by Anne Tyler
“To wear to the front.”
He sent a quick glance toward his mother. Then he took hold of Pauline’s elbow. “Let’s go get a Coke,” he said.
“Oh, why, that would be—”
“Michael? We have another telephone order,” Mrs. Anton said.
But he said, “I’ll be back soon,” and he guided Pauline out the door.
They left behind a larger space than they had occupied, somehow.
Mrs. Pozniak paused for a moment longer, just in case Mrs. Anton had something interesting to say. She didn’t, though. She was staring grimly after her son, one hand tracing the Cream of Wheat box as if to square off its corners.
Mrs. Pozniak cleared her throat and asked for a bottle of molasses.
The parlor windows on St. Cassian Street developed a military theme, the Blessed Virgins and china poodles and silk flowers replaced overnight by American flags, swoops of red, white, and blue bunting, and grade-school geography books laid open to maps of Europe. Although in some cases, the religious items stayed put. Mrs. Szapp’s bleached-out Palm Sunday palm fronds, for instance, remained in place even after a banner bearing six satin stars was tacked to the wooden sash. And why not? You need all the intervention you can get, when every last one of your sons is off risking his life for his country.
Mr. Kostka asked Michael what branch of the service he’d joined. This was in Sweda’s Drugs, which had reopened under the management of Mr. Sweda’s brother-in-law. Michael and Pauline were sitting at one of the marble-topped tables; they’d been observed together often over the past few days. Michael said, “The Army,” and Mr. Kostka said, “Is that a fact! I’d have thought the Navy.”
“Yes, but I get seasick,” Michael told him.
Mr. Kostka said, “Well, young fellow, the Army’s not going to ship you over by motorcar, you know.”
Michael got a sort of startled look.
“And when do you leave for boot camp?” Mr. Kostka inquired.
Michael paused. Then, “Monday,” he said.
“Monday!” By now it was Saturday. “Has your mother lined up any help at the store?”
Oh, sneaky; very sneaky. Everybody knew that Mrs. Anton had no idea Michael had enlisted. But who was going to tell her? Even Mrs. Zack, famous for interfering, claimed she hadn’t the heart. They were all waiting for Michael to do it; but here he sat, sipping Coke with Pauline, and the only thing he would say was “I’m sure she’ll find someone or other.”
Pauline was wearing red again. Red seemed to be her color. A red sweater over a crisp white shirt with a rounded collar. It was known by now that she came from a neighborhood north of Eastern Avenue; that she wasn’t even Catholic; that she worked as a receptionist in her father’s realty office. How this was known was through Wanda Bryk, who had somehow become Pauline’s new best friend. It was Wanda who reported that Pauline was just the nicest person imaginable, and so much fun! So vivacious! Just always up to some mischief. But others had their reservations. Those seated at the soda fountain, now. You think they weren’t cocking their ears to hear what foolish talk she might be filling Michael’s head with? Not to mention they could see her in the long mirror behind the counter. They saw how she tucked her face down, all dimpling and demure, fingers toying coquettishly with the straw in her Coca-Cola. They heard her murmuring that she wouldn’t be able to sleep a wink nights, fearing for his safety. What right did she have to fear for his safety? She barely even knew him! Michael was one of their own, one of the neighborhood favorites, although not till now considered the romantic type. (Over the past few days a number of girls, Katie Vilna and several others, had started wondering if he might possess some unsuspected qualities.)
Old Miss Jakubek, drinking seltzer at the counter with Miss Pelowski, reported that the evening before, she had gone up to Pauline at the movies and told her she looked like Deanna Durbin. “Well, she does, in a way,” she defended herself. “I know she’s a blonde, but she does have that, oh, that dentable soft skin. But what did she say? ‘Deanna Durbin!’ she said. ‘That’s just not true! I look like me! I don’t look like anyone!’”
“Tsk, tsk,” Miss Pelowski sympathized. “You were only trying to be nice.”
“I myself would love it if someone told me I looked like Deanna Durbin.”
Miss Pelowski drew back on her stool and studied Miss Jakubek. “Well, you do, around the chin, a little,” she said.
“His poor, poor mother, is all I can think. And the girl is nothing; no nationality. Not even Ukrainian; not even Italian! Italian I might be able to handle. But ‘Barclay’! She and Michael don’t have the least little thing in common.”
“It’s like Romeo and Juliet,” Miss Pelowski said.
Both women thought for a moment. Then they glanced toward the mirror again. They saw that Pauline was crying; that Michael was leaning across the table to cup her chrysanthemum head in both hands.
“They do seem very much in love,” Miss Jakubek said.
That night there was a huge going-away party for Jerry Kowalski. Depend on the Kowalskis to make more of a fuss than other people. Other people had been seeing their boys off all week with no more than a nice family dinner, but the Kowalskis rented the Sons of Warsaw Fellowship Hall and hired Lenny Zee and his Dulcetones to play. Mrs. Kowalski and her mother cooked for days; giant kegs of beer were rolled in. The whole of St. Cassian’s Church was invited, as well as a few from St. Stan.
And of course, everyone came. Even babies and small children; even Mr. Zynda in his cane-seated wooden wheelchair. Mrs. Anton arrived in a ruffly blouse and ribbon-trimmed dirndl skirt that made her look grayer than ever, and Michael wore a pinchy suit that might have been his father’s. His raw, bare wrist bones poked forth from the sleeves. A white flake of toilet paper clung to a nick on his chin.
But where was Pauline?
Most certainly she had been invited, at least by implication. “Feel free to bring a date,” Mrs. Kowalski had told Michael—in his mother’s presence, no less. (Oh, Mrs. Kowalski was widely known to be a bit of an imp.) But the only girls here were neighborhood girls, and when the first polka started sawing away, it was Katie Vilna who came over to Michael and pulled him onto the dance floor. She was the forward one of the group. She kept tight hold of his hand even when he resisted. Eventually, he gave in and began awkwardly hippityhopping, every now and then glancing toward the door as if he were expecting somebody.
The Fellowship Hall was a warehouse-like building with splintery floors and metal rafters and naked overhead lightbulbs. Card tables draped with hand-stitched heirloom linens lined the far wall, and it was here that the older women gathered, scrutinizing Mrs. Kowalski’s pierogi and finickily readjusting the sprigs of parsley garnish after one or another of the men had passed through loading his plate. When they stood back to watch the dancing, they tended to clasp their hands on their stomachs as if folding them beneath aprons, even though not a one of them actually wore an apron. They commented on Grandfather Kowalskis sprightly step, on the evident chill between the Wysockis (newlyweds), and—of course—on Katie Vilna’s unbelievable nerve. “I swear, she has no shame,” Mrs. Golka said. “I’d die if one of my girls was to chase a boy that way.”
“Fine chance she has, anyhow, with that Pauline person in the picture.”
“Where is Pauline, though? Wouldn’t you think she would be here?”
“She’s not coming,” Wanda announced.
Wanda had approached unnoticed, her footsteps drowned out by the music. (Otherwise, the women never would have said what they did about Katie.) She forked a kielbasa onto her plate. She said, “Pauline’s miffed that Michael wouldn’t call for her.”
“Call for her?”
“At her folks’ house.”
“But why—?”
“He wanted to spare his mother’s feelings. You know how his mother can be. He told Pauline to meet him here; they’d act like it was just happenstance when they ran into each other. And first she said okay, bu
t then I guess she reconsidered because when I phoned her this evening, she told me she wasn’t coming. She said she was the kind of girl a fellow should be proud to be seen with, not all ashamed and hidey-corner.”
Wanda moved off toward the dessert table, leaving a silence behind her. “Well, she’s right,” Mrs. Golka said finally. “A girl has to set some standards.”
“He was only thinking of his mother, though.”
“And what good will that do him, might I ask, when Dolly Anton’s dead and gone and Michael’s a seedy old bachelor?”
“For mercy’s sake,” Mrs. Pozniak said, “the boy is twenty years old! He’s got a long way to go before he’s a seedy old bachelor.”
Mrs. Golka didn’t seem convinced. She was gazing after Wanda. “But does he know,” she said, “or not?”
“Know what?”
“Does he know that Pauline’s miffed? Did Wanda tell him?”
Now several of the women began to show some sense of urgency. “Wanda!” one called. “Wanda Bryk!”
She turned, her plate in midair.
“Did you tell Michael that Pauline’s not coming?”
“No, she wants him to worry,” Wanda said, and she turned back and plucked a pastry from a tray.
There was another silence. Then, “Ah,” the women said in unison.
The Dulcetones stopped playing and Mr. Kowalski tapped the microphone, sending a series of furry-sounding thwacks through the hall. “On behalf of myself and Barbara . . .” he said. His lips were too close to the mike and each b was an explosion. Several people covered their ears. Meanwhile, the children were getting up a game of Duck, Duck, Goose, and the babies were fussing themselves to sleep in nests of their mothers’ coats, and several young men near the beer kegs were growing loud-voiced and boastful.
So nobody noticed when Michael slipped away. Or maybe he didn’t slip away; maybe he walked out openly. Even his mother was absorbed by then in the goings-on, the speeches wishing Jerry well and the prayer from Father Pasko and the cheers and the rounds of applause.
But they noticed when he returned, all right, later in the evening. Here he came, brave as you please, leading Pauline by the hand through the big plank doors. And when he helped her take her coat off—which no one had even realized Michael knew to do—it emerged that she was wearing a slim black dress that set her apart from the other girls in their lace-up waistcoats and drawstring blouses and flouncy embroidered skirts. But it was her eyes that caused the most comment. They were wet. Each of those long lashes was a separate, damp spike. And the smile she gave Wanda Bryk was the rueful, wan, chastened smile of someone who had just come through a crying spell.
Oh, plainly she and Michael had been having words of some kind.
She turned from Wanda and looked at Michael expectantly, and he gathered himself together and squared his shoulders and took hold of her hand again. He led her further into the hall, past the microphone where Jerry himself now stood, foolishly grinning, past the accordionist who was flirting with Katie, over to the women on their cluster of folding chairs. “Mama,” he said to his mother, “I know you remember Pauline.”
His mother held a plate in both hands on the very tip end of her lap—a single beet swimming in horseradish sauce. She gazed up at him bleakly.
“Pauline is sort of . . . my girl,” he told her.
Even this late, the noise was deafening (all those overtired children on the loose), but where Mrs. Anton sat, the silence spread around her like ripples around a stone.
Pauline stepped forward, and this time her smile was heartfelt, her dimples deep as finger pokes. “Oh, Mrs. Anton,” she said, “we’re going to be such good friends! We’re going to keep each other company while Michael is away.”
Mrs. Anton said, “Away?”
Pauline went on smiling at her. Even with her damp lashes, she had a natural kind of joyousness. Her skin seemed to radiate light.
“I’ve joined the Army, Mama,” Michael said.
Mrs. Anton froze. Then she stood up, but so unsteadily that the woman next to her stood up too and took away her plate. Mrs. Anton relinquished it without a glance. It appeared that she would just as soon have dropped it on the floor. “You can’t,” she told Michael. “You’re all I’ve got left. They would never make you join.”
“I’ve enlisted. I report for training Monday.”
Mrs. Anton fainted.
She fell in an oddly vertical manner, not keeling over backwards but slowly sinking, erect, into the folds of her skirt. (Like the Wicked Witch melting in The Wizard of Oz, a child reported later.) It should have been possible to catch her, but nobody moved fast enough. Even Michael just watched, dumbstruck, until she reached the floor. Then he said, “Mama?” and he dropped sharply to his knees and started patting both her cheeks. “Mama! Talk to me! Wake up!”
“Stand back and give her air,” the women told him. They were rising and moving their chairs away and shooing off the men. “Lay her flat. Keep her head down.” Mrs. Pozniak took Pauline by the elbows and planted her to one side. Mrs. Golka sent one of her twins off for water.
“Call a doctor! Call an ambulance!” Michael shouted, but the women told him, “She’ll be all right,” and one of them—Mrs. Serge, a widow—heaved a sigh and said, “Let her have her rest, poor soul.”
Mrs. Anton opened her eyes. She looked at Michael and closed them again.
Two women helped her to a sitting position, and a moment later they lifted her onto her chair, all the time saying, “You’ll be just fine. Don’t rush yourself. Take it easy.” Once she was seated, Mrs. Anton bent double and buried her face in her hands. Mrs. Pozniak patted her shoulder and made soft clucking sounds.
Michael stood at a distance, now, with his palms clamped in his armpits. Various men kept slapping him reassuringly on the back, but it didn’t seem to do any good. And Pauline had simply vanished. Not even Wanda Bryk had seen her go.
The Dulcetones were drifting helplessly among their instruments; some of the children were quarreling; Jerry Kowalski was standing slack-jawed at the microphone. Cigarette smoke hung in veils beneath the high rafters. The air smelled of pickled cabbage and sweat. The tables had a ravaged look—platters almost empty and puddled with brownish juices, serving spoons staining the linens, parsley sprigs limp and bedraggled.
Everybody said later that the party had been a mistake. You don’t throw a celebration, they said, when your sons are leaving home to fight and die.
The windows above Anton’s Grocery stayed dark all the next day, not even a glimmer showing behind the lace curtains. The store, of course, was closed, since it was a Sunday. Neither Michael nor his mother came to church, but that was not unusual. After Danny got sick, the Antons appeared to have fallen away somewhat from their faith. Still, people said, in view of the situation, wouldn’t you think Michael’s mother would want to offer up a prayer?
This was not a neighborhood of drop-in visits—or any visits, really, other than from blood relatives. Houses were too small and too close together, too exposed, without so much as a shrub to shield them from prying eyes. Best to avoid becoming overfamiliar. But toward evening, Mrs. Nowak from across the street called Mrs. Anton on the phone. She planned to inquire after Mrs. Anton’s health and maybe bring by a casserole if she received any encouragement. Nobody answered, though. She told Mrs. Kostka later that she had a definite sense that the ringing was being listened to, in silence. You know how you get that feeling sometimes. Eight rings, nine . . . with a kind of watchfulness in between. But that could have been her imagination. Maybe the Antons were out. Mrs. Anton did have a brother-in-law, an unsocial sort who ran a dry-goods store over near Patterson Park. It seemed unlikely, however. Surely somebody would have noticed them walking.
Several times during the evening, Mrs. Nowak glanced across the street again. But all she could see were those secretive curtains and the display window below them, ANTON’S GROCERY in curly gold letters in front of fifteen Campbell’s soup cans n
eatly arranged in the pyramid style that Michael was so fond of.
The Army hired a special bus to take recruits to Virginia. It was a school bus, from the looks of it, repainted a matte olive drab, and at eight o’clock Monday morning it stood waiting on the designated corner within eyeshot of the seafood market. By fours and by sixes, families approached in a lagging, hanging-back manner, always with at least one young man in the lead. The young men carried suitcases made of cardboard or leather. Their relatives carried lunch boxes and cake tins and thermoses. It was a raw, windy day, but no one seemed in any hurry to pack the young men onto the bus. They stood in small groups clutching their burdens, stamping their feet for warmth. A few of the families knew each other, but a lot more didn’t; the bus served a fairly wide area. Still, people made a point of exchanging greetings even if they were strangers. They sent quick, searching smiles toward the young men and from then on averted their eyes, giving the families their privacy.
The Kowalskis came with Jerry and Jerry’s girlfriend and Mrs. Sweda, who was Mrs. Kowalskis sister. The Witts came. Mrs. Serge and Joey came.
Mrs. Anton and Michael came.
Mrs. Anton looked even drearier than usual, and she barely responded when her neighbors said hello. She wore a gray tweed overcoat and thin, short socks half swallowed by her brown oxfords. Her hands were thrust deep in her pockets; it was Michael who carried his lunch, in addition to a mildewed black gladstone bag. Around his neck he had wound Pauline’s scarf—broad bands of navy blue and white, a pattern any neighborhood girl would have considered too simple.
Just as they arrived, a beefy man in uniform lumbered down the steps of the bus with a clipboard under one arm. No one had even known he was there; all they had seen was the driver, who sat staring ahead expressionlessly with the motor loudly idling.
“All right, men,” the man in uniform called. “Line up here to my left.”
People began milling in his direction, the relatives as well as the recruits. Michael, however, stayed where he was. He gazed northward, straight up Broadway to where it crossed Eastern Avenue.
