Until She Comes Home (19 page)

At the bottom of the stairs leading into the dining hall, one of the husbands appears, his hat in hand, fingering the brim as he stretches his neck to scan the room. “Doris,” he calls out, brushing aside the ladies who approach him. “Where’s my Doris?”

“Very well,” Malina says, taking Julia’s place behind the table while keeping watch over the commotion going on across the room. Not even this extra duty will dampen Malina’s mood. Julia has always been an odd sort of neighbor, and Malina’s found it difficult to converse with her ever since her baby died. It’s such a lot of sadness to contend with. “Don’t forget this.” Malina picks up the tattered, worn slip of paper and stretches across the table to hand it to Julia.

Julia takes the clipping between two fingers and opens it.

“Did you ever consider this?” she says, lifting the article and pressing it toward Malina for a closer look.

“What ever do you mean?”

The ladies continue to congregate near the stairwell. “I’m here.” It’s Doris Taylor’s voice, rising above the rest. “My goodness, I’m right here.”

“A place like this,” Julia says, paying the ladies no mind. “The Willows. Have you heard of it?”

Malina walks from behind the table, crosses her arms, and leans forward so she can see what Julia holds in her hands. “What on earth? I haven’t the faintest notion what this is. The twins, Julia. You’re supposed to be tending to the twins.”

“You and Warren, you’ve never had children. You must have considered it. Adoption. Did you ever consider adoption?”

“I am quite sure that is none of your business, Julia Wagner.”

“Let us pass.” It’s Doris’s husband. “Step away, all of you. Let us pass.”

All around the room, the ladies begin scurrying about, collecting their bags and wraps. Some of them fuss with their casseroles and cover them with foil while others gather the plates, saucers, and flatware and stack them on the back credenza. Still others rip linens from the tables and stuff them in cloth laundry bags.

“How dare you broach such a personal question?” Malina says. “You should concern yourself with those girls and stop all this foolishness.”

“You think I don’t concern myself with the girls?” Julia says.

Julia’s perfume, something cheap and sweet, snags in Malina’s throat. She coughs into her fist. Julia throws back her shoulders, lifts her chin, and the gap in her blouse widens, straining the safety pin’s thin-coiled wire.

“I think adoption is a private thing not to be discussed in this manner, and you should concern yourself with the two children you already have.” Malina clears her throat as much to give herself time to think as to soothe the irritation from Julia’s perfume. “I think maybe you’re not well. It’s no wonder. What with all the stress of Elizabeth disappearing, I can’t imagine the guilt you’re feeling. I only meant to suggest you bring your banana bread to the sale. You’re such a fine cook. Nothing more. Really, nothing more.”

“Ladies, ladies, you two hurry along.” It’s Sara Washburn, calling out from across the room. When Julia and Malina make no move to leave, Sara walks toward them, a white cotton sweater slung over one arm and both hands wrapped around her clipboard. “Leave these things,” she says. “Switch off that coffee and go home.”

“You think I can’t care for Izzy and Arie?” Julia says, ignoring Sara.

“I said no such thing.” Malina pauses, reaches out to touch Julia’s arm.

Julia jerks away, nearly stumbling. “It’s what you all think, isn’t it? That I’m unfit.”

“Ladies,” Sara says, clutching the clipboard to her chest as if to protect herself. “Leave this to another time. I’d like to lock up.”

“Please, Julia. I said nothing about you being unfit. For goodness sake, what has gotten into you? The girls stay only a few weeks. How much trouble could they or you possibly get into? They really are of no concern to me.”

“Ladies, let’s move along,” Sara says.

“And what if they were to stay? Would you worry then? Am I only fit to care for them a few weeks at a time?”

“Is that true?” Malina says, her giddy mood slipping away. Looking from Sara Washburn in her bold plaid dress to Julia, who is bursting through her white cotton blouse, Malina tries to draw in another deep breath to clear her head, but the air is too heavy with Julia’s perfume. “They’ll stay on? The girls will stay?”

“Ladies,” Sara shouts.

Julia drops the tattered sheet of paper on the table. Her round, full chest rises and falls. More of her red hair has pulled loose of the scarf that held it from her face, and wiry strands stick out from her head. Both she and Malina turn to Sara.

“It’s Elizabeth,” Sara says, her shoulders sinking. “They’ve found her. They’ve found our Elizabeth. Please, it’s time to go home.”

G
race agrees with Mrs. Nowack when she suggests it might be best that Grace go straight home, and after the fifth police car has raced past the bakery and turned toward the river, she boards the bus that will carry her back to Alder Avenue. But rather than stopping at her own house, she walks directly to Mr. Symanski’s, opens the iron gate, climbs the three stairs leading onto his porch, and knocks lightly. The door opens. Mr. Symanski wears a wrinkled shirt and a tie that falls too short. His pants hang loose on his waist and bag at his ankles. A pair of men’s shoes cut from soft kidskin leather sit to the side of the door. The tip of his big toe pokes through a small hole in his right sock.

“I thought to check on you,” Grace says. “I was down on Willingham. . . .”

She lets her words trail off into silence, afraid to mention the many police cars and blaring sirens. Tugging off her white gloves one finger at a time, she checks the street for any sign of an officer who might be coming to deliver bad news.

Mr. Symanski blinks twice and squints again, as if not certain who Grace is, and then he smiles. “Come in,” he says. “Before the heat is getting you.”

Outside Mr. Symanski’s, tufts of crabgrass have grown up through the cracks in the sidewalk. The yard has become shabby in the short time since Elizabeth disappeared. It must have started when Ewa died, the slow, steady falling apart, but Grace hadn’t noticed until now.

In the living room, Grace tucks her gloves into her handbag. The air is heavy and stale, making it difficult to breathe. So often in the days since Elizabeth disappeared, it’s been difficult for Grace to breathe.

“The baby is well?” Mr. Symanski says.

Grace nods and pushes aside the heavy drapes in the front room. Light spills into the house, and the dust in the air sparkles. Across the street, the Filmore Apartments are quiet. They’re always quiet. In the evenings, when the people come home from work, they must park their cars and disappear inside straightaway. Everyone says some of the families living there are Negroes, but Grace has never seen them coming or going through the glass doors. She’s only seen the men who roam the alley and now the street. The one who came for her hasn’t been among them since the night of the attack. Grace excuses herself and, in the kitchen, pulls a bottle of diluted vinegar from under the sink, grabs a few pages from yesterday’s newspaper, and walks back to the living room.

“The police came to see you?” Mr. Symanski says.

“They did.” She sets aside the bottle so she can use both hands to wad up the newspaper.

A half dozen times since the officers questioned James and Grace, their patrol car has rolled down Alder Avenue. Each time, the car drove slowly as it crept past her house, giving her a chance to rush outside and admit to them she lied. They could find Elizabeth if only Grace would tell the truth.

“Yesterday,” she says. “They came yesterday.”

Sprinkling the diluted vinegar on the crumpled ball of newspaper, Grace rubs small circles on the living room’s cloudy window.

“They are asking you more questions?” Mr. Symanski says.

Another deep breath so her voice won’t quiver.

“I wish I could have told them something,” she says, and rubs her nose.

Ewa’s vinegar water is stronger than the mixture Grace has at home. But stronger is better. The glass glistens and squeals as Grace scrubs.

“I wish I could have told them something that would help. But they arrested a man. Does it give you any peace to know that?”

Maybe there is some comfort in knowing. Maybe not knowing is the thing that tortures a father, keeps him up at night, turns his hair to straw, makes his shoulders cave and his spine bow. The street must surely be safer with one of them arrested. This must bring some peace.

Mr. Symanski sits on the sofa. He used to sit in the brown recliner pushed against the wall, and Ewa would sit next to him in her chair. With his hands in his lap, he smiles at the bright window.

“They have no one,” he says.

“But they arrested a man.”

“They are telling me it was unrelated,” Mr. Symanski says. “I don’t understand unrelated. I am thinking Elizabeth doesn’t matter as much as another might.”

“I don’t understand, either,” Grace says. “They let him go? How can they do that?”

Mr. Symanski shakes his head. “They say they can be holding a man only so long. That is all they are telling me.”

“Did he live there?” Grace says, pointing at the Filmore. She squints into the freshly cleaned window just as Mr. Symanski had squinted when she first opened the door. As she stares across Alder Avenue, she wipes down the marble sill with her soggy newspaper. “Is he here on this street? Have you ever seen him?”

“I am never looking.”

“I wish I could have helped you,” she says, knowing the man is back on the street because she was too afraid to tell the truth. “I wish I could have said something to the police, told them something that would have stopped all this.”

From his seat on the sofa, Mr. Symanski stares down at the sliver of toe poking through his sock. “You are helping me now,” he says. “You are being a good neighbor. And always so good to my Elizabeth. Always so good. You’ll be having your own soon and knowing how wonderful a daughter is to love.”

After scrubbing the kitchen window, wiping down the counters, and promising to deliver a roast in a few days to fill Mr. Symanski’s empty refrigerator—or possibly a stuffed chicken if he has tired of a roast every week—Grace walks with Mr. Symanski to the front gate. Once there, she hugs him lightly and pushes on the gate’s latch. It sticks, so she gives it a second jostle. Down the street, near her own house, one of the twins walks toward her. From this distance, she can’t tell which one.

“The police came to see me today,” Mr. Symanski says. “Just before you are here, they came.”

Grace lets the gate fall closed and whirls around to face Mr. Symanski. “Oh, no.”

The twin is a half block closer. Because her head jerks from side to side as if she’s afraid of her surroundings and because her shoulders droop, Grace knows it’s Arie.

“Yes,” Mr. Symanski says. “It was being the river. That is all they are telling me. Today they are finding her. It is being the other men who tell them it is my Elizabeth.”

Grace reaches out, squeezes Mr. Symanski’s wrist, pulls him into her arms. “What can I say? It’s my fault. All of this. My fault.”

Mr. Symanski, hunched over at an awkward angle because of Grace’s large stomach, rests his head on her shoulder. “This is not being true,” he says. “My Elizabeth, she is being at peace?”

Grace dabs at her eyes. She wants to ask how it happened, what the police found, but Arie is only a house away and she shouldn’t see this or hear this.

“Can I help you inside?” Grace says, glancing back at Arie. She has walked a few yards closer and stopped. She stands at the sidewalk that leads to the Archers’, who live next door, and has wrapped herself in both arms. Even from this distance, Grace can see Arie is crying.

“Go,” Mr. Symanski says. “Go and see to the child.” Halfway up the sidewalk, he stops and turns back. “It is being hardest to be the only one left.”

Grace watches until Mr. Symanski reaches his porch, then she bangs on the latch again and once through the gate, she rushes toward Arie.

“Arie, dear. What is it? What’s wrong?”

Arie’s lips roll in on themselves and she backs away. She shakes her head but doesn’t speak.

“Honey, please. Why are you crying?” Grace takes another few steps closer, but this time, she moves slowly.

Arie must know about Elizabeth’s death. Grace should be crying too, but she’s known all along things would come to this end.

“It’s Izzy,” Arie says, still cradling herself with her own arms. “I’m afraid what happened to you is going to happen to her.”

•   •   •

When Mrs. Richardson reaches out to cup Arie’s shoulder, Arie stumbles away. It’s rude, and Aunt Julia would be disappointed, but something bad happened to Mrs. Richardson in that alley, something so bad she hasn’t even told Aunt Julia, and Arie doesn’t want to be touched by it.

Again, Arie says in little more than a whisper, “I’m afraid what happened to you is going to happen to Izzy.” She sniffles and drags her hand across her nose.

Mrs. Richardson doesn’t try to come any closer. Her white hair glows in the bright sun. None of it breaks free of the band holding it from her face or frizzes at her temples like Arie’s hair always does. In the street, a car drives by. Mrs. Richardson doesn’t smile or wave even though it’s the neighborly thing to do. Now she is the one afraid to get too near.

“What do you mean by that, Arie? What do you think happened to me?”

After Arie had finished cleaning up to go to church with Aunt Julia, she had run downstairs, her sneakers in hand. Sock-footed, she skated into the kitchen. Empty. She shouted into the backyard. Nothing. Lastly, she looked out the front window. The driveway was empty. Aunt Julia was gone, and so was Izzy. She ran back upstairs, and from her bedroom window, she scanned Alder Avenue. Every door along the street was closed. Most of the driveways were empty. She crawled over Izzy’s bed, a rumpled mess because she never makes hospital corners or smooths her quilt, and looked out the side window. She looked past the roofs and antennae and overhead lines, and at the far end of the alley, she saw a person. She couldn’t say she saw Izzy because the person was too far away, and yet, she knew it was Izzy because an arm stretched into the air and waved in broad strokes.

Arie watched the alley for half an hour. It was early, she told herself. Not until five o’clock would Mr. Schofield set up his chair again. Like everyone on Alder Avenue, Mr. Schofield knew the colored men came at ten and five, or thereabouts. Surely Izzy would be home long before that. But then one o’clock passed, and two o’clock and soon, Aunt Julia would be home. Arie had to go looking.

The street had jumped to life while Arie was upstairs watching the alley. Cars drove past, whipped into driveways, and ladies scurried to their front doors. Arie had clung to the banister with both hands as she walked down the stairs to the sidewalk and she waited for one of the ladies to shout out to her and tell her to get back inside. But no one noticed her or scolded her. Three times Arie walked up and down Alder. Cars continued to drive down the street, but instead of more ladies, it was their husbands, home at an odd hour, and because they, too, hurried inside without tending to their trash cans or setting out the sprinkler or using the daylight to mow the lawn, and because time was slipping away and five o’clock would eventually come, fear welled up in Arie and she couldn’t stop that fear from spilling out as tears when she saw Mrs. Richardson a half block away.

“I asked you a question,” Mrs. Richardson says, grabbing Arie’s arm. It’s the same spot she grabbed when she thought Izzy and Arie started the fire. “What do you mean? What do you know about what happened to me?”

Arie stares down on Mrs. Richardson’s hand. Her fingers pinch but Arie doesn’t pull away.

“The bad thing that happened to you,” Arie says. “The bad thing that happened in the garage.” She lifts her eyes. “I can’t find Izzy and I’m afraid the same will happen to her.”

Mrs. Richardson’s hand softens and drops from Arie’s arm. “Come,” she says, taking Arie’s hand, gently this time. “That looks like your aunt’s car. Let’s get you home and then we’ll find Izzy.”

Mrs. Richardson smiles at Arie and talks with a smooth, steady voice. She is trying to sound like she’s not scared, but red patches grow where her white collar rests on her neck and sweat collects on the soft hairs above her top lip and on the tender skin under her eyes. And instead of walking toward Aunt Julia, Mrs. Richardson almost runs, dragging Arie along behind.

Up ahead, Aunt Julia’s car rolls into the driveway. Uncle Bill doesn’t like for her to drive it because he says it’s on its last leg, but Aunt Julia said first leg or last leg, she had to drive it today because the bus wouldn’t do. She parks the car where the back bumper is left to stick out into the street, and without closing the door behind her, she walks toward Arie and Mrs. Richardson, slowly at first and then more quickly when she sees Mrs. Richardson is in a hurry.

Across the street, Mrs. Herze pulls into her driveway too. Mr. Herze’s big blue car is already parked there. He must have been one of the husbands who came home early. Arie’s been thinking only about the bad thing that might have happened to Izzy, but because Aunt Julia walks with long, quick steps and her makeup is smeared and because the husbands are home early and because every house is closed up tight, something else bad is happening right here on Alder Avenue.

Like Aunt Julia did, Mrs. Herze doesn’t bother to park her car properly and she runs over a patch of her snapdragons with one tire. They’re all dying anyway because she hoses them down several times during the day in case someone peed on them. Mrs. Herze throws open her door and waves across the street at Aunt Julia.

“Julia, stop,” Mrs. Herze calls out, waving something in the air.

Aunt Julia pauses but doesn’t look back. “Leave me be, Malina.”

“Please stop,” Mrs. Herze shouts again. Making her way down her driveway, she teeters on tall heels and a white handbag swings from her wrist. “Please, hear me out.”

Aunt Julia doesn’t wait for Mrs. Herze but continues toward Arie. Once close enough to see Arie has been crying, Aunt Julia draws her into a hug and says, “What’s wrong, sugar?” Aunt Julia smells like ripe bananas and brown-sugar frosting.

Mrs. Herze continues to wobble across the street on her narrow heels, all the while waving something in the air and begging Aunt Julia to listen and understand.

Saying nothing more to Mrs. Herze, Aunt Julia stoops before Arie and holds her by both shoulders. “Why are you crying? What’s all this fuss?” Aunt Julia smiles and talks with a hushed voice. Her speech becomes sluggish and she punches the beginning of each word. Uncle Bill says tough times, happy times, any sort of times can draw out Aunt Julia’s Southern drawl.

“Julia, I saved your clipping.” Mrs. Herze stumbles to a stop behind Aunt Julia. Clumps of her short black hair stick to her forehead where she has sweated, except she would call it perspiration, and her red lipstick bleeds into the thin lines that cut into her top lip. “Look here, I brought it back to you.”