Vinegar Hill

by A. Manette Ansay

  She and her sisters had gone with Mom to light a candle for their father every Sunday after Mass. They’d line up with the Feiderspiels, who had lost their oldest daughter; the Oosters who had lost their mother; the Klepners who had a sickly son. All of them knew each other’s grief. Everyone waited patiently as the others took their turns at the kneeler, clattering coins into the donation box, praying for health, for rest, peace. I can’t think of what to say, she told Mom the first time she was allowed to light the candle. You don’t have to say anything, Mom said. God knows what’s in your heart.

  The candle burns steadily. The outer husk is sun yellow, surrounding the darker core.

  Dear God, Ellen begins.

  She does not want God to know what’s in her heart. Last week, Barb took the kids for the morning so she could drive to Schulesville, an hour away, and interview for an opening at the public school there.

  Dear God.

  The next day, the principal called to offer her the job. She answered the phone in the kitchen as James and Fritz watched TV in the living room; afraid they might hear, she accepted in a whisper. Afterward, she sat down on the floor by the phone, waves of panic rippling over her.

  Who called? James said later.

  No one.

  No one? he said. It seems peculiar you would want to talk to no one for so long.

  Now Ellen feels as if what has happened to Mary-Margaret is her fault. But that’s crazy. But that’s how she feels. But she’s done everything she could for Mary-Margaret, cleaning her house, fixing her meals, rubbing salve into her soft peach shoulders. But she cannot stop seeing those thin legs walking, walking nowhere, growing still.

  God.

  Schulesville Public pays much more than Saint Michael’s. With child support, she and the kids can get by, and when she gets her share of the money back she’ll be able to buy a car. But how can she even think about leaving at a time when James will need her so much? If there was ever a chance that her mother and sisters would understand, that chance does not exist now. You promised for better or worse, they’ll say. How can you live with yourself?

  God.

  The word is empty. She gets to her feet and sees that a man is standing in the doorway of the chapel. Light streams from behind him, making his body glow. For a moment, Ellen thinks of the saints and their visions of Christ, His body wrapped in light. Perhaps He has come to chide her for her selfishness, and in His presence, filled with Grace, she will finally be certain, this is right; this is wrong. But the man simply walks into the chapel, stops, shifts foot to foot. She sees he has been crying, and she has never seen him cry before. “James,” she says, but his name in her mouth is as empty as God’s; she doesn’t have anything to say to him.

  “I thought,” he says, talking in gasps like children do when they’ve been crying very hard and for a long time. “When I came home. When I came home and they told me about the ambulance.”

  Then he comes to her and embraces her, his sharp nose chiseling her neck. Ellen feels nothing except sadness and, perhaps, an awkward disbelief.

  “I know it’s wrong, but I was so grateful.” He sobs into her shoulder. “When I found out it was Mother. Because I thought it might be one of the children. I thought it might be you.”

  Choice

  16

  Miriam arrives at the house late that night, Bert leaning sleepily against her side. She wears a windbreaker that belongs to one of her grown-up sons and carries a duffel bag that another grown-up son left behind when he moved out. “I keep my family with me,” she jokes, kicking off her husband’s big boots. She hugs Ellen and Amy, then moves toward James, arms outstretched. “Can’t you give your sister-in-law a kiss?”

  “It’s good of you to come,” James says formally. He tries to sidestep the hug, but Miriam is quick and she links him into her arms.

  “I can stay as long as you need me,” she says, following him into the living room. “Sarah can take care of Darby and the house. Sometimes I forget she’s just fifteen, but they say the youngest is the most down-to-earth.”

  It’s the first time one of Ellen’s sisters has been invited inside. Ellen is suddenly aware of Bert’s fingerprints on the walls, the dust on the TV set, the clutter of newspapers, cups, and shoes. Miriam walks around the living room, fingering Mary-Margaret’s knickknacks and vases, straightening the shade on the lamp. James phoned her himself to ask if she would take care of the children for the next few days, so Ellen can stay at the hospital with Mary-Margaret. He’s arranged this with the nurses. He is organized, rational, calm. There have been no more outbursts of weeping.

  “So how is she?” Miriam says. She brushes a balled-up sock from the couch and sits, pulling Bert into her lap.

  “The heart attack wasn’t severe,” Ellen says.

  “Are you going back to the hospital tonight?”

  “No,” Ellen says, just as James says, “Yes.”

  Ellen can see James’s mind at work, dividing her into shifts: take care of my mother, check on the kids, talk with the doctor. Already he has mentioned she might want to take a leave of absence in the fall. Ellen still hasn’t told him that by then she will not be here; she cannot imagine saying James, I am leaving you, packing only the things she and the kids absolutely need, carrying the suitcases out into the driveway where Barb’s red Camaro would be waiting to take her…where? “There’s nothing we can do for her tonight,” she says. “They’ll call if there’s any change.”

  “And your pa is already there with her, I imagine,” Miriam says to James.

  “He’s in his room,” Amy says. “He won’t come out.”

  “Oh, my,” Miriam says.

  “He says he thinks Grandma is the Devil.”

  “What?” Ellen says. All she needs is for Amy to act up in front of Miriam. Miriam is already convinced that Amy is growing up wild because Ellen isn’t home with her the way a mother should be. Suddenly, it is important to show Miriam that she is a good mother, that Amy is under control, that Ellen knows how to handle her children. “Don’t tell lies,” she snaps.

  Amy’s eyes are bright with hurt, but she does not contradict. Instead, she chews on her thumbnail, ripping the cuticle with her teeth. She does not look at Ellen, does not look at anyone, just tears the skin from her finger with a deliberateness that makes Ellen wince. “Why don’t you and Bert go to bed now,” Ellen tells her weakly. Amy takes Bert’s hand, pulls him out of Miriam’s lap, and leads him away without a word. Ellen gets the set of spare sheets from the linen closet in the hall; she presses her face into the clean, stacked towels, feeling absolutely terrible.

  By the time she has fixed up the couch for Miriam, James is already in bed. Instead of rolling to the edge of the mattress, the way he usually does when Ellen lies down beside him, he presses himself against her, cups his hand affectionately over her stomach. It takes all of her willpower not to push him away. Only after she is certain he is sleeping does she lift his heavy arm and wriggle out from under it. The sound of his breathing, the smell of his body, the deep hollows of his nostrils: she experiences James piece by piece, part by part. She cannot force herself to assemble those parts. She cannot bear to view him whole. She does not love him.

  She does not love him.

  In the morning, Mom and Ketty come over with paper plates and cups, a big glass jar of instant coffee. “You’re going to need these,” Mom warns. “Everybody wants to see the inside of this house.” She and Ketty explore the rooms, looking in closets, peering into cupboards, picking up Mary-Margaret’s china knickknacks and putting them back in slightly different places. “So this is what she’s so proud of,” Mom says to Ellen, deliberately unimpressed.

  Neighbors start to arrive: the Muellers, the Kaufmans, the Wenzels. They carry casseroles still hot from the oven, angel food cake, pork and beans, and their faces are bright with sympathy. They bring their children, who stare at Ellen, not knowing how to react to Teacher out of school. Ellen has heard them whisper to their friends that
512 Vinegar Hill is haunted. Sometimes they brag about having to walk past it on their way to school. At recess, they call Ellen witch just loudly enough that she can pretend she doesn’t hear. But now they are silent, and Ellen can sense their disappointment as they look at the ordinary, everyday coffee table, the TV and couch, the familiar picture of the Last Supper hanging on the wall. Their parents’ reaction is almost the same. They discuss the tornadoes, their effect on the local crops, the possibility of a long summer of storms. By lunchtime, everyone is eager to leave and they all get up together. They give Ellen instructions about reheating the casseroles. They say they will come by later for the pans. They ask Ellen to give their condolences to Fritz, who has come out of his room only twice today: once to use the bathroom, once to drag the TV from the living room into his bedroom.

  We’re sorry, we’re so sorry, they say.

  “She isn’t dead yet,” Ellen says.

  Miriam quickly grabs Ellen by the arm and leads her to Mary-Margaret’s chair. “You’re tired,” she says, “now you just rest.” She and Ketty finish the good-byes while Mom sits on the couch across from Ellen and asks her does she want anything—another cup of coffee? A piece of pie? Ellen pinches a broken leaf off the philodendron on the end table. She’s supposed to be at the hospital by two, when Mary-Margaret will be transferred to a private room. As if she’s read Ellen’s mind, Mom says, “I know it’s hard but it’s an opportunity. She never liked you or any of us. Now’s your chance to make peace.”

  “She doesn’t want peace,” Ellen says.

  “She’ll remember how you cared for her at the hospital. She’ll see how you did what’s right.”

  “Whew!” Miriam says, falling into a chair. “That’s the last of ’em for now.” Her short legs dangle; the blunt toes of her shoes kiss. She selects a carrot-raisin cookie from a plate and nibbles on it thoughtfully. Early this morning, while Ellen was still in bed, Miriam pulled the living room drapes to let the sunlight in and propped the windows open with mildewed back issues of the Catholic Digest. She vacuumed and dusted, scoured the toilets and sinks. She even shamed the kids into cleaning their room.

  “I understand,” Miriam said when Ellen came into the kitchen for coffee, still in her nightgown, sleep in her eyes. She was dumping limp vegetables from the crisper into the trash. “You get a little behind on your housework, it all comes down like a landslide.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Ellen said. And it’s not my housework, she added silently. But it was a relief to let Miriam take charge, and she drank the coffee Miriam had made and tried to eat the bacon and eggs and pancakes Miriam set before her even though she wasn’t hungry.

  Now Miriam says, “Sputzie, you better get ready to go. Don’t worry about the kids, we’ll have a good time together.”

  “I sent them outside to play,” Ketty says. “I brought along some trucks for Bertie. And Amy”—she shakes her head—“is tanning. Girls can be so foolish.”

  “Isn’t she young to get started on all that?” Miriam says.

  “Girls these days, they grow up fast,” Mom says, and she looks at Ellen meaningfully. “They need a mother’s close eye on them.”

  “I better tell them good-bye,” Ellen says, and she escapes through the back door, squinting at the bright burst of sunlight. “Hello?” she calls, and Bert pops up from between the shrubs along the house. He’s making tunnels for the trucks, probably damaging the shrub roots. When Ellen bends to kiss him, his face is peppered with fine grains of dirt. Amy is lying face down on a blanket. The straps of her bathing suit have been pulled around her shoulders; a bottle of coconut tanning lotion nestles in the grass. Where does she get the money for these things—the lotions and lipsticks, the magazines? Ellen can’t believe she’s stealing.

  “I have to go to the hospital now,” she says.

  “To see Grandma,” Bert says.

  “To see Grandma.”

  “Why doesn’t Grandpa go see her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I told you why,” Amy says without lifting her head. “He says she’s the Devil, that she kills babies.”

  “Does she eat them?” Bert says.

  “Just the boys,” Amy says. Even a month ago, this could have made Bert cry, but now he stares at her, thinking.

  “You’re lying,” he says calmly, and he goes back to his trucks and the intricate maze of trails he has made for them. Ellen sits down on the blanket next to Amy. The air is thick with coconut, a good sweet smell. She plucks a piece of grass and flicks it against the bottom of Amy’s foot until Amy rolls over, sits up.

  “He said there were other kids besides Dad and Uncle. He said all women are devils. He said I am a devil.”

  “Amy,” Ellen says.

  “Don’t believe me, then, I really don’t care.”

  “It’s not that I don’t believe you, or that I do believe you,” Ellen says. “Sweetheart, I’m just tired, that’s all, and I have to go to the hospital now, so maybe it would be better if we talked about this later.”

  “You’re always tired,” Amy says.

  “I know.”

  “What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?”

  Ellen stares out across the lawn, fighting the urge to lie down beside Amy on the blanket and not get up. There are so many things that she and Amy have to talk about, that she and James have to talk about, that she and her mother and sisters have to talk about, and she doesn’t know where she will find the energy, now or later or any other time. Somehow, she has to pull herself together. She needs to create enough space within herself to think things through.

  “Look,” Amy says. “Just forget it. I made it all up about Grandpa.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “He was mumbling some stuff, but I couldn’t really hear it.” She lies back down on the grass. “You better go,” she says after a minute.

  “I wish I didn’t have to,” Ellen says.

  Amy takes the bottle of lotion, squirts it onto one slender leg. Tiny bees hover inches above her skin, searching for the sweet. Her earlobes are swollen and red; are they pierced? “It’s not like I’m a little kid and you have to take care of me anymore.”

  At the hospital, Ellen gets Mary-Margaret’s new room number from the front desk: 333. Easy to remember. She buys a yellow rose and a paperback at the gift shop before she goes upstairs. It’s a relief to be moving through the cool, silent hallways. Undoubtedly the house will fill with a new round of visitors this afternoon. Ellen imagines the dining room table spread with food: congealed meats, sugary fruit breads, Ritz crackers, Jell-O salads. Her stomach churns. She finds a trash can and throws away the neat foil package of tuna casserole that Miriam tucked into her purse.

  Mary-Margaret’s room is plain and white, with two small windows, and a TV mounted high on the wall. Father Bork is standing beside the bed, and seated on the chair beneath the windows is a woman. For a moment, Ellen thinks it’s Mary-Margaret, already sitting up. Then the woman turns toward the door, as if by instinct, as if she had caught a whiff of Ellen’s scent, mouth open to taste the air. Salome blinks her beautiful eyes as if she doesn’t quite remember who Ellen is. The bones in her face are fierce.

  Father Bork comes over to greet Ellen, soft white hands outstretched. “I understand you’ll be staying here at the hospital,” he whispers. His hands swallow Ellen’s like gloves.

  “Yes, Father.”

  “So good of you,” he says. “Mary-May’s sister wants to stay, but she seems a bit…confused. They both do, really, and I was reluctant to leave them alone.”

  “I haven’t seen Auntie Salome in months,” Ellen says. “I don’t think she likes me.”

  “Well, I’m sure she’ll forget about that now,” Father Bork says. “One of the blessings of illness is that it draws people together.” He smiles his calm, wise smile. She remembers his office, James nervously squeezing her hand. The hearth and the home. She keeps her eyes on the floor the way she did when she was a girl wo
rrying that the nuns could read her mind.

  “Mary-May,” Father Bork says warmly, leading Ellen toward the bed. Mary-Margaret looks like a child’s paper construction, gray with paste, wrinkled at the edges. IV tubes trail from her arm; another tube runs from her nose. On a portable stand behind her, a heart monitor flashes silently.

  “Hi,” Ellen says awkwardly.

  “Look who brought you a rose! You always liked yellow flowers, just like your mama did.”

  He brings the rose to Mary-Margaret’s face. Her eyes focus on Ellen; she swallows hard.

  “Are you come to help?” she whispers.

  “Yes,” Ellen says.

  “You?” Salome says. She rises stiffly. Sunlight cuts in through the blinds, dividing her face into savage shadows. She wears a housecoat that might have once been pink; now it’s the color of an old bloodstain, and it hangs straight from her bony shoulders. A frayed black sweater is draped over the back of her neck, cat-like, one long arm switching. “We won’t be needing any help,” she says.

  “Come now,” Father Bork says. “Ellen can make your sister more comfortable. You want her to be comfortable, don’t you?”

  Salome sits back down without answering, but she fixes Ellen with an angry stare.

  “I have to leave now,” Father Bork murmurs to Ellen, “but I’ll give Mary-May Communion before I go.” When he turns to prepare the Host, tears stream down Mary-Margaret’s face.

  “It’s supposed to hurt,” Salome tells her. “The pain is part of God’s will.”

  Father Bork tries to feed Mary-Margaret the Host, but she bites her lips, shakes her head. He looks at Ellen; she doesn’t understand either.

  “She is dirty,” Salome tells them. “She is unclean.”