Agnes cleared the toques and sequin chains from the kitchen table and set four places for supper. She would have liked for Lydia to join them, would happily have cradled her in her own lap. But that would ruin the meal for Eddie. So Agnes left Lydia alone in the front room, compensating, as always, by keeping her own attention fixed upon her like a rope whose two ends she and her younger daughter were holding. Through this rope Agnes felt the quiver of Lydia’s consciousness and curiosity, her trust that she wasn’t alone. She hoped that Lydia could feel her own feverish love and assurance. Of course, holding the rope meant that Agnes was only half-present—distracted, as Eddie often remarked. But in caring so little, he left her no choice.
Over bean-and-sausage casserole, Brianne regaled them with the story of her smashup with Bert. Relations had already soured when she’d delivered an accidental coup de grace by knocking him from the deck of his yacht into shark-infested waters off the Bahamas. “You’ve never seen a man swim faster,” she said. “He was an Olympian, I tell you. And when he collapsed onto the deck and I pulled him to his feet and tried to throw my arms around him—it was the first amusing thing he’d done in days—what does he do? Tries to punch me in the nose.”
“Then what happened?” Anna cried with more excitement than Eddie would have liked. His sister was a rotten influence, but he was uncertain what to do about it, how to counter her.
“I ducked, of course, and he nearly toppled back in. Men who’ve grown up rich haven’t the first idea how to fight. Only the scrappy ones can. Like you, brother dear.”
“But we haven’t yachts,” he remarked.
“More’s the pity,” Brianne said. “You’d look very smart in a yachting cap.”
“You forget, I don’t like boats.”
“Growing up rich turns them soft,” Brianne said. “Next you know, they’re soft everywhere, if you take my meaning. Soft in the head,” she amended to his severe look.
“And the trumpeter?” he asked.
“Oh, he’s a real lover boy. Curls like Rudy Vallee.”
She would need money again soon enough. Brianne was long past her dancing days, and even then her chief resource had always been her beaus. But fewer men were flush now, and a girl with bags under her eyes and a boozy roll at the waist was less likely to land one. Eddie found a way to give his sister money whenever she asked, even if it meant borrowing from the shylock. He dreaded what she might become otherwise.
“Actually, the trumpeter is doing rather well,” Brianne said. “He’s been working at a couple of Dexter Styles’s clubs.”
The name blindsided Eddie. He’d never heard it uttered by Brianne or anyone else—hadn’t even thought to gird himself against the possibility. From across the table, he sensed Anna’s hesitation. Would she pipe up about having spent the day with that very man at his home in Manhattan Beach? Eddie didn’t dare look at her. With his long silence, he willed Anna to be silent, too.
“I suppose that’s something,” he told his sister at last.
“Good old Eddie.” Brianne sighed. “Always the optimist.”
The clock chimed seven from the front room, which meant that it was nearly quarter past. “Papa,” Anna said. “You forgot the surprise.”
Eddie failed to take her meaning, still rattled by that close shave. Then he remembered, rose from the table, and went to the peg where his overcoat hung. She was good, his Anna, he marveled as he pretended to search his pockets while steadying his breath. Better than good. He tipped the sack onto the table and let the bright tomatoes tumble out. His wife and sister were duly staggered. “Where did you get these? How?” they asked in a welter. “From who?”
As Eddie groped for an explanation, Anna put in smoothly, “Someone from the union has a glass growing house.”
“They live well, those union boys,” Brianne remarked. “Even in a Depression.”
“Especially,” Agnes said dryly, but in fact she was pleased. Being on the receiving end of perks meant that Eddie was still needed—something they were never guaranteed. She took salt and a paring knife and began to slice the tomatoes on a cutting board. Juice and small seeds ran onto the oilcloth. Brianne and Agnes ate the tomato slices with moans of delight.
“Turkeys at Christmas, now this—there must be an election coming up,” Brianne said, smacking juice from her fingers.
“Dunellen wants to be alderman,” Agnes said.
“God help us, the skinflint. Go on, Eddie. Taste one.”
He did at last, amazed by the twanging conjunction of salt and sour and sweet. Anna met his eyes without so much as a smirk of collusion. She’d done beautifully, better than he could have hoped, yet Eddie found himself preoccupied by some worry—or was he recalling a worry from earlier that day?
While Anna helped her mother clear the table and wash up, and Brianne helped herself to more rum, Eddie opened the front window that gave onto the fire escape and climbed outside for a smoke. He shut the window quickly behind him so Lydia wouldn’t take a draft. The dark street was soaked in yellow lamplight. There was the beautiful Duesenberg he’d once owned. He recalled with some relief that he would have to return it. Dunellen never let him keep the car overnight.
As he smoked, Eddie returned to his worry about Anna as if it were a stone he’d placed in his pocket and now could remove and examine. He’d taught her to swim at Coney Island, taken her to Public Enemy and Little Caesar and Scarface (over the disapproving looks of ushers), bought her egg creams and charlotte russes and coffee, which he’d let her drink since the age of seven. She might as well have been a boy: dust in her stockings, her ordinary dresses not much different from short pants. She was a scrap, a weed that would thrive anywhere, survive anything. She pumped life into him as surely as Lydia drained it.
But what he’d witnessed just now, at the table, was deception. That wasn’t good for a girl, would twist her the wrong way. Approaching Anna on the beach today with Styles, he’d been struck by the fact that she was, if not precisely pretty, arresting. She was nearly twelve—no longer small, though he still thought of her that way. The shadow of that perception had troubled him the rest of the day.
The conclusion was obvious: he must stop bringing Anna with him. Not immediately, but soon. The thought filled him with a spreading emptiness.