Sirens

by Janet Fox

  Without turning away, I said, “Pops?”

  Connor’s eyes were gray, the color of steel. He was young for someone with such power, maybe not even thirty. His eyes held mine, and something twisted inside me. I was alone on a steel-gray sea, and he was reeling me in, much against my inclination. He was a devil of a man

  My heart slowed, and then time slowed. His lips formed a small smile that vanished in an instant. I didn’t like him. But he had my attention.

  Pops came in behind me. “Go to your room, Josephine.” As I turned away Danny Connor tipped his hat.

  I left the door of my room ajar and leaned against the wall next to the jamb. Daniel Connor had a soft, pleasant voice for someone built so square. I supposed he didn’t need to use his voice when, from what I’d read in the paper, his fists could do the job. Though he looked like he hadn’t hit anyone himself in a while—his tailored suit, spats, felt hat, and gold-tipped cane were not fighting gear. No, he had men around him, like the men from the other night, who were not such sharp dressers and who looked like they could break a guy’s arm as if they were snapping a chicken’s neck.

  For a minute or two it sounded like a social call. Pleasant conversation about the weather. Inquiries after the health of Ma and me.

  I’d seen Connor that once at Teddy’s memorial service, about two months after Teddy’s disappearance. Connor had sat in the back at a respectful distance. I’d wondered at it then, why he was there. Later I put two and two together: it was right about that time, more or less, that Pops had started in on the bootlegging.

  But now I heard: “Billy, my boys told you why I’m here.”

  “I know, and I can’t help you.”

  “Have you made a thorough search?”

  “Teddy left nothing behind. Just his clothes. And his medals.”

  “Yes. Of course.” A bee batted lazily against my window screen. “His medals. Your son was a true hero.”

  “Yes.”

  “It is such a shame, not to be able to bury him properly. It’s a shame that you and your family can’t say good-bye.” Someone paced around the room. “You don’t think he might still be alive?”

  My heart thudded.

  “No.” Pops’s voice was flat.

  “From time to time I imagine I see Teddy, here and there. I remember him well. He was such a pleasant young man,” Connor said. The blood pounded in my ears. “Why does someone commit suicide, I wonder? Just up and disappear in such a fashion, only his clothes left on a beach?” Connor paused. “Well, Billy, here’s the point of it: if Teddy told you anything about his involvement in certain affairs, things he might have been mixed up in, in particular anything that might reflect”—and here he coughed—“reflect on me, I’m sure you would let me know.”

  “Teddy was not himself after he came home,” Pops said, his voice shaking a little.

  Silence, except for a tapping—I imagined Connor’s cane on the floor—and then, “You have not addressed my question.”

  Pops’s voice came out low and rumbling. “Teddy didn’t confide in me.”

  “Who did Teddy confide in, Billy? His sister, perhaps? Didn’t she find his clothing on the beach?”

  The bee parried, feinted, moved on. My mouth was dry as a desert.

  “Josephine was very close to her brother. But he’d never mix her up in anything. Never.”

  “No. Of course he wouldn’t. Not a hero like Teddy.”

  I was so parched I couldn’t swallow, as if I’d tried to drink that salt water while the hook in my mouth reeled me in, steel, gray, sharp.

  “I would appreciate it, Billy, if you could look again for something he might have left behind. And should you find anything, you would inform me at once, wouldn’t you.” It was not a question.

  Pops said something I couldn’t make out.

  “My respects to your family.” I heard the screen door squeak open and shut, heard Connor’s footsteps, heavy and sure, on the wood porch and stairs, heard the slam of a car door and the engine start and the car pull slowly over the gravel and away. Then, silence for a moment before I heard Pops’s heavy tread as he mounted to the second story and approached my room.

  I scrambled to my chair, grabbing a book and holding it before my face.

  He knocked.

  His face was pale now, that rough anger drained away and replaced by something else. “I’m getting you a ticket for the noon train tomorrow to your uncle’s. Be ready, Josephine.”

  “Pops…” I held the book in my hand like a shield. “Do you need help with anything before I leave? You know, any last calculations?”

  His eyes met mine, and then he shook his head once. “Tomorrow, noon. Be ready.”

  I nodded, and he left.

  Pops might not know it, but Teddy had confided in me, all right—although not anything about Danny Connor. And if Teddy had left anything hidden, surely he would have told me.

  New York City was a special place for Teddy and me. I should be happy I was heading there; of all the places on earth, it was the one in which he was most likely to reappear. And I wanted more than anything for him to come back and help set things right.

  But at the moment all I heard was the humming of the bees outside my window and the distant shouts of children out in the fine weather, and my pops in the kitchen talking to Ma in a voice low and rumbling like the thunder that rolls across the Hudson before a summer storm.

  CHAPTER 5

  Lou

  I was so proud to be with Danny Connor—yes, Detective Smith, whatever you might think of him, I was proud—that I held my head up like a queen.

  Danny bought me an entire wardrobe. Took me right over to Herald Square to Macy’s and outfitted me from head to toe in the latest styles. Right from Paris and only the best. Slinky velvets, chiffons, and silks—even silk unmentionables—and a swell coat with fur at the collar and cuffs and even around the bottom. As if my calves needed to keep toasty. And such shoes! Sweet little patent pumps with straps and heels, and silk pumps, too, that were to be dyed to match the two gowns he bought me. Gowns! I was putting on the Ritz.

  I walked into Macy’s one girl and came out another girl altogether.

  I thought it was kind of sweet when Danny asked the saleslady to burn my old shirtwaists and wool skirts, for fear they carried nits or fleas or such.

  “We aren’t bringing anything from that dump”—he meant the apartment I had downtown when I met him. “We aren’t bringing old trash with us, Louise. Leave it all behind.”

  I confess it made me a little teary when I had to leave my ma’s wedding portrait because the paper might carry bookworms, but Danny was a stickler for cleanliness, and I wasn’t about to argue with a guy who gave me everything. A guy who made me over, like new. Who made me feel like I was floating above the clouds.

  He took me to the finest hair salon and had my hair done just the way he liked, bobbed and curled over one eye. Had the ladies show me makeup. Eyeliner black as ink. Lipstick in a shade called Killer Red.

  “You look lovely, honey,” the hairdresser whispered when Danny’s back was turned. “You take care, now.”

  “I’m the happiest girl on the planet,” I said, in a voice that brought Danny around.

  I thought he’d smile, but instead he frowned and said, “Feelings are best kept inside, Louise. See you remember that.”

  That hairdresser’s eyebrows went up, but I wasn’t going to let that wet blanket spoil my day.

  He set me up in this hotel, the Algonquin. He’d been looking for a proper house and wanted something grand, he said, but in the meantime, while he was still on the hunt for the right place, we had a whole suite to ourselves on an upper floor so high it made me giddy to stand at the window. So high I was truly floating. A suite with walls as white as snow and fresh sheets daily and fluffy white towels and a monogrammed robe.

  And he took me over to Tiffany’s and bought me a diamond necklace and earrings, although he never let me wear them except when he took m
e out. He’d unlock his little safe and clasp that necklace on me, and I wanted to faint at the touch of his soft, manicured hands on my neck. Of course, in my heart I kind of hoped for a ring to go with that necklace, but I wasn’t about to say anything like that to Danny.

  Yes, sir, Danny treated me like I was the Queen of Sheba, and I was sure we were set forever and always.

  CHAPTER 6

  MAY 20, 1925

  New Grand Central Ceiling Has the Heavens Turned Around

  —Headline from The New York Times, March 23, 1913

  Jo

  Pops dropped me at the train station at noon the next day. It was a forty-minute ride in to Grand Central. “I’ll see you in a couple of weeks,” he said as we stood side by side on the platform.

  “Listen,” I began, but he held up his hand.

  “No arguments.” He dropped his eyes, examining his hands as he stretched and clenched his fists. “I’ll try and bring your ma.”

  I flattened my lips and then said, “That would be swell.”

  “Okay, then. Mind your aunt and uncle.” He coughed. “You can make something of yourself, Jo, if you find the right guy. These are good times. There are lots of rich guys out there, looking for a pretty wife like you to show off. Lots of lonely war heroes making some dough now, the way things are.” He looked away, pursed his lips. “I know I’m not a perfect father. And I’ve gotten mixed up with people that aren’t…” He rubbed his fingers on his forehead. “Take a tip from your aunt. Don’t marry down like your ma did.”

  “Pops…”

  “Get on that train.” His eyes were bright, his voice like rough gravel.

  I sat by the window facing back so that I could see him. He stood on the platform, watching, not moving, and I kept my eyes fixed on him until the train picked up speed and leafy branches whipped by and Pops and the White Plains station disappeared like they were spinning into a green tunnel.

  As the view out the train window opened toward the west, toward the distant, hidden Hudson, I remembered that week when I was ten—the good parts—when I fell in love with the river and wanted to watch it forever, watch it ripple by below the high banks where my uncle’s summer house perched. I’d sit on the bank, the tickle of cool grass on the backs of my knees, and read and daydream, safe in my books, while Teddy helped Uncle Bert with chores. I had dreams about the river after that, dreams in which I could swan dive down into the cool water, lift out of that water like a tiny nymph, and then cling to a leaf that had drifted down from high in the Adirondacks. I’d float toward Dobbs Ferry and past Hastings, drift by Spuyten Duyvil, passing Harlem and Midtown, until I floated right past the tip of Manhattan and butted up against Liberty Island. I’d fly on my magic wings up to Lady Liberty’s crown and sit and watch the sun set, and the lights come blinking on, the bright white and yellow incandescents, all through the stretched-skyward buildings of the city of dreams.

  New York City was magic. I should be happy I was headed that way. Happy at the possibility that Teddy might return to me there. Happy that although Pops had commanded me to go, I was, in fact, free. Instead, my belly clenched with nerves. I fretted over what was happening at home and over leaving Ma and Pops.

  And what of my plans? Without Teddy, could I see them through? Teddy, he knew. I wanted to do more with my life than run clothes through a wringer. To do more with myself than hang on the arm of some rich fellow.

  I felt tiny, all right, floating down the Hudson and wishing I knew that my voyage stretched toward liberty.

  The train screeched into the underbelly of the city and right into its heart, and I climbed down the narrow steps from the train and lugged my suitcase bumping along the platform, the air around me stinking of metal, and up the ramp into Grand Central Terminal.

  Even though I was barely a kid before Teddy left for the war, he’d bring me to the city to see a show from time to time. Now as I moved with the crowd into the station itself, and remembered those earlier trips, I looked straight up at that ceiling that was dotted with painted constellations as if someone was trying to say, You wanted to see New York stars? There you go. Even beyond the glow of the lights of Manhattan there’s a heaven above, traveler.

  Stars.

  And the swirl and the bustle, too. Gee, I liked that, the people heading this way and that, going upstate or to Connecticut or coming in to New York for the first time, most in a hurry, but some, like me, taking the time to admire the place, the echoing marble, the high, high stars.

  It had been great being there with Teddy, who took me down to the Oyster Bar, where he’d order a dozen and I’d have two of his and then a bowl of chowder. All the girls in the place had eyes for Teddy, and I’d sit up straight with my braids and ribbons and best dress and hat and I’d feel special.

  The stars. I set my suitcase down and looked up. Teddy. What was it about those stars?

  Well, for one thing, the constellations were painted backward.

  Teddy had told me that the artist painted them as if we, the little people below, were, in fact, looking at the constellations from the outside. As if we were gods, looking down from the heavens, from the vast universe looking inward to the tiny globe of earth.

  “Like you’re sitting way out in space,” Teddy had said, when I shook my braids and told him I didn’t follow. He knelt down so that his blue eyes were level with mine, and he tugged the end of one braid. “Like you’re way out in the middle of the universe, Josie-girl. Sitting way up with the angels.” And Teddy smiled. “Which is where you should be, my little angel.”

  My suitcase full of books weighed a ton, and when I hefted it again and lugged it across the noisy echoing hall to the exit onto Forty-second Street, it felt like it had picked up a few extra pounds. Pops had given me enough money to hail a taxicab, but it was only a bit more than ten blocks uptown to my aunt and uncle’s new place on Park Avenue. I wanted to save every penny I had in my pocket, just in case. I could walk even if I had to stop every half a block and switch arms.

  Which I did. The suitcase was hard, and it banged against my calf and shin with each step, as the handle strained, squeaking on its hinges. It was yet another warm day, and I wore Ma’s old linen summer coat—shortened to a more modern length, thank goodness, but still a decade out of fashion—so by the time I arrived at my aunt and uncle’s Park Avenue apartment building, sweat ran down my spine in a stream. It didn’t help any that my long hair was tied back in a ribbon and not pinned up, and that the floppy hat I wore—also way out of date—was made from wool felt.

  I stopped on the sidewalk and looked up in wonderment at that brand-new pale stone building, with its sparkling glass windows and its dark green canopy, its carved fluted ornamentation. I thought I must’ve looked like Dorothy, gazing up open-mouthed at the Emerald City.

  Oh, this magic city, this New York Oz, this city that never sleeps. That keeps one eye always open. That prowls like a beast and growls with life. With hum and buzz and memory. And Teddy, who haunted her streets, he loved this island of a million eyes. He said that despite all those eyes and all that movement, the city could hide secrets.

  I so hoped that was true. That that’s where he was hiding now.

  The doorman coughed and looked me up and down, but Aunt Mary, now out and about, had left word and I was expected. I let the doorman haul my suitcase; I had to bite back a smile when he picked it up with a grunt of surprise. The elevator boy, in his smart red suit and cap, was years younger than I was, and he stared at me wide-eyed and open-mouthed, as if he’d never seen a country girl welcomed as a guest in these quarters.

  The elevator cage opened with a clang directly into the foyer of the apartment, so it was no surprise to see Melody emerge from the living room, right behind the butler.

  I hadn’t seen Melody since Teddy’s memorial. She was seven years my senior, and I’d always thought her a sophisticate. To say she’d changed in the last year would’ve been an understatement. She’d gone from sophisticate to worldly.

/>   “Cuz!” She held me at arm’s length. Her forehead wrinkled as her thinly plucked eyebrows lifted. “What a quaint little outfit!” She turned to the Negro butler, who hovered over my suitcase, appraising, having tried to lift it once. “Go ahead, Malcolm. Take it to the guest room.” She waved her hand. “Shoo.”

  “Hi, Melody.” I touched my hair. Hers was short, about chin length in front and shorter in back, and fell in thick blond waves across her left cheek, a diamond barrette fastened high on the other side. “So. Here I am.”

  “Yes. Here you are.” She tapped her index finger against her berry-red lips, and seemed to come to a conclusion. “Let’s just get rid of that, shall we?”—she pointed at my coat—“And that”—she motioned at my hat. I shrugged out of the coat, unpinned the hat, and handed them over. She tossed them on a chair without giving them a second glance, then folded her arms. “Oh, dear.”

  I surely wasn’t the fashion plate she was, in her sleek peach silk dress with its beading along the hem, and with her silk stockings and pale-colored low heels. I tugged at my middy blouse and fiddled with the waistband of the navy wool skirt.

  “Cuz, you must let me advise you. You can’t go around New York dressed like that.”

  The flush crept up my neck. She looked terrific, I had to admit.

  “Honey, no big deal. We’ll have you square in a jiff.”

  “Gee, thanks.” I folded my arms across my chest as if to hide the oversize blouse. Then I changed the subject. “Look, I need your help. Pops sent me here on a pretext, I’m sure of it. He said something crazy about my meeting a man.”

  Melody burst out laughing. “Yes, my dear, that I can arrange.”

  I waved my hand now, impatient. “No, Mel. There’s another reason for this sudden excursion to New York. Something Pops wouldn’t tell me. What am I really doing here, do you know?”