New Haven Noir

by Amy Bloom

  She doesn’t know what she’s going to do with him until they come. She’s already fed and watered him; he hasn’t spoken, just stares at her with those large dark eyes. He hasn’t tried to leave; it’s almost as though he’s relieved that it ended this way. Maybe she reminds him of his own grandmother. Maybe he was brought up right and just got in with the wrong crowd. She knows what can happen with that. She’s known her share of boys who went bad.

  Those boys from her past grew up over near James, off Grand. When they started their families, they moved to the other side of Blatchley near Ferry, a better area, even though they weren’t but a few blocks from where they started. Grand Avenue was their Main Street; they were separate from the rest of the city on their patch of land: a peninsula surrounded by the East and Quinnipiac rivers and a swamp on the other side.

  She doesn’t like what Grand has become, all those shops and restaurants with Spanish signs owned by the Mexicans. Or are they Ecuadoreans? It doesn’t really matter, because they don’t speak English and she’s willing to bet that most of them are illegal anyway. When her people came, when Frank’s came, they were all legal. They were proud to become Americans and live in tidy houses and take advantage of the opportunities. Now she passes the old wooden houses in decline, three or four families living inside, maybe more, piles of junk in the backyards: rusted cars and bikes, dirty plastic toys, stained mattresses, old furniture. Does this boy live like that? Is that how he grew up?

  The boy is fidgety. She doesn’t have any more cannoli, and he’s finished up the last of the milk. She’s only got a little half-and-half left, and she wants that for her morning coffee. She’s got to keep something for herself. There might be a little bread in the box, it’s from Apicella’s, which is still on Grand after all these years. When she’s out doing her shopping, she always stops in for a loaf of bread, the scent bringing her back to her childhood. She walks all the way to Ferraro’s for everything else; she won’t set foot into that C-Town ever since that one time when she saw those kids with the knife. It’s cheap, though, and sometimes she’s tempted because she always likes a bargain.

  It’s not as though she doesn’t have money. She’s got enough to live on, what with the Social Security and Frank’s insurance. She doesn’t need much. The house was paid off a long time ago. Her son wants her to move to East Haven, near him. She and Frank decided to stay here in Fair Haven back when everyone else was going to East Haven or the East Shore, and she thinks if she moves now it would be a betrayal of Frank. Her son doesn’t understand, tells her how unsafe the neighborhood is now, it’s not like in the old days when everyone had protection. He wants to take care of her. She told him maybe she’d consider one of those new condos along the river, but it was really only to keep him quiet. If she lived there, she wouldn’t be able to have her vegetable garden anymore. It’s not what it used to be, only a few tomatoes, some green beans, zucchini, garlic, and onions, but she likes to work the small plot, get her hands dirty. What would she do without it? She doesn’t want to plant in the community garden, that sad little patch of land that’s overgrown, showing how no one really cares.

  She worries, however, that her son will put her in the Mary Wade Home over on Clinton at some point if her memory keeps failing. Agnes and Emelia ended up there, forced to leave their homes by their children, and they didn’t last long. Once you go to a place like that, it’s over pretty quick because you know it’s the last stop and who wants to keep living with the smell of urine and disinfectant in the air all the time?

  The boy shifts in his seat, and she holds up her hand. He catches his breath, stops moving, obedient. She wants to ask him about himself, where does he live, how did he end up here like that, but she isn’t sure she should invest that much in him. One of the things about getting older is that you suddenly stop caring what people think or what other people’s lives might be like. She lives with her memories, wraps them around her while she sips her sherry, watching the world go by from her front window.

  There’s the young woman who jogs in the early evenings with those wires in her ears and the young families who walk on weekends with their strollers and designer coffees as though the neighborhood is gentrifying rather than deteriorating. It’s just less expensive than anywhere else, which is how they can afford to live here, making it easier to pretend that it will turn around. They close their eyes to the little ones, their eyes wide, their bellies growling with hunger, only half dressed even in the winter, leaning against the rickety railings on the decrepit front porches.

  She wonders if this boy was one of those little ones, then admonishes herself. Of course he was. He wouldn’t be here right now if he wasn’t. He looks familiar. He looks a little like those boys she grew up with. No, that’s not it. She is certain she has seen him, but she can’t remember where.

  She doesn’t understand why he’s still here. Oh, that’s right. She reaches for the phone, then remembers that she’s already called, that they are waiting. She opens the Frigidaire and looks for milk, but the carton isn’t there. Where did it go? she wonders, then spots the empty glass next to the boy on the table. He drank all of it, didn’t he?

  She takes the bottle of sherry out of the cupboard and pours herself a small glass. The boy’s eyebrows rise, and she makes a face at him. It’s like with her son, always nagging her about things. Doesn’t he know she can take care of herself? She’s been here a long time. She’s survived it all. Survived all of them. No one is left. They’re not even in prison anymore. They’re dead. Midge disappeared to who knows where back in the seventies. They say he’s at the bottom of Bridgeport Harbor. She’s always thought he might be in someone’s backyard, here in town, right under their noses. Serves him right. He should have known better from the get-go. He was no stranger to the life. Holding up that card game was a mistake. It was the first time they sent him away. He might not have been a dashing fellow, that Midge, but he was always charming.

  Billy was a different story. He scared her. Scared her father and Frank too. Scared everyone. Like Whitey. The two of them were the same. Cold-blooded. It was no surprise they ended up the way they did. They deserved it.

  She wonders about the boy: does he deserve it?

  He’s looking at the door again. She reaches over and puts her hand on his forearm. He stiffens; she can feel the tension. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen now. He’s not as tough as he thinks he is; he’s not like Midge or Billy. She can see the softness in his eyes, behind the fear. Maybe this is his first time. Maybe it’s like the bomb. The one that killed that child.

  She pulls her hand away and sits back farther in her chair, farther away from him. She doesn’t see him anymore as she pictures the shattered windows, the blood splatter on the sidewalk. Why is it that she has such trouble remembering what she needs at the grocery store, but the bus stop is as if it happened only moments ago? Every detail is etched in her memory and won’t let go: Frank in the basement, heading out through the cellar door; two hours later, they were having dinner and the sound of the blast echoed through the house, making it shake like an earthquake. She rushed down the few blocks, along with everyone else, to see the charred remains of the car, the mother kneeling on the pavement next to the child with a piece of the car’s fender sticking out of his chest, her screams almost inhuman, Frank whispering over and over to himself that it wasn’t supposed to happen that way.

  She touches the short gray curls near her ears, patting them down, pretending that she doesn’t hear the low roar. She knows it’s not real, that it’s all in her head, but she can’t make it go away, no matter what she does. Her son keeps taking her to the doctor to adjust her hearing aids, but she can’t tell him that’s not the problem. She can’t tell him about that day. About what his father did for a living because he was a part of something that always ended in a violent death.

  The equipment and tools are still in the basement. They’re in a locked trunk. Her son asks what’s in it, and she tells him she doesn
’t know, that the key is long gone. He has not pushed it, but she’s often wondered if he really does know what his father used to do down there. If that’s not the real reason why he wants her out of here, so he can get rid of the evidence. As long as she’s living here, she won’t let him get rid of anything.

  What’s not locked is the cabinet in the den. She reaches into her apron pocket and fingers the iron key. The boy sees her movement and flinches. She frowns at him. Doesn’t he know that he’s safe now? That the danger is gone? She opens her mouth to say so, but the words don’t come. The ringing in her ears is worse; she wouldn’t be able to hear herself anyway. So she merely shakes her head, as befits the situation.

  He doesn’t belong here, but he is here. How did he get here anyway? She hates it that her memory does this. Moments are lost, some forever, some come back. She has no control over which. And then as quickly as she forgets, she remembers. She was watching the news, like she does every night after supper, when the doorbell rang. Her plate with the chicken bone and potato skin is still on the counter. She usually washes up after the news.

  She wasn’t going to open the door tonight. She never opened the door after dinner or when it got dark—she knew better than that—but the banging started and wouldn’t stop. Rage filled her—how could they interrupt her evening like this?—and she turned the knob and yanked it open, ready to give them a piece of her mind.

  The boys charged into the house, shouting about something.

  All she could see was the gun.

  The one with the gun raised his hand, and she felt the blow against the side of her head. She spun around and watched her hearing aid skitter across the floor. She was so busy focusing on it that she didn’t see him come at her from the other side. He grabbed her arm, pulling her off balance, and she stumbled, her ankle bending unnaturally. She had the crazy thought that she couldn’t fall on her hip, that would be the death of her, and then the hand tightened around her wrist and yanked it. She did fall, but on her knees, which had been filled with pain for years and now it was excruciating. He dragged her across the floor and into the den. Her glasses were half off her face; everything was blurry and her ears weren’t working right, sounds were muffled.

  Where was the other one? She frowned. He was saying something; his lips were moving, but she couldn’t make it out. He was shouting now, looking up toward the stairs, shouting more, finally dropping her arm, and she pulled it underneath her like a bird with a broken wing. The wood floor was cool against her cheek.

  For a moment, he peered down at her, his lips opening, baring his teeth, and she was reminded of a pit bull she’d encountered a few months ago, but it was on the other side of a fence and this boy was leaning closer and closer until—

  He was gone.

  She lay on the floor, feeling the vibrations. He was heading upstairs. That’s where the other one had gone. What would they find there? Her jewelry, her mother’s pearls, her father’s watch, Frank’s cuff links. None of it is worth a thing; she’d sold the good stuff years ago to pay for Frank’s care. She doesn’t have any money up there; it’s in the freezer, in the coffee can, an old trick that these kids probably wouldn’t think of. There are some drugs, her aspirin, her blood pressure medication, the Valium—but that’s so old it probably wouldn’t work anymore.

  It was only a matter of time before they found out she had nothing worth taking.

  Frank was in her head then, telling her to get up. She couldn’t die like this; she’d rather go to the Mary Wade Home and continue to lose her mind. It wasn’t gone yet, though, and she knew what she had to do.

  She ignored the pain in her knees and crawled across the floor. The cabinet loomed overhead, and she pulled herself up by grabbing onto the arm of the chair next to the desk. She glanced back for a second, saw nothing, fished the key out of the desk drawer, and unlocked the cabinet.

  When they came back downstairs and burst into the room, she fired.

  The first one fell, a blossom of red spreading across his chest.

  The other one let out a shriek. He was just a boy. Her hand, no, her entire arm, was shaking, but his eyes were focused on the gun.

  She waved it in front of him, stepping over the boy on the floor, ignoring the blood. It would come back, like the blood on that sidewalk so many years ago, but for the first time in a long while, her head was clear and the ringing in her ears was gone. She could even hear the siren in the distance.

  Her hand steadied, and a sense of calm spread through her.

  She pointed the gun at him like Frank taught her.

  “Do you want something to drink?” she asked.

  Evening Prayer

  by Stephen L. Carter

  Dixwell Avenue

  The boy hated Mondays most. He used to hate Sundays most, but that was before Yale happened to his father.

  The reason the boy hated Sundays was that church took half the morning and he had trouble keeping still that long. His mother was in the choir and his father in his black suit sat up front with the deacons, so the boy was stuck in a pew with Mrs. Percy and her girls. Mrs. Percy was very strict. Her girls could sit for three hours and never move once. The boy knew he was wicked because he couldn’t sit still like they did, and Mrs. Percy was always shaking him by the arm and hissing at him to stop fidgeting. The boy understood. He had realized years ago that he was going to hell. Every week Pastor Harrigan talked about the flames that awaited the unrepentant sinners and, from the looks Mrs. Percy and the other church ladies gave him when he squirmed or dropped the hymnal or yawned, the boy knew he was one of them.

  Mrs. Percy was a big, dark, round lady who wore a white hat and a veil to church. She and her son Christopher ran the candy store. Mr. Percy was dead. Christopher only had one leg. He was crippled from the war. Christopher was even meaner than his mother. If you spent too much time looking at the comic books in their spinning rack, he would yell at you to get out and then roll up a newspaper and swat you unless you were quick. But in church he liked to get up and tell the congregation about everything the Lord had done for him. Sometimes he would tell the story of how he got his leg blown off in the war by a mine and should have bled to death but Jesus saved him. The boy thought a mine was a cave where you dug for gold and he couldn’t figure out how a cave could explode. One day after church, Christopher and another man got in a fight about who would be better for the Negroes, Truman or Dewey. The boy’s father had to break them up. Truman was the president. The boy was not sure who Dewey was. For a while the boy was not even sure exactly what a Negro was.

  Then he found out, and that was when he started hating Mondays.

  * * *

  After church was Sunday dinner. The boy’s mother would make sausage and eggs and ham and greens and grits and sweet rolls. The family would sit at the dining room table with its pressed white cloth, the boy and his mother and his father and Nana, who was his father’s mother and had the room next to the boy’s. Sometimes they would have guests from the church or out of town. Before dinner his father would say a long prayer. After dinner he would say another long prayer. He was always correcting the boy’s table manners. He liked to say that your manners were your passport to the world. He worked at one of the big hotels down by Yale. All around the neighborhood, people nodded when the boy’s father passed by. Everyone said good morning. No one ever called him by his Christian name. Everyone called him Deacon or Mister. When he took the boy to the soda fountain the man would say, No charge, Deacon. Even Christopher, Mrs. Percy’s mean son, would come out from behind the counter and shake his father’s hand. People were always coming to the house with problems, and the boy’s father would listen and nod and listen and nod until he had the whole story. He would give them advice, and they would say thank you. Days later, on the street, they would come up to him and say it again, Thank you, Deacon. If the boy’s father was on his way home and saw kids acting up, he would tell them to stop and they would do what he said. The boy was secretly proud that h
is father was so important, and this secret pride was another reason he was sure he was going to hell.

  The church was a small brick building on Dixwell Avenue just up from Munson Street. That was how he always heard people describing things, just up from. Their house was just up from the church. The doctor was just up from their house. The school was just up from the doctor. But the stores where his mother liked to shop were down, not up. They were down by Yale. The boy liked to go with her. He would watch her try on dresses and she would smile at him over her shoulder. Sometimes she would stand on the sidewalk and look in the window and say, I sure would love to try that dress, but then she would not go in the store. The boy would ask why and his mother would say, Hush, sweetie pie, don’t worry about it. But the white women would walk right past her and go into the store and come out with big boxes and bags. He asked an older kid at church who told him that some of the stores down by Yale did not serve Negroes.

  One afternoon his mother took him downtown to Malley’s to buy shoes. There were lots of department stores on Chapel Street but Malley’s, with its colorful awnings and big picture windows, was his favorite. Today the windows featured a display about the store’s history. The boy looked at the mannequins in their costumes from the olden days. Each diorama moved forward a few years. The styles kept changing. One window said, Bride of Today and Her Attendants. The bride and her attendants were all white. The last window showed the bride and groom boarding a shiny new train on the New Haven line. The groom was white too. The boy stared. His mother told him to stop gawking and hurry up. She thought he was looking at the train.

  Children’s shoes were on the second floor, and that was where the birdcage was too. The boy loved the cage. He ran over. The cage was taller than his father. There were parakeets chirping and singing. They jumped and fluttered from branch to branch. A blue one flapped broad-feathered wings and looked at him. The boy looked back. A sign said not to feed the birds. The boy stood there with his nose against the wire, waiting for the parakeets to start talking, but they never did.