Hilda and Pearl

by Alice Mattison

  “It was in the zoo,” Pearl said. “On the bench in the zoo. You noodle. You left it on the bench in the zoo.”

  It was as if she was proud of me. Her hair was flat against her head, which made her nose look large and her chin jut out. Her blouse and skirt were translucent, clinging to her body.

  “Are you all right?” I said, and put out my arms to her, and Pearl made a funny sound; I wasn’t sure whether it was a combination of laughing and being out of breath or whether she was crying.

  “What is it, Mommy, were you afraid?” Simon said.

  Pearl came into my arms and put her head close to mine. “I wasn’t afraid,” she said, “but I’m so cold.” She pulled my arms closer around her. “I don’t know why I did that,” she said. “It’s not going to rain forever. We could have waited. It wasn’t going away.”

  “I don’t know why you did it either,” I said.

  “Now I’m so cold,” she said. I held her until the rain dwindled and stopped, and then we walked—wet and dirty—to the subway.

  When Frances was four I got a sore throat, then a bladder infection. I was sick all spring, and finally Nathan said I should go away for a week or two. Someone he knew suggested a place on Long Island, a sort of rooming house on the beach. I took Frances with me. There was no one to take care of her when he was at work, and I’d have missed her. And I took Pearl with me to help take care of Frances. She deserved a vacation, too, we told her. She was working in an office but they gave her some time off. It was early June and we spent about ten days on Long Island. Some of the guests in the rooming house lived there all the time, or all through the warm months, but others came for a week or two. Meals weren’t served but you could leave your groceries in the refrigerator and cook for yourself. Pearl was worried about leaving Simon with Mike. “He has no patience with Simon,” she said. But Simon was still in school, so we couldn’t take him with us.

  Mike drove us out there on a Saturday with our valises. Simon came along and at the last minute I thought Pearl might not stay. Simon was nonchalant, though. Mike helped us carry our things in. The landlady wasn’t home, but she’d asked one of the other guests—a young woman who’d lived there all winter—to show us our room. “I’m Gussie,” said the young woman. She asked Frances, “Do you want to see my bird?”

  “Where is it?” said Frances. She probably thought Gussie had a bird in her pocket that might fly out at any moment. She pulled back.

  “Upstairs. I’ll show you later.” She walked us down the corridor and we all went into our room. It was large, with a threadbare dark red rug and a plank floor around it. A big bed was in the middle of the room and a crib was in one corner. There were four windows, all in a row, and outside were pine trees. The windows were open and I smelled the trees and the salt water nearby.

  “She’s sorry there isn’t a cot,” Gussie said. “You asked for a cot.”

  At home Frances had a bed. I think I’d expected that she would sleep with me and the cot would be for Pearl.

  “Can you go in there?” Gussie said now to Frances, leaning over to talk to her. She was skinny, with dyed blond hair. She was probably thirty, but she seemed like a girl. She was wearing a bathing suit, though it wasn’t hot out.

  “Is there a bird in there?” said Frances.

  “No, honey, no bird. Let me show you.” She picked up Frances and put her into the crib, shoes and all. I thought she’d object but she lay down. It wasn’t much longer than she was. She lay on her back, arms and legs spread, her skirt up so her underpants showed. “Where’s the bird?” she said.

  “She forgot to tell you,” Gussie was saying to me, shrugging, apparently in the direction of the landlady’s room. “Someone else is using the cot.”

  “It’s all right,” said Pearl, and that was when I was afraid she’d say she wasn’t staying. Simon was looking out the windows into the trees. Mike stood holding the suitcases.

  “You’ll be all right with him?” said Pearl to Mike, moving her chin in Simon’s direction.

  “Of course,” said Mike. “Why shouldn’t I be all right? Come on, Tiger, we’ll head back to town. Got a long drive ahead of us.” He put down the bags.

  Pearl seized Simon and kissed him, but he wrestled away from her and followed Mike.

  “I think maybe it’s better when I’m not there,” she said, after they were gone.

  “He looks like a nice kid,” said Gussie.

  “He’s a good boy,” Pearl said.

  “Can I show her around?” she said to us. “What’s your name, honey?”

  “Frances Levenson,” said my daughter.

  “Okay, Fran, let’s go,” said Gussie. I didn’t think Frances would want to go off with Gussie, but she did.

  “Do you really have a bird?” I said as they left.

  “A canary. His name is Rosie.”

  “Rosie is a girl’s name,” said Frances.

  “It’s short for Franklin Delano Roosevelt,” said Gussie. “I had another one called Eleanor, but she died.”

  When they were gone, Pearl kicked off her shoes and lay down on the bed. I opened my suitcase. “Do you mind if I take this dresser?” I said. There were two.

  “Whichever you want.”

  “Is this all right?” I persisted.

  “Why shouldn’t it be all right?”

  “You don’t mind sharing a bed, do you?”

  “I don’t mind,” said Pearl. After a while she stood up and unpacked her own clothes. I was putting my underwear into the first drawer, my blouses underneath, and so forth, but she just filled one drawer randomly, then the other.

  When Gussie brought Frances back she offered to show us around too. I wanted to go exploring by ourselves but Pearl said yes. Next to the house was a big shady lawn with a hammock and picnic tables. A young couple was lying on a blanket in a sunny place at the end of the lawn. A small cottage was near the house and Gussie said more guests stayed there. “We all get along,” she said. “We have good times.”

  She pointed us toward the beach and said she had to go wash her hair, and Pearl and Frances and I set out by ourselves. It wasn’t far, just down a dirt road past a store where you could buy snacks and suntan lotion during the season. Past it was the beach, covered with rocks and pebbles. Long Island Sound, which was gray, stretched into the distance. Little, overlapping waves made a low, steady noise reaching the shore. Far away I could see a boat. I liked the smell, and the sound of the gulls mewing. The beach went as far as I could see in one direction, but in the other, a dune cut off our view. We began to walk, while Frances came behind us. She picked up shells and carried them.

  “She’s nice,” said Pearl.

  “Gussie?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I don’t know.” I thought she was too eager to make friends. I wanted to be alone with Pearl and Frances.

  That night Gussie said she was cooking fried chicken and it would be silly for us not to have some. Besides, we had no food. We had thought there was a store within walking distance, but it turned out you had to get a ride with the landlady, and she went when she went. We were glad to have Gussie’s fried chicken that night, and after that she suggested that we share food and it seemed easier. She had a car.

  The third or fourth day Gussie and Frances and Pearl went down to the beach. I was reading and didn’t go, and as soon as they left, I was sorry. I lay on the bed, with the breeze blowing in, and played with the tufts on the bedspread. Then I fell asleep. They were still gone when I woke up. I had a dry mouth, and I went into the kitchen to find something to drink. No one was there. The house was big, but only a few people were staying there just then. The landlady went into town a lot. She worked part-time at the post office.

  I made coffee and went back to our room. I was annoyed with Pearl for going off without me, even though I could have said something at the time and I didn’t. I remembered a time when Pearl had just married Mike and they were living with us. I was angry with her for being young and
pretty, for finding her way so easily into the household. I wanted her to suffer, I think. I’d get angry with her for no reason and she’d just take it. I’d confuse her on purpose.

  I heard them coming back. Pearl came into the bedroom, eating something out of one hand. “Where’s the baby?” I said.

  “She’s asleep. I was carrying her and she fell asleep in my arms. I put her down on the living room couch.”

  “What are you eating?”

  “Crackerjacks. Frances is fine, Hilda.”

  “You kept her out awfully long. No wonder she’s tired.”

  “We got to talking,” Pearl said.

  “I don’t know what you and Gussie find to discuss for so long,” I said.

  “Nothing,” said Pearl. “Are you angry with me?”

  “No. Why should I be angry? I have no reason to be angry.”

  “Just checking,” she said.

  That night all the guests gathered in the living room and played charades. It was Gussie’s idea. It was a good idea, I had to admit. I resisted it because I was starting to dislike her. But the charades got funnier and funnier, at least so it seemed. Pearl crawled on the floor, pretending to be a mouse, and Frances shrieked with laughter. Gussie guessed everything before I’d even started to think about what it could be.

  That night I couldn’t sleep. I tried to keep still but I kept shifting around in bed. My arms and legs felt cramped. I thought Pearl was asleep but at last she sat up. “What is it?” she said.

  I didn’t answer.

  She sat there for a long time. Moonlight made boxes on the blanket and half-lit her in her pajamas. “Hey,” she said, the way Mike would say it—awkwardly.

  Then she drew me into the curve of her arm and lay down close to me. I was embarrassed, but I put my arm around her. Then I was so happy I tried not to breathe, as if she might think that the pressure of my chest moving in and out was a signal for her to go away. I wanted time to stop.

  After that some things were different. I noticed that all three of us took off all our clothes without going into the bathroom. Every day Pearl and I went for a walk on the beach, usually with Frances. Gussie never came with us, but sometimes Frances stayed behind with her. “You two should be in pictures,” Gussie said to us when we came in laughing from the beach one day.

  “In pictures?” I said.

  “The Something Sisters. Hey, you’re sort of sisters, aren’t you? What’s your last name again?”

  We explained that we had different last names even though our husbands were brothers, that Mike had changed his name years ago. “Oh, I remember,” she said. I was confused; I didn’t remember even telling her our husbands were brothers. Then I realized Pearl must have told her. “Pearl Lewis and Hilda Levenson,” Gussie said. “The L Sisters.” Her voice was slightly bitter.

  Gussie thought we should sing, and somehow plans for singing began to be made. Harold, the man of the young couple, said he knew lots of good songs. He brought out a guitar and it turned out he could sing Woody Guthrie songs about electrical dams and power stations and we gathered in the evening to sing. One night somebody made popcorn. We were singing union songs when I went out to check on Frances, who was asleep, and when I came back Pearl and Harold were singing a duet, and then he kissed her. His wife wasn’t there that night for some reason. I think if she had been, it wouldn’t have seemed like anything.

  After a while Pearl said “I’m sleepy” and leaned against me. I stroked her hair, but she stayed only a minute and then said quietly to me, “Let’s go for a walk.” We walked out onto the lawn. It was a warm night, but I was chilly, and Pearl said she’d get sweaters and check on Frances again. While I waited, I sat down in the hammock, leaned back in it, looking at the moon, which was past full by now. The hammock felt rough under me. It was stiff canvas, not very wide. I pulled my feet in and tucked them under me. When Pearl came I didn’t get up, and she tossed me my sweater, which I spread over me like a blanket. Pearl tried to climb into the other end of the hammock, but she spilled me out, and I fell on the ground. We both laughed.

  “Stop it, they’ll come running,” she said, and this time we held hands and lowered ourselves carefully into the two ends of the hammock, and pulled in our legs one at a time. “Okay, right leg,” said Pearl. “Now my left. Now your left.” When she pulled in her second leg the hammock was crowded and swayed hard, like a boat in a storm. We held on to the edges. The moon had gone behind a cloud and it was dark.

  “I’m glad I came along on this vacation,” Pearl said.

  “You gave Harold quite a kiss.”

  “I wondered what you thought.”

  “It’s none of my business.”

  “I’m not going to fall for Harold,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’m inoculated.”

  We rocked back and forth. “Did you ever get over Nathan?” I asked at last.

  “Really get over him?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, I didn’t,” she said. Then after a moment she said, “But I’d rather have you.”

  “You can have me trouble-free,” I said.

  “Yes. Nobody cares.”

  I was silent for a while. “I care,” I said.

  “That’s not what I meant. You know that’s not what I meant, Hildie.”

  The next day was the last day of our vacation. On the beach we were alone. Gussie told Frances she was going through her old clothes and Frances could try them on and pretend to be a princess. They treated Frances a little like a princess there, in fact. She was always being singled out. I thought it made her shy, but she wanted to stay with Gussie.

  Pearl and I walked slowly down to the beach. It was a chilly day and she was wearing striped pants—green and white stripes—and an old brown jacket. She leaned over for some shells and began sorting them. I looked out at Long Island Sound. It was gray and foggy, and I couldn’t see very far. “My father brought me to a place like this once,” I said. It had just come to me.

  “Around here?”

  “I don’t remember where it was.”

  “Was your mother alive then?”

  “Yes, but she didn’t come. It was just my father and me. He carried me on a beach. I remember that the stones hurt my feet.”

  We walked for a while. “I forget how old you were when your mother died,” said Pearl.

  “Fourteen.”

  “It must have been terrible.”

  “By then I knew she’d die,” I said.

  “Was she sick for a long time?”

  “A year.” I thought I’d told her before, but I was pleased that she asked. I felt like talking about my mother. “I remember one of the last times she took care of me,” I said. “She was in bed, and she called me to come to her and sat up a little so she could brush my hair and braid it. But it was funny, I’d been braiding my own hair for a while by then and I didn’t like the way she did it. You know how when you braid someone’s hair from behind, the braids go down the back. Well, I thought it was more grownup the way I did it myself, down the sides.”

  “I remember,” said Pearl. “I had braids, too.”

  “Of course. That long braid.” I remembered when she had cut it off. I started to laugh at her. “That must have been so much trouble, cutting it off. You were such a fool, Pearlie.”

  “I remember you thought so at the time.”

  “I thought I’d have to go picking up after the two of you all my life.”

  We had turned back. When we reached the house we stopped for Frances and then we all took a nap together. I was a little sunburned, though it had been cloudy on the beach. The skin of my face and arms felt tight and a little gritty. I lay happily in the lumpy soft bed between Pearl and Frances, who both fell asleep. I stretched my toes out, reaching down to rub away the sand that had caught between them.

  But there was one more night. We bought a big chicken and invited everyone. We hadn’t been cooking with Gussie for several days. She’d made different excuses. That day she said she’d
be sure to come, but she didn’t. The rest of us ate together at the big table, and we had a good time. Gussie came in when we were nearly done, but she said she’d eaten. After dinner we all went into the living room and Harold took out his guitar and began to play, but it was as if someone had asked us to restage one of our other nights so it could be looked at. His wife seemed upset and I thought they might be having a fight. There was an older woman staying there then, Mrs. Engel, and she sat and crocheted and smiled at everyone, but insisted she couldn’t sing. “I’m a good listener,” she said.

  Frances was still up. She kept asking for “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and at last we sang it. We were Dodger fans, being from Brooklyn, but Gussie was a Yankee fan. She teased Frances about it, although Frances barely understood. Frances knew she was for the Dodgers, and she knew the song, but I’m not sure she knew what the Dodgers were, although Nathan often listened to the game at home.

  As we sang “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” Gussie leaned over to where Frances was sitting cross-legged on the floor, and said, over and over again, “Yankees, Yankees, Yankees,” and sure enough, when we reached the line “Root, root, root,” we all sang “for the Dodgers” and Frances and Gussie sang “for the Yankees.” Frances noticed what she had said and looked startled; then I saw that she was crying.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, leaning over to talk to her. “Gussie’s just teasing you. It’s just a song.”

  When the song ended Pearl said to Gussie, “Don’t you think you overdid that a bit?” She sounded angry.

  “Fran’s my buddy,” said Gussie. “You don’t care, do you, honey?”

  Frances shook her head, but she still looked blubbery.

  Then Gussie said to Pearl, “What do you care, anyway? She’s not your kid.” I turned around. Gussie was looking at Pearl, her eyes sharp and cold. “Or is she? Or can’t you keep it straight, who’s who in your family—who are the husbands and wives, who are the men and who are the women?”