After the incident with Myrtle Evans at Murray’s store, the widow Lankowski had waited for the children to start showing up at her door. She didn’t have to wait long. She took to baking sweets and ordered extra bottles of milk to have on hand when they came calling. She thought both were in sore need of a mother’s love, though in Violet’s case, the widow held out hope that Grace would eventually come around, poor soul. The same could not be said for Stanley. She just had to look him in the eye to know. If his dear matka were still alive, maybe things would have been different, but with only Albert in the house, the boy had no chance at all.
God had not seen fit to bless Johanna Lankowski with her own babies. She’d pocketed that hope twenty-five years earlier, on the day two miners dropped her husband Henryk’s broken body on her front porch steps. Of course, she had been young enough to marry again but never considered it, even though there had been a few offers. She’d submitted to Henryk’s will without complaint, as God required a wife to do, but she vowed not to make the same mistake twice.
Fortunately for the widow, she’d come to America as an eighteen-year-old bride with a gift for languages and lace-making. Back in Poland, her father, a teacher, had taught her German in honor of her paternal grandmother, and English, so she could read the works of William Shakespeare in his native tongue. Her mother, like most mothers in the mountain village of Koniaków, taught her the art of needle lace, so she could help out when they came up short at the end of the month. She took to the crochet hook like a baby to the breast, quickly mastering the scallop, swirl, and petal patterns handed down from her ancestors. Soon, she began creating her own openwork designs, inspired by nature. In winter, she studied frost blossoms on the windowpanes and reproduced their intricate shapes. In summer, she collected feathers and mimicked their lines. Much to her mother’s delight, several of Johanna’s cloths adorned the altars in the local Catholic churches, and some of the wealthier women hired her to make baptismal gowns for their children. She could turn cotton string into a work of art as easily as she could turn a page, and although needle lace was her specialty, eventually she could imitate any style of European lace set before her, including point, pillow, and bobbin.
After Henryk’s death, she took a job at the Scranton Lace Curtain Company on Meylert Avenue, down past the Sherman Mine. They specialized in what the English called Nottingham lace because the looms that originally produced it came from that town. The seamless fabric created on the factory’s machines looked homemade to the untrained eye, but Johanna could tell the difference. No heart. No life. The Lace Company’s curtains and tablecloths were too exact, too smooth for human hands.
In spite of her aversion to machinery, the widow quickly moved through the ranks from operator to winder, apprentice to weaver, jobs more often assigned to men than women. As a female, she still did not earn enough to keep herself. Males made a better wage since they had households to support and women could always marry. She took in sewing to earn extra money. At first, she mended a variety of goods, but slowly, she became known in Scranton for her ability to repair damaged lace by hand. Soon, the wealthy wives from all over town started sending their torn curtains and tablecloths to the widow Lankowski. One day Mrs. Dimmick, wife of J. Benjamin Dimmick, the president of the Scranton Lace Curtain Company, sent a servant to the widow’s home with an heirloom cloth. It seemed one of the children had gotten his hands on a pair of scissors and cut a gash across the middle.
“You’re wasting her in that factory,” Mrs. Dimmick told her husband after the widow had stopped by their Green Ridge home to return the repaired tablecloth. “I dare you to find the damaged portion.” Mrs. Dimmick handed the cloth to her husband. “I’m sure you have customers who would pay dearly for such attention to detail. Better yet, there are many who still prefer one-of-a-kind creations.”
By the end of the week, the widow started working from home for the self-supporting wage Mrs. Dimmick encouraged Mr. Dimmick to offer her.
* * *
The widow poured sugar into a paper sack, set it on the table, and grabbed the plate of doughnuts from the windowsill. “Take turns,” she said. “Drop a pączek into the bag, fold it closed, and shake hard.” Stanley grabbed for the doughnuts. “Where are your manners?” the widow asked. “Ladies first.” She pushed the plate toward Violet and went back to the stove.
Their bellies full, Violet and Stanley had as much sugar on their faces as they’d had on their pastries. “Don’t forget to wash up,” the widow said.
They both nodded and took turns at the sink.
“Thank you kindly,” Violet said as she dried her hands. “I never tasted anything so wonderful.”
Stanley added, “Me too,” then smacked his lips and laughed as the pair headed out the door.
* * *
The widow sat at the kitchen table long past suppertime thinking about her situation. She had her books, her garden, her lace. All gave her pleasure, though the books caused some of the neighbors to regard her with suspicion.
“Always has her nose in a novel, that one,” one remarked in a disapproving tone. “Wish I had time for such folly.”
When Violet and Stanley came into her life, the widow realized what she had been missing all these years. “If only we’d had children,” she directed toward a sepia photograph staring down at her from a wall. In the picture, Henryk stood behind a seated Johanna, his hands on her shoulders, eyes glaring straight into the camera. He wore the new suit of clothes they’d purchased their first week in America. Like so many immigrants, they’d gone out and bought new American clothes and had their picture taken to show their families in the old country how well they were doing in the land of opportunity. In the end, that had been Henryk’s only suit, so of course the widow had him buried in it.
Finally, the widow stood and cleared the pączki dishes from the table. It had been a long time since she had allowed herself to imagine how children might have changed her life. Just as sadness started to settle in, she glanced over at her husband’s picture once more. Henryk’s eyes, cold marbles, stared back at her. “I suppose God knew best,” she said aloud, “considering.” She pulled a lace-trimmed handkerchief from inside her sleeve and spit the word “świnia,” bastard, into its center.
CHAPTER TEN
DUTY AND INDIAN SUMMER, two unlikely conspirators, coaxed Grace into the backyard for the first time since the tragedy. Violet wouldn’t be home from school for another two hours, so Grace decided to hang the wash herself. She dropped her basket next to the clothesline, shut her eyes, and tipped her face toward the sky, inviting the sun to warm her bones, to thaw her heart. The rays obliged, and for a moment, Grace convinced herself that a tonic of sun and sky might be enough.
“A little color in your cheeks. It makes all the difference.” Grief stood on the other side of the clothesline, examining Grace’s features. “At that angle,” he formed a frame with his thumbs and forefingers, cocked his head, and closed one eye, “you look like a young girl.”
Grace ignored his remarks and held onto the sun, absorbing its heat like the trees, the grass, and the flowers around her. Without opening her eyes, she pictured the spot where she was standing—the back half of her own yard and the beginning of Myrtle Evans’s patch of dirt. That’s what Owen always called it when he compared their properties. Like everyone else in the neighborhood, both families rented from George Sherman, owner of the Sherman Mine. The company houses looked