Harlem Redux (2 page)

Time’s running out.

She could make it to the bedroom door.

Fifteen steps. That’s all it would take.

But she hesitated. She did not know what—or more accurately, who— might be waiting for her on the other side. In a bizarre way, her bedroom meant safety. She heard a thump. Her heart lurched. Was it a footstep in the hallway—or just the house settling on its foundation? She swallowed and took a deep breath. She would have to make it down the stairs, creeping along with the help of the banister, then make it into the parlor before she could reach the telephone. If she fainted along the way, on the steps or at the parlor entrance, then ...

No, not the door.

What then?

An icy breeze stroked her cheek.

The open window. Get to it. Scream. Call out—that’s the way to go.

She counted backward from three, focusing her energy. At zero, she let go of the bedpost and took a step toward the window. Her legs were weak and shaky. Her knees trembled, but they didn’t buckle. She took another tottering step. And another. That window had never seemed so far away; her body never so unwilling.

She was nearly across the room when it happened.

She tripped over the hem of her gown and toppled forward. Her head hit the corner of an antique linen chest. A sharp pain lanced through her skull and the moonlight, dim as it was, grew dimmer.

No, not now. Please, not now.

But her vision blurred and the light grew duskier. She lifted her head a wobbly inch or two, her eyelids drooped and her head sagged to the floor.

She might have drifted away permanently if it hadn’t been for the wailing scream of a racing police siren. The sound expanded in the air, ballooned inside her head, until it seemed to explode inside her skull. She lay blinking in the dark, telling herself it was all a bad dream. But the cold floor under her face was real. So was the blood that had congealed and crusted on her face and arms and chest. She was awake and she had to get going. She didn’t know how much blood she’d lost, but she assumed she’d lost a great deal. If she passed out again, she wouldn’t wake up.

She was too weak to stand again, so she half-crawled, half-dragged herself across the floor. An eternity passed before she reached the base of that window. She rested, panting, and looked up.

The casement sill was little more than a yard above her head, but it might as well have been a mile. Her head throbbed. Her heart knocked. She wanted to sit and be still.

Get to that windowsill. Find the strength.

Curling up, she leaned one shoulder against the wall and inched her way up. It was taking forever. She was swimming up from way down deep. She held her breath, struggling against a vicious, relentless, downward pull. Clear droplets of agony slipped down from her temples. Would she ever reach the surface?

Then she was up. Fully upright. She leaned into a blast of frigid air. It cut to the bone, but it felt good. So very good! To be standing. To be at the window To
still
be alive.

Pushing aside a porcelain vase on the windowsill, she flopped down on the narrow ledge and looked out. The small dark street seemed empty.

No! There has to be someone. Please, Lord, let there be someone. Help me this once, damn it. I’m begging you, begging you to help me. Now!

She noticed a light shining in a second-floor window across the way.

“Help! Help!” she screamed, but the wind, merry and malicious, kissed the words from her mouth and whipped them away. “Pleeease! Somebody!
Anybody]
HELP MEEEE!”

Again the wind, ever careless and cruel, swallowed the sounds of her pleading, took them so fast she barely heard them herself.

She pushed herself to hang out the window. Down the street to her left was a man walking his Doberman. He was stooped with age and bundled against the cold; his cap jammed down over his ears.

“Hey, mister! Mister, please! Up here! Send help! Please, mister,
please!”

The man did not respond but the dog paused, perked up his ears, and howled. The wind that swept her words away served up the dog’s mournful wails with mocking efficiency.

“Please! I don’t wanna die! I DON’T WANNA DIE!”

The dog barked harder, louder, belting agitated yowls that rode the hellish gusts of wind up and down the street. Hope pulsed through her. The Doberman pulled on his leash, strained in her direction. The dog’s owner yanked him back. He cuffed him on the nose. And dragged him off down the street. Away from her.

“NO!!!”

Her elbow touched the vase. She turned without thinking and gave it a shove that sent it plunging out the window. She watched it turn and tumble as if in slow motion, saw it crash and explode into minute pieces. She looked down. Had they heard?

They were gone. So quickly. Gone. As though they’d never been there.

Her legs gave out. She crumpled to the floor, her outstretched arms smearing trails of blood on the wall. Her head sagged.

“Oh, God ... no,” she wept. “Don’t let this happen. This can’t happen.”

Then she felt the curtains. Made of lightweight silk, they billowed about her face, as familiar, as gentle, cool, and caressing as a loved one’s touch. She closed her eyes. An eerie calm crept over her. Odd, how the pain was receding. If only she could rest. Sleep.

No! She wanted to live, to hold on. She loved life. She refused to let it slip away. Not like this. Not while she was young. Not when she finally ... had nearly everything ...

But the darkness was getting hard to fight. She had never felt so tired. Her inhalations grew fainter. Her eyes slid shut. From behind her closed eyelids, she saw her inner lights fade individually, felt herself float away, bit by precious bit, as her blood-starved organs shut down, one after another. She was about to die and she knew it. Summoning her strength, she raised her face to bathe it in the moonlight. She held it there with stubborn determination for several exquisite seconds. Then her last inner light faded and with a moan she slumped down, a bloody but still beautiful corpse gazing blindly at the bleak night sky.

1.
      
The Lost Son Returns

Lilian’s older brother had been away for years, but he had altered little, at least on the surface. He was thirty-five. Silver already touched his temples, but his hair was otherwise still dark and thick. Quite tall and lean, he had an oval face and clear olive skin with a strong fine profile. He had retained the lustrous dark eyes that had melted many a feminine resistance. Time had magnified their eloquence. Maturity had deepened them and experience saddened them. He was aware of his effect on women, but he tended toward solitude, and though he enjoyed female company, he always feared that in the end, a woman would ask for more than he could give. Or worse, that he would give all he had, then see her pull away in disappointment and leave him.

Well-built and poised, David McKay had a reputation for dressing well with tasteful understatement. His clothes were of excellent quality, but close inspection would have shown them to be worn. There were no holes or tatters, hanging threads or missing buttons, but the clothes, like the man, gave off an intangible air of fatigue. Even so, he was usually the handsomest man in any crowd. That day, his dark gray cashmere coat was buttoned high against the early spring chill. He wore his fedora tipped low to one side, just enough to cast a shadow, but not enough to hide the sad gleam in his eye.

Like his sister, David preferred to stay out of the limelight. But his air of quiet distinction was noticeable to even the most casual observer. It was all the more evident that chilly March Thursday because of the mute pain in his eyes. The early evening’s dusky skies emphasized his pallor. Sorrow had grayed his complexion. Tension had cut furrows into his handsome face. He was bone-weary. From shock, grief, and lack of sleep. His sister was dead and buried some three weeks, but he had only learned of it the day before.

He had forgotten much of the past twenty-four hours. The last moment he did recall was when he got that note while eating lunch at his desk in Philadelphia, that telegram summoning him home. He had an excellent memory. It could be useful, but there were times when it absorbed information he would have rather forgotten. The words to that telegram, for example, would remain etched in his memory until the day he died. It had turned his world upside down. When he left his law office to head home and pack, he was as disoriented as a man who suddenly finds himself walking on the ceiling.

Lilian was a part of him. It was nearly impossible to accept that she was gone. He swung between anguish and numbness. His mind struggled to accept her death even as his heart rejected it. Her presence hovered in the air about him, a gentle warmth that carried a hint of the light powdery perfume she wore. Whenever he looked at a crowd, he thought he saw her face.

It had never occurred to him that Lilian might die. He had not seen her in four years, but he had always been able to visualize her writing poetry at her desk or reading a newspaper before the parlor fireplace. Those images had comforted him. He had summoned them in times of doubt. Lilian: stable, dependable, clearheaded, and never changing. Whether she agreed with his life choices or not, she had been there for him.

It wasn’t only her death that stunned him; there was the manner of it: The telegram said she had committed suicide. When had Lilian’s life become so unbearable that death seemed to offer the only relief? And why?

She had mailed him a letter on the first of every month for some two years, starting in January 1923. Her letters had never reflected dissatisfaction with her life. They were always warm, colorful missives, filled with innocuous but witty gossip or news about her writing career. Her letters had arrived with efficient regularity until a year ago, in March 1925, and then ended abruptly. He told himself now that he should have become worried at her sudden silence. He should have made inquiries. That last letter had begged him to return home. He hadn’t answered it.

Now he longed for one more chance to hug her, to tell her how proud he was of her, to confess and explain the unexplainable. But he would never have an opportunity to do that—never. And that stunned him.

Struggling to confront the inescapable, he tried in vain to reconcile the immense contradiction between her dramatic death and her deep devotion to discretion during life. She was a proud, gentle woman, known for her exquisite discipline, delicate tastes, and exceptionally even temperament. Were someone to ever write her life story, a most likely title would be
Pride of Place.
She was a reclusive person, raised with a deeply ingrained awareness of her responsibilities toward her family, her class, and her race—in that order. A conscientious conformist, she strove to keep her name synonymous with propriety, refinement, and perfect manners. She scrupulously guarded her privacy and avoided contact with anyone whose behavior might attract inappropriate attention. It was a horrible irony that the most private of all acts—the act of dying—had made her the source of tabloid scandal.

He had lost all sense of time during the train ride from Philadelphia. Fear had lengthened the trip into an eternity. And fear had shortened it, propelling him toward his destination much too quickly. He had gotten hold of a copy of the
New York Times,
but neither the latest corruption tales involving the Democratic Party machine at Tammany Hall nor the political circus of the Sacco-Vanzetti case could distract him. His terrorized mind fought to stave off the coming appointment with his very personal reality. A vague protective hope that some terrible mistake had been made rode with him, kept him company the entire way, but this false friend abandoned him the moment his train pulled into Manhattan.

That was less than an hour ago. Now he stood on the doorstep of his family home on Harlem’s elegant Strivers’ Row, deeply disoriented, his one suitcase at his side, and it seemed that the family maid was the only person there to greet him. But the sight of her loved and familiar face warmed him.