The Rose Thieves (4 page)

“Don't be so melodramatic. Do you think they'll slap me in leg-irons and haul me off to prison?” She was laughing, and her voice softened so much, I couldn't hear the rest. She came through the living room and ran lightly up the stairs. Out the window, behind her, I could see Pop going up the hill in back of the house, shaking his head.

*   *   *

We were exactly a mile from home (I could see on the special odometer for trips) when Ma pulled over and asked if Cappy had shown me how to put the top down. Audie leaned over the seat to watch as I worked the little chrome lever that opened the trunk, as the roof folded over our heads and the trunk ground shut on it. The exposed sky was brilliant, the sun hot on my shoulders. We set off again, laughing, shouting to each other over the wind, waving to everyone: other cars, ladies pushing oversize lawn mowers, people in wedding regalia outside a church. Ma drove very slowly—she said she was frightened of traffic. We missed nothing all the way to New York, and nothing missed us. By the time we got there it was too late for a visit to Grandma's. Ma double-parked and left us to guard the car.

“They won't tow my children away,” she said.

While she was gone, we planned what to do if, indeed, they would tow her children away. Should we scramble out in different directions, run between buildings, and leave the car to its fate? Pretend to be immigrants and not know that double-parking was illegal in America? We practiced speaking in tongues. Audie said we should play Lorelei—we combed our hair and hoped policemen would be so moved by our beauty they would overlook the car. No policeman came. The buildings were so high they seemed to taper together above the narrow street.

A huge truck pulled up behind us. I could see the driver lift his arm and jerk his elbow down to pull the horn, but it startled me anyway. Surely, every cop in New York had heard it. I tried to explain to the driver, in sign language, that I didn't have my license yet and could ruin my life by trying to move the car. The endless horn sounded like a steamship, roaring toward us between the buildings. Audie and I, dwarfed by the noise, watched each other over the seat. If my mother heard it from the tenth floor, I'm sure she didn't look out to find the source. Finally, as if we were some kind of obstruction that the usual methods had failed to dissolve, the driver climbed down from the cab and approached us. He was sturdy but not as tall as I had expected, and not much older than we were. Audie and I could handle him, I thought.

“Who put this thing here?” he asked me.

“My mother,” Audie said. He couldn't berate her mother. He looked at us, and I looked at us, too. At fourteen and sixteen, we were only slightly fleshed. Audie had biceps from basketball, I had breasts. Our hair was brushed one hundred times a day, outside and in. Mine hung over most of my face. I wore my new leotard and my new skirt, my knees protruding sharply from underneath, and I wanted to put my hat on so much that my hands trembled in its direction as if they were not in my control.

“Can either of you drive?” he asked.

“I can,” I said.

He seemed doubtful. “Do you have the keys?”

I did. “This is my car,” I told him, and I glanced up to see if he was surprised that a woman as young as myself should possess a wing-tip car, but he simply put both hands on the door and swung over it and into the front seat.

“We can't go very far,” I said, handing him the keys. “My mother'll be out any minute.”

He looked at me. “I don't want to go anywhere in
this,
” he said. “I just want to get it out of the way.”

Ma came running out through the revolving door. She stopped, seeing the truck and the car, and gave me a wide, deceiving smile before she went around to the driver's side.

“Oh dear, am I in the way? I'm awfully sorry. I have a terrible time understanding the parking in New York. It's so nice of you to move the car for me, but we're about to go, so we'll just get it out of your way.”

The man was staring at the pedals, and as my mother prattled over his bowed head, he began to look insubstantial.

“I'm Lila Vanderwald,” Ma was saying, “and these are my daughters, Kate and Audie.” She smiled, and her hair brushed across her shoulder as she leaned down to shake his hand.

“Ronnie Garkofsky,” he said, clearing his throat. “This street is too narrow. I've got some kind of problem on this street every week. Sometimes I get two wheels up on the sidewalk and just drive through.”

Audie laughed. “I'll bet they get out of the way then.”

“You should see it.” He grinned. “Even in New York, people move for an eighteen-wheeler.”

There were horns behind the trunk now, all the way to the end of the block. The sun was shining straight down between the buildings, and the noise was rising toward it like a tide.

Ronnie Garkofsky got out of the car, shook Ma's hand, and ran back to his truck. Ma started the Lincoln.

“I'm gone twenty minutes and you're all ready to run off with a perfect stranger,” she said.

Audie turned around, lifted her arm in the air, and made a yanking motion, as if pulling an overhead horn. Ronnie pulled. His horn cut through the little hoots and bleeps of the cars behind us and seemed to send us forward along the street. He pulled it once more before he turned, and we didn't see him again.

*   *   *

On the way to Jack Cirillo's we practiced our new sign language. Ma drove so slowly that all the trucks had to pass us, and as they did we yanked furiously at the air. They honked. There was not one exception. Enormous men honked twice and waved sausagelike arms at us; scrawny men with few teeth blew long bugle sounds; handsome mustached men like the men in cigarette commercials honked quickly and swooped around us and away. The honking carried us along the parkway while Audie perched on the seat back and waved like a politician in a parade. My hat shimmered beside me, my hair flew, New York blew by and out to sea on a chorus of truck horns, and we waved to Yonkers, and Westchester, and Valhalla, where graves stretched for miles, until we crossed into Connecticut and everything became perfect green. Jack Cirillo lived on Long Island Sound. Well before we arrived we could see the water, always appearing and receding, more a swamp than a sea. He had a dock and a boat, Ma said, so his children could explore the salt marshes when they visited. And a family of swans lived on the water in back of the house.

Jack Cirillo, when he came out to meet us, walked casually, spoke slowly and deeply, as if he had a pleasant, private idea beneath everything he said. Ma had been combing her hair, and passed me the comb under her hand. I arranged my hat, and she pushed my hair back beneath it, off my face. Jack Cirillo kissed Ma's mouth, but quickly, and Audie glanced at me for confirmation. I didn't care if Ma was having an affair with him; in fact I hoped it was true. I liked the way his watchband gripped his wrist; I liked the dark hair curling at the opening of his shirt. He shook Audie's hand and patted her head, admiring her tattoo, and when he shook my hand, he kissed me lightly, beside my eye.

“This is too much,” he said to my mother. “God knows what people are going to think I'm keeping over here. You've got a built-in entourage.”

Ma smiled, lifting her chin.

“And you deserve one,” he added.

We went directly to the backyard, where Jack Cirillo brought out two pitchers of lemonade, a green plastic one for us and a smaller glass one, which he set down by the chairs at a distant corner of the lawn. A bottle of gin already rested on one of the chairs.

“Jack and I have to talk about the theater,” Ma said. “You girls can explore, but don't leave the property, and don't bother us. We need to concentrate.” He poured out drinks and they sat down.

*   *   *

The dock was a beam jammed into the bank, and the boat was only a rowboat, but the swans were wonderful. They drifted like lilies along the surface of the water, luminous and imposing. If I could touch them, I thought, I would find them soft but resilient, like giant meringues. Audie took off her shoes and climbed into the rowboat. Every time she stretched her arm out toward the swans, the ribbons that were meant to tie the neck of her dress trailed farther into the water.

“Let's row out to them,” she said.

“We don't have oars. We have to stay at the dock,” I told her.

“Well, let's pretend we're rowing. Come on, Kate, you sit on the front seat. Look,” she said to me as I tried to keep my balance and my hat, stepping into the boat, “they're putting on a show for us.”

The swans were weaving patterns around one another, bobbing just beyond our reach as we cooed and kissed at them and splashed water to catch the rainbows in it. We tossed them knotted grasses, which they refused even to examine. I wrapped one of Audie's sodden ribbons around my neck, but it didn't keep me cool for long. I could feel myself losing my will against the sun, and I stretched over the edge of the boat and arched my back up into its warmth. Audie was quiet, staring abstractedly across the water. On land my mother's legs were drawn up beneath her; with one arm around them she rested her head against the chair and laughed. Two things sparkled: the gin he poured into her glass, and her eyeglasses, dangling from her left hand, unused.

“I'm so hot I think I'm going to melt,” I said. “I'm
so
glad I'm not all covered with feathers.”

“
They
're comfortable,” Audie said. “They're half in the water. If you want to cool off, you should just dip your head in.”

I did. I leaned far over the side, watching my hair fan out along the water as I lowered my face. The water was stunningly cold, and when I had wrung my hair nearly dry, I forced it down my collar, where it would cool my blood with every pulse.

“Now your hair's going to dry all frizzy,” Audie said. “I'm exhausted. How much longer are they going to talk?”

“I don't know. I'm starving.”

“Look, the swans are swimming out to sea.” Audie pointed to them receding against the low, green water. “They're too fragile! They'll break up on the waves. Come back, come back!” she called to them. “Maybe we could feed them.”

She got out and ran up the lawn. Jack Cirillo had left a plate of crackers on the picnic table for us. Neither he nor my mother turned to look as Audie ran back to the boat.

“Be careful,” I told her. “They bite.”

The idea was ludicrous; it would be like dancers stepping off the stage to pinch their audience. The swans drifted guilelessly beyond her reach. But Audie reached farther, balancing her way out to the end of the dock and scattering broken crackers in front of her. They noticed. It was the first reaction I had seen. The smallest swan circled and returned, bending its head to the water, coming up beneath the cracker, swallowing it in a single gulp. Audie laughed. “Look, it loves my crackers!” She held one out and the swan came toward her, stretching its neck. The two others followed.

“They like me,” Audie said. “These crackers are good.”

She ran back along the dock to the edge of the water. “Come here, little swan,” she called.

As the swan floated toward the upheld cracker, I could see it was not little at all: in fact it was nearly the size of a large wedding cake. It gave the appearance of nonchalance, drifting as if the current had shifted in our direction. The older swans followed it. I was envious of Audie, who could persuade reasonless creatures to come to her. The little one straightened its neck, lifting its head to her hand. I leaned back against the rim of the boat. Under the arc of Audie's outstretched arm I could see my mother nod her head, making a point.

“Look,” Audie said, “the mother wants a cracker too!”

The largest of the swans had zoomed into position under her arm, pushing the baby away. I was amazed at its sudden energy. It reached up to Audie's hand.

“Kate, look!” she called, but the creature ignored the cracker altogether and bit her. The cracker fell. Audie yelped and pushed back from the water and the swan, but the malevolent creature was on the shore in a second, squawking as if Audie had bitten it. Ma was on her feet, I was on my feet, rocking the boat, and Audie—poor Audie—was running as awkwardly and as fast as the pursuing swan. It seemed a real bird now, a giant chicken.

“Just run straight up the lawn!” Ma shouted. Audie did, and the swan followed her as far as some invisible human boundary, turned, and stumbled back to the water. My mother, like a mother swan, took Audie in. Jack Cirillo seemed suddenly out of place. He poured a glass of lemonade for Audie, held it out to her, poured gin into it. I saw this as I walked up the lawn to them. Breathing loudly, tossing back the gin, Audie handed me a barrette.

“Put your hair up in this,” she whispered. “It looks terrible.”

“I told you they bite,” I said. I tried to pull my hair into some kind of order, twisting and pinning it, drawing from my face like a curtain. “You're lucky they didn't pull you down to a watery grave,” I said.

Ma was laughing softly, helplessly.

“Do they make a practice of this?” she asked Jack Cirillo. “Can you sic them on burglars?”

“I swear I've never seen it before,” he said. “Usually they ignore people altogether.”

“I wish
I
could have seen it too,” Audie said. She raised her arms and collapsed lightly to the ground.

“She has a flair for comedy,” Ma explained.

Jack Cirillo laughed a quiet inward laugh. He was surveying us, I thought, as if we too were a flock, similar to our motley attitudes, biting at our feathers, shifting our weight. I could feel Audie's barrette begin to slip in my hair, and Ma said that we should leave.

“But I haven't had a chance to talk to your daughters,” Jack said.

“Jack, I can't stay. You know the situation. He's already furious. And now I've got this car that God only knows if it works or what. I'll bring the girls again sometime.”