“Sup, Wild Man!” Tony calls out to him. The boy cuts him a look that almost looks welcoming and he smiles.
“Keep walking!” Tony threatens.
“Hey!” I say. “What did you do that for?”
“He was staring. He don’t know you.”
“Well maybe I wanted him to stare.”
“Why? You like him or something?”
“That’s none of your business. You don’t own me, Tony. I’m not your girl.”
“But I can still look out for you, as a friend.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah really.”
“Well guess what? I’m not your friend. So butt out of my life.” I snatch the bag out of his hands.
He doesn’t call after me as I go. I bet he really hates me now. Good. I hate him too. And just for an added bonus I hate the world along with him. Thanks to him, I’m back to hating everybody again. Just like that, the loving girl is gone.
I don’t see Soldier Sonny leaning up against the side of my building so when he greets me I get startled. “Your momma looking for you.”
“I know, Sonny.”
His eye is swollen. “What happened to you?”
“People are ugly, sistergirl. They only know the beast inside them. They only know how to strike and hurt.”
“You have to fight back.” I’m trying not to raise my voice, but it’s hard. I want to scream at him now. “You’re strong, Sonny. You can defend yourself.”
He shakes his head and a tear rolls down his cheek.
“No. Don’t cry. You’re a big boy. Don’t do that.”
But the tears keep coming and my heart does that unwanted thing where it feels like it’s just been pinched. “Please, Sonny,” I whisper.
“Fighting is bad, Stori. I don’t want to see it anymore. I don’t want to see it.”
“Life is a fight. Life is two fists like this.” I raise my trusty fists to show him. “These have never failed me. Go ahead. Put them up. Take a shot.”
He won’t. I know it. “I saw your little sister the other day. What a good kid she is. I know a good kid when I see ‘em. I want to have a kid, Stori. I would be a good father. But I need to find a girl first. I went to see the old woman who lives in the tower.”
“What woman in the tower?”
“The one she got magic.”
“What did she tell you?”
“Told me I ain’t never gonna have kids, Stori. That’s what she told me.”
“You don’t know about the future, Sonny. Just one day. Take it one day at a time. I gotta go. I’m sorry.”
He reaches out and strokes my face. “That’s alright. You go. You’re better off getting away from me.”
11: Priscilla
I’m on my second serving of coffee with Mrs. Anna Putzarella when Stori finally arrives home. She bursts through the front door and scowls as soon as she sees me. (Don’t get into social work if you want to be appreciated. This is a thankless job, if ever there was one.)
“Stori, hon,” her mother, says.
Her face changes when she sees her mother. “Ma. You’re up?”
Her mother is still weak but decided after some coaxing from me to try just another day. She nods with a smile. “Priscilla convinced me to get up. I called for you.”
This place is an anthropological goldmine. There are many fascinating codes of conduct here in the Valley. If a child is out in the streets and their mother wants them home all that mother has to do is open any window and call out the child’s name. It doesn’t matter the distance between mother and child. The call will be heard. It will travel far, as hustler will pass it to hooligan, hooligan to welfare bum, welfare bum to street sweeper, street sweeper to sedentary veteran and so on.
It’s an unbroken chain linked by something stronger than steel—an absolute reverence for the bond between mother and child.
“Stori, You remember Miss Van Patten.”
Stori drops her bookbag and coat on top of the radiator and kicks off her boots onto a brown paper bag on the floor. She gives me a half-assed hello and brings her own bag to the kitchen counter and begins to empty its contents. “Where’s Regina?” she asks.
“Taking a nap,” says Mrs. Putzarella. “Miss Van Patten brought her to the da Vinci School of Arts today.”
I take this opportunity to size her up while she’s not looking at me with those razor sharp eyes of hers. Broad shouldered, slim waisted, and her leg muscles are defined under her black leggings. It’s a natural strength she possesses, one of someone born to be strong. Not of someone who works for it at the gym. I wonder if she had been raised under different circumstances, if she would have harnessed her physique into becoming a gymnast or a runner. I ponder what I consider to be her wasted talents and surmise that the end result is the hard, unforgiving girl I see in front of me.
She must sense I’m checking her out because she turns and gives me a look that makes me fear for my safety. This girl can obviously beat me up and if she has a chance to get away with it, she probably would. She grins with satisfaction like she knows exactly what I’m thinking. I can see it gives her great pleasure intimidating people. I come to the conclusion that this has been her coping mechanism in her most recent years. If one can’t enjoy the finer pleasures of this world, like I have been fortunate enough to, one must at least be able to make that same world suffer.
“How you feeling Ma?” she asks.
“Better today. I even got dressed and everything.”
“I got some hens from the market,” Stori tells her. “Your favorite.”
As Stori busies herself about the cabinets and fridge her mother tells me, “Stori’s a wonderful cook.”
“Did you teach her?” I ask, warming my hands around my coffee mug.
“Just what I know. But she’s got that Calabrian blood in her veins. She cooks with the passion from the Old Country.” Anna’s pride in her daughter is sincere, and although I don’t believe that culinary skill is inherited I envy her adoration.
For some reason, whenever I step foot inside this rickety old apartment, I always get distracted by things irrelevant to my case. I have to remind myself to stay business minded. I have specific questions I need to ask. About Anna not paying her bills, about the possibility of placing the children in a foster home.
But there are other things I’m curious about. Like the strange rumors in Rita’s Tavern and Regina’s secret. I decide to ask a question or two to sate my curiosity. “I was at Rita’s Tavern the other night. And some people were talking about very strange things. Like this man Cosimo.”
In a minute’s time Stori has chopped a head of celery and an onion. She angles the chopping board over a heated skillet and scrapes only the celery in with her knife. She jerks the skillet a little to get the onion where she wants it; the oil sizzles. Then she grabs a stale loaf of bread and starts to cube it.
It’s kind of hard to explain without making myself look like a hypocrite. (Seeing how I don’t like Stori.) But I feel kind of soothed sitting here while she’s cooking. She’s totally in charge and I must say there is nothing more calming than being in the presence of a capable woman in a kitchen.
I had that once. Back in Erie. Before stuff got bad with my dad. Afterwards my mom wasn’t up to cooking I guess. She got involved with this nondenominational church and spent so much time there that I hardly ever saw her. I really resented her for that. Putting her church friends in front of Grace and me.
“What about Cosimo?” Stori mumbles.
“Have you heard things about him, lately? Being here in the Valley.”
Stori shoots a look of warning to her mother and her mother straightens in her chair.
“I assure you, I’m only curious. It’s not for the case. I just found it all hard to believe. But they were dead serious about this man.”
“Cosimo hasn’t been seen in the Valley or anywhere for hundreds of years,” says Mrs. Putzarella.
“So you do believe he’s walki
ng dead.”
“Listen. I know you think our ways are strange. But lots of stranger things have happened beyond the Valley. You can’t fault us for our beliefs. They were passed down from generation to generation. Like our naming day.”
“Yes,” I say. (There I go again, getting distracted.) “I find that one quite lovely. To be named at first light under a tree.”
“By a prophetess no less,” Anna adds. Her smile makes me smile. She’s a soft woman, nothing like her daughter. She reminds me a little bit of my own mother. “Tell me,” I say. “What was it like when Stori was named?”
“Stori was born in the middle of a blizzard. I labored for four hours right there in my bedroom. She came out wide-eyed and screaming. The next day we gathered under the sycamore in the backyard and the prophetess, Caroline, who lives somewhere secret came. She held Stori up into the light and sang an ancient psalm and then she named her: My beloved. I will write your words upon my book. In an ink of permanent. Pages ever turning. My beloved. I will lay open my heart, become the book. And you will write my story.”
“It’s gorgeous. What does it mean?”
Stori’s interested too, as if she’s just hearing this for the first time. “Yeah, Ma. What does it mean?”
“It means that Stori’s special. And her destiny is waiting,” Anna answers grandly.
I turn the words over in my head as Anna beckons Stori in for a kiss on her forehead. There’s something so submissive about her naming song, yet also it’s infinite, it’s soaring.
What would the prophetess have sung when I was born? Something infinite as well? I would only hope so.
“Ma,” Stori says, wiping her fingers with a dishtowel. “I’ve never seen that lady Caroline. Is she for real? People say she’s in some tower and hasn’t come out for years. Is that true?”
“She’s real. She stays hidden. And she’s a hundred-thirty-years-old.”
“People don’t live that long,” I insist.
Mrs. Putzarella shrugs. “People can live as long as they choose to, I assume.” She puts a hand up to her forehead. “Oh no. I have to rest. I have to.”
“What is it?” I ask, my heart fluttering in my chest.
“The pain.”
I hate seeing people in pain. It gives me a sour feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Of course. Please. Let me help you to your room.”
Stori hustles to the fridge and says, “I’ll get her some water.”
In her bedroom, as I help her into bed and close the blinds, Stori comes in and places a glass of ice water on the bed stand. “We should let her sleep,” she whispers.
“Of course,” I whisper back.
I follow Stori out but on my way Mrs. Putzarella calls for me.
I feel guilty standing over her bed while she’s lying there in discomfort.
She puts a pleading hand on my forearm and whispers, “Have you ever been in love, Miss Van Patten?”
“In love?”
“Yes. In love.”
“Yes. I love my boyfriend. Very much.”
“Would you die without him?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.”
“Cause that’s what I’m doing. I’m dying here without him.”
“You could move on,” I tell her.
“No.”
“You should then. For your children.”
“Miss Van Patten. How can I forget about someone who is unforgettable?”
Oh, Daddy. Don’t die. Please. I wish I could come home.
“If he wants to leave me, that’s fine. But I just need to see him one last time. He cheated on me, and it tore me up. I just need to tell him, before I die, that I forgive him. If you find him, you tell him to come on home. You give him that message for me.”
Jaded as I am, I know I will not have a chance to relay the message but I lie to make her feel better. “I’ll try my best to find him and tell him.”
“Oh thank you. You’re a good woman. Thank you so much.”
Back in the kitchen I decide I don’t want to bother this family any more. I start to collect my things when Stori says, “You can stay for dinner if you want.” The room smells delicious and she’s stuffing the hen with her bare hands.
Against my better judgments I put the coat down and sit. Evidently I do want to stay. Evidently too many memories of the good days back in Erie have been resurrected in this kitchen. Funny how memories can haunt. Like ghosts. Like real things. Living and breathing memories. Mine are of days when the sun was spilling through the windows and the floors had just been mopped and my mother was humming over the stove.
I watch Stori wash her hands vigorously with a bar of soap. She covers the pan with the hen in it with some foil, dons a pair of oven gloves and shoves the pan inside the oven. I almost feel like a little girl in her presence.
“Can I help?” I ask.
“You wanna chop the broccoli?”
“Sure.”
A cutting board of Broccoli Rape is set before me. I pick up the knife. “I heard once about angels too. Not in the bar. But from a case I had last spring. The youngest daughter ran away from home. The mom thought she was looking for the angels.”
Stori’s sautéing garlic in another pan. “A legend Miss Van Patten.”
“Well I would like to think they are real because we sure do need some angels in this world.”
She turns, holding her wooden spoon, her strong but slender hands glistening with water. She does something that almost knocks me off my chair. She smiles.
“Do you believe in them?” I ask hopefully.
“Even if I did, I don’t anymore.”
“Have you ever seen one?”
It looks like she wants to tell me something. Something she’s been holding in her heart for a long time.
“Go ahead, Stori. You can trust me.”
She sighs as her gaze cuts across the room to the window. “Yes. I do remember them. But I would never admit it to Regi. It would just make her sad to know they’re all gone. But when I was young, they were everywhere. On a winter’s evening like this, they would show themselves in the moments when I was having the most fun. Like falling in love with a single snowflake or racing out of my house to dive off my front stoop into a mountain of snow.
“And in the summer. They used to meet me on the rooftop when I was up there star gazing. They loved to talk. Tell secrets. They liked to tell silly stories, too and have a good deep down belly laugh. Angels are really just kids at heart. Grown ups who never grew up. Who went to heaven still never grown up. And so the Lord made them into Night Lights. To hover over rooftops where children rested and gazed at stars. And dreamed of peaceful things and felt at one with the whole wide world.
“You could find them, too, if you ran wild and free in the open field skirting Forest Boom. (It’s not too far from here.) Chasing after fireflies and pressing your bare knees into the coolness of the grass. How perfect and clean is one blade of grass. So clean you can pluck it from the earth and put it in your mouth and chew.
“It’s been said that the angel’s were vital for the Valley. That the magic created between angel and child was what was holding the neighborhood together and keeping the darkness at bay. But then the angels started to disappear. The children started to get sad and bored. They started begging for video games and expensive toys to fill the space. I, myself, begged my mother for my doll, Amanda. Some kids couldn’t take the loneliness. So they ran away from home and vanished into Forest Boom. It’s rumored there are still angels in the forest.” She gazes out the window and sighs.
“Thank you, Stori. I loved hearing that. I wish I could see an angel.”
“Miss Priscilla. If I tell you something do you promise you won’t share it with anyone or use it against me?”
I don’t want to promise, because God knows what might come out of her mouth and the bearing it could have on the case. “I promise.”
“My friend Ernestine was placed at the Pilgrim’s Mansion. The
one that woman named Smyrna runs.”
“Really? I’ve yet to meet this woman. Well your friend is lucky.”
“No. That’s the thing. She said the mayor wants to make all the girls his wives. And she also said the mistress isn’t human. She cuts herself and doesn’t bleed.”
I get a chill that runs from the nape of my neck all the way down my spine. I shudder.
In some way, I believe her. Ever since I’ve moved to Redemption I’ve known something wasn’t right about this place. But what can a girl like me do? Or even Stori? People like us don’t have any power to change things.
“I got this feeling, Miss Van Patten, that there is some real bad stuff going on in this town and my father got caught up in it. Maybe someone can check out the mansion and the mayor and stuff.”
“Stori,” I say, determined to forget all the things I’ve learned in the past few days. “Your friend is probably going through a hard time adjusting. I think people would know if someone as visible as the mayor was planning to make an illegal commune in the middle of Redemption.”
“I knew you wouldn’t believe me.” She takes the cutting board from the table, turns back to the stove and tosses the broccoli into boiling water.
“Stori. I know about what happened at the dam,” I tell her. “The report from the hospital came in. Your father didn’t try to kill himself. You did. He jumped in to save you. I just want you to know it’s not your fault that you have a mental illness. Your father walking out on you guys, it’s not your fault either. I know you think the world of your father, because he tried to save you that day. But you and Regina are the innocent ones. Your father and your mother have not been doing a very good job at taking care of you. They both need help and in the time being I think it would be in both your and Regina’s best interest—”
“—Stop,” she says. “Just stop your talking because I don’t want to hear it anymore.”
“I know this discussion is tough but we have to have it at some point. Stori, look at me. Please.”
She turns.
“Forget this place. It’s destroying you.”
The Book, the Key and the Crown (Secrets of the Emerald Tablet Book 1) Page 13
