How It Ends Page 15

  “Wow,” I said, pausing the CD and glancing at her. “You sure you want to hear this? It doesn’t sound exactly cheerful.”

  She blinked once, slowly.

  “All right,” I said because I wasn’t exactly cheerful, either, and even though the last thing I wanted to hear was someone else’s happily ever after (or from the sound of it so far, bloody bruises) it was still better than silence.

  I reached out, hit play, and settled back in the chair.

  How It Ends

  A Love Story

  If you really want to hurt someone, if you’re the type of person who smiles as you grind your heel down onto the white-knuckled grip of the desperate dangling off the edge of a burning building, then do this: tell your victim a devastating secret about a loved one, something that will change the way she thinks of them forever…but do it only after the loved one is gone, so she can never go back and ask them the truth.

  The perfect time would be right after the graveside service, when she has to be half carried, wailing and inconsolable, out of the barren January cemetery, still reaching for the thirty-one-year-old mother left behind in the casket, and dragged back to the boardinghouse where she and her mother had rented a room from Kitty, who hurried ahead to set out a postfuneral buffet for the friends of the deceased.

  Do it after the thirteen-year-old, now motherless child, dazed and heartsick, is herded into the bedroom to rest while downstairs the adults shed coats, blot drippy noses, and uncap the Rock and Rye to toast the deceased.

  Sit the shattered girl on the edge of the same bed she shared with her frail, tubercular mother. Ease her stiff body down onto her side exactly as she was on that fateful morning four days ago when, feeling the faint warmth of the thin January sunlight on her face, she opened her eyes to find her mother lying beside her only inches away, stretched out and staring back, her lifeless, murky gaze fixed, sunken, and discolored, her skin slack and dusky purple, the bloodstained hanky clutched in a frozen claw, the dried trickle of rust staining the embroidered pillowcase beneath her cheek.

  So go ahead, press the quaking child down to rest and tuck the blanket in tight around her, tuck it tight like the sheet turned shroud they wound around her mother while the child writhed and begged, and the landlady Kitty held her back…

  And then pull down the shades and turn off the light, shut the door, and leave her to nap where the chill of death mingles with the sweet, familiar scent of Evening in Paris talcum powder, and her mother’s pink velvet bathrobe hangs limp and defeated from a hook on the open closet door.

  Become too busy to check on her as the hours pass and the party continues, as the mourners gather in pockets throughout the house, maybe even outside the bedroom where the child lies rigid and wide-eyed, afraid to move, afraid to sleep. Yes, let the mourners go on drinking, laughing, trading stories, reminiscing about good ol’ Evelyn Bell, oops, you mean Evelyn Bell Closson, another one of those war widows who just can’t seem to find her marriage certificate, and let the laughter follow, hearty laughter with a tinge of malice, not much really, just enough to wrinkle the girl’s forehead, to cause her to search out the beloved souvenir photo in the cardboard frame from Ciro’s nightclub that has sat on the table next to the bed for as long as she can remember.

  The black-and-white photo, taken almost fourteen years ago, is of her parents, eighteen-year-old Evelyn Bell and twenty-one-year-old Walter Closson, on the night they met.

  Their whirlwind romance has always been the child’s favorite bedtime story, the magical tale of how Evvie Bell, a pretty, vibrant eighteen-year-old who had gone to Hollywood to make her fortune, became a sophisticated cigarette girl at Ciro’s and was discovered not by movie mogul Louis B. Mayer but by movie-star-handsome PFC Walter Closson, a GI with twinkling eyes, a wicked smile, and a casual, irresistible grace. The tall, dark, and confident Walter spotted young Evvie across the crowded room and fell head over heels in love, calling her to his table again and again, buying pack after pack of Winstons, until the camera girl came along and he’d convinced the dazzled, rosy-cheeked Evvie to pose with him for a photo.

  That began their thrilling three-day romance, a fairy tale of dining, dancing, an orchid corsage, and a champagne-hazy Army-chaplain marriage outside the back of the club. This was immediately followed by a one-night honeymoon at a nearby motel, Walter shipping out, and Evvie being fired from Ciro’s.

  Within two months, Evvie, now alone, broke, and pregnant, decided Hollywood was no life for an American GI’s wife, so she packed her belongings, took her souvenir photo, and came home to Plainfield to move back in with her grandmother Bell and wait for her husband to return from war.

  “And then came the saddest news of all,” the child’s mother would say, the tip of her nose turning pink and her soft gaze far away and glistening with unshed tears.

  “Daddy was killed storming a bunker, and the grenade blew up everything but the letter you wrote telling him about me,” the child would say when she was little, snuggling close to her mother, resting her head on her chest and winding a strand of her mother’s fine brown hair around her finger. “And the envelope wasn’t even opened yet, so he didn’t even know he was going to be a daddy.”

  “That’s right,” her mother would say, stroking the child’s cheek. “And then you were born—”

  “And then Grandma Bell died without ever finding Clark Gable’s shoes under her bed and we moved here to Kitty’s house and lived happily ever after,” the child would say in a satisfied voice. “The End.”

  And her mother would kiss her and run a thin, work-roughened hand over the child’s thick dark hair—her father’s hair—and rise from the bed they shared in the rented room. Sometimes she would place a scarf over the lamp so the light wouldn’t fall across the child’s face and sit in the chair in the corner, mending socks and listening to the radio. Other times she would leave the child to sleep, close the door, and join Kitty and the other boarders in the parlor for coffee and company.

  By the time she was thirteen, the child, Louise, knew her life. She understood it, and all the pieces fit; she’d been born a war baby to a war widow, and even though the war was long over, they still lived in a neighborhood of workingwomen and fatherless children, the block a collection of ramshackle shotgun shacks and female-owned boardinghouses, places with sagging, neatly swept front stoops, sparkling windows with paint-chipped sashes set beneath dented downspouts, and tidy former victory gardens in sight of single-seat outhouses.

  A place where clothing was handed down and around, and harried mothers with distracted gazes, empty change purses, and mouths to feed worked days at the grocery store and nights at the factory while their children peeled potatoes and made beds, did homework, cut paper dolls, and played Hide and Seek, Tag, and 1–2-3 Red Light.

  Occasionally a new boarder would arrive or an old one would leave, a baby would be born and there would be laughter and booties and scavenged lace for trimming bonnets, or a child would die and there would be tears and solemnity and dark clothes. The few little old men left living on the block would stand at the curb as the casket went by and hold their worn Sunday fedoras over their hearts, mop their rheumy eyes with rumpled hankies, and bow their heads in sorrow and respect.

  It was a small life and for the most part a steady one, where once a month Louise and her mother would go to a movie matinee, a gala musical or snappy, sophisticated comedy, and they would eat red licorice and Sugar Babies, and laugh or cry together. Her mother would stifle her cough in one of her many hankies, and once the movie was over they would walk home, Louise singing or dancing along the sidewalk, always careful not to step on any cracks, her mother quiet and thoughtful until they came to their block, when she would suddenly look at her daughter, smile and say, “Who needs all that Hollywood glamour? We live our own way and ain’t it grand?”

  And yes, it was until four days ago, when Evvie lay down next to her daughter in bed, intending to rest a moment before letting out the hem on Louise�
�s new hand-me-down winter coat, and while indulging in the simple pleasure of watching her daughter sleep, felt her heart flutter and then quietly, without fanfare, stop.

  So if you want to destroy the child, to reveal a secret that can never be forgotten or slash a wound in her soul that will never heal, then say this outside her bedroom door on the afternoon they bury her mother: “Oh, for Pete’s sake, if Evvie and Walter really were married, then why does the kid’s birth certificate list the father as John Doe? Yes, I’ve seen it. Evvie showed it to me last New Year’s Eve and made me promise never to tell.”

  And if the child’s heart isn’t already pounding close to bursting, then top it off with: “So the kid’s not only an orphan now but a bastard, too. Who’s gonna break that news?”

  “The state will clue her in. They’re sending somebody out to collect her tomorrow.”

  And despite the laughter and the noise of the party, the thin, terrified mewl that escapes the child is heard through the door, heard by Evvie’s friend Kitty standing outside, who blurts, “Oh balls, don’t tell me she’s awake?” and swings wide the door to reveal the child’s stricken face in the shaft of light, wide-eyed, tearstained, and utterly lost.

  The best friend of her late mother, flushed and tipsy on too much rye, does not say, Oh, honey, I’m so sorry, or, Can I come in and keep you company? but rather, “Jesus Christmas, don’t look at me like that, Lou Lou. I’m not the one who’s been lying to you your whole life. Now go to sleep!”

  And then the door swings shut and the voices fade.

  Moments later the child’s cold hand, my hand, slips out from under the blanket, closes around the Ciro’s souvenir photo, and tucks it beneath my undershirt, over my heart.

  Exhausted, I sleep.

  “Oh my God,” I said, looking at Gran. “Are you sure you want to hear another chapter?”

  She blinked once, and one tear slipped down her cheek.

  I blotted it with a tissue and hit play.

  How It Ends

  The lady from the state home came midmorning while I was sitting in the kitchen tracing the boomerang print on the laminate tabletop and trying not to look at Kitty, whom I was too numb to hate and too scared to lose.

  The state lady was thin and abrupt, wore brown tweed, and smelled of cold, fresh cigarette smoke. She accepted coffee from Kitty, who had quickly shed her apron and straightened the kerchief tied over her rollers, and sat at the table across from me. Other than asking my name and raising an eyebrow when I mumbled Louise Closson, though, she spoke almost entirely to Kitty. She explained the official procedure, paused and blew on the steaming black coffee, then informed Kitty that I was allowed to bring one valise or cardboard box of necessaries but it couldn’t be heavier than I could carry.

  Kitty, either still hungover from the funeral party or maybe even a little ashamed of the secret she’d revealed the day before, rubbed her eyes, exhaled, and without looking at me, said gruffly, “Run down to the liquor store, Louise, and see if they have an empty box you can have.”

  “It was my understanding she would be ready to go,” the state lady said, glancing at her watch. “I do have other appointments today—”

  “Go, Lou,” Kitty said and, as I slid out of my chair onto wobbly legs, added, “I’ll get your things ready in the meantime.”

  So I went, stumbling weak-kneed and dumb in a thick, foglike fear through the cutting January wind, plodding down the frost-heaved sidewalk with the cold chapping my wet cheeks, absently pulling my benumbed fingers from my coat pocket to touch the home-base oak as I passed, skirting the remains of the hopscotch board chalked onto the cement from our last game before Christmas, detouring into the street past the dilapidated house with the chicken-wire gate and the dog who hated everyone.

  The old foreign lady who lived there always smelled like cabbage and liniment, and when she smiled, her whole face would wrinkle like an accordion. Her hands were gnarled and covered with liver spots, and she scrimped all year to save enough to make the most delicious kiflis at Christmas, the prune, nut, and apricot filling moist and the powdered sugar drifted as high as sweet, dusty snowbanks. She had always liked my mother and me, always pinched my cheek, and for a moment a wild thought cut a chasm across the fog, a thought that said, Maybe you could live here with her, maybe you could just walk right up those sagging steps and knock and when she answers you could beg her and she would hide you until the state lady left, maybe…

  But then the dog rushed the gate, snarling and barking, skinny and cranky on a diet of boiled cabbage, bread crusts soaked in bacon grease, and old soup bones, and my feet carried me past the house and around the corner to the liquor store with its smudged glass, crooked sign, and dead flies on the windowsills. I’d been in here twice before—all us kids always ran errands for the adults, eager for the nickel they’d give us—but I didn’t know the man with the empty, pinned-up shirtsleeve reading the newspaper behind the counter.

  “Hey, kid, what do you need?” he said finally, glancing up when I sniffled.

  The store was too warm, making me woozy, and stank of stale smoke, sweat, and sour wine. I shuffled forward and stopped in the hollow near the register, a dip in the floor where the linoleum pattern had been worn smooth by countless feet and asked for a free box.

  “How big?” the guy said, motioning behind him to the jumble of empty liquor boxes piled in the corner.

  “I…I…” I stammered and, because I didn’t know, said, “I need to be able to carry it myself,” and then everything blurred and the tears spilled over, running quick, hot, and without pause down my cheeks.

  “Sure, I get it, sister,” he said quickly, heading for the pile. “Don’t take it to heart. Lotsa kids have to get rid of the puppies. I mean, what’re you gonna do, keep ’em all? Can’t do that, right, or they’d eat you out of house and home.”

  I sucked in a deep, hitching breath.

  The guy nodded. “That’s right, I had to do it myself once. Loaded up a box of the sweetest little mutts you ever wanted to see and dragged ’em door to door for three days. Got rid of all but two and I couldn’t bring ’em back home because I knew my old man would drown ’em so I took ’em down to the park and left ’em in the box on a picnic table.” He glanced at me. “I figured anybody going on a picnic’s gotta be happy, you know, and puppies make people happy so I figure somebody would take ’em home.” He studied a box, cast it aside, and reached for another. “This oughta do.” He held it up, nodded, and handed it to me. “Listen, if I was you, though, before I went door to door I’d take ’em down to the grocery store or the butcher’s and sit out there with ’em, looking real pitiful. I mean, what broad can resist a kid and a puppy, right? Heck, I’d take one myself if my landlord wasn’t such a rotten old bastard, if you’ll pardon my French.”

  I sniffled and wiped my face on my sleeve.

  “Just…whatever you do, don’t leave ’em in the park, not even on a picnic table. They got clowns out there who think it’s funny to throw puppies in the pond to see if they can swim.” He shook his head and, grimacing, rubbed the shoulder stump where the empty shirtsleeve hung. “Must be gonna snow.” He gave it one last rub. “Okay?”

  “Okay,” I mumbled and, when he didn’t say anything more, made my way out of the store and back down the block to Kitty’s.

  When I returned, the state lady was on the phone in the hallway and Kitty was upstairs in my room, standing in front of the closet mirror holding my mother’s best black velvet dress with the rhinestones on the collar. When she spotted me she turned away, hung it back in the closet, and said gruffly, “You shouldn’t sneak up on people that way. There”—she pointed to a pile of clothes on the bed—“I got your things ready for you.”

  I stared at her, unsure of what to do. She’d been in our closet, in our bureau drawers, and was standing here in the middle of our home, touching all our things. If my mother was alive, she never would have done this—although when my mother was sick Kitty had come in and s
traightened up, brought her hot tea and toast, swept the carpet and put away the laundry, so maybe it was all right?

  And suddenly it didn’t matter to me that she was in here and my mother wasn’t because as long as someone who cared about me was here, then I could be here, too. I set the box on the bed next to the stacks of clothes, winter sweaters and skirts and pants…and noticed my summer shorts and tops, the playsuit my mother had made me for my birthday, and my summer pajamas in the piles, too. I stared at them, heart thudding, and said in a small, wavering voice, “When do I get to come back?”

  Kitty, on her way out the door, paused without turning and sighed. “Come on, Lou, you’re a big girl. Don’t make me spell it out.” Silence. “You don’t come back, okay? You’re gonna go live somewhere else now.”

  “Oh,” I said as the world narrowed to a pinpoint and a weird ringing started in my ears. The fog returned, sapping the strength from my knees, so I felt behind me for the bed and sank onto it. The room was stifling, and I clawed open my coat and scarf.

  “I can’t keep a kid. I have to get this place cleaned out and rented. I didn’t mind carrying your mother all those times she was sick because I knew she was always good for it, but this last month she was sick more than she worked, and if it wasn’t for the church taking care of the burial, well, I don’t know what would have happened.”

  I gazed at her stocky, blurred figure and all I could think was that my mother’s beautiful velvet dress would never fit her. Never.

  “Besides, I hear the state home’s a real nice place for an orphanage,” she said in a hearty voice. “Somebody even said the kids get ice cream twice a week. Now, hurry up and pack your box, and I’ll see you downstairs.”