Between Before and After

by Maureen Doyle McQuerry

  I knew exactly what Mr. Lopez was like. He doled out bad puns like candy. He bought the newest gadgets, and several weeks later they collected dust on his shelves. Ari’s mother came from a wealthy family in Mexico City. Her father was east LA, and Ari’s mother never let him forget it. I liked the way her parents were with each other, the way they teased, the way Mr. Lopez circled her waist from behind and nuzzled her neck. Even when she swatted him away, she laughed.

  “Your dad will never know. We’ll borrow it and return it before he gets home. I’ll let you take the pictures.” The last concession was very hard for me. I would dearly love to take an instant photo with a real Polaroid Land camera.

  Ari adjusted the sunglasses on top of her head.

  “I don’t know.”

  I sighed. “I’ll write your next two essays for English.”

  “Done.”

  We shook hands.

  A car pulled into the driveway. Jesse and two friends emerged. They’d been playing basketball and were in sweat-soaked T-shirts and shorts.

  Laughing and talking, they pushed past Ari and me into the house. Jesse bumped my shoulder. I caught a whiff of sweat. It wasn’t at all like the smell in Angus’s room. It was warm and musky and made my stomach tighten in an unexpected way.

  Ari was talking, and I missed most of it.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  She crossed her arms and dropped her voice.

  “I mean, what if you discover something you don’t want to know? Then what? Not all secrets are good, Molly.”

  My mouth said, “Don’t worry so much.” But in my head, I knew that was what I feared the most.

  “If you’re sure, go distract my mom while I get the camera.” She slid the sunglasses over her eyes.

  I gave a quick nod. Did I want to know? Maybe some things in life should remain a mystery; examining the details could only lead to disappointment.

  Twenty minutes later, two photos lay in the bottom of the cigar box. While Ari was home packing her new two-piece for her cousin’s pool, I was on my way to the corner mailbox with an envelope holding two dollars and twenty-two words addressed to the New York Times.

  Chapter Nine

  PIGEONS

  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK—MAY 1919

  ELAINE

  Masks had disappeared for good in the spring. Faces again had noses and mouths. And there were other changes. Soldiers returned and prowled the streets. Some of the men were missing arms or legs. Others had afflictions Elaine couldn’t identify and didn’t like to think about. In March, Pop had taken the train into Manhattan to see the welcome home parade for the 27th Division. He said people threw cigarettes and candy while the troops marched in full army gear with a French goat parading beside them as a mascot. Some of the wounded rode in cars, but many of them watched from the street corners.

  Elaine tried not to stare at the injured who haunted the market. Wallabout was her escape from their flat, where her mother’s ghost still moaned in the corners, where Pop raged, and where her school books collected dust.

  For one entire week, Elaine and Stephen shelled peas for a wall-eyed woman. They made twenty-five cents apiece each day. But Stephen was slow and kept getting distracted by the crates of pigeons in the next stall over. At the end of the week the lady said she didn’t have any work for them, and shouldn’t they be in school anyway?

  “Lainey, couldn’t we visit the pigeons for a minute?”

  She was tired and cross, but without another plan she couldn’t think of a reason to refuse. “Why not? We don’t have anything else to do.”

  “Look at their feathers; they’ve got rainbows in them.”

  “Pigeons are nasty, disgusting birds, shatting all over everything.” She made sure she was quiet enough that the pigeon man didn’t hear her comments. “Besides, you might get the flu from them.”

  “But these ones are messenger birds. You write a secret message on a little piece of paper, roll it up, stick it in the little tube, and the bird delivers it. Then he comes back home again.” Stephen was bent almost double peering into a crate of shuffling birds.

  “How’s he know where to go and how to get back?” Elaine found herself more interested than she pretended to be.

  “Ah, that’s the mystery, i’n’ it?”

  Elaine jumped when the voice boomed right in her ear. She looked up into the watery eyes of the pigeon man. Her first thought was to hurry Stephen away, but his voice was kind. A big gray bird rode his shoulder. A smear of white pigeon dropping ran the arm of his jacket like trim. He probably didn’t even care.

  “Homing pigeons got a sense about ’em. Used ’em in the war, they’re that smart. Why, one even got a medal of some kind. A kind of magnetism tells ’em which way to go.” He was talking faster now, and he reached up to scratch the top of the bird’s head. The pigeon cocked its head toward his thick finger and closed its eyes as if having its head scratched was the best thing in the world. “You can’t send messages just anywheres. You can only send ’em to the pigeon’s home. This pigeon is Lucky.” He continued to scratch the gray-and-green giant on his shoulder. “One of the smartest birds there is. She’ll always come back to my coop. That’s her home. Say my friend Dom want to send me a message. He takes Lucky somewhere, writes me a note, and she’ll bring it to me. She’ll always find her way home.”

  “Can I hold her?” Stephen was looking so eagerly at the big man that Elaine didn’t have the heart to drag him away.

  Pete pushed his finger under the bird’s chest and it stepped right up as if it was climbing on a perch. He carefully placed her on Stephen’s narrow shoulder. Her yellow feet grabbed on and she ruffled her feathers. The bird was almost as large as Stephen’s head.

  “There’s a good lady, Lucky. Nice little feller here wants to hold you.” Pete looked over at Elaine. She looked away quickly, not wanting to find pity in his eyes or have him start asking questions. When he cleared his throat, all that came out was a deeper version of Lucky’s coo.

  But Elaine didn’t notice; she was watching a lady.

  The lady was wearing a hat with a mist of black veil. Her dark, thick hair was caught up in a roll above her slender neck, and her shoulders were covered by a fine lace shawl. On her arm was a basket filled with onions and lettuce. Her gloves neatly met the lace-edged wrists of a green silk suit short enough to show off her black-stockinged ankles. She was beautiful. Elaine sighed, and for a moment she was reminded of her mother. The pain was so sharp and unexpected that it strangled her breath. Not that her mother had ever owned anything so fine, but something about the way the lady carried herself, about the way she joked with the old woman selling bread, brought back Anna Fitzgerald so intensely that Elaine wanted to throw her arms around the woman.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Stephen asked, poking her in the side with his finger.

  She pushed his hand away, still unable to speak.

  “Lainey, I’m hungry.” He grabbed at her sleeve.

  Elaine pulled her eyes away and looked at her little brother. His hair needed washing and stuck to his head in ragged clumps. She had been too tired to heat up water for baths this week and his face looked like it hadn’t been washed in a few days. The pigeon preened on his shoulder. Stephen’s ankles stuck out of his pants. Thank goodness his shoes still fit, because it looked like he was growing.

  She didn’t want the woman to notice how dirty and poor she and her brother looked. When she looked down at her own skirt, she could feel blood rush to her face. Not only had there not been time for baths, but there hadn’t been time for laundry either, and she noticed there was a coffee stain on the front, vaguely in the shape of Africa.

  “Give the man back his bird. I’ve got four pennies. Enough for one sugar bun for each of us, but that’s all you’ll get ’til we get home. So don’t whine for more.” There really wasn’t anything more at home, but it made her feel better to say it. “If we
get them now, just eat half and save the other half for later, okay?”

  “Fine, but let’s hurry. My stomach’s burning.” Stephen pushed his finger under Lucky’s chest as he’d seen Pete do and the bird obligingly climbed on. Pete was busy selling onions to an old man, so Stephen helped the bird back into its crate. “That’s a good girl, Lucky.”

  Elaine followed him over to the bakery stall, darting glances at the fine lady in the lace shawl.

  Stephen was already handing the bread seller, an old lady not much taller than he was, his pennies for a day-old sugar bun. The day-old buns were kept in a bag in the back and all the children knew about them. They weren’t as soft as fresh buns, and sometimes Lainey suspected they were much more than a day old, but they still had the same sugar crust on the top and that was worth a little extra chewing. Stephen opened his mouth for the first bite when a man balancing a load of boxes clipped his arm. The bun spun from his hand onto the damp ground. It landed half in a puddle of muddy water. When the man’s boot stomped on top of it, Stephen began to wail. Elaine hurried over as fast as she could, grabbing for Stephen and the bun at the same time. But the squashed bun bore the muddy imprint of a boot.

  “Shush now. I’ll give you half of mine if you stop crying.” People began to turn and stare, and one of them was the lady in the green dress. Stephen wailed louder.

  “Here now, it can’t be that bad.” The woman pulled a handkerchief out of a small pocketbook that was tied to her waist and brushed at Stephen’s face. It was a pure white cloth with edges of lace. It startled him into silence. And that was the moment their luck changed.

  And so the children set out in the gray dawn with their father and stepmother, who lead them deeper into the forest. All that long day, Hansel held his hope close. After all, he had a pocketful of white stones, gathered by moonlight the night before. Every few steps he looked back at the way they had come and dropped one white, shining stone to mark their path. Those stones would change their fortune. The woods were dark and unpredictable, but this way they could always find their way home no matter what happened in the forest.

  Chapter Ten

  MAY GOSSLEY

  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK—MAY 1919

  ELAINE

  “It’s okay, I can buy him another sugar bun.” Elaine rummaged in her pocket as if there really was enough money. She didn’t want this lady to think Stephen was there by himself with no one to look after him, and she wouldn’t be seen as a charity case. When the lady turned toward Elaine and smiled, faint lines laced the edges of her eyes. She was older than her mother had been when she died, thirty-five at least, Elaine guessed.

  “I’m sure you can, but why don’t you let me?” The woman didn’t wait for an answer and asked for two fresh buns. Lainey could see them resting in her gloved hand, white and soft, light brown tops crusted with sugar. Saliva pooled in her mouth.

  “We don’t take things from strangers.”

  Stephen’s lip began to tremble again.

  The lady pursed her own painted lips. “Then I won’t be one. My name is May Gossley.” She took Stephen’s dirty hand in her gloved one. And then handed him the fresh bun. Half of it disappeared in the first bite.

  “I’m Elaine Margaret Fitzgerald, and this is my brother, Stephen.” The fragrance of lavender water pinched her heart. It was a fragrance she could still smell on her mother’s slip. She’d hidden it in the bottom drawer of the dresser she shared with Stephen so Pop wouldn’t find it. When life got to be too much, she’d bury her face in its silky folds and inhale.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you, Elaine Margaret Fitzgerald. Consider this a gift.” May handed the other bun to Elaine. Elaine ran her tongue over the rough, sugary crystals. Her stomach growled so loudly that her face flushed.

  “Are you shopping by yourselves?”

  “No, ma’am, my sister is looking for work.” Stephen spoke with bulging cheeks and Elaine looked away.

  May’s eyebrows rose in two brown arches. “What kind of work do you do?”

  “I can clean and cook, mend and sew a little.”

  “You’re a talented girl.” She looked closely at Elaine, right through her skin and into her bones. Elaine stiffened her spine.

  “Can you read?”

  “Of course. I’m fourteen. I’ve almost finished the eighth grade.” She stared back into the keen gray eyes and longed to take another bite of her bun, but she didn’t want to be caught with her mouth full like Stephen.

  “You’re looking for a summer job then. There are still a few more weeks of school this year.”

  “She don’t go now cuz our mother is dead.”

  Elaine glared at her brother. How could he have said it right out loud? That pain was private. She might as well be naked in front of the world. And there was always the threat of the orphanage hovering like a great cold shadow.

  “I’m sorry to hear that. What about your brother?” Her eyes stayed fastened on Elaine.

  “He’ll be going back to school in the fall.” She reached for Stephen’s hand. This spring he’d missed more days than he had attended; she couldn’t always make him go.

  “I see.” May narrowed her eyes the slightest bit. “I have a son a few years older than you, Elaine. He’s in the eleventh grade. Schooling is very important. Have you ever read to anyone before?”

  “Only to my brother, and he likes it when I do.”

  “Well, Elaine Fitzgerald, I have a proposition for you. My father is very old, and he can no longer see well enough to read. In fact, he’s almost blind. He still likes to hear the news every morning. I have commitments that often take me away from home in the mornings. I would be willing to pay someone to come and read newspapers and books to him every weekday for an hour or two.”

  A tremor ran through Elaine like a small earthquake. “I could do that.”

  “Then I could pay you two dollars a week if you could begin as soon as school’s out. You would need to be at my house by eight.”

  Two dollars! And newspapers and books to read. The numbers sang in her head. Elaine bit her lip so she wouldn’t grin. The end of school was only a week away.

  “Where do you live, ma’am?”

  “I’ll write down my address. It’s not too far from the market.” May reached back into her pocketbook and took out a tiny silver pencil and piece of smooth, creamy paper. In a neat hand, she wrote down the house number and street. “See that you’re not late.”

  She had a real job. Money they could count on. What would Pop say? She shrugged off her tiredness like last winter’s coat. It was spring, and with every step she felt lighter.

  Elaine decided they should detour past Sacred Heart on the way home. She’d never seen this particular church before, even though it was only a few blocks beyond the market. They had gone to their parish church, Holy Family, every weekend of their lives to say confession, but all that had changed since Mama died.

  Sacred Heart filled an entire block between Claremont and Adelphi. Elaine looked up at the rose window set high in a brick wall. Mama had promised Stephen that, once he was old enough, he could be an altar boy and wear vestments and walk ahead of the priest at Mass. Seeing that it was Friday, and that they hadn’t been to confession since Mama died, Elaine decided they should stop. She still had her pennies deep in her pocket. It would be enough money to light a candle and say a prayer. She had watched people do this before and knew that the prayers kept your soul from purgatory, which was a place that was neither here nor there, like waiting at a bus stop for a ride that never came. Even though she was sure her mother had gone straight to heaven, Elaine didn’t want to take any chances.

  “Stephen, we’re going in to say prayers for Mama.”

  “Okay, but I’m still awfully hungry.”

  Elaine dragged him up the steps before he could start whining. Inside, the darkness swallowed the day, silencing the noise of the outside world. Candles flickered in red glass, casting moving shadows on the painted walls. The echo of
their footsteps was no more than the sound of a rock breaking the surface of the East River, a small splash soon absorbed. The air smelled holy.

  She gripped Stephen’s hand. The last time they had been in church, Stephen had been frightened of the statues, especially the one of Christ, blood dripping from his head and hands. In the flickering light, the blood appeared to trickle from real wounds that hadn’t healed. Mama had reassured him that wasn’t the case. But sometimes, she had told them, the statues did bleed for the sins of people and for the sadness in the world. Then it was a miracle. Now Elaine walked cautiously, hoping a miracle for them was lurking in the shadows. Maybe they had already found one, and it was named May Gossley.

  “Don’t forget to bless yourself.” Elaine dipped her hand into the holy water font and made the sign of the cross, touching forehead, chest, left shoulder and then right. Solemnly, Stephen copied whatever she did. The church was mostly deserted except for two old ladies with lace scarves on their heads and a man kneeling in the front pews. Elaine pulled Stephen toward the rows of candles under the Virgin Mary.

  “We’re going to light a candle under the Virgin.”

  “Was that Mama’s favorite saint?”

  “I don’t know, but she’s mine.”

  The mother statue. She would understand how much Elaine missed her own mother. She’d understand about Pop and the way she hated and loved him at the same time until everything inside her was all tied up in knots. She’d even understand how much Elaine wanted to finish school and get away from Brooklyn. Looking up, she whispered, “Thank you for the job, and please make sure Mama makes it to heaven.” She didn’t add what she really thought. That maybe God should have worked a little harder to keep her mother alive. But she knew the Virgin saw the bitter seed rooting in her heart. Elaine clinked her last pennies into the metal box and selected one of the small white votives.

  “Let me light it!”

  “Okay, but don’t shout. You light it from one of the other candles and then you say a prayer. If you don’t say a prayer, you can’t light it.”