Two Rivers

by T. Greenwood

  Two Rivers is located in a valley, surrounded on most sides by hills. The Heights, just about eight miles outside of town, is the best place to watch a storm. You have to climb about two thousand feet to reach the Heights; my father’s old car was a weary soldier on these missions, but the journey was worth it when we got to the top. From up there, you can see all of Two Rivers: the paper mill with its sulfurous smoke hovering over the river, the train tracks, almost serpentine below. The churches, all three of them, steeples each jutting into the air with purpose and escalating grandeur ( Methodist , Episcopalian , Catholic ). Depot Street, the hub of our world, and all the tiny houses with their inhabitants’ tiny lives inside. During a thunderstorm, with the headlights out, it was better than the Fourth of July.

  In the fall of 1963, not long after my senior year started, we had a week of storms. I remember this week as vividly as anything else that year. It was the same year that Martin Luther King Jr. spoke before a crowd of two hundred thousand people in Washington, D.C., and the Celtics beat the Lakers in the NBA Finals, but all that I remember was the incessant rain, the long slow drive up to the top of the Heights, with Betsy sitting next to me. The storm came in on a Sunday and did not leave until the following Saturday. Seven days and seven nights. Two Rivers had one of the worst floods in its 250-year history, a flood that killed livestock, destroyed homes, closed every school and almost every shop for a whole week. The playing fields by the school turned into ponds, causing Homecoming weekend and all of its ancillary activities to be cancelled, including the Two Rivers/Westport football game (a rivalry that reached epic proportions this time of year), much to the dismay of everyone, it seemed, but me. I welcomed the deluge, could have danced in the puddles, because each crack of thunder, each streak of lightning sent Betsy Parker into the front seat of my father’s car. In the late fall of 1963, President Kennedy was shot and killed, but all that I remember is the static on the radio, the giant sweep of my windshield wipers, and Betsy’s long legs stretched out in the front seat.

  Though it had been nearly five years since Mrs. Parker was sent away, the family stuck to their story that she was simply ill, convalescing somewhere in the Midwest, though most people in town still believed otherwise. Only I knew that once a week Betsy and her father drove to Waterbury to visit Betsy’s mother. Every Sunday morning, they descended the crooked steps of their house, Betsy wearing a dress and pumps, her father in a good shirt and pressed pants. His hair was always shiny with pomade, but on these days it looked like he’d spent an extra minute in front of the mirror. There was no reason for anyone to suspect that they were headed anywhere but to St. Elizabeth’s. My parents certainly never did. For one thing, they never went to church, despite the fact that they were both baptized Catholics. My mother hadn’t been to Mass in more than thirty-five years, not since she cussed at a priest and stormed out of a confessional after her first stab at this holy sacrament. In her version of the story, the priest had it coming; she said he’d told her that if she didn’t say a hundred Hail Marys that she was bound straight for hell. Her sin? Coveting her cousin Bobby’s bicycle. Not for the coveting, but because girls shouldn’t want to ride bicycles. She made it a point to ride her bicycle in front of the rectory every day after school after that. My father had lapsed not long after marrying my mother, and I wasn’t even baptized. (I didn’t tell my mother that sometimes I went to Mass with Ray and his family if I spent the night at his house on a Saturday. And I certainly didn’t tell her that I sort of liked the sounds of the organ, the smell of incense. The promise of prayers.)

  But on the Sunday that the flood of 1963 started, Betsy and her father didn’t make their weekly trip. I was at home, helping my father build a device that would allow my mother to clean behind the toilet without getting on her hands and knees. It was really just a modified mop, with a swivel added on. My mother was in the kitchen, reading an article in The New York Times about four little girls in Alabama who were killed when a bomb went off in a church. She was talking to herself really, as my father was so engaged in the task of converting the mop, and I was busy checking the window, wondering why Betsy’s father’s car was still in the driveway.

  “Children,” she said. “Little girls .”

  I held one end of the mop as my father fastened the swivel to the other end.

  Her voice grew louder and louder as she paced the kitchen floor. “Children who are kept ignorant so they can’t fight back. That’s the real reason all those bigots don’t want integration. Knowledge is power. And giving power to a Negro is just too scary.”

  The whole idea of integration was as relevant to me and my life as a discussion about what to eat on the moon. There were no Negroes in Two Rivers. I’d seen one black person in my entire life when we went to visit my grandparents in Boston. He was standing at a bus stop, eating a hot dog. I didn’t really see what the fuss was about.

  “And so they kill these children before they even get a chance. It makes me nauseated. Doesn’t it make you nauseated?” she asked us.

  “Helen,” my father said, clearly excited about his latest contribution to her homemaking endeavors. “Look!” He held up the ridiculous gadget, smiling stupidly at her.

  Her expression grew from one of abstract frustration to one of pure anger. I’d never seen her look so furious.

  “Jesus Christ!” she said, grabbing the mop from my father. She held it horizontally, like a barbell without any weights on the ends. Motionless. And then, with one turn of her wrist, it became a javelin, and she threw it toward the kitchen sink. For a second I was sure it was going to smash through the window over the sink and land in our front yard. It did crack the glass but, surprisingly, did not exit our house. Instead, it ricocheted, shooting back toward us, making both my father and I jump out of the way. It landed on the floor, and (because of the unfortunate incline of our house) it began to roll. It rolled clear through the dining room and stopped only when a chair leg obstructed its path. All three of us stood staring toward the dining room, bewildered.

  “I’ll be in my study,” my mother said, gathered the newspaper under her arm, and left us.

  Outside the air was tight. The rain was deceptively soft. If it hadn’t been for the crack of thunder that was louder than shattered glass, you might think it was only a little sprinkle. My father and I didn’t speak as he retrieved his invention. I waited for Betsy to rescue me from this awful silence, and thankfully, within moments after the first flash of lightning, I heard the door of the DeSoto slam shut.

  “That’s Betsy,” I said to my father, and he nodded.

  I ran outside; the rain was coming down harder.

  “Please,” she said. “Let’s drive.”

  It was cold. One thing about that old DeSoto—the heater worked like a champion. Within a few minutes we were on the road, and hot gusts were blowing out of the vents. Betsy was wearing her mother’s ratty green sweater and jeans, the same thing she’d had on the day before.

  “You didn’t go to the hospital today?” I asked. I always called it a hospital because in my imagination it looked just like the North Country Regional Hospital, where I had my tonsils taken out in the second grade. Only filled with crazy people. I tried to picture Mrs. Parker there, but my imaginings almost always involved her wearing a nurse’s uniform. Clean and white and pretty. Sometimes, in my fantasies, she was feeding me ice cream. If I had been religious, thinking about Mrs. Parker like that probably would have been a sin. Sometimes it was best to be godless.

  Betsy stared ahead, silent.

  The DeSoto sluggishly made its way up the r
oad toward the Heights.

  “She was supposed to come home,” Betsy said.

  “What?”

  “The doctors said she was rehabilitated . She just needed some rest.”

  “It’s been five years ,” I said in utter disbelief.

  Betsy was staring at the window. “There’s medication, you know, to take care of the depression. It helps people, people like her, to function in society .”

  I thought of my own mother, hurling the mop, screaming about racism and bigotry. I remembered Mrs. Parker’s lemon bars. The sway of her hips as she led me time and time again into that kitchen.

  “That’s great!” I said. “When is she coming then?”

  Betsy’s eyes filled, but she didn’t blink. A sob snarled in her throat. “She’s not.”

  “Hey, you okay?” I asked, reaching for her hand. It was soft. Warm.

  “They found her this morning. She took pills, her pills and a whole bunch of pills she must have stolen from the other patients.” She blinked hard, and wiped hastily at her wet cheeks. She laughed then, grimly. “I guess the idea of coming home was worse than staying in the hospital.”

  We drove in silence the rest of the way, as the rain picked up momentum outside. When we pulled over at the overlook, it beat against the windows. I left the car running, the heat blowing. Streaks of lightning split the sky, and Betsy pulled the sleeves of her mother’s sweater over her hands. She looked straight ahead. She didn’t ask me to turn on the radio like she usually did. I wanted to touch her, but I didn’t know how.

  When she turned to me, I thought for one terrible but thrilling moment that she was going to kiss me. I anticipated the way her lips would feel pressed against mine. This wasn’t the first time I’d dreamed this. I’d been rehearsing this moment ever since she first kissed me. And then the reality of the moment crested: Mrs. Parker was dead . Guilt washed over me in one, big wave.

  But before I had time to speak, she grabbed my wrist, hard, and pulled my hand toward her. Then she was lifting her shirt with her free hand, and my knuckles were grazing the soft skin of her stomach. I could feel her ribs, the fabric of her bra, and the soft swell of her breast underneath. I caught my breath. She was still holding my hand, but she was forcing my fingers open, spreading my palm flat against her skin.

  “Sometimes,” she said, “my heart stops. Sometimes I can’t feel it beating at all.”

  She was pressing my hand so hard into the center of her chest I could feel the resistance of bone. I wondered if she pressed hard enough, if it might just crumble.

  “Do you feel it?” she asked. There was an urgency in her voice, a tremble I’d never heard before.

  I pressed my hand harder. I could feel the rhythmic beating of her heart in my palm. Its cadence pounding through my whole body.

  “Do you?” she asked again. Frantic.

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  We stayed like this for a long time, me feeling her heart in my fingers, in my shoulders, in my whole body , and then she moved my hand. To her breast, slowly, and I looked at her (for some sort of explanation, for permission, something ), but her eyes were closed. She leaned her head back then, and let go of my hand. Tentatively, I moved my palm back down to her rib cage, pushing my thumb underneath the bottom edge of her bra, holding my breath as I touched her. Her skin was so hot and soft, it hardly seemed real. I had to force myself to breathe as I reached further, holding her whole breast in my hand, cradling her in my hand, my thumb stroking the surprisingly hard nipple at the center of all of this soft warmth.

  Betsy moaned softly, arching her back, her head thrown back and her throat exposed.

  “God,” I whispered, my whole body aching.

  Betsy reached up then and held my hand again, guided my fingers in slow circles. Under my fingertips, her heart beat hard and fast, but her breath was faster. And then her whole body trembled, electric. Blood pounded in my temples, between my legs. Outside, thunder cracked and she lowered her head, burying it in my neck. I stroked her hair, her face, her shoulders.

  “I’m going to go to college,” she whispered. “Next fall.”

  I couldn’t make sense of a single thing she’d said. I could still feel her skin, hot and tingling in my hand. I heard my mother’s voice, Knowledge is power. Little girls. I thought of Mrs. Parker building a snowman inside that winter kitchen, swallowing pills. All of this was jumbled inside my head, which was throbbing.

  “College?” I repeated.

  She sat up and looked out the window at the blue-black sky. “Just the state college, in Castleton. It’s not so far away. I’ll be home every weekend.” She was talking quickly, almost manic, tugging at a loose thread in the cuff of her mother’s sweater. Thunder roared as she went on and on. “I’ve been thinking about studying art. Photography. Music, I don’t know.” She shook her head.

  When lightning split the sky, I felt it rip through me.

  Betsy pulled the thread slowly, carefully and meticulously unraveling.

  “You can’t ,” I said.

  She stopped talking and looked at me, her face blank.

  “My mother is dead,” she said, loudly. Angrily. It was the first time she had ever yelled at me, and I felt like I’d been punched. “I don’t want to wind up like her. I don’t want to be some housewife making potpies and pitchers of Kool-Aid. It killed her. Can you try to understand that?”

  “Betsy,” I said, already sorry.

  “Please,” she said, exasperated. “Turn out the headlights. Let’s just watch the storm.”

  Sunday Supper

  P aul and Hanna have known me for ages. When we were kids, I went with Betsy to their house for dozens of Sunday suppers. We continued this Sunday ritual all through high school and even later whenever we were both home from college. By the time Betsy died and Shelly and I moved into their little house by the river, the smell of a New England boiled dinner, mixed with Paul’s sweet cigar smoke, already felt like home. Even now, when Hanna ushered us into the foyer, the smell of turnips and tobacco was pacifying. It even made me feel a little homesick.

  “I hope you brought your appetites,” Hanna said, smiling. She was wearing lipstick in a color I didn’t recognize, an orange-y hue. Her lips were cracked, and the color bled garishly around her mouth, making her look clownish. She couldn’t look me in the eye, even as she took my hand and led me into our old room to show me what she’d done.

  “That was my mother’s machine,” she said, gesturing toward a treadle sewing machine. It was in the window where my bed used to be. There were baskets brimming with fabrics and yarn all over the room. A chair that used to be out on the porch was in the corner where my dresser had been. There were bright new curtains, yellow with white polka dots, and I realized that this was probably what she’d been wanting to do with this room for twelve years.

  “It looks great, Hanna,” I said.

  She nodded. I had left Shelly and Maggie in the kitchen with Paul. I had one ear listening to Hanna, and one straining to hear what might be going on in the other room.

 
Hanna looked toward the door, checking to make sure we were still alone. “Your mother’s friend’s daughter ?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Come to help out with Shelly?”

  I nodded. I tried to remember if I’d ever met my mother’s college roommate. I had a vague recollection of a woman with long blond hair. I’d met her only once, and at the time I don’t think she had any children. Certainly not a girl like Marguerite. Margaret.

  “You could have asked us for help, you know.”

  I realized then that Hanna was less concerned with Maggie’s sudden appearance and more hurt that I’d somehow sought help from outside the family. She thought that I hadn’t been able to do things on my own, that I was already failing in my efforts to parent Shelly myself.

  “You could’ve always come back here—if it wasn’t working out for you. If it was too much. You didn’t need to get somebody, a stranger…” she started, her voice trembling.

  “I know, Hanna,” I said. “But with Shelly starting seventh grade, and everything, it was time for us to get our own place. We all know that. And Maggie’s just going to be with us for a little while.”

  Hanna dabbed at her nose with a tissue she had pulled like a magician from the cuff of her sweater.