Strings Attached

  Mr. Greeley slid back into the armchair. I wondered if he was sick. There was something in the air here that I didn’t understand.

  “So, Hank tells me you work,” Mr. Greeley said.

  “At the Lido,” I said. “I’m a dancer.”

  “A dancer! Did you hear that, Nancy?”

  “I’m right here, Sam.”

  “But you don’t go to school? Education is so important.” Mrs. Greeley got up abruptly and said she had to check the roast.

  “I was just in a Broadway play — That Girl From Scranton!“

  “I haven’t heard of that show. We don’t get around much anymore,” Mr. Greeley said apologetically.

  With a lead-in like that, I couldn’t resist. I hummed the tune of “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.”

  Mr. Greeley brightened and sang out the first line. It brought back a world to me, of music on the radio, of dancing with Billy on a Saturday night.

  “Please, Dad,” Hank said. “You’ll crack the glasses.” Smiling, he turned to me. “So you sing, too?”

  “I’m a better dancer, but sure,” I said. “I’ve been taking voice lessons since I was nine — plus tap, ballroom, ballet, jazz. I want to start acting lessons now that I’m in New York.”

  Mrs. Greeley came back in and sat on the edge of her chair as though she was ready to jump up any second, and it wasn’t for the roast. “Perhaps you could sing for us,” she said. I could tell — she didn’t want me to be good. She wanted to expose me, not show me off. “Something from the show perhaps? That Girl From …”

  “Scranton,” I said. “It wasn’t very good.”

  I sang a few lines.

  Let’s go to the Dappledown Dreamery

  Right next door to the cold ice creamery

  Don’t even stop to admire the scenery…

  I stopped. “You see? Pretty awful.”

  “It’s sort of catchy,” Hank said politely.

  “Do you know ‘The Way You Look Tonight’?” Mr. Greeley asked. “Always loved that song.”

  “I’ll play if you’ll sing,” Hank said. “C’mon.”

  Hank sat at the piano and I sat next to him.

  I loved the song, too. It was the saddest love song. It was like the person was singing how perfect a moment was even while they knew they were going to lose it. I sang it gently, softly, and when the last note faded, I turned and saw that I’d won over Mr. Greeley, at least.

  “That was lovely,” he said. “Wasn’t it, sweetheart?”

  “Yes.” For the first time, Mrs. Greeley smiled at me. “It was.”

  And the lamps seemed to glow a little more golden, and the room seemed to come closer around us, because suddenly we were all getting along.

  Hank swung into a popular tune, “Don’t Tell Me.”

  Don’t tell me this is just for tonight,

  Don’t tell me that hearts are meant to be light.

  Your dreamy smile, your shelt’ring arms tell me what’s true.

  No turning back, no second chance, forever us, forever you…

  “It’s funny, you remind me of someone,” Mrs. Greeley said. “I just can’t place it.”

  “Rita Hayworth,” Mr. Greeley said.

  “Oh, Sam, really.” Mrs. Greeley shook her head. “I’ll think of it.”

  I decided to ask the question I’d come here to ask. “Hank said the apartment has been empty for years,” I started.

  “Oh, yes,” Mrs. Greeley said. “Since the war ended. We don’t know why. Especially because of the housing shortage, we thought for sure it would be rented. Such a shame; we even asked about it because we knew a family looking for an apartment. One of the other teachers.”

  “I didn’t realize you were teachers.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Greeley exchanged a glance.

  “Well. Not right now. We, uh…”

  “Mom and Dad lost their jobs,” Hank said. “In the purge.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about.

  “The Board of Education has been investigating teachers for what they call ‘subversive activities.’ With the help of the FBI,” Hank explained. “They targeted Mom and Dad.”

  “You go to a meeting or a rally ten years ago, and they come after you,” Mr. Greeley said. “I’m not a Red, Kit. I’m just on the side of the workingman. I have the class read The Grapes of Wrath, and the next thing I know I’m under investigation. And Mrs. Greeley? They go for her next. She’s interested in politics, but four hundred years ago. Cromwell is her bailiwick.”

  I wasn’t sure what a bailiwick was, and I only vaguely remembered Cromwell from European History, but I didn’t want to look like a dumbbell in front of the Greeleys. “You mean you were fired?”

  “I was the one interested in politics before the war,” Mr. Greeley said. He straightened up and leaned forward, so I knew he didn’t mind talking about it. Mrs. Greeley, on the other hand, just clutched her glass of tomato juice and shot him a look that told him to shut up. He didn’t. “Nancy got called in because she’s married to me. She refused to answer about her ‘affiliations,’ they call it. So she got the boot, too.” He clapped his hands. “But it’s all right, we’re looking for work in the private schools. We’ll get a job next year. It’s just that they’re already in the term, so that’s why they’re not talking to us. We’re getting by. Mrs. Greeley has a secretarial job, I’m delivering milk and cheese in the mornings, and Hank is lending a hand. We’re making honest money.”

  “Maybe if you two didn’t still go on those Teachers Union picket lines and Ban the Bomb meetings they’d call us back,” Mrs. Greeley said, holding on to her smile by her teeth. “You know the FBI is watching who’s there.”

  “We’ve got to stand up for what we believe in, Nan,” Mr. Greeley said. “They tried to shut us up, but they can’t. We’re allowed to have political beliefs in this country, or are we going back to your beloved Cromwellian days? Off with our heads, is that it?”

  “So, how did you find out about the apartment, Kit?” Mrs. Greeley asked me. I could tell she wanted to change the subject, but she’d managed to change it to a subject I didn’t want to talk about.

  “A family friend,” I said.

  “Ah, our mysterious landlord, I bet,” Mr. Greeley said. “We’ve never met him. We just mail in our checks to a management company.”

  They waited politely for me to tell them who the landlord was, but they could wait until the roast burned.

  “So it was a couple who lived in the apartment before me?” I asked. Mrs. Greeley wasn’t the only one who could change the subject.

  She suddenly leaned forward. “I know why you seem familiar. How uncanny. You look a little like the woman who used to live in the apartment. We’d just moved in, so I only saw her once or twice before they moved away. A married couple, he was in the army, stationed somewhere down south. He came up on weekends. But they were so quiet.”

  “Newlyweds,” Mr. Greeley said. “Kept to themselves. The Wickhams.”

  “No, it was the name of a hotel — the Warwicks! And of course they had their own private entrance, so we didn’t bump into them in the lobby. We only had one conversation. She wasn’t very social. But, oh, I remember the last day, I saw her just for a minute, moving out… she was so changed. Her husband was dead, she said. How sad, when it was so close to the end of the war. What was her name, Sam?”

  “Don’t remember. I think I only saw her a couple of times. Never met him. I can’t see the resemblance myself.”

  “Bridget,” Mrs. Greeley said. “We said we’d keep in touch, but of course you never do, do you….” The buzzer on the stove rang, and she popped up. “Be right back. No, sit down, dear.”

  Now I was a dear. Things were looking up. And now I knew who owned the silver compact. A wife of a soldier, not a mistress of Nate’s. That made me feel better about him.

  Mr. Greeley leaned forward. “Say, Kit, do you know a song from Carousel? Nan and I saw that on Broadway.”

  Hank sat down
at the piano, and I slid in next to him. I sang my favorite song from the show, “What’s the Use of Wond’rin’?” It’s a song that’s all about how love can make anybody stupid. That you can fall in love with the completely wrong person and know it, but he’s still yours, and you’re still his.

  That night when I got back to my apartment I took out the silver compact and ran my fingers along the initials. Bridget Warwick. She had lived here and drank her coffee at the kitchen table. She’d squeezed out every minute of time with her husband. They’d met here and loved here, and here is where she probably got the telegram that told her he’d been killed. I wished I could send the compact back to her. He’d given it to her, I knew that; it wasn’t something a woman would buy for herself.

  Could I do that? I wondered. Could I be that wife, sitting at the table, waiting, always waiting… and then getting the terrible news? We regret to inform you…

  I didn’t know if I was that brave. Even for love.

  Nine

  Providence, Rhode Island

  March 1945

  “Hurry up, Kitty, the taxi’s here. Do you have to use the bathroom?” Delia tugged on her gloves without glancing at me. Which was a good thing, because I’d left off my socks. I wanted people to think I was wearing stockings, and hoping that though I was twelve they’d think I was fifteen.

  Delia had dressed up, too, in a dress she’d bought when her boss had gotten her a job in the War Department in Washington, DC, last summer. It was emerald with black satin buttons all the way down the back. She wore a dark green hat with a black veil and fresh new black kid gloves. She’d pulled her red hair back in an elegant French twist. She was even wearing lipstick. This view of my aunt as glamorous was startling, as though Delia had suddenly burst into vibrant song. I was used to seeing her in an assortment of grays, the colors of winter skies. Delia hid her beauty, just like the nuns she visited in Vermont once a month for retreats filled with solitude and prayer. “So I can keep my sanity before the lot of you send me around the bend to the crazy house,” she’d tell us, smiling as she headed out with her small suitcase and her train ticket.

  She paused at the mirror she’d hung near the front door so “maybe you won’t look like tinkers on the way to school if you get a good look at yourselves.” Jamie and Muddie and I had long ago outgrown the mattress we’d all slept on in the closet. With Da’s overtime and a bit of luck, the increase in the family fortunes coincided with the Duffys moving out of the adjoining apartment to live with their daughter in Pawtucket. We took on their space as well. Since the landlord had thrown up a wall in order to create two out of a full-floor apartment, Da simply knocked it down again. Now Delia had her own room, as did Jamie, and Muddie and I shared the small back bedroom overlooking the yard.

  A taxi to the station! I couldn’t believe it. I held myself very still in the backseat so Delia wouldn’t correct me. It was hard not to ask a question, but I could tell Delia was nervous about missing the train. She kept checking the delicate watch on her wrist. Maybe she, too, was nervous about going to a real Broadway play.

  Well, it wasn’t on Broadway, not yet. The two of us were going to New Haven for the tryout of a new musical called Carousel, and I’d read that there would be a real carousel onstage. Delia had bought the tickets, shocking everyone in the family because she never did anything extravagant and didn’t approve of my voice and dance lessons, even though she paid for them. “It’s time Kit knows what she’s in for,” she said. Leave it to Delia to turn a pleasure trip into a warning.

  As we sat on the train, I was content to look out the window and not talk. Delia seemed on edge, and when I said I had to go to the bathroom, she snapped, “Oh, for heaven’s sake!”

  I looked down at my bare legs. I had a scab on one knee, and my calves were dotted with bruises. I realized how silly I was, believing that people would think I was older. Delia’s sleek legs crossed and recrossed, her stockings whispering. I could see a man down the aisle looking at her legs, and how Delia’s head jerked away, how she managed to convey to that stranger that he was a lout for even stealing a glance. I lifted my chin, too, trying to look as disapproving as she did.

  Outside the theater in New Haven, people were milling under the lights of the marquee, the women all dressed up in mink and high heels. I’d never seen such glamour. I could pick out the ones who had driven up from Manhattan, and they were so perfect I almost lost my breath. I felt very Rhode Island, and was embarrassed that I’d ever imagined anyone ever saying, “Who is that beautiful red-haired girl in the blue dress?”

  Delia moved stiffly through the crowd, the tickets held tight in her gloved hand. “Follow me and don’t get lost,” she instructed.

  We pushed through into the lobby. It was smaller than the glittering palace I’d pictured. My nose filled with perfume and hair spray, a delicious smell.

  “Wait, Delia! Can’t we —”

  “Let’s find our seats. We don’t want to miss our curtain.”

  “But it’s only a quarter to.”

  “Shh!”

  We were up in the balcony, high up, but it didn’t matter. Delia sat the way she always did — straight, her spine not touching the chair. She looked below to where the audience was beginning to file in. I craned my neck, picking out the most elegant dresses.

  The lights dimmed and the music began with a swell that felt like a wave against my body. Tears instantly spurted to my eyes and ran down my cheeks. It was a waltz, but like no waltz I’d ever heard.

  It was all up there, everything I knew and everything I didn’t know yet. Love and lies and cruelty and beauty, and the music that could be like a bruise way deep inside. When the curtain thundered down for intermission, I couldn’t speak for a minute.

  “What do you think will happen?” I asked Delia. “Why is Billy Bigelow being such a louse when he loved Julie so much?”

  “Love isn’t enough, I guess,” Delia said.

  “Sure it is,” I said. I couldn’t understand a world where it wasn’t.

  She stood up. “It’s not over. Let’s go hear what everyone says in the lobby.”

  I trailed after her, the music still in my head.

  “I think the show is a hit,” Delia murmured, her gaze darting around the lobby. Her cheeks glowed pink from excitement.

  Through the crowd I spotted Nate Benedict. It had been three years since I’d seen him last, but I couldn’t mistake his profile with the flattened nose. He stood with that same small woman in a tweed coat with a brooch of red stones. They weren’t talking to each other, the woman looking down at her program while he scanned the lobby. I would have taken him for one of the crowd from Manhattan if I hadn’t known him. His gaze moved past us, then snapped back.

  Delia touched her hair. “Well, he’s seen us. We have to say hello now.” She linked her arm with me and brought me forward, almost pushing me. “Hello, Mr. Benedict.”

  “Hello, Miss Corrigan. Angela, you remember Miss Corrigan? My wife,” Nate said to us. “And this is Kitty, isn’t it? All grown up. Are you enjoying the play?”

  “It’s so sad,” I said. “I thought musicals would be cheerful. Especially one with a carousel in it.”

  “Yes, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

  I hummed the tune of “If I Loved You,” then sang a few lines. I couldn’t remember the dates of the Revolutionary War or one scrap of geography, but I could remember a song. “Isn’t it romantic how he sings that she’ll walk away in the mist, and she’ll never know how he feels?”

  “But she doesn’t walk away,” Delia said. “She stays. That’s her mistake.” She wasn’t under the same spell I was, that was clear.

  “I have a headache.” Mrs. Benedict hadn’t even looked at us. “I want to go home now.” Without waiting for a word from her husband, she pushed through the people in the lobby.

  “Ah,” Nate said. “It appears that there will be no second act. Here.” He handed me a box of mints. “But they’re yours.”

&nbs
p; He bent down then, right at my eye level. “I think the lesson of the play is that we can’t always have what we want. Maybe it’s good that you learned it now.”

  He moved off through the crowd, out toward the doors to the street.

  “What did he mean?” I asked. “And wasn’t she rude? She must have felt really sick. Do you think she had to throw up?”

  Delia turned abruptly. “Let’s get back to our seats. Hurry up now, you don’t want to miss the opening number.”

  I followed, tearing at the top of the box of mints. I felt the sharp taste of peppermint explode in my mouth. We settled back into our seats, not talking, just waiting in suspense for the first notes of the orchestra.

  The next act began, just as dark and sad as the first part. I cried again, sopping up my tears with the edge of my cardigan. We’d run out of tissues because Delia was crying, too.

  We stood on the train platform. The music from the play still vibrated in my body and I tapped out the rhythms of the songs, making my feet move to the ballet. The girl who played Louise Bigelow wasn’t that much older than I was. I could dance that part in a few years. I sucked on the last mint, feeling it crumble in my mouth in a satisfying way.

  “Is he rich, Mr. Benedict?” I asked. “He was wearing a camel hair coat, and I think that pin had rubies in it, the one his wife was wearing.”

  “Stop asking me questions about him. I hardly know him.” Delia looked at her watch. “Where is the train?”

  “This was the best day of my life. I’m going to be on Broadway someday. Do you think I could be, Delia?”

  Delia looked down the track for the train.

  I began to sing the lyrics of “What’s the Use of Wond’rin’?” piecing together the parts of the song I could remember. It was the saddest love song I could imagine — something about how love could be false or true, but you had to love him anyway, and that was that.