Strings Attached (24 page)

I felt guilty, sitting in the tree, spying on Da. Jamie was looking at the boy with a fascinated, intent look in his eyes. Billy handed him the camera and showed him how to work the lens. I was jealous. Two boys absorbed by machinery, and the girl always got left out. Their heads were together, bent over the camera.

“Come on, Jamie.” I sidled over on the branch, closer to the trunk. “Come on.”

“Nate has his arm on Da’s shoulder,” Jamie said, the camera raised to his face. “Now they’re shaking hands.”

“That means the meeting is over,” Billy said. “Gimme the camera.”

We shinnied down the trunk, hanging on to branches and swinging, our shoes finally hitting dirt with a satisfying thump.

Muddie came tearing around the side of the house. “He’s leaving! He’s looking for us now!”

We dashed toward her, but for an instant I turned to look back. Billy was leaning against the tree, the camera up to his eye again, and I heard the shutter click.

 

We’d expected a courtroom, but instead we were just in a room with a judge and a few other people who didn’t introduce themselves. We all sat silently, waiting, but we weren’t sure for what. The judge looked at papers. He didn’t seem friendly.

Da had brought the scrapbook with all our clippings. All the articles that said what a happy family we were and what a wonderful father he was. The pictures of us lined up on the couch, the first picture that was ever in the paper, Da with his arms full of three babies, a smile on his face, and sadness in his eyes. Da and the three of us at Maggie’s grave site. We’ve only gone once or twice, and then because a photographer wanted a picture. Da couldn’t stand the thought of our mother under the ground.

Da and the Corrigan Three at the Pennsylvania state fair. Da and the Corrigan Three at the Fourth of July parade. The Corrigan Three singing on the radio. On Decoration Day, on Thanksgiving, waiting for pie. Singing Christmas carols.

He tried to show the judge the scrapbook, but the judge waved it away. He looked down at his papers and looked at his watch and looked at his watch again. The minutes went by like long hours.

After what felt like an hour someone knocked on the door and came in and whispered in the judge’s ear. Delia hadn’t shown up.

We went down the courthouse steps and looked at each other in a daze.

“Something must have happened,” Da said. “She’d never give up like this.”

But what we didn’t realize that afternoon, standing on the courthouse steps, was that she was gone for good.

 

Everything else was still there in her room: her winter coat, her good shoes, her hats, dresses, sheets. Her books, her radio, even her rosary.

He wrote to the convent in Vermont, but the sisters hadn’t heard of her. Maybe we’d heard the name wrong. Sisters of Mercy, we thought, but could it have been something else?

“She’ll come back,” Da said.

“She’ll send us a card,” Muddie said.

“She can’t just be gone,” Jamie said.

Nobody looked at me. It was like Da’s old story of our birth. Everybody knew who was at fault. Everybody knew who was guilty. I was the one, after all, who had made the deal with Nate.

 

Nate promised Da he’d had nothing to do with Delia’s disappearance. He’d just talked to the judge and vouched for Da, for old time’s sake.

We waited to hear from her. We thought surely she’d come at Christmas, or send word. Surely she’d send a card on our birthday. Surely…

There was a shift then. Strange how Delia was the funkiller, the one who could flatten the fizz in the soda, could remind you it was raining, could tell you on a brilliant cold
day that you’d catch your death. You’d think there would be more songs, more laughter after she was gone. You’d think that, wouldn’t you?

When a family breaks you don’t hear the crack of the breaking. You don’t hear a sound.

Thirty

 

New York City
November 1950

Here was where Delia had moved and talked, read the papers, had a cup of tea in the afternoon. Maybe there was a whole other side to my aunt. Maybe she sang along with the radio. Maybe she painted her fingernails. Because I didn’t really know her.

It was dark outside when I summoned all my courage and dialed the number. When I heard Muddie’s voice, I almost hung up.

“Kit!” she said when she heard my voice. “Oh, the newspapers! It’s all over, that picture of you….”

“So you saw it.”

“What happened? How could they print such lies? Everyone in Providence knows you’re Billy’s girl.”

I hung on, wanting to cry. Muddie’s belief in me was a steady thing, no more noticed than the sidewalk underneath my heels. But now I was glad of it. “Did Da —”

“I don’t know — he’s not home yet. Any minute. Are you coming for Thanksgiving? I can meet the train. Anytime —”

“I don’t know,” I said, stalling.

“But you have to come! Is Billy with you?”

“No. I was hoping he was in Providence,” I said, my heartbeat speeding up.

“Gosh, I wouldn’t know. He hasn’t called, but I’m sure he will,” Muddie rushed to say. “I’m sure he won’t believe any of this nonsense. Oh, here’s Da! It’s Kit on the phone! Hurry, it’s long distance!”

“I know it’s long distance!” Da shouted into the phone. “Kit? Are you there?”

“I’m here, Da —”

“I’m going down to that editor’s office and string him up by his tie, do you hear me?” he roared. “I’m suing him for libel! How dare they print such a lie! So you’re dancing with the man — you’re a dancer, aren’t you? Calling you a chorus girl —”

I was crying, leaning against the wall, tears sliding down my cheeks. He believed in me. Believed without my explaining or begging. “I
am
a chorus girl, Da.”

“I know, but it’s the way he wrote it. I’ve a mind to —”

“You can’t do anything. It’s in all the papers here. I’m just glad you don’t believe it.”

“Of course I don’t!”

“Da, I have to ask you something. What happened between you and Nate?”

“What happened? What do you mean? I haven’t seen him in years.”

“No, I mean, long ago. Why didn’t you stay friends?”

There was a pause. Then, cautiously, “Well, now, we’re friends. Of a sort.”

“What does he blame you for?”

I heard the hiss of the phone connection. I pictured Da, still in his work clothes and boots, standing in the kitchen. “This isn’t something to be yelling into a phone long distance.”

“Tell me! I need to know. Was it about Delia?”

“He asked for Delia’s hand back then — when she was twenty and him twenty-two. And me being his best friend and her brother, he asked me. I said no. Well, of course I did! He was already mixed up with those gangsters up on Federal Hill. So much for his promises.”

“What promises?”

“That he was out of the rackets. That he would take Delia and they’d move away, to Boston, or even farther, to get away.”

“Why would she listen to you?”

“Well, that’s another question, isn’t it? I think she listened to herself, more’s like. But he blamed me, even though it was for the best. Anyone would say that. And he wasn’t even a fine lawyer then, just a skinny kid saying he was
going
to be a lawyer. Who knew he’d turn out to be such a big man? But wasn’t I right — isn’t he still a gangster? Just look at the papers!”

“I thought you didn’t believe the papers.”

“Well, they get things right once in a while. Listen, everyone makes their own road, I’m not throwing stones at the man. I just didn’t want him marrying my sister. That’s enough of the past, now. What difference does it make?”

I choked out a half laugh, half sob.

“Darling girl, come home. Muddie is all sparked up.”

I told him I would let them know, which he didn’t like, and that long distance was expensive, which he couldn’t argue with, and we hung up.

I was no further along than before.

If Nate had closed up this apartment after Delia disappeared in 1945, maybe there was more evidence of her having been here. I began to search. I had nothing else to do. I opened every drawer and felt behind it. I moved the
rugs. I climbed on a chair to search the top shelves of the closet. I crawled on my hands and knees on the floor and ran my hand along every seam in the floorboards. I didn’t know what I was looking for — a stray earring, a scrap of paper, a key… something left behind five years before that would have been overlooked the same way the powder compact had. Nothing.

I suddenly sat up very straight, pierced by a thought. There was one place I hadn’t searched.

 

Down in the basement, there was no problem at all breaking the lock on the chain-link fencing for apartment 1A. The super kept his tools in the utility room, where the boiler sat. I broke the lock with a screwdriver and a hammer. Amazing the tips you could learn from growing up in a lousy neighborhood.

The door swung open. I walked right through. I removed a box from on top of the footstool and then sat down to open it with the tip of the screwdriver.

The box was filled with women’s clothes. Not folded and neatly put away, but thrown in and all jumbled together. I pawed through it and found expensive cocktail dresses with net and tulle and lace. Holding one up, I gauged the hemline and the style. A shorter hemline, out of date — the war years. A fox stole, a little black hat with a veil. Some rhinestone jewelry. And brassieres and underwear and girdles — all black, trimmed with lace, dainty things. Clothes to be seen in.

They couldn’t be Delia’s.

I pressed my nose to a sweater. Delia had never worn perfume, but a scent clung to these….

But wait. During the war years, there had been a bottle on her dresser. A little bottle with a gold top. Toujours Moi. I’d never paid attention in French class, but I knew that meant
Always Me.

I breathed in again. Suddenly, my eyes smarted with tears. Delia burst into brisk, purposeful life, her fingers resting on top of my head, bending down to adjust a scarf or fix a button. I
smelled
her.

I slipped into a little gold jacket, nipped in at the waist with a small peplum. It fit perfectly. I vaguely remembered this one.

So this was why Nate knew how to buy clothes for a woman. He’d had years of practice with Delia.

A small chest was wedged against the grating. I opened all the drawers. Empty. I pulled them out and searched underneath and behind. Nothing.

Another box. This one, purses and shoes. Platform pumps in kid and sandals in black. Summer shoes. Shoes to dance in. And tiny purses, a clutch in black satin and one in red leather. A small beaded one for evening. The shoes had scuffed bottoms but seemed barely worn, and there was nothing inside the purses except a crumpled tissue. At the very bottom of the box was a green quilted rectangular box, the kind ladies kept their silk stockings in, instead of rolling them into balls and tossing them in a drawer. I opened it — nylons and silk stockings, tumbled together. I shut the box, then opened it again. Underneath the stockings, I’d caught a glimpse of white.

An envelope addressed to Nate at his office address on
Federal Hill. In Delia’s handwriting. But there was no stamp, no postmark. I opened it.

Do you remember the night of the hurricane, when you picked me up and carried me through the water — do you remember? We said we could never walk away from something so true. We did once and we found each other again and so we’d never leave again. That’s what we said.

Are you afraid of me now? Is that it? Do we have too many secrets to keep?

I thought my heart had been broken every Sunday afternoon we parted. Every Friday night you put it back together. My life was full of waiting.

And now it ends with waiting. I’m waiting for you here and you aren’t coming. I know that now. You’re shedding your mistress. You are making that clear. Yes, I said mistress. I know, I was never allowed to use that word. I wasn’t your mistress, I was your love. How many times did you say that to me over the years? How could I have known that the language was as false as the promise?

I wish I could take back every tear I shed for you. I wish I could take back every kiss. I wish I could take back the years.

Keep your money and your clothes. On my forehead, the words are written in ash, and I am wearing scarlet and purple and I am leaving because

 

The letter stopped there. I could see Delia writing it, maybe wiping tears away while she did it, putting down her pen and picking it up again. I had no way of knowing if
Nate had ever read it. It seemed the kind of letter you’d tear up if you found it.

The air was so chilly down here. The light was dim. I was suddenly aware of how alone I was, and how much time had passed.

Turning to go, I saw something I’d missed. A trunk, an old one with leather straps. Pushed to the very back, with an old rug tossed on top.

I stared at the trunk. Suddenly, fear seized me, a hard, cold fear that made it impossible for me to move, or even think for a moment.

Are you afraid of me now?

Do we have too many secrets to keep?

What would his
mistress
know about his business that no one else might know? What part of his life could she threaten if she became
emotional?
If she showed up where she wasn’t supposed to show up, like in a theater when his wife was there? If she suddenly brought a legal proceeding against her own brother, what would she do to Nate?

I knew it from the movies, and I knew it from Fox Point, where windows and doors were flung open and fights were like opera in other houses — men were afraid of desperate women. They’d do anything to shut them up.

I needed somebody else to open that trunk, because I was too afraid.

I felt the screwdriver in my fist. I made my legs move.
All I have to do is break the lock and lift the lid. Just glance inside, quickly, and put it back down. Don’t think about what you’ll see, just do it. Because you have to know the truth.

I walked over to the trunk. I fit the screwdriver in the lock. My hands were perspiring and the screwdriver kept slipping. The clatter of the noise made my heart pound. It
took long minutes before I was able to pop it open with a clatter that made me jump back.

I put my hands on the edges of the trunk. I tried to find courage, but could only come up with some sort of tattered determination and the knowledge that I couldn’t go to the police with a story like this unless it was true.

I pulled at the lid. It stuck for a moment, and I knelt on the floor and pushed harder. The lid sprang open and scraped against the fencing like a scream.

The trunk was empty.

Closing the lid, I sagged backward, placing a hand over my heart in a futile attempt to slow it down.

But if Delia wasn’t in the trunk, she was
somewhere.
Nate was involved in her disappearance, or her murder. Why hadn’t we gone to the police at the time? Because in our family, you didn’t poke at things. You just accepted them. Delia was angry, Delia moved away. There had been a short investigation, but it was clear that Delia had been rejected by her family and had chosen to go. We didn’t know where she’d kept her money; she’d handed over the rent to Da in cash every month. It made sense that she would just go. Never darken our door again, like in some melodrama.

If we suspected that Nate had done something terrible, we pushed the thought away, because it meant we were responsible for it. I’d been only twelve, so of course I would hide my head under my pillow and try to forget. But Da? What was his excuse? Was the answer so easy — that Da hid from everything?

I remembered his loyalty to me, how he believed in me, and I felt helpless against the great tide of his love. Delia had been right — he took the easy road. But he loved us and protected us. He was all kinds of things in one — liar and charmer and schemer. He was my da.

He wasn’t alone. We all chose to believe that Delia had left. We didn’t believe it — we
chose
to. We saw there was a mystery, but we decided to believe the easiest thing, the thing that made us the most comfortable. My father had led a whole life by that principle. Maybe choosing to believe the easiest thing was the worst sin of all.

And what about me? I had taken the easy road, too, accepting the apartment and the job and clothes…. How many things did I turn my face from, afraid of losing something?

I put everything back the way I’d found it and left. As I reached the stairway I realized that I was still wearing the jacket. The light was better here, and I looked down at it. For the first time I saw a stain on the front, near the waist. I slipped it off and looked at it closely. Dark brown, faded now, but an irregular stain that had splattered a bit, faint drops in a trail.