Other Shepards (2 page)

“Mom will like how we bought her present from Mrs. Motahahn, especially since Carr’s salespeople work on commission,” I volunteer. “And did you know Brett and Carla are bringing baby Freddie tonight?”

There is no visible reaction from her brittle body. “I bet he has some teeth by now,” I say after a few more blocks.

Silence.

We turn off Fifth Avenue on Ninth Street, nosing west through the crosstown traffic. Tight green buds are beginning to appear on the dogwood trees. Soon they will unpack into friendly white blossoms, softly loosening along with the pink, tongue-shaped blooms of our window box bleeding hearts. Spring in the Village. Nowhere else in the city looks or smells more luscious.

“I hate it when Brett comes,” Geneva says abruptly. “It’ll be weird. The parents get strange.”

“I like Brett.”

“I like
him
, I hate the
visit
.” Geneva turns and her eyes are like a pair of tacks, pushing into me. “Last time he was here he told me I looked like Kevin. Spitting image, he said.”

“What? No, you don’t. You look like me and I look like you. Everyone says so. Medium sized, reddish brownish hair, blue eyes, kind of freckly. That’s us.”

“Dad once said I looked like Kevin, too,” Geneva muses.

“Kevin? Ha, Kevin was short and round and had pink skin. Pink as a shrimp. I bet he always got sunburned.”

“Watch out how you talk, Holland,” Geneva warns. “Kevin can hear every word. His feelings might be hurt.”

“He
was
pink. It’s no insult.”

Geneva slides her gaze to the ceiling of the cab and mutters something.

“You better not be apologizing to Kevin for me. Are you?”

“Mom always tells us how angels can hear everything. Plus, the Bible says they answer straight to God. If you do or say something bad, the angels have to report you.”

“Geneva,” I say, exasperated, “heaven isn’t like the principal’s office.”

“I didn’t know you were such an expert,” she retorts airily. “By the way, don’t tell Mom or Dad about Carr’s. Mom thinks I’m getting better. Don’t tell.”

“I wouldn’t. Why would I? And I think you are getting better.”

Geneva shakes her head. “Nobody else acts like me. Nobody’s scared like me.”

“You’re being very dramatic.” I nudge a leg closer to knock it against hers. “Let’s get out here and walk to the flower shop. Then we can get a couple tulips for our vase. You pick the color.”

The three-story brick townhouse on 176 Waverly Place in Greenwich Village has been my home ever since I was born, only a few blocks away, at St. Vincent’s Hospital, and my parents’ home for twenty years before that. They bought the entire house during a time when the Village was cheap, since anybody with a regular paying job preferred to live higher than the Forties.

The parents were young and poor, perfect downtown candidates. They met at a bookstore on Bank Street, closed now, that specialized in detective and crime novels. Dad always begins the story of when he first saw Mom by saying, “It was a dark and stormy night,” but then confesses that it was actually a cool summer morning and that Mom was working behind the register.

Although they are often praised for their good investment in buying the house, the Village itself does not suit either of them, since they both work in midtown: Mom as a buyer for Macy’s and Dad as a research scientist for Biotech Labs, which is an off-campus part of New York University. And whenever they go out, which is rare, it is usually to see a play or a ballet—never to the jazz clubs and poetry corners of our neighborhood. Leaving 176 Waverly, however, is not an option. The house is inlaid and overworked in memories too precious to sell.

Every Saturday morning since I can remember, tour groups have strolled down our street, part of Historic Manhattan, and 176 Waverly’s official history has been long overboiled inside my head. “Designed by a student of the popular architect James Renwick, this Victorian Gothic style building—note the leaded-glass fanlight over the door, the wrought-iron stair railing, the open-box newels—was built in 1883. During
prohibition
, Waverly Place was lined with s
peakeasies
.” (A speakeasy is a place where people could sneak off to buy and drink alcohol during prohibition, which was a law in the 1920s that banned liquor from public and private establishments. After years of hearing the bullhorn-wielding tour guides yak about this, I finally looked up both words.)

The tour always winds up with the story of New York mayor James John Walker’s mistress, an actress who lived in our house during the Roaring Twenties. It is rumored that some nights the furtive but well-dressed ghost of “Beau James” can be seen sneaking down the short flight of steps to the sidewalk, where he dissolves into mist as soon as his foot hits the pavement. I have never caught sight of the mayor’s ghost, although not for lack of trying. Geneva maintains she’s seen him on several occasions, wearing a swirling opera cape and a top hat. She says his eyes are more bashful than you might expect, all things considered.

Waverly is a bent, quiet street, where the most commotion on a given day is the yips of two sparring poodles. In the summer, the poplar and ginkgo trees provide a spangled shade from the sun, although the crushed ginkgo berries under our shoes smell like vomit.

Geneva snuffles at the yellow tulips as she waits for me to unlock the front door. “They don’t smell,” she says. “Maybe we should have got roses or lilies.”

“Tulips are more cheerful. Besides, you’re allergic to roses.”

“And don’t tell about Carr’s.”

“You already said. And why would I tell?” I try to bite back the snap in my voice, but I’m tired and distracted, thinking about how I should start digging into my French homework, which tonight means correcting the test I flunked.

“Someone’s here,” Geneva whispers. I follow my sister’s gaze to the dining room window.

“No, no one.”

“Someone,” she insists. “A lady.”

“Ooh, maybe it’s the mayor’s mistress,” I say. “Waiting for one last afternoon of illicit love.” But I watch the front windows as I jiggle my keys impatiently at the slide and dead bolt locks. A lady? The parents almost never have visitors. Certainly no one unexpected. I can tell from Geneva’s breathing that she’s curious, too.

“Hello!” I make my voice brave, like a returning hunter, as we enter the house. “Who’s there?”

“No one, just me. Annie. Annie the painter.”

It was not fear, exactly, that stirred inside me when I heard her voice, although I have lived in New York City my entire life, and know its many terrible tales of intruders and muggers and worse. I probably should have spun right around and hustled both of us out into the safety of the street. But when my sister tugged at my elbow, stepping past me and walking through the swinging doors into the kitchen, I remember feeling mostly surprise. It was such a strange thing for her to do. And I wondered if Geneva had read my mind, and was trying to be the big sister for a change.

The only thing I could think to do was to follow her.

“W
HAT WAS YOUR FIRST
impression?” my sister would ask me time and again after we had met Annie, and long after we stopped knowing her. “The first, number one thing that hit you?”

“That she wasn’t a redhead,” I always answer. I associate the name Annie with the Little Orphan and the one of Green Gables. Both redheads.

This Annie’s hair is brilliant blond and wispy, its pollen yellow tint reminding me of the baby picture of Mom that sits on Dad’s desk. Her complexion is bright; her forehead, nose, and chin are flushed, as if she has crept too close to a fire, and her pale, smoke-colored eyes regard my sister and me with steady attention.

Geneva remembers thinking that Annie was floating. “She was holding her pencil like a wand, and she was wearing that light blue dress, and the sun was coming in behind her so I had to squint. But when she moved across the kitchen to us, it was like those fairies with the pulleys on their backs from when we saw
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
at the Bleecker Street Theater. Or at least,” Geneva bites her lip, “that’s what I
think
I thought. The kitchen was full of sun. I couldn’t see.”

Which is strange, because in my mind Annie wears a dark blue dress and the afternoon is overcast. The image is like a negative plate held over Geneva’s picture, and looking back, I can’t help but mistrust both versions of our memory.

“Annie the painter?” I repeat. “A wall painter or a picture painter?”

“Both. A picture on a wall,” Annie says. She reaches a hand to the messy knot of her upswept hair and untwists it. Saffron squiggles fall around her shoulders. “I’m painting the mural for your mom’s birthday. Some plants and leaves to look at and cheer her up while she slaves over a hot stove.” She points a finger at each of us. “Two Shepard sisters. But which is … ?”

“That’s Geneva,” I say. “I’m Holland.”

“Nobody slaves much in this house,” says Geneva. “Mostly we defrost.”

“Speaking of, who wants a nice warming cup of coffee? My own blend. I’m taking a breather. What do you think of my sketches?” She nods to the kitchen table.

Rolls of vellum paper clutter our table and banquette. The lazy Susan and napkin holder have been pushed aside to accommodate sketch paper and pencils. Several opened books display glossy photographs of landscape paintings and designs. The place mats are stacked on the floor. I suppress an urge to straighten the mess.

“The parents don’t like us to drink coffee,” Geneva says, creeping toward the table. She bends over a book, her arms wound exaggeratedly behind her back to show she won’t touch it. Then she turns and looks at me, her teeth raking her bottom lip, waiting for me to set the situation right. “Do they know she’s here?” she whispers.

“You’re sure my mom and dad know you’re here?” I ask as politely as I can. “I mean, that you’re here in our kitchen right now? Because I think they would have told us. It’s kind of, whatever, weird, finding a stranger in your own house.”

“But it’s supposed to be a surprise. From your dad to your mom. Only, when you think about it, the mural is really from me to your mom, since I’m doing all the work. Now why don’t you two relax and take off those funny hats. Who wants coffee?”

That’s when I notice the powerfully cozy coffee smell wafting through the kitchen. I never drink coffee, but this aroma is like a potion, thick and enticing.

Annie opens a cupboard and pulls out two orange-striped coffee mugs, part of a set of Navajo earthenware we never use anymore. Geneva and I yank off our berets but otherwise remain motionless, watching Annie.

She picks up the pot and pours coffee into mugs. “At least try it. It’s a special vanilla nutmeg blend that I invented myself. And I have a bag of cinnamon rolls. There was a day-old sale at My Favorite Muffin. Jack eats there all the time.”

“Who’s Jack?” I ask.

“Jack’s a friend of mine, an actor. In fact, he went out on an audition this morning, a television commercial for heartburn medicine. He was so funny, talking to himself in the mirror—‘I can’t believe all those years of summer stock for this’—but then he got more positive, which is just like Jack, telling himself how an actor’s life is not about shortcuts, but persistence and … you want milk?”

We are transfixed, watching Annie bungle around our kitchen, rummaging for spoons and milk. She has a dancer’s body, long limbs as delicately hinged as Japanese brush strokes, but her movements are fidgety and graceless, as if she can’t figure out how she is centered. I decide the problem must be her old-fashioned cork-soled sandals, a style that not only looks uncomfortable but is too summery for the weather.

She jerks to a stop at the kitchen counter and begins tunneling into a nylon knapsack that is flopped beside the sink. “In here somewhere, if you just hold on a minute.”

Geneva looks at me and mouths, “Gun.” I shake my head and mouth, “No way.” Annie rummages and mumbles to herself, looking slightly demented, if not gun-toting.

“Ask,” Geneva mouths. I shake my head.

Geneva pulls in a quivering breath and squeaks, “Who are you? Are you a robber? I think now is a good time to call Dad or the authorities to find out—”

With a triumphant “Aha!” Annie whips around, clutching a white paper bag. Geneva screams. It is her usual scream, a spine-scouring pitch that has roused me so many times in the middle of the night that upon hearing it now, I do not even flinch. Annie immediately drops her paper bag and matches Geneva with a scream of her own, although this noise seems more professional and military: a call to arms, a war whoop. Then she claps a hand to her mouth, spreading the fingers of her other hand to touch the pulse points of her neck, and she doubles over laughing. Her laugh is goofy, it sounds like hiccups. I smile. I can’t help it.

“I see tomorrow’s headline of the
Post
: ‘Girls Attacked by Artist Bearing Pastries.’” Annie smiles and bends to retrieve the bag, which she opens and glides beneath Geneva’s nose. “Day-old cinnamon rolls. That’s all they are. See? Look, it’s no joke, I was officially contracted to come to the Shepard residence and create a spectacular mural worthy of your mother’s fifty-sixth birthday. I have all the information on me, somewhere.” She taps her forehead. “Most important is that it’s up here. Anyone will tell you the best plans are stored in the memory.”

“Oh, sure,” I agree. The smell of coffee dries my throat and gurgles my stomach, and most of my concentration is focused on tasting it.

“Clear off the table, and then we’ll sit down and take a load off. You can tell me which design ideas you like best. How obvious is it that I haven’t talked to a single solitary person in a while? I’m going crazy for company. I should have Jack’s job. I’d be good at heartburn commercials. ‘Oh, Mama, I love your sausage and anchovy pizza, but I sure hate the heartburn.’” Annie makes a sour face and touches her hand to her heart. Then her expression changes to coin-eyed surprise. “‘Cohrex? Never heard of it! But hey, I’ll try anything to get ridda this pain.’”

I look at Geneva, ready to take my cue from her reaction. Annie’s day-old rolls and heartburn monologue might be too much for my sister. A classic Geneva move would be to run upstairs and slam her bedroom door, and I am half-waiting for it. Then I will have to apologize for my sister and spend the next hour coaxing Geneva back into a social mood in time for Mom’s birthday dinner. I make a bet.
If Geneva stays, then you have to do all your French conjugations after dinner and not, absolutely not, leave them for last minute tomorrow morning.