Speak Softly, She Can Hear

by Pam Lewis

  “Who?” her mother repeated into the phone. She frowned at Carole while she listened, then covered the receiver again to speak. “She found a wallet belonging to this Rita person in the ski parka.” Her mother watched Carole while she listened to what Emily was saying, then repeated it. “She’s going to put it into an envelope and send it back to the address on the driver’s license.”

  “No!” Carole blurted out. “I mean, I’ll send it to her.”

  “I thought you didn’t know her,” her father said.

  “Did you hear that, Em?” Her mother paused. “Carole says she’ll send it herself.”

  “I remember now,” Carole said. “I did meet her.”

  “The driver’s license says she’s twenty-eight.” Her mother’s face fell into a question. She put a hand over the receiver so Emily wouldn’t hear. “They had grown women in the dorms?”

  “She was on the staff,” Carole said in a panic. “She worked there. She helped me when I got sick. I’ll send it back to her with a note. I’ve been meaning to thank her.”

  “And you forgot that?” her father asked.

  “Her name. I just forgot her name.”

  “But why would her wallet be in the parka?” her father asked.

  Carole was unable to speak, unable to find any reasonable answer at all. Able only to say the truth of what she was thinking. That she didn’t know how to lie her way out of this one, that she was caught. Finally. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “You don’t know,” her father said, shaking his head and going back to his paper. She was stupefied at his reaction, or lack of reaction. She could hardly believe it.

  “Be a dear,” her mother said to Emily. “Send it to us here, and Carole will take care of it.” She paused, listening. “She says it’s no trouble,” her mother said, “to send it there. Less in fact to send it here and then you send it. And when you think about it, she’s got a—”

  “No!” Carole said. She felt everything spinning out of control. “I said I’d do it.”

  “Well,” her mother said into the phone. “You must have heard that. Would you mind awfully sending it here?” She listened a while more, then murmured a good-bye and disappeared back into the kitchen to hang up the phone. While she was out of the room, her father put down his paper. “What in creation was that all about?” he said.

  “Since when is it a federal crime to forget somebody’s name?”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.” Her father took a deep breath and sighed. The sound of her mother’s heels on the kitchen floor clicked toward them. “You haven’t been yourself.”

  “Then who have I been?”

  “Don’t talk back to me, young lady.”

  “You should call her right away and say you found it,” her mother said, coming back into the room. “It’s been almost a month.”

  The shocker was that she’d been caught unprepared and then been able to come up with something so plausible they still didn’t have a clue. The bigger shock, though, was that she hadn’t remembered the wallet, and if she could forget that, Eddie was right, she could forget anything. She could forget what she did in that room. She stole into the living room, slipped the silver cigarette box into the pocket of her sweater, and put her coat on over that so it wouldn’t show. If Eddie found out about the wallet, who knew what he’d do. Better take him the cigarette box, like he said.

  “Oh,” her mother said. Carole stopped at the door to the elevator, her hand pressing against the silver box in her pocket. “You’ll never guess who I ran into the other day.” Her mother giggled and blushed. “That man from the train. You remember. The one who shared the taxi with Naomi when you girls went off to Stowe that day?” She looked so hopeful and girlish. “Well, he stopped me right out here on Lexington. At first I didn’t remember, but then of course I did when he explained. He asked after you. Asked about your trip, and I told him you’d gotten sick. He lives around here somewhere.” She sighed again. “Small world.”

  Instead of walking directly to Madison to catch the bus, Carole went up Lex to Sixty-sixth Street and rang Eddie’s buzzer. He thought she was going to give them away, and there he went talking to her mother! When he answered the door, she knew what a bad idea it had been to come. The sight of him in his bathrobe, open down the front over nothing but his underpants, made her almost gag.

  “What happened?” he said. “What’s the matter?

  “You stopped my mother on the street.”

  “Aw, for Christ’s sake.” He looked left and right, then pulled her inside. Paint-spattered canvas covered all the furniture. Two men were on stepladders painting the ceiling. Eddie glared at them. “I can’t think straight anymore with all these people around.”

  Maybe he hadn’t heard what she’d said. “My mother—” she began.

  “I told Petey and Case I’d stay in the house if nobody started work before nine.” He looked at his watch. “Shit.” He pulled her through the living room and down a long hall to a small elevator. “I told you not to come here. I told you to work through Naomi.” He swung open the elevator door. “We have to stick to the rules. It’s the only way.”

  “I’m not going up in that. I can talk right here.”

  “Guineas’ll listen to everything you say.” He pushed her into the elevator. “Wop wop wop,” he said.

  On the second level he showed her into a room with a large unmade bed and clothing strewn across the floor and over the furniture. “This is exactly what you can’t do,” he said. “Panic and come here.”

  “You talked to my mother. Now she’s going to talk about you. You have no idea. Now she’s going to wonder stuff about you. Who you are, where you live, and what you do for a living.”

  “So what?”

  “So everything.”

  “Your mother came at me gangbusters. Big sloppy grin on her face. She remembered me.”

  “That’s not what she said.”

  “You think your mother’s going to admit to chasing me halfway down the block?”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “She gives me this big yoo-hoo. I couldn’t ignore her. I tried to get rid of her, but hey. That mother of yours—”

  Carole had seen her mother do that other times. It was possible. “Move someplace else, then. You don’t even live here. Those other people do. Pete or whatever. So why don’t you even have a place of your own, anyway?”

  He sat down on the bed and watched her. The nightstand was a mess—a full ashtray, crumpled packs of cigarettes, and a soiled scarf. “I’m in between apartments, that’s why.” He gestured around. “I deserve to live in places like this. I should have been brought up like this.”

  “I thought you were,” she said. “I thought you—” She noticed a shocking pink sweater on the floor, the same one Naomi had worn the first day back at school. “Are you and Naomi—”

  “She likes me. What can I say?” He lifted his filthy shoes onto a big soft silk comforter. “Let’s make a little deal, okay? You keep your mouth shut, and I stay away from Mommy.”

  “I was already keeping my mouth shut. Why would you even—”

  “I want insurance. It’s for your own sake.” He smiled cruelly. “I’d hate to have to let Mommy in on our little business.”

  She was stunned. “Why would you even think that? It’s the whole point. It’s them I’m keeping it from. God, Eddie, what’s the matter with you?”

  He was off the bed so fast she barely saw it happen, and then suddenly he was behind her, twisting her arm up, the pain searing her shoulders. “Nothing is the matter with me. Get it? It’s you, cunt. Dropping in, disobeying. I asked you something, and now I want the answer. “Do. We. Have. A. Deal?”

  “Yes,” she whispered.

  He relaxed his hand but stayed close to her, pushing himself against her. “What’s this?” He fumbled with her coat, found the silver box, and held it to the light. He opened and closed it a couple of times. “Good girl. I almost forgot.”

>   She loathed seeing it in his hands. Hated when he blew on it and rubbed the top with his sleeve. “I changed my mind.” She reached to take it back, but he hid it behind his back. She wished he’d close the robe.

  “Too late,” he said. “No Indian giving.”

  “It’s ours.”

  “Not anymore,” he said.

  She felt disoriented, dislocated. How long had she been here? He led the way, walking ahead of her. She watched his body move under the flimsy robe and remembered it from that night. In the elevator he said, “Hey. You have any money on you? I’m short of cash.”

  “No.” He snatched her purse from off the pile of books she was carrying. “Give it back.”

  “You have ten,” he said, fumbling in her wallet. “You big fat liar.”

  She tried to take the money back, but he held it from her and pointed to the living room, where the painters silently did their work. “Sshh.”

  Outside she was shocked by the noise of traffic, the bright sunlight. She hurried to Lexington, where there was a clock in the drugstore at the corner. It was nine-fifteen. Impossible. She ducked inside to ask if the clock was correct and was told that it was slow if anything. At school, assembly would already be over. First period would have begun, and she was twenty-five blocks from school. Half an hour away. How would she explain it? She hurried west on Sixty-sixth Street, crossed Park, ran the block to Madison, and checked south to see if there was a bus in view. There wasn’t. She headed north. Already groups of women were shopping. Men in suits and overcoats were jumping out of taxis and disappearing into buildings. Maids were strolling along with children. The daytime world she’d never seen.

  Carole bumped into people in her hurry, lunged through red lights between moving cars. He was a monster. She stopped and leaned against a building, suddenly weakened by the memory of his words. Do we have a deal? And Naomi’s sweater on the floor. For the first time she understood how completely alone she was in this. She sucked in air until she could move again, but now, all around her, the street was thick with people. She tried to push her way through, but people pushed her back, accused her of cutting in. Cutting in? Cars were being directed by mounted police. She tried to cut around with the cars and back to Park, but a throng of people surged at her. There were sawhorses blocking the way, and people with signs milling around. Anti-Castro, anti-Communist, signs in Spanish that she couldn’t read. What was happening? She snaked through, heading north as well as she could, and found herself at the front, pushing and shoving.

  “I’m only trying to get through,” she said to a man who elbowed her hard.

  “So aren’t we all,” he said.

  There was another ring of sawhorses blocking off the entrance to the Carlyle Hotel, a big clear semicircle of space. Something big must have happened inside the hotel. Maybe something terrible.

  “What happened?” she asked a woman behind her.

  “Nothing yet,” the woman said.

  The clock in the lobby said it was nine-forty, but that was impossible. It couldn’t be. She asked a man the time, and he checked his watch. “Quarter to ten,” he said. How could the time be going by so fast? It was after recess now. Second period. She’d never been late to school a day in her life.

  From behind there came the sounds of car horns. Lots of them. A noise started in the crowd, shouting and chanting. Horns blared everywhere, and suddenly people were shouting from their apartment windows, dropping rolls of toilet paper and confetti. Across the way, police on horseback were separating the crowd, pushing them back to form an opening. The empty space filled with a line of gleaming black limousines, flags snapping over the headlights, making their way slowly up Madison. The sea of people parted. Men in dark suits ran ahead of the cars. A limousine pulled to the Carlyle’s front door and stopped twenty feet from where Carole was standing. A man swung the door open. There was a long pause when nothing happened and the sound subsided, then a loud roar and thunderous applause all around as Bobby Kennedy stepped from the car. The wind lifted his hair in front, and he brushed it back. He was hunched, slightly untidy, and thinner than she would have thought, but energetic looking. He smiled. Somebody shouted something in Spanish, and he answered in Spanish. There was another roar, thunderous applause again. Grinning, he held out his hands to shush people. This happened three times before he could be heard. He thanked people for coming out to see him. He said something in Spanish and then he was gone, whisked into the hotel. The crowd stayed put, chanting and calling out things, but the police pushed them back and away. It was after ten. She felt sick to her stomach at what she’d done. She’d missed English and history. Her perfect attendance was shattered. They would have called her mother by now.

  The police were pushing people away, telling the crowd to break it up. Any act of hers, any effort to move against the crowd, was futile. She’d read about panic, the need to quell it, to surrender and let herself be pulled and pushed until finally the crowd began to disperse. In only moments there were more police than people. She didn’t dare look at the clock, but habit made her take a few steps back toward the hotel. It was ten after ten. She’d make it by ten-thirty. She’d explain about the crowd, about Bobby Kennedy. She’d say she got caught up in the crowd. That part was true. That Kennedy was there and she stopped to listen. She could even tell them she’d done it on purpose, a historic moment worthy of missing school for.

  But then she spotted a familiar-looking girl with her black hair teased and sprayed in a huge bubble. The girl was rooted in place, staring at the door that Kennedy had just passed through. Who was she, though? The girl was certainly not a Spence student. Perhaps she was a clerk at Gristede’s or Bloomingdale’s? Or had Carole seen her on the bus? No. It was something else.

  She moved closer, around. When she saw the girl full on and that she was pregnant, Carole remembered. The girl from the home, the bottle, the nun. Carole had thought often of the little flick of the hand behind her back that night, so intimate and friendly. She would just say hello and then she’d make a run for school. She approached and tapped the girl on the shoulder. “Hi,” she said. “Remember me?” She had an urge to rub the streaks of teary mascara from the girl’s wide, smooth cheeks. “From Sixty-second Street. That night.”

  “What night?”

  “I saw you from my window? That old nun caught you hiding something in the john.”

  “God a-mighty.” The girl’s sudden smile took Carole by surprise. “Sure. Wow.”

  “Well,” Carole said and didn’t know what to say next. “I just thought I’d say hello.”

  The girl burst out laughing. “That’s all? Jeez a-mighty. Who are you anyway? I’m Rachel Weaver.” She flung her arms out to either side. Her coat flew open. “In all my glory.”

  “Carole Mason.” Carole felt oddly dwarfed by Rachel.

  “Shouldn’t you be in school or something?” Rachel checked her watch. “It’s half past ten.”

  “It can’t be,” Carole said. “That’s impossible.” She squinted into the lobby window to see the official time. In forty minutes lunch would start.

  “Welcome to the trouble club.” Rachel had a big loud laugh. “You skip for this too?” She indicated the Carlyle entry with her thumb. “I would have if I were in school. I mean real school, not that crap we get from the sisters.”

  “I didn’t know he was—”

  “I got goose bumps.” Rachel had large, dark down-sloping eyes, like a puppy’s. “I’m not sure which one I like better. Bobby or MLK. It’s a draw. I definitely like them both better than JFK, and I adored him. But, you know, you’ve got to move on. Who’s yours?”

  Carole shrugged. “We get taught to be objective all the time,” she said. “Not to have favorites.”

  “So what?” Rachel said. “You can still have an opinion.”

  “Okay then, King.” It felt thrilling to pitch that objectivity right out and go from the gut.

  “Why’s that?” Rachel said.

  “He didn�
��t get his job by being the president’s brother.”

  Rachel let go a wallop of a laugh. “Right on,” she said. Carole felt a surge of pleasure at how much she’d amused Rachel with the truth. It was exactly what she’d always thought about Bobby Kennedy. Sure he was great, but come on.

  “I feel sorry for Ethel,” Rachel was saying. “All those kids, I heard they don’t even have enough beds in the house, and the kids have to sleep wherever.” She patted her stomach. “I was due a week ago.” She looked around. “If Sister ever catches me out here, she’s going to kill me. They’ll tie my legs together for punishment. They do that to some of the girls when they go into labor. To punish them. So they won’t get pregnant again before they’re married. They’re barbarians. So?”

  “So what?”

  Rachel let out a rollicking laugh. “So are you going to school or are you going to skip? If it’s skipping, come on. We can get some coffee.” When Carole hesitated, Rachel went on. “Look, it’s almost lunchtime. Take it from me, I’ve skipped a bunch. You’re better off staying out the whole day than going in this late. You might as well. You’re in trouble both ways. Enjoy the free time.”

  Almost lunchtime? It was like one of those nightmares where you can’t do the thing you have to do no matter how hard you try. You keep doing something else instead, and it keeps getting later and later. Eddie kept telling her to act normal, and she was trying, but she just didn’t seem able to do it. The school would be calling the apartment by now. They always called. Where was her mother today? She had to think. Maybe she was out. Oh, please let her be out and the phone ring and ring.

  Rachel started walking. From behind you wouldn’t even know she was pregnant. She stopped and turned, that big smile flashing. “Well?”

  She’d go home. If her mother was out, there was still hope. She could answer the phone when it rang. But what if her mother was there? Oh, God. She caught up with Rachel, and they walked up Madison. Rachel careered into Eve’s, a very expensive hat shop on the corner of Seventy-seventh and Madison. The windows were full of tiny pillbox hats with veils. Inside there were hats on little pegs on the walls, hats under glass, a counter where people could sit to try them on. Rachel plopped herself down and asked to see something that Lady Bird might wear. “How many times do I have to tell you you’re not welcome here?” the saleslady said. Rachel grabbed Carole by the arm, and they ran out. Carole felt too numb to laugh as the time ticked away. What if Eddie had gone out and waited for her mother? He knew where they lived. What if he went to the apartment?