These Granite Islands

by Sarah Stonich

  There were only two other girls in her school who had been born in Cypress. She asked her parents to transfer her to the town’s other school. Most of the merchants sent their children to the Catholic school, but Isobel’s parents saw no advantage in wasting good money on educating a girl, and they made no bones of saying so.

  In fourth grade she tearfully asked her teacher if she might be moved to another desk. “Can I please sit with an American girl?”

  The teacher sat her down. “They are all American girls, Isobel. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  She was given a lecture on equality, all the while fighting the blush that raced up her cheeks. Her punishment had been to sweep the school sidewalks clear of snow for the entire month.

  When she turned twelve, Isobel worked alongside her parents after school. She knew they expected her to stay on with them in the bakery, but after four years of rolling out yards of dough for strudel and peeling apples from the seemingly bottomless crate, she knew she couldn’t do it. The texture of raw flour between her fingers made her jaw ache and cinnamon made her sneeze. She did not mind the work particularly, but when she saw her mother, flushed and muttering into the ovens, she envisioned her future self.

  She told Cathryn of the day, while cutting squares of petits fours, she had informed her parents she’d apprenticed herself to a milliner in Duluth. She’d seen the ad, had written the letter, and had received a favorable recommendation from her teacher. She’d passed the interview and would be leaving at the end of the school term. Her mother froze over her rolling pin and glared.

  “Vot are you saying?”

  “I’m going to make hats.”

  “You vill do no such ting.”

  Isobel had expected this. “I’m sixteen, I’ll do what I want.”

  With icy silence, her father took his apron off and walked out the back door. Isobel knew her father admired her determination; she knew too he hated himself for not having more.

  As the door slammed, her mother slouched over the marble slab, the rolling pin trembling slightly in her hands.

  Isobel cried, “Can’t you be a little happy for me?”

  Cathryn sighed. “Ah, well, there’s probably not a sixteen-year-old girl alive who hasn’t disappointed her parents one way or another.”

  “You too?”

  “I was a grand champion, did it up real fine. I got it all over in just one night, the night of the Lake Forest cotillion. My coming out.”

  “Coming out? Like a debu —”

  “Debutante, right. Cultured-young-lady-of-society. You are looking at a former, fantastically failed debutante. I was never very good at society. Mother always said my behavior was ‘uneven at best’ during social functions.”

  Cathryn clapped her hands and rocked. “Ever notice how the word function is also used for going to the toilet? Anyway, between Miss Charlemaigne’s School and endless private tutoring, I knew everything there is to know about etiquette.”

  Cathryn dipped in a broad curtsey. “Manners! And I can use them too, when I feel like it. Inciting me to use them always was my mother’s purpose on earth. Poor dear, she so wanted me to be a socialite like her, but I wasn’t built for it. Too moody, she said, too unpredictable.

  “The cotillion, of course, was a big deal — champagne fountain, orchestra, the cream of the boys from the academy, only the best boys from the best families. Did you know, Izzy, the social magnitude of a function can be gauged by how uncomfortable one’s gown is? And mine was killing me — it had enough stays in it to build a boat.”

  She leaned forward to whisper. “So I went back behind the cloakroom, where there was this little restroom, to try to shift things around. Well, didn’t I get the surprise of my life in there. My ticket out of that ballroom was kneeling right there on the floor.”

  Cathryn’s accent was suddenly British. “The reception line is veddy important at these things. Utterly important, really, how one comports oneself. Can make or break a future, you see?” Her smile grew vaguely wicked. “So when Mr. and Mrs. Jarvis, of Jarvis Trust and Indemnity — very hoity-up banking family — came through the line, I was ready. In my best voice… ad three years of elocution at Miss Charlemaigne’s, and believe me I could carry — I said my how-do’s to Mrs. Jarvis and then I turned. ‘And here’s Mr. Jarvis! Sir, I’d be delighted to shake your hand, but didn’t you just have it down Bobby Addison’s trousers a few minutes ago?’”

  Isobel hissed out the sip of tea she’d just taken. “You didn’t!”

  Cathryn was doubled over. “I did! I was sorry to ruin things for that poor boy, but Mr. Jarvis was a horrid man. It was the least I could do.”

  “And your mother?”

  “Nearly died of mortification. She practically disowned me.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was freed. I applied to art school, and they didn’t lift a finger to stop me. I took life drawing classes with naked models and cut my hair and dated racy men. I went abroad, alone. That did it. By the time Liam came along, with no pedigree in sight, they let me marry him anyway. Gladly. They were relieved, I think, to be rid of me.”

  “And now?”

  “My parents?”

  Cathryn sighed. “Asleep with the angels, poor dears.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ~ ~ ~

  Isobel stayed away from home two years. When she did come back it was only reluctantly, bringing Victor to meet her parents. He endured endless cups of watery coffee and the stream of her mother’s chatter. When Victor finally asked what he’d come to ask, for Isobel’s hand in marriage, her father nodded solemnly, rose, shook Victor’s hand listlessly, and ambled away to the kitchen. Isobel followed him and reached out. He would not look at her.

  “Your mother and I were hoping for better.”

  Isobel’s hand fell away. “I wasn’t.”

  She walked Victor downstairs to the street. At the door he whispered, “Those people aren’t your parents. Your true mother and father were stolen by gypsies” — he nodded up the narrow staircase — “and were replaced by that pair of wayward pallbearers.”

  After they married and moved back to Cypress and Isobel’s parents moved to St. Paul, the grim bakery changed as if a page had been turned. The gentle hum of well-oiled sewing machines and the hiss of steam redefined the space, and cheerful industry lifted the gloom. Sixteen years of Victor’s pack rat habits were represented in the clutter of his worktables; racks bulged with garments tagged with cryptic handwriting. In spite of the chaos, he was economical and swift in filling orders, and though his demeanor might have seemed casual to an outsider, Isobel knew that as he whistled or tapped his foot or idly talked, his real attention was on the cloth in his hands. His standards were as rigid as his manner was leisurely. He insisted on hand cutting his canvas linings, and he sewed every shoulder seam by hand, whether the suit was for a potato farmer or a partner in the Vermilion Mine.

  His customers found Victor affable, with a sympathetic ear, an anecdote for every occasion, and an informed opinion on political and economic developments, whether in Cypress or Washington, D.C. He kept up by reading every paper available, and three were delivered to the shop daily, the Minneapolis Star, the Duluth Herald, and the Cypress Tribune. Customers traveling to Chicago or cities east would always remember Victor by bringing him newspapers from those places. Men popped in with little repairs their wives could easily handle at home, and while the client sat in one of the three plush theater seats salvaged from the Lyric, Victor would reattach a loose button or turn under a frayed trouser hem and hash over recent news. More than once it had been suggested to him that he might run a successful campaign for mayor.

  “Bah, I’m just a working stiff. My backside isn’t wide enough to fill that particular seat. Besides, fellas, who the hell’d make your suits?”

  As the Depression took hold, business thinned customer by customer, until the money was barely enough to keep Victor’s growing family fed. The mines were still in op
eration, so Cypress was better off than many places, but people had grown wary, saving what they could in case the worst hit. Tailored clothes were a luxury seldom indulged in. After the first panic, Victor found himself with dozens of abandoned orders worth hundreds of dollars in labor and materials. With scant new business in sight, he resorted to delivering the finished garments to customers’ doors. Like a reluctant bill collector, he took the first suit on his rack out to the farmstead of a crusty old Finn.

  “Listen, Arno, I reckon you don’t have the money for this, and if you do, you’d be a fool to part with it. But I’m willing to barter.”

  Victor took in the shabby farmhouse, the field of overturned stones, the herd of thin goats grazing. “So, what is it you might have extra of around here?”

  The Howards were delivered a crock of goat cheese and five hundred pounds of red potatoes, half of which were traded to a neighbor for venison sausage and butter. When the Swedish pastor needed new vestments, two parishioners came to the house and built a small sauna off the back cellar. In this manner Victor was able to provide for his family in the lean years, trading and retrading stores and services… ozen jars of sauerkraut, one Sacher torte every Saturday for six months, fifty Mason jars of pickled beets, a barrel of cornmeal, a Malamute puppy, ten gallons of pine-green paint, a crate of salt cod, a thirty-dollar credit at the hardware store, train tickets to Duluth, piano lessons for Louisa, and so on. Some things had no takers, and Isobel found herself at the height of the Depression saddled with strange excesses and luxuries… ound of raw angora from the widow who raised long-haired loppits, twenty-five boxes of French-milled lavender soap too fancy to use, reams of Italian stationery yellowing in gold gift boxes, and ten sour-faced carved wooden dolls the children refused to play with. The dolls were eventually put to use propping open windows around the house and the shop. One of the wretched things still glowered naked on Victor’s desk, a nail driven through its neck, a paper cravat of bills jammed onto the point.

  Isobel picked up the ugly doll and tossed it into Victor’s desk drawer. The shop had always had an overwhelmingly masculine air, like a barbershop. Now, as she looked around, she could see the atmosphere had begun to lighten; it was clean, the windows opened to fresh air, vases of daisies Louisa had picked brightened the rear counter, and the revolting spittoon had been shoved out of sight under one of the theater seats. She’d hung lace curtains behind the display window and placed potted violets on the sill. Now Cathryn’s presence added the element that made her recall her days in the Pasal Millinery: the light sounds of women at work.

  She was glad for Cathryn’s company. After the first weeks of nearly frantic chatter, they had settled into a more relaxed routine, one that included silences, companionable for the most part. But sometimes Cathryn’s silence seemed less easy, as if accompanied by some heaviness descending, as if she’d stepped away to some low inner plateau. Barely aware she was doing it, Isobel tried to intercept these moments with quick volleys of gossip, or jokes or some interesting item. She came to realize that what she did to cheer Cathryn was exactly what Victor did when she was moody.

  After closing up shop, strolling down the sidewalk to Jem’s Diner, her arm linked through Cathryn’s, Isobel realized she hadn’t had a real friend in years. After leaving the millinery, she’d kept in touch with Kathleen by mail, but that correspondence had dwindled to only a Christmas card each year and an occasional letter.

  Cathryn brought a flat wooden paint box and a roll of heavy paper. She set up her easel by the large windows and began to paint simple watercolor sketches of hats. She warned the sketches weren’t perfect; most were vaguely remembered hats she’d seen on women in Chicago or in her travels abroad. Several paintings were thrown out before Isobel could even see them, Cathryn apologizing that her hand was rusty.

  “I haven’t kept up. I’m afraid I’m out of practice.”

  Isobel peered over her shoulder. “But you’re so talented. Why did you ever give up painting?”

  “Oh, I don’t know why. I should really give it another go. I suppose I’ve no time anymore.”

  “But Liam is away so often, what do you do with your time?”

  Isobel tactfully did not bring up Cathryn’s childlessness, but she couldn’t help wondering what a woman alone might do all day.

  Cathryn looked startled. “I… I do various things.”

  She thought for a moment and then ticked off her daily activities on paint-tinted fingers. “I listen to music, I do my needlework. When Liam’s home, I cook. Back home in Chicago there are always exhibits to see, concerts to hear. I shop. I have a few friends, of course, but they all have families now.”

  Her eyes brightened. “I do read an awful lot. There’s a beautiful Carnegie library not far from our house in Oak Park, and I volunteer there twice a week. You know, stamping and reshelving books. Very glamorous. Oh, and there’s a second-hand bookseller just a few blocks away. I go there and spend hours. I even thought about clerking there, but Liam, well, he thinks it best I stay home. Just as well, I suppose. I’d probably spend all my earnings on books I have no room for. Say, I should bring you some I’ve brought with me. I’ve far too many to ever read in one summer.”

  “Oh, I wish I had more time for reading.”

  Cathryn waved her hand in dismissal. “Pish. Time comes to you for the right books.”

  In the idle time between rearranging the shop and the day the supplies arrived, Isobel sewed three plain summer dresses for Louisa, and Cathryn began embroidering their yokes with designs outlined in fine tailor’s lead: two kissing thrushes perched on a pine bough with distant clouds shaped like hearts, half a dozen squirrels scampering over oak leaves — one tripping over the acorn in its mouth. The stitches of these works were so tiny, the floss and needles so fine, Isobel worried the task would take up Cathryn’s summer. The last dress Cathryn worked on was Louisa’s favorite, and the girl checked its progress regularly, creeping to peer over Cathryn’s shoulder. Sensing the girl’s shyness, Cathryn never turned around to look straight at Louisa. Feigning surprise, she would exclaim, “Oh! There’s my shadow! Goodness, I’d thought I’d lost you.”

  And then she would hold up the blue linen yoke for Louisa to examine. There, in Cathryn’s exquisite stitching, three cartoonlike fish wearing bowler hats rode their bicycles, racing toward a full moon.

  Over twenty years later, on a summer afternoon, Isobel would walk into grown Louisa’s house to see one of her granddaughters wearing the very dress. Isobel knelt to kiss the child and as she did, she noticed that the last bicycleriding fish had never been completed. After staring a moment at Cathryn’s unfinished embroidery, Isobel burst into rare tears. Louisa put an arm around her mother, whispering into her grey curls, “Momma, I haven’t forgotten her either.”

  It was Louisa who first noticed the birds had gone silent. “Auntie Cathryn, what do you hear?”

  They were at the edge of town, Cathryn walking her bicycle, her sandals swinging from the handlebars. Isobel trailed behind, watching as their footfalls roiled up soft dust to coat their bare ankles. They stopped and Cathryn stretched her neck in listening.

  “Why, nothing. What do you hear, Louisa?”

  “Nothing. They’re gone. The birds are gone.”

  Isobel began to listen for them over the next days. She watched the woods and gardens during her travels from her house to downtown and back and was surprised to find Louisa was right. The chimney swifts had disappeared, the robins were gone. Even the crows had left. It must be this heat, she thought, so little water. They’ve gone looking for water.

  In bed she strained to hear night birds. The owls and maniacal-sounding loons that usually announced the nights ceased announcing them.

  What few birds she did sight, starlings, flew close and silent to the ground, as if not trusting their wings at any altitude.

  Cathryn brought a portable gramophone and recordings by composers with names Isobel could hardly pronounce: Scriabin, Dvořák, Puc
cini. She laid a thick seventy-eight on the machine and a pure voice filled the shop.

  “Opera?”

  Isobel looked unsure. Three practice hats were spread before her on the worktable—a russetbrown disk with auburn mink trim and metallic netting, a low teal-coloured cloche trimmed with pounded copper and a band made from a peacock plume, and a tiny black Robin Hood affair with a cluster of tarnished silver acorns and burgundy silk oak leaves. She rested her elbows on the worktable, comparing the hats with those in a Parisian fashion magazine that Cathryn had found. Cathryn leaned over her shoulder. “Izzy, you’ve got it! Those are almost identical copies!”

  Isobel chewed the inside of her cheek. “Yes, perhaps that’s what’s wrong.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “Honestly, I think this one” — she picked up the teal — “might be prettier with pheasant. The peacock is completely lost on this colour.”

  She carefully detached the feather and started digging around in her trim boxes.

  Cathryn paced the shop, pausing now and then to straighten the items on a shelf or sweep an already clean corner. Isobel, oblivious, sewed and tacked to the music of Puccini, her needle flowing along with the melody.

  The days grew longer and Isobel was in the shop by seven. Louisa’s mornings with the twins wore her out, but afternoons she trudged to the shop, where she settled down to observe and then proceed to emulate nearly everything Cathryn did. If Cathryn was working on a watercolour, the girl would stand patiently until Cathryn would give her a piece of paper and a brush of her own. If Cathryn arrived with a flower tucked over her ear, Louisa would dash out and return wearing a roadside bluebell or even a dandelion. Most of the time the girl sat blended into the bolts of fabric, sewing on a sampler or drawing pictures, but always watching Cathryn from the corner of her eye.

  Isobel watched all this while pretending not to. She noted her own gladness at seeing her daughter and new friend form a charming if odd bond and left it at that. She knew speaking of it might make Louisa draw back in shyness, or become more self-conscious than she already was.