The Hollow Ground: A Novel

by Natalie S. Harnett

  She came at me and pinched my arm. Then she sat on the desk chair with the doll box resting on her lap. “Don’t you dare look at me like that. You know we don’t got the money for this. Don’t act like you thought you could keep her. Don’t make me feel bad when you knew it all along.”

  My voice came out as thin as a trickle of water. “But you had the money for the deli food. The money to get your hair and nails done.”

  “And don’t I work hard for that! Don’t I deserve something too?”

  I backed up to the door. My chest felt all dense and tight and my voice came out in stops and starts. “I hate you. I hate you more than anything else in the world.”

  Ma laughed. “Wait. Wait till you see the rest of the world. I ain’t that bad. Compared to the rest of it, I ain’t nothin’ at all.”

  Out the door I ran, past Gramp and Daddy who were sitting on the plastic-covered couch watching TV. I ran outside and deep into the fire zone, hoping I’d trip on a borehole and break my neck and for the rest of her life Ma would have to be sorry for what she’d done.

  That night in bed Ma shook me and whispered, “Brigid? Did you have a nice birthday? Huh, honey? I need to know. Did you?”

  I was lying on my side facing the wall. All I had to do was roll over and say “yes” and Ma’s love would have washed over me like sunshine, like rain. But I remained rigid, staring at the werewolf poster on the wall, thinking of Auntie’s story “The Great Forgetting.” I couldn’t wait for the day to come when me and Ma would pass each other on the street and not even know each other’s names, when we wouldn’t know each other at all.

  Thirteen

  Our lives changed once Daddy started working for Uncle Jerry. On Sunday evenings Daddy drove down to Allentown where he spent the week working for Uncle Jerry in his used car dealership and living in Uncle Jerry and Aunt Janice’s spare room.

  “Calling it a closet would be a compliment,” Daddy said, referring to the spare room, which fit only a cot and a nightstand. “Calling it a closet would be an insult to closets all over the world.”

  All week we looked forward to those Friday nights when Daddy came home. When he walked in the door with his jacket folded over his arm and his tie loose around his neck, he walked in a different man. That’s what Ma said. “Like he turned back to the way he used to be. Like whatever happened to him that day in the mine just disappeared. Like it hadn’t happened at all.”

  We’d hold supper, sometimes not eating until eight or nine, until whatever Ma and Gram had cooked had dried out or cooled. We’d all sit around the kitchen table with the stove blasting out its warmth and the louvered window cracked for air. The lateness of the hour would give those evenings what Daddy called “night magic,” that mystic kind of feeling that comes sometimes with darkness and night.

  Those evenings might have actually been magical in that Ma and Gram would use the kitchen together to prepare the meal. Sometimes they wouldn’t even be talking to each other and Gram would tell me to tell Ma that Ma’s water was boiling, and Ma would tell me to tell Gram that Gram’s gravy was sticking. Somehow, though, they always managed to pull off one of Daddy’s favorites: pot roast and biscuits, meat loaf with slightly burned oven-roasted potatoes, the salad done with petals of iceberg leaves cupping radish wedges that resembled the hearts of flowers.

  Ma wore her hair up the way Daddy liked it and put on one of the dresses she’d made styled after one she’d seen Mrs. Jacqueline Kennedy wearing in a magazine. As soon as Daddy walked in the door he’d wolf whistle and spin Ma around and tell her she was the prettiest girl in the world. And I think just like with Daddy, Ma turned back to the way she once was, the way I remembered before her heart turned bitter. Brother must have felt it too, even though he was too little to remember her back then. He’d cling to Ma, standing beside her chair and nuzzling into her armpit like a sad little calf. Sometimes he’d sit on her lap snoozing against her shoulder as if he was afraid that when he opened his eyes she’d be back to the bristly ma we’d all gotten used to.

  On those nights Gramp, who usually went to bed at eight, would stay up no matter how late the hour and Gram would hold off putting her Friday-night curlers in until we’d sat long over dessert, listening to Daddy tell stories about the customers, and the other workers, and the people he met in Allentown. He told funny stories about something dumb someone said. And he’d tell sad stories about car accidents and deaths and divorces and bankruptcies that had made people lose their cars or need to buy a used one.

  Most of Daddy’s job was making sure all the paperwork for the cars was in order and making sure the two men under him, Joe and Phil, had done their jobs, which was to clean and repair the cars. We knew all about Joe’s mother’s glaucoma and Joe’s hammertoes and about Phil’s wife who would sometimes leave the baby alone in the afternoon to go to the corner bar and how Joe would hear about it from neighbors and would have to give her the “what for” all over again.

  Daddy was proud of how well the men liked him. “I tell them I don’t care if they take an extra five minutes here or there, as long as they get the cleanup and repairs done. I tell them flirt with Norma all you want. As long as your work gets done, it’s no skin off my nose.”

  Norma was the office girl. She had a boyfriend who she was afraid was never going to propose and a father who was such a drunk he sometimes locked her out of the house because he didn’t recognize who she was. “She’s a bit of a ditz,” Daddy said. “But I never talk down to her. When I tell her to get my coffee, I always say please and thank you. A little politeness goes a long way. Especially with women.”

  Daddy told us about the things they’d find in the cars: loose change, buttons, a baby’s shoe, the last page of a breakup letter, torn photos, shopping lists, shell casings, a box filled with potted meat. “And other things,” he said ominously. “Grownup things.” When I pleaded to know what those were, he winked and Ma and Gramp laughed. “Don’t you dare tell,” Gram said.

  “Slimy rubbers probably,” Marisol informed me when I asked what Daddy could be referring to. “I bet the seats are sticky from where people did it. I bet he’s found bloodstains and poo stains and who knows what else.”

  I started picturing those cars as violent wrecks, horrible museum pieces of people’s lives. And I got worried for Daddy that something bad would happen to him.

  When Daddy came home those Friday evenings, he didn’t only tell stories; he also did what Gram called “wicked imitations.” “Imitations that make you burn in hell, Adrian, if they weren’t so funny.” Legs crossed, Daddy would dangle his shoe off his foot and do Norma filing her nails or snapping her gum. He’d do Phil belting his wife and Joe hobbling around on his crooked toes. And he always did a rendition of Aunt Janice that would leave all of us—Gram especially, who’d never even met Aunt Janice—breathless.

  “Little Jerry, Little Jerry,” Daddy called out, his voice high-pitched and quivering with tension. “You need help wiping your butt? Should I come up and wipe it for you?”

  Trying to hold back the laugh, tears oozed out Gram’s eyes and even Gramp hacked out a chuckle. The only person Daddy never made fun of was Uncle Jerry. All his life Daddy was careful of the places where Ma was tender.

  Sometimes it was close to midnight when Daddy finally fell quiet. He’d pick up Brother from where he’d be sleeping, either on Ma’s lap or curled up on the floor mat by the sink, and I’d be left to wash the dishes. Usually Ma would open the front door and stare out at West Mountain, which steamed worse in the cold weather, and tell Daddy how he’d nailed those people exact. “Feels like I know them already, Adrian. Like I known them all my life.”

  On Friday night and Saturday night when Daddy was home, he slept with Ma in his and Uncle Frank’s old room and I was stuck having to sleep in Gramp’s smelly old Barcalounger. The first thing Daddy did in his old room was to move his mattress from the bottom bunk to the floor next to Ma’s mattress and the second thing he did was to pack into boxes all
of Uncle Frank’s athletic trophies and photos. He even peeled off the werewolf poster, stuck to the wall by his bed, leaving a rectangle that was a much brighter shade of blue from the rest of the room.

  “Burn it all, Adrian,” I heard Ma say about Uncle Frank’s photos and awards. “That’ll get her. That’s the only thing that hurts her—losing him.”

  To Gram’s protests Daddy said, “Wasn’t any room to breathe in there, Mother. Much less room for the girls to put their things. But if you want, I’ll put it all back when we leave.”

  “Leave? So you can be a used car salesman? Ain’t no one in the world trusts one of them. They cheat anybody, even their own people.”

  Gramp spit into his can, making a hollow sound of agreement.

  “He’s working a respectable job!” Ma shouted. “What more do you people want?”

  “Well, at least he gets a paycheck,” Gram said. “That’s somethin’. But I’ll tell you, Dolores, you better make sure that brother of yours is on the up and up. You don’t know him from Adam. No tellin’ what reasons he got for wantin’ you down there.”

  “What you mean what reason, Rowena?” Ma said. “What better reason than having his own sister back in his life. You’re just jealous ’cause there’s no one on this whole planet who’d want you anywhere.”

  Then Gram said all sorts of stuff about how Ma should be grateful Gram took her in all those years ago when Ma had nothing to her name but the clothes on her back. “But I understood what it was to be an orphan, Dolores,” Gram said. “Didn’t I? How many mother-in-laws would a been as nice about that?”

  “Nice about it? You call telling anybody who’d listen that my daddy gave me away, nice? You call promising me your grandma’s ring and then not giving it to me, nice?” Ma held her ring finger up like it was her middle finger and wiggled it at Gram. On that finger was the same plain silver ring she’d worn since she was married, the same silver ring she told people was white gold.

  With a yelp like she’d been struck, Ma turned and ran into the bedroom. Me and Daddy followed and found her curled up on her mattress like a baby, bawling her eyes out. I was still so mad at Ma for taking back my doll that I just stood there, watching her, even though each sob raked me hard like a claw.

  But Daddy knelt on the mattress and stroked her hair. “Mother wants to goad you, Lores. When will you learn that? You’re giving her exactly the reaction she wants.”

  Ma sat up and wiped her nose against her arm. She looked like she had a cold, her face was so puffy and red. She spun her ring around her finger. “I told you no one will ever respect me if I don’t have a proper ring.”

  Daddy took Ma’s hand and kissed it. “I was going to keep this a secret”—he nodded at me to shut the door and lowered his voice—“but I might as well tell you now. Jerry and I have been looking at apartments. Soon we’ll be out of here, living near your brother, just like you always wanted.”

  Ma’s mouth opened and her bottom lip trembled reminding me of a baby bird I’d found and fed with a dropper. Ma pressed Daddy’s palm to her cheek. “Oh, Adrian, how soon can we go?”

  “But I don’t want to leave,” I said. “I’ve got friends here.”

  “Can’t you think of anyone but yourself?” Ma snapped.

  “Can’t you?” I snapped back and flung open the door and bolted before either of them had a chance to smack me.

  * * *

  Later that night Daddy found me out by the catalpa tree and put his arm around me. He said not to be mad at Ma for taking back the doll. He said she was so overcome by finding her brother she couldn’t think of anything else. He told me that he was proud of me for being as nice to Ma as I generally was, even though sometimes Ma said thoughtless things.

  He kissed the side of my head, pointing first at Taurus romping around the sky, then Orion readying for battle, then the sweet sad little cluster of the seven Pleiades sisters, the seventh little sister twinkling in and out, so difficult to see. It was then Daddy told me something crazy. He said that Gram and Ma fought so much not because they hated each other, but because they loved each other. He said they each wanted the other’s love so bad they could taste it. “One of them has got to give the love first, though,” Daddy explained, “and they’re each so stubborn they won’t do it. So they hold on to the love for each other and it turns all ugly inside them.”

  We pondered that in silence for a while and then Daddy asked me all about school and what I’d been up to while he was away. He was especially interested in my teachers, wanting to know if they were mean or nice and it reminded me of countless afternoons in Centrereach when Daddy would pick me up from school and ask about everything that had happened to me that day. If it had been something bad, he’d make up tall tales to make me feel better, returning often to my favorite stories, the library monster who was going to eat mean old Mrs. Blot or the fairy angel who would sprinkle star dust in my eyes and make anything that upset me disappear.

  That night by the catalpa, Daddy leaned against the tree’s trunk and his face caught some of the living-room window’s light. His cheeks looked thin and his eyes hollowed out and I realized that working in Allentown must have been a horrible strain on him.

  “Daddy,” I said, “something happened while you were away.” And I told him what crazy old Mrs. Novak had said about the dead man being her son. And I told him that she thought Gramp had been the one to kill him. And then I did something that we hardly ever did in my family: I asked a question that I knew Daddy wouldn’t want to answer. “Could it be, Daddy? Could she be right?”

  Daddy shook his head and said, “Jack Novak had a lot more enemies than friends, but then being a fire boss who takes bribes—” He turned to me and stopped talking. He shook his head some more before he continued, “No, princess. That dead man isn’t Jack Novak. Jack Novak killed himself. He was seeing this girl over in Minisink Ford. One day he walked right onto the Roebling Bridge and dived straight off it into the Delaware River. People saw him do it. A fisherman even tried to rescue him. They never found his body. Old Mrs. Novak just can’t accept what happened. It made her crazy, I guess, pretending that he was missing or had died some other way.” Daddy sniffed and wiped at his nose. “That bridge was actually built by John Roebling. The same man who built the Brooklyn Bridge. It used to be the Delaware Aqueduct and was part of the Delaware and Hudson Canal. Actually, it’s not far from a Revolutionary battle site.” Daddy went on to talk about that battle and what was at stake for the colonies until I shivered. The night had grown starkly cold as we’d stood out there.

  “We should head in,” he said and reached out his hand for me to take it.

  “You’re the best daddy ever,” I said, playing the game we used to play in Centrereach, a time that seemed so long ago it felt separate from me, as if it was some other little girl and her daddy that I was remembering.

  Daddy smiled, playing along. “And you’re the most wonderful princess in the world,” he declared.

  As we walked to the house I made him promise to always be my daddy and always be Ma’s lover boy.

  “Of course, princess,” he said. “All I am is a daddy.” And then he told me about the first time he saw Ma standing in the great big doorway of the mill and how she’d stolen his heart that very moment. “That’s right, princess. She stole my heart. And don’t you know your ma. Once she takes a thing, she never gives it back.”

  And we smiled in sympathy with each other at Ma’s hard, edgy ways.

  Fourteen

  Ma slept poorly in those weeks after Daddy told her we’d be moving to Allentown. She’d toss and turn, wanting to gossip about the mill girls or discuss decorations for our new apartment. I did my best to fake sleep and ignore her, but that didn’t last for long. No matter how much I wanted to keep my heart hard to Ma, I couldn’t do it.

  “I knew if I waited long enough,” Ma told me, “everything I wanted since I was little would happen. I’d almost given up. Almost,” Ma repeated as if she had finall
y given up, the good stuff would never have happened at all.

  Often during the night I’d wake up at 3:00 A.M. to hear Ma talking to Mr. Smythe. Ma usually asked about the gas levels in the houses nearby and then she’d say something like, “Well, we don’t got to worry about that no more. We won’t be a bother to you soon enough.” Or she’d tell him yet again how her brother invited us down to live by him. “In Allentown,” she’d add, “where they ain’t got no fire.”

  Mr. Smythe’s response was always the same, “Glad to hear it, Mrs. Howley. Now go to sleep.”

  In the weeks after Daddy told us we’d be moving, me and Marisol spent even more time together. Sometimes we’d hunt for hawthorn or wild thyme or other herbs Marisol’s mother wanted to brew in teas to help her breathe better. And it would remind me of the many times me and Auntie went on what we called “herb hunts,” taking long hikes to find the weeds and flowers she needed for her remedies. Auntie and me would wander the woods and overgrown fields along the highway, the sun streaking the dusty air, Auntie humming tunes I’d never heard sung by anyone but her. The way the sounds of the approaching, then passing cars grew, then faded, always turned me lonely inside. So on those herb-hunting walks with Marisol I got to feeling wistful and sad and happy all at once.

  Marisol was especially worried about her mother’s health. She was sure her mother had taken a turn for the worse because Detective Kanelous had been to the house three times in the last two weeks and had asked questions about her father.

  “Next time he comes,” Marisol said, “I’m going to tell him to come straight out and say my father is the killer.”

  I stopped short on the fire trail we were walking and pretended to be interested in the lichen greening up a tree. “He thinks your daddy did it?” I shook my head as if that could help me get my thoughts around such an idea.

  Marisol kicked at the hunk of artist fungi that was growing off the tree’s bark. “He keeps asking the same questions about him and I keep saying the same things—William Sullivan was a cheater and a liar and the only good thing he ever did was listen to my mother and get out of our lives.”