“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.