Sirens (2 page)

—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)

Jo

Tonight Pops was in a foul mood. He’d been that way ever since Teddy had disappeared—dead, they said, but I knew the truth. I was not grief-stricken like Ma and Pops, because I’d been privy to the lie.

Pops chewed on a bitterness so sharp and keen it gave him a permanent frown. But this was worse than usual.

“Fanny!”

I winced, yanked out of my fictional world, and I bowed my head over the story I was working on and tried to concentrate on that last sentence I’d written, tried to block out Pops’s bark and Ma’s scrambled response.

“Fanny. Where’s that ledger? I need those numbers.”

I heard Ma’s soft voice, though not her words, and I gave up on
the sentence and rested my forehead on my palm and shut my eyes. My turn next.

With a thud, the ledger landed on the table, burying my paper and nearly smashing my right hand, which still clutched a pencil.

“Josephine. I need those numbers,” Pops said. He was gone before I looked up.

My skill with numbers was more important to him than anything else. Certainly more important than my fledgling desire to write.

Ma hovered in the doorway, and her eyes met mine before she slipped back into the kitchen, hiding behind the flower-infested apron and the clattering of pots. The gauze curtain that hung over the dark window lifted, a round belly, then dropped; the breeze riffled the loose hairs across my cheek. A distant dog’s bark drifted in on the spring night air. It was warm for May, the breeze fragrant with lilacs.

I shifted the heavy bound black ledger until I could open it to the page with its marker showing where I’d left off. I sighed at the columns citing cases of whiskey and rum, gin and mixers.

Pops had to be so upset tonight because of what had happened the night before. Danny Connor’s men had been at the house and were looking for something of Teddy’s. I’d overheard the conversation, and wished I hadn’t.

Teddy. It was like I could feel his hand on my shoulder. Séances were all the rage with my friends at school, but I didn’t need any old séance to manifest my brother. He’d told me he’d gotten into a jam and had to lay low. He’d said he’d come back and made me promise not to tell. I might not know where he was now, but I held fast to that promise. I held to it even after we’d placed an empty
coffin in the ground, even when everyone else was sure Teddy was dead.

I worked the figures totaling the profits that the black market liquor had brought in over the past week. My Pops, bootlegger for the biggest gangster in New York, Danny Connor. It was all wrong.

Pops said he was in the business for the family. Our sweet little grocery next door to the house had been a fine thing. Once. Now the old dry-goods section hid a false wall, and midnight deliveries of crates from Canada disturbed my sleep. The business had grown lately, and the figures in the ledger had swelled, too. Bootleggers made a lot of money as middlemen between the Canadians who imported the booze and the swells down in the city who drank it despite the Prohibition. But bootleggers like Pops who made deals with gangsters like Danny Connor were always one step away from danger.

Before Teddy disappeared a year ago, Pops had kept his bootlegging to small-time deals. But after Teddy disappeared, Pops assuaged his grief by making a bigger deal with the devil. It didn’t matter. All the money in the world wouldn’t cure what ailed him. As far as I was concerned Pops had forgotten about what was right.

And here I was, helping Pops’s misbegotten work by keeping the books. Helping him try to drown the memory of Teddy when I wanted to shout, He’s not dead! Except that I had made Teddy a promise.

A hard, hard promise to keep when I watched my ma and pops. But I kept it, for Teddy’s sake.

The clock chimed ten when I leaned back in the chair. I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands. My hair had fallen out of its pins and lay like a blanket hanging down my back, hot and heavy.

Last week Moira had her hair bobbed. The other girls all crowded around, touching and admiring. Moira said she felt a million pounds lighter and, with her voice low and thrilling, told us that a man on the street had stopped and asked her if she was the real Colleen Moore. Colleen Moore, whose smiling visage graced the posters at the moving picture theater just about every week, who was touted as the perfect flapper with her short skirts, heart-shaped face, and bow lips.

I didn’t want strange men stopping me on the street or, heaven forbid, thinking I was a flapper—daring and naughty and foolish. But it was already warm and the steamy summer loomed, and my thick curls weighed on my neck. Shorter hair would be nothing more than a convenience. A simple haircut wasn’t enough to turn a girl into a flapper, right? Modern and smart, sure. But not a flapper. The last thing I wanted was to be taken for a fool.

Ma was still in the kitchen, hanging the damp wash. Her black skirt grazed her ankles as she bent over the tub to pick out the next wet shirt and position it to run through the wringer.

“What would you think if I cut my hair short?”

She started and straightened and put one hand up, touching her own gray-streaked hair, which was piled in a rolling crown on top of her head.

I lifted my hair off my neck, peeling clinging moist strands off my skin. “It sure would be cooler. And easier. It’s just a practical matter.” I waited. “That’s all.”

“Cut your hair. I’ll think on it.” Ma wiped her hands on her apron. “I’ve been wanting to tell you. There’s something important come up. Your father put a call in to your uncle this morning.”

I let my hair drop. “About?”

“Things.” She shifted her eyes away. “Your father and I, we want you to go stay with your aunt and uncle for a time.”

“In New York? What?” I was stunned. “Why?”

She met my eyes again, her cheeks dark. “That’s the decision.” The worry in her voice made my heart pound.

I said, “But after school ends, right? Exams are over in three weeks.”

She shook her head, said with finality, “Sooner.”

“But, Ma. I have to finish school. I won’t graduate.”

Pops’s voice came hard: “School’s for boys, not girls. Last time I looked you weren’t a boy.”

I jumped. “Pops!” I hadn’t heard him come up behind me.

His face creased with a frown. “You’re to go down to the city and stay with your aunt and uncle.” He paused. “And meet someone proper, a proper guy. Your aunt and uncle can see to it. It’s high time you get married and get on with your life.”

A proper…what? The color rose up my throat. “Pops. I’m not getting married.” I would’ve laughed, but Pop’s expression choked the humor out of me.

“You’ll do as I say.” No question, he was not just upset tonight but cornered-animal upset.

I kept my voice steady. “I have to finish my schooling, Pops. I’m only seventeen!”

“Your ma was seventeen when we married. You’re better than her?”

I bit my tongue so as not to hurt Ma’s feelings. She shifted, and the shirt she had hanging halfway through the wringer dripped into the rinse water, a soft
plink, plink
in the warm night air.

The warm night air that rippled with undercurrents of confusion and worry and threat. And all of it focused on me.

I had dreams, though Pops didn’t know about them. I wanted to become a writer—like that Agatha Christie. Teddy’d told me I had talent. He read the little things I wrote, and he liked them. Lots of girls were working now. It was modern and all right and didn’t mean you were bad. Teddy’d said he’d help me, said he’d talk to Pops so that after I graduated from high school I could set out on the path toward my dreams.

But Teddy wasn’t here.

I stood as straight as I could, hanging on to those dreams. “I have to graduate high school. I’ve got plans for when I graduate. I want to go to college. And then make something of myself.”

You could’ve cut the air with a knife.

Pops’s voice was low. “Teddy was the one should’ve gone to college. He went to war instead. Sacrificed his brain to that good cause. At least he was a hero.” Pops now stared at the floor so hard I thought he might bore holes right through it. “I spoke to your uncle. You’re darn lucky he’s got the goods and the willingness to take you in. He can introduce you to society types. You can make yourself useful by getting married to a guy who has some dough. Then there’s one less thing to give me a headache.”

What was he thinking? Marriage? I talked back, made bold by the warm temperature and the worry. “I can help the family by getting a job once I graduate from college.”

“Job.” Pops paced the floor, spouting, my back talk unleashing his anger, all his pent-up arguments. “First they get the vote, and now women think they can go around taking jobs from men. Worse
thing that ever happened to this country was when women got the vote. Dumb politicians.”

I’d heard it all before—Pops’s raving about the suffrage—but this time was different. This time it was about me.

He turned on me. “There’s no job except where you ought to be—at home, taking care of your family. Like your ma, who takes care of things around this house. You don’t hear her complaining, do you?” Behind me, Ma shifted, a soft murmur in her throat. Pa’s voice rose, quick. “You’re going, and you’ll find a husband. And no nonsense about cutting your hair. Women who cut their hair short are floozies.”

My voice trembled. “I’m not ready to get married. I want to finish out the school year. I have plans. And my plans don’t include becoming a floozy.”

Pops narrowed his eyes. “I’m your father. You’ll do as I tell you. You’re to go to New York, to stay with your aunt and uncle.”

My throat grew tight, and I heard Ma behind me, felt her rest her hand on my shoulder. “Of course she will. Won’t you, Jo?”

Pops’s eyes slipped between Ma’s and mine, and he turned on his heel and left us in the kitchen, the air weighing damp with the clean clothes that smelled of Ma’s lavender soap.

I turned. “Ma.” Now the tears welled. “This is all wrong.”

She shook her head. “Don’t. Don’t, Jo. It’ll do no good.”

“But why? Why can’t I stay here?” Even as I said it I could see it in her eyes: she and Pops both wanted me out of the house, to disappear behind a curtain. Something was surely wrong. Frustration edged in again behind my fear. “He sells spirits illegally and I can do his books, but I can’t finish school and get an honest job?” I folded my arms over my chest, tucking myself in.
“If he’s worried about floozies, he should take a look at the places that sell his liquor.”

“Josephine.” Ma’s voice was hard now. “You will not talk about your father that way in this house.” She took a breath. “Especially not when he’s only thinking about you.”

I dropped my head.

She went on, “You know, Mary landed on her feet with Bertram. My sister was clever that way. He’s done well. They’ve got a big beautiful place on Park Avenue now. They tell me it’s all the rage, living in a Park Avenue apartment. Plenty of privacy there, and lots of protection. They even have a doorman to keep you safe.”

Safe.
The word stuck in the air like a dab of glue on paper.

“Aunt Mary and Uncle Bert hardly know me. Why would they want to take me in?”

“They’re family. We’re family.” Ma didn’t lie well.
Safe
hung there, thick.
Protection
. Pops’s anger was out of bounds. Ma pressed the shirt through the wringer, squeezing the life out of it.

“Mary said you don’t need to bring anything but underclothes. Your cousin Melody has dresses she’s dying to give you.”

“Ma? What’s really going on?” I reached for the shirt, hung it for her while she picked out the next.

She shrugged. “I don’t ask for details. I don’t question your father.” She worked the wringer with a vengeance, snapped the next shirt hard, then handed it to me to hang it over the drying rack. She said as she turned away, in a voice so calm it was chilling, “We just couldn’t bear to lose you, too.”

The argument went out of me as I heard the tremor in her voice. Lose me, too. Like they lost Teddy.

She moved back to me then, placed one hand on my shoulder,
lifting the hair away from my face with the other. “You’re a smart girl. I know you can take care of yourself in New York. Your aunt and uncle aren’t unkind. They live high, but they won’t treat you poorly. Please. Do this for your father. For me.”

“All right, Ma. When should I be ready?”

“Your father said over the weekend.”

“This weekend?”

“Best not to finish out the school week and have the other students knowing where you’re off to.”

I rubbed my eyes with my fingers. Not finish out the week. And not finish out the year. “Do you need my help here?” I asked from behind my knuckles.

“No. You go do what you need to.” Her voice was soft.

I turned away fast so Ma couldn’t see my face.

I left the kitchen, back to the dining table where I dropped into the chair, my eyes stinging. Pops’s books were done. My story wouldn’t be finished tonight; I was in no mood for it. Besides, now without school and Miss Draper, there’d be no one to read it.

Pops had never mentioned marrying me off before. I thought again about that conversation in the alley I’d overheard the night before, the one between Pops and Danny Connor’s men. There was a threat hanging over this house, and he wanted me out. Fumbling for answers, I went over in my mind what I’d heard of the argument in the dark alley outside my bedroom window.

Close to midnight the noises had started. I’d gotten so used to noises like those that usually I slept through. But not last night. Behind the clatter of bottles and from the depths of sleep I heard Teddy’s name.

And then, “…something Mr. Connor’s been looking for. You know anything?”

“No.” Pops’s voice was sharp.

“You wouldn’t be lying now, would you?” The voice was a low growl. “’Cause Mr. Connor, he wants us to tell you he’s got reason to believe there might be something Teddy…” Here the clanking of bottles drowned the next words.

After a few minutes, Pops said, “We’re done.”