Strings Attached

  “No! I’m tired of listening. To you. To my father. I can’t listen anymore. Can’t you see, you’re destroying me! You’re all destroying me.”

  “No,” I said. “We love you. We both just wanted to give you something to come back to.”

  “I don’t want love anymore,” he said. “Love is nothing. From now on, I just want truth. I want all this to stop, do you hear me? I have to stop it. Starting now.”

  All I could do was whisper his name. “Billy…”

  The door shut behind him as he stumbled out.

  Twenty-four

  New York City

  November 1950

  I sat huddled in my robe.

  I imagined the whole city opening doors, picking up the paper, reading that I was a gangster’s moll.

  How had it happened, how had I gotten here, what else could I have done?

  I knew this: There were things I could have done. Life gives you plenty of chances to be stupid, and I’d taken every single one of them.

  Now I knew why Mickey had kicked Darla, why the girls wouldn’t look at me, why Darla had asked that night if Nate approved of my hair. All along, they’d thought I was Nate’s girlfriend. Sonia had given him my shoe size. Ted had seen me because word had come from Nate Benedict, one of Frank Costello’s mouthpieces, that I was to be given a chance. He’d been expecting a no-talent nothing that day. And what had he said on the phone yesterday? It won’t be long before they start kicking up some dirt on your boyfriend. He hadn’t meant Billy — he’d meant Nate.

  And now the news would spread from the club to the entire city. Daisy would read that headline, the girls from the chorus of That Girl From Scranton!, Shirley and her mother would have the best morning of their lives today with gossip like this.

  It was no wonder Billy didn’t believe me. You’re fed something by a paper, you swallow it whole.

  Whenever I thought of Billy trying to tie his shoe, blinded by tears, I felt as though my body would simply fold up on itself and disappear. I wrapped my arms around my legs and rocked back and forth, trying to think. Trying not to feel.

  I couldn’t sit still. I mopped up the milk and the blood and the glass. I roamed the apartment, avoiding the bedroom with the mussed sheets. I would write him a letter. I would make Nate explain. I would take the train to Providence and wait outside his house. I would see him somehow, I would explain it all. This time in words he would be able to hear.

  When the phone rang I was tempted to ignore it, but I hoped it would be Billy. I picked it up and listened.

  “Hello? Kit?”

  “Ted?”

  “How are you?”

  “Perfectly swell.”

  “Well, don’t let the papers get you down, kid. Listen, the reason I’m calling is… you don’t have to come to the club today.”

  “Ted, I’m fine. I don’t want to miss work.”

  “Well, the thing is, I have to let you go. Mr. D’s orders, I’m afraid. The club doesn’t need this kind of publicity right now.”

  “But I’m not Nate Benedict’s girlfriend!”

  There was a short silence.

  “The papers got it all wrong,” I said. “He’s my boyfriend’s father. I knew him in Rhode Island.”

  “Honey, it doesn’t matter one way or another. It’s in the papers. It’s publicity, good for you, but it’s wrong for us. Never mind the cops, we’re square with that, but now the Feds are breathing down Mr. D’s neck, and so… look, kid, it’s better this way. You can hole up for a while. If you need a reference, you call me. You have a future, Kit. It’s just not at the Lido. I’m sorry.”

  He hung up hastily. I knew he didn’t believe me.

  Why should anybody believe me?

  I was mixed up with Nate. I was living off him. This apartment wasn’t mine. I hadn’t bought these clothes. Of course it looked bad. It was bad.

  I picked up the paper again. I hadn’t been able to do more than scan the article. There was another photograph of me, the one a photographer had taken the night I’d spoken to Dex Hamilton on the radio.

  Who was that girl? That eager smile, the lipstick and powder, the bombshell in the tight dress?

  They were comparing me to Virginia Hill, the mistress of Bugsy Siegel, the gangster who’d been shot a few years ago. The Flamingo, they called her. They hadn’t come up with a nickname for me yet, but I had no doubt that they would.

  I’d always wanted to be famous.

  Lucky Delia wasn’t around. She’d always told me that being famous was an occupation for fools.

  Delia. I’d put out of my head what Billy had said about Delia.

  Do you think you’re the first to shack up? Maybe you should ask your Aunt Delia.

  What did he mean? Delia? My prim and proper aunt?

  I looked over at the mirror, hung in an awkward place just to reflect a splinter of the blue-gray river. A reminder of home to someone who had seen a river every day, who breathed marsh and damp and salt, all running into a tidal bay toward the vast ocean.

  And suddenly I could see her, I could see Delia placing that mirror just so. I could see her tapping in the nail, hanging the mirror, stepping back to adjust it. Staring at it when she felt herself lost in a place that seemed too big and yet too stuffed with people to have room for one more soul. Just as I had.

  Could it be possible? The knowledge was like a rush of air inside my body, and it lifted me to my feet.

  Is that what he wants here, a second chance?

  Here. Here, in this apartment? Did Billy mean that Nate and Delia… but they hardly knew each other!

  Good evening, Miss Corrigan.

  Hello, Mr. Benedict.

  I shook my head slowly, trying to fit the pieces together. Nate and Delia? Delia, with the rosary beads slung on the bedpost. Delia, with her disapproval of kisses that lasted too long in movies. Delia, who pressed her lips together at a dirty joke.

  Delia and Nate?

  What had Da said… that the three of them had been in each other’s pockets when they were young. They met that night, Delia swimming out to meet the boat, tossing her braid over her shoulder and wringing it out, and Nate looking at her like she was a selkie. At Buttonwoods Cove, he’d said. I’d thought it was funny that we’d been at the very same beach that day. Because Billy remembered it from his childhood.

  I stood up as the realization pierced me. The beach was in Warwick.

  I walked slowly back to the bedroom. I ignored the rumpled sheets, the blanket trailing on the floor, the memory of Billy in that bed. Instead, I knelt and looked for the silver compact that he’d kicked.

  They’d taken the name of the place where they’d first laid eyes on each other, where, no doubt, they’d fallen in love. The Warwicks. Of course. And when Billy had looked down at the compact… how had he known?

  I traced my finger over the whirls of the letter B. And suddenly memory flashed, uncertain and hazy, and I grabbed it. Me, twelve years old, leaning against my father’s side as he sat at a table, staring down at a legal document. I couldn’t decipher the language, but I saw the names, bold and black.

  BRIDGET ROSE CORRIGAN

  JAMES GARVEY CORRIGAN

  Bridget was Delia’s birth name. She never used it; she’d used her nickname since she’d been born. I hadn’t even known her name until I’d seen it that day.

  The Warwicks had lived here that last summer of the war, Hank’s mother had said, and before that, he’d only come on weekends. She was a quiet tenant….

  Hadn’t Billy told me that his father had begun to have clients in New York? Had spent time there during the war? And Delia had told us that she was working in Washington the summer of ‘44. For the war effort, she’d said.

  And the weekends! All those weekends she’d told us she was going to a convent! She’d taken the train to New York.

  Billy was right. Not about me. But about them.

  The truth thudded into my brain. How could I have been so stupid? Because Delia had been s
o smart. Delia, who’d turned down every invitation from a man. Delia, in her prim, tight bun. Delia, going to morning Mass on Mondays. Doing her penance, no doubt. Doing battle against the world with nothing but God and a hairbrush.

  I sank back on my heels as memory followed memory. That evening in the lobby of the theater, the trip to see Carousel.… Angela hadn’t had a headache. She knew Delia was her husband’s mistress. No wonder Angela had hated me.

  Delia’s tears, her anger, the slap… was it all about her own heart’s agony?

  And that very night… I’d seen Delia, in the bathtub, crying, her body white and rose, her breasts bobbing on the water, her red-gold hair like glittering seaweed on her shoulders. I’d turned away because I’d been embarrassed— Delia’s naked body was so beautiful, so womanly. So I’d turned away and forgotten what I’d seen.

  Turning away. Wasn’t that what we did in my family?

  I like your hair that way.

  I’d like to see you in that black dress.

  The way Nate looked at me, the way he’d held me when we danced… and the clothes! Dressing me the way he’d dressed her, most likely. He’d recognized the compact, of course. He hadn’t wanted to fix it, he’d wanted to take it. Maybe that’s why I’d felt he’d been here, maybe that’s what he was looking for.

  Everything made sense, except for one thing.

  Why had Delia disappeared?

  Twenty-five

  Providence, Rhode Island

  September 1938

  The first time I saw Nate Benedict was after the hurricane of ‘38, which Muddie, Jamie, and I spent in the bathtub, waiting for the roof to blow off. Nobody knew the storm was coming — people went on church picnics, they went to work, the children went to school — and when the rain and wind came, it was so ferocious that it didn’t take long before everyone in Rhode Island knew they were in trouble. Some of them didn’t know it until their houses were sailing away with them inside.

  The rain was bad but Delia went to work anyway, because if she missed a day, she’d miss a paycheck. She left early so she wouldn’t be late. She was trapped downtown. In a burst of surprising piety, Da told us to pray. No phones were working, we’d lost electricity, and there was no going out of doors with trees slinging by in the wind. We were sure we were going to die, and it terrified and thrilled us.

  People did die in the hurricane in Rhode Island, hundreds of them, drowned in their cars, struck by trees, swept straight out to sea, but after the skies cleared, Fox Point cheered up, for the hurricane meant jobs. Anyone who could hold a shovel had immediate work if he wanted it. It was tough going, cleaning out muck and dragging downed trees, and Da came home exhausted and slept in his clothes.

  I was the only one who heard the quiet knocking that night, a week after the hurricane. I was lying awake, warming my feet against Jamie’s back as he slept at the bottom of the mattress.

  Was that it, was that the start of it, the change in the family, a movement of knuckles on a door?

  I stuck my head out of the closet and watched as Da greeted the stranger in a murmur. Da’s hair was matted with dust and stuck up in back, and he was in a white undershirt and work pants, his feet clownish in thick wool socks. A man stepped through the door, dressed in a gray suit spotted with rain. Men in suits didn’t come to our door, and I crept out to get a closer look.

  They talked about the storm, of course, because everyone was still talking about it. I heard Da chuckle as he hurriedly tucked in his shirt. He quickly ushered the guest into the kitchen, past the shabby furniture, the blanket falling off the couch, and his boots caked with dirt sitting on a newspaper by the door.

  I followed the murmurs and skidded next to the wall to listen. The whiskey bottle taken down from high in the cupboard, the chime of glasses — a rare event, so the man must be important. I wanted to hear his hurricane story; maybe he’d seen a drowned body, something to tell Jamie and Muddie tomorrow to make them jealous. Jamie and Muddie could read already, but I wasn’t much for books, since letters seemed to shimmer all around on a page. Stories, though — those I could remember.

  He said he was downtown, that he’d seen Delia there. How the water had risen so fast that people were swept away. It rose above the reception desk in the Biltmore Hotel. He and Delia had battled their way to an office building and he had the key to an office, he knew someone, so they climbed all the way to the top and spent the night there. Down in the street the water surged up to six feet. I wanted details, the more gruesome the better. I perked up when he described people climbing out of the trolley and sitting on the roof, then getting knocked off into the water. He saw a mink coat float by and he thought it was a bear.

  I pressed closer, but the topic changed just as it was getting interesting. I thought that only happened when children were around to overhear.

  Da said that Delia was out, that she worked until late at night, most nights.

  “Remember her that night down at Narragansett?” the guest said. “We talked her into driving the covering car —”

  “— and she drove so fast she rammed our bumper!” Da slapped his leg.

  The two men chuckled softly together. It was the first time I realized that they were friends. Before then, it had just seemed odd and jerky. I yawned. It was exciting to see a stranger, but I started to think of my warm bed. Then I heard the word that made me pay attention.

  Job.

  The man had heard about a job. Maybe Delia would be interested? A secretary for a firm he knew downtown.

  The dresses could come back, and the stockings! Delia would be pretty again. She’d turned pale and scrawny, her lips bloodless and her moods foul.

  I hadn’t stirred a hair, but Da suddenly sensed me.

  He said, without turning, “Go to bed back there.”

  The stranger rose and peeked around the doorway. He smiled, and I saw how handsome he was. He took two steps and swung me up in his arms. “And which one are you? Muddie or Kitty?”

  “I’m Kitty,” I told him, insulted to have been taken for Muddie, who was shorter than I was.

  “How do you do. I’m Mr. Benedict.” He took me back to the kitchen and settled into the chair. He smelled like rain and cigarettes, a nice smell. I didn’t mind being on his lap. I swung my legs, excited to be in the kitchen with the men.

  “So you’ll tell her, Jimmy?” he asked Da. “I’ll tell her, Benny.”

  They started to make those noises that meant the visit was over, a cough, a decisive slap as the whiskey glass hit the table.

  I trailed after the men to the door. When the man named Benny opened it, the fresh smell of rain on pavement invaded the apartment, as well as something else, the smell of dead leaves from the coming autumn.

  Da stared at the door after it closed, not moving except to tell me to get back to bed.

  But he didn’t seem that interested in my obeying him, so when he sat on the couch and sagged back against the cushions, I scooted up next to him. I knew he was too tired to fuss at me. It was rare that I got my father to myself, and I knew better than to pester him.

  We sat in the darkness, hearing the rain against the windowpane. I could smell the faint sweet smell of whiskey on Da’s breath and feel the warmth of the stranger, see his hands on the glass, the hands of a man who did not work with dirt and grease for a living, the fingers clean, with no cracked or blackened nails. He’d brought us a job from that world, the world that my aunt had known and slipped away from. I fell asleep dreaming of a doll for Christmas.

  I woke up to the door opening again, and Delia stepped in, shaking the drops from her umbrella. “What a night, fit for man nor beast.” She always said that when it rained.

  She leaned her umbrella against the wall so that it would drip onto the newspaper Da had spread out, took off her coat and hung it up, told me to go right to bed, and went to the kitchen for her tea. Da still hadn’t said anything but hello. So it was me who sprang toward her, to say that a man had come, a handsome man in
a suit, and that he had a job for her, that she wouldn’t have to be a cleaning lady anymore.

  Delia put her hand on my shoulder and I felt the weight of it, like she was tired from work and needed support to stand. She looked across the living room at Da.

  “Who was it, then, this man?”

  “Mr. Benedict,” I said, proud to have remembered the name.

  She said something about it being good news, but she’d sounded more excited about the rain.

  I knew how Delia had prayed for things to get better. Hadn’t I seen her just last night, kneeling by her bed, her long red-gold hair braided, her white hands pressed together, her lips moving in her march of Hail Marys?

  “It’s a job!” I sang. “A job, a job, a job!” As if saying it like that would get her to pay attention.

  “I didn’t say I would take it,” Delia said, but she wasn’t talking to me. She was looking right at Da, and there was defensiveness in her tone and fear in her eyes.

  Of course Delia took the job. She got out her gray dresses and pressed them, washed out her sweaters, brushed her hair and twisted it back in a hard knot like a two-day-old roll you had to dunk in your tea to soften. She worked for two businessmen who shared her, Mr. Loge and Mr. Rosemont, and their names were almost as sacred as Jesus in our house, for we all knew how close we’d come to the kind of poverty that meant empty bellies and no heat.

  The next summer, we were on our own, because Da now had a job at the American Screw factory. He worked out a deal with our neighbor Mrs. Duffy — in return for his working in the garden on weekends, she’d feed us lunch and keep an eye on us. But Mrs. Duffy wasn’t much for keeping an eye on anyone except her husband, who was up to no good, she assured us, and had to be watched every minute.

  We met Elena because we hated the Duffys and we were up to our necks in waxed paper. Da had finagled a radio ad in which we sang, “We love Howland’s because it’s three times as good!” and instead of payment, Howland sent over two cartons of waxed paper, which Da kicked across the room because that lousy chiseler had promised cash.