Vinegar Hill

by A. Manette Ansay

  Money

  13

  Swimming lessons begin in June; Ellen enrolls Amy and Herbert in spite of James’s complaints about the cost. “If we’re going to live near a lake,” she tells him, “they have to know how to swim.” James, she knows, is afraid of water, afraid of the sound it makes as it enters your ears, engulfing you, pinning you down until you work with the feeling of it rather than against it, when it buoys you up like a gentle hand. Amy is afraid of water too. Since she stepped on a dog skeleton in Autumn Lake, she will not place her feet where she cannot see them. What were you thinking of, James still says angrily, letting the children into that dirty water?

  But Holly’s Field Pool is chemical clean, dyed the appropriate shade of blue. Lifeguards prowl the edges; the temperature is kept at an even seventy-eight degrees. There are no dead leaves or fish, no sharp rocks that might cut a child’s heel, no skeletons or sunken beer cans filled with mud. Even James agrees it’s perfectly safe, but he says money, money, we don’t have that kind of money until, on their wedding anniversary, Ellen takes the checkbook from his briefcase, goes downtown, and pays the nonrefundable registration fee.

  For the past ten months, James has banked all of her paychecks, and usually some of his, too. But the more money they accumulate, the more James panics at the thought of spending any of it. Ellen studies him with an oddly clinical interest as he dresses in old shirts with yellow, frayed collars, drives three blocks out of his way so he won’t have to put a quarter in a parking meter, pockets occasional loose change from the muddy church parking lot on Sundays. At night he talks about the future, dreams that money will buy for them all. Amy will be a pediatrician; Herbert will practice law. He paces the room in his boxer shorts and T-shirt, talking about the situation in Vietnam, the economy, the nation, the TV humming behind him like a chorus. Ellen lies in bed, not speaking—for it is not a response James wants—and waits for the warm wash of sleep, the aftertaste of the pills she swallowed still bitter against her tongue. With this new prescription, she has enough pills so she doesn’t have to ration. She keeps most of them in the bathroom, hidden in the body of Mary-Margaret’s empty ballerina, safe from James and the kids. The rest, she carries in her purse. It’s hard to think about cutting back, even though she knows she’s been taking too many.

  But she hasn’t had insomnia like this since after her father died. Then sleep had brought nightmares of long tangled mazes. Men were coming for Daddy, and Ellen struggled to hide him in the pantry, in the root cellar, high up in the silver dome of the silo. Often he was so small he fit neatly into the palm of her hand; once she even hid him in her mouth, but the men always found him, always carried him away through a series of twisted paths which Ellen could not follow.

  Now, each night she pokes her fingers into the ballerina’s belly, and in the morning she wakes up in the position in which she fell asleep, sometimes with her hand numb beneath her pillow. She sleeps fiercely, dreading the buzz of the alarm, the flash of sunlight beneath the drapes. “Just five more minutes,” she pleads with the children when they tap on the bedroom door. The aqua lady of her childhood would certainly not behave this way. The aqua lady would be up at dawn to make homemade muffins for her family. She’d wear sweet gingham aprons and aqua hose, high heels to show off her legs. Mornings, Ellen pulls on the same shorts and T-shirt she wears each day, stares into the mirror at the plum-colored welts beneath her eyes, trying to find something in her face that is familiar.

  “I can’t believe you did that,” James sputtered when she dropped the pool receipt into his lap, muttering Happy Anniversary under her breath. He and Fritz were playing cards, their faces the same in the half-light until James tipped his chin forward, embarrassed in front of his father. “You listen to me,” he said firmly, grabbing her arm.

  “Good night,” Ellen said, twisting free, and she went down the hall to the bedroom without saying anything more. She was half undressed when James came in and shut the door behind him.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he said. “You just aren’t yourself anymore.” She unhooked her bra and he looked away uncomfortably. His gaze traced the fine cracks in the ceiling plaster, stroked the tops of the window frames. But she did not put on her nightgown. She did not cover her breasts with her hands. Goose bumps rose on her arms; she realized how thin she was, how much weight she had lost over the past few months, and she laughed a little because it was so ironic—she didn’t even bother to diet anymore. Her body was angular, knobbed with bone. Her breasts sagged against her ribs.

  “Are you laughing at me?” James said. “Why are you laughing at me? You’re the one standing there naked. You’re the one not making any sense.” His voice was high, uncertain. When she didn’t answer, he said, “Put some clothes on, you’ll catch cold.”

  He still did not look at her.

  “Do I embarrass you?” Ellen said, moving into his line of vision. “Does this embarrass you?” She touched her breasts, and his face grew sharp with disgust. She couldn’t imagine ever loving him, wanting him, his damp, nervous body locked against her own. What she wanted now was to frighten him with her own flesh, with what he had rejected; to make him feel ashamed the way he made her feel ashamed.

  James flinched. “You shouldn’t talk that way,” he said, “as if you’re crazy.”

  “You’re the one who’s crazy. You’re the one who won’t even spend the money for our kids to learn how to swim.”

  “I just want what’s best for everyone.”

  “You want what’s best for you. How much money is enough, James? How much before it will make you safe?”

  “You had no right to go behind my back.”

  “Let me tell you something: you will never be safe. All the money in the world and you’ll still be the same person you are now, still under your father’s thumb.”

  “In my family, we learned how to save money,” James said shrilly. “In my family, we didn’t waste money on every little thing we wanted.”

  Ellen sat down on the bed. “Go away now,” she said quietly, “because if you don’t I’m going to break every last thing in this room. And when your father comes running to see what’s wrong, I’ll dance naked on what’s left of the furniture.”

  She slipped the nightgown over her head so she wouldn’t have to see the sickly look on James’s face. By the time she pulled the nightgown down, he was gone. The door closed gently behind him. Covering her face with her hands, she tried to feel remorse, but she was distracted by the darkness of her palms and the way light filtered red between the edges of her fingers. She knew that to anyone watching she would appear stricken with grief. But Ellen didn’t feel anything. After a while, she gave up trying. She spread her fingers, closed them, idly watching the dresser, the statue of the Virgin, the crucifix hanging on the wall as they appeared, disappeared, reappeared.

  She drives the children downtown for their first swimming lesson, partly to help them sign up for their lockers and keys, but mostly to make sure that Amy doesn’t slip away and spend the hour in the library reading books from the Young Miss section, slim paperbacks with horses and dreamy-eyed girls on the covers. The poolhouse smells strongly of popcorn from the concession stand. Candy wrappers are scattered on the floor; the trash can by the rest rooms is overflowing. Older boys lean against the soda machines, wearing only their swimming trunks, their postures both arrogant and shy. They glance at Ellen, then look away, eyes narrow slits.

  “What a dump,” Amy says. Her towel and suit hang loosely around her shoulders. Bert’s are rolled up neatly, tucked beneath one arm. He trots into the boys’ locker room before Ellen can say good-bye; he’s excited, he’s meeting a friend from school who has told him swimming is fun.

  “Do I have to do this?” Amy says.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you at least give us a ride home?”

  “I gave you a ride here. It’s not far to walk.”

  Amy storms off toward the girls’ locker room, her small square
shoulders rigid. For a moment, Ellen wavers, almost calls her back. But she just can’t play the mommy right now, patient and cheerful, ignoring her real self, which feels hollow, drained of everything except the desire for sleep, for quiet, peace. Lots of kids take swimming lessons—Amy will take them too. And Ellen has bought herself two sweet hours: James thinks she’ll be watching the lesson from the bleachers with the other mothers; the children think she’s gone home. She winces as Amy turns at the locker room door, fires one long last look of sheer hate.

  “She doesn’t hate you,” Barb assured Ellen the week before, as they sat drinking coffee in the diner. That morning, Ellen had told James she had gone to early confession at Saint Michael’s. So confess, Barb said, grinning. I absolve thee.

  “I know she doesn’t hate me,” Ellen said. “But she doesn’t like me either.”

  “If you left Holly’s Field, it would be easier. Just you and Amy and Bert, minus the rest of the menagerie. There are openings at the public school in Schulesville. You could get by on what they pay, plus support.”

  Ellen had already called Schulesville for information on those jobs, but she did not tell Barb. Telling Barb would make leaving James seem like a real possibility.

  “Ellie, you’re better off than lots of women. At least you have some options.”

  “But if I did something like that,” Ellen said, “my family—” and she stopped, trying to think of a way to explain how they would look at her and see someone who had done a terrible, selfish thing, who had committed a mortal sin, who had lost her respect as a woman. “Maybe I should talk to one of my sisters,” she said weakly. “Maybe it won’t be so bad.”

  “It killed my mother when me and Rick split up,” Barb said quietly. “It’s never been the same between us. That’s why I’m trying for the annulment, even though there’s no chance of getting it.” And they drank their coffee, not saying anything more. But the next day, Ellen visited Julia, because Julia was the youngest, the one most likely to keep an open mind. Julia was pregnant again, her belly so big that she had to turn sideways to open the door. She wore one of her husband’s roomy old robes and a pair of tennis shoes; her two oldest sons danced around her waving Styrofoam airplanes, while the youngest shrieked from a playpen in the center of the living room. Over coffee, while the kids played jail between the table legs, Ellen grasped Julia’s hand and held on to it tightly. “Please just listen, okay?” she said. “Don’t tell Mom, but I’m thinking I might leave James for a while. Not a divorce or anything. Just, you know, a separation.”

  Julia’s face drained of color, and she pulled her hand away. “Kids!” she snapped. “Upstairs to your room, pronto!” The boys scuttled out from under the table like silverfish. Ellen tried to reassure them with a look, but the ice in their mother’s voice had frightened them. They filed up the stairs with their heads down, as if they expected to be punished.

  “You can’t do this,” Julia said, as soon as they were gone. “It’s wrong, you know it’s wrong.”

  “Please listen.”

  “No.”

  “Julia.”

  “You shouldn’t even say something like that. You took sacred vows, you made a promise.” She stood up angrily. “What are you going to tell me next? You’re taking birth control pills? You’re having an affair?”

  Ellen got up too. “Look, forget it. Just don’t tell Mom, okay?”

  “Every couple goes through bad times. You should talk to Father Bork, find out what you can do to make things better. It’s not like…James hasn’t hit you, has he?”

  Ellen shook her head. “It’s not like that.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t expect it to be easy.” Julia sat back down again, ran her hands through her hair. “I forget how different things are for you, being younger. Young people want everything to be easy. But think about it—Christ didn’t have an easy life.”

  Ellen said nothing.

  “Maybe you should have another child.”

  “Oh, God,” Ellen said. “You’re not listening. Even divorce is better than having a child with somebody I don’t love.”

  “But you love James,” Julia insisted. “You love him, you just do. Have another baby, you’ll see.”

  What Ellen saw was that Julia was going to tell their mother.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said, and quickly sat back down.

  But of course, that was a lie. There will be no more babies, no more boiled rubber nipples, first words, first steps. She tries to recall what it felt like carrying Amy and Herbert inside her, but what she remembers most is the loneliness rather than the kicks or the backaches or the strange flush that lingered on her cheekbones. The more she wanted to talk about the changes in her body, the less James wanted to listen. “It’ll all be over with soon,” he told her, but she didn’t want it to be over with. She wanted it to last, to be wonderfully significant. When he told her, “Don’t worry, women have babies all the time,” it made her feel like some kind of animal, a cow who calved every year in spring without anyone thinking anything about it.

  She lets her hand fall to her stomach; it is flat now, and lifeless, unlike the plump, proud stomachs of the flocks of little girls in their swimming suits, digging through their small plastic purses at the concession stand. Over the past few months, she has lost muscle tone. Exercise, Barb tells her, is the key to feeling better, but sleep is what appeals to Ellen most, delicious sleep, dreamless sleep, the sort of sleep that nearly always eludes her, even when she takes an extra pill. She no longer goes for walks at night; Bert cries, James complains, Fritz and Mary-Margaret shake their heads at what they call foolishness. For a month or so, she visited Salome because Mary-Margaret certainly couldn’t object to that. But Salome became strange, suspicious. Why are you here? she often said. What do you want from me? The last time Ellen visited, Salome would not let her in, and after that she couldn’t think of where else she might go.

  Perhaps it’s best that she stays in at night. She hears stories about groups of teenage boys, about men who get drunk at the Sunburst by the waterfront and follow young women home. Just two weeks ago, a young girl hitchhiking south of town was raped. Who knows what might have happened to Ellen, had she been walking alone that night? But right now it’s broad daylight, almost noon, and she decides to take a walk down to the lake. She loops her purse strap over her shoulder and sets out at a brisk pace; after two blocks, though, she is dizzy, out of breath, and she looks for a place to sit down. The sun glares off her glasses, burns the tip of her nose. A group of boys flash past on skateboards, and their colorful T-shirts and sneakers look sinister. “Shit, lady, move it,” one of them says. Across the street, the doors of the bank open toward her like welcoming arms, and she can feel how it will be inside even before she gets there, the coolness of the tiled floors, the sedate blue colors, the hushed adult voices.

  She goes in and sits self-consciously in one of the chairs that line the wall, listening as the tellers talk softly with one another. The dizziness fades, leaving her forehead and temples slick with sweat. She looks in her purse for a tissue, and beneath it she finds the checkbook which she meant to return to James. The check she wrote was number 221, but there’s no record of the check before it.

  Well, she’s at the bank, she might as well find out the amount of that check so she can figure the new balance. Won’t he be surprised, smug James, when she returns the updated checkbook. She walks up to the tellers somewhat nervously. Banks, like churches, make her vaguely uncertain with the unspoken rules and private gestures she associates with solemn occasions.

  “I’d like a balance on my account,” she says, “and the amount of the last check to clear.”

  While the teller looks up the ledger, Ellen studies the paintings on the walls. Geometric shapes mostly: blue circles, yellow squares. Meaningless. Non-threatening. So different from working in a classroom decorated with anguished tempera paintings, twisted clay pots, clumsy poems labeled LOVE or HATE. Alone at her desk, Ellen studie
s these frail reconstructions of her students’ lives—a lost pet, an angry parent, a distant older sibling. It’s too easy to find pieces of her own portrait here in a mother’s scold, a daughter’s rigid stance. How wonderful it must be to handle money instead of people, to be responsible for balances and quotas rather than wishes and rages and dreams.

  The teller scribbles on a slip of paper, passes it to Ellen, ten months’ worth of savings. Six hundred dollars and seven cents.

  Six hundred dollars?

  “Excuse me,” Ellen says. “There should be over six thousand dollars in this account.”

  “Let’s see,” the teller says. Ellen stares at blue circles. Bright yellow squares. Breathes in the clean, cool air; traces a finger along the smooth countertop. “The balance is correct,” the teller says. “Two weeks ago, here”—she points to the ledger—“a withdrawal was made for six thousand dollars. Check number two hundred twenty.”

  Ellen tucks the checkbook back into her purse and walks out of the bank into the bright sunshine. She feels dizzy, hollow, as though she’s had the wind knocked out of her, and she sits down on the curb, watching the traffic straggle past. Their money, her money, gone. If she tells her mother, Mom will say, It’s not your place to worry about money or He probably had a good reason. Her sisters will say, Well, men know more about that kind of stuff anyway. Father Bork will remind her that just as God is the head of the Church, the man is the head of the woman, and that Ellen should place her trust in James. You are the hearth and the home, he had said. When the fire burns out in the hearth, the family dies.