“Son of a gun just pushes and pushes,” Paul said as we walked back up through the haying pasture to the trailer after dinner. “Every day, it’s something else. Yesterday, it was that I was going light on the milking quota. Today, I didn’t put a vacuum hose back just the right way. It’s always something. I don’t talk up the way he likes. I don’t look him in the eye. It’s like some kind of Chinese water torture. I’m back just three weeks and we’re already at each other’s throats.”
“But it’s not just you,” I told him. “He’s like that with everybody, as far as I can tell. Even your mom. It’s just his way, don’t you think?” In fact, I believe that a certain cussedness was ingrained in Dandridge’s character. He was stubborn and opinionated, querulous and outspoken. But I also saw that he loved Paul, I believe more than any of his other children, maybe almost as much as he loved Clara. But he expressed his feelings for both of them by this constant, childish needling and complaining. Nothing anybody did was ever quite good enough for him, but he came down the hardest on his wife and Paul. It was his way of getting their attention, I think, and perhaps distracting them from taking stock of his own shortcomings. Because, in fact, the business continued to struggle badly.
I was never privy to the true financial situation, though I knew that the dairy had been mortgaged at least once to help pay Paul’s legal expenses. The money Nelwyn was earning as a secretary in Northridge went right into groceries, as did my own contribution from waitressing. I believe that at this point, ours was actually the only real cash coming into the household. When Dandridge had taken over the dairy from his own father it had been a thriving concern, one of the biggest operations in the county. Through circumstances beyond his control—the consolidating trends in the dairy business, the downturn in the economy in general—Dandridge had been forced to oversee its slow demise. Two hundred head had been reduced to almost half that; a third of the 175 acres sold off. For a man of such impenetrable ego and pride, this must have caused terrible internal damage. He was always so controlled and controlling, I can only guess at the truth; still, I do believe that he had to have sensed that Paul was driven to throw in his lot with Luke because he saw that the dairy was failing. Surely, somewhere deep down inside himself Dandridge understood his own culpability in what had happened to his favorite son.
“Doesn’t mean I have to stand for it,” Paul said. “I won’t be backed into a corner on this. I already told him plain as can be that we weren’t going to have our wedding at St. Anne’s. But he refuses to hear it. It’s like he’s deaf as a post, as well as being dumb as an ox.”
“But I’d like to be married there,” I said, stopping in the pasture. It was mid-May and the fields were sweet with the smell of wild thyme and frais des bois. In the early night sky, a new moon smiled thinly above us. For me, the world was still an open question, full of possibilities. It was different for Paul, and I was only beginning to learn how much.
“I don’t believe anymore,” he said simply. “I’m not sure I ever did. But now it’s important for me to be clear about it. To say where I stand. It didn’t matter before; but I refuse to pretend now, or ask you to either, just to keep up appearances.”
“But your mom will be—”
“I’ll talk to her. She’s dealt with disappointment before this, believe me. But I’m sorry for your sake. It would have made things a lot easier for you with her. And everyone.”
So we were married in a secret ceremony by a justice of the peace in Albany. Ethan and his new girlfriend, Barb, whom he’d met at a Red Sox game on a day trip to Boston, were our witnesses. Barb was an upbeat and matter-of-fact girl from Brookline with more spirit than looks at that point, though self-confidence and a kind of athletic poise would give her an attractive sheen as she grew older. She saw the whole thing as great fun, and her enthusiasm for us, for the fact that she’d been included by Ethan, whom she was clearly taken with, infused our wedding day with a gaiety it might otherwise have lacked.
Paul and I spent the night in a Holiday Inn not far from the turnpike, traffic noises roaring through my confused dreams. We sent Ethan back to break the news to the family. By the time we returned around noontime the following day, the battle lines between Paul and his father were already drawn. Paul moved his things out of the house and up to the trailer that afternoon. We still took dinner at the farmhouse, but from that day forward my position as an outsider within the family was solidified. I don’t think anyone blamed me for what had happened. I believe they all understood how much I wanted to please them, to be a part of things, but it was impossible. I was shy and unused to such a large, demanding group to begin with. And then I’d somehow allowed Paul to close the door on the one thing that might have drawn me in.
But I was also beginning to realize that the family’s seeming closeness was complex and often uncomfortable. There were a lot of issues that were simply not discussed: Paul’s prison time, the dairy’s worsening finances, Ethan’s drinking. Besides a quick hug when Clara first saw me after we came back from Albany, she never said a word about the fact that I’d married her son. But at least she had the good grace to ignore it. Dandridge took every opportunity to rib Paul about living in that “old tin can,” or “sending the wife out to bring home the bacon.” The tensions only increased with the news that Nelwyn was planning to marry Dennis Ditmars and move with him to Indianapolis, where he was starting a new job with a trucking firm. My sense was that all the dairy’s meager profits were being siphoned off to meet the mortgage payments, so this meant that the family’s ready cash flow would be reduced to the tiny trickle I brought in through waitressing. I began to take on some double shifts at Salter’s, though Paul hated my doing so. I would sometimes be so tired when he picked me up at midnight that I’d fall asleep in the car before we’d pulled out of the parking lot.
It took me a while to realize that my weariness wasn’t temporary. That my queasiness in the morning wasn’t just a lingering bout of indigestion. I was already six weeks along by the time I got the confirmation that I was pregnant.
“Marty knows a place in Troy,” I told Paul that night. “Her sister went there.”
“What are you talking about?”
“How are we going to keep it? We don’t—”
“That’s not even an option.”
“We can barely feed ourselves at this point. And I’ll be the only one working outside of the dairy. Besides, you said yourself that you’re not a Catholic anymore.”
“That has nothing to do with how I feel about this. Our child. A part of us. Nothing is more important than that. This is what kept me going. Come over here.” I’m sure Paul thought I was crying because I was so relieved that he wanted to keep the baby. But, in fact, I wept that night because I realized how uncertain I was about what was right and wrong. I was ashamed that I had thought and said what I had. I was driven by fear and uncertainty. After everything we’d been through, I still didn’t know my own mind.
And Paul was so sure. I was just beginning to see the rock-solid sense of purpose that had taken hold in him. He’d been tempered in a fire of guilt and shame. His beliefs had been reduced down to basic and unshakable principles. I began to understand that I could trust him completely. No, more than that, I could believe in him. He was the church that I finally joined. But, like all faith, this was also the beginning of my dependency on him. He was my compass. I could let my own moral reflexes soften. Why would I need them when I had him? He believed in me, too, though I think his conviction went far deeper. Where I relied on Paul for guidance, he needed me for sustenance. I was his life force, pure and blameless.
Soon after this Paul worked one Saturday afternoon unloading inventory for Salvatore Petrossi at the Northridge Agway he managed. He’d played football in high school with Sal’s son Ricky and had always gotten on well with the extended, gregarious Petrossi family. That half Saturday turned into full ones, then weekday evenings when big shipments were scheduled. He was still putting in his hour
s at the dairy, but the Agway job was what he wanted to talk to me about when we got home. A month before I was due, he was introduced to a brother-in-law of Sal’s named Nicholas Polanski, a building contractor from Danbury who was starting a big construction project up in Rydell. Polanski hired Paul at Sal’s recommendation, even though Paul didn’t have any real experience.
“So, I’ll be the gofer,” he told me that night as he rubbed my feet. We’d had dinner at the house, but he hadn’t said anything about the new job. “I’ll work my tail off and learn what I can. It’s fourteen dollars an hour. I’ll kick in half of that to the household for the time being, though no matter what I do I know Daddy’s going to be mightily pissed. But this is too good a deal to pass up money-wise, and it’s just the chance I’ve been hoping for.”
“What’s going to happen here?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’m pretty sure Ethan’s leaving, too. Barb’s uncle has a liquor store over in Newton and has offered him a job. It’s like setting the fox loose in the henhouse, I guess, but anything’s got to be better than here for him. And Barb’s tough. She’ll keep him on the straight and narrow.”
“But Bob can’t handle the dairy on his own, can he?”
“If any of us can make a go of things, it’s him,” Paul told me. “Because he wants it to work so badly. It’s all he thinks about. Gallons per head. Price per gallon. Milk versus cream. Feed corn or hay. Bob could talk about dairying all day if anybody would listen. And I think he’s got a lot of good ideas. If Daddy will let him take the lead.”
“When are you going to tell him?”
“Construction doesn’t start for another three weeks. By then I hope the man will be a grandfather and maybe start taking a gentler view of the world. In any case, I’m planning to wait and give him the bad news along with the good.”
I wasn’t there to hear what happened, of course. It had been a breech birth with an emergency C-section. I’d woken up groggy and upset that Rachel didn’t seem to want to take my nipple. In an instant, my world had narrowed to her dark blue gaze and that sweet slack bow of a mouth.
“Hey there, beautiful,” I murmured. We’d named her Rachel Clara, hoping that would help mend the many rifts. It was the visit from Paul’s younger sister Louise, then a redheaded, large-boned high school sophomore, that gave me the first clue our news had not been received with unqualified joy. She came bearing a green glass vase filled with wildflowers.
“For you,” she said, setting the vase on the windowsill and leaning over to smile at the baby. “From everybody. Oh, isn’t she something?”
“Where are they all?” I said, looking to the door. Paul had asked a hospital orderly to bring in half a dozen extra chairs, explaining that he came from a big family.
“Mommy sent me,” Louise said, sitting on the edge of the hospital bed. Though she was several years my junior, Louise had always seemed composed and mature to me. She had Clara’s measured delivery, along with her martyrish way of sighing every other minute. “The house is kind of in an uproar right now. Daddy’s real upset.”
“Because she’s a girl?” I asked, angrily. That’s how quickly all my thoughts had already started to revolve around the new life in my arms.
“Oh, no! It’s Paul leaving the dairy. Taking that job in construction. Daddy says that all Paul’s doing is kicking him when he’s down, and after all we did for him. He threw a chair at him. One of the kitchen ones. Told him if he’s going to leave, then he should just clear off altogether. He wants you both out of the trailer. I’m sorry, Maddie.”
She wasn’t my only visitor that day, although I wish she had been. Paul stopped back in briefly with Ethan to say he’d found a place for us to rent outside town and that they’d be busy moving our things over there. I could smell the beer on them, and I sensed Paul’s blurry anger under his attempted good humor. He held Rachel for a moment before he left. I can’t recall him ever looking sadder than he did at that moment, staring down into his daughter’s questioning gaze.
Around seven, I dozed off with Rachel asleep beside me. When I woke up, my mother was standing by the bed. For a moment I thought I was still dreaming, but then I noticed how much she’d changed from the woman I’d last seen up close over two years before. Over that period, I’d caught glimpses of her and my father—at the Mobil station, or waiting in line at the post office—but I’d always turned away before having to face them. Now I stared. It was as if someone had sifted white flour over her; her hair, her skin, even her lips seemed strangely pale and powdery.
“I heard the news,” she said. Of course, I thought she meant the baby and I turned Rachel around so that she could see her better. But she didn’t even look at her. “About Dandridge kicking Paul out of the house. They were talking about it at the general store when I went in for the paper. About how he refuses to help out at the farm. After Dandridge mortgaged the place for him and everything. Oh, Maddie! I guess you see now. What your father and I tried and tried to tell you. We talked about it. We think you should come back and live with us. You and the baby.”
I looked from my mother to my daughter’s sleeping face, the tiny lashes tucked so perfectly into the pale softness under her eye. Oh, this miracle that Paul and I had somehow created from our own two clumsy, needy bodies!
“The baby’s name is Rachel, Mom. Take a good look. Because this is the one and only time I’m ever going to let you near her.” That’s what faith does: it makes you strong and unbending. It fills you with righteousness. It blinds you to compromise, tolerance, or empathy. It rushes through you like adrenaline, as sweet and numbing as wine. It enables you to drive your mother, who only always wanted what was best for you in the world, out into the indifferent light of a hospital corridor. It gives you what feels like peace. For a while.
23
We lived in a cocoon of domesticity, a world of three. Though we were so close it often felt that we were really more like one extended being: lying on the hammock with Paul’s arm around me and four-year-old Rachel asleep between us. From the outside on a summer’s evening, the house we rented looked almost charming: a white-painted brick Colonial with a shingled roof and center chimney. Before we took up residency, the house and surrounding six acres had been in the Anderson family for generations. After Lily Anderson’s death, it had fallen into the hands of a nephew who rented it out—and let it drift into a general decline. When you got up close, you could see that the front steps and shutters were spongy with wood rot and the foundation was crumbling in places. The interior was dark and cramped with low-beamed ceilings and plastered walls, and the floors and stairs creaked. At night the wind whistled around the loose window frames.
But over time its drawbacks began to seem less important than its familiarity. The rent was reasonable. I cleared out the overgrown perennial beds in front of the house and discovered a nicely laid-out border garden. The second summer, we planted vegetables behind the barn and purchased a small molded plastic aboveground pool where Rachel and I could splash around after the chores were done. Paul was getting steady work with Polanski Builders and his pay had been upped to eighteen dollars an hour. There were a lot of building jobs to be had and experienced help was now at a premium. The second-home market was beginning to take off; land values were rising slowly. But the farms were still struggling, and despite Bob’s Herculean efforts, Alden Dairy barely limped along. It seemed that Paul had made the smart choice after all. Construction was the place to be.
That’s not to say we didn’t have our problems. I didn’t have the heart to tell Paul about my mother’s visit to the hospital when Rachel was born, so he didn’t know that relations between us had deteriorated even further. Never giving up hope that he could somehow bring my parents around, Paul convinced Polanski that he should use my dad as his paints and stains vendor. It was a major piece of business and might have helped boost the hardware store back into solvency, but then my father found out how he’d landed the contract and refused to fulfill it. A few
months later, we saw the CLOSING SALE—EVERYTHING MUST GO signs in the store’s front windows, and learned through Ethan that the bank was forced to foreclose on my childhood home as well. Ethan had gone to the sale and picked up a lot of heavily discounted supplies—as well as an earful of local gossip.
“Her old man’s crazy,” I overheard Ethan tell Paul that night when they thought I was asleep. As usual when he’d had too much to drink, Ethan’s voice carried a lot farther than he knew. “He was ranting on about you, like you were the one who drove him into bankruptcy or something. Clear to anyone who half listened, though, that he wasn’t making any sense. They’re moving up to that retirement home in South Harringdale. Good thing, too. You need that kind of bad-mouthing like a hole in the head.”
With Clara acting as go-between and facilitator, Paul managed to patch things up with his own father. I’ve no idea what Clara said, what threats she might have used, but the following July we were invited to the family picnic. Though Paul and Dandridge had nothing more than a jury-rigged relationship after that, one that couldn’t carry the weight of true feelings or an honest exchange of opinions, we were slowly taken back into the fold. Rachel, who I thought looked pure Alden from the day she was born, was a welcome addition and diversion. In those days, it seemed there was always some family event to attend. Nelwyn and Dennis’s wedding, followed three months later by Ethan and Barb’s. Then more births and christenings, anniversaries, holidays, the endless march of birthdays. We always had Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter dinners over at the farm, the dining room table growing longer every year. Rachel, the first grandchild, somehow legitimized me with the women in the family, and I felt vaguely a part of things in a way I hadn’t been able to before.
Local Knowledge Page 24
