Stars Over Clear Lake

by Loretta Ellsworth

  I did my best to study and keep up with chores at home as well as most of Mom’s duties. I was still dating Scotty. The basketball team was having their best season ever, thanks to him, and he signed a letter of intent to play for the Hawkeyes. I went to his games and we dated on weekends. I let him kiss me, but it all felt lackluster, as though I was an imitation of myself. Maybe it’s because I was thinking of Jens. Or perhaps it was grief. But at least I was trying.

  Dating Scotty became another chore, and soon I felt overwhelmed. One February day after school I met up with him and told him I couldn’t see him anymore. The wind was brisk and the sky threatened snow. He shoved his head down into his coat.

  I looked away so I didn’t have to see his disappointment, or worse, relief. “I have to help take care of Mom,” I explained. “She’s had such a hard time since Pete died.”

  I turned to leave but Scotty stepped in front of me. “You don’t have to break up with me. I’ll still wait for you,” he said.

  “No. Don’t do that. I, I just can’t handle a boyfriend right now. Please understand, Scotty.” I hurried to the bus as the wind whisked me away. When I found my seat, I looked out the window. Scotty was still there on the sidewalk, his head down, shivering in his letter jacket.

  *

  Two weeks later at lunch I overheard Lance brag that he and two other guys had visited the POW camp and left messages for the prisoners on the poles surrounding the camp. He laughed when he told how the prisoners had had to repaint the poles. It was like spreading butter, the way he harnessed them in with his dramatic voice.

  “Hey, retard,” Lance said, turning his attention to Tommy Moser, a closer target than the POWs. “I think I hear a toilet bowl calling your name.”

  I tried to ignore his comments, to take the higher ground, but something inside me snapped. I stomped over to his table. “It takes a lot of courage to torment other people, doesn’t it, Lance? A sweet boy who never did anything to you, and prisoners of war who are locked up.”

  Lance eyed me as though he was sizing me up. “You know, Lorraine, you always walk around like you’re better than everybody else just because you can carry a tune and you got that Rita Hayworth look about you. But you shouldn’t be holding your nose up in the air so high. You’re right. I don’t know anything about those Jerrys. But you do, don’t you?”

  Heat flooded my face. “What do you mean?”

  “You were more than friends with those Krauts … at least, that’s what I heard.”

  My courage faltered and I settled my gaze on the rest of Lance’s lunch: the remaining half of his hard-boiled egg, which I could smell from where I stood, and two frosted gingersnaps, the store-bought kind that few of us could afford.

  When I looked back up at him, he was smiling. “Stella told me about your Nazi saxophone player.”

  The room felt hot. My mind raced. She’d promised! Stella went home for lunch every day, so I couldn’t confront her now.

  Scotty was sitting at the next table. We hadn’t spoken since our breakup, but when our eyes met, I saw that he knew, too.

  “Guess I was right about the farmer’s daughter after all,” Lance remarked, and my hands curled into fists. But Scotty was on his feet, already advancing on Lance.

  “Shut up,” Scotty said, yanking Lance up by the front of his shirt.

  “I was just thinking of you,” Lance said. “She threw you off for some Jerry.”

  Scotty pulled Lance up to his tiptoes. “I said, shut up! Now apologize to her.”

  Lance put his hands out in retreat as a crowd gathered. The vice principal was hurrying across the lunchroom toward us.

  “Sorry,” Lance said, giving me a curt nod.

  Scotty let go of him. The air stilled and I felt the eyes of my classmates on me. I glanced down at the forgotten lunches. The room smelled of milk and bologna. I wanted to crawl under the table.

  Someone took my arm. “Come on,” Betty Lou said, pulling me away. I held my head up and my gaze steady as the crowd parted for us, and let her guide me back to my table. Betty Lou sat down next to me.

  “Lance is so mean,” she said, as she patted my arm. Other students were still staring at me, keeping their distance.

  “Thank you,” I said, my voice breaking. I didn’t trust myself to say anything more. I looked down at my half-eaten biscuit. My stomach lurched, and I thought I might throw up.

  “Excuse me,” I said, and I got up and ran to the bathroom. I drank water out of the faucet and stared at my reflection, telling myself that it would be okay. Everyone knew Lance was a jerk.

  But inside I felt like a melting puddle of shame. Scotty knew about Jens. I wondered if I could ever look Scotty in the face again.

  Three girls entered the bathroom, their chatter immediately ending when they saw me. I dried my hands and went to class, taking a seat next to Betty Lou.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, smiling at me reassuringly. She hadn’t heard from her brother in over a month.

  I nodded, then opened my book. I kept my head down, and books became my refuge for the rest of the day.

  Twenty-five

  1945

  “Lance exaggerated the whole story. You know I’d never hurt you, Lorraine, especially after what happened to Pete. You don’t know how terrible I feel. If I’d been there, I’d have hit Lance myself.”

  She’d apologized at least ten times, explaining how she’d gotten drunk and hadn’t meant to tell him, but it had spilled out.

  “I’ve told everyone that Lance is a jerk and I’m not speaking to him,” Stella added, though she didn’t say she was breaking up with him.

  Stella had been my best friend since first grade. We hadn’t been as close in the months since Pete died, as I was keeping to myself more. Breaking up with Scotty had taken a toll on my popularity at school. And Lance’s accusations didn’t help, either. I wasn’t ready to throw away our friendship, even if she had betrayed me.

  I looked over at Stella, at her unfinished homework that lay sprawled across her desk. She’d been a good student before she started dating Lance. It seemed he was a bad influence on her. I remembered how much she’d liked Scotty last year before I started dating him. “You should date Scotty instead. You have my permission.”

  Stella rolled her eyes. “I know Lance isn’t much to look at, and he can be obnoxious.” She sighed. “But Scotty’s still hooked on you. You broke his heart, you know.”

  “I didn’t mean to.”

  “I know things have been hard with your mom, but you don’t want to let him get away. Believe me, if I had a chance with him, I’d snap him up in a heartbeat.”

  Stella thought I was a fool. Maybe I was. I had told myself that breaking up with Scotty had nothing to do with Jens. But I couldn’t forget the way Jens had made me feel, the way I still felt when I thought of him. And even though everyone would say I was wrong, I knew that Jens was a good person, no matter what side of the war he was on.

  “You don’t have to settle just because we’re at war,” I told Stella.

  “Yes I do. All the good ones are dead.” Her eyes widened. “I’m so sorry, Lorraine.”

  “No. You’re right. They are.” I just hoped Jens wasn’t among the dead.

  “Well, other than your brother Pete, you can’t do any better in this town than Scotty Bishop. Remember that.”

  She was right, of course. Scotty was a class act. I hadn’t told Mom we’d broken up, not that she’d notice. Mom was a shell of her former self. The tranquilizers helped her sleep at night, but she hadn’t improved much otherwise. She’d wander about during the day and night, barely speaking two words to us, and she’d given up on most of her basic duties. The only task she performed daily was to walk to the mailbox, as though she still expected a letter from Pete to arrive.

  What did arrive on a rainy April day was a letter, along with a Silver Star Medal for Pete’s gallantry in battle. Dad hung the star-shaped medal with its red-white-and-blue ribbon on the fireplace man
tel next to Pete’s picture, but the medal went missing a few days later.

  When Daddy inquired about it, Mom stuck out her jaw and said, “I couldn’t stand to look at that thing, a daily reminder of my son’s death. I don’t understand how that’s something to be proud of.” The one thing Mom was holding on to tightly was her anger over Pete’s enlistment, which she continued to blame Daddy for. Daddy didn’t mention the medal again. On May eighth we celebrated VE Day. The war in Europe was over. Businesses closed and classes were dismissed. Residents gathered in the city park to celebrate and to dedicate their efforts to the war against Japan. There was even a special celebration dance at the Surf, but I didn’t attend. I wondered what would happen to Jens now. Would he be released? Or would he be kept in a prison camp until the Japanese were defeated?

  Daddy adjusted the bill of his cap on his way out to the fields the next day. “Things are going to get better now that the war’s over. It’s a damned shame President Roosevelt didn’t live to see it happen. Greatest president in history, and he died pursuing victory for his country.”

  I turned away and busied myself at the sink, afraid he might hear what I was thinking, that it was a damned shame Pete hadn’t lived to see it happen, either.

  I took the newspaper up to Mom’s bedroom after Daddy left. “The war is over,” I said, showing her the headlines. Mom looked at me, the first time in a week she’d made eye contact. Then she turned around and stared out the window. “Six months too late,” she whispered.

  *

  Daddy stood outside the room pacing the hallway until the doctor came out.

  “Well?” he asked, as though Doc Cornelius would be able to make Mom instantly better.

  The doctor shook his head. “We might try electroshock treatment. That’s had some good results for nervous breakdowns.”

  “No,” Daddy said. “I won’t allow you to hook her up and run a current through her.”

  “She needs to find a way to keep busy,” Doc Cornelius said. “Something to help her get interested in life again.”

  “She has lots to do. That’s not the problem,” Daddy said.

  “She doesn’t do anything,” I said, then felt my face grow hot. Mom would never want me to reveal that.

  Doc Cornelius cleared his throat. “If she doesn’t get better, you should bring her to the hospital in Mason City.”

  Daddy stuck his hands in his pockets and shook his head. “No. I’m not sticking her in the crazy ward.”

  The doctor put his hand on Daddy’s shoulder. “I understand, but she’s becoming very weak.”

  “We’ll figure out something,” Daddy said with resolution. “We’ll make her better.”

  We woke Mom up the next morning and got her dressed and fed, but I came home from school to find her in the same chair as when I’d left in the morning.

  “At least she’s getting up,” Daddy said.

  “For what? What does she do all day?” I asked. “She doesn’t clean or do laundry or feed the animals or cook. She sits there staring at the walls except when the mail comes. She’s rotting away, Daddy.”

  “She’s getting out of bed,” he said. “We’ll take it one day at a time.”

  But days turned into weeks. One morning I was cleaning the kitchen when I found a torn-up recipe card in the drawer. I put the pieces together like a puzzle. It was a recipe for chocolate macaroon cake, Pete’s favorite. My anger erupted. All the vicious words I could think of worked their way up my throat.

  I stomped up to my parents’ room and pulled the covers off my mother. “Get up!”

  Mom groped around for the covers and rolled into a ball.

  “Get up, Mom. Pete wouldn’t want you to do this.”

  “Pete isn’t here anymore,” Mom said.

  “Well, if he was here, he’d be ashamed of you. And since you’re not going to do anything except wallow in self-pity, I’ll just go clean out his room.”

  I marched over to Pete’s room and opened the door. The curtains were drawn and the room had a musty smell, but everything was the same. His record player sat on the walnut dresser, the same as it had ten months ago with his collection of records. And above the dresser was the mirror, which reflected my mother’s horrified face behind me. I went to the window and started opening the shades. Mom grabbed my arm; her strength surprised me.

  “No!” Mom screamed. “Don’t touch anything!”

  “Then you start acting like you’re supposed to,” I said in a threatening tone. “Or else you’ll wake up one day and this shrine will have disappeared.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  “I would!”

  I saw the anguish in my mother’s eyes. Finally I’d gotten a reaction. If I had to shock her into reality, I was willing to do so.

  Mom pressed her lips together. “I’ll get up. Leave his room alone.”

  I wanted Mom to say she was sorry, to say that her daughter and husband were important to her and worth living for, but there was no apology.

  Mom tried after that. She stayed out of her bed for entire days at a time. She went to the annual Memorial Day parade with us and spoke to some of her old friends. She planted a garden, even though it was late in the season, and spent most of her days in her floppy hat tending to the vegetables. The outdoor sun did her good, and she developed a healthy tan and put up pints of her strawberry-rhubarb jam. She started cooking again. Even though she was still a ghost of the mom I remembered, life gained some sense of normalcy.

  Twenty-six

  2007

  I sit across from my daughter and son-in-law in a booth at Perkins and stare down at the oversized plate in front of me. Eggs over easy, toast, hash browns, and bacon. Our monthly Sunday brunches have been a staple of our lives for the last ten years, interrupted only by Daisy and Harry’s busy summer schedules, and have resumed today.

  Daisy holds up her fork. “So where did you go the other day after I dropped you off from your appointment? I thought you were going to take a nap.”

  “I did. Then after I woke up, I went for a drive.”

  “Where in God’s name did you go?”

  “Around the lake. Do you remember how we used to do that when you were little? We’d go for a Sunday drive around the lake after mass, look at all the fancy houses, see who was out fishing, then we’d stop at the state park and you and your father would try to skip rocks across the water. Afterward, we’d get ice cream at that little shop, I forget the name of it now; it went out of business. That used to be the thing to do on Sunday afternoons. Cheap entertainment, I guess.”

  “Right. But you weren’t home after dark when I called. There isn’t anything to see at night, is there?”

  Daisy is very perceptive. In my opinion, an outright lie is worse than a sin of omission, so I shrug my shoulders and look down at my runny eggs.

  Her eyes narrow. “You’re keeping something from me.”

  “You know what, honey?” Harry says as he motions to the waitress for more coffee. “Maybe you should lay off those pills.”

  “Don’t try to distract me.”

  I look up. “What pills?”

  Daisy waves her fork in the air. “With work and going through menopause, I needed something to help me make it through the day.”

  “You told me they helped you with anxiety,” Harry says, which earns a glare from my daughter. He stands up. “I’m going to the restroom.”

  Daisy picks at her fruit like she’s mining for gold. “Everyone I know takes something,” she says defensively, as though she’s talking to her fruit.

  “I think it’s great that you’re getting therapy.”

  “Who said anything about therapy? My doctor gave me the pills.”

  “Oh. I just assumed.”

  “How is your food tasting?” a young girl with a long ponytail asks as she pours more coffee in our cups.

  Daisy pushes her fruit plate away. “I’m full, thanks.”

  As soon as the girl leaves, Daisy says, “The honeydew me
lon tasted like brick. It’s obviously not ripe. And last time the plate had raspberries.”

  “Why don’t you try some of my hash browns?” I suggest.

  Daisy recoils. “Do you know how many carbs are in that?”

  “You’re just as thin, if not thinner, than you were ten years ago.”

  “And I intend to stay that way,” Daisy says, sipping her coffee.

  “How do you make it through the day?” I ask her. “You barely eat and you work so hard. You need to take care of yourself. I worry about you.”

  “I’m fine, Mother.”

  “I thought you were cutting back on your design business.”

  Daisy takes out her phone and reads her messages while she talks. “I plan to. But we’ve been really busy. Did I tell you I’m doing the mayor’s house? It’s right on the lake—a huge, older home that we’re going to update.”

  Daisy continues to pay attention to her phone. I watch as other restaurant patrons interact and chat. I think of my own mother. I’ve been noticing the similarities with Daisy recently. Like my mother, she’s moody, demanding, and often impatient.

  “Maybe you should see a therapist,” I say.

  Her eyes widen and she sets her phone aside. “Why do you think I need to see a therapist?”

  “Well, if you need pills for anxiety, it might help to also talk to a therapist. My own mother had sort of a nervous breakdown—they didn’t really have a diagnosis for it back then. Maybe it’s hereditary.”

  “I’m not having a breakdown! I’m stressed, is all. I have a lot on my plate,” she says.

  “Then maybe you should take some time off.”

  “Why? I enjoy my work. What causes me stress is trying to balance work and all my other commitments.”

  “What other commitments?”

  Daisy stares at me, as though it’s obvious.

  I feel a sudden anger. “Seeing as how I’m one of your commitments, I guess you’re trying to make me feel as though I’m a burden.”