of Roses, they called it.' She took her husband's hairbrush from the sideboard and stood behind him, lightly brushing his white hair, while he sat, bathed in the westering sun that filtered through the lace curtain, looking gently out at nothing. 'I wrote to Lawrence every day, telling him how our apartment was coming along. He wrote every day too, but his letters used to come in clumps—nine or ten at a time. That's how they do mail in the army. By clumps. Then... then his letters stopped coming, and there was no word for a long time—more than a month.' She stopped brushing and looked down upon his fine hair. 'I was so worried, so frightened. I asked Mr O'Brien if he could find out why the letters weren't coming through. Mr O'Brien the mailman? Then this letter came from the government, and I was afraid to open it. Everybody on the block knew I had this government letter because Mr O'Brien told them. My mother and father and sister came and asked what the news was. I told them I hadn't dared to open the letter. My father said I was acting silly; there was no point in putting it off. I might as well know one way or the other. But I didn't want to, so my father said he'd open it for me, but I said no! No, Lawrence was my husband, and it was my duty to open the letter.... when I was ready.'
Tears stood in her pale blue eyes, and her voice had gone tense and thin as she relived standing up to her old-country father, probably for the first time ever, telling him that Lawrence was her husband and she would open the letter when she was ready.
Then she blinked and looked across at me. 'You know what? I believe that was the first time I said the word 'husband' aloud. I always called him Lawrence, of course. And we'd only been married four months, and I'd been busy fixing up our home, so I didn't see many people or get much chance to talk about him. My husband... husband.' As she savored the word, she began brushing his hair again.
As I sat watching her brush his hair while he gazed, empty-eyed, at the roofscape beyond his window, his pale cheeks suddenly trembled! Then his lips drew back in an unconscious rictus that revealed long, yellow teeth, but the eyes remained dead.
A sharp breath caught in my throat. 'Mrs McGivney... he just... he...!'
She nodded. 'I know. He sometimes smiles when I brush his hair. Lawrence just loves having his hair brushed.'
Well, it didn't look like a smile to me. It looked like a man in terrible pain hissing out a silent scream through his teeth. Then, with a slight quiver, his cheeks relaxed, the grin collapsed, and the teeth disappeared.
It was a moment before my heart stopped thudding in my chest. I wanted to get out of there, but a private investigator working for Mr Keene, Tracer of Lost Persons doesn't turn tail. I drew a deep breath and asked, 'What about the letter? It said he was a hero?'
'Yes, a hero.'
'What had he done?'
'It was from his commanding officer. Captain Frances Murphy? He regretted having to tell me that Private Lawrence McGivney had contracted an illness in the performance of duty. He was in a military hospital and would soon be shipped home so he could get every care and comfort—I remember the exact words. Every care and comfort. That's what I've tried to give him. Captain Murphy went on to say that Private McGivney was a cheerful and willing soldier and that he was well liked by everybody in the regiment. Think of that! Everybody in the whole regiment.'
Wait a minute. Being liked by everybody then getting sick didn't seem to me to be the stuff of heroism. But I didn't say anything.
And for a while Mrs McGivney didn't say anything either. She stood there brushing her husband's hair, a fond smile in her eyes as she seemed to reread the letter from his captain in her mind. Then she blinked and focused on me. 'You know what I'd bet? I'd bet dollars to doughnuts you'd like another cookie. Am I right?' She looked at me out of the sides of her eyes in that coy Shirley Temple way.
'No, thanks, I—'
But she shook her finger at me. 'Now don't you tell me you can't eat another cookie. A boy can always make space for another cookie.'
As she went for the cookie jar on the counter I asked, 'What was Mr McGivney sick with?'
'Brain fever,' she said from the kitchen. 'He ran this terribly high fever for days and days, lying in his bunk, sweating and shivering, sweating and shivering. The doctor at the veteran's hospital over in Troy—Dr French?—he told us that most men would have died.' She brought back one of her little decorated plates with a cookie on it and set it before me. She still had the hairbrush in her hand. The long white hairs entangled in its bristles made me shudder. 'Dr French said that Lawrence had fought a long, heroic battle against the fever, and survived!'
Oh. So
'But...' She sighed. 'It was the fever that left him... well, like he is.'
'And you've taken care of him ever since?'
She smiled. 'I wash him and feed him and... everything. He likes it when I brush his hair. He doesn't say anything, but I can tell by the way he sometimes smiles.'
So she had lived alone with him up here for more than forty years, cleaning him and feeding him and brushing his hair. Forty years. So long that the existence of Mr McGivney had dropped out of the collective memory of the block, which now thought of Mrs McGivney, when it thought of her at all, as just a shy old crazylady. But she thought of herself as the bride who had made a cozy nest for her soldier bridegroom.
I started to ask if she didn't get lonely, up here all day without anyone to talk—but a child's instinct for social danger stopped me short. Of course she got lonely! That's why I was sitting there, eating cookies. That's why she gave me a whole nickel for buying a pickle that only cost a nickel. I could feel the jaws of the trap closing. I should never have asked her about her husband. Now that I knew how lonely she was, I'd feel obliged to come whenever she tapped at her window with that nickel and sit with her and listen to her talk about how her husband liked it when she turned the gaslight on. Another responsibility in my life. And sometimes when I dared to glance over, he'd be grinning his silent scream of a smile. Right then and there I decided I'd have to be careful about going into the back alley too often. I'd stay out of the alley altogether for at least a week to get her used to not seeing me and depending on me.
It was during that week of emotional weaning that my life toppled out of balance because of an incident that might seem trivial: a tube burnt out in our radio. There wasn't enough money in the Dream Bank to buy a new one, so I had to do without the daily hour-long dose of reality-masking adventure programs essential to my well-being, just when all the stories were at their most exciting and dangerous moments—or so it seemed to me, and all because we didn't have the dollar and a quarter for a new tube.
Mother was furious because we'd only had the radio for three years. I reminded her that the radio was secondhand when we bought it, but she said we'd been robbed and she'd be goddamned if she was going to let them get away with it! She was sick and tired of everybody doing her in! Sick of it! Sick of it! Her famous French-'n'-Indian temper carried her out of her sickbed and down to the pawn shop on South Pearl where we had bought the radio. I went with her, trying to calm her down all the way, but she stormed into the shop and slammed the radio down on the counter. I winced at the possibility of additional damage. The old Jewish man who owned the pawnshop came out from the back room and I smiled a feeble greeting, embarrassed by the scene I knew would follow. He had been good enough to let us have the radio for nothing down and only a quarter a week because we looked like 'good people'. Mother said the tube had burned out and what was he going to do about it? He shrugged. 'Tubes burn out, Missus. It happens.' Well, she wanted him to put in a new one and right now, because her boy was missing his programs! The pawnbroker said he'd end up in the poorhouse if he gave everybody tubes every time they burnt out, but here's what he could do. He could give us a new tube for a quarter down and a quarter a week until it was paid for. How was that? Mother snatched up the radio and said, 'To hell with you, mister! This is the last time we do business with your sort!' And she stormed out. I smiled weakly at the man. He thrust out his lower lip and shrugged, and I had to run to catch up with my mother, who was steaming up the street towards home, muttering in a rage that she'd be damned if her boy would go without his radio programs because of a lousy buck and a quarter. She'd get a job in some goddamned hash house to pay for the goddamned thing! I reminded her that she was still weak from her last lung attack, but she said she knew how much that radio meant to me, and that her kids had just as much right to listen to the radio as the kids of those snooty hoi polloi bastards! She'd get that tube, and she didn't care if it killed her! Then I got angry. So it would be my fault if she got sick and died and Anne-Marie and I ended up in the orphanage! I told her to forget the radio. I didn't want the radio! I was sick of the radio! I didn't care if I never heard a radio again! And we continued home, walking fast in the hot silence of a double rage.
