Until She Comes Home

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The first two times Julia tries to wake Bill, he doesn’t stir. Now he will definitely be late to work. All the men will be returning to the factory today, and Bill should be among them. Behind her, the twins’ door is closed; their room, quiet. She checks her watch.

After James left the house yesterday, Bill had stood in the entry and stared at Julia. He didn’t speak, didn’t ask her to explain, didn’t notice the mess in the kitchen. Just stared. What had happened between James and Julia left something tangible in the room, something concrete enough that it filled up the entry and pushed Bill and Julia apart. By the time Bill left, slamming the front door behind him, he knew the truth even though Julia hadn’t uttered a word. She had waited up for him, but at some point during the night, she fell asleep on the sofa and didn’t wake when he came in.

“Bill,” Julia says, pushing open the bedroom door. She kneads her neck with one hand where it’s tightened up from sleeping without a pillow. “You’re late to work.” She leans into the room but doesn’t cross inside. “You need to get up.”

The bed creaks and Bill throws back the top cover. He is fully dressed in the clothes he wore the day before and still wears his black boots. Both are untied. Black laces dangle across the white sheets. Pushing himself into a sitting position, he swings his legs over the side of the bed. Even from across the room, Julia smells the liquor. Black-and-white scotch. He drinks it over ice.

“Figure I’d better get my house in order first,” he says, his voice rough from cigar smoke.

“What do you mean by that?”

Julia crosses into the room but stops at the foot of the bed. She leans over and tugs on the quilt, straightening Bill’s side.

“What did he do?” Bill says.

“What did who do?”

“James Richardson. In this house. What did he do to you?”

Feeling as if she’s naked from the waist up, Julia folds her arms over her chest. “Don’t be ridiculous. Why aren’t you going to work?”

“Asked you a question. Plain and simple.”

“And I’m telling you, it’s a silly question.”

Bill groans as he stands from the bed. He often comes home from the factory rubbing his lower back or the thick muscles at the base of his neck. He walks over to the window that overlooks the street.

“He touch you?”

“Keep your voice down. You’ll wake the girls.”

“Answer me, then. He touch you?”

Julia backs into the doorway and leans there. “Why aren’t you going to work, Bill?”

“You going to tell me what I walked in on last night?”

“You didn’t walk in on anything. James was… he was comforting me. He was being kind.”

“He was comforting my wife?” Bill says slowly, thinking about each word as if not quite certain what they mean.

“Yes, he was.”

Julia stares at him. His rounded shoulders hang, his hair is mussed on top, his jawline droops. He has lost more of himself than Julia has in the years since Maryanne died. Studying him now, she realizes how weak he’s become. So weak that all he remembers of their daughter is that she cried. All he remembers is her small red face and the tiny, rigid body. All he did during those few short months she lived was complain. He needed more sleep. Couldn’t be expected to work a full day if he couldn’t get a decent night’s sleep. No one else’s baby cried so much. Why theirs?

Bill unfastens the small buttons on the front of his shirt. Next, he unbuckles his belt, pulls it from his waistband, and tosses it on the bed.

“He lay his hands on you?”

Maybe Bill got so tired of all the crying he decided to stop it himself. Maybe that’s what has weighed so heavily on him all these years. When he mumbled about being sorry, he wasn’t talking about some woman down on Willingham or Elizabeth Symanski. Julia hadn’t considered it before. Never. Now it’s so obvious. The doctor was wrong. Babies don’t die for no reason. It’s not the grief that has made Bill so weak. It’s the guilt.

“I asked you a question. Did he lay his hands on you?”

“Only after I laid mine on him.”

Peeling off his shirt and tossing it on the bed, too, Bill lifts his eyes. “Excuse me? You want to repeat that?”

Though she’s gone too far, Julia can’t stop. She swallows and lifts her chin. She knows it now. Bill did something to Maryanne the night she died. He must have gone to the nursery while Julia slept. He must have decided he couldn’t live with it another day. All those nights after Maryanne died, he walked through this house as if Julia weren’t living in it alongside him. He looked past her, around her, through her. He was numb. He must have forgotten his guilt in these recent years, forgotten Maryanne. He became playful again, almost seemed to love Julia as he did in the beginning. But then came Grace’s baby, Betty Lawson’s baby, Elizabeth’s disappearance-one of them reminded him, drew his guilt to the surface. She knows he did it, knows that’s why he can’t live with the thought of another child.

She had overslept the morning it happened. When she woke, startled by the silence, she threw back the covers. She stood on the cool oak floors, curled under her toes, and as she rubbed her feet together to warm them, she listened. Inside the nursery, the weight of the air lifted. The temperature dropped. It was as if a window opened. Or someone shook a blanket. She walked across the wooden floor, slowly, hoping it wouldn’t squeak underfoot. At the crib, she placed one hand on the top rail, reached inside with the other. Maryanne’s tiny leg was cool.

The pain of it took two weeks settling in and then it stayed. The doctor rubbed his thick gray eyebrows and said it happens sometimes. No good reason why. Don’t go thinking you’ll find one. Then he patted Bill on the back.

“After a time, she’ll be ready again,” the doctor had said.

In the beginning, people offered privacy. A soft touch on the shoulder. A hug. They brought casseroles and lemon squares. Grace came every day, slipping silently through the front door to do the laundry, push a broom, scrub the pots and pans. She was the only one brave enough to wade through it day after day. James worked outside. He raked leaves and cleaned gutters. When a few weeks had passed, Bill thanked Grace and James, sent them away with a handshake and a hug, and closed the door to Maryanne’s room.

“Got to put it behind us,” he had said.

When a few more months passed, people began to talk about time. They said it would heal Julia and Bill. Not to worry, it always healed. But the pain continued to sink in, deeper one day than it was the last.

She’d asked Bill, “Do you feel it’s easier now?”

She needed to remember Maryanne, to talk about her. Julia needed to feel like she had been a good mother. Needed to feel like it wouldn’t happen again.

“All the talk in the world won’t bring her back,” Bill had said, and slowly he came home from work later and later. He would drive himself down Alder Avenue, stagger through the door. Other nights, someone from the bar would bring him home and help him up the stairs. Strangers stumbling through her house, dropping her husband on her bed.

And finally, signaling the grief should be over, when almost a year had passed, people began to say Julia and Bill should try to have another baby. Such a shame that a lovely girl and a good man shouldn’t have a child. Julia held out her arms to Bill, told him they ached. It started after Maryanne died, her shoulders and forearms and joints aching because she couldn’t hold her baby.

“You want to say that to me again?” Bill says. His chest swells. He squeezes both hands into fists.

“It’s been a long time since a man’s touched me,” Julia says. “James is as good as any other.”

Bill crosses the room in two long strides and, grabbing Julia’s upper arm, he slams her against the wall. Her head bounces off the doorframe. With one forearm across her chest, Bill holds her there. Standing over her, he smells like smoke from Harris’s Bar. He seems larger again, like he was before Maryanne died. His chest pumps up and down as he breathes through his nose, his mouth closed tight.

Barely able to speak because of the weight of Bill’s arm on her chest, Julia says, “Get. Out.”

Today is the first day the men have gone back to work and Mr. Herze and the others will resume a normal schedule. Within the half hour, Mr. Herze will come home and Malina has yet to set supper on the table, mix his Vernors, or deal with the trampled flowers in the backyard. Perhaps she’ll yank those snapdragons out entirely. Perhaps that would be best. But not until Julia has seen them. All day, Malina has kept watch for Julia, even knocked on her door a few times. Not even those twins have shown themselves. Checking the street for any sign of Mr. Herze’s car and knowing she’ll need to get home soon, Malina knocks one last time on Grace’s door. From inside the house comes the sound of footsteps and the front door finally swings open.

“Thank goodness,” Malina says, fingering the string of pearls at her neck. “You are home. I hope I didn’t interrupt your supper.”

Grace wipes her hands on a dish towel. “Not at all. James isn’t home yet. Please, come in.”

“No time, really,” Malina says, crossing over the threshold. “Are you ill? It’s so dreadfully dark and dreary in here.”

“How may I help you, Malina?”

“A hammer,” Malina says. “I’m in need of a hammer.”

“A hammer?” Grace says.

“I’ve been all over the neighborhood. Perhaps James has one?”

“In the garage, I imagine.”

No bulb hangs from the ceiling of the Richardsons’ garage to light Malina’s way. She pauses until her eyes adjust to the dim light and then she sees it-a large green metal toolbox pushed up against the back wall, where James won’t accidentally run it over with his car. Next to the toolbox, several bags of clothing, shoes, purses, and belts have also been stored against the wall and out of the way. With one finger, Malina flips up the latch on the toolbox and opens the lid. Two hammers lie on top. Each has a rounded head and no clawed end. They are a different kind of hammer, not at all what she needs.

“What are these clothes here?” Malina shouts from the back of the garage. “Are they meant for the clothing drive?”

“Mr. Symanski brought them,” Grace shouts back. “Mostly Ewa’s things, I imagine. He asked that I get them to you, to the thrift store.”

“Let me take them off your hands,” Malina says. She gathers the three bags filled with clothing and leaves the belts, purses, and shoes for another time because they won’t need to be laundered. Stepping back into the sunlight, the three bags cradled in her arms, she smiles at Grace. “I’ll see that these get to the thrift store. You shouldn’t be bothered with them. The news of Elizabeth must be especially difficult for you.”

Grace lingers inside the shadow thrown by the house and smiles in lieu of proper thanks. “Did you find what you need?”

“It really isn’t important,” Malina says, tired of constantly concerning herself with Mr. Herze’s hammer. He’ll have no reason to take notice of his tools during these hot months. Before he sets about winterizing the house this autumn, she’ll buy yet another hammer to replace what the twins stole from her, one with a red handle. “Why, Grace,” Malina says, noticing how Grace’s eyes flick from side to side and how she clings to the railing with both hands. “Are you frightened? Has something frightened you, dear?”

Grace shakes her head, but Malina knows fear when she sees it.

“You’ll come to supper one night soon,” Malina says, bracing the bags against her hips. “You and James. I’ll spoil you before your little one comes along. That would be nice, don’t you think?”

Grace really is a lovely person. A little young for a man like James, but that isn’t for Malina to judge. She is, after all, much younger than Mr. Herze. She likes to tell people she was seventeen when she married, but really she was fifteen. Only thirteen when they first met. Perhaps this fear is something else Grace and Malina share in common.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Malina says. “A warm supper served up by someone else for a change.”

But before Grace can answer, Malina notices the cars driving past the house, more than normal for a lazy afternoon, and the sound of engines shutting off and doors slamming. For the first time in several days, husbands are coming home from work. A commotion rises up in the back alley-rocks spraying across a wooden fence. A black sedan slows behind Grace’s house and rolls into the dark garage-James Richardson already home from work.

“I’ve got to run,” Malina says, hurrying past Grace toward the street. “Very soon you’ll come to supper. You and James. Won’t that be lovely?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

It’s nearly suppertime. Izzy and Arie are especially hungry because Aunt Julia never made lunch and they had to fend for themselves. Izzy stands at the end of her bed and yanks the bottom two corners of her bedspread, but because she never bothered to straighten the sheets beneath, it won’t ever look as tidy as Arie’s. Izzy crosses both hands over her rumbling stomach and takes a good long look at her work. For the second time, Arie says that she would like to help but can’t because it’s against the rules, but do a good job and Aunt Julia might fry up some chicken for supper. Izzy says she can fix her own bed, thank you very much and now she wishes Arie hadn’t mentioned fried chicken because her stomach hurts even worse.

Arie always makes her bed first thing in the morning. She will tug at her sheets until they are taut, tuck sharp hospital corners, and snap her bedspread so it floats smoothly, perfectly down over the bed. Deciding she doesn’t care about a smooth quilt even if it means no supper, Izzy flops down on her mattress, folds her arms behind her head, and wonders why Aunt Julia would throw food against the kitchen wall and if Uncle Bill will ever come home again or if he, like Izzy’s mom, is gone for good.

Sitting on her own perfectly made bed, Arie shakes her head at Izzy and continues to work the tip of a steak knife through the belt they found in Mrs. Richardson’s garage. Before starting, Arie had measured out the size of Patches’ neck as best she could remember so when she eventually works the knife through, they’ll be able to buckle the belt to create a loop that is the perfect size.

“Girls?” It’s Aunt Julia tapping on the door. “May I come in?”

The door opens and Aunt Julia walks into the room. Her face and neck are red and her hair is mussed on top. If she had been downstairs frying chicken, she’d be wearing her white cotton bib apron, but she’s not. Izzy sure was hoping for fried chicken.

“Do you girls need to talk about Elizabeth?” Aunt Julia says. “Do you have questions?”

Both shake their heads. They saw Elizabeth only a few times a year. Sometimes they would sit with her while Aunt Julia talked with Mr. and Mrs. Symanski, but she never spoke.

“Then I think we need to have a conversation about stealing?” Aunt Julia says.

Izzy and Arie had hoped Aunt Julia was going to tell them not to worry, that Uncle Bill would be home soon and that the argument was just a silly thing between grown-ups. That’s what they had hoped for. That, and a plate of chicken.

“I would have thought you knew better,” Aunt Julia says.

“Izzy did it,” Arie says, holding the knife in one hand and the belt in the other. The clear jewels on the small buckle shine because she cleaned them with a cotton ball and rubbing alcohol. Arie points the knife at Izzy. “I wasn’t even there.” And then she lowers the knife when she remembers she’s not supposed to ever point one. “Sorry,” she says, even though Aunt Julia didn’t see.

Aunt Julia exhales and blinks slowly like she’s tired of teaching the two of them a lesson. She waves Izzy off her bed, pulls back the bedspread, and begins straightening and smoothing her sheets.

“You didn’t have any,” Izzy says. “I checked all the cupboards. We needed it for Patches. I’ll pay him back.”

“I’ll help earn the money,” Arie says, already feeling bad for telling on Izzy.

Aunt Julia tucks two perfect hospital corners on Izzy’s bed, shakes out the blue spread, and lets it fall into place. “You’ll pay who back?” she says, then sits and cradles Izzy’s pillow in her arms.

“Mr. Beersdorf.”

“The hammer belongs to Mr. Beersdorf?” Aunt Julia fluffs the pillow and, holding it by two corners, gives it a good shake and props it against the center of the headboard. “You know you aren’t supposed to go that far.”

“No,” Izzy says. “That’s Mrs. Herze’s hammer.”

“Why do you have Malina’s hammer, of all things?”

Arie scoots to the edge of her mattress and lets her legs hang over the edge. She sets the knife on the dresser between their two beds and lays the belt over her lap. “We saw her pounding her flowers with it and she was going to blame us. She tries to blame everything on us. We didn’t do anything. We caught her and I took it so we could show you. We weren’t stealing.”

“So the hammer belongs to Malina?” she says. “Why, then, do you owe Mr. Beersdorf money?”

“I stole a can of tuna from him,” Izzy says.

Instead of whirling around to face Izzy, Aunt Julia stares at the belt spread across Arie’s lap. The buckle glitters where it catches the sunlight.

“I wanted to put out tuna for Patches because she loves it. It was my idea. All my idea. Arie didn’t even know. I tricked you into thinking I was Arie and I went to Beersdorf’s by myself.”

Aunt Julia says nothing.

Arie glances at Izzy and then at Aunt Julia. Arie wants Izzy to tell her what’s wrong with Aunt Julia, but Izzy doesn’t know. Aunt Julia stands and lifts the thin belt from Arie’s lap.

“Where did you get this?” Aunt Julia asks, pulling the belt through a loose fist. When she reaches the buckle, she runs her pointer finger over the tiny, clear jewels.

Arie is frightened because Izzy can feel it deep in her chest. Izzy can hear her own heartbeat too, and the inside of her mouth swells until it feels too small for her tongue. That means Arie is feeling the same.

“Mrs. Richardson was going to throw it away,” Arie says.

“It was with her trash,” Izzy says. “We only took it because it was trash. It’s going to be a leash for Patches.”

Izzy stands so she can show Aunt Julia where Arie was making a new hole in the thin piece of leather, but Aunt Julia jerks the belt away.

“This is not Mrs. Richardson’s belt. This is Elizabeth Symanski’s.” She waves the belt in Arie’s face. “Where did you get it?”

“That’s not right,” Izzy says, slipping around Aunt Julia to sit next to Arie. She takes Arie’s hand. “It was trash in Mrs. Richardson’s garage.”

“You stole this from Mr. Symanski?” Aunt Julia shakes her head as she says it. “I can’t imagine you would do such a thing. How could you?”

“No,” Izzy says.

Arie’s eyes are closed and she is shaking her head so she doesn’t have to look at the belt. “We’d never steal from Elizabeth, never steal from Mr. Symanski.”

Aunt Julia hugs the belt to her chest. “How will I ever explain this to him? His daughter isn’t even buried yet and you’re stealing from her.”

“We didn’t, Aunt Julia,” Izzy says. “We didn’t.”

“Let me make one thing perfectly clear. You are forbidden, and I mean forbidden, to leave this house. And I assume that hammer belongs to Mr. Herze, not Mrs. Herze. He’s just come home, so you’ll return it now. See that you apologize and then straight back here with you both. I imagine Uncle Bill will treat you to a whipping and then give you chores to earn money so you can repay Mr. Beersdorf.” Holding the belt against her chest with both hands, Aunt Julia walks from the room.

“We didn’t steal it,” Izzy shouts after her. “I promise, we didn’t steal.”

“In this house,” Aunt Julia says, pausing in the doorway, “your promises amount to nothing.”

Taking tiny steps so as to not trip over the curb, Malina walks faster, almost runs from Grace’s house to hers, ignoring the cars that drive past, all of them carrying husbands home to supper. Though her hair falls into her eyes, she can’t stop to brush it away because in her arms she carries three bags of clothes. By the time she reaches the sidewalk leading to her house, she knows she’s too late. Mr. Herze’s blue sedan sits in the driveway and on the porch-her porch-stand those twins.

Mr. Herze leans in the doorway like a younger man might do, his body loose, one leg crossed over the other. In his hands, he holds something and shakes his head.

“What are you two doing here?” Malina says. “You shouldn’t be bothering Mr. Herze.”

“Aunt Julia made us,” the one twin says. “She said we stole and we have to apologize to both of you.”

Malina walks up the stairs and positions herself between the twins, forcing them to stumble as they move aside.

“What on earth have you done?” she says, and drops the bags. Flimsy blouses and rumpled skirts scatter at Mr. Herze’s feet.

“Malina?” Mr. Herze says.

A shiny silver hammer with a brown handle lies in Mr. Herze’s open palm. It’s clean again, as if Julia scrubbed and dried it before sending the girls to return it.

“These girls say they took this from our backyard,” Mr. Herze says, holding the hammer out for Malina to inspect.

She touches the smooth brown handle. “Is it yours?”

“Not mine,” Mr. Herze says.

“She was pounding down her flowers,” the one twin says. It’s the loud one who is entirely too full of herself. “We saw her and she was going to blame us. She told us our cat was dead and that we ruined those flowers. She says we trampled them and peed on them. That’s why we took the hammer.”

Mr. Herze shoves the tool at Malina. “Is this true?”

“How can it be true if we don’t own such a hammer? They’re telling tales. I shouldn’t venture to guess why.”

The timid twin backs down the stairs.

“We have to give it back,” the mouthy twin says. “We took it and we’re sorry. It’s yours.” And she jumps from the porch, grabs the other one’s hand, and together they run across the lawn, leap Malina’s hedge of wilted snapdragons, and sprint across the street.

“I went looking for my hammer,” Mr. Herze says. “Wanted to assure those two this wasn’t mine.” He wraps his hand around the handle and taps the flat head in his palm. “Couldn’t find it.”

Malina tucks under her skirt and kneels to the clothes spilled across her porch. These must be Elizabeth Symanski’s things. So much lavender and pink. She did love her pastels, even though they washed her out. As Malina shoves the clothes back into the bags, she says, “I’m sure I don’t know anything about hammers and such.”

Shoving the last of the clothes into the bags, Malina gathers them, but before she can stand, Mr. Herze’s hand strikes her left cheek. She stumbles across the porch, falls into the banister, and the bags of clothes fly into the front yard. The railing knocks the wind out of her. Her diaphragm contracts like a fist opening and closing. She gasps for air, trying to fill her lungs, and presses both hands over her cheek. Beneath this cover, the sting fades to a burn. She sucks in one good breath and glances at the neighbors on either side.

“Was it you?” Mr. Herze says. Sweat trickles down the sides of his face and disappears into his jowls. “You’re best served to tell me now. Did you kill her?”

Malina drops her hands from her face. It’s the strangest of feelings, when a person has the wind knocked out of her. The body wanting so badly to draw in a breath and yet it can’t. Staring at Mr. Herze, this is how her body struggles yet again. Slowly, she shakes her head.

Mr. Herze will go into the kitchen now and mix his own drink while he waits for the television set to warm up. This used to happen more often. When Malina was younger, she was careless and would lie without thinking. Maybe she would forget to cook the spareribs in the refrigerator and when they spoiled she would throw them out and lie about the smell coming from the garbage can. With age, she learned to be more careful, to not give herself reason to lie. Pride. That’s what made her lie about the driving and the hammer. No woman wants the others to see her driveway standing empty long after her husband should be home.

“This will not end well,” Mr. Herze says. He also looks up and down Alder Avenue as if he, too, is concerned about the neighbors, then walks inside and slams the door.