The Tenderness of Thieves

by Donna Freitas

  “You didn’t look hard enough.” I stared at Seamus while he watched the wall like it was showing a movie. “We were there.”

  “Michaela?”

  “Yup.”

  “Bridget?”

  “Yes.”

  A pause. A breath. Then, “Tammy, too?”

  I patted his knee. “Of course.”

  He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t have to.

  “She’s not with Devin anymore,” I said. Devin was Tammy’s fellow skinny-dipper. The basketball player she’d dated off and on during the winter and spring, then decided she was bored with the last week of school. “Are you ever going to ask Tammy out?”

  “Why would you want to know that?”

  “Okay, fine,” I said. “Don’t talk to me about it.”

  Seamus’s knee was bobbing up and down like the needle on my mother’s sewing machine. “I tell you everything, Jane.” The note of accusation in his voice was faint, but I’d heard it, clear. Seamus told me his secrets, but I didn’t tell him all of mine.

  “I don’t think so,” I said.

  “I do, you know. And if I needed to confess something about Tammy, I would. But I’ve got nothing for you.”

  I smirked. “When you’re ready, I’m here.” I sang those words to him, trying to make everything light and sunny.

  Seamus turned to me then, with those shy-boy eyes. Deadly serious. “Same goes for you, Jane. I mean it.”

  Words piled up in my throat, but none of them made it out of my mouth. Seamus and I sat there, silent, our unspoken questions flitting around the room like anxious moths. The sounds of the neighborhood boys playing street hockey sifted through the screens, filling the empty air.

  “I gotta go,” Seamus said eventually, when it was clear I wasn’t talking. He got up and hovered in the doorway about to head out, giving me one last wide-eyed look, one more look that said you can trust me, Jane, before he was gone.

  But I couldn’t trust anyone. Not anymore.

  TWO

  “HIYA, MRS. LEVINSON,” I said, and began emptying my basket at the register in Levinson’s, the corner grocery closest to my house, just a half block up from the wharf. It was right before lunchtime on our second official day of summer, and it was hot—hotter even than yesterday. The soft bump of boats against the dock played a faint and steady sound track. Lettuce. Thump. Onions. Thump. Potatoes. Thump.

  “Hello, Jane, sweetheart,” she replied. Mrs. Levinson called everybody “sweetheart.” “Roasting a chicken in this hot weather, are you?”

  “I was thinking about it, you know, for the leftovers.” I glanced at the plastic-wrapped plucked and skinned bird sweating on the counter. “Maybe it’s not such a good idea after all.”

  Mrs. Levinson eyed my items. “The heat from the oven is going to turn your house into a sauna.” She picked the chicken up and set it to the side. “Larry! You got any of those roasters left from the bridal luncheon?” Silence. “Larry, you hear me?”

  “Gimme a minute,” he yelled from the storeroom in the gravelly voice of a man who’d spent the majority of his life smoking cigarettes.

  “You don’t have to do that—” I began.

  Mrs. Levinson shushed me. “It’s not a problem, sweetheart. I’ll be right back.” She ambled off, everything about her rustling. The only sound left after a while was the talk in Russian coming from the radio she kept on the counter.

  The bell over the door jangled as it swung open and shut, and my heart swooped and dipped. Handel Davies walked in and made an immediate left down the first aisle. Talk between the Levinsons floated out of the storeroom and mingled with the Russian words swirling around up front. The potatoes and onions I’d set next to the register were staring at me. My entire body had gone still, as though it were waiting for something to happen. Goose bumps covered my bare arms and legs, and I longed for something more substantial than a tiny sundress to hide my skin. A shiver traveled up my spine, and my body shook off the unease creeping over it.

  Footsteps behind me—slow, sure—tapped their way from the wall-sized fridge holding milk and yogurt and soda at the back of the store. I wished for Mrs. Levinson’s reappearance, or maybe I wished it away.

  There was the faintest sound of breathing.

  “Jane,” Handel said with that laugh of his.

  My name from his mouth a third time.

  I turned a little, but only just. Enough so there was the sway of long dark hair and the display of my profile. “I saw you come in,” I said.

  Bold, I know.

  Handel stepped to the side so he could better see my face. “I saw you, too.”

  I looked at him, all six feet of him, Irish skin and blond hair, thick and long. His eyes, too dark on someone with such fair coloring. I smiled then, just a small one. Didn’t say anything, though.

  There came the sound of rustling again. Mrs. Levinson ambling along, returning to the register to break the strange spell that had fallen over the front of her store, and with a roast chicken of all things. “Here you go, sweetheart,” she was saying, the tip of the kerchief tied over her hair flapping with every step. “Saves you the trouble of cooking it yourself, all right?” The chicken thunked onto the counter. “It’s too hot today.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Levinson. Really, thanks so much,” I said. She rang everything up. Money exchanged hands. A bag was passed over the counter, and I took it. In a flash I was saying, “See you later,” about to head out the door, a quick “Bye,” to Handel, like it wasn’t a big deal we’d been exchanging words when of course it was.

  Before the door closed behind me, I caught another few of those Handel words.

  “A pack of Marlboros, Mrs. Levinson.”

  I set the bag of groceries on a bench outside and found a ponytail holder to tie up my hair. Get it off my neck.

  Was I stalling? Waiting?

  Maybe.

  Fishermen congregated on the docks, taking a break, some of the Sweeney boys among them. Old Mr. O’Connell and his sons. The smell of salt and seaweed and ocean pressed into the heat, pressed into all of us. We were tender with the newness of summer. Raw.

  Mr. O’Connell put up his hand in a wave.

  I waved back. Slipped the bag over my arm again.

  “You headed home?” Handel appeared next to me, cigarette dangling from his lips. He took it out of his mouth, and a stream of smoke followed.

  “How can you smoke in this weather?” I asked.

  “Habit.” He took another drag. “I’ll walk you partway.”

  I nodded toward the docks. “You don’t have to work?”

  “They’ll live without me awhile.”

  “All right,” I agreed, and suddenly there I was, walking down the street, Handel Davies at my side, like he already knew where I lived and maybe he did. We passed the neighborhood gossips sitting on their front stoops along the way. Old Irish ladies and old Italian ladies. Old Eastern European ladies, too. Their mouths grew hushed as they watched us go by. Then they went to work again afterward. Clocked some overtime.

  There’s Jane Calvetti with the youngest Davies boy, I heard one of them say. I thought she was going out with that nice Seamus McCormick. The smart one. People were always guessing I was dating Seamus, but they were always wrong. That Davies family is bad news. Always in trouble.

  “Is that your dinner?” Handel asked after a long silence, still puffing on his cigarette. He nodded at the bag in my hand.

  “It is,” I said, blinking in the bright light. Tossed my ponytail.

  “For your family?”

  “My mom and me,” I said. “Just my mom and me,” I added.

  A pause. Then, “Yeah, I read about that.”

  “Yeah, I bet,” I said. It was in all the papers.

  Another long pause.

  “I should probably get bac
k,” Handel said next.

  What he didn’t say was sorry about your father, and this was a relief.

  I stopped—we both did. We’d gone five blocks, and I only had another two left. Handel had walked me more than partway. “Okay. See you around,” I said without ceremony. Tried not to stare at him but failed. I suddenly wanted to get up on my toes, lean closer, and kiss Handel’s lips. It was the way he watched me that made me want this, I think.

  Handel took another drag of that cigarette. Those black eyes of his holding me there for the second time in my life. So many firsts, seconds, and thirds for Handel and me in such a short period of time.

  Then, a question from Handel. “Can I see you tomorrow? On purpose?”

  “Okay,” I said. Bit back a smile. “Yes.”

  He watched my face. Smiled a little, too. “I’ll come by your house.”

  Something in me resisted this. “I could meet you at the docks.”

  “I’d rather pick you up.”

  I laughed, nervous. “All right. If you insist. My house is—”

  “I know where your house is.”

  “You do,” I stated. Somehow I’d already known this. Accepted it without question or concern.

  He nodded. “Eight?”

  “Eight.”

  “See you tomorrow, Jane,” Handel said.

  My name a fourth time.

  I would have to stop counting soon. Not yet, though.

  “See you tomorrow, Handel,” I said.

  Then he was turning and walking back the way he came, and I was continuing on the way we’d been going, my mind a whirl.

  Tammy and Bridget were going to die.

  I had a date with Handel Davies.

  Michaela, well, she was going to disapprove.

  But I didn’t care.

  Ever since that night in February, I’d wanted my luck to change, and my luck was going to change with Handel Davies. I knew it would be with him. I knew even then. I just didn’t know how, and at the time, it didn’t cross my mind that sometimes luck could be bad.

  THREE

  THERE CAME A LOUD knock on the door.

  I startled awake, my novel draped across my stomach.

  “Jane?” my mother was calling out. “Can you get that? I’m at the machine.”

  “Sure, Mom.” I set the novel on the wobbly metal coffee table, facedown to keep my place, and got up. Mrs. McIntyre watched me from the other side of the screen, a big brown leather purse clutched to her side like someone might run up and steal it. Then again, in our neighborhood, someone might.

  “Hi, Jane, dear,” she said in a strong Irish brogue. “I’ve got an appointment with your mum. Sara’s wedding’s coming up in no time.”

  “Hi, Mrs. M.,” I said, letting her in. “When’s the date?”

  “The last weekend in July,” she sighed. “The twenty-ninth. We’re tearing our hair out with the arrangements.”

  “I’m sure. Hang on a sec, and I’ll tell my mother you’re here.”

  “Thanks, dear.” She took a seat on our beat-up couch, purse still clutched tight.

  I poked my head into the sewing room. Hot-pink satin was speeding through my mother’s old Singer—she swore the antique machines worked better than the electric ones—her bun sticking into the air as she bent over her work. “Mom?”

  Everything came to a stop.

  My mother took the pins from her mouth. “Tell her I’ll be just five more minutes, would you, please?”

  “Sure.”

  The corners of her brown eyes crinkled. “Come give your old ma a hug.”

  “You’re not old,” I protested, and went to her.

  She found me from beneath the yards of satin and drew me into a sea of pink. “I love you, you know.”

  “I do know,” I said, wanting to stay in her arms and leave at the same time. Eventually I pulled back. “Finish up so you don’t keep Mrs. M. waiting. She seems stressed.”

  My mother rolled her eyes. “She’s always stressed. It’s not just the wedding. The stress runs in her veins.”

  I laughed. Gave my mother a quick peck on the forehead just before she got that pedal going again, the needle moving up and down so quick it was a blur.

  • • •

  “Stop your fidgeting,” my mother was saying a while later.

  “What?” I’d been daydreaming about Handel. Lost in my head. It was so good to be lost in wishful thinking, in romantic possibility. It pushed away the bad, the dark, the fear that’s had me lost ever since winter, alone in a tiny, rickety boat in the middle of the sea.

  My mother shifted the heavy, ruffled train of Sara McIntyre’s wedding dress, and I could feel its strong tug on my lower back.

  Sometimes my job in the dressmaking business is to be the mannequin of the house. Today it definitely was. Mrs. McIntyre needed to get an idea of how her daughter’s wedding dress was coming along, and I was to help her with the vision. Mrs. McIntyre seemed happy, with all that oohing and aahing, but I thought the dress was hideous. Spangles and sequins and pearls everywhere and enough ruffles for a princess. I kept silent, of course, since this meant my mother was going to make a mint with the kind of work it took to sew all that beading. I knew my mother wouldn’t be offended, either, if I gave her my opinion later. I just make what the customer wants, not what I think is pretty, she’d say.

  My mother shifted the train a little more to the left. “If you keep moving, Jane, I’m never going to get this right and we’ll be here all afternoon.”

  “Sorry,” I said, and tried to stand still.

  “Well now,” Mrs. McIntyre said. There was a hidden smile in her voice. “We wouldn’t want that! Jane’s doing me a favor, standing in for my Sara while she’s away.” She glanced up at me, then again at my mother. She smirked. “Did your daughter tell you? She’s been taking walks through town with Handel Davies.”

  My skin burned at this, bright against the bleeding white of the dress.

  “Is that right, Jane?” my mother said absently, but I could tell she was interested.

  “We were just talking. And it was just one walk.” God, I hated this neighborhood sometimes. People talked too much, and unfortunately a lot of this talk went on while my mother was pinning up fabric and pinning on fabric and the ladies she was pinning it up and onto were yapping about every damn thing that happened around here, gossip-worthy or not.

  Mrs. McIntyre looked at me, and I knew she wasn’t seeing her daughter’s wedding dress now. “That Davies boy runs with a rough crowd.”

  Whether she was informing my mother or me of this was unclear. Like I didn’t know this already. Like everyone didn’t know this already.

  “All right,” my mother said, unperturbed. There was the short rip of a zipper. “This gown is all set for today.”

  I wanted to kiss her. “Can I go, then?”

  “Yes, but you need to change first,” she said.

  “Obviously.” I lifted up the giant skirt and gathered the train over one arm. Did my best to fit through the narrow doorway and cross the hall to my room without tripping and killing myself. I stepped out of the dress, trying not to shift any of the pins. Hushed conversation floated through the house from the sewing room as I slipped a tank top over my head and shimmied on a pair of jean shorts. Heaping the gown into my arms, I tiptoed back to my mother and Mrs. McIntyre, trying to catch them mid-gossip.

  “—there hasn’t been another one since,” Mrs. McIntyre was saying.

  I halted just outside the sewing room. Listened. Watched them through the crack in the open door.

  My mother shifted in her sewing chair. “I just never thought—I couldn’t have imagined my daughter caught in the middle of something like that. And her father . . .”

  “How are you feeling, dear? What a loss. And poor Jane.”

 
; “Oh, you know. It’s hard,” my mother said. “I wish they’d catch whoever did it.”

  My breath caught, a tiny, sharp intake. A dart to my throat.

  Sometimes I wished the police would catch who did it, but honestly, sometimes I wished everyone would forget all about it. That I would forget, too. If they caught the who, then it would become real again. I would have to relive it.

  Mrs. McIntyre was tsk-tsking. “All those robberies and nobody home and then . . . what are the chances Jane would get caught in the middle of all that? What if she’s still in danger? Aren’t you just terrified for her?”

  The wedding dress turned into a sack of stones. It threatened to sink me. I didn’t want to hear any more about danger and break-ins, about my break-in, as I’d come to think about it. I wasn’t sure what was worse: gossip about Handel Davies and me, or the town tragedy, which was also my tragedy; ours, I guess, if you counted the fact that my mother used to be married, once, to my dad. I nudged the sewing room door open with my knee. The hinges creaked; the gossip stopped. Worried eyes, guilty eyes turned on me. I held up the gown in my shaky arms. “What should I do with this?”

  My mother blinked. “Let me take that.”

  I gave it to her, gently, carefully. If only all the weight in my life could be shifted to someone else this simply, this literally.

  “Oh, it’s really lovely, Molly,” Mrs. McIntyre said, sounding relieved to go back to the real reason she’d come to my house, speaking my mother’s nickname, Molly, short for Amalia, like an Irish song from her mouth. She took some of the fabric into her hands and leaned close, inspecting the beading. “What gorgeous work. Sara is going to look beautiful on her wedding day.”

  “I’m off to see the girls at Slovenska’s,” I said to my mother.

  “Bye, Jane,” she said with raised eyebrows.

  She was waiting to see what I’d heard. Checking to see if I was okay.

  I nodded, one slight bob of my head.

  Then, after a quick peck on her cheek, I headed out, just in time to hear Mrs. McIntyre whisper, “She’s such a lovely girl, Molly, but her eyes—they’re so sad.”