“I don’t take you for anything. It’s not my business, Miss Kelly, to make any sort of judgment on your personal affairs.”
“And yet, you just have. I guess I should be flattered. You must care a little for me, in that case.”
He turns away. “Of course I care.” His voice is hoarse.
The air goes quiet between us, that old Manhattan quiet, existing separately within the faint, constant cacophony of the house and the city around us: somebody’s gramophone playing jauntily upstairs, the tinny reek of jazz from Christopher’s down below, the thumps and the creaks and the muffled laughter and the arguments and the banging of stove lids. Anson’s cheek is bathed in light, his nose outlined in gold, and for the first time I perceive that while his face has all the raw, prehistoric charm of a Viking skull, his ear is curiously tender, the kind of pink and elegant curve you want to trace with one finger while a hurricane rages outside.
“I found the button in a box on my mother’s drawer chest,” I say. “A whole box just full of buttons. I think they might have belonged to my father.”
“To Mr. Kelly?”
“No. My real father. The man who sired me.”
Anson looks back at me, and for an instant, you wouldn’t know he was the same man. His face is soft, his eyes gentle. “May I see the button again?” he says.
I extract said button and hand it back. This time he gives the object his full attention, like a jeweler with a monocle, right there under the lamp. I step in close, next to him before the bureau, and watch the movement of those thick, careful fingers beneath the light.
“Well?”
“It’s the Harvard crest, all right. But I’m afraid it doesn’t help much. There must be thousands of Harvard men in New York, and that’s assuming your father’s in New York.” He places the button on the wooden surface, where it wobbles and spins before us, like a small brass top. “Do you have more buttons?”
“Yes. About a dozen.”
“Would you like me to examine them?”
“Might take hours.”
“I could take them home with me.”
There’s something about his voice, saying those words, not demonstrably different from any other tone of voice—he tends to stick to the same one, you know, somewhere deep in the baritone register, lacking any form of what musicians like Bruno call dynamics—but still sort of intimate and low pitched. Again, maybe that’s all in my own head. Sometimes your head’s like that, finding things it wants to hear, even if they don’t properly exist on the outside.
“Be my guest,” I reply, touching the button with the tip of my finger, until it comes to rest. “Just take good care of them for me, will you?”
“Of course.”
“You’ll have to step aside for me. They’re in the top drawer.”
He steps aside, and I work the drawer open, offering him a fine view of my intimate articles. I remove the box and allow the buttons to spill over the top of the bureau, and he says urgently, Let me see that, and I say, The buttons? and he says, No, the box, the box, by God.
So I hand him the box, and that’s when all that musical cacophony in the background resolves into a series of discrete and purposeful thumps, like the step of a man’s boots on the staircase outside, and before I can even turn to Anson and offer some kind of warning, the thumping stops, replaced by a knock on the door of my bedroom.
And trust me when I tell you, dear reader, that no lady’s feeble fist ever caused a knock of that size.
4
NOW, YOU may have been wondering about Billy, all this time. I know I have! When I arrived home on Friday night, all cold and shriveled, sleet chasing me down the sidewalk and up the stoop, I confess I half-expected to discover my Billy-boy sitting there on the edge of the bed, wearing his college-boy duds, face turned toward me in a mixture of relief and reproach. Warm arms prepared to receive me.
But I’m afraid the room was plain empty. Just the radiator bubbling under the window and a thin fan of letters spread on the floor behind the door, not one of which was addressed to me in Billy’s lopsided handwriting. And let me tell you, nothing’s barer than an empty room when you were expecting somebody in it.
So I stacked all the letters on my bureau and opened each one—as I said, there weren’t many—and set aside those that needed replying to and those that needing paying for. I unpacked my valise and brushed out my dress and my spare skirt and set aside the underclothes for laundering. That kind of thing. By the time I climbed beneath the blankets, I had nearly forgotten that Billy was supposed to be there at all, filling the chasm inside my breast; I had nearly forgotten that a chasm wanted filling to begin with. Busy hands, you know.
I went on to fill my Saturday and my Sunday with all the usual things—you must keep to your routine, Anson instructed me on the train, you must pretend everything is just the same as ever—and today, as you know, I had my hands terribly full. First Mr. Smith, and then the stack of underwriting agreements waiting for transfiguration upon my return to the typing pool. And then arriving home to discover my bedroom crammed full of a bristling warm Prohibition agent, the kind of surprise that shouldn’t have been a surprise: the parcel you had forgotten you were expecting. A reversal, really, of my disappointment Friday night.
So in all those things, but especially the last one, I had allowed the expectation of Billy to slip free from its foremost position in my imagination, right down into the murkiness of subconscious (have I got my psychology right?), from which it now springs forth like a demented clown at the sound of that urgent, uncompromising knock on the door of my bedroom, just exactly when I need it least.
5
AGENT ANSON has the reflexes of a feral cat, I’ll say that much. Without any particular appearance of hurry, he simply disappears under the edge of the bed, enclosing all four limbs by God knows what kind of calisthenic maneuver. I untuck the blankets from one side, just to make certain, and call out, singsong: “Who-iiiis-it?”
“Geneva Rose? That you?”
It says something for the flimsiness of boardinghouse carpentry that I can distinguish every word, as if my visitor’s standing on the right side of the door instead of the wrong side. And I suppose it says something for my miraculous memory, too, that I can fling open that door and say, tone of relief: “Carl Green! What in blazes do you think you’re doing here?”
6
MIND YOU, I likely shouldn’t have been so glad to see him as I was. It’s just that I figured he had to be Billy, and what a damned thing for Billy to walk in right now, possibly expecting to stay awhile, possibly expecting to stay the entire night, while my bed—at least the underside of it—is otherwise engaged.
So, in my excess of relief, I usher my old friend Carl gratefully into my bedroom, and that’s when I discover poor Mrs. Washington standing behind him, fluster faced, wagging a finger and telling me ten minutes, Miss Kelly, ten minutes and that cousin of mine must go. She runs a respectable establishment, after all.
“Cousin?” I query when the door is shut.
“Well, now, I done had to say something, didn’t I? And I reckon we’s cousins somehow, me and you.” He stands there awkwardly, holding his hat at his middle. “How you been, Geneva Rose? I never seen you after the funeral.”
“I left pretty quick. Train to catch.”
“You might could-a left Saturday instead. Train runs on Saturdays, now.”
“I might.”
His hair is all slicked back, benefiting from a recent shearing. Cheeks all pink, suit all crumpled. He wears an expression of wary hope on that long, hollowed-out, handsome face—a country boy finding some point of refuge in the wicked city. I take pity on his confusion and ask him, for the second time, what brought him here on such an inauspicious winter’s night.
(Well, as if I didn’t know.)
“Done brought a parcel for you, from your daddy,” he says, reaching into his pocket, and I take the brown-paper thing from his big hand and thank him for it.
“I expect you know what’s inside,” I say as I move to the bureau and tuck Duke’s parcel in the bottom drawer, as far away from the hiding place of my mama’s enamel box as I can manage.
“I guess I do. I never did open it,” he adds quickly.
“Of course you didn’t.”
“It ain’t none-a my business, after all.”
“Oh, but it is your business, I guess. It’s River Junction’s business. And a good business it is, too. Drink?”
“Why, I just might! Thank you kindly, Geneva Rose.”
“It’s just gin,” I say, slithering a few ounces down the side of Agent Anson’s empty glass, hoping Carl doesn’t start to wondering what it’s doing there, side by side with my own, “but at least it’s wet. And it’s free.”
“It is, too.” He takes the glass, and of course I then pour another for myself—wouldn’t be friendly, otherwise—and we clink glasses and commence to talking, as two people do when they share a bottle of gin between them, regardless of some fellow who might be hiding under the bed a foot or two away. Carl begins with some kind of observation on the luxury of my surroundings, and I shrug my shoulders and say, It’s home, isn’t it, and he says something about how I look different somehow, here in New York City.
“I’ve been working all day, Carl. Stooped over a typewriter for eight hours. I guess I might be showing the strain.”
“No. Ain’t that at all. It’s the opposite. Looking all fresh and pleased with yourself. Your cheeks a-coming up roses.”
“That’ll be the central heating. Or the sauce, I guess.” I brandish my glass.
“Well, maybe.”
“You staying nearby? Can I get you a taxi or something?”
“Oh, I can find my way, all right. Mr. Kelly got me a room at a hotel. Real nice place on Fifth Avenue.”
“The Plaza?”
“That’s the place.”
“Well, well! Carl Green’s got himself a room at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. A nice big one, maybe? Looking out over the park?”
“Nothing like that, Geneva Rose. Just a little old cupboard by the elevator. No more room’n a henhouse.”
“You should have asked for a nicer one. I’ll bet they thought you were some kind of hayseed who didn’t know any better.”
He laughs a little. “Why, Geneva Rose, that’s just what I is. Simple fella from the country. I don’t require myself no fancy hotel suite. Just a bed to lay my head on. Why, I don’t reckon I might could sleep a wink in one-a your luxury accommodations. Room like this’d suit me much better.” He starts to gesture, realizes how such a declaration must sound, and stiffens right up. Color starts spreading into his neck and over his cheeks. He stammers something, which I interrupt in soothing tones.
“Well, you just remember to tip for room service, now, or they’ll find a way to get you back. Those Plaza bellboys.”
He hides himself behind another drink of gin. “I reckon I been in a nice hotel before, Geneva Rose. I know myself some manners. What kind-a hayseed do you take me for?”
I squint a little, but I truly cannot tell if the old lummox is kidding me or not. He presents this face of angelic honesty, tinged with offended pride, which might or might not be the genuine article. Anyway. I can sense the proximate impatience of Agent Anson shimmering through the floorboards and into my shoes, so I finish off my gin and set it on the bureau with the air of a working girl who’s done her bit for the day, thank you.
“Anyways. It’s been fine to see you, Carl Green. I do surely thank you for fetching me this parcel through all that sleet and dark of night, like a regular postman. I reckon you’ll be wanting to get on back to your room at the Plaza, now.”
“I reckon so,” he says, tone of indecision.
“Much nicer than this room of mine, even if it’s just a broom closet. And I’m afraid I can’t offer you any supper. Certainly not a nice hot one like they serve up at the Plaza.”
“That’s all right. I ain’t hungry.”
He stands there, toying with glass in the one hand and hat in the other, not quite looking at me. Outside the window, somebody’s trumpet climbs up and climbs down, dizzy and melancholy, and the pluck of Bruno’s double bass makes the glass thrum.
“Something else you want, Carl?”
“Maybe there’s something.”
“Out with it, then. We’re old friends, aren’t we? Cousins, isn’t that right? And I guess you don’t have more than a minute left of your ten, before Mrs. Washington comes marching right up those stairs to evict you.”
“I reckon that’s true.” He finishes the drink like a man inhaling courage and steps toward me. Sets his empty glass down next to mine with a resolute thump. “It’s about your mama, Geneva Rose.”
I think about Oliver Anson folded up under my bed, listening to every word. A wave of new sleet rattles against the window, overcoming the music.
“What about my mama?” I say softly.
“Weeellll …” Long, drawn-out syllable, and then, in a rush: “You knowed she and my mama was good friends. Near enough sisters, I reckon, most especially after you went away to school, and there was no more girls left around your place. Just Mr. Kelly and the boys.”
And now my heart is beating strong, my breath is coming short, since the words she and my mama was good friends crossed his lips.
“I guess Johnnie told me something about it,” I say.
“All right. And I reckon Johnnie told you how my own mama died two years back. Caught the influenza and it turned to pneumonia.”
“I heard. I’m real sorry, Carl.”
“Well, I reckon we was all kind-a shocked, you know, account-a my mama always was a strong woman, scarce sick a day in her life. And it came on so sudden. Not a thing we might could do except to watch her gasp for her breath and shake with the ague.”
“Oh, Carl—”
“She didn’t suffer long, though. No more’n a few days. I seen some fight it out for weeks, until they ain’t no more than a pile-a bones in fits under the blankets—” He stops and looks aside, no doubt remembering how my own mama suffered and fought and finally died. Clears his throat, which doesn’t really need clearing. “Anyway, before she passed, she called me to her and said there was a thing she required me to do. A charge laid upon her, which she now fixed to pass on to me. See, Geneva Rose, the two of them always reckoned your mama’d be the first to go, seeing as—as—well.”
“Seeing as she was always the weaker one.”
He picks up his glass and peers inside, as if expecting to discover some key to wisdom there. “That’s about the size of it. And your mama—Mrs. Kelly—there was something she wanted you to have from her, once she was gone, excepting she was afeared there was no one to brung it to you … no one in the family, I mean …”
“So she gave it to Mrs. Green. She gave it to your mama.”
“She did, Geneva Rose. And my mama done gave it to me when she died, and she said I was to pass it on to you when Mrs. Kelly found her end, and so I have brung this thing to you, Geneva Rose, I have borne it like a cross all the way from River Junction, and Mr. Kelly don’t know a thing about it, my mama made me swan I wouldn’t tell him, and the Lord knows I was a-going to give it to you after the burial, see, but you up and left so early—”
“What is it? Where is it?”
“Why, right here. Right here in my other pocket.”
He reaches into a pocket, not the pocket of his overcoat but the one inside the lining of his jacket, right up against his chest, and he draws out a thick brown envelope bound several times over with twine.
“And I was a-wondering how I was a-going to brung it to you, account-a Mr. Kelly, see, he always knows who is coming and who is going in River Junction—”
“And then he asked you to deliver me this parcel.”
“That’s exactly it, Geneva Rose. So here it be.” He presses the envelope into my open hands. “Take it. I don’t want no more part-a this.”
I fol
d my fingers around the envelope. Rough twine scratching my skin. Smells of flowers, like it’s been sitting in somebody’s drawer chest, next to a sachet of old summer roses. “You don’t like hiding things from Mr. Kelly, do you, Carl?”
“No, Geneva Rose, I do not. He liketa …”
“He owns you. Isn’t that right? He about owns all of you.”
“And you.” Carl nods to the bottom drawer of the bureau.
“And me.”
He sets the glass back down—he’s been holding it in his left hand, all this time, while the right hand delivered me the goods—and he straightens out his jacket. “Fact is, he done a whole mess-a good in River Junction, Geneva Rose, and I ain’t got no desire to say a word against him. And I don’t hold with no government men, either, telling us what we can drink and not drink and what we can brew up and sell for the drinking of others. I would surely ruther take my orders from Duke Kelly than from some rich fellow in Washington, some swell with the dough to fill up his cellar before the axe set to falling, enough booze to last him until kingdom come.”
“Then why didn’t you tell him about this, Carl Green? Why didn’t you?”
“Because I promised my mama, is why. Promised her on her deathbed, didn’t I, and besides, I ain’t stupid, I ain’t blind, Geneva Rose, I know what—”
“You know what, Carl?”
He turns his attention to the buttoning of his overcoat, one by one. Lips moving to the rhythm of his fingers. He straightens and picks up his hat and smashes it down on his head, and his eyes are turned down at the corners, like the eyes of an old hound dog in front of a dying fire.
“Nothing. I know nothing. You take care of yourself, Geneva Rose. You take good care-a your dear self. You fix to get yourself out-a this racket as quick as you can, you hear me? You discover yourself some rich man to marry you and give you a nice, soft life. Life your mama wanted for you.” He takes me by the shoulders, and before I have time to gasp or move my own hands or anything like that, he plants a kiss on my lips, the same kind of kiss he planted there back in the bushes by the old fishing hole, sweet and heartfelt, and just like that time he pulls away as I come to my wits, except this time he’s quick enough not to get slapped.