by Lori Roy
“Yesterday,” she says. “They came yesterday.”
Sprinkling the diluted vinegar on the crumpled ball of newspaper, Grace rubs small circles on the living room’s cloudy window.
“They are asking you more questions?” Mr. Symanski says.
Another deep breath so her voice won’t quiver.
“I wish I could have told them something,” she says, and rubs her nose.
Ewa’s vinegar water is stronger than the mixture Grace has at home. But stronger is better. The glass glistens and squeals as Grace scrubs.
“I wish I could have told them something that would help. But they arrested a man. Does it give you any peace to know that?”
Maybe there is some comfort in knowing. Maybe not knowing is the thing that tortures a father, keeps him up at night, turns his hair to straw, makes his shoulders cave and his spine bow. The street must surely be safer with one of them arrested. This must bring some peace.
Mr. Symanski sits on the sofa. He used to sit in the brown recliner pushed against the wall, and Ewa would sit next to him in her chair. With his hands in his lap, he smiles at the bright window.
“They have no one,” he says.
“But they arrested a man.”
“They are telling me it was unrelated,” Mr. Symanski says. “I don’t understand unrelated. I am thinking Elizabeth doesn’t matter as much as another might.”
“I don’t understand, either,” Grace says. “They let him go? How can they do that?”
Mr. Symanski shakes his head. “They say they can be holding a man only so long. That is all they are telling me.”
“Did he live there?” Grace says, pointing at the Filmore. She squints into the freshly cleaned window just as Mr. Symanski had squinted when she first opened the door. As she stares across Alder Avenue, she wipes down the marble sill with her soggy newspaper. “Is he here on this street? Have you ever seen him?”
“I am never looking.”
“I wish I could have helped you,” she says, knowing the man is back on the street because she was too afraid to tell the truth. “I wish I could have said something to the police, told them something that would have stopped all this.”
From his seat on the sofa, Mr. Symanski stares down at the sliver of toe poking through his sock. “You are helping me now,” he says. “You are being a good neighbor. And always so good to my Elizabeth. Always so good. You’ll be having your own soon and knowing how wonderful a daughter is to love.”
After scrubbing the kitchen window, wiping down the counters, and promising to deliver a roast in a few days to fill Mr. Symanski’s empty refrigerator—or possibly a stuffed chicken if he has tired of a roast every week—Grace walks with Mr. Symanski to the front gate. Once there, she hugs him lightly and pushes on the gate’s latch. It sticks, so she gives it a second jostle. Down the street, near her own house, one of the twins walks toward her. From this distance, she can’t tell which one.
“The police came to see me today,” Mr. Symanski says. “Just before you are here, they came.”
Grace lets the gate fall closed and whirls around to face Mr. Symanski. “Oh, no.”
The twin is a half block closer. Because her head jerks from side to side as if she’s afraid of her surroundings and because her shoulders droop, Grace knows it’s Arie.
“Yes,” Mr. Symanski says. “It was being the river. That is all they are telling me. Today they are finding her. It is being the other men who tell them it is my Elizabeth.”
Grace reaches out, squeezes Mr. Symanski’s wrist, pulls him into her arms. “What can I say? It’s my fault. All of this. My fault.”
Mr. Symanski, hunched over at an awkward angle because of Grace’s large stomach, rests his head on her shoulder. “This is not being true,” he says. “My Elizabeth, she is being at peace?”
Grace dabs at her eyes. She wants to ask how it happened, what the police found, but Arie is only a house away and she shouldn’t see this or hear this.
“Can I help you inside?” Grace says, glancing back at Arie. She has walked a few yards closer and stopped. She stands at the sidewalk that leads to the Archers’, who live next door, and has wrapped herself in both arms. Even from this distance, Grace can see Arie is crying.
“Go,” Mr. Symanski says. “Go and see to the child.” Halfway up the sidewalk, he stops and turns back. “It is being hardest to be the only one left.”
Grace watches until Mr. Symanski reaches his porch, then she bangs on the latch again and once through the gate, she rushes toward Arie.
“Arie, dear. What is it? What’s wrong?”
Arie’s lips roll in on themselves and she backs away. She shakes her head but doesn’t speak.
“Honey, please. Why are you crying?” Grace takes another few steps closer, but this time, she moves slowly.
Arie must know about Elizabeth’s death. Grace should be crying too, but she’s known all along things would come to this end.
“It’s Izzy,” Arie says, still cradling herself with her own arms. “I’m afraid what happened to you is going to happen to her.”
• • •
When Mrs. Richardson reaches out to cup Arie’s shoulder, Arie stumbles away. It’s rude, and Aunt Julia would be disappointed, but something bad happened to Mrs. Richardson in that alley, something so bad she hasn’t even told Aunt Julia, and Arie doesn’t want to be touched by it.
Again, Arie says in little more than a whisper, “I’m afraid what happened to you is going to happen to Izzy.” She sniffles and drags her hand across her nose.
Mrs. Richardson doesn’t try to come any closer. Her white hair glows in the bright sun. None of it breaks free of the band holding it from her face or frizzes at her temples like Arie’s hair always does. In the street, a car drives by. Mrs. Richardson doesn’t smile or wave even though it’s the neighborly thing to do. Now she is the one afraid to get too near.
“What do you mean by that, Arie? What do you think happened to me?”
After Arie had finished cleaning up to go to church with Aunt Julia, she had run downstairs, her sneakers in hand. Sock-footed, she skated into the kitchen. Empty. She shouted into the backyard. Nothing. Lastly, she looked out the front window. The driveway was empty. Aunt Julia was gone, and so was Izzy. She ran back upstairs, and from her bedroom window, she scanned Alder Avenue. Every door along the street was closed. Most of the driveways were empty. She crawled over Izzy’s bed, a rumpled mess because she never makes hospital corners or smooths her quilt, and looked out the side window. She looked past the roofs and antennae and overhead lines, and at the far end of the alley, she saw a person. She couldn’t say she saw Izzy because the person was too far away, and yet, she knew it was Izzy because an arm stretched into the air and waved in broad strokes.
Arie watched the alley for half an hour. It was early, she told herself. Not until five o’clock would Mr. Schofield set up his chair again. Like everyone on Alder Avenue, Mr. Schofield knew the colored men came at ten and five, or thereabouts. Surely Izzy would be home long before that. But then one o’clock passed, and two o’clock and soon, Aunt Julia would be home. Arie had to go looking.
The street had jumped to life while Arie was upstairs watching the alley. Cars drove past, whipped into driveways, and ladies scurried to their front doors. Arie had clung to the banister with both hands as she walked down the stairs to the sidewalk and she waited for one of the ladies to shout out to her and tell her to get back inside. But no one noticed her or scolded her. Three times Arie walked up and down Alder. Cars continued to drive down the street, but instead of more ladies, it was their husbands, home at an odd hour, and because they, too, hurried inside without tending to their trash cans or setting out the sprinkler or using the daylight to mow the lawn, and because time was slipping away and five o’clock would eventually come, fear welled up in Arie and she couldn’t stop that fear from spilling out as tears when she saw Mrs. Richardson a half block away.
“I asked you a question,�
�� Mrs. Richardson says, grabbing Arie’s arm. It’s the same spot she grabbed when she thought Izzy and Arie started the fire. “What do you mean? What do you know about what happened to me?”
Arie stares down on Mrs. Richardson’s hand. Her fingers pinch but Arie doesn’t pull away.
“The bad thing that happened to you,” Arie says. “The bad thing that happened in the garage.” She lifts her eyes. “I can’t find Izzy and I’m afraid the same will happen to her.”
Mrs. Richardson’s hand softens and drops from Arie’s arm. “Come,” she says, taking Arie’s hand, gently this time. “That looks like your aunt’s car. Let’s get you home and then we’ll find Izzy.”
Mrs. Richardson smiles at Arie and talks with a smooth, steady voice. She is trying to sound like she’s not scared, but red patches grow where her white collar rests on her neck and sweat collects on the soft hairs above her top lip and on the tender skin under her eyes. And instead of walking toward Aunt Julia, Mrs. Richardson almost runs, dragging Arie along behind.
Up ahead, Aunt Julia’s car rolls into the driveway. Uncle Bill doesn’t like for her to drive it because he says it’s on its last leg, but Aunt Julia said first leg or last leg, she had to drive it today because the bus wouldn’t do. She parks the car where the back bumper is left to stick out into the street, and without closing the door behind her, she walks toward Arie and Mrs. Richardson, slowly at first and then more quickly when she sees Mrs. Richardson is in a hurry.
Across the street, Mrs. Herze pulls into her driveway too. Mr. Herze’s big blue car is already parked there. He must have been one of the husbands who came home early. Arie’s been thinking only about the bad thing that might have happened to Izzy, but because Aunt Julia walks with long, quick steps and her makeup is smeared and because the husbands are home early and because every house is closed up tight, something else bad is happening right here on Alder Avenue.
Like Aunt Julia did, Mrs. Herze doesn’t bother to park her car properly and she runs over a patch of her snapdragons with one tire. They’re all dying anyway because she hoses them down several times during the day in case someone peed on them. Mrs. Herze throws open her door and waves across the street at Aunt Julia.
“Julia, stop,” Mrs. Herze calls out, waving something in the air.
Aunt Julia pauses but doesn’t look back. “Leave me be, Malina.”
“Please stop,” Mrs. Herze shouts again. Making her way down her driveway, she teeters on tall heels and a white handbag swings from her wrist. “Please, hear me out.”
Aunt Julia doesn’t wait for Mrs. Herze but continues toward Arie. Once close enough to see Arie has been crying, Aunt Julia draws her into a hug and says, “What’s wrong, sugar?” Aunt Julia smells like ripe bananas and brown-sugar frosting.
Mrs. Herze continues to wobble across the street on her narrow heels, all the while waving something in the air and begging Aunt Julia to listen and understand.
Saying nothing more to Mrs. Herze, Aunt Julia stoops before Arie and holds her by both shoulders. “Why are you crying? What’s all this fuss?” Aunt Julia smiles and talks with a hushed voice. Her speech becomes sluggish and she punches the beginning of each word. Uncle Bill says tough times, happy times, any sort of times can draw out Aunt Julia’s Southern drawl.
“Julia, I saved your clipping.” Mrs. Herze stumbles to a stop behind Aunt Julia. Clumps of her short black hair stick to her forehead where she has sweated, except she would call it perspiration, and her red lipstick bleeds into the thin lines that cut into her top lip. “Look here, I brought it back to you.”
Aunt Julia takes a deep breath. A silver safety pin meant to keep a gap in her blouse closed has popped open. Its sharp end points at Arie. Aunt Julia brushes her fingers across Arie’s brow.
“Now, tell me,” Aunt Julia says, “what’s all the fuss?” Then she turns to Mrs. Richardson. “Did she hear about Elizabeth?”
Mrs. Herze stomps one white shoe, grabs Aunt Julia’s shoulder, and gives a yank. Aunt Julia, still squatted in front of Arie, falls backward and lands on her hind end. Mrs. Richardson lunges but can’t stop Aunt Julia from toppling over.
“What on earth has gotten into you, Malina?” Mrs. Richardson says, her large belly making it difficult for her to stretch out a helping hand to Aunt Julia.
“I only meant to help, Julia,” Mrs. Herze says, gazing down on Aunt Julia and ignoring Mrs. Richardson’s question. A gray streak cuts through the part in Mrs. Herze’s black hair. “You’re being entirely unreasonable.”
“Malina.”
The loud, deep voice silences everyone. There, across the street, standing near the back of his car, his hand resting on the peak of one of its tall blue fins, is Mr. Herze.
“What on earth are you doing there?” he shouts. “Leave those people be.”
Mrs. Herze crosses her arms over her chest, tips forward at the waist so she is hovering over Aunt Julia, and drops her voice to a whisper. “Please, listen to me,” she says. Her eyes are stretched wide open and her thin, black brows ride higher than they normally do. Tiny stray hairs pepper her lids. Grandma would say Mrs. Herze needs to reacquaint herself with a pair of tweezers. “Please. Send those girls back to your mother.”
“Good Lord, Malina,” Aunt Julia says, snatching the sheet of paper from Mrs. Herze. “What kind of crazy has gotten its claws in you? Is this about those flowers of yours? Is that what has you in such a state?” Aunt Julia brushes away Mrs. Herze and reaches for Mrs. Richardson’s hand and the tissue she has pulled from her pocketbook. Once standing, Aunt Julia dabs at the stains under her eyes and says, “I suppose you’d better listen to your husband and leave us be.”
Aunt Julia continues to pat her face and chest until Mrs. Herze has backed into the middle of the street. Then Aunt Julia drops her eyes to Arie and lets them drift right, left, and right again.
“Where’s Izzy?” she says, the wadded-up tissue dangling from her fingers. The words crawl out of her mouth.
Mrs. Herze stops backing away. Behind her, Mr. Herze stands in the driveway.
“Where is your sister?”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Malina lingers in the middle of the street until a car forces her to move. She gives a kindly wave to the driver and steps onto the curb outside her house. Mr. Herze stands near his sedan. He rubs the top of the car’s fin as if it were Malina’s thigh. Her cheeks burn. Certainly, they’ve turned red. Across the street, Julia kneels before the twin and stares up at her. Grace stands at the girl’s side, one hand resting on her shoulder.
“Arie, you promised me you two would stay inside,” Julia says. “You crossed your heart and promised me.” One of Julia’s nylons is torn and a hole has opened up in her skirt’s side seam.
The girl shakes her head. “No,” she says.
Malina braves the street again and presses her ear toward the threesome.
“What do you mean, no? You stood right there in that entry and gave me your word. You gave me your word, Arie. You said you’d watch over your sister.”
The girl shakes her head. Malina takes another step.
“I didn’t make that promise,” the girl says. “It was Izzy. She was pretending to be me.”
They talk some more, the girl pointing toward the Filmore Apartments, Grace patting the girl’s shoulder and shaking her head, Julia looking up and down Alder Avenue. How long has she been gone? When did you last see her? Where would she go? Did you know she was going? Did you know she had gone?
“You said you saw one of the girls today,” Julia shouts when she notices Malina standing nearby. “Was it Izzy? Did she say where she was going?”
Malina shakes her head and can’t stop herself from glancing back at Mr. Herze.
Grace wraps an arm around the girl and walks her up Julia’s driveway. “I’ll get her inside,” she says. “And then I’ll check with the neighbors.”
“I’ll get my keys,” Mr. Herze calls out. “She won’t be far. I’ll drive around a few blocks.�
��
The screen door slams once when Mr. Herze goes inside and again when he returns. Another car comes along to force Malina and Julia from the street. It’s Grace Richardson’s husband. He pulls over, climbs out of his car, and jumps back in after Julia tells him of the missing child.
“Move this car,” Mr. Herze shouts at Malina. “I can’t very well get out with you blocking me in.”
Malina fumbles with the clasp on her purse and digs one hand inside, searching for her keys.
“How about you, Warren?” Julia says, after James Richardson has driven away. “Did you happen to see one of the girls while you were out today? It would have been Izzy.”
Walking out of Julia’s house, Grace’s skin is white except for the red glow that creeps up her neck. She has taken the other twin inside and now that twin sits in the front window, her face pressed to the glass, and looks as if she’s watching Mr. Herze.
Standing at the side of his car, his keys in hand, Mr. Herze stares across the street at Julia but doesn’t answer.
“Warren,” Julia says again. “Did you see her?”
He looks down at his keys, jostles them, pulls open the car door.
“Warren?”
“Well, good Lord in heaven,” Mr. Herze says. He tosses his keys into the air, catches them, and slams the door shut. “Unless you’ve got a third one running around, that must be the one you’re looking for.”
Down the block, James Richardson pulls into his drive. He has seen the same as Mr. Herze. Walking on the side of the street, where the last few elms throw a spot of shade, is the other twin. James Richardson walks to the street and makes a motion with his thumb, signaling to the girl she’d better hurry on home. She hugs something to her chest and begins a lazy jog. As she gets closer and sees Julia standing on the curb, arms crossed, the girl slows her pace. Malina walks toward her for a closer look. The girl definitely holds something in her arms. It’s a stack of paper—white, glossy paper—one sheet the exact size of the next. A stack at least a half-inch thick. Malina leans close as the girl passes. LOST CAT, it reads across the top in large black letters.