by Laura Ruby
“What about me?”
“How are you? How is it here?”
“How do you think? Lots of scrubbing. And it’s hot.”
“You wouldn’t be so hot if you took off that sweater.”
“I can’t,” she said. She rolled up a sleeve, wincing as she did it. The inside of her forearm was red and blistered.
“Loretta! That’s horrible! Did you get that in the laundry? Did you go to the infirmary?”
Loretta rolled down the sleeve. For her, there was no one to go to the infirmary for. “I’ll be fine. It probably won’t even scar much. And anyway, who cares?”
“I care!” Frankie said. “I’ll bring you some cream next visiting Sunday.”
“That’s two weeks from now. It will already be healed.”
She was right, of course. Frankie sighed, and tugged at the waves that were almost down to her shoulders. Sister Cornelius nodded at her from her desk at the front of the room. “It’s strange to be here.”
“You look like a different person,” Loretta said. “Your hair is getting long.”
“Finally.”
“It’s beautiful.”
“That’s what Dewey said.”
“Who’s Dewey?”
“Ada’s younger son. He has a year before he goes into the service.”
Loretta’s eyes searched Frankie’s face. “Ada’s son said your hair was beautiful?”
“Yes.”
Loretta frowned. “He’s practically your brother.”
“No, he isn’t.”
“Is he kind of creepy or something?”
“You could say that.”
“I think maybe you should stay away from him.”
“I think so too. I just don’t know how I’m going to do it. The apartment is small, we’re practically eating and sleeping and living on top of one another, no windows and too many open doorways and—”
Loretta picked up the fork Frankie’d brought for her and pressed it into her palm. “You might want to keep this handy.”
Dear Frankie,
I can’t believe it! I don’t hear from you in weeks and weeks and then you tell me that you and Toni were booted from the orphanage and are living with Dad! It’s like the war. You turn around for a few minutes and then everything changes.
And I really can’t believe you got yourself a job that pays 75 cents an hour! You can’t hear me, but I’m whistling right now! My sister, all grown up! What are you doing with all that money? Saving up for a baby Lincoln, I bet!
I can’t wait to get home and get myself a new job too. All the fellows are so tired of being tired, if you know what I mean. We just want to get home, take a hot bath for about a thousand years, and eat until we bust. That’s what I want to do, anyway, eat until I bust. Are you going to cook up some good Italian spaghetti for me? I hope so.
You hang in there until I come home. I know what you mean about Ada, but she’s all bark and no bite. And Bernice and Cora are just like her, all talk. The only one who’s a little strange is Dewey, but he’s probably grown out of the worst of it. Stay out of his way as much as you can and you’ll be fine. Anyway, a nice-looking girl like you is sure to meet some nice fellow soon. You’ll be off and married in no time, and you won’t have to bother with Ada and her kids anymore if you don’t feel like it.
Well, that’s all for now. If all goes right, I’ll be home in a short time and I’ll be looking for some spaghetti.
Love,
Vito
“Whatcha got there?”
Dewey with his mustardy sandpaper eyes shambled into the kitchen where Frankie was reading her letter at the table.
She put the letter in her pocket. “Nothing. A letter from my brother.”
“Your brother, huh?” he said. “What he have to say?”
“Not much. He wants to come home.”
“Ummmm,” Dewey said, not listening, just gaping. He licked his thick lips.
Toni walked into the room, stopping dead when she saw Dewey. He gave her one of his sick smiles and tipped his dirty hat. “Hello there, Antonina. That’s a very pretty dress you got on.”
Toni didn’t say anything, just crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him until he shrugged. “You ladies have a nice day,” he said, and swept out of the room.
“Ew,” Toni said after they heard the front door slam. “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.”
“I’ll say.” Frankie worried the corner of Vito’s letter, then handed it to Toni. “You watch out for Dewey, all right? Don’t get in his way.”
“I’m trying not to, but he keeps popping up everywhere. He’s like a roach, only bigger.”
“Where’s the roach?” Their father stood in the doorway holding a shoe that he was resoling. “I kill it.”
Toni and Frankie looked at each other. “No, Dad,” Frankie said. “There’s no roach. Toni was just fooling around.”
“Oh. Yes.” Their father went over to the sink and got himself a glass of water.
Toni sat down at the kitchen table to read Vito’s letter while Frankie watched their father’s back. It was a big back, a strong one, and she knew just by looking at him that he was much stronger than Dewey. The thought didn’t make her feel better. Sometimes when she talked to her father, he wasn’t focused on her face, he was looking at her hair or her forehead or even somewhere behind her. And when they were all crowded around the kitchen table, eating dinner together, her father would say, “Pass the potatoes, cara mia,” and “Bella, such a lady,” but he only had eyes for Ada. Just like he only had money for her, space for her, room for her children.
A person figures out her place in the vast and churning world very quickly, and Frankie’s was right in Ada’s shadow.
We were shadows, Marguerite and Wolf and I, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t live it up a little, so to speak.
At the bar, I introduced Mad Maureen to Marguerite.
This is Miss Marguerite Irene Knowles, I said. Miss Marguerite was murdered by a preacher’s daughter with a cup of poisoned tea and a pillow.
I’d say that calls for a bourbon, said Mad Maureen, flexing her fox for the fox.
I’ve never had spirits before, said Marguerite.
Spirits for the spirits, I said.
I grew up during prohibition, Marguerite said. Oh, people made bathtub gin or bought bootleg, but the only spirits my family used were the kind we put in cough syrup. She took a sip of the bourbon, winced. How is it that I can taste this?
The glories of God? I said.
The glories of bourbon, said Mad Maureen. Hey! What do you two geniuses think you’re doing? she shouted at two men rolling like wrestlers on the floor. They didn’t hear her, or they didn’t care. One broke a bottle over the other’s head, the other pulled a knife. They would die on the floor of the bar, get up, and do it all over again. Mad Maureen would shout, and they would ignore her. The bartender—the living one—would march back and forth behind the bar, walk right through Mad Maureen. She would stiffen and yell, Kiss me where I sat on Saturday! and the bartender would pour a drunk another beer.
Marguerite pointed at the rows of bottles behind the bar. Why don’t you try and knock one of those off the shelf?
I swallowed the bourbon, coughed. Why don’t you?
I asked you first.
I can’t, I said.
You can, you’ve done it before. The light at the library.
I didn’t do that.
Yes, you did. So practice. The more you practice, the better you’ll get.
And what good will that do?
People will see it. Maybe they won’t see you, but they’ll see what you’ve done. Your effect on the world. That’s something.
I don’t think so.
It’s more than those two gentlemen can do, she said, toasting the men wrestling on the floor. It’s more than they know.
I remembered Marguerite casually poking books off the library shelves, I remembered the picture on the fl
oor of the bookshop. I had done things like that too—I had poked the feet of children, tugged at their blankets, crooned till they heard me—without understanding how it worked, or why. And maybe I had burst the light fixture, maybe I had knocked the photographs off Mercy’s coffee table. But it all seemed so accidental. Like catching the flu.
Well, how did you do it? I said, turning to Marguerite. When you made that newspaper fly?
You were annoying me.
So I just need to get angry?
No, said Mad Maureen, wiping down the bar. You have to focus and you have to let go at the same time.
What does that mean? Marguerite asked.
Mad Maureen said, What happened when you died? When you first came back?
I said, Everything was hazy. Bright and dark. Blurred. Like seeing through tears.
Mad Maureen said, And you had to learn to gather yourself, redraw the lines of yourself?
Marguerite nodded. Yes.
And the more you gathered, the more you drew, the more real you felt?
Yes, I said.
Well, said Mad Maureen, you need to let that go. Let yourself disperse through the air like a mist over the lake. But at the same time, as you take your focus off yourself, you focus instead on what you want to do. You draw the lines of the act itself, get me? A book falling from a shelf. The window smashing. The light bulb bursting. A tattoo drifting across a sea of skin.
Marguerite said, Wait, you . . . tell yourself a story?
Mad Maureen smiled. Yes. You tell yourself the story of what happened. And then it happens. Try it.
We did. Marguerite closed her not-eyes and I closed mine. I undrew the lines of myself, let them go hazy and slack.
A strange fluttering filled my not-chest, a panicked scrabbling, like claws against a locked door. My not-eyes shot open.
What? said Mad Maureen.
I don’t like how it feels.
You have to let go of yourself when you move through a door or a wall.
Yes, but that’s when I’m moving. It’s quick. I don’t have to think about it. This feels awful.
Like dying? You’ve died before, Mad Maureen said. What’s one more time?
Again, we closed our eyes. Again the strange fluttering, the panicked scrabbling, my not-heart throbbing in my not-throat. My not-skin pricked by a thousand needles. Not-lungs burning.
I gasped and coughed some more. I can’t do it, I said.
Marguerite said, I can’t either.
Yes, you can, said Mad Maureen. You have gathered yourself before, you will gather yourself again. You’re spirit, not flesh, and your spirit is strong.
But—
How do you think you’re here, talking to me? Mad Maureen said. How can you taste the liquor? Feel the fur of that little fox in your fingers? How do you keep finding each other? That’s how powerful you are. Let yourself feel it.
I took Marguerite’s hand. I could almost feel, did feel, her slim fingers in mine. I could almost feel, did feel, her gentle squeeze in response.
Again, we closed our eyes. Again, we undrew the lines of ourselves. Hot sparks of pain coursed through me. The fluttering and scrabbling was replaced by a feeling of weightlessness, of recklessness, of wildness. What was death to us? Death was nothing! Nothing! We released the spirits of ourselves into the smoky bar all around. As my thoughts went white and dark and bright at the same time, as I was on the verge of losing all sense of myself, I told myself a story. The story of a bottle.
Once upon a time, a bottle of vodka, the most expensive bottle on the shelf, teetered, then fell.
A thud and a crash. First the bottle, and then me back into myself.
“Shit!” said the bartender.
Mad Maureen clapped. That will teach you, you nasty oaf.
Another man’s beer stein shot all the way down the bar and off the counter, smashing against the wall.
Marguerite, beautiful Marguerite, sat grinning at me. I grinned back.
And there you go, said Marguerite.
And here we are, I said.
We practiced again and again, until the bartender was charging like a bear around the bar, accusing people of playing tricks on him, shooing everyone out. Until Mad Maureen said that we’d had enough fun for one day and we had to leave something for tomorrow.
You have to confront her, I told Marguerite.
Who? Maureen?
Stop that. You know who. The preacher’s daughter.
Marguerite took another sip of her drink, made a face, set the drink down. There’s no point, she said. She’s dead. Peacefully. In her sleep. Something about a blood vessel.
Then you know what you have to do.
He wasn’t the one who killed me.
He left you! He married the woman who murdered you, knowing that she did it! He let her get away with it!
Why are you so angry?
Why aren’t you? I said.
What would you have me do? Knock over more photographs? Push books off the shelves? Haunt his cat?
He can see you, Marguerite. Show yourself to him. Make him repent.
I’m not God, she said.
You’re a child of God.
So are you.
I died of the flu. I can’t punish anyone for it. I can’t get justice. But you can.
She holds the glass in both hands as if to warm it. What if he doesn’t repent? What if he tells me that even with everything that happened, he would do it all again?
Love you?
Hurt me.
I took the bourbon from her hands, drained it, turned the glass over, and slapped it down on the bar.
Then, I said, we kill him.
The Dragon King
MARGUERITE VANISHED AGAIN, as was her way, though this time I was sure she would be back. But we missed her at the little blue house in the sea of brick, missed her at the lake, missed her at the bar, missed her at the library. The blond man had stopped coming to read The Hobbit, but that was no problem, not anymore. I found the book on the shelves, told myself the story of a book falling, a book opening to just the right chapter, just where we left off. I read chapter ten to Wolf, I told him about the hobbits and the thirteen dwarves stuffed inside barrels, floating down the river and out of Mirkwood forest. Bilbo sees the Lonely Mountain, where they’d really like to go, but instead, the river takes them toward Lake Town. At Lake Town, Bilbo frees the dwarves from the barrels. Thorin marches to the town hall and declares that he, a descendant of the King under the Mountain, has returned to claim himself king. The people of Lake Town have heard the stories of how gold flowed down the river when the King under the Mountain reigned before Smaug the dragon came. The people rejoiced.
Inside Berman’s, though, there was no rejoicing, only typing, typing, and more typing. When Frankie went to sleep at night, she heard the clackety-clack of the typewriters snapping in her ears. Her wrists and back ached, and her vision was blurry. She liked the money (though she didn’t get to keep much of it), but she had to wonder if her brain was drying up like an old sponge.
One day Mr. Gilhooly poked his bald head out of his office. Frankie thought he was going to call for Wanda the way he always did, but this time he barked, “Which one of you is Mazza?”
Frankie was so startled, she didn’t answer. She’d been working there for months, and no one but Wanda had ever said her last name before. The other girls already had their friends, and Frankie didn’t know what to say to them anyway. She tried to deal as best she could, but every time she got tongue-tied and shy with people who weren’t orphans, people who had never been beaten or shorn, people who came and went as they pleased and always had, people who were free, she got angry all over again. Then scared that she would never be able to manage in this world. That it was far too big and far too small at the same time, and she’d always be scrabbling for a doorknob, searching for a way out.
Mr. Gilhooly’s bald head went pink. “Mazza!”
“That’s me,” Frankie squeaked.
He
peered at her through his thick glasses. “I lost my girl last week. Got married when her soldier came home. Wanda says you take shorthand.”
“Y-yeah,” Frankie stammered. “Yes, sir.”
“Why don’t you come in here and we’ll give it a shot, what do you say?”
The light shone off his pink scalp as she tried to figure out what he meant. Would she be his secretary? Would she start now?
“Well!” he said.
“Uh . . . yes,” she stammered.
“Get your steno pad, then, and hop to it.” He disappeared into his office. Frankie searched her desk for a steno pad and a pen and started to walk to Mr. Gilhooly’s office. Her insides twisted tighter and tighter with every step she took. She was okay in the typing pool, she was a good typist and no one paid much attention to her, which was the way she liked it. What if Mr. Gilhooly was a hothead? What if he was like Dewey, with his mustardy sandpaper eyes? What if he got mad like Sister George? What if she had to work there with him, all day, in his small office, trapped and terrified like some feral cat?
By the time she reached Mr. Gilhooly’s office and knocked on the side of the door, her knees were knocking loud as typewriters. Her throat dried up tight. Mr. Gilhooly shuffled papers across his desk and scratched at his head. He looked mad.
He waved at Frankie. “Come in, come in!”
She walked inside the office and in a few steps she was standing in front of his desk. “Well,” he said. “Are you going to sit?”
She sat.
“Are you ready?”
She swallowed hard and showed him her pen.
“Swell,” he said to the papers on his desk. “Swell. Let me just find . . . ah, here it is.” He found the paper he was looking for and held it up. Even in Mr. Gilhooly’s office, Frankie could hear the loud clacking of the typewriters. He could too. “A man can’t hear himself think!” he said. “Can you get the door?”
“What?” Frankie said.
“The door,” he said again, eyebrows raised if she was deaf. “Close the door.”
“Oh. Right.” She put her pad and pen on the chair and walked over to the door. She grabbed the knob and pushed, but it wouldn’t shut all the way. Why did he need her to shut the door? Her feet itched in her good shoes, telling her to run while she still could.