Mrs. Jevic wiped her hands on a tea towel. Then she saw Joyce’s face.
“You didn’t know?” She spoke rapidly, in a low voice. “Heavens to Betsy, I thought the whole town knew. She’s Irene’s baby.”
The kitchen seemed very warm. Sweat trickled down Joyce’s back. “I had no idea.” Her voice came out in a whisper. “Irene never said a word.”
“Well, she’s ashamed, of course. Can you blame her?” Mrs. Jevic sat heavily in a chair. “She’s had a hard couple years. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t excuse what she did. But she’s paid the price, I can tell you that.”
Joyce swallowed. “What about—the father?”
“An Eyetalian boy. No offense.” Mrs. Jevic checked the baby’s diaper. “He skipped town the minute she told him. He could be anywhere by now. And his mother’s a real witch. She won’t have anything to do with Susan. She blames it all on Irene.”
There were footsteps on the porch. Then the screen door slammed.
“Irene!” Mrs. Jevic called. “Joyce Novak is here.”
Joyce’s heart quickened. She wished, absurdly, for a place to hide. What do I say to her? she thought frantically.
They waited a moment.
“Irene?” Mrs. Jevic called.
She rose and glanced out the window.
“That’s strange,” she said. “Looks like she went back up the street.”
JOYCE WALKED HOME, her hands in her pockets. The air had turned cold. She’d waited another half hour, but Irene hadn’t returned. “I’ll come back another time,” she told Mrs. Jevic, after they’d each had two macaroons. She walked quickly, grateful to leave the noisy, overheated house.
Her whole life she’d heard of girls who had to get married; less often, girls sent away to convents, or to live with relatives out of state. At one time she’d believed, childishly, that these girls were wicked. Later she decided they were merely stupid. A boy would try to talk you into anything; he had nothing to lose. It was the girl who took all the risks.
Experience had taught her that life was not so simple. Irene wasn’t stupid, just a girl who’d seen too many movies—as Joyce had; as they all had. It was, she reflected, a dangerous pastime, mooning over the handsome, clever men on the screen. It doomed you to disappointment; it made you expect too much. Joyce had never been in love, but felt herself capable of it. She could love Fred Astaire or Clark Gable or Errol Flynn, an elegant, cultivated fellow who wore wonderful clothes and possessed all sorts of hidden talents, who sang and danced and even fought in a way that looked beautiful; who even when he drank was witty and articulate and gentle and wise. The harder job was loving what men really were—soldiers and miners, gruff and ignorant; drunken louts who communicated mainly by cursing, who couldn’t tell you anything about life that you didn’t already know. That was something Joyce wanted no part of. It seemed to her a waste of love.
Poor Irene. Joyce could imagine easily how it had happened. Stuck in Bakerton, answering phones at the radio station; Irene bored and boy-crazy, starved for attention. An easy mark for a fellow who wanted only one thing.
She crossed the tracks and began the hike up Polish Hill. Halfway up, the sidewalk ended; a narrow path wound alongside the road. The path was safer than the road, quicker than hiking through the woods. Still, it was a rough climb, narrow and winding and littered with red dog. One false step and you’d easily twist an ankle, trip and fall headlong down the steep hill.
Irene, Joyce reflected, had taken a false step, one nobody would let her forget: I thought the whole town knew. She herself had stuck to the path. As far as she could tell, it was the only logical route, even though it didn’t take her anywhere she wanted to go.
The days grew shorter. By suppertime it was nearly dark. The family ate at the big table in the kitchen. Lucy chattered about her day at school. Sandy hunched silently over his plate. Rose cooked enough for ten: huge vats of minestrone, piles of macaroni, pounds of eggplant baked with cheese. She herself took seconds and sometimes thirds. Joyce reminded her, gently at first: A serving of noodles is two ounces. She had saved the leaflet from the doctor’s office and pasted it to the refrigerator door. Finally she bought a scale at the drugstore and meted out the portions herself.
In the evenings they sat together in the parlor: Joyce reading, Lucy doing homework, Rose hemming skirts or trousers by hand. A tailor in town paid her a half-dollar per item. She sewed for ten, twenty minutes at a time, then stopped to rest her eyes.
Years later, looking back, Joyce would try to remember where Sandy spent those evenings. Often he barricaded himself in his room. “Homework,” he said, when Joyce asked what he did in there for hours on end. He said it with a twist to his lips, a smart-aleck tone that made her feel foolish. He seemed to be laughing at her.
Some nights a car would park in front of the house and honk its horn. Then Sandy would rumble down the stairs.
“Where are you going?” Joyce would call after him.
“Uptown,” he’d answer, slamming the door behind him.
A few times she had gone to the window. Each time a different car—a green Plymouth, a Studebaker sedan—and a different girl. Sandy hopped inside, and the car tore away, scattering gravel. Music from the open windows, a silly song that had been popular that summer: Rag mop, rag mop.
JOYCE FILLED OUT APPLICATIONS at the phone company and the post office, the grocery store and the five-and-ten. She could run a cash register or serve customers at the candy counter. It wouldn’t be ideal, but she could do it. Still nobody called.
A month passed. The weather turned cold. The winter coal was delivered and paid for. Lucy’s parochial school tuition came due.
“She could try the public school,” Rose said hesitantly, but Joyce disagreed. She herself had graduated Bakerton High and considered her own education lacking. Unlike Sandy, Lucy was a good student. If the town had a better school, she deserved to go there.
In November Joyce went to work at the dress factory.
She was placed on the second floor, collars and facings. In the same department were two of her classmates from high school, Sylvia Fierro and Frances Scalia. Irene Jevic followed the other two like a lost child. Her first day on the job Joyce noticed them in the lunchroom, Sylvia and Frances chattering loudly, Irene chewing silently at her sandwich.
“Hi there,” said Joyce, pulling up a chair.
Irene looked stunned. “What are you doing here?”
“Collars and facings. I started this morning.”
“Holy cow.”
For a long time neither spoke. “Holy cow” pretty much covers it, Joyce reflected. There was nothing more to say.
“Sorry I missed you on Saturday,” Irene said. “I left my glasses at the dentist’s. I had to run back and get them.”
“That’s okay. I had a nice visit with your mother.”
Irene chewed silently at a thumbnail. Her fingernails, Joyce noticed, were bitten to the quick.
“I guess you met Susan.” She spoke very quietly; Joyce had to strain to hear her. “My baby sister.”
“Yes,” said Joyce. “I did.”
“The last of the Mohicans.” Irene smiled wanly. “With ten brothers and sisters she’ll be spoiled rotten. You can imagine.”
Joyce thought of the Punnett squares she’d studied in high school biology; then of Irene’s parents, with their watery blue eyes. Irene hadn’t taken biology. No one had told her that two blue-eyed parents couldn’t produce a brown-eyed baby.
“She’s a beautiful child,” Joyce said.
“I think so, too,” said Irene.
JOYCE’S TASK, at first glance, was a simple one. She was assigned to a machine and given two piles of fabric—one pile of collars, one pile of facings. She was to stitch a collar to the underside of a facing, then pass the pieces on to Mrs. Purdy, who fitted them into the bodice of a dress at a speed that seemed supernatural. One after another Joyce stitched together the curved bits of fabric, cursing her slowness. Around her
the machines roared. The foreman, a big sullen man named Alvin Blick, watched her from the door. Twice she attached the collars backwards. Criminy, she thought. I’ll go crazy doing this.
By the end of her second day she had developed a system, a way of laying out the pieces on her table and folding the edges together so that the fabric fed smoothly into the machine. After that the work became automatic, and her mind began to wander. She remembered the interminable trip to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, three days by train. Basic training; the heat a constant presence, like a sleeping beast. Maneuvers at noon: the malevolent sun, girls collapsing on the parade grounds. The air force had provided salt tablets; the briny water turned her stomach, but still she kept drinking. It was impossible to drink enough. At night she slept deeply, the night loud with bugs. Sometimes, when the factory whistle roused her, she felt she’d traveled a hundred miles. Then she looked up from her machine and saw she hadn’t been anywhere at all.
She worked as part of a team. There were four girls who fused collars and facings, three older women who attached the collars to the bodices. To Joyce’s left sat Mrs. Purdy’s daughter, a big, slow-witted girl named Betty. Though she’d worked there for months, she was clumsier than Joyce. At least twice an hour her thread would break. Several times a day the fabric became caught in her machine. When this happened, Mrs. Purdy would get up from her own machine and lumber over to Betty’s. She moved slowly, rheumatism in her knees and back. Only her fingers were fast.
Blick, the foreman, began to notice. “You’re getting backed up,” he’d yell, and it was true: a pile of collars and facings would accumulate each time Mrs. Purdy left her machine. At those moments Joyce thought of her sister Dorothy, who’d lasted eight months before Alvin Blick fired her. Dorothy was as timid as Betty Purdy; Joyce imagined her trembling like a child whenever Blick glanced in her direction.
He’s a bully, she thought. She had strong opinions about bullies. The air force was full of them. She’d spent four years at their mercy.
One day after lunch she returned to her machine early and showed Betty her method for laying out the fabric. “It’s quicker this way,” she said. She felt Alvin Blick watching them from across the room.
The whistle blew; the women settled at their machines. Later, when Betty’s thread broke, Joyce reached over and quickly rethreaded the machine. Mrs. Purdy looked up, surprised.
“Thank you, dear,” she whispered.
Joyce became so skilled at rethreading Betty’s machine that she barely rose from her chair; most times Alvin Blick, busy barking orders at the cutters or glaring at one of the other girls, didn’t even notice. Over time Betty’s thread broke less often; only rarely did the machine gobble up her fabric. Free of interruptions, Mrs. Purdy attached collars to bodices at her usual blistering speed. Joyce was nearly as fast. In this way their section became the most efficient on the floor. The women downstairs, who assembled the bodices before sending them up to Mrs. Purdy, could scarcely keep up.
Lucy loved all holidays, but Halloween was her favorite. The festivities combined candy and compliments, her two favorite treats. Each year her mother sewed her a special costume. At different times she had been a fairy, a gypsy, a kitten with whiskers and a tail of fake fur. This year she would be Pocahontas, the Indian princess. Her sister Dorothy would come home from Washington especially for the occasion, to braid her long black hair.
In the past her costumes had gotten only two wearings: trick-or-treat in the neighborhood, and the children’s costume party in the fire hall uptown. But this year the third grade had an especially nice teacher. A Halloween party would be held Friday morning at school.
On Thursday afternoon Lucy sat at the kitchen table, flattening cookie dough with a rolling pin. Her mother padded around in bare feet, singing along with the radio: “Come on-a My House,” in a funny voice that sounded like her aunt Marcella. The song always made Lucy laugh. They were singing together when the back door opened.
“Mama, what are you doing?” Joyce stood in the doorway, her coat over her arm, a pinched expression on her face. A draft filled the kitchen.
“Making cookies.” Her mother stood with her back to the oven. “Your sister need them for school.”
Joyce sighed.
Lucy stared down at her floury hands, the circle of dough she had rolled flat on the counter. They had cut the dough into different shapes—a witch, a jack-o’-lantern—and dusted them with colored sugar. In between they nibbled at the sweet, buttery dough, which tasted better than the finished cookies.
Her mother took a pan from the oven. “I leave the sugar off these. See? They’re not so bad.”
“Mama.”
“Me, I just bake them. I don’t eat none.”
Lucy’s heart quickened. It was a lie; they had each eaten five or six. Her mother turned on the faucet and scraped at the bar of soap, to clean the black-and-orange sugar from beneath her fingernails.
Joyce turned to Lucy. “Honey, go upstairs and wash your hands. You’re all sticky.” She smiled then—an afterthought, it seemed to Lucy. Joyce was usually too busy to smile. Busy reading something, cleaning something, folding laundry with more energy than seemed necessary. When she picked clean sheets from the clothesline, the fabric made a whipping noise, like a flag flapping in the wind. She expected Lucy to be busy, too: to red up her room and set the table every night for supper, to gather the eggs each morning before school.
“After that you can start your homework,” Joyce called after her. “I’ll be up in a minute to see how you’re doing.”
AT THE TOP of the stairs Lucy listened.
“Mama, you can’t,” said Joyce. “The doctor told you. No more sweets.”
“I make for your sister. That school cafeteria, they cut corners. She don’t get enough to eat.”
“She doesn’t need them either. Lucy is overweight. She can barely fit into her uniform.”
Lucy’s hands went to her belly, swollen now with raw cookie dough.
“She still growing,” said Mama.
“We have to do something. It’s not bad now, but what happens when she gets older? She could have a weight problem for the rest of her life.”
Lucy backed away from the railing. A coppery taste in her mouth, from gnawing the inside of her cheek.
“Lucy is beautiful,” said Mama. “She’ll always be beautiful.”
SHE WAS BEAUTIFUL; Lucy knew this as she knew her eyes were brown. She’d been told it her whole life—by her mother and Dorothy, her Italian aunts, the Polish ladies who lived in the neighborhood. An Indian princess: this was how Lucy had come to think of herself. She was no blond, bland Rapunzel, cooped up in the tower; but a warrior in the wild, fast and strong. Born in November, just past the cutoff date, she’d been kept back a year and was the oldest in her class. She was also the tallest. She could run faster and throw farther than any boy in the third grade. At the noon recess they played stickball, dodgeball, frenzied games of tag and Red Rover. She came back to the classroom soaked with sweat, her blouse sticking to her back. If the other girls ignored her, she didn’t care. Pocahontas had no girlfriends either. Her braves were the only friends she needed.
Now, standing before the bedroom mirror, she examined the swell of her belly. She was getting bigger; lately her school uniform cut her under the arms. Each night after supper, she undid the top button of her dungarees. Her mother had always changed into her nightgown after supper, removing her girdle with a great sigh of relief. Lucy could see that the girdle hurt her, leaving angry red marks across her belly. Now she wore the girdle all the time. Since Joyce’s return, they had all suffered.
There was a knock at the door.
“How’s the homework coming?” Joyce called.
Lucy buttoned her dungarees.
“Fine,” she answered. Her mother never asked about homework; neither, when she visited, did Dorothy. Instead they listened to the radio after supper: first the news, then Gunsmoke or The Red Skelton Show. Fr
idays were the best nights, because of Mario Lanza. He sang in a deep voice, like a priest; his show was her mother’s favorite, a special occasion. Friday nights they shared a big bowl of buttered popcorn and a plate of macaroons.
Joyce came into the room and sat on the bed. “What are you learning in arithmetic?” she asked, peering over Lucy’s shoulder. “Times tables?” She took the book from Lucy’s hands. “Let me quiz you.”
Lucy felt sick. “That’s okay.”
“I don’t mind. What’s three times eight?”
Joyce led her through the threes and fours. By the fives she was struggling. By the sixes it was clear that she hadn’t studied at all.
“We just started the sixes today,” said Lucy, taking back her book. This was a lie. They’d already been assigned the elevens and twelves.
“Just the same, you don’t want to fall behind. If you’re not sure of the sixes, you’ll get all confused with the sevens.” Joyce glanced at the clock. “Give it another half hour.”
“But my program is starting.” Every Thursday she listened to Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. She had never missed an episode. “Can’t I study after that?”
“At nine o’clock? You’ll fall asleep on your math book.” Joyce rose. “Twenty minutes on the sixes. I’ll quiz you again tomorrow night.”
LUCY LAY IN BED, unable to sleep. Her stomach hurt, but it was anger that kept her awake. She glanced at the clock. Eleven-thirty, and her mother still hadn’t come to bed.
She crept downstairs and found Rose sitting at the kitchen table. Before her were three cookies on a plate.
“Whatsa matter, bella? How come you still awake?”
“I couldn’t sleep.” Lucy sat. “Can I have a cookie?”
Her mother handed her one.
“What happened to the rest?”
“I had a couple. I make you some more tomorrow. Here.” She handed Lucy another cookie and took the last for herself. “We eat the last two. Don’t tell your sister.” She smiled, showing her gold tooth.
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