April in Paris

by John J. Healey

  Carmen, who’d studied and worked and found a successful way to live far from her original nest—this telling me that she too had undergone difficulty and that she too lived in some ambivalence with respect to her home—was nevertheless able to return here. She enjoyed Madrid and went back to this apartment I sat in front of without, as far as I knew, having to self-medicate to get through it.

  My conundrum was very different. Perhaps it was the fact that it had been a real crime that took place in my family’s basement, a crime from much longer ago, a crime that was inviting me to attach all manner of feelings and emotions of my own to it without having to face what, apparently, despite decades of therapy and significant introspection, continued to haunt me—my own murder story.

  The driver returned. I sent him back to the hotel and decided to take a stroll in the Parque del Oeste, the Western Park. It was in full bloom and replete with joggers, children, skateboarders, and retirees sitting on wooden benches resting their chins on canes. Tall umbrella pines I associated with the countryside around Rome lorded over rose gardens and lawns and well-kept paths and monuments to Spanish wars, writers, and former colonies.

  I sat at a café facing the rebuilt Temple of Debod, a beautiful construction from Egypt, 200 BCE. It reminded me of the Temple of Dendur at the Met in New York. Small children were playing near it and I could tell from their bossy voices that their game was being invented right then and there and that they were making up complicated and contradictory rules as they went along, each new rule favoring whichever child spoke it. They were adorable and at the same time rather frightening. I paid for my coffee and moved on, wondering how Carmen was faring. I sent her a message:

  Food delivered. Are you OK?

  No answer. I walked to the Plaza de España and looked at the huge statue of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza and had to raise my hat to a society that placed fictional characters from classic literature in the nation’s most central square. A woman walking her dog caught my eye, the dog especially. It was a King Charles spaniel, rapt in a state of high excitement. It was not a puppy; its joy and energy did not derive from inexperience. It was just thrilled to be out and about, sniffing at every leaf, shrub, and water drain within reach, and peeing at the base of the statue. The woman was on her phone and paid it little mind but smiled at me as I leaned down to engage her pet. The smooth feel of its pelt, the cold wetness of its nose, the guileless, slightly bulging eyes looking up into mine affected me with its devotion to the here and now.

  In a taxi heading back to the hotel I got a response:

  Thank you for that. All is well. See you this evening.

  – 16 –

  Back in my suite with a few hours to kill, I flopped down on the bed and read some of MacBride’s testimony. As I did, I realized the original trial had taken place before a coroner, that MacBride had been found guilty, and that he had been sentenced to be executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing, the infamous prison on the Hudson River north of the city. The transcript I had was from MacBride’s appeal trial. I googled “New York City coroner” and learned that the office had been abolished just a year after MacBride’s trial took place. Up until then coroners, two in every borough of the city, had the power to convene grand juries and pass sentence on the accused. The system had been abolished due to a pattern of consistent abuse. New York City coroners throughout the 1900s had only sometimes been physicians; some had been undertakers, some were dentists, some were politicians, and one was a butcher.

  Eugene J. MacBride: “I am thirty-three years old. I was born in Scotland. I have been living in New York for twenty-eight years. I am not married. In June 1916, I was living at 1077 Ogden Avenue with Alexander J. Conlan, a brother-in-law. He is married to my sister. He lives on the third floor.

  “I got up about eleven o’clock in the morning that day, had breakfast and stayed around the house for about an hour. Then I went down to Conlan’s shop, about half a block away. Conlan is a plumber. I filled my arms with firewood and brought it up to my sister’s home. Then I went down again. There were two boys playing ball on the stoop. One boy I know was the little Buckley boy that was here yesterday and testified about my being struck with the ball.

  “I stood on the top step to wait, not wanting to interrupt them from their game, and one of the boys, I don’t remember which one it was—threw the ball and it happened to miss the edge of the step, and comes up and hits me in the testicles. That is about the only way I can pronounce that.

  “I only said to them, ‘Boys, why you ought to be a little bit careful, and play in the lots or go down the street somewhere and play. You will be hurting somebody with your ball. You don’t know who might be coming out and it might go in the hall and hit somebody else.’ The boys laughed and went on.

  “I went over to Barney Valiunas’s saloon. That was about four o’clock. I was there until about six thirty. During that time I read the papers and threw dice with Barney. I was sober when I left and in full possession of my faculties. Then I went over for supper and met my brother-in-law at the door. He was in a hurry to meet somebody and finished before I did. I left the house about a quarter after seven, came downstairs and went up to the corner of 165th Street on Ogden Avenue. There I sat on the stone wall in front of my brother-in-law’s shop.

  “I sat there talking with a neighbor and then with Joe Wood until about eight o’clock. After he went away, I went over to the firehouse and there I seen the captain of the firehouse and Peter J. Bird. Then I went back again to the corner, the same place I was at before. I sat on the wall for a few minutes. Then I went over to the barbershop and I seen this barber, Louis Colossi, at the door. I was with him a few minutes. He was on the stand yesterday. I had been talking with him a few minutes and I asked him to lend me five cents and he said he could not spare it. That’s all I remember him saying.

  “I then went back to the wall. I stayed there until I saw Mrs. Buckley who asked me if I had seen the little girl that was missing, and I asked her what little girl it was. She told me, ‘That Swedish girl that lives in the same house that I do.’ I told her no I hadn’t seen her. And she said, ‘All right,’ and went on.

  “Johnny Dolan and Joe Woods came along, and they both sat on the wall with me until about ten o’clock, when one of them says, ‘There must be a fire up in the flats,’ and the three of us ran up together. We ran up to 1077 and 1075 Ogden Avenue, and I saw four or five people running across the street and I thought it might be a fire and they were running over to get the engines out. I got up there and found that they had found a little child in the cellar. I found that out in front of the house, I don’t know who told me.

  “There was a crowd gathering. We stood there for a few minutes and I seen Barney Valiunas standing in his doorway, and I went over and spoke to him for a while. We went inside and he gave me a drink I had no intention of paying for, and he knew that. I went in and got the drink and came out with him.

  “Shortly after the ambulance left, I went upstairs and got into a long argument with my sister. I told her that if I didn’t stop getting the devil off them, between her and my brother-in-law I would go away, and she said she didn’t care whether I went away or not. I came downstairs disgusted, jumped right on a tram car and went right up and got to Mount Vernon, the city line, because the tram cars do not run any further, and I got out there to wait for a New Rochelle car where another sister of mine lived.

  “I stayed with her until Conlan came up and asked me if I knew anything about the death of the little child in Highbridge and I told him I did not. He told me that the police were after me to get a statement, not to arrest me. They wanted to know if I had any suspicions on anybody. I told him I didn’t have no suspicions about nobody. Conlan told me I had better come down because if the police got after me, they would lay the whole blame on me because I had gone away. I says, ‘You are right,’ and I came down with him.

  “At the station house that night they brought me into a little room and took my fi
ngerprints, and then Captain Morrison asked me if I knew anything and I told him no. He told me that if I had anything to do with this thing it would be better to tell him. I told him I didn’t. I had nothing to do with the death of this child. He told me he was sure I was the right man, but he says, ‘I don’t think from your appearances or looks that you would do such a thing, but at the same time I think we have got you right.’ I says, ‘I don’t know why.’ He said, ‘We have your fingerprints here and they correspond with the photograph of the child’s neck,’ he says. As he looked at them I kind of reached over and looked at them and he pulled back, he wouldn’t let me see them. So then when he couldn’t get me to say I had done it, which I didn’t, he turns around and tells me what I could say.”

  ***

  I closed my laptop. The dream I had in Paris seemed to indicate I had fused and identified with a deeply repressed memory of being told about Ingrid Anderson, condensed further with reverberations of Anne Frank. But reading the Faulknerian prose of the transcript my sympathy also went out to the poor bastard MacBride. I’d gone to grade school in the Bronx with a big, lumbering kid named Johnny MacBride whose tie was always crooked, whose hands were always stained with ink, whose gray flannel trousers were thin at the knees. He received many paddlings from the creepy Irish Christian Brothers who pretended to educate us. I wondered if he was a descendant, perpetuating some genetic curse. The police captain, Captain Morrison, who overpowered MacBride, seemed the sort of man who would have been a friend of my family, a conniving, self-satisfied Irishman, an alpha mick up to no good, entirely at ease with rites of church and family. My father’s older brother, Wild Jack, once worked as a property clerk for the Bronx police, the men who took “the bundle” for safekeeping. This story, that took place so long ago in a neighborhood I’d spent so much energy trying to forget, felt suddenly close. It gnawed at my psyche, unnerved me, shook me to the core.

  – Part Two –

  The Truth must dazzle gradually

  Or every man be blind —

  —Emily Dickinson

  – 17 –

  Horcher was a relic. It had first opened in the 1940s thanks to a German chef who had cooked for Himmler in Berlin, but then moved to “neutral” Spain upon sensing the Third Reich was going to lose the war. Franco’s Madrid was filled with Germanophiles back then, spies and scallywags of all stripes, and the restaurant had thrived ever since. It was decorated with deep red wallpaper set off by dark wooden trim and numerous displays of ceramic figurines. After Franco embraced Eisenhower in the 1950s, movie stars like Ava Gardner, Charlton Heston, David Niven, and Sophia Loren had flocked to the place with spouses, lovers, and retinues. Horcher remained a culinary stalwart even during the “Transition to Democracy,” when the Spanish Socialist Party dominated the scene in the 1980s and ’90s. Conservative Madrileños and left-leaning nouveaus were glad to walk through its doors, leaving large cars double-parked out front with the uniformed valet.

  That night, more than two decades into the twenty-first century, it was three-quarters full with well-heeled parties still arriving. We were seated near a stained-glass window slightly opened to the avenue. As soon as she was seated, Carmen was provided with a footrest covered in burgundy velvet that had faded over time into a warm pinkish hue. It was deftly placed without fanfare. A small silver bucket filled with ice and radishes was brought to the table along with bread and butterballs. I ordered champagne. We toasted and took a sip.

  “How did you know about this place, or did the hotel recommend it?” she said.

  “No. I’ve been here before, a lunch with a bunch of people from the Prado some years ago. They filled me in on its colorful history. I remembered it as a place where you could actually have a conversation without having to yell.”

  “Unlike Casa Dani.”

  “Which I loved. Well, until we were interrupted.”

  “I know. That was unfortunate.”

  “So, who was that fellow, an ex of yours?”

  “No.”

  “Really? He seemed besotted.”

  “Did you actually just use the word ‘besotted’?”

  “I did,” I said, “and you’re changing the subject.”

  “He … anyway, he’s about something else entirely. But what if he had been?”

  “I would have understood his feelings—completely.”

  “Have you been jilted by someone you care about?”

  “Not since I was a teenager,” I said. “Not really. Like you with your husband, I’ve generally been the leaver, not the left.”

  “But not always.”

  “Pretty much always. Well. Except for when I lost my mother. That was a double-whammy. Not only did she prefer my father to me, but then she left us both, which I expect goes a long way toward explaining why, since then, I’ve been the one to put a stop to things.”

  “So perhaps we’re two of a kind in that regard,” she said.

  “Could be.”

  “On the verge perhaps of a battle royale.”

  On that we clinked glasses and drank some champagne.

  “That’s my sorry explanation, anyway,” I said. “What’s yours?”

  “Wait a sec. Are you saying you leave the women you fall for because in the end you’re afraid they’ll eventually leave you like your mother?”

  “I’m not proud of it,” I said. “But I’ve done it enough times to make me stop and think. It’s like I get to a point where I start to get anxious if things are going too well, and rather than work through it, rather than risk another catastrophe that would blow me out of the water, I—unconsciously, mind you—find an excuse to wreck things, usually by finding someone new.”

  “Now it’s me who’s worried,” she said.

  “Well, it’s how life goes, no?” I said. “No matter how well things begin, they always end painfully, one way or the other, whether you’re an eleven-year-old Ingrid Anderson, a six-year-old me who has to watch his mother die, or some theoretical happily married couple who eventually lose each other to illness and death.”

  “Wow,” she said. “You are the alegria de la fiesta.”

  “This place is a trip,” I said, looking to change the subject.

  “I completely agree,” she said. “But you must be used to places like this.”

  “Not really. I tend to avoid them in Paris or London or New York. They intimidate me as a rule and serve heavy, too-elaborate dishes that give me indigestion. I prefer new places.”

  “New women. New restaurants. The pick of the litter.”

  “That’s not fair,” I said.

  “I’m just kidding,” she said. “I think.”

  That evening she wore a black dress and small gold earrings. Her blonde hair was down below her shoulders and on one finger she wore some sort of heirloom ring dotted with tiny old stones.

  “So now that you’ve realized I’m a depressed, serial commitment-phobe, what about you?” I said.

  “I’m not really one for armchair analysis,” she said, “but I suppose, taking your cue, I behave in a somewhat similar fashion. My parents drifted apart and divorced when I was young. Not a dramatic thing these days but it was back then, here. He left the country and I lost touch with him for too long and I suppose I’ve been reluctant to trust men ever since. Let’s just say I harbor a mix of low self-esteem and rage.”

  “I see.”

  “She remarried after a while, to a childhood sweetheart from Barcelona, but it was more of a rebound relationship. It didn’t last very long and I didn’t get along with him very well either.”

  “So, you’ve had a bit of a rough time.”

  “I really can’t complain. I’ve been blessed as well.”

  We’d ordered fish and were just about done. I was tempted to renew the discussion about Ingrid Anderson and MacBride, but we were clearly in need of something cheerier.

  “When do you go back to Boston?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow.”

  “No.”

 
“I told you,” she said. “I only had a couple of days here.”

  “I know. I know. I suppose I didn’t want to take it literally.”

  “What are your plans?”

  “Back to Paris, to stay there until July to finish the Géricault article. My classes don’t resume until the fall.”

  “You’re so lucky to be on leave,” she said. “What about July and August?”

  “I’m not completely sure yet. How about you?”

  “Apart from a conference or two I’m not sure yet either.”

  “Well, maybe we could see some of each other then.”

  “We haven’t even finished our first dinner together,” she said with a laugh.

  “It’s our second dinner.”

  “Alone I mean.”

  “You’re stalling.”

  “Well, of course I’m stalling. I’ll have to think about it.”

  “Please do,” I said.

  We shared some strudel with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and both of us had a mint tea. I invited her back to the Ritz for a nightcap. She declined. She wanted to get back to her mother for a nighttime chat since her flight left early the following morning. The car was waiting outside and we both got into it.

  “How do you feel about dogs?” I said.

  “You mean as pets?”

  “I saw one today and I’ve been thinking about getting one ever since.”

  “What kind?”

  “A King Charles spaniel.”

  “What a grand name. Is it big or little?” she asked.

  “Medium sized. Like twenty-five pounds, Yea high, yea long.”

  “I’ve never had a dog,” she said, “or any kind of pet really.”

  “So, what do you think?”

  “You should definitely try to get one if you want to.”