Kings of Broken Things

by Theodore Wheeler

  “How did you meet Ugo?” he asked. “What did you do for money then?”

  Evie let her face drop. He was such a disappointment.

  “Were you still a dime-a-dance girl? Or am I missing something?”

  She drank from the bottle. She saw a tear on Jake’s cheek, which was the last straw, him thinking he deserved to cry.

  “I worked for them too. For Billy Nesselhous,” she said. “It’s the truth. Billy hired me out of a dance hall. Paid me to seduce Ugo and keep tabs on him. Not only Ugo. There were more before him.”

  “How many?”

  Evie laughed. “A few. The first one lasted two years almost. It was easy. Make a man fall in love with you. Let him buy you fancy things. Billy pays for the rooms, so there’s plenty of dough for other things too. Things I wanted.”

  “You were a snitch?”

  “I guess so, sure. Ugo never said much. He wasn’t up to anything. Don’t you know that? Ugo knew people called him the Cypriot. He liked having a reputation, but he was no instigator. I don’t know why they had to kill him.”

  “I don’t know either.”

  Evie crossed her arms over her chest and gave Jake hell with her eyes.

  “You got a lot to learn. There has to be money to live on. There has to be some way to make dough. That’s just business. Don’t be simple about it. A guy pays your way, you owe him what he paid for.”

  Evie turned her head. Her mouth dropped open. She had to suck her lips. “I want you to go. It isn’t right, you being here.”

  “Is it the thing about the job? Our fight? Is that it?”

  She was quiet a long time, him asking questions but not waiting for her to answer. He didn’t understand. He didn’t see her rooms, her wire dummy, the cutting table. He didn’t even really see her, not how she saw herself.

  Evie wanted Jake to say the right things, to understand her and what she wanted her life to be like, to convince her that they should stay together and that life would be good if they stayed together. Her shoulders collapsed, compliant to this yen, her eyes went wet. But she repeated “You have to go” until he lifted the suitcase and left.

  Anna had her own trouble that spring. Somehow her file flittered up to the top of a stack of suspicious cases at the local education office. She caught the notice of a state inspector.

  He came unannounced in May. There was a knock at the door, and when Anna went to answer, a fat man in a brown suit was standing there. He was bald, she saw, when he removed his hat. He asked if Mr. Miihlstein was at home.

  She nodded yes. “But he’s busy.” This was true. Herr usually was busy in the attic and hated to be disturbed.

  “Go get him anyway,” the man said.

  “What do I tell him this is about?”

  Anna jumbled her English when she had to speak to a stranger like this, one who had the unmistakable look of a government man. A man who could make trouble. She’d been reading in the parlor, which was a mistake. She couldn’t hide when she was in the parlor—he’d seen her though the window and she had to answer.

  “Are you Anna Miihlstein?” he asked, bungling his words too, the pronunciation of her last name. Mill-stine. Anna acknowledged that this was her. “I’m here about you,” he said. “You don’t attend school and I have to find out why that is. Education is mandatory for the children of this state. Nobody told you this, I’m sure, but that’s no excuse.”

  “The school?”

  The man nodded. He peered down at Anna to look her over. Anna knew she was in trouble. She wanted to call for Maria, but Maria was out. Only Herr was home.

  “Go on. Get your father. I need to speak with him.”

  Anna had to turn and walk. When she did, she knew the inspector would see everything about her. Her illness. How she had to gird herself to start moving then hurry her legs along to keep up with her torso. How she pulled herself up the stairs by the railing. The man from the state would see that she wasn’t at all well, and then he’d repeat himself, that this was no excuse, she was sure. Her illness would make her absenteeism worse. She’d seen this when they lived in the Bowery. The state took sick kids away. Sick kids didn’t come back.

  Anna sat on the staircase landing when Herr went to speak with the inspector. The front door hung wide open, the inspector waiting on the porch.

  “Come in! Come in!” Herr urged him inside. “What are you waiting for?”

  The inspector sat hesitantly on the parlor sofa next to Herr. “I’d offer you tea,” Herr said, “but I’m afraid it’s been doctored.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Herr laughed to himself and, searching the man’s face, became silent. This was a dumb thing to say, of course. There was the prohibition.

  “I’m not unsympathetic to your plight,” the man said. “You surely have your reasons. But the girl must be educated. The law is quite clear on this.”

  “She is being educated,” Herr insisted.

  “Two years she’s lived in this state, and not one day has she been in attendance at a school, public or private. There are records on file that speak to this fact.”

  “Herr Inspektor. There’s a explanation for this.” Herr leaned back on the sofa and folded his hands in his lap. He was a reasonable man. He would explain. “You have seen my dear Anna. She has trouble. She’s sick. So because of her illness I’ve been teaching her myself.”

  “Is that a fact? What’s the curriculum you follow?”

  “Poetry, music, art. This is how she spends her time. I assure you it’s being addressed.”

  The inspector’s weary face lit up at this suggestion, like it was becoming clear to him that he was being hoodwinked by immigrants after all.

  He explained that the program Herr had devised was hardly up to the standard of what the state prescribed.

  Even as Herr invited the inspector upstairs to examine the attic, Anna having to scuttle up the stairs with her eavesdropping found out, the inspector was not impressed. Anna’s uncanny crafts, the entire days listening to music, the recitations of German poetry. No. This didn’t fit any course of study except in the imagination of Herr Miihlstein.

  Anna tried to perk up before all was lost. She snuck away to the bathroom and splashed water on her face, tied a ribbon in her hair, to look better than she was, to fool the inspector. He was stout and spoke with a griping tenor. Anna tried to calm him to the ways of her education by speaking to him directly, instead of letting Herr misguide the conversation. Twice already Herr had misspoke that Anna heard, bringing up liquor and that she’d been trying to speak Hebrew. Her English wasn’t so great. She lagged far behind Karel since she was never out in public.

  Anna suggested they move back to the parlor, where it would be more comfortable. There she’d show the inspector that she was being educated. That there was no problem.

  She set her posture erect on the edge of the parlor sofa seat and played the violin. The inspector sat back and listened. Maria home then, with a plate of ginger snaps and a lemonade. There was no mention of doctored tea, just Anna playing her scales flawlessly, then a simplified étude of Schubert’s “Ave Maria.” And yes, another ginger snap for the inspector.

  The inspector took notes in a book the whole time Anna played. What could he be writing about, all the notes he was taking? He’d ambushed them, showing up like this to observe and record. They were unprepared. It wasn’t fair.

  “I had no idea this was such a special case,” he said once Anna was finished with the violin. “You’re going to cause me a lot of trouble. I can tell.”

  “I assure you we won’t,” Herr said. “We’re not that kind of people.”

  “Is the boy around?” the inspector asked.

  “Karel? He goes to school. Not now. It’s summer.”

  “Yes, I know. But there’s some notes about him here, from his teachers.” The inspector reached down and patted his briefcase. “Karel is a troublemaker, it says. A bad egg.”

  “I don’t believe that. Karel’s a
good kid. It’s his friends. They’re the bad egg.”

  “He’s the ringleader. That’s what it says. It has no bearing on Anna’s situation, only gives a clearer picture of what’s going on.”

  The strain of pretending for the inspector took a toll on Anna. She was exhausted. The bags under her eyes dropped low, were bluer, her hair hung in strings over her forehead. And now the inspector saying these things about Karel! Anna felt like she was going to collapse by the time the inspector said he had to leave.

  “I’ll be back,” the inspector promised, packing up his briefcase. “You can expect me.”

  “This did not go well,” Maria said. “God in heaven. What will we do?”

  Anna hid in the cellar when she was home during the day. This hiding wasn’t too much different from her typical day. Working down in the cellar. Twisting around her metal works, until sometimes she overworked a piece and the wire snapped from being bent this way then that too many times. It was summer, though, and cool down below the floorboards. Nobody would see her, like they might if she was reading on the parlor sofa.

  The state inspector stopped by on occasion, every few days. “We haven’t forgotten about Anna,” he’d say to Maria, who was the only one allowed to answer the door thereafter. “Is Anna at home?”

  “No,” Maria would lie. “Anna isn’t expected back until dinner. She’s gone playing with her friends.”

  “We’re processing her. Do you understand what that means?”

  “Show me her file. Don’t come here and say things like that with no proof.”

  The inspector wouldn’t show Maria anything, because he didn’t have to. Maria wasn’t a blood relative to the girl.

  “Listen,” she said. “Don’t make me beg you. Something can be worked out to keep Anna at home. I’m no fool. I’ve seen how things work.”

  “I don’t like that implication.”

  “There’s no implication. The girl has friends.” Maria leaned her face out the doorway, lowered her voice. “A young man who lives here is a close associate of Tom Dennison. Does that mean anything to you?”

  The inspector put his hat on and stepped back on the porch. “Ma’am. That name means plenty. None of it good, I’m afraid.”

  And yes, the inspector promised, that too would go in the file.

  If Anna wasn’t in the cellar, she was in the attic, staring out the window. Anna never quite knew what she was looking for. Just watching the street. How bustling things got at lunchtime. Cars bounding past and leaving behind clouds of black smoke. How most every kid in the neighborhood made his way home for lunch. Straggling boys most of the time, given a little hustle at that hour by the hunger pains in their guts. There were a few she knew. Michael Hykell and Nathan Shapiro and Louis Weaver. Boys who wore the same set of wool trousers year round. Cowlicked boys, dusky boys, boys who came skidding around the corner on the heels of their shoes like they were up to something. Until they came to the Eigler house and stopped to peek up at the attic window. And there Anna Miihlstein was. She saw the recognition in a boy’s eyes, how he loitered on the walkway to get a better look.

  Anna wondered what it would be like to know these boys, to know all the kids on Clandish as Karel must know them. If she did go to school, she might not be so nervous around real kids. This was the way she thought of them, the real kids. Not dolls, like she was only a doll. It was quite possible that Karel was right about this—that the reason Anna stagnated physically was because she was trapped in the attic. She’d grow too if she went to school. She’d learn to take care of herself. To not have such thin skin. She’d run. She’d play in a juniper hollow. What else had Karel promised? A pet duck? A new lavender overcoat? A new hat?

  Karel wasn’t likely to follow through on a promise. And he was likely wrong that the neighborhood school would cure Anna’s deficiencies. At any rate, the state inspector would leave them alone if Anna were to enroll, if it wasn’t too late for that.

  Anna was sure the state inspector was scaring Karel away. He hadn’t come home in weeks. Nobody in the house knew where he was. There’d been little word about him at all. Snippets from neighbors about how they’d seen Karel on such-and-such street the day before, or cruising around with the Braun boy in Jobbers Canyon. Of course, Karel was playing baseball. It was summer. Five afternoons a week he had a game at Rourke Park with a junior team sponsored by the Omaha Printing Company. Besides that there was practice with the Southside team. Karel Miihlstein wasn’t all that hard to find those days, if they’d dared to go down to the field and grab him. The rougher business would have been pulling him off a ballfield without raising Cain.

  None of that mattered much to Anna. She wasn’t going to take a streetcar to Rourke Park. From what she’d heard (and what she saw her one trip there) South Omaha wasn’t all that pleasant. Anna didn’t care to subject herself to the mean spirits of its environs. No. Karel was afraid of coming home because he thought the state inspector could be a welfare cop there to send incorrigible boys to reformatory school. It could have been true anyway. Anna worried about that. The inspector hadn’t mentioned Karel after that first time, but maybe it was a cover. Maybe Karel had done something bad and the authorities were going to send him away. Anna considered this a distinct possibility, even though she hadn’t heard that Karel was mixed up in any trouble besides drinking alcohol (which there was plenty of going on in the house already, between Herr, Maria, and Jake). Other than that the only concern was what Karel did with those ballplayers. Which was play baseball, by all appearances. He got a blackened thumbnail from an inside pitch that hit his hand where he gripped the bat. Grass stains on his pants. Nothing the inspector could charge Karel with. The realization set in after a while. The inspector truly was there for Anna.

  She held her hands in the light from the window, up in the attic, to look at her fingers stretching. She felt bad about how she’d told Karel those things about their mother, the actor their mother had a thing for, how she’d been stabbed and bled to death, and Karel’s bawling. She was sorry for the way she told him. She’d felt sad about it every day since. And Karel wasn’t there for her to apologize.

  It wouldn’t be all that awful if she wasn’t around. If she wasn’t buried up to her neck in all that junk in the cellar. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if the state inspector took her away.

  Whenever Maria left the house, from then on, she took Anna along. The inspector might snatch Anna from the house when Maria was out. She wasn’t going to let that happen. Anna followed her around the house in the morning after breakfast, as Maria washed dishes and then shrunk into a wooden chair out front to roll a cigarette and catch her breath before heading to the market. The Eigler house sidled up to the big buildings of downtown—Anna could see them from the porch—so it wasn’t far to the market. They walked slow down the steep hill of Clandish, the brick walkway full of chucks and gaps. If they hurried, one of them was liable to trip. Maria was in no hurry anyway. She gabbered to Anna. Told who lived in the houses down the block. Stefan the furrier. A merchant named Rudolph who lived at home and cared for his parents. The McPhees, who were Irish. Maria talked about families who used to live in the houses they passed. Krugs and Fischers and Kountzes. She told about a garden party on Constitution Day in 1892. Anna gibbered back with questions. What clothes were in fashion then? Was it only adults at the party, or kids too? How late were kids allowed to stay up that night? Cars rumbled by on Clandish as they talked. Every once in a while Anna peeked around a house and saw a woman hang laundry.

  In the market Anna trailed behind as Maria browsed the stalls. A cabbage plucked out from a stand of them, some fruit. She felt a little better going out on errands with Maria. It had been over a year since she’d done this regularly. Those days, new to Omaha, Anna, Frau, and Karel stepping out for fruit and veggies, whatever else was needed and could be gotten in season. Anna had forgotten how nice it was to get out. Exhilarating as well as aggravating. Her muscles sore. Once she was out in the market stall
s, the shouts of callers, the purchasers, a buzzing feeling overcame her objections. She had to stand tall and straighten her back or else she’d be trampled. She liked being out in the sun, in the market, where women complimented her on how smart a white straw hat looked on her, and how cute she was. Some neighborhood boys saw her and could hardly believe their eyes. Yes, it’s Anna, she wanted to say to them. Out for a walk. With necessities to buy at market. So she went to fruit stalls and Hiller’s Grocery. The proprietor behind the counter, silent, near a glass case filled with tobacco, pens, and other sundries. His four daughters in a back office with a phonograph and a record that told fairy tales. Anna sneaked over to hear what came from the horn. Baba Yaga and her house on chicken legs.

  She carried packages for Maria. Fruit, strawberries, veal cutlets folded in a newspaper. She waited as Maria chatted up merchants, as Maria chatted up women her age, friends, or anyone. Maria liked to talk, so long as she looked busy in the process, a cloth bag snagged on her elbow, her pocketbook unclasped but clutched to her breast, how she made the person behind her in line wait as she fished for coins and counted pennies. Somehow surprised to find she had enough money to pay after all. But always chatting. Asking for news, sharing news. That’s too bad. But she’s okay? You never know. A woman like her. Too proud to ask for help. Maria would help anyone so long as they asked and the solution wasn’t money. There were pies that could be made, fresh bread, time-tested remedies. She could sit in a room with someone who was ailing.

  One day out on the street, in fact, a man grabbed Maria by the elbow and requested help. A sick woman was dying—an elderly woman with no family, the man said. A woman in the tenement building where he lived. Could Maria go sit with the woman? Until the pastor arrived? The woman was seventy-something years old with pneumonia. There was nothing else to do.

  A crowd was at the top of the stairs, men familiar with each other, in the way they whispered, hands gently on each other’s shoulders. They cleared the narrow doorway to let Maria and Anna through. None of them wanted in, not really.