Dangerous Neighbors (13 page)

“Poor Sophia,” Anna says, but Katherine knows she doesn’t mean it.

“Mother will want us home for Sunday lunch,” Katherine cautions. “Mrs. Gillespie herself is coming for tea. Or so Mother hopes. She’s in a buzz about it. She’s made her plans.”

“We’ll be home for Sunday lunch. Bennett can’t even get away until late afternoon. Before sunset. That’s what he said. ‘I’ll meet you there sometime before sunset.’ ” When, Katherine wonders, had these particular plans been set? These lovers’ promises? She thinks of the last time she saw them out on Walnut Street together—their hats pulled low across their faces, their heads bent against the wind.
To anyone but Katherine they would have seemed anonymous, indistinguishable from the rest of the passersby in a city where winter had finally come, after so many days of a strange January thaw. Two people in a hurry on a Friday afternoon, taking care not to be seen. Katherine tried desperately not to see them. She doesn’t want to see them now, but still: she’s been invited to the river.

“What will you tell them this time? What excuse will you give?” Katherine props herself up on one elbow and looks down on Anna, who schemes with her eyes closed and seems blissfully unconcerned with the secret she’s perpetuated, the lies she’s grown so expert at telling. Into the cave of the quilt the cold air flows, and now Katherine settles down again, pulling the quilt over both their heads and huffing warmth into her hands. Anna murmurs.

“We’ll make it mysterious,” she says. “On purpose. Make Mother think that our going out has to do with her birthday.”

“That’s not for two weeks!”

“Well. One has to plan.”

“You’re awful.”

“Come on, Katherine. Please. It’s the first time the river’s been frozen all winter.”

“Mother doesn’t care about her birthday,” Katherine interrupts. “It’s not a very reliable plan.”

“You come up with something, then.”

“Why should I?”

“Because I’m irresistible, that’s why.”

“So you’ve said. A million times.”

“Because the river’s frozen and the moon is so full. Because you love to skate even more than I do. Because you’re good at it.”

“Not skating alone. I’m not good at that.”

“But you won’t be alone, Katherine. Bennett will be there. Me too.”

Katherine can’t help it: she groans. “You must be kidding, Anna. I’m always alone when you’re with Bennett.”

“Oh, Katherine!” And now Anna is up on one elbow, looking genuinely aggrieved. “I thought—”

“We said we wouldn’t talk about it anymore, and honestly, I don’t want to.” Katherine turns toward the wall and brings her knees back up toward her chin, remembering Cape May and the months after Cape May, the week neither spoke to each other. Anna had never confessed about Bennett to Father; in the end, after making her promise, she’d refused. Katherine had threatened; she had ridiculed. She had called her sister a narcissist, a burden, and that’s when Anna had left her, in the park, one afternoon. “I don’t need you,” Anna’d growled, and that was it, and from then on, for days, she behaved as if she didn’t—making her own plans and telling her own lies, taking her own risks, which she would
not speak of later. Telling Katherine nothing, for Katherine had lost her.

Katherine was the one, as it turned out, who was in desperate need of a sister, the one who could not survive without. By October, Katherine understood that she had this choice: either settle her debts with her sister, or lose her altogether. There could be no more fighting about Bennett. No more accusations, either way. Katherine would not press against promises once made. She would leave Anna and her lies and her Bennett be, for the return of at least some fraction of Anna’s heart.

It was colder, Katherine realized, on her left side, facing the thick plaster wall. It was always colder, turned away. Now beyond them, in the hall, she hears their mother’s boots stomp by. There’s the bristle of suit skirts, a pedantic sigh.

“Girls,” their mother calls. “We’re leaving by nine.”

“I was only saying that you’re not alone,” Anna whispers. “And you brought it up, besides.” She touches a hand to Katherine’s right shoulder and applies pressure. Katherine succumbs—turns and falls, lies flat on her back, her eyes on the small gas lamp by the door frame.

“We’re not talking about it,” Katherine whispers back. “I’m not, anyway.” Anna sighs. She relaxes back down to the pillow so that her hair spills out in most directions—long, loose, unmanageable curls. Lengths of it graze across Katherine’s cheek. She brushes them aside.

“Girls!” It’s their mother again, calling up to them from the base of the stairs, then calling out to Jeannie Bea. “Mrs. Gillespie,” she says, then something about cheese.

“You’re probably right,” Katherine says after a while, “about the river. It could be the last freezing all winter.”

“You’ll go then?” Beneath the quilt Anna reaches for Katherine’s hand and squeezes it tight.

“I will, but no lies.”

Anna waits.

“We’ll just tell Mother the truth, is all. We’ll say we’re going to the river to skate. If Bennett comes, well then, he comes. But at first it will only be us.”

“Oh,” Anna says, “that’s lovely.” She kisses Katherine on the cheek. “Maybe you’ll teach me one of your tricks.”

“My tricks,” Katherine echoes, and she feels herself grow warm with pride.

“Girls!” Their mother’s voice trumpets up the stairs.

“Katherine? Anna?” Now their father joins in, and if they’re not careful, Jeannie Bea will be next, carrying their generously peppered eggs to them on two white, gleaming dishes.

“Coming!” Anna answers. She yanks at the quilt, and the cold scorches them both. Scorches Katherine, anyway. Anna’s too intoxicated with the promise of the coming afternoon to notice.

*  *  *  *

Before they even see the Schuylkill they hear the skaters’ shouts. Their father has sent them off with George, his favorite hansom driver, and with a dark horse named Hank who blows dragon steam through his nostrils. The horse kicks at the stony streets whenever George tries to rein him in. He pulls hard against the turns, throwing the twins against each other. Under a wool blanket they sit, their steel skating blades clinking steadily upon their laps. Mrs. Gillespie had remained long after she had finished her second cup of ginger tea and the wedge of Brie that Jeannie Bea had baked beneath crumbles of cinnamon sugar. The talk had been of monies raised, of a building in progress, of regrets over the choice of architect, of
priorities
, and their mother had been (Anna was the one to say so) extraordinarily pleased with herself. “Look at her,” Anna had insisted behind her hand. “It’s as if she has found her first friend.”

“Be home before dark.” That was their mother’s final instruction before they left for their skating afternoon, though she barely turned her head so as not to disturb the tea with her venerable guest, who was, by the way, not distinguished in person—not, at least, in Anna’s whispered estimation. She had mock-curtsied, Anna had—in the hall, spreading all her skirts, unseen by anyone but Katherine or Jeannie Bea, who had covered her smile with a long-practiced hand.

You’re terrible
, Katherine had meant to tell her, but now
their father was there by the door, holding out to each a muff, which he promptly hung about their necks, Anna’s first. “I’ve asked George to wait and bring you back,” he told them. “But don’t take advantage of him. Please. It’s frigid cold. It’s Sunday. Let him come home before dark.”

Anna had stretched onto her toes to kiss their father high on the cheek. She had fit her gloved hands inside the flecked muff, then pulled them out again so that she might carry her own pair of blades, which Katherine had collected from the closet. “Thank you, Father,” she said, and meant it, and Katherine found herself yearning again that there had never been a Bennett—for her own sake, for the protection of their father, and for the sake of honesty.

They were gone after that—tucked in behind George and his impatient Hank, watching the familiar streets through the small squares of glass. Past the square. Up north. Toward Spring Garden Street. Out west. The streets being more or less empty, for it was Sunday and cold, and it was that hour in between things, when people sat with their Bibles on their laps, or the news in their hands, or their schoolbooks beside the gas lamps in their parlors. When people sat after a Sunday meal, a hymn in their heads.

The girls can hear the intrepid skaters through the square glass of George’s cab—the high hollers and pitched calls of winter revelers on a river that had refused to freeze until now. The girls are past the dam, on the east side of the reservoir
and the Water Works, where the pavilion stands tall over the steep rock garden and yields an impeccable view. They are around the corner, coming onto Boathouse Row. Hank, reluctantly, is being reined in. The journey’s over. George is calling to the girls through the trapdoor. “Here we are then. You’ve picked quite a day for it.” Far away, in the effervescent winter sky, the moon has begun to ascend.

“We’re here,” Katherine says. Beneath the blanket Anna squeezes her sister’s gloved hand until George’s face appears in the scratchy glass. When he opens the door, he offers his arm—to Katherine first, then Anna. He has a craggy face and tender eyes. His hair is long and gray-blond beneath a crushed hat.

“Brisk, isn’t it?” he says as a blast of wind rushes by and catches in Katherine’s ear.

“Glorious,” Anna answers, pulling a scarf down tighter over her hair.

“Someday I’ll get my own blades and join you on the river,” George warns them.

“Oh, you should,” Anna tells him. “Skating is lovely.”

“Hank needs a little stabling,” George says. “We’ll go do our business and be back before sundown. You two make the most of it now, will you?” He blows warm air into his thinly gloved hands, then digs them both into his deep pockets.

“Take as long as you like,” Anna says, smiling.

“I promised your father,” George tells her, and she nods.

From where they stand, the sisters see a game being played out on the river—two groups of boys whooshing a silver pail between them with sticks, one team wearing maroon scarves about their necks. The girls and women tend to hover near the river’s shore, or drift out farther, west and north. One girl in a gray-blue coat is sailing out and fast away on a diagonal, her coattails lifting up and flapping behind, revealing a skirt made entirely of summer yellow. With her shoulders pressed forward and her blades pushing her on, she seems intent on vanishing.

“Where do you suppose she’s going?” asks Anna.

“Perhaps to Birdsboro,” Katherine guesses as they move across the frozen earth toward the frozen ice. “Or Valley Forge.” But just as Katherine predicts a long journey for the skater, the girl performs a miraculous pivot and begins to sail toward the shore, lifting one leg behind her as she does and holding herself up like an
L
, on an assured leg, causing one of the boys with the stick and the scarf to stop and stare. He hollers for her then and others do, too, and she remains intrepid above the steady foot on the frozen body of the Schuylkill. There are cheers. Applause that would be so much louder if it weren’t for the muffs and gloves.

Katherine is the first to find her balance. She remembers not to walk the ice but to float across, continuous. The river
is a million shades of ice—the silver nitrate of a daguerreotype, the veining of white marble, the delicate fiberwork of a spinner’s weave, with sticks and bits of things stuck in. It is the reflection of sky, of the Water Works, of the boathouses, of the Philadelphia Skating Club and Humane Society flag that flies above, on the eastern shore. The boys with the bucket are farther down toward the dam, and the acrobatic girl has sought refuge temporarily—glided off the river onto the tundra beyond, where she can be confused with anybody else, except when her coat reveals her yellow skirt.

Now Katherine hears Anna calling her name from the bank; she skates back to collect her. Anna’s muff is precisely like Katherine’s—the soft fur of a rabbit—but she wears hers like jewelry, and her hair tumbles from the scarf about her head enchantingly unruly. But she becomes instantly comedic when she tries to skate. Already her ankles and knees are buckled in, her elbows are crooked, she has that look of sweet terror on her face. Taking one small, tentative step toward Katherine, Anna skids precipitously. Katherine is right there to catch her.

“Is it always this slick?” Anna wants to know, and Katherine laughs.

“Only where there’s ice,” she answers.

“Somehow,” Anna says, “I’d forgotten.” She opens the wing of her arm and, releasing her hand from the muff
momentarily, Katherine slips her own arm into the open space. Anna makes a tiny, pedaling effort with one foot, nearly loses her balance, charms her way out of disaster.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Katherine tells her, struggling to find a balance that suits the two of them.

“Just take me with you,” Anna says. “Until I get the feel of the ice beneath my feet.”

“Drag you about, you mean?”

“Not for long, Katherine. Only until I get my footing.”

“All right, then,” Katherine says, leaning into the cold wind and pressing into the ice with her blades. Soon the blades edge in and slowly the two draw away from the bank, where a new family has arrived, a few more boys to play the bucket game, an older woman who is being pushed about on a bladed chair by a man who seems much younger. Anna tries to keep up with Katherine, periodically punching her blade tip to the ice for balance.
Like a whirligig
, Katherine thinks, and smiles, for the truth is she has her sister precisely where she likes her best—at her side and in her debt. The Humane Society men are here, piling the accoutrements of rescue along the river’s edge and gliding about with their reels of twine.

It’s a magnificent sky—big enough for both the sun and moon, a virgin blue but for whiskered patches of gray. Up on Lemon Hill, all but the pines and spruces are bare. On
the river itself, Katherine sees places where the sun seems to come from down below, beaming up through caves of slumbering fish and bearded shells. Beside Katherine, Anna has regained her equilibrium, her natural grace. She wonders out loud whether Bennett will come.