Strings Attached (28 page)

Thirty-four

 

Providence, Rhode Island
November 1950

“Nate isn’t a killer,” Da said to us. “He’s out of his mind with his grief, and who could blame him for that? He didn’t mean what he said.”

Muddie nodded, her eyes wide with fear. Jamie and I said nothing.

But Da decided we would go to a friend’s anyway. The Learys lived over on Power Street, in a big square house that looked like it was squatting on its lot, holding on against any stray hurricane that might try to blow it away.

The day of Billy’s funeral was a gray day, with a sky like steel and clouds scudding across the sky. The papers said that hundreds had come to the church and people lined up outside. I could picture it: the heavy smell of flowers in the church, and the pools of water from people’s umbrellas. Billy was a Korean War hero, never mind that he had never gone to war; he had enlisted and died in uniform, and that was enough. His mother, they said, was in a state of collapse, but there was a photograph of Nate, ashen-faced in his suit, going into the church.

It all had nothing to do with Billy. Billy was somewhere else in my mind.

I remembered the day we went with Jamie to Roger Williams Park. The cherry trees were in blossom, and under the trees the light was so pink you felt you were nestled in the heart of a flower. Billy took my picture, and Jamie’s, because he kept saying how perfect the light was. After a bit the weather changed and the wind blew and suddenly the petals were flying in the air, thick as a hard rain. We ran through the trees and the petals nestled in our hair and our clothes, and we brushed each other off, laughing because we were so happy to be all together, and it was spring.

Jamie stayed on the sunporch the afternoon of Billy’s funeral, and I knew he was thinking what I was thinking, of the cold, frozen ground and the coffin, and the graveyard, and the mourners with their black umbrellas.

I thought of that night in the parking lot, how Jamie’s arms had gone around Billy and he’d rested his cheek against Billy’s back, and how I should have seen that he was managing to calm Billy with his embrace, with his words, in a way that I never could. I thought of how he’d driven all night to get to me, how he’d bathed my face and brought me a blanket and made me tea, and how I’d paid him back by ordering him to stop crying. I could hear the exact tone of contempt that had been in my voice, and I thought that out of every bad thing I’d done, that could be the worst.

Quietly, I went into my purse, and Muddie’s. In my fists I carried the coins, and I walked onto the cold porch. Jamie’s eyes were on his book but he wasn’t turning pages. I moved around the room, placing the pennies, heads up, on the windowsills and the bookshelf and the arms of the chairs. I felt him watching me. I saved one last penny and
opened his hand. I put the penny heads up in his palm, then closed his fist over it.

Then, without looking at the title, I took a book from the bookshelf. I sank into the couch on the other end, nudging his stocking feet aside. I wiggled into my space, put my feet up, and opened my book.

I thought of the first day we’d spent together, of Billy kneeling in the sand with his camera, grinning at us, the wind whipping his hair. It was a good thing to know and to remember: This was joy, and he had known it.

Jamie and I stayed there together until the light faded, our books open, not reading a word, waiting until dark, when we knew Billy would be buried, and all the mourners would be gone. What could we wish for him but that? To sleep without dreaming. To rest in peace.

 

The house was quiet when I rose from the bed I shared with Muddie and slipped out. I tiptoed down the stairs, holding my shoes. The house seemed full of breath — the quick pants of the Leary children, dreaming in their beds, the uneasy sleep of Da, the mound of Jamie under a blanket on the couch.

I quickly pulled on my coat and Muddie’s black beret. I slipped out of the sunporch door. I hurried to the backyard, where I climbed a short fence. No shades flickered, no shadow moved as I took off to the crown of the hill.

I crossed over into the streets that ran through Brown University. I had forgotten my gloves, and I tucked my hands in my armpits to keep them warm. It was close to
midnight. The Brown campus was deserted, most of the students gone for Thanksgiving weekend. I walked faster, knowing I was outside Fox Point territory now.

I don’t know where my courage was. I didn’t feel brave at all. I just felt scared. But doing nothing was worse. Da didn’t believe Nate would put a contract out on one of us and I did. So it was up to me to stop it.

 

I took the trolley downtown. A few people were waiting at the stop, a woman and a man I’d thought were together. But she got off, and the man stayed on. He wore a hat that shaded his face and he was thin and not too tall, a man nobody would notice unless you were alone and afraid.

When I got off, he got off, too. With every nerve screaming, I wanted to walk fast, but I didn’t. I strolled down Westminster Street, past the Chinese restaurant, turned again, and headed for Washington. He was still behind me. There were people on the street, but not many, not enough.

When I came to the Riverbank Club I ducked inside and nodded and smiled at the hostess who’d replaced me. Sammy was over at the bar, and he hurried to greet me.

“Kit! Gee, you look swell. What brings you here? Tony will be glad to see you; the new girl can’t find a punch line with both hands.”

“Sammy, I’ll come back and see you, I promise, but right now, can I use your alley? I’m trying to ditch some joker who followed me.”

“You betcha, kiddo, don’t give it a thought. I’ll make
sure he doesn’t go after you.” He gave me a pat on the shoulder and turned, shielding me from the door.

I walked out through the kitchen into the alley, surprising a busboy emptying trash. I hurried down the alley and turned onto Snow Street. Then I headed up Federal Hill.

I crossed the street when I got close to the Benedict house and walked on the opposite side, turning my collar up. The lights were still blazing, and cars were parked outside. Relatives and friends sitting with Nate and Angela. They would come for weeks with casseroles and fruit, they would sit in the kitchen and make coffee and soup. Life would go on, no matter if Nate or Angela wanted it to.

I slipped through the dark streets toward Atwells Avenue, grateful for the clouds that covered the moon. There was no one around, as if every family on Federal Hill was paying their respects to Nate by staying home.

Nate’s office was dark. I hurried down the side walkway to the back.

It had been five years, but I remembered every detail of that day. I counted the bricks and lifted one and there it was, the key, dull and crusted with dirt. I fitted it in the padlock and I heard the click.

Billy had wanted me to follow him that day. He’d known about Delia. Had he wanted me to know, too?
I liked you because you liked my pictures. Before that… you were my enemy.

His enemy because of Delia. That photograph I saw that day — of a woman pulling off her sweater — he’d wanted me to see it. He’d wanted me to know about Delia. But something had stopped him. Maybe because I liked the pictures so much? I’d never know.

I could only guess that it hadn’t been friendliness that day that had led him to bring me inside. It had been
something else. Some impulse to share a knowledge of a grown-up world that was wrong and painful. So he wouldn’t be alone.

I switched on the light, but the place was bare. Billy’s darkroom had been cleared out years ago. Later he had developed his photographs at college. But today, on the day of his burial, the bare planks of the tables felt wrong. It was as though he’d been erased. When I thought of that boy, down here alone with his trays and his solutions, tears burned my eyes. I wiped them away fiercely. I couldn’t do this if I thought about Billy. I had to save who was left. I turned off the light again in case it would shine through the cracks of the coal cellar door.

I walked slowly through the basement. The darkness was almost total, and I kept my arms outstretched. I could just make out a wooden stairway in the gloom.

I walked slowly up the stairs, testing each one before putting my weight on it. I couldn’t hear a sound from the house, and when I paused at the top and cracked the door, I could only see more darkness.

I made my way to the office. I had no way of knowing if I could find anything that would bring Nate down. I didn’t even know if I’d know it if I saw it. He was a lawyer. He knew how to cover his tracks.

But it was my only chance.

I couldn’t switch on the lights and I had no flashlight, but I could just make out the desk and filing cabinet. I opened the drawer and began to flip through the files. I took some out to read them by the window, where a small shaft of light entered from the streetlight. Financial transactions, arrest records, several wills… I had no idea what to look for.

Frustrated, I wanted to wad up the papers and throw
them around the room. Trash Nate’s office, destroy everything.

Instead, I carefully returned the papers and put the files back. I opened the next drawer and flipped through.

I hadn’t heard a thing, not even the front door, so I was taken completely by surprise when Nate opened the door and switched on the light.

We stared at each other for a moment. Never have I seen grief mark a man like it marked Nate. He looked like a ruin, like his clothes should be smoking. He didn’t say a word but crossed to the phone and dialed a number.

“I found her. I’m at the office.” He paused. “Do that.” He hung up the phone but kept his hand on it, his back to me. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you can’t change anything. And if you think I keep anything here that could incriminate me, you really are a dumb kid.”

“Da had nothing to do with Billy’s death,” I said. “Neither did I. But did you ever think that you did?”

He whipped his head around. “What are you saying?”

“That morning Billy said he just wanted truth. That he was going to stop everything. I think he meant he was going to stop you, somehow. Didn’t you ever think of why he was on that train?”

“He was lost, he got on the wrong train….”

“Billy didn’t get lost! Don’t you know where that train was going? It was going to Babylon. He was going to see Delia. Why?”

I’d succeeded in rocking him. “I don’t know.” He crossed to the window and pulled back the curtain.

From behind him, I could see a man across the street standing underneath a streetlamp. The same man who’d been on the trolley.

“It’s time for us to go,” he said. “What does any of it matter now?”

“I’m not going out there,” I said. “You’ll have to drag me out.”

“I can do that.”

“Why do you hate us so much?” I whispered. We heard a noise and turned to see Delia and Da in the doorway.

“He doesn’t hate you. He hates me,” Delia said.

“Dee,” Nate said. “What are you doing here?” His face flushed red, but whether from anger or emotion, I didn’t know.

“I called Mac last night,” Delia said. “He told me what you said. Is it true, Nate? You want to kill one of my family? A child?”

“They aren’t children,” Nate said. “Do you understand? My heart was cut out! He has to pay!”

“It’s Jimmy’s fault? Is that how you see it?” Delia glided into the room, stripping off her gloves and tossing them on the desk in a gesture that rang with such ease I knew she’d done it countless times before.

Da moved into the room and stood beside me. “Why did you come here?” he said in an anguished whisper to me. I could see his problem. He couldn’t send me out there, out into the streets of Federal Hill, where a killer might be waiting. But he didn’t want me here, either.

Nate was still staring at Delia. “How did you get in?”

“Through the kitchen door,” Delia said. “The key you gave me so long ago. Did you forget? You should have changed the locks.”

“I don’t want to see you again. Haven’t I endured enough on this day?”

“I want to make a deal,” Delia said.

“I thought we were done with deals.” Delia crossed in front of me. She stood, blocking me slightly, facing Nate. “I’m sorry about Billy.” Nate said nothing.