Strings Attached

  What was left to say? I’m sorry? Good luck? Take care? I looked at Mr. and Mrs. Greeley, and I silently promised them that nothing would happen to their son.

  And then I shut the door.

  I stood on the sidewalk and looked in the lighted window of the apartment. The shades were up. Muddie passed by the window in a navy dress. I could glimpse Jamie sitting on the couch. I couldn’t hear the radio, but I knew it was on. They’d probably already had the turkey and the dressing and the pie.

  I walked up the stairs and pushed open the door. Muddie turned, startled.

  “You came!” She rushed forward to hug me.

  The hug lasted a long time. Usually, in our family, we gave quick, fierce hugs that resembled strangulation.

  Over her shoulder, I met Jamie’s eyes. He dropped his gaze as he got up to greet me. “So you came after all.”

  Da heard the commotion and hurried into the room. Muddie finally let me go and Da hugged me quickly. “You’re where you belong,” he said.

  I wasn’t sure where I belonged anymore. But I was where I wanted to be.

  I noticed that Da was wearing a suit, the only one he owned. “Where are you off to?” I asked him.

  “The wake, of course.”

  “You’re going?”

  “Yes, I’m going,” he said. “I’ve got to pay my respects. We’re all going. You should come, too. You were his girl.”

  “I can’t go. Everyone thinks —”

  “What difference does it make that the paper prints a lie about you? You are what you are.”

  “I’m afraid of Nate,” I said. “I’m afraid I’m mixed up in everything, and he knows it. I’m afraid he might do something.”

  “He’s not going to do anything,” Da said. His voice was firm. “The Corrigans and the Benedicts are family friends.”

  “I’ve got something to tell you all first,” I said. “I found Delia.”

  The news seemed to freeze them in a tableau, as if they were on a stage and had hit their marks and they were waiting for the director to tell them where to move. Over a storm of questions from Muddie, I spilled the story of finding out that Delia had lived in my apartment, about her romance with Nate. I had to tell the story between a chorus of “No!” and “I don’t believe it!” from Muddie.

  The words tumbled out, about her house, and the way she looked, and how bitter I’d felt when I left. I looked at Da. “You knew about Delia and Nate, didn’t you?”

  He pulled at his tie. “I didn’t know anything for sure,” he said. “I suspected plenty. But it was her life to live.”

  “Delia and Nate Benedict,” Muddie breathed. She sat down abruptly on the couch. “Cross of Christ about us. I don’t believe it.”

  Jamie shook his head. “Well, that explains all those weekends away.”

  “Do you still think it’s a good idea to go to the wake?” I asked Da. “Considering?”

  “It was five years ago, and it’s got nothing to do with us,” Da said firmly. “Nobody knew, did they, until now?”

  “Angela knew,” I said.

  “Well, that’s between Nate and his wife,” Da said. “Anyway, I’ve heard Angela won’t leave her bedroom, so we won’t see her at all. I’ve known the man for twenty years. I’m going, and whoever comes along, that’s fine with me.”

  In the end I went because I couldn’t stay away. You did this for people you loved, you went to honor them at wakes and funerals. That had been embedded in me since childhood. I would go, and I would kneel and say a prayer, and then Billy would be put to rest, and I would have a part in the grieving. Nate and I were in our proper places now, both of us mourners. Both of us dead inside.

  The house on Broadway was glowing with light. Cars packed the street, and we saw a steady stream of people going in and out. The temperature had dropped, and the wind was cold, the kind that cut through your clothes. A wet, thick snow had begun to fall. We hesitated in our little clot of nervousness and gravity until Da took a breath and climbed the porch steps.

  We passed through the front hall into the living room. Folding chairs had been set up, most of the furniture cleared out or pushed to the sides. The room was full of women in black and men in dark suits. There was a strong smell of coffee. I could see into the dining room, where there were platters of sandwiches and pastries crowding the table, their edges overlapping.

  The closed coffin was at the far side of the room. Were we supposed to be comforted by the luxury of it, the satiny wood, the gleaming brass? Should a coffin beg for admiration? It was an insult to grief. I felt the horror of it in my knees and I would have fallen if Muddie hadn’t gripped my arm right then. I turned and counted the spoons lined up next to Angela’s fine china cups and saucers until I felt like I wouldn’t faint.

  Something took me over, an underwater feeling. Sound was muffled. This wasn’t real, my feet moving on the carpet, the people moving away as we passed, parting in front of us like a school of balletic blackfish.

  Nate sat in the corner, an untouched cup of coffee in front of him. Three men in suits sat with him, men I didn’t recognize. Their hard glances put up a wall between us and Nate.

  Da went up. We clustered behind him. “Benny,” he said. “I am sorry for your loss. He was a grand boy, and a hero. I don’t have words for you, just the sympathy of my family.”

  Nate stared at him as though Da didn’t exist. Like there was just air where we were standing.

  Da hovered uncertainly for a moment, then moved jerkily away. We filed past the coffin, crossing ourselves.

  The room fell silent, down to the sniffles and sobs. A heavy presence seemed to be at our backs as we knelt in front of the coffin and bowed our heads. I tried to pray, I tried to think of Billy as I knew him, as I loved him, but I could only think of the silence pressing against us.

  After a brief time Da got up, crossed himself again, and started out. We followed in a single line. Past the mourners in back. Past the corner where Nate sat. We only began to breathe again when we hit the sidewalk.

  We started down Broadway. No one said a word. The sidewalk was slick with the wet snow and Muddie slid into me, clutching my arm.

  We heard quick footsteps behind us and as one, we turned. Nate was heading toward us, quickly, hurrying to catch up with us, crossing his lawn instead of using the walkway. The same three men walked more slowly, keeping him in sight but giving him distance.

  He came within a few feet and then stopped, as if coming any closer would contaminate him.

  He was clutching something in his hand, a wadded-up mess of newspaper, wet from the snow.

  Muddie huddled next to me, her arm still in mine. I pressed it. Jamie moved closer to Da. We felt the threat, the violence in the way Nate stood, feet apart, breathing heavily.

  In a motion so quick it caught us off guard he threw the wadded-up paper at Da. It hit his face and fell to the sidewalk. Da didn’t flinch.

  I saw part of a headline.

  WILLIAM BENEDICT DEAD IN NYC TRAIN DISAS

  “He was in the first car,” Nate said. His voice shook.

  Yes. He always liked to ride in the first car.

  “He was decapitated.” The word was torn from his throat, it shredded in the telling, and yet I saw and felt it like he’d struck me. Muddie cried out. I thought of the coffin, the lid closed, and I felt sick.

  “They wouldn’t let me see him. They had his dog tags. They said a father wouldn’t want to see him.”

  I put my hands over my face.

  “Benny —” Da started.

  “They wouldn’t let me see him!”

  I felt terribly sick. Sweat broke out on my forehead. Billy. I couldn’t envision the horror of it. His beauty, his face, his hair, his skin. That last morning in my bed, his slow, sleepy smile.

  “You took my son from me,” he said.

  Da looked confused. “I —”

  “I can trace it all back, you see,” Nate said. “You wouldn’t let me have Delia. I wasn’t good e
nough for you.”

  “That’s not —”

  “And then my boy wasn’t good enough for you, either. My boy!” Nate let out a sound so anguished Da took a step forward. Nate held up a hand to stop him.

  “You took my heart!” he cried. “And then you took it again!”

  “Benny, let’s be reasonable —”

  “I curse you,” he said. “It’s because of you and your children that my son is dead. So one of your children will die.”

  “What are you saying?” Da asked, confused. “You don’t know what you’re saying. It’s the grief talking —”

  “I’m talking!” Nate shouted. “I’ll do it, Mac, God knows I can, and I have a right to. You won’t know which one I’ve chosen. But one of your children will die. James. Margaret. Kathleen. It doesn’t matter to me which one. Nothing matters anymore. An eye for an eye. A child for a child. Do you understand?”

  “No. Benny… Nate — you don’t mean this!” Da cried. “You don’t!”

  Nate turned and walked back. Alone, but with the three men at his back, protecting him.

  Thirty-four

  Providence, Rhode Island

  November 1950

  “Nate isn’t a killer,” Da said to us. “He’s out of his mind with his grief, and who could blame him for that? He didn’t mean what he said.”

  Muddie nodded, her eyes wide with fear. Jamie and I said nothing.

  But Da decided we would go to a friend’s anyway. The Learys lived over on Power Street, in a big square house that looked like it was squatting on its lot, holding on against any stray hurricane that might try to blow it away.

  The day of Billy’s funeral was a gray day, with a sky like steel and clouds scudding across the sky. The papers said that hundreds had come to the church and people lined up outside. I could picture it: the heavy smell of flowers in the church, and the pools of water from people’s umbrellas. Billy was a Korean War hero, never mind that he had never gone to war; he had enlisted and died in uniform, and that was enough. His mother, they said, was in a state of collapse, but there was a photograph of Nate, ashen-faced in his suit, going into the church.

  It all had nothing to do with Billy. Billy was somewhere else in my mind.

  I remembered the day we went with Jamie to Roger Williams Park. The cherry trees were in blossom, and under the trees the light was so pink you felt you were nestled in the heart of a flower. Billy took my picture, and Jamie’s, because he kept saying how perfect the light was. After a bit the weather changed and the wind blew and suddenly the petals were flying in the air, thick as a hard rain. We ran through the trees and the petals nestled in our hair and our clothes, and we brushed each other off, laughing because we were so happy to be all together, and it was spring.

  Jamie stayed on the sunporch the afternoon of Billy’s funeral, and I knew he was thinking what I was thinking, of the cold, frozen ground and the coffin, and the graveyard, and the mourners with their black umbrellas.

  I thought of that night in the parking lot, how Jamie’s arms had gone around Billy and he’d rested his cheek against Billy’s back, and how I should have seen that he was managing to calm Billy with his embrace, with his words, in a way that I never could. I thought of how he’d driven all night to get to me, how he’d bathed my face and brought me a blanket and made me tea, and how I’d paid him back by ordering him to stop crying. I could hear the exact tone of contempt that had been in my voice, and I thought that out of every bad thing I’d done, that could be the worst.

  Quietly, I went into my purse, and Muddie’s. In my fists I carried the coins, and I walked onto the cold porch. Jamie’s eyes were on his book but he wasn’t turning pages. I moved around the room, placing the pennies, heads up, on the windowsills and the bookshelf and the arms of the chairs. I felt him watching me. I saved one last penny and opened his hand. I put the penny heads up in his palm, then closed his fist over it.

  Then, without looking at the title, I took a book from the bookshelf. I sank into the couch on the other end, nudging his stocking feet aside. I wiggled into my space, put my feet up, and opened my book.

  I thought of the first day we’d spent together, of Billy kneeling in the sand with his camera, grinning at us, the wind whipping his hair. It was a good thing to know and to remember: This was joy, and he had known it.

  Jamie and I stayed there together until the light faded, our books open, not reading a word, waiting until dark, when we knew Billy would be buried, and all the mourners would be gone. What could we wish for him but that? To sleep without dreaming. To rest in peace.

  The house was quiet when I rose from the bed I shared with Muddie and slipped out. I tiptoed down the stairs, holding my shoes. The house seemed full of breath — the quick pants of the Leary children, dreaming in their beds, the uneasy sleep of Da, the mound of Jamie under a blanket on the couch.

  I quickly pulled on my coat and Muddie’s black beret. I slipped out of the sunporch door. I hurried to the backyard, where I climbed a short fence. No shades flickered, no shadow moved as I took off to the crown of the hill.

  I crossed over into the streets that ran through Brown University. I had forgotten my gloves, and I tucked my hands in my armpits to keep them warm. It was close to midnight. The Brown campus was deserted, most of the students gone for Thanksgiving weekend. I walked faster, knowing I was outside Fox Point territory now.

  I don’t know where my courage was. I didn’t feel brave at all. I just felt scared. But doing nothing was worse. Da didn’t believe Nate would put a contract out on one of us and I did. So it was up to me to stop it.

  I took the trolley downtown. A few people were waiting at the stop, a woman and a man I’d thought were together. But she got off, and the man stayed on. He wore a hat that shaded his face and he was thin and not too tall, a man nobody would notice unless you were alone and afraid.

  When I got off, he got off, too. With every nerve screaming, I wanted to walk fast, but I didn’t. I strolled down Westminster Street, past the Chinese restaurant, turned again, and headed for Washington. He was still behind me. There were people on the street, but not many, not enough.

  When I came to the Riverbank Club I ducked inside and nodded and smiled at the hostess who’d replaced me. Sammy was over at the bar, and he hurried to greet me.

  “Kit! Gee, you look swell. What brings you here? Tony will be glad to see you; the new girl can’t find a punch line with both hands.”

  “Sammy, I’ll come back and see you, I promise, but right now, can I use your alley? I’m trying to ditch some joker who followed me.”

  “You betcha, kiddo, don’t give it a thought. I’ll make sure he doesn’t go after you.” He gave me a pat on the shoulder and turned, shielding me from the door.

  I walked out through the kitchen into the alley, surprising a busboy emptying trash. I hurried down the alley and turned onto Snow Street. Then I headed up Federal Hill.

  I crossed the street when I got close to the Benedict house and walked on the opposite side, turning my collar up. The lights were still blazing, and cars were parked outside. Relatives and friends sitting with Nate and Angela. They would come for weeks with casseroles and fruit, they would sit in the kitchen and make coffee and soup. Life would go on, no matter if Nate or Angela wanted it to.

  I slipped through the dark streets toward Atwells Avenue, grateful for the clouds that covered the moon. There was no one around, as if every family on Federal Hill was paying their respects to Nate by staying home.

  Nate’s office was dark. I hurried down the side walkway to the back.

  It had been five years, but I remembered every detail of that day. I counted the bricks and lifted one and there it was, the key, dull and crusted with dirt. I fitted it in the padlock and I heard the click.

  Billy had wanted me to follow him that day. He’d known about Delia. Had he wanted me to know, too? I liked you because you liked my pictures. Before that… you were my enemy.

  His enemy because of
Delia. That photograph I saw that day — of a woman pulling off her sweater — he’d wanted me to see it. He’d wanted me to know about Delia. But something had stopped him. Maybe because I liked the pictures so much? I’d never know.

  I could only guess that it hadn’t been friendliness that day that had led him to bring me inside. It had been something else. Some impulse to share a knowledge of a grown-up world that was wrong and painful. So he wouldn’t be alone.

  I switched on the light, but the place was bare. Billy’s darkroom had been cleared out years ago. Later he had developed his photographs at college. But today, on the day of his burial, the bare planks of the tables felt wrong. It was as though he’d been erased. When I thought of that boy, down here alone with his trays and his solutions, tears burned my eyes. I wiped them away fiercely. I couldn’t do this if I thought about Billy. I had to save who was left. I turned off the light again in case it would shine through the cracks of the coal cellar door.

  I walked slowly through the basement. The darkness was almost total, and I kept my arms outstretched. I could just make out a wooden stairway in the gloom.

  I walked slowly up the stairs, testing each one before putting my weight on it. I couldn’t hear a sound from the house, and when I paused at the top and cracked the door, I could only see more darkness.

  I made my way to the office. I had no way of knowing if I could find anything that would bring Nate down. I didn’t even know if I’d know it if I saw it. He was a lawyer. He knew how to cover his tracks.

  But it was my only chance.

  I couldn’t switch on the lights and I had no flashlight, but I could just make out the desk and filing cabinet. I opened the drawer and began to flip through the files. I took some out to read them by the window, where a small shaft of light entered from the streetlight. Financial transactions, arrest records, several wills… I had no idea what to look for.

  Frustrated, I wanted to wad up the papers and throw them around the room. Trash Nate’s office, destroy everything.