“I couldn’t write this to you in a letter. I needed to see you. To tell you in person.” She was weeping now, not even bothering to stop the tears. Her careful makeup smeared into muddy pools beneath her eyes. I rubbed them fiercely with my thumb, my face so close to hers I could smell the chamomile scent of her tea. “He will kill me,” she said. “He will kill you.”
I thought of Calder, and my chest swelled with anger and loss and fear. I could feel my heart beating in my ears, the blood pounding like fists at my temples. I reached for her hand and she pulled it away from me, shaking her head. “We can’t do this anymore. He’s right. It’s sick. It’s wrong. We were just confused. I am so confused.”
My eyes widened as she recited the words I was certain he had repeated like a mantra in her ears, as she minimized what had happened between us to an illness, to an accident, to a mistake.
“It’s over, Billie,” she said, wiping away her tears and taking a deep breath. “It has to be.”
I stood up then, feeling as though I might faint. My legs seemed to have disappeared out from under me. I stumbled, no different than Frankie, but drunk on love and filled with a lethal combination of rage and despair. I backed away from her, terrified by what she had become, by what he had made her. I backed up until I was standing in that foyer again, in that damp, dark place that smelled of rot.
“He can’t kill you,” I said, my voice coming from somewhere so deep it felt as though my very heart were being excavated. “You’re already dead.”
I didn’t call Frankie from the imaginary doctor’s office with made-up stories about my female troubles. And I didn’t go to the record store to buy
Fun in Acapulco
or to the post office to inquire about Frankie’s disability benefits. I didn’t get on the train and go home so that I could meet my children at the bus stop, and I didn’t stop at the market along the way to buy a roast or ground beef or a ham. I didn’t plan another menu in my head; I didn’t think once of the laundry that needed to be washed, the cookies I’d promised to bake for the Winter Carnival at the school; I didn’t think about anything but Eva. Eva and our baby. Eva in that dark prison of a home, with its dark walls with their velvet stripes like prison bars. As I walked through the blistering cold, I thought only of Eva. Eva’s head resting on my lap each night in Vermont, the way I wound her hair between my fingers and the soft sounds that came from her lips as I did. As I soothed her. I thought only of the way she laughed, those big, hiccupy laughs that seemed so incongruous with her dainty doll face, her delicate lips parting in joy. I thought only of her tongue as it skipped across my body, as it pried and pleaded, as it soothed and sated. I thought only of the way it had felt that one night in New York to hold her hand as we walked down the street together, as we danced with each other in front of the whole world. For everyone to see. For that single night without the presence of shame.
Ashamed
. I was ashamed that I hadn’t stayed there, waiting for Ted to come home. I was ashamed at my own cowardice with Frankie, ashamed that I had bought into his dream to erase the last three years. I was ashamed that I hated my body for all the ways it had failed me: by its inability to carry a child. Its inability to want a man. Its inability to resist the pull toward Miss Mars and then Eva. I was ashamed of my shame.
The new Prudential Tower rose like a monolith on Boylston Street. It towered over everything, dwarfed everything around it. Fifty-two stories high; they said when it finally opened, you’d be able to have a panoramic view of the city from the skywalk. That you’d practically be able to see the entire world from up there. This is where Ted would be working. Ted, watching Eva, never losing sight of her. Towering over her, a force so large, a force so big and so grand, there was no escape.
I stumbled away from the tower, trudging through the wet and cold, allowing the wind to permeate me as I made my way to the footbridge that led to the esplanade. The river was choppy, the water like a moving sculpture beneath me. I watched the icy current, mesmerized and paralyzed, thinking
I could swim
. If I were to just shed my clothes and leap into the water, the river would have no choice but to embrace me, to hold me. I’d been a swimmer my whole life, and not once had water ever failed me, accused me, spurned me. In water, I was absolutely who I was supposed to be.
That was what I was thinking, it truly was, when I slipped off my shoes and started to climb over the fence that separated me from the river below: brain and heart numbed by the frigid New England winter. I was only thinking,
I could swim
. I could just
swim
.
I was the only one out here, the only one stupid enough to face this bitter cold, and I felt absolutely alone as I stood, perched as if to dive into the icy depths below. It was the way I had felt for years, before Eva came along and changed all that. And now Eva was gone, and I was alone again.
I held on to the fence behind me, felt my legs, protected only by my thin stockings, pressing against the cold, metal barrier between earth and water. The wind urged me on and then pushed me back. It whispered in my ear, beckoning. When I felt the tug at my coat, I thought it was also only the wind playing games with me.
“Lady?” a voice said, and I turned around.
Standing on the walkway behind me was a small child, a little boy. He wasn’t dressed for the cold: no boots, no scarf, no mittens.
“You aren’t thinking of jumpin’, are ya?” he asked.
Jumping? I had only thought of swimming. Of the glorious, graceful dive into the water. Embarrassed, I shook my head.
He held out his hand, and I took it. And despite the cold, his skin was warm. He helped me climb off the fence and back down to earth. I used his shoulder to steady myself as I climbed back into my soaking wet pumps. I hadn’t put the rubbers back on, and my shoes were soaked all the way through.
“You been cryin’,” he said. Not a question, just a simple statement of fact.
I studied his face. His dark hair, the freckles across the bridge of his nose. He looked like Johnny. Not exactly, but there was something familiar. The same but different. And suddenly, I felt my stomach plummet. The children. God, how could I be so selfish? How could I have even considered diving into that icy water? Eva was a better person than I. A better mother. I hadn’t once considered the children. Maybe Frankie was right. Maybe I didn’t deserve the children. I felt overwhelmed by guilt, by this terrible failure.
“Why aren’t you in school?” I asked him as he led me away from the water’s edge.
“I am. I only came outside for a smoke.”
“What?” I said, horrified.
“Just joshin’ you, lady. I go home for lunch, but sometimes I come here instead.”
“Well, let me walk you back,” I said.
“You think I go to school around
here?
” He laughed. “I’m a Southie.”
“What are you doing all the way up here?” Misplaced maternal anxiety ripped through my body like the cold wind that was coming off the river now. “You shouldn’t be walking the streets all by yourself.”
“Well,
I
ain’t the one who was gonna jump into the rivah,” he said, his accent as thick as Frankie’s.
“Touché,” I said.
“What’s that mean?”
I just smiled. “Well, let me at least walk you back to the subway station,” I said.
“How about I show you something instead?”
“You’re not planning to go back to school at all, are you?” I asked.
“How ’bout you stop asking questions?” he said.
He led the way down Boylston Street, and I followed behind. He stopped when we got to a building that appeared to be an old fire station.
“Come on!” he said. I knew that if I didn’t go inside with him, I would risk frostbite. I might lose my toes, my fingers, if I didn’t get out of the cold soon. I couldn’t feel my feet at all, and my face was completely immobilized by the cold. I struggled to get the door open, and even then it took every ounce of my strength to remain standing and not collapse by the information desk, where a lady with eyeglasses suspended from a beaded chain around her neck looked at us, shaking her head with disapproval.
“There’s some cool stuff in here,” he said. “But I gotta go, before they call the boys on me.” And then he was gone, just a flash of gray disappearing through the doors just as quickly as he had earlier materialized at the river’s edge. I wondered if years from now he’d remember me, the crazy lady in her stocking feet whom he saved from jumping into the Charles River. Would he tell the story to his pals at the pub, to his girl as he courted her? Would he wonder at the serendipity of his skipping school and finding me? Maybe, maybe not. I might escape his memory as quickly as these paintings and sculptures would. I might become a small smudge in his impression of this day, if he remembered the day at all. Childhood is filled with a zillion miracles we are less likely to remember than forget. But I knew that I would always remember him: the face splattered with freckles, Johnny’s face, the runny nose, and warm hands. I would remember the small tug at my coat that saved my life. The gentle reminder that I was not alone in the world. I was a
mother
. I still had to take care. This day for me would not be the impressionistic blur of a childhood recollection but rather the clear photograph of the day that I’d almost given up. The day I’d let my selfish sorrows almost overwhelm me.
I sat down on one of the benches meant for the weary museum patrons, and boy, was I weary. I took a hankie out of my purse and blew my nose, which, like a frozen pipe, seemed to have burst and started running a nearly unstoppable stream. Then for some reason, rather than looking at the painting before me, a painting that surprisingly has escaped my memory now, I looked up. And when I did, I saw the mobile. The enormous, brightly colored shapes suspended as if by nothing but hope and imagination. And for the second time that day, I felt like someone was sending me a message.
I
make my way slowly from the guest room to the kitchen, where Devin has set the waiting phone on the kitchen table. He’s disappeared again upstairs, to give me privacy, I suppose, though I want nothing less in this moment than to be alone with that telephone. I consider simply hanging up, cutting Johnny off before he has a chance to speak, silencing him. I realize that I am terrified of what he has to say to me. I worry that he will tell me how damaged he is by what happened, how if not for Eva and me, he would have been like any other boy. If we hadn’t been so selfish, so single-minded and intent, then we would have stopped to consider the children. That my own children suffered as well. I have had this conversation with Francesca a hundred times. She herself has accused me, has blamed me, has ripped my heart open with her harsh words.
I am beginning to expect less and less that he has summoned me here to apologize for revealing our secret to Ted and setting into motion everything that happened that winter. I imagine now that he will have accusations, that he will blame me. I suspect that he has called me here to finally seek retribution for his fractured childhood. And the worst part is, I know that his indictment is exactly what I deserve. I blame myself. Of course I do.
I can smell the fire in the wood stove, hear the crackle and hiss of the logs inside. Effie and Devin are sleeping, Gussy is sleeping, the girls are also fast asleep. I am completely alone in this midnight kitchen. Alone with Johnny’s voice and my smoldering remorse.
I have spent nearly fifty years immersed in the memories of my time with Eva. I have relived every moment I had with her a thousand times. In my mind, I have changed history. I have contemplated every single factor, fiddled with my decisions. Tinkered with the tiniest choices I made, in an effort to prevent disaster. I have lived a life of regret. Even the life I made with Lou was overshadowed by the tragedy of Eva. It pains me to admit this, but it is true. And this realization hits me like a blow to the chest. I feel my heart beating wildly, and I start to feel dizzy. My ears fill, and stars circle my vision. I use my hands to steady myself against the kitchen table, will myself to stay conscious. Will myself to stay alive.
I stare at the pale white phone, the same old phone that has been here forever, attached to its base by a curling umbilical cord.
What do I owe this man?
I ask myself as I reach for the handset through the blur of stars.
What do I owe this child?
What do you owe to someone whose mother you killed?
I
knew Eva hadn’t meant it. Her pleas for me to leave her, to forget her, were spoken out of fear. Insincere. I had to trust that if I simply hung on she would come around, that patience and persistence would bring her back to me. That Ted hadn’t completely brainwashed her. That there was still hope. If I hadn’t held on to this fragile sliver of belief, then I would not have survived that winter.
The letters I wrote to Eva after that awful day in the city were not the same pathetic, lovesick epistles I had sent before. Instead they were carefully crafted entreaties. They were diagrams, plans. In them I outlined how I would get her and the children out of that dark, suffocating apartment, away from Ted, away from that life. And how, if we were intelligent about it, we could begin our new life together. Every day for three weeks I delivered a new letter to the mailbox while Frankie took his shower, which was thankfully nearly an hour-long process because of the cast. And then later, when the cast was removed, and he was finally able to go back to work, I slipped the letters in the mailbox after he had gone off to the city.
At first there was no response. I worried that she no longer even made the trip to the post office to collect the mail. I tried not to think about my letters piling up inside that tiny receptacle, the postman shaking his head and cramming the next missive in.
I thought of calling, but in addition to the fear of Frankie seeing a Boston number on the phone bill, we were still on a party line, and both Mrs. Boucher and Hannah were notorious for listening in to other people’s conversations. I also never knew when Ted might be there, when he might pick up.
And then, on Valentine’s Day, as the mailman trudged toward our house, slinging an extra heavy sack over his shoulder, as he stuffed a single envelope into the mailbox, my heart soared. I shoved my slippered feet into a pair of Frankie’s old boots and ran clumsily to the mailbox. The envelope inside was large, not the letter-sized ones I’d been sending her. It was excruciating, almost more excruciating than the days (after days) when the mailbox was empty. Because here was the answer to the arsenal of questions I had been asking. Here it was, in a manila envelope, dampened by February snow.
I sat at the kitchen table, clearing a spot. I had been working on a project for the Girl Scouts, and every flat surface in the house was covered with pinecones. I slipped my finger under a loose part of the flap and gently tugged until the glue yielded. I pinched the envelope open and turned it upside down, spilling the contents onto the table. Not surprisingly, there was no letter inside. Eva had always felt self-conscious about her writing, so I wasn’t surprised. But what was inside spoke louder than any words.
Lying on the Formica tabletop, it could have just been an intricate web of nearly invisible strings. It could have only been the filaments of my imagination, the tiny hearts, each no larger than my pinkie nail, just confetti. But when I pulled the one center pin, the tiny silver bar at the middle, the hearts (my heart!) took flight. Suspended from the network of thread were a thousand tiny hearts, floating in air.
I carried the mobile carefully upstairs, trying to figure out where I might be able to hide it from Frankie. I paced from room to room, looking for a spot in the house that he did not go. A place that belonged only to me. But it didn’t exist. In all these rooms, there was nowhere I could truly call my own. And the realization of this was what undid me. I sat down, finally, on the bed Frankie and I had shared for the last fifteen years, and wept. The thousand hearts collapsed beside me. I knew then that I needed to call her. This was ridiculous. I just needed to hear her voice.
Surprisingly the number was not unlisted, an oversight on Ted’s part I was certain. Perhaps he didn’t think I’d be brazen enough to call. But I was. That’s exactly what I was. I dialed the number the operator gave me, and within only a couple of agonizing moments, she answered. “Wilson residence.”
“Eva,” I said.
“Billie?”
All of that certainty that had been in her voice when I stood in her apartment had disappeared. All that questioning and second-guessing. All that talk of illness and moral corruption and godlessness seemed to have slipped away.
“I love you, Eva,” I said. Unable and unwilling to keep any secrets anymore.
“I love you too,” she said. “I feel like I am dying here.”
And then I heard the crackle and static of someone picking up on the party line. Hannah, I was sure. I heard a small clicking sound, a breath.
“Wait for me,” I whispered. “I promise it will be soon.”
“Billie?” she said, but I knew that if I stayed on, the entire neighborhood would know about our tryst within hours. And so I hung up.
When the girls got out of school for Easter break, I told Frankie I wanted to take them to Gussy’s. We’d be back in time for Easter Sunday, but the week leading up to the holiday I hoped to spend some time with my sister.
Frankie was working a lot now, trying to replenish the bank account that had, despite the disability compensation, become depleted during his long recovery. Many days he worked overtime, catching the last train back into Hollyville after work, arriving long after supper had grown cold and the girls were tucked into bed. He would barely miss us as far I was concerned. But he was reluctant. He still did not trust me, not as far as he could throw me (which wasn’t far, especially after his injury). But he had a soft spot for Gussy. We all did, and I took advantage of that.
“Gussy’s going through some hard times,” I said. “With the girls.” Gussy’s daughters were older than ours by several years. Teenagers now. They were hardly trouble though; Nancy was a straight A student, and Debbie was not bright but had a terrific sense of humor and was always, as far as I could tell, surrounded by friends. But fortunately, any troubles associated with parenting teenage girls were one of the areas (like female troubles) that Frankie stayed out of.
“How are
you
going to help?” Frankie asked.
“Just an ear to lend, a shoulder to cry on. She’s my
sister,
Frankie.”
This too was something Frankie could understand. He had plenty of sisters, each of whom had needed both his ears and his shoulders (as well as mine) over the years.
“You’ll be home Saturday night,” he said. “And the girls will have new dresses for Easter Mass on Sunday morning?”
“Gussy’s got a sewing machine, and I’ve already bought the fabric.” Every year I made the girls matching Easter dresses, and despite their objections this year, Frankie had insisted. I knew both Mouse and Chessy felt like they were too old now to be dressed up like frilly twin dolls. But I also couldn’t help but fear that Mouse’s violent rejection of the fabric I chose, the pink dotted Swiss remnant that I’d bought at half price, was indicative of something else. I hadn’t liked dresses as a girl either. I hadn’t wanted ruffles or bows or anything pink. I too had eschewed girly accoutrements in favor of blue jeans and baseball caps and sneakers. I was terrified that everything that seemed to have gone wrong in my wiring was also wrong in Mouse. Even Eva had suggested that what we had, what we
felt,
was some sort of illness. And despite every effort to think in other terms, I couldn’t help but wonder if I had somehow infected her, passed on this sickness. And that she, like I, would find nothing but frustration and sadness in this life.
“Fine then.” Frankie finally relented.
Gussy’s home. How can I describe Gussy’s home? From the outside, it wasn’t so very different from ours: a two-story farmhouse on a dead-end street. A wide porch with a happy, wooden porch swing, still and expectant and inviting. Our house always made me feel a bit anxious (the repairs that were neglected in favor of other projects, the mess I could never seem to contain, the lights just a bit too bright—illuminating the chaos of clutter, the smell of last night’s dinner and the stink of cigarettes seeping into the curtains and carpets no matter what I did). But Gussy’s home was so welcoming and warm.
Gussy was a born homemaker, and I mean that in the very sense of the word. Out of this crooked house, she had truly
made a home
. If a home is where a family lives, where love lives, then she was, indeed, a homemaker. And not only was she a homemaker, but a caretaker. She
took care
. Of these four walls and everything inside of them. It was evident in all of the details. She had taken our mother’s domestic lessons to heart. While I resisted all of her teachings (on how to keep spots off glasses and silver, on how to iron shirts and make hospital corners and mend socks), Gussy had studied them, perfected the details our mother had insisted mattered. While I grimaced at the very thought of those tasks, Gussy delighted in them. And as much as I used to think otherwise, I saw there was a certain happiness and fulfillment that came from making a home. You could feel it the moment you walked through their door.
The kitchen was warm and smelled of bread, even when the oven was bone cold. Gussy made a loaf of homemade bread every single day, rising before dawn to knead the dough. There was always a hot pot of coffee on the stove, and a colorful selection of teas in a basket on the counter. She attended to everyone’s needs: sugar cubes, a honey pot, a little china pitcher of cream. Iced tea brewed in a glass jar on the sill. The table was never cluttered with the girls’ homework or Frank’s papers. The floors were clean, and the shelves clear of dust. And she made it all seem effortless.
Frank, like me, loved books. But while my collection consisted of piles of dime-store novels and thrift-store paperbacks stacked up in teetering towers beside my reading chair or at the side of my bed, Frank had assembled a virtual library in their home. Every room had at least two bookcases, each of them stuffed with books. Every seat had a proper lamp to read by. And most evenings, rather than retiring in front of the TV, like our family was bound to do, Frank settled in front of the fire with a book while Gussy helped the girls with their schoolwork or taught them to sew or knit or do needlepoint.
Frank had exactly one glass of bourbon each night, with plenty of ice. He never raised his voice in anger, and he certainly never pounded his fists against that dining room table. He didn’t disappear into the basement of the house to drink wine by the jugful or work on whatever salvaged piece of junk he’d dragged home. Instead he was
there
. Present. Reading passages aloud when he found something interesting. Offering up tidbits of knowledge like little treasures, thrilled by each discovery. He was a gentleman. A truly gentle man. And he adored and appreciated every single thing Gussy did for him and their family. After nearly eighteen years of marriage, Gussy still blushed when he complimented her. They still held hands. And he still kissed her and said “Love you, Gus,” whenever he got a chance.
Did I envy Gussy? Of course I did. Gussy’s life was everything a life was supposed to be. She had found happiness in that kitchen, inside the walls of that home. She was a good mother, a patient mother, and a good wife whose husband honored and respected her. Our lives, though seemingly similar, were like two opposite sides of the same coin. She never wished her husband dead. She never fantasized about running off with the lady who lived across the street. But despite any envy I felt for the happiness Gussy had found, it was impossible to begrudge her any of her contentment. She had earned it. She deserved all of this simple joy.
She was my
sister
. And she was one of the only people in the world whom I knew would not judge me. Her kindness and openness of heart was not for show. It was exactly who she was inside. And it was with absolute certainty of this that I finally told her. That I shared the secret I’d been keeping almost my whole life.
The older girls had taken Chessy and Mouse to see a matinee of
The Pink Panther
. My girls adored Gussy’s daughters, looking up to them like older sisters but without any of the rivalry of siblings. Cousins are like this, I’ve found. Cousins are to be adored and admired.
It was the Saturday before Easter, and the girls and I were going to catch the three o’clock train back to Hollyville. I had somehow managed to make it through an entire week without doing what I’d come to do. I’d lost myself a little in Gussy’s world, enjoying the peace of it, the normalcy and comfort of it. But I also knew that I was only a train ride away from my own world, and that I could not go back to Hollyville, back to Frankie, without some sort of concrete plan rather than the hazy one I’d dreamed up and shared only in my letters to Eva.
Gussy was at the counter chopping vegetables for beef stew. Gussy almost never stopped moving; no idle hands in this house. There was a certain rhythm, a pleasing cadence to the chopping of carrots and celery. A pitter patter of purpose. But I needed her to stop if I was ever going to get it out.
“Gussy,” I said, feeling my entire world rocking, shaking beneath me.
“Uh-huh?” she asked.
Chop. Chop. Choppity chop.
“Come here a minute?” I said.
She turned to me, and, seeing my face, she set the knife down and wiped her hands on her apron. She came to the table and sat down next to me. She reached for my hands, which were shaking like something electrified. “Oh, Gingersnap,” she said. “You’re trembling something terrible. What’s the matter?”
I lifted my head, and it felt as though I were trying to support a bowling ball on a needle. I frowned and shook my head. “You know, I’ve never been like you,” I said.
“Of course not,” she said, shaking her head. “That would be silly. You’re
you
.”
“No, Gus, just listen.”
She nodded, always obedient, and looked me right in the eyes.
“It’s Eva. Eva and I . . .” Saying our names together felt dangerous and wonderful, terrifying in the way that a simple sentence could link us, grammar bringing us together. But I didn’t know how to get the words out, the ones I’d rehearsed. The technical term for what I was, for what we were doing. Suddenly, it felt all wrong. Impossible to articulate. Those words just that, nothing but words. Labels on a spice jar, having nothing to do with what was inside.