The Wicked City: A stunning love story set in the roaring twenties

by Beatriz Williams

  “Yeah, wish me luck.” She rose from the piano bench and manufactured a gigantic stretch. “Thanks for the bourbon.”

  Hector rose, too, in the middle of a measure, and closed the keyboard. The sudden absence of music made the room grow huge. Made the space between the furniture yawn, made the air turn thick.

  “Nerves all settled?” he asked, looking at her seriously. Like a doctor. His breath smelled of bourbon.

  She held up her hand, palm down. “Do you see me shaking?”

  “Cool as a cucumber, Sherlock. Good news. Off you go, then. Get your beauty sleep.” He held his arm to the side. “Want a bottle of water or something to take down with you?”

  “No, I’m good.” The room swam a little around her. “Actually, maybe the water’s a good idea.”

  Hector went to the fridge while she threw on her bathrobe and went to the door. He handed her the bottle of water and asked if she wanted him to walk her down.

  “Thanks,” she said, “but I’m fine.”

  “I know you are. You are as fine as they come. I mean that.”

  “Thanks. I guess it’s good night, then.”

  “Good night, Ella. And if you need anything, just let me know, okay? If there’s any weird stuff downstairs. I’m the house doctor.”

  “The mayor, you mean?”

  “Ha. Touché.” He raised his fist, and Ella bumped his knuckles. “Watch those stairs. And take some aspirin.”

  “Will do.” She turned to leave. Took a few careful steps down the hallway and stopped. “Wait a second, Hector.”

  “What’s up?”

  Ella stared at the ecru wall, on which the light overhead made a strange, lurid pattern. Or maybe not. Maybe the pattern was just the bourbon smoking her eyeballs. She licked her lips. “So. I had fun tonight.”

  “Yeah. Me too. Knew you were kindred, under that suit you wear out the door in the morning.”

  “Kindred?”

  “You know. Certain people. You can just sit down at a piano together and play.”

  “Right.” She blinked hard. “Also. I kind of lied to you back there.”

  He didn’t reply.

  Ella gathered her breath. Didn’t turn around; that would be too much. Anyway, the floor was already unsteady beneath her. Kindred. “Not exactly lied, I guess,” she continued. “About why I moved here, I mean. I just didn’t tell you the truth.”

  “The whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Big deal or small deal?”

  “I don’t know. I guess it’s a big deal to me.”

  “Well, I guess we all have secrets, right?”

  Ella turned after all. Gripped the stair railing for balance. Hector stood tall in the doorway, sturdy and wiry and remarkably still. His face was heavy with fatigue. Nellie had wandered over and now stared in sleepy curiosity from between his legs. Yawning, showing off a set of small, sharp teeth. Hector braced one hand on the door frame and waited for her.

  “So it’s like this,” she said. “I left my husband three weeks ago because I caught him having sex with a prostitute.”

  ACT II

  We Come to an

  Understanding

  (of sorts)

  RIVER JUNCTION, MARYLAND

  1924

  1

  NOW THE B&O branch line into River Junction runs a passenger train but once a day, and even so I find myself in possession of a carriage nearly empty, except for a middle-aged woman in widow’s weeds who stares through the window the entire journey, though a book lies open in her lap.

  I don’t blame the folks who aren’t present. Why should you travel into the frigid crook between two godforsaken mountains in the middle of far western Maryland in the middle of winter, unless you have urgent business calling you there? No reason at all. Like the widow, I observe the passing drifts of snow, the pastures all tucked under smooth white blankets, the gray horizon bleeding into the gray sky, the mounting hills and the small, broken-down houses huddled between them, and I cannot raise the slightest whiff of longing. Just a sick weight growing in my stomach, fed by the rattle of wheels and sight of the smoke trailing from all those lonely chimneys. The smell of burning Pennsylvania anthracite.

  2

  THE LAST time I saw my mother, she lay in bed. She spent a lot of time in bed, my mother, with one thing or another. Nine and a half months after marrying Duke Kelly, she heaved out ten pounds of Johnnie from between her narrow hips, and she never really was the same after that. Not that Duke seemed to care much about Mama’s state of health, I guess, because she went on to whelp three more boys, one after another, like a crumbling sausage factory that somehow continues to churn out sausages, and then twin girls who died a month later, and then—well, I lost track by then, because I was mostly at the convent, getting an education. All I know is that she kept falling sick, which is the name we give to a miscarriage out here in the country, and lastly had another girl the year I started college. That’s Patsy. She’ll be rising five years old now, if she’s made it this far. My baby sister. Anyhow. The last time I saw Mama, she was sitting up in bed, nursing wee Patsy, and when I told her I was quitting college and running off to New York City right that very morning, she didn’t even look up. Didn’t even meet my eye. Just brushed back a bit of limp hair from her temple and told me not to be getting myself in trouble, and I thought, You’re one to talk, not in a sour vein but rather a pitying one. I asked if I could hold Patsy and say good-bye, and she said no, baby’s nursing, so I just leaned over and kissed Patsy’s velvet crown and then Mama’s temple, and breathed in the scent of milk and skin. And I said I’ll be going now, and funny thing, when I straightened up my eyes I found the window, and right through the middle of that dirty square marched Duke himself, doing something to the buttons of his trousers, and I turned away so Mama wouldn’t see my face. And you may be sure I departed the premises directly that minute, carrying my little carpetbag in one hand and my coat in the other, running out the front door so he wouldn’t spot me. Heat rising from the grass. Train whistle crying down the tracks. Sent my address two weeks later not to Mama but to Johnnie, because Duke always opens Mama’s mail but doesn’t give much damn about any business of Johnnie’s.

  Speak of train whistles. There it goes, thin and short, and two seats ahead of me the widow starts in her seat. Glances over her shoulder in my direction, under guise of looking for the conductor. Her face is plump and well fed, not a trace of want.

  “Excuse me,” she says, “is you Geneva Rose Kelly?”

  I reply cagily, “I am.”

  “Why, they Lord. Don’t you know me?”

  “Should I know you?”

  “It’s Ruth Mary Leary, you old so-and-so! We was at school together, recollect?”

  “Ruth Mary! Of course.” (Laying on a thick, false coating of enthusiasm as I pick through the old stacks of memory.)

  “Course, I was just Ruth Mary Green back then, before me and Eddie ran off to Baltimore to get hitched. You remember that, I reckon!” She laughs.

  “Course I do. Talk of the town.”

  “Mama liketa murdered Eddie.”

  “She surely did. How are you these days, Ruth Mary?” I say these words with knowing tenderness, because her costume suggests that someone dear—likely Eddie, whoever the devil he is—must have gone and turned toes-up in the recent past, and I can see she expects I’ve heard all about her sorrows and joys over the years. That I make it my habit to keep current on the patter of River Junction elopements and birthings and passings on. Ruth Mary Green. I have some general impression of bony knees and a dirty, wan face. Long, straight hair worn in two braids. A blue calico dress. The River Junction schoolyard, which I last inhabited when I was but eight years old.

  Ruth Mary’s face sinks a little. “Course it was awful when Eddie passed on.”

  “Course.”

  The train makes that first soft lurch, braking down for the River Junction station, the lurch that te
lls you it’s time to gather your things and make your apologies. Ruth takes no notice.

  “But your daddy’s taken right good care of us. Right good care. He’s a right good man, your daddy.”

  I make for my pocketbook and my little satchel, so she can’t see my face as I reply. “He surely is.”

  “I’m a-coming from Hagerstown. Calling on my sister. You recollect Laura Ann? Done had herself another baby girl. Doing just fine. You here to see your mama?”

  “I am.”

  “I hope she ain’t took a turn for the worse.”

  “She has, I’m afraid. Johnnie wired me last night.”

  “They Lord. I’ll send something over. Poor Mr. Kelly. He does dote on her.”

  This time, when I reply, my smile is tacked on with care and attention, bright as you please. “Like bees on nectar.”

  3

  RUTH WANTS to know if anyone’s meeting me at the station, and I tell her no, I didn’t have time to wire ahead, I thought I’d walk.

  “Walk! You can’t walk in this, Geneva Rose. My brother Carl’s a-meeting me in the Ford. Be more than pleased to give you a lift.”

  “You needn’t bother. I like the walk.”

  “Why, don’t talk nonsense. You know Duke’d liketa have our hides if we let his baby girl walk home from the station in all this.” She nods to the piles of dirty snow creeping past the window. The platform appears suddenly, crisp and gray, giving me some kind of startle, because there never was a platform at River Junction station before, let alone one shoveled free of precipitation. Just limp grass and beaten mud. The clapboard corner of the depot edges into view and stops, concurrent with the final lurch of the train and the sigh of the steam. Here we are, says Ruth. Home again. Sight for sore eyes, ain’t it?

  Not yet four years gone altogether, I collect, since I parted ways with River Junction, and I have tried not to give the place another thought since. Easy enough, when you are living in the bosom of Manhattan, encircled by an urban landscape of buildings and more buildings, mounting into the sky, stone and pavement and patches of stubborn parkland, jumbles of enchanting humanity in all its various states of dress and undress, wealth and unwealth, cathedrals and skyscrapers and mansions and slums, monuments to snatch your heartbeat, tenements to choke the breath right down in your lungs, and above all that the restless, reckless churn of motion. New York City is one thing never, and that is standing still. But here. Here at the River Junction railway depot, a brief western outpost on a meager branch line of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, as the train rests and sighs and Ruth Mary Leary reaches out a widowy black arm to push open the door and hump her suitcase across the step to this interesting brand-new platform, the whole world around us is just plain frozen. Frozen and empty. Same station house sleeping in the snow, strange in its old familiarity, an exact replication of a building I knew in another life: a life I did my best to forget.

  Except, if I’m not mistaken, the clapboard siding has been painted a bright new red, and the beaten-up row of stores across the street—Cathy’s Café, the five and dime, Ned MacDonald’s hardware store—share an unaccustomed sharpness in their general demeanor. As if a smart-mouthed nun from an especially strict order marched up and told them to straighten their signboards and fix their windows and wash away all the dirt. (Not that I speak from experience, you understand.) And is that fellow with the shovel actually clearing snow from the sidewalk?

  Is that actually a sidewalk?

  I seem to have come to a stop, there on the unexpected railway platform, staring at the unexpected purity of River Junction’s center of commerce, such as it is. The wind blows cold on my cheek. My fingers clench around the handle of my satchel. Someone taps my shoulder and says something, and he has to repeat his words—Excuse me, ma’am, is this your pocketbook?—before I startle out of my thoughts and turn.

  The conductor. Burly fellow, holding out a plain black pocketbook in his gloved right hand. I nod my head and snatch the pocketbook and say thank you, brusque with embarrassment, and he says, My pleasure, ma’am, will there be anything else? And something about the tone of that voice makes me look up at his face and the dark blue eyes watching me steadily beneath the round brim of his conductor’s cap.

  “They Lord,” I say.

  “Let me know if you need any help, ma’am,” he says, stony voiced, no expression whatever.

  “No help needed, thank you.”

  Ruth tugs at my arm and tells me her brother Carl’s right over there in the Ford, come along. Won’t take no for an answer.

  So I oblige. Turn away from that aggravating damn conductor and march down the platform at Ruth’s side. Satchel banging against my leg. Wouldn’t do to be rude, now, would it?

  4

  THE RIDE is short. As I said, a mere half mile separates Duke Kelly’s ramshackle abode from the railway depot, and Ruth Mary Leary’s brother Carl has acquired himself a fine new Model T Ford, engine purring like an overfed cat: the kind of automobile that makes easy work of a country road, even in wintertime. Carl’s delighted to see me. Seems he went to school with Johnnie.

  “Recollect how we used to catch them crawdads in the old fishing hole, down by the creek? You was covered in dirt back then, Geneva Rose. Knees all skinned, dress up to here.” (He points to his shinbone.) “Fixed to steal a kiss from you once, and Lord Almighty did you let me have it. Never did try again.”

  “Wise decision.”

  He laughs. “Always knowed you was going to bust outta River Junction for good. You was that kind of girl. Reckon you own half New York by now.”

  “Not quite. It’s a big town, after all. An island unto itself.”

  “Reckon you got some high-class fella to step you out these days, that right? Reckon your knees ain’t skinned no more, no ma’am. You done cleaned up right smart, Geneva Rose, just like I knowed you would.”

  Ruth Mary spears his ribs with her elbow. “Now, you quit your teasing, Carl Green. Geneva’s back home on account-a her mama’s sick.”

  “Aw, I’m sorry. Forgot about all that. Didn’t mean to offend.” Looks back at me, over his shoulder, and his blue eyes are kind.

  “Oh, that’s all right, Carl. Laughter’s the best medicine, they always say.”

  Already we’ve turned the corner of Front Street, and Duke’s abode stands but seventy-five yards ahead, on the rightward side of the road. Me, I happen to be staring leftward, toward the astonishing sight of a brand-new house getting itself built: a large house made of red brick, full dozen busy workmen crawling all over its skin, almost as if it weren’t the middle of winter and this the middle of River Junction.

  “Why, whose house is that?” I cry out, from the backseat.

  “Which-un, sugar?”

  “The brick one, the one that’s getting built.”

  “Why, don’t you know? That there is your brother Angus’s house. Fixing to get married in June. That house be his wedding present. From your daddy.”

  “Here we are!” sings out Ruth.

  Carl brakes hard, sending the flivver into a bit of skid across the firm-packed snow covering the road, and Ruth screams a little. Carl just laughs.

  As for me. So discombobulated am I from the sight of Angus’s grand brick house and the precarious sliding of the Ford’s new tires, I turn my head right bang in the direction of my childhood abode to fill my eyes, a mistake I hoped never again to make in this life.

  But the sight that strikes my eyeballs isn’t the sight I expect, and maybe I should have expected that. Maybe I should have taken note of the spruced-up railway depot and the spruced-up businesses, and the grand new house getting built as a wedding present for my worthless brother Angus. Maybe I should have thought more thoroughly through the implications of what Special Agent Anson disclosed to me last night (was it just last night?) in his shoddy little office along the rim of Tenth Avenue.

  Not a little business, Miss Kelly. Your stepfather has built a network of distilleries across Allegany County and beyond
, and nobody will say a word against him.

  Now the first time I came home from the convent on a school holiday, it was a day much like this. Winter. Christmas around the corner, and the first fall of snow had newly hit the ground, covering the rotting remains of autumn. Mama and Johnnie came to the station to walk me home. I wore my shabby little clothes, my threadbare coat through which the wind whistled and froze on my skin. Wee satchel in one hand, carrying my all. Fingers still stinging by the wrong end of Sister Esme’s ruler. Mama clutched Johnnie’s wrist and waved as I stepped from the train. She was great with child, coat straining mightily over the weight of her belly, eyes all hooded and weary. Hat full of holes. I ran up to her and she bent and hugged me, and then she straightened and looked me up and looked me down, and I remember the expression on her face, because I couldn’t decide was she happy or was she sad. Some frictional combination of the two, I guess, peculiar to grown-ups.

  Anyway, we trudged home through the darkening snow and arrived at the house, Duke Kelly’s house, and Johnnie opened the creaking gate and I looked up and took it in, the house of my childhood, and I saw things I hadn’t seen before. I saw the peeling white paint and the sagging boards, the bricks crumbling from the chimney and the way the porch slanted downward by a few unhappy degrees. And I thought something sort of strange for a little girl to think, an idea made unusually of clear, distinct words that still ring in my head: This is not my home. Just like that. This is not my home.

  As I stood there by the gate, experiencing this alienation, the front door opened and there stood Duke, wearing his neat suit of brown wool, the lord of this dilapidated little manor. Looking us over as if he owned us, as if we were cattle wandering in from the cold. And the thought—This is not my home—flared up stronger and fiercer, almost fixing me to vomit with its clarity. This is not my home.