“Wait, Pickles hadn’t—”
“No, I swear I saw’r it. Pickles was standin’ off. Vincent Maher shot him.”
“An’ ya told the jury on the witness stand it was Pickles did it,” Anna nods.
Grace looks at Kit, then back to Anna, “I did. I said it was Pickles.”
“Why?”
“The Swede.”
“What about The Swede?”
“The Swede told me that if I tell the truth to the jury that Vincent shot Christie Maroney, then he’d kill me an’ Kit an’ my mother an’ everyone else. That sayin’ it was Pickles was the only way I could save us. So I lied. I’m a liar. But while I’m alive I should tell the truth and shame the devil,” Grace’s eyes go white. “But ya know me, Anna. I’m not a liar. Am I?”
“No, ya the sweetest person I ever knew.”
“But I lied on the witness stand, they call that perjury. I looked it up.”
“Ya did it to save ya mother, Grace. It’s no crime if ya lie for ya fam’ly. It’s not even a sin.”
“I. . . I don’ know, but now there’s this,” Grace sits up and walks over to a drawer in the open kitchen and takes out a piece of paper, then sits down cross-legged again. “A patrolman served me it.”
“What is it?” Anna looks at it.
“It’s a subpoena. Patrolman Culkin had me sign for it.”
“Culkin,” Kit repeats as if she were spitting out a rotten piece of meat.
“Yeah, ya favorite customer,” Grace turns from the subpoena. “The one that makes ya wrap up his testicles in leather bounds an’ wallop them with his own blackjack.”
“What?” Anna recoils. “Is that true?”
Kit’s eyes roll upward as she shrugs, “He says he needs to be punished. I dunno.”
Grace goes on, “Anyhow Patrolman Culkin told me he is head o’ the investigation behind his father-in-law’r’s disappearance.”
“An’ ya signed ya real name, didn’ ya?” Kit hisses.
“Well I can’t lie no more,” Grace opens her palms and shrugs. “I don’ wanna go back up on the witness stand. I don’ wanna see The Swede’s face ever again.”
“But doesn’t Vincent come to the Adonis all the time to see ya?”
“See me, she says,” Grace laughs. “He sees me alright. He’s my best customer. He pays twice what anybody else does, an’ ya know why he does that, right?”
Anna and Kit nod.
“He came to see me at the Adonis the other day an’,” Grace looks to Anna. “An’ he asked about ya.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, he said somethin’ about how ya ‘full-fledged’ now. He likes to call ya a ripe tomato an’ he says, ‘tell Anna I’m the Queensolver.’”
“What does that mean?”
Kit snorts, “It means he only thinks wit’ his little head.”
But Grace just shrugs and rolls her eyes, then wraps her long, thin arms round her stomach and bends forward, “I’m scared.”
“Ya have to tell them ya were intimidated,” Anna says. “Tell them it was The Swede. His real name is James Finnigan. An’ ya should ask for protection. Ask Patrolman Culkin an’ Reilly to provide protection.”
“Then what? I have to move from here? I like it here.”
“I. . . don’ know, maybe?” Anna wonders.
“I was just a kid back then, they shouldn’t make me go back up on the witness stand again.”
But if you do, Pickles will get released and Bill will get his army, Anna realizes. Her thoughts run quickly. If I can convince her to do it. . .
“Ya should make right for when ya lied, Grace,” Anna advises.
Kit looks at Anna sideways, “Yeah, g’ahead, we’ll put that on ya gravestone, ‘I told the truth, look where it got me.’”
“It’s the only way to fix the guilt that looms over ya,” Anna says.
“What about The Swede?”
“Ya’re right, the tunics aren’t gonna provide protection for ya. I got another idear though. I know someone who can help us.”
“Really Anna? Who can help us?”
What am I doing? Do I really want this? Do I really want to end my hiding?
“Let me worry about that,” Anna stands.
“Wait,” Grace touches her hand. “It’s ya turn to tell me a secret. I told ya mine, now ya gotta tell me why ya get so shattered wit’ the drink and who Neesha is.”
Anna lowers her eyes.
“It’s only fair,” Kit says.
“I know that ya father is. . . He’s not a good man,” Grace’s voice is near a whisper as she looks for Anna’s eyes. “Did he take ya purity first?”
“No,” Anna pulls away. “He’s guilty o’ a lotta shit, but not that. But I did see him carry off my mother. . . A lot. An’ every time I saw’r her belly big wit’ another child, well—”
“It made ya sad?”
“No, angry.”
“Anna, why do ya let people think that ya prostituted ya’self? When Bill called ya a slattern in front o’ ya brother, ya didn’t say nothin’ back. Now everyone thinks ya sold ya’self to pay for ya fam’ly.”
“That wouldn’t be a sin, remember?”
“Well, but—”
“People believe what they want, not what’s true or factual. The whole world’s built on lies by men. I ain’t a slave to their idears an’ I ain’t a slave to the word ‘slattern.’ Let them think what they want, it don’ matter. Anyhow, I want them to think less o’ me.”
“Why?” Grace’s mouth goes small in disbelief.
“Because I wanna—” Anna stops herself, then takes a deep breath. “Because I just wanna hide from all o’ that now. An’ the best way to remove myself from expectations is to let them think the worst about me. Better that way.”
“But why do ya wanna hide? From ya fam’ly, o’ all people?” Grace turns to Kit. “If only Kit an’ I had a more o’ a fam’ly, maybe we wouldn’t be in the pickle we’re in t’day, holed up in a house for whorin’ hens. But ya throw away the gift o’ fam’ly?”
Damn you, Grace. Damnit that hurts.
“Ya don’ know what it’s like to have so many in ya fam’ly thrust all kinds o’ expectation on ya everyday—”
“I wish I did,” Grace interrupts.
“Same here,” Kit agrees.
“Who is Neesha then?” Grace asks.
Neesha, my love. My prince.
Anna’s stomach turns when she hears his name, and she bites at a loose piece of skin on the cuticle of her middle finger, “I can’t tell ya.”
“Anna? Ya promised.”
“No I didn’t. Anyhow I already told ya a secret, that I’m hidin’ here,” Suddenly a rush of pain shoots into the back of Anna’s head again and everything starts to spin. Black spots appear in front of her eyes and sounds come from her that she had never heard herself utter before. Moans of fear. Laments of grief. Pain so deep that the ache reaches far into her chest. Before she can gain control of herself again, she is prostrate on the ground with big tears dropping onto the wood floor.
“Sweetness,” Grace’s voice goes soft and is colored with a sympathizing tone, which makes Anna’s chest heave. Her sobs are so strong now that she must take deep breaths to fill her lungs with air while salty tears stream into the corners of her mouth. Kit scoots closer to her when Anna curls into a fetal position. Grace lifts her head and puts it on her thigh and softly wraps strands of Anna’s red hair round her ear, soothing her with gentle strokes across the scalp.
But I want to tell them so bad. I want to. I want to.
“Ya were in love,” Grace realizes. “Was it real love? Was it true?”
Anna bursts into tears again. Spittle lands on the wood floor in front of her. She nods her head and turns her eyes to the ring on her left finger. It’s amber color shines in her wetted view. It looks like a wreath of laurel that wraps delicately round her finger. Gold like her lion’s mane.
Crown me king, and you will be Queen, he told her. I live inside a
nother now. But who?
The realization sparks joy in Grace’s eye and she grabs Anna’s hand and pulls her ring finger close, “Ya got married? Is this a weddin’ ring? Ya told me it was passed down in ya fam’ly. But there ain’t a diamond? Anna?”
“I. . . I almost got married, but he—” The words are too heavy in her mouth. They bear so much weight that she struggles to lift them to her lips. She had never said the words aloud since Neesha had. . . died. She had never said his real name since that terrifying morning when she found out. Only in dreams does his name exist now. And keeping the secret of their secret love is all that gives her heart.
In dreams. That is where he lives forever, in dreams. He is a myth now. Neesha, my love. My prince. His real name was. . . I can’t, I can’t even think it.
She sits up at the thought that the man she fell in love with so quickly and so deeply. . . still lives. Yes, he lives, even more beautifully than ever, and it scares her. Shocks her so badly that she fears she is losing her grip and that she may fall. Fall to him. Again. In the Otherworld.
If I surrender to him, then I will know I am mad.
Too many nights she had woken up in belief that she was with him. So many times that she blurs the line between dreaming and wakefulness. She prefers dreaming, of course, where she could see him. His big face and flaxen mane. His hands brushing against her like the wind, their bodies merged in the moonlight as they had been in real life. It felt so good to have him inside her again. So close that she could feel him from within. With words, when he was alive, he poured his heart into her ears like molten gold. Pouring so truly that she had let go of the hate that had kept her alive through the countless trials and tragedies of her childhood.
Now, when they are together in her dreams, every muscle in her body relaxes and she drifts away. Even begins to surrender to him. But at the precipice, she would look up and see another man’s face. A grotesque man with a black mask that half-covered horrific scars. Scars that leak pus onto her. Into her mouth. It had happened so often in her dreams now that she no longer trusts herself to give in because as soon as she does, her Neesha turns into a monster.
In the dreams where Neesha turns, a snowstorm rages outside and dawn cuts across the eastern sky like a razor on skin bleeding orange light. She longs to drift away again and surrender to his loving words and live there forever, but it would mean her sanity.
She looks at her two friends.
I’m ready. I trust them, she thinks to herself, then finds their eyes and speaks.
“It was Mickey Kane. Neesha is Mickey Kane.”
“Ya were in love wit’ Mickey Kane?” Grace’s eyes go big. “That’s why ya dragged us down to Red Hook after the storm? An’. . . He gave ya that ring?”
She nods and struggles to get words from her throat, “I told him once that I thought it was beautyful that a passionflower could grow outta somethin’ as ugly as a simple vine.” The tears boil out of Anna’s eyes again. “He said that was what made me more beautyful than anyone he’d ever met because. . . because I grew outta the trash heap o’ Brooklyn. Then he got me this as a symbol, it’s a wreath-o’-vine.”
“But why do ya call him Neesha?”
She swallows and palms at her wet eyes, “It was dumb. Borne o’ the imagination lovers have, I s’pose. So silly, but so meaningful to me. The stories I heard growin’ up like the ol’ Irish myths an’ whatnot, ya know? There’s this story o’ two lovers who run away together. Dierdre is her name, Neesha is his, but it’s spellt different. I think it’s Gaelic spelling.”
Kit tilts her head, “I remember that story. Dierdre o’ the Sorrows, it’s called.”
“Yeah, her sorrows are mine now. Just like in the story, he gets killt. Ya see,” Anna clears her throat. “I hung on his neck like fox fur on a golden prince, but what I didn’t know was that I am, in truth, an albatross. We were gonna get married an’ run off forever, but then the storm. . . Then—”
Kit holds her heart and shakes her head slowly in realization.
Grace covers her mouth with both hands and speaks through them, “Ya own brother, Richie. Richie killt’ him!”
“It wasn’t his fault!” Anna screams and holds hands over her ears. “It’s not Richie’s fault!”
“An’ Mickey paid for ya fam’ly. That’s where ya got the money from. I can’t believe—”
A knock comes to the door that halts Grace in mid sentence. She and Kit wheel toward the sound, then look at each other.
“Who could that be? Lucy again?” Anna comes to her feet and wipes the memory of Neesha from her eyes.
Grace tiptoes to the door on long, thin legs and touches it gently with painted fingernails, “Who is it?”
A younger man’s voice comes through, “Anna, we know ya’re in there. Ya can’t hide forever.”
In Mockery of Honor
“I’m John Carter!” The boy screams and jumps on the hotel bed with the big book open and above his head.
Sadie Meehan’s concern turns to a smile when she sees her son look to her. She then turns back to the window and moves the curtain to the side where a collection of black motorcar taxis roll into the car park below. A gaggle of women spill out and bunch together in the cold like winter geese. They wear gowns and cabbage rose hats pulled tight with chiffons, even mink stoles, and are not accompanied by men, save the drivers.
“I’m a super hero,” Sadie’s son calls out again. “I’m John Carter!”
“Let’s just keep it to John,” Sadie turns a half-smile to him again.
“Uhright.”
“An’ where are we?”
He raises the book over his head again and announces, “We are in the Valley Dor, in the Barsoomian afterlife!”
“An’ why can’t we leave?”
“We’re prohibited, but we can escape if we—”
“Later, John. Later, alright? We’re to stay ‘ere for a bit, yeah?”
“Uhright.”
To convince her son to accept a name change, she had to turn it into a game. The Name Game. She explained to him that while they are “on holiday,” he could pretend to be someone else. Someone new. Instead of L’il Dinny, as he’d been called all his life, they would call him John.
The Gods of Mars is John’s favorite book. It is also the most complex story she has ever read to him, but he is able to keep up with the plot. And the more he learns, the more he wants to learn.
“That kid’s got the smarts,” Happy Maloney crutches out of the hotel bathroom with shaving cream on his face. “He’s already a better reader than I am an’ he’s only six.”
Since she could not use her married name while in hiding, they lied and signed the hotel receipt as “Mr. Maloney, wife & son.”
Here, in the Barsoomian Afterlife I am the wife of a Great War veteran, Sadie snickers as she watches the women in the car park below the hotel window.
In the real world Happy Maloney lost his leg in France. Happy earned his nickname from being happy-go-lucky, and he still is, but a dark twinkle had appeared in his eyes since a landmine exploded close to him that left his leg in ribbons. She had only seen that dark shadow in his eyes two or three times since living together in the hotel. He hid it well, but took orders from Sadie with a happy-go-lucky willingness.
What choice has he? I’m the wife of the King of Irishtown and he is but a finger on the White Hand. Here to protect me. Or is he?
Instead of checking Sadie’s identification, the hotelier shook Happy’s hand and thanked him for his service. That was when she saw the newspaper article on the hotelier’s desk about her real husband, Dinny Meehan:
The Most Desperate Gang Leader
in Brooklyn Incarcerated
When Happy had turned away with John, she followed without acknowledging the hotelier’s staring eyes. That was when she felt a hand grab at her arm, startling her.
“Please let me know if there is anything I can personally provide for ya, mam,” He began to lift her hand to his lips u
ntil her son John called back to her.
“Mummy! C’mon.”
The hotelier quickly let her hand go, smiled a three-toothed smile and scuttled back toward his desk. When he disappeared behind a partition wall, she snapped up the newspaper.
Dinny had been arrested for robbing the Hanan & Sons shoe factory. Since then he’d been released. But with Detective William Brosnan now missing, the investigators have named him a suspect as well as the recently returned “Wild Bill” Lovett.
No, she cannot use her married name. She has to hide that too.
The women in the car park below the hotel window continue to talk and linger and laugh. Nothing seems to worry them as if their numbers protect them from the predators. As if they haven’t a care in the world, other than petty pleasures. And where their children are, Sadie could only guess. She has always been chained to her child. A woman is never free of her children, but for the mother who abandons them comes the enslavement of scorn. But the women below seem free enough, even from guilt.
I have got to get out of this room, Sadie looks away from the window. I’m getting cabin fever.
How many months had she been locked up in hiding, she can’t even remember. Time is passing quickly, though she seems to imagine things more now. Fantasize about the outside world, she turns inward. Fictions arise.
That’s what happens when you’re imprisoned like a woman in a tower cell. You start seeing things that aren’t there.
Even before she escaped Brooklyn Sadie was confined to her Warren Street Brownstone tower while Vincent Maher stood guard downstairs. Dinny said Vincent was only there as a precaution, but Sadie could never tell if he had her on a pedestal, or in a cage.
She turns her eyes to Happy Maloney and clenches her teeth.
My husband’s men are always nearby to guard the woman in the tower.
But sometimes that could be a good thing. When a man tried to shame her on the street in Brooklyn for marrying the White Hand, Vincent dragged him away. She heard later that Vincent had shoved his .38 up the man’s arse and threatened to shoot it if he ever troubled her again. Of course, she never saw the man after that.
Still, it’s hard not to think of yourself as a possession when all you see is your own walls and your child. A sheltered and protected life is better than the itinerant poverty of her childhood, but it was not her choice.
Divide the Dawn- Fight Page 24
