“Oh, now, Ruby!”
“I was right down here near him, Esther, and I tell you I smelled booze.” She turned to us. “Do you know him?”
“Now Ruby Hambly, why on earth would they know a drunken burglar?” Esther exclaimed. “Of course they don’t.”
“You said there were two attempts?” I asked.
“Yes,” Esther said. “The second time was just a day or two ago. Didn’t get as good a look that time-slender fellow, trying to break in through a back window.”
“How tall?” Rachel asked.
“That’s hard to say, too. I only saw him at night, and from my upstairs window. Saw someone in dark clothes and a knit cap, which was an odd thing to be wearing on a spring evening. Heard him trying to pry the bars off. Stupid thing to try. I shouted down at him and he ran off. I’d guess him to be younger than the fellow who was at the door, and definitely not as tall.”
“Sure it wasn’t the same man?” I asked.
“That much I’m sure of. Different build.”
Rachel asked a few more questions, but the ladies seemed not to be able to recall much more. There was an argument over the make and color of the drunken burglar’s car. It was American, a sedan, dark green or brown.
“I appreciate your watching over things,” I said. “I’m going to try to get everything moved out this weekend, so with any luck this place won’t seem so attractive to thieves.”
They again expressed condolences, then went back to their apartments.
I unlocked Briana’s apartment door, and Rachel followed me in and shut it behind us.
“I’ll open a couple of windows,” she said.
The room we stepped into was warm and close. I felt a mild sensation of claustrophobia, and if Rachel had not hurried to let some air in, I might have stepped back outside. I glanced back at the door and saw a crucifix above it, dried palm leaves from a Palm Sunday Mass placed behind the cross. I turned my attention back to the job at hand.
I reached over a small, tattered sofa and raised the blind on the picture window, filling the room with sunlight. Looking more closely at the sofa, I saw tufts of shredding on the corners and arms; the type that can only be made by a cat who has decided to use the upholstery as a scratching post. For a moment I worried that some feline had been horribly neglected after Briana’s death, but saw no other signs that a cat had been living in the apartment-no scent of a cat or a litter box, no fur, no food dishes, no cat toys.
This front room was a parlor of sorts, a room that could be closed off from the rest of the apartment by pulling two sliding wooden doors shut. The carpet was a faded floral pattern of large, pale roses on a beige background. On one wall, there was a framed print of the Sacred Heart. On top of a set of built-in bookcases, Briana had made up a small shrine to the Blessed Virgin: a little plaster statuette surrounded by five blue-glass candle holders. A pink- glass rosary lay to one side, on top of a holy card with the prayer “Hail Holy Queen” printed on it. One shelf of the bookcase held a dog-eared, leather-bound Bible and a worn
If Briana was this religious a couple of decades ago, when we were closer, I didn’t remember it. Devout Catholics though Briana and my mother had been, that devotion hadn’t overwhelmed the decor of their homes.
Rachel had already moved to the rear of the apartment. I continued to walk through rooms, but more slowly. I moved from the front room into a larger room that contained a small dining table and a set of built-in cupboards. The cupboards contained a few pieces of mismatched crockery. On the table, facing the single chair, was a small, black-and-white TV with a crack in its case; a bent hanger did duty as an antennae. In front of the TV was a plastic placemat-a photograph of a meadow blooming with small yellow flowers. Although it was clean, there was an indentation where hot cups of tea had been placed. I caught myself making this supposition of tea and stood remembering that unlike her sister, Briana had never acquired a taste for coffee; that on Sundays after Mass, Briana would come to the house and my mother-who had shopped at special stores to find the type of tea her sister liked to drink-would bake scones. Tea and scones to make Briana feel welcomed in our home. I ran my fingers across the indentation in the plastic mat and wondered if Briana ever thought of those long-ago Sunday mornings.
I went into the small, bright kitchen at the back of the apartment. I opened cupboards, found a can of peaches, two cans of chicken noodle soup, a tin of Hershey’s cocoa, a box of powdered milk, a box of baking soda, a small box of sugar and half a bag of flour. Nothing more. The refrigerator was empty, but Mary had warned me that the landlord was going to clean it out-it belonged to him, along with the stove. In a drawer next to the stove, I found a box of generic-brand tea bags. I felt my throat tighten.
I shut the drawer and moved through another door, which led to a bathroom. Here there was a sink, toilet and claw-foot tub; a small mirror that was losing its silvering; a pink toothbrush in a water-stained glass; three hairpins near the faucet; cracked linoleum; a set of thin towels neatly folded over a single towel rack. I moved on.
I found Rachel sitting at a small rolltop desk in the bedroom, lost in thought. It didn’t look as if she had been searching the contents of the desk, which surprised me-we’re both curious by nature.
“You doing okay?” she asked as I walked in.
“Yes. Sorry to take so long-I guess I’ve been looking for-well, it’s hard to explain.”
“Something to tell you who she was?”
“Yes.”
“This is the room you’ve been looking for.”
As I glanced around the bedroom, I saw that she was right. There were a number of photographs on display on top of a plain wooden dresser. The small bookcase in the room was not filled with religious books but with two types of paperbacks: westerns and Georgette Heyer romances. Near the end of the neatly made twin bed was a rocking chair; a basket of knitting-blue and gray yarn to make an afghan, it seemed-lay on the seat.
There were a crucifix and a rosary on a nightstand next to the bed, and above it, a print known to any Catholic school child. An angel with flowing blond tresses and a white star above her head hovers serenely behind two barefoot children, a little boy in a straw hat and his sister, who carries a basket over one arm and comforts her brother with the other. Dark woods rise in the background as the children cross a dilapidated bridge over a treacherous river, but we fear not-their guardian angel will see them to safety.
The nightstand also held a plastic statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary that was about ten inches high, the type that has a little night-light bulb in the base and glows from within when plugged in, although this one wasn’t. But even with these items, the bedroom had less the feel of a religious articles store display than the front room.
“Is this you?” Rachel asked, holding out a small, framed snapshot.
I took a look. “Yes, with Barbara. Judging from the missing front teeth, I was probably about seven, so Barbara was about twelve.”
Barbara and I were a study in contrasts-she, a redhead with green eyes, was looking at the camera with a bored, half-pouting regard: how awful to be asked to pose with her little sister. I, with dark hair and blue eyes, looking more like the Kellys-my father’s side of the family. In the photo I was grinning up at the lens with my goofy gap-toothed smile, oblivious to Barbara’s sullenness.
I began studying the other photographs. One was of a thin, gray-haired woman with a cane, standing next to a priest, in front of a church. I saw the family resemblance and thought perhaps this was a photograph of my grandmother, in Kansas, until I noticed a palm tree in the background. A closer look made me realize-with a shock- that this must be Briana herself. In that instant it was brought home to me that she had not stopped aging when my mother died; that while my mother would forever be fixed in my mind as a woman in her early forties, Briana had gone on, had become a woman in her sixties. She was my mother’s younger sister by a number of years, but I could not remember exactly how many, and now, looking at the photo, I wondered what my mother might have looked like at a similar age, had she lived.
Even taking a high estimate of Briana’s age, she could not have been past her early sixties. The years, I was sad to see, had not been kind.
Another photo showed her when she was younger, looking much as I remembered her-probably in her late thirties or early forties-holding a toddler. Travis, most likely. There were several photos of Travis at various ages,
