The Crazyladies of Pearl Street (23 page)

But the possibility of a new game began to take shape in my mind when Mother spoke of Mrs McGivney as being all alone in the world. “H'm... did you ever hear anyone talk about Mrs McGivney having a family?” I asked casually, as I dealt out the cards. “A husband, maybe?”

No, Mother had never heard anyone mention a Mr McGivney. “But I suppose that gossipy Mrs Kane has made up all sorts of stories about the poor old woman.”

Shortly after we arrived on North Pearl, my mother got wind that over in her hairdressing salon cum tea room cum gossip shop Mrs Kane was telling stories about us, weaving them from the fertile threads of my mother's having no husband in residence, and being part Indian, but with a blonde daughter who didn't look at all Indian, and a son who did. (Of course, we had the same father; it was just that different genes came to the surface.) Mother's French-'n'-Indian temper carried her, steaming, across the street and into Mr Kane's store. Anne-Marie and I watched from our front window for her re-emergence, our cringing neck muscles tense with worry about the outcome. She came out after about ten minutes with the air of a man rolling down his sleeves after taking someone to Fistcity, and I knew that we wouldn't be hearing any more about our origins again. The next time I went to the cornerstore, Mr Kane shook his head and blew out a long jet of breath. “She's got some temper, your mother,” he said with reluctant admiration. I sheepishly admitted that she did.

“You never heard anyone talk about Mrs McGivney's husband, eh?” I asked my mother as I picked up my cards.

Mother said she was pretty sure Mrs McGivney was a widow, or maybe an old maid that people just called 'Mrs' out of courtesy.

So she didn't know about Mr McGivney! As I led out a middling trump, I mulled over the intriguing possibility that I might be the only person on the whole block who knew of his existence. With the part of my mind I didn't need to play cards, I developed a story game of Detective in which I helped radio's Mr Keene, Tracer of Lost Persons, track down the mysterious Mr McGivney, famous hero... of some sort. While I wondered if he had been a heroic policeman or a fire fighter or maybe he had saved a child from drowning in the Hudson, Anne-Marie sat on the floor, muttering complaints on behalf of her actress paper doll about how dull, dull, dull all the clothes in the shops were, then she gasped with astonished delight when Anne-Marie's latest 'creation' was revealed.

The next afternoon after helping Mother wring out the laundry in our tub and hang it up, I climbed over our back fence into the alley to play my new story game. Squatting in the doorway of a stable with a book on my knee and my back to Mrs McGivney's building, I pretended to be reading, but in reality I was keeping watch on the McGivneys' windows, looking over my shoulder through a small mirror I had borrowed from my mother's handbag and taped onto the inside cover of the book. But I could see nothing through the lace curtains. My followers complained about being bored with this no-action game, but I reminded them that the stake-out was an important part of detective work. All right, so maybe it wasn't much fun! But it had to be done, and we were the ones chosen by Mr Keene, Tracer of Lost Persons to do it. They could quit if they wanted to, but me, I'd stay at my post until hell froze over, if that's what it took! I turned my face away and refused to listen to their apologies, until Uncle Jim and my faithful Japanese valet, Kato, pleaded with me to forgive them for complaining. But my admiring young niece, Gail, continued to whine about this being a dull game, so finally Tonto and I (sometimes I borrowed Tonto from the Lone Ranger, which was all right because I was part Indian) Tonto and I began a careful examination of the ground, using a magnifying stick to look for clues. We found what might have been part of a footprint, and there was a very interesting piece of broken glass, and a half-covered cat turd that Tonto said had been dropped since the last full moon, but that was all. Searching for Lost Heroes was beginning to lose its zest, and I was considering changing back to driving the Nazi Strong Troopers out of their bunkers with my blasting stick, when I heard three crisp clicks of metal on glass above me and I looked up to see Mrs McGivney smiling down from her window, holding up a nickel, and motioning for me to come up. At first I felt bad: it's pretty shoddy detective work when the suspect spots the stake-out; but then I realized that here was a chance to get into the suspect's apartment in the guise of a kid willing to run an errand, and do some undercover snooping around. I told my followers to wait for me there. I'd report back after I'd grilled the old dame.

If they got bored, they could blast Nazis.

Mrs McGivney met me at the top of the dark stairway and I followed her into the apartment, where her husband still sat at the window, looking out over the alley, his pale eyes vacant. She explained that she had forgotten to write 'pickle' on her list, and she knew that Mr McGivney would just love to have one of Mr Kane's big plump dill pickles.

I couldn't promise to get a big plump pickle, because Mr Kane always rolled up his shirtsleeve, reached into his barrel, and gave you the first pickle he touched. Even if it turned out to be a little one, he wouldn't drop it back into the brine and try again because, as he explained, he'd pretty soon be left with nothing but little pickles, so people would desert him and buy their pickles where they had a chance of getting a big one. When I returned with an average-sized pickle wrapped in white butcher paper I found the little table set up with napkins and fancy plates and sugar cookies and milk for two. I told Mrs McGivney that I really couldn't accept the nickel she was trying to press into my hand, not for fetching something that had only cost a nickel in the first place, but she pointed out that I had walked the same distance as if I'd been sent for a whole bagful of groceries and therefore I had earned the nickel; I said no, I couldn't take it, but she just stood there with her head cocked, giving me one of those ain't-I-the-cutest-thing glances out of the corners of her eyes, the kind of look Shirley Temple used when she wanted to get her way. Adults thought Shirley was just too adorable for words, with her dimples and her sideward glances, sticking out her lower lip in a pout and shaking her pudgy finger at people she thought were being naughty, but every red-blooded American boy yearned to kick her butt. Hard. In the end... all right, all right, I took the damned nickel. Jeez!

Those sugar cookies had something against me. They didn't get caught in the corner of my mouth this time, but I had just bitten one when Mrs McGivney asked me how my mother was, and when I tried to answer through the cookie I coughed and sprayed crumbs. Not much of a start for a slick detective.

I was curious to know what was wrong with Mr McGivney, but I didn't think I should ask straight out. So instead, I told her I'd have to be getting home before long because my mother was sick.

“Still? I'm so sorry to hear that.”

“She's almost over it.”

“Is she often ill, John-Luke?”

“Only my mother calls me John-Luke. Yes, she's sick pretty often. She's got weak lungs.”

“And you take care of her?”

“My sister helps.”

“What about your father?”

My mother hadn't mentioned my father since he failed to turn up with the green cake. But I knew that she thought of him sometimes because I once walked into her bedroom looking for something, and I found her sitting on the bed with photographs of the two of them strewn around her. Her eyes were damp and bruised-looking. I walked out, silent and embarrassed, as though I had seen her nude.

“I don't know anything about my father,” I told Mrs McGivney.

“Oh, I... see. Well, the important thing is to always be a good boy and take care of your mother because you'll never have another.”

“Ah-h... yes... well, that's certainly true.” I wasn't getting anywhere in my investigation and I couldn't think of anything to ask without giving a hint that I was working for Mr Keene, trying to trace a Lost Hero. Mrs McGivney was no help; she seemed content just to sit there, smiling at me vaguely, her head tipped to one side. I glanced over at Mr McGivney, but he was still staring out the window. And I suddenly remembered a scary episode of Lights Out about zombies and the living dead.

I felt Mrs McGivney's eyes on me, so I turned to her and dredged my imagination for something to talk about so she wouldn't guess that I had been thinking her husband might be a zombie. “Ah... ah... what was your nephew's name again? You told me, but it slipped my mind.”

“My nephew?”

“The one who used to visit you, but doesn't anymore?” Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Mr McGivney. I'd never seen anyone sit so still before. Even his eyelashes didn't move. I watched to see if he'd blink. He didn't. Was it possible not to blink? I looked at his neck, then his wrist, but I couldn't see any throbbing of a pulse. It was almost as if—

“He's dead,” she said with a sigh.

“What?” Icy horror rippled down my spine.

“Michael. The nephew who used to visit us? He was killed in France. Poor boy.”

Oh, the nephew. I took a deep breath and tried to think of a way to ease back into my interrogation, like smooth detectives do. So, let's see. If the nephew died in France during the Great War, then he hadn't visited them for about twenty years. “Don't you have any other relations?”

“No, no. My sister and I were the only children in my family, and she died shortly after her son. The Spanish 'Flu. The 'flu took my mother and father, too. They caught it caring for my sister.” She seemed to think about this for a moment before adding, “Lots of people died of the Spanish 'Flu.” She smiled a faint, sad smile. “My people are all gone, and Mr McGivney was an orphan, so, no, we don't have any relations.” She shrugged, and sudden tears dampened her eyes. “No one at all.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Are you, John-Luke?” She looked at me with such intense gratitude that I felt nervous.

“Only my mother calls me— Look, Mrs McGivney, I really have to get home.” I rose from the chair and went to the door. “Thanks for the cookie.” Then I did something risky. I turned to Mr McGivney and said, “Good-bye, Mr McGivney.”

“He can't hear you.”

“Is he deaf?”

“No, no, he's not deaf.” She opened the door for me. “Mr McGivney is a hero.”

“Oh.” I looked back at him. “I see. Well...” I left.

Uncle Jim, Gabby, Tonto, Jack, Doc and the rest were in the alley, anxiously awaiting my return. “Michael!” I whispered hoarsely out of the side of my mouth while gazing off into the distance so as not to tip off their presence to some onlooker. “Killed in the Great War. Write it down, and don't forget it!”

In the 'Thirties, the 1915—'18 war was called the Great War or just The War. It wasn't called the First World War until the advent of the Second World War, just as early films were not called 'silent films' until the advent of the talkie.

A week or so later, I was cutting through the back alley with an armful of books about birds. I no longer remember why I decided to bring Mother's ship in by becoming a rich, world-famous ornithologist, but I wouldn't be surprised if I had just stumbled across the word 'ornithologist' and taken a fancy to it. This was during a period when I shifted from one eventual profession to another, often on the basis of small clues to my destiny I found while reading the encyclopedia in the library or my three-volume High School Subjects Self-Taught. This idea of becoming an ornithologist lasted longer than most—maybe a week or two. I even began my first book, Meet the Warbler, which I wrote as a book, the sheets of paper folded in half and stapled together down the center crease so you could turn the pages and read my careful printing, which I justified by spreading or crowding the letters. The cardboard cover had a crayon drawing of a yellow warbler on it, and at the bottom: Written by Jean-Luc LaPointe, author. It was dedicated to 'my best friend, My Mother'. Working at the kitchen table, carefully wiping the tip of my nib on the edge of the ink bottle after each dip to avoid blots, I painstakingly produced half a dozen pages of this seminal study, scrupulously altering a word here and there from my single research source to avoid being a copycat. Then something went wrong; I don't remember what. Maybe I made a blot, or miscalculated the space necessary to fit a word in. At all events, my effort to erase the error made a smear, which my attempt to erase converted into a hole, so I abandoned the profession of ornithologist. I found this aborted scholarly effort many years later, when I was going through my mother's things after her death. She had underlined the dedication: To my best friend, My Mother.

I had stopped in the alley to shift books from one hip to the other when three sharp clicks on a window above made me look up. Mrs McGivney was gesturing for me to come up. I indicated the books I was carrying and tried to mime the complicated message that I had to bring them to the library before it closed. But she just smiled and tilted her head in that little-girl way of hers and beckoned me up, so I reluctantly returned the books to my apartment and went down the street, up her stoop, and up the staircase to the top floor.

Again the cookies and milk; again her wistful smiles, again Mr McGivney sitting perfectly still with the low evening sunlight caught in his fine white hair. But this time I was determined to uncover the facts about his heroism. I decided to try the double-bluff of a subtly deceptive direct approach. “Mrs McGivney, how did Mr McGivney become a hero?”

She seemed pleased that I was interested enough to ask. “Mr McGivney was a soldier. He fought the Spanish in Cuba.”