There Was an Old Woman

Chapter Eighteen


Startled, Evie dropped the envelope. Cash scattered across the linoleum floor. As she scrambled to pick up the hundred-dollar bills and stuff them back into the envelope, there was a rap at the door and a voice. “Hey, Evie. It’s Finn.”

“Hang on. I’m coming,” she called as she cast about for somewhere to stash the cash-filled envelopes. She stuck them in the refrigerator’s veggie bin. Then she went to answer the door.

Finn stood at the foot of the front steps. “Hope it’s okay I came by this late. I saw you were up.”

He saw she was up? Then she realized that anyone on the street side could have seen in. She’d left the kitchen curtains open.

“It’s supposed to rain tomorrow,” Finn said, apparently unruffled by Evie’s silence. “So I brought you this.” He pushed forward a panel of plywood. “For the window. And you left this in the store.” He held out a six-pack of beer, raised his eyebrows, and gave her a tentative smile.

Nice gambit. Evie hadn’t seen this guy in, what, decades? She felt safe with him, but she knew better than to go on instinct alone.

He must have sensed her reticence, because he set the beer on a step. “Listen, never mind. I’ll just . . .” He propped the plywood panel against the front of the house, held up his hands, and backed away.

How dangerous could a mudflat-hugging birdwatcher be? Besides, she needed to take a break. Her shoulders ached and she was bleary-eyed. A cold beer was exactly what she needed, almost as much as she needed someone to talk to.

“Come on,” she said, stepping aside so he could come in.

He cantered up the steps, scooping up the beer, then stopped just shy of the threshold. “You’re sure?”

Evie felt herself drawn into his smile. She took the six-pack from him. He had strong-looking hands. No ring. A thick braid made of black silk or maybe hair was tied around his wrist. As she looked down at the bottles, slippery with condensation, she could feel him watching her.

“Okay, so you didn’t leave the beer at the store.” He poked a sneakered toe against her foot. “I wouldn’t want to start with a lie.”

Start?

“You know, I used to have the worst crush on you.”

Even though she knew she was being played, Evie felt herself blush. She turned and walked through to the kitchen and set the beer on the counter.

“Listen,” he said, following her, “I thought—” He stopped, staring at the piles of papers on the kitchen table. “Whoa.” Then he took in the disarray of the two rooms beyond. “I had no idea it had gotten this bad. No idea at all. ”

“Believe it or not, it’s a lot better than it was. And I’m done for now. I need to take a break.”

“How’s your mom?” He gave her a searching look.

Evie started to say fine, but all that came out was a hoarse croak. She turned away, tears pricking at her eyes. “I talk to the doctor tomorrow. I’m not expecting good news.”

“I’m sorry.” He gave her a long look. “Listen, never mind. Obviously this is a bad time. I’ll come back another—”

“No, no. It’s okay. I don’t mind the company. Please, stay.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Well. Okay then.” He clapped his hands together. “I’ll get started on that window.”

“You want to fix it now?”

“No time like the present, as my dad used to say. Your mother’s got a ladder in the garage, and I brought my own tools.” He unhooked a hammer from his belt and dug a handful of nails from his pants pocket. “Be prepared. Dad used to say that, too, but I don’t think these are what he meant.”

Finn plugged in an extension cord and rigged an outside light so he could see what he was doing, and an hour and a half later, the upstairs window was securely boarded over with a sheet of plywood and Georgia O’Keeffe was back on the bedroom wall, no worse for the wear. On top of that, he promised to come back and replace the front steps, and he said he knew a local plumber he could call who would come and take care of the leak under the house.

“That would be wonderful,” Evie said, feeling ridiculously grateful. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

“My pleasure,” he said, holding her gaze for a few moments. He really wasn’t bad looking. Not bad looking at all.

Evie got out two beers, opened them, and handed him one. It was a brand she’d never seen before, Bronx Brewery, its label a black-and-white image of the back of a subway car. She saw him eyeing the counter where she’d left the business card that Frank from across the street had left.

“What was he doing here?” he said.

“Asking about my mother. Apparently they were friends.”

“Friends.” Finn seemed to consider that for a moment before he shrugged and turned his attention to the refrigerator. “Your dad was a firefighter?” He pointed to her father’s official firehouse photo that her mother had stuck on the door. “How could I have forgotten that?”

The picture showed her father’s big smile, crinkly eyes, and bushy mustache. He had on black turnout gear, the jacket collar pulled up framing his face, a white 3 over the visor of his battered black helmet. He used to let her wear that helmet for dress-up, and whenever she’d put it on, she’d been surrounded immediately by the smell of sweat and smoke. She wondered what had happened to it, whether it was still in the house somewhere.

“Rescue 3?” Finn said. “That’s up in Tremont, isn’t it?”

Evie nodded, surprised. That wasn’t something most people could come up with.

“I remember him pretty well, actually. Looks like he was about my age in that picture. Nice guy.”

“Yeah. He sure was.” Evie took another swallow of beer, sideswiped by the sadness that welled up in her.

“He used to come to the store every Sunday morning for doughnuts.”

“I remember. Best doughnuts ever.” It had been years since Evie had eaten a doughnut that came even close to the decadence of the jelly doughnuts of her childhood.

Finn grinned. “The very best. They’re from a little mom-and-pop shop. They keep trying to retire, but they still make them for us. Your dad’s still a firefighter?”

“Died in ’02.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I was away.” He took a step closer to her. She could smell the tang of his perspiration. “Was he one of the first responders on Nine-Eleven?”

She shook her head. “He retired a year before.”

Her dad had died a year nearly to the day after that awful morning when eight of his best buddies boarded the rescue truck and never came back. He’d never gotten over the fact that they’d all perished and he wasn’t with them.

Finn didn’t say anything, and Evie appreciated that he didn’t feel like he had to rush in and fill the silence. “So where were you?” she asked, after a moment.

“In class. Third row.” He closed his eyes, like he was visualizing. “Second seat. Civil Procedure. Required class, and they tortured us by scheduling it at eight in the morning.”

“You went to law school?” Evie hadn’t meant it to come out sounding quite so incredulous.

“Columbia Law, class of ’04. Michael Finneas Ryan, J.D., at your service.” He took a little bow. “Another lifetime. Different things mattered to me back then.” He stared out into space. “I remember that day like it was yesterday. We could see the smoke all the way from the fifth-floor classroom window up at 116th Street.” He sighed and shook his head. “A group of us trooped over to St. Luke’s, right from class, and tried to give blood.”

Evie and her friends had gone to St. Vincent’s Hospital in the Village. They’d been turned away.

“What about you?” he asked.

“In the dorm at NYU.” Her mother’s phone call had woken her up. She almost hadn’t answered because she hadn’t wanted her mother to know she was skipping her nine o’clock class.

Are you all right? Then, Turn on the TV.

Later, Evie had wandered out into the acrid haze, through drifts of paper that turned lower Manhattan into a perverted snow globe.

Finn took a long pull on the beer, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Listen,” he said, “was I kind of arrogant when you first came into the store? I tend to be a bit judgmental.” He tilted his head and smiled. “My ex-girlfriend called it something else.”

“I didn’t notice,” Evie said. She had noticed, though, Finn’s casual drop of the “ex-girlfriend.”

“Ha, ha. Like hell you didn’t. I thought maybe that’s why you were so . . . quiet when you came in again.”

Arrogant and judgmental sure, but also perceptive. “No. Sorry. It had nothing to do with you.” She straightened her father’s picture under the refrigerator magnet. “So, tell me about Soundview Lagoons.”

“You really want to hear? Or are you changing the subject?”

“Yes.”

He laughed. “Soundview Lagoons. Well, they are pretty amazing. At low tide, they’re transformed into seven acres of mudflat, home to great blue herons, great egrets, blue and fiddler crabs, eastern mud snails, blue-finger mud and hermit crabs, and the ribbed mussel. And it’s no joke what’s happening around here. Most people could give a rat’s ass whether the eel grass comes back. They couldn’t care less about what happens to salt-marsh sharp-tailed sparrows and clapper rails.”

“I confess, I don’t know a sparrow from a clapper rail.”

“A clapper rail is the size of a chicken. Long orange bill. Whitish rump. It’s all about whether you decide you’re going to pay attention.”

Evie did a double take. That was something she’d often said herself, that preserving history was about deciding to pay attention.

“I’ve seen old postcards of Higgs Point,” she said. “There was a ferry landing, beaches, a casino, all of them long gone. Wasn’t there an amusement park, too?”

“Snakapins Park. My family owned it.”

“Snakapins?”

“It’s an Algonquin word. Means ‘land between two waters.’ ”

Evie smiled. Leave it to the Algonquin—or the Siwanoy if she remembered her history of the boroughs correctly—to come up with such an evocative name for the place that white men named the far more pedestrian Higgs Point. “And your . . . grandfather borrowed the word for his amusement park?”

“Great-grandfather. His parents used to come over from Queens and camp out by the water. Hard to believe, looking at it now. Anyway, he loved it so much that he bought up what was mostly farmland and swamp. Built the amusement park. The store used to be one of the main buildings. You wouldn’t believe the old crap that’s still in the basement.”

Evie’s heart skipped a beat. “Old crap?”

He grinned. “You like old crap?”

“Of course. It’s what I do. I’m a curator at the Five-Boroughs Historical Society.”

“Really?” He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes at her. “I didn’t know that.”

Evie felt herself flush. “You never asked.”

“My ex-girlfriend accused me of that, too. I’m sorry.”

“Apology accepted. So tell me about what’s in the basement of the store?”

“All kinds of stuff. It’s been moldering down there since the place closed down in the twenties. There’s even parts from some of the old rides. Junk, really.”

Junk? That depended entirely on who was looking at it. Evie opened her mouth to explain about her job, and that preserving pieces from the past was something she cared passionately about. But instead, all that came out was a huge yawn.

Finn laughed, reached out for her hand, and pulled her to her feet. He was so close she could smell beer and sawdust and maybe a whiff of turpentine. He put his hands around her waist.

Too fast. The thought was like an alarm going off in her head. But before she could react, he’d released her.

“You need sleep,” he said. He walked his empty beer bottle to the kitchen sink, reached across, and tugged the curtains closed.

Evie followed, unsteady on her feet. Even a single beer made her tipsy?

“Thanks. For everything,” she said.

“No big deal. I won’t forget about the front steps and the leak. Anything else you need?”

“Actually, there is something. That old gas pump outside the store? It doesn’t still pump gas by any chance?”

“The EPA would have my head on a platter if it did. Do you need gas?”

“My mother’s car won’t start, and I’m hoping it’s only out of gas.”

“I’ve got a can of gas in the back of my truck. Enough to get you to a service station, anyway. I’ll bring it over tomorrow. Around ten? After our morning rush.”

“That’s perfect. Thanks. I’ll be here.”

“It’s okay if you’re not. I’ve got a key to the garage.” Evie’s surprise must have shown on her face because he added, “Your mother has us leave deliveries there.”

“Really?” She wondered if her mother’s deliveries had included cases of cigarette cartons. She could understand her mother not wanting them deposited at her front door.

“Well,” he said, taking a step closer. She could feel his body heat. “Guess I better go.”

“Thanks for the beer.”

“Thanks for the company.” He put his finger under her chin and raised her face to his. Her heart felt like it was pounding a mile a minute, but before she could decide whether she wanted to kiss him or not, he kissed her on the nose and headed for the door.

“Don’t forget to lock up,” he shot over his shoulder. “Sleep tight. See you in the morning.”

The instant he was gone, she realized that she did want to kiss him. Wanted to be kissed. But she was also desperately tired and glad he’d known not to press his advantage.

Evie cleared a space in the living room for a twin mattress she dragged down from the upstairs bedroom. The sheets already on it were clean, despite the squirrels. She’d meant to call Ginger and tell her about the envelopes of cash, but it was much too late. Tomorrow. First thing.

She got the money out of the refrigerator and slid it under the mattress, then changed into an oversize T-shirt, brushed her teeth, and got into bed. Before she closed her eyes she took a minute to contemplate the mess that still surrounded her. Why had her mother even bothered to drag in broken aluminum lawn chairs? Had it been drunken inspiration? And had she done that before or after she got the flat-screen TV?

Evie rubbed her nose. She could still feel Finn’s lips. Five minutes later, she was sound asleep.