Sirens (40 page)

“I suspect Connor financed the bombings because it was one more way for him to get in good with the Irish community. It was all he cared about, that he had their respect, even the anarchists’. But you can lay it to rest now, because both the Connors are dead.” And, I could have said, the proof is at the bottom of Long Island Sound.

“I knew it.” Rushton said. “Thank you—thank you for, well, everything.”

Charlie put his arm over my shoulder, and I leaned heavily against him.

Rushton had his driver take me to my aunt and uncle’s apartment and take Charlie to his place.

In the car, on Park Avenue, Charlie kissed me. “Can I see you later?”

“In a day or two. Yes.”

I watched that dark cloud creep over him. “Jo…”

“Wait, Charlie. I really like you. Really and truly. But there are some things I have to sort out.” And then I kissed him, holding his face between my hands. “Okay?”

He nodded, and I loved him for understanding. Loved him. So I kissed him again, full on the lips, letting myself melt against him, right there in the limo, his strong arms wrapping around me, his full sweet lips pressing hard against mine. I pulled away slowly, touching his cheeks, his dark hair, brushing the curls from his forehead. I touched his lips with my fingertips, gazing into his soft black eyes.

And then I opened the car door and left.

CHAPTER 53

Lou

Well, I wasn’t about to die and let Jo ditch my baby brother, now, was I?

Plus, there was all that other stuff to clean up. John Rushton and Melody and little Leo. Jo’s future. Charlie’s future.

My future.

Teddy let me know I’d better get a move on if I was to straighten it all out, and I liked Teddy.

Who knows? Maybe he and I…heck. It’s kinda hard to get stuck on a ghost, even if you’ve already been there yourself.

CHAPTER 54

JUNE 11–12, 1925

No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and shortwinded elations of men.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald,
The Great Gatsby
, 1925

Jo

Sleep is a wondrous thing.

But first, Ed. I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy as I was when I stepped out of Rushton’s Daimler, all torn and ragged and messy, to be hugged by the likes of Ed the doorman. It was like having Pops, a happy Pops, back with me.

And Joey—even he gave me a hug, and I told him on the way up in the elevator that starting in the next week I’d be tutoring him in his letters in his spare moments. To which he replied, wide-eyed, “Yes, miss. I’d like that, miss.”

Aunt Mary and Uncle Bert were both there, both looking awful, which made me feel awful. But they were so relieved that I was all right that after hugs and tears they ushered me into my bedroom—my bedroom, tidied and neat—so that I could rest.

“How’s Chester?” I asked.

“He’s fine,” said Uncle Bert. “Nose like a boxer, but, well, it’s
made him a little more humble, in fact.” My uncle cleared his throat.

“And Melody?” I asked, trying to stifle a yawn.

Aunt Mary shrugged. “Asleep. But she hasn’t been out carousing around since you left. She’s been talking about getting a job. Maybe something you said…?”

I shook my head. “Not me, Aunt Mary. Mel’s got a mind of her own.”

I wanted to take a bath, and I thought I might read that single last page of Teddy’s journal, that page I still clutched tight in its scarf bundle; but when I sat down on the bed, thinking, I might just rest my eyes first, I fell into a deep sleep before I could move again.

When I awoke it was late afternoon, and I stood at the tall window of my room and watched the city that never sleeps match my yawn and stretch. I saw the buildings across the street reflect the late-day coppery sun. Saw the deepening blue of the sky beyond as I looked east, out over the east side of the island toward Long Island Sound.

The Sound. Where Teddy had died.

I sat on the windowsill and spread out the last page.

September 12, 1923

If you’re reading this now, Josie, it means I’m dead.

I’m sorry, sweet Jo. If I was there, I’d be saying stuff like, I miss you, and how can this be, so I can only imagine what you’re thinking as you read this. ’Cause I know you’d never have opened this journal—you’d have kept your promise—unless I was dead.

Danny Connor is going to come after me, and I have to keep him from going after you and Ma and Pops. So the outcome may not be what I want.

But here’s the thing: I’ll protect you for as long as I can. I won’t rest until I know you’re okay. Happy and safe. That’s what I gave up my soul for, and until you’re safe I don’t get it back.

Now that you’ve read this, you’ve got to do me a favor.

I was never a true hero. Never felt like one, never liked the whole business.

So I’m going to ask you to…

CHAPTER 55

SEPTEMBER 1925

So we beat on, boats against the current,

borne back ceaselessly into the past.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald,
The Great Gatsby
, 1925

Lou

That’s the way it happened, I swear. You guys have been swell listeners.

Lemme add a few things here. If it hadn’t been for Jo, I’d be dead. If it hadn’t been for Jo, Mel wouldn’t have gotten her little boy back—and bagged a guy like John Rushton in the bargain. If it hadn’t been for Jo, Charlie would never have been so happy.

Now I’ve got a job, and Jo’s got…well, I’ll let her tell you. And we’ve got the apartment—our nice cozy little place in the Chelsea Hotel—thanks to Jo standing up for us and hitting the street. We’re not swimming in dough, but mine’s a decent job, and we’re sticking together. When Jo’s got her feet planted solid on the ground, that’s when she’ll consider taking Charlie up on his proposal. I admire that—she wants to make it herself and not depend on a guy, even a good guy like my brother, to make it for her.

We kind of joke about how she thought she knew right from wrong
but she really had no clue.

Sometimes, when Jo doesn’t know I’m watching, I see her staring out there from our apartment window, out and up into the night sky, and what’s really spooky is she talks to herself. Actually, I think she’s talking to Teddy.

So okay. I talk to him, too. You got a problem with that?

I wonder. What does it mean to believe in yourself so much that you don’t let some guy push you around? What does it mean to believe in something, the way Jo does, something so big and powerful that you can’t let it go? What does it mean when Jo says, “Everything comes in shades of gray, Lou. Just when you think you’re right, you find out something that sends it spinning backward.”

I’m still trying to figure that one out.

Well, Detective, I’ve got nothing more to add. You can see what really happened. I’m guilty of a lot of things, but nothing you can arrest me for.

Am I free to go?

Jo

This window from our living room looks west. I like that; I’m more of a sunset type than a sunrise. There’s something about knowing New York is about to wake up for her nightlife and watching the lights go on and the stars come out, all that stretching and yawning and preparing; something about hearing the music that swells up from the street, smelling the toasted bitter of chestnuts, leaning out into the chill evening air, something about a New York night that makes me feel alive.

And now I’m back in school—they let me in, up at Barnard
Women’s College, a work-study thing, after I wrote about what I’d been through this past summer in a story that they said showed “promise.” I bit my lip not to laugh. Since I know a bunch about promises.

I know Lou thinks I’m a little crazy. Maybe I am. I have Lou and my family. I have Charlie, and that thought makes me smile and warms me from my toes right on up. The little crazy part is that I also still have Teddy.

It was when I went to the dock not long ago, that cold air, that icy water, those stars, when I let go of those medals, when I pitched them into the water, that’s when I felt it. Like a sigh, from me, from him, like the release of all the bad things Teddy thought he’d done and all the bad things he really had done, and I knew I’d freed him at last. Knew I’d really kept that promise anyhow. And now I have Teddy new, the golden-haired brother who loved me with a pure heart.

But mainly I have me, Josephine Anne Winter, who has no clue what mysteries might spring up, and who still doesn’t know what it takes to be a true hero and is not always sure about right and wrong, but who is ready to find out. I’m ready to chart my own course, and whether I’m a flapper or not isn’t the point.

My future is very much up in the air, an open book, an unfinished story. I get to write my own ending. I get to find all the characters and the plot. And I believe it’ll turn out okay now.

I’m guided by the stars.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

There’s no question that the Roaring Twenties hold a mystique for contemporary readers. I think the reason for this is that there are many parallels between the 1920s and today: the excessive “anything goes” lifestyle, the emergence of wondrous new products, the search for spiritualism, and even the social and political tension that led to a Wall Street bombing. Veterans who had returned from World War I were as damaged as those who returned from Afghanistan and Iraq. In the 1920s flapper fashion ushered in a radical new style. The automobile ushered in a new physical and psychological freedom. Advertising and product development made their first appearances. And, of course, Prohibition is an endlessly fascinating subject, with its clandestine “speaks”—which encouraged the emergence of jazz and the blues and the rise of the gangster.

A number of resources gave me insight into the 1920s. Frederick Lewis Allen’s
Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920’s
was first published in 1931, which gives it the air of immediacy. Joshua Zeitz’s
Flapper
is a fascinating look at the women’s liberation movement that truly began in the ’20s. And Lucy Moore’s
Anything Goes
is a colorful examination of the nuances of life in the 1920s.

But I confess I was most taken with the spiritualism movement, and three of its intriguing figures, who also happened to be close (if argumentative) friends: Harry Houdini, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Howard Thurston. Thurston, in particular, fascinates me, and I learned much from Jim Steinmeyer’s biography of Thurston,
The Last Greatest Magician in the World.
Here was a man convinced of the reality of reincarnation, who yet thrilled the masses with his fakery and magic craft.

We resonate with history’s repetitions: the reckless 1920s and 1990s, followed by the belt-tightening 1930s and the first decade of the twenty-first century. I love the resonance of history, and I hope I’ve given you something to savor of New York in 1925.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS