Forgotten City

by Carrie Smith

  “What else is new?” Her mother slammed her shot glass on the Formica counter. “You must think I’m running a restaurant here or something. You think you can just pay the check and go every night?”

  Claire watched the napkin on her father’s plate absorb the pool of red marinara.

  “What’s got into you?” he snapped.

  “I’m up to here. That’s what.” Her mother raised her palm to chest level.

  “What do you want from me? I got a job.”

  “Yeah, sure. And what’s your job’s name?”

  “Shut up, Maureen.”

  “Because I’m not one of those ditsy little Italian housewives who looks the other way, remember? I’m Irish, even if I make a better gravy than your mother.” She waved a disdainful hand at his dinner plate and poured herself another shot. Her father’s expression was cold and implacable, but her mother refused to heed the warning signs. She continued, “What does she do for you, huh? What’s her job?”

  He pounded the table with both fists. His plate jumped. “I said shut up, Maureen.” He turned to Claire. “Don’t you have school work? Go do it.”

  Claire got up.

  “Does she get on her knees?” Her mother’s taunts were fueled by cheap vodka. “Does she get down there and say, ‘Oh baby, it’s so big’?”

  From the next room, Claire heard her father shout, “Shut your fucking mouth, you stupid Irish cunt, or I’ll shut it for you!” She heard the familiar crack of his hand across her mother’s face. She moved reflexively back into the doorway as her mother staggered, lost balance, hit the Formica counter, and fell. When her mother got back on her feet, blood was rolling down her forehead. She was smiling. “I see I touched a nerve, huh? I guess I got it right,” she said in a scornful voice that precipitated another blow to her jaw. Then Claire’s father turned and saw Claire in the doorway. “Get the fuck out of here.” He raised his fist. “Unless you want some too.”

  Claire could have run upstairs and crawled under her bed. She could have hidden in the basement or at the back of a closet. But in the panic of the moment, she ran out the front door to the silence of the street. To the end of screaming and slapping. She was breathing fast. She stood at the end of the driveway and looked both ways down the block. The neighbors’ houses appeared warm and inviting, but then, so did hers. She walked to the end of the dark block and back, hugging herself. She had not thought to grab her jacket, and in the biting winter air, her teeth were chattering. The bottoms of her feet absorbed the coldness of the concrete sidewalk through her thin sneakers. Her fingers grew stiff. She tugged at the heavy garage door—it would be warmer in there—but she did not have enough strength to lift it. She could no longer feel her toes. Her ears burned. She looked into the next-door neighbor’s house. Mrs. Nardallillo was sitting in front of her television. But Claire knew that knocking at a neighbor’s door was not an option, that exposing her family’s secret violence would have dire consequences she could not quite articulate.

  Then she remembered the old blanket in the back of her father’s Impala. She opened the rear passenger-side door. The blanket was balled up on the floor behind the driver’s seat. She crawled into the car and closed the door behind her so the dome light wouldn’t draw attention to her. She was draping the blanket over her shoulders when the front door slammed. She dropped to the floorboard and pulled the blanket over her head. The driver’s door opened and shut and the driver’s seat pressed into her shoulder as her father adjusted his position. She was too terrified to breathe. Her teeth began to chatter from fear, not cold. She bit into her hand hard to stop them. The car rolled down the driveway, and she stayed beneath the scratchy wool blanket, her cramped, rigid body in agony, as they twisted and turned through the dimly lit streets of Cranston.

  Finally the car came to a stop. The driver’s door opened and slammed shut again. Her father’s heavy footsteps moved away from the car and faded into the night. She remained under the blanket for several minutes. Then she peeked out, sat up slowly, and peered over the driver’s seat. Through the front windshield she was staring at an unfamiliar street. She looked over her shoulder, through the rear windshield, and saw that her father had backed the car into the driveway of a small, aluminum-sided house. He had popped the trunk of the car, obstructing part of her view.

  She waited and waited. Each exhalation became a small cloud in front of her mouth. She stuffed her hands between her legs to warm them. Her shivering made her aware that she needed to go to the bathroom, and the more she tried to ignore this need, the more it intensified. She held her legs tightly together and rocked in time to a song she had learned in school. O Mary, we crown thee with roses today. Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May. She mumbled the words over and over until the song ceased to distract her from her physical discomfort, and she opened her door, walked up the driveway at the side of the house, and peered through a window into a small living room.

  She saw it all like a silent movie. The woman’s terrified face. Her mouth forming words. No. No. Please. Her arms moving up to shield her face. Her father’s surprisingly placid expression as he swung the bat into her stomach so hard that she bent forward and vomited. The second swing that bent the woman’s knees unnaturally and sent her to the floor. The third and fourth blows that must have broken vertebrae. Her father mouthing some words while the woman writhed in pain and pleaded for mercy at his feet. And then the home run hit that crushed the left side of her skull.

  Claire did not realize she was screaming until her father looked up and their eyes met through the windowpane. He dropped the bat and came outside. He clamped one latex-gloved hand over her mouth and dragged her into the house as she kicked and screamed. “You stupid little shit.” He launched her into a corner, and her head slammed against the wall. Only then, as she watched him unfurl an industrial-size black plastic bag, did she realize that she had urinated. Her father worked the trash bag around the body, stuffed the bloody bat inside, and carried out his handiwork. Then he came back for her, and when they emerged, two Cranston police cars were blocking the driveway.

  At the Cranston Station, they called Claire’s mother. When she showed up, she was so inebriated that they refused to let her take Claire home. She slapped Claire’s face over and over in the station bullpen and screamed “Look what you’ve done! This is your fault!” until two officers pulled her off and arrested her on a DUI and child endangerment. Then a social worker was called and Claire had to talk to a detective, and then she began her odyssey through the Child Protective Services system while her mother “stood by her man”—unlike Joanie Carlucci, the woman Claire’s father had punished for not standing by hers.

  Now Codella stared through her living room window at the snow blanketing Broadway. She touched the side of her abdomen where the lymphoma had been. In the wake of cancer, this touch had become habitual, a way of reassuring herself that the cancer was gone. She saw a yellow cab—the only vehicle on the snow-covered street—fishtail when the light turned green. She thought of her mother and father, now in their sixties, whose only intimacy had ever been violence and a shared bottle of cheap vodka. Codella had been an afterthought in their lives. She had existed in their physical space but not in their emotional world. When she had left, her mother never reached out in an effort to reclaim her. She had discarded Claire as easily as New Yorkers let go of flyers people shoved at them in Times Square. Codella supposed it was natural to feel sadness about that, but she had compartmentalized her sadness well—or at least, she thought she had. But this afternoon, Julia Merchant had flaunted her mother-daughter bond and reminded Codella that her mother had chosen a bottle and a monster over her.

  Codella exhaled a deep breath. She was lucky her mother had let her go. She had escaped and made herself into the opposite of her mother. She had never allowed herself to become someone else’s victim, and now it was her job to avenge those who were victims.

  She turned away from the window. If someone had killed Julia Merchan
t’s mother, she told herself, she would find out who. And then she returned to the bed and fitted her body against Haggerty’s warmth.

  TUESDAY

  CHAPTER 18

  Haggerty flipped on the gas. “Hey, where’s the coffee?”

  Codella opened the cupboard and smiled. “Have some tea.”

  He frowned. “I’ll pass.”

  She went to the front door while he examined the contents of her refrigerator. This morning, her New York Times lay on the floor tiles in front of her neighbor Jean’s door. Speed, not accuracy, was the main concern of the delivery guy who hurled papers from the elevator each morning. Codella picked it up and was carrying it back to the kitchen when she noticed the headline on the front page just above the fold. “Hey, check this out,” she called to Haggerty, who was slipping two slices of bread into the toaster. He came behind her to read.

  Broadway Dance Legend Dead at Age 56

  One of Broadway’s shining stars, Lucy Martinelli Merchant, died yesterday of Alzheimer’s related complications. Fans of musical theater remember her best as Noreen Shipley, the big-hearted showgirl in Vegas Nights, a performance that New Yorker critic Marty O’Kane described as a “dazzling, heart-stopping display of art in motion.” In 1993, Vegas Nights won Merchant her third of five Tony Awards for Best Lead Actress in a Musical. During her 386 consecutive performances, Merchant famously signed autographs every night, often lingering at the stage door for more than an hour. In a Vanity Fair interview that year, she explained her devotion to fans: “The theatergoers are my real employers. Without their passion and dedication, the magic on stage could never happen. I owe my joy to them. Why wouldn’t I give some back?”

  Codella turned to the inside page where the article continued. She poured boiling water over the green tea bag in her mug while Haggerty pulled the toast out and buttered it. Then they continued to read.

  During her career, Merchant electrified Broadway and West End stages in hit after hit. Choreographers loved to work with her. “She’s not just an artist and a superb athlete; she’s the ultimate risk taker,” choreographer Gabriel Salzman commented during previews for Vegas Nights.

  Haggerty took a bite of his toast. “You ever see her?”

  “I wish I had.”

  “I once dated a dancer. She had an amazing body.” He grinned.

  “Dated or picked up?”

  He kissed her cheek. “It was a long time ago.”

  Codella rolled her eyes at him and sipped her tea. She skimmed through the details of Lucy Merchant’s first four Tony Awards until she got to something more interesting.

  In 1994, Merchant gave birth to only daughter, Julia Merchant, and in 1996, she married the father, newly divorced financier Thomas Merchant. That same year, she won her fourth Tony Award in Harbinger of Love. She went on to win a fifth in 2001 for Filibuster, in which she played the role of Helen, the spiteful wife of a U.S. senator, opposite a delightfully abhorrent Malcolm Walsh, who also won a Tony for his performance.

  In a freak accident six months into that show’s run, Merchant fell from a structural platform during a performance and broke her leg in two places. She never returned to the stage as a dancer, but in the wake of the tragedy, she transformed herself into one of the most prolific and innovative choreographers of her time, staging back-to-back hits such as Dance Until Dawn and Fever Dream.

  “You ever wonder what your obit will say?” Haggerty asked.

  “I wrote mine in my head several times while I was in the hospital.” She sipped her tea. “Lucy Merchant’s was probably written by some New York Times staff writer the day she moved into Park Manor. I’m sure all those celebrity obits are sitting in a file years in advance.”

  Haggerty held a piece of toast up to her mouth. “Eat something, Detective. You’re still too thin. Let’s keep your obit in the file.”

  Codella pushed the toast away and kept reading instead. Haggerty lowered the toast to a plate, rested his chin on her shoulder, and read along.

  In a 2014 interview with New York Times arts columnist John Avery, Merchant acknowledged that she was a carrier of a rare genetic presenilin mutation associated with inherited early onset Alzheimer’s disease. “This is obviously devastating news. I’ll face it with as much stage presence as possible and do whatever I can while I can to advocate for those who still have time to benefit from a cure.”

  Broadway marquee lights were dimmed at 8:00 PM last night in Merchant’s honor. She is survived by her husband, Thomas Merchant, daughter, Julia Merchant, and younger sister, Pamela Martinelli.

  Codella lowered the paper. “Shit, that’s worse than cancer.”

  “We’re all ticking time bombs.” Haggerty raised the toast to her mouth again.

  Were any diseases purely accidental, she wondered as she took a bite, or were they all blueprinted in the primordial language of DNA the moment your life began? She had experienced the awfulness of the body’s betrayal. But how could that begin to compare with the mind’s? Had all of Lucy Merchant’s memories dissolved before she died? Had she lived her last days with no storyline at all, robbed of her darkest secrets, her deepest disappointments, and her failed romances as well as her moments of glory on the stage, at a curtain call, when thunderous applause must have made her feel omnipotent?

  Codella recalled her own vivid memories of childhood. The sights, sounds, and smells of that last evening on Pleasant Street in Cranston were hardly pleasant, but they were part of her narrative, part of who she was today. They were like the light from a burned out sun still barreling through time and space to make an impact on the present. What would be left of her when those memories faded away?

  Haggerty was rinsing his plate. Then he put it in the dishwasher. He was on his best behavior, she thought. Trying to make this work—whatever this was. She put her hand on his back. He turned, smiled, and wrapped his arms around her waist. His hands found the backup gun in the holster tucked into her waistband, and he frowned. “Since when do you carry your backup on duty?”

  “Since the last time I could have used one,” she said. “Since Sanchez.”

  He kissed her lightly on the lips. “Well, let’s hope you don’t need one today, Detective Codella. Now, I’ve got to go. Reilly’s out until next Monday, and I’m playing captain all week.”

  CHAPTER 19

  At first, the noise was a loose catgut string vibrating in slow motion in the back of her mind. Then, little by little, the vibrations sped up and the pitch grew higher so that the sound perforated her awareness. Eventually her dreaming self could not dampen the noise or sleep around it any longer, and her eyes opened.

  She was aware of the light, brilliant and blinding. She felt the grip of invisible fingers compressing her skull. Then sights and sensations emerged from the black hole of her mind. They were like jump cuts in a movie, too quick to process. Black tires circling gleaming hubcaps. The needle pricks of falling snowflakes on skin. The snap of burning logs in a fireplace. Her limp legs and arms falling into soft sheets. The hard cracking sound of flesh slapping flesh. Hot, lacerating pain. Suffocation. Terrible pressure.

  She shut her eyes to seal out the images, but they persisted on the insides of her lids. Over and over, the same flashes, surreal, indecipherable. She hugged the pillow. The fabric felt familiar. This was her pillow, she thought, which meant that this must be her bed. She squeezed her forearm to make sure that she was real. She ran her hand up and over her shoulder to her neck. She felt her naked stomach and legs. But who was she? What was her name? She squeezed her eyes together and tried to grasp the answer through a thick mental sludge. And then it came to her. Baiba Lielkaja. My name is Baiba Lielkaja. And this most basic fact became a tenuous bridge to others. I come from Latvia. My mother lives in Riga. My father is dead. I have a sister. I live in New York City.

  This reconstruction of her basic identity exhausted her. She curled on her side and brought her knees up to her breasts. The insistent noise continued to assault her eardrums. Was
she only imagining it? She pulled the covers over her naked body. Her mouth was so dry. Her chin and cheeks felt chapped and raw against the pillowcase. Her neck was stiff, and it was hard to swallow. When her knees brushed against her breasts, the nipples felt sore. She lowered her knees, straightening her legs between the sheets, and realized that her thighs and abdomen ached.

  The awareness of pain made her more alert. The offensive noise, she finally realized, was the ringing of an alarm clock, her alarm clock, and she reached out to turn it off. In the subsequent silence, her confusion turned to terror. She was afraid to move, to take further inventory of her body. She did not want to think. She did not want to know what had happened in the dark emptiness of her amnesia, and yet she knew without remembering. She knew it all in a sudden upsurge of awareness that made her curl into an even tighter ball, like a primitive pill bug reacting to danger. Now what do I do? she asked herself, and the answer tracing the circumference of her consciousness was, Nothing. Block it out. Forget it before you remember.

  CHAPTER 20

  “Thank you, Heather.” Constance Hodges lifted her eyes as her assistant set the clear mug of coffee on her desk. She stared at the headline. Park Manor: Lucy Merchant’s Last Address. She was not surprised to see it. In these waning days of print media, disclosing the excesses of the privileged was still a sure way to sell tabloids, and Lucy Merchant’s death was the predictable excuse for another Park Manor exposé.

  Hodges sipped her coffee and studied the byline. The reporter’s name wasn’t familiar to her, and that meant it was unlikely he had ever set foot in Park Manor. If he had, she would know it, because no one gained admittance without signing in and showing a valid ID card. His article, she concluded, must be a tapestry of tabloid fabrications and rehashed rumors. Still, there was the possibility he had sniffed around. He might have “befriended” a talkative resident leaving the building. And many of those residents had no filters. There was no telling what they would say.