Then Came Heaven (8 page)

“Mommo,”
 he said, in Polish, as their arms went around each other.

“Oh, Eddie... my boy... my precious boy...” They did their weeping, and hugging, then he turned to his dad.

“Poppo,”
 he got out, then his dad’s powerful arms were around him, strong farmer’s arms with splayed hands as tough as harness leather, hauling him close. “She’s gone, Poppo, she’s gone.”

“I know, son... I know...” Cass Olczak was not an articulate man, but a loving one just the same. He could only hold his boy and suffer with him, and hope Eddie understood that he’d do anything to take the pain away if he could, would take it solely unto himself if he could spare any one of his kids any kind of suffering. Cass had come straight from the fields in his striped bib overalls and smelled dusty and sweaty, with overtones of the barn. He was a thick man, a little shorter than Eddie, built low to the ground like the Cossacks from whom he’d descended. His brown wavy hair was beginning to recede, and he had ears the size of a toddler’s foot, with large velvety lobes. Eddie’s Grandma Olczak had always said you could gauge a man’s intelligence by the size of his ears, so Eddie had always known his dad was one of the smartest men around. Cass had taught all his boys everything they knew about crops and engines and animals and carpentry and the thousand unforeseen repairs a farmer has to face in a year of running a farm. But most important, he’d taught them how to love a woman—not the showy kind of love that could mask a hollow core, but the faithful, undecorous kind that stood by, no matter what, with few words and fewer arguments, but a constancy that was immutable. Above all, Cass and Hedy’s children knew security, because through all the toil of birthing fourteen kids, and walking the floor with them when they were sick, and putting food on the table for them when they weren’t, and worrying where the money would come from for the oldest one’s shoes, and how the bills would get paid during the years when the crops were lean—through all this they loved each other, and those kids knew it.

Cass, a man of few words, had once told Eddie, “You only marry once. Pick her right and treat her right and you’ll be happy.” It was as close to philosophizing as Cass had ever come, but Eddie had followed his father’s advice.

They both knew this as they drew apart and Cass asked, “Why didn’t you let one of your brothers ring that bell?”

“I couldn’t, Poppo. Krystyna would’ve wanted me to ring it.”

Cass had his hand folded over Eddie’s collarbone, and squeezed it so hard he broke a couple of blood vessels. But Eddie was as honed and hard as his old man and hardly noticed.

“She was like one of our own, your Krystyna.”

“I know, Poppo.”

They were still standing that way, struggling to think of something to say, when Irene Pribil came up, asking in a shy, retiring way, “Have you eaten anything, Eddie?”

“No, I’m not hungry, Irene.”

His mother said, “We should make coffee though.”

“Yes,” Irene added, “and there’s cake.”

Where the cake came from so fast, Eddie couldn’t guess, but he wasn’t surprised: these women thought food was the antidote to any crisis. They brewed egg coffee and before the first cake could be cut another arrived from a neighbor woman, Mrs. Berczyk. It was followed by other foods from other neighbors—a platter of deviled eggs, a roaster full of sliced roast beef and gravy, some pork chops over scalloped potatoes, fresh-baked buns and poppy-seed coffee cake, potato salad and sliced tomatoes from somebody’s garden. Near closing time, Mr. Kuntz from the bakery brought over the last of his bismarcks and glazed doughnuts that hadn’t been sold that day. Pete Plotnik came from the back door of his meat market across the alley and brought three rings of Polish sausage. The women warmed them and laid the foods out on the kitchen table that Eddie had made for Krystyna as a wedding gift. He had painted it white and she had trimmed the backs of the four matching chairs with fruit decals she had bought at Lloyd Berg’s hardware store. They had figured that whenever they had more children he’d make more chairs in his little workshop in the backyard.

But there would be only these two little girls, the ones upon whom, at that very moment, the women were forcing plates of food, and who sat down dutifully on the front porch with a bunch of their cousins at a miniature table and chairs that their daddy had also made.

Lucy ate only a piece of cake.

Anne ate nothing.

One of her cousins, a girl a few years older than Anne, stood beside her chair with an arm around the younger girl’s shoulder, patting her on the shoulder the way she’d seen the aunts do, while Anne stared at her food in silence.

Adults sat on the porch rails with plates on their knees, and on the wide porch steps, and inside the tiny living room on the piano stool and the overstuffed maroon horsehair sofa, and even out in the yard on the wooden platform surrounding the pump that wasn’t used anymore.

Afterward, the women washed dishes, and the men stayed with Eddie, who asked six of them to act as pallbearers—three of his brothers and three of Krystyna’s. The women hung up the dish towels on the clothesline out back, and the air grew chill as the stars came out. The younger children started playing Starlight Moonlight, but were stopped by their mothers, jerked sharply by their arms, and scolded for their insensitivity. The older ones got sheepish and the young ones pouted, not clearly understanding what they’d done wrong.

The hovering departures began.

Eddie’s mother said, “Why don’t you bring the girls and come out to the farm tonight? Sleep there.”

“No, Mommo, we’ll stay here. I feel closer to her here. You understand, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. But it’ll be worse here, won’t it?”

“If it gets too bad, I’ll run over to Romaine’s house and wake him up.” Romaine lived a short sprint away, across the alley, through the vacant lot, across Main Street and around the corner from the creamery.

“Well, if you’re sure...”

“I’m sure, Mommo. I promise we’ll come out to the farm whenever we get lonesome.”

“All right, then. Well...” She didn’t know what else to offer. “I’ll pray the rosary for her then.” She pronounced it 
rozhary.

“Thank you, Mommo.”

The four parents, plus Krystyna’s sister Irene, who had ridden with her folks, and Romaine and his wife, Rose, were the last ones remaining. Irene commandeered Eddie’s arm and clung to it as the group moved toward the two cars parked at the boulevard. Eddie could feel Irene trembling as she clamped her elbow firmly around his, as if to steady herself. The tremors came from deep within her, and he understood what she was going through. She was two years older than Krystyna. The two of them had been closest. She had stood up for Eddie and Krystyna at their wedding, and because Irene had never married and still lived with her folks, she spent a lot of time here at the house. They had done everything together, Krystyna and Irene—given each other permanents, danced the polka together at the Saturday-night dances, made matching dresses, cut recipes out of 
The Farmer
 magazine, dyed curtains with Rit when their bedrooms needed sprucing up, and confided secrets.

What Irene was feeling was what Eddie would be feeling if it were Romaine who’d died.

When all the parents had gotten in the cars, Irene gave Eddie the last hug. It was meant to be a short one, but in the middle of it she let loose a sob and said, muffled against his clothes, “Oh God, Eddie...” She wept against his shoulder and he held her head fast, from behind as they rocked some, knowing that out of these two vast families, nobody would miss Krystyna more than the two of them. Husband. Sister and best friend.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said.

“Neither do I, Irene. Go on, I guess.”

She cried a while longer until she had calmed somewhat. Finally, withdrawing from his arms and turning toward the car, she said, “Anything you need, you let me know.”

“I will.”

She climbed into the backseat of her dad’s ’38 Plymouth and Romaine shut the door. The cars pulled away and left Eddie standing on the boulevard with his daughters and Romaine and Rose, who had sent their brood home under the care of their oldest.

Romaine said, “You want me to stay awhile, Eddie?”

“Yeah, I’d like that, Romaine.”

“The girls need baths,” Rose said. “Why don’t I take them inside and fill the tub?”

Eddie dropped a heavy hand on Rose’s shoulder. “Thanks, Rose.” To his children, he added, “Daddy will be right here. You go with Auntie Rose and she’ll bring you down when your pajamas are on.” He watched them go, exhausted and listless, following every order they were given because their emotions, like everyone else’s, were in chaos.

Then Eddie and Romaine sat down on the porch step in the gathering dark. The night was quiet. From behind them the living-room ceiling fixture threw a patch of light across the porch floor and outlined their shapes in shadow across the sidewalk and grass. A couple of late crickets sang in the astilbe bushes at the base of the house. Across the alley, at the Quality Inn, Hub Ringwalski shut out the lights, closed his back door, and locked up for the night. They listened to his footsteps heading for his car, which was parked by the power pole out back. He started the engine and backed into the alley, left the car running and got out to step over the low double-railed wooden fence that separated Eddie’s yard from the alley. Hub crossed the grass, bent down and took Eddie by the back of the neck and said nothing for a long time. Then he uttered in a choked whisper, “So sorry...” and went back to his car.

When Hub was gone, Eddie said, “What’m I gonna do, Romaine? What’m I gonna do?”

“Keep working at the church, I guess. Take care of the girls the best you can. The women will help you with them, and you’ll get through it one day at a time.”

“How do I go in there to that bed?”

“You can sure come to our house tonight,” Romaine offered. “We’ll find room for the three of you someplace.”

“I’d still have to face it though, wouldn’t I? Tomorrow night or the night after that.”

“Yup. You still would.”

They heard the sound of the bath in progress, and Rose talking quietly to the girls in the upstairs bathroom that Eddie had put in for Krystyna only a little over a year ago. Such a short time she’d had to enjoy it.

“You know what, Romaine?”

“What?”

“From the first time I saw Krystyna I knew I was going to marry her. It was at a wedding dance out at Knotty Pine, and I asked Poppo who that girl was and where she lived and if they went to St. Joe’s. I found out right away that I was seven years older than her, but I made up my mind I’d wait for her. Then when she was fourteen I asked her out for the first time and I couldn’t believe her folks let her go. But it was like they knew I was the one for her, and there was nothing they could do but let her go. They never uttered a peep, just said to have her home by ten, and I did. And we had to 
walk
,
 too! Clear over to Clarissa to the dance, because I didn’t have no car. But she didn’t complain. Ah, she never complained. When she got old enough to wear high heels, if we had to walk, she just put on her low shoes and carried her high heels, and off we went dancing. Matter of fact, I think the first pair of high heels she wore she borrowed from Irene.” He paused for a moment, then added, “I feel bad for Irene. She’s really going to miss her.”

Romaine knew all this, but he let Eddie talk.

Soon Eddie said, a little more animated, “Hey, Romaine, remember that time when you were dating Irene and the four of us drove your Model-T down the railroad tracks?” Romaine laughed. “Lucky that damn car didn’t bust an axle.”

“Oh, we had some times, didn’t we?”

“Sure did.”

“And we picked up that huge snapping turtle out by Thunder Lake and put him in the car to make turtle soup with, and the girls screamed and climbed in the front seat with us.”

“Boy, did that old turtle stink!”

“Those women about went crazy.”

“I don’t think we ever did make that soup.”

“Nope... never did.”

Eddie smiled into the dark. Soon his smile faded and he covered his face with both hands. Romaine flopped a brotherly arm around him and massaged his shoulder.

“I don’t know how to cook,” Eddie said, battling a new round of despair. “How’m I supposed to do my job and come home and fix supper for them, and wash and iron their dresses like she did, and fix their hair in pin curls and comb it fancy and do all that stuff? Hell, I got to be at church to stoke the furnace before Mass in the winter, and shovel the steps and ring the bells at seven-thirty and eight, and that’s just when they should be getting up and getting ready for school. How can I be in two places at once?”

“We’ll work it out, Eddie, don’t worry, we’ll work it out. All of us can help you for a while till we figure out what to do.”

Eddie sighed and dug his fingertips into his eyes. Suddenly he squared his shoulders and exclaimed, “Hoo!” blowing the word out as if to fortify himself to go on without further tears. “I don’t know, Romaine... I don’t know.”

The children came to the door behind them and Lucy said, “Daddy, we’re all ready for bed now. Are you coming in?”

He turned and saw Rose standing behind them, folding their wet towels over her arm. 
Laundry
, he thought, 
how am I supposed to manage doing laundry after I get home at night?
 Like all the other housewives, Krystyna had spent every Monday morning, the entire morning, washing in the wringer washer and hanging the clothes on the line, then a good hour folding things in the late afternoon and some more time dampening the stuff that needed ironing. Ironing itself took hours and hours on Tuesdays. Hell, Eddie had never handled an iron in his life. Boys didn’t need to learn how. His mother and sisters had done the ironing at home, while he and his brothers helped in the fields. Now ironing, too, would fall to him.

“Daddy?” Lucy repeated, her voice small and lost.

“I’m coming in now, dumpling.” The pet name reminded him of the dumplings Krystyna had planned to make them for supper tonight, but he pushed the thought from his head and went inside. The reminders would be everywhere for a long, long while, and he must not give in to weeping every time they surfaced.