Strings Attached (27 page)

I’d go to his office. One night, one Sunday night, it was snowing, and we were… together, and we saw Billy run past, down the alley by the house. We knew he’d seen us — he was probably looking in the back window.”

No,
I thought.
He was in the tree with the camera, looking.

“Then we saw someone else run by. Nate went after them, but it took a few minutes, because of course we had to —”

“— put your clothes on,” I supplied.

“And so I followed Nate, but I kept a bit away, you know, in case there was anyone around. But Sunday nights are quiet, and there was this snowfall, and it was bitter cold and everyone was home. I saw Nate’s car down the street, and Nate chasing it. He always left the keys in the car — nobody in Federal Hill would dare steal Nate Benedict’s car. It was like the world went still except for that car and Nate chasing it. The car was going so fast, like an airplane, like Billy wanted to just take off into the sky. It was like a dream, so white and quiet except suddenly I heard the tires spinning. And then it just… moved sideways, it spun like a toy and smashed sideways into a tree. I started to run. Nate got there first, and Billy was already getting out — he was driving. He had blood on his forehead and he was dazed, but he was all right.” Delia stopped talking. She placed her hands around her cup but didn’t drink from it.

“His cousin Michael,” I whispered.

“He was already dead.” Delia took a sip of tea. “A patrolman suddenly showed up, and he was kneeling in the snow over Michael. Nate pushed Billy toward me and said, ‘Take him away.’ So I did. I brought him back to the office and I cleaned his cut — it was under his hair. There wasn’t a mark on his face. He was crying — he was only fourteen, and his
cousin was dead and he’d been driving and he thought his life was over. Nate came by an hour later and said, ‘It’s done.’ And it was. No one ever knew that Billy had been driving that car. Nate made it go away because that’s what he could do. He told Billy it was better that way. That one boy was dead, but if the other boy’s life was ruined, it would be even worse for the family. The family would fracture — how could his Aunt Laura ever look at her sister again, knowing that Billy had been driving the car? He said all this while he was hugging Billy. They were both crying.”

“When was this?”

“In 1945, in February.”

“When you took me to the play in New Haven —”

“I knew he’d be there with Angela. I hadn’t heard from him in weeks. I’d gone down to the apartment like always, and he hadn’t come. I had to see him. And I guess that day we both realized that Angela knew. And I made him afraid of me, afraid of what I might do. I was afraid for myself. I was afraid I was losing my mind.”

“Why did you try to take us away?”

For the first time, Delia looked uncomfortable. “I went a little mad. I wasn’t sleeping, I was staring at my life and I saw how every choice had led to the next, that it wasn’t some big fall but a series of steps, each one of my choosing. I could see Jimmy doing the same with Elena and I didn’t want that for you. Think about it, Kit — could he have married a dark-skinned girl? Could that have worked?”

“Was that up to you? We loved Elena!” I drew in a breath. “You were jealous of her, jealous because we loved her.”

She looked down. “I was jealous of anyone who had love and wasn’t going to lose it. But it wasn’t just that. I thought I” —she pressed her lips together —“I thought I should be
the one to raise you. Because I’d renounced him, and I had nothing, and I could dedicate myself to all of you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“Of course it doesn’t — I said I went a little mad, didn’t I? One night, I… well, never mind. Terrible things were in my head.”

The night I’d seen her in the tub, Da’s razor on the edge. I realized I hadn’t understood anything that night.

“It was the look on your faces that destroyed me. The fact that you didn’t want me — no, that the idea of my having you would be a terrible, dreaded thing.”

“You were taking us away from our father!”

“I was like a mother to you!”

“A mother who left every weekend! You got what you wanted, and it wasn’t us. It was never us!” Now we were shouting at each other, finally, and I felt satisfaction in it.

Delia controlled herself with an effort. “It is a terrible, terrible thing, Kitty, not to be loved by those you love. I hope you never find that.”

“This isn’t about love. This is about
possession.”
I shook my head. “You’re just like him. You’re just like Nate.”

I saw her recoil. “That’s not true.”

“Do you really expect me to feel sorry for you?”

“No, of course not. I don’t feel sorry for myself— why should you? I left everything because I had to. He made it clear I had to leave town. He was afraid of what I would do. So I made another life.”

“The whore of Babylon?”

She gave a small, private smile. “You got that, did you? I meant it as a taunt to him, but I like this place. Nate and I took a holiday once. We drove out to Fire Island and I saw this town, and I remembered it. I couldn’t risk staying in Rhode Island. But I wanted to be near the sea.”

I didn’t want to hear about Delia’s life. I reached into my pocket for the letter. “I found this.”

Delia looked over at the letter but didn’t touch it. “Where…”

“I guess Nate packed up all your stuff— he threw it into boxes. It was in the storage unit at the apartment.”

Delia shook her head. “The apartment — how did you —”

“Nate offered it to me when I moved to New York.”

Delia’s glance flicked to the living room. “The Greeleys — that tall boy is their son.” Her chair scraped back. She went to the sink and gripped it, her back to me.

“He said the apartment was just sitting there, and that I could take it until Billy came back from the army and we could be married.”

“And you accepted?”

Delia’s voice had risen, and I stood up to face her as she turned.

“You think you have a right to judge me?”

“Not judge you, just point out a particular piece of idiocy! What did you think you were doing, getting mixed up with Nate Benedict?”

I laughed. And, suddenly, Delia barked out a surprised laugh, too. We were bitter and angry and lost, but we both saw what was ridiculous in what she said.

“Oh, Lord, Kitty.” Delia dabbed at her eyes.

“So you wrote the letter and didn’t send it,” I said. “I don’t think he saw it — I found it in your stocking box.”

“I thought I’d be going back, one more time.”

“’Keep your money and your clothes,’ you said.”

“Well. When you leave a man, that’s what you do, I thought. To prove you aren’t a kept woman. I didn’t need the clothes; they were clothes to go out to restaurants and
things in. I wasn’t going to do that. But I took the money. If someone pays you to leave town, it only makes sense to keep the money.”

The matter-of-factness took my breath away. She’d taken money to leave us. She could call it something else. But it was a payoff.

“So you’re still bought and paid for, then,” I said. My whole body shook. I looked at her small, neat kitchen, with the apples and butter on the counter, and rage filled me up. I remembered Billy describing his anger, how it made him blind, and now I knew blindness and hatred and how it felt.

“Why did you come?” Delia asked quietly.

“Not for your mea culpa!” I swept the butter and the apples and the flour off the counter. The apples bounced and rolled, and the sack burst, sending up a puff of flour that settled over our shoes like ash.

Mea culpa. The words in the Mass where you beat your chest three times.
Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault.

But Delia didn’t look humble. She looked
fine.
She hadn’t said the word
sorry.
She hadn’t asked about Jamie or Muddie or Da.

Why was I here? It was so clear that we didn’t matter to her, so why would I think she could help us? She didn’t know why Billy was on that train. I’d come for nothing, I thought, and a vast and helpless emptiness opened up inside me. I would have to leave here and face my grief again. I would have to face the fact that Billy was coming here and not know why. I would have to think of him on that train, dying with a heart full of anger and desperation.

“There are some sins that even God can’t forgive,” I said. “Go back to your new life — your library and your
books and your apple pie. You’re right. We didn’t want you then. We don’t want you now.”

I heard Delia calling me, but it was as though from a far, far distance, and I was running, flinging myself out of the house as though pestilence was there.

Thirty-three

 

New York City
November 1950

The good news was that I was done with crying. Delia had stopped my tears.

All the way back into Manhattan, I thought about air-raid drills, disaster raining from the sky. They said that if the Bomb hit Manhattan the living would envy the dead. I knew how that felt now. All I wanted was to close my eyes and not hear another word, see another sight. When I looked out the car window and saw people walking, I hated them for their smiles, their scamper toward a meal, a hissing radiator, pumpkin pie. The whole world, it seemed, was in a holiday mood.

How had Billy lived with that, killing his cousin, attending that funeral? No wonder he’d been so afraid of his anger. So afraid that he clung to me desperately, wanting me to make everything all right.

Hank gave me space to think on the way back. He was good at that. The sound of the tires was like an easy beat if I closed my eyes. When I opened them I saw we were leaving the tunnel. The circle of gray light ahead grew and grew until we hit open air. Hank followed the signs for uptown.

“What are you going to do now?” Hank asked.

“The right thing,” I said. “However it falls.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve got to be braver than I want to be,” I said. “And that means going home.”

 

I hitched a ride with the Greeleys. It was a long drive and we drove without stopping, eating turkey sandwiches in the car. Mrs. Greeley had gotten up at four a.m. to roast a turkey, because that’s the kind of mother she was.

If the Greeleys felt it was my fault that Hank had gotten involved in a murder at a nightclub, if they resented me or despised me, they didn’t let me know it. They shared their sandwiches and their thermos of coffee, and they drove me through the streets of Providence straight to my front door.

I got out of the car. Hank rolled down the window and I leaned in to look at them all, Mr. Greeley at the wheel, his eyes red and tired, Mrs. Greeley, tense but summoning up a smile for me, and Hank, who just looked bewildered. I didn’t know what I’d done to deserve their kindness. I think they were the kind of people who just gave it out for free.

“Thank you for this,” I said. “I owe you more than I can repay.”

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.

W
ILLIAM
B
ENEDICT
D
EAD IN
N
YC
T
RAIN
D
ISAS

 

“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 enough 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.