Down the hallway were a bathroom and three small bedrooms. James’s crib was a pile of wooden slats in the tiniest one, and in the largest Nora’s suitcases had been tossed into a heap. In the third bedroom, the one facing the street, Billy found his cowboy boots and his globe of the world that glowed in the dark when you plugged it in. From the window he could see the identical houses opposite theirs. He could see the Volkswagen, parked sloppily, with one wheel up on the curb, and the rhododendrons Mr. Olivera had planted. Billy sat down with his back against the wall. He didn’t think he was tired, but once he leaned his head forward, he instantly fell asleep. As he slept, a spider on the ceiling let out a thin, silky strand and dropped down from its web, and in no time it had climbed into Billy’s shirt pocket.
Unlike most people’s mothers, Billy’s mother believed that spiders were good luck. She always had to close her eyes before she could force herself to take a broom, cover it with a dishcloth, and bring down a spider’s web. Having had very little of it, she knew a great deal about luck. She knew that you could wrap a cut with a spider’s web and stop the bleeding. Spirits would disperse when you set out a saucer of salt. Three rainy days in a row meant an arrival. And—this one Nora could testify to—a husband who talked in his sleep meant betrayal.
So it was easy for Nora to ignore the mess around her and keep on with her baking, stopping only to pry open some windows and air out the house, and then again to write a check for the moving men, who leaned against the kitchen counters watching her, made mute by the scent of vanilla and the way Nora’s tongue darted out from her mouth while she signed her name. When the moving men had gone, and the first batch of cookies was out of the oven, Nora dusted the flour off her hands and lifted James out of his playpen.
“Da da,” James said.
“Please,” Nora said. “Don’t mention his name.”
The awful thing was that Nora knew she would have continued to put up with Roger if he hadn’t left her. Roger would have known how to fix a roof when it leaked, he would have known there was such a thing as an oil burner. And, of course, if she was still married to him, Nora could have told herself she wasn’t alone.
The baby reached for her breasts, so Nora sat at the kitchen table to nurse him. She knew she had to get him onto a bottle soon; he wanted to nurse in inconvenient places, in the grocery store or the post office, or whenever he was startled, just for comfort. Nora leaned her back against the old kitchen table and wriggled her feet out of her high heels. As the baby nursed he grew warmer, the way he always did when he began to drowse. It was a good sign when a baby fell right to sleep in a new house; that was a fact.
Nora gently eased off James’s knitted yellow booties, and the baby sucked harder and curled his toes. He was ten months old, and each time he cut a new tooth Nora rubbed scotch on his gums and wept because he was less of a baby. He fell asleep with his arms outstretched and his mouth open. Nora put him down in the playpen and covered him with a warm dish towel. She put in a second batch of cookies and carefully closed the oven door.
Somewhere, Mr. Popper was mewing. Nora found him in the living room, perched on the air conditioner. The cat leapt to her shoulder and stayed there as Nora surveyed the house, stepping over the boxes, the pots and pans, the snow boots, the Elvis collection, the record player, which was in need of a new needle. The baby’s room would have to be painted, the toilet gurgled, and Nora’s bed seemed to have been damaged by the moving men. Nora reached up to stroke Mr. Popper. Then she went to stand in the doorway of the third bedroom, where she watched Billy sleep. His face was hidden in his arms and his hair stood away from his head, electrified by all the dust in the house. You could hear the hum of the Southern State here in Billy’s bedroom, like a cricket caught in the wall.
The children were so exhausted from the move that Nora let them go on sleeping. She mopped the bathroom floor and hung her dresses and her woolen car coat in the closet. When it was nearly suppertime, Nora went out to the back patio, and she was there smoking a cigarette when the crows returned. Right away they set up a horrible racket. They cawed and shed their feathers and began to pick up stones, which they tossed down, one by one, so that stones skittered along the boards of the picnic table like hail. Nora shaded her eyes and finished her cigarette. You had to be careful about birds; they could be good luck just as easily as bad. So Nora waited, and when she was sure, she went to the side of the house where the grapevines grew. Big purple grapes were all over the ground, and Nora carefully stepped over them as she set up a rusted ladder Mr. Olivera hadn’t had time to put away. She went back into the house, and while the baby stirred in his sleep and moved his thumb into his mouth, Nora took the container of salt and slipped back outside.
At this hour the traffic on the Southern State moved like a river. Nora climbed the ladder, and as she neared the roof she saw that the rain gutters were full of pine needles and dead leaves. Something would have to be done about the gutters before winter, before the sky turned yellow and new fallen leaves piled up. Nora held on to the gutter with one hand to keep herself balanced while she tossed salt upward, onto the roof. The crows huddled together on the chimney, screaming like mad.
“Go on,” Nora told them, because, after all, she had her children’s sleep to consider.
The crows called to her mournfully. Then, with their tails coated white, they rose up from the house and flew south, toward the parkway. They careened in a zigzag line until the salt on their tails fell onto the asphalt like snow. When Nora was satisfied that she was rid of them, she climbed back down the ladder. She tried one of Mr. Olivera’s grapes and was surprised by its sweetness. She could feel her milk coming in. She could feel the pull of the new moon that would rise above her roof in only a few hours. Nora licked her fingertips, knowing as she did that if those crows had had eggs in their nest, she would never have been able to chase them off with salt.
While Billy dreamed he was playing ball in the driveway, and the baby turned, slowly waking beneath the dish towel, Nora came back into the kitchen. She wiped the table clean, then fixed a bowl of rice cereal for James. As soon as she had the chance she would buy cookbooks, she’d ask her neighbors for their favorite recipes, but tonight she took out two green bowls for Billy and herself and filled them with Frosted Flakes and milk. And later, after the children had eaten, after they’d sampled the cookies she’d baked, and the tub had been washed out and they’d both been bathed, Nora made up her mattress with clean sheets, right on the floor where it lay. She took both children into bed with her, for whose comfort she could not have honestly said, and because there were no curtains hung yet they were able to look at the stars through the bedroom window. Soon, Nora would fix her children macaroni and cheese for dinner; they would grow chrysanthemums and sunflowers in their yard. Nora would find a baby-sitter for James and a baseball mitt for Billy, and she would try to remember to fix Bosco and milk every day at three. If she had to, she would repeat the recipe for rice pudding until she knew it by heart.
2
SLEEP TIGHT
ACE MCCARTHY WOKE UP WITH his body on fire and a ripping feeling in the center of his chest. He swung his feet to the floor and put his head down between his knees, and when that didn’t help, he went to his closet, took a cigarette from the pack hidden on the shelf, and lit up, even though his hands shook, as if he were caught in the wind.
In the room next to his, he could hear the Saint snoring. He could hear traffic in the distance and the leaves moving in the maple tree. He blew out a stream of smoke and watched it disappear through the open window. All summer he had worked alongside his father and his brother, and there was a permanent moon of oil under each of his nails. His dark hair was longer than his father liked it to be, and his eyes were a deep, immutable green. He had always been able to get any girl he wanted, and he’d gone a lot farther with them than he’d ever told Danny Shapiro. In spite of his passion for fast cars and black leather, Ace wasn’t a braggart. The Saint had taught him a se
nse of piety, something his brother, Jackie, who assured total strangers he planned to be a millionaire before his twenty-first birthday, had missed out on altogether.
Pride aside, this would be the year when Ace would have everything he ever wanted. He had nearly enough saved to buy the car he wanted—a candy-apple-red Bel Air one of Jackie’s friends was ready to sell. This year when he walked down the hallways in the high school there wouldn’t be any older guys to eclipse him. Girls’ heads would turn when he pushed his metal locker shut. Teachers who wanted to get him out of their hair would stop harping at him and automatically pass him through his classes.
Today, thinking about his senior year, Ace had felt great. He and Danny had hitched to Long Beach; they’d sat under the boardwalk, drinking beer and listening to Danny’s transistor radio, and then they went swimming drunk, until the waves sobered them up. They’d been best friends since the day Danny moved in and they’d had a fight on the Shapiros’ lawn; they’d been more like brothers than Jackie and Ace were. And yet now, alone in his room, Ace felt nothing but resentment. After this year Danny would be going to college; even if he hadn’t been smart enough to get in wherever he chose, he could have gotten an athletic scholarship; he could probably make it in the minors right now. But for Ace, this would be his last good year, and he knew it. Everything that followed would be downhill. Next year, when the boys who were seniors drove into the Texaco station and admired his Bel Air, Ace would think they were fools because he’d still be living in his parents’ house, and the girls who were all so crazy for him now would be wanting something more than deep kisses and promises Ace would never be able to keep. He had already started to see the future in some girls’ eyes: a house, a family, a balanced checkbook.
Ace shook out another cigarette and smoked it. When he was done he went to the kitchen and drank three glasses of water, but the water didn’t put out whatever was burning inside him. It should have been easier to sleep now that the crows were gone, but it was harder. Through the kitchen window Ace could see the Shapiros’ house; he could see right into Rickie’s window, he could see that the shade was pulled down in Danny’s room, where there was probably already a stack of college catalogues. Ace sat down at the kitchen table and lit matches. He blew each one out carefully, with a single breath. He heard the front door open and close, heard someone ease off his boots and let them fall to the floor. Jackie came into the kitchen; he opened the refrigerator and reached for the orange juice. He stank of liquor.
“Hey, buddy,” Jackie said. “You’re up late.”
“Yeah,” Ace said. “A real night owl.”
Jackie pulled out his cigarettes and his silver lighter. He still ran with the same gang as he had in high school; sometimes they’d hang around the gym, checking out girls who were five years younger and didn’t know any better. Jackie sat down across from Ace and smiled. He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a billfold.
“Get out of here,” Ace said, not believing how much money his brother was waving around. He knew what Jackie made down at the station. “That’s not yours,” Ace said. He kept staring at the money.
“The Corvette,” Jackie said.
Ace looked up at his brother.
“The one in for repairs at the station,” Jackie said. “Pete stole it.”
“Oh, shit,” Ace said. “Don’t tell me this.”
“All I had to do was forget to lock the garage doors. It’s like taking candy from a baby.”
A bedspring creaked and the brothers looked down the hall. The Saint was turning in his sleep.
“You maniac,” Ace whispered to his brother.
“I’m not pumping gas for the rest of my life,” Jackie whispered back. “The guy with the ’Vette had insurance.”
“Pop,” Ace said.
“Pop.” Jackie shrugged. “He’ll never know.”
Jackie peeled off two twenties and held them out.
“Nah,” Ace said quickly.
“Go on,” Jackie urged him, and he grabbed Ace and stuffed the bills into his palm. Ace’s hand felt hot; in spite of himself, his fingers closed around the twenties. “Buy yourself a good time,” Jackie said.
“Yeah,” Ace said.
After Jackie had gone off to bed, Ace cleaned out the ashtray and went back to his room. He slipped the money into a dresser drawer, beneath his clean socks. He listened to the Saint breathing in the next room. How could he have thought Danny Shapiro was more like his own brother than Jackie was? Danny was nothing but a guy who happened to live next door. Ace felt a new kind of badness inside his chest, and it was cracking him apart trying to get out. Bad blood moved down his arms and legs. It was the beginning of the end of something, and Ace wasn’t about to wait up for his own future. He got into bed and pulled up the sheet and told himself to stop thinking. All he wanted was to fall asleep, fast, and at eleven fifty-five he did.
And it was a good thing, too, because on Hemlock Street summer always ended at midnight on Labor Day. That was the hour when a wash of white light cut through the sky and a cold wind picked up and shook the crab apples from the trees and set the dogs circling the corners where they slept. When the wind came up, a thin trail of chalk dust whooshed from the chimneys of the school. If you looked carefully you’d see that the leaves of the poplars and willows were coated with a powdery substance, and that the letters of the alphabet formed on the leaves before disappearing into smoke. Every September had been the same. The children moved from one grade to another, their legs grew longer, they started to crack their gum and mutter to themselves when they were told to clean their closets, and eventually they’d turn right instead of left at the corner of Hemlock and Oak, and cross over to the high school. But this year, in the maple tree that stood between the McCarthys’ lawn and the Shapiros’, the chalk dust was so faint all it did was paint the veins of the leaves, until it seemed as if the white lines of skeletons peered through the dark.
Just before dawn, Ace woke up again. When he had fallen asleep it was summer, now he was freezing cold. The last of the season’s fireflies were drawn to the warmth of his room, and they came to the screen in his window, their green light growing fainter. Ace rolled out of bed and pulled a blanket around his shoulders. He went to the window and put both hands on the screen. The fireflies congregated in the center of his palms; when they lit up, his hands looked watery and green. The last few stars were hanging over the Southern State. It was still so dark that it took a while before Ace realized that what he was looking at was the new owner of the Olivera house, perched up on her roof, cleaning the leaves out of her gutter with a broom beneath the clear, black sky.
Across the street, Joe Hennessy was standing in his driveway. It wasn’t unusual for him to be out at odd hours; he hadn’t been able to sleep for two weeks, not since he was promoted to detective. He could sense the outline of his gun against his chest. Even when it was in the night-table drawer, he could always feel his gun, the way they said you could feel a part of your body you had lost.
Maybe he was sick, maybe that was why he heard thunder whenever he put his head to his pillow. Since the promotion, all someone had to do at the station house was jangle some loose change in his pocket and Hennessy would reach for his gun. He had been trying to make plainclothes for two years, but as soon as he gave up his uniform something had gone wrong. In the past few days he had completely lost his sense of taste; he’d stood at the refrigerator and guzzled half a jar of black-olive water, thinking it was grape juice, until an olive slid down his throat. Tonight at supper he realized he could eat pepper right out of his hand and not even flinch. He was hearing things wrong, too. The telephone would ring and he’d go to open the front door. His daughter would beg for a piggyback ride and he’d have to ask her to repeat herself, again and again, as if she were speaking a foreign language.
Earlier in the evening, when the children were watching television and his wife was in the kitchen fixing coffee, Hennessy had found himself at his
own front door. He was sweating, ready to explode. He knew that men went crazy all the time for no reason. He picked them up outside bars on Saturday nights, and they always seemed shocked as angels when they realized the damage they’d done. One look at their own bloodied hands and they’d start to swoon. But Hennessy wasn’t like these men. He had always wanted to be a cop, not so much because the law inspired him, but because he was addicted to order. He liked to know his shirts would be hanging on the left side of the closet; he liked to know he’d be having tunafish casserole and rice every Friday night, although he preferred steak. He was even-tempered, with the confidence of a big man who had easy good looks, and he didn’t take most things personally. He was the one they usually sent over to the elementary school on Safety Day because he looked like a cop. All he had to do was walk into the auditorium and the kids would quiet down.
In a way this had complicated things for Hennessy; hotheads made detective more easily. They were flashy; they looked for trouble. But Hennessy, you could depend on him. He knew to drive slowly when he received a call that teenagers were gathered behind the high school, to give them a last chance to ditch their beer bottles when they saw his red light. He knew to be careful when he lifted up an old woman who had fallen down her basement steps. Lost dogs came to him when he whistled; children put their hands in his when he crossed them at the light on Harvey’s Turnpike. He inspired confidence, and he was pleased with all he’d managed: a house of his own, two kids who knew not to talk back, a wife who still looked good to him.
But all along, even before the promotion, there was something wrong. There were times when he knew something was going to happen before it did. He’d get a spooky feeling along the base of his neck, as if he’d just walked through a spider’s web, and then he’d know. He’d be sitting in his patrol car, and he’d get that feeling, and then it would happen. Not a routine call on his radio about speeders headed his way or fire alarms set off. No, it would happen when the air was heavy and still, when he was driving down a shady side street, or having a cup of coffee behind the wheel, and then, before he could even stop to think, he’d have to toss the coffee out the window so it wouldn’t slosh all over him when he took off. It had happened a few days before his promotion, when a woman left her baby carriage outside the A&P. The carriage had rolled off the curb and into the parking lot; a car pulling out had just missed the damned thing as Hennessy leapt out of the patrol car so he could grab the baby, who had been sound asleep. Hennessy stood there sweating as the baby opened its eyes and stared hard into his face with complete trust. The feeling had come over him again the next afternoon down at the station house, and when Hennessy turned he saw two cops about to go at it, both of them furious over nothing more important than a screwup in the schedule.