Empire Girls

by Suzanne Hayes

  “I could use a drink,” said Jimmy. “What do ya think, Sonny?”

  “I’m game. Rose?”

  “She’s fine,” said Ivy. “But I could use one.”

  A man stood at the side of the entrance. He didn’t look like he worked there.

  “Rose, you’re the one who looks the least likely to do anything bad. Do me a favor, would ya? Go give that guy this money,” Jimmy took a few dollars out of his back pocket.

  “You can’t be serious,” I said.

  “Come on, Rose,” said Ivy.

  “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do,” said Santino.

  “Can everyone stop talking at me? You’re like seagulls after a crumb, squawking. My head might explode.”

  I took the money from Jimmy, and walked up to the shadowy man.

  He held out his hand. I didn’t want to shake it. He was dirty, as if he’d taken a bath in coal. And he was short, shorter than me. Shifty.

  “Shake my hand like you know me,” he said through clenched, smiling teeth.

  I shook it then tried to give him the money.

  “Are you crazy? Women. Can’t trust ’em...” he said, grabbing me. He pulled me behind a large wall painted with animals and futuristic machines. From the front it looked like magic. Behind, it was just a bit of wood. And I was hidden with Mr. Shifty.

  “Now,” he said.

  I handed him the money again, and he gave me a bottle from inside his jacket.

  “Tuck that away safe, dearie,” he said.

  I walked back to Ivy, Sonny and Jimmy and said, “I’ve bought gin. Does that make me a criminal?”

  They all looked at me, and then laughed so hard they started to cry and people began staring at us. We’d become a sideshow all our own.

  That started another wave of laughter that I had to join. “Sometimes you have to laugh at yourself, Rose,” said Ivy.

  It felt good to laugh.

  * * *

  As Ivy and I were there for another purpose altogether, and our “fun day at the beach” was to be a ruse of sorts, the fun we had at Coney Island that day was unexpected and blissful. The boys put gin in lemonade they bought from a stand. I wouldn’t drink any because of the debacle the previous night, but they did and it relaxed all of us. It’s funny how you can be drunk on sun, sand and good company alone.

  We ate hot dogs at Nathan’s, which were delicious. We hadn’t had them before. And we did, in fact, buy bathing dresses. I couldn’t talk Ivy out of the one that was too short. She simply glared at me. And the way Jimmy was looking at her made me a little angry.

  She’d been lecturing me about Santino with her eyes and her gestures all day long, but she and Jimmy were worse! I couldn’t believe I hadn’t realized their attraction sooner.

  We swam in the ocean. Running back and forth like children.

  We even rode the Roller Coaster, which was brand-new and terrifying.

  Then we went back to the boardwalk.

  Ivy, sun kissed and glorious-looking, was admiring a booth where a paper moon was hanging. It was enormous and there was a line of people waiting to sit on the crescent and have their picture taken. A man working at the booth came up to us and asked, “And how are you young ladies doing today?”

  “Oh, we’re doing fine...enjoying the park!” said Ivy.

  “Would you like to have your picture taken on the Paper Moon?”

  “We sure do!” she said. “Boys, will you hold our place in line?” she asked, batting her eyelashes at Jimmy.

  “Sure thing, Beauty.”

  “Let’s freshen up, Rose. For the picture!”

  There it was, my clue, and our chance to find our brother.

  As I started to follow her, Sonny grabbed my arm. “Rosie, be careful, okay?”

  I felt right then that he knew what we were doing. That he’d known it all along.

  On impulse, I threw my arms around his neck. He returned the embrace and whispered words into my ear that made me blush. He whispered, “Just tell me you’re my girl and I’ll leave happy.”

  Now, a clever, upstanding woman like Jane Eyre or Marilla Cuthbert would have been able to craft a response that implied a shared affection at the very same time as it kept the young man in his proper place. But I was realizing hour by hour that I was never going to be either of them. I was far more Anne of Green Gables, hungry for life, always ready with a mouth that had a life of its own. So instead, I said, “Of course I am.”

  And chased off after my sister.

  When Ivy ducked into the changing tent where we’d left our dresses, I looked back. I’d been right; they must have both known, because they’d left the line and were nowhere in sight.

  “Quick, did you by any chance bring the matchbook and postcard?” she said, shimmying out of her swimsuit behind a curtain.

  I smiled at her and brought them from my purse.

  “Atta girl! You get a prize,” said Ivy.

  “Look! I knew I recognized that address. Come on, let’s go.”

  “But I thought we were looking for the card stand.”

  “Yes and yes. Just get dressed and follow me.”

  “Hey, Ivy?” I asked while I changed.

  “What? My God, you are so slow.”

  “Jimmy was in the war. Did you know that?”

  “Nope. What does it matter? A lotta guys their age were over there. Asher, too. In France. Mr. Lawrence wrote me about it this week.” She paused, looking genuinely apologetic. “I thought I told you.”

  “Well, now things are starting to make sense. If Sonny, Jimmy and Asher were in the war together, there’s a connection. And that’s what Jimmy was trying to hide last week when he started to say three, instead of two!”

  “Rose, you’re babbling. Just get dressed.”

  For the first time since we’d begun asking about Asher, I felt we were close.

  * * *

  Ivy was dragging me through crowds of people, dodging them and bumping into them sometimes. I felt I was saying, “I’m sorry,” and “Excuse us please,” over and over.

  Then she stopped, and I bumped into her.

  “Here we are,” she said.

  Cards & Co. wasn’t a shop at all. It was a kiosk on the boardwalk in front of Nathan’s. I hadn’t noticed it, but she had.

  “I even browsed while you were eating your hot dog and making moony eyes at Sonny. You need to watch yourself, do you hear me? Anyway, look.”

  “Did you ask the clerk if they knew Asher?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Jesus, Rose, LOOK.”

  She walked to the stand and pulled a postcard out from a display called Streets of Coney Island, which held bird’s-eye drawings of different neighborhoods and streets around the park.

  I walked to her and saw what she had seen. She held the matchbook cover up to the postcard.

  Picturesque Oleander Drive.

  I was so excited that I clapped.

  “And the best part,” she said, “is that it works just like a map, and we are...here.”

  She pointed to the boardwalk on the postcard. We were mere minutes away from the address on the matchbook.

  * * *

  The neighborhood past the park was quiet and lovely. I couldn’t believe it was part of New York. Tree-lined streets and people walking at a proper pace.

  We walked down Oleander Drive and counted the house numbers together.

  “Thirty-four, forty-two, fifty-eight...” The excitement growing in our voices as we got closer.

  “Sixty-seven. This is it,” said Ivy very softly. We’d stopped in front of a two-story building with an iron gate. There was a metal sign affixed to the gate itself
that quieted both of us.

  It read:

  SEACREST HOME.

  The building was boarded up, but there was a man taking care of the front garden.

  “Hiya, mister!” yelled Ivy.

  He walked to the gate. “Can I help you?”

  “Well, we were coming to meet our brother who lives here, but it seems we’re too late,” I said.

  “Yeah, the neighborhood got bent outta shape with all those crazy people livin’ there. Got some kind of petition together to oust ’em.”

  “What do you mean crazy? What kind of place was this?” asked Ivy, visibly upset.

  “You know. Those ones that came back home after the war, only left most of themselves on the battlefield. Their minds, at least.”

  My face must have betrayed my emotions because I saw the man’s eyebrows rise.

  “Thought ya said your brother lived here,” he said with a wariness clouding his disposition.

  “Sir,” I said, “we’ve recently found out we have an older brother. Our father has died and we need to find him. Everything we have points to this address, and any help you can give us is appreciated.”

  “Well, now...I sure am sorry for your loss, but to tell you the truth, I don’t know where that doctor up and moved his patients to. Somewhere in the city, I think. Sorry I can’t say where.”

  He walked away.

  Ivy held fast to the bars, pressing her forehead, her eyes closed, against the metal.

  “Ivy...”

  “Don’t talk, Rose.”

  “Ivy, that address may not mean anything. Why are you so upset? We’ll find him. We’ll shake the truth out of everyone....”

  “I said don’t talk to me.”

  She let go and walked by, going too fast.

  “Ivy! What is the matter with you? We are chasing tiny tokens. We might’ve made the wrong assumptions anyway.”

  She turned around and stood in the center of the sidewalk.

  “You don’t understand anything. Besides, you don’t care about it the way I do. You want to find him so you can go home to that dollhouse life, that bubble we lived in.... You have an agenda, Rose. And this would suit you fine, wouldn’t it! To find out that he’s mad or slow-witted. To find out he’s ill...you’d write to Mr. Lawrence, get some kind of doctor’s note and that would be it! Ta-da! Rose saves the day! But that’s not what I want.”

  Her hands were in fists at her sides.

  “Then tell me what it is you want. I cannot read your mind, and you don’t often bare your soul to me, do you? So what do you want, Ivy?”

  “What do I want? I want to find him, to get to know him, to have another person in our lives who may love us. I want to know if he likes theater and music. I want him to hear me sing...I want to stay in this glorious city and learn to live in it. Really live.”

  Her face was red, and as the first tear fell, she turned her back on me and began walking again. Ivy doesn’t like to cry.

  “Besides,” she said, “that was our only real clue, so now we might never find him.”

  “We’ll find him, Ivy,” I said catching up and trying to put my arm inside of hers.

  She shook me away.

  “I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to look at you. I don’t want to take care of you while you throw up, or worry that you’ll embarrass me again.”

  She said it because somehow she knew it was my Achilles’ heel, and even though I knew she might not even mean it, I snapped right back at her. I yanked her around by the same arm she’d used to shrug me off.

  “If you could stop telling me what to do, maybe I could act the way you want me to act, or be the sister you’ve wanted me to be, but you just can’t. You can’t stand that I fit in so well to this life you expected would suit you. You’re jealous Cat asked me to work for her, and that she talks to me.”

  She stared at me and then turned away.

  We caught the six o’clock train and parted ways silently.

  * * *

  When I walked into Empire House, Santino was there with two other men. Nell was clucking around them. When she saw me in the foyer she came to me. “You must be quiet, Rose. Once a week, I let Sonny meet with his writer friends in the salon. They pay me for the space, in case you’re wondering. But don’t disturb them. He might be famous one day, that one. I do love supporting the arts.”

  “You start this poem, Joseph,” said Santino.

  “And if the night be long...” said Joseph, a pale man who I thought might be Asher when I first walked in because of his coloring, but he was too young.

  “The twinkling fade of stars that were her own...” said Sonny.

  “I have something to LOAN,” said the third man, thick, short and glistening with sweat.

  To which Sonny groaned and banged his head on the table.

  “No! Boris...it doesn’t have to rhyme. Dear God, man! What is the matter with you? Honestly, I think you may have to give this writing idea up. Can’t you be a mason or something? You lay one hell of a brick down with your words....”

  Joseph was laughing. Boris, who I realized was drunk, tried to say something but stopped midsentence and looked at me.

  That’s when it happened. Santino turned to me.

  “Oh lady fair, come join me here.”

  Joseph started to continue the poem, but Santino put his hand up in the air to stop him.

  “I have a stone of nothing in my room for you to see,” I said. The words tumbled out so fast and seemed to make no sense but all the sense in the world. A chill of pleasure ran through me.

  “Another poet,” said Nell. “Why do all the fancy literati have to work here at Empire House? Hmm? Now no work will get done. None. Write a poem about that!” said Nell and walked away.

  “I have something for you,” he said to me, reaching across the table for a box wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. He got up and handed it to me.

  “Let me know what you think...” He was leaning against the door frame, more to hold himself up. He tried to smooth back his thick hair to no avail.

  “Is it from you?” I asked.

  “No. It’s from Boris. Of course it’s from me, Rosie! You agreed to be my girl, right?”

  All three started to laugh. But Sonny stopped when he saw my face. I think he understood that something had happened to me, something too enormous for laughter.

  “Are you okay? Did you find things you didn’t want to find?”

  I couldn’t answer him. I ran up the stairs to the penthouse, but before opening The Poet’s present, I had more words that wanted to tumble out from my fingers.

  Dear Asher,

  Your youngest sibling, Ivy, thinks I don’t care about finding you. Well, that’s not true. She thinks I only want to find you so that I can get back to a life we used to live. Oh, say...a little over a week ago, yet it feels a million thousand years gone.

  At first, that was true. I only wanted to find you because you were the key to my past. But now I realize she’s right—you are also the key to my future.

  Only when we thought we’d found you, and then had not? When we realized that if the address was really a clue to you, that you could be ill?

  We had a terrible row.

  Who is Daisy? Who are Nell and all those who live here at Empire House to you? Where are you, Asher?

  I can’t explain it, but what happened today with Ivy made me feel closer to you. Made me want to find you for the same reasons she gave me. And Asher, you really should hear her sing...I’m so proud of her.

  If we find you, will you be kind?

  If we find you, will the sins of our father be visited upon us? Please, if you are angry with him, take it out on me. Please release my sister from any sort of retribution. It was never
her fault.

  Your Sister,

  Rose

  I thought I’d burn the letter I’d just written to Asher, but I didn’t. I put it in a small tin I was using to save the earnings we didn’t spend on living expenses. We had eighty dollars. A far cry from three thousand.

  Then I opened Santino’s present.

  It was a stationery set with roses embedded in the border. There was a new bottle of ink and a fancy pen. The best part of all was a small, leather-bound journal that was inscribed:

  “To my girl, Rosie. Write down your dreams.”

  I held the new stationery to my chest and pulled out my new pen again.

  I wrote,

  Dear Santino,

  Thank you,

  Rosie

  And when I was sure he’d left for the night, I placed it in the kitchen by the coffeepot.

  When I awoke the next morning, Ivy was still sleeping, and she looked so lovely.

  I touched her soft cheek with the back of my hand, and pushed away the black hair from her sweaty brow.

  She woke up and reached to touch my face.

  Then she pulled her hand away.

  She put a pillow over her head, and I put on my apron.

  * * *

  I went to breakfast without her. Maude had saved a seat for me, and there was coffee already poured. Everyone seemed to be smiling.

  There was a family here. Nell shouting orders to Claudia, who was bustling around the tables. Santino tried to engage me as he put more food on the tables, but I would not comply. The politicos were sipping coffee and not arguing, for once.

  Maude had taken the bread basket from Claudia, and she was chasing her for it. Playing. It was nice to see her play.

  Sonny clinked a spoon against a water glass.

  “Nell, I have an announcement to make. We have another poet in residence. Miss Rose Adams...”

  The room applauded.

  I had no idea what he was doing.