Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind Them All

by Laura Ruby

  When she made it back behind the counter, Ray of Sunshine was pulling out his wallet so that he could pay his bill. “Well, Miss Frankie,” he said, reading the name on her uniform, “I don’t suppose a beautiful young lady like yourself is in need of a dance partner.”

  She could say yes. She was old enough. But her father wouldn’t agree. And she couldn’t jeopardize her plans. She grabbed a rag and wiped down the salt and pepper shakers. “I’m too young to go out dancing.”

  He took a step back and clutched at his chest. “Oh, no, go easy on me. I’ve got a weak heart.”

  “Well, I won’t be too young forever,” Frankie said. She would be a woman in no time, a woman who could do what she pleased and work where she pleased and live where she wanted to. “I might just be in the market for a dance partner soon.”

  He fished around in his front shirt pocket and pulled out a shell, which he laid carefully on the countertop next to the quarter he’d already set there.

  “What’s that?” she asked, tapping the shell.

  “It came all the way from an island they call Okinawa. The only thing I kept from my . . . travels.”

  “I can’t take that from you,” Frankie said.

  “You can give it back to me when we go out dancing,” he said. “I’ll be counting the days.”

  She thought about the money stuffed in her mattress, the ad for a room to let burning a hole in her handbag. “I’ll be counting them too.”

  Frankie got home from her lunch shift, her feet tired, but her cheeks flushed. As soon as she opened the kitchen door, Ada barked, “I thought you were going to be home hours ago. Your father needs help in the shop.”

  “Why doesn’t Dewey help him?”

  Ada’s eyes flashed. “I asked you to do it.”

  In the shop, her father was kneeling on the floor sliding a shoe onto the foot of a handsome woman with red lipstick on her lips and dark circles under her eyes. Frankie’s father said nothing to Frankie, only indicated a broom in the corner with the slightest jerk of his head. Then he turned back to his customer.

  “You like?” he said.

  The woman stood up, walked the length of the store in the sleek black leather shoes. “Yes. These will do very nicely.”

  She sat, and Frankie’s father removed the shoes. She slid into brown shoes that matched her suit and came up to the counter to pay. Frankie was sweeping behind the counter when the woman signed her bill. Frankie noticed the bracelet of faint purple bruises around one delicate wrist. I noticed her name.

  Mrs. Charles Kent.

  The Kents lived in a sprawling mansion on the far north side of the city, miles from the house in which I had first laid eyes on him. In the cavernous foyer, Mrs. Charles Kent handed her parcels and her hat to the maid, asked for a cup of tea in the parlor. The maid told her that Mr. Kent was upstairs, but that he expected dinner promptly at six p.m. Mrs. Kent nodded, did not remind her maid that Mr. Kent always expected dinner promptly at six p.m., did not tell her maid what other kinds of things Mr. Kent expected. Perhaps the maid, like the rest of us, already understood his expectations.

  Mrs. Kent repaired to the parlor while Wolf and I stole up the stairs. Charles Kent had his own suite of rooms that faced the back of the property, a bedroom and a sitting room both painted in hunter green, both with enormous windows that looked out on sweeping lawns and great shaggy oaks. An enormous portrait of Charles Kent with two hounds hung over the bed, the head of a deer glared at me from the wall in the sitting room, an enormous taxidermied bear lurked in the corner. Hello, deer, hello, bear, I said. There were no pictures of Mrs. Kent anywhere.

  I found him in the bath, languishing in bubbles and steam. The skin around his watery eyes was creased, his dark blond hair streaked with gray. But he wore that hair in the same style he always had, slicked straight back. His downturned pouting mouth had the same too-pink cast, as if his lips were chafed, or stained. And his body was soft and grub white, little bits floating like sea creatures.

  Mrs. Kent wouldn’t miss him.

  I sprang at him like the wild thing I was, and pushed his head down into the water. He thrashed and kicked at my not-hands, yanked at my not-arms, his nose and lungs stinging, filling. But as he bucked and gurgled, I felt the pressure in my own nose, my own lungs, the shuddering of my own death. The flu had drowned me too, asphyxiated me with my own toxic fluids, my own blood, and his drowning echoed my drowning. Gasping and coughing, I fought to keep hold of him, fought to punish him, make him pay like I had paid. But my hands on Charles’s throat didn’t look like my hands and the water didn’t look like bathwater. I felt as if I were dispersing, dissolving, little shards of myself wafting away, then coming back to me in the right order.

  The flu, the sickness, had come before Benno, before Mercy, before, not after, and I . . . I . . .

  I had survived it? I had survived it.

  What killed me? Who killed me? My fingers tightened around Charles Kent’s throat. Was it you?

  Charles Kent splashed and kicked the memories back to me, almost knocking me off my not-feet. After Benno was sent away, after Mercy was stolen, after Dunning, my family brought me home. The weeks of drugs had made my head lurch, had thinned the skin of the world so I could see beyond it. Wolves in the woods, mermaids in the water, ghosts everywhere. I saw my long-dead grandmother standing at the foot of my bed in the middle of the night, scolding me in her British accent. In the yard, in the middle of the day, I saw men wearing outfits of fur and skin who babbled at me in French. A little girl, no more than six, liked to ride with me in the back of our auto, giggling when we took sharp turns and slid across the leather seats, and when she slid through me. When I giggled along with her, when I pointed out my grandmother or the mermaids, my father’s frown got that much deeper, my mother’s sutures pulled that much tighter.

  In moments of clarity, I tried to explain: “I loved him.” Or, “Her name is Mercy.” Or, “Charles tried to hurt me.” Or, “Am I dead? When did that happen?”

  Still, I ran in the woods, I swam in the lake, I came home disheveled and damp. The last time, during a party at our house, I slipped away and went to the water, not even bothering to take off the dress and shoes my parents had bought on credit. The water was freezing, cold enough to clear my head some, cold enough to slow my blood. When I couldn’t feel my limbs, I crawled to shore to find William waiting for me in the sand.

  “What in the bloody hell are you doing, Pearl?” he bellowed. “Haven’t you done enough?”

  Frederick swayed behind him, a bottle in his hand. “Shhh, Willy. Someone will hear you.”

  “I asked you a question, Pearl. Haven’t you done enough?”

  “His name wasn’t really Benno,” I said. “He wouldn’t tell me what it was because he was afraid it would sound ugly coming out of my mouth.”

  William kicked me over to my side, as if he were trying to flip a bug. “You are ugly. You’re disgusting.” He stared down at me, his teeth bared like no animal I’d ever seen. “I can hardly stand to look at you.”

  “You didn’t have to hit him like that. You hurt him.”

  He kicked me again. “Shut up. We could have killed him and no one would have blamed us.”

  “I would have. I do.”

  “You’re a whore. A crazy whore.”

  “And you’re cruel. Stupid and cruel. I’d rather be a whore.”

  “You’re not even good for that,” he said.

  I made an angel in the sand. “You’re just proving my point.”

  “Don’t make it worse, Pearl,” Frederick slurred, staggered. “Father had to pay so Charles’s family wouldn’t sue us.”

  “He hurt me! He sent me to that place!”

  “Father’s investors walked away. No one else will come near us. We’re already ruined because of you, do you understand? Do you want us to lose everything?”

  “Maybe you ruined yourselves. Maybe we all do that.”

  Frederick threw the bottle at me, but mi
ssed. William kicked me, and didn’t.

  “You never think of anyone but yourself. You never think. We should send you back to Dunning.”

  “They were a lot nicer there,” I said, clutching my ribs. “They smelled better, too.”

  “Jesus, Pearl,” said Frederick.

  “I can’t see him. But I can see the mermaids now.”

  “Shut up about the mermaids!” said William. “Do you hear yourself?”

  “Why don’t you try, William? Look!” I pointed at the water. “They’re right there. And there. And there.”

  William’s hands flew to his hair, grabbed handfuls on each side. “Will you shut up?”

  “No, I won’t,” I sang. “And you can’t make me.”

  Once upon a time, a girl got in trouble and then went on to make some more. One brother was too drunk to punish her, but the other brother was willing.

  William took hold of one arm and dragged me back toward the water. I fought with everything I had, but in the end, what did I have left to give?

  At least the mermaids were there to keep me company.

  I had mercy, I let Charles go. He fell from the tub, vomited on the tile, looked up. Just for a moment, in the slanting blue light of the late afternoon, he saw my face, and screamed.

  That would do.

  For now.

  No Memories but One

  WHAT I KNEW ABOUT MY mother: Her skin was creamy white. She had perfect posture. Her hair had gone silver by the time she was twenty-five. When she was angry, her lips pulled tight like a row of sutures. Her most prized possession: the set of pearl and diamond wedding rings she wore on her left hand.

  William had those rings now, tucked in the same box where he’d kept his French postcards. He was easy enough to find, so easy that it was a marvel that I’d never bothered to look. He and Frederick lived in the same house where we’d grown up. They’d inherited it after my parents died in an automobile wreck in 1937. My brothers were lucky that there was something left to inherit besides the wrecked automobile. The family had lost everything else in the stock market crash of ’29.

  Not that the house was much to be proud of. The brick was dull and dusty, mortar falling in gray fingers to the dirt. The shrubs and lawns were patchy and piebald and brown, the woods behind razed and sold off in lots. Other families had built their homes there and blocked the view. When William stood to look out the window of the grand parlor, he saw into the dining room of the house next door, another family laughing over dinner.

  William and Frederick didn’t laugh much. I sat with my brothers around the fireplace while Wolf sniffed at the stained rugs, the chipped furniture. William was fuming, Frederick was drunk; it seemed to be a common state of affairs. I remembered them so well when they were young, William of the thick glasses and thicker head, Frederick of the quick smile and quicker fists.

  William still had the thick head, Frederick the quick fists. They used them on each other.

  “They’re the only things we have left,” Frederick was saying, or trying to say, through a wine-thickened tongue.

  “I’m not selling them. We’ll sell something else.”

  “Maybe I could sell you, if you were good for anything,” said Frederick.

  “I need them. They’re for my future wife,” William said.

  Frederick slapped his knee. “What future wife? No woman in her right mind would ever marry you. You repel them all like you always have.”

  “And no woman would ever stay with you,” William said. “Where’s your wife now? Where’s your son? How long has it been since you’ve seen them?”

  “Oh, go slobber over your postcards, you pathetic piece of—”

  William pushed Frederick out of his chair; Frederick sprang up and punched William out of his shoes. The two of them rolled across the carpet like children, flailing flailing flailing.

  The house was mortgaged to the hilt. When they died here, and they would, the house would be turned over to a bank and then to a builder, and the builder would knock it down, as if it had never been. As if they hadn’t.

  The area children called William and Frederick “the uncles.” They said it in hushed tones, as if they were telling a ghost story.

  We are all our own devils, and we make this world our hell. Oscar Wilde had said that.

  I’d come back to punish them, but it seemed that someone already had.

  Still.

  I took the rings. I left the postcards burning in a trash bin by the window. Maybe the curtains would catch. Maybe they wouldn’t.

  I left the house behind and went to the lake, settled myself in a snowbank, Wolf at my feet. The mermaids bobbed in the distance. The sun was high and strong. When the birds cried overhead, I said Hello, I love you, hello, I miss you. You never know what shape an angel might take, and Marguerite would hear me.

  But it didn’t take long for him to appear, swinging his cane this way and that. When he reached me, he stopped short.

  You’re the whitest girl I’ve ever seen, he said.

  I know.

  You’re so white you’re almost blue.

  You can call me Blue Girl, if you want.

  He tapped the handle of the blade sticking out of his neck. That would be like you calling me Knife Man. But this is not all I am.

  I thought about that. How I’d assumed he was a ghost like any ghost, no memories but one. How I’d assumed that I was so special, when I’d been playing my own death over and over just like everyone else. When I had hidden myself from myself because it hurt too much.

  I thought he was a character in my story, but maybe I was a character in his.

  You’re right, I said. What shall I call you then?

  The name’s Horace Bordeaux, like a fine wine.

  Only better, I said.

  Now you’ve got it.

  You can call me Pearl.

  Well, Pearl. I was about to take myself out to dinner. Are you and your little friend hungry?

  As it turned out, we were.

  Horace took me and Wolf to a Chinese restaurant all the way downtown, maybe the first one in Chicago. When we walked in the door, a man whose black hair was shot with silver glanced up from his work at the counter in the back. Even with the silver threads in his hair, the lines etched on his face, even though he was a stranger now, I knew who it was. I knew.

  Once upon a time, a boy chased a girl through the woods to their joy and their ruin. But the boy lived to be a man, lived to marry a lovely woman with strong hands and a delicate face. He had three more children with her, and they were lovely too. It was its own kind of fairy tale, its own kind of prayer.

  Upstairs, in the bathroom of the restaurant, I turned on the hot water. In the fog on the mirror, I drew a picture of Mercy.

  Then I sat with Horace over dinner. He asked me to tell him about myself.

  I said: I was the wolf. And you?

  He said: Let me tell you a story.

  We spoke perfect Chinese. The food was hot and spicy and lit us up from the inside.

  We ate our fill.

  Witness

  MUCH LATER, I WATCHED MERCY and her boxer man while they slept. I am here, I am here for you, I told her. One day she would wake up, one day she would see me, one day she would forgive me, one day I would forgive myself. And maybe, one day, she would see herself, know herself. I had transgressed, but she wasn’t a transgression. She was everything good and beautiful in the world.

  In the meantime, I slipped the pearl and diamond rings on her hand.

  She could always sell them.

  Doorways

  AS FOR FRANKIE, SHE TOO had already flown away.

  Well, in her head she had.

  In reality, she was still lying on the couch in her father’s cramped apartment in the dark, waiting for Toni to creep out to the living room. She had her bag packed and tucked under Toni’s bed; all Toni had to do was grab it along with her own. Every cent Frankie had saved was crammed in an old purse she hugged against her che
st.

  Also crammed into the purse: a pad of paper, her pastels, and two more letters.

  Dear Frankie,

  By the time you get this, I will probably be halfway across the ocean. I’ve left the orphanage. Sister Bert arranged for me to get my diploma a little early, just like she did for you. I just couldn’t stand it there a minute longer, not one minute. Without you, and without Beatriz. Yes, the nurse’s aide from the orphanage.

  You asked me once if I always confessed everything to Father Paul. I’m confessing to you instead. I’m going to be with her. I don’t care if we have to live in a pile of bomb-ridden rubble and eat dirt for breakfast for the next fifty years.

  I know how much you loved Sam, how much you risked for him. That’s how much I love her. I’m not going to ask for your forgiveness, because you only ask for that if you think you’re doing something wrong. I don’t care what anyone says, this isn’t wrong. But I do hope you understand.

  I know you didn’t have much time with Sam. And it isn’t fair. But that doesn’t mean it was any less real. That’s something to hold on to, so hold on to it.

  I board the boat in a half an hour, so I have to go. I’ll send my new address to Sister Bert, so you’ll always know where to find me.

  One more thing: be happy, Frankie, as happy as you can. And if you can’t be happy, just live as much as you can. Be like Francie in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, be something every minute of every day, be sad, be cold, be warm, be hungry, be full, be ragged or well dressed, be truthful, be a liar and a sinner, only be something every blessed minute. Make art, make the most beautiful art you can, draw everything you see, everything you feel. And when you sleep, dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is lost.

  That’s what I’m going to do.

  Love,

  Loretta

  And:

  Dear Frankie,

  I didn’t know about Mom. I swear to God, I didn’t know.