by Liz Freeland
Mortified, numb, and terrified that he might come at me again, I waited until I’d heard his footsteps retreat down the hall and then down the stairs before getting up and stumbling back to my dresser. In the mirror, one side of my face was red and bore the outline of lace in my cheek. At first, in my daze of confused revulsion, I couldn’t put a name to what had happened. I dressed and, not knowing what else to do, tried to continue on with my day. I got as far as the front door, but turned back. Much as I wanted to escape the house, I dreaded seeing anyone. What was I going to say?
I wound up in the kitchen, preparing supper. Aunt Sonja had mentioned having cabbage that evening. By the time she got back, less than an hour later, I’d cut up five heads of them. When my aunt looked at the mountain of chopped cabbage on the wooden counter, she demanded to know if I’d lost my mind. It took three Carusos to calm her down.
If only it could have been as easy to soothe the storm raging inside me. By then I’d conjured a word for what had happened. Violated. I’d seen the word in papers, and even heard the word rape whispered, usually in conjunction with the name of a girl who’d fallen from grace and should have known better than to . . .
But what had I done? That man had said I’d looked at him, but I couldn’t help looking at people. If he’d interpreted my manner as leading him on, would others, too? In my heart, I knew I’d done nothing. I didn’t deserve to be a girl people whispered about. Perhaps those other girls hadn’t deserved it, either. Right or wrong rarely stilled flapping tongues.
Occasionally a wave of indignation would hit me and I’d determine to go to the police. But I knew only one policeman, our neighbor Mr. Meyer’s annoying son Gus, who’d been a terror as a boy and hadn’t matured much since. Was I really going down to the station to tell what had happened in my bedroom to smirking, sneering Gus and his colleagues? What if they didn’t believe me? I couldn’t stomach it.
That evening, Mr. Tate packed his suitcase, settled with Aunt Sonja, and left Altoona. So I said nothing, and continued to say nothing until three months later, when it became clear to Aunt Sonja that I was pregnant. I confessed the whole story in a rush, relieved to finally tell someone. When I was done, Aunt Sonja was looking at me with a hard, skeptical stare.
“The nice man who left you all those stockings?” she asked.
As if Mr. Tate’s insulting final gesture was proof that I’d traded my body for hosiery. My heart froze. Forget policemen. My own aunt didn’t believe I hadn’t encouraged Mr. Tate.
I reminded her that I’d told her to donate the wretched stockings to the needy family collection at the church. But she couldn’t believe I hadn’t done something to make him think I was fast. It was as if my behavior in all the years I’d lived with my aunt and uncle counted for nothing. I had fallen, and it had to be my fault.
“You’d better write to him,” she told me. “I can’t say I’d want to be married to a traveling man myself, but it’s too late for you to be thinking of that now.”
I could have cried. Married? Had she not listened to a word I’d said? “Aunt Sonja, he raped me.”
Her lips flattened, and she brooded in silence through “La Mia Canzone.” I thought perhaps I’d reached her. Then she said, “He might be married already. In which case you’re really in a mess, my girl.”
I let her know in no uncertain terms that I wanted nothing to do with Mr. Tate ever again.
“What will you do, then?” she asked. “You can’t stay here. Dolph and I have the boys to consider.”
Aunt Sonja and I didn’t part on the best of terms. Uncle Dolph and Uncle Luddie never said a word to me until Uncle Dolph saw me off on the train out of town. In parting, he presented me with the set of knives at the station. The cardboard box they came in was only slightly smaller than my suitcase and weighed twice as much. “I meant to give the knives to you as a wedding present someday,” he said. “But now . . .”
In the weeks that followed, I tried very hard not to think too much about what he meant by but now. Apparently the family who raised me no longer considered me marriageable. Most days that was fine by me. I never wanted to have anything to do with men again. Marriage wasn’t the be-all and end-all. The last thing I wanted to do was have to explain to some suitor what had happened to me. To apologize for being despoiled. I was done apologizing for someone else’s barbarity.
Callie pinched my arm, jolting me out of my own thoughts. The train was pulling into the Thirty-fourth Street stop. Without warning, she bolted for the door, pulling me along with her.
“What is it?” I asked, watching our train—the one we were no longer on—squeal out of the station.
Callie’s respiration was as quick and shallow as a rabbit’s. “There was a man on that train. He’s been following me.”
“Are you sure?” I looked after the last car disappearing from view, as if that would be any help. “What did he look like?”
“He’s about medium height, and he wore a brown suit with faint stripes, not very well cut. He has beady eyes and a bristly brown mustache. I also saw him following me this morning, and watching from across the street while I was in the candy store.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”
“I hoped I was imagining things.”
“He’s probably one of those newspapermen.” I was still incensed that they’d found a picture of Ethel—heaven only knew how. Callie’s photograph album was on the bottom shelf of a table in her bedroom. Which meant that either the police had given it to journalists or someone had been snooping through our things while we were out.
“He wasn’t standing with the other men from the papers,” Callie said.
A maverick penny-a-liner. Even worse. “The next time I see Muldoon, Robinson, or any policeman, I’m going to demand they do something. We shouldn’t have to be pestered this way—we didn’t commit a crime.”
“What can they do?” she asked. “The man following me hasn’t spoken to me, or even approached me. My skin crawls when I think of him watching me, but maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill.”
I doubted it. Men didn’t usually frighten Callie. If she said this one was shady, I believed her.
We boarded the next train and once we got off again we walked with fleeter steps to our apartment, our antennae now on alert for any sign of the mustache. Callie whispered that she couldn’t see him anymore, and even the flock of journalist buzzards in front of our building had thinned. Maybe this was their supper break.
At the thought of supper, my stomach rumbled. Bernice’s soup was waiting for us in the icebox, which made it easier to run the gauntlet of pesky questions.
“Give us your story, girls.”
“Where were you the night of the murder?”
“Why was Ethel Gail alone in the apartment?”
“Vultures,” I muttered.
We scooted into the building and dashed up the stairs, mindful as always of Wally, who, happily, wasn’t hovering at the bottom of the steps.
“But aren’t we doing the same things those journalists are—snooping into Ethel’s life?” Callie asked.
“That’s different. We knew her. Those men out there are simply trying to get information to feed a public hunger for sensationalism. They’re the lowest form of life.”
As we reached the third floor, a bulb flashed, momentarily blinding us. It had come from the direction of our doorway.
“Give us a story to go with the photo, Miss Gail,” a reporter standing next to the photographer called out. His voice barked as loudly as if we were all the way across a football field instead of mere feet away from him.
Once the spots had cleared from my eyes, I rushed forward. “Get out of here.”
“Just a few words,” the man pleaded, ignoring me. “Your angle, Miss Gail—about how much you’ll miss your cousin from the country. How ’bout it?”
“I’ll call for a policeman,” I warned. “You’re trespassing.”
The man with the camera s
hook his head. “We have a perfect right to be here. We got permission from the management.”
Did I say journalists were the lowest form of life? My error. Landladies’ sons actually took that prize. No telling how much these two had paid Wally to be let into what the papers were now charmingly referring to as “the murder apartment.” Small wonder Wally had been so eager to keep us there when his mother wanted us out. He was probably raking in a tidy profit from Ethel’s murder.
“Get out,” I repeated. “You won’t get any more fodder for your birdcage liner from us.”
“Okay, girls,” the scribbler said, as if I’d just wished him a good day. He and his photographer chum left, not at all out of sorts.
Unlike me. I stomped into the apartment steaming mad, my hunger forgotten. Callie sank onto the sofa. She looked depressed, which made me even madder. As if Callie didn’t have enough to trouble her without Wally selling tickets to our misfortune. “I’m going to go down and give him a piece of my mind,” I fumed.
“Don’t,” Callie said.
“We have to do something. Those men could have come in and taken anything. Look at this place.” Our housekeeping was always a bit haphazard. We both had a high tolerance for clutter, and Callie absolutely loved to accumulate trinkets, decorative bits of material, and inexpensive objets d’art she found in secondhand stores. Now, though, after the police had been through everything, our clutter was more chaotic than usual. “How will we notice anything missing? At least until it’s splashed across the front pages, like Ethel’s picture. I wonder how much Wally got for that.”
“If we make a fuss, Mrs. Grimes will just be all that much more eager to kick us out.”
“So what? This isn’t the only apartment building in Manhattan.”
“But it’s the one where all our things are. And, as you reminded me, we’ve paid up for the month.”
She had me there. “Next time we find a place, we pay week to week.”
“At least we can go down to the Bleecker Blowers’ apartment for the next few days. It’ll seem like a different place.”
Yes. And it was the apartment directly above Wally’s. “I’m going to take up clog dancing this week,” I said. “Clog dancing and bagpiping and maybe Limburger cheese making.”
Callie groaned. “Take up new-roommate-finding while you’re at it.”
A commotion downstairs interrupted my plotting. It sounded like a riot—doors slamming, people shouting, crashes, a scream. Callie and I ran out to the landing and leaned over the railing to peer downstairs.
“This is him!” Wally cried. “The butcher!”
“Call the police!” someone yelled from outside the front door.
“I just left the police.” Otto’s voice was a muffled croak, as if someone’s boot was on his throat. “I didn’t do it!”
I charged down the stairs. By the time I covered the two flights, Otto was being mobbed. I jumped into the fray, taking one of his arms and trying to pull him free. The poor man looked in danger of being tugged apart like a Christmas cracker. Everyone was yelling—me louder than any of them—and the commotion didn’t stop until a police constable burst through the door.
“What’s going on here!” he bellowed at us all.
The dissonant, chaotic reply he received was worthy of Stravinsky. The newspaper men retreated to the sidelines, flashbulbs popping as Wally and I continued our tug-of-war with Otto in the role of rope. Sheet music papered the floor, and I nearly lost my footing when one of them slipped beneath my shoe’s heel. Reporters scooped up copies.
The police officer finally pried Otto away from Wally and me.
“He’s the man that murdered Ethel Gail!” Wally cried.
“I didn’t do it,” Otto repeated. “Ask Detective Muldoon.”
“I saw him with my own eyes,” Wally said.
I turned pleading eyes on the officer. “No, he didn’t. This man was at the police station all day. They obviously let him go.”
“Or he escaped,” Wally said.
“Sure—and came right back here to the scene of the crime,” I said with a sneer.
The policeman narrowed his eyes on Otto. “Got yourself a fast-talking lawyer, did you?”
Otto gulped. “No, sir. Mr. Faber just speaks at the normal speed.”
Several reporters sniggered, which didn’t help Otto. The policeman’s face darkened. “A wisenheimer.”
“He oughta be locked up,” Wally growled. “It ain’t safe with guys like this wandering loose.”
The cop shook his head, disgusted. “Once these mouthpieces start getting their mitts in, there’s no end to the mischief.” He yanked Otto up by his coat collar until Otto was almost on tiptoe and they were standing nose-to-nose. “I’ll have my eye on you, son.”
“Yes, sir,” Otto said.
Wally hitched up his pants and glared at Otto. “That goes double for me.”
I pulled Otto free and steered him toward the stairs, but of course he had to stop to scoop up his music, minus the copies the reporters had pinched.
“What happened this afternoon?” I asked him as we headed upstairs. “When did you get out? What did they say to you?”
I could have fired off questions till I was hoarse; Otto wasn’t listening. He was staring up at Callie, who was still leaning over the banister. She smiled at him.
“You’re Louise’s roommate?” he asked, gawking.
The day had been so long and terrible, and our situations all seemed so bound up together, that I forgot Callie and Otto hadn’t met. She’d glimpsed him this morning as he was being hauled away, but the frenzy of the moment hadn’t allowed for formal introductions.
“I’m awfully sorry about your cousin,” Otto said, after I introduced them. “I hope you don’t think I was the one who . . .”
Callie shook her head. “Louise explained it all to me. Now come in. I’ll warm up some soup. You must be hungry if you’ve been in jail all day.”
“They gave me a sandwich, b-but I am a little hungry,” Otto stammered. “It’s very nice of you to offer, Miss Gail.”
“Callie,” she corrected.
She ducked into the kitchenette to heat up the soup—the limit of her cooking expertise—while I got back to my questioning. “How did you get out?” I asked Otto.
He didn’t hear the question. He was staring off toward the kitchen.
“Otto?”
He turned back to me, blinking. “Oh—how did I get out? Well, I don’t know if I ever would have if your aunt hadn’t sent Mr. Faber. Now there’s a clever fellow. He told Mr. Muldoon he couldn’t hold me because there was no evidence except Wally’s, and that he’d have contradictory testimony from the people at my hotel.” Otto frowned. “But that man Wally seems very sure, doesn’t he? If I didn’t know better, I’d almost believe him myself.”
Even as he spoke to me, his attention strayed more than once in the direction of the kitchen.
“Wally is an idiot,” I said. “So is Detective Muldoon.”
“Muldoon’s not so bad. He listened to Mr. Faber. Otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to thank your aunt enough.”
I chewed my lip, wondering. Why had Muldoon listened to Faber, but not to me? Had there been some sort of payoff? I’d heard stories about crooked policemen in this town—money slipped under tables for them to look the other way. I hoped nothing like that had happened today. Otto was innocent, and it shouldn’t require jiggery-pokery to prove it.
Otto, who’d been sitting in the armchair, straightened and peered around the room. “So this is where you live? It’s nice. Real homey.”
“It’s not looking its best at the moment.”
“Well, no.” His gaze flicked toward the closed door down the hall. In a lower voice, he added, “Is that where . . . ?” I nodded and he swallowed, his Adam’s apple leaping above his collar. “You shouldn’t be here, should you?”
“We’re going to stay downstairs for a few days. The nei
ghbors are out of town for the week.”
Callie darted her head into the room. “We keep coming back here, though. It seems second nature.”
He nodded, drinking her in with that look. I shifted. Callie was smiling back at him gently, the way she might smile if we’d brought home a wounded puppy.
“What about you?” I asked him. “Where are you going to stay?”
“At my hotel, I guess,” he said. “I still have money left from what the music publisher sent me. I’ll need to find a room soon, though, to economize.”
“You’re going to stay in New York?” Otto had been so much a part of my Altoona life, it was hard imagining him here permanently.
“Of course. If I’m really going to make a go of my songwriting, I need to be where the business is.”
“I thought maybe you’d want to go back to Altoona. You’ve had a rocky start here.”
Again, that gaze strayed kitchenward. “I can’t see going back to the butcher shop, nice as your uncle always was to me. And now your aunt Irene. Gosh, without your family I’d be a mess, wouldn’t I?”
I wasn’t positive he was out of the woods yet. There was that sheet music, for one thing. “I saw reporters picking up your music. I hope they don’t mention your song in connection with the murder.”
Callie zipped into the room. “I want to see your song.” She picked up a sheet from the table.
“Callie might be cast in a musical revue,” I told Otto.
“Oh!” He sat up straighter, his eyes brightening with a new respectful adoration that almost had me rolling my eyes. You’d think he’d just met Ethel Barrymore.
She scanned the music, smiling. “This is a sweet tune.” She flicked back to the cover. “And it’s dedicated to Louise!” She grinned at me.
I foolishly blushed, but not nearly as much as Otto, who was halfway to tomato on the color spectrum.
“ ‘She’s my tootsie from Altoona,’ ” Callie sang in a lilting soprano. Her heels bounced a little to the rhythm, and the rest of her bounced along.