Riggs Park (11 page)

Marilyn felt the same way. We agreed to have a little talk with her.

“I think you’re making a mistake,” I told Penny on the appointed day. “I mean, you can’t really want to go out with just everybody.”

“You ought to find just one or two boys you really like,” Marilyn added.

“You think so? Well, I’m looking.” Penny’s tone was flip, but Marilyn and I knew she felt hurt and bitter. She kept going out with anyone who asked.

Steve was one of the few who didn’t take Penny on a date during that time, and who sounded worried every time he mentioned Penny’s name. “She better watch it. She’s only safe with someone who’ll look out for her.” If he were Penny’s boyfriend, he said, he’d never tell what went on between them. “But most guys don’t think like that.” He was picking out a new song on the guitar, strumming the same chord over and over. I knew he was writing the song for Penny, who was on his mind all the time. Accustomed to being the smart one, I hated to admit Steve was right about Penny’s need for protection.

Yet I heard the truth in what he said. Penny seemed to let boys touch her in some important way that other girls never did, even girls like Francine Ades, who was also known for being easy. It was unthinkable, given the standards that prevailed in those days, to sleep with a boy you weren’t married to (or at least engaged). But Francine got away with it because she viewed sex as an act of kindness, no more important than offering a drink of water to someone with a wicked thirst. Afterward, Francine talked to her lovers about algebra, sports, politics—business as usual. She was running for sophomore-class treasurer, and all the boys helped with her campaign. They wanted to pay Francine back because they knew she had done them a favor. With Penny, it seemed the other way around.

During Easter week, just before the pledges were usually let into the sorority, Penny went out three nights in a row with a boy named Allan Kessler. He had been dating Darlene Zimmer, a member who was spending Easter in Florida with her parents. No one liked the idea of Penny moving in on another member’s boyfriend. This was more a matter of principle than a vote of sympathy for Darlene, a brusque, authoritarian girl who served as the sorority’s parliamentarian.

The pledges never knew what Darlene actually said to the members, because we were sitting upstairs during the Sunday-afternoon meeting while the members met in the basement. But the story got around that when Darlene returned from Florida, Allan told her he’d taken Penny out just to see what he could get, and it turned out to be quite a lot. “He’s asked me to take him back,” Darlene supposedly said, “but I’m not sure I can after that.” Tears reportedly came to Darlene’s eyes, which no one would have believed because of her toughness.

She could not bear the thought of belonging to a sorority with a girl who would do something like that, Darlene had sobbed; she could not bear the thought of the entire group being tainted by Penny’s reputation. She invoked social rules the way she invoked Robert’s Rules, but with considerably more emotion. Something had to be done.

Outside the sun was bright, the tulips blooming, the grass a sudden green. The den where the pledges sat was warm and stuffy. All twenty-two of us believed, secretly, that this was the day we were going to be made members. The initiation ceremony was secret but very beautiful, we had been told. Usually we were brought down in pairs. That day Penny was called first. She was called alone. She was gone for perhaps ten minutes, but to us the time seemed interminable.

When Penny came back upstairs, Elaine the pledge mistress was by her side. They were both silent, with hard grim expressions on their faces. Penny did not return to the den. She walked through the hallway and out the door. She held herself stiffly, as if she wanted to cry but wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. Marilyn and I knew we ought to follow her. We knew Penny was waiting for her mother to pick her up. We remembered Penny waiting just like this in elementary school, after the boys called her Red. For a moment, it was as if nothing had changed in all the years since, and the least we could do was go to her. Both of us felt an aching in our chests at the sight of Penny, standing so stiffly in the sun, her bright hair cheerful as ever. But both of us froze. Our legs would not move to carry us out of the den. We kept smelling the perfume the other pledges were wearing, seeing their long, stockinged legs under springtime skirts, and it was as if going out that door would be the end of the large, secret thing we were part of, and neither of us could bear it.

Francine Ades finally whispered to the pledge mistress, “What happened?”

“You’ll find out in a minute.” Helen Weinberg’s car pulled up to the front of the house, and Penny got in. Then all the pledges were called downstairs at once and lined up against the wall.

“A very serious thing has happened,” the president said. She spoke in a low, dramatic tone. “We’ve had to ask one of you to depledge.”

A murmur went through the pledges, though all of us expected this.

“This is something we don’t do lightly, girls,” the president said. It was done only in a case of utmost seriousness when a girl turned out not to have the qualities—the ethical and moral qualities—that the sorority expected of its members. She hoped this would serve as an example of the sorority’s serious commitment to admitting only girls of good character. The basement was cool, lit with recessed lights. The members stared at the pledges without blinking. Darlene Zimmer’s mouth was drawn into a tight line. Everyone knew what Allan must have told her about his dates with Penny. I tried to catch Marilyn’s eye, but Marilyn was looking at the floor.

Afterward, I went to Marilyn’s house because neither of us wanted to be alone. We didn’t know quite what to do. Seeing us come in without Penny, Steve demanded to hear the story. He said, “You have no choice but to depledge.” His words fell on our ears like stinging shards of glass. Of course, he was right. We had to stand up for Penny. We always had. And especially now. As officers of the pledge class and Penny’s good friends, it was our duty.

We were being sucked into a whirlpool. There was no way out. For the rest of the afternoon, we made our plans. We’d ask to be brought down together at next Sunday’s meeting. We would make a little speech about fairness and, at the end, depledge. Marilyn, who knew something about politics, said that was the most dramatic, the most effective way.

All week Penny stayed home and isolated, just as she’d done as a child when the boys had called her Red and as an adolescent after the incident at Wishner’s Upholstery Shop. Helen Weinberg said Penny had the flu. Marilyn and I called every afternoon, but were told Penny didn’t want to come to the phone. When we knocked on Penny’s door, Mrs. Weinberg said Penny was sleeping.

On Sunday, Marilyn and I were sick with nerves and shame. Once we depledged, no sorority member would speak to us. We’d been careful not to tell anyone what we were up to. We almost wrote Penny a note about it, but in the end we decided she would find out soon enough.

At the meeting, we asked to be brought down together and the pledge mistress said all right. The pledges started being taken down five at a time, which was odd. When it was our turn, Marilyn and I were blindfolded at the top of the stairs. A pleasant melody reached us as we descended in the dark. We could make out the voices of a choir, the words of a song. At the bottom of the steps, our blindfolds were removed. We stood in cool half darkness, illuminated by halos of yellow flame. The smiling members stood before us, each with a lit candle in her hand. They were singing the initiation song. So before Marilyn and I could depledge, we were members.

As the scent of perfume rose into the candlelit darkness, Marilyn and I didn’t think about Penny or about the happiness Marilyn’s mother would feel knowing her daughter had been installed after all. We didn’t think of any one person or one thing because we were part of something larger. We were warm and complete. At the same moment, in the grip of the same emotion, we whispered to each other, “Sisters.”

We went back to Marilyn’s house afterward. When we walked into the living room, Penny was sitting on the sofa with Steve. He was playing the song he’d written for her on his guitar. Penny looked beautiful and desperate. The music was sweet, but we were part of a sorority now—we couldn’t help it—and knew that Steve and Penny could only cause us shame.

I
n the hospital, still clinging to my hand, Marilyn had fallen into a fitful sleep. Her fingers loosened their grip, then tensed again and held on, while her eyes darted about beneath closed lids. Beside us in the recliner, Bernie snored lightly. After a few minutes, Marilyn jerked awake and said, as if her nap had never interrupted our conversation, “Who am I fooling? Who says high school didn’t make any difference? We treated Penny like shit.”

“Like
shit?
Don’t you think that’s a little strong?” I forced a little laugh. “Maybe we were selfish teenage pukes. Maybe we acted accordingly. But treat Penny like
shit?
Come on, Marilyn.”

“We avoided her because we had all that sorority stuff to talk about. Snuck around to go shopping without her. To go to the movies without her. Don’t say we didn’t.”

“Only because we didn’t want to talk in front of her about things it would be hard for her to hear,” I murmured, truly alarmed now. “And Penny never seemed to care. Think about it. She really didn’t. She was still our friend. She never got angry or upset.”

“Just because she never said anything didn’t mean she didn’t care!” Marilyn sat up straighter in the hospital bed, already rolled nearly upright because of the drains behind her ears. As if bewildered, she lifted her hand to her face, patted her bandages, looked uncomprehendingly toward the darkened window, then with dawning recognition at Bernie now stirring in the recliner. “Let’s get out of here,” she said.

In an instant, Bernie was fully awake and on his feet. “Relax, Marilyn. It’s just for one night.”

“I mean it. I want to go home.” Her tone carried a thread of panic.

“What’s the point?” Bernie shrugged with great nonchalance. “So you can walk the floors? So you can worry about yourself? Here they’re keeping an eye on you.”

“I’m not worrying about myself! I’m thinking about Penny.” Marilyn threw the covers back and flung her legs over the edge of the bed.

Bernie clasped her wrist, held it tight. “Relax,” he said again. “What do you think you can do for Penny in the middle of the night? Remember what Felicia used to say?”

“Who’s Felicia?” I asked.

Marilyn grew still for a moment, then turned a worried, swollen face to Bernie, sighed, and leaned back against her pillow.

“Felicia said you wouldn’t forget the relaxation exercises. You could revive them anytime you needed.”

“It’s been three years,” Marilyn muttered.

“Who’s Felicia?” I asked again.

“Then maybe you should call her,” Bernie said. “Get a quick refresher course.”

I might not have been in the room.

Five minutes later, Marilyn was propped up in bed doing deep-breathing exercises, and I had been dismissed. A nurse had checked Marilyn’s pulse; everything was under control.

“You might as well go back to the house and get some sleep. One of us should.” Bernie walked me to the elevator with a firm hand on my shoulder as if he feared I might change my mind. Felicia, he explained, was a holistic healer Marilyn had consulted during her chemo, who had helped calm her down.

“I know how it sounds—‘holistic healer.’ I had doubts myself. But she was okay. Marilyn had no hair. Her nerves were shot. Felicia taught her deep breathing, biofeedback. Told her to take vitamins and some herbs I don’t think did any harm.” He punched the elevator button.

“Some—hippie healer,” I said. “I talked to Marilyn every day on the phone and never heard a word about any Felicia.”

“Felicia’s not a hippie. She’s a doctor’s wife, fifty years old, who wears designer jeans. Don’t feel bad, I think Marilyn was afraid people would think she was a weirdo if she mentioned it. She didn’t even tell
me
at first. You can be around somebody all your life and still not know them as well as you think.”

“As I’m finding out,” I said. It amazed me that Marilyn still felt guilty about high school. That she felt there was no way to make it up. That—at what might be the end of her life—she was hoping Penny had a grown son or daughter she could do better by than she’d done by the mother. This had nothing to do with Steve. Not really.

The elevator door opened, and Bernie patted me on the shoulder as if to ease me inside. “Get some sleep, Barbara,” he said. “In the morning we’ll all feel better.”

I realized that sleeping was not on the agenda.

Tikkun Olam,
I thought. The piece of my world that most needed healing was Marilyn. And what Marilyn wanted from me was research. All right: reluctant as I was, I’d try to find Marcellus Johnson and ask him about Essie. It was the least I could do.

Considering that Essie was probably dead, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

Back at Marilyn’s, the house felt loomingly quiet and eerie, and the portable phone on the kitchen counter, illuminated by the fluorescent glow of an automatic night-light, seemed to beckon menacingly. The gloom reminded me that on earlier visits I had usually been greeted by at least one animal, often more. Even the mangy cat that had been the last of Marilyn’s menagerie to go would have made the scene more cheerful.

At least I had the benefit of solitude. Thinking things through, I decided Steve’s story about the baby was true. As Marilyn had said, he wouldn’t have made it up just to distract her. I still wanted to talk to him—partly to ask why he hadn’t told Marilyn until now, but mostly just for comfort. Talking to Steve always made me feel better. But I wasn’t going to call him. I’d end up telling him Marilyn was in the hospital, and why, and I’d let him make me feel better by upsetting him—selfish Miss Barbara all over again—and there was no reason for that, now that Marilyn’s crisis seemed under control. Instead, I’d get straight to the task of finding Marcellus Johnson. I half hoped it would be impossible, that he and Essie Berman had disappeared into the mists of history and thus discharged me of my obligation.

Assuming that if he was around at all, Marcellus would live in Washington or Maryland, not Virginia, I tackled the phone book first. Although the day had seemed interminable, it was not even nine o’clock. I called dozens of numbers, feeling foolish each time I said, “I’m looking for the Marcellus Johnson who used to live in Riggs Park and knew a woman named Essie Berman.” An hour later I was hoarse, but no closer to finding him. I’d begun to believe I’d done my honor-bound best and could honestly say I’d failed.

Then it occurred to me that Marcellus could be a middle name.

“Yeah, that’s me,” he answered three calls later—a J. Marcellus at an address in Adelphi, only a few miles over the District Line into Maryland from his old house in Riggs Park. “Who’s this?”

“My name is Barbara Cohen. Essie was my neighbor when I was growing up in Riggs Park. You and I have never met, but I’ve heard about you.”

“I bet.” A smile in his voice, or maybe menace. “So you moved out of Riggs Park thirty-some years ago, and now you looking for Essie?”

“She’s alive, then?”

“Yeah, she alive. She old, but she alive. What you want her for?”

“Like I said, I lived near her when I was a kid. Now I live out of town and I’m here for a visit. I just want to see her.”

“You want something from her.” A flat statement. didn’t deny it. “Don’t matter,” he conceded. “She probably like to see you anyway.”

“Where is she?”

“Same place as always. Where you think?”

“In Riggs Park?”

“She never moved.” A weighty pause. “Not like some people.”

I ignored that, though the accusation in his voice was unmistakable. “She still lives there by herself?”

“Naw, she too old for that. My daughter stays with her. Sometimes I stay with her myself.”

Stay.
As if a house were always a place of impermanence. He’d probably never
lived
anywhere, only
stayed.

“You didn’t find her because the phone’s listed under my daughter now. Taneka Johnson.”

When I hung up my mouth was dry as sand. This was far too easy, and not at all what I’d expected. Now I was obligated to see it through.

“Essie’s sleeping,” Taneka said when I dialed her number after gulping two glasses of water. “It’s late. I’m about to go to sleep myself.”

I apologized profusely for the hour and repeated the story I’d told her father. I adopted my meekest tone. “I’d really like to see Essie. Your father said she’d probably like to see me, too.”

“She’s at her best in the morning.” She hesitated. I thought she might hang up. Then she said, coolly, “Come tomorrow at ten.”

I wanted to suggest afternoon instead, wanted to spend the morning with Marilyn, but Taneka was firm. “Ten o’clock,” she repeated.

I set my alarm, tossed my way through the night, and the next day got to the hospital just after eight.

“You didn’t need to come check up on me,” Marilyn scolded, very much back to normal, her face still swollen, but far less pallid than the day before. “They’re releasing me as soon as the doc checks me out.”

I turned to Bernie, who sat disheveled and bearded in the recliner where he’d slept. He nodded.

“See?” Marilyn said. “You could have lazed around the house till I got home.”

“No. I have an appointment. You’ll be thrilled to hear it’s with Essie Berman.”

Marilyn’s jaw dropped open just far enough to remind her it was sore. “She’s alive.” She put her hand to her face. “You found her. I knew you would.”

“Get this—she still lives in Riggs Park. With Marcellus’s daughter. Taneka.”

Marilyn could barely contain her merriment. “Go,” she said. “I’ll await the full report at home.”

Riggs Park looked even less prosperous than it had the other day as I pulled into the space in front of Essie’s house. It was drizzling again, everything gray. But I took the patch of golden chrysanthemums blooming in Essie’s yard as evidence that this residence, at least, had been cherished.

My heart drummed wildly as I ascended the steps to the porch. Aside from what I might learn about Penny, what if Essie gave me a tongue-lashing for never writing or calling, and then showing up after all this time? Even at ninety, I wouldn’t put it past her. Essie had always been known for forthrightness.

I raised my hand to knock, but before my fist touched wood, the door was flung open by a pretty and oddly familiar young woman in a University of Maryland sweatshirt and jeans, smiling so cheerfully, and with such an air of welcome, that I thought we either must have met before or else the girl was putting on an act.

“Taneka?”

The girl laughed, revealing large, perfect, pearly teeth. “You! I saw you on Sunday!”

Of course! This was the young woman we’d seen carrying the toddler into Penny Weinberg’s old house. Today her long braids were pinned close to her head, but the most remarkable change was her lack of a scowl, her sunny manner.

“Sunday I thought you were the cops,” the girl said. “They hassle you even if you’re minding your own business.”

“Not cops. Just an old neighbor.” Why was the girl worried about police?

“Come on in. Essie’s waiting for you.” Taneka literally pulled me into the living room, cluttered with furniture I didn’t recognize and cut off from the dining area by a solid wall that hadn’t been there before, with a door open just enough to show the dining area had been converted into a sleeping space. Did that mean Essie could no longer climb the stairs to the bedrooms? A familiar, heady scent hit me. Strong coffee. Essie’s great weakness.

“So. Barbara Cohen.” The voice was raspy instead of booming, but had lost none of its bite. In a wing chair by the window, always her favorite spot, sat an ancient but unmistakable Essie. “I’d get up, but I’m not so sturdy anymore. Come here.”

In her younger days Essie’s sharp features had made her grotesque enough, but in old age, whatever cushioning had softened her face had fallen away so thoroughly that her beaky nose and jutting cheekbones seemed about to break through the skin. Always thin, she was almost skeletal now, and her once-sallow complexion had grown pale and powdery.

Though I’d expected no better, Essie’s appearance was a shock. Measured against the long swath of eternity, the thirty-odd years since we’d seen each other seemed too short a span to have made such a mockery of her: robbed her of flesh, creased her face, bent her spine. I took the old woman’s hand, so papery and crushable, that I was afraid to grip it. But Essie squeezed amazingly hard for a woman of ninety—a clear, “I might be old but I’m not finished yet” squeeze, so deliberate that I wanted to laugh.

Then, holding the frail hand with the firm grasp, I realized how shriveled and small Essie had become. My earliest memories were of a giantess, huge and loud, a force to be reckoned with no less than thunder or lightning. Now, even in a sitting position, she seemed several inches shorter, hunched, dwarfed by the high back of the wing chair. More distressing yet, her head seemed smaller despite the prominent nose, which puzzled me until I realized what was missing was Essie’s voluminous hair, once a salt-and-pepper pandemonium, now white and sparse, sadly diminished.

“Sit down. Please.” Taneka pulled up an extra chair. “I’ll get the coffee.”

Essie waited for the girl to disappear. “So, what brings you here? Don’t tell me nostalgia.”

“Not nostalgia. I came to ask you something.” There had never been any point lying to Essie.

“Ah. A mission.” Essie nodded, leaned back. “Why am I not surprised?”

I reached over, took her hand again. “Are you going to send me on a guilt trip, Essie? For not coming to see you? I don’t even live around here anymore. It’s a seven-hour drive.”

Essie didn’t ask where I lived or if I visited D.C. regularly or why I hadn’t come to see her before. “Fine, you can tell me about your mission. But first catch me up. My old friends from the neighborhood are either dead or we don’t keep up. Mostly dead. Tell me who you still keep in touch with.”

“Marilyn and Bernie, mainly. And of course Trudi.” Grateful for the distraction, I filled Essie in on my sister’s history and a little of my own, and told her about Bernie and Marilyn in a cursory way. Bernie was fine; Marilyn had had a bout of cancer.