Rose clomped over to inspect them, in the new house slippers Joyce had bought her. “Try to get them all the same size,” she advised.
Sandy frowned. “Mrs. Novak, these females have no business in the kitchen. No wonder they can’t find husbands.”
“Who says we’re looking?” said Joyce.
“Well, what are you waiting for? That’s what I’d like to know. Neither one of you is getting any younger. I’ll bet Lucy beats you both to the altar. There will be two of you dancing in the trough.”
“Eeee, the trough!” Rose clapped a hand over her mouth. “When your aunt got married I couldn’t believe it. Her sister in the trough like a pig.”
“Not an ordinary pig,” said Sandy. “A dancing pig.”
“She must have been humiliated,” said Joyce. “To think her own family put her through that, just because her sister got married first.”
“Them Polish, they crazy people,” said Rose.
“I think it’s a splendid tradition. I’m already looking forward to Lucy’s wedding. Dorothy and Joyce will bring down the house.” Sandy rose and performed a little jig, daintily lifting an imaginary skirt.
“Stop!” said Dorothy. She was flushed from laughing. “You’re a terrible boy.”
“I’m never getting married,” said Lucy.
Sandy raised an eyebrow at Joyce. “You see the example you’re setting?”
“Oh, honey,” said Dorothy. “Why not?”
“I don’t want to go away. I want to stay here.”
There was a moment of silence.
“Do you ever hear from Georgie?” Dorothy asked.
“Once in a blue moon,” said Joyce.
“He’s not much for writing,” said Dorothy. “Maybe I should get a telephone.”
“He don’t like the phone neither,” Rose observed. “He call maybe once a month.”
“He must be very busy,” said Dorothy. “The baby and all.”
They had never seen the child, Arthur Quigley Novak, but several times a year George sent photos. The first few had been dutifully framed and placed on a bureau in the living room. More recent shots were tucked into a drawer. In Bakerton Arthur remained an infant. In actual fact he was nearly four years old.
Rose’s face darkened. “It’s that girl he marry. She don’t like it here. She get a headache that time they come.” After that first visit, Georgie had always come to Bakerton alone. The family hadn’t seen Marion in years.
Silence fell over the kitchen. Joyce glanced at Dorothy. Her eyes were moist.
“What’s the matter?” said Joyce.
“Onions.” Dorothy rose, dabbing at her eyes with her wrist. “I should wash my hands.”
Joyce watched her head upstairs. Dorothy had always loved Georgie too much. Every year she was devastated when he didn’t come for Christmas, though by now no one else expected him to show. She didn’t understand that Georgie had left Bakerton completely, as Sandy soon would; that neither love nor obligation nor concern for their mother would be enough to keep the Novak boys in Bakerton. It seemed to Joyce that men were made differently, that love and guilt didn’t work on them in the same way. She didn’t blame her brothers for this. She envied them. She herself had tried to leave. She probably would have succeeded, if she had been born a boy.
AFTER DINNER Joyce and Dorothy stacked the dishes beside the sink.
“Blick,” said Joyce. “A heavyset fellow, with a red face.”
“That’s the one. I still have nightmares about him.” Dorothy swiped at a plate. “Joyce, how can you stand it? I know what that place is like.”
“It’s not so bad.”
“Did you ever think of coming to Washington? Mag Spangler is a supervisor now. She’s the one who got me in at Interior, after all those wartime jobs were eliminated. Maybe she could find you something.” She stacked a roasting pan in the drainer. “I wouldn’t mind the company. It gets lonely down there.”
Joyce studied her. Dorothy’s face had aged. The skin beneath her eyes looked thin and bluish, as though she slept poorly. “Maybe you should find a roommate. Didn’t you have one once?”
“I did, years ago.” After the deaf schoolteacher retired and moved back to Georgia, Dorothy had taken over her tiny single room. “Never again. Let me tell you, living with a stranger isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” Dorothy hung her towel on the rack. “We could get ourselves a little apartment. It would be a treat to get out of the boardinghouse.”
Joyce had visited Dorothy the summer before, on a brief furlough from North Carolina. Dorothy’s cramped little room had struck her as grimmer than the barracks. It seemed impossible that she had lived there almost ten years.
“I know you hate to leave Mama,” said Dorothy. “But she’s got Lucy and Sandy. It’s not as if she’s alone.”
Joyce smiled, thinking of Sandy’s dance in the kitchen. He was no help, but at least he was company. Meanwhile Rose had become more vigilant about her diet. Most days she wore her slippers without prompting. After dinner she’d refused a slice of pie.
“Maybe,” said Joyce. “We’ll see what the doctor has to say.”
JOYCE AND ROSE left early the next morning with a lunch Dorothy had packed, sandwiches of stuffing and leftover turkey. Afterward Dorothy sat alone in the kitchen. She heard movement overhead. Lucy appeared on the stairs in her nightgown.
“Where’s Mama?” she asked.
“She just left,” said Dorothy. “Joyce took her to the doctor.”
“Is she sick?”
“No, honey.” Dorothy rose and poured her a glass of milk. “She went to get her eyes checked.”
“Does she need glasses?”
“Maybe so,” said Dorothy.
“I don’t think she does.” For as long as Lucy could remember, her mother had been perfectly healthy. She had eaten whatever she wanted. There had never been anything wrong with her eyes. All these problems had begun when Joyce came.
“Mama’s getting older, honey. These things happen when people get older.”
Lucy didn’t respond.
“Come on,” said Dorothy. “Let me make you some breakfast.”
IN THE WAITING ROOM, Joyce flipped through a two-year-old magazine: Reds Sign Pact with China. Rose glanced nervously around the room, her pupils dilated from the eyedrops the nurse had given her. In one corner, a boy sat next to his mother, his eyes covered in bandages. An old man walked awkwardly with a white-tipped cane.
Finally the nurse called Rose’s name. She clutched Joyce’s arm as they walked down a long corridor.
The doctor, a wizened old man named Lucas, shined a flashlight in Rose’s eyes, then turned off the lamp and had her read a backlit chart on the wall. He made her look into a large machine and asked her what she saw.
“How long have you been diabetic?” he asked.
“We found out last month,” said Joyce.
“Are you controlling your blood sugar?”
“She’s working on it,” said Joyce.
He turned on the light. “You are suffering from a condition called diabetic retinopathy. Your blood sugar has been high probably for years and in that time an important nerve has been damaged, the nerve that connects the eyes to the brain.” He paused. “When did you first notice a change in your vision?”
Rose hesitated. “Maybe last year,” she said. Then considered. “Maybe two years.”
Mama! Joyce wanted to cry. Why didn’t you say anything? She thought of the broken windows at the house, the rotten floorboards on the porch. It was just like Rose to ignore the problem, and nobody else had been around to notice. Joyce gone. Dorothy and Georgie gone. Left to her own devices, Rose had simply pretended. That nothing had changed. That she wasn’t going blind.
“This is a degenerative condition. Once it has begun, its tendency is to progress. How quickly, we do not know.” The doctor paused. “Mrs. Novak, how old are you?”
“Fifty-three,” said Rose.
His mouth tightened. “
It’s hard for me to judge. I can’t see precisely what you’re seeing. But it appears that your condition is quite advanced for a woman of your age. Do you live alone?”
“No,” said Joyce. “I live with her.”
“Good,” said Lucas. “She’ll need your help.”
THE TREATMENTS, called radioactive retinography, would be fourteen in all. Lucas scheduled them two weeks apart, which meant seven months of trips to Pittsburgh. The morning after the doctor’s visit, Joyce sat at the kitchen table with pencil and paper, calculating the cost of bus tickets. A single round-trip ticket was ten dollars. But Rose’s vision had deteriorated dramatically; she could not travel alone.
There was no way around it. Joyce would have to buy a car.
She walked to the dealership that Friday night, with fifty dollars in cash withdrawn from her savings account. The same salesman was on duty, the pimple-faced boy in the ill-fitting suit. “I’d like that car,” she said, pointing. Her voice held a certainty she did not feel. “That Rambler.”
The boy’s eyes widened, stunned by the ease of the sale. He hadn’t even said hello. “Don’t you want to take it for a test drive?”
“No, thank you,” she said. “May I use your telephone?”
Sandy answered. She knew he would; he always raced for the phone on Friday nights.
“It’s Joyce,” she said. “I need your help.”
HE TAUGHT HER in six lessons. She drove hesitantly, with much grinding of the gears, but well enough to pass the licensing exam the second time out. The first failure, a mercifully brief humiliation at the hands of an avuncular state policeman, she did not allow herself to register. Brush it off, she repeated each time the engine stalled. She had never failed a test of any kind.
The officer wouldn’t let her drive home afterward. Sandy took the wheel instead. When Joyce returned from failing her test, he was leaning against the registration counter joking with the clerk, a stout, matronly woman who’d held up the line to bring him a cream-filled doughnut.
“Weren’t you nervous?” she asked him later. “She could have asked to see your license.”
“Nah. I’m a good driver. I don’t need a stinking license.”
She watched him weave expertly through the Saturday traffic. He’s probably right, she thought. Her brother seemed to have an instinctive gift for steering around obstacles. Because of his charm or his looks, or simply because he expected them to, people liked him. And if military life had taught her anything, it was this: if the right people liked you, the rules often did not apply. The realization had stunned her—its unfairness, its cruelty. Joyce had never charmed anyone in her life. It had never occurred to her to try.
Sandy hit the gas and raced through a yellow light. If he weren’t her brother, if she’d met him somewhere out in the world—at school or in the service—she’d have disliked him on sight: his slouching posture, the palpable male confidence that hummed around him like an electrical field. His laziness would have infuriated her; his contempt for authority would have seemed a personal affront. But he was not a stranger. Lazy or not, cocky or not, Sandy was hers. Even his charm was forgivable. In some way it, too, belonged to her.
LICENSE IN HAND, Joyce faced other hurdles. The drive itself, for one, a nerve-shattering experience that left both her and Rose sweating and irritable. They were an hour late for Rose’s first appointment. Joyce had stopped twice to ask directions; she had taken a series of wrong turns and nearly collided with another car when she drove through a stoplight. The parking garage mystified her; she had parked illegally on the street and would almost certainly get a ticket. Still, they had made it. We’re here, she thought.
The treatments themselves were not painful. Rose sat for forty minutes in a tiny room, in what looked like a dentist’s chair, her lap draped in a lead apron. A nurse instructed her to keep her eyes closed as the room was bombarded with brilliant light. Afterward she had a slight headache, but felt much like herself. The misery came the following day, a violent nausea that left her trembling and soaked with perspiration, so weak she could barely stand. This lasted for several days. When the nausea left her, she was extraordinarily tired. By the time she felt better, it was time for another treatment. Joyce helped her into the car, which they had both come to view as an instrument of torture. Rose had lost much of her sight. She complained that everything looked fuzzy, even her hand in front of her face. She had lost weight and was sick with dread of what lay ahead of her. What am I doing? Joyce thought. What am I doing to my mother?
The appointments were mostly on Saturday afternoons, but twice Joyce had to miss a day of work. This attracted some attention at the factory. Finally she explained the situation to Alvin Blick.
“Well, now,” he said, scratching his head. “They are called sick days, but the idea is that you’re the one who’s sick. You can’t go taking them when other people are sick.” He smiled, showing his bad teeth. “Can’t your mother get to the hospital by herself?”
“No,” said Joyce. “She’s—” She had never said it aloud before. It seemed a terrible betrayal. “Going blind,” she finished.
Blick nodded, as though this were to be expected. “Mine’s hard of hearing. Old age is no picnic.” He rose. “I don’t know what to tell you, Joyce. You’re one of my best girls. I’d hate to lose you.”
She watched him go, thinking how she was already lost.
SALVATION CAME in a phone call.
“Miss Novak?” said a deep male voice. “It’s Ed Hauser, at the high school.”
In the next room, Rose and Lucy were eating dinner. They’d set a place for Sandy, but he hadn’t come home from school. Joyce had no idea where he could be. She prepared herself for the worst.
“Is everything all right?” she asked, her voice small.
“Oh, yes. In fact, I’m hoping you’ll consider this good news. I have a proposition for you.” It took her a moment to absorb what he was saying. The school secretary was in the hospital—her baby had arrived sooner than expected—and he needed a replacement immediately. He was offering her the job.
“Why me?” said Joyce.
“You come highly recommended. Viola Peale was in my office today singing your praises. She can’t say enough about you, which is fairly remarkable considering she hasn’t spoken a word to me in five years.” He paused. “I’m hoping you can start Monday. Are you interested?”
“Yes,” she said simply. “But don’t I have to have an interview, or something?”
Hauser laughed. “The school day begins at seven-thirty. Interview at seven-fifteen.”
And on Monday morning, Joyce Novak went back to school.
Five
The Bakerton Volunteer Fire Company sat at the corner of Main Street and Susquehanna Avenue, the busiest corner in town. Across the street was Keener’s Diner, a bowling alley and a pool hall. Weekend evenings, after dances or football games, these places were crowded with teenagers. On warm nights the firemen set up folding chairs on the sidewalk and watched the girls go by, calling to the pretty ones who walked in pairs or threes down Main Street. Long shadows in the summer evening, a shimmery trail of female laughter.
The firemen were mostly single, mostly young. During the late forties and fifties they were all veterans, as if having once presented themselves for danger, they now did so routinely, without ceremony, as a matter of course. By day or night they worked in the mines; in their off-hours they congregated at the fire hall (far hole), playing pool or Ping-Pong, drinking coffee or Coca-Cola, sober always, just in case. They came from Little Italy, Polish Hill, the outlying farm country; from nearby towns like Kinport or Coalport, too small to support companies of their own. Even a volunteer company had expenses: clothing, equipment, upkeep on the trucks. To raise money they held Saturday-night dances in the hall. Two weekends a month, the floor was cleared. A band set up in the corner. Teenagers waited in line at the door.
For several months in 1941 and ’42, George Novak’s band had played the fi
re-hall dances, until the drummer and the trumpeter and finally the whole combo was drafted. For a few years Bakerton made do with phonograph records. It seemed that every musician in the county had been taken away.
At eight o’clock the dancing began. First the steady couples. Then pairs of girls—giggling, spunky girls who refused to stand by and wait. For a long time the boys did not dance, just walked in a slow circle around the dance floor—boys like Sandy Novak, slouching a little, a plastic comb peeking out the back pocket of his dungarees. Week after week they walked the Bakerton Circle, eyeing the girls on the dance floor. The circle moved counterclockwise, an orderly parade, as though someone had planned it that way. In nearby towns people laughed at the Bakerton boys: could you beat it, paying a quarter to walk in circles all evening? Nobody knew how the custom had started. Some things would always be.
In the second week of August, Bakerton hosted the Firemen’s Festival—to the men, Holy Week in a year of Ordinary Time. For three days the firemen came, volunteer companies from across Saxon County, to drink and game at the booths set up along Baker Street. Friday night was the Battle of the Barrel. Men from two companies squared off, tug-of-war style. Above their heads was a rope tied between two telephone poles; hanging from the rope was a barrel filled with water. Each man was given a long wooden pole, to swat the barrel toward the other side, dousing his opponents with cold water. By the time the contest was over, both sides were soaked. The men wore their wet clothes proudly. For the rest of the evening they were regarded as celebrities—greeted with laughter and slaps on the back, treated to cups of yellow beer at the booths all over town.
Saturday afternoon was the firemen’s parade. Up front, in a shining convertible, sat the Fire Queen: the prettiest girl from Bakerton High, handpicked by the firemen themselves. Next the pumpers came. Bleary, liquor-sick, wearing full equipment in the August heat, the men waved to the spectators from atop their trucks, hundreds of them, standing three deep along the parade route. Each truck stopped briefly at the judging stand, a platform of wooden risers stacked before the fire hall. Two or three men dropped down from the truck and opened all its doors. A voice over the loudspeaker gave its weight and dimensions and pumping capacity. For each engine, polite applause—for the fortieth truck, the fiftieth; to the untrained eye indistinguishable from the ones that came before. Shouts and whoops were reserved for the local boys, and in one unforgettable year, a standing ovation for Bakerton’s brand-new Mack ladder truck, a slick red monster with bulging wheel wells and gleaming chrome. The truck cost $2,500, what a miner earned in a year. A sum raised through five years of fire-hall dances, ten thousand teenage nights walking the Bakerton Circle.
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