Halsey Street

by Naima Coster

  Penelope scanned Samantha’s face.

  “You must know each other so well after all these years together.”

  “We’ve been through a lot. School, and marriage, and then more school. Quitting jobs and finding jobs. Grace. This house. Both of our mothers dying the year before we moved to New York.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “You’re not close to your mother, are you? What a shame. Parents don’t live forever, you know.”

  “I’m aware.”

  “You’ll feel differently when you have children of your own. It’s obvious you’re very good with them. Grace adores you. Lately, whenever I tuck her in for bed, she’s all Penelope this and Penelope that. She seems less lonely with you around.”

  Samantha swirled the wine in her glass, inhaled the bouquet.

  “When I was your age, Grace was already four. I had her in my second year of law school, and our parents thought we were nuts. That was the hardest part, the beginning. But you never regret starting a family. You can create the life you want. It’s a beautiful thing.”

  Penelope didn’t believe her.

  “But I remember the years before—when I wasn’t committed to anyone, anything. I hope you’re taking advantage. You must be seeing someone?”

  Penelope could see through the landlady now. All this talk had been a preamble, and she was finally closing in on what she really wanted to say.

  “Come on now,” Samantha said, her smile growing even more strained and gorgeous. “I’ll keep your secret.” Her teeth were violet from the wine.

  “There isn’t anything to tell.”

  “I don’t believe you. Someone like you must have many options—you’re so athletic, exotic. I’m skinny, yes, but you have all these muscles and curves. I’m just straight up and down. You’re far more striking than someone like me. And your hair—there’s so much of it. And it looks so messy, but in a good way. That’s the whole beauty of it, isn’t it?”

  Penelope slid onto the edge of her chair, not as if she were ready to leave but to show the landlady she wouldn’t be intimidated. “Is there a point you’re getting at?”

  “All I’m saying is there has to be someone. There’s no way that teaching a bunch of kids how to finger-paint and running a couple of laps around the block is enough for a woman like you. I remember what it’s like to be single. To date and flirt and fuck around. Have pity on me, Penelope. I don’t have that freedom anymore, and I don’t have any single girlfriends to tell me their war stories. So dish. Tell me. I promise I won’t tell Marcus.”

  “Samantha, is there something you want to say to me?”

  “Why would there be? Is there something you want to say to me?”

  “Look, I used to be a bartender, so I can tell when people are drinking because they’re actually feeling good and trying to celebrate something—like having the house to themselves—or if they’re just drinking to work up the nerve to do something they could never do sober.”

  “And which kind of drinker are you?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re not just a former bartender, are you, Penelope? You’re quite the connoisseur yourself. Of very expensive, very chic gin.”

  “Were you in my room?”

  “Of course not. That would violate our agreement, wouldn’t it? I’ve seen the bottles. Marcus might be the man of the house, but I’m the one who takes down the recycling.”

  “Do you have a problem with my drinking?”

  “Your drinking is your concern, not mine.”

  “Well then what did you want to talk to me about?”

  “Marcus tells me you might be moving.”

  “I’ve already given him my notice. I’ll be gone by the new year.”

  “He said you didn’t give a reason for wanting to leave.”

  “The lease doesn’t require that I do.”

  Samantha frowned. “You’ve put me in quite a pickle.”

  “How is that?”

  “Someone has to pay the mortgage while Marcus goes off and becomes a writer, and I’m not around nearly enough. Grace is often alone, and it helps her, I know, to have someone in the house. I never meant for that to be you, but Grace has grown very fond . . . The last thing I want is for her to lose someone again. Even if it’s just the idea of someone.”

  Penelope didn’t say anything.

  “Please don’t rush this decision. It would crush Grace. We can talk about it after the holidays when we get back from California. Deal?”

  Samantha smiled, as if there was a lever inside of her that she had pulled, but Penelope could see that her lips were shaking. She murmured about the room being too hot, fanned her face, and lifted the carafe to pour more wine into her glass. Penelope saw her hand slip. The landlady knocked over the glass and the carafe, the dark wine began to seep into the pale wood.

  “Damn,” she said, and instinctively Penelope rose to help her. Samantha was fishing tissues out of a box on the shelf, the flimsy Kleenex coming apart as she tried to sop up the mess. The wine dripped onto the beige carpet. It leaked onto the suede chair.

  Penelope took a few blank pages out of the printer and spread them over the desk. They absorbed the liquid but not the stain. Penelope could feel the warmth of Samantha’s little body beside her; their elbows brushed as they tried to stop the spill. “Damn,” Samantha muttered again. “Damn, damn.”

  She stopped and clenched the desk, tilted her head up to the ceiling with her eyes closed.

  “I think you should go,” she said.

  “I have some paint thinner upstairs. It might help with the stains.”

  “You’ve done enough, Penelope. I want you here for Grace—not for me.”

  “Is that everything then?”

  “It is.”

  Penelope had hardly stepped into the hall when Samantha slammed the door.

  12

  NOBODY WANTS TO SEE

  The Harpers left on Christmas Eve. They weren’t careful about making noise, although the sun wasn’t up yet, and Penelope could have been asleep for all they knew. She was at her window, listening to Samantha and Marcus shout back and forth to one another from different floors of the house. Had he remembered to pack the rubbing alcohol in case somebody had a fall? Flashlights and extra sweaters for walks on the beach?

  Just before the car arrived, Samantha dashed around the house, sealing all the rooms shut. Penelope strained to listen in case Grace called out to say good-bye or to wish her a merry Christmas, but she heard nothing. A black town car drove them away, and Penelope watched, her cup of cold, murky tea balanced on her knee. She hated to admit to herself that she still envied them—Marcus may have fucked the tenant, and they may have lost a baby—whether the boy had been the size of a thimble or a peach or a softball when he died, Penelope didn’t know—but they were still indisputably one. She had heard it all morning: the evidence that they were all moving parts of the same thing, yelling and carrying, packing and leaving together.

  The house felt emptier, as if Penelope could sense all the closed doors. She didn’t like the feeling of being left behind. Penelope lit a cigarette and pushed open the porthole window. She promised herself she wouldn’t fantasize about the Harper family Christmas on the beach, not when she had a family and a holiday of her own. Tonight would be her first Christmas in New York with Ralph, without Mirella.

  She wasn’t due at Halsey Street until evening, so she let the radio play and read from a library book of poems by Gwendolyn Brooks. She drank from a small bottle of gin as she read, until she fell asleep facedown in the winter sun, the lines of a poem orbiting in her head: something about burrowing away from the light, finding comfort in the haze. It was dark when she woke. Somehow she had lost the whole day to poems and gin and sleep. She took a shower to sober up under the cold spray.

  She put on the best of everything she had to prepare for the night: coconut oil in her hair, burgundy lipstick, her leather skirt, a cashmere sweater a customer had le
ft one night in the bar in Squirrel Hill and never returned to reclaim. She inspected her reflection in the mirror above the china sink, and decided she looked beautiful. She wanted someone to tell her so. She took a photograph of herself, half her face in the shadow of her camera.

  She left to pick up the beef pastelitos she had ordered from the Dominican spot on Fulton Street. The girl who rang her up wore blue eye shadow and door-knocker earrings, and she spoke to Penelope in curt English, although she’d been chatting with the woman behind the counter in lazy, beautiful, sprawling Spanish. Could she tell Penelope was Dominican? Penelope wanted to say something to let the cashier know, but what was there to say? Dos fundas plásticas? Feliz Navidad? My mother is alive. She lives across the ocean. She sent me a postcard. I threw it away.

  Penelope settled for “Gracias,” which anyone could have said, and she headed for Halsey Street, even lower than she had been when she first heard the Harpers leave.

  Miss Beckett opened the door, and Penelope shouldn’t have been surprised but she was. Ralph hadn’t mentioned inviting the old bird. She wore a festive, sparkling green dress, and led Penelope up the stairs, as if she were the one hosting a party and it was her house. Ralph was upstairs on the old sofa, elegant in an evergreen sweater, wool pants, his battered oxfords. He smelled clean, like detergent and sweet tobacco. Miss Beckett must have done the laundry. Penelope kissed her father, and he didn’t look up from the television. He was watching reruns of different shows from the seventies, flipping between channels.

  Penelope occupied herself, arranging her spread on the coffee table, iced cookies and bottled eggnog, the pastelitos. Miss Beckett had outdone her with a Christmas ham, a tureen of string beans, biscuits, and a bowl of her infamous potato salad, nearly all celery and mayonnaise. The women served food onto plastic plates and settled down to watch TV with Ralph, who offered commentary on each of the sitcoms. They drank cup after cup of the eggnog, which Penelope had allowed herself to spike. It was Christmas, after all.

  “This is nice,” Penelope said, raising her voice above the commercial. She looked around the living room and regretted not putting up decorations. A few blinking lights around Mirella’s empty flowerpots, a tinsel wreath over the mantel. Dollar-store old-fashioned Christmas cards dangling from twine. Just a little would have spruced up the room.

  “Isn’t this nice?” she said again.

  “I’ve got to pee,” Ralph answered, and Miss Beckett was over him in an instant, offering the crook of her elbow. Ralph lumbered to his feet, and they crept slowly to the hall. Penelope sat on the couch obsoletely and waited for them to return.

  “Well, I think it’s time for presents, don’t the two of you?” Miss Beckett stood in the middle of the room and put her hands on her hips, as if she were some kind of talk-show host.

  “We wait until midnight,” Penelope said. “It’s tradition.”

  Miss Beckett gave Ralph a questioning look, and he explained.

  “That’s how they do it in DR. They wait until twelve o’clock and then open up everything. That’s how we’ve always done it.”

  “I don’t know if I can wait that long. I’m afraid to have too much punch.”

  Neither Ralph nor Penelope offered a solution.

  Miss Beckett bowed her head and muttered something about a headache, how she should probably just leave Penelope and Ralph to themselves—she didn’t want to intrude on tradition. Penelope didn’t stop her when she shuffled out of the room to retrieve her gifts, and Ralph didn’t look up from the TV. Penelope wondered whether her father could even tell the old woman had left the room; did he even know Penelope was there beside him? Had he noticed her fix his drink and lay out the iced cookies he liked?

  Miss Beckett gave Penelope a powder-pink turtleneck, fuzzier than anything she could ever imagine wearing, and an enamel teapot. No one had given her a gift in years, and she found herself thanking the woman sincerely and offering to walk her home. She lied and said she had left the old woman’s gift at home, and Miss Beckett shook her head and said, “Never you mind, never you mind about me. As long as you like your things! You do like your things?” Penelope assured her that she did, and she felt an unexpected pity for the woman. They were just alike, pining for Ralph’s affections, hunting for family.

  Ralph’s gift was a tambourine that he immediately started to whack. The jingles rang, and Ralph put on a soulful face to amuse the women, and they all laughed. Penelope wrapped her arm around his shoulders although she felt the beginnings of heat in her face, tension behind her ribs. She gave him a kiss. He didn’t have a present for Miss Beckett either.

  When they were through thanking her, Miss Beckett clapped her hands and sat between them.

  “This truly is the Lord’s day! What joy! Last year I was by myself on Christmas Eve, just wondering about how the two of you were doing in Pittsburgh. But it finally feels like Christmas this year. It truly does.”

  Ralph reached for Miss Beckett’s hand and squeezed, and Penelope decided to wait downstairs while they said their good-byes. In the foyer, Penelope wondered when exactly things between her father and Una had shifted. Maybe it had been after Sheckley’s, and the postcard that announced Mirella wasn’t alive somewhere thinking of Ralph. Maybe it had gone on for a long time. Either way, Penelope couldn’t begrudge the old woman. She knew how it felt to have Ralph finally turn his attention to you, to squeeze your hand, and look at you, before he returned to his record or himself. If Ralph was an island, Miss Beckett was another woman rowing her boat, waiting for the tide to turn and bring her closer to shore.

  When they were outside, Miss Beckett reached for Penelope so they could tread over the ice together. They linked arms, Penelope without her jacket, Miss Beckett in her bright pink peacoat. The old woman thanked Penelope for seeing her home.

  “Least I could do.”

  “You never do the least, young lady. I see that about you now. I never understood why you left—and why you stayed away even after your father was alone, and, you know, disabled. I used to say to him, Why hasn’t she come back! And your father, he’d say, Penny has to find her own way. And I had my doubts about you, Penelope—the kind of woman you’d become, whether you could see how lucky you were to have a father like Ralph.”

  Penelope nodded, although she hardly felt lucky. She worked hard to keep her feet steady over the ice, and she felt acutely how cold she was, her numb fingers, her dry throat. She had been thirsty all day, she realized, ever since she woke up that afternoon in the attic, but all she’d had to drink for hours was eggnog and rum. She’d drained cup after cup, although it was too sweet and it blurred her sight, and it had sated nothing. She coughed into her hand.

  “You lucky girl,” Miss Beckett said and patted Penelope’s hand before she unlocked her door and disappeared into her little hovel of an apartment.

  Penelope returned to the house to the sound of vinyl scratching. Ralph hadn’t been able to stand to start the record over again. She lifted the needle and set it on the outer edge; she thought, briefly, of unplugging the whole apparatus, tearing out the cords, and smashing it all underfoot.

  The strings started up again, and the horns joined in. Ralph shook his tambourine.

  “You should have told me Una was coming so I could buy her a gift.”

  Ralph slapped the tambourine gently in his own time, fracturing the melody.

  “Una doesn’t care about that kind of thing—she’s a simple woman.”

  “I’m sure she’d have liked a necklace or another sweater.”

  “Pfsh,” Ralph said. “I’m sure our company was enough.”

  “Did you even get anything for me?”

  “Of course I did,” Ralph said. “You go get it.” He sent her off to the bedroom with instructions to look for a black garbage bag inside the closet.

  She found the bag on the floor. Something flat and angular threatened to pierce through from the inside, and Penelope carried it carefully out of the bedroom. On her way out,
she passed the little bulletin board where she had tacked up the exercises from Dr. Elias. The tiny, robust ink men reached for their ankles and pointed their toes; they touched a palm to one knee.

  She left the bag on the side of the couch and went into the kitchen to wash dishes. She didn’t want to sit next to Ralph. She squeezed detergent on the dishes and scrubbed them, turned the water on hot and held her hands underneath, let her skin redden and pucker.

  He wasn’t any better than when she had arrived in the fall, and it was plain that her life wasn’t any better either—she’d wasted months looking after the Harpers and wanting their life. When the dishes were clean, she decided to go home. She went back into the living room, and Ralph was shaking the tambourine.

  “Merry Christmas, Penny! It’s midnight. You come here and open your gift.”

  Penelope didn’t want to stay, but her father smiled at her so broadly, she consented and sat next to him. He watched her tear open the garbage bag and extract a wooden frame. The molding was ashen white and grainy to the touch.

  “The lady at the store said any serious artist would appreciate one of these. I found the number in one of your old catalogues—we still get them in the mail. Maybe you can paint me something. I’ll hang it up over the fireplace.”

  “I don’t paint anymore, Pop.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since ten years ago.”

  “Pfsh. You never told me.”

  “I did.”

  She knew she should thank her father, so as not to upset him, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She leaned the frame against the couch and handed him his gift instead. Ralph ripped it open with the sad, expectant smile of a man who never had a proper Christmas as a boy. He looked at the gift, then tucked one hand into the crook of his arm, as if that was where he had his heart.

  In the photograph, he was forty-three, his afro not yet gray, and his skin like tinted glass, honey brown and smooth. He had a cigar tucked between his fingers, and his mouth half-open, as if he were advising the cameraman on angle, or about to laugh. Lionel Sheckley and Freddie Elias stood on either side of him, their arms around his shoulders. Dr. Elias looked slender and sophisticated, Sheckley satisfied and plump in a tilted fedora. Ralph was clearly the leader of the bunch, charismatic, handsome, leaning forward in his pants and blazer, a skinny dark tie flying away from his shirt. The bar behind them didn’t look like a bar at all. With the unpainted wood and shutters, it could have been a cabin in some woods, if not for the pavement they stood on, the cement steps up to the door that gave the scene away as Brooklyn. The back of the photograph read Franklin Ave, 1987 in blue pen.