The Boy Who Granted Dreams

  “Name,” said the inspector, when Bill’s turn came.

  “Cochrann Fennore,” said Bill.

  As he left the room he saw a group of cleaning women heading for the bathroom, armed with straw brooms, rags, and buckets of disinfectant. He was already going down the stairs with his new name and new papers when he heard a woman’s sharp scream. Aw, they found him, thought Bill, smiling. They’d found the Irish kid who had given him a second life.

  Another desperate scream from a woman’s throat.

  And now the new Cochrann Fennore thought about his mother. Or rather, he corrected himself smilingly, about Bill’s mother, for the first time since that night. Only then, in the instant of the cleaning woman’s scream, did he recognize that she’d died as she’d lived. In silence. Without crying out, not when her father had renounced her, not when her German husband lashed and kicked her, not when her son stuck the knife into her.

  “And where’s Cochrann gone?” he heard someone saying behind him as he climbed aboard the Immigration Service ferry, bound for the welcome center in New Jersey.

  He looked back. He saw a red-cheeked girl with chapped hands. A laundress, maybe. And a couple in their fifties. He was short and tough looking; he might be a stevedore. She was hunched, with deep-set eyes and hands even redder than the girl’s, with sores on her knuckles that looked as though they’d never heal.

  “I will not go without me Cochrann,” cried the girl, trying to go back down the gangplank.

  A policeman blocked her way. “Get back in there, you can’t come down,” he told her.

  “I’m waitin’ for Cochrann!” said the girl.

  “Get back!” shouted the cop.

  The older woman took her arm and pulled her into the ferry’s interior. The short tough man looked around. “It’s him who has all our money, you see,” he said quietly, almost hopelessly.

  The girl looked around too, gazing at the other passengers. “Cochrann! Cochrann!” she called.

  Right over here, darlin’, thought Bill. If he reached out his arm he could touch her. Cochrann, that’s me. And suddenly he laughed with joy.

  19

  Manhattan, 1912-1913

  Cetta was alone now. For the first time since she’d come to New York. Sal wouldn’t be there to look after her any more, not for a long time. At her moments of greatest loneliness, she would go to the Queensboro Bridge. From there she could look across at Blackwell’s Island and the penitentiary where Sal was serving his time. Lawyer Di Stefano had bribed the prison administration, and Cetta had gotten permission to visit Sal once a week for an hour, in a room without any mesh barriers. She boarded the New York Prisons Department boat, landed on the island where prison officers escorted her, making heavy jokes about how much money they’d be willing to pay to be shut up in a room with her. But Cetta didn’t hear them. She only wanted to be with Sal, sitting beside him, mostly in silence, looking at his newly blackened hands. Then when visiting hour was over, Cetta stood up and returned to her life. Without him.

  The brothel had moved to an elegant small brownstone between Eighth Avenue and West Forty-Seventh Street. Cetta missed the happy ragtime tunes she used to hear from Tin Pan Alley when the windows of the old place were open. But since she really never brooded over misfortune, choosing to look for the positive side of things, the move to the new house became a new adventure for her. For the first time she was alone, and for the first time she rode the IRT.

  She would go up Fulton Street and into Cortland Street Station. She would get off at Forty-Ninth Street and walk down two blocks to Forty-Seventh. Every afternoon and every evening. She would sit among all the people and feel like one of them. An American citizen. Nothing gave her more happiness than this feeling of belonging. So much so that more than once, outside of working hours, she brought Christmas with her, yearning to transmit the same emotion to her son. “See? You’re an American, with all these other Americans,” she would murmur to him.

  One night, coming back from work, Cetta was sitting by herself. She was singing Alexander’s Ragtime Band softly to herself, a hit from the year before. When she found out that the composer was a Jew named Irving Berlin, Cetta had tried not to like it. Ever since they’d shot Sal, Cetta had declared war on Jews and hated them whole-heartedly. But she had to make an exception; she liked Alexander’s Ragtime Band too much to give it up. And so on that night too, she was lulling herself with Berlin’s melody.

  About halfway down the car, three teenage thugs were joking with each other, from time to time glancing at Cetta. She didn’t even see them. Further on, towards the front of the car, a blond man with glasses was sitting, reading a book. Across from him, a tired-looking cop with his head resting in his hands, half-asleep.

  “What’s a pretty girl like you doin’ out so late?” said one of the teen thugs, sitting down next to Cetta and grinning at his two pals.

  Cetta didn’t answer. She turned and looked out the window.

  “Hey, don’t try an’ act like no high toned lady,” said the boy. “High toned ladies don’t ride the train,” and he laughed, beckoning his friends.

  The two other boys joined them. One sat across from Cetta, with his feet on the seat, staring at her. The other stood behind her, between her and the window.

  “What do you want?” said Cetta, looking towards the policeman who was still slumbering.

  She tried to stand up, but the boy across from her pushed her back, sitting her down again. The one behind her put his hand over her mouth, firmly, and snicked his switchblade against her throat. “Be good,” he said.

  The boy next to her slipped a hand under her skirt. “We just want to be friends,” he said.

  Just then the train slowed, approaching the next station. The man further down the car glanced up from his look and caught Cetta’s terrified gaze. “Hey!” he shouted, jumping to his feet. The policeman woke up. He stared at the young man dazedly, then looked towards the back of the car. The lights of Canal Street Station lit up the car. The train stopped. The three delinquents abandoned Cetta and fled. The policeman blew a blast on his whistle and rushed out of the car, chasing them.

  “Are you all right?” asked the blond man, hurrying over to her.

  Cetta’s eyes were swollen with tears, but she nodded. The man took a handkerchief out of his jacket pocket and held it out to her. Cetta looked at him. He was thin and not very tall, but he had nice eyes. Honest eyes.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  The man smiled, still holding out the handkerchief to her. “Dry your tears,” he said.

  “Forget about tears, I need to blow my nose,” she laughed.

  The man laughed too. “Go right ahead.” He looked at her, smiling. “Are you ashamed to blow your nose in front of a stranger? Do you want me to look the other way?”

  Cetta laughed again. She blew her nose. “I’ve never learned how to do it without making noise, like fine ladies.”

  He was still smiling at her. “I’ve always found fine ladies pretty boring,” he told her. “May I sit with you?” he asked.

  Cetta nodded.

  “And can I walk you home?”

  Cetta stiffened.

  “You’ve had enough excitement for one night. I feel it’s my duty to see you safely home.”

  Cetta looked at him. Good eyes. She could trust him. “Okay,” she said. “Cortland Station. Then we walk.”

  “Cortland Station, then walk. Got it,” said the man, raising his hand to his brow in a military salute.

  Cetta smiled.

  “I’m Andrew Perth,” said the man, offering his hand.

  She took it. “Cetta Luminita,” she replied.

  He kept her hand in his, not tightly, but she could feel the strength. He gazed into her eyes. Good eyes, Cetta thought again. A man’s eyes, though. Eyes full of desire. But she was flattered. She looked down and the man let go of her hand. After a little while, she signaled to Andrew that it was time to get off.

  During the walk home
, side-by-side on the deserted pavement, he told her that he was a union organizer. He busied himself with working conditions and workers’ lives. And as he told her about the killer work schedules, the wretched pay, the oppression many workers had to endure, the ever-present risk of being fired, Cetta saw that Andrew’s eyes were full of fire. She recognized a passion in the depths of those eyes, like a great love.

  When they reached the door, Cetta stopped. “I’m home,” she said.

  “Too bad,” said Andrew, looking at her.

  Cetta smiled and blushed. Because that night she wasn’t a whore, but a girl like any other, one who’d met a decent man. A man who liked her and wasn’t using her. Because that night she wasn’t for rent, five dollars for half an hour. “I have to go,” she said. Knowing that moment wasn’t going to last forever. She shook hands quickly and hurried into her stifling basement.

  A few evenings later she met Andrew a second time. At Cortland Street Station. They recognized one another, laughed, and then Andrew offered to walk her home. When it was time to separate, Andrew held her hand in his again as they said goodbye.

  “I didn’t run into you by chance,” he confessed. “I wanted to see you again.”

  Cetta could hardly breathe. She didn’t know what to say.

  “May I invite you to dinner some evening?” Andrew asked her.

  “Dinner?” Cetta repeated, astonished.

  “Yes.”

  “In a restaurant …?”

  No one had ever asked her to dinner. She was almost nineteen and no one had ever taken her out to dinner. She wasn’t like other girls. She was a whore. And whores were girls you took to bed, not to restaurants. “Okay,” she said.

  “When?” Andrew asked her.

  “But first, I have to tell you …” Cetta was suddenly grave. She looked at him, frightened. Andrew had those honest eyes. And perhaps she needed to tell him …

  “How about day after tomorrow? That night?” Andrew broke in, smiling.

  No one had ever looked at her like that.

  “I’ll meet you here at seven.”

  “Seven,” said Cetta. “And later, restaurant.”

  The next day she went to see Sal. And while they were closed in the room, sitting next to one another, Cetta thought that now she should say something to him, too. For the first time, beyond love and gratitude, she noticed that she was feeling something new: a sense of guilt that was making its way into her soul. Guilt for what? she thought, sitting there in silence. Nothing happened. I’m not doing anything bad. The feeling of guilt made her suddenly angry, and the anger made her hate Sal.

  On the way back to Manhattan on the penitentiary boat, Cetta turned back to look at the bleak dark buildings. ”I not do anything bad, Sal,” she murmured. “I just have dinner.”

  She told Ma’am that Christmas was sick and needed her. That night she worked as a prostitute till very late, then rushed home, and fell into the squeaky bed that had belonged to Vita and Tonia Fraina. She was as excited as a child. She fell asleep only at dawn, and when Mrs. Sciacca brought Christmas home, she cursed herself because at seven o’clock that night her eyes were still going to be puffy with lost sleep. Perhaps Andrew wouldn’t think she was pretty enough, and she would have spoiled her first dinner in a restaurant.

  She spent the day trying to choose the right dress. She made up her face and scrubbed it clean at least ten times, because it never looked right. Each time she looked in the mirror she saw a whore’s vulgar face. She wept. She laughed. She went from despair to euphoria a thousand times. She dabbed perfume on, and then she washed it off with cold water, because it was a whore’s scent. She polished her shoes, and her handbag too. She pulled her hair back into a knot. She brushed it out loose across her shoulders. She tied a ribbon in her curls. She pulled some out, shrieking.

  “You look beautiful, Miss Luminita,” Andrew told her that evening at seven. “There’s an Italian restaurant on Delancey Street. Is that all right?”

  “Why not?” said Cetta, who had always found that phrase highly sophisticated.

  “May I call you Cetta?” he asked after they’d taken a few steps.

  “Yes, Andrew,” she replied, tucking a hand under his arm.

  A few light snowflakes floated in the air, shining like gems in the cone of light from the lamppost.

  “Are you cold?” asked Andrew.

  Cetta smiled. “No,” she said.

  It was a simple restaurant that smelled of garlic and sausage. The menu and prices were painted directly on the glass of the front window in white paint, the specials underlined with a thick stroke.

  “I wish I had big dark eyes like yours, Cetta,” said Andrew.

  Cetta blushed, and without looking up, said, “I always want blue eyes like you. More American, I think.”

  They ate caponata with eggplant and red peppers, spicy sausages in tomato sauce, and cannoli filled with ricotta and candied fruit. They drank a strong sharp red wine as Andrew told her about an industrial town where the bosses had gone too far last year.

  “Do you know about Silk City?”

  “Where?”

  “Haven’t you ever heard of it?”

  “No, I’m sorry,” said Cetta, mortified.

  Andrew stretched his hand across the table. “Forgive me, Cetta,” he said gently. I’m living in the middle of all these things, but you …” he stopped, then spoke again, with passion in his voice. “This is what I mean when I talk to ordinary people. The workers’ problems are everybody else’s problems, too. Do you understand?”

  Cetta nodded timidly.

  “Ignorance lets the bosses do anything they want. But that’s ending, Cetta. If all the rest of you start to feel what the workers are going through, then we’ll win this fight. Understand?”

  “Yes …” said Cetta. “I don’t want to be ignorant.”

  Andrew looked at her proudly. “I’m going to educate you,” he said.

  Cetta felt a wave of warmth.

  Then Andrew went on to explain to her that Paterson, New Jersey, was a town with more than three hundred silk mills — that was why it was known as Silk City. The mills gave work to seventy-three thousand people, but the owners had decided to put each worker in change of four looms instead of the two they’d been assigned to until that moment. “That lets them cut the personnel in half, do you see?”

  “Yes …”

  “Just imagine how many families are going to go hungry now!”

  “Yes …”

  “That’s why I have to fight.”

  Cetta looked at him admiringly. This slight man, blond and blue-eyed, and thin, was fighting for seventy-three thousand persons. He must be like a general, a good general who took care of weaker humans. Socialism, civil rights, the unions’ struggle. Andrew was taking care of all these things. Now he was taking care of her, too. He would educate her. He would help her to better herself.

  Because of these things, when Andrew, in front of the basement apartment, drew her to him, his arm around her waist, Cetta let him do it. When he kissed her lips, Cetta let him do it. She closed her eyes and abandoned herself to that good and honest man who thought she was beautiful. She clung to him, when their lips were no longer kissing, she held him tightly in her arms because for the first time in her life Cetta was a girl like other girls. And as she held him, she felt that she didn’t deserve this wonderful man who was interested in her.

  “I work in the whorehouse at the corner of Eighth and West Forty-Seventh,” she whispered in his ear. “I’m a whore.”

  She felt his thin body grow rigid. And then slowly withdraw from her embrace.

  “I have to go now,” said Andrew.

  “I know …”

  “I’ve got a lot of work to organize. You know — the strike …”

  “Sure …”

  “So long now.”

  “Thanks for dinner,” Cetta said softly. She didn’t look away, because she knew she wouldn’t see him again. “It was nice.”

/>   Andrew gave her a faint smile, politely. And walked away.

  “Thanks for the kiss,” she said in a tiny voice, watching as he turned the corner.

  Then she went into her room and flung herself on the bed. I swore I’d never kiss anybody else, she thought, stroking Leo, the balding plush lion Sal had given Christmas. She could feel surging tears, but before they had a chance to come out she got up and rushed to the brothel. She told Ma’am that Christmas was well now, and she worked until very late that night.

  Two weeks later, on New Year’s Eve, Ma’am told her a client was waiting for her in the green room. Cetta rouged her lips, arranged her breasts in the bustier and came into the room.

  Andrew’s back was to her. He was looking out the window. When he heard the door close, he turned around.

  “I think about you day and night,” he said, coming close to her, embracing her, holding her tightly, as he would never have done with an ordinary girl. “I want you too much,” and he kissed her neck and ran his hands down her thighs and lower, reaching under her skirt.

  Cetta didn’t let him kiss her lips, but she lay back on the bed and spread her legs. She turned her head and saw Andrew’s five dollars on the nightstand. Andrew pulled off his clothes, touched her and then came into her eagerly; no, he wouldn’t do that with a nice girl. When they had finished, Andrew dressed himself hurriedly. Cetta still lay naked on the bed, naturally, casually: a whore with her client.

  “Please get dressed,” said Andrew.

  “The half hour’s up,” Cetta told him.

  Andrew shook his head, covering his eyes with his hand. He took out his billfold, pulled out another five-dollar bill and held it out to Cetta. “Here, take it. I’ll pay for another half hour.”

  Cetta took the money and laid it on the nightstand.

  “Get dressed, Cetta. Please.”