Strings Attached

  And then tears would roll down his cheeks. I saw her pretty feet first, he would say. Her pretty white feet. The room was full of blood. A river of it. And the butcher of a doctor was still working on her, but I saw her soul rise to the angels, saw it clear as day, and felt her breath on my cheek as she passed. She blessed you, each one as she went, she did. You were blessed by an angel.

  And Da would touch our heads, one by one, in order of our birth.

  She was naming you all as she went by, because I heard the names like a bell. Margaret, James, Kathleen.

  Your mother is an angel, he would say, tears still rolling down his face. She forgave me, too, for not going to the doctor right away. I saw her smile at me. She forgave Kitty for not wanting to come out and join her brother and sister. Even then, our Kit had to make an entrance. You are all blessed, he’d said.

  And I thought — blessed with what? Cursed was more like it. For being the last one out, from swimming away from the doctor’s forceps with a will of my own. Did I want to stay near my mother’s flickering heartbeat? The curse was clear in the way Jamie and Muddie turned to me with a look of awe — because I had killed our mother.

  And so my birth was Irish to the core — guilt and suffering, attended by a ghost, scored with celestial bells and the whispered blessings of angels.

  It was only the next day that the commerce began.

  Since their parents died, he and Delia had always scraped by, dropping out of school and finding work when they could.

  At least, that was the story they told. Not the whole story — that came later. Just a few sad facts sprinkled in for a bit of waterworks from the audience, and the rest jokes and exaggerations. Da was never afraid to talk about the past, but he had locked in his stories on bar stools and at kitchen tables over the years, and he stuck to them. He knew every beat and every pause.

  And so there he was, a widower with three babies to raise. Delia had moved out of their small apartment to give the couple privacy, taking a room nearby. The day of Maggie’s funeral, she moved back in. They’d saved up for Delia to attend a secretarial course, so she had a good job at the artificial flower factory, in the front office, not at the machines. A good salary, but not for a family of five.

  That first night while the babies slept, Da and Delia sat in the kitchen and discussed their options. They were two people used to calamity and it didn’t scare them. There was no question that Delia had to keep working. There were no jobs now, in the worst year of the Depression. How would Da cope with the babies, with feeding and diaper pins and baths? How could they afford blankets, and soap, and milk, and medicine? That’s when Da got the idea.

  The day he left the hospital, three nurses following him out with the babies in their arms, a taxi drove him home for free. Turned out the driver gave tips to a newspaperman at the Journal, and in no time at all there was Da on the front page, holding the babies in his arms. Within an hour, a delivery of free formula from the local drugstore arrived at his door.

  Wasn’t the world apt to cry at the sight of motherless babies? Three at once?

  Da didn’t have much, but the man knew what to do with a story.

  THE CORRIGAN THREE SLEEP THROUGH

  THE NIGHT IN SLEEP-TITE CRIBS

  WHEN IT COMES TO EVAPORATED MILK,

  THE CORRIGAN THREE LOVE THEIR PET!

  THE CORRIGAN THREE SAY “YUM!” FOR

  DEAL’S COD LIVER OIL!

  LISTEN TO THE CORRIGAN KIDDIES:

  “DADDY BUYS SLEEK-O-TIRES FOR A SMOOOOOTH RIDE!”

  So we became the Corrigan Three, and within a few months we were famous in Providence and Boston and, after a newsreel team came to film us, around the entire United States of America. When we were babies and toddlers, companies would pay for our endorsements — the endorsements of tiny things who spit up for a living — but later, as the Depression ground on and the public moved on to a fascination with flagpole sitting and dance marathons, Da was reduced to accepting things in trade. Rarely did the trade involve something we could use. Suddenly, the apartment would fill up with cartons of bicycle tires or laxatives while we opened a can of beans for dinner. But Da would take the tires, or the laxatives, and go around the neighborhood, trading them for a bit of butter, or secondhand shoes.

  All of Providence knew us, the redheaded Corrigan triplets. Every Easter we were invited to the egg roll at the statehouse, and as soon as we could walk, we marched in as many Fourth of July parades as Da could cram in, driving from one small town to another. Our pictures were taken on Santa’s lap every year.

  We were famous for being famous. For a while.

  All families peg their kids — the smart one, the slugger, the mischief maker. Imagine a whole country pegging you as one thing. Da decided early on that we needed personalities. Muddie was the shy one (Muddie, trained to make a show of peeping out from between Da’s legs), Jamie was the charmer (trained to bow and say “how do you do” from the age of three), and I was the ham, the sassy one who stole the show.

  During the summers, Da traded in every favor in order to borrow Jack Leary’s DeSoto and take us on tours of state fairs as far west as Iowa, where we learned how to sing “Galway Bay,” repair a blown tire, and pee in a can.

  It was a grand gypsy life, we thought. We slept on the ground, wrapped in blankets, or in the car as Da drove from one fair to another. Occasionally, he was able to book us into a theater, where we would open for the movies, singing “I Faw Down an’ Go Boom.” We lived on cheese sandwiches and the food at the fairs — candy apples and funnel cakes, pickles and pies. We rehearsed in the car, singing as loud as we could as the hot air slapped our sticky hair against our cheeks.

  In those hot summers, full of flies and white skies, corn and pigs, I learned what America was — people looking up from their work and trouble and hoping someone would tell them a story, sell them a dream. And I saw what it was like to be looked at, and came to like it.

  Prosperity was just around the corner. So people said. At first I thought it meant that if Da could just walk another few blocks, he’d get a job, because the streets in Providence had names like Benefit and Benevolent, so why not Prosperity? But there was no Prosperity Street, and there were no jobs, even on a street called Hope. Delia’s salary was cut, and endorsements dried up. We were growing fast, and it was hard to look cute in a dress made out of an old faded pillowcase, even for me and Muddie. Shirley Temple was the child everyone wanted to see, with glossy curls and the fresh plump cheeks of someone who had a chicken in her pot and warm water to wash with.

  In the winters, we spent all of our time in the kitchen, the biggest room at the front of the apartment, where the coal stove gave out a thin, inadequate heat. A bonus was that we were away from the thin walls of the rear bedroom, behind which the Duffys in the next apartment argued every Saturday night when Duffy came home drunk.

  Delia had the bedroom, Da slept on the couch, and Muddie, Jamie, and I slept on a mattress in the hall closet, all tangled together, pushing each other and arguing about who got spit on the pillow. Aren’t you the luckiest of children, Da said, who get to sleep in a cave like wolf cubs, instead of in a regular room with a door?

  And weren’t we lucky to hang on to that home when we saw other families losing theirs and disappearing in the middle of the night?

  We were five years old the day Delia was fired, and we saw her cry for the first time, as fiercely as she did everything else. She prided herself on being a secretary, on her clean fingernails and her gray dresses and her pretty scarves. She was a professional.

  We had never seen Da and Delia scared before.

  Jamie stood up. “It’s time for the lucky pennies,” he announced.

  It was a ritual we saved for only our most dire circumstances, and this was the worst one yet.

  Da and Delia stood. They emptied all the coins from their pockets and Delia’s purse. Delia went to get the spare change she kept wrapped in a handkerchief for church. Jamie looked at the pi
le on the table. He took each coin and went around our apartment, placing them heads up on windowsills and door frames.

  Then he put his hands on Delia’s knees. “All we have to do now,” he said, looking straight into her face, “is wait for the luck.”

  “Darling boy,” she said, putting both hands on his cheeks.

  That was Jamie. Darling boy.

  At night we’d face each other, lying down in the darkness, and we’d press our cheeks against one another so that we could be eye to eye. Our eyes would be black and deep, and yet we’d wait to see the reflection of a point of light, the diamond that shone in our eyes. Then we’d shout the word straight in each other’s ears: Diiiiiaaaamond! Trying to blast each other’s eardrums and laughing fit to bust. I don’t know who thought of the game — it wasn’t a game, really, more like a ritual, a hunt to find the light in the darkness. There were diamonds in our eyes and all our coins were heads up. Everything would be all right.

  Delia folded her dresses and the blouses and carefully placed them in the bottom drawer. She looked for work, coming home tired and thinner every day, insisting that she preferred her bread without butter and her tea plain, so that we’d still have bread with butter and sugar for our treat. She tried to take in washing, but others had got there before her. Finally, she found a job cleaning offices at night.

  “That’s what our mam did when she came over, on her knees mopping floors,” Da said. “There’s Irish progress for you.”

  Delia didn’t laugh. She tied a turban around her bright hair and went off after tea, leaving us to Da’s cooking. A pot on the stove with some kind of thin stew he called slumgullion. When one of us was hungry we’d take a bowl and slop some in, and that was dinner.

  I’ve heard people say about their childhoods during the hard times, We didn’t know we were poor, and do you know what? They’re lying.

  Twenty-two

  New York City

  November 1950

  I told some of the story to Hank as we stood there in the subway, leaning against the wall, and he listened so intently to my whispers that I felt the grip of nerves ease and the time pass. As we climbed the stairs back up to the light, it felt like a miracle to see the sun and everybody going back to the cars and the buses, taking up their lives on an ordinary day.

  An ordinary day for them. Not me.

  He kept asking more questions and I kept remembering because it was easier than thinking, and soon we were standing outside his mother’s office and we’d walked twenty blocks.

  “So you’re a triplet,” he said. “I can’t imagine two more of you.”

  “Oh, we’re as different as night and day. We don’t even look alike.”

  “So when did you meet Billy, then?”

  “That’s another story, a longer one. I met his father first, Nate Benedict.”

  Hank’s face changed. “Nate Benedict? The lawyer?”

  I nodded. “He knew my father back in the twenties.”

  “And… you know him now?”

  Hank was suddenly looking at me as though I were someone he didn’t recognize.

  “He comes to the club sometimes,” I said. “It’s not a big deal.” Even as I said it, I realized how hollow the words sounded. Even if Hank knew nothing about how I was tangled up with Nate, he knew from the morning paper that Nate was defending a murderer. “Listen —” I started.

  Hank looked up at the clock hanging over the entrance to the office building. “I’m late,” he said. “My mother will be worried. I’m never late. Listen, I’ve got to go. Thanks for the walk.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, even though it was miles past okay. He had turned away so fast, and now he was almost running. He had to get away, as though just knowing Nate Benedict was enough to taint me.

  It was a good thing Billy never read the papers, because when he called that afternoon, there was no mention of what had happened at the Lido. Instead, he asked me if I wanted to join him and his army buddies for an afternoon on the town.

  “They’re taking me to — where are you taking me? — oh, Coney Island, because Tom says I have to have a hot dog at Nathan’s or I didn’t see New York. So I guess that means you do, too.”

  “It’s sounds swell, but —”

  His voice pitched lower. “Look, I’m going crazy, thinking about you. You don’t have to come to Brooklyn. I’ll ditch the guys and come to you. I miss you.”

  I heard hoots of laughter and some voice yelled, “Get out the violins, Tommy boy!”

  “I miss you, too,” I said. “But it’s only a couple of hours until I have to get to the club. You’d spend all that time on the subway. I’ll see you tonight.”

  He didn’t like it, but he said he’d see me at the club. He’d come to the last show so he could walk me home.

  I wanted to tell him everything. But “everything” was so much. So I hung up, and after I did, I wished I’d spilled it out over the phone, every last secret, and just let it fall.

  He’d know tonight, anyway. So at least I could give him a carefree afternoon on the boardwalk, one last good time with his pals, with hot dogs and roller coasters and the Parachute Jump.

  I hadn’t expected to see Hank again that day, but he knocked at the kitchen door later that afternoon. I was starting to get ready for work, and I had to throw on a robe when I answered the door.

  He held up a piece of paper. “I got your note.”

  “I didn’t —”

  I heard a knock at the other door, a quick, sharp rap, and then the sound of the door opening. I could have sworn that I’d locked it. I ran toward the front of the apartment, Hank behind me.

  Nate swept off his hat. “Hello, Hank.”

  Hank froze. “I guess I’ll be going, Kit —”

  “In a minute,” Nate interrupted. “Kit, why don’t you make us some coffee?” His voice was low and polite, but Hank looked nervously toward the kitchen, as if he wanted to dash that way and out the other door.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. My hand drifted to my robe, holding it tightly closed. This felt like an invasion.

  Nate had walked in as if he owned the place. Which he did. Like he had every right to be here. Which he didn’t.

  My words got swallowed into the tension in the air. It was like I wasn’t even there. Nate just held Hank’s gaze.

  “I’m Nate Benedict, Hank,” Nate said.

  “I know. I saw your picture in the paper.”

  “And I’m your landlord. I own this building. Isn’t that right, Kit?”

  I nodded. Hank gave me a swift, surprised glance.

  “I bought it before the war, as an investment. I’m the one who’s been giving your parents a break on the rent. I know they got a raw deal, losing their jobs because they’re Reds.”

  “They’re not Reds.”

  “Doesn’t matter, does it? You see, I don’t like it when people get pushed around. That’s why I became a lawyer, no matter what the papers say. Kit, go make some coffee,” he said, and this time the tone in his voice made me move toward the kitchen. I just didn’t want things to get worse than they were.

  I ran the water and filled the pot, measured the coffee and dumped it in, but I didn’t plug in the percolator. I moved back toward the living room to listen.

  “You’re going to Yale, right? Scholarship and everything, smart kid, you have a future, no question about it. This is just a rough patch in the road. I’m sure you’ll get through it. The thing is, I can help. Believe it or not, I take an interest in my tenants.”

  “I don’t need any help.”

  “Just hear me out.”

  I could recognize something hard behind the pleasantness in Nate’s voice, like he’d knocked Hank’s shoulder, the way kids do before they fight. And I could tell by Hank’s voice that he was scared. I couldn’t leave him alone like that. I walked back into the room.

  “Coffee ready?” Nate asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “I have to get home,” Hank blurted.
He went by me without seeing me, blundering into the kitchen. I heard him fumbling with the knob.

  Nate followed him quickly. “Hank, wait. One more thing.” He slipped an arm around him and talked quietly to him. I couldn’t hear a word unless I got right on top of them.

  I’d seen this before.

  That night at the Riverbank, Jeff Toland holding the napkin-wrapped ice to his swollen face, listening as Nate put a gentle arm around his shoulders. That quiet voice in his ear, telling him what was going to happen. I knew that now. Jeff had listened, and he’d gone off to Hollywood, and his career had been saved by a contract. Was that what Nate had promised him that night?

  When Nate released him, Hank opened the door so fast he slammed it into his forehead. Then he rushed out, shutting it behind him.

  Leaving me alone with Nate.

  “What was that all about?” I asked.

  Nate lit a cigarette and blew out the smoke. “He’s a good kid. I’m just trying to help out.”

  I started to get an ashtray and stopped. I wasn’t going to wait on him.

  “Did you just walk in the door before?” I asked.

  “I knocked, but you didn’t hear. It wasn’t locked.”

  “Funny, I thought it was. I have to get dressed.”

  “You have time.”

  “No, I have to do my makeup and my hair and everything —”

  “Kit, it’s only five thirty. You’ve got an hour. You heard what happened at the Lido last night.” He opened the cupboard and took out a saucer. He tapped his ash onto it.

  “I can read the papers like everybody else.”

  “Yeah, well, Tuesday is a slow news day. They need headlines.”

  Tuesday. It was Tuesday. How could this impossible, terrible day… be a Tuesday? And then it hit me.

  It was the day of my callback audition. And I was already an hour late.