The Stranger Behind You

by Carol Goodman

  My new friend, Melissa, has another explanation. “Repressed trauma. You subconsciously knew that Simon was the one who had attacked you but you couldn’t face that so you made up a sweet, dotty old lady whose story mirrored yours: innocent young girl in the city betrayed by charming older man.”

  “But I didn’t make up all that stuff about Murder Inc. and Abe Reles and the Half Moon Hotel and William O’Dwyer,” I object. “A lot of that really happened.”

  “You did research,” Melissa tells me, producing for me a file of articles she’d copied from the Internet on Murder Inc. “And then incorporated it into the story ‘Lillian’”—she puts up her fingers in air quotes, which unnervingly makes me feel as if Lillian herself might appear in the air between her hands—“told you. It’s a great story—I’m doing a little research myself right now to see if she was a real person. When you finish the book on Cass you should write one on Lillian.”

  One of the odder sequelae—a word I’ve learned from my occupational therapist—of my trauma has been acquiring Melissa Osgood as the most vocal champion of my book exposing her husband’s misconduct. She’s agreed to be interviewed for it, a coup that made my publisher more than happy to grant me a three-month extension. In addition, Melissa has made it her mission to oversee my recovery and get me in shape to write it by personally managing my “rehab team” of therapists. She also makes me get out every afternoon for a brisk walk together through Inwood Park, during which I am to report on my writing progress for the day.

  Nor are there any interruptions from the little old lady next door. My real elderly neighbor is a retired accountant named Phyllis Breen (née Schwartzman), whom Enda took me to visit when I got home to prove to me that no one was hiding Lillian Day in a closet. Phyllis is a congenial, sharp-tongued plump woman in a housedress who hasn’t left her apartment since “the second Bush administration” and spends her days watching CNN and doing crossword puzzles. She thanked me for the Milanos, told me she preferred Entenmann’s, and invited me to stop by for coffee anytime (Tea? Blech! Might as well drink dishwater!).

  “I thought it was a little odd when you said your elderly neighbor was visiting you,” Enda said after the visit to Phyllis, “but I didn’t want to suggest . . .”

  “That I was delusional?” I finished for him. Enda’s become a friend as well. If tackling Wally Shanahan to keep her from shooting me hadn’t been enough to endear him to me, the fact that he visited me every other day in the hospital, bearing grapes and gossip magazines, would have. He’s still a little careful around me, though, as if I’m a cracked teacup that might come apart in his hands.

  “Actually,” he said, “I wondered if you might not be entertaining a ghost.”

  That was Enda’s explanation for Lillian. “It wouldn’t be the first reported ghost at the Refuge,” Enda told me when I scoffed. He produced for me a dozen “sightings” on a website called “Haunted Inwood” and a drove of data he’d unearthed from files left behind by the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in the basement when the Refuge was closed, including a file for one Lily Anne O’Day.

  Lillian was real.

  Or at least, she had been. She was born in 1923 in Brooklyn, New York, and was remanded, at age eighteen, on the charge of prostitution, to the Refuge. A note from the admitting nun read:

  Lily is an intelligent and pretty young girl who had no trouble with the law until her mother died of rheumatic heart disease. Since her mother’s death, though, the family has descended into crime and loose morals. Two of the boys, who were remanded to St. John’s House, have been arrested for petty thievery and vagrancy. The younger brother, Tommy, was involved in a shooting in August and is serving a three-year sentence in Sing Sing prison on the charge of manslaughter. Lily herself spoke in her brother’s defense at the trial and made frequent entreaties of the police to treat her brother with leniency in consideration of the hardship of losing their mother. “He would never be in this difficulty had our poor mother been alive today,” Lily told me.

  All of which was exactly what Lillian—my Lillian, be she ghost or hallucination—had told me.

  But how had I known about Lillian’s life? She didn’t appear in any of the coverage of the Murder Inc. trials. The only woman referred to was someone named Rose O’Grady, a mobster’s girlfriend whom the press dubbed “The Black Rose.” There were stories about her: that she wound up at the Magdalen Refuge in Inwood but then vanished mysteriously, never to be heard from again. She was one of the legendary ghosts of the neighborhood, celebrated at our local pub, and clearly I could have read about her and conjured her in my disordered brain.

  Only I hadn’t been visited by a ghost named Rose; I’d entertained her best friend, Lillian.

  Thinking about it made my poor recovering brain ache and so I put away the files and took down the Post-its and articles about the Half Moon Hotel and Murder Inc. and concentrated on writing my book and doing my physical therapy and getting out regularly. By Christmas I surprise myself by finishing a (very) rough draft. I’ll still need that three-month extension to get it in good enough shape to turn in to my editor, but at least I’ve got the bones of the story down. It’s not quite the story I’d set out to write, but then I’m not quite the same person I was when I began it.

  When I report my progress to Melissa she says, “Congratulations! Let me know when it’s coming out so I can go out of town for a few weeks.”

  I know she’s only half joking. Although she’s been completely cooperative in our interviews, I know how painful it has been to face how deluded she’d been by her husband.

  “You’re not alone,” I tell her. “Look at how I was fooled by Simon. I still have trouble understanding how he could have encouraged me to write the story when he knew that he’d helped Cass evade the law. And all because of some stupid club membership!”

  “It wasn’t just the club,” Melissa says, “although I can see how galling that must have been to Simon. He wanted more than anything to belong to Cass’s world. In college he thought he could get that by imitating Cass and writing his papers to buy his friendship, and later, his news stories. That night at the Hi-Line he must have thought he could buy entry into that world by hiding Cass’s secrets. When he found out that Cass had blackballed him he must have realized that he’d always be on the outside and the only hold he’d have over Cass was to hurt him.”

  “It seems so childish,” I say.

  She nods. “Yes, but who of us doesn’t act like a child sometimes? Speaking of which, are you going to your mother’s for Christmas?”

  Since Melissa’s been spending more time with her kids—who often slept over, brought friends, played their music too loud, got into shouting matches over dinner, came home late from trivia night at the Black Rose, and generally made their mother happy—she’s become an advocate for me spending more time with my mother.

  “Yes,” I tell her, “so you can cross me off your to-do list.” I’m immediately sorry for that last bit. Melissa’s ferocious efficiency saved my life, got me off my ass, and kept AJ from being deported.

  “Good,” she says, “because I’m starting a new job next week as assistant editor at a new digital media company and I’ll expect you to pitch me a story after the holidays. Stop by before you go—I have presents for you and your mom.”

  THERE’S A HOLIDAY air to the Metro-North Marble Hill station, passengers carrying festive packages, the sun turning the ice on the Spuyten Duyvil silver, the steam from the approaching train white and puffy as snowbanks, the brisk air shimmering with a crystalline clarity that makes everything stand out like an etching. Or maybe it just feels good to be out in the fresh air, clear-eyed, taking a train home for the holidays. I sit on the left side of the train and watch the river glittering in the bright sunlight, thinking about Lillian riding on the train picnicking on pastrami sandwiches and cream sodas . . . But of course, I made all that up.

  I root in Melissa’s gift bag to find what she had given me. There were two pack
ages for me: a thin, eight-by-eleven-sized package labeled “Open First” and a small jewelry box labeled “Open Second.”

  Leave it to Melissa to be bossy, even with gift opening.

  Neither said “Don’t Open Until Christmas,” though, so I open the large package first. Inside is a handsome paper portfolio in a beautiful shade of duck’s-egg blue embossed in gold with my monogram. It’s the kind of thing people Melissa’s age used to hold their résumés or copies of their newest reviews. Kind of retro, but classy. I open it up—and find three pages of typescript. A letter, I think, taking the sheets out.

  It is a letter, but not to me. It’s to Melissa from the New York City medical examiner. The subject line reads: Remains found near recovered body of Simon Wallace.

  Not exactly cheery holiday reading. I put it away as we come into Croton-Harmon, where I have to transfer to the Amtrak train to Albany. Why would Melissa give me a letter about remains? I have tried not to think about Simon’s broken body on the rocks below the Refuge. I have told myself that he must have lost his balance and slipped. There was no “Lillian” there to push him, and surely I had not been in any shape to do it.

  Unless I’ve conveniently forgotten doing it before I blacked out.

  When I get on the next train I open the portfolio, take out the letter from the ME, and read.

  Dear Ms. Osgood,

  I’ve been told that the information you requested has been made available since the inquiry into Mr. Wallace’s death has been closed. And since you were instrumental in directing the forensic team to the additional remains I am happy to supply you with what we have learned from them.

  The bone fragments wedged in between the rocks below where Mr. Wallace’s body was found (see figure 1) were, indeed, human remains. They belonged to a female, probably in her late teens to early twenties, who died from blunt-force trauma to the skull, likely caused by the fall from the roof of the building adjacent to the site. In addition, below these bones, the forensic team found remains of a male, age unknown. He, too, had signs of trauma to the skull and spine, but in addition there is splintering of the sternum and rib cage consistent with a bullet wound. It’s impossible to tell if he died from the fall or the bullet wound, but it is clear that he was shot. The proximity of the bones and similar stages of decomposition suggest that they died at the same time. It cannot be determined with any certainty what that time was, but deterioration of the bones suggest sometime in the middle of the last century.

  Any clothing the two subjects wore has long since deteriorated. There were a few metal buttons recovered with the remains and a discharged bullet, but it’s impossible to tell if they were associated with the subjects. The only other evidence clearly connected to the remains is a thin gold chain around the female’s neck. Any ornament that may have been on that chain broke off in the fall and was not recovered with the remains.

  The medical examiner’s office will hold on to the remains for sixty days, when they will be interred in Potter’s Field unless a relative claims them, which seems unlikely. Do let me know, though, if you discover any pertinent information.

  At some point in reading my hand has drifted to my throat, where it stays, fingers touching my breastbone in the spot where Lillian’s locket had rested. I’d asked about the locket in the hospital but they said I hadn’t been wearing one when I came in.

  Of course I hadn’t. There’d been no locket because there’d been no Lillian to give it to me.

  And even if there had been a locket, it could have been an old piece of jewelry I’d found somewhere. Nothing to do with anonymous bones lying for decades amid the rocks below the Refuge. A woman and a man who fell together after the man was shot—

  I remembered Lillian’s face as she stood on the rooftop looking toward the skylight—a look of anguish, followed by a flinch as if at a loud noise, and then her face lighting up as if she had realized something. What was it she had said?

  It wasn’t him.

  At the last moment she had realized that Frank was not there to kill her. He was trying to save her, only he was shot and they fell together to the rocks.

  Except I had imagined all that.

  I shake my head and open the smaller package with trembling hands. It’s a blue Tiffany box. Melissa has probably bought me some overpriced bauble—

  But the thing inside is clearly not from Tiffany’s—at least, not recently. It’s a gold oval locket, dented and corroded at the hinges, the design on its face nearly rubbed smooth. When I hold it up to the window I can make out, in the sharp light off the river, that it’s two intertwined flowers—a lily and a rose.

  MY MOTHER PICKS me up at the station and drives us back to the house—up the steep hill, past the one-room post office with its classical columns, down a winding road lined with old dry-laid stone walls and apple orchards, to the old white farmhouse where I grew up.

  Just as Lillian described in her visit to Rose. More proof, if I needed any, that I’d made up Lillian out of bits of my past (locket in my pocket notwithstanding). How far gone must I have been not to recognize the details of my own childhood home.

  Who could forget the particular quiet and peace of the farmhouse surrounded by apple trees on a ridge overlooking the Hudson? The old house looks newly whitewashed by snow and blue sky, framed against deep-green pines and the blue ridges of the Catskill Mountains on the other side of the river. Closer up, though, I notice the paint is chipped and the porch stairs slope to one side.

  If the book does well it wouldn’t kill you to put some money into its upkeep, I surprise myself by thinking. The house has always seemed more like a trap than a haven, but maybe all havens are a little of both. Inside it smells, as it always has, of woodsmoke and apples.

  “Put your stuff down and come say hello to Grandma in the kitchen. She’s been waiting all morning to see you.”

  I find that unlikely, but I drop my bags and obediently enter the old kitchen with its wide plank floors, tin sink, chipped enamel stove.

  “Hi, Grandma,” I say, approaching her favorite chair by the woodstove. She has a photo album splayed open on her lap and she’s looking out the window at a view of apple trees and mountains. When she turns to look at me, her blue eyes are as vivid as the sky outside. She smiles politely. As you would for a stranger.

  “It’s Joan,” I say, pulling over a kitchen chair and sitting down close enough that she’ll be able to see and hear me. “Your granddaughter. Anne’s daughter.”

  “Joan,” she dutifully repeats. “Like Joan of Arc.”

  Yet another detail I cribbed for “Lillian.”

  “Yes, like Joan of Arc. I bet she was your favorite of the saints.”

  She looks confused and I immediately feel guilty. Then she looks down at the album in her lap and says, “No, but she was Lily’s favorite.”

  “Lily?” I say, feeling suddenly chilled, as if I’d brought the contagion of my brain damage into this snug, safe kitchen.

  She nods and opens the album. It is not, as I expected, a family photo album. It contains Xeroxed copies of articles and pictures. My grandmother turns the pages slowly until she finds one of an imposing stone building. “Poor Lily. I lost her here.”

  I look closer at the picture and see that it’s of the Refuge. On the facing page is an article about two girls who went missing there. “Mom,” I say, turning to my mother, who’s studiously checking on something in the oven. “Where did you get these?”

  “From your wall,” she says, coming over and laying down a dish towel on the butcher block. “When I saw them I realized they seemed familiar. Some from your grandmother’s stories . . .” She reaches over to turn the pages. “The Kiss of Death Girl, Eddie Silver, the Half Moon Hotel . . . I figured you must have woven those details into your . . . projections.”

  “You mean my hallucinations.”

  “I thought it might help you understand them if you could connect the details to Grandma’s stories. So I showed these to her and . . . well, at firs
t they upset her . . .”

  My grandmother turns a page and taps a blunt fingernail on a picture of Eddie Silver. “It was my fault Lily went with him . . .” Her voice warbles and then breaks off.

  “Did you tell her about Lillian?” I ask as she blots a tear from my grandmother’s cheek.

  My mother bites her lip as she would when I went off on one of my teenage rants. “No,” she says finally, pulling up a chair beside me. “I never mentioned any Lillian or Lily. But when I showed her this . . .” She flips to the drawing of the girl known as the Black Rose and my grandmother laughs.

  “That’s me,” she says, tapping the picture. “When I was young and pretty.”

  “But your name is May, Grandma,” I say, hating the prim tone of my voice—but hating more that my grandmother has somehow fallen prey to my delusions.

  “Changed it,” she says, leaning close and lowering her voice. “So Eddie’s men wouldn’t find me. Joe always called me Mary, but I liked May and when he didn’t come back from the war . . .” Her voice warbles again and I reach out and squeeze her hand.

  “You don’t have to do this, Grandma, if it upsets you.”

  She squeezes back. “I wondered then if what Sister Dolores had said was true, that I was being punished for living a sinful life. First poor Lily—” She raises her hands to her eyes where they flutter like moths beating up against a lit windowpane. “She was trying to give me time to get down the ladder. Go, Rose! she told me. I’ll keep him back. When I was halfway down the ladder I heard a gunshot and then I saw them both fall. Him first, but holding on to the chain at her neck, the locket I’d given back to her to keep her safe, with both our flowers, the lily and the rose. Only it didn’t keep her safe at all.” Her frail voice is rising into the panic so familiar from my childhood. “We’re none of us safe. Not ever!”

  “Lily is,” I say, pulling out the locket and pressing it into her hand. “Lily’s safe at last. She wanted me to give you this and tell you not to be afraid anymore. The bad men are all gone. They can’t hurt you—or her—anymore.”