Family Matters

by New York Tri-State Chapter of Sisters in Crime

  By the time Gabriella’s world came into focus again, the diffusing lens of happiness was entirely gone. She saw his betrayal, and anger sliced through her fear.

  He started a driving school, wanted to teach her to drive. But she refused.

  “You don’t learn to drive, you gonna end up like that,” he’d said, pointing to an old woman in black shuffling along with her cart.

  Gabriella had never been able to shake his prediction, but at least he, too, had paid a price. At eighteen, she’d left everything behind for him—a man she barely knew. How many girls were brave enough to do that? All her friends had urged her not to go even as their faces flamed with envy, for they too had heard that New York’s streets were paved with gold.

  WHEN Gabriella arrived at the door to the big house in Forest Hills Gardens that morning, it was to an impatient voice saying, “There you are, Gabriella. I’ve told the caterers to set up outside. We don’t want to miss this glorious day.”

  Gabriella started to object. It was a rare sunny morning in a summer that had been plagued by rain, but she’d planned the party so as to ensure Mrs. McTigue’s safety and the security of the house. It should be held inside.

  Arguing with the old lady’s daughter, who whirled about issuing commands, was no use, however, so Gabriella hurried to the powder room, where she changed into the uniform required for such occasions. She studied herself in the mirror: Had she become like those old crones? How somber she looked in the black dress.

  She heard the caterers moving about and pulled herself back to business. She was checking the fish when she heard Mrs. McTigue calling from her dressing room upstairs.

  “Aspettare!” Gabriella grumbled as she climbed the dark oak staircase. But when she saw the flicker of excitement in the old lady’s eyes, her annoyance melted away. She looked beautiful, despite turning ninety today, wearing earrings and the diamond brooch that was normally kept in the safety deposit box. She was trying to reach the back of her head with her brush.

  Gabriella took the brush from her, and as she coaxed the coarse white hair into waves, they joked about the birthday. Gabriella’s heart expanded. She mentioned that she, too, had just passed an important milestone, her thirtieth year in New York. “Okay, you are beautiful, no?” she said, putting the brush down. She helped the old lady down the steps and accompanied her as she greeted her guests, a number of whom had gotten to know Gabriella over the many years she’d been housekeeper for the family. How’s your husband? some inquired. What’s your daughter doing, Gabriella?

  Not much new with us, she’d answer. Mario and me, we’re going to Italy Saturday. Rosanna? You know kids. She’s out West somewhere, traveling.

  LATER, after the last guest had departed, Gabriella settled Mrs. McTigue in her study for a nap. She wished she could rest, too, but the caterers were still cleaning up. After she’d put Mrs. McTigue’s party clothes away, she emerged from the bedroom to see a pink-uniformed teenager whisk past her in search of a vacant bathroom. Mia Dio! She’d told the caterers to stay downstairs. And here Mrs. McTigue’s brooch was, in plain sight on the bureau!

  The girl in the pink uniform raced by again, and Gabriella picked up the brooch and put it in its box. She would conceal it somewhere and station herself downstairs to make sure the French doors got bolted shut.

  By the time the caterers finished loading their minivan with trivets and linen and serving dishes, Gabriella was beat. She locked all the doors, woke Mrs. McTigue, and hurried for her train.

  Normally, she enjoyed her walk through the Gardens, the affluent donut hole in Forest Hills’ surrounding ring of apartment buildings—its mock-Tudor houses set on lots four times the size of her patch in Astoria—but today all she could think of was getting home.

  She emerged from the McTigues’ neighborhood to a heavily trafficked thoroughfare and pushed onto a train. The N was almost to her stop, when she reached in her pocket for a Kleenex and realized she’d forgotten to change out of her uniform.

  A moment later, a paralyzing chill crept up her spine. Her fingers had touched something velvety and hard. The jewel box—which she’d placed in her uniform pocket temporarily for safekeeping.

  Oddio! She’d walked out of the house with it. A fortune in diamonds!

  AT a phone booth on the corner beneath her train platform, Gabriella took a quarter from her purse, but then a thought flashed through her mind. With so many people roaming through the McTigue house today, and the doors left unlocked to accommodate them, who could say the jewels had not been taken by an intruder?

  Two girls in miniskirts stood nearby, puffing on cigarettes, one of them talking on a cell phone. Gabriella doubted the pay phone would work, and besides, she needed to think about this. Not that she really intended to keep the brooch—of course not—but it was a delicious fantasy.

  She looked around for a place to sit. Her side of the street, which housed a warehouse-sized Greek specialty store, didn’t seem to have any benches. She spotted one across the road, but it was in front of the OTB, and she’d be conspicuous among the smoking bettors.

  As she scanned the rest of the shops, her eye caught the profile of the beautician who’d done her hair yesterday, sitting near the window in the pasticceria. And in that instant, she knew what she’d do if she had money. She’d start her own little business, just as Josephine had.

  Suddenly, an impulse overtook her. She crossed the street and headed for the ladies room at the McDonald’s next to the pastic-ceria. She’d dressed up a little this morning, to complement yesterday’s makeover. She pulled the blouse and pleated slacks from her bag, put them on, and studied herself in the mirror. A lot better than the way she’d looked dragging into Josephine’s yesterday. But what would really cause her to be noticed was in the jewel box. She hesitated for a moment, then took the brooch out and pinned it to her blouse.

  Most of the café’s tables were filled by espresso-drinking men. Josephine, seated by herself, basked in their assessing glances.

  As Gabriella approached, the beautician’s eyes fixed on her, or rather, on the jewels, the light flashing off them in glittering rays. Seeing that Gabriella hoped to occupy her table’s empty chair, Josephine slowly moved her handbag, making Gabriella wonder if she’d been cherishing a moment of solitude, or wanted this chair, at the window of the boulevard’s swankest café, left free for one of her business associates.

  She pushed the thought away as the weight came off her feet.”Ahh. I need to rest. I’ve been shopping,” she said. She gestured at the tiers of fancy pastries in the shop window and then at Josephine’s empty plate. “Too good to resist, eh?”

  Josephine tapped her nails against her coffee cup and continued to stare at the diamonds. “You should be careful you don’t get mugged, if you wear jewels like that to go shopping, Mrs. Bellini.”

  Gabriella waved away her concern. “It’s no good having what you can’t wear. My husband bought this for me as a memento. Thirty years ago this week, I came to America!”

  “Well. Aren’t you the lucky woman. I wish I could stay, Mrs. Bellini, but I left Anastasia in charge of the shop. And unlike the girls in your day, they all come off the boat now waving their diplomas. It’s only later you find out how little they know.”

  A moment later, Josephine was weaving her way between the tables, leaving Gabriella alone.

  BY the time Gabriella left the café, deflated by the empty chair across from her, she’d decided to ask Mario to drive her back to the McTigues.

  She trudged past the Italian bakery and the Greek butcher’s, its lamb carcasses strung up in the window, then turned off Twenty-third onto the residential street adjoining theirs, where the neighborhood’s rows of identical duplexes began.

  She needed Mario’s ear to herself today, but when she turned the corner for home, she saw him stretched out on a lounge chair with Suzie just a few feet away, her bottom on the low wall that separated the gardens.

  Her heart sank.

  Suzie greeted
her with a loud snap of gum, raised a glass, and said, “There she is. How ’bout a Campari, Gabriella?”

  The sound of her voice made Gabriella bristle. “Not tonight, Suzie. Long day. You know how it is,” she said, hoping Mario would excuse himself.

  “Long day for who?” he countered. “I work too, you know— and start the dinner!”

  Suzie rolled her eyes. “Will you two chill out.”

  Gabriella ignored them and went inside, where the silence was so complete she could hear the lid of the pot Mario had put on the burner pop gently up and down.

  WHEN she’d locked the bedroom door, she picked up the phone and started to dial. She knew the McTigues might be suspicious, and her hand trembled. The ring had just started on the other end, when she heard Mario clatter into the kitchen and let out a string of curses.

  A pan rattled as he dropped it into the sink and she noticed a burning smell seeping beneath the bedroom door. Heart thumping, she put down the receiver.

  THE squad car that awaited Gabriella in the McTigues’ driveway the next morning caught her unprepared. She’d reassured herself on the ride over that she could pretend to find the brooch behind the bureau in Mrs. McTigue’s bedroom if its absence had been noticed. By the time she’d scrubbed the burnt saucepan and fixed something else for dinner last night, it had been too late to phone. The old lady went to bed early, and if she’d realized the brooch was gone, Gabriella reasoned, she’d have phoned to ask Gabriella where she put it.

  But here were the police, and it was all Suzie’s fault. She hadn’t wanted to ask Mario to drive her back to the McTigues in front of the girl. Suzie, too, had her hair done at Josephine’s, and Suzie was a gossip. How amused Josephine would be if she realized the jewels Gabriella had flaunted belonged to her employer.

  She needed a hiding place for the jewel box, and there, in front of her, was a crack in the stone wall. She squeezed it in, then hurried up to the front door.

  Two cops stood in the foyer questioning Mrs. McTigue with patronizing cheerfulness. Gabriella would have felt indignant on her employer’s behalf, if she hadn’t recognized an opportunity to save herself. With a slight lift of her eyebrows, she conveyed what they already seemed to think, that the brooch was simply misplaced somewhere in the house.

  After the squad car pulled away, Mrs. McTigue turned to cross the slippery marble foyer.

  “Attenta! É pericoloso!” Gabriella said. But there was a fierce glint in the old lady’s eyes as she refused Gabriella’s arm. She sat brooding in her study for most of the day, from where she could see the front door, making it impossible for Gabriella to slip out to retrieve the brooch. So there the little jewel box was, when she passed through the gate again at the end of the day.

  THE hall clock was striking five when Gabriella returned home to an empty house. To still her rising panic, she began to pack for tomorrow’s flight to Rome. She threw a Samsonite case onto her own twin bed, brought the clean laundry in to sort on Mario’s, and began to fold and stack. Hurrying, like someone on the run.

  She stacked until her suitcase was nearly full, thinking all the while of Mrs. McTigue. Things would never be the same between them, even if the older woman didn’t voice her suspicions. Even if Gabriella found a way to return the jewels.

  She turned to gather some odds and ends for her case and saw Mario’s canvas bag slouched next to his bed. She’d always packed for him, but today she couldn’t resist kicking it, sending it skidding along the hardwood floor.

  Hearing the burble of a television, she realized that he’d come home. She hurried down the hall, determined to tell him about the jewels, certain he’d help her straighten things out. But when she entered the room, his attention was riveted on Suzie, who leaned against the open front door.

  Suzie glanced at Gabriella, but Mario made no attempt to turn around.

  Fury exploded inside her. She scanned the bookcase for something to throw at him, her eye catching the airline tickets he’d propped against one of his bocce trophies.

  Before Suzie’s attention could turn to her again, Gabriella slipped the tickets into her pocket and darted out of the room.

  ALONE behind the bedroom door, Gabriella had to sit for a moment to stop hyperventilating. Eventually she got up, retrieved Mario’s suitcase, and began to roll and stuff socks into its corners. Still unsteady on her feet, she went into the bathroom to collect some toothpaste and aspirin. At the medicine cabinet mirror she looked up.

  Oddio! The face that stared back at her was so strange.

  She ran a finger across one cheek and then the other. What was it that seemed so odd? She blinked, screwed up her lips. The features were the same, of course, but the whole aspect of her face had changed. It was like looking at someone she didn’t know.

  SUZIE was still in the doorway when Gabriella came back into the living room. Gabriella straightened the pillows on the wing chair and said, “Why don’t you come in, Suzie?”

  Suzie’s eyebrows rose a little. She hesitated and blew a small bubble with her gum before easing into the room.

  Mario sat up straighter and reached for the remote control. Gabriella saw that he was searching for something to say.

  “Come on, Mario,” she said. “Offer Suzie something to drink.”

  Suzie mumbled that she was needed at home, but Gabriella swooped on her like a bird of prey, ushering her to a chair. She wasn’t going to get away now. Oh no!

  A train whooshed by on the Amtrak trellis a few blocks away.

  “That the Mets game?” she said, nodding at the TV. “Nice. You and Mario enjoy.”

  Back in the bedroom, she snapped the lock on her suitcase.

  Looking into that bathroom mirror this evening, she’d recalled an incident from Rosanna’s childhood . . .

  “What is it, Mama?” Rosanna had said as she pushed a piece of paper under Gabriella’s nose. “Cosa vedi?”

  Gabriella stared at the drawing. “Looks like someone started to draw a duck.” The lines on the paper seemed to form a long beak with a circle attached to it and an eye in the center. A duck’s head, maybe.

  “Look again. Do you see anything else?”

  “Just the head of a duck, or some other bird that’s got a long beak, cara.”

  Rosanna rested her head sulkily on her hand. “Come on, Mama. Try!”

  Irritated, Gabriella snapped, “I don’t have time for games, Rosie. Tomorrow, you’re gonna be still in bed when I’m on my way to work.”

  Rosanna had stalked out of the room then, leaving Gabriella to finish sweeping the floor, her thongs snicking as she moved. It was when she bent to push in Rosanna’s chair that the drawing, still on the table, popped out at her as the head of a rabbit. Sure. That beak could be long rabbit ears.

  She decided to find Rosanna and tell her she’d seen the trick.

  But when she reached the top of the stairs she heard, “Mama didn’t get it, of course,” and knew Rosanna meant she never got it, never saw the world the way the American mothers did.

  She never told Rosanna she had seen the rabbit, but when she’d looked in the mirror earlier and seen how transformed her own face was, it occurred to her that there was more than one way of seeing a lot of things: Mario and Suzie, her problem with the diamonds, maybe even herself.

  Rain had begun to patter on the awning outside. She hauled her suitcase off the bed and down the hall, where she glanced into the closet but couldn’t see her raincoat.

  Instead of waiting till the rain subsided, she hiked her suitcase higher and started down the walk. She stepped carefully at first, avoiding spots where the water was pooling. She turned back to look at the house, thought about how uncomfortable Mario had looked once Suzie was inside their home, and hesitated, thinking maybe it wasn’t too late.

  But it was. She couldn’t go back to being the woman who ran his house, packed his suitcases, and sat in the shadows—and she didn’t need to. Rosanna was grown, and Mario would be fine without her. He had his clients and the
house . . . maybe even Suzie.

  Gabrielle pressed her handbag tight under her arm. She’d be all right too. She had some cash, their plane tickets . . .

  And a fortune in diamonds.

  Tears mixed with the rain on her face as she turned the corner and lost sight of the house. The streets in New York might not be paved with gold, but they led to all sorts of places: Out West to find Rosanna. Back to the McTigues. Or somewhere—like Palm Beach—that would turn Suzie green with envy. Until she knew where she was going, she’d just keep walking, splashing right through the puddles along the way.

  CROSSING THE LINE

  Ellen Quint

  MILLIE reached down, opened her bottom desk drawer, pushed aside the Glock and pulled out the tissue box, offering it to her newest client—this mess of a female who had just confessed that she suspected her husband of cheating. Millie knew how this one would end. Of course the putz was having an affair, and of course this sobbing, pitiful woman would be just another friggin’ forgiver. That’s what Millie called them and she could spot them as soon as they crossed her threshold.

  The woman with the sleek blonde shoulder-length hair, the blue eyes, now red and tear-filled, reached across the desk for the tissues. This woman was a doctor—a cardiologist for God’s sake. People sought out and valued her opinion. What would they think if they could see the good doc now, crying her eyes out and kvetching that she couldn’t understand how her husband could do this to her—do this to them. But this was a woman of science and she wanted proof; thus, she’d made her way to Millie’s office on Court Street from her practice on Montague Street.

  Millie tapped her foot and waited out the tear fest. In between the sobs, the doctor (whose real name, if you are into the details, was Jennifer Jackowska: “My patients just call me Dr. J,” she had shared with Millie on their first call) confided that she’d become suspicious when her hubbie of five years, Neal, had been caught in a couple of lies. Neal, a senior marketing associate, claimed to be late at work, but his boss had called the apartment looking for him. When he finally got home, according to Dr. J, Neal had become all twitchy and defensive. When something similar happened the next week, she felt, for sure, something was going on. And then there was his loss of interest in her, you know, sexually.