Baker Towers (13 page)

“Come on,” he teased. “Girls always say that. Then when the baby comes it’s a different story.”

Marion did not smile.

“Well, we don’t have to think about it right now,” he said carefully. “Let’s just play it by ear.” He pushed off with his feet; the swing rocked gently. “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” he said, as though it had just occurred to him. “I ran into someone the other day. That girl I told you about, who wrote me letters when I was overseas.”

“Evelyn Picnic,” said Marion.

“Lipnic.”

“Lipnic.” She rubbed at her temples. He knew what she was thinking:
Dear God, these names.

“Don’t you want to know what happened?” he teased.

Marion laughed. “Nothing happened. If something had, you wouldn’t be telling me about it.”

His smile faded. He’d hoped, for a moment, to make her jealous. Now he saw that she was only amused. As brief as it had been, as frenzied and passionate, their courtship had left him no time for reflection. Marion had bewitched him completely: her beauty and sophistication, her withering intelligence, the absolute self-containment that disappeared—ferociously, deliriously—in bed. She seemed a different species from his mother and his sisters, from Evelyn Lipnic; she was unlike any woman he had ever known. Yet now that she was his, a question had begun to nag at him: What did Marion see in him?

“You’re right,” he said. “There’s nothing to tell. She wrote me a few letters when I was overseas. I wasn’t too good about answering. Then I came home on furlough and found out she was engaged.”
To my best friend,
he could have added, but didn’t. He still believed in keeping things simple.

“That’s all?” She sounded disappointed.

“Yep. Half the guys in the navy could tell you the same kind of story.”
He rose. “I’m going to see if they need any help in the kitchen.” He bent and kissed her cheek. “Try and work up an appetite.”

G
EORGE WATCHED
his mother pile Marion’s plate: homemade macaroni with sardines and tomatoes, fried cauliflower breaded with cornmeal.

“Georgie, did I tell you?” his mother asked. “Your sister Joyce, she going to the air force.”

George glanced quickly at Joyce. They hadn’t spoken since their conversation on the porch. Last night at dinner, and this morning at church, she had avoided his eyes.

“You think it’s okay?” his mother asked.

Joyce rose and filled her glass at the sink. “Mama, don’t put him on the spot. It’s got nothing to do with him.” She turned to face him. “Let’s just have a nice visit. Give him a chance to tell us about his wedding.”

George met her gaze. The implication was clear:
Back me up, or I’ll tell her everything.

“It’s a big decision,” he said carefully. “There’s a lot to consider.”

His mother nodded agreement. “
Ecco.
I think maybe she wait a little while. If she want to, she could go next year.”

“Next
year
? A whole
year
?” Joyce’s face reddened. Her eyes met George’s.

“Just a minute,” he said hastily. “Let’s look at this rationally. What’s the alternative? Can she find a job here in town for a year?”

“She could go in the factory,” said Rose.

“Mama! That place is a graveyard. Remember how miserable Dorothy
was there? Georgie, tell her.” Her voice vibrated with emotion, her desperation to get away.
Why should she have to stay?
George thought.
If I can leave, why not her?

“Mama, it’ll be okay,” he said finally. “Joyce is a tough girl. I’m sure she can handle whatever they throw at her.”

He took his plate to the sink, squeezing her shoulder as he passed. A bony little shoulder, fragile as a cat’s.

G
EORGE AND MARION
left early the next morning. His mother and Joyce stood on the porch, watching them go. He waved from the window as the Chevy rolled down the hill. Marion rummaged through her pocketbook for a cigarette.

“Oh, God,” she said, inhaling deeply. “God, that’s good.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” George said.

Her eyebrows shot up. “As if you haven’t been craving one yourself.”

“I’m fine. What’s the big deal? It’s just a couple of days.”

Marion laughed, a throaty chuckle. “Oh, please. You don’t fool me. You’ve been dying for one all morning.” She handed him the pack; he flipped open a Zippo from his pocket. The sound was oddly soothing. He inhaled deeply.

They crossed the railroad tracks and continued on through the town: Mount Carmel Church, where his Scarponi cousins had been baptized; the apartment above Rizzo’s Tavern, where his grandparents had lived. At the corner, the Baker Brothers bus—an old school bus painted dark green—had stopped to let off passengers. He watched them cross the street, black-faced men carrying dinner buckets, heading home to sleep
off eight hours of Hoot Owl. He wondered if Gene Stusick was among them, coming home from the Twelve, climbing the fire escape behind Bellavia’s Bakery to the apartment he shared with Ev.

He glanced over at Marion, smoking quietly, her long legs crossed at the knee, coolly elegant in her pale blue suit.

“Come on,” he said, accelerating at a yellow light. “Let’s get out of here.”

T
he town grew.

Baker Twelve was mined around the clock. By its third year it employed six hundred men, two hundred per shift. At dawn, and at midafternoon, and again late in the evening, cars idled at the new bridge that had been built across the Susquehanna. White-faced men in the westbound lane, heading toward the tipple. Black-faced ones in the eastbound lane, driving home from their shifts.

Baker Towers grew taller and broader, their shape softly conical, like a child’s sand castle. In time they took over the old rail yard, where the coal cars had been loaded before the new depot was built. Rain eroded them. In winter they resembled alpine peaks. Each week they were fortified with truckloads of black dirt, the rocky entrails of the One, the Three, the mighty Twelve. In the summer of 1950, the Pennsylvania Department of Industry sent a field technician to measure the piles. It was the lead story in that week’s
Bakerton Herald,
the triumphant headline in two-inch letters:
SIXTY FEET
!

On a good day the air smelled of matchsticks; on a bad day, rotten eggs. When the local thundered down Saxon Mountain, its passengers held their breath. On breezy days the whole town closed its windows, but no one ever complained. In later years this would seem remarkable, but at the time people thought differently. The sulfurous odor meant union wages and two weeks’ paid vacation, meat on the table, presents under the Christmas tree.

The
Herald
increased its frequency to twice a week. More was happening, and more often, than a weekly paper could possibly report. The grammar school enrolled its largest class ever; the children shared desks and readers. A trailer was brought in to handle the overflow. A year later, a second one was parked behind the school.

A few things did not grow. In 1951, the Pennsylvania Railroad ended passenger service to Bakerton. After the war, business had dwindled. Nearly every family in town owned a car. Some people minded: those too young to drive or too old to learn, women like Evelyn Stusick whose husbands refused to teach them. Still, the coal trains continued to rumble through the town, reminding the old-timers of what had been lost.

A Town Improvement Committee was formed. They agreed at their first meeting that everything needed improving; the question was where to begin. A referendum was held to rank possible improvements in order of importance. The list included a water treatment plant, a public library, a job training center, housing for veterans, and a maternity wing for the hospital. Space was left for write-in suggestions, in case there was anything the committee had missed.

The referendum was held, the votes tallied.

That summer, a new baseball park was built.

J
oyce Novak came home in September, in the last brilliant week of summer: hot afternoons fading early, the morning grass touched with dew. She had left on just such a day. The coincidence made the last four years of her life seem imaginary, the vivid dream of a late-afternoon nap.

But Joyce did not nap; for her, daylight made sleep impossible. On the train ride from Charlotte to Washington, the longer one from Washington to Harrisburg to Altoona, she stared out the window as the other passengers snored around her. With her she brought a hatbox and a suitcase full of civilian clothes, the skirts and blouses she’d worn as a teenager. In her pocketbook was a packet of letters from her friend Irene Jevic. Except for the letters and the hat, she’d acquired nothing in her years away.

Sandy met her train at the station in Altoona. They embraced awkwardly. He had grown four inches that year. His cheek felt rough against hers.
He shaves now,
she thought.

She followed him to where the car was parked. He had borrowed it
from the Poblockis up the hill. “Does Mama know you’re driving?” she asked. He was only fifteen.

He backed smoothly out of the parking space, one elbow hanging out the window. “Sure.” He grinned. “It’s fine by her. She doesn’t even know you need a license.”

They drove past the diocesan cathedral, the bus station, Gable’s department store. Growing up, she’d considered Altoona a major city. Now she saw that it was just another town.

Sandy downshifted smoothly at a light.

“Who taught you to drive?” she asked.

“Nobody. I just picked it up.”

“Picked it up where? On whose car?”

“Everybody has a car. Everybody but us.”

They rode in silence, the lights of the town disappearing behind them. The sky had begun to darken; the road wound narrowly. On either side of it the corn had been cut.

“I can’t believe you’re back,” Sandy said. “You’re not really going to stay, are you?”

“Mama needs me.” She hesitated, not sure how much to tell him. She studied his handsome profile, the blond forelock curling over his forehead like some exotic plumage.

“You need a haircut,” she observed.

Sandy shrugged. “I like it this way.”

Twilight was falling as they came into town. A new traffic light had been hung at the corner of Main and Susquehanna, another at the bottom of the hill. A horn sounded in the distance. At the crossing they waited for the train to pass. A string of traffic formed behind them, headlamps bright in the rearview mirror.

“So many cars,” said Joyce.

“It’s quitting time.” Sandy glanced over his shoulder. “They’re going to West Branch. There’s a bunch of new houses out by the Twelve.”

They drove through the town and crossed the tracks to Polish Hill. A chorus of dogs announced their arrival: the tenor bark of beagles, the deeper baying of Ted Poblocki’s hounds. Sandy parked and honked the horn. The house looked small and shabby. The grass hadn’t been cut in weeks.

The front door opened. Rose appeared, barefoot, on the porch. She had grown fat; her hair was almost totally gray. She descended the steps carefully, as though her knees pained her. Joyce felt a weight in her stomach, as if she’d swallowed something heavy.
She’s getting old,
she thought. Her mother had worn the same housedresses since Joyce was a child. Seeing her change in any way was deeply unsettling.

She got out of the car and filled her lungs with the cool air, then accepted her mother’s embrace, an ordeal to get through as quickly as possible. Joyce had a horror of crying; tears caused her nearly physical pain. When she felt them coming—the warning ache in her throat—she rebuked herself with a single word:
Don’t.
A bald command, suitable for a dog, but it generally worked. She hadn’t cried in years.

“So thin!” her mother exclaimed. She’d said this every time Joyce came home on furlough, though her weight hadn’t changed since basic training.

Sandy leaned out the car window. “I’m going to drop this wreck off to the Poblockis. I’ll be right back.”

Joyce watched the car pull away, thinking,
He shouldn’t be driving without a license.
But that—like the shaggy lawn, the cracked pane in the front window—could wait until later. There was already so much to fix.

Her little sister appeared in the front doorway. Her plaid jumper was tight across her belly. Her glossy black hair hung in a braid down her back.

“
Bella
Lucy,” said Rose. “Come and say hello.”

The girl hesitated a moment, then came down the porch stairs. She walked awkwardly, thighs touching, her calves slightly bowed.

“Hi, honey,” said Joyce, clasping her briefly. The words sounded strange to her; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d called someone that.

The house was smaller than she’d remembered; it seemed incredible that her entire family had once lived there. The first floor had three rooms: a parlor, a dining room—never used for dining—and a large kitchen. Upstairs were three bedrooms and a tiny bath. The summer before his death, her father had hauled away the outhouse and installed the tub and toilet himself.

Joyce glanced around the rooms, noticing everything. The parlor furniture was worn and threadbare. There was another cracked window in the kitchen, patched with electrical tape.

She sat at the kitchen table while her mother reheated a plate of spaghetti. She wasn’t hungry, but refusing was more trouble than it was worth.

“How are you feeling, Mama?”

Rose’s eyes darted in Lucy’s direction. “Go and play,
bella,
” she said, handing her a macaroon from the jar.

Joyce waited until Lucy had disappeared into the parlor. “Did you make an appointment?” she asked.

Rose dismissed this with a wave, as though no doctor were worth the extraordinary bother of making a telephone call.

“I’ll go uptown and call tomorrow.” Joyce accepted the plate, twice as much spaghetti as she could possibly eat.