Rust & Stardust
Page 13
“I believe she is…,” she started, and felt her head begin to pound.
Father coughed, as if to urge her on, she supposed. She imagined he wanted to be outside with the others, drinking hot cocoa and assembling the manger. There was so much joy this time of year; usually it made her feel lighter. The world so full of possibility and peace.
“I worry that she is suffering, Father. At home. That, perhaps, she is being mistreated.”
Father paused.
“How so, Sister?” he asked.
“She lives with her father. Alone. He is widowed. I fear that in his wife’s absence, he may be…”
He coughed again.
“What are you insinuating?” the priest said. He sounded not only impatient but angry as well now.
“I am concerned that with her mother gone, and her growing into a young woman, that he is tempted, Father…”
“This is not your confession to make, Sister,” Father said abruptly.
Stunned, her mouth fell open.
“But Father…”
“For the sin of impure thoughts, your penance is twenty Hail Marys. Do you understand?”
She felt suddenly hot beneath her habit. Sweat trickled down her sides, causing her to shiver.
Before she could argue, Father stood up, leaving her alone in the confessional. She heard his footsteps as he made his way to the vestibule and then outside where he would join the other men in building the nativity scene. Where for the next seven nights before Christmas, the parishioners would dress up as Mary and Joseph. Where the miracle would be reenacted: the star of Bethlehem leading the wise men to the newborn baby, who would cry out into the dark night.
SALLY
“Where is Sister Mary Katherine?” the girl who sat next to Sally whispered.
It was the first school day after the Christmas recess. Sister’s desk at the front of the classroom was empty. The children were restless and waiting for direction.
“I heard she got transferred over to the Sacred Heart,” a boy on her other side said. “My cousin Rudy goes there.”
Sally looked toward the door where every morning Sister Mary Katherine came into the room like a beam of sunshine. When a squat, serious nun whisked into the room, Sally felt tears springing to her eyes.
No.
“Good morning, children,” she said, scowling at them. “I am Sister Bernadette. I will be your new teacher.”
Sister Bernadette was stern and spoke to them sharply. She got rid of the books that Sister Mary Katherine had collected and didn’t allow the children to stay inside during recess, not even when the air felt like knives. She looked at Sally with disgust rather than compassion when she saw that she still did not have a proper coat and forced her to wear a boy’s scratchy woolen jacket salvaged from the lost and found. Insisted she wear it during recess.
That winter of 1949, Sally felt herself slipping away, disappearing. Like her namesake, she was only Fogg, now. Only mist. With each passing day in the classroom during the day and that drafty attic room at night, as she both waited for someone to find her and struggled to figure out how she might escape, she felt herself, somehow, evaporating.
Whenever she began to feel this wraithlike, vaporous sensation, she closed her eyes and thought of home. Of her mother, of Susan. At night when the bed creaked and groaned beneath her, and his heartbeat pounded against her chest, she turned those sounds into the sounds of her mother’s sewing machine, dreamed herself back into the house on Linden Street.
She began on the cracked sidewalk and walked up the steps to the porch with its rusted wrought iron railings. There she imagined the stray cat she called Cleopatra, on account of her shiny black fur, slept curled up on the turquoise patio chair on the porch. Through the door and into the dim foyer. She dreamed the wallpaper roses, the smell of a baked ham or chicken soup. She could taste the chalky pink mints her mother kept in a tiered crystal candy dish on the console table where the telephone sat. She woke herself up crying sometimes, the scent of her stepfather’s Old Spice still wafting from the medicine cabinet. (Her mother could never bear to throw away that milky white bottle.) And all the while, the sound of the sewing machine’s needle going up and down, in and out of the fabric, those endless yards of fabric, resounded. Then, when he was finished, when he climbed off her and disappeared down the stairs to the bathroom below, locking her inside the room, she dreamed herself back into her bed at home. Chenille spread, soft pillow with its heady clean smell of Oxydol.
It was the only way she could keep from vanishing.
“Please,” she’d whisper, her breath, her words, forming in vaporous puffs in the still, cold air of the attic room. “Please God, let me go home?” But these words, too, dissipated, as if they’d never been spoken at all. Her pleas, her dreams, her prayers evanesced.
SISTER MARY KATHERINE
Sister Mary Katherine vowed to herself, to God, she would find out where Florence Fogg lived. Go to her. She had promised the child that she would help her, and the thought that she had failed to do so was unbearable. That winter, in her small, fusty room at the Sacred Heart, she scoured the Baltimore phone book, but there were no Foggs in its pages. It was as if Florence Fogg had never existed at all. She mourned her like a mother who had lost a child to tuberculosis or rheumatic fever. She wrote her letters (Dearest Florence, I hope this finds you; Dearest Florence, I haven’t forgotten you) and addressed the envelopes simply, Florence Fogg, Baltimore, Maryland, hoping some benevolent postman might find her, but the letters came back to her, stamped RETURN TO SENDER.
Then one morning in March, she dreamed of that red coat, lying empty in the snow. She awoke in a cold sweat, and the aching sense of helplessness she’d felt in the dream would not go away.
She had to take three buses to get back to St. Ann’s. If anyone at the Sacred Heart knew what she was doing, she could have lost her job there as well. But she couldn’t stop thinking of the dream or of that child, the fear in her eyes. He’s a bad man, Florence had said, her voice deep with fright.
“Good morning, Vanessa,” she said, smiling as brightly as she could at the St. Ann’s secretary, a bitter woman who manned the desk in the school office like a prison guard. “I have a favor to ask of you. I was hoping you might give me the address for the Foggs? Florence Fogg was one of my sixth-grade students.”
Vanessa scowled at her over the top of her cat-eye glasses.
“You see, she left something behind, and I’d like to make sure she gets it back,” she said, her blood pounding in her ears as she lied. “It’s her coat, you see. I found it in a box of my things. I didn’t realize I had it until just now.”
“Sister, you know that student records are confidential. I am under strict orders to protect the privacy of our students. I am certainly not giving out this kind of personal information to a former teacher here.”
“Please, I intend no harm. It’s just that it’s been such a terribly cold winter…” Her voice hitched. “I’m concerned about Florence.”
Vanessa peered at her over the rims of her dark spectacles, and Sister thought she might acquiesce. But then she snapped, “Sister, Florence Fogg is no longer your concern.”
* * *
She left St. Ann’s in a fury. Marched through the cold to the bus stop, where she stood waiting for the bus to return her to the other side of town where she had been banished.
“Buses are all running late today,” a gentleman sitting on the bench offered. “On account of the ice.”
The roads were sheer ice, treacherous. It had been a frigid winter, the temperatures well below average. It was the middle of March, but the air was bitter and it felt like winter might never end.
“How long?” she asked, and the gentleman shrugged.
There was a newsstand across from the bus stop. She almost never read the newspaper—the horrors of the world were too much for her to bear—but she’d forgotten to bring a book along and thought she might pick up something to read to bide her ti
me until the bus arrived and then for what would likely be a long journey home. She didn’t know what to do about Florence. She’d tried everything to find her, short of knocking on all the doors in the Barclay neighborhood.
Sitting on the cold bench, she was grateful for once for her woolen habit. She read the headlines of The Baltimore Sun, shaking her head at the news of murder and fire and strife. She flipped to the back of the paper, looking for birth announcements, any bit of news that wasn’t full of tragedy. And there, in the very back pages, was a small article: FRANK LA SALLE INDICTED IN KIDNAPPING OF FLORENCE “SALLY” HORNER. No photo accompanied the article, but Sister Mary Katherine, somehow, knew. It was her. The girl in the article, the little girl stolen by a mechanic. The same age. That accent she hadn’t been able to put her finger on. New Jersey! She swore that Florence told her that her father worked at a repair shop.
She crossed herself, her hand flying to the crucifix at her chest.
Florence. Florence Fogg. Could it be?
“Do you have a nickel?” she asked the man sitting next to her.
“Sure,” he said, and pressed the cold coin into her hand. “For charity?”
“To call the police,” she said.
SAMMY
The knock at the door came as Sammy was going to bed. Nine a.m., the sun coming up, and he’d just gotten home from his shift at the Coca-Cola plant. He lived his life backward from the rest of the world. Upside down. Nighttime became day, and day night. He’d never get used to it. Had to drink two quick shots of whiskey to knock himself out each morning, his body exhausted but resisting sleep.
Frankie had already taken off for work, but the girl was still upstairs, sick with a cold. No wonder, the poor kid didn’t even have a proper coat. Frankie said not to worry about her; he’d given her some cough syrup, and he expected she’d sleep most of the day. Sammy wondered if some of that Lix-a-Col could knock him out, too.
Frankie’s kid wasn’t much of a talker, but it was nice to have a female presence in the house these last six or seven months. She was a smart girl, a sweet girl. It made him a little bit sick to think that her mother, Dorothy, was out there somewhere looking for her. But again, it wasn’t his place to ask questions. Wasn’t his job to meddle in a lovers’ quarrel.
“Can I help you?” he said to the two cops who stood on his porch.
“We’re looking for someone named La Salle,” the first one said.
“Might go by Fogg,” the second one chimed in.
Goddamned Frankie.
“Sorry,” Sammy said, feeling a prickle at his spine. Must be Dot finally caught up with him. “I never heard of nobody by that name.”
“Well, that’s odd, because your address was the address on record for one Florence Fogg at the St. Ann’s School. We have reason to believe she’s Sally Horner. Little girl kidnapped last year in Jersey? There’s a reward out.” With that he produced a newspaper clipping, with a photo of Frank next to one of Florence. REWARD: $500. He shook his head, felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. He knew the kid didn’t look a thing like Dot. But if she wasn’t Frankie’s kid, what the hell was he doing with her?
“Did you try next door? Think there’s a girl over there. Maybe they got one of the numbers in the address wrong?” He was sweating despite the chill coming in through the open door.
“Have you been drinking, sir?” the first officer asked, leaning toward him, inhaling.
“I work the night shift. I just got home,” he said.
One of the cops, the one with the bad skin, rose up on his toes a little and stretched his neck, trying to look past Sammy into the house. “Mind if we come in? Kinda cold for March out here.”
“Listen, fellas. I’ve been on my feet for the last eight hours. I was just about to go to bed. I don’t know anybody named Fogg. Or La Salle, for that matter. And I ain’t seen no girl.”
Suddenly, there was a loud sound, almost like barking, from upstairs. It was the girl; she’d been so sick.
“What was that?” the shorter cop said.
Sammy tensed. If they found Florence upstairs, he’d be a goner. Just when he’d gotten back on track.
“That? Oh, that’s just Lola, my Pekingese,” Sammy said with a laugh. (Lola was his mother’s Pekingese. Dead ten years already, hit by a truck.)
“All right, but we may be back. Next time with a search warrant,” the tall one said, and the short one nodded.
As soon as they were gone, Sammy ran to the kitchen, grabbed the phone, and dialed the garage number Frank had scratched on a pad.
“Frankie,” he said. “I don’t know what you done, but you can’t stay here no more.”
SALLY
When she heard the yelling, Sally woke in a haze; her chest ached from coughing and her head pounded. She tried to sit up, but her body was heavy, though her head felt light. The shades were pulled shut; she didn’t know whether it was day or night. How long she’d been asleep. She stood up, feeling dizzy, and walked to the bedroom door. She pressed her ear against the cold wood, leaning into it for support.
“What the hell, Frankie?” Sammy said. “You told me she was your kid.”
“Jesus H. Christ. She is my kid. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“I knew that girl didn’t look nothin’ like Dot,” Sammy said. “I don’t know what your game is, but she says one word to somebody and you’re toast, Frankie. We both are.”
“She ain’t gonna say nothin’ to nobody. Stupid fool thinks I’m with the FBI.”
Were they talking about her?
“FBI?”
“Long story,” Frank said.
“What are you doing with her, Frankie? She ain’t nothing but a little girl.”
“I told you. She’s my kid. My stepkid, okay? Another story for another day.”
“Five hundred dollars,” Sammy said. “They put up a reward.”
Reward? she thought. For what? He’d said they were fugitives. Did this mean it was true, that there was a reward to capture her? Her head spun trying to recollect the conversation. Sammy sounded like he was accusing Mr. Warner of something. She ain’t nothin’ but a little girl. Did he know what he did to Sally in that attic room? She felt like she might vomit. Was he not really with the FBI? Then how could he arrest her at the Woolworth’s that day?
“The police say…,” Sammy went on.
“Her mother’s crazy,” he said. “She’s trying to get me locked up again. She’s a … oh, forget about it. We’ll get outta your hair.”
She heard him bounding up the stairs, and she ran to the bed and lay down, feigned sleep, stifled the cough that was rumbling inside her chest.
The door burst open.
“Wake up,” he said.
“What is it?” she asked, breathing fast, but sitting up slowly.
Mr. Warner paced back and forth across the floor. This was exactly the way he’d acted right before they left Atlantic City. It made her body tense, her muscles clench.
“Listen up, the FBI has asked me to go to Dallas to investigate some things. It’s nothing to worry about, but it means we need to pack up. Today.”
“Dallas?” she asked, sitting, coughing again. “Where’s Dallas?”
“Texas,” he said incredulously. “You didn’t think we were going to stay here forever, did you?”
No, no, no. She scooted backward slowly on the bed.
“But you don’t…” she whispered.
“What’s that?” he said. His hearing wasn’t great in his right ear, and so he tilted closer to her.
“But you don’t work for the FBI,” she said, louder this time.
“’Course I do.”
“But I heard you, downstairs…,” she started, and then summoned every bit of courage she had. Asked the single question that had been burning inside her like a hot coal. “Sir? If you work for the FBI, then why you gotta fix cars?”
Mr. Warner stopped pacing and almost shouted. “I’m undercover. I told you that.”
Mr. Warner bristled, the tendons in his neck straining as he seethed.
“Your ears musta been playin’ tricks on you,” he said, forcing himself to laugh, making a twirling motion with his finger by his temple. “Medicine’s made you loopy.”
No. She shook her head, gripping the sheets in her fists.
“I heard Sammy say there’s a reward. That people are lookin’ for me.”
Mr. Warner took a deep breath and walked toward the bureau. She thought about the gun. But instead of opening the drawer, he paused, turned on his heel, and ran his hand over the top of his head. His mouth twitched, and he took a breath.
“Listen,” he said, eyes darting all around the room. “I ain’t sure how to tell you this.”
“What?”
“I swore I wouldn’t,” he said, frowning.
“Tell me,” Sally pleaded.
“Your mama, she’d be so angry with me,” he said, shaking his head solemnly.
“Mama?” she said, the word like a lozenge in her sore throat.
He nodded, then came to the bed and crouched down. He leaned forward and swiped at a tear on her cheek with his callused thumb.
“God, I ain’t seen you since you were just a little thing.”
Sally’s stomach pitched, and she tilted her head. Hungry for whatever he could offer her about her mother.
“What about Mama?”
Mr. Warner’s thin lips spread into a smile, those long yellow teeth bared.
“Don’t you see, Sally? Your mama been keepin’ me from you all these years,” he said.
Perplexed, Sally shook her head.
“I’m your real daddy, baby. And I come back for you.”
ELLA
Despite the cold snap up and down the Eastern Seaboard, Russell’s tulips erupted from the earth that spring like a violent reminder of time’s insistence on passing. Those bulbs he’d planted so many years ago were like bombs in the soil; their explosion each spring never failed to shock Ella.