No More Swedish Meatballs

“What’s wrong with me?” Evelyn shot back. “What’s wrong with you? Watching you suck up to her makes me sick. You want the money for the house so Goddamn bad you’d kiss her ass till sundown. I just can’t stand it.”

“Well, you’re going to have to suffer because I want that house. If you make her so mad she won’t give us the loan, I swear I’ll walk out on you. I mean it. I won’t put up with any more of your bullshit. I’ve had it up to here.”

“God damn it you can’t do this to me.” Evelyn kept her voice low but she wanted to shriek into the wind.

“What am I doing to you? What? I have to keep a roof over our heads. So your silly ass problems with your parents had better not get in my way. Do you hear me?” Karl was enraged. He wanted to throw something, punch something, rip something apart.

Kristen was in her basinet in the alcove, wide awake, just a tiny infant. What did she hear? Did she feel the fury between the two people who were the center of her universe? Was she frightened? Angry? She started to cry. They didn’t hear. She started sobbing.

Kristen’s howls grew louder as the hushed angry voices went on into the night.

Finally Evelyn heard the baby’s distress and broke off the argument. She went into the alcove to soothe her daughter. Karl had no more fight left in him. He crawled into bed like a wounded animal going into his lair. Evelyn spent the rest of the night holding and rocking Kristen, smoking cigarette after cigarette. Her anger, hurt and sorrow enfolded her like a shroud. She went to bed as the grey November dawn began to break. Karl moved away from her when she slid under the covers looking for warmth.

Lavinia’s visit passed quickly. On Saturday Karl took the toddlers and Lavinia to see what Karl was already thinking of as his new house. Karl took Lavinia to the 30th Street station on Sunday. Mother and daughter were more alienated from each other than before the visit. But the grandchildren had fallen in love with Grandma and Karl got his loan. He began negotiating for the house immediately.

He bought the house at the top of the hill where Kristen had most of her early memories. And in the house across the street Rita, child number four of the O’Leary brood, had recently come into the world. Rita and Kristen were just two months apart in age. Their two houses were mirror images of each other. Actually, they were half houses. They each had three bedrooms, one bathroom and a toilet in the basement. Karl’s house originally had a coal burner so the basement had a little room with a coal chute that Karl converted to a shop.

The Hansens moved to the new house in the spring of 1955.

Evelyn and Karl had a final Christmas party at the old house with the Philips. It was a tense and unhappy affair. Evelyn and Karl were barely speaking to each other. Wanda and Evelyn got drunk and watched over the infants while the men talked shop.

But the four toddlers had a wonderful time. Jimmy and Ned were great pals and Elizabeth was fascinated by Marjory’s long blond hair. Christmas Eve was magical for the children. There was the huge Christmas tree with mountains of presents and all kinds of treats and special music. And at eight o’clock Santa arrived!

At New Years, Evelyn and Karl entered into a truce that was to last for a few years. They started talking more. Although it was against company rules, Karl started discussing his projects with Evelyn. Evelyn found Karl’s research fascinating and her quickly grasped many of the new concepts Karl was working on. At night she and Karl were often able to discover angles he’d missed when he was working alone in his office during the day. The work brought them closer together than they’d ever been. The kids benefited. So did their sex life.

The loan from Evelyn’s parents finally gave Karl some financial breathing space. He put a healthy down payment on the house so his mortgage payments would be less than the rent he was paying. And they had some money left over for new furniture which got Evelyn out of her funk. Karl was happy because he was able to start a savings account.

The move took place on a bright, sunny spring day. The family settled quickly into their new house and things went smoothly for a while. Evelyn wanted the car during the day so Karl started getting a lift to work from a neighbor. Kristen became a precocious toddler. She was always trying to keep up with Ned and Elizabeth. Evelyn had her hands full with the three of them, day in and day out.

They were basically nice, happy children. They got along pretty well together. After a time, Evelyn stopped paying careful attention to them when they played in the back yard. Ned was hearty, solid and almost six. Elizabeth was four. Kristen was amazingly untroublesome for a toddler. So Evelyn smoked, drank a little on the sly and worked around the house or in the garden while the kids played in the summer sun.

Fall came and Ned started first grade. Elizabeth acted as little mother to Kristen most mornings while Evelyn did her house work. Elizabeth kept telling Kristen she was too little to do things. Kristen was getting tired of hearing it, and of being left behind when Daddy took the older kids places.

One early autumn morning Ned and Elizabeth were playing a game of jumping the back porch steps. Kristen wanted to play too. Elizabeth said she couldn’t ‘cause she was too little. Evelyn was in the bathroom doing whatever it was that took her an hour every morning. No one was paying any attention to Kristen so she toddled out to the porch and decided to take her turn. Splat! She landed flat on her face and bit right through her lower lip. Boy did she howl! Ned and Elizabeth were terrified. Mom was going to kill them.

Upstairs in the bathroom Evelyn heard Kristen shrieking at the top of her lungs. Oh my God! What the hell happened? She flew down the stairs and out to the porch and found Kristen with her face covered in blood, sobbing in Elizabeth’s arms. Ned looked angry and scared.

“Give her to me,” Evelyn yelled at Elizabeth. “What did you do to her? Christ in a barrel she’s bleeding to death!” She didn’t stop to think. She yelled at Ned “Go to school!” He took off running like he’d been shot.

Evelyn slapped a bandage on Kristen’s mouth and piled the girls into the old dodge. She drove hell for leather to the hospital. It was a forty-five minute drive with Kristen wailing the whole time. Elizabeth was a natural born nurse. She cradled Kristen and comforted her and helped stop the bleeding. She was fantastic.

When they got to the emergency room there was a huge fuss. The hospital staff wanted to know how the injury occurred. Evelyn was practically incoherent. Social workers were called in to talk to Elizabeth and Evelyn separately while Kristen was strapped onto a gurney kicking and screaming.

They wheeled Kristen into a cold white room. She’d never known fear like this in her short little life. She kept crying for Elizabeth. They had to hold her down while they stitched her up. They weren’t very gentle. After they finished with the needle they kept asking her dumb questions that she didn’t understand and made her feel dirty inside and out.

What had she done wrong? She didn’t understand. Yes her daddy spanked her. No, only she was bad. Her mommy never hit her. Nobody ever touched her down there.

In another room poor Elizabeth was getting the same only worse. She was bright and articulate for her age. She tried to tell her questioners it was just an accident. Kristen just wanted to play like Ned and her. Elizabeth thought everything was her fault and got sadder and madder and sadder and madder.

Evelyn was put through the wringer. The welfare department was just doing its job. In the end they decided it was an accident. But, they were very concerned about the care the children were getting at home. They wrote it up as “questionable” which meant the welfare department was going to assess the home situation.

Finally Kristen was given a lollipop and let her out of the horrible white room. She ran to her sister and mother. She was crying -- happily this time. “I were wondering where you were” she said to Elizabeth with big eyes. Then she noticed Elizabeth had two lollipops. She realized for the first time that life was just not fair.

Once again good came out of bad. The welfare department decided the Hansens were a relatively normal family with some problems and made a few referrals. One of the referrals was to a nursery school for Elizabeth and Kristen.

The nursery school was a blessing. A Godsend. It was eight miles from Paoli, but there were carpools. Carpools meant Evelyn had contact with other mothers. Evelyn’s universe suddenly opened up and things got better for her.

The school was unconventional – ahead of its time. It was founded by an amazing woman and run cooperatively by parents and others with an interest in the venture. The Hansens fit right in. It took kids from age two to five on Monday through Friday, nine to noon. Elizabeth went into the ‘tween fours and Kristen started the twos on her second birthday. Evelyn’s week days became structured around Playschool. She had a lot less time to sit and simmer.

Playschool was out in the sticks which was nice for the kids. It had a lot of outside play area, with tire swings and all kinds of unusual playground equipment. There was a woody area, a meadow and playground. Inside there was a gigantic sliding board and a fireman’s pole. The school was a fantasy land for kids but it was also very down to earth. The classes were broken down by age into the two’s the three’s the four’s the ‘tween fours and the fives. Each class had a regular teacher and, on any given day, a couple of mothers acted as teacher’s aids. If you had a kid in the school you had a teaching obligation to fill. It was great because all the kids got to know all the parents, and visa versa.

The family’s circle of friends grew right along with the children. They met couples who were into canoeing and family camping. They were building a huge day camp for grammar school kids on some farmland owned by the nursery school’s founder. It, too, was a cooperative project. The families involved built bridges over the fast running creek dividing the property. They constructed an outside theater in the woods and a never, never land type tree house. They cleared paths and dug a well. There was a museum, a kiln, and an arts and crafts tent on the boys’ side of the camp. The girls’ side was in the cow pasture where there was room for team sports. There was a swimming pool next to the spring house and the old farm buildings. It was a miracle of cooperation. Everything seemed to fall into place. There was a school bus to travel a long, winding path from Paoli, through Charlestown, over to Phoenixville and then back to Charlestown for a stop at Playschool before heading down the long country road to Day Camp.

Day Camp started the Monday after Elementary School shut down for summer and ran for six golden weeks.

Despite their improved relationship Evelyn and Karl continued to have violent fights from time to time. To the kids home was a battle field, with land mines everywhere. But there was also love. Love for each other, the children, and the home they’d built. Books and education were Gods to Evelyn and Karl and a legacy to their children.

And there was always Christmas Eve. Christmas was the only time Evelyn and Karl could set aside their anger and give each other some of the love they always had for the kids

The children started to become little individuals. Elizabeth had a “best friend, Katie, at Play School. Katie was a rowdy, chubby imp. Elizabeth was a leader and made friends easily. Katie was her number one friend and Marjory Phillips, who didn’t go to playschool, was second. Kristen fell in there somewhere as well, when she wasn’t a brat.

The girls had secret little games which they played in Elizabeth’s room on weekends when Katie and/or Marjory slept over. One was “baby scratching at the door.” Kristen loved the game. She got to pretend she was an abandoned baby left on a door step. The older girls would diaper her and bundle her up and set her out side the door. Then they’d decide how to greet their new child. What happened when the baby was brought into the house was different every time.

Kristen had one true friend, Rita, who lived across the street. Kristen loved playschool but always felt like an outsider. She didn’t know how to make friends. She’d known Rita as long as she could remember. Rita was true blue. They played together almost every day since they lived across the street from each other.

Of course there was Elizabeth. She didn’t have to make friends with Elizabeth. Elizabeth just was. Period. Kristen never knew where she stood with Elizabeth. Elizabeth loved Kristen to death one day and the next day hated her guts.

Time passed quickly. In the blink of an eye the girls were out of Playschool and off to elementary school. The house at the top of the hill soon became too small for the family. Evelyn would have loved to move down into the Valley closer to the Philips. It had more status. But Karl had his eye on a house on the street where they already lived. It was a single house with three bedrooms, one bathroom, a large attic and basement and a pretty standard down stairs. It was set on three lots. Karl had fallen in love with the property. It was flat. It had a huge oak tree a lot of spruce. The house was surrounded by yard. It was right smack in the middle of an acre of land.

And the house had potential. Karl already had plans for a modern kitchen laid out in his head. Sure, it would be a lot of work. But hell, some of the guys he’d met from Playschool had designed their homes and were building them with their bare hands. Karl had all the skills he needed to do great things with the house. His mind was made up.

Evelyn hated the house from the start. It wasn’t modern. It wasn’t in the valley so it had no status. Big deal, it had a great yard. Who was going to do all the yard work? No her, you could be sure of that. So what, it had a big side porch. But it wasn’t screened in, was it? And it only had one bathroom. The kitchen was impossible. It didn’t have enough bedrooms, or closet space, and so on and so on.

Evelyn tried every trick in the book to get him to consider other possibilities. Karl was immoveable. His mind was made up. He didn’t need any help from Evelyn’s parents this time. He was doing well at work and had just gotten a raise. So he turned a deaf ear to all Evelyn’s objections and made the deal. The house was a great bargain.

The former owner was a little old lady who hadn’t been able to keep up the property. She was leaving it to spend her remaining years in an old age home. She’d been living there alone for God knows how long. It was a mess, but Karl loved it and he was Hell bent on making it his dream house.

The Hansens moved into their new house in the spring of 1953. The house stank of old age and mildew. Every single room had to be aired out, stripped, and painted or wallpapered depending on Karl’s vision.

Kristen didn’t think it was fair Ned got his own room just because he was a boy. He and Elizabeth were so damn chummy. Let them have the big front room.

But dad said she and Elizabeth had to share. “You’re sisters,” he said when Kristen complained. And that was the end of it. They moved into the room and divided it up as best they could. Elizabeth got the alcove and half of the main room. Kristen got what was left. It wasn’t exactly equal but Elizabeth set the rules these days.

Elizabeth was miserable to live with. She had a full length cast on her leg that itched all the time and she was meaner than a hornet. She was taller and heavier than the other girls in her class and was being teased miserably at school. She hated the new house, forth grade, the world in general and Kristen in particular.

Kristen didn’t really blame Elizabeth for being miserable. The cast was horrible and the new house smelled awful. But Kristen didn’t appreciate the pinches and slaps, or being treated like Elizabeth’s personal slave. Kristen retreated into a private world of fantasy where she had a secret room all to herself. She wasn’t very happy, but nobody noticed. She tried to be the “good” child and imagined a world where Ned and Elizabeth lived with one parent and she lived with the other.

After they settled into the house, Karl set about of renovating it room, by room. It was a task of love for Karl. It was hell for the rest of the family. Karl made the basement his shop. He got an electric saw and all the other tools he’d been dreaming about for so long. He drafted plans and made a lot of trips to the lumber yard. Sometimes he took the kids along.

Kristen loved going to the lumber yard. The sound of the saws was exciting and for some reason the smell of saw dust made her imagination run wild. It was the smell of adventure.

Karl spent hours in the basement building cabinets and doing anything else he could do to keep away from Evelyn. When they moved into the house the kitchen was barely useable. But Karl had a great design all mapped out in his head. Unfortunately it took four years to implement. Four years of knocking down walls and rewiring and putting in pipes on weekends and on evenings when Karl wasn’t too depressed. He put in a “powder room” for Evelyn which was supposed to make her happy, but didn’t. The marriage took a down swing

The following four years were full of screaming fights and thrown dishes and divorce threats. But the kitchen beautiful when it was finished. It was a masterpiece. Even Evelyn had to admit Karl did a wonderful job.

Through it all they kept up the Christmas Eve tradition. Every year they had the trip to the Reading Terminal Market and the Christmas tree and the lights on the bushes outside. Every year Karl must have rolled at least two hundred little meatballs. Elizabeth and Kristen learned how to pickle herring.

Every year the Philips came over and they had their Christmas Bacchanalia. They started a new tradition of going to the Midnight mass at the old Episcopal Church in the Valley. Evelyn and Karl joined the adult choir and year after year they drove down to sing drunkenly off key in church after the Christmas Eve Party.

There were some good times. Karl had been right about the yard. It was the best in the neighborhood and became a gathering place for the neighborhood kids in the summer. The games went on for hours in the long summer evenings. They played hide and seek, tag, kick ball, hide and seek again and would finally end up with kill the man with the ball. At the very end of the evening when it was completely dark the kids would scare themselves by throwing acorns into the air for the bats to dive at. Everyone would run screaming to the back porch thinking the bats were going to land on their heads and get caught in their hair.

The kids went to Day Camp during the first six weeks of summer when they were in elementary school. The camp families who had been associated with Playschool were a close knit group. They started going to family camp grounds together for long summer weekends. They all bought family sized canvas tents, sleeping bags, air mattresses, Colsen lanterns and stoves and other accoutrements necessary for comfortable family camping. It was a great, cheap way to have a short vacation with a whole gang of what today would be called yuppie families.

About this time Karl broke down and bought a brand new car. It was a damn good car and a great value but it was plug ugly. Evelyn and Elizabeth thought it was the ugliest car in the world. Evelyn and Elizabeth never agreed about anything but they agreed about the car. It was one more humiliation for Elizabeth to live with. She was already being teased to death at school, so why not have to ride in the ugliest automobile ever invented?