Between Before and After

by Maureen Doyle McQuerry

  BROOKLYN, NEW YORK—MAY 1919

  ELAINE

  Elaine opened the door. Brilliantine, cigarettes, and beer. Pop was home. But he wasn’t in the main room or in one of the two bedrooms that ran shotgun, one opening into the other.

  “Pop’s on the fire escape!” Stephen called. The fire escape cantilevered over the alley off Steuben Street, where even on the hottest days a breeze funneled down the narrow channel between apartments.

  Elaine hesitated. Should she tell him about her job right away? Her aunt always said approaching Pop was like walking on eggs; you had to be careful where to put your foot. But no one really walked on eggs. Elaine thought of him like a tomcat. Sometimes he’d hiss and spit, and other times he’d rub against your legs and purr. The problem was, you never knew which cat to expect.

  Pop leaned an elbow on the railing as if he was on a ship’s deck staring out to sea. That faint breeze ruffled the thick, dark hair he arranged so carefully in the mirror every morning. The tip of the black comb he always kept at hand peeked out above his back pants pocket. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbows and one sinewy arm rested on Stephen’s narrow shoulders. Like a painting of father and son, Elaine thought, and she waited a few seconds before interrupting the scene.

  “Pop, I’ve got a job, a real job for two dollars a week!”

  When he swiveled his head in her direction, she noticed new lines rumpled his face. She wanted to reach up and smooth them like sheets on an unmade bed.

  “That so?” His voice was flat, measured, and his gaze drifted away again out over the alley.

  Elaine held her breath.

  “Never expected a daughter of mine to be working so soon. But I guess we could use some good news about now.” A tic vibrated his cheek. “An extra paycheck would be good news.”

  She expelled her breath.

  Then Pop swung around. “What the hell are you thinking? No daughter of mine’s going to quit school!” His eyes sparked blue fire.

  Stephen wiggled out from under his arm and scooted back into the apartment.

  “I could do it for a little while, just the rest of this summer. Then I’d go back in the fall, promise.”

  Pop began to whistle under his breath, jingling the loose change in his pocket. “She wants a job and she’s even talking back to her old man.”

  “I’m not talking back. I said I could be back at school in the fall.” Her chest was tight and her eyes stung.

  A thick hand flew up to cut her off. Air moved against her face. She blinked, but she didn’t flinch. Those hands had a life of their own. Boxer’s hands, he told people.

  “I’m not saying it’s a bad idea. Just takes some getting used to.” He whistled through his teeth. “I’ve a bit of news myself. I’ll be helping Harry Ames out with his horses regularly. It isn’t much, but it should put something on the table.”

  “That’s great.” She could hear the tremble in her own voice.

  “Won’t pay enough to keep us in this place though.” He pulled at his lower lip. “You’d only work through the summer and then be back at school in the fall?”

  “Promise.”

  He spit on his hand and extended it to her. “Man’s handshake’s his word, Princess.”

  Elaine spit on her own hand and grabbed on to Pop’s big warm one. Then he dragged her into his chest. At first, she stiffened. But his familiar scent surrounded her. She buried her face against him and breathed in. Maybe he was coming back to them after all. He’d always been good with animals. Horses were his special love, and Harry Ames supplied them to most of the delivery services in town.

  Pop took a step back and pushed her out to arm’s length. His eyes traveled her face as if it was a territory he hadn’t visited in a long time. “Tell me about this job of yours.”

  Elaine told him all she knew while he listened, his eyes parsing every word. Then he pulled the comb from his back pocket and ran it through his hair.

  “Let’s see this fine house where my daughter will be working. A little foray into the neighborhood.”

  It was less than a mile from their flat on Steuben Street, between Myrtle and Flushing, to Clinton Avenue. Even in that short distance, the landscape changed. As they walked west, away from the riverfront, factories and light industry dropped away. Flats changed to houses. The houses stood farther apart, leaving space for small gardens and trees. And right in the middle of the block was a new women’s college, St Joseph’s. Elaine eyed the wide college yard and solid brick buildings. Maybe one day she would go there and be the first in her family to be educated. With a job, anything seemed possible.

  The Gossley house was white clapboard with tall windows fringed by black shutters. And in the very center of the house was a glossy black door with a brass knocker. There was a handkerchief front yard with a tree and a row of lipstick-red tulips lined up like soldiers. A boxwood hedge separated the yard from the street. It was the type of house Elaine liked to imagine she lived in.

  “If I lived here, that would be my bedroom.” Stephen pointed to an upstairs window where a chestnut tree brushed the glass. “I could climb right out and down that tree.”

  “I wonder how many rooms are in that house.” Elaine counted the windows.

  Pop nodded. “Looks like a place for a princess to me. You stumbled into a piece of luck. What about your brother?”

  “I talked to Mrs. Malloy. She’ll watch him with her grandson this summer. Then he’ll be in school in the fall like me.”

  “In school,” Pop repeated. “My boy’s going to grow up better educated than his old man.” And he bent down so that his face was level with Stephen’s. “Don’t let me hear that you’ve been skipping school or church, or you’ll end up like me.” With one fist he chucked Stephen under the chin. “How about I treat you both to lunch? Hot dogs on me.”

  Elaine took one of his big square hands and Stephen the other, and they walked back through the weak spring sunshine. For the first time since her mother died, she felt hope stirring, faint as the breeze in their alley.

  The lunchtime crowd was swarming the hot dog cart, and the warm, savory smell made Elaine woozy. Stephen squirmed by her side. Had they even eaten today?

  “Wait here.” But as Pop pushed forward between a man in a bowler hat and a stout woman in black, a hand landed on his shoulder.

  “Mr. Fitzgerald?”

  Pop spun around. Elaine watched as his eyes widened and then narrowed to blue slits. A cop had materialized from nowhere, and he stood so close to Elaine that she could smell the garlic on his breath as he spoke.

  “You’ll be needing to come with me.”

  Pop shot a glance at Stephen, but his eyes settled on Elaine, landing no longer than a bird on their balcony and then flitting away.

  “I can walk myself.” He shrugged off the policeman’s hand and tossed the coins to Elaine. “Buy yourselves a dog.”

  The coins spun and clattered to the ground. Stephen scrambled to one knee.

  “Pop?”

  Why didn’t he say there was some mistake? He didn’t look at them again as he walked away.

  But Gretel’s legs were short, and she had to run to keep up. Every time Hansel paused to wait for her, he’d catch a glimpse of glittering eyes watching from between the trees. Their father and stepmother never broke stride or looked back as the woods closed around them.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE MIRACLE BOY

  SAN JOSE, CALIFORNIA—JUNE 1955

  Molly

  I crept a little closer to the kitchen, so close that if Mom or Uncle Stephen weren’t completely distracted, they might see me in the dim light of the hallway. I considered it worth the risk. What did Mom mean about leaving Uncle Stephen, and where did she go? Why did she need saving? I wrote both of her comments in my journal, bracketed by big question marks. So far, I couldn’t tell who was winning this discussion, Mom or Uncle Stephen. I could see Uncle Stephen sitting hunched at the table; Mom was just out of view.

 
; “Listen, I don’t want you filling my children’s head with nonsense. They need to be prepared to live in the real world, not in the church like you do!”

  I heard a chair drag across the linoleum floor. I pictured Mom sitting down next to my uncle at the Formica table.

  “You go on believing what you want, but Molly’s already too much of a dreamer, and Angus, well, I don’t know what he’s thinking half the time.” Her hands moved into my line of sight. One gripped the other as they rested on the tabletop.

  Uncle Stephen reached out a bony hand and covered up Mom’s elegant ones. Even with bitten fingernails they were long and slender.

  “Molly’s a fighter like you, and she’s a thinker. She’s going to be a tremendous writer one day.”

  My heart swelled, and at that moment I loved Uncle Stephen more than anyone.

  “And Angus, he might be a genius.”

  Just as quickly, my heart deflated to its normal size.

  “Geniuses can’t always pay the bills.” She pulled her hands away. And I knew she was thinking of my father, who was some kind of mathematical wizard but never held any one job for too long. Mom had said he was always too busy thinking great thoughts.

  “Don’t worry, Lainey. They’re good kids, exceptional kids, and you’re a good mother.” That’s when the crying started. The cry of a wounded animal, the same noise Ari’s dog made after it was hit by a car. It was the sound of bone rubbing bone, the sound of tearing flesh.

  My hands couldn’t stop shaking. I dropped my journal, but I didn’t look away. Uncle Stephen disappeared and reappeared with a tissue in his hand. Then he sat down, again crossing his forearms on the shiny tabletop. He didn’t say anything. That was one of the many things I liked about my Uncle Stephen; he knew when not to talk. When the cries subsided to jagged sobs, Mom loudly blew her nose. She scooted her chair to the same side of the table as my uncle, and for the first time I saw her face. It was blotchy. My heart skipped a beat. Her voice was thick. “You haven’t been sleeping again, have you?”

  He shrugged. “It’s difficult. Always has been since you went away.”

  Away. That word again. I concentrated so hard on listening that my head hurt.

  “So, tell me about this miracle of yours.”

  This was what I’d been waiting for: the miracle details. As quietly as possible, I scooped up my journal from the floor.

  “It’s not my miracle, Lainey. I don’t even know if it is one. Some days I don’t even believe miracles exist. I just happened to be there when something extraordinary happened. Remember Robbie Crater, the boy who came to class with a helmet every day?”

  Mom nodded. “He’d had a brain tumor and didn’t have any balance.”

  “That’s the one. Well, he hated wearing it. The other boys teased him; you know how kids can be. They chew up anyone who is different. They called him a Martian, stuck gum on his chair, drew ugly pictures and left them on his desk. I never could catch them at it, but I had a good idea who it was.”

  He got up and brought the teapot over to the table, pouring a mug for Mom and another one for himself. “The doctors hadn’t gotten all the tumor and he had these horrible headaches. It was only a matter of time for him, although I don’t know if he knew it. He’d stay in at recess and I’d give him little jobs to do. Things got so bad, he’d make up reasons not to come to school. I didn’t know what to do. So last month, when he was eating lunch in my room, I asked him if I could pray for him, and—”

  “I’m sure his parents had been praying for him all along,” Mom cut in.

  “I’m sure they had. Anyway, I prayed, and for some reason I took the helmet off his poor head and put my hands on his bony scalp. It seemed the thing to do.”

  “And what happened?”

  “Nothing. Nothing that I could see. We went back to eating our lunch, and he didn’t come to school the next day or the rest of that week, and I didn’t think too much about it. I told you he’d been making up reasons not to come to school. And I got busy—” He turned up his palms in a helpless gesture. “I may not even have prayed for him again that week. After the second week, I got a call from his parents asking if they could come in and see me. Of course, I agreed. I had all the homework he’d missed laid out for them, but that’s not what they were interested in. I must confess I was a bit nervous too. What if his folks thought I’d overstepped myself? His father’s a big man, used to be a football player. He leaned right in to my face and asked what I’d done to their son.”

  I tried to breathe as quietly as I could so that I wouldn’t miss a single word.

  “The tumor was gone, not only reduced in size but gone—the whole thing. That was when Robert spoke up. He told them he knew it was gone because the headaches and the dizziness were gone. They asked him when that happened, and he told them about my laying my hands on his head and praying. He said he felt different right away.” And Uncle Stephen let his hands fall limp on the table. He looked down and shook his head.

  “It probably would have cleared up on its own like Angela Fabrino and hundreds of other children who are healed,” Mom said.

  I was writing as fast as I could. Mom’s reactions interested me as much as my uncle’s actions.

  Mom wasn’t about to give in. “We don’t know everything about the human body.”

  “You’re probably right, Lainey. Whatever happened didn’t have much to do with me at all. Maybe it was coincidence or maybe God used my hands when he had some work to be done. How can I know?”

  Mom slapped the table hard enough for the teacups to rattle. “I’m glad for the little boy. Who wouldn’t be? But I think you’re taking this too far—going to New York to prove you worked a miracle when you’re not even sure they exist. You’ve always been soft, Stephen, too willing to believe.”

  Why was she so mad about a miracle? Weren’t miracles good things? As soon as she said New York, my heart started summersaulting again. I needed to finagle a way to go with Uncle Stephen. Not only was New York a real city, but the secret to Mom’s story was there. I could almost smell it. And if it was her story, it was my story and Angus’s story too.

  Uncle Stephen was quiet for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice was the hardest rock in the world. He said each word slowly, like he was dropping them into a pond. I had never heard him speak that way before.

  “I’m going, Lainey, because I’m being sent. I don’t know if it was a miracle. If it was, it wasn’t about me at all, maybe not even about Robert. Belief isn’t a soft thing. It’s hard, more work than rolling over and being bitter like you.”

  “I’m a realist, Stephen. Call it what you like.”

  “No, you’re bitter. It’s like a sliver that you refuse to pull out. Even when it’s poisoning you.”

  Mom was silent for a long time, at least a hundred heartbeats. When she spoke again she was calm. “Believe what you want.” Her voice held that note of finality that could end any conversation. “You were in the right place at the right time, and God had nothing to with it.”

  There wasn’t much interesting after that. They both went back into the living room separately, and Mom turned the TV’s sound back on. I crept back into my room intent on making sense of my notes and adding them to the cigar box. I didn’t know what to think about Uncle Stephen being a miracle worker. I had trouble separating miracles from magic. I knew that most of the things I considered magic as a kid involved tricks and had logical explanations. But it was hard to give up the idea that the world was peppered with magic, that the unexplainable might happen any time. Where miracles fit in, I wasn’t sure. Were they a different kind of unexplainable? And by this age, shouldn’t I know the difference?

  I had theories about why Mom said she needed to be saved. My favorite one was that she had done something really dangerous, the kind of something she was always warning Angus and me not to do. Right in the nick of time Uncle Stephen, or maybe Dad, had saved her from certain death. But I didn’t have any facts. Other clues,
I was sure, were in New York. A tapping on my door made me stash my journal under my pillow. Uncle Stephen poked his head into the room.

  “You still up, Molly?”

  I nodded but didn’t meet his eyes. “I’ve been writing.”

  “If you keep writing, I’ll probably be teaching one of your books someday. I wanted to say good night.”

  “Wait. Will you take me with you to New York?”

  He leaned against the doorjamb. “Not this time, but I’ll take you next time.”

  “But—”

  “What’s so special about New York?”

  “Lots of writers get their start there—Walt Whitman, F. Scott Fitzgerald.” I paused. “I can name more.”

  “I’m sure you can.”

  “Besides, it’s the largest city in the country. Things happen there.” How could I put the longing I felt into words? “It’s full of opportunities. San Jose is . . . small.”

  “In my experience, big things can happen in even the smallest places.”

  I wondered if he was thinking about his miracle.

  “But I understand what you mean. Sometimes a person has to stretch her wings. Next time, you’ll go with me.”

  “Promise?”

  He drew an X across his heart with one finger and quietly shut the door.

  While he talked, another fear had crept in. What if this miracle business did make Uncle Stephen famous and he left us for good?

  I crossed to the window and looked out, letting my mind play with this new thought. I rested my chin on my hands. New York and all its glittering possibilities felt a million miles away. The night cooled my cheeks. I inhaled the scent of night blooming jasmine and the smell of rain on asphalt, which had a perfume all its own. Under the streetlight right across from our house, a blue car idled. I could see the silhouette of a person sitting in it.

  Minutes later, when Uncle Stephen stepped out onto our porch to leave, the car sped away. I was sure I’d seen that same car on our street earlier in the day. It caught my attention because it was my favorite color, robin’s egg blue, and because I’d never seen a car parked with a grown man sitting in it in the middle of the day as if he had nowhere to be.