The Wicked City

by Beatriz Williams

  Now it’s gone.

  That sagging white house, home to Kellys since about the Revolution, where Duke Kelly himself entered the world in the same upstairs bedroom as his daddy before him and his own sons after, has disappeared. In its place stands a building that might as well be the town hall, so far as I can see: faced in limestone, crammed tight with every architectural feature you can imagine—Palladian windows and Jacobean parapets and friezes and bay windows and God knows. Stretches fifty feet in either direction from a front door like the entrance to a cathedral.

  “Lord Almighty,” I say. “What’s that?”

  “Why, it’s your daddy’s new house! Ain’t they sent you no pictures? Mr. Kelly’s right proud of that place.”

  “No.”

  Carl sets the brake and jumps out to hump my carpetbag. “Well, there it is.”

  “Ain’t it grand?” sighs out Ruth. “Just like that Morgan fella in New York.”

  “Just exactly like.” I take the bag from Carl, whose face wears an expression of intelligent mischief, and what do you know, I actually recall him. Recall an afternoon down by the creek, full of heat and mud and blood-drunk skeeters, and a boy with an unusual pointed face, like an elf, who snatched me out of the water and tugged me into the bushes and held his hand over my mouth, grinning and grinning, and I was so mad and helpless, imprisoned by his skinny arms, until I heard my stepfather’s voice floating down the grassy bank and realized that this boy had actually rescued me. Staring at me just as he stares now. Blue eyes twinkly and all-knowing, like they see right through the substance of my little troubles. That was my first kiss. Didn’t last long. I slapped him for it a second later. Carl Green. What do you know. I hold out my hand and say thank you, and I’m not talking about the ride home.

  Well, the mischief fades a little. He takes the hand and shakes it. Warm palm melts through my glove. “You take care of yourself, Geneva Rose.”

  “I surely will.”

  A big voice roars from between the pillars on the brand-new portico.

  “Carl Green, you sonofabitch! Get your lousy hands off my sister.”

  (That’s Johnnie. As if you couldn’t guess.)

  5

  MY KID brother wraps me up in a hug that might turn a weaker mortal into a diamond. Johnnie always was two sizes bigger than the other boys, even when he was born. They used to get up games of football in the schoolyard and Johnnie just plowed right over everybody.

  “Where’s Mama?” I ask when he lets me go.

  “Upstairs. How’s yourself, sis? You look different.”

  “I am different. So’re you. What kind of joint is this?”

  “You should see the inside.”

  “I would if you’d invite me through the door.”

  Big old familiar belly laugh. Johnnie’s laugh can cure any trouble. He takes my carpetbag and turns to usher me through the door, and I tilt away to wave good-bye to Carl and Ruth, but they’re already gone, smell of gasoline exhaust fouling the air behind them.

  The door stands open, allowing expensive gusts of warm air to escape into the winter afternoon. Johnnie sends me into the foyer and follows, shutting the door behind us, and I’ll be damned if a fellow in a black-and-white uniform doesn’t appear from the doorway to the right, hair all slicked back, asking me for my coat in broad country cadence. As I obey, I peer into his scrubbed face and dark eyes. “Why, Tommy Leary! Is that you?”

  Tommy sort of flushes and says it sure is, how is you, Geneva Rose? I hand him my coat and say I’m just fine, stopped by to see my mama. Around us, the foyer takes shape, polished wood paneling and white marble floor, a god-awful chandelier bursting from the ceiling twenty feet above, twin staircases curving upward to form some kind of gallery. I nod toward them. “That way?”

  “Turn right at the top. Johnnie’ll show you.”

  He speaks in a tone of hushed reverence, or so near to hushing and reverence as a fellow like Tommy Leary can manage, and the very respect in his voice sends my pulse throbbing like a dynamo. I toss my coat into his arms and stride across that slippery damn marble to the rightmost staircase, and as I bound upward and wheel right and race down the corridor, I take no notice of the statuary and the portraiture and the red-and-gold wallpaper, nor yet the plush crimson carpet and the scrolling plasterwork on the ceiling above.

  I just think, Mama, poor Mama, left to decay in a mausoleum like this.

  6

  NO EXPENSE spared on Mama’s bedroom, I’ll say that. If Duke Kelly is the new king of River Junction, this chamber is fit for his queen. Twelve-foot ceilings and a canopied bed. French furniture gilded up right. She’s even got a lady-in-waiting, some kind of uniformed nurse who hovers near the window, eyes snarling at me as I bend over Mama’s sleeping body.

  “She mustn’t be disturbed,” snaps the nurse.

  I send her a glance, no more. “Pardon me. I’m Geneva Kelly, Mrs. Kelly’s daughter, and I expect I’ll do what is damned well best for her.”

  Behind me, Johnnie makes a coughing noise.

  Mama may be sleeping, but not in peace. Her eyelids twitch, her fingers claw the glossy satin counterpane. Her skin is pale and fine, such that I can follow the disturbing passage of blood along the network of arteries and capillaries and veins, back to her heart, pulsing through again.

  Someone once told me—I can’t remember whom—that Mama was a great beauty in her youth. I suppose she must have been. After all, she ran off to New York when she was but sixteen and joined some kind of show, dancing and singing for the entertainment of ladies and gentlemen. Mostly gentlemen, I suspect. Inevitably, one of them sired me, but the funny thing is, she didn’t return to River Junction right away after this disgrace. She stayed on in Manhattan for two more years, and when she returned, she was still bright and well fed, as her wedding photograph attests. How I used to stare at that photograph of Mama, snapped just before Duke got into her. The only glimpse I had of the real Mama, clean and untainted. Her eyes are hooded, mysterious, her brows a pair of long, elegant arches, slightly bent at the ends. Smooth dairy skin, lips set in a melancholy young pout entirely unsuited to the happy occasion of a respectable marriage meant to save her from mortal sin. But she’s lovely, no doubt about that, and what’s more, there exists no hint of my own existence in that photograph, either hiding coyly in her big white skirt or disturbing the perfection of her small white waist. Just her smirking new husband at her side, a head taller, eyes a little blurred as if recovering from a blink.

  The point is, she was beautiful once, and you can still trace the contours of that beauty in her bones. Perhaps better than before, because her skin now sinks like a drape along her skeleton, exposing the angles of symmetry, exposing the loving hand of God in her creation. Maybe she feels my breath on her cheek, because her eyes crack open for an instant, her head turns in my direction, and then the lids fall back twitching and a sort of moan slips free from her desiccated lips.

  The carpet rustles. “See what you’ve done,” says the nurse.

  “What’s the matter with her?”

  “She’s in the last stages of a consumption, as you can see.”

  “What kind of consumption?”

  “Aw, now, Geneva Rose,” says my brother softly. “You know she been like this for years. Just a-getting worse and worse.”

  “Having so many babies, I guess. That kind of consumption.”

  Nobody says a word. Mama’s breath bubbles in her lungs. Offers the nurse: “It’s God’s will.”

  “Or Duke’s will, I guess, which is much the same thing.” I place my hands over hers, hoping to still that goddamned clawing, but the knuckles keep on sliding beneath my palms, all bone, and another moan slips out, more like a sigh. My mama’s dying. I remove my hands and straighten the counterpane and turn to Johnnie. “I could use a drink.”

  7

  SEEMS DUKE’S house has a special room for such purposes, drinking and smoking and what have you. I guess most folks would call it a library. Th
ere’s bookshelves, anyway, with real books in them, from all appearances. Smell of smoke and leather and tobacco. Maybe a hint of good country whiskey. Winter sun poking between the curtains. Johnnie mixes me something while I stand next to a baronial marble mantel and light a cigarette. “Have a seat,” he calls—the room is wide—but I shake my head. The fire’s made of coal and burns hot. Melts the stockings right off my legs. I have no intention of moving away from such delicious, unending warmth as that.

  “We never used to have such fires,” I observe.

  “Things have changed around here.”

  “No kidding.” I flick a little ash into the fire and turn to face Johnnie, who’s making his way across the acre or so of Oriental carpet, bearing a lowball glass in each hand. “Your daddy’s special recipe?”

  “It ain’t going to kill you, if that’s what you mean.”

  “No, I guess not. He’s not the kind of fellow to poison his own well, is he?” Nonetheless, I sniff before sipping. Rye whiskey, pure and pungent. Neither one of us proposes a toast. Doesn’t seem proper, with Mama dying upstairs. Johnnie drinks about half in one gulp and lifts his massive elbow to the fireboard. Peers into my face in his mute, slow way. I sip again and say, “How long has Mama been sick like this?”

  “Ain’t she always been like this?”

  “Don’t say ain’t, Johnnie. I raised you better than that.”

  He finishes the drink and pulls a cigarette case from his pocket. A gold one that reminds me of Billy’s cigarette case, except Johnnie’s is more ornate. Swirls and curlicues all embossed around the sides. His monogram in letters so complicated I take their identity on faith.

  “Nice box. So you’re on the take, I guess.”

  He pulls out a cigarette and lights up clumsily. “Last month—about Christmas—I reckon she fell sick again.”

  “The usual?”

  He nods. Turns to the fire and rests both paws on the edge of the fireboard. Cigarette burns quietly from between two meaty fingers. “Some kind of infection got in. Couldn’t shake it. Dad called in all kinds of doctors.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “He did, though.”

  “I don’t doubt it. And where is the great humanitarian now?”

  “Business meeting.”

  “Does he know I’m here?”

  Johnnie straightens and snatches a drag from his cigarette. His long, broad nose looks a little pink to me. “Reckon he does now.”

  “You don’t say. He’s reading minds, is he?”

  “Geneva Rose, the first thing you got to understand, ain’t nobody comes in or out of River Junction these days without Duke Kelly knows it.”

  We stand there staring at each other, absorbing the heat of the fire. Johnnie’s got this funny thing about his eyes, one kind of blue and the other one greener. Also the pupil’s larger in the blue one—you have to be standing close to notice this—and the effect, combined with his giant frame and strange bony face, can give you a regular case of the willies if you aren’t already acquainted with the fact that Johnnie Kelly is a gentle old pussycat, sweetest honey-heart in Allegany County, wouldn’t hurt a flea unless it was carrying a football toward the wrong set of goalposts. God only knows where he gets his nature from. Not his daddy.

  “How long has he been running this racket?” I ask.

  “Since right about the day you left, I guess. Near enough, anyway. Figured out Carl Green’s daddy was cooking up rye mash in his barn and making a few nice dollars on the side, selling it on to some outfit in Hagerstown. Well, Duke went straight to Hagerstown and convinced that fellow to let him run the business instead—”

  “Did he now? Did he shoot the poor sucker dead, or just wave the gun in his face?”

  “Naw, Geneva. You know Duke don’t like guns.”

  I toss the end of my cigarette into the fire and hand Johnnie my empty glass. “Refill, dearest?”

  Johnnie ambles back off across the rug, wrinkled suit jacket swinging from his wide shoulders, and I light another cigarette and start off along the row of bookshelves lining the wall, each one crammed tight with rigid new leather-bound volumes. Mahogany gleams under the electric light. I run my finger along a gold-stamped spine—Tristram Shandy, blow me down—and ask Johnnie where Duke got all the damn books. Rob the wrong storefront in Baltimore?

  “Hired a dealer, I guess. Said he wanted the best library in the county.”

  I allow a low whistle. “How much lettuce is he clearing, do you think?”

  “Aw, I don’t keep the books.”

  “You can guess. A hundred thousand? Two hundred?”

  “Maybe something like that. Maybe more.”

  Another whistle. “Three hundred large a year.”

  Johnnie walks up and hands me my second rye whiskey. “A month.”

  “Three hundred thousand dollars a month?” (Sputter of whiskey.)

  “Something like that. Less expenses.”

  “Oh, naturally. Expenses. You’ve got to pay everybody off, for one thing. All those revenue agents and policemen don’t come cheap, I’ll bet. To say nothing of butlers and country estates and mahogany bookshelves full of books you can’t even read. And a nurse to tend the wife you’ve fucked into an early grave.”

  To Johnnie’s credit, he doesn’t flinch at this little speech, not even the filthy, staccato word that punctuates it. Just a long, slow blink, as if he doesn’t quite recognize my face, after all. The ceiling creaks above us. Lights in the electric chandelier give off a shiver. I suck on my cigarette and take a drink.

  “Well? Aren’t you going to answer me, you big dumb ox? Or are you on that bastard’s side now, instead of mine?”

  “Now, Geneva Rose,” he says softly, “that money’s done a lot of good around here.”

  “Oh, I can see that, all right. Smart new houses. Buildings all cleaned up. I see Carl Green’s driving himself a nice new flivver, right off the lot. I’ll bet everybody in River Junction’s got an automobile now, and a garage to put it in.”

  “No. I mean folks can eat regular. Folks can get a doctor when they’re sick. Get medicine and coal for the winter.”

  “And fancy gold cigarette cases.”

  “Aw, Geneva.” He shakes his head. Nudges his glass against mine. “Anyway, where do you think this comes from? All that moonshine you’re drinking in New York City. Don’t tell me you ain’t a-drinking hooch in some joint most nights, you and your friends. It’s Duke’s hooch you’re drinking, ain’t it? He’s just giving you what you want. What you demand from somewhere. Anywhere.”

  “Goddamn it, Johnnie.” I hurl my glass into the fireplace, hard, so it shatters good. Makes the coals hiss like a snake. “Goddamn the pair of you.”

  “Geneva Rose. You always was a hothead.”

  “I’ve got a right, don’t you think?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “You know what? I should have done something about him years ago. Should’ve had the nerve to just walk up while he was sleeping, and bam! Right in his ear.” I make my fingers like a revolver, cigarette sticking in a diagonal line from the imaginary trigger. “Then I might have just stayed right here with you and Mama in River Junction. Never had to leave.”

  “Law woulda found you, though.”

  “Now, don’t go spoiling my dream, Johnnie-boy. Don’t say it never did cross your mind, neither.”

  He rolls his shoulders and stares at me piteously. “Lot of folks woulda starved or froze to death, then. Lot of widows woulda had nowhere to live.”

  “Got his finger in every pie, hasn’t he? A thousand little insurance policies to make sure he never goes to jail.”

  “Folks round here’d die for him now, honey. Remember that.”

  “What about you, Johnnie? Would you die for him?”

  He furrows his two thick brows into one, making my stomach knot up. But before he can open his mouth to answer this important question, a sweet voice pipes up from the doorway.

  “Johnnie! Johnnie! Who’
re you talking to?”

  And I turn my head to find a little girl bearing Mama’s hooded eyes and Duke Kelly’s dark hair, wearing a pink dress and black patent leather Mary Jane shoes, and Johnnie’s big voice rolls out from beside me in an entirely different tone.

  “Why, Patsy-pet, don’t you know your own sister, come home this minute from New York City?”

  8

  I KNOW I’M supposed to say something, call out some greeting, open up my arms so I can embrace this baby sister of mine, who is growing fast into a beauty far more breath-stopping than even her mama. But my limbs seem to have taken on some strange disease of paralysis, some untoward stiffening, while my belly contracts into a hard and sickening ball. Only my heart moves, knocking dizzily into my ribs.

  Patsy-pet displays no such symptoms of physical malady. She skips right on across all that Oriental rug and into Johnnie’s chest—he’s lowered himself to his knees to accommodate her tiny frame—and just sort of peers round his ear and into my face like she can’t decide am I friend or am I foe.

  I sort of squeak, “Well now. I was wondering where you got to.”

  Patsy whispers something in Johnnie’s ear, just exactly the way he used to whisper in mine, and he nods that head of his and lifts her right up into the air, settling her on his hip, and turns to me.

  “Say hello to Geneva Rose,” he tells her.

  “Hello, Geneva Rose.”