The Sisters Page 4

  Mabel wailed. “It won’t work. It won’t work. Something will go wrong. She’s sure to want some of her things. The stereopticon. We could go back for that—just for that.”

  “We’ll find her one in Chicago.”

  “You don’t understand!” Mabel struggled to get out of the seat again, but Wallace pulled her to him, holding her head against his chest.

  “Mabel, Mabel,” Wallace whispered, stroking her hair. “It’s too late, too late.”

  Yes. Too late. There was no going back now.

  THREE

  The Letter

  November 1933

  Newman, Indiana

  BERTIE

  NOT A DROP SPILLED FOR once. The rusted threads of the cap scraped when Bertie twisted it back onto the lamp. She ought not to use any kerosene this time of day, she knew, but there wasn’t enough light coming through the window and her fingers were too cold to cut the cabbage. Hans would fuss about it, but she’d just have to remind him how he was always telling her they had to save where they could on the light bill. He’d come right back and say kerosene cost money, too, but then he’d go sit at the table and wait for supper and not offer another word about it. She’d keep the lamp going only until she had the fire blazing in the stove.

  Her stomach flopped inside her when she thought of the smell that would soon fill the house—like a mildewed wool coat of Mabel’s she’d once found in the old barn, only heated up to spread the stink. If she had the salt to spare, she’d shred a couple of heads and pack a crock for sauerkraut. But no, even if she did have the salt, it took weeks to ferment the cabbage … and then if it spoiled partway through, all that food—wasted. And if the kraut did take, what would they eat in the meantime?

  At least Alma was asleep. She’d dropped right off as soon as Bertie had set her in the rocking chair, bundled in one of her daddy’s sweaters. Bertie was glad for it. That child had gotten so she cried every time she saw a head of cabbage, choking on her tears, not able to say just what upset her, but Bertie knew, even if Alma didn’t exactly. It was the way her small belly filled with gas after she ate it. Four-year-old bellies weren’t made to eat cabbage nearly every day—nor grown bellies, either, for that matter, but that’s how it was. Every week for months, when Hans carried in the grocery box—two or three heads of cabbage. And then one day, suddenly, it would be potatoes and they’d feel like Christmas had come, until more months passed with potatoes and potatoes, each week a little softer and more shriveled. After that there might not be any vegetables at all, except the canned tomatoes and the dried beans. The only thing that was sure about what came in the grocery box was that it would never be enough and the last day or two of every week, first she and then Hans would go without so Alma could have a little something.

  She gathered up the chopped cabbage and dropped it in the pot then slid her palm across the counter to make sure she didn’t miss any little pieces. Mama used to sprinkle a little caraway in if she had it, or some cracked pepper. That small yellow onion, chopped fine, might be nice on top for a change. Bertie wiped her hands dry and scraped the knife clean on the edge of the pot, ready to peel the onion—she’d save the leavings to drop into a broth—then stopped herself just before she made the cut. Hans would need that onion tomorrow, sliced onto the last of the bread. If she used it tonight for flavor, she’d have to send Hans out to work without a lunch, and that wouldn’t be right.

  At least he had work. Most of the other women she knew couldn’t say the same about their men. From one day to the next, Hans never knew what he’d be doing—unloading trucks, digging ditches, clearing brush, laying bricks. When Bill Crother had to shut down the mill, he’d turned off close to a hundred men, keeping just a dozen to make up his work crew—even Hans with his bad leg. Somehow, for the last two years, Mr. Crother had managed to find work for them steady, waiting at the empty mill every morning at six to carry them off to wherever they were needed, sometimes moving them three or four times in a single day. He’d stay right with them, Hans told her, working alongside them, then put in hours longer asking around to find another day’s work. There were plenty of folks needing help who couldn’t pay for it—even in trade—but good as Mr. Crother was, he put his men first and wouldn’t take any charity work. He did his best to hand each of them a few dollars every week, but mostly he paid in groceries because he could stretch the money better that way. Now that winter was coming on, Bertie hoped the coal company would use the crew regular again, since they paid in coal. Each man got a shovelful for every full load sold—on a good day that might be five or six—and at the end of the day, they could divide up the flakes left behind in the truck bed. It didn’t leave them any extra, but most days last winter they’d had some to warm up the house of an evening, enough to take the chill off before they tucked Alma into the bed between them.

  Just like she’d promised herself, Bertie snuffed the lamp now that the cabbage was stewing. Nothing to do but let it cook and to wait for Hans to come home to dish it up. She’d grown up thinking of her family as poor, but it had never been like this. They didn’t have much at Christmas, and until her hips and bosom had spread out bigger than Mabel’s, she’d worn her sister’s hand-me-down dresses. They’d learned not to waste food or anything else, and at school, though it did make the teacher mad, they used up every bit of space on their paper and wrote new compositions on the backs of ones that had already been marked. But now she knew what it really meant to be poor. She could think of a hundred things to do—like stitch up the seam in Alma’s blue dress, but how could she? What was she to do, unravel a seam from one of her own to get a length of thread? Her dresses were all so old, any thread she’d get would break in the pulling. She’d clean the windows if she had a few drops of vinegar. Or she would mend the chair seat that had broken through if she had any cane on hand. She’d at least wash her hair so she’d look a little nicer when Hans got home, if she could spare the soap. If, if, if—that’s what these years had done to them.

  There was a banging at the back door, enough to rattle the window. Bertie glanced at Alma, still asleep in the rocker, and stepped into the hall to look. Alice Conrad. She came at least once a week, asking Bertie for some sugar or extra yeast or a little wedge of bacon—always something Bertie either didn’t have or couldn’t spare—every time making a point about how her husband had lost his job when the mill closed. There were three or four others like Alice who lived nearby, women bitter that Hans had been kept on when their husbands weren’t.

  Bertie had overheard them talking one day when she passed them on the corner, on her way down to the riverbank with Alma to watch the barges pass. “Bill Crother’s brother died of the polio, you know,” said one. The others nodded, and it was Alice who said what the rest were thinking. “Just pity, then. Why else keep a cripple when there’s plenty of strong-legged men to do the work?”

  Bertie wished now she’d said to them what had come into her head: Crother’s kept him ’cause he’s the best one down there. Never missed a day of work, and there isn’t anybody can lift more. But she hadn’t said it. Instead, she’d clamped her lips tight and shoved past them, dragging Alma behind her. If she had said it, they wouldn’t have believed her and would have just turned their noses up and walked away, but maybe then they wouldn’t keep coming over asking for things, trying to make her feel bad. Not that she did. Why should she? But she did hate the sight of every one of them.

  “Afternoon, Bertie.” Alice turned the knob and stepped inside without being asked. “Cooked cabbage?” She walked over to the stove and lifted the lid on the pot. “My little Harry just loves cabbage. Specially with corned beef. I can’t think when the last time was we had some.”

  Again, Bertie held her tongue. Only last week she’d seen Alice coming out of the relief office with an order of groceries, and there was a tin of corned beef peeking right out of the top. Ever since President Roosevelt had taken over, all those men who’d been let go from the mill—between the grocery orders an
d the checks—were doing about as well as they were. It hardly paid for Hans to wear himself out with working. All he had to do was put in as disabled, but he would have died before he quit and went on the relief.

  “Would you have a cup of flour to spare?” Alice asked.

  “Used the last for the bread yesterday,” Bertie said. It was a lie, but it might just as easy be the truth.

  “It’s Sue’s birthday, you see.” Sue was Alma’s age. “And if I just had a little more flour, I could make her a cake. I’ve been saving the sugar for months.” Alice had something in her hand, a piece of paper, and she kept running her fingers along the edge of it, over and over.

  “I wasn’t able to do a cake for Alma’s last birthday.” Instead of closing the door, Bertie opened it wider and said to Alice, “A child that age is really too little to know any different.”

  Alice pulled out a chair and sat down, tapping the paper she was holding on the table. “That wind sure is cold, Bertie. But nice you’re able to have the house good and warm.”

  Nothing to do but shut the door and go on over to the table. She wouldn’t sit down, though. Standing beside Alice, Bertie could see what she had in her hand. An envelope. The same pale yellow, the same blue ink. It had gone to Alice’s box by mistake and now here was Alice, come to pry.

  “What’s that you’ve got there?” Bertie asked.

  “Well, I swear,” said Alice. “I think I must have left my head right behind me on the pillow this morning.” She laughed at her own joke, and Bertie did her best to force a smile. “This came to my house. It looks like it might be for you.” She held it up before her face, as if to read it for the first time. “But really I don’t see how it can be. Those people at the post office have got you mixed up with somebody named Alberta Fischer.”

  Bertie didn’t have to see the address on the envelope to know how it was written: Miss Alberta Fischer, General Delivery, Juniper, Kentucky. The return address was someplace in Chicago. Mabel never put her name on it, just a single M, but even without that, Bertie would have known who it was from. She could always pick out Mabel’s handwriting, as delicate and pretty as she was. Up above the original address, somebody at the Juniper post office would have printed Mrs. Imogene Jorgensen, 738 Clark Street, Newman, Indiana. She wished she could take back the note she had scribbled to the Juniper postmaster right after she was married, telling him how to send on any mail that might come to her. He must have thought it an odd thing for her to do, since she’d never had a letter in her life, but right away he sent out an envelope that had been sitting with the dead letters for four or five months, paying extra out of his own pocket for the postman to bring it straight out to the house. She’d even had to sign for it.

  “I was Fischer before I was married,” she said to Alice. “And there’s some who’ve always called me Alberta.” She held out her hand for the letter.

  “This one’s come a long way,” Alice said, pretending again like she hadn’t spent a long while studying the envelope’s details before she ever stepped out of her house. “Postmark says Chicago, Illinois. You got family in Chicago?”

  “Now I think of it, Alice, I believe I did save back a little flour. You said you needed a cup?”

  “Two cups would be better.”

  Getting up from the table, Alice scraped her chair across the floor, and Bertie pointed at Alma sleeping in the rocker. She opened the cabinet door just enough to reach in and get the flour canister. No reason to let Alice see what else was inside. She could have put the flour into a sack, but instead she scooped it up in two coffee cups, so Alice would have to put the letter down.

  “I thank you for bringing the mail by,” Bertie said, leading Alice back to the door. “Hope your cake turns out.”

  Alice turned to look at her over the cups of flour. “I’ll be anxious to hear all about your letter.”

  “Bye,” Bertie said, closing the door just a little too fast so Alice had to quick-step out of the way.

  Back in the kitchen, she closed off the hall door to keep the heat in, then sat down at the table and picked up the envelope. Most folks looked forward to letters, but like all the ones that had found her before in Newman, this wasn’t the one she wanted.

  Hans had stood up and looked solemn when that first letter came, like it was some important telegram, and she’d made up a story quick, showing him how it had been forwarded. She told him it was nothing but a letter from her grandmother’s sister, who didn’t write too often, then she folded it into her apron pocket so he’d forget about it. When she and Hans were getting to know each other, she had told him that because she shared her mother’s name, Imogene, the family had all called her by her middle name, Alberta—Bertie for short. It had surprised her how easily the lie had come, once she made it up, and how it felt almost true, right from the start. As far as Hans was concerned, her given name was Imogene Alberta Fischer and she had just passed her twenty-sixth birthday instead of her twenty-first. When she’d left Juniper behind her, she’d taken her mother’s Christian name and her sister’s age and told everyone she was an only child whose parents had both died of the flu in ’18, taken in by the preacher of the Baptist Church until she was old enough to earn her keep. There was a piece of truth in all of it. Daddy had died of the flu, and after Jim Butcher hanged himself, the preacher did take her in until Nellie Perkins was ready to have her at the boardinghouse. Bertie wished now that she’d decided to take her mother’s full maiden name, Imogene East, when she was on the train out of Juniper, the greasy dollars from Jim Butcher’s strongbox in her pocket, but then there had still been a little part of her that wanted to leave a trail in case Wallace took a notion to follow it.

  Odd how even that first letter had the same address as this one, not directed to the old house. Maybe Mabel had somehow heard the news about Jim Butcher. Or maybe she just figured with her gone, Bertie wouldn’t stay there. Well, she was right about that. A sour burn pricked the back of Bertie’s throat. Time and again she’d tried to work out some other reason for Mabel to leave her like she did. But in the end it didn’t matter. That’s what she’d done. And that’s how she’d shown herself for what she really was.

  Every time a new letter came—this one made the eighth or ninth—Bertie prayed it would be the last, but Mabel wasn’t one to give up. Lucky thing that after the first, all the rest had come with the regular post while Hans was at work. But now Bertie had Alice Conrad to worry about, with her big mouth. No knowing who she might tell. At least she hadn’t opened it—the seal was still tight—but Alice could sure start the questions going if she wanted to.

  Well, the letters had to stop. But how to do that without writing back?

  The day after that first letter had come, after Hans had gone to work, Bertie had almost opened it, hoping for some news about Wallace, but she couldn’t bring herself to read anything Mabel had to say. There was nothing to say. Nothing but lies. Even an apology would leave too bitter a taste—not that she believed Mabel would ever apologize.

  “Mother.” Alma was scooting her way out of the rocker, pale cheeks drawn in, thin brown curls sticking all over her head, her daddy’s faded green cardigan slipping off her shoulder, not looking any better for her nap. When Alma was born, she was plump as a dumpling and Bertie had worried the girl would tend to heavy like herself—well, like she used to be—but now she couldn’t imagine her daughter as anything but rickety. She didn’t even seem to want things, not like a four-year-old should, and Bertie reckoned this was because Alma had learned wanting didn’t do a bit of good. Even now she knew the child wasn’t calling for her so much as just letting her know she was awake again.

  “Come on over here.” Bertie sat down at the table and pulled Alma onto her lap, folding the sleeves of the sweater up around her daughter’s tiny wrists. “Let’s count things.” Alma lifted her arms to wind them around her mother’s neck, but Bertie caught her hands and pushed her arms back down, then twisted the child around again to face the table. She
spread her own hands flat and said, “Count,” and Alma touched each of her mother’s fingers, calling off the numbers without energy. “Now the buttons,” Bertie said, leaning back to reach to the low shelf for the old tobacco can, filled with buttons from clothes long gone. She dropped a handful onto the table to keep Alma busy.

  “Flower,” Alma said, rolling between her fingers a small, carved silver button.

  “Rose,” said Bertie, taking the button from her daughter. “A rose is a kind of flower.” She handed Alma a tortoiseshell button and pointed out the different colors, then lifted Alma into another chair and stood up. “Find me two more like that,” she said, and while Alma sorted, Bertie slipped the rose button into her pocket. She ought not to have kept them, and she really ought to go through the button tin to find the other one and just throw them out—but then, it seemed wrong to waste them. They’d look pretty on a dress for Alma when she got a little older. Besides, no one in Newman, not even Hans, knew anything about that pink dress except that she’d worn it when they married in the judge’s office.

  Not too long ago, out of the blue, Hans had asked about the dress. “You never wear it,” he said.

  “Nothing to wear it to.” She shoved her fist deep into the bread dough she was working on the counter. “It’s too fancy for church.”

  “We got an anniversary coming up. You could wear it then.”

  “Can’t,” she said. “I gave it away in a church drive a while back. It never did fit right.” She was afraid to turn to look at his face, so she lifted the dough with both hands and flipped it over. It sounded like a slap, coming down. She wouldn’t have thought Hans would remember that dress. Every now and again he would shake her up with some tenderhearted feeling she didn’t think he had. She sure couldn’t tell him the truth—that she’d cut that dress to pieces the day after they were married.