Baker Towers (15 page)

She thought of the games she and Dorothy had played as children: hide-and-seek, blindman’s bluff, duck-duck-goose. At the beginning of the game all players were equal, and anything was possible—every kid in the neighborhood running breathless and excited, like bees humming around a hive. Then someone found you, or pointed you out, or slapped your sweaty back, and like it or not, you were it.

Georgie and Dorothy had escaped the hand—whether through speed or calculation, or just the simple dumb luck of being older, Joyce couldn’t say. But the hand had landed on her shoulder. She, apparently, was it.

Duck, duck, goose.

T
HE EYE SPECIALIST
was booked until November. Joyce took the first appointment available, a Friday morning, the day after Thanksgiving. At the drugstore she bought a road map of Pennsylvania and spread it before her on the counter. She located Pittsburgh immediately, an agglomeration of bright yellow at the southwest corner of the state. Bakerton was harder to find, the name in faint italicized letters, the smallest typeface on the map.

She set out early the next morning, in sturdy shoes. In half an hour she had reached the edge of town, where a car dealership had just opened. She stood in the lot a moment, looking around uncertainly.

A boy in a suit approached her. “Can I help you, ma’am?” He was tall
and gangly, his face studded with pimples. He looked barely old enough to drive.

“I need to buy a car.” She pointed to a blue sedan at the edge of the lot. “How much is that one?”

“That Plymouth over there?”

“Yes,” she said. “The Plymouth.”

He named a figure that seemed impossible. She had a small savings account, where she’d deposited her last check from the air force.

“That’s more than I can afford,” she said, embarrassed. Her own discomfort irritated her.
Brush it off,
she thought.
He’s just a kid. Who cares what he thinks?

“Do you have one less expensive?”

He pointed to a smaller car. “That Rambler is four hundred dollars. It’s secondhand, but it runs good. You want to take it for a test drive?”

She looked him in the eye. “I don’t know how to drive.”

He stared at her, mystified. “Then what do you need a car for?”

Mentally she ticked off a list: the Wojick boys, the half-bright Poblockis, her brother Sandy, who’d “just picked it up.” Every male on Polish Hill knew how to drive. How difficult could it be?

“I’ll learn,” she said.

T
HE BANK WAS BUSTLING
that morning. Tellers stood at their windows, silently counting. A half-dozen customers waited in line. Joyce approached a window.

“I’d like to fill out a job application,” she said.

The teller, a short round-faced man, eyed her briefly. “Hang on a second.”
He resumed counting, then wrote a figure on a scrap of paper. He placed the paper atop the stack and wrapped it with a rubber band.

“Stiffler,” he said to the man at the next window. “This lady wants to fill out a job application.”

Two men turned in her direction. One, Irving Stiffler, was her brother’s age; he’d come back from the war missing a foot. Joyce had seen him around town and was amazed by how well he walked, with only a slight limp.

“Hello, Joyce,” Stiffler said, nodding. “You’ll have to talk to the manager. Have a seat, and I’ll tell him you’re here.”

Joyce sat on the vinyl sofa near the window, aware of the silence in the room. In a moment the clerks resumed counting. Two men in overalls came in the front door. The bank opened early on Friday mornings to accommodate the miners, the Hoot Owl crews who stopped to cash paychecks on their way home from work.

Half an hour passed. Finally, a portly man in shirtsleeves came toward her. He eyed her uncertainly, then sat beside her on the sofa, hitching up his trousers to preserve their creases. “What kind of a job are you looking for?”

“Secretarial,” she said. “I type seventy-five words a minute. I can do just about anything involved with running an office.”

“Have you tried over at the factory?”

She blinked. He seemed not to have heard her. She tried again. “Actually, what I’m looking for is an office job. A teller position would be ideal.”

He scratched his head. “The thing is, we generally don’t hire girls for those jobs. We did years ago, during the war, but these fellows”—he gestured with a nod of his head—“are all veterans.”

“I see.” She wished, for a moment, that she’d worn her uniform. “I’m just out of the air force, myself.”

A smile played at his lips. “Good for you,” he said. “But these men are combat veterans—wounded, some of them. With families to support. You can understand that, can’t you?”

“Perfectly,” she said evenly. “I’ve got a family as well, sir. My mother is a widow, and my younger brother and sister are still in school.”

The man glanced at his watch. “Well, I can’t help you. We aren’t hiring right now.” He rose. “Try over at the factory,” he said again. “Good luck to you, Joyce.”

O
n Saturday afternoon she left the house carrying a tin of macaroons. Her mother baked them every Friday. Unless Joyce watched her closely, she’d eat half of them herself.

The Jevics lived in a dilapidated frame house, a big, barnlike structure near the Number One tipple. Irene was the third of ten children; every few years, it seemed, her father built another bedroom onto the house. As a little girl, Joyce had been intimidated by the place, not just its size but its strangeness. All her other friends had lived in company houses—three rooms upstairs, three rooms down. It had never occurred to her that a house could be built any other way.

In the Jevics’ backyard, boys ran and shouted. Joyce climbed the porch steps and knocked at the front door. She sensed a flurry of activity behind it: a radio playing, a baby crying, tiny voices raised in anger or joy. Then Irene’s mother opened the door, a dark-haired baby on her hip.

“Joyce Novak!” She held the door open. “For God’s sake, I didn’t know you were back.”

Joyce stepped inside. Shrill voices in the next room, the excited chatter of little girls. “I brought you some macaroons. I remember how you liked them.”

“You’re a sweet girl. Those Eyetalian cookies are delicious.” Mrs. Jevic shifted the baby to her other hip. She was a big, red-faced woman with wide, startled-looking eyes, the same watery blue as Irene’s.

She led Joyce to the kitchen. “Irene’s at the dentist, having that tooth pulled. She’ll be back any minute. Sit down and have some tea.”

Joyce sat at the table, its Formica top extended with a plywood leaf. Bottles and rubber nipples dried on a towel by the sink. Beside the back door was a metal washtub, overflowing with different-size shoes. The place was as chaotic as a kindergarten.

“Have you met little Susan?” Mrs. Jevic asked, smoothing the baby’s hair.

“No,” said Joyce. “She’s adorable. How old is she?”

“A year next month.” Mrs. Jevic filled the teapot with water. Susan squirmed and let out a squeal.

“Here we go again,” said Mrs. Jevic. “You won’t be quiet—will you?—until your mother comes home.”

Your mother?
Joyce thought.

Mrs. Jevic wiped her hands on a tea towel. Then she saw Joyce’s face.

“You didn’t know?” She spoke rapidly, in a low voice. “Heavens to Betsy, I thought the whole town knew. She’s Irene’s baby.”

The kitchen seemed very warm. Sweat trickled down Joyce’s back. “I had no idea.” Her voice came out in a whisper. “Irene never said a word.”

“Well, she’s ashamed, of course. Can you blame her?” Mrs. Jevic sat heavily in a chair. “She’s had a hard couple years. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t excuse what she did. But she’s paid the price, I can tell you that.”

Joyce swallowed. “What about—the father?”

“An Eyetalian boy. No offense.” Mrs. Jevic checked the baby’s diaper. “He skipped town the minute she told him. He could be anywhere by now. And his mother’s a real witch. She won’t have anything to do with Susan. She blames it all on Irene.”

There were footsteps on the porch. Then the screen door slammed.

“Irene!” Mrs. Jevic called. “Joyce Novak is here.”

Joyce’s heart quickened. She wished, absurdly, for a place to hide.
What do I say to her?
she thought frantically.

They waited a moment.

“Irene?” Mrs. Jevic called.

She rose and glanced out the window.

“That’s strange,” she said. “Looks like she went back up the street.”

J
OYCE WALKED HOME
, her hands in her pockets. The air had turned cold. She’d waited another half hour, but Irene hadn’t returned. “I’ll come back another time,” she told Mrs. Jevic, after they’d each had two macaroons. She walked quickly, grateful to leave the noisy, overheated house.

Her whole life she’d heard of girls who had to get married; less often, girls sent away to convents, or to live with relatives out of state. At one time she’d believed, childishly, that these girls were wicked. Later she decided they were merely stupid. A boy would try to talk you into anything; he had nothing to lose. It was the girl who took all the risks.

Experience had taught her that life was not so simple. Irene wasn’t stupid, just a girl who’d seen too many movies—as Joyce had; as they all had. It was, she reflected, a dangerous pastime, mooning over the handsome, clever men on the screen. It doomed you to disappointment; it made you
expect too much. Joyce had never been in love, but felt herself capable of it. She could love Fred Astaire or Clark Gable or Errol Flynn, an elegant, cultivated fellow who wore wonderful clothes and possessed all sorts of hidden talents, who sang and danced and even fought in a way that looked beautiful; who even when he drank was witty and articulate and gentle and wise. The harder job was loving what men really were—soldiers and miners, gruff and ignorant; drunken louts who communicated mainly by cursing, who couldn’t tell you anything about life that you didn’t already know. That was something Joyce wanted no part of. It seemed to her a waste of love.

Poor Irene. Joyce could imagine easily how it had happened. Stuck in Bakerton, answering phones at the radio station; Irene bored and boy-crazy, starved for attention. An easy mark for a fellow who wanted only one thing.

She crossed the tracks and began the hike up Polish Hill. Halfway up, the sidewalk ended; a narrow path wound alongside the road. The path was safer than the road, quicker than hiking through the woods. Still, it was a rough climb, narrow and winding and littered with red dog. One false step and you’d easily twist an ankle, trip and fall headlong down the steep hill.

Irene, Joyce reflected, had taken a false step, one nobody would let her forget:
I thought the whole town knew.
She herself had stuck to the path. As far as she could tell, it was the only logical route, even though it didn’t take her anywhere she wanted to go.

T
he days grew shorter. By suppertime it was nearly dark. The family ate at the big table in the kitchen. Lucy chattered about her day at school. Sandy hunched silently over his plate. Rose cooked enough for ten: huge vats of minestrone, piles of macaroni, pounds of eggplant baked with cheese. She herself took seconds and sometimes thirds. Joyce reminded her, gently at first:
A serving of noodles is two ounces.
She had saved the leaflet from the doctor’s office and pasted it to the refrigerator door. Finally she bought a scale at the drugstore and meted out the portions herself.

In the evenings they sat together in the parlor: Joyce reading, Lucy doing homework, Rose hemming skirts or trousers by hand. A tailor in town paid her a half-dollar per item. She sewed for ten, twenty minutes at a time, then stopped to rest her eyes.

Years later, looking back, Joyce would try to remember where Sandy spent those evenings. Often he barricaded himself in his room. “Homework,” he said, when Joyce asked what he did in there for hours on end.
He said it with a twist to his lips, a smart-aleck tone that made her feel foolish. He seemed to be laughing at her.

Some nights a car would park in front of the house and honk its horn. Then Sandy would rumble down the stairs.

“Where are you going?” Joyce would call after him.

“Uptown,” he’d answer, slamming the door behind him.

A few times she had gone to the window. Each time a different car—a green Plymouth, a Studebaker sedan—and a different girl. Sandy hopped inside, and the car tore away, scattering gravel. Music from the open windows, a silly song that had been popular that summer:
Rag mop, rag mop.

J
OYCE FILLED OUT APPLICATIONS
at the phone company and the post office, the grocery store and the five-and-ten. She could run a cash register or serve customers at the candy counter. It wouldn’t be ideal, but she could do it. Still nobody called.

A month passed. The weather turned cold. The winter coal was delivered and paid for. Lucy’s parochial school tuition came due.

“She could try the public school,” Rose said hesitantly, but Joyce disagreed. She herself had graduated Bakerton High and considered her own education lacking. Unlike Sandy, Lucy was a good student. If the town had a better school, she deserved to go there.

In November Joyce went to work at the dress factory.

She was placed on the second floor, collars and facings. In the same department were two of her classmates from high school, Sylvia Fierro and Frances Scalia. Irene Jevic followed the other two like a lost child. Her first day on the job Joyce noticed them in the lunchroom,
Sylvia and Frances chattering loudly, Irene chewing silently at her sandwich.

“Hi there,” said Joyce, pulling up a chair.

Irene looked stunned. “What are you doing here?”

“Collars and facings. I started this morning.”

“Holy cow.”

For a long time neither spoke.
“Holy cow” pretty much covers it,
Joyce reflected. There was nothing more to say.