Seventh Heaven

by Hoffman, Alice;

  “Stay,” Ace whispered.

  The dog didn’t pull, but he made a soft whining sound. Cathy Corrigan’s ghost was disappearing as they watched, molecule by molecule, as if it were made up of fireflies. Soon there was a blanket of light over the lawn, and the light went deeper and deeper, through the ice and into the grass, and finally between the blades of grass and into the earth.

  Ace McCarthy lowered his head and wept; not knowing if he’d been blessed or cursed, he was completely lost. Now more than ever, there was no place for him to go, but he couldn’t stay where he was. He took off as fast as he could. The dog ran beside him, along the sidewalk and across the lawns, but the air was so white they might have been running through stars. They ran with all their might, side by side, every breath tearing at their ribs. They weren’t about to stop, and they might have gone on running this way forever, headlong into the oncoming traffic on the Southern State, if Ace hadn’t found himself in Nora Silk’s arms, where he cried for as long as he needed, before she took him home.

  1960

  6

  THE SIGN OF THE WOLF

  THE AIR WAS WHITE AND FULL of whispers, clairvoyant air, as if there were ghosts on the chimney tops and under the beds and in your own freezer, between the ice cube trays and the Eskimo Pies. As soon as twilight fell, a trellis of ghosts would appear in the white air and the children would stop throwing snowballs and race inside their houses. Late at night there would be the sound of something tapping at your window and not even the TV or the radio could get rid of the voices telling you things you shouldn’t know. People began to long for color, for a line of crimson over the parkway at sunset, or a blue sky; but day after day there was nothing but snow and fog, and in the stillness you could find yourself overcome with desire, a desire that made everything ache, fingers and elbows and toes.

  On Hemlock Street desire did not come alone but was twisted around a core of dissatisfaction. You might find it when you slipped your hand into a rubber glove to scour the kitchen sink, or in the wedges of pear sliced onto a plate for a baby’s lunch. It was in the bottom of lunch pails brought to work, in the sleeves of black leather jackets thrown on after the last bell rang at the high school. And in the morning, when the fog was at its thickest, people stared at each other from their driveways and wondered what they were doing on this street, and the ghosts whispered in their ears, egging them on, and things began to happen for no reason at all. Things no one had imagined or ever expected and certainly had never wanted. Some of the men on the block forgot to pay the bills on time, and you’d know it when the lights in the house next door began to flicker. There were evenings when the women didn’t even bother to cook but slipped TV dinners into their ovens and let their children eat right in front of the set. On Friday nights it was almost impossible to get a baby-sitter because most of the teenage girls had decided they had better things to do. They had given up wearing panty girdles and stockings and a few of the wilder ones had stopped wearing underwear and you could see their flesh through their blue jeans and their pleated skirts. Looking at them, the boys went crazy all at once and turned up their transistor radios so loud you’d have thought they’d go deaf, and they got so hot the air around them sizzled and they smelled like fire even when they stepped out of the shower, clean and soaking wet.

  Everyone was edgy and ready to snap, but the ghosts kept up their whispering, a jumble you couldn’t quite make out, and yet you knew it had something to do with the way you lived your life, and that just made you more furious when dinner wasn’t on the table at six o’clock or when your daughter mouthed off to you. It was the weather, the dampness, the January blues, the mothers told themselves when the laundry piled up and they just didn’t care. It was this and nothing more that made the children pull cats’ tails and the neighborhood dogs tip over trash cans and scatter garbage over the lawns. But it kept getting worse, and toward the middle of the month some people started to believe that it was Donna Durgin’s disappearance that had started to make things go wrong. People began to turn away when they saw her husband walking the two boys to school, with the little girl running after them, all their clothes wrinkled as could be and Melanie’s braids fixed so poorly you could tell no one had bothered to comb them out the night before. They tried not to run into Robert Durgin at the supermarket, where he took boxes of cereal and jars of mayonnaise off the shelves while the children, who were all piled into the cart, grabbed at bags of potato chips and bottles of Pepsi. They stopped taking casseroles over to the Durgins’ house and they stopped offering to baby-sit, and after a while they even stopped feeling bad about it because Robert hired a woman from Hempstead to sit for Melanie during the day and pick up the boys after school, and from a distance she could almost pass for the children’s grandmother, although she never bothered to pull up their socks or tuck their pants into their snow boots. But even though people in the neighborhood avoided Robert Durgin, it seemed what was happening was contagious. Ellen Hennessy noticed that the braids in her own daughter’s hair kept slipping out of their rubber bands and Suzanne, who usually looked like a little angel, seemed messy no matter what, and that her son, Stevie, refused to mind her and talked back in a way she would never have dreamed of when she was his age, and that she herself forgot to defrost chops and steaks for dinner so night after night they had fish sticks and baked beans and, although Joe never said a word, the children were beginning to complain.

  Ellen still had a double boiler she had borrowed from Donna, and maybe that was why she couldn’t cook. She had a breathless feeling sometimes, too, and even breathing slowly into a brown paper bag did no good. When she and Joe were alone she got all shaky, and Joe had actually asked her if there was another man and she’d laughed and said, Who on earth could there possibly be? He’d let it drop at that, he didn’t go as far as her sister Jeannie’s husband, who had made her take down a photograph of John Kennedy she’d tacked to the wall because he was too damn good-looking. It wasn’t another man Ellen Hennessy wanted, and although Kennedy made her feel something, too, it was Jacqueline Kennedy she couldn’t get enough of; she’d search the newspapers for her photograph, she’d read whatever she could find about what designer Jackie liked best, what books she had read, anything to give her a clue to how this woman could be so perfect and so completely filled with promise. Jacqueline Kennedy was the future, Ellen could see that, and as soon as she did she had to consider her own future as well. When Stevie was in school and Suzanne was down for her nap, Ellen would stand by the back door and look at Donna Durgin’s house and she’d feel something she didn’t want and didn’t understand surface within her. It was the desire, and it hit her hard, and she was so furious about all those years when she had never wanted anything that she grew colder each day, until she was a perfect piece of ice and Joe Hennessy couldn’t touch her, he couldn’t even be in the same room with her.

  Hennessy would have wept if he’d allowed himself to, he would have banged his head against the wall, but instead he downed ten cups of black coffee each day and half a bottle of Pepto-Bismol. He was still on the Durgin case, and it was a relief to think about Donna instead of feeling sorry for himself. Hennessy was the only one on the block who still went to the Durgins’. It got so that he’d make up excuses to go over and look for clues. He’d search Donna’s closet and look through her cookbooks for secret messages. He telephoned her relatives in Queens twice a week to make certain no one had heard from her. Robert didn’t talk about her disappearance much, not even when Hennessy pressed him. Oh, sure, if Hennessy pushed hard enough Robert would come up with the name of Donna’s favorite restaurant when they were dating and living near Queens Boulevard, although when Hennessy went to look at the place, he found it had been demolished and an apartment building was going up on the lot. And even when there were no clues to look for, Hennessy would find himself heading to the Durgins’. He’d run errands for Robert on the weekends; he’d pick up one of the kids’ prescriptions at the drugstore or some takeo
ut Chinese food and then stay to watch wrestling on TV after the kids were all tucked into their beds. It wasn’t as if Robert was a friend—they didn’t talk much and could watch television for hours without speaking, other than to comment on the refs’ lousy calls—it was more a feeling that somehow, for whatever reasons, both their wives had left them, even though Ellen was right across the street and hadn’t gone anywhere at all. And it was something more. When Hennessy was at the Durgins’ he could almost erase the desire that had been getting worse every day. He’d do almost anything to avoid going home. When it was too late to go to Robert’s and there wasn’t any extra duty down at the station, Hennessy would be trapped in his house, and after a dinner of fish sticks and beans and twelve hours of black coffee, he’d be so stricken with desire that he would have given it all away, his house, his family, his job, for one night with Nora Silk.

  He wasn’t lying to himself anymore, he wanted her that much, and before he knew what he was doing he had opened a savings account in Floral Park at a bank he’d never been to before. Each week he added to the account, and he kept the bankbook hidden in the garage and wasn’t even sure why. He started looking through the real-estate section of the paper for garden apartments farther out on the island and up in Albany. He got in touch with the PBA to find out if he could transfer to upstate New York. He found reasons to hang around the courthouse in Mineola, and after a while everyone knew his special interest was divorce cases. The lawyers got to know him by name, and over lunch at Reggie’s Bar around the corner from the courthouse they each had a divorce story to end all divorce stories: about a woman who burned down her house in Levittown rather than split the proceeds with her husband, or a man who had shot off his toes so he wouldn’t have to work and support his ex, or a sportswriter who had taken his ex’s photo out to the dunes at Jones Beach and shot at it, and missed by a mile, accidentally wounding an old hermit who lived in a hut made of beach grass and who pressed charges and collected a quarter of a million.

  Hennessy ate up these divorce stories; he couldn’t get enough of them, the nastier the better. The chiselers who fled to Florida so they wouldn’t have to pay child support, the wives who hired private detectives at twenty dollars a day so they could get close-ups of their husband’s infidelity. Each story gave him hope and fueled his desire. The truth was it could be done and had been done before. In his family, in his universe, there had been no such possibility, people got married and were married forever, and that was the way it still was, except for down at the courthouse, where people were breaking up with each other right and left, tearing their families apart and shooting off their toes, and not one of them had half the reason Hennessy did, because Hennessy was in love. It truly tore his heart out just to see her. He wouldn’t shovel after a heavy snowfall if Nora was out there first, because if he did he might just pick her up and carry her to his car. He didn’t care if she wanted to bring her kids with her, they could all take off; and it didn’t matter one damned bit if the department couldn’t transfer him and he lost his pension; and he didn’t give a damn about who would finish the shelves for the laundry room or even what his kids would think.

  Whenever he thought of her he’d get that feeling along the base of his neck, and it drove him crazy. He started watching her house every chance he got. He found his old binoculars in the basement and cleaned them up and then locked himself in the bathroom. At night she kept the living-room blinds down, but not completely closed. He could see the lights turned on at dusk, he could see her in her bathroom, sitting on the counter, so she could put on her mascara and shaking her hair in front of the mirror. Twice he had seen her lift the baby up and dance in a circle with him, and when Hennessy saw that he got shivers down his spine and he had to wash his face with cold water, and by the time he was through she was gone.

  Down at the station house no one noticed that Hennessy was more withdrawn than ever. There was a red scare now that Castro had taken Havana, and Johnny Knight, who had been to Cuba on vacation once to go deep-sea fishing, was particularly upset. The other detectives said Castro wouldn’t last much longer, but Johnny Knight, who already had plans to build a bomb shelter in his basement, suggested they all go to Miami this winter because by next year Florida would be red all the way up to St. Petersburg.

  “You don’t give a crap about Castro, do you?” he’d said to Hennessy when they went out to their cars.

  Hennessy had turned on him savagely. His hands were blue with the cold. “You don’t know what I think,” Hennessy had told him. “You don’t know what I feel.”

  “All right,” Knight had said, backing down. “Jesus.”

  Hennessy had walked to his car and slammed the door shut, but he would have done anything to be in Cuba right then, red or not, he didn’t give a damn. That was when he realized how far gone he was and he knew that he had to make his move. He waited for a Saturday, when Ellen took the kids to her sister’s, and if he should have felt that he was betraying her, he didn’t. Why should he? Ellen didn’t want him any more than he wanted her, that was clear; she never would have thought of another possibility, the desire just wasn’t in her. Hennessy shaved and dressed and went out to shovel snow, and when he’d cleared his sidewalk, and part of the lawn as well, Rickie Shapiro finally came out of her house and went over to baby-sit. Then minutes later, while Hennessy was working on the Winemans’ sidewalk, Nora came out and began to scrape the ice off the Volkswagen’s windshield. Hennessy leaned his shovel against a crab apple tree and went across the street, his neck all crazy and his pulse crazy, too. Nora was wearing sunglasses because of the snow’s glare and her charm bracelet jangled against the windshield as she worked. She stopped and waved at Hennessy when she saw him, and Hennessy wished he could see her eyes.

  “Armand always has a fit when I’m late, and I’m always late,” Nora said.

  “I’ll do that for you,” Hennessy said. He took the scraper from her and set to work on the driver’s side of the windshield.

  “You’re the greatest,” Nora said.

  When Hennessy looked at her she was adjusting her bracelet.

  “Maybe someday you won’t have to work,” Hennessy said. He felt choked up, as if each word he said were a sharp, dangerous object.

  “Oh, no,” Nora said. “I’m not kidding myself about that.”

  “If you got remarried,” Hennessy said. He actually had the nerve to say such a thing.

  “Even if I didn’t have to work, I’d still work just in case I ever had to again,” Nora said. “If you know what I mean. I learned my lesson.”

  Hennessy went around to the passenger’s side and kept scraping. Nora reached into her purse, then bent down to look into the side-view mirror and put on her lipstick. Hennessy took the ice off the scraper with his fingers.

  “Not that I’m planning to get married again anytime soon,” Nora said.

  He could see he would have to give her time. He finished the windshield and came around to hand her the scraper.

  “Well, that’s a loss for any man,” Hennessy said before he could stop himself.

  “Oh, yeah, sure.” Nora laughed. Up close she smelled like honeysuckle and lipstick. She grabbed his arm, just for an instant, but that was long enough. “You’re a certified doll,” she said.

  Hennessy stood in her driveway as she got into the car and started it up. He would save as much money as he could, for the time when she changed her mind. He’d have everything ready, maybe even the apartment, and then he’d question her and find out what kind of furniture she liked best and he’d have it all there, waiting for her. When she put the car in gear and backed down the driveway, Hennessy realized he didn’t have that sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. He felt great; he could wait if he had to, he would act as if everything were the same when in fact nothing, not a goddamned thing, was. That night and the next he ate the dinners Ellen fixed as though he were really hungry. And the next day at lunch he listened to Johnny Knight curse Castro over hamburgers from
White Castle. He took Suzanne to her first ballet lesson and he spanked Stevie for saying “bitch” in front of his teacher. He couldn’t have done any of it if he hadn’t had hope, if it all weren’t just temporary. But the waiting made him edgy and at night he couldn’t sleep. He’d get into bed at eleven, and when he was certain Ellen was asleep he’d get up and fix himself some coffee and he’d wait. Sometimes Nora’s cat would be out on the front stoop and sometimes her kitchen light would still be on at midnight, when the moon was in the center of the sky. When she forgot to close her Venetian blinds, Hennessy liked to guess what he was looking at in the darkened living room before he got out his binoculars to check. A baby blanket on the couch, a pile of 45s forgotten on a chair, a rubber tree plant with the leaves wrinkled and turned up at the tips.

  And then one night, when the air was particularly cold and still and the moon looked blue, Hennessy saw something moving in a corner of her living room. It wasn’t the cat, who was out on the stoop. Perhaps the baby had climbed out of his crib, or a bundle of clothes had fallen? Hennessy put down his coffee and got his binoculars; the back of his neck was so tight he could barely turn his head. The thing stood up slowly, and only when it walked halfway across the room could Hennessy see its shadow on the wall. It was, without a doubt, the shadow of a wolf.

  Hennessy went to his bedroom, opened his night table drawer, and got out his gun. His hands were shaking as he cocked the gun open and slipped in the bullets. His breathing was so raspy and loud it was hard to believe Ellen didn’t wake. But she slept on, unaware that Hennessy had run out of their house with the gun in his hand. He went across the dark street, with the sound of his own breathing filling his head. When he reached the bushes beside the stoop he forced himself to slow down. He made his way to the window carefully, crouching low. The wolf was under the dining-room table. Hennessy might have been fooled into believing it was asleep, but its ears stood straight up, listening. This was fate, it was almost a miracle, because the waiting was about to be over. It didn’t matter how the beast had gotten into Nora’s house, or even if it took a chunk out of Hennessy’s leg when they faced each other; he was about to save Nora, and when he did she would know he was the man she needed. Certain of this, Hennessy felt his fear drop away. He stood up to his full height, but as he did he knocked against the window and the wolf saw him. And then Hennessy was not quite so certain.