Habit of Fear

by Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  “I’ve been given to understand the marriage was annulled,” Julie said to her informant. “Does that show on the record?”

  “No. It would only show if the annulment dated back to the day of the ceremony.”

  “In other words, if they hadn’t slept together,” Julie said.

  “That’s what it comes to, yes, ma’am.”

  She returned to the Marriage Bureau, paid her fee and waited for the other information to be taken from the microfilm, transcribed and certified, and passed along to the office where she waited. No question: Morgan Reynolds had lied; he had juggled the order of events to suit a purpose of his own. Again she questioned: a purpose or a whim? With genuine purpose, would he not have sought her out at her mother’s death? And he could have found her, knowing that she was married to Geoffrey Hayes. A sophisticated man, Morgan Reynolds ought to know that the true dates were ascertainable if she wanted badly enough to ascertain them.

  A whim, she decided, contrived in the wake of her phone call. Champagne and roses, and the romance of her mother’s illicit love. Oh, wow! Could he really have thought she would fall into his arms and cry, “Daddy, you’ve been on my mind!”

  The transcript came through. She did not open it until she walked out and into City Hall Park, where, in the warm noontime sun, she found a bench to herself. She felt taut as a bowstring, her heart thumping. A party of pigeons gathered around her when she sat down. “Sorry, kids,” she said, having no lunch to share with them. They waddled elsewhere, and she opened the transcript.

  Katherine Anne Richards, residing at 499 East 91st Street, New York City, born July 17, 1926, in Chicago, Illinois, and Thomas Francis Mooney, residing at 584 East 54th Street, New York City, born October 10, 1934, in Wicklow, Ireland, were married on July 20, 1954, at Saint Giles’s Church Rectory in New York by the Reverend Stephen Flaherty. The witnesses were Margaret Fiore and Michael Desmond. There had been no previous marriage of either bride or groom.

  For a moment it seemed as though she had learned a great deal, and then it seemed very little. In the City Hall basement she found a public telephone and called Saint Giles’s Rectory. The church was not far from the United Nations and not far for East Fifty-fourth Street. But to her inquiry about Father Flaherty, the soft-voiced woman said, “Father Flaherty’s been in his grave for over twenty years.” Julie asked if there would be a parish record of the annulment of a marriage Father Flaherty had performed. “Those records are kept in the Chancery Office,” the woman said.

  Julie said, “I see,” and thanked her, but she felt little hope of access to the Chancery Office records.

  There were a number of Fiores in the Manhattan directory, but none named Margaret. Nor was there a Michael Desmond. Margaret Fiore had to be her mother’s friend, Maggie. She could not remember her very well—a plump, noisy woman. Her mother had talked a lot about her at some point, which suggested that she had either died or moved away. Julie was on her way uptown when it occurred to her that she probably knew where Maggie had moved to. She remembered a quarrel with her mother over the size of a telephone bill. She had fought back because the largest item by far on that particular phone bill was a call her mother had made to Los Angeles, and it was to her friend Maggie.

  Julie got off the bus at Forty-second Street and headed for the New York Public Library. There were numerous Fiores in the Los Angeles phone books, but again, none by the name of Margaret. She could have married, of course, or remarried. Inveterate housecleaner that Julie was, she had destroyed her mother’s address book long ago.

  Her disappointment was heavy. Then she chided herself: she could have had a rich, successful father, Morgan Reynolds, half a column in Who’s Who. And here she was, looking for a Heathcliff. Leaving the reference room, she passed the various indexes—the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature, the Cumulative Book Index …

  What prompted her to stop and search she would never know—a hunch, a prayer, a jab of hope. Beginning with the year 1950, she looked up Thomas Francis Mooney in the Reader’s Guide. In 1955 someone of that name had published a poem in The New Yorker called “Where the Wild Geese Fly No More.”

  ELEVEN

  JULIE COULD NOT HOLD BACK the tears when she read the poem. Whether or not it was good, it was Irish, and she thought it beautiful. Pride, a sunburst, warmed her through. She would brook no doubts, not of the author’s relationship to her nor of the poem’s merit. If it was in The New Yorker, it had to be good. She copied the poem—of sonnet length—into her notebook and turned in the bound magazine. While she waited near the elevators for a public telephone to become available, she began to memorize it.

  She called Virginia Gibbons, whom she knew through Jeff. Ginny reviewed theater for The New Yorker.

  “Nineteen fifty-five. Even for the magazine that’s going back a long time,” Ginny Gibbons said. “What do you want to know?”

  “Anything and everything about Thomas Francis Mooney, who wrote the poem. He might possibly be my father.”

  “The title and the date it appeared?” Ginny wanted to know.

  Julie told her. Then: “Want me to read it to you? It’s only fourteen lines.”

  “Wait till I get a cigarette.”

  “I like it,” Ginny said afterward. “I suppose you know about the Wild Geese? They were Irish mercenaries, I should think, though from what I know of the Irish, they’d have fought without being paid for it. In Napoleon’s army? For the French, in any case.”

  “We’re onto something,” Julie said. “I’m sure of it.”

  “Let me go down the hall and talk to some of the old-timers. What else has he written?”

  “I’m going to go search now,” Julie said.

  “I’ll see if there’s anything on him in our files while I’m at it,” Ginny said.

  Julie searched back a few years from 1955 and forward to date. She found nothing. Bleary-eyed, her enthusiasm slightly blunted, she called Virginia Gibbons back.

  “Sorry, Julie. Nobody around here knows the name, and there’s nothing in our files. It probably came in cold. If you want me to, I’ll try bookkeeping on it, but I’m not sure where those ledgers are stored, so it may take time. I have one other suggestion. It’s a long shot, but you might want to try it: in those days the Walsh and Kendall Agency represented most of the Irish writers. John Walsh’s father was an Irish playwright. I didn’t know him, but I knew John. We had some wonderful times trying to get his father’s plays produced in this country. ‘If it’s this hard to get Walsh produced,’ John would say, ‘what would it be like if his name was Yeats or O’Casey?’”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Walsh,” Julie said.

  “That’s the point.”

  “Oh.” She sometimes had trouble with the New Yorker ellipses. “I’ll try Kendall and Walsh. I’m not going to let go now that I’ve got this far.”

  “Maybe he’s publishing under his name in Gaelic these days.” Whether or not she was serious Julie couldn’t tell. “Julie?”

  “I’m still here.”

  “Do you know the Irish playwright Seamus McNally?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you should. He’s giving a seminar at Yale this summer. Before he goes back, I’m having a gathering at my place. I’ll ask you and Jeff.”

  “Jeff will be in Paris,” Julie said.

  “Then you’ll come yourself, for God’s sake.”

  Julie went from the library to a cocktail party at the Players’ Club given by the producers of a daytime television series, “Melissa’s Children,” to celebrate its twenty-fifth year on the air. She picked up a couple of items for the column, enough to keep her in business, and a pretty good meal of hors d’oeuvres. She fantasized a book to be called The Well-Dressed Beggar’s Guide to Manhattan; or How to Live on Publication Parties, Opening Nights and Bar Mitzvahs.

  She was back at the shop writing up her column material when she picked up on a call she first debated leaving for the answering service.
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br />   “Friend Julie? This is May Weems. I sure hopes you remember me.”

  “I do.” It was the black street girl Detective Russo called Ring-Around.

  “Would you like to do me a little favor, Friend Julie? Then I does one for you like …”

  “Like what?”

  “The fuzz done busted me again, and my pimp say he won’t pay no more fines. He say I don’t run fast enough, but I can’t run no faster.”

  “How much is the fine?”

  “I don’t know till I goes before the judge, the different judges say different. I bet they don’t say more’n fifty dollars seeing it’s you and knowing …”

  Knowing, Julie thought, the key word. Knowing what May Weems might be able to contribute to the apprehension of the men who attacked Julie Hayes. “Where are you?”

  “They taking me to a holding pen—like I was a pig or something, so’s they can deliver me first thing tomorrow morning.”

  “I’ll find you,” Julie said. She hung up the phone and sat a moment thinking back to her last encounter with May Weems—and her pimp. He affected the bad speech of the comic Stepin Fetchit back in the days when blacks were colored people or Negroes. She wondered if May imitated him. She wasn’t very bright. Only cunning and pathetic. But smart enough to have avoided saying just what she’d do for Julie to return the favor.

  Detective Russo, aware of the arrest—he might even have arranged it, Julie thought—tracked May Weems to the old Fifth Precinct stationhouse in Chinatown. He put Julie in touch with the desk sergeant, and she was able to learn from him that May Weems would go before Criminal Court Judge Arbiter in the morning.

  TWELVE

  MISERY DIDN’T LOVE COMPANY in that courtroom. The early arrivals were concerned spectators, who chose to sit far apart from one another. A few were young, but most were not. They were working women, most of them, and most of those were black. They were losing half a day’s pay to be in court, or half their sleep if they worked by night. They had dressed to look respectable, able to cope with the son or daughter on whose behalf they’d come. The bailiff waited at attention; there was activity at the lawyers’ tables; the court stenographers were ready. The judge was in his chambers.

  Prisoners began to arrive with their arraignment officers; they congregated at the rear of the room, a scruffy mix of anger and bravura, looking only sidewise to see if there was anyone in court for them. Their lawyers, mostly court assigned, drifted in through a side door chatting with one another, ignoring the clients with whom they would in their own good time make contact.

  “Friend Julie!” The woman waved.

  Julie waved back. She hadn’t recognized her on arrival. May Weems presently pointed her out to a sallow young man Julie was sure would smell of mothballs. After a few words with his client he came to Julie, introduced himself and offered a limp hand. He reeked of shaving lotion. Mothballs would have been better. He sat down beside her and asked how high she could go if he could get his client off with a fine and suspended sentence.

  “Fifty bucks,” Julie said.

  He groaned and shook his head as though that wasn’t going to do it. Then: “Is she telling the truth about being a witness in a rape case?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. I’ll try, Friend Julie,” he drawled.

  Julie glowered at him for the familiarity. Rape, the great equalizer.

  Sniveling kids and arrogant punks went with state-paid lawyers before the bench of Judge Arbiter, every one of them a mother’s son. Not a father in sight. One of the few professions Julie had not at one time or another made a run for was the law. She had no regrets that morning.

  May Weems was called and charged with 240-37, loitering for purposes of prostitution. Her attorney asked if he might approach the bench. The black girl waited, her only curiosity a glance Julie’s way to be sure she was still there. May wore tight orange pants and yellow boots. Her black T-shirt hung limp as though she had shrunk within it. No one seemed to have dressed up for court. Tatters and naked parts that showed their scars. A lot of scars. But if she were a judge, Julie thought, she would demand clean clothes as part of the court’s decorum. She heard mention of her name, and then May’s lawyer beckoned her to come to the bench.

  “Hi, Friend Julie.” May Weems wore heavy makeup, but the eyes framed in mascara were as dead as buttons.

  The judge frowned at the black girl and turned to Julie. “I understand you’ve tried to help this woman before.” Julie was surprised that May would have mentioned it.

  “If you can find a way to get her off the streets, you’ll be doing society a service. And you might save her life. I’m fining the defendant twenty-five dollars … if that’s satisfactory to her. …” He glanced at May’s lawyer, making the mandated query, and with hardly a pause added: “Case dismissed.”

  May Weems could have found her way to the court clerk’s office blindfolded. Julie got a receipt for her twenty-five dollars.

  “He’d’ve wanted more if I was to pay,” May said as they waited outside the Criminal Court building, Julie trying to flag a cab. “When you ain’t got no money, that’s when it costs you.”

  “How about the favor you’re going to do for me?” Julie asked.

  “I intends to. The police say this old street person, did I know them? Did I know where they goes? I ain’t going to say till I finds out why. And then I only say I try and find out. … Julie, honey, I sure glad them wasn’t black men what attacked you.”

  A cab pulled up and discharged a passenger. Julie pushed May Weems in ahead of her. “Tell the driver where we’re going.”

  “Make him go up the West Side and let us out when I say when.”

  Julie directed the cabdriver. Then to May: “This old street person—man or woman?”

  “I swear she half and half. She not right in the head either. But I knowed she must be who the fuzz was talking about. Missy Glass. She say she try to get me in where she stay sometime, but they say, ‘No, thank you. We don’t take no ‘hoes.’”

  Julie was moved to touch the girl’s hand. May drew it away, reminding Julie of her own problem these days with touching. She said, “You’re all right, May. You’ve still got pride in people, so why don’t you have some in yourself?”

  “I ain’t people. I’s a whore.”

  Julie said nothing more. She knew as well as Judge Arbiter how very nearly hopeless it was to preach a straight gospel to May Weems.

  They were approaching Twentieth Street on Eighth Avenue when May said they could walk from there. While Julie was paying the cab fare, she saw, out of the corner of her eye, May pull down the shirt to display a naked shoulder. A reflex of the profession, for by the time Julie emerged from the cab, both shoulders were again covered. They walked along a street that if not as full of grace as it had been in the nineteenth century, wore an air of respectability. Fleetingly, Julie thought of what it might be like to restore a brownstone and furnish an apartment in it for herself.

  “This here,” May said.

  They approached a church within sight of the abandoned elevated tracks. May explained that they were going to a refuge provided by the Saint Vincent de Paul Sisters of Charity. At a side entrance to the church basement she rang the bell and gave Julie instructions: “You be the one and ask for Missy Glass.”

  “How do you know she’s here?”

  May pulled up by a couple of inches her hammered-down look. “Sometimes I takes her home when she don’t know the way.”

  A chubby red-cheeked nun in a blue uniform and wearing a large crucifix on her breast opened the door to them. Julie asked to see Miss Glass.

  “Missy’s in the back room working,” the nun said and led the way. She asked Julie if she worked for the city.

  “No. It’s a personal matter. Missy Glass may have witnessed something that happened to me.”

  “Something bad,” May added enthusiastically.

  They walked through a curtained dormitory, a dozen cots made up uniformly, and cam
e to a recreation room—a television set and faded garden furniture, a table with a coffee urn and magazines. Only one person was present, a gaunt, stooped creature who could indeed have been taken for a man or woman. She wore men’s slacks and shoes, and she was sorting what Julie presently saw to be pieces of broken glass on an old pool table.

  “Visitors, Missy Glass,” the nun called out with a good-news air.

  The woman straightened up as far as she could, to some three-quarters of what was once her normal height. Her hair was gray and brown shag. Her smile was shy, her teeth bad, her eyes furtive.

  The nun approached the table and said of a laid-out assortment of glass fragments, “Aren’t these pretty?” She explained to Julie that a woman who made jewelry gave a day a week to the mission. “Missy is very good.” As though praising a child.

  And Missy seemed hardly able to bear the praise, turning her head away, the color rising to her slack and wrinkled cheeks. The smell of the woman remind Julie of mushrooms.

  When the nun left them, May Weems said, “This here the lady you seen getting in the trailer. Remember, Missy Glass?”

  Julie stiffened. “Please, May, don’t tell her what she saw. Let her tell us. … Would you please, Miss Glass … Missy? Do you remember? It was a Sunday morning. Very quiet. Did you hear anything unusual before you saw me?”

  May burst in again. “She don’t hear good, but she hear something.”

  “Can’t you be quiet, May?”

  The woman looked surprised or alarmed by their exchange.

  “I just trying to help. Them men don’t mean her no good either, Friend Julie, but she don’t know that. I’s the one makes her stay here and do her glass.”

  Julie said, “May, do you know the men?”

  “Seem like I ought to. I knows a lot of Johns that part of town.”

  Missy Glass was looking at Julie surreptitiously. The large, strange eyes, which made her expression seem one of continual surprise, fled when Julie tried to hold them with her own gaze.