Halsey Street

by Naima Coster

  It was quiet in the residence, and the day already seemed much longer to Mirella than any other she had faced. So many hours lay before her, hours without her daughter. How would she fill them now that she was gone?

  Penélope, Penélope, Penélope, flying in an iron bird over the ocean. Penélope, Penélope, Penélope, crossing leagues of water, back to the city that was still her home.

  The crow of a rooster somewhere in the residence. The yapping of the Englishman’s dogs. The curtains dancing in the air, the roses rustling outside.

  Maybe she should write to her. Yes, she would write to her.

  For now, Mirella cherished the vibrations inside of her, the chord still resounding in her body. Penélope, Penélope, Penélope. It was her only music.

  19

  ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  The next day Penelope rode the train to Willow Lake to tell Ralph the news. She brought a sweet potato pie and a bunch of poppies with her, as if it were any other Sunday visit. In the home, she greeted the orderlies, drifted through the halls. The olive carpet in the hallways was freshly cleaned, and soft, bland music played over the PA system, not quite loudly enough to cover up the drone of the nearby BQE.

  Ralph was in his suite, in the green armchair by the window. One of the nurses must have helped him transfer from the bed to his wheelchair to the armchair this morning. Maybe it was Faye, the young one with the triple-pierced ears who liked to flirt with her father. She knew he liked the view of Brooklyn from the window. At night, he could make out the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower, the orange hands on the clock the size of matches from his room.

  Her father smiled at her when she came in. She set the flowers and pie on the windowsill, squeezed into the chair beside him. He smelled of tobacco and whatever aftershave they used here. His wheelchair lay on the floor, beside the wooden transfer board he was learning to use. He had less function than ever before—that’s what the doctors called it: function—but he seemed stronger to Penelope. His skin was brighter, his body fleshier, his hair more carefully combed. He got three hot meals a day, and snacks, vitamins, and shortbread cookies after dinner, no more than a cup of beer in the afternoon. Penelope had worked out a deal with the staff—she bought the six-packs, and Faye kept them in the orderlies’ refrigerator, rationed out the drinks. He was safer here, too. No more holding on to the wall, no foot catching on the edge of a rug. Miss Beckett came to visit, and so did she. He was all right, perhaps even better than he’d been on Halsey Street. And Penelope was here to ruin it all.

  “What’s wrong, Penny girl?” Ralph looked at her more tenderly than usual. She leaned in closer to her father, took his hands in hers, and said it all as quickly as she could. In an instant, Ralph sprang into his grief. His sobs were high and quivering, as if he were singing, and she didn’t shush him. She patted the soft fluff of his hair and let him moan.

  He asked her questions as he cried. Who was this man who’d called with the news? Why didn’t he try harder to contact them before? Consult them? Ashes? What right did he have? What did he know? Her wishes—what about her wishes? How could this happen? How?

  Penelope answered what questions she could. She said the word—cremated—because it was the best she could think of. It was technical and neutral, not like the others. Incinerated, burned, embers, ash—they made her feel woozy, and she had to keep steady for Ralph.

  He cried for a long time, wiping his eyes with his knuckles. He stared out the window, and Penelope couldn’t believe she was living this moment: Ralph mourned a dead Mirella instead of a living one, and she was finally motherless, after all her years of claiming motherlessness.

  “Oh God. Oh God, God.”

  Ralph blew into his handkerchief and seemed to put away his grief a little, tucking it back so that it wasn’t visible all at once.

  “So, what are we going to do about a funeral?” he said.

  “There’s nothing to do, Pop. She’s already gone.”

  “You’re just going to leave her in an urn in an empty house in the Dominican Republic?”

  “I’m not going to bring her here. She didn’t like this country, remember?”

  “All right, then we’ll go there. Give her a proper funeral.”

  Penelope hung her head. She should have counted on her father making this all worse than it had to be. Mirella was already dead, and Ralph wanted theatrics—ceremonies and speeches, honor and praise for his saintly wife. He wanted them to worship an urn, the idea of a woman Mirella had never been.

  “You want to go be in that house? See where she lived after she left you? After she pushed you down the stairs?”

  “She did not push me. You know that.”

  “And what about the ashes? You think you can handle that? Why do you want to torture yourself?”

  “It’s not about want, Penelope. She’s the mother of my child. My wife. I’m not going to leave her alone, like she had no family, like she wasn’t loved.”

  “She’s already dead. She won’t know what we did or didn’t do, and she doesn’t deserve any different.”

  Ralph looked at Penelope, horrified.

  “I’m not saying she deserved to die. But I don’t want to pretend she was someone I loved.”

  “Penny girl, I’m heartbroken for you if you have to pretend.”

  Ralph looked away from her, out the window. He was quiet and somber, as if he had reached a lower rung of sorrow that didn’t allow for tears.

  “We can find another way, Pop. Some way to honor her and say good-bye from here.”

  “Like what? Put on a record and eat this here pie? Sit together and say, What a shame, what a shame?”

  “You can’t even get to DR the way you are! We’d have to get you to the airport, on a plane. And what about once we land? You think they have wheelchair ramps and elevators in the campo?”

  Ralph looked at her, his eyes watering.

  “I guess you don’t think any more highly of me than you do your mother.”

  “Pop—”

  “I’m no vegetable.”

  “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

  “What else could happen to me? What could happen that hasn’t already happened?”

  “I won’t go with you. I won’t have any part in it.”

  Ralph folded his hands in his lap like some monarch, raised his chin. “You’re a grown woman, Penelope. You live your own way. I’ll live mine.”

  Penelope tried to dissuade him, but Ralph held up his hand to silence her.

  “That’s enough now. I’m going to see my wife.”

  He leaned over and picked up the wheelchair. He unfolded it and placed the wooden transfer board on the edge of the seat. Penelope went to help him, but he shook his head at her. She watched as he slid himself into the wheelchair.

  “Now, you’ll excuse me,” he said, “but I’ve got to go down to the main desk and see the head nurse. I have travel arrangements to make.”

  He wheeled away from her, out the door.

  Penelope rode home in a daze. Once the train got to Broadway and Union, a trio of dancers entered the car. They were all black and young, not a single one of them seemed over sixteen. They carried a stereo that discharged muffled beats and static.

  They started their clapping and stomping to hype each other up, and the two boys went first. Their bodies stretched and snapped like rubber bands; they dangled upside down from the pole at the center of the car. They grabbed for the rails overhead and somersaulted like underground, underage aerialists. The girl was the least acrobatic and the most electrifying to watch. She stomped one leg in front of her and then behind, swinging her arms to keep time with the beat. She tumbled to the ground, spun on her shoulder blades, sprang up and got light, her feet switching beneath her, her fingers fluttering like wings. Penelope marveled at their bodies, how much they were able to do. They were young and gifted, elastic, black. They seemed as far from death as it was possible to be.

  When they were done, the dancers applauded thems
elves and encouraged the passengers to drop donations into an overturned fitted cap. Penelope looked at them, swaggering up and down the car, and she couldn’t help but pray for them—Keep them safe, she thought.

  When they passed her, she gave them all the singles she had in her purse. “Thank you, ma’am,” said the girl with the braids, and it surprised her, at first—ma’am—and yet, it seemed right.

  Back in Bed-Stuy, Penelope sat on the stoop, where there was plenty to distract her. Her thoughts were a thread that would spool endlessly if she gave them a start in the quiet of the house. She took in all the activity along the street: the cheers of children in a game of catch at the corner, the scrape of a scooter along the pavement, the cars stalling beneath the traffic light, the babble of men and women into their cell phones. The wind unsettling the trees, the white glare of the sun.

  She didn’t notice mother and daughter approaching until they were just outside the gate. They stood in trench coats and rubber boots, mirror images of each other, aside from their size, the colors of their hair. The mother carried a large potted plant, the green leaves higher than her head.

  “May we come in?” Samantha didn’t wait for an answer and pushed open the gate. “We heard about your mother. Our friend who helped you with the deed called DR this morning to speak with her. A man named Marcello told him everything.”

  “We’re really sorry that she died,” Grace said, as if they had rehearsed.

  “After my mother died, our house was filled with flowers. Everyone kept sending us bouquets and wreaths, which was lovely, until they all started to rot. The house began to stink, and we had to throw away all those flowers. It was like losing my mother all over again.”

  “No one is going to send flowers,” Penelope said.

  Samantha lowered the terra-cotta pot onto the stoop. The plant was all drooping green leaves.

  “Rhododendrons are tough—they can survive the cold, but they bloom in the summer. Pink and purple blossoms. They look tropical almost. We thought they’d remind you of your mother.”

  Samantha and Grace waited for Penelope to say something, but she didn’t. She didn’t want the Harpers’ pity, even though they had been kind to her at the end, letting her stay in their house until the trip to DR, connecting her to the lawyer to help with the deed. But they weren’t friends. What had brought Samantha here? A sense of neighborly duty? Some false connection they shared as fellow women, daughters? The etiquette of grief? Penelope didn’t thank her.

  “I’d like to say to you that no one should ever have to lose a mother, but, unfortunately, we all do. I wasn’t much younger than you when my mother died. It’s a nightmare, but you can live with it. It’s for the best that our mothers go before we do. I couldn’t see that until I had Grace.”

  “It isn’t a nightmare for me. It’s a nightmare for my mother.”

  It was a half-truth, the most she had said about how it felt to know her mother was gone. The loss was greatest for Mirella. She was the one who had found her place, who had learned to like her life, then had her self snatched away. What had Penelope lost?

  Samantha smiled at her, meaningfully, a smile that was like a frown.

  “You’re much less selfish than I am then. More than anything, I felt bad for myself when my mother died. I still do. Losing a mother is like losing the most primal part of yourself—the most fixed thing you know about life on this planet.”

  “Like I said, we really weren’t very close.”

  Grace listened to the women go back and forth, and she was blushing, as if she was embarrassed by all the talk of sympathy and death. She wouldn’t meet Penelope’s eyes. Maybe her dream of Penelope had been tainted by her status now as half an orphan, or maybe the weeks had worn away at the girl’s fascination with Penelope. Perhaps the news of Mirella’s death had made her newly aware that her mother would die one day, too, and she had decided to devote her attentions to Samantha. She was probably right.

  Samantha explained the best place to plant the rhododendron. It would grow best on higher ground, somewhere the rainwater wouldn’t pool. And she should get it in the ground soon—this was its growing season.

  “We’ll be heading home now. Say good-bye to Penelope, Grace.”

  “Good-bye, Penelope.” The girl repeated after her mother, and Penelope said good-bye, too, without rising from the stoop. The women nodded at one another, and Penelope watched them walk away. The two Harpers with their arms around each other’s waists, their hair swinging over their shoulders, as they went down Halsey Street. Penelope called after them.

  “No car service?”

  Samantha spun around. “We walked!” she called, and they went on north to Bedford, where they turned the corner and disappeared.

  Jon arrived once his shift was over, gliding on his bicycle in the dark, unfazed by the sheets of rain falling over the block. His face was wet and serene, as he locked up the tires and frame to the gate in front of the house. He dragged a tarp over the bicycle then bounded up the stairs.

  He kissed Penelope and they sat on the navy loveseat in the parlor. She covered them with a ratty blanket from her childhood that she had found upstairs.

  “You bought a plant?” Jon gestured to the rhododendron in front of the fireplace, all filled with bricks. She shook her head and didn’t say more. She didn’t want to revisit the afternoon, the visit from the Harpers, or the hours afterward. She had called Willow Lake and Ralph refused to come to the phone, so she lay down in her new bedroom on the first floor with the lights turned off, and she felt as if a great time had passed since yesterday. She had spent her whole life in this house, in this dark little room. She had never lived in Pittsburgh, or in Providence, or on Greene. She had always been here. Her mother had always been dead.

  “I brought you something,” Jon said, and he produced a lump, wrapped in tissue paper, from his bag. Penelope withdrew two pale yellow ceramic cups. They didn’t have handles, and they each had a visible seam along one side, as if two halves had been joined imperfectly. Penelope raised one of the cups overhead and saw two letters etched into the underside: BW.

  “Did your mother make these? Bertha Wright?”

  “Birdie,” Jon said. “Nobody ever called her Bertha.”

  Penelope looked at the cups again, appreciated their even glaze, their weight in her hands.

  “She used to take me sometimes to her ceramics studio in Lincoln Square. It wasn’t cheap, but she paid for time whenever she could. She started putting these ridges in everything when she got sick. She said she’d spent years trying to make perfect, beautiful things, but that wasn’t real—everything in life could be taken apart. Everything has a seam, and it’s a lie to try and hide it.”

  “Seams,” Penelope said. “Sounds like a show they’d have in some gallery in Chelsea.”

  “I know a lot of people wouldn’t consider her an artist—all she ever made were salt shakers and bowls and pitchers, but her stuff is all over our house in Chicago. I think it makes my dad feel like she’s still around.”

  “You never told me how she died.”

  “It was her liver. Cancer. How’s that for fucked? My dad plowed through handles of vodka for years, and he’s already outlived her by a decade. She wouldn’t even drink wine at communion. Said it gave her headaches.”

  “She sounds like a saint.”

  “She was my mother.”

  Penelope thanked him for the cups.

  “Everyone is bringing me presents,” she said, and neither of them mentioned Mirella. “Tell me about the bar,” Penelope said before Jon could ask her about her day. He indulged her.

  The owner had been around at Sheckley’s, spilling drafts, putting mixing spoons in the wrong cup, asking a dozen questions—had Jon remembered to check the icemaker for mold? Where did he keep the receipts from last night when he closed out the register? Had he set out the olives on every table? Olives were going to be the new thing at Sheckley’s—pitted, marinated, fat green olives. He’d made
a deal with Sprout to put them out in tiny bowls on every table with a little placard describing their origin, and their price per quarter pound at the shop. Penelope listened as Jon went on about the olives, how they didn’t pair with beer, how bar peanuts were bar peanuts for a reason. He made her laugh.

  Penelope brought out a deck of cards so they could go on with the evening, without any useless heaviness. She taught Jon a gambling game she had played with Ramona. It wasn’t long before she was forgetting turns and playing the wrong cards, and Jon started to win.

  “I guess you’re a natural,” Penelope said and left for her room. Jon followed her and climbed into bed beside her. The thunder was far off enough that the house was mostly peaceful, the rush of water in the drainpipes, and the smell of Jon: wet denim, smoke, industrial-strength dish soap.

  “Did the Harpers bring you that plant?”

  “How could you tell?”

  “’Cause they’re nice white people.”

  “My father wants to go to DR.”

  “That’s no surprise either.”

  “It surprised me. She’s already dead.”

  “Jesus, Penelope.”

  “She didn’t even go to her own mother’s funeral.”

  “Well, you don’t have to be her.” Jon reached for Penelope’s hand. “I couldn’t stop thinking about her today. I was setting out those little bowls of olives, and I wondered what Mirella would think of Sprout if she could see it. Whether she’d like the things there, since she’s got such elevated tastes, or whether she’d hate it just on principle.”

  Penelope was shocked that Jon could spend the day thinking of her mother, whom he’d never met and never would meet. “She’d like it,” Penelope said. “And she’d hate it, too. She never wanted the store to close.”

  Jon looked at her, squeezed her hand, and waited for her to explain.

  “We had trouble with the store long before those Seattle hippies priced us out. There were good years and bad years, especially when I was little. One year when we were still living on Marcy, Pop fell behind on the rent. I don’t know how much, but he’d sit up every night at our kitchen table with his head in his hands, going through piles and piles of paper. I didn’t know what they were—loans or bills or notices or what, but I knew it wasn’t good. And Mirella—my mother—she kept saying, We’ll find the money, we’ll find the money, we’ll make a way. Even though she wasn’t miserable then, not yet, I remember being shocked at how confident she was, when my father couldn’t be. One day, one of the front girls called in sick, and Pop was in a panic—said he couldn’t afford to open late, to lose even an hour of sales, so Mami and I went to help him sweep and set up. But before we went in, Mami led us around to the side of the building, and she pulled out this knife, a Swiss army knife. And she turned to us and said, ‘This store is going to stay open. I know it. But no matter what, whatever passes, we will be a family.’ And then she starts scratching into the brick her initial, just an M for her first name, and then she puts the knife in my hand, and helps me write out my initials. I must have just been learning my letters. And then my pop wrote his initials down, and he was all teary-eyed, and he kissed my mother—at least, I remember them kissing—and then we all went inside. My mother went back out there, after we were done inside the shop, and she retraced every letter. She wanted to make sure we’d pressed deep enough.”