“I found it at the bar,” she grumbled, though she didn’t seem to believe it herself. “I was on my way to the lost and found—I don’t even know why they stopped me.”
“Huh.”
The girl had receded into the gloom. Marie felt as if she were advising a lovelorn caller on her radio show.
“That lady at the bar, she was eyeballing me,” the girl mused. Her voice lowered then, her tone hardening. “I took her for a dyke.”
Marie didn’t care for that kind of talk, but the suggestion that a female undercover might have taken part in the caper thrilled her. She pictured a lady agent in an off-the-shoulder evening gown, a transmitter concealed amid the diamonds of her necklace. At a gala in the ballroom of the Plaza Hotel, maybe; maybe there were Russian spies. A clarinet began to croon the opening bars of “Begin the Beguine”—
“Do the cops have gals like you doing sneaky shit like that?”
Marie was so caught up in the reverie that she barely heard the profanity. “Oh, yes!” she exclaimed. “Not a lot—most of us are stuck on matron duty for twenty years. But one day, I’m gonna be out there, like them.”
A water bug the size of a sore thumb skittered down the hall. Marie winced and exhaled. Someday—but not tonight.
“You were so good in the lineup,” the girl said. “‘Careful, big fella!’ Did you ever think about acting?”
“Oh, you know, just daydreaming. Once, in school—”
The girl cut her off. “Oooh, sorry, but I have to go. Gimme some toilet paper, wouldja?”
Marie opened a dented tin cabinet and took three sheets of newspapery tissue from a roll. The girl sounded hurt when she took them. “Thanks, but—three? I’m not feeling well. Could you just give me the roll?”
Marie hesitated. She felt bad for the girl, but the rules were the rules. “I’m only supposed to give you three at a time.”
The girl groaned and swayed, stamping her feet as if struggling to hold it in. “Please! It’s embarrassing to have to ask.”
Marie was embarrassed, too, and she handed the roll through the bars. Was the three-sheet rule really a rule? She’d never seen it written down. She closed the door to the precinct lobby for privacy and moved her chair down to the next cell. She was grateful there was only one bulb in the hall. It wouldn’t matter that she’d forgotten to bring something to read.
Marie hummed a tune to cover the splashing noise from the cell. When they begin the beguine, it brings back the sound of music so tender—Da-da, da-da-da-da-da. What in God’s name was a beguine? The toilet flushed, but Marie barely heard it. She was trying to get back to the Hotel Astor. She’d been out of the police academy for six months, and she’d only done matron duty so far, aside from a few stray days on other assignments. Once, she helped detectives with an Italian burglary suspect, translating the interrogation. She’d been thrilled to do her bit, but the detective later told her that the perp was from Newark, not Salerno, and he’d only been playing dumb. There was the weekend at the beach at Coney Island, where she was supposed to be a reassuring figure if she came across any lost children. That was a change of scenery, at least, but she broiled in her heavy woolens, and several mothers seemed to take her for a free babysitter, dropping off junior—Just for a minute, I swear!—and strolling back hours later. Matron duty was better than DOA runs. It was considered inappropriate for a patrolman to search a female corpse. There had been a couple of stinkers. The toilet flushed again.
Marie was in awe of her boss, Inspector Melchionne, whose hand-picked gals were out and about doing all kinds of interesting things. There weren’t a lot of them—thirty, maybe, out of two hundred and fifty policewomen—working pickpocket cases and con games, and detectives borrowed them for robbery stakeouts and drug buys. Just yesterday, there was a story in the paper about the one who locked up the Gypsy fortune-teller who swindled three spinster sisters from Flatbush out of their life savings; last week, another nabbed a would-be models’ agent in Brooklyn who took plaster casts of girls’ chests, claiming it was standard procedure: “All the major brassiere companies insist!” The headline was funny, if a little fresh: BUSTED! Marie had been in the papers when she was in the academy. She had the clip framed—a beautiful shot of her and her husband, Sid, beneath the caption “Two Cops in Every Family?”
The inspector was said to be fanatical in her attention to publicity. It was rumored that she approved every script for the new television program Decoy—the first cop show starring a woman, with opening credits that proclaimed, “Presented as a tribute to the Bureau of Policewomen, Police Department, City of New York.” And policewomen were popping up on TV quiz shows like Twenty-One and Dotto and Treasure Hunt. Marie had wondered what consolation the public might take from learning that Policewoman Claire Falhauber knew so many state capitals, and then she realized that most people didn’t know that policewomen existed. Marie hadn’t herself, until recently.
Six months on matron duty. She didn’t know how long it would be before she got a chance to do something else. It wasn’t as if she’d get better at her job if it consisted of sitting down and doing nothing. She couldn’t really say she was learning anything. And then she felt something at her feet. She heard the toilet flush again, and again. She looked down and saw the flood. What was this?
“What did you do?” Marie sputtered, clambering up on her unsteady chair.
The girl screeched and cackled, gripping the bars as if she might collapse from laughing. “That’s for when you make the big leagues, honey! I’ll never forget your face!”
WHEN MARIE DROVE home to the Bronx that morning, she didn’t want to think about work. Her mind was as empty as the Sunday-morning streets when she arrived. It didn’t really have a name, her neighborhood. The houses on her block were low-slung brick boxes, attached two by two—“mother-daughters,” as they were called, accurately in her case. Most of the houses had some Jewish or Catholic testimonial, a mezuzah over the door, or a concrete saint in the yard. Mama had an elaborate shrine to St. Anthony of Padua in the back. Every year on his feast day, in June, there was a big party, prayers, a processione. When Marie was little, Mama got sick. Every doctor Papa took her to, they didn’t know what it was. “Maybe some infection.” “Maybe cancer.” “Maybe you need to find a new wife, this one, she’s not going to last.” Mama had long black hair, down to her behind. She cut it off and wove it into braids, like lace, and she made a new frame for the picture of St. Anthony on the wall. She sent it to Italy, to the orphanage of St. Anthony of Padua. Did the orphans care that a lady in America cut her hair? Did God? She got better, though. All Marie knew was that Mama loved St. Anthony, and he loved her back.
It was a neither-nor place, stranded between highways. Hundreds of blocks had been bulldozed for the Cross Bronx Expressway, just to the north, and the Bronx River Parkway cut them off to the east. Whole neighborhoods were being paved over in the name of progress. The papers said that people were leaving the Bronx—Brooklyn and Manhattan, too—faster than they arrived, for the first time ever. Another highway had just begun construction to the west, on the far side of the foul wash of the Bronx River, just behind their house. Upstream was a coal-to-gas plant; downstream was a cement factory. Marie couldn’t imagine any fish in the river, even the toughest fish, diving in on a dare. She wondered if she’d miss the place. She was willing to try.
There were four Panzarino sisters—Ann, Marie, and Dee, born two years apart, and then Vera, the baby, six years younger than Dee. Ann and her husband, Sal, had moved to Yonkers, following Dee and her Luigi, and Marie and Sid were looking at houses there, too. Vera would likely follow, whenever she got married. Cops were supposed to live within city limits, but that was one of those rules they didn’t make much of a fuss about. At times, Papa grumbled about his daughters moving away, even if it was only a twenty-minute drive, but they’d been safely handed over to husbands. His say was no longer final once their names had been changed. He and Mama had traveled farther than any of h
is children would ever dream of going, and though they had met here in the New World, their marriage had been arranged from the old country. That was the way things were done then.
Marie usually took the subway in, but today she had Sid’s car because he was having a Boys’ Night in. Her father’s venerable black Packard was parked in front, but she could usually find a spot no farther than three or four houses away. Cars filled the neighborhood the same way TVs had, creeping from novelty to normality without anyone really noticing. Everyone had TVs now, almost, outside of the roughest slums. Some said that kids would never leave the house, spending their lives staring pie-eyed at the box, and some said that TV was a godsend, a cure for delinquency, that would draw back the Jokers and Pharaohs and Tomahawks from their street gangs to huddle around Lucille Ball and Jackie Gleason. In the papers, you read that TV meant the end of radio, the end of movies, and the end of reading. You could read columns and letters saying so in the Daily Mirror, the Journal-American, the Herald Tribune, the World-Telegram and Sun. There had always been cars, of course, but now almost everyone had one. One of the casual miracles of the age, like the polio vaccine.
Marie mounted the concrete steps and stood beside the potted geranium as she dug into her purse for her house key. An iron rail separated her half of the stoop from Mama’s. A twin house, joined side to side. She cast a furtive glance next door, as if Mama were waiting up to yell at her for being late for dinner. She opened her door and called softly, “Hello? It’s me! Anybody awake?”
No one answered, but the smell hit her like—well, it hit her. The reek of sweat and ten-cent cigars and sloshed beer from the Boys’ Night made her wonder if he’d hosted a prizefight along with a card game. She left the door open and went through the living room to the TV room—it didn’t have a name before the TV arrived, as her parents just called it laggiù, “over there”—and yanked open the windows. Even the Bronx River smelled better than the room, and she was glad for the breeze, taking it in for a moment before surveying the damage. Toppled beer cans and an overflowing ashtray covered the coffee table in front of the tatty old couch, and the rabbit-eared TV was tuned in to a test pattern. The living room seemed untouched, as always, with an immaculate white cloth over the table, a china cabinet full of dishes too good to be used. One of the pictures of Italy on the wall—the Leaning Tower of Pisa—hung askew, and Marie straightened it. The kitchen she didn’t dare look at. And then—
“Mommy!”
Sandy came barreling out from the kitchen and vaulted into her arms. The crush of four-year-old love nearly made Marie faint. They kissed again and again, and Marie cherished the weight of her in her pink pajamas, the way she stared at her with dark, demanding eyes. Marie stared back, pretending to be angry, knowing that her daughter wouldn’t be fooled. She didn’t want to think about how late Sandy had stayed up, how much she’d overheard. “Sandy! This place is a mess! Did you have a party here last night?”
“No! Daddy did. They played cards.”
“Did he win?”
“I dunno. What’s for breakfast?”
Marie took in the horror of the kitchen then, with its littered beer cans and half-eaten sandwiches and still-smoking ashtrays, the coffeepot hissing on the stove. She marched forward and felt the broken glass crunch beneath her feet. Reee-verse march! She backed into the living room and set her barefoot daughter down.
“You stay out here, and I’ll make you a bowl of cereal. See if cartoons are on.”
Sandy was thrilled. “Can I eat in front of the TV?”
“Today’s a special day.”
“Is it because the place looks like a shithouse?”
Marie glared at her, more-than-half-pretending to be angry, and Sandy lowered her eyes, less-than-half-pretending to be contrite. “Sorry, Mommy.”
That would have to do for now, Marie supposed. She went into the kitchen, picked up a towel, and flung the scalding coffeepot into the sink, where it sizzled in the dirty dishwater. She opened the refrigerator and saw the bottle of milk on its side, a white puddle below. Sandy called from behind, “The milkman doesn’t come on Sunday, does he, Mommy?”
Marie turned around and forced a smile. “Did I tell you the prayer you say to St. Anthony? He’s the patron saint of lost things.”
Sandy ran a hand through her bangs with her right hand. Her black hair was in a bob. “I think. Can you tell me again?”
Marie stepped out of the kitchen, swept her up in her arms, and began to spin like a top. “Tony, Tony, turn around, something’s lost that can’t be found. Tony, Tony, turn around . . .”
After only three turns, she felt dizzy, so she set Sandy down. “But God helps those who help themselves. I’ll make eggs.”
Two hours later, Marie was dozing on the couch with Sandy in her arms. The house was clean. Some time had passed when Sandy nudged her. “Should I wake Daddy up?”
Marie looked at her watch: 10:10. “Let him sleep.”
She must have slept again herself, because she woke when Sandy sat up. Marie heard Sid’s heavy tread on the stairs and roused herself. He was in his underwear, his face unshaven and puffy, and he scratched himself as he ambled across the room. He was not having a good morning. Still, the boys called him “Hollywood Sid,” and on his bad days he looked better than most on their best: six feet tall, broad-shouldered, built like a light heavyweight. He had thick black hair with a soft curl to it, a profile meant to be chiseled in marble, and a smile that could sell toothpaste. Not that he was smiling now. He surveyed the room and scowled. “Place looks fine. I don’t know what you’re complaining about.”
Marie sat up, reflexively straightening the uniform blouse she still hadn’t taken off, running a hand through the mushed side of her hair. Complaining? Had she been talking in her sleep? Sandy was still fixated on the TV. Sid stopped at the threshold of the kitchen. “Is it too much to ask for coffee?”
Marie turned off the TV, and Sandy followed her into the kitchen. Sid sat down at the table, and Sandy clambered into his lap as Marie put the kettle on. “You know, hon, the stupid coffeepot is no good. It’s the cheap one we got from my cousin at the wedding. All we got is instant.”
“If that’s all we got, that’s all we got.” Sid exhaled heavily. He softened as Sandy nuzzled against him. “At least I got one girl who takes care of me.”
“Daddy, who locks up more bad guys, you or Mommy?”
“Girls can’t be real police, baby,” Sid grunted. “It’s a rough world out there, full of bad guys. They stay inside, so they can’t get hurt.”
Marie thought about bringing up the lady undercover at the Carlyle—not to argue with him, just so Sandy would know—but instead she said, “You want me to fry you some eggs or something?”
“Don’t bother, I’ll go out.”
“Don’t forget about Mama’s later. It’s—”
Sid looked at Sandy. “What’s up?”
Sandy replied, “It’s an extraspecial day for Aunt Vera. There’s a boy she likes, and Nonna and Nonno have to see if he’s good enough.”
Sid laughed, and Marie laughed, and she went upstairs to shower and change. He was gone when she came back down, and she had to turn off the TV again so Sandy could dress for church.
MARIE AND SANDY had gone straight from Mass to Mama and Papa’s. It was just like home, but in a mirror: the kitchen and stairs were to the left instead of the right, but the same spaghetti-joint prints of Venice and Rome adorned the walls, the dining room table had the same white cloth, the same china cabinet was filled with never-used dishes. In the living room, her brother-in-law Luigi sat with Papa, who was reading the paper. A public affairs program was on, with two men arguing about building a bus station.
“So, Pop, you mind if I maybe watch the baseball game?”
Papa didn’t look out from behind his copy of Il Progresso. “Do what you want.”
But when Luigi got up to change the channel, Papa growled, “But la macchina break, anybody touch.”
Luigi hesitated, his hand inches from the dial. “Hey, Pop, me and Dee—I don’t wanna spoil the surprise, but we’re gonna buy you a new one for—”
“I like this one fine.”
Sandy broke the stalemate, bellowing, “Nonno!” as she raced over to hug him. Papa was short and squat, and his feet didn’t reach the floor when he sat on the couch. He had hard, small eyes, and a mouth that always looked as if he were about to spit. But he beamed at the sight of his granddaughter and climbed down from the couch. “Cara mia, you so pretty today!”
Papa had learned some Yiddish since his arrival, and better English, but he and Mama still spoke Italian at home. Their melodious speech was jarringly spiked with Americanisms, like “traffic jam, bad-bad” and “Buy one, get one free.” The four girls picked up English from neighbors, the radio, and at school and mostly spoke it with their parents. Italian questions received English answers; Italian reproofs brought English apologies. The sisters traveled between languages, pulled between the little lost-in-time villages of the Bel paese and the big city in the New World.
Luigi was slight and trim, always dressed in the best from his mid-town haberdashery, always ready to entertain, like the song-and-dance man he’d once been. Today, the costume was summer suit in pearl-and-gray herringbone tweed, and the show would be a melodrama, it seemed. As they embraced, he whispered, “Help me, please.”
“Easy, kiddo. Is he being a pill?”
Luigi was a gem, but Marie knew that Papa was nervous. He might have to break Vera’s heart in a couple of hours. Arranged marriages weren’t done in this country, but he and Mama held the final and irrevocable right of refusal over their daughters’ suitors. The day would end in banishment or matrimony. This wasn’t a family dinner; it was a trial with catering.
“He could haunt a house,” Luigi said.
Dee leaned out of the kitchen and barked, “Get the hell offa my husband! He signed the papers, it’s too late for him to pick another sister. Get in here, Marie, we got jobs to do. Come on, Sandy, go play in the back, your cousin Anthony is there.”
The Policewomen's Bureau Page 2