Sirens (13 page)

Then out of the blue I remembered my promise to Aunt Mary. “Melody.”

She looked at me. “Yes?”

What in the world was I to say? Your mother asked me to look out for you. I’m supposed to spy on you. Be a good girl, Melody. Don’t drink. Don’t smoke. For pity’s sake, cover up those knees. Walk the straight and narrow. Come to a temperance meeting with me. Leave the boys alone. Leave John Rushton alone.

Instead, I blathered. “What are you up to tonight? You know, what’s going on, and such….”

Melody looked at me as if I was out of my mind. I was, after hearing Rushton’s last comment, and then after sensing whatever it was between him and Mel.

I floundered in this unfamiliar water. Teddy liked John Rushton enough to save his life. And Melody: Was I getting the feeling that she liked—more than liked—John Rushton, too?

I started in again, trying to sound casual. “Maybe I’d like to try one of those highballs.”

“Well, okeydokey! Coming right up,” Melody said.

“That’s the spirit, doll,” said Louie. She opened a cigarette case and thrust it in my direction. “Ciggie?”

Good heavens. What had I just done? And why? When what I needed to do was go into the privacy of my room and read Teddy’s journal, now I’d trapped myself here, with these two and a glass of alcohol.

What an idiot I was. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Melody showed me how the hidden liquor cabinet worked. Push here, slide there—a false wall of bookshelves slid away and revealed bottle after bottle. It looked like enough alcohol to run an entire speakeasy. The cabinet was a dark place, a hoard, a great place for hiding secrets of any kind.

Giggling, she pulled out a small flask and showed me how she stowed it in her garter for excursions on the town. And she mixed my beverage with an expert hand, telling me how soda water provided the base and when you ordered soda water it was a wink-wink clue that you carried a flask.

My first taste of alcohol, in the form of a highball, was so unpleasant that I let the ice drift in the glass and pretended to sip, while Lou and Melody gossiped away. The concoction I held in my hand made my throat burn and my eyes water. Honestly, it tasted like ammonia.

I’d heard that some alcohols were, in fact, not far from cleaning fluid. That in the early days of the Prohibition, when desperate folks
took matters into their own hands and built homemade stills, some of the resulting potions could kill a body. Crazy people distilled all sorts of stuff: rubbing alcohol, camphor, bichloride of mercury, embalming fluid. Innocent young girls from the sticks drinking liquor lost all inhibitions and all decency. They drank until they were stupid. Some went blind. Some went mad. Not a few died.

Melody then opened a bottle of champagne for herself and Lou, popping the cork so that it hit the ceiling and the champagne foamed out of the bottle so that she had to guzzle. She held the bottle by the neck and laughed like crazy as she swiped her mouth with the back of her hand. I watched as she drank more than her share, and watched as Louie took a more circumspect approach. Lou’s glass was never empty, yet she guarded herself. She was clever, that girl.

As I had expected, there was nothing I could say or do to stop Melody. I could only sit and watch and bite my tongue, feeling for my aunt, who was so full of worry and, I thought, for good reason.

The afternoon skimmed past. Melody turned on the radio, searching until she found a station that played slow jazz, then she swayed around the room to the rhythm. The setting sun cast a rosy glow down the hallway from the living room windows into the foyer, and we switched on the library table lamps. Melody and Louie gossiped about some club up in Harlem that played a wild kind of jazz; Melody wanted to take me there, although Louie seemed to have other ideas.

Once, while Melody and Louie were deep in gossip, I went to the bookshelf, where I’d marked which book Rushton had been reading. Why did I feel surprise at Proust? Surprise and a twinge of satisfaction.

At some point I began to smell the dinner that my aunt’s cook prepared, savory smells drifting through the apartment that made my mouth water. Melody may have smelled it, too, but not with pleasure; without warning she stood. “Must go potty.” She staggered out of the library.

Louie murmured, “Probably time to be sick.” I put my drink on the table.

Lou said, “So, you’re Teddy’s baby sister? Sorry about what happened to him.”

I stared at my hands.

Lou leaned over toward me. “Reason I’m here? I’ve been told to invite you along tonight, take you out on the town.”

“By whom?”

“My guy. Daniel Connor.”

My hands lay folded in my lap, fingers laced tight. “Why should Daniel Connor have an interest in me?” I thought I knew, but wasn’t about to let on to her.

“I have no idea. He’s a nice guy, that’s all.”

Not so nice to my pops, I wanted to say, but didn’t. Connor’s hateful, I wanted to say, but couldn’t. Especially not to her. Because I did like her.

She looked at me with those large eyes. “Danny doesn’t tell me everything, doll. But I gather you’re important.” She gazed at me for a minute. “What’d you do, get ahold of some dope on some high roller?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She stared at me, her eyes narrowed. “Danny’s taken an interest in you. He wants to introduce you around, or so he tells me. Wants to show you the town, you being a pretty thing and all.”

I was so startled I picked up my drink and took another sip, avoiding her eyes. I stared into the glass, the half-melted ice cubes floating like small barges. “My pops sent me here. Pops said he was hoping that Uncle Bert and Aunt Mary would help me meet the right people, help me find a husband. I know that’s not true—well, maybe partly. But that’s not why I’m here, really.” Maybe that one little sip had loosened my tongue. I couldn’t tell Louie the truth, not her, since I was really here so that Pops could keep me away from Louie’s guy, Daniel Connor.

What would Pops say if he knew that I was making friends with Daniel Connor’s moll?

“So. Your old man wants you to find a husband?” Louie laughed. “Well, he’s a good father, then, looking out for his little sweetheart.”

“No, you don’t understand.” What didn’t she understand? I stammered. “I have no interest in getting married.”

“Ah,” Louie said. “You looking to score a good guy but not get married?”

I looked at her. Those eyes were big and round, but they weren’t innocent. They were like giant drill bits, piercing me. And that voice, like gravel. I had the feeling she was testing me.

“No,” I said.

“‘No’ what?”

“No, I don’t want to get married. I mean, I’d like to fall in love with someone who loves me, someday. Have a family, all that. But I have other things, other dreams, plans, you know.” Goodness. Now I was unloading my thoughts on Louie as if I’d known her all my life, for the second time in a matter of days.

“Do I know?”

I rushed on, more and more heedless. “I want to be a writer. Maybe a reporter. Something to do with words and books, anyway. I want to be independent. Have my own place. I want to work. Not like my ma, who’s slaved away all her life taking care of the family.” I looked at my hands, twisted them in my lap. “And there are other things I want to do, need to do, some things I have to take care of. Like Teddy…” I stopped myself. Yes, that little bit of alcohol had surely loosened my tongue.

Louie sat back. “If I could offer a bit of advice.”

I nodded, pinching my too-loose lips together.

“Don’t go saying anything about your brother around Danny.” She pursed her lips as her eyes grazed the floor, as she seemed to retreat in thought.

I nodded again, swallowed hard. “Okay.”

She lifted her chin toward my drink. “You’re smarter than your cousin.”

Good, a change of subject. But I thought, Are you sure? I sighed. “I’m supposed to watch out for her.”

Louie snorted with laughter. “Good luck. Melody’s on a bit of a tear. Been that way for a few years now. Doesn’t know what she really wants—unlike you, doll—so she dives into the sauce. I suppose it’s her way of escaping.” Louie sat forward, put her elbows on her knees, rested her chin on her fists. “It’s tough, these days.” She was looking away from me, musing, talking almost to herself. “A girl doesn’t know what to do anymore. We have it all free and easy, right? Can do whatever we want. Wear whatever we want, smoke, drink, stay up all night, go necking with some stranger, have it all. There are no more scandals: why, we’re all scandalous.
Even nutty Zelda Fitzgerald can dance in a fountain and drink like a sailor and everybody thinks she’s charming. Your pops is wrong. It’s not about finding the right husband. It’s about finding yourself. Isn’t it?” Louie looked up at me, her eyes bright. “What do you really think, doll?”

Maybe my openness had unleashed her own. I shook my head.

She watched me. “You said it yourself, about finding love someday. Is it all about the happily ever after, even if you do make something of yourself? I dunno. What do we want, really? Don’t we all want the happy home? The nice little hubby and the couple of sweet kids? And the freedom, the independence? Happily ever after. Yeah, we want it all.” She leaned back again. “You do, dollface. You just said so.”

I tucked my hands beneath my knees and leaned toward her. “What about you?”

Louie stared at me for a minute with those big eyes, then she reared back in a laugh. “Sure, I do. Of course. I want a nice happy home.”

“With Daniel Connor?”

She stopped laughing and looked at me sharp. “Daniel,” she said in a slow drawl, “is not the marrying kind.”

“Then, why? Why stay with him?”

For the first time, Louie seemed vulnerable. She looked away from me, fidgeted, tugged at the curls that hugged the nape of her neck, then stuck her index finger in her rope of pearls and wound the necklace around and around. She shrugged. “Lord knows.”

But she sat right up and smiled, the act back in place. “I must love him something wicked.” And she peered at me. “You wouldn’t try to steal him now, would you?”

I heard the edge in her voice; I shook my head and made my voice firm. “No. Never.”

“Good, then. We can be friends.” And she flashed me that smile with only a hint of wariness.

I heard the elevator door clang and the voices of my aunt and uncle as they entered the apartment. Melody came back into the library. “Well. That was titillating.” She looked better, freshly made up, her lips a dangerous red. “Everyone’s home, and the limo’ll be here at eight.” She looked from Louie to me. “I’m starved. What are you waiting for? Shall we eat?”

CHAPTER 17

Lou

She had this funny thing going on, Jo Winter. She was innocent but savvy. She thought she knew what she wanted, but it was stuff right out of a fairy tale. I wanted to shake her and say, “Wake up, baby.”

But I also wanted to believe. I wanted to believe in happy ever after. I wanted to believe Jo was as innocent as she seemed. I was that innocent, once upon a time. I’d traded up.

John Rushton, he believed only in what he’d lost. I’d heard about the bombing; we all did. It was the time of the “Red Scare”—the “Reds” were coming to set off a revolution here in the good old U.S. of A. Whoever they were, they didn’t get very far. You fellows put out a reward for the Wall Street bombings: $20,000. You boys have some money in the bank, right, Detective? Gosh. That reward is almost as much as Danny paid for the mansion.

But then you arrested those Italians, Sacco and Vanzetti, and now
they’ll hang, so everyone’s saying, even though there’s no good reason to believe they were part of it.

It’s interesting how no one ever claimed that reward. Who knows who the bombers really were? Maybe we won’t ever know. But blaming a couple of Italians? No different than blaming a couple of Irish. Or a couple of Negroes. Or blaming me—oh, don’t put on that face, Detective. You know what I’m saying.

And in case you don’t, here’s a taste. It was like that time when Charlie and me were out on the town and we ran into one of Charlie’s friends, some guy he’d played in a band with. Okay, so the guy was a Negro. So what?

There we were, on the street, having a nice conversation about the latest nightclubs, when some goon walks up and spits on the other fellow’s shoe.

Charlie, his face went sour. I got real fearful there would be a fight.

But Tooley—that was his name, the Negro bass player—he just bends down and wipes that spit off his shoe with a bright red hanky he pulls from his pocket.

“Some folks have a hard time seeing in this light,” he said, squinting at the sun.

“I’d be happy to go break his neck,” Charlie said. His dark eyes lit on the spitting guy, off laughing with his pals liked he’d scored something big.

“Now, what you want to do that for, son?” asked Tooley. “You’ve got a gig tonight, and a fat lip won’t help your tuneless playing improve.” And he laughed, at least with his teeth, and tossed that spoiled hanky in the nearest garbage can.

And we moved on, then, Tooley in his direction and we in ours, and Charlie, I had to rein him in when we passed those boys so he wouldn’t take revenge for Tooley’s insult.