the witness protection program after having provided secret testimony at
government hearings in Washington. This was a couple of years after
President Kennedy had been assassinated, a time when an aura of
suspicion and distrust seemed to have spread even to our Boston suburban
neighborhood, which, according to Jerry Kavanaugh, was exactly
nine-point-four miles from Fenway Park. "That's Jerry for
you," his sister Angela would say, part prideful boast, part
complaint, "always with the stats."We lived next door to the Kavanaughs and the source of most
rumors was Mrs. Kavanaugh, who played the organ at St.
Bartholomew's Catholic Church, and who had made a promise to God to
take in several foster children for each of her own the Lord had granted
her. This notion was a cause for humor between Jerry and my older
brother Matthew, the kind of thing they wouldn't explain to me
because I was eleven, though one day Jerry offered that God had nothing
to do with it. He said it had to do with his mother's eggs and his
father's sperm, and he lost me there.The Kavanaugh house, a large Victorian in need of paint, was
overrun with children. Our house was also an old, creaky Victorian,
though not so ramshackle as the Kavanaugh's because my mother
asserted that she hadn't moved out from Dorchester to live like
you-know-who. Matthew's room was on the third floor, and at night
he would sit by his window with the light off, looking across at the
Kavanaugh's, waiting for the light to come on in Angela's
window on the second floor. She had a tendency to go about her business
without pulling down a shade or drawing a curtain. Some nights (I know
this because my room was on the second floor, directly below
Matthew's), Angela would turn on the light in her bedroom and pace
back and forth while undressing. She tended to wear her father's
old white dress shirts, the ones he wore to work at the electric company
until the collars began to fray. She would unbutton her father's
shirt and shrug it off her shoulders. Then she would turn her back to
the window, place her arms behind her, and there would be a moment of
hesitation, something like the magician who pauses before producing the
white dove that flies out over the audience, followed by a swift
maneuver where the brassiere was unfastened and held aside in one
languid hand before it was dropped to the floor. She would then raise
her arms up, piling her long brown hair on top of her head, and fasten
it in place with a large barrette. Upstairs I could hear the floorboards
creak beneath Matthew. Often the show would end there. Angela would
usually walk out of view, though sometimes she'd traipse past the
window again, maybe wearing her terrycloth bathrobe. Sometimes
Matthew's room overhead would fall into an extended silence. Other
nights he would flee his room, pound down three flights of stairs, burst
out the back door, and pitch tennis balls against the garage door until
my mother would finally come to the kitchen window and tell him to stop
before one of the neighbors complained. But no one ever complained. It
was just a noisy neighborhood. There were kids everywhere, playing
games, running, screaming, shouting, riding bikes. Every house had kids.
We had four: Matthew, me, and the twins. The Kavanaugh's six, plus
all those foster kids; the Macy's five; the Gellman's a mere
three--all up and down the block one house after another, spilling over
with kids. There were safe havens, and there were houses that, when
approaching, I would avoid by crossing the street to the opposite
sidewalk. The Gellman's dog had bitten at least three kids on the
block, but they refused all attempts to have the animal restrained until
the police took the dog away and kept it in the pound for ten days.
Charlie Macy was known to hide behind a bush in his front yard and pelt
kids with stones. I sometimes thought of the neighborhood as a war zone,
and every time I ventured from the house I was on a secret mission
behind enemy lines.I became convinced that the spy lived in the brick house on the
far side of Dr. Linden's house. My theory was based on the simple
notion that it was the only house that didn't have any kids. Spies
didn't have children.For a long time, no one seemed sure who lived there. An elderly
couple, Mrs. Kavanaugh said, had bought it after old Mrs. Carlisle
passed away, which could mean anything. They were all elderly. The fact
was, we never saw anyone come or go from that house.Next door to the brick house, behind Dr. Linden's garage,
there was a basketball court, not full-size, but with lines and circles
painted on the asphalt, and at each end a hoop with a chain net. The
doctor and his wife had had it built years earlier for their older son,
who had died from some disease like polio, and they didn't object
to neighborhood kids using the court. The ping of the dribbled ball
echoed off the back of the garage as well as the side of the spy's
brick house which loomed above the shrubs.There were rarely even any lights on in that house. One night
after dinner I went down to the darkened basketball court, pushed my way
through the shrubs, and walked softly across the back of the yard, where
there was a marble statue of a naked woman. She had been holding
something up, a basket of fruit, or maybe the scales of justice, but her
raised arm was broken off at the shoulder. I stood behind her (we were
about the same height) and watched the back of the brick house. I
remained in the yard for maybe a half an hour and nothing happened. Then
I slipped back through the bushes, and walked home, pleased with the
fact that I had not been caught.I returned a couple of nights later. I had an alibi: I was
supposed to be watching TV over at Tommy Farnham's house. Instead,
I stood behind the statue, listening to the crickets in the shrubs. I
liked it there in the dark. I liked that no one knew I was there. It was
better than standing at my bedroom window, knowing that Matthew was
above me in his room, waiting for Angela to do her thing.I had also acquired information: the elderly couple who lived in
the house was named Stieglitz. Mr. and Mrs. Hans Steiglitz. I knew this
because one afternoon I just happened to be on my bike in the front of
the house as Mr. Eagan, our mailman, worked his way down the block."I found this" I took the envelope from the back of my
pocket and handed it to him."Thirty-eight Abbott Road" Looking up at the brick
house, he shook his head. "This is the right address but the Bakers
don't live here. Where--""It was just lying on the sidewalk.""Well, you did the right thing, Sean, but nope, this is Mr.
and Mrs. Hans Steiglitz on Abbott Road. The Bakers live two blocks over
at thirty-eight Algonquin Hill Road." Mr. Eagan tucked the envelope
in his bag.And I'm thinking won't they be impressed by how
official their address looks, banged out on my father's Underwood
typewriter, but confused when they find nothing in the envelope.So I was standing in the dark with a name, Mr. and Mrs. Hans
Steiglitz, when suddenly the back door opened, casting a trapezoid of
light across the yard. A man stood in the doorway, gazing out. I
didn't move, other than trying to make myself smaller than the
statue. There was a voice from within the house, a feminine voice, very
faint, and the words unintelligible--and there was some kind of foreign
accent.Mr. Steiglitz remained in the doorway so long that I was sure he
knew I was there, and I was about to come out from behind the statue,
raise my hands and surrender, when he stepped out into the yard and
walked along the back of the house. Away from the light, it was
difficult to see him. He seemed to bend over, and I heard something
move--slither--in the grass to my right. Then I heard something squeak,
and just as I thought spigot a fan of water sprang from the grass,
glistening in the light cast from the open doorway. Mr. Steiglitz went
back inside the house, leaving me in the dark behind the statue, soaking
wet.II I went back the next night. It was Wednesday; Mom and Dad were
out playing bridge. I stood behind the statue and waited perhaps twenty
minutes. This time, when the back door opened, two people came outside,
a man and a woman. They walked along a gravel path and entered the
garage, and a minute later a car backed down the driveway and headed for
Lincoln Avenue.It was hard to tell if there were any lights on in the house
because there appeared to be drapes closed behind all the windows. I
watched the back door. He had only closed it; no key. Nothing strange
there: few people locked their doors in our neighborhood; why should
they? Finally, I crossed the thick summer grass and waited outside the
door. The house was silent. I put my hand on the door knob and it turned
easily. Still, I waited--minutes passing, my heart throbbing--until I
pulled the door open and stepped inside.I was in a mudroom: coats and hats hanging from hooks; shoes and
boots lined up on the flagstone floor. The air was different--warm, and
there lingered the smell of something that had been cooked too long.
Through the door to the right there was a kitchen and the light was on
above the stove. I could see just well enough to walk carefully, heel to
toe in my sneakers, through the kitchen, into the dining room, and then
I stopped in the vestibule. A wide archway opened into the living room,
and down the front hall were the stairs, and another door, which was
half opened, casting a plane of light across the hardwood floor. I went
down the hall slowly and could just fit sideways through the open door.
The light came from a desk lamp, brass, with a green glass shade.I walked over to the oak desk. (I knew oak because my
father's Underwood typewriter was on his oak desk and the grain
always made me think of tigers.) There was an ink blotter and everything
on the desk was stacked in neat piles: papers, envelopes, several books.
In the center of the ink blotter was a stack of paper, and typed on the
top page were words in a language other than English. Lots of vowels.
Accent marks.The phone rang.It sat on the corner of the desk and my heart kicked against my
ribs as I backed away from the desk until I bumped into a bookcase with
a glass door that was cool against my bare forearm. From somewhere
overhead, I heard footsteps; they seemed to cross carpet and come out
into the hall at the top of the stairs. Whoever it was answered, causing
the phone on the desk to stop ringing.A woman's voice, soft and weary, as though she'd been
sleeping, echoed down into the vestibule. "No, he's taken
Marsha to the bus," she said. "I'm fine. A little tired.
I've been lying down, but I need to get up or I'll never get
to sleep later."She listened for a long time, and while she did, I walked
carefully to the door to the hallway and slipped through. There was a
light from the second floor--angled light that came from the open
bedroom door, I guessed--and it cast her shadow on the wall above the
staircase. Her figure was tall and slender, and something about the way
her arm was bent to hold the phone to her ear made me think first of
Angela when she raised her arms to clasp her hair on top of her head,
and then it made me think of the missing arm on the statue out in the
backyard."Yes, all right, I will," she said, finally. And then,
after a brief pause, she said something I couldn't understand. It
wasn't English.After she placed the receiver in the phone's cradle, she
took a few steps toward the banister--I was sure she was barefoot. There
was a long moment when neither of us moved. I was about to run, to
sprint down the hall, into the dining room, through the kitchen, and out
the mudroom door, when she said, "Hans, is that you?"At that moment I was willing to die. Stop my heart right there.
Her bare feet padded down the stairs. Just as she reached the bottom,
one tread groaned, and then she turned and looked down the hallway at
me.She grew taller as she placed a hand upon her throat. The sound
she made seemed an inhalation of surprise, but also a sigh of
recognition."Hello there," she said."Hello.""What's your name?"I didn't say anything."Live around here?""I'm sorry," I said."Don't be.""I'll go. I didn't take anything. I--""It's all right.""Are you going to tell?"She took her hand away from her throat. It was a gesture of
surrender. "No. But I am going to have some ginger ale. Won't
you join me?"I was not good at gauging the age of adults. They all were about
the same, it seemed; or they were really old, like my grandfather who
had come and stayed with us two years earlier, had all his teeth pulled,
and died a few months later, before my father had finished paying Dr.
Babcock, our dentist. Mrs. Steiglitz didn't smell old. There was
some perfume, or perhaps a lotion she put on after her bath that was
intended to be pretty and fresh. My mother kept such things on her
vanity, sprays and creams, but they just made me sneeze. Mrs. Steiglitz
made me think of an open window in May, when the lilacs are just
starting to bud.We sat at the kitchen table and drank Canada Dry ginger ale on
ice in tall glasses. Her eyes were huge, dark and moist, as though she
might cry at any moment; but she also seemed pleased, or maybe relieved,
to have me there. Her long fingers kept touching her hair, pushing at
the piles of dark curls, as though she were afraid they would fall out
of her head. She was wearing a nightgown, made of some fine, gauzy
material that I was afraid to look at--I could only get to her bare
shoulders. When I finished my glass of ginger ale she poured me some
more, and there was a moment when she leaned forward and her nightgown
opened up. I glanced down. I saw them. Not all of them, but enough to
know that they were nothing like Angela Kavanaugh's."I love ginger ale," she said.I nodded."Has to be Canada Dry."I nodded."I tried that store brand they have at the A & P, but
it's not the same."I shook my head.She took a sip from her glass. There was something about her skin
I couldn't figure out. It didn't seem real. There weren't
any wrinkles, and I wondered if she was wearing a lot of makeup. When
she put her glass on the table, she looked at me seriously, and I
expected her to ask how I got in the house, or why.I cleared my throat, planning to explain, but then I surprised
myself. "You have an accent," I said. "Where are you
from?"She seemed pleased by the question. "You're quite
observant. I'm from a region known as Trentino-Alto, which is in
the mountains of northern Italy, close to the Austrian border.
Hollywood," she said, exasperated. "Three-quarters of the Alps
are in Italy, but they insist on calling them the Swiss Alps. Before I
was married my name was Malatesta, Francesca Malatesta. My husband Hans
is from Austria."She paused, and I realized I was supposed to tell her something
about myself. I was supposed to tell her who my parents were so she
could call them and inform them that their son had broken into her house
in the dark of the night while her husband wasn't home. Or she
might just call the police and let them contact my parents, which in the
long run would be worse for me."I like ravioli" I said."Do you?""Yes. Chef Boyardee""Ah, si." Then she smiled at my confusion. "It
means yes.""In Italian"She nodded."You speak Italian with Mr. Steiglitz?" Her eyes
widened slightly, impressed, and I realized I had given away some
information: I knew their name."And German, sometimes," she said."I thought he was from Austria""He is, but they speak German, though it is their own form
of German. Italian is more pleasant to the ear. It's musical,
whereas German--German sounds like someone trying to chew ice
cubes" Then she tipped her glass to her mouth, allowing an ice cube
to slide on to her tongue, and then she said something--it was German, I
was sure, because she sounded like the Nazis in the movies--and as she
spoke she crushed the ice loudly with her teeth.I smiled, but only for a moment. She seemed surprised--and
disappointed--that she had done such a silly thing. She turned in her
chair and studied the floor as though she had lost something valuable.
Her legs were crossed, and she folded her arms on her top thigh. I was
afraid to look down. I finished my ginger ale in one draught, letting
the ice cubes stack up against my nose."I should get home," I said."Yes, Mr. Steiglitz should be back soon" She sat
upright then. Her eyes were concerned, and I couldn't tell if this
was for me or herself. "We'd have some explaining to do. Me,
all alone in the house with a strange man."I put my empty glass on the table."Perhaps," she said, barely a whisper, "this
should be our little secret?""All right.""So you won't tell?""No." I stood up, careful not to scrape the chair legs
on the floor. "I promise.""Thank you.""You're welcome. Bye.""Bye."I walked toward the mudroom, getting as far as the doorway before
she spoke. "You didn't tell me your name," she said. I
paused but didn't look back at her. "I was wondering about
your first name.""It's Sean.""Sean. It was a pleasure to meet you." I looked at her
then. She smiled, though something in her eyes suggested she was sorry,
or perhaps she was in pain. "Would you come and visit me
again?""You want me to?""I would, yes," she said. "Si." "All right."I went into the mudroom and let myself out the back door.I didn't go near her house for several days. I was scared of
the place, though I wasn't sure why. Fear of getting caught by an
Austrian man who spoke German as though he was eating ice cubes, or
because I had liked being there in the kitchen with Francesca Steiglitz,
whose maiden name was Malatesta?However, one afternoon a bunch of us were playing basketball on
Dr. Linden's court. I kept gazing up at the brick house, at the
windows that were visible above the shrubs, imagining that she was
watching us from behind the drapes. I played hard, dribbling and
shooting well (for me), imagining that she was observing my every move.
But there were distractions. This was one of those rare boy-girl games
that we sometimes played. It was a bit of a concession on the boys'
part, because we knew we could play better, harder when there were no
girls. But having a few girls on each team made things interesting in a
different way.I'm talking about Angela Kavanaugh's belly button. As
usual, she was wearing one of her father's white dress shirts,
untucked, and she seemed always to be moving and jumping so that her
arms often lifted above her head, and as her shirttails rose up you
could see her smooth, flat stomach. Angela's was the most intricate
belly button I had ever seen; it was an "innie"
("outies" were generally perceived to be gross, which really
meant they were interesting), and a glimpse of the complicated folds in
that shallow crater of flesh could freeze me in my tracks on the court.
Matthew, who was playing center on my side, was more interested in the
rest of Angela. They managed to bump against each other, brush by each
other, and often simply collide. At times it appeared Angela's
doing--she'd dribble the ball two-handed toward him until she
couldn't help but become entangled in his arms (and then cry
"Foul! I get a free throw!"), while at other times he would
lunge toward her, grabbing her by an arm or, once, around the waist. The
rest of us watched all this, aghast, as though it were some exotic
mating ritual. We played until dinnertime. It was a Friday and we were
having fish sticks, which I could only eat if they were loaded with
heaps of tartar sauce. After dinner my mother and father were going out,
invited to a cocktail party, and once they drove off, all four of us
scattered, free of any supervision for hours.When it was dark, I walked down the block and took up my place
behind the statue. This time I didn't have long to wait. Mr.Steiglitz came out the back door, accompanying Marsha to the bus
(I presumed). It was so warm that she wasn't wearing a coat this
evening, and I was baffled to find that she wore a white dress, and that
she carried a rather large leather satchel--much more substantial than a
woman's handbag. Minutes after Mr. Steiglitz pulled his car out
into the street and left, I went up to the door. I just stood there for
a long time, undecided.I finally opened the door and went into the mudroom; everything
looked the same and the house was silent. Slowly, I walked through the
kitchen and the dining room, and paused in the vestibule. The light was
on in the den at the end of the hall (it was dark at the top of the
staircase), so I went to the door. Mrs. Steiglitz was lying on a couch
beyond the desk, and when she saw me she tried to sit up.It was difficult for her. She seemed different; more frail."I should have knocked," I said. "I'm
sorry."She touched her head, and I realized that it was her hair. Rather
than massive curls, she didn't have much hair at all, and what she
had was short and black and matted to her skull. Her eyes, though still
large and dark, seemed embarrassed, but then she said, "No,
it's all right, Sean. I've been wondering if you would ever
return." Then she adjusted the cushions, making a place for me on
the couch, which she patted with her hand. "Please come and sit
with me."I went around the large coffee table and sat beside her. The room
was warm and the air smelled odd, like medicine. "I've been
busy," I said, "but I thought I would pay a visit." This
was the kind of thing some of my mother's friends would say if they
showed up at the house unexpectedly--my mother always welcomed them,
though after they left she'd usually say something about them
having too much time on their hands.But my saying this made Mrs. Steiglitz smile, and I think she
meant it. "It's good to see you." She struggled to get to
her feet. "I'm going to get us some ginger ale. I'll be
right back." She was wearing a bathrobe this time, and as she left
the den she retied the sash about her waist.There was a book, a large book, opened on the coffee table in
front of my knees. I leaned forward and looked at the picture--it was a
drawing of some kind, not a photograph, and the figures were naked. I
simply could not make out what they were doing. They seemed to be all
together in a way that was disgusting and scary. I was afraid to look at
the book, so I sat back on the sofa and just tried to stare at the
framed pictures hanging on the walls--old black and white photos of
couples who were posing for their portraits the way people used to
before they smiled for the camera. There was one photograph of children
standing on a pile of brick rubble in a street. They looked proud. Proud
and hungry.I heard the tinkling of ice in the glasses in the hall, and then
Mrs. Steiglitz came into the den. She placed our ginger ales on the
coffee table, making sure each was centered on a cork coaster. I liked
coasters; they were so grownup."Oh," she said, leaning toward the open book. "Oh,
dear." She began to close the book, but then hesitated. "You
saw this?"I nodded."Do you know what it is?"I shook my head.She inhaled and released her breath slowly, and then she seemed
to have come to a decision. "Well, I best explain." She picked
up the book and placed it in her lap. "This is a book with a famous
poem in it. The Divine Comedy, which was written a long time ago--over
six-hundred years--by a man named Dante Alighieri. But people usually
just call him Dante. Have you heard of him?""I think so.""He was Italian, see?"I looked down at the book and she was pointing to the left-hand
page, which had lines of poetry in a heavy script. It wasn't.
written in English. "That's Italian?""Si," she said, pleased. "Italiano. And
this--" she pointed to the right-hand page--"this is an
etching by an artist named Gustave Dore. He was born in Austria,
actually quite near where Mr. Steiglitz is from."I looked at the figures in the illustration. "What's
the matter with them?" "They're in the Inferno," she
said. "Hell."After a moment I picked up my glass of ginger ale and took a long
drink, thankful that it was ice cold. "I go to St.
Bartholomew's School," I said, "and the sisters talk
about hell all the time, but I never--I never thought it would look like
that.""It's called contrapasso," she said, gazing down
at the book. "Retribution. Sinners go to hell and their punishment
often takes the form of their sin on earth.""Their souls don't just burn for eternity?""Yes, but it can be worse, much worse. Some suffer from
fire, some from ice. It depends on their sin." She turned to me
then and studied me carefully. "How old are you, Sean?""I'll be twelve next fall.""And the sisters, they talk about hell in school?""Every day.""Do you want to look at this, or shall we put it away?"
She began to close the book."No, show me," I said.She hesitated a moment, and then she flipped to the front of the
book. It was very heavy and the paper had a pleasant smell. "All
right. Then we must start at the beginning." We looked down at a
sketch of two men in cloaks, standing beneath dark trees. "This is
Dante, and this is Virgil," she whispered, as though she were
telling me a secret. "They are poets."Francesca held the book in her lap and turned the pages, telling
the story about the two poets' descent into hell. Sometimes she
would read a few lines in Italian, and then explain what they meant. I
was an altar boy at St. Bartholomew's, which meant that I had
memorized a series of Latin responses we were to say during mass, but
the priest always spoke Latin in a flat monotone that was deathly
somber. Francesca speaking Italian was like music, rising and falling
notes, and r's that rolled off her tongue dramatically. Mostly we
looked at the illustrations. I'd never seen anything like them.
They seemed at once real but unbelievable. They depicted vast spaces,
caverns, trails along the edges of sheer cliffs. The figures were
grotesque: they had wounds; their faces expressed incredible suffering
and agony. But they were also gorgeous. As Francesca spoke, barely a
whisper, she leaned over the book and the lapel of her bathrobe fell
away from her chest. Sitting next to her, I could look inside and see
her right breast, the way it hung heavily off her ribcage, the way the
nipple was surrounded by a circle of flesh the color of wine, the way
the breast rose and fell as she spoke. I looked at the illustrations of
the Inferno, I looked at her breast. I was certain that I was committing
a sin (the nuns would certainly think so), but I couldn't stop
looking, looking so hard I could feel a heat and intensity in my
eyeballs, such that I imagined that when I died and went to hell my
contrapasso, my retribution, might very well be to have my eyes burn for
eternity. But it was too late. I could not look away.We were both so absorbed by the story that we didn't hear
Mr. Steiglitz until he pushed open the door and said, "Who are you
talking to?"Francesca closed the book in her lap and I sat back on the couch.
Mr. Steiglitz watched me for a moment, his eyes more calculating than
angry, and then he said something to her that I guessed was German--he
sounded as though he was chewing on ice cubes. She responded in
Italian--her voice was not just a song, but a plea. They continued to
talk this way, in two languages that I didn't understand, but it
was clear that they were both becoming upset. I had the feeling
they'd had this argument before, and they talked as though I
wasn't even there.When they stopped, he was breathing audibly through his
mouth.Glancing at Francesca, I saw that her eyelashes were matted with
tears.I stood up. No one said anything, though Mr. Steiglitz stepped
out of the doorway, allowing me to pass. I walked out of the den and
left the house by the back door.III I avoided Dr. Linden's basketball court, and when I would go
down to Marisi's corner store, I would always walk on the opposite
sidewalk, fearing that Mr. Steiglitz might be looking out the window
watching for me. I couldn't get some of the images of the Inferno
out of my mind. One afternoon, I was in the train depot across Lincoln
Avenue with Leo Kavanaugh, who was a grade behind me in school, who
showed me the Playboy he'd stolen from his older brother
Jerry's room. That night, I didn't sleep at all, because I
kept thinking about the pictures of the naked women but imagining that
things were happening to them that had been portrayed in
Francesca's book: the women would be scorched, frozen, slashed,
clawed; their internal organs would dangle from gaping wounds; they
would be beheaded, with blood gushing out of their necks and coating
their breasts. Their mouths and eyes, which seemed to have beckoned
longingly from the pages of Playboy, were transformed into pleas for
mercy. I was tormented through the night by such images, and in the
morning my mother took my temperature, determining that I had a
fever.A couple of days later, we went on vacation for two weeks down on
Cape Cod. We swam in the ocean every day, we fished, we dug clams at low
tide, we wrapped our heads in beach towels and pretended we were
Lawrence of Arabia in the sand dunes. I got sunburned but I slept better
at night thanks to the cool salt air. Matthew met a girl named Barbara,
and at night sometimes they let me go with them to watch the Cape league
baseball games in Chatham. The arrangement was that I'd stay in the
bleachers overlooking the ball field, while they went off somewhere to
make out. At first, the two weeks on the Cape felt as though they would
last forever, but suddenly we were piled in Dad's car and driving
across the Sagamore Bridge, headed toward Boston.When we returned home, the days were shorter, the nights chilly,
and my mother took us shopping for school clothes. I was going into
junior high school and wouldn't have to wear a white shirt and
plaid tie every day as I had at St. Bartholomew's. There was a
minor scandal in the neighborhood: Angela had begun dating a boy from
Needham who played football. Matthew didn't seem to care, and
neither of us spent our nights watching the Kavanaugh's house from
our bedroom windows.School started after Labor Day weekend, and on that Thursday
afternoon as I was walking home, I saw an ambulance parked in the
Steiglitz's driveway. There was a small gathering of adults and
children on the sidewalk across the street: Mrs. Kavanaugh and several
of her children and foster children, and Mrs. Marisi, whom I had never
seen in broad daylight. The ambulance was backed up in the driveway, the
light on its roof flashing, the rear doors open; the crew, we assumed,
were in the house, entering through the back door. We couldn't see
anything really, but for some reason Mrs. Marisi was convinced that she
knew what was going on."Foul play," she said. "I've seen it
coming." She had a cardigan sweater over her shoulders and her arms
folded against the autumn air. "Down at the Italo-American Club
they talk about the wife," she said to Mrs. Kavanaugh. "Paola
Fortello used to clean house there once a week until they let her go,
but the stories she'd tell. That woman was--she was ..." But
then, looking down at all the children staring at her, Mrs. Marisi
tugged her sweater about her and concluded, "Well, it's just a
crime and a shame, is what it is."Mrs. Kavanaugh nodded her head. "I'm telling you,
witness protection program, though more likely spies." She began to
herd the children down the sidewalk toward her house, saying, "No
point in our standing here and gawking."Mrs. Marisi said, "Some of us have work to do," and she
started back toward her store at the end of the block.Suddenly I was alone on the sidewalk across from the
Steiglitz's house. The flashing light on the roof of the ambulance
was mesmerizing. I felt conspicuous standing there in my new school
clothes, but I kept watching the windows of the house, waiting for some
movement, something to indicate that someone might be looking out from
behind the closed drapes. But I saw nothing. I kept telling myself to
leave, but I stayed just a minute longer, until I heard something from
the back of the house: voices. I moved down the sidewalk for a better
view up the driveway and just caught a glimpse of the crew as they
wheeled a stretcher to the back of the ambulance and put it inside--but
I couldn't tell who was on the stretcher because there was an
oxygen mask covering the person's nose and mouth. Then I also
caught a brief look at Marsha, the woman Mr. Steiglitz was always taking
to the bus at night, and in the daylight it was clear that she was
wearing a nurse's uniform. There was then a great deal of milling
about as the ambulance doors were being closed by the crew. I
couldn't tell if Marsha had gotten inside the ambulance, or whether
she went back inside the house. When the ambulance came down the
driveway and turned into the street, it released one blast of its horn,
an ear-splitting sound that seemed to say Whooop-Whooop!--and then it
sped down the road toward Lincoln Avenue.A couple of days went by and no one seemed to know what had
happened. Actually, no one seemed very curious. If it were any other
house on the block, everyone would have known what was going on, and if
someone was ill, visits would be paid to the hospital and meals would be
delivered to the house. But Mr. and Mrs. Steiglitz were different, and
no one bothered.That weekend, it was hot and muggy. Indian summer. We were
wearing shorts and t-shirts again. Saturday night, Matthew had a date
(his third with a girl named Cathy, who was a junior), and after dinner
I went outside and hung around on the Kavanaugh's porch where there
was usually some ice cream and Reddi Whip being distributed in small
plastic bowls. (The best part was passing the aerosol can around and
taking a blast of Reddi Whip right in the mouth.) After dessert, the
Kavanaugh kids went in the house to watch TV, and I wandered down the
block. Now that it was mid-September, it got dark early, and soon I was
standing behind the statue in the Steiglitz's backyard.I couldn't see any lights on in the house; as usual, the
drapes were all drawn. I wasn't sure there was anyone in there
until I heard a door shut. I went up to the back door, put my hand on
the knob, and turned it. The door opened. But I just stood there,
staring into the mudroom. I kept telling myself to just go home, but I
also felt that this was my only chance, so finally I went inside and
walked through the kitchen and dining room. There was something
different about the house: large cardboard boxes were stacked in the
dining room, and the shelves in the corner hutch were bare. My feet
echoed on the floor, and I realized there used to be a rug under the
dining room table.I went into the vestibule. The door to the den opened and Marsha
stepped out into the hall. She was older than I had thought (though how
old I couldn't say), and her gray hair was tied up in a bun beneath
a small white cap. When she saw me, she put her hand on her chest and
said, "Dear God, you gave me a fright. I thought it was a
burglar."Someone spoke from the den, so softly that I couldn't tell
who it was, and Marsha, who now seemed irritated, glanced over her
shoulder and said, "Why it's just some boy." Looking at
me again, she said, "What on earth are you doing in here?" And
she made a shooing motion with her arm, as though I were a dog."Go--go now."But then she looked into the den again, and said, "What? Are
you serious? I think we should call his parents, or even the police.
I've already had one heart attack in this house." But then as
she stepped out into the hall she squared her shoulders indignantly, and
said to me, "All right, then. I'll not be responsible. You,
you come in here." She began walking toward me, and would have
knocked me over if I hadn't stepped aside. "Your presence has
been requested." Turning into the dining room, she practically
hissed, "And I will get you your ginger ale."I went down the hall and stopped in the doorway. Francesca lay on
her side on the couch under a blanket. She had her wig on, and she
looked pale, which I never imagined possible. It seemed to take all of
her effort to extend her arm toward me. "Sean. Please, come sit
with me." She didn't sit up but just patted the couch.I went around the coffee table and she took my hand and guided me
down on to the edge of the cushion; but that wasn't enough, and her
arm pulled my back right against her stomach. "Look at you,"
she said. "You look, I don't know, so grown up.""I started junior high school last week.""Wonderful" She smiled; her teeth seemed dingy.
"No more nuns."I shook my head."No more talk of hell every day."I shook my head, and smiled, too."Girls?"I looked away.Her arm was still around my back and she squeezed my shoulder.
"You know, I saw you from the window one afternoon. You were so
dressed up. The girls, they won't be able to leave you alone.
You'll see."I was embarrassed to talk about girls, so to change the subject,
I said, "Mrs. Kavanaugh--she's our next-door neighbor--she
thinks you're spies."Francesca laughed in a way I'd never heard her laugh before;
there was real joy in her voice, and I imagined that there was a time
that she used to laugh that way often. "Where did she ever get that
notion?""Mrs. Kavanaugh, she just thinks things up. My mother says
she's very opinionated.""Si, capisco. I understand." Francesca's
expression changed, as though she'd just remembered something.
"But how did Mrs. Kavanaugh know?""What do you mean?""But I was, during the war.""A spy?""Well ... sort of. It wasn't, it wasn't like in
the movies, but I was still a girl really, and often I would carry
messages from our village up into the mountains, where my father was
hiding with the partisans.""Partisans?""They fought against the fascists in Italy. What I did was
quite common, actually.""But dangerous.""War is dangerous, Sean.""Are--are you in hiding now? That's what Mrs. Kavanaugh
says.""Does she? No, I'm not in hiding now. Mussolini's
dead.""He was on Hitler's side.""Si." "And you weren't.""Many of us weren't." She was silent for a moment,
and then she said, "If there is a hell, that's where they are
now."Marsha came into the den with two tall glasses of ginger ale on
ice. She was so disgusted she couldn't even look at us, together on
the couch. After placing the glasses on the coasters on the coffee
table, she left the room."Please, drink." Then, as though we were in on a
conspiracy together, Francesca whispered, "She's so bossy. I
think she's a fascist."I picked up my glass and, as I drank, the fizz coming off the
ginger ale was cool and moist on the tip of my nose. It was then that I
noticed that all the photographs had been taken off the walls, though
their hangers were still nailed to the plaster. I put the glass back on
its coaster and said, "You're moving.""This is all very sudden," she said. "You see,
I've been ill for some time, and the stress turned out to be too
much for my husband." I looked at her. "He had a heart attack,
Sean. You didn't know?"I shook my head, and then I couldn't help it but my eyes
began to water. "I saw the ambulance that day, but I didn't
know--I thought it was you they took away.""That was a reasonable assumption," she said as she
placed her hand on my face. A finger kept my tear from running down my
cheek. "But that's one of the things you can never forget.
Terrible, unexpected things will happen." Her eyes became moist,
too, but only for a moment, and then they became hard, even stern as she
looked at me. "So you always have to be ready for that. Prepared
for the surprises. Sempre. Always."She took her hand away from my face, picked up my glass, and gave
it to me. I looked down at the bubbles around the ice cubes. "Where
are you going?"She didn't answer.Without taking a drink, I put the glass back on the coffee table.
I turned on the couch and lay down beside Francesca, and her hand guided
my head until my cheek was pressed against her breast.
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