The afternoon was unseasonably warm and the family had only the screen door to protect them and it was unlocked. The local newspaper headlines called it the New Year’s Day Massacre: a couple in their late thirties and their two daughters, ages six and four, murdered in their basement. Though the article did not describe the deaths, by the following afternoon everyone knew it had been gruesome.

Such a heinous act was only made worse by taking place on a day set aside for reflection or renewed hope or at least some relaxation. An uneasy sadness settled over the town. The coming year looked bleak. The day, which had started out mild and overcast ended with a peaceful drizzle. They wondered how they would ever recover from the shock and the loss.

The papers reported that the murderer had set fire to the house after the crime. A neighbor smelled the smoke, went onto the front porch and called through the screen door. Getting no response, he stepped inside to investigate. Everyone tried to imagine how that must have felt: to walk into a smoldering home, call out the names of your friends and hear nothing in response. The town knew the man who had discovered the bodies; they knew the husband’s colleagues from the high school where he taught; the wife’s helpers at the small bric-a-brac shop she owned out on the bi-way; the little girls’ teachers and babysitters. The family had lived here all their lives. If you didn’t know them yourself, you knew someone who did.

Despite the District Attorney putting a gag on the case, the town reeled with questions and rumors. Was there something shady about the parents that had led to this—drugs or sex or something sinister no one could even imagine? People close to them were brought in for questioning. Everyone knew it was routine, still it made them wonder. The couple had no immediate family, no elderly parents out of town, no siblings or cousins in nearby counties. Did that suggest something? No one wanted to think these things, but that was how it was in those first weeks.

Vigils took place outside the house and a memorial service was held. Days passed, children went back to school, the first snow fell and business resumed, though not at the mother’s shop which stood unchanged for over a year with no relatives to claim it or help out and the small staff of college girls too upset to try. Everyone wanted to move on, to get over it, but didn’t know how. Neighborhood meetings were held. A detective talked to the citizens about safety and future precautious. They locked their doors now and assumed that was how it had to be in this day and age.

In those first weeks, mothers could be seen whispering to each other in the grocery store aisles out of earshot of their young children. A teenage girl cried on her boyfriend’s shoulder in the parking lot. A father gave his son a stronger than usual hug before saying good bye at the school bus stop, a hug that made the boy’s ribs ache. Husbands and wives slept closer. A grandfather’s eyes strayed from the television set, as if the night outside his window deserved some attention.

A young woman who lived alone in the next neighborhood over from the crime had taken to staring out at the patch of back yard as she stood washing her few dishes at the sink after supper. Shrubs planted by previous owners had filled in nicely, creating a perfect border around the rectangle of lawn. This was her first home, bought with help from her father and her own savings from teaching. The previous spring she had brought in blooming boughs of her own azaleas to her kindergarteners. But, now, in mid-winter, she stood with her eyes fixed on the ragged outline. She knew there was nothing out there behind those bushes. Still, she stood waiting, sensing the possibility that someone could at any moment step onto the grass.

Her name was Shirley and she had grown up in a town a lot like this one, only smaller still. She had never seen a horror movie or even a thriller and was uneasy about detective films. Her grandmother had scared her when she was small with stories of hell. As an adult she knew the old-fashioned fire and brimstone was meant to trick the ignorant, still some cloud of the lesson hung over her. Shirley had always done her best to maintain a firm stance against such creeping darkness.

She had been perky and bright as a girl, intent on bringing nothing but good cheer to others. Since high school she had volunteered at the hospital, helped bring meals to the home-bound and was active at her church, a progressive Presbyterian congregation where the minister had no intention of coercing you into heaven. She couldn’t recall anyone even mentioning hell, until the incident on New Year’s Day.

If asked, Shirley would have argued that the world was a beautiful place and the people in it good. This wasn’t believed out of naiveté—viscerally she sensed the world was a terrible place—but as an act of defiance. She would be damned if the awful things that were always happening in the newspaper would get to her. Her life had been dominated by good fortune and that seemed worth preserving to balance out the misery that existed elsewhere.

Though no one would have known it from looking at her—an adored teacher, a strong community member, a homeowner with a steady boyfriend, Rob, whom she had met at church, a success in all the right ways at only twenty-four—Shirley kept her upright posture to resist the relentless tug of unhappiness that she knew threatened to swirl us all into its vortex. She embraced her father’s often repeated, cheery directives of “stiff upper lip” and “pull up your socks.” For Shirley, they were some resistance against a current that could first weaken then ruin a person, if they weren’t careful.

This evening as she washed and rinsed her plate and mug, she could not seem to step away from the window. Something might be out there that should not be ignored. It took the phone ringing to break the spell. She dropped the sponge, wiped her hands on a dishtowel and went to get it. The voice of one of her church friends crashed out at her. Shirley held the receiver away from her ear as Cynthia shouted.

“Reverend Tim approved and the Executive Committee authorized the matching funds. Watch out, New York, here we come!”

“Fantastic,” Shirley tried to match her friend’s exuberance, but couldn’t possibly be as loud.

“I bet we have enough in the Contemporary Service kitty to cover a Broadway show and between now and April we can pull together at least one major fund raiser to help with the air fare. I was thinking, how about a New York, New York evening? Pot luck desserts, games, or a raffle and cake walk, or is that just too old-fashioned? Unless we decide to make it an old-fashioned evening: how about New York in the 1890s? I bet Richard over at the Costume Barn would donate dresses. The guys could wear spats. All right, Jimmy will wear spats. None of the rest of them would, party poopers. Can’t you just picture it? A well-run cake walk brings in a bundle.”

Shirley pulled a pencil from the holder and used the blank pad kept by the phone for just this purpose. She jotted down ideas as she and Cynthia brainstormed. Together they would organize the trip, using the help of a local travel agent. Fundraising would be relatively easy, given the level of interest. With good publicity, new people would join the Contemporary Service gang. Shirley cited: “Growing the Congregation” and “Helping People Take Minds Off Troubles” as their “Two Principle Goals.”

“You don’t think it’s too soon?” Shirley found herself asking when Cynthia finally took a breath, though she knew it was more a question for their minister than for someone as full-speed-ahead as Cynthia.

“No, it’s a good thing. Time we got back on our horses. What better way to do that than in New York City?”

“But Reverend Tim approves?”

“He said a-OK.”

“I’m just a little concerned.”

“Well, of course, you’re concerned. We’re all concerned. More than concerned. We’ve been scared silly, is what we’ve been. I think New York in spring is just what the doctor ordered. I’ll take one of those horse and buggy things through Central Park if it’s the last thing I do. It’s crazy not to have been there before. Life is too short.”

Both women paused at this thought.

“I’ve never been there,” Shirley finally confessed.

“Jimmy certainly has, the nut. He saves up every year for his annual Bacchanalia as he calls it. How about we put a little poll down on the trip application form asking if each person has been before—not that it’s any of our business.”

Shirley marked that down. Cynthia was the idea person and Shirley strong on follow-through and the nitty-gritty details of getting things done. Over the following months their committee organized two bake sales, a spring bulb sale, a CD swap with an entrance fee and, of course, the big event to be held in the Social Hall. Every night for weeks, Shirley was either out at a meeting or on the phone with various women making plans. She hardly had a moment to stand at her kitchen window or wander around in her home at night wondering about the chances of ever being secure again.

She supposed she had Cynthia to thank for that, although strangely, she also missed the melancholy, the worrisome sadness that had hovered over her in the days following the murders. She had started to feel comfortable being so full of doubts, as if this unsettled period was proving to her what she had always suspected. A dark, realistic cloud spread over things making Shirley wonder how she had missed it before. She didn’t, however, miss the accompanying fear. Now, when she hit the bed at night, she had no energy left to picture what must have happened in that basement or embellish new versions with herself as the victim.

 

The night before the big New York, New York evening, she and the other women and Jimmy gathered at Cynthia’s house to try on the costumes donated by Richard’s costume barn. They stayed past eleven making decorations, pushing silver thumb tacks into Styrofoam balls to hang from the ceiling and twirling fabric swags. Jimmy had decided to cut costs by using plain kitchen cellophane with black nylon stockings from thrift stores around town—crotches and toes cut out. Although the others thought he was crazy for not just buying silver and black fabric at Jo Ann’s, in the end he proved the women wrong, and the long, shiny braids looked smashing.

At one point in the evening, Shirley found herself alone with Jimmy in the kitchen, refilling the snack plates and preparing a fresh pot of coffee. He was a skinny young man with a pock-marked face and hair spiked unnaturally and—could it be?—frosted at the tips. Even his eyes were unlike any of the men around here: Jimmy’s had none of the pragmatic firmness, but instead sparkled. Although he was only two years younger than Shirley, he somehow made her feel like a matron, someone already settled in her ways. They had been in choir together for years, but had never really gotten to know one another, though she had noticed that his good cheer was contagious over in his section. The tenors were always cutting up and getting into trouble. It had made her wish she could sing lower.

Now she noticed that the two of them worked well in the kitchen together, something that was not true of all her friends. They danced around one another, she in an 1890s floor-length evening dress, and he in khakis and a top hat. They took down Cynthia’s mugs from the cabinet, located the sugar and cream set, slid cookies off the cookies sheets from the oven—all with grace and ease. Shirley laughed when he pirouetted, coffee pot in hand. He was something. She took out the cream and was about to fill the creamer, when he grabbed the pint box from her hand.

“Let’s do them a favor, shall we?” he asked before flinging it back into the refrigerator and pulling out the carton of 2% milk. “They’ll never know the difference.”

Then he spun into the living room again, coffee pot in one hand, plate of cookies in the other. The living room was so bright and nicely decorated, the banter of the women lively and fun, but still, Shirley found herself turning away and looking out Cynthia’s window at the wide expanse of yard that led down to an apple orchard at the back of the property. The moonlight struck one side of each tree in the distance, making the scene appear more like an unfinished drawing of trees than the thing itself. Shirley considered whether she felt worried at the sight. Did she picture someone dangerous walking up from the pasture? She let out a sigh and leaned against the counter. The fact that she had to ask herself if she was afraid made her realize she had come some distance in the past six weeks.

Then Jimmy was there again, at her elbow.

“You look lovely in that Isabel Archer get-up.”

“Who’s that, one of those New York dress designers no one knows about around here but you?”

“Never mind. Too bad we can’t dress like this always. I poured us some coffee.” He handed Shirley a mug.

“It’ll keep me up.”

“We’re not even a thousand thumb tacks into the project, dearie. Drink away.”

Shirley looked past Jimmy and out at the back lawn. He followed her gaze, pressing into the counter beside her.

“If it weren’t for harvest moons like that one,” he said, “I wouldn’t live out here in the sticks.”

“You wouldn’t?”

“Honey, the idea of a guy like me settling here is absurd and everyone knows it.”

Shirley’s cheeks flushed and she let out a high laugh, which she quickly contained.

“The chances of me finding happiness here are—well, you can imagine.”

Shirley had never imagined something like that, had never had the need to, yet now she let herself see how it might be for him. There was no avoiding the fact that Jimmy’s chances at love were slight here. That he was unhappy suddenly struck her as a terrible truth, one that could no longer be ignored. Of course he must be miserable, although he appeared so light-hearted. He rested his chin on his hand and leaned over the counter.

Shirley summoned up a chipper voice and said, “Now look at us, a couple of sad sacks.”

“Not me.” He grinned at her.

“Well, me neither.”

But their gazes drifted back out the window.

After a long moment, Shirley whispered, “It’s hard not to think about it. I just don’t know if I’m really ready. Cynthia keeps saying it’s time to get back on our horses.”

Jimmy snorted. Shirley leaned towards him ever so slightly, their shoulders grazing.

“I’ve been imagining something like that happening for years,” he said, his voice soft and conspiratorial. “Then, finally it does, but to a normal, run-of-the-mill family.”

Shirley set down her mug. “You’ve imagined something like that before?” her voice contained both shock and its opposite, a sudden understanding.

He pushed back from the counter. “Wouldn’t you, if you were me?”

Shirley didn’t know what to say. She’d never had a conversation like this before, not with a gay person, not with any person. And while it made her uneasy, she also felt an excited tingling down her arms. The hardened look on his face helped her contain a shiver. Of course, he would imagine such awful things. He was one of the people she might read about in the newspaper, a stranger with terrible luck. It made her wonder who else she knew like this. Or if it was true that any of us could be struck down by the awfulness of things at any moment and for no apparent reason. Hadn’t that been the lesson of New Year’s Day?

One of the ladies called for advice on how to tie a swag and Jimmy headed back into the living room, leaving Shirley to look out the window and wonder.

 

Saturday morning, January 22nd, Shirley hurried down her front walk in her bathrobe and the new Christmas slippers from her mother. She was alone. Rob had gone home the night before because he had to referee early at the Special Needs basketball tournament that morning. Shirley swooped down, picked up the newspaper and scurried back inside. A cold snap had finally hit, wilting the rhododendrons under the front windows. Her coffee was ready in the new machine from Rob—he had joked that it was more for him than her, but then he more than made up for it by presenting her with a sapphire pendant. Shirley poured herself a mug, sat down at her tidy kitchen table and spread out the paper before her.

The murderers had been captured in Florida. The story was there below the blazing headlines. Shirley lifted the paper closer and read as quickly as she could, skimming the first paragraph which restated the crime, as if there were anyone who didn’t know already.

Two strangers, men from a large city three hundred miles away, had been passing through, high on something that resulted in the violent outburst. No reason behind it, no cause. They had stopped their truck outside the house with the open door. There was no purpose behind them being in that neighborhood or getting off the highway in the first place. Shirley looked up and wondered: couldn’t they have just kept on driving?

She read more. And there it was in print for the first time: a statement of what everyone had sensed by now, despite the directives for silence from the detectives. The family, all four, had been bound, gagged, beaten, their throats slashed. Shirley took in a quick breath. The crime was unfathomable. There was no explanation for it, unless you believed in evil—unmitigated, indiscriminate evil. She felt oddly relieved, not by its existence, but by her willingness to finally let down her guard and accept it.

Knowing who had done the crime brought her little immediate relief. The story still made no sense, but at least this information was something, a way of knowing the who and the how, if not the why. Shirley suspected there would never be any knowing of why.

The article continued: the mother had been in the kitchen making lunch. Shirley’s eyes stung as she imagined the woman heating a can of soup and grilling cheese sandwiches for her family. The father and the younger daughter were in the basement adjusting the seat on her new Christmas tricycle. When the mother heard footsteps on the front porch she hurried to see if it was their older child, the six-year-old, come home from her first sleep over, a special New Year’s Eve night away at her new best friend’s house. But instead of finding her daughter, two men stood at the door. They forced the mother to the basement to join the father and younger daughter. No one knew exactly what happened next, the paper said, although the trial would undoubtedly shed more light. Shirley took a sip of coffee and pressed on. Although a part of her didn’t want to consider any of this, she had to know more, had to know it all.

Sometime later, perhaps only a short time, the older daughter returned from her sleep over. The mother of the new best friend came to the screen door to drop off the girl and, not knowing the family well—the girls were friends from school, not the neighborhood—rang the bell. The mother was sent up from the basement.

Then, Shirley read more slowly, deliberately, as if searching each word for the truth hidden behind it. The other mother stood at the screen door and offered a few pleasantries about the successful sleep over. She noticed that the mother of the doomed family looked pale, perhaps ill, so she asked if she was all right. The mother said she wasn’t feeling well, probably too much New Year’s Eve. The other mother offered to keep the little girl and her sister for the afternoon, so the parents could rest. But, the mother said, no, they would manage. The little girl asked where her sister was and the mother answered that she was in the basement. Both mothers then watched as the little girl scampered down the hall to the top of the basement steps, turned back to thank the other mother for the sleepover, and disappeared down the stairs.

Shirley reread the paragraph. Then read it again. She noticed the words blurring before her eyes and pressed hot tears from her lashes. The paper trembled in her hand as she read it one more time. Then she bowed her head, letting it drop between her knees, the soft terry cloth of the bathrobe against her cheek. She breathed in through her nose and out through her mouth as she had been taught in CPR class at the hospital. Slowly, the blackness that had been filling the edges of her vision receded. It was a while before she lifted her head.

How had those two mothers let the little girl go down those stairs? How was it that the doomed mother could not make some signal? Mouth ‘911’ or put a finger to her temple as if it were a gun? Couldn’t she have whispered the word ‘help’? And why wasn’t the other mother, the mother of the daughter’s friend, more attentive, more aware? How could she have been so oblivious to the terrible thing happening right before her eyes? Shirley’s head was reeling with questions.

She slowly stood and took her mug to the sink, poured out the rest of her coffee and started going at it with a sponge. The crime was one thing. They had all had weeks to consider the crime. But this other business, this story of the two mothers, was what troubled Shirley—two women standing on the threshold of the house, the screen door propped open, the girl standing between them.

Shirley could picture it: the grey day outside, the soup and grilled cheese sandwiches growing cold on the kitchen counter. The criminals must have threatened the mother that if she said anything, hinted at anything, they would kill her husband and younger daughter downstairs. But couldn’t the two women have silently conveyed something? Shirley set the mug in the empty dish drainer.

Couldn’t they, for once, have stopped pretending that everything was all right?

She splashed water on her face. She had never used the kitchen sink for this purpose, but instead preferred the proper cleansers and lotions upstairs. She pulled out a dishtowel and began scrubbing at her wet cheeks. She took up the bar of soap from its dish by the sink and covered her face with suds. The towel was coarse, the soap unpleasant and the water too hot, but she kept on.

Perhaps the doomed mother had said nothing for fear that the other mother, a virtual stranger but a mother after all, would have been taken into the basement, too? That was heroic, Shirley conceded, but somehow, she still couldn’t forgive the murdered woman for not letting out even a peep. It was terrible, Shirley realized, to find fault with someone so victimized, yet here she was—hating the two women for their ineffectualness, their weakness.

Shirley rinsed for the final time, water dripping from her chin. Would she have been courageous enough or smart enough to do something different? Shirley had to ask herself: would she have been so blind?

 

The night after the final get-together at Cynthia’s, Shirley hardly slept. Everything seemed to wrangle her. What did Cynthia mean by Jimmy’s annual Bacchanalia in New York? And just how miserable was he? The questions led to other ones about the crime and the breaking news. She couldn’t shake the image of the two women at the screen door of the house. She kept replaying the scene in her mind, but the outcome was always the same. What could they have done? What would she have done? And now, the troubling question of what it was like to be Jimmy in their town.

Finally, at dawn, Shirley threw off the covers and prepared for the school day. Later, she left her classroom early for the first time in four years, asking her assistant to take over at nap time and clean up. Everyone assumed she was exhausted from the church event preparations. They advised her to go home and nap before the big night. She didn’t. Instead, Shirley cleaned out her kitchen cabinets and organized her linen closet. When Rob called at five to say he was coming over to pick her up, she begged off. She wanted more time to get into the costume dress. He was needed over at the Social Hall to hang the last of the decorations. She would be along shortly.

Shirley spent considerable time in the bath and afterwards used every lotion and cream she had. She pulled on the satin and taffeta gown, but had a hard time with the zipper low in the back. She looked at herself in the mirror and was surprised to see that she looked stunning, her hair up in lovely wisps, her face flushed and pretty. She took little pleasure from the sight. Her hands trembled so much she barely managed to shut the clasp on the new sapphire pendant. She told herself it was only excitement about the upcoming event. She tried to push the frantic questions about the crime from her mind. Instead, she let herself vaguely worry about Jimmy. At least she could do something about Jimmy.

In the end, Shirley arrived only fifteen minutes late, her clipboard in hand. Cynthia looked wonderful, the extensions woven into her bob at the salon well worth the splurge. Rob was startlingly handsome in his tux. He couldn’t stop fawning over Shirley, but in a nice way, pulling out the seat for her at the registration desk and fussing with the curls fallen over her bare shoulders.

Attendance was better than they could have hoped. The women looked terrific in their costumes, even if some dressed in sequined flapper minis and others were done up like Scarlet O’Hara. Reverend Tim, over at the roulette wheel, was raking in the chips and laughing hard, so unlike the ministers at the more traditional churches. Shirley couldn’t imagine anyone coming here and not wanting to join their fun congregation. The potluck desserts were extravagant, some right out of Gourmet magazine and Martha Stewart. Even the decorations seemed bright and sophisticated under the glaring light of the Social Hall.

Forty-five minutes into the festivities, Shirley decided she could close up registration and join in. She was snapping shut the petty cash box and putting the key into her bra—how did those women manage back then?—when a couple arrived whom Shirley had never seen before. She took their money and welcomed them. They seemed nice, though quiet. Shirley felt pleased that Cynthia’s and her little idea was now bringing together absolute strangers. It had to be good for the town. She chided herself for ever questioning the timing of the event. The husband of the couple put down their names on the sign-in sheet and they drifted into the party, tentative, more watchers than the partying type.

Shirley stacked up the trip flyers, cash box, pens and name tags. She glanced at the sign-up sheets and, just out of curiosity, read the new couple’s names so she might address them familiarly and help them feel more at home. Michael and Nancy Wilson it said in a tiny scrawl. Nancy Wilson! Shirley recognized the name from the newspaper: the woman who had dropped off the older daughter on New Year’s Day.

Shirley looked across to where they stood apart from the crowd, still in their coats, though the rack was in plain sight to the right of the entrance. Shirley’s fist tightened around the pen in her hand. Why couldn’t they just go on in, she thought? They should stop staring from the side lines, making everyone else feel uncomfortable. Although, truthfully, she had to admit, no one had yet noticed the Wilsons. Before she had a chance to think twice, she set down the pen and marched over to them, the taffeta of her dress making a brusque sound as she came.

“Let me take your coats,” she said and started to peel Michael’s top coat off his sloped shoulders. He shimmied out of it reluctantly, his bald head bobbing as he thanked her.

“We’re all right,” he mumbled. “Not sure how long we can stay, really.”

Shirley had his scarf now and was starting to go for Nancy’s drab three-quarter length quilted parka. At least she hadn’t worn it on New Year’s Day, Shirley thought. It would have been too heavy for that mild afternoon. Nancy slipped out of the coat and undid the knitted scarf from around her neck. It was striped in mismatched colors, unblocked knitting, something imperfect a child might make. She wore a basic skirt and cardigan outfit, more like work clothes really, no jewelry, just flats. Her husband wore a sweatshirt, for goodness sake, Shirley thought. No effort to dress up, no attempt to fit in or get over it.

Shirley swirled away with their coats in her arms. As she hung them up on the last few coat hangers, she tried to tell herself to calm down, to not be so upset with this woman. Still, she could feel herself burning up and not just from the weight of the coats. She wanted to say something, felt determined to, but what?

When she turned around again, Nancy was standing alone. Her husband had slouched off towards the refreshments. Good, Shirley thought, they were making an effort. She saw Jimmy in his red vest, top hat and spats behind the soda and punch bar and somehow wished she could send him a message via telepathy: make that man’s drink strong, she’d say. Put something in it to wash away a person’s memory, or somehow make them just disappear altogether.

Wouldn’t that have been easier, she suddenly thought, to have just given in and gone down into the basement and gotten it over with, instead of having to live out the rest of your life standing on the outside like Nancy did now? The woman would never recover. How could she, Shirley thought, if she herself was having such a hard time and she hadn’t even been there? How could this Nancy live with herself? Shirley wanted to know. How could she live?

Shirley edged up beside Nancy and forced a smile. She knew she looked beautiful in her period dress and the other woman blushed slightly as if she was standing next to a movie star.

“Lovely dress,” Nancy said.

“It’s from over at the Costume Barn.”

Nancy nodded.

“I like your,” Shirley started, but hadn’t thought it through, “Scarf. Nice and warm.”

“Yes, it is.”

They watched the couples at the roulette wheel and others ogling the desserts. “You and your husband must buy a raffle ticket for the prize dessert.”

“Oh, I don’t think so. We probably can’t stay late.”

“That’s too bad.” Shirley said, letting her voice fall to a whisper. “I suppose its difficult getting out and socializing these days?”

Nancy didn’t flinch, didn’t take her eyes off her husband who was ordering drinks from Jimmy all the way across the Social Hall. She shook her head and said, “We’re not going out much.”

“I’ve been trying to imagine,” Shirley started, but then stopped. The husband was turning now and heading back across the room, two full plastic cups in his hands. Shirley tried to hurry her thoughts. She would have wanted more time alone with Nancy, hours really, perhaps days. She blurted out, “What was it like that morning?”

“Yes,” Nancy said without looking at Shirley, “Well, thank you.” She stepped towards her husband.

Shirley bustled beside her, brushing back her swishing skirt from the other woman’s legs. “I mean, I’ve tried to understand how she could have let her daughter go down those stairs? I’ve been asking myself how that could have happened. Didn’t you sense something—anything? It just doesn’t seem possible.”

“We have to go,” Nancy said to her husband.

“What, dear?” he asked.

Nancy whipped around and headed towards the coat rack.

“Oh,” Michael said, “I see.” Flustered, he placed the cups in Shirley’s hands. “She’s still so sensitive,” he added, more to himself than to her, then raced after his wife, gathered up their coats and in a moment, they were gone.

Shirley stood staring at the leather-backed doors of the Social Hall as they swung shut. Her cheeks were burning and sweat poured down her tightly corseted ribs. Her hands shook so much, the ginger ale sloshed. She had never been so rude to anyone in her life. And yet she could barely keep herself from chasing after the woman, hounding her, pounding on the windows of her car and shouting.

Instead, she turned and raced across the hall towards Jimmy, vaguely aware of Rob trying to catch her eye from his spot at the bingo table. She pressed her way around the drinks table, her skirt knocking a stack of unused plastic cups to the floor.

“Jimmy,” she said, “Help!”

“At your service,” he said brightly as he handed soda to an elderly gentleman.

“You’re one lucky fellow,” the man winked before stepping away.

Shirley took hold of Jimmy’s arm and yanked him after her.

“Don’t tell me, Reverend Tim’s been caught embezzling the poker chips,” Jimmy said.

“Quit it,” Shirley’s voice suddenly choked with tears. “She was here. The woman who dropped off the little girl that morning.”

It took a moment, but then Jimmy’s face registered the horror she hoped it might. He got it. She knew he would.

“Did you talk to her?”

“Yes. I hounded her. I chased her from the party.”

“You did?” Jimmy said, almost laughing, but worried as well.

“It isn’t funny,” Shirley said.

“No, no, I see.” He put his arm around her and whisked her through the swinging doors into the kitchen.

“I tormented her, poor woman,” Shirley sobbed. “I was awful.” She threw her arms around him. “But, you see, she has been tormenting me.”

Jimmy held her gingerly and Shirley nuzzled her cheek against his bony shoulder.

“Poor, miserable Shirley,” he said as her tears darkened his vest.

Although she wondered if he was mocking her, she had no choice but to let herself go in his arms and cry. Much to her astonishment, Shirley felt in that moment that Jimmy was the only person in town who understood her.

 

A freezing rain had started before their flight arrived and kept them circling LaGuardia an extra forty-five minutes. They missed the first item on their itinerary altogether, a Circle Line Cruise around Manhattan: all for the best because the off-shore wind had turned icy, and the ladies had brought only spring jackets.

Cynthia insisted on taking her buggy ride that first afternoon, so the willing ones piled under coarse wool blankets borrowed from the hansom cabby, blew warm breath on their hands and meandered through Central Park. Jimmy, seated beside Cynthia, wouldn’t stop whispering about what usually took place under those blankets. Shirley leaned into Rob and focused on the clip clop of the horse’s hooves on pavement. The thin lacquer of ice on the branches of the cheery trees appeared slick and elegant, very New York. The dusting of snow on the blossoms resembled a costly confection. That spring time had already come weeks before to their home town made this second spring all the more fanciful.

By the afternoon of their second day, the weather had shifted and a milder breeze pushed Shirley and Rob forward as they walked hand in hand up Madison Avenue. They stopped before the windows of the shops to study the haute couture. It would never have occurred to them to go inside. The restaurants were as fantastic as everyone had always said—dinner at a wood-paneled steak house their first night and sushi the next. Their hotel was more of a disappointment, but what could you expect from a chain? And Cynthia snored, which she had failed to mention, and Shirley had forgotten ear plugs. But by the second night, they were feeling more settled, less awestruck by the City. They knew the nearest pharmacy and had ridden the subway twice. It was remarkable how quickly a person could adapt to a new environment, Shirley thought. She could almost imagine living here, if it weren’t so completely out of the question.

And then, all too soon, the trip was almost over. On their last night, after an exhausting day of museums and a quick supper at one of Famous Ray’s pizzerias, a plan was made to meet in the lobby at seven before taking cabs or the subway to theaters around town. They had seen CATS the night before, which Shirley considered quite strange, although she had kept that to herself for fear she had missed something. Some of their gang was just pooped and had decided to stay in for their last night. They would join the Reverend up in his suite for pinochle. Rob had caught cold that first afternoon on the buggy and had valiantly held off collapsing ever since, but there was no question now that he needed to crawl into bed and sleep. Cynthia and the others were intent on another big Broadway production which Shirley and Jimmy had had enough of. So, it turned out that Shirley and Jimmy were on their own—if such a thing was possible in bustling New York City.

They set out for downtown to see a play Jimmy had gotten cheap tickets for— Hedda Gabler at an off-off-Broadway venue. Shirley remembered hearing of it in high school—the kids in honors English had carried it around—although she had never read or seen it. The theater was in a cramped little space on a side street in the West Village, a neighborhood Jimmy seemed to know well. They passed several groups of men milling around and Shirley wondered if that made Jimmy feel comfortable—to be not so terribly different for once. She almost felt she could ask him, that was how close they had become in the past weeks, but she was trying to stay light and not “a drag” as he had taken to playfully calling her.

They took their seats in a row of fold-up chairs and settled in for the show. It was long with several intermissions. Shirley did not move from her seat once. She had never seen anything like it, with that terrible woman at the center ruining the lives of everyone around her. She felt indignant towards Hedda and yet also, in her heart, feared that she was not so dissimilar from her. When Jimmy went off to the men’s room, hoping, as he said with a lifted eyebrow, “to find something interesting,” Shirley let herself recall how she had treated Nancy Wilson at the Social Hall. Heat rose up her cheeks as if the moment had just taken place. She was every bit as cruel as this Hedda woman, every bit as shameful.

When the play finally ended with that shocking bang of the pistol off stage and the realization that Hedda had killed herself, Shirley couldn’t help but gasp. Luckily the applause covered it. She was among the first to stand, offering a robust ovation. She had an urgent need to go to the bathroom, her bottom had pins and needles from so much sitting, her eyes were leaking tears of outrage, still she was the last to stop clapping.

Outside on the sidewalk, she hugged Jimmy and thanked him, though she worried that the play had somehow changed her life and not necessarily for the better. In her crowded mind, she wondered, among other things, if Rob deserved some one else, someone more innocent, and if she would make him miserable in time.

“A solid production,” Jimmy said.

Shirley could hardly believe he sounded so unfazed.

“Fantastic ‘Mommy Dearest’ Hedda. And that Lovborg was quite the jilted lover, wasn’t he?”

She didn’t really understand his comments, but nodded along as they wound their way up the side streets towards the subway. Shirley was too absorbed to consider the play merely as a story. What she wanted to talk to Jimmy about was something larger. She wanted to talk to Jimmy about life.

“I’ve seen that Hedda before,” he was saying. “He used to do Mame, I think. Too bad he didn’t get to use his voice in this one. If I remember correctly, he has quite a baritone.”

Shirley froze on the sidewalk, straining to see Jimmy’s expression in the streetlight.

“You look so cute,” he said, “all bundled up.” He hitched up the collar of her coat. “Let’s get back to the hotel. I couldn’t be more exhausted.”

Shirley’s head was spinning as Jimmy took her arm. A man had played Hedda Gabler? How had she missed that? It was bad enough that the play itself had gone into her gut and turned it inside out, but now this. She hadn’t even realized what she had been looking at for close to three hours. How could she have been so blind?

They hurried down into the subway. That the platform was still crowded with people past midnight was also remarkable. So many things were remarkable, or terrible, or both. Shirley felt grateful to Jimmy for holding her hand and positioning them in the right place for when the train would arrive. She suddenly felt grateful to him for so much.

A little away from them on the platform, she noticed a thin, black man with gold-rimmed glasses duct-taped on one temple, the tails of his sports jacket poking out below a ratty parka. He held the hands of his small daughter and son—the girl in a worn, woolen coat and scuffed Mary Janes, the boy in loafers and khaki trousers that were too short. Shirley thought the children looked cared for, though not well-off, but it was still strange to see them up so late. She immediately felt sorry for them, then tried to remind herself to be more open-minded. Perhaps it wasn’t the sad scenario she assumed and the children weren’t deserving of her pity.

She was just about to ask Jimmy what he thought the father and children were doing out at this hour, when a young woman near them on the platform dropped her book bag and bottled drink, the glass breaking on the concrete. Everyone turned to look at her as the subway train came towards them inside the tunnel.

The young woman started convulsing, her body twitching and shaking, her eyes rolling back in his head. She fell to her knees near the edge and the father of the children let go of their hands and hurried to the young woman’s side and started to help her. But the woman’s movements became too erratic and somehow she slipped from the father’s grasp. Apparently unconscious, the young woman fell down over the edge of the platform and onto the tracks as the train approached.

People screamed, including Shirley and Jimmy. Someone further up the platform started waving their arms frantically, shouting for the conductor to stop the in-coming train.

In an instant, before anyone else had a chance to react, the father leapt down onto the tracks. His two children let out shrieks and started forwards. Shirley let go of Jimmy’s arm and grabbed the two, first by their coat sleeves, then gently, but firmly, by their hands. They could have been two of her kindergarteners—she felt that sure with them.

Shirley squeezed the children’s hands and began repeating, “It’s OK. It’s going to be OK,” though she knew they could not hear her above the thundering sound of the train, the fierce squeal of its brakes and in spite of being certain that nothing was in fact at all OK. She wanted to turn the children away, but could not move. She could not avoid the terrible sight before her. Her whole life she had chosen to look away, but now, as the train frantically stirred the air and tragedy rushed to meet her, Shirley no longer denied its triumph.

She watched as the father gathered the unconscious woman into his arms. She wasn’t light and the man strained under her cumbersome weight. For a moment, he teetered there on the tracks and Shirley thought there was no avoiding the end. They would both die, the unknowing woman in a stranger’s kind arms.

But then the father stepped over the rail and brought the woman’s limp body to the platform. He heaved hard, using all his strength to push her up onto the concrete floor.

Jimmy had moved closer and he rolled the woman to safety. Then Shirley’s friend surprised her even more by hurrying back to the edge and bending forward to offer his hands to help pull the man up. Jimmy seemed to have forgotten that he was scrawny and slight. It all happened so quickly, as people shouted and the children cried. Shirley opened her mouth, but no sound came. She held their small hands tighter as disaster stuck and she shut her eyes.

Then she heard the father’s voice saying, “We made it. We’re all right.”

Shirley could not believe her ears and wondered if she were making it up. Perhaps she had said the words herself to the children out of desperation. Was it her imagination, her insistence on seeing only good? Was she lying to herself again, choosing to stay blind?

When she opened her eyes, she saw Jimmy and the father sprawled on the edge of the platform, their legs in a tangle. Certainly Jimmy wasn’t strong, and Shirley could see now that the father wasn’t either. They both looked more like young boys tussling on a playground blacktop than the heroic men that they were.

The train had slowed and now stopped, but all eyes were on the floor where the three people lay, uninjured, alive. Alive! People looked around at each other, stunned. Strangers grabbed one another’s arms in disbelief. They hugged and cried out in amazement.

And again it was the father who knew what to do. He shouted for someone to call ‘911’ as he went to the unconscious woman and felt her pulse. His two small children strained and started towards him, but Shirley held them fast.

“Hang on,” the father said, without looking up. He tipped the fallen woman on her side and opened her mouth, apparently sure of what he was doing to help her. “You hear me, kids?”

The children nodded.

“I’ll be there soon,” he said. “You just wait and see.”

Shirley looked down at the boy and girl and saw them as if for the first time. She had been gripping their hands so tightly it must have hurt. Still, their small fingers stayed curled in her damp palms. Shirley loosened up a bit, but did not, would not, let them go.

 

Copyright © 2009 by Virginia Pye. All rights reserved.