Read Online Off Keck Road by Mona Simpson - Free Book Online Page B

hired the local children. Once, when she was small, Peggy had wanted to pick strawberries, June said. But there was nothing pastoral about it. Her fingers bled and she’d gotten a sunburned nose and quit before the end of the day. Her mother, frosting on moisture cream, had scolded her for doing it at all. They paid twenty-six cents a flat.
    Now one of the nurseries was buying out the other. Bill Alberts was brokering the transaction. But he was doing less of the fine work—busy with the Riverclub and the Fox River Trotters. By now, he’d named his ballroom More, after the one in New York called The Most. Bea would ask him to let her work with the developers, to pick out good stoves, simple sinks, and floors. People wanted carpet, but flooring lasted longer. That was one reason she liked her dark yarns.
    â€œThe Garshes used to live out here,” June said, “over there, in that place. And then when Marge was nine or ten, they bought the smallest little house in De Pere.” Her voice curved, scolding around her point. She was still bitter about Keck Road. “And then Marge was in with all those kids.”
    Bea was one of those kids. Or if she was not one of them, she’d known them all her life, graduated with them from Miss Pimm’s Nursery Day and, for that matter, De Pere High. She looked down at her hands on the steering wheel.
    Marge Garsh was the now-estranged wife of Bill Alberts, the one who had let herself become a drudge.
    Well, that’s what this neighborhood was, all right, Bea thought, people who weren’t about to buy the smallest house in De Pere so their daughters could get in with any crowd. “But you wouldn’t have married Bill Alberts,” she murmured.
    June sighed. “Maybe I should’ve. Who knows.”
    Had she seriously considered him? Had he made an offer? “What have they done over there?” Bea asked, changing the subject.
    They were passing June’s brother’s place. It was late spring, and George’s front yard looked ominous, a building site in the dark. There was a hauling truck and a pile of dirt more than twenty feet high.
    â€œOh, he built his own swimming pool. Yah. With that little Shelley across the street. They all say she’s a good worker. Better than the boys. Now I think they’re putting in a Jacuzzi.”
    Peggy didn’t know Shelley anymore. She was too old to need a baby-sitter now when she was at her grandmother’s, and she didn’t go outside to play there either; she had homework. She was already concerned about her score on the PSAT, a test she doubted the kids on Keck Road had even heard of or would ever take.

IX
    W hen Shelley’s grandmother died in 1971, George Umberhum went to the funeral. Just him, not any of the rest of the family—not his wife, not his son. Not his mother, the other grandmother Shelley had wanted to make into her gramma’s friend so long ago, though she’d lived across the street from her for all those years. Certainly June didn’t go. Not even the Kecks. The fat woman sent over a casserole. Her son Buddy, now a high school sissy, delivered it covered with a dish towel.
    At the funeral, George talked about his latest dream: He wanted to build a swimming pool in his yard, that summer.
    Even before school was out, he had Shelley working every day with him to dig the hole.
    The summer before, Shelley had picked for the nurseries. Almost every kid on Keck Road had tried one time or another, but most left after a few hours of midday sun, their fingers swollen and bleeding. None of the Umberhum kids had done it; they got better jobs. The Umberhum girls were legendary anyway, but older. Their father had been a prison guard, but the girls were all pretty and smart, and won scholarships to college. The only kid who didn’t go was George. And his son, Petey, didn’t have to work summers. He just rode his bike to the park every day and played