Maybe the biggest folly of all to them was her insisting on college for me, and demanding that it be the University of Chicago. Only the best did for Gabriella, and she’d decided that was Chicago’s best when I was two. Not, perhaps, comparing in her mind with the University of Pisa. Just as the shoes she bought herself at Callabrano’s on Morgan Street didn’t compare to Milan. But one did what one could. So two years after my mother’s death I’d left on a scholarship for what my neighbors called Red University, half scared, half excited to meet the demons up there. And after that, I’d never really gone home again.
Louisa Djiak was the one woman on the block who always stood up for Gabriella, dead or alive. But then, she owed Gabriella. And me, too, I thought with a flash of bitterness that startled me. I realized I was still pissed at spending all those glorious summer days baby-sitting, at doing my homework with Louisa’s baby howling in the background.
Well, the baby was grown up now, but she was still howling exigently in my ear. I pulled up behind her Capri and turned off the engine.
The house was smaller than I remembered, and dingier. Louisa wasn’t well enough to wash and starch the curtains every six months and Caroline belonged to a generation that emphatically avoided such tasks. I should know-I was part of it myself.
Caroline was waiting in the doorway for me, still edgy. She gave a brief, tense smile. “Ma’s really excited you’re here, Vic. She’s waited all day to have her coffee so she could drink it with you.”
She took me through the small, cluttered dining room to the kitchen, saying over her shoulder, “She’s not supposed to drink coffee anymore. But it was too hard for her to give it up-along with everything else that’s changed for her. So we compromise on one cup a day.”
She busied herself at the stove, tackling the coffee with energetic inefficiency. Despite a trail of spilled water and coffee grounds on the stove, she carefully arranged a TV tray with china, cloth napkins, and a geranium cut from a coffee can in the window. Finally she set out a little dish of ice cream with a geranium leaf in it. When she picked up the tray I stood up from my perch on the kitchen stool to follow her.
Louisa’s bedroom lay to the right of the dining room. As soon as Caroline opened the door the smell of sickness hit me like a physical force, bringing back the odor of medicine and decaying flesh that had hung around Gabriella the last year of her life. I dug the nails into the palm of my right hand and willed myself into the room.
My first reaction was shock, even though I thought I’d prepared myself Louisa sat propped in bed, her face gaunt and tinged a queer greenish gray under her wispy hair. Her twisted hands emerged from the loose sleeves of a worn pink cardigan. When she held them out to me with a smile, though, I caught a glimpse of the beautiful young woman who’d rented the house next to ours when she was pregnant with Caroline.
“Good to see you, Victoria. Knew you’d come by. You’re like your ma that way. Look like her, too, even though you have your daddy’s gray eyes.”
I knelt by the bed and hugged her. Underneath the cardigan her bones felt tiny and brittle.
She gave a racking cough that shook her frame. “Excuse me. Too many damned cigarettes for too many years. Little missy here hides ’em from me-as if they could hurt me any worse now.”
Caroline bit her lips and moved over next to the bed. “I brought you your coffee, Ma. Maybe it’ll take your mind off your cigs.”
“Yeah, my one cup. Damned doctors. First they pump you so full of shit you don’t know whether you’re coming or going. Then when they got you tied by the hind legs they take away anything that’d make the time pass easier. I’m telling you, girl, don’t ever get yourself in this spot.”
I took the thick china mug from Caroline and handed it to Louisa. Her hands shook slightly and she pressed the mug against her breast to steady it. I slid off my heels into a straight-backed chair near the bed.
“You want to spend some time alone with Vic, Ma?” Caroline asked.
“Yeah, sure. You go on, girl. I know you got work to do.”
When the door shut behind Caroline I said, “I’m really sorry to see you like this.”
She made a throwaway gesture. “Ah-what the hell. I’m sick of thinking about it, and I talk about it to the damned docs often enough. I want to hear about you. I follow all your cases when they make it to the papers. Your ma’d be real proud of you.”
I laughed. “I’m not so sure. She hoped I’d be a concert singer. Or maybe a high-priced lawyer. I can just imagine her if she saw the way I live.”
Louisa laid a bony hand on my arm. “Don’t you think so, Victoria. Don’t you think so for one minute. You know Gabriella-she’d of gave her last shirt to a beggar. Look how she stood up for me when people came by and threw eggs and shit at my windows. No. Maybe she’d of liked to see you living better than you do. Heck-feel that way about Caroline. Her brains, her education and all, she could do better than hanging around this dump. But I’m real proud of her. She’s honest and hardworking and she sticks up for what she believes in. And you’re just the same. No, sir. Gabriella could see you now she’d be as proud as can be.”
“Well, we couldn’t have managed without your help when she was so sick,” I muttered, uncomfortable.
“Oh, shit, girl. My one chance to pay her back for everything she did? I can still see her when the righteous ladies from St. Wenceslaus were out parading around my front door. Gabriella come out with a head of steam that damn near drove ’em into the Calumet.”
She gave a shout of hoarse laughter that changed to a coughing fit which left her breathless and slightly purple. She lay quietly for a few minutes, panting in short, gasping breaths.
“Hard to believe folks cared so much about one pregnant unmarried teenager, ain’t it,” she said finally. “Here we got half the people outa work in the community-that’s life and death, girl. But back then I guess it seemed like the end of the world to folks. I mean, my own ma and pa, even, throwing me out like they did.” Her face worked for a minute. “Like it was all my fault or something. Your ma was the only one stood up for me. Even when my folks come around and decided to admit Caroline was alive, they never really forgave her for being born or me for doing it.”
Gabriella never did anything by half measures: I helped her look after the baby so Louisa could work the night shift at Xerxes. The days when I had to take Caroline to her grandparents’ were my worst torment. Rigid, humorless, they wouldn’t let me into the house unless I took my shoes off. A couple of times they even bathed Caroline outside before they’d admit her to their pristine portals.
Louisa’s parents were only in their sixties-same age as Gabriella and Tony would be if they were still alive. Because Louisa had a baby and lived by herself, I’d always thought of her as part of my parents’ generation, but she was only five or six years older than me.
“When did you stop working?” I asked. I called Louisa occasionally, when my guilty imagination conjured up Gabriella’s image, but it had been awhile. South Chicago hovered too uneasily at the base of my mind for me to willingly court its return to my life, and it had been over two years since I’d spoken to Louisa. She hadn’t said anything then about feeling bad.
“Oh, it got so I couldn’t stand anymore about-must be just over a year. So they put me on disability then. It’s only been the last six months or so I couldn’t get around at all.”
She flicked the covers back from her legs. They were twigs, thin bones a bird might use but mottled greeny-gray like her face. Livid patches on her feet and ankles showed where her veins had given up carting blood around.
“It’s my kidneys,” she said. “Darned things don’t want me to pee properly. Caroline takes me over two, three times a week and they stick me on that damned machine, supposed to clean me out, but between you and me, girl, I’d just as soon they’d let me go in peace.” She held up a thin hand. “Don’t you go telling Caroline that, now-she’s doing everything to see I get the best. And the company pay
s for it, so it’s not like I feel she’s digging into her own savings. I don’t want her to think I ain’t grateful.”
“No, no,” I said soothingly, pulling the cover up gently.
She reverted to the old days on the block, to the days when her legs were slim and muscular, when she used to go dancing after getting off work at midnight. To Steve Ferraro, who wanted to marry her, and Joey Pankowski, who didn’t, and how if she had to do it over, she’d do it the same, because she had Caroline, but for Caroline she wanted something different, something better than staying on in South Chicago working herself to an early old age.
At last I took the bony fingers and squeezed them gently. “I’ve got to go, Louisa-it’s twenty miles to my place. But I’ll come back.”
“Well, it’s been real good to see you again, girl.” She cocked her head on one side and gave a naughty smile. “Don’t suppose you could find a way to slip me a pack of cigarettes, do you?”
I laughed. “I’m not touching that with a barge pole, Louisa-you work it out with Caroline.”
I shook out her pillows and turned on the TV for her before going off to find Caroline. Louisa had never been much given to kissing, but she squeezed my hand tightly for a few seconds.
3
My Sister’s Keeper
Caroline was sitting at the dining-room table, eating fried chicken and making notes on a colored graph. Chaotic stacks of paper-reports, magazines, flyers-covered all of the small surface. A large pile near her left elbow teetered uncertainly on the table edge. She put down her pencil when she heard me come into the room.
“I went out for some Kentucky Fried while you were in with Ma. Want some? What did you think-kind of a shock, huh?”
I shook my head in dismay. “It’s terrible to see her like this. How are you holding up?”
She grimaced. “It wasn’t so bad until her legs wouldn’t support her anymore. She show ’em to you? I knew she would. It’s really tough on her not being able to get around. The hard part for me was realizing how long she’d been sick before I noticed anything. You know Ma-she’d never complain in a million years, especially about anything as private as her kidneys.”
She rubbed a greasy hand through her unruly curls. “It was only three years ago, when I suddenly noticed how much weight she’d been losing, that I even knew anything was wrong. Then it came out she’d been feeling off for a long time-dizzy and stuff, her feet numb-but she didn’t want to say anything that might jeopardize her job.”
The story sounded depressingly familiar. People on the hip North Side went to the doctor every time they stubbed their toes, but in South Chicago you expected life to be tough. Dizziness and weight loss happened to lots of people; it was the kind of thing grown-ups kept to themselves.
“You satisfied with the doctors she’s seeing?”
Caroline finished gnawing on the chicken thigh and licked her fingers. “They’re okay. We go to Help of Christians because that’s where Xerxes has their medical plan, and they do as much as anyone could. I mean, her kidneys just aren’t working at all-they call it acute renal failure-and it looks like she may have some bone marrow problems and may be starting with emphysema. That’s our only real problem-she keeps going on about her damned cigarettes. Hell, they may have helped get her into this fix to begin with.”
I said awkwardly, “If she’s in that bad shape, the cigarettes aren’t going to make her any worse, you know.”
“Vic! You didn’t say that to her, did you? I have to fight her about them ten times a day as it is. If she thinks you’re backing her up, I might as well quit on the spot.” She slapped the table emphatically; the teetering pile of papers flew across the floor. “I was sure you of all people would support me on this.”
“You know how I feel about smoking,” I said, annoyed. “I expect Tony would be alive today if he hadn’t had a two-pack-a-day habit-I still hear him wheezing and coughing in my nightmares. But how much time is smoking going to shave from Louisa’s life at this point? She’s in there by herself, got nothing but the tube to keep her company. I’m just saying it’d make her feel better mentally and won’t make her any worse physically.”
Caroline set her mouth in an uncompromising line. “No. I don’t even want to talk about it.”
I sighed and got down on the floor to help her with the loose papers. When we had them all collated again I looked at her suspiciously: she had reverted to her tense abstracted mood.
“Well, I think it’s time for me to push off. I hope the Lady Tigers go all the way again.”
“I-Vic. I need to talk to you. I need your help.”
“Caroline, I came down and pranced around in my basketball uniform for you. I saw Louisa. Not that I grudge the time with her, but how many items you got on your agenda tonight?”
“I want to hire you. Professionally. I need your help as a detective,” she said defiantly.
“What for? You give SCRAP’s money to the church Lenten fund and now you want me to find it for you again?”
“Goddamn you, Vic! Could you stop acting like I’m still five years old and treat me seriously for a minute?”
“If you wanted to hire me, why couldn’t you have said something about it on the phone?” I asked. “Your step-by-step approach to me isn’t exactly designed to make me feel serious about you.”
“I wanted you to see Ma before I talked to you about it,” she muttered, looking at her graph. “I thought if you saw how bad off she is, you’d think it was more important.”
I sat at the end of the table. “Caroline, lay it out for me. I promise I’ll listen as seriously to you as to any other potential client. But tell me the whole story, front, middle, and end. Then we can decide if you really need a detective, if it should be me, and so on.”
She took a breath and said quickly, “I want you to find my father for me.”
I was quiet for a minute.
“Isn’t that a job for a detective?” she demanded.
“Do you know who he is?” I asked gently.
“No, that’s partly what I need you to find out for me. You see how bad Ma is, Vic. She’s going to die soon.” She tried to keep her voice matter-of-fact, but it quavered a little. “Her folks always treated me like-I don’t know-not the same way they are to my cousins. Second-class, I guess. When she dies I’d like to have some kind of family. I mean, maybe my old man will turn out to be an asshole jerk. The kind of guy who lets a girl go through what Ma did when she was pregnant might be. But maybe he’d have folks who’d like me. And if he didn’t, at least I’d know.”
“What does Louisa say? Have you asked her?”
“She practically killed me. Practically killed herself-she got so upset she almost choked to death. Screaming how I was ungrateful, she’d worked herself to the bone for me, I never wanted for anything, why’d I have to go nosing around in something that wasn’t any of my damned business. So I knew I couldn’t go on about it with her. But I have to find out. I know you could do it for me.”
“Caroline, maybe you’re better off not knowing. Even if I knew how to go about it-missing persons aren’t a big part of my business-if it’s that painful to Louisa, you might prefer not to find out.”
“You know who he is, don’t you!” she cried.
I shook my head. “I have no idea, honestly. Why did you think I do?”
She looked down. “I’m sure she told Gabriella. I thought maybe Gabriella told you.”
I moved over to sit down next to her. “Maybe Louisa told my mother, but if so, it wasn’t the kind of thing Gabriella thought I ought to know about. As God is my witness, I don’t know.”
She gave a little smile at that. “So will you find him for me?”
If I hadn’t known her all her life, it would have been easier to say no. I specialize in financial crime. Missing persons takes a certain kind of skill, and certain kinds of contacts I’ve never bothered cultivating. And this guy’d been gone more than a quarter of a century.
But in addit
ion to whining and teasing and tagging along when I didn’t want her, Caroline used to adore me. When I went off to college she’d race to meet my train if I came home for the weekend, copper pigtails flying around her head, plump legs pumping as hard as they could. She even went out for basketball because I did. She almost drowned following me into Lake Michigan when she was four. The memories were endless. Her blue eyes still looked at me with total trust. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t keep from responding.
“You got any idea where to start this search?”
“Well, you know. It had to be someone who lived in East Side. She never went anyplace else. I mean, she’d never even been to the Loop until your mother took us there to look at the Christmas decorations when I was three.”
East Side was an all-white neighborhood to the east of South Chicago. It was cut off from the city by the Calumet River, and its residents tended to lead parochial, inbred lives. Louisa’s parents still lived there in the house she’d grown up in.
“That’s helpful,” I said encouragingly. “What do you figure the population was in 1960? Twenty thousand? And only half of them were men. And many of those were children. You got any other ideas?”
“No,” she said doggedly. “That’s why I need a detective.”
Before I could say anything else the doorbell rang, Caroline looked at her watch. “That might be Aunt Connie. She sometimes comes this late. Be back in a minute.”
She trotted out to the entryway. While she dealt with the caller I flipped through a magazine devoted to the solid-waste-disposal industry, wondering if I was really insane enough to look for Caroline’s father. I was staring at a picture of a giant incinerator when she came back into the room. Nancy Cleghorn, my old basketball pal who now worked for SCRAP, was trailing behind her.
“Hi, Vic. Sorry to barge in, but I wanted to fill Caroline in on a problem.”
Caroline looked at me apologetically and asked if I’d mind waiting a few minutes to finish up.
“Not at all,” I said politely, wondering if I was doomed to spend the night in South Chicago. “Want me to go to the other room?”
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