All Waiting Is Long

by Barbara J. Taylor

  Like little Daisy Morgan. Or is it Davies now? Either way, Violet is going to have her hands full with that one. Why, just the other day, when Mrs. Trethaway was telling Reverend Sheets how it’s a sin to marry out of your faith, Daisy interrupted with some story about an elephant married to a donkey up at Nay Aug Zoo. She may well get away with that sort of cheekiness now, but it’s bound to catch up with her later in life. No man will want that kind of wife. Some lessons need to be taught in childhood if they’re going to stick. Not every opinion is worth airing. The sooner she learns that, the better off she’ll be.

  acknowledgments

  “It is well to remember a good turn,” as the Welsh proverb goes. I owe a debt of thanks to those who assisted me with the historical research for this book: Jane and James Widenor from the First Christian Church of Scranton; Mary Ann Moran-Savakinus and everyone at the Lackawanna Historical Society; Brian Fulton, staff librarian at the Scranton Times-Tribune; the employees at the Albright Memorial Library; and P. Casey Telesk who taught himself all about 1934 LaSalle automobiles, so he could teach me.

  Also, many thanks and lots of love to my nephew, Jimmy McGraw, who answered all my questions about broken bones with his characteristic patience.

  Thank you to my fellow “workshoppers”—those who were there from the beginning and those who joined us along the way: Tom Borthwick, Laurie Loewenstein, Nina Solomon, Theasa Tuohy, Liz Dalton, Kevin Heisler, Monique Lewis, Matthew McGevna, Deidre Sinnott, and Wendy Sheanin.

  To Teresa Beattie, thank you for getting me through that last set of rewrites. You’re an amazing life coach (truly!) and a wonderful friend.

  Speaking of friends, thank you to Chris Tomasino. You read an early draft of Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night long before you became my agent. Over coffee, you talked to me about my next project and suggested my characters might have more to say. All Waiting Is Long was born out of that conversation, and I’m grateful for your insight.

  And thanks to publisher Johnny Temple and everyone else at Akashic Books for giving me a chance to tell my stories. I’m proud to publish with Akashic and Kaylie Jones Books.

  Special thanks to Kaylie Jones—mentor, editor, publisher, friend. Quite simply, everything I am as a writer is because of your patience, tenacity, talent, and passion for writing. Your generous spirit is boundless, and I love you.

  And finally, although my dad passed away in 2013, I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge his contribution to this novel. He answered every question I had from pistols to prostitution. (Just to be clear, he had firsthand knowledge of the former, not the latter.) One night my sister and I took my dad out to dinner, and on the way home he noticed some overhead cables and started explaining streetcars to me. When he finished, he turned to my sister and said, “You know we’re writing a book.” And we were. However this novel is received, it’s far better than it would have been without my dad’s input, and I am a far better person for having known him.

  E-Book Extras

  Excerpt: Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night

  A Note from the Author

  Reading Group Guide

  About Barbara J. Taylor

  TO REVIVE WITHERED FLOWERS

  Fill a bowl with water so hot that you can scarcely bear your hand in it; throw a little salt in the water and put the flowers in immediately. The effect is wonderful. —Mrs. Joe’s Housekeeping Guide, 1909

  Widows and spinsters. We’re the backbone of the church. Visit the shut-ins, polish the collection plates, wash and iron the baptismal robes. Wrap them in blue paper to keep them from yellowing.

  Every Saturday morning we clean the sanctuary. Takes a good deal of water. And elbow grease. Start in the front and work our way back. No reason. Just habit.

  Mix a spoonful of kerosene into your bucket. Adds a shine to the woodwork. Glass too, if you dry it with newspapers.

  Cleaning’s more difficult after a funeral. The family takes the flowers graveside, but you can still smell them. Stronger when it’s a child. Don’t know why, but we’ve all said it. We’ll say it again soon enough. That’s how life is.

  Buried the Morgan girl this past summer. Tragic. Only nine years old. The candle of Grace’s eye, as we Welsh say. And Owen’s, most likely, since Daisy was the first of their two children.

  Reverend Halloway preached himself proud. Not easy under such circumstances. Seen better than him fall to pieces while performing a service for a youngster.

  Owen too. A rock, if we ever saw one. Patience of a saint. Holding his wife on the right and that other daughter of his on the left. Job himself could not have done better.

  Of course, strength like that can’t last forever.

  Now, Grace, she’s another story. Just have to look at her to know. She’ll take the easy way out. Go batty, like her mother. Not that we can blame her. Who’s to say we’d manage any better? Hope we would, though.

  And then there’s Violet. Lost her only sister—accident or not. Can’t hold a body accountable at eight years old. Probably didn’t do it out of meanness.

  Makes us wonder is all.

  CHAPTER ONE

  GRACE LAY IN BED, listening to Violet mill about the kitchen, but for what? Breakfast, that was it. Something to eat before heading off on the first day of school. “I’m her mother,” Grace murmured. “Her mother,” she repeated, pushing herself up, swinging one leg onto the floor and then the other. She heard a milk bottle clank against the lip of a metal cup and pictured the eight-year-old sitting at the table. “I’m her mother,” she said again, this time tasting the anguish as it rose from her stomach. She leaned forward, wretched into the pot beside the bed, crawled back under the covers, and shut her eyes. “Lord, forgive me,” she prayed, waiting for the back door to close behind Violet.

  * * *

  An hour later, Grace dragged herself into the kitchen for a cup of tea. Neither the blackberry root nor the quince seed had done much for her dyspepsia. She’d try the spearmint leaves this morning. After putting the kettle on to boil, she stared at the wall calendar—an advertisement for the George Sherman Coal Company.

  Cleanest Anthracite in Scranton, PA.

  Every miner in the neighborhood had one tacked up in his house. “Sherman’s idea of Christmas cheer,” Owen had said last December, tossing it on the table along with what was left of his wages, after paying his tab at the company store. Grace had been the one to hang it. She’d waited until noon on New Year’s Day, to avoid the bad luck that comes with putting a calendar up too soon.

  As if luck were that easy.

  As if found pennies or four-leaf clovers could have saved her child.

  September 4, 1913. Had it been two months already? Fresh tears started down Grace’s face. My Daisy, she thought. It’s really true.

  When Grace turned, she found Grief sitting in his usual chair at the table. His wasted appearance and blanched complexion always startled her. He had first come to her twenty years earlier, a few days after her father’s suicide, just enough time for one so young to grasp the finality of death. Grief would sit on the corner of her bed, attired in a slim gray suit, loose about the shoulders, but clean and ironed. “What’s to become of us?” he’d whisper, opening and closing the glass buttons on his shoes with the sterling silver hook he carried in his pocket. For several months, his gangly frame cast a long shadow over her bedroom. “My poor Gracie.”

  He showed up a second time after her sister Lizzie passed away, and later that year when her mother followed. He’d grown into his clothes by then and had a hint of a beard. And he began coming around again once the miscarriages started. He’d undo his coat and loosen his tie, lingering a bit longer each time. Daisy’s birth eventually shooed him outside, and Violet’s seemed to have chased him off for good. But he reappeared soon enough, after Rose, Grace’s blue baby, died at the hospital. That night he rolled up his shirtsleeves, unpacked his belongings, and made himself at home. She knew then that he’d always return, so she prayed to have long stretches bet
ween visits. Her prayers went unanswered, and now, nine months later, he sat across from her, his hair matted, collar soiled, shirt unbuttoned below a rope of neck.

  She shuffled to the sink and started in on Violet’s breakfast dishes. Busy yourself—Owen’s advice when she’d tried to talk to him about her pain. Easy for a man who spent twelve hours a day in a mine. Backbreaking work, yes, but still, it was time away from home. How could he know the torment of changing a bed in the room where Daisy’s dresses hung on a bar, waiting for Violet to grow into them? Or the agony of discovering Daisy’s favorite hair ribbon wedged between the cushions of the couch?

  “He’ll never understand.” The soothing ripples of Grief’s voice lapped against Grace’s ears.

  She brushed the crumbs off Violet’s plate and ran a wet dishtowel across it. “He’s a good man.”

  “Who’s gone back to the drink.”

  Without turning toward him, she wagged her finger at the reflection in Owen’s shaving mirror propped on the windowsill. “You have no proof of that.”

  “But you do. I saw you catch the whiskey on his breath last night.”

  “You saw no such thing.” She abandoned the dishes and slumped into the chair across from him.

  He slid his hand toward her, but she did not offer hers in kind. “So be it,” he said, as he fished the buttonhook out of his pocket. “But what about Violet?”

  “What about her?”

  “I’ll say it if you won’t.” He scraped at the sludge under his fingernails. “Violet’s the one who killed Daisy. It’s her fault. We both know it.”

  “Those words have never passed my lips!” Grace pounded her fist, knocking an empty teacup off the table. Porcelain shards peppered the floor. “Now look what you’ve done.” She swept the pieces onto a rag rug, lifted both sides, and shook it into the wash tin. “You’re not wanted here. Never were.”

  “Just the same. You hold the words inside.” He pulled out his shirttail, wiped the hook clean, and put it back in his pocket.

  “Where they belong.” She set the rug in place and went to the stove to brew her tea. Grace thought about the words, those words, beads of buckshot—solid, heavy, cold. Each leaden syllable primed to explode. All along, she’d been swallowing them whole, choking them down with roots and seeds and leaves.

  “Come now. Ease your pain.” Grief pressed up against her back and pecked at her ear. Blood rose to his pallid cheeks. “Blame Violet. Give voice to your heart’s truth.”

  Grace trembled at both his touch and his suggestion. I’ll not say the words, she thought. Better to push them deeper into her belly. What if the accusation shot past her lips while she scrubbed floors or sipped tea? You killed Daisy! What if she opened her mouth to pray, and fired the words instead? Our Father, who art in heaven. What happened to Eve when Cain slew Abel? Did she still love her child?

  Grace pulled away from Grief and sat down at the table. “What do you know of me?”

  “I know your fears. Your pain.” He tucked in his sullied shirttail and combed his parched fingers through his oiled hair. “We’re two halves of the same whole. Twins, born on the same day, tied together for eternity.” He stepped closer.

  “Not another word about Violet, do you hear?” Exhausted, she dropped her head and wept.

  “Poor Gracie. What’s to become of us?” Grief lifted her chin and blotted her tears with the back of his hand. “Stay with me,” he whispered. “I won’t leave you.”

  A late-summer breeze pushed through the screen door, momentarily rousing Grace to a larger world, one with Owen, and yes, even Violet, and love. Her feet stirred, but her body remained rooted to the chair.

  “Let’s do something about that pain,” Grief cooed. Grace nodded but held onto the words. “So much pain,” he continued. “So many tears.” He wiped her cheek again.

  Grace leaned forward and pressed her lips against the hollow of his open hand.

  CHAPTER TWO

  WHILE THE THIRD GRADERS PRACTICED THEIR CURSIVE, Miss Reese called Violet into the hallway. On her slow march up the aisle, Violet looked to her classmates for some hint of her wrongdoing, but they kept their eyes trained on their papers.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Miss Reese said when Violet stepped into the hall.

  She nodded. She wasn’t in trouble. There was some relief in that. The teacher was simply offering her sympathies. Violet should’ve been used to it by now. She should have been able to say thank you the way she’d been instructed so many times throughout the viewing and the funeral, but once again, the words stuck in her throat. She still didn’t know what words to use for Daisy being gone, but thank you hardly fit.

  The teacher continued: “Your sister was a student of mine last year.”

  Violet and Daisy had spoken about Miss Reese on several occasions. “She smells of rose petals,” Daisy had said, and standing this close, Violet realized it was true. Neither sister had ever had or even known such a young teacher. And so pretty. Violet had had Miss Philips the year before, a stern woman, all teeth and bosom, who wielded a switch with a marksman’s accuracy.

  Miss Reese knelt down, and her long skirt billowed, sending a puff of air in Violet’s direction. “I said, your sister was a student of mine last year.”

  Violet wondered at the repetition and nodded again, this time more vigorously.

  The teacher pulled a handkerchief from the sleeve of her shirtwaist and held it out.

  Violet had neither sneezed nor spilled anything, the only two reasons for a hanky in school, so she said, “No thank you.”

  Miss Reese stood abruptly, shook out the folds of her skirt, and sent Violet back to her seat, alongside Olive Manley.

  * * *

  Later that morning, after the children had been released for recess, Violet sat on the steps listening to her teacher describe the morning’s encounter to Miss Philips. “Not a tear in her eye after only two months.”

  “An odd duck,” Miss Philips said, her eyes trained on a spirited game of kick the can. As if to clarify her remark, she explained, “Only one in the yard that day other than Daisy herself. We’ll probably never know the truth.”

  Violet glanced up and noticed several of her classmates listening to the women with rapt attention.

  * * *

  After recess, Olive slid into the empty desk next to Lydia Parker.

  “And what’s wrong with the seat I gave you?” Miss Reese asked.

  Olive’s eyes nudged at Violet.

  “Perhaps you’d prefer to spend the rest of your day in the corner.”

  “No ma’am.” Olive crossed over and dropped into her seat next to Violet, without looking at, speaking to, or brushing up against her.

  * * *

  When Miss Reese rang the bell for lunch, Olive popped up before the clapper finished sounding. The other students quickly followed suit. Violet remained seated, wiping down her pen tip and arranging her books, until she felt certain the room had emptied. She padded out to the schoolyard, convinced that self-imposed isolation somehow suggested she had a choice in the matter.

  As she started down the hill for home, Evan Evans, known in the neighborhood as Evan Two-Times, bounded into her path from behind an oak tree.

  “Slowpoke.”

  Violet kept her head forward and her eyes straight ahead as she tried to move around the boy.

  Evan mirrored her steps so she could not pass. “How come you’re alone? Everyone’s way ahead.” He winked in the direction of some overgrown elderberry bushes, and giggles rose up from behind them.

  “Not you,” she said, still refusing to glance at him or his pals in the covert. “Unfortunately.” Everyone knew Evan to be a bully like his mother Myrtle. Violet had no intention of showing weakness.

  “I’d be happy to see you home.”

  “No thank you.” Violet glanced toward the street, but a milk wagon prevented her from crossing.

  “Wouldn’t want to worry your ma . . . considering.” The bushes shook with
nervous laughter.

  “Will you please move?”

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “You’re going to make me late.”

  “Did you really kill your sister?”

  Violet slammed Evan Two-Times against the tree with such force that the back of his head knocked against the trunk. “Ask me again. I dare you.”

  He rubbed his scalp and winced. “Ma’s right,” he said, pushing Violet into the elderberry bushes, causing the crouching boys to scatter like hens. “You are crazy.” Evan took off down the hill after his friends.

  Violet tried to wriggle free of the bushes but couldn’t get a grip on anything to push off of. Just as she started to cry, two hands reached in and pulled her to her feet.

  “Thanks,” she managed, too ashamed to look up.

  “He had it coming, but good.”

  “Stanley?” Violet said, recognizing his pinched voice. Of all the saviors in the world, hers had to be Stanley Adamski. Stinky Stanley. Stupid Stanley. Not that she had ever called him those names, but she’d never spoken against those who had, either. For one thing, Stanley did have an odor, which surprised Violet. According to her mother, Polish women had spotless kitchens, so it stood to reason that their children would be clean as well. For another, even though Stanley was a year older than Violet, he hadn’t yet made it out of second grade. He failed due in large part to his poor attendance, but that didn’t stop the bigger boys from calling him a dumb Polack. And from Stanley’s view, all the boys were bigger. He stood four feet tall on his tiptoes, at least six inches shorter than anyone else his age. Even Violet had an advantage over him.

  “Thanks again,” she muttered, brushing leaves off her pinafore. “Mother’s expecting me,” she added over her shoulder as she started running down the hill. Once safely on her front porch, she turned to see Stanley waving at the top of the block. She pretended not to notice and darted inside.