By the time her mother turned, the Yard was behind them. It didn’t matter; she’d little interest in it. She hardly seemed to care about the war, dutiful though she was about saving fat for the butcher and helping to sew blood pressure cuffs. It seemed to Anna that their mother spent her days listening to serials, Guiding Light, Against the Storm, and Young Doctor Malone, in the company of various neighbors. It was Anna who turned the radio to The New York Times News Bulletin at suppertime, eager for news of the U.S. landings in French North Africa. In the week since they’d taken place, the Yard had fizzed with new optimism. Anna had even heard talk of a turning point in the war, the long-awaited second front.
Anna’s own nervous excitement had a different origin: Dexter Styles. In the two weeks since she’d encountered the nightclub owner, her imagination had begun tiptoeing into dire, thrilling scenarios. Suppose her father hadn’t left home at all. Suppose he’d been obliterated by a hail of gangland bullets, Anna’s name on his dying lips like “Rosebud” in Citizen Kane? She read an awful lot of Ellery Queens. The winnowing of diffuse danger to a single corrupt soul had always been an inexhaustible pleasure for Anna. Now her own life seemed to have tipped into the world of those mysteries; the long November shadows leaned suggestively, and the sheen of streetlight on Naval Yard brick sent an ominous ripple through her belly. There was dynamism in this new foreboding, a stinging vitality, as if she’d wakened from drugged sleep.
Dr. Deerwood’s office was on the first floor of an apartment house on Park Avenue. His waiting room was “Victorian,” according to Anna’s mother, layered with Oriental carpets and brocade-upholstered sofas. There were gold tassels on the curtains, and the walls were a patchwork of small paintings overwhelmed by heavy frames. Other patients sometimes waited here, crunched or folded into chairs, walking with canes, their resemblance to Lydia familial, as if they were cousins in affliction. Today being Sunday, the room was empty. Anna and her mother sat side by side on a settee, Lydia in her chair. Waiting for Dr. Deerwood, knowing he would come, was the high point for Anna of these biannual visits. Anticipation effervesced under her ribs. The doctor will come! The doctor will come!
The whisper of a door, then his voice: “Good day, good day. Welcome, all of you.” He was a round man whose waxed white mustache looked better suited to a top hat than a gray medical coat. He greeted Lydia first, gently pushing aside her peekaboo hair. “Hello, Miss Kerrigan,” he said. “Lovely to see you again. And the elder Miss Kerrigan,” he added, shaking Anna’s hand. “And, of course, Mrs. Kerrigan.” The whereabouts of Mr. Kerrigan in recent years had never been addressed.
The examination took place in an adjacent room, plainer in decor but comfortably warm. A cascade of pulleys and leather straps occupied one corner, but these were never invoked for Lydia. The doctor lifted her from the wheeled chair and stepped with her onto a scale. Anna, who had been excited by this job as a younger girl, adjusted the weights until the bar was suspended. Then the doctor set Lydia down on a soft examining couch, took her head in his hands, and moved it gently from side to side. She lay still, almost sleepy, while he looked inside her mouth and smelled her breath and listened to her heart and lungs with a stethoscope. He examined her hair and fingernails. He manipulated her body: arms, legs, torso, feet, and hands, which he carefully uncurled to their full size and measured. Lydia would have been taller than Anna by some two inches.
“Is she more restless in the evenings?” he asked. “I’ll give you camphor drops that should calm her. Is it harder for her to swallow? Eating can become a trial, I know. I’m impressed that she hasn’t lost weight; many of my patients begin to at about this point. Don’t be alarmed if she starts to look thinner; that’s perfectly natural.”
Lydia used to laugh. She used to look out the window. She used to repeat what was said around her in a babbling, nonsensical form. She used to be alert for long periods. One by one, these pleasures and habits had fallen away. Each time another one disappeared, Anna and her mother would adjust to a new state in which they no longer expected that thing—hardly remembered it.
Now, in her awakened state, Anna found herself thinking differently about her sister. Wouldn’t listening to love serials all day send anyone into a stupor? What did Lydia have to stay alert for?
The examination complete, Dr. Deerwood pulled a chair close to Lydia, making her a part of their colloquy. “I must commend you both,” he said to Anna and her mother. “Your efforts continue to bear wondrous fruit.”
Tears streaked from their mother’s eyes, as they often did at this juncture, although she never cried. “Do you think she’s happy?” she asked.
“My goodness, yes. Lydia has been surrounded by love and care the whole of her life. Few people in her position enjoy that luxury, I’m afraid.”
Anna had sometimes thought she might be in love with Dr. Deerwood, this magician who could transform their long struggle into something luminous. But today, perhaps because she’d noticed he wore riding boots under his medical coat and she wondered if he kept a horse in Central Park, she found herself thinking, We’re paying him an awful lot of money to tell us we’re wonderful. And then, as if another voice had interposed itself, Nice work if you can get it.
“Why is she getting worse?” Anna asked, and felt her mother flinch.
“There is no cure for Lydia’s condition,” Dr. Deerwood said. “You know that.”
“Yes,” Anna admitted.
“She is following a course that is natural to her. What we might consider ‘better’ or ‘worse’ does not apply to your sister in quite the same way.”
“Can we do more with her?” Anna asked. “Take her outdoors more often? She’s never even seen the ocean—not once in her whole life.”
“Novelty and stimulation are good for everyone, Lydia included,” the doctor said. “And sea air is full of minerals.”
“Suppose she catches cold,” Anna’s mother said tightly.
“Well, I wouldn’t take her in winter. But a day like today would be fine, if she’s properly dressed.”
“I’d rather wait until spring.”
“Why?” Anna asked her mother. “Why wait?”
“Why rush?”
They stared at each other.
“I would tend to agree with Miss Kerrigan,” Dr. Deerwood said gently. “Tempus fugit, after all. Before we know it, we’ll be meeting again next May. Why wait?”
Normally, visits to Dr. Deerwood left Anna and her mother swathed in a gauze of well-being that lasted hours—some of the loveliest they spent together. Now they avoided each other’s eyes as they pushed Lydia back to Park Avenue. Outside, Anna adjusted her sister’s hair while their mother retied the kerchief at her neck.
“Well. The park?” her mother asked.
“Why not the beach?”
“What beach, Anna?”
Anna was incredulous—had her mother not heard a word the doctor had just said? “Coney Island or Brighton Beach! We can hail a taxi.”
“It will take forever and cost a fortune,” her mother said. “We haven’t enough diapers or food. And why this sudden fixation on Lydia seeing the ocean? She can hardly see at all.”
“Maybe she hasn’t enough to look at.”
In the rich autumn light, her mother’s face appeared terribly faded—the more so for the bright green feathers she’d sewn onto her hat the night before. “What’s gotten into you, Anna?” she asked sadly. “Can’t we enjoy our day like we usually do?”
Anna relented. Her mother was right about the food and diapers; it was too much to attempt without more planning. They walked to Central Park, full of mothers with their children and soldiers eating frankfurters carefully, so as not to soil their uniforms with mustard. Anna tried to snatch the pleasures of the day as if she were biting into candies. The huff and snort of horses. The smell of popcorn. Leaves floating from the trees. Lydia fell asleep, her head forward. With her shining hair covering her face, she looked like a girl with trouble in her legs, no
more. This vision elicited a more benign pity than what her true condition provoked. Anna could almost hear soldiers murmuring to each other, What a shame, such a pretty girl.
But Anna’s thoughts strayed stubbornly to the beach and then to Dexter Styles. As they looked down the steps to the Bethesda Fountain, she said, “Do you think Papa will come back?”
It had been a year, easily, since they had mentioned him, but her mother showed no surprise. Perhaps she, too, had been thinking of him. “Yes,” she said. “I’ve a feeling he will.”
“Did you look for him? On the piers? Or at the union hall?”
“Of course. You knew it at the time. But the Irish never tell. ‘So sorry, Aggie dear, shame of a thing . . .’ Those twinkly blue eyes. You’ve no idea what they’re thinking.”
“Suppose there was an accident. On the piers.”
“Oh, they wouldn’t hide that! Widows and orphans are their specialty. It’s wives they’ve trouble with.”
“What if—someone hurt him?” Anna’s heart accelerated as she said these words. She saw amazement in her mother’s face.
“Anna,” she said. “He hadn’t an enemy ever, in all the years I knew him.”
“How can you be sure?”
Her mother seemed to grope for a reply. At last she said, “He left his affairs in perfect order. Cash, bankbooks . . . not a loose end anywhere. People who—who disappear the way you mean, they’ve no warning.”
Anna had lost sight of these facts. Recalling them now, she was gutted by disappointment so profound it made her lean against the balustrade. After a long silence, she said, “Do you think he’s far away?”
“I don’t think he could be nearby and not be with us.”
“Doing what?”
“I’ve no idea.”
“What do you think?”
Her mother glanced at her. “I don’t think about him, Anna. That’s the truth.”
“What do you think about?”
A spot of red had appeared on each of her mother’s cheeks. She was angry. Anna was, too, and the anger strengthened her, as if she were bracing herself against it.
“You know perfectly well what I think about,” her mother said.
* * *
Shortly after Silvio carried Lydia back upstairs (always calmer on the return climb), there was a perfunctory knock, and Brianne shoved open the door. She heaved herself onto a chair, gasping from the climb, and flung off her coat, swamping the room with a smell of roses and jasmine tinctured with something medicinal, like witch hazel. Lady of the Lake. For as long as Anna could remember, her aunt had worn that perfume. No man can resist it, she liked to say—sardonically, even when it was still somewhat true.
Having caught her breath, she rose and kissed Anna and her mother hello and cocked her head fondly at Lydia. “How’s life in the salt mines?” she asked Anna. “Still oiling the machine for our warmongering president?”
“Well, I’m hoping to sell you a war bond.”
“Certainly. When pigs fly.”
“We’re behind Philadelphia and Charleston. Mama won’t let me join the Ten Percent Club.”
“She’s speaking War,” Brianne remarked to Anna’s mother, who was feeding Lydia. “I’m afraid I’m unfamiliar with that tongue.”
“She’d like to be paid ten percent of her wages in war bonds,” her mother said flatly. She and Anna had hardly spoken in hours.
“I’ll bet they give you some sort of gewgaw if you buy enough bonds. Eh?” Brianne said. “Tell the truth.”
“I signed a scroll that will go to sea on the USS Iowa.” Anna took pride in saying this, even knowing her aunt would find it silly.
“Listen to her! They’ve bewitched you, dearie. It wasn’t even our war. The Japs played right into Roosevelt’s hands—I’d not be surprised if he paid them to do it, the weasel.”
“You sound like Father Coughlin,” her mother said.
“They should have left Father on the air. And Lindy should have run against Roosevelt and given him the drubbing he deserves.”
“Lindbergh supports the war now, Auntie.”
“Hah! Knows they’ll run him out of town if he speaks his mind.”
“Father Coughlin is a rabid dog,” her mother said.
“Hitler needs a good spanking is all,” Brianne said. “He’s a bully in a sandlot, and our boys have to die for that? I don’t just mean the soldiers and sailors—how about the boys in the merchant marine? They’re all over Sheepshead Bay—they’ve a new maritime training station there. Food, weapons, blankets, tents—who do you suppose brings all that to the field of battle? Merchant ships are being torpedoed by the dozen, and those boys haven’t even proper guns to defend themselves.” She’d gone red in the face.
“That’s what war bonds are for, Auntie. To give Hitler a spanking.”
“Fine. How much?”
“One dollar? Two?”
“Make it five. And when are you going back to college?”
“Thank you, Auntie!”
Brianne unearthed a five-dollar bill from her pocketbook, along with a bottle of Chartreuse. For several years she’d had a “special friend”—a wholesale lobsterman who was flush enough to keep her shopping at Abraham & Straus and buying Chartreuse at ten dollars a pop. But she was ashamed for Anna and her mother to meet him.
Anna exchanged a tentative smile with her mother; Brianne made them feel their likeness to each other. She was forty-seven, stout and raspy, her crimson lipstick a memento of old times like the Cheshire cat’s disembodied grin. At seventeen, she’d rechristened herself “Brianne Belaire” and joined the Follies; Anna’s mother had come eight years later, but they’d hardly overlapped before Brianne fell out with “Mr. Z.” and moved on to more risqué revues: George White’s Scandals and Earl Carroll’s Vanities. By her own account, Brianne’s life had been one long fever of love affairs, narrow escapes, failed marriages, small parts in seven moving pictures, and various scrapes with the law arising from booze, or nudity onstage. None of it had stuck except the Scotch, she liked to say: an indictment of the world’s thin and fickle offerings that not one could compete with the reliable satisfaction of a whiskey soda. Men were the biggest failures: rats, lice, good-for-nothings—you couldn’t blame them; they’d been bumly manufactured. The best possible outcome of marriage was a wealthy, childless widowhood. Brianne had managed only to be childless.
She fixed the drinks and slid a glass toward Anna’s mother. “Say, isn’t it time you had one of these?” she said to Anna. “God knows I was drinking them by nineteen.”
“You were married at nineteen,” Anna’s mother pointed out.
“Divorced!”
“No, thank you, Auntie.”
Brianne sighed. “So virtuous. Must be your influence, Agnes.”
“We know it wasn’t yours.”
Anna was tempted sometimes to accept the drink—just to see her aunt and mother react. Her role, so firmly established that she no longer recalled its origins, was to be impervious to the vices around her—good, despite everything, in her bones, heart, teeth. The fact that she was not good in the way they thought—hadn’t been since age fourteen—should have been easy to forget in their company. But Anna never quite forgot.
Her mother put a hand on her shoulder: a peace offering. Anna touched it with her own. “Let’s get her changed and into bed,” her mother said.
“Sit down and have your drink, Aggie,” Brianne commanded. “Lydia isn’t going to run away.”
Her mother sat, oddly docile, and they raised their glasses. Across the table, Lydia drooped in her chair. Brianne took no part in her physical care—that was out of her line. Anna guessed her aunt thought it madness to keep Lydia in the apartment in diapers—a grown woman, practically. But if her mother sensed this opinion, she was unperturbed by it.
“Sad story,” Brianne said after a first long pull on her drink. “Remember that usher, Milford Wilkins? With the toupee? Who wanted to be an opera singer?”
&nbs
p; “Why, sure,” Anna’s mother said.
“Saw him at the Apollo the other day, taking tickets. Hooked on dope.”
“No!”
“The eyes. There’s no mistaking it.”
“Oh, that’s terrible,” her mother said. “He’d such a beautiful voice.”
“Was he a singing usher?” Anna asked.
“No, but he would sing for us sometimes, after the show,” her mother said.
Brianne shook her head, eyes downcast, but Anna could practically hear her rummaging for the next tragic tale about fellow dancers or others they’d known in their Follies years. When fresh mishaps had been exhausted, there were old standbys to fall back on: Olive Thomas, who drank mercury bichloride after a fight with her ne’er-do-well husband, Jack Pickford—Mary Pickford’s brother. Allyn King, who jumped from a fifth-story window when she got too fat for her costume. Lillian Lorraine, legendary temptress and longtime mistress of Mr. Z., now a hopeless drunk who still washed up in this or that bar, making a cluck of herself. As a child, Anna had imagined these doomed beauties occupying the same magical sphere as Little Miss Muffet, Queen Guinevere, and Sleeping Beauty. A separate intelligence had revealed itself more slowly: the storied girls had been stars, whereas Brianne and her mother were ordinary chorus girls, whispering in their wakes.
“I went to a nightclub two weeks ago,” Anna said. “With a girl from the Naval Yard.” She spoke nonchalantly, although she’d been longing for a chance to discuss Dexter Styles with her aunt. “It’s called Moonshine. Have you been?”
“It’s illegal to enter a nightclub looking like I do,” Brianne said. “They’d cuff me at the door.”
“Stop it, Auntie.”
“It’s run by a racketeer, that I do know. The best ones usually are—remember Owney Madden’s club, the Silver Slipper? Or El Fay?” She was asking Anna’s mother, who had made Lydia her own cocktail of the new camphor drops in warm milk and was helping her drink it.
“With Texas Guinan emceeing the floor show?” Brianne went on. “Hello Suckers!” She hove a sigh. “Poor Texas. Dysentery, of all things.”