“Where did Bernadette get the story?”
“Redbook,” Beth said. “It’s a magazine.”
Chalk up one for Bernadette, thought Grace to herself. She had tried.
The car swung onto the main road that led to Bagley. “We’re leaving cabin country,” Bernadette called. “It’s back to hot town, summer in the city, after a cig stop.”
With the exception of Grace, everyone followed Bernadette into the drugstore, hoping for pennies for the gumball machine or even a nickel each for a candy bar. Grace walked to the end of the block and turned the corner while she waited, leaning against the stone wall. A short bridge spanned the narrow river several yards ahead.
The bridge arched gently upward. At the high point stood Hilda, rapt, motionless. She looked crushably frail in her print dress, neck sprouting from her chest, hands at rest on the railing. What was she looking at, eyes pulled over the water?
As if tethered to her mother by an invisible rope, Gunda bounced little dance steps in time to a tune that played in her mind. Hilda lifted her hands from the railing and held them out to her daughter. Hands together, they danced to music that only they could hear.
Grace looked away, the intimacy of the image flooding her head. She replaced it with a picture of Frankie at the cabin door. Then she turned the corner and backtracked to the station wagon.
“Grace, Mom bought us all Chiclets! Hurry up!” Polly called from the sidewalk next to the car.
Grace knew that Chuck would open his Chiclets box and empty them into his mouth all at once. Polly would fall asleep with a Chiclet under her tongue and wake up choking on it. Pinky would chew one for the whole ride home and then hide the box. Beth would need help getting a Chiclet out of the box without spilling the rest of them. Then she would clutch her treasure for the entire trip.
“Do you need help, Bethie?” Grace asked.
“Mommy already opened it for me,” Beth replied.
“Let’s get a move on,” Bernadette called to any kids outside the station wagon. The stragglers piled in.
“Will somebody open this pack for me?” she asked, flipping her cigarettes into the backseat while she crashed around in her purse, searching for the car keys. Pinky caught the cigarettes. “And don’t let me ever catch one of you lighting up,” Bernadette said. “It’s a filthy, money-sucking habit. Amen.”
“She doesn’t want us to smoke cigarettes,” Beth said to Grace, “because she doesn’t want us to ever get sick like the lady in the story.”
“Sounds like a good story.”
“And because,” Beth added quietly, “she loves us.”
“Was that in the story, too?” Grace said, regretting the words as she spoke them.
“No, I just know it,” Beth said with a less tentative smile than usual. “Mommies love their children.”
“You’re right. Bernadette loves you and Pinky and all of us.” Grace rested her forehead against the glass that wasn’t a window. By choosing the back of the car, she was dependent on everyone else’s window for air.
“I have two mommies,” Beth continued. “You’re my mommy, too.”
How could you stand to be a real mom when one little kid with Chiclet breath could break your heart with her goodness and hope in the back of a station wagon driven by a chain-smoking egomaniac? A familiar flicker of rage began to ignite in Grace, but she tamped it down.
Something hadn’t been said. What was it? Grace picked up her sister’s hand and held it on the seat between them. “I love you, Bethie,” she said, aware of never having spoken these words to her.
“What’s all the whispering about back there?” Bernadette called. “Are you planning a mutiny?” Bernadette swung a U-turn to head out of town, accelerating down Main Street.
Beth wore a mischievous look. “Mommy, may I drive home?” she called to the front of the car.
“Jeez, Bethie, don’t grow up to be like Chuck, promise?” Bernadette said loudly.
Grace squeezed Beth’s hand. Bethie was going to be okay. Maybe the rest of the kids would be nearly okay, too.
She trained her eye on a spot down one short block as the car rolled by. From this vantage point, the sun shone in Grace’s unshaded eyes. But Hilda and Gunda were visible, if you knew where to look and you looked hard. They stood there still, Hilda and her daughter, her family, now hand in hand, gazing over the water, watching, seeing, together.
Jane St. Anthony grew up in south Minneapolis in a house with a front porch that was perfect for summer reading. She is a freelance writer and leads workshops for young authors. Her books The Summer Sherman Loved Me and Isabelle Day Refuses to Die of a Broken Heart are also available from the University of Minnesota Press. She still lives in Minneapolis.
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