Strings Attached

Nineteen



Providence, Rhode Island

September 1950



After Billy threw my belongings onto the Mid-Cape Highway, I swore we were through, and it didn’t seem like he’d put up much of an argument. Still, he lived in my head. We had terrific conversations in which I explained how his jealousy had driven us apart. Jamie slipped out of the house with a guilty expression on weekends, and I knew he was going to see Billy. They had spent a lot of time together over the summer, and just because Billy and I weren’t speaking didn’t mean that they had to stop.

I caught Jamie alone after school one day. “So how is he?” I asked.

“He’s okay.”

“You know, I didn’t want to hurt him. It’s just he gets so jealous for no reason.”

Jamie crossed past me to get to the kitchen. “You don’t know what to do for him.”

“What do you mean? What should I be doing?” Insulted, I trailed after him. Jamie and I had our squabbles, but this felt like a real criticism, and it stung. Jamie knew me better than anyone, even Billy. “Let him think he owns me?”

“He’s not like that.” He took the milk bottle out of the fridge and put it down. “You don’t know how hard he’s trying. Would you just think about it for a minute? His mother should be in the bughouse, but everyone pretends she’s okay. And his father… you know about the Kefauver Committee hearings, right?”

“Sure I do.” I didn’t read the paper much, but you couldn’t walk down the street without knowing about the mob hearings — there were headlines every day in the paper, and everybody was talking about it. Senator Kefauver was going after organized crime, and he had scheduled hearings all over the country. Kansas City, Chicago — they put the hearings on television, and even though hardly anyone had a set, people piled into bars to watch it. Everybody knew they’d be coming to New York and Kefauver would be going after the big mobsters like Joe Adonis and Frank Costello.

Jamie sighed when he saw I didn’t get it. “They’re saying the hearings might come to Boston, and if they come to Boston, that means Providence, and Nate could get a subpoena. Nobody’s saying anything, but who knows how things will shake out?”

Da’s words came back to me, about how Nate was in it up to his neck.

“So maybe it’s better that you broke up with him,” Jamie said. “He’s got a lot on his mind.”

“Whose side are you on?” I asked my brother. “He threw my whole wardrobe to the seagulls!”

“I’m on the side of true love,” Jamie said. He smiled, but his eyes looked sad. “However it falls.”



I’d been back to school for only a week when I found Billy waiting at the tree where we used to meet. He swung into step beside me and we didn’t say a word. Silently, he handed me a pear.

If he thought a reference to our first real meeting would undo me, he had another thing coming. I took a bite, and it was sour. I threw the rest to the squirrels.

We walked without talking. Finally, as we passed Prospect Terrace, he gently took my elbow and steered me to the railing. We were high above the city, and we could see the river glinting below and the dome of the statehouse. On the other side of the railing, Roger Williams looked out at the city, tilting back and raising one stone hand in a regal hello. We’d learned it all in school, how he’d founded Rhode Island on the principle of religious liberty. Everybody should have their own God and get along, said Roger. It was a nice story, but I was still waiting to see how it was all going to work out. Billy and I shared the same religion, but that didn’t mean our worlds were the same. Fox Point was a long way from Federal Hill.

Billy reached out his hand, and after a moment I put mine in his. To refuse him was more than I could do. We laced our fingers together.

“I sat down with my father last night,” he told me. “He says he’s going into wills and trusts. It’s going to take awhile, but he promised that by the time I graduate from law school, he’ll get rid of the clients he has and he’ll have new ones before we hang out the Benedict and Benedict sign. This time, I actually believe him.”

“That’s good.”

“I told him no.”

I turned, startled, to look into his face.

“I told him no, once and for all no. I’m going to New York after I graduate and I’m going to become a photographer.”

“What did he say?”

“He offered me a deal.” Billy’s mouth twisted. “He’s so good at deals. He said, ‘Go to law school first, and after you graduate, I’ll stake you for a year. If you can’t make it you have to come home. But I won’t help you otherwise.’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t need your help.’ It was not a pleasant conversation. I don’t know, it’s like he’s got to do his life over, like he’s making penance or something. If I say no, it’s like I’m damning him to hell.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I assured him, the look on his face breaking my heart. I knew what it was like to struggle against your own father, but Da was nothing compared to Nate. “Besides,” I said, “there’s always purgatory.”

He let out a reluctant laugh, then took me in his arms. “This is why I need you,” he murmured. “I need you to make me laugh.”

We kissed, and I rested my head against his chest. The next words were muffled, but I heard them.

“I also told him that I’m going to marry you.”

I pulled back to look at him. “Don’t you think you should ask me first?”

“I know better than that. You’d just say no.”

“This is one heck of a proposal,” I said. “You don’t even ask the girl, and then you answer for her.”

He grinned. “In less than a year, you’ll be eighteen and I’ll have graduated. We could get married in June and move to New York. We’ve got all year to save up. I’ll get a job —”

“Billy —”

“No, listen. The whole world could explode tomorrow. Did you read Life magazine? It’s not a question of if the Russians will drop the Bomb. It’s when. So what are we waiting for? We’ve got to get going on our lives.”

“So we should elope because the Russians are going to blow us up anyway?”

“We could get an apartment, someplace close enough so that you can walk to the theater and your dance classes —”

“A year is so far away.”

“Can you imagine us in New York? We’d conquer it! We’d get everything we want out of it. And we’d get away! Don’t you want that, too?”

“You know I do. Or at least I did.” I knew I had to say it. “I can’t have you exploding on me again. I couldn’t take that.”

“I’m sorry. I know how wrong I was. It’s like, I get angry and I just can’t see anything. Jamie will tell you — I’ve been kicking myself about it ever since. I just couldn’t stand seeing you with him. I thought… well, I thought the wrong thing. I know that now. I understand that. It will never happen again.”

“Never again?”

“Never, ever again. Never, ever, ever.”

“You’ve got to trust me, Billy.”

“I do. That’s the crazy thing. In my heart, I do. I can do anything if you’re with me. If we’re married. You don’t have to say anything, this isn’t a proposal. No, don’t say a word. I just wanted you to see it like I do.”

Our bodies crashed together and we hung on. The last smell of summer was in his hair. Over his shoulder, past the rooftops of Providence, I could see our future. The apartment, the jobs, the way we’d discover the city and not let it frighten us, because we were together. We would lie together in our own bed, in our own home, and make our own lives.

“We can do it,” he said. “One more year.”

That embrace, right there, on the top of the hill? So tight, so urgent, so necessary. That was how love felt. That’s what safe was.