by Ed Ifkovic
“It’s Christmas.” A twinkle in her eye. “You got Christmas in the city?”
“You know we’re from the city?”
“Don’t take no Sherlock Holmes. From the looks of you. Expensive furs and that man”—she pointed an accusing finger at Noel—“with the fancy-schmancy cigarette holder like he’s the king of England. And that hat that makes him look like one of the Wright brothers.”
Noel started to say something but sputtered to a stop.
“I’m Edna Ferber and this is Noel Coward.”
She had no idea who we were. An expression that said: Good for you.
“I’m Angela D’Angelo. Owner, proprietress of this here general store. Closed today. Christmas, as I say. You two heathens?”
“Yes, and proudly,” Noel said.
She tapped on the car door. “You, ma’am, is shivering from the cold.”
“That I am. The window is down and…”
She looked up and down the deserted road and scratched her neck. Stepping back, she grasped the back of the shovel she’d stuck in the snow. She was watching us closely, head tilted to the side, a quizzical smile on her face. “Time for my Christmas dinner.” She looked into my face. “You two look like harmless folks. Not your usual ax murderers and holy-roller born-again crusaders. Perhaps you’d like a bite to eat. As I said, it’s Christmas.” A sly grin. “Even for heathens from the big city.”
I looked at Noel as he shot a glance back at me, puzzled. I shrugged. “A pleasure.”
“Edna,” Noel admonished, “do you think…?”
Angela D’Angelo said, “If he ain’t comfortable with an old lady what’s a good cook, maybe he can stay in the car. We can bring him treats like he’s an old ornery dog.”
Noel burst out laughing. “Dinner is served.”
“You bet it is.”
We followed her through the aisles of the general store, headed to a back stairwell. Uneven floorboards, old-fashioned pegged wood, creaky, spongy, the feel of an old barn, musty. Starved shelves, I noticed: wooden racks with scattered canned goods, bolts of fabric, hardware tools, sets of crockery. A cracker barrel nearly empty of flour. A molasses jar. For a moment I was taken back to my father’s failed general store in Appleton, Wisconsin. My Store, his quaint name for the emporium that struggled to find customers. So much like this meager emporium with its mishmash of sundry goods for sale. A momentary tug at my heart as I remembered the lonely aisles and my father sitting in front, quietly waiting for business.
She caught my eye. “Folks ain’t got much money to spend, especially when you got nothing to sell them.”
At the top landing, unlit and cluttered with old wooden crates, Angela opened the door a sliver, peeped in, then smiled back at us. “Make sure the dog ain’t gonna run down the stairs.”
Little chance of that, I figured, as I spotted the ancient orange dog lazily watching us, rheum-eyed and indolent, from a corner of a sofa. For a second an ancient tail wagged, but then stopped, the dog yawning, closing its eyes.
“Better hang that coat on a high hook.” Angela indicated my chinchilla. “Leroy might think it’s one of his long-lost relatives come to visit, and try to greet it warmly.”
I stepped into the warm room, breathed in, and smiled. On the cast-iron kitchen stove a covered pot of simmering sauce, pungent, spicy. On the linoleum counter loaves of fresh bread wrapped in bleached-white dishtowels. Water at a low boil in a huge cast-iron pot. Intoxicating, all of it, mouth-watering.
“Sit yourselves down at the table,” she directed. “I made a heap of food, always do, bad habit in such times, but I was hoping my daughter and grandkids could make the trek from Worchester. But no bus money this year. But I was hoping. You never know.” A smile, infectious. “A Christmas miracle in a time when there ain’t no miracles.”
Noel was eyeing the steaming loaves of bread. He whispered to me. “Once again the Bible had it all wrong. There is actually room at the inn.”
Angela fussed around, banging pots, pulling china from a Hoosier cabinet, setting dishes on the kitchen table. “You like grappa,” she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. She poured the blood-red liquid into tall glass tumblers and watched as we took tentative sips. Potent, hair-chilling, wholly satisfying. “There’s dandelion wine if this ain’t your cup of tea.”
“No,” Noel told her, “this tea is just what the doctor ordered.”
She watched him closely. “Call the cops.” She chuckled at her own joke. “Prohibition and my dead husband taught me how to break the law.”
We ate quietly, both of us ravenous, our heads bent over the plates while Angela picked at her own plate, her curious eyes on us. Piles of thick spaghetti, homemade, she told us, glistening yellow strands buried under a robust tomato sauce spiced with basil, oregano, garlic, and God-knows-what other mysterious and tantalizing spices. Meatballs the size of tennis balls, lopsided and flaky, sprigs of parsley peaking out of the meat. That Italian bread, crusty and golden on the outside, warm and chewy inside, slathered in home-churned butter.
We were drunk with it all, Noel and I, barbarians at the Roman feast.
We ravished and celebrated that simple meal, unabashedly, maddingly. Rail-thin Noel, as finicky an eater as God put on this earth, a man who cut the edges off his toast and insisted food was a delaying extravagance before an evening of wit and charm, transformed himself into a giddy glutton. He smacked his lips, which surprised even him. His eyes danced. When he caught my eye, he laughed out loud. “Lord, Edna, I’m acting like an American.”
Angela sat back, thrilled, eyes bright, her hands folded in her lap, watching.
You saw a heavy-set woman whose generous bosom strained the old housedress she wore, a seam spilt at the side revealing a white cotton slip beneath. Chubby arms with stubby fingers, her nails blackened, chipped. A round, pancake face with tiny mouse eyes over a stub nose. Her hair, freed from that snowcap, was a Minerva tangle of iron-gray curls, uncombed. Bushy grayish eyebrows, wild like the eyes of old potatoes in the winter bin. A plain face, enlivened by those small marble blue eyes. Parchment skin, chapped from the wind and snow perhaps, but a light crimson flush in her cheeks. The bright overhead light gave her a girlish look. Majestic, I thought, and wonderful—Neysa McMein needed to paint her. The hell with those insipid, cherry-cheeked all-American girls.
“All right,” she announced as she placed an old blue enamel coffee pot onto the stove, “time to answer questions you got and are bursting to ask me.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Talking to people is my Christmas treat, I have to tell you.”
“No,” Noel told her, “sitting in this room is our treat.”
“Then we’re even. Okay, now we’re done telling one another how blessed we are.” She chuckled for a while. Then, abruptly, she said, “The Roswells. Everybody talked about that family.”
“Why?” I sat up.
“Because they sort of wanted you to talk about them. This here is a tiny town, everybody knows everybody else. Folks go to the Congregational Church or to St. Peter’s Catholic over to Bridgeport. That family went nowhere.”
“That’s why folks talked about them?” I asked.
“Naw,” she said. “Maybe a little. Peoples’ religion is their own business. God don’t care what pew you sit in. But you see, the old man bought that decrepit farm, and he don’t know nothing about truck farming. Tomatoes withered on the vine, cucumbers looked like twigs. Green peppers like a schoolboy’s marbles. You get the picture? He worked in a factory over to Bridgeport. But his wife was an old vaudeville performer—or circus. Never knew what it was actually. Sort of high-strung, the woman. She’s the one who pushed her kids to perform. And perform, they did. School chorales, glee clubs, 4-H meetings, community theater, sing-alongs if you looked twice in their direction. Dancing fools, all of them.”
“Any
good?”
“Yeah, I guess. But the girl…she was talked of. Sweetest voice. I heard her once at a Grange Hall potluck dinner one year. Like an angel, gave you chills. She sang ‘Jesus Met the Woman at the Well.’ Chills, I say. And gorgeous. A curse, of course.”
“Why a curse?”
Angela poured us coffee. A kick to it, and I winced. She brought out a pitcher of heavy cream from the refrigerator, “Sun-dried chicory,” she told me. “From my backyard. It gives coffee a life of its own.” She took out an old Schrafft’s tin box from the cupboard and emptied the chocolate cookies onto a platter. “Fresh-made. Chewy.” She sat back down. “A curse because the boys chased her. Old men chased her. Lord, the village idiot would have chased her if he had any sense of direction. Now her daddy was a tyrant, a mean old fussbudget, unhappy. Beat those kids. Beat his wife. Can’t tell you how many times the sheriff knocked on that door. No neighbors to speak of, down at that end of town, but you’ll see the kids in town all banged up, black and blue.”
“Yet they sang,” Noel commented.
“Like chickadees.” She sipped her coffee slowly. “Now Linda hooks up with this older boy in some church chorale group, seventeen she is, and he’s considerable older, maybe in his twenties, and she runs off to get married. Some say she actually got married—lied on the documents. Two smitten fools running amuck. Her daddy chased them over to Hartford, supposedly stopped the marriage, took a pitchfork to that cad so as he was never seen coming round their porch again. I heard the sheriff had a long talk with his family. Read the riot act to that fool.”
I looked at Noel. “Just what Lady Maud told me—Belinda had been married.” I bit into a cookie, then greedily reached for another: crisp, tangy, a hint of sweet mint.
“Maybe.” Angela stressed the word. “Maybe. Anyway it didn’t take. Short time afterwards her father died of a stroke, no loss to humanity, God forgive me for saying that.” She crossed herself. “But God sometimes makes copies that got blemishes in the finish.”
“What happened to their mother?”
She nodded at the coffee pot, and I nodded back. She poured me another cup. “Times got bad and then worse. No money. The town sheriff foreclosed. But you know how it is—folks resent the government taking homes from decent folks. On the auction day the locals bid like pennies on everything, shut out the scavengers with rifles and cautioning looks, if you know what I mean. So the bank give the house back to the mother. But she don’t last long. I mean, a beaten woman, she was. She’d wander in here for something, looking lost. She’d forget what she come for. I give her a piece of fudge, and the old lady teared up. Pitiful. I think a few too many blows to her head by that crazy man. So the farm went under again.”
“And the children?” I asked, eagerly.
“They talked a lot about New York City.” Angela purposely spaced the name out: New…York…City. Each syllable stressed. “About performing there. Getting rich. Making it big. Money to burn. So one day you turn around, they’re gone. Lock stock and barrel. Somebody said they seen them with cardboard suitcases headed to the depot in Bridgeport. On foot. Didn’t have no car. Next thing I know, a few months later, the mother dies.” She sat back. “And the place goes to the rats and squirrels and wandering bums who lost their way.”
“My Lord,” Noel muttered.
“But you heard about Linda…Belinda’s success?”
“Rumor, much later. Someone comes in and says, ‘Remember that pretty girl with the voice of an angel? That Roswell girl? Well, she reinvented herself on Broadway. Belinda Ross. Go figure.”
“Go figure,” I echoed. Noel smiled.
“By that time their ma was long buried in a pauper’s grave over to Ridgefield. Forgotten. They never looked back.”
“Linda and her brother.”
Angela eyed me. “Brothers, dear. Brothers.”
I sat up. “There was more than one?”
“Of course. Two brothers. All performers like their mama. Linda was close to one of them, but he was sickly, consumptive, always coughing in your face like he was sent by Satan to infect the world. Handsome lad, though. Like that Valentino actor. The other was a lot older, I remember. He didn’t get along with the others. Took after his papa maybe. Always had a scowl on his face, wouldn’t give you the time of day. Linda hated him, so I was told.”
“Two brothers,” I repeated, shocked.
“Yeah, Linda and Jack headed to the city to seek their fortune. The other went to Chicago, I was told. He worked in some theater there.”
“Two brothers,” I said foolishly, and Noel rolled his eyes.
“You hard of hearing, Miss Ferber?” Angela grinned.
“It’s just that—I only know of one brother.”
“It don’t make no difference anyhow. All three of them skedaddled out of town and nobody ever looked back.” She clicked her tongue. “And now one of them got herself murdered.”
Chapter Fifteen
The other brother. The one who went to Chicago.
I woke the next morning thinking of the unmentioned brother.
I had no idea why the idea of that other brother lingered with me. Yet Angela D’Angelo’s harsh comment on the older brother the others did not get along with—a brother as mean as the dead father—intrigued me. Of course, there was no reason Belinda or Jackson had to mention him, but…somehow the idea of the miserable family dynamic back in that niggling Sayville village gave an edge to my morning.
Brother and sister, two schemers afoot in Manhattan with plans for wealth and fame. Maybe fame. Wealth, definitely. Jackson the maniacal force behind his sister’s rise to glory. Rags to riches. An Horatio Alger school primer. Yet at the back of my mind the nagging image of that sad, struggling theater warred with images of the brother who went far away.
Nonsense, but my gut propelled me back to Hell’s Kitchen. There was a story not being told. Belinda’s murder—if not Dougie, then who? The creaky walls of that old theater held secrets, echoes of Chauncey Waters whispering in my ear. Secrets there. The walls talking.
They’re afraid of you and Mr. Coward.
The taxi dropped me off in front of the theater just after noon. The line for the soup kitchen stretched down the block. Breadlines opened at six in the morning, I knew. At four the men began lining up. For a moment, watching the numb, quiet line inching along, I felt a wave of dizziness, tottering against the brick wall. A passing stranger reached out to steady me, gripping my elbow. As I thanked him, he shrugged it off, but tipped his battered railroad cap and gave me a bittersweet smile. I watched as he joined the snaking line, and felt a tug at my heart. A desolate street, this Eleventh Avenue, a wasteland of gaunt faces, bent bodies. Across the street a mattress-spring discarded in an alley, a packing crate upturned. A family sifted through a pile of garbage, their bodies moving in slow motion.
The doors of the theater were locked, which surprised. Overhead was the brand-new, glossy marquee, but no announcements of upcoming revues. I peered through the dusty glass windows and saw nothing, a lobby shrouded in darkness.
I stepped away, flummoxed—I had no plan B—but noticed an entrance at the side of the building that doubtless led to the upstairs apartment. An old-fashioned bell with a typed nametag inserted in a metal strip: Roswell, J. I pressed the bell and waited.
From above me came the grating sound of an old window being raised. “Yes?”
I stepped back onto the sidewalk and looked up. “Mr. Roswell?”
“Miss Ferber? What?” He sounded groggy, roused from a nap.
“A few words with you, sir?”
He debated that, his head disappearing for a second, then reappearing. “The door’s open. Walk up.”
An unlit stairwell, a wobbly banister that did nothing to help me maneuver the worn steps in the murky dark. Suddenly a door at the landing flew open, a wash of feeble light illuminating t
he top stairs.
“Sorry.” Jackson watched me. “The landlord doesn’t believe in lighting your way.”
Nearing him, I smiled. “A stairwell out of Dickens.”
“Yeah, the ghost of Christmas present in little old New York.”
He stood aside as I walked into his rooms. His breath was a cigarette smoker’s raw, hot scent. Stale body odor, foul. Small, messy rooms, a table sagging under piles of sheet music and newspapers. Clutter everywhere, clothing draped over chairs. A makeshift clothesline with drying shirts extended from the clanging cast-iron radiator by the front window back to a doorjamb.
He saw me looking around.
“I would apologize for the disarray,” he began, “but I’m not much into apologies to people who surprise me in my own house.”
Idly, he scratched an armpit, then wrapped his arms around his chest. An old dress shirt, collarless, pulled out of his trousers. Loose suspenders draped over his hips.
I laughed. “And a warm welcome too.” But I got serious. “My apologies, then.”
He yawned. “It’s all right. I wasn’t going anywhere.”
He rustled about, clearing a chair and sweeping old copies of magazines off the sofa onto the floor. A copy of Collier’s slipped onto the floor near me, the frayed cover stained with coffee rings. A stack of the New York World scattered across the floor. I stepped over the mess and sat down, sank into broken cushions. A wire cut into my lower back, and I shifted my body.
“We never have guests,” he said, eyeing me.
“Again, my apologies.”
He held up his hand and repeated, “It’s all right.” His face tightened. “Has something happened? The murder?”
I shook my head. “Sorry, no. That’s not why I’m here. I have no idea what the police are doing.”
He scoffed at that. “Nothing. At least so far as anyone tells me. I stopped calling the precinct. Family counts for nothing in this godforsaken city. Belinda murdered like that, and the curtain comes down. Finis.”
“Dougie no longer stops in?”
