-els is a happy boy. He likes to draw butterflies. He looks just like you.

  Her father was looking straight ahead, his shoulders slumped forward as he stared at something she couldn’t see. The harsh light illuminated the web of grooves on his face, the white patches of hair at his temples. When did that happen? How had she never noticed?

  “I’m not moving to Shaker, Dad,” she finally said. “After I graduate, I’m moving home.”

  “Don’t overreact, Sam.”

  “Mom’s right. There are plenty of children who need me right here in Erietown.”

  “Your mom.” He sighed. “Let’s get this straight. You’re not living here. Not in this house. If you move back to Erietown, go find a nice apartment to rent. Make some new friends, too. It’s time you figure out who you want to be. Away from us. It’s not your job to take care of your mother, or me.”

  “Now you tell me.” She picked up her sandals, stood, and held out her hand to help him up. He reached for the railing instead.

  “Sam, that boy is not the one for you.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “You don’t love him,” Brick said. “If you loved that boy, you’d be defending him to me. You’d be yelling and fighting for him.” He brushed off the seat of his pants. “He admires you. Probably loves you. But he’s not strong enough for you. You need someone who isn’t afraid of you. I’m not sure that man exists in Erietown.”

  “I belong here, Dad.”

  Brick looked up at the moon as he spoke. “It’s one thing to remember your roots, Sam. Helps us keep our balance. But don’t let your roots become your excuse to be stuck.” He opened the door and walked inside.

  Sam’s legs felt leaden as she walked up the stairs to her bedroom. She changed into her nightgown and went down the hall to brush her teeth. She peeked into Reilly’s room. He was a grown man, but he still slept like little Reilly. His bedding was puddled on the floor, and he lay on his back with his arms and legs spread wide, as if he were making an angel in the snow.

  She didn’t see the envelope on her pillow unt
il she turned on her bedside lamp. It was thick and light blue. She ran her fingers along the typed letters: Miss Eleanor Grace Fetters. It was from a nursing school in Cleveland. She held the envelope under the light to read the faded postmark: April 10, 1957.

  She flipped it over to open it, and immediately recognized her mother’s handwriting: Sam, I never even saw this letter until Grandma died. You do what you need to do, for you. I’ll be fine.

  Brick knew by heart the biggest milestones of Paull’s life, as reported by the Erietown Times.

  Paull Russo attended Harbor High School, which was one point seven miles from the apartment over Sardelli’s, where he was conceived. For the first three years of high school, he played forward on the Mariners basketball team. A summer growth spurt shot him up to six feet two in his senior year. Same height as his old man, same position: point guard.

  Paull also played baseball, alternating between right field and shortstop and, like his father, threw “faster than a bullet out of the barrel,” one sportswriter said. He did not, however, mirror his father’s strength at bat. Poor coaching, Brick was sure of it. He and Paull had the same build, the same rhythm of bone to muscle. Brick knew what he was doing wrong without ever seeing him at the plate.

  Paull lettered in both sports all four years, and graduated in 1983. That fall, he went off to Hiram College, about an hour south of Erietown, and majored in business administration. A private school, Brick noted with a grudging respect for Rosemary’s aunt and uncle.

  Four years later, Bianchi & DeLuca, the Italian accounting firm in the harbor, announced Paull’s hire as junior associate, just two weeks after he graduated from college. With a three-point-six average, Brick wanted to brag.

  Brick never told Ellie any of this, because Paull did not exist. This was the deal they’d struck in the summer of 1969, in the hours after Rosemary drove off that bridge.

  Brick had never thought Rosemary was capable of killing herself, and the police said it was an accident. But he’d been haunted by the look in her eyes that night, in the moment before she left. She’d looked crazed, like a trapped animal.