Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All

by Laura Ruby

  So, said Mad Maureen Kelly. Who was the wolf?

  Stella might have looked more like a starlet than ever, but she was a pup who dreamed she was a wolf. She liked to write her servicemen just after church in the early afternoon. She’d take out all the little slips of paper she’d collected and transfer the names and addresses to index cards she’d gotten from Sister Cornelius (she lied and said she was using them to study). In an old cigar box, she kept the cards in alphabetical order, along with all the letters the servicemen wrote her. Some days, she read parts of the letters out loud to the other girls, mostly the parts that said something about her being beautiful (if she’d sent a picture) or talented (if she’d sent a hand-knitted scarf) or smart (who knows why?).

  “‘I showed the fellas your picture,’” she read, “‘and they all say you look just like a movie star.’” Stella put the letter down in her lap. “Isn’t that just the sweetest thing you ever heard?”

  Loretta looked up from her book, Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down. “Which serviceman was that one?”

  “That was Robert C.,” she said. “There are three Roberts. Robert C., Robert M., and Robert R.” Stella folded up the letter and dropped it into the box.

  Loretta flipped a page in her book. The intervening year had sharpened her cheekbones, gilded her strawberry-blond hair with bright veins of gold, and given her gaze a knowing calm that made some of the girls believe she could read their minds. “If you were as careful with your schoolwork as you are with those letters,” she told Stella, “you wouldn’t have to spend so much time staying after class with Sister Cornelius.”

  Stella took a fresh piece of paper and licked the tip of her pencil. “You’re just jealous that nobody’s telling you that you look like a movie star.”

  “True,” said Loretta. “Frankie, remind me to start lying to a bunch of servicemen, okay?”

  Stella’s smile got even wider. “The other day I got a marriage proposal.”

  Toni nearly flipped right out of her chair. “No! A marriage proposal! What are you going to do?”

  “Do? Nothing! What do I need to do? Sam W. is on a boat in the middle of the ocean.”

  “But what if he comes back?” said Toni.

  “Oh, he’s got eighteen more months, at least,” said Stella. “And who knows, maybe I’ll want to get married by then.”

  “You won’t even be eighteen in eighteen months,” Loretta said.

  “But I look eighteen now,” said Stella, raising her eyebrow. “And what do you care anyway? You don’t even like boys, do you?”

  A muscle in Loretta’s cheek jumped. Stella’s practiced giggle sounded like the clink of a knife on a wineglass. Toni laughed hard enough that one of the buttons straining to contain her bosom gave up and popped from her blouse. Toni made a great show of being upset about it. (She wasn’t upset about it.) Frankie scooped up the button and tossed it to Toni, who missed it. She and Stella crawled after the button, snickering at Toni’s open blouse and visible cleavage, while Frankie rolled her eyes.

  Frankie turned her chair away from her sister and opened Vito’s latest letter, expecting more news about the shoe shop, more complaints about Ada’s spoiled kids, more lies about their father saying hello and sending his best. But that wasn’t what the letter said, because this letter was the one Frankie had been pretending would never come.

  Dear Frankie,

  Thanks for the birthday card. But you know what that means. It’s the army for me. I’m shipping out in a few weeks. Not sure where I’m going and I probably won’t be able to tell you when I get there. I wish I had the time to visit before I go, but it’s not in the cards.

  Still, I don’t want you to worry about me. Hitler is the only one with something to worry about.

  I’ll write again soon.

  Your brother,

  Vito

  She stood and paced back and forth, folding and refolding the letter. Maybe the war wouldn’t last, maybe Vito wouldn’t even have to go. Vito would be okay, everyone would be okay.

  She wasn’t okay.

  “What is it, Frankie?” Loretta said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Vito,” Frankie said. “He’s . . . he’s . . .” She could barely choke out the words. “He’s going overseas.”

  “Vito?” said Stella. “That handsome brother of yours? You just tell him to write me and I’ll be—”

  Frankie dropped Vito’s letter and shoved Stella hard enough to launch her out of her seat.

  Look at that, I said. A shooting star.

  The Three Spindles

  EVERY TIME I VISITED THE blue house in the sea of brick, I promised myself that I wouldn’t go back. And then I proved myself a liar. I hovered at the back window, hoping to catch a glimpse of Berry Girl and Boxer Boy. Was there a word for that, a word for wishing for exactly the thing that caused you the most pain? Perhaps the Germans had one. They probably did.

  There was no one in the bedroom. No one in the kitchen, either; no one in the living room. Before I had the chance to think better of it, before I could remind myself of my own rules, I pressed inside. Doesn’t take much, to move through a wall when you’re dead. You take a step and let go of yourself, release the thought or the dream or the belief that binds you together. Then, once you are through, you gather yourself back, the way a woman gathers up a sheet that has fallen from the bed.

  It doesn’t take much, but it does take a while to learn.

  Not pleasant, being trapped in a wall, mice running over your feet.

  Once I was through, once I had gathered myself, I stole through the darkened, empty rooms on my ghostly tiptoes. I swept my not-fingers over the dishes drying in the rack—simple white bowls, scratched juice glasses. I pressed my not-palms on the spotless counters, the threadbare furniture. I breathed my not-breath on the photographs on the coffee table, where the two of them smiled at their wedding, smiled in their swimsuits at the beach, smiled at a party, smiled and smiled and smiled. There were pictures of her family, and his, and everyone was so happy. Their happiness hurt. There was probably a German word for that, too.

  I stood, still and mesmerized by those wide white smiles until a key turned in the lock and the front door swung open. I’d expected to see him, home from a job where he added up numbers in endless, numbing columns, but it wasn’t him. She walked in, the same girl she always was, and a completely different girl. Instead of spilling down her shoulders and back, her long glossy hair was tied up in a red kerchief. No dress today, no posing like a starlet; she wore blue trousers and a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Oil-stained work boots on her feet. She stomped past me into the kitchen, where she dropped her lunch pail on the counter. She rummaged in the icebox, brought a beer back into the living room, and slumped in the nearest chair. She put her booted feet up on that table and sipped the beer.

  Your mother wouldn’t approve of the beer, I said, a ridiculous thing to say, both because she couldn’t hear me and because what did I know of her mother? Maybe her mother loved beer. I was too astonished by the trousers and the posture and the boots to make sense. Where did she go in that outfit? What did she do all day? Rivet things? How did one rivet a thing? What kind of thing needed to be riveted? A boat? A plane? But she was so delicate, so fine boned and ladylike.

  I tried to imagine myself coming home in trousers, putting my boots up on my mother’s coffee table, but the vision wouldn’t keep in my head, kept dissolving into cloudy wisps for its sheer lunacy, its impossibility. My mother would never have allowed it—well, also ridiculous because everyone insisted I act like a lady, and look what I’d done instead. I’d been a riveter too, in my own way. I giggled at my own joke, more lunacy because there was no Mad Maureen here to appreciate it, and also because I’d died because of it. Divine intervention, my mother called it, divine retribution. The pretty girl coming to an ugly but satisfying end, delirious and feverish and hacking blood up on herself. Tragic, but was anyone really surprised, considering? I wasn�
��t ill long, just a few hours, not even long enough to soil my dress. Maybe not so much retribution as intervention, then, because it had been so quick. Or maybe the reverse, as I was still here, still trying to sort my own boundaries, the lines of myself.

  When I first crossed over, I didn’t understand anything I was seeing. Everything had a queer sort of vagueness, a haziness, a fuzziness, a flatness and a brightness at the same time. As if I had stared at the sun too long and then tried to make out the outlines and the colors of a thing—a flower, a dog, a bird, a person. Nothing came together, people and animals and plants and things spat and sparked, flesh or spirit coming off them like bits of ash floating up a chimney. I might have screamed a lot. Difficult to be sure. It took me a while to understand that I couldn’t just rely on my senses the way I had when I was alive, I had to use my imagination. I had to focus, I had to concentrate, apply my own will to gather the people and the things into coherence, fill them all with substance and color. They almost looked real now, as if I could touch them.

  I could touch her.

  She finished her beer and set the bottle by the array of pictures on the coffee table, laid her head back, and closed her eyes. I would not enter her mind, I would not sift through her thoughts like the thief I was, the criminal, but I wanted . . . what did I want? For her to see me, the spirit coming off me like sparks from a fire? For her to scream and scream and scream? No. And yet.

  I wanted her to know.

  I took a step toward her. She didn’t move. I took another step. A few strands of glossy hair had escaped the kerchief. If I could just smooth them from her cheek, I—

  Her eyes opened and she gasped, clutching her chest. My not-heart hitched and ran. Don’t be afraid, I told her, I won’t hurt you, I could never, I will tell you a story if you want to listen. Listen. Listen. Li—

  She leaned forward, staring. “Where did you come from?”

  Shock that she saw me, shock that she heard me, made the words tumble out in a torrent. I’ve been here before, I said, I’ve been here longer than you remember, I can’t stay away, I wish I could.

  “What do you want?”

  Once, there was a noble’s young daughter who got herself in trouble and her parents threw her out of the house. She wandered around aimlessly because she had nowhere to go. The world is cold, you see, cold and gray and deader than dead, and so this girl ended up in the woods all alone. She found a tree stump with three crosses carved into it and sat down to rest there, because what else was she to do? All of a sudden, a fairy no bigger than a cat burst from a clump of trees. Hot on her heels was a band of hunters, all dressed in red, all on fiery red horses whose sharpened fangs champed at silver bits. Demon hunters on demon horses, come to kill everything that was good, everything that was magic, including the fairy. The girl pulled the fairy behind her so that the demons wouldn’t see her. They raced by without a backward glance. The fairy thanked the girl and asked how she might help, considering the girl had just saved her life. Through her tears, the girl explained her trouble, and the fairy said that all would be well. The fairy led the girl to a little house in the middle of the wood. Inside the house was a tidy bed, a warm hearth, and a spindle. The fairy told the girl to spin moss into yarn every day, and every day, when her work was done, she would be paid in food and wood for that hearth. She had never worked before, this nobleman’s daughter, so the yarn wasn’t very fine at first, but she grew to love her work, grew to love herself for working. Every day, she spun, and every night, the fire in her hearth burned cheerily, a full pot bubbling over it. Then one evening, the fairy came by and found a beautiful baby wrapped in swaddling on the rug by the hearth. The child was so calm and lovely that the fairy asked if she could keep the baby in exchange for bringing the young woman home. The young woman agreed. The fairy brought the girl back to the tree stump carved with three crosses and left her there with three spindles of her own beautiful yarn. The fairy said, The child will never want for anything. And neither will you. If you ever find yourself in real need, just unspool a bit of the yarn from the spindle. You’ll find that there’s always the same amount of yarn left on the spindle, you’ll find that you’ll never run out.

  Do you see? I said. Do you hate me?

  I reached for her then, for that lock of hair that had come loose from the kerchief. I thought she was seeing me, I thought she was hearing me. When she got up from the chair and moved toward me I thought she might ask my name, and I thought I would tell her, I thought I would tell her everything, anything she wanted. She stepped through me, and it was as if I’d jumped from the top of a skyscraper as if I’d jumped from an airplane as if I were drowning in a lake and the lake was her. Not-tears streamed down my cheeks, but she kept going, through me, then past me, moving instead to the window, where a little furred face was perfectly framed, as if in a painting, or in one of Frankie’s drawings.

  “What are you doing out there?” she said to the little furred face, laying a palm on the window. “Are you spying on me?”

  The fox smiled, its tongue lolling like a party favor.

  No, no, no! I shouted. Go away!

  “Look at you, you sweet thing.”

  You’re ruining it, you stupid animal!

  “Aren’t you cute?”

  My vision went hazy, fuzzy, white. On the coffee table behind us, the photographs shook, then fell to the floor with a crash.

  The girl was picking up the pictures, setting them back on the table, when the door opened, and he limped in. His pale skin, the exaggerated limp, told the story of the trials of the day, but his cinnamon eyes blazed for her, they always blazed for her, a fire that would never run out.

  “What happened?” he said, seeing her crouched there by the chair, a chipped frame in her hand.

  “I saw—” She gestured to the window where the fox had been, frowned. “Never mind,” she said. “Whatever it was, it’s gone.”

  An accident, just an accident, I muttered to myself as I walked back to the orphanage. But it hadn’t been an accident. I had just wanted her to see me. I had knocked those pictures to the floor, and I hadn’t even been near them. But why couldn’t I figure out how I’d done it?

  Instead of finding the orphanage comfortably, soothingly, punishingly gray and somber, stark and sad, churchy and still, I stumbled into a parade, the Parade of Corpus Christi. The June sunlight shining over everything was the same bright, buttery color as the new dresses the orphan girls had made for themselves.

  “It’s your color,” said Loretta.

  “What is?” Frankie asked.

  Loretta lifted the hem of dress she wore, revealing one knee red and pitted from kneeling to scrub this or polish that. “Yellow,” she said. “I’d look better in blue or pink, but you look like a princess or something.”

  A flush crept up Frankie’s neck, but she was pleased. It couldn’t hurt to look like a princess if she caught a glimpse of Sam, if he caught a glimpse of her. She scanned the boys, who were lined up in their best suits just a few feet away. Normally they didn’t let boys and girls get this close, but the Parade of Corpus Christi was different. They were celebrating “the real presence of Jesus Christ in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, the real presence of Jesus Christ in the world,” Father Paul said every year, had said after mass that morning. They were marching for Jesus, and they were going to do it all together. Frankie wasn’t complaining.

  Loretta was plucking at her collar.

  “What’s the matter?” Frankie asked.

  “You know I can’t sew,” Loretta said. “Of course I made my collar too tight.”

  “Unbutton one button in the back.”

  “I already did,” she said.

  “It’s nice, ain’t it?” A boy’s voice. Scratchy and low.

  Frankie whirled around. Saw him. Sam. Smiling.

  “What?” she said dumbly, her mouth hanging open. She couldn’t help it, she kept thinking of the day before, when they’d sneaked into the greenhouse and kissed behin
d a lemon tree until her lips were numb. She could still taste the lemons.

  “The sky,” Sam said. “It’s nice today.”

  “Uh . . . yeah,” she said. “It’s real nice.”

  Sam pointed to a cloud. “Now, my friend Clarence says that that cloud looks like Sister George, but I say it looks like the witch from The Wizard of Oz. What do you say?”

  “I say that there isn’t much difference, is there?”

  He laughed, and for a minute she could see his teeth, big and white, straight on top, a little jumbled on the bottom. She had run her tongue over those teeth. The thought made her shiver.

  “I think I’ve seen you washing up in my cottage after dinner. Do you work in the kitchen?” he said, as if they didn’t know each other at all, as if their hands hadn’t worked frantically at buttons and zippers and skin.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I work in the kitchen.”

  “So how come they make you wash our dishes?”

  “Maybe they think you don’t know how to take care of yourselves.”

  “They’re probably right,” he said, still grinning. “We can be hopeless on our own. Without . . . you know . . . women.”

  Frankie was just warming up to the conversation, just getting used to the idea of being called a woman, when Sister Cornelius marched up to them and shooed Sam back to his place on line. After she marched away, he smiled at Frankie and waved. She made sure no one was looking before she waved back.

  “Be careful, Frankie.”

  Loretta. She’d forgotten Loretta was there. There was something wrong about that, but Frankie wasn’t sure what it was. “What do you mean?”

  Loretta sighed. “You know what I mean.”

  The trumpets swelled and the rest of the band started to play, and the parade began. Frankie couldn’t describe why she liked it so much, parading around the orphanage like that—it could take hours—but she did. Something about the fancy gowns, the warm summer air, the smell of the flowers that they carried in baskets and tucked in their hair, the sight of the colored banners made her, made all of them, feel special. Maybe it was Jesus. Maybe it was the angels. Maybe it was all of it. It seemed impossible that there was a war going on anywhere, with the sun so bright. It seemed impossible that she’d ever felt sad about the future. She wondered how she would describe it to Vito in her next letter.