That Camden Summer (10 page)

In front of her house she stopped and he showed her how to shut off the key and make sure she left the spark lever and throttle in the up position.

"so I won't break my arm the next time I crank it," he explained.

When the engine quieted, she heaved a sigh

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of relief and let her fingers slide from the wheel. No sooner had her shoulders wilted than they squared again resolutely.

"May I run through it one more time to make sure I remember correctly?"

"Of course."

"Spark on retard J" She repeated what she'd learned without a slip - in the car, out of the car, touching each of the pertinent parts without actually starting the engine.

44 ... throttle in the up position," she finished, meeting his eyes directly. "How did I do?" "Perfectly."

They stood in the street beside the vehicle. She studied it as if evaluating. Finally, she said -' "Elfred gave me a long list of reasons why a woman shouldn't even think of owning a motorcar. He says they break down quite regularly and the tires need patching and something up there needs adjusting all the time."

"The carburetor." "Yes, that's it."

"Carburetors are touchy, all right, but I can show you how to adjust them. It's not very complicated. "

"Elfred says gasoline is heavy and clumsy to put in. "

"Not so heavy and clumsy you couldn't do it. "

"Where does it go?"

"Gas tank's underneath the seat. Here, I'll show you. "

He leaned into the truck and tipped up the

all

seat bottom revealing a wooden floor with a hole through which the mouth of the gas tank projected. "You put the gas in here." He stepped back to let her see.

She bent over and peered at the spout. Beside it a wooden stick was tethered to a string. "What's this?"

"A dipstick to find out how much gas is left."

She studied the increments carved into it. "Gallons?" she inquired.

"Ayup." "Mm, simple." She dropped the stick and stepped back while he replaced the seat and brushed off his palms.

94so tell me, Mr. Farley. You can be honest. Do you think I'm crazy to want to own my own motorcar?"

"Well, you certainly can drive one. You've proven that today."

"There's a garage downtown where I could have it repaired when necessary, right?" "Mmm ... well, yes, if the trouble conveniently

develops when you're in town. Elfred's got a point about these things acting up constantly. Do you mind telling me, Mrs. Jewett, what you want the car for?"

"I've got a job as a public nurse." "Traveling, you mean?"

"Yes, all up and down the county." "All by yourself?" He acted surprised. "Yes. "

"In that case He clamped his hands beneath his armpits. She was beginning to see

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the pose covered a range of tacit responses. "In that case, forget about the motorcar?" "Well, let me put it this way. I wouldn't

want any woman of mine driving all over these mountains in one of these things."

"Yes ... well, you see, Mr. Farley, it's my good fortune that I no longer have to answer to any man for what I do. "

"You asked my opinion and I gave it." "Thank you, Mr. Farley," she said. "Now I'd best get back to work."

She marched inside and left him standing in the thin veins of shadow from the naked ash tree. He went back to work wondering why she'd asked his opinion if she didn't want it.

Sometimes, from up on the ladder, he'd see junk come flying out the front door. Once she flung out some scrub water. Right afterward he heard the piano start up and stopped working to listen.

Strange woman, playing the piano between bouts of scrubbing.

A while later he smelled coffee but she didn't offer him any. Shortly before noon her mother arrived on foot.

"Mr. Farley," she hailed, "is that you up there?"

"Hello, Mrs. Halburton." She was tilted back stiffly, eyeing him with a grouchy expression on her face, a jowly overweight woman dressed in a pail-shaped hat, pressing a black purse against her diaphragm.

"I can't believe she hired you to fix up this old wreck. Why, it's hardly worth the match it

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would take to send the place up."

To the best of his recollection he'd never heard Myra Halburton greet anyone with anything but complaints. It gave him a twinge of pleasure to disagree with her. "Oh, I don't know. You might be surprised when I get all done. "

She flapped a hand in disgust. "That girl's never listened to me a day in her life, and if you ask me, she's plum crazy to put her money into such a shack. I can't imagine what Elfred was thinking. Plus a person has to walk up that blame hill to get here, and my legs are ready to give out on me. 'Course, she wouldn't stop to consider that!" Myra stumped on toward the house. "How's a person supposed to get in here anyway?"

"Stick close to the wall on that porch, Mrs. Halburton," he advised.

She picked her way to the door, complaining nonstop about the construction mess. "Roberta," she called, "you in there?"

Gabe heard Roberta answer, "Mother? Is that you?" Momentarily she appeared at the door while he looked down on her head through the shorn rafters. Her voice lost all color as she said, "Hello, Mother, come in."

"It's a fine how-do-you-do when a daughter doesn't even come to visit her own mother. I thought you'd come up to my house yesterday."

"I thought you'd be at Elfred and Grace's." "That Sophie cooks too rich for me. Bothers my gallbladder." Gabe lost sight of them as they moved into the house. "Merciful heavens,

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girl, have you lost your mind buying a place like this?"

"It's all I could afford."

"It smells like Sebastian Breckenridge's slop pail. That old man was crazier than a coot. V7hy,-_y_Qu can't keep three girls in conditions like this! V.7hat's it got - three bedrooms?" "Two."

"Two bedrooms. Roberta, whatever were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that it might be nice for my children to get to know their grandmother." "Well, of course it will be, which is why I

waited for you all day yesterday."

"I had a busy day. After we arrived and had breakfast I had to meet the draymen here and see that our things were unloaded and get beds set up. It was nearly midnight when we got to bed."

Myra gave the place another once-over, grievance written all over her face. "This is all so unnecessary, Roberta. This is what comes of getting divorced. You had a decent home and a husband and now you've got this."

"How do you know I had a decent home, Mother? You never came to see it."

"Oh yes, blame me. You're the one who ... who moved off the minute you got old enough, as if your family meant nothing to you.)5

"I moved off because I had to, to go to college. And I stayed with George because I had to. What else can a wife do? But I'm all done with that now. I can do exactly as I please."

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"But the disgrace, Roberta. It's all over town that you've divorced him."

"He kept mistresses, Mother."

"Oh, please!" Myra slammed her eyes shut and held up both hands. "Please, don't be vulgar. 5'

"He kept mistresses, one right after the other, women he could live off of, which he did until they finally realized he was nothing but a gigolo. Then they'd throw him out and he'd come crawling back to me, inveigling his way back into my good graces, asking for a new stake. Time and again I took him back, until I simply couldn't anymore. The last time he came back I locked the door on him and consulted the girls about getting a divorce. They encouraged me to get it, and I refuse to hang my head about doing what I had to to make a better life for me and my girls. "

"But it just isn't done, Roberta! Not by respectable women. You don't understand. People whisper the very word."

"Of course I understand. I've already heard it whispered behind my back since I've been here. "

"And it's obvious it doesn't bother you or you would have kept it quiet to begin with instead of trumpeting the fact."

"I didn't trumpet the fact. You and Elfred and Grace seemed to have done that for me, otherwise how would people have known even before I got here?"

"Who knew?"

"Farley, for one. I met him in the steamship

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office and he alr(lady knew. I certainly wasn't the one who told him. "

"It just goes to show, people will talk, and how's a mother supposed to hold her head up?

"You might try telling people that I've got three lovely children I intend to support on my own, and that I've got a job as a public nurse. 1)

"Traveling all around the countryside unescorted? Oh, that'll really impress my friends. And speaking of that, how do you intend to get around?"

"I'm buying a motorcar."

"A motorcar! V.7ho's going to drive it?" C4I am.5

"Oh, heavenly days, there's just no getting through to you, is there? You were always headstrong and you still are. But mark my words, Roberta, you won't have any friends in this town, not when you flaunt your independence the way you do! Vv7hy can't you just take a job in the mill like the other women do? The girls could get on there, too, and help you out some."

"The mill again! Mother, we were arguing about the mill when I left here eighteen years ago! "

"You were always too good for the mill, weren5t you?"

"It isn't a question of being too good for the mill, it's a question of what I wanted out of life, and it wasn't working in some closed room splicing felt ten hours a day for the rest of my life. And that's certainly not a sentence I'd

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impose on my daughtcrs, either! They're bright girls, with imagination,' and spirit. Taking them out of high school to work in the mill would crush that spirit and ary up that imagination, don't you see?"

"All I see is that you defied me years ago and went off to spend momy your grandparents had left you to study nursirg, of all things. And look what it got you. This aouse. This ... pathetic house."

"Mother, why can't you be proud of me, for once in your life?"

"Oh, please

"Everything Grace does is perfect, but nothing I've ever done in my w1ole life has met with your approval."

"Grace follows the rules." "Whose rules? Youn?"

"I didn't come owr here to be insulted, Roberta."

"Neither did L I (ame here thinking that maybe, after all these 7ears, I might be able to get along with my farrily, but I can see I was wrong. All I get is cfiticism and admonitions to put my girls to wojk in the mill. Well, I'm sorry, Mother. I can't.'

Myra touched her foiehead. "You've given me a monstrous headache, Roberta."

"I'd offer you some stone root, but I haven't had time to unpack rn medicines."

"I don't need stone root. I need to go home and lie down with a cold compress on my head."

"Very well, Mother I'll tell the girls their

grandmother stopped by and would like to meet them soon."

Her tone was acid enough to send Myra toward the door without a good-bye. Watching her go, Roberta thought sadly, why should there be a good-bye when there was no hello? No hug, certainly no kiss, only Myra sailing in on a billow of complaints, just the way it had always been.

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HEN Myra stormed out of the house Gabe was sitting under the ash tree with his ankles crossed, finishing up W

a cheese sandwich.

"That girl has always had the power to exasperate me. I should have known better than to come up here! Now I have to walk all the way back down, and what do I get for my trouble but her disrespect!"

Gabe sprang to his feet holding his sandwich tin.

"I can give you a ride back down, Mrs. Halburton."

"I'd be obliged, Mr. Farley. At least some young people know how to treat their elders!" She tramped straight to the truck and he

leaped forward to give her a hand up. While he was cranking the engine, Roberta drifted to her living room doorway and stood back, watching. Though her face was hidden in shadow he caught a glimpse of her hands, pressed fast against the dishtowel over her skirts. He'd heard enough to get the gist of their argument and to realize she and her mother got along like a pair of hens tied over a clothesline. He thought of his own mother, a kind woman with loving ways, and felt a twinge of compassion for Roberta, being attacked instead of welcomed after so many years away.

Myra complained all the way.

"Moves back herye bold as brass with her divorce papers in hand. Says she's going to get a motorcar. Says she's going to run all over the mountains in it and leave her children home alone. Says they wanted her to get a divorce. Hmph! Anything I've got to say on the subject rolls off her like water off a duck's back. She always thinks she's right. Always! Accuses me of playing favorites with Gracie. Well, Gracie never gave me a moment's worry, Mr. Farley, not one! But that one - from the time she could speak she was defying me. Gracie married a good man and had his children and made a good marriage, which is a woman's job. She didn't go running off to become a nurse! Why, it's no wonder Roberta's husband wasn't home much. What man would want to be when his wife came and went whenever she pleased?"

There was more, so much more that by the time Gabe dropped off Myra at her front gate he was ready to kick her out at ten miles an hour and watch her roll.

Watching Myra climb into Farley's truck, Roberta indulged in a rare moment of heavyheartedness. Her mother hadn't changed. She was still the autocratic oppressor of Roberta's youth. Part of the reason Roberta had left Camden was to escape her. How misguided she'd been to believe the intervening years might have tempered her mother.

Grace, Grace, the favorite had always been Grace. Grace, who used to play the songs on the piano that Mama liked; who wore her hair the way Mama said she should; who walked, talked, postured the way Mama told her to; who loved to hide around doorways and listen to Mama gossip; who garnered Mama's approval by becoming a gossip herself; who brought home a handsome, flirtatious swain able to turn his charms on Myra and blind her to his faults.

Grace, who stayed in Camden, married Elfred, gave him her inheritance to start his business, bore his children and had turned a blind eye to his extramarital forays ever since.