Other Shepards (8 page)

“I hate this subway,” she whispers. “I need to wash my hands.”

“Nowhere to wash on the subway. You’ll have to suck it up and wait till we get off,” Annie answers. We both look at her, startled. Did Annie actually hear the secret voice?

“How much longer?” Geneva asks in the same pitch, testing Annie.

“More soon than later,” Annie answers, and she opens her face into a giant kidlike yawn, to prove how disinterested she is in Geneva’s needs.

Geneva tucks her hands in her armpits and whispers Hail Marys until the subway stops at Spring Street.

Soho is packed with its usual mix of self-consciously fashionable locals and frowzy tourists. The smell of roasted peanuts and spicy falafels wafts from the street vendors’ grills and drifts through the air.

“Let’s hit the vintage stores,” Annie says after we stop at a diner and wait while Geneva runs into the rest room. Soho has sent a jolt of exhilaration through Annie. As soon as Geneva emerges, Annie breaks into a stride down the street, and it becomes impossible for Geneva and me to keep pace without taking a few jogging steps every half block. Annie holds her chin up and keeps her hands pushed inside her blazer pockets. It is a deliberate gesture; she does not want to hold our hands. Annie does not touch, I have noticed. It might be one of the reasons Geneva has been so quick to adore her.

“Good shops are hard to find since this part of town’s so commercial lately. The true clotheshound will prevail. I remember once when I was about your age, Holland, I wore a tutu to a Valentine’s Day dance, a semiformal. I found it in a store called the Basement Boutique, but the tulle had gone ratty. So I bought a length of dark blue chenille at one of the fabric shops in Alphabet City, and I recovered the whole dress. Tulle is like a canvas, a base coat. Chenille, on the other hand, sets a mood.”

“Did you wear ballet shoes, too?” Geneva asks breathlessly.

“Tap shoes, actually, with the taps still in,” Annie answers. “I made the most noise on the dance floor, even if I didn’t have the best moves. Jack wore a painted tuxedo T-shirt. I guess that sounds awful now, but we thought we were stunning. Here it is.” She stops at the corner of a brick-bunkered side street. We stare at the outside of a glass door so filthy I cannot see in.

“Five-Star Vintage Clothing and Consignment,” I read the words scrolled on the shop’s torn awning. “In a class by itself.”

“Hello!” Annie calls as we step inside the shop. “Mr. DePass?”

A man behind the counter does not look up from his newspaper. He wears his graying hair loose over his shoulders and his checker-and-rhinestone shirt gives him the look of some kind of cowboy poet.

“Mr. DePass!” Annie exclaims. She tucks her arms in front of her chest, surveying him. Her feet in their strappy shoes rock back and forth.

Mr. DePass eventually glances up at us. I catch a twinkle of his bejeweled fingers as he flips them through his hair. “Yeah?” He peers forward and looks at us.

“I haven’t been here in so long,” Annie says apologetically. “But it smells exactly the same.” I sniff the air politely and inhale a faint scent of carbon paper and feet.

“We’re just going to look around,” I say to Mr. DePass.

“Feel free,” he answers, focusing back on his paper.

“Something’s changed,” Annie says, moving into the crowded heart of the store. “Is the lower level where the on-sale clothes are?” She runs her hands along the racks of soft fabrics.

“Does the lower level have sales?” I raise my voice. Poor old Mr. DePass seems to be going deaf. He looks up, startled, and shakes his head.

“Sales in back. The basement’s my music studio now,” he answers. He points to me, and I notice that, in addition to his assortment of rings, he wears black fingernail polish. “You.” He smiles at me, flashing a jumbled row of teeth. “I know you from somewhere, sometime a while back, right?”

“I don’t think so.” I pretend to ponder his features, although I am certain that I have never seen the man before in my life.

“Come look at this, guys.” Annie’s voice calls out from the back of the store. Mr. DePass nods.

“Might be I’m wrong. Probably seen one too many faces come through my shop.” He dismisses me with a wave. “Go on, have a look in back. I just got a pile of loot from the East End Theater Company that’ll interest you.”

Geneva and I find Annie surveying a mountain of clothing piled on a folding chair. “This place is still as big a mess as ever,” she says happily. “I never get back here anymore, since I moved. Look—spectacular.” She points to a royal blue jacket trimmed with gold braid. “Try it on.”

“Me?” I am already shedding my wool coat to slide one arm, then the next, through the blue-and-gold-striped satin lining. “It’s loose.”

The mottled mirror reflects a girl lost deep inside a pageant style blazer. The longer I look, though, the more I see myself in the coat, and the more the coat becomes me. “I’m sure I don’t have enough money,” I say.

“Bet you could swap it,” Annie says. “For the one you walked in with.” I hear Geneva’s delighted intake of breath at the nerve of the suggestion.

“Mom would be angry,” I say. “That is, even if Mr. DePass wants my Ambrose coat to begin with.”

“Holland, hand it over. Geneva, go check.” I toss my wool jacket to Geneva, who trots to the front of the store.

“I’m making her an accomplice,” I say.

“What’s the use of having a sister if she can’t be an accomplice?”

“Holland,” Geneva calls. “He says come up here so he can make sure we’re talking about the same jacket.”

Mr. DePass’s ornamented fingers are rubbing the sleeve of my jacket as we approach. “It’s a decent quality wool here,” he says. “There’s enough to take down the cuffs, too. I got a customer, he does an Audrey Hepburn act down at the Chateau Hip, I bet he’d pay some good money for this. It’s a trade, if you want to walk out in what you got on.”

“Deal,” I say before my logical mind can stop me. I feel the compulsive twinge of a gambler about to play a crucial stack of chips. Not only will Mom be furious, not only am I setting a bad example for my little sister, but somehow I feel that I have succumbed to the temptation of Annie, and I have become her accomplice just as Geneva has become mine.

When I walk back into daylight I feel altered, and I do not know which is the braver act, wearing my new jacket or leaving my old one behind.

“You look cool,” Geneva says. “I saw a hat in there I liked. Maybe this weekend we can come down here and get it.”

“It’s far to walk.”

“We could take the subway,” she says. “It’s easier to take a subway to a place you want to go than to somewhere boring. I like Soho. Annie’s right, no one pays attention to us. Ooh, look at that place—‘Miss Pia’s Psychic Readings and Advice.’” Geneva points across the street to a ground-level storefront. “I have money. I want a fortune.”

“Go get one then,” Annie says. “But hurry. I can’t hang out all day.” When I look over at Annie, I notice that her hair is clumping around her shoulders and that her face and neck glow in the rich afternoon sunlight.

“I know that shop,” she says.

“It’s probably a ripoff.”

“Only for skeptics,” Annie says in such a way that I can’t tell if she herself is a skeptic or not.

We watch Geneva cross the street and slide through the door of the fortune teller’s shop. She reappears inside the glass picture window, now speaking with Miss Pia, a plump psychic who wears her hair in two braids.

Geneva places some bills on the table between them, then seats herself in the curve-backed chair opposite Miss Pia.

Annie watches, then strides across the street, paying no mind to the charging traffic. A cab driver honks and curses as I rush after her, and I raise my hand in meek apology. Despite her confident stories, I doubt that Annie was the most protective baby-sitter in the city.

“I’m going on a trip,” Geneva announces, not turning around as we duck through the sateen curtains and into the psychic’s lair.

“It’s late and Annie wants to go,” I whisper. A psychic is the last thing Geneva needs—someone to help her troll for nightmares and attach meaning to her ghostly visions. I only hope my sister doesn’t bring up her sightings of the mayor.

“Shhh.” The woman puts her finger to her lips and regards me haughtily. “You’re creating negative energy.”

“Sorry,” I say, taking a step back. I look over at Annie, who stands in the curtained shadows and stares down at her watch, tapping its face.

“Your sister’s a doubter,” Miss Pia tattles on me to Geneva. “Remove yourself from this skepticalness so I can see your inner light clearer.” The back of Geneva’s head moves slightly, realigning herself outside the beam of my negative energy.

Miss Pia leans forward to clutch Geneva’s palm, but germ-phobic Geneva snatches it away.

“Can you read without holding?” she asks.

Miss Pia pauses a moment, then recovers and nods. She drops her head, so close her eyelashes could kiss Geneva’s fingers. “Like I said, you are going on a journey,” she intones in a phony dramatic cadence. “You have been confused for a real long time. Which is from a problem. This problem is hard to see. I do not know where your journey takes you. Aha but wait. A man or a lady appears in your future. He maybe she holds three roses. One rose is for beauty. One is for chance. The last rose—”

“She’s allergic to roses,” I grumble. Annie hiccups a laugh.

“Come on!” Geneva exclaims, twisting in her chair to frown at us.

“Who’s there?” the psychic asks, looking past Geneva.

“Oh, they’re with me,” Geneva answers. “Go on, back to the fortune. What is the last rose for?”

“Who’re you?” Miss Pia points at me.

I look at Annie, who shrugs.

“I’m Holland. Holland Shepard.”

“Get outta here!” The Dracula accent is gone, replaced by one more distinctly New York in origin. “Shepard, I knew it.” She taps her chest. “Pia Kredneck—I went to Ambrose. I was a senior Liz’s freshman year. We played on the tennis team together. She was excellent at tennis. I knew Johnnie Shepard better—same grade. Even went on a double date with him. He wasn’t my date, though, he went out with Suki Miller, but I went out with his best buddy, Lentil—Len Tillman—which is how I met Johnnie.”

I nod. I know Suki Miller, John’s high school girlfriend, who is now Suki Miller Slatey. Mom always says Suki would have been her daughter-in-law, and last year on John’s birthday Suki even sent us some hand-marbleized coasters and such a long letter about missing John that Mom suspected that Suki’s marriage might be heading for trouble. Lentil keeps in touch, too. He’s been living in Seattle and is the father of five-year-old twins. He sent us a cute picture of their last birthday party, two dark-haired boys covered in white frosting. The picture is somewhere in the house, tucked into a drawer with the marbleized coasters and other like mementos.

“I saw you in the door, and I kept thinking, Who does she remind me of? You could be Liz, I swear!” Pia stands, hands on her hips, Geneva’s fortune forgotten. “Get over here, let me take a look!”

She reaches across the table and pumps my hand, and her robe falls open to reveal a pair of spandex jogging pants and a halter top.

“Wow, so this is so something, so surrealish. A long time ago now, but still, looking at you brings me back. Jeez.”

“And this is my sister, Geneva,” I mention. Pia registers the introduction with a faint wave in Geneva’s direction; her thoughts are focused elsewhere.

“That memorial service was, I mean, you couldn’t even get in the churchyard. I was there, I wouldn’t have missed it, paying respects. Three kids in one family, it was like you couldn’t stop thinking about it, talking about it. In college I heard you were born, and I was so psyched for your parents. Seemed real positive, after all that negative. I sent over a pair of pink sparkle booties.” She smiles, spacing a finger and thumb an inch apart. “Teeny little baby shoes, pink hearts on the toes.”

“I don’t really remember them,” I say awkwardly. “But, um, thanks. Oh, I should—this is Annie.” I turn, but Annie is gone.

“Hey.” Geneva stands up. “Where’d she go?” She skirts past me, out the door and into the street, leaving me to indulge Pia Kredneck’s memories.

And talk Pia does, many of the same stories that I have heard before, from Brett—how John loved Pink Floyd and followed their concerts up and down the coast, and the time he made bird noises over the school intercom. Then she tells me a new story about Elizabeth being one of the only freshman allowed to sit in the senior lounge because she played varsity tennis. Once Pia gets going on high school memories, she can’t stop, and I nod and listen and think about Geneva turned loose on the streets of Soho. I am relieved when Pia says she has a date tonight and wants to close shop early.

“I’ll come back and visit,” I promise. “It’s always great to meet people who knew my brothers and sister.” The parents can be selective about who they invite into our home, and to look at Pia is to know she did not make the cut, which is a shame because she seems very lively. Plus you could get all those free lessons on how to read tea leaves and palms.

“Oh, yeah.” Pia’s little braids quiver as she nods. “Totally. I live upstairs. We’ll put on some Floyd, dish up the old times.”

After they get a little tipsy on the memories, people who knew my old family almost inevitably forget that I never did.

I help her lock up—two glass doors, then a roll-down metal grill—and after she is gone I sit on her stoop and wait. I catch sight of my reflection in the restaurant window across the street. The gold buttons of my jacket flash like gentle stars in their blue sky of fabric. I shift my hand to watch the change in my reflection, to make sure I am really here.

“There you are!”

“Annie said she’d see us later.” Geneva has crept up to my side, puffing short breaths. “She walks too quick. I didn’t feel like following.”

“We better get home.”

She squints at Miss Pia’s shop. “Where’d she go? What about my fortune?”

“Next time. It’s almost six, anyway.” I pat the pockets of my coat and realize that the few bills I brought with me are back at the thrift shop, tucked in a pocket of my old wool jacket. “Do you have any money?”