Strings Attached

Twenty-four



New York City

November 1950



I sat huddled in my robe.

I imagined the whole city opening doors, picking up the paper, reading that I was a gangster’s moll.

How had it happened, how had I gotten here, what else could I have done?

I knew this: There were things I could have done. Life gives you plenty of chances to be stupid, and I’d taken every single one of them.

Now I knew why Mickey had kicked Darla, why the girls wouldn’t look at me, why Darla had asked that night if Nate approved of my hair. All along, they’d thought I was Nate’s girlfriend. Sonia had given him my shoe size. Ted had seen me because word had come from Nate Benedict, one of Frank Costello’s mouthpieces, that I was to be given a chance. He’d been expecting a no-talent nothing that day. And what had he said on the phone yesterday? It won’t be long before they start kicking up some dirt on your boyfriend. He hadn’t meant Billy — he’d meant Nate.

And now the news would spread from the club to the entire city. Daisy would read that headline, the girls from the chorus of That Girl From Scranton!, Shirley and her mother would have the best morning of their lives today with gossip like this.

It was no wonder Billy didn’t believe me. You’re fed something by a paper, you swallow it whole.

Whenever I thought of Billy trying to tie his shoe, blinded by tears, I felt as though my body would simply fold up on itself and disappear. I wrapped my arms around my legs and rocked back and forth, trying to think. Trying not to feel.

I couldn’t sit still. I mopped up the milk and the blood and the glass. I roamed the apartment, avoiding the bedroom with the mussed sheets. I would write him a letter. I would make Nate explain. I would take the train to Providence and wait outside his house. I would see him somehow, I would explain it all. This time in words he would be able to hear.

When the phone rang I was tempted to ignore it, but I hoped it would be Billy. I picked it up and listened.

“Hello? Kit?”

“Ted?”

“How are you?”

“Perfectly swell.”

“Well, don’t let the papers get you down, kid. Listen, the reason I’m calling is… you don’t have to come to the club today.”

“Ted, I’m fine. I don’t want to miss work.”

“Well, the thing is, I have to let you go. Mr. D’s orders, I’m afraid. The club doesn’t need this kind of publicity right now.”

“But I’m not Nate Benedict’s girlfriend!”

There was a short silence.

“The papers got it all wrong,” I said. “He’s my boyfriend’s father. I knew him in Rhode Island.”

“Honey, it doesn’t matter one way or another. It’s in the papers. It’s publicity, good for you, but it’s wrong for us. Never mind the cops, we’re square with that, but now the Feds are breathing down Mr. D’s neck, and so… look, kid, it’s better this way. You can hole up for a while. If you need a reference, you call me. You have a future, Kit. It’s just not at the Lido. I’m sorry.”

He hung up hastily. I knew he didn’t believe me.

Why should anybody believe me?

I was mixed up with Nate. I was living off him. This apartment wasn’t mine. I hadn’t bought these clothes. Of course it looked bad. It was bad.

I picked up the paper again. I hadn’t been able to do more than scan the article. There was another photograph of me, the one a photographer had taken the night I’d spoken to Dex Hamilton on the radio.

Who was that girl? That eager smile, the lipstick and powder, the bombshell in the tight dress?

They were comparing me to Virginia Hill, the mistress of Bugsy Siegel, the gangster who’d been shot a few years ago. The Flamingo, they called her. They hadn’t come up with a nickname for me yet, but I had no doubt that they would.

I’d always wanted to be famous.

Lucky Delia wasn’t around. She’d always told me that being famous was an occupation for fools.

Delia. I’d put out of my head what Billy had said about Delia.

Do you think you’re the first to shack up? Maybe you should ask your Aunt Delia.

What did he mean? Delia? My prim and proper aunt?

I looked over at the mirror, hung in an awkward place just to reflect a splinter of the blue-gray river. A reminder of home to someone who had seen a river every day, who breathed marsh and damp and salt, all running into a tidal bay toward the vast ocean.

And suddenly I could see her, I could see Delia placing that mirror just so. I could see her tapping in the nail, hanging the mirror, stepping back to adjust it. Staring at it when she felt herself lost in a place that seemed too big and yet too stuffed with people to have room for one more soul. Just as I had.

Could it be possible? The knowledge was like a rush of air inside my body, and it lifted me to my feet.

Is that what he wants here, a second chance?

Here. Here, in this apartment? Did Billy mean that Nate and Delia… but they hardly knew each other!

Good evening, Miss Corrigan.

Hello, Mr. Benedict.

I shook my head slowly, trying to fit the pieces together. Nate and Delia? Delia, with the rosary beads slung on the bedpost. Delia, with her disapproval of kisses that lasted too long in movies. Delia, who pressed her lips together at a dirty joke.

Delia and Nate?

What had Da said… that the three of them had been in each other’s pockets when they were young. They met that night, Delia swimming out to meet the boat, tossing her braid over her shoulder and wringing it out, and Nate looking at her like she was a selkie. At Buttonwoods Cove, he’d said. I’d thought it was funny that we’d been at the very same beach that day. Because Billy remembered it from his childhood.

I stood up as the realization pierced me. The beach was in Warwick.

I walked slowly back to the bedroom. I ignored the rumpled sheets, the blanket trailing on the floor, the memory of Billy in that bed. Instead, I knelt and looked for the silver compact that he’d kicked.

They’d taken the name of the place where they’d first laid eyes on each other, where, no doubt, they’d fallen in love. The Warwicks. Of course. And when Billy had looked down at the compact… how had he known?

I traced my finger over the whirls of the letter B. And suddenly memory flashed, uncertain and hazy, and I grabbed it. Me, twelve years old, leaning against my father’s side as he sat at a table, staring down at a legal document. I couldn’t decipher the language, but I saw the names, bold and black.

BRIDGET ROSE CORRIGAN

JAMES GARVEY CORRIGAN



Bridget was Delia’s birth name. She never used it; she’d used her nickname since she’d been born. I hadn’t even known her name until I’d seen it that day.

The Warwicks had lived here that last summer of the war, Hank’s mother had said, and before that, he’d only come on weekends. She was a quiet tenant….

Hadn’t Billy told me that his father had begun to have clients in New York? Had spent time there during the war? And Delia had told us that she was working in Washington the summer of ‘44. For the war effort, she’d said.

And the weekends! All those weekends she’d told us she was going to a convent! She’d taken the train to New York.

Billy was right. Not about me. But about them.

The truth thudded into my brain. How could I have been so stupid? Because Delia had been so smart. Delia, who’d turned down every invitation from a man. Delia, in her prim, tight bun. Delia, going to morning Mass on Mondays. Doing her penance, no doubt. Doing battle against the world with nothing but God and a hairbrush.

I sank back on my heels as memory followed memory. That evening in the lobby of the theater, the trip to see Carousel.… Angela hadn’t had a headache. She knew Delia was her husband’s mistress. No wonder Angela had hated me.

Delia’s tears, her anger, the slap… was it all about her own heart’s agony?

And that very night… I’d seen Delia, in the bathtub, crying, her body white and rose, her breasts bobbing on the water, her red-gold hair like glittering seaweed on her shoulders. I’d turned away because I’d been embarrassed— Delia’s naked body was so beautiful, so womanly. So I’d turned away and forgotten what I’d seen.

Turning away. Wasn’t that what we did in my family?

I like your hair that way.

I’d like to see you in that black dress.

The way Nate looked at me, the way he’d held me when we danced… and the clothes! Dressing me the way he’d dressed her, most likely. He’d recognized the compact, of course. He hadn’t wanted to fix it, he’d wanted to take it. Maybe that’s why I’d felt he’d been here, maybe that’s what he was looking for.

Everything made sense, except for one thing.

Why had Delia disappeared?