Strings Attached

Nine



Providence, Rhode Island

March 1945

“Hurry up, Kitty, the taxi’s here. Do you have to use the bathroom?” Delia tugged on her gloves without glancing at me. Which was a good thing, because I’d left off my socks. I wanted people to think I was wearing stockings, and hoping that though I was twelve they’d think I was fifteen.

Delia had dressed up, too, in a dress she’d bought when her boss had gotten her a job in the War Department in Washington, DC, last summer. It was emerald with black satin buttons all the way down the back. She wore a dark green hat with a black veil and fresh new black kid gloves. She’d pulled her red hair back in an elegant French twist. She was even wearing lipstick. This view of my aunt as glamorous was startling, as though Delia had suddenly burst into vibrant song. I was used to seeing her in an assortment of grays, the colors of winter skies. Delia hid her beauty, just like the nuns she visited in Vermont once a month for retreats filled with solitude and prayer. “So I can keep my sanity before the lot of you send me around the bend to the crazy house,” she’d tell us, smiling as she headed out with her small suitcase and her train ticket.

She paused at the mirror she’d hung near the front door so “maybe you won’t look like tinkers on the way to school if you get a good look at yourselves.” Jamie and Muddie and I had long ago outgrown the mattress we’d all slept on in the closet. With Da’s overtime and a bit of luck, the increase in the family fortunes coincided with the Duffys moving out of the adjoining apartment to live with their daughter in Pawtucket. We took on their space as well. Since the landlord had thrown up a wall in order to create two out of a full-floor apartment, Da simply knocked it down again. Now Delia had her own room, as did Jamie, and Muddie and I shared the small back bedroom overlooking the yard.

A taxi to the station! I couldn’t believe it. I held myself very still in the backseat so Delia wouldn’t correct me. It was hard not to ask a question, but I could tell Delia was nervous about missing the train. She kept checking the delicate watch on her wrist. Maybe she, too, was nervous about going to a real Broadway play.

Well, it wasn’t on Broadway, not yet. The two of us were going to New Haven for the tryout of a new musical called Carousel, and I’d read that there would be a real carousel onstage. Delia had bought the tickets, shocking everyone in the family because she never did anything extravagant and didn’t approve of my voice and dance lessons, even though she paid for them. “It’s time Kit knows what she’s in for,” she said. Leave it to Delia to turn a pleasure trip into a warning.

As we sat on the train, I was content to look out the window and not talk. Delia seemed on edge, and when I said I had to go to the bathroom, she snapped, “Oh, for heaven’s sake!”

I looked down at my bare legs. I had a scab on one knee, and my calves were dotted with bruises. I realized how silly I was, believing that people would think I was older. Delia’s sleek legs crossed and recrossed, her stockings whispering. I could see a man down the aisle looking at her legs, and how Delia’s head jerked away, how she managed to convey to that stranger that he was a lout for even stealing a glance. I lifted my chin, too, trying to look as disapproving as she did.

Outside the theater in New Haven, people were milling under the lights of the marquee, the women all dressed up in mink and high heels. I’d never seen such glamour. I could pick out the ones who had driven up from Manhattan, and they were so perfect I almost lost my breath. I felt very Rhode Island, and was embarrassed that I’d ever imagined anyone ever saying, “Who is that beautiful red-haired girl in the blue dress?”

Delia moved stiffly through the crowd, the tickets held tight in her gloved hand. “Follow me and don’t get lost,” she instructed.

We pushed through into the lobby. It was smaller than the glittering palace I’d pictured. My nose filled with perfume and hair spray, a delicious smell.

“Wait, Delia! Can’t we —”

“Let’s find our seats. We don’t want to miss our curtain.”

“But it’s only a quarter to.”

“Shh!”

We were up in the balcony, high up, but it didn’t matter. Delia sat the way she always did — straight, her spine not touching the chair. She looked below to where the audience was beginning to file in. I craned my neck, picking out the most elegant dresses.

The lights dimmed and the music began with a swell that felt like a wave against my body. Tears instantly spurted to my eyes and ran down my cheeks. It was a waltz, but like no waltz I’d ever heard.

It was all up there, everything I knew and everything I didn’t know yet. Love and lies and cruelty and beauty, and the music that could be like a bruise way deep inside. When the curtain thundered down for intermission, I couldn’t speak for a minute.

“What do you think will happen?” I asked Delia. “Why is Billy Bigelow being such a louse when he loved Julie so much?”

“Love isn’t enough, I guess,” Delia said.

“Sure it is,” I said. I couldn’t understand a world where it wasn’t.

She stood up. “It’s not over. Let’s go hear what everyone says in the lobby.”

I trailed after her, the music still in my head.

“I think the show is a hit,” Delia murmured, her gaze darting around the lobby. Her cheeks glowed pink from excitement.

Through the crowd I spotted Nate Benedict. It had been three years since I’d seen him last, but I couldn’t mistake his profile with the flattened nose. He stood with that same small woman in a tweed coat with a brooch of red stones. They weren’t talking to each other, the woman looking down at her program while he scanned the lobby. I would have taken him for one of the crowd from Manhattan if I hadn’t known him. His gaze moved past us, then snapped back.

Delia touched her hair. “Well, he’s seen us. We have to say hello now.” She linked her arm with me and brought me forward, almost pushing me. “Hello, Mr. Benedict.”

“Hello, Miss Corrigan. Angela, you remember Miss Corrigan? My wife,” Nate said to us. “And this is Kitty, isn’t it? All grown up. Are you enjoying the play?”

“It’s so sad,” I said. “I thought musicals would be cheerful. Especially one with a carousel in it.”

“Yes, you’d think so, wouldn’t you?”

I hummed the tune of “If I Loved You,” then sang a few lines. I couldn’t remember the dates of the Revolutionary War or one scrap of geography, but I could remember a song. “Isn’t it romantic how he sings that she’ll walk away in the mist, and she’ll never know how he feels?”

“But she doesn’t walk away,” Delia said. “She stays. That’s her mistake.” She wasn’t under the same spell I was, that was clear.

“I have a headache.” Mrs. Benedict hadn’t even looked at us. “I want to go home now.” Without waiting for a word from her husband, she pushed through the people in the lobby.

“Ah,” Nate said. “It appears that there will be no second act. Here.” He handed me a box of mints. “But they’re yours.”

He bent down then, right at my eye level. “I think the lesson of the play is that we can’t always have what we want. Maybe it’s good that you learned it now.”

He moved off through the crowd, out toward the doors to the street.

“What did he mean?” I asked. “And wasn’t she rude? She must have felt really sick. Do you think she had to throw up?”

Delia turned abruptly. “Let’s get back to our seats. Hurry up now, you don’t want to miss the opening number.”

I followed, tearing at the top of the box of mints. I felt the sharp taste of peppermint explode in my mouth. We settled back into our seats, not talking, just waiting in suspense for the first notes of the orchestra.

The next act began, just as dark and sad as the first part. I cried again, sopping up my tears with the edge of my cardigan. We’d run out of tissues because Delia was crying, too.



We stood on the train platform. The music from the play still vibrated in my body and I tapped out the rhythms of the songs, making my feet move to the ballet. The girl who played Louise Bigelow wasn’t that much older than I was. I could dance that part in a few years. I sucked on the last mint, feeling it crumble in my mouth in a satisfying way.

“Is he rich, Mr. Benedict?” I asked. “He was wearing a camel hair coat, and I think that pin had rubies in it, the one his wife was wearing.”

“Stop asking me questions about him. I hardly know him.” Delia looked at her watch. “Where is the train?”

“This was the best day of my life. I’m going to be on Broadway someday. Do you think I could be, Delia?”

Delia looked down the track for the train.

I began to sing the lyrics of “What’s the Use of Wond’rin'?” piecing together the parts of the song I could remember. It was the saddest love song I could imagine — something about how love could be false or true, but you had to love him anyway, and that was that.

Delia whirled and slapped me across the face. I was nearly sent to the ground, not so much by the ferocity of it but the surprise. Delia had never struck any of us. This wasn’t a slap on the rear to give us a little propulsion to set the table. This was a slap, a grown-up slap of anger and frustration. Tears sprang to my eyes. My cheek felt as though it had burst into flame.

Delia’s eyes glittered with what looked like fever.

“Stop your noise,” she said. “I’ve had enough, do you understand? I’ve had enough.”



We were peppered with questions from a sleepy Jamie and Muddie when we got home. Da was asleep, deep into the cushions of the couch. I could hardly talk. Delia went into her room and closed the door.

Late that night I woke and went to the bathroom. The door was shut but not locked. I pushed it open.

Delia sat in the tub, the water up to her waist. Da had left his shaving things on the tub as usual — he liked to shave in the tub. I saw the sharp glitter of the razor. There was a towel on the floor, which surprised me, because Delia was fussy about things like towels.

Steam rose from the water and I saw the pale perfection of her skin flushed from the heat. Her breasts were full and rosy. Her hair was loose and streamed into the water.

That’s when I noticed she was crying. She turned her head and looked at me and I saw it was hard for her to focus. She’d been lost in a dream, or a memory, and we stared at each other through the steam.

The water stirred as she lifted a hand, and I thought she would cover herself, but for once she had no shame. She lifted that hand as if to entreat me, or apologize, I still don’t know.

I backed up and shut the door.