Paper Lantern

by Stuart Dybek

  That slut’s laundry hangs for days. Who lets their laundry hang through the middle of the night? When Frank ain’t tending bar, he’s on the back porch communing with it. I start noticing changes on the clothesline—a different pair of panties, a half-slip that wasn’t there before. Maybe it’s like a message that szmata’s sending, reminding him a the clothes he stripped off her stitch by stitch on the sheets they rolled around on and left stained and sweaty.

  But then I think, What if I’m wrong?

  One year all I done is sleep and now I’m up all hours watching to catch her at her window, reeling in the unmentionables, reeling out new ones. At night, I haul the garbage out and stand looking over the fence into her back windows. The plywood’s off, but she got those Old Country lace curtains that look transparent, but there’s no seeing in. I can make out candles burning, and I remember how me and Frank would light candles when we got romantic. He had an old record player and would play the Stones cause he knew it got me in the mood, and later when he thought I was asleep, he’d smoke a cigarette and play his opera at a whisper.

  See, ever since we lost the baby, me and Frank weren’t really living as husband and wife. Maybe something changed even before, when I got pregnant. I don’t know exactly when it started. Things happen in slivers too tiny to notice until they suddenly add up and you’re amazed you been living in their shadow. That night we won the Deuces changed us. One minute Frank that sumnabitch was crying like a baby in the dark, and the next he’s asking me to tell my dirtiest secret. And when I did, I told him, Frank, you gotta really want to do it. Well, he got into it, all right. I think he kept waiting for me to draw the boundary, you know? I think the sumnabitch was wondering if there was a boundary in his little Rosebud. Best sex of my life. But we had a keep upping the ante. For him it was how outrageous could we get. Me, I was listening for that voice that whispered dirty to me at the track, only I never heard it that clear again even when I’d whisper it to myself.

  We’d given up on trying to have kids, then I got pregnant and it felt like we got lucky again. Only, when I lost the baby, there was no miracle bailing us out. I went numb. When I finally got outta bed and tried to go back to my life, Frank had become like a stranger. He’d growed a mustache and was wearing fancy Buffalo Frank Novak cowboy boots that made him taller. He’d never had a case of BOH—you know, drinking up the profits—but he was drinking now. He’d put a cot on the back porch, and slept out there when he was loaded, which was more and more often. He’d complain in this wheezy-ass voice, The bedroom’s too stuffy, Rosie, it’s giving me asthma.

  No more Rosebud. I was Rosie now, and he didn’t look at me when we talked. I didn’t know how to get the sumnabitch to look at me. I wanted him to look at me like he looked at that szmata’s laundry.

  One night there’s a thunderstorm. I think, Her laundry’s getting soaked, and suddenly I wanta see those pearly sheets splattered with mud. But in the lightning flashes, the clothesline’s empty.

  It stays empty till the next Saturday, then there’s those beautiful sheets billowing in the breeze. I can’t stop imagining them splattered with mud. I wake in the middle of the night, not sure if I’m up or dreaming. Something wakes me that makes it seem real—alley cats yowling in heat. I open the window to shoo them off, and watch the toms spraying piss on her sheets. I realize I’ve been lying in bed listening to a song I haven’t heard in years: Shirts and shorts the kids outgrew, your favorite dress now far from new … And I know it’s the loony beggar woman we used to call Raggedy Sal. When I was a little girl, she pulled a coaster wagon through the alleys, and people would give her used clothes she’d sew and wash and sell. I look out the window and she’s stripped the laundry off the Widow’s line and replaced it with rags. A couple drunks are arguing like winos do. They killed all Pani Bozak’s chickens with straight razors and now they’re having a tug-a-war, wrestling like ghosts tangled in the sheets until one slashes the other’s throat. He looks up and sees me, and nods. He knows his secret’s safe. I wake and think, I been dreaming. Pani Bozak don’t live there anymore—there wasn’t dead chickens or no murder. I get up to check. The moon’s coated the alley, but otherwise everything’s usual, until I notice a stained sheet on the line, and the longer I stare, the more the stain looks like a mural of the Virgin spray-painted in blood.

  By morning, Raggedy Sal, the winos, the Virgin’s all gone, but now that I saw them, it’s like they’re waiting for night to return.

  I start laying out hard corn on the back porch sills to attract more pigeons. That cooing’s worse than cats. Cats are a goddamn opera, but pigeons are nonstop gossiping about sex. I dish out corn until our yard’s mobbed. Then, Saturday night, after the Deuces closes and Frank’s supposedly out watching trains, and the pigeons got their heads under their wings, I light a M-80. KA-BOOM! Wakes up the neighborhood. The pigeons flap around the dark and settle over Pani Bozak’s. Next morning that fancy laundry’s streaked with a downpour of pigeon shit.

  The clothesline’s empty all week. It’s September, leaves scuffling down the alley from some backyard tree. I figure that’s the end of laundry day, but goddamn if the next Saturday it ain’t all on the line again. The szmata must change her push-up bra and panties twice a day. The pigeons are back on our side. I think, You dumbass slut, you didn’t get the message the first time, you will now. That night when Frank’s closing up late, I make like I’m sleeping till I hear him leave, and then triple KA-BOOM!

  When I wake it’s getting light. Frank’s passed out on his cot, dressed except for his missing cowboy boots. His white socks are filthy. He don’t snore, he wheezes through his mustache, stinking of liquor and smoke like he’s smoldering, and some powdery smell. I used to love his smell, would bring his T-shirts to my face and inhale before I threw them in the machine. Maybe them meds did something to my nose. I look out the porch windows at her shit-bombed laundry.

  Her wash is hanging perfectly clean.

  Ain’t a pigeon to be seen, not on her side or back on ours. I think, Maybe I blasted the pigeons right outta the neighborhood. Then I see the owl.

  It’s perched on her attic windowsill. In the shadow of the roof peak it looks like a mallard decoy—painted feathers, plastic beak, gold no-mercy eyes—a bird with shoulders, standing at attention, guarding the laundry. The Widow sure as hell didn’t set out no owl. Only way for it to get on that sill is Frank that sumnabitch put it there. Meaning he was in her house—you know, being a good neighbor and all, protecting the szmata’s unmentionables from his crazy wife blasting off M-80s. The M-80s he brought home when I asked him to get rid of the pigeons so I could sleep at night and not have the rain ruined by their shit. He told me, Rosie, you need an owl, but the sumnabitch never cared enough to bring an owl home. He could haul home tons a greasy junk smelling of tetanus—goddamn spikes and lanterns, flares, signal flags, but not one sumnabitching plastic owl.

  When I stand over him on the cot, it feels like I stood up too fast. I can see the vein beating in his neck under stubble and smell his wheezy-ass breath. I go, Where’s your boots, you sumnabitch? You sumnabitching awake? You left your boots under her bed, didn’t you, and snuck home drunk in your socks. It would be so easy to slit that vein. Bet that’d wake you up.

  You ever wanted somebody dead, Rafael? People who get through life never wishing for that, they’re the lucky ones.

  I go in the kitchen and pick up the butcher knife, just to imagine doing it, but wishing him dead ain’t the same as having the nerve to ruin my life over it. What I imagine is life without him, starting fresh, selling the Deuces, cashing his insurance, feeling flush, maybe buying beautiful sheets and whatever else I wanted from the bank account we worked like dogs for. Then I realize Frank does the books and I don’t have a clue how much we got or where the money goes. Being Frank, he’s no doubt got all kinda schemes for hiding it from the IRS. Plus he’s gone BOH, smoking and drinking, so maybe he’s gambling again, too. I need to find out where he keeps things stash
ed. I think, Rosie, don’t be stupid, you still got a killer hand he don’t know you’re holding.

  It wasn’t wanting to shoot him so much as needing to know about all he hid that made me remember the gun. I never believed he sold it, cause he’s a pack rat—excuse me, a collector—and collectors don’t sell stuff without bragging how much they got for it. I figure, find the gun and I’ll find God knows what all he’s stashed. Which brings to mind the dirty magazines and videos and sex toys he called our props that he used to keep in his dresser drawer. I go through his drawers. None of it’s there, but I know he wouldn’t pitch that stuff. It’s been a long time since I thought about the two of us at the height, me on my knees saying, I adore you. I remembered the night we first crossed that line when I told my dirtiest secret, and I remembered after, Frank loading the gun, leaving for Lawless Gardens, like the sex and gun were two sides of the same coin.

  What happened? I asked when he came back.

  Got the money and now I gotta get some sleep.

  How much you have to end up giving him, Frank?

  Frank never told me what happened at Lester’s, and I never asked again. Why? Why do you think? Cause I wanted us to believe we were blessed with luck. But I remembered him saying he’d stole the gun to keep under the bar, so why get rid of it? Back then, I didn’t wanta know. Now knowing was like picking up the fourth deuce in the hand I was playing.

  I get the white pages out and look for James Lester. There’d been a lotta phone books since that night I picked his name out of a city of millions. There’s no James Lester listed, but hell, he’s probably dead by now. I call Information: no such listing. I need to find out when Lester died, and how, cause suddenly I’m convinced Frank that sumnabitch killed him. It was the owl convinced me beyond a reasonable doubt.

  They don’t keep old phone books at the branch library, but they tell me the Main does. I can hardly stand the wait till Saturday when we don’t serve lunch.

  You’re going where? Frank asks. The library? That’s a first.

  The wiseass don’t have a clue why.

  I take the L downtown and the librarian shows me where they keep the phone books, and after she’s gone, I open the white pages to the page where I found James Lester that August night nine years ago. It’s like I don’t expect him to be there, like I made it up, like it happened to somebody else, and maybe it did, maybe I was somebody else, but there he is listed on Martin Luther King Drive. Just seeing his name makes me shaky.

  I page back and there’s Lionel James and Leo and Leonard and Leroy and L James with her colicky baby. It’s like they’re the ones in the present, and me, I’m sitting at a library table looking back from a future that don’t seem quite real. Maybe that’s the only way you can time-travel—when you ain’t living in real time yourself anymore. The night we won the Deuces was real. Me and Frank were the real me and Frank. I have to get up and go to the Ladies’ cause I’m losing it. I lock myself in a stall and sob into a roll a toilet paper.

  A woman in the next stall asks, You all right, hon?

  Hunky-dory, I say, and wait for her to leave, then go back and check the next year’s phone book and sure enough, Lester’s gone. Vanished. I know that in itself don’t prove nothing in a court a law. When I page back to the James column, Leo’s gone from there, too, which don’t mean he’s murdered. I look through the phone books for the next eight years. Lester stays gone. If I’d seen a new number, I’d have called him. Eight years later, L James is the only one of the bunch still there, living the whole time on Forty-seventh. Her little baby’s a schoolgirl by now.

  There’s pay phones by the ladies’ john, and I don’t know why, but L James’s number sticks in my mind. I could tell it to you now. I dial it just to hear the tingly ring, not thinking she’ll answer. When she does, instead of hanging up, I say, Hello, Lorraine?

  I expect her to go, Ain’t no Lorraine here. You got the wrong number.

  She goes, Who this?

  Someone from the future, I say, who wants to wish you and that sweet little girl of yours the best of luck.

  She’s gasping, Oh! Oh! Oh! like she can’t breathe. Oh, you sickass cracker bitch, wasn’t killing her enough, how can anyone be so fucking cruel? she says, and the line goes dead.

  I all but run outta the library, like they’re coming to arrest me, like everyone knows what I’m there to find, and what I just done.

  Back then, everything was getting switched to computers. I wanted the library to check their computer for newspaper or police reports. If someone’s murdered—even an old sick black man in the projects—there has to be a police report, right? I didn’t know how to find it on the computer, and I was worried about the librarian wondering why I’m asking her to look up Lester. I rush out, figuring I’ll come back for more evidence later. But I was already sure what Frank did. That was the real reason why the sumnabitch never went back to Sportsman’s.

  It goes from fall, when you start to see your breath in the morning, to Indian summer, and the szmata’s laundry is back on the line. I think, This is the last time I’ll see those beautiful sheets, like it’s laundry not the falling leaves that’s the last look of summer. It’ll be May before you can hang out wash again. What’ll life be then? I think of Frank singing at the window the first time she hung her wash and that question that woke me up. Ever wonder what it must feel like to sleep on sheets like that?

  Frank, I wouldn’t even know where to buy them for you.

  The owl on the attic windowsill stares across the alley like we’re under surveillance. I could swear once he blinked at me. The pigeons are gone, maybe to some bell tower—St. Paul’s down the block, or St. Pius on Ashland. Think they feel homeless? A pigeon’s instinct is to return, right? Do they send a dove like Noah did to check if it’s safe yet? In dreams I hear the owl going, Oh! Oh! Oh! like Lorraine James. Since I got off them meds, it takes a couple drinks to self-medicate myself to sleep. More than a couple some nights.

  Night sweats, trouble sleeping—I’m too young to be going through the Change, and what do I have to feel guilty about? Maybe that’s why Frank goes out at night, maybe he really has insomnia from feeling guilty, maybe what he done haunts his dreams. But that gives the sumnabitch credit for a conscience. A man with a conscience wouldn’t a brought her an owl. It’s like I’ve become his goddamn missing conscience.

  One Saturday I feel the time’s right to go back to the library. It’s windy, paper flying. I’m not dressed warm enough and stop in church. Not St. Paul’s. The priest there’s a drunk—drinks at the Deuces on money he skims off bingo. I go to St. Pius. I heard they got this young kumbaya priest there who got tortured in Latin America for trying to liberate the poor. People say his scars from torture bleed on Good Friday. Supposedly it’s always crowded when he gives Communion, but today he’s hearing confession and hardly anyone’s there—a couple old ladies in black mantillas like mourners, one praying like moaning. What sins could an old lady commit to deserve a penance like that? I’ve got nothing but a Kleenex I bobby-pin to cover my head.

  Been a long time since I was in church. I was a daily communicant till high school. Wasn’t I stopped believing, just that I grew boobs. I always prayed to the Black Madonna. Sometimes I could swear she’d wink at me, which is why I didn’t take the owl blinking too seriously. The Virgin’s not like black. Her face got sooty when the infidels burned the churches. But her icon wouldn’t burn, and the miracle drove the infidels outta Poland—or something like that. She’s Queen of Poland, like the Virgin of Guadalupe is of Mexico. You know, Mexicans and Poles got a lot in common—the Virgin, drinking, lame polka music, a weakness for the color gold. When the parish went Latino, St. Pius traded in the Black Madonna for the Virgin of Guadalupe. I light a candle to her anyway. I’m worried I forgot how to confess, but as soon as the priest slides open his curtain, the words say themselves.

  Bless me Father for I have sinned. My last confession was … a long time ago.

  Welcome home, my c
hild, the priest—his name’s Father Julio—says in this gentle voice with a smile in it.

  My child makes me think, I’m probably older than him. He’s wearing aftershave. I’m not fond of aftershave on a man, but this scent I want to breathe in. I’ve smelled it somewhere before.

  I’m not sure where to begin, I say.

  He asks, What brought you back today?

  I think my husband killed someone.

  What?

  I think my husband killed a black man.

  You aren’t sure? Why do you think that? Did he tell you?

  The sumnabitch ain’t about to tell me. He’s shtupping the widow next door. Did I need him to tell me that?

  Father Julio doesn’t say anything. I listen to his breathing. Finally, he asks, Do you have a troubled marriage? The smile’s gone from his voice.

  You think I made up he killed someone? I can prove it. Only, if I do, does that make me an accomplice? What’s a worse sin: not wanting to know, or knowing and not doing anything about it?

  To be human, he says, is to have feelings that can be confused and troubling, feelings that make us ashamed or guilty, but feelings aren’t sins. Which doesn’t mean it isn’t good sometimes to tell them. You can tell me anything you need to say.

  I already told you, my husband killed someone.

  But you’re not sure, and even if he did, you can’t confess for him. He has to ask for forgiveness himself.

  Would you forgive him?

  When the Lord forgave all sins, he made an exception for none. Let’s talk about you. You’re going through a crisis. What will bring you inner peace?

  So you’re saying if I knelt here and said I killed someone, like slit his throat while he was passed out, you’d forgive me.

  It’s God who forgives. I can only help you find his voice in your heart.

  But you give penance. I heard the old lady before me crying her eyes out over hers. What would my penance be?

  I think you are already doing penance. You haven’t told me yet for what. It’s not more penance you want.