What I Saw and How I Lied (23 page)

When the doorman started looking at me funny, I pushed open the door to the Metropole. The lobby was busy, people checking in, people checking out. Newspaper stand, bellhops pushing carts, elevators dinging. People dressed up and ready for a Sunday in New York. Other people pushing through the doors and going into the swanky-looking restaurant.

So this was what a real hotel was like.

A bellhop offered to take my bag but I shook my head. I went to the front desk and waited while the desk clerk gave a couple directions to Toffenetti's. Then he turned to me.

"Mrs. Grayson, please," I said.

"Is she expecting you?"

"No. But she knows me. Could you tell her that Evie Spooner is here to see her?"

He picked up the house phone and dialed. I waited, trying not to squirm.

"No answer," he said after a minute.

"Can I wait?" I couldn't have come this far without seeing her.

He looked at me and I saw him soften. "I know where she is. Eddie will take you up to the roof.”

“The roof?"

He smiled. "The roof. Take the elevator bank to your right."

It was yes-miss and watch-your-step and thank-you-miss and going-up-miss all the way through the lobby and onto the elevator.

"The roof, please," I said.

The elevator man looked over to the desk, and the clerk gave a quick nod.

"Right away, miss." The doors swished closed. I felt the pull in my stomach as it rose. My hands were damp inside my gloves.

"Here you are, miss. Go to your right, and take the third door on your left."

I stepped out. The carpet here was thin and brown, not like the green one I'd sank into in the lobby. I walked past the doors. One of them said
Tailor
and I surprised a maid coming out, still tying on her apron.

She smiled at me. "Looking for Mrs. Grayson?"

At my nod, she led me a little way down the hall and opened the door marked
Roof.

"Go right on up."

I found narrow concrete stairs and an iron railing painted dull red. I pushed at the door and stepped onto the tar surface of the roof.

The first thing I saw was the sign, twenty feet high, maybe thirty, and with light bulbs all screwed in. HOTEL METROPOLE. Behind it, skyscrapers bristled, and I could make out the green rectangle of Central Park.

Mrs. Grayson sat on a camp stool a few feet away, painting at an easel. Her dark hair was in a pony tail, and she wore a smock over a turtle neck sweater and slim trousers. Flat shoes were on her feet. I picked my way past the air vents toward her. When she saw me, she opened her mouth in a comical O of surprise. She laughed as she stood up. I could see how happy she was to see me, and my nervousness lifted a little bit.

"Evie! What a lovely surprise. Come look at this mess I'm doing."

I stepped over to look at her canvas. She was painting the view, tall buildings and the park, all in thick black lines and blue shadows going every which way. Tiny squares of gold marched up and down in vertical rows.

She was right, it looked like a mess.

"I like it," I said.

"You sweet liar. It's not good, but I keep trying."

"That's what you did in Florida — you painted. When you'd go off by yourself."

"Sketching, actually. Do you want to go down to the apartment and get some tea, or stay up here?"

I was dying to see the Grayson's apartment, but I felt better up here in the cold fresh air.

"Up here, please."

"Oh, good. I was hoping you'd say that." She tossed her smock on the stool and led me to a small paved area with folding chairs and a small round table. "Tom and I sit up here in the evenings in the summer. Best view in town."

"Is Mr. Grayson here?"

"He's in his office downstairs."

"Is he still yelling at God?"

She smiled at me. "Yes, he is. But he's all right."

"I came because you invited me, and because I wanted to ask you ... I wanted to talk to you."

"I'm glad." Mrs. Grayson rubbed at a splotch of blue paint on her thumb, like she was working up to something. "Evie, I read all about it in the paper. I think by the end I started to understand what was happening. You loved him, didn't you? I'm so sorry for your loss."

My loss.

That's what it was, a hole I could never fill. It would be bottomless. I would have all the not knowing what happened to him, and beside it would be this loss. Never to see him again, never to see his walk or his smile. That was gone from the world forever.

The first time he kissed me it had been an impulse he regretted.

The second time he kissed me it had been a man to a woman. I wasn't too young. He wasn't too old. My mother hadn't existed for us. Everything had gone away except us.

There had been love between us at that moment. He had loved me, at that moment.

"Nobody ever said that to me," I told her. "Nobody ever said they were sorry. I hadn't even said it. Not even to myself. He's dead, isn't he?"

In Mrs. Grayson's eyes was the sadness I'd always seen. Now I had it, too.

"Yes, petal. He is."

He was dead, really dead. It was all gone, his beautiful forearms, his throat, his laugh.

I felt tears build up inside my chest, and even though I was good at pushing tears away, this was something I could not stop.

The first sob escaped, and I rocked forward, burying my face in my hands. I was embarrassed but I couldn't stop.

She waited. I could feel her sympathy. After a while I felt her get up and search through her pockets, then go over to her work table. She came back and put a rag in my hands.

"It's clean," she said. "Barely."

I laughed, and she did, too. I wiped my face.

"Now, petal," she said. "Tell me why you came."

I told her about what Peter had told me, about the fortune in the warehouse, about how Joe got his money. About halfway through, she got up and went to the ledge just a few paces away. I got up and joined her and kept talking while we looked out at the city. It was easier to talk when she wasn't looking.

"So I took the money that's left, the eight thousand dollars," I said. "Gladys brought it down for a bribe, but she didn't need it. I want to give it to you."

Mrs. Grayson swiveled and looked at me.

"You must know people who need it," I continued. "That friend — that family friend you know who was in the camps. And he must know people, and they must know people, and they must need money because everything was taken from them, and they can start over ..."

"Evie, stop. I can't take this money."

"But you have to. It's the only way!"

"I can't take stolen money."

"It's nobody's money now. It's not Joe's. Would you rather he bought a house with it?"

"But it's not for me to say," Mrs. Grayson told me. "I'm not a judge, I'm not..." She waved her hands helplessly. "I'm not equipped for this."

"Then donate it somewhere. Just take it, because if you don't, we're doomed. The family. It's bad enough that I don't know," I said. "Don't you see, I don't
know
what happened on that boat. I don't know what kind of man Joe is. But I do know he did this one bad thing, at least. Peter said that somebody had to pay. Well, it can't be him. It just can't be. He might have been a thief and a liar and a cheat, but he was a good person."

Mrs. Grayson choked back a laugh. Then she stared down at the little suitcase, stared at it hard.

"I'll never tell Joe that I gave it to you," I said. "I promise."

"It's not that. What will he do to you?”

“Nothing. There's nothing he can do. He owes me too much."

Mrs. Grayson hugged herself, shaking her head helplessly.

"All the way back home, on the drive, I was thinking about penicillin," I said. "You know how they found it? The guy who found it was a slob. He kept his laboratory a mess, stuff everywhere — he'd leave it for weeks and months ... and one day he finds a mold. It was an accident. Out of this mess, this
contamination,
comes ..."

"Deliverance," Mrs. Grayson murmured.

"Deliverance," I said.

Back at home, it was time for Grandma Glad to get home from church. She would be walking up the stairs, holding on to the banister. She would go into her room and the first thing she would do was open the closet and look up at the shelf. I'd watched her do it yesterday — every time she came into her room she'd make sure it was there. Today, the shelf would be empty.

She would call for Joe, and he would come quick, alarmed at the tone in her voice. Mom would come, too, but they'd shut her out. Grandma Glad would talk about calling the police but Joe would say no. After maybe a minute or so, they'd think about me.

There would be hell to pay, but I was all right with that. I would pay that price. There was nothing they could do to me.

I swung down Forty-eighth and turned left on Sixth Avenue, heading away from my train. I felt light without the valise. I would walk for a while. The wind had kicked up, and it was blowing papers around like crazy. I looked down at my feet as I stepped on every crack. I didn't believe in bad omens anymore, or luck.

Dusk had fallen, and lights were coming on in all the apartments around me. Little squares of gold. I realized then that this was what Mrs. Grayson was painting, blue shadows and golden light. Behind every square of gold was a person. Maybe a family. How nice it must be to wake up and know so many busy lives were around you, in the humming hive of the city.

I felt something clear and straight inside me, and I knew I'd found home. I'd live here one day. I'd be in one of those golden squares of light. Around me would be a bunch of lives, some better, some worse. I'd be smack in the middle of all that living.

Joe would lose the money he'd counted on for his dream house. Mom and I weren't going anywhere. We would live in the house we hated, but that was okay, too, because maybe we were just getting a little bit of what we deserved.

What did I owe Peter? I knew the answer now. Something bigger than the truth. A little bit of justice — not for him, but for people he didn't even know.

During the war, whenever we had to give something up or put something off, we'd say it was "for the duration." Because we didn't know when the war would end, but we knew we'd stick with whatever we had to do.

So here I was. I would live with Joe and Mom. I had no place else to go. Joe would carve the roast on Sundays. He would put up the Christmas tree. They would hand me the phone, pick up my socks, leave the porch light on. I would never know what happened on the boat that day, but they would be my parents. For the duration.

But while I'd be their daughter, while I'd eat the roast and come home from dates and wash the dishes, I would also be myself. I would love my mother, but I would never want to be her again. I would never be what someone else wanted me to be. I would never laugh at a joke I didn't think was funny. I would never tell another lie. I would be the truth teller, starting today. That would probably be tough. But I was tougher.

Acknowledgment
is way too genteel a word for the buckets of gush I want to dunk on the heads of those in my life who aided and abetted this book. First off, my amazing editor, David Levithan, truly a hunk of heaven, who took me to lunch and listened to a coming-of-age story involving blackmail, adultery, and possible homicide and said, "Cool!" Thank you, dear D, for your support and "perfect plumb" (look it up) over lo these many years. And a hunka burning love to everyone at Scholastic who liked this book and worked for it.

My cowgirl hat is hereby swept off in homage to my posse, Elizabeth Partridge, Julie Downing, and Katherine Tillotson, all of whom chase away blues and Mean Barbara like nobody's business. I am indebted to Donna Tauscher, as always, for her support, insight, and grace; to Jane Mason, gentle soul, fierce ally, and a friend forever; and to Meredith Ziemba, for sharing her stories, similes, art supplies, and whatever else she has in her truck at any given moment.

Every writer who tackles the historical past ends up standing on the shoulders of those who wrote insightfully about the period. I am especially indebted to Jan Morris for her fine book,
Manhattan '45,
and to Kevin Coyne for
Marching Home.
For those interested in the story of the Gold Train and the strange journey that ended in an army warehouse in Salzburg, there are numerous Web sites with historical documents to peruse. For a definitive history, I relied on
The Gold Train,
by Ronald W. Zweig. The excellent research department at the
Palm Beach Post
sent me exhaustive accounts of the 1947 hurricane. A tip of the hat to Sandy Simon's charming
Remembering: A History of Florida's South Palm Beach County.
Kelli Marin and Kathleen Holmes, experts in all things Florida, helped me out with hurricane holes. It was a lucky day when I stumbled on Barbara Holland's memoir,
When All the World Was Young.
Her prose is so crystal-perfect that I have a strong desire to put on a fetching hat and buy her a cocktail at some swanky hotel bar. A special thank-you to my parents for sharing newspapers and memories and photographs of their own journeys in the postwar years, as well as giving me all the support and love I could ever wish for.

And now, I saved the best for last. A toast to you, Neil and Cleo: To the moon and back.