1929 (67 page)

She fled the kitchen quickly, running through
the living room and upstairs to the sanctuary of their bedroom and
sobbed. She tried to shove the images, ones she never should have
been allowed to see as a child, back down into the recesses of her
mind and, in the process, had her first warm thought toward Jean.
She was grateful he hadn’t been there to watch his mother die. And
although the thought blindsided her to the point of her tears
ceasing abruptly, she was appreciative that Elyse had had the
decency to send him away beforehand, instead of selfishly keeping
him as a comfort right up until the last.

June 13th 1930

“Do you have everything?” Jonathan adjusted
the straps on Jean’s knapsack, bursting with everything he could
possibly need for the weekend.

“I think so.” He turned around and reached up
to Jonathan, who picked him up and gave him a bear hug with growls
that made Jean squeal with giggles. He gave his son a solid kiss on
the cheek before setting him down.

“Be good. Mind your Aunt Ahna.” He tousled
his hair one last time. Jean waved to Ava and then ran to Arianna,
who was waiting inside the Runabout. He hopped in the front seat,
reached to hug her and began talking animatedly in French.

“Seems like he’s doing better,” Caleb
said.

“He is, I think. It’s been a month.” Jonathan
shrugged, wondering what the usual amount of time is for childhood
grieving. The first few days, he cried off and on from morning till
night and, for the most part, stopped eating. After a week, he
began to come around; at least the hollow look in his eyes had
faded and he would nibble at his food. The end of the second week
was when Jonathan saw the most improvement. And it was in no small
part, in his opinion, to the talk that Ava had had with him.
Jonathan had come home early and found them on the couch. One
cushion apart but clearly having a private conversation. He never
asked either of them what they had talked about and neither one
volunteered. But there was a peace between them now that didn’t
exist before. The last week had been hit or miss. Some days,
Jonathan came home to him sobbing in his bed, clutching the framed
picture of his mother and other days, he would find him drawing at
the table, somewhat contented and it was Ava who was crying.

When Caleb offered to take Jean for the
weekend, Jonathan jumped at the idea. “I really think this change
of scenery is what he needs. Get his mind off things till the sting
starts to wear off,” Jonathan said.

“Well, we’ll take good care of him,” Caleb
promised as he turned to leave.

“See you Sunday night.” Ava and Jonathan
watched from the porch as they drove away, Jean's little hand waved
wildly out the window. Jonathan pulled Ava close to his side as a
sly grin spread across his face. “We have the whole weekend to do
whatever we want.”

“I know. I hardly know what to do first. Oh!
Let’s go to the movie house in Boston!”

His suggestive smile faded to a pleasant one.
“Or we could do that.”

∞∞∞

“Where are the bebes?” Jean walked into the
kitchen and dropped his knapsack by the back door. He gave Ethel
and Hubert a passing hug and darted into the living room to look
for them.

“They’re upstairs sleeping,” Ethel said with
a smile.

“Alone?” he cried with wide eyes. “What if
they need something?”

“It’s all right, Jean. If they need
something, they’ll cry and we’ll hear them.”

“Can I go sit with them?” he asked with
pleading eyes.

“Well.” Caleb looked at Arianna.

“Don’t you want to play outside?” she asked.
“With the piglets maybe? Or Caleb can take you for a ride on the
horse?”

“Not now. I’d rather sit with the bebes.”

“Well, all right. Just don’t wake them up,
okay?” Jean nodded so fast it looked like his little head might pop
off, and he took off wildly up the stairs, slowing to light steps
at the top.

Arianna peeked in on him sometime later to
call him for dinner, and he was lying on the floor in the middle of
the room, coloring. Every ten strokes or so, he would pop his head
up like a gopher and take a look at the babies, who lay sleeping
together inside a floor pen, and then go back to coloring.

“Le temps pour manger, petit homme.” He
looked up and grinned.

“Bon. J'ai faim,” he whispered. He dropped
back into English as Arianna closed the door softly behind them.“I
didn’t wake them.”

∞∞∞

“I didn’t know I got letters.” Ava picked up
two letters from the kitchen table.

“Mail must have run late today.” Jonathan
rummaged through the icebox for leftovers to reheat. “You mind
eating before we go?”

“That’s fine,” she said distantly as she
began reading a letter from Shannon. “Oh, no,” Ava breathed.

“What’s wrong?” Jonathan set a pot of
vegetable stew on the stove and lit the pilot light.

“Patrick was laid off, says that jobs are
harder and harder to come by, says what Maura said, that it’s good
we got out of the city.” Jonathan sighed heavily.

“I’m sure he’ll find something. He’s very
versatile.”

“I hope so,” she said as she opened the other
letter, from Maura.

“What?” she yelled out. “Ian lost his job,
too.” She leaned forward, chewing on her thumb as she kept
reading–more about the bread lines, small food riots and the break
in. She looked up in disbelief. “They got robbed.” She stared at
Jonathan, her mouth hanging open.

“Oh, no.” Jonathan leaned against the stove
with crossed arms. “What did they lose?”

“Food. That’s all they took. Wiped out their
icebox and cupboards. Didn’t even look for valuables, not that they
had any.” She continued reading, shaking her head slightly.

“Does Maura still have her job?”

“I think so, she hasn’t said otherwise,” she
said and smiled wistfully at the last line of the letter, Oh well,
it isn’t the end of the world. “How can she keep such a good
attitude with all this?” Ava wondered out loud.

“It’s admirable.”

She crossed the kitchen and hugged Jonathan
tight around the waist, resting her head just under his chin.

“She said to tell you hello. Do you think?”
She paused, not sure if she wanted to hear the answer. “Do you
think sometime, we could go visit her?”

“Maybe.” He kissed the top of her head. “I
miss her, too.” They both turned to the entrance of the kitchen,
hearing the front door close with a thud. His father walked through
first, slowly, with a tightly drawn face. Margaret followed,
sitting down unhurriedly in a chair.

“Did you have fun?” Jonathan asked with a
wary eye.

“We didn’t go out to have fun,” Jonathan Sr.
said grimly. “We just needed to talk privately.”

“Everything okay?” He shifted Ava to his
side, his arm around her shoulder.

“Not really, son.” He sighed heavily and sank
his head into his hands. Jonathan felt what had come to be a
familiar knot of dread in the pit of his stomach. Life had been
tumultuous, so unpredictable, that the sensation hardly had a
chance to fade before providence dealt another crisis. If he could
do with his body what he had become accustomed to doing with his
mind, he would be the greatest running back of all time; dodging
formidable players with minds set to knock him to the ground and
keep him there, making split-second decisions on which play has the
most chance of success.

His father sighed and said, “That part-time
job I had at the quarry. The one I pretended I didn’t have? Well, I
was let go.” Ava looked at Jonathan, waiting for his reaction.

“Okay.” He nodded slowly and decided, “So
it’ll be a little tight around here. We’ll pitch in more.”

“It’s not only that.” Jonathan Sr. looked at
Margaret with apology and angst but directed his words to Jonathan.
“You were right,” he said softly.

“I was right about what?” Jonathan asked
cautiously.

“Getting back in. I didn’t say anything. I
had big plans when the payday came.” He rubbed his face hard with
his hands. “I should have listened to you,” he said softly.

“What in hell are you talking about,
Dad?”

“I went all in. The end of March. Every last
cent of my savings. Gave it to a friend of mine in Boston, the one
I wanted you to start working for, Jack. He said it was at bottom,
nowhere to go but up. Get in while it’s good.” He shook his head
remorsefully. Jonathan closed his eyes and dropped his head. “It’s
all gone. What little we had saved is gone,” Jonathan Sr. said
apologetically. “I’m sorry. I should have listened to you.”

“You’re damned straight you should have. Did
I not tell you that it was unstable, Dad? Didn’t I tell you that it
wasn’t finished shaking out?” Jonathan Sr. nodded, eyes cast down
like a child being scolded. “When it all started sinking again,”
Jonathan began, shaking his head in disbelief, “didn’t you think to
get out then? Right at the beginning when you still had something
left. Did you have to ride it straight to the bottom?” he demanded.
Unconsciously, his grip on Ava’s shoulders had tightened like a
vise and she squirmed under the pressure.

Jonathan Sr. nodded. “I wanted to, but Jack
kept saying–”

“Kept saying what? Ride it out? It’ll rally,
it’ll all be okay?” Jonathan shook his head at the ignorance. “Dad.
They've been saying that since October of last year. People are
still losing their jobs left and right. Families are doubling and
tripling up to survive, more and more businesses and factories are
closing. There are soup lines and bread lines in New York, in every
major city for that matter, which are blocks long. Our friend was
just robbed and you know what they took? Food. Didn’t bother with
anything else. I don’t care what the weekly address says, it’s bad
and it’s only getting worse . . . .” he trailed off, with a hanging
jaw, not sure how to further emphasize the magnitude of what was
going on in the world around his father.

“I’m sorry,” Jonathan Sr. said into his
hands. Jonathan sighed deeply and glanced at Ava, signaling her to
follow him.

“I’ll be right back,” he said as they walked
out the backdoor. He led her to the car and opened the door for her
to get in, then walked around and climbed into the driver's
seat.

“Of all the stupid things,” he said and then
turned to Ava. “I made a huge decision without you recently, and
I’m not about to do that again. I need to talk to you about
this.”

“Okay.” She waited curiously for what he
might have thought of in the last three minutes.

“His savings is gone. His part-time work is
gone. He still has a couple of accounts he does on the side, but
that’s not enough to live on, and I doubt those businesses will
survive much longer anyway.” He rubbed his forehead with a grimace.
“I don’t think we have a choice but to stay,” he said with
resignation. “Take over the bills. Keep the boat afloat so to
speak. I’ll have to work more, but there’s no way they can survive
now. It’ll only be a matter of a few weeks, and they’ll lose the
house and be starving. And honestly, with Jean and our baby, it’ll
be damned hard for us to make it alone as well. We’re not getting
as much for the lobster; it’s getting vicious. Everyone’s
undercutting prices so they'll at least walk away with
something.”

“I would want to anyway, Jonathan, even if we
could make it on our own. They helped us when we were at bottom.”
She reached over and took his hand. “I remember when you had a very
similar look on your face, lost and scared, wondering what we were
going to do. There’s no way we can abandon them now.” He nodded
slowly, staring through the cracked windshield. Ava watched him as
his eyes narrowed in concentration. She felt it an absurd question
but asked it anyway. “What are you thinking about?” He picked at
the thick cracked leather of the dashboard.

“Patrick.”

“Why Patrick?” Her brows came together in
confusion.

“Because he’s resourceful and purposefully
versatile. I was just thinking that with his approach, it’ll see
them through.” His voice was soft and distant as he retreated into
his mind, racing through ideas and possibilities, giving them
undivided attention.

“I’m glad for him, but I don’t understand
what that has to do with your father?” She watched his eyes as they
flitted back and forth, deep in contemplation. She knew from
experience that if she asked him anything now, he either wouldn’t
hear her or would answer unintelligibly. She waited several moments
for him to come back, entertaining herself with the daydream of a
trip to visit Maura. In her mind, they were walking along Broadway
with linked arms, talking and laughing.

Jonathan snapped his head back slightly. She
looked over with a smile.

“What'd you figure out?”

“It just might work, won’t make a lot of
money, but it’ll keep him busy, make him feel productive.”

“What will, Jon?”

“Let's go back inside.” He grabbed her hand
and pulled her out the driver's side door. “I’ll explain, don’t
worry.”

∞∞∞

“Huh?” Caleb jerked his head up, looking left
and right, startled.

“She’s ready to go down,” Arianna whispered.
He stood, stretched, then shuffled to the rocking chair, yawning
and took Little Girl.

“We really need to give her a name,” he
whispered as he cradled his daughter in his arms. Arianna nodded
but was too tired to think. “What kind of parents let their baby go
over a month without a name?” he asked as he walked toward the
stairs.

“The kind who didn’t expect her in the first
place and are now too tired to put serious thought into it. Long as
she has one by the time she starts school,” she said and grinned as
she stood, arching her tired back. Jean walked over to her, tugging
at her skirt.