Baker Towers

by Jennifer Haigh

  “Don’t tell me, young man,” the woman huffed. “I know exactly what it shows.”

  Tipsy herself, Marion had shrieked with laughter; and somehow—who knew how these things happened—it had become a private joke. In bed, or at her parents’ dinner table, or at First Presbyterian as Kip exchanged rings with a very pregnant bride, George had only to whisper the words into Marion’s ear to send her into peals of laughter. Don’t tell me, young man. I know exactly what it shows.

  A few years later, toward the end of Marion’s illness, they had attended an exhibition of abstract art at the Metropolitan. She had begun seeing Dr. Gold; for the first time since Arthur was born, she and George were spending an evening out in public. At one time she would have spent hours at such an event, but the new Marion moved quickly from canvas to canvas, clutching George’s arm. Ahead of them, a scraggly bohemian type critiqued each painting, in exhaustive detail, to a suntanned old woman in a pink Chanel suit. Without thinking, George leaned close to Marion.

  “Don’t tell me, young man,” he whispered. “I know exactly what it shows.”

  She stared at him blankly.

  “Remember, honey? The lady in the shoe department?” Thinking Jesus, she’s lost her memory, too.

  “Oh, yes,” Marion said vaguely. “I remember. But I don’t understand, George. What does it mean?”

  By midmorning, the road was lined with cars, parked at odd angles on both sides of Polish Hill. The Stusicks’ porch was crowded with neighbors and relatives. In the living room, card tables were loaded down with food: the usual Polish favorites, plus a hodgepodge of casseroles. A ceramic basket held ornate psanky—hand-painted Ukrainian Easter eggs. Children picked through a mountain of cookies—some store-bought, some homemade. There were cupcakes and Bundt cakes, a rhubarb pie, green and yellow gelatin salads studded with fruit.

  “Beep beep,” said Ev’s sister Helen. George stepped aside, and she set down a plate of deviled eggs dusted with paprika. “Georgie. We didn’t see you in church.”

  “Hi, Helen.” George didn’t know her married name; she lived at the top of the hill and was a notorious gossip. “We went to the first mass. Joyce is an early riser.”

  “How’s your other sister? I heard she came back from Washington a little under the weather.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Ida Spangler, at the hat shop.” Helen lowered her voice. “Nothing serious, I hope.”

  Goddamned small town, George thought. “Bronchitis,” he said. “Turned into pneumonia. She’s still recuperating.” He spied Gene heading out the back door. “Excuse me. I want to say hi to Gene.”

  He wove his way through the crowded kitchen to the back porch. Gene stood at the kettle grill digging at the charcoals, a bottle of Iron City in his hand. He was still in his Sunday clothes, suit trousers and a short-sleeved shirt.

  “Eugenius,” George called.

  “Georgie.” He had thickened around the middle, but otherwise looked much as he had in childhood: fair hair standing up in a cowlick, glasses repaired at the temple with electrical tape. “Glad you could come.”

  They sat in folding chairs overlooking the small yard, which had been taken over by children playing a noisy game of tag. “So you’re a homeowner now,” said George. “Congratulations.”

  “Can you believe it?” Gene handed him a bottle from the cooler. “I wish my dad had lived to see it. He hated living in a company house. It about killed him, having that money taken out of his pay every month.”

  George nodded. You pay rent, you never have nothing: his own father had said it a thousand times.

  “They’re solid houses, Georgie. Nothing wrong with them a little elbow grease won’t fix. It’s hard to believe Baker’s letting them go.” Gene took a pull on his beer. “What about your mom? Any chance she’ll buy her place?”

  “She hasn’t said anything. To tell you the truth, I didn’t know it was for sale.”

  The screen door opened and Evelyn appeared, carrying a plate of snacks: celery stuffed with cream cheese, more deviled eggs. “Well, look who’s here.”

  “How are you, Ev?” He embraced her quickly, avoiding Gene’s eyes. The three of them had spent their adolescence at Keener’s Diner: George and Ev on one side of the booth, hip to hip; Gene on the other side, alone. Ev had felt sorry for him, George remembered. A few times she’d offered to set him up with one of her girlfriends, but Gene wasn’t interested. Always it had been the three of them.

  Ev sat, smoothing her skirt. “How’s life in the big city, Georgie?”

  “Not bad. Good to be back here, though. There’s no place like home.”

  “It must be hard, being so far away. You must worry about your mother.”

  “Joyce takes good care of her,” said George. “But yeah, I do.”

  “If you’re interested,” said Gene, “we’re hiring over at the Twelve.”

  “Oh, Georgie’s not looking for a job.” Ev pulled up a chair. “Aren’t you about finished with medical school?”

  “Oh, I gave up on that a long time ago.” George took the beer Gene offered. “I work in retail. Marion’s father has a department store.”

  “He sell Caddies at that store?” Gene asked, a twinkle in his eye.

  George grinned. “Oh, that. My brother-in-law has a dealership.” After a series of accounting missteps that would have landed anyone else—George included—in prison, old man Quigley had given up on teaching his son the family business. He’d bought Kip a Cadillac dealership, a business so foolproof that even a proven fool couldn’t run it into the ground.

  “Told you,” Gene said to Ev. He grinned. “My wife here was ogling your Eldorado.”

  Ev blushed to the roots of her hair. “It’s beautiful, Georgie. And so clean.”

  “What do those go for new?” Gene asked. “Four grand?”

  More like six, George thought but didn’t say.

  Ev gasped. “Four thousand dollars? For a car? That’s more than we paid for this house!”

  George shifted uncomfortably. He’d felt guilty about spending the money—his wife’s money—on such a luxury; but on some level he felt entitled. The car made him happy. Except for his son—a clever, hyperactive five year old, sweet-natured and affectionate—it was the only thing in his life that did.

  “Georgie’s no fool,” Gene said, laughing. “I told her you must have got it at cost.”

  “Gene!” Ev protested, her cheeks flushing. “Ignore him, Georgie. He’s got no manners. Never has.”

  George watched her. Later—days, months, years later—he would replay the moment in his mind, the flush creeping up from her throat. He had always loved her skin, its utter transparency. She’d never been able to keep a secret; her feelings were written on her face, all over her body. There was no mystery to a redhead. A redhead was incapable of deceit.

  “Sure,” he lied. “I got a nice discount.” He turned to Gene. “I hear you’re doing well for yourself, Mr. Crew Boss.”

  Gene beamed. “It’s a hell of an operation, Georgie. Right now we’re bringing up eight thousand tons a day. That’s enough to heat eight hundred homes for an entire winter.”

  He adjusted his glasses, which had slipped down his nose—a gesture George had seen him perform a thousand times. Despite his swagger, Gene hadn’t changed at all. Underneath was still the same boy who had rattled off the list of presidents, who could multiply and divide in his head.

  “Eugenius,” George said, raising his glass. “It’s good to be home.”

  AFTERNOON STRETCHED into evening. Cold bottles of Iron City appeared from the cooler; empty bottles were whisked away. George watched the children chase one another across the yard: red-haired Lipnics, blond-haired Stusicks, a few girls still in Communion dresses, like tiny brides. Adults crowded the living room—young couples, old women. Past a certain age the men seemed to disappear. The lucky ones, like Gene’s uncles, hobbled around on canes, crippled by Miner’s Knee, Miner’s Hip, Miner’s Back. The
rest were at home breathing bottled oxygen, their lungs ruined from years of inhaling coal dust. You’d have to call them moderately lucky, George reflected. The unluckiest were like his own father, keeled over in his own basement. Dead at fifty-four.

  He watched Gene flip hamburgers at the grill. Smarter than me, George thought, and what is he doing? What is this life he’s signed on for? In his boozy state, his old buddy seemed to him a kind of bookmark, holding his place in a life he himself had started but decided not to finish. The company house, the redheaded children, the woman George could have (and maybe should have—probably, definitely should have) married. Eugenius would be the one who finished that book. Eugenius would let him know how it all turned out.

  He watched Ev carry plates back and forth to the kitchen. She wore a yellow dress cinched at the middle. He was aware of breasts and arms, a round behind. She had been his first, and he’d been hers. One time only, the night before he left, but enough to qualify for the title. I love you. In my heart we’re already married. At the time he’d meant it—at least he thought he did. And she had taken him at his word.

  She pulled up a chair next to him. “Whew. I’m beat.”

  “Are they all yours, Ev?” George asked, pointing.

  “Gosh, no. Leonard’s in fourth grade.” She pointed to a boy in striped trousers. George would have recognized him anywhere: his father’s thick glasses, his mother’s red curls. “You met him when he was a baby. Then the two girls. Gene wants to try for another boy, but I’m ready to retire.” She laughed. “How old’s your boy, Georgie? I don’t even know his name.”

  “Arthur. He’ll be six in July.”

  “Just the one, Georgie?” She smiled; again the hint of a blush. “You’re not planning on more?”

  “Marion’s awfully busy. I’m not sure what she’d do with another one.”

  “Is she—a career girl?” She used the phrase hesitantly, as though she weren’t sure it applied. I could kiss her, George thought.

  “I guess,” he said. And then, because an explanation seemed necessary: “She’s a painter.”

  “A housepainter?”

  “Oh, no. She’s, you know, an artist.”

  Ev blushed a deep red. Again he felt his heart quicken. His own cheeks heated, as if warmed by hers. I’m drunk, he thought.

  “Well, she sounds fascinating. I’d love to meet her someday.”

  He let himself imagine this: Marion in Ev’s living room on Polish Hill, eating deviled eggs, swapping recipes for gelatin salad. Marion’s recap afterward: My picnic with Evelyn Picnic. Her progeny screaming in the next room. Her milkmaid’s arms as big as my thighs. The old Marion: skewering Ev with a few turns of her vast vocabulary, in the bored, flat tone that let you know how little she cared.

  “Oh, sure,” he said miserably. “You two would hit it off.” He rose, a bit unsteady, and began clearing plates from the table.

  “Georgie, sit! You don’t have to do that.”

  “It’s the least I can do.”

  She gave him an odd look: he’d said it with more feeling than was appropriate. He couldn’t help himself. Picturing Ev at Marion’s mercy unsettled him deeply. As though he himself were sadistic and cruel, as though he’d imagined her violent death.

  THE STREET was dark by the time the party broke up. George crossed the street, feeling guilty. He’d spent the whole day—a third of his visit—at Gene and Ev’s. Now his mother’s windows were dark.

  He climbed the porch stairs on tiptoe. The old floorboards creaked beneath his weight. The porch, he remembered: he had promised to help Joyce with the porch. But he was due at the store Monday afternoon. He would have to leave first thing in the morning.

  He glanced over his shoulder at the Cadillac gleaming beneath the street lamp. He’d stopped along the highway and paid a dollar to have it washed. Now the small extravagance shamed him. He’d always been vain about his cars.

  He closed the screen door quietly behind him; feeling along the wall, he climbed the stairs to his room. His suitcase sat at the foot of the bed; he hadn’t even bothered to unpack it. Shame prickled his skin. Had his mother noticed? Did she know he was in such a hurry to leave?

  He clicked open the suitcase. In the pocket of his trousers he found his checkbook. Why not? he thought. For God’s sake, what is money for?

  His hand shaking, he wrote a check for $5,814, the exact sticker price of a ’55 Eldorado ragtop, payable to Joyce Novak. On the memo line he wrote, in wavy letters: You pay rent, you never have nothing.

  He left the check on top of the bureau. By the time she found it, he would be halfway to Philadelphia.

  Every year, in the third week of July, Mount Carmel Church held its annual festival and spaghetti dinner. Tents were raised on the church lawn. In the street, a bandstand and rides for the children: chair swings, a miniature carousel. Susquehanna Avenue was closed off with sawhorses, causing a tangle of traffic on the street below. Every year the local merchants grumbled. Might as well shut down for the weekend. No one does business on Dago Day. A few wrote letters to the mayor. But John Mastrantonio chaired the town council. Every year the requisite permits were issued, and Dago Day was celebrated as planned.

  Every Italian in town worked at the festival. When Rose Novak was a girl, her aunts fried sausages and rolled meatballs in the church basement. Before he went away to war, her brother had helped build the gaming booths—darts, ringtoss, chuck-o-luck—and hammered the posts into the parish lawn. Her uncle Vincent had built the wooden platform used in the procession, to carry Our Lady of Mount Carmel through the streets of the town. Each year the platform was decorated with fresh-cut roses, the statue draped in a long cloak of sky blue velvet. Carried, always, by six young men, and followed by the Legion of Mary, the Knights of Columbus and the church choir. The procession wound its way through Little Italy, a slow-moving beast sluggish in the afternoon heat, easily caught by the small dark-eyed children who pursued it, carrying dollar bills punctured with safety pins. The bills were pinned to Our Lady’s cloak. The sign of the cross was made.

  The festival ended with a pyrotechnics display; for many years, Rose’s father had driven his wagon to Punxsutawney to buy the firecrackers. All of Bakerton watched the fireworks, but the Italians had the best view, from the steep hill behind the church.

  As a girl of eleven, Rose cleared tables at the spaghetti dinner. She had just come over with her mother. Starting fifth grade at the grammar school, she had learned, cruelly, that her English was poor; but at Mount Carmel that didn’t matter. The patrons spoke to her in Italian. The women in the kitchen called her bella, gave her anisette cookies and exclaimed over her long hair. As a teenager, she helped decorate Our Lady’s platform. During the procession she sang in the choir.

  After her marriage, Rose stopped working at the festival. Her children were baptized at St. Casimir’s, and she acquired a collection of dowdy hats, which the Polish women favored over mantillas. Her life was in all ways Polish except for one day each summer: on the third Saturday in July, Stanley stayed home alone; Rose and the children trekked across town to the festival. There, Georgie and Dorothy chased around the churchyard with their Scarponi cousins. Rose sat under an awning with her aunts, playing bingo and drinking Sambuca, speaking Italian and breaking out periodically in cawing laughter. Years later, her children would remember that Rose laughed more on Dago Day than on all the other days of the year combined.

  THE THIRD SATURDAY in July was the hottest day of the year. At eleven in the morning the temperature reached a hundred degrees. “It’s not so bad,” Rose told the girls, in defiance of all evidence. She could still distinguish light from dark, could recognize certain shapes; but her feet were swollen, a sign her heart was failing. Still she would not miss the festival.

  Joyce drove them into town and dropped them off at the church—the nearest parking space was blocks away. Dorothy led Rose to a chair under the canopy, where her aunts were playing bingo.

  The aunts—in the
ir seventies now—greeted them with hugs and shrieks. “You looking good, honey,” said Aunt Marcella, kissing Dorothy loudly. “You hang in there, you be good as new.”

  Dorothy guided Rose to a folding chair. She did feel well. She had regained a little weight; her daily walks had improved her appetite. Little by little, her speech had returned. She’d set her hair and wore a new dress. Joyce had taken her shopping for her thirtieth birthday that spring.

  “Dorothy,” said Aunt Bruna. “Come here, bella. I got a job for you.” The kitchen was shorthanded, she explained; the second seating had begun, and there weren’t enough waitresses. “We need some girls to pour coffee. Pretty girls,” she said, winking. “Keep the men occupied while they wait.”

  In this way Dorothy found herself in the church basement, an apron wrapped around her waist. Long tables stretched from wall to wall, set with folding chairs. Families sat close together: grandparents, young couples, children in Sunday clothes. There was no telling where one family ended and the next began. The same features repeated up and down every table: brown eyes, black hair, sharp noses, square chins. The overflow crowd waited in line at the door. The room seemed to Dorothy very full—perfume, cigar smoke, laughter, all tightly contained by the cinder-block walls.

  There was no room for shyness, no time. She hurried from table to table pouring coffee; the simplicity of the task reassured her, the impossibility of making conversation in the loud room. Men laughed and called to her. Hey, coffee girl. Another refill here. Good thing you so skinny, get between them tables like that. Old men, strongly perfumed, in pink shirts and pastel slacks. Some bald, with oiled scalps; others with low hairlines, graying pompadours beginning just above the eyebrows. Dorothy smiled back; it was impossible not to. She filled their cups and returned to the kitchen for a fresh pot.

  For an hour or more she raced and poured. Packed full of bodies, the room grew close. The heat of the kitchen astonished her, the enormous pots of boiling macaroni, the steaming vats of tomato sauce. She wiped her brow. Around her the room began to spin.