during the day, whenever they could. Every television, it seemed, was tuned in. When Frank Costello testified, he wouldn’t let them show his face, so the cameras focused on his hands. They never stopped moving, and people watched, fascinated, hearing the voice and seeing the nervous hands. That was enough to tell a story.
Virginia Hill came in her mink stole and picture hat and told the committee that sure, she got presents and cash from men, and what of it? On the way out, she slugged a woman reporter.
Nate invoked the Fifth Amendment twenty-seven times, plus attorney-client privilege. He wasn’t a crook, he said, just an honest attorney. And he had no personal knowledge of Miss Delia Corrigan, who lost her life so tragically on Atwells Avenue.
Billy stayed a hero.
The day after Nate’s testimony, I called the number on the card the man had given me outside the apartment in New York. I realized now that it hadn’t been about the Greeleys; he was trying to warn me about Nate. He told me what to do, and so I took the trolley downtown and personally delivered the photographs to the office of the FBI.
Time passed, but not enough. Muddie fed me soup and pudding and her terrible stews, Jamie took me to the movies, Da bought me records, and I was grateful for every scrap of their caring, even though it didn’t quiet the howl of grief inside me. I couldn’t imagine going back to school, and Da didn’t suggest it. I visited Madame Flo, but I didn’t take a class. I couldn’t even walk into the diner on South Main without seeing Billy at the table, his head bent over his books. Every day I would decide to look for a job, and every day, I would walk the streets instead. I couldn’t find a way to return to my life. I couldn’t find my way anywhere good, and panic was beginning to alternate with grief.
When you learn to sing, you learn to keep a reserve of breath in your lungs. It’s there when you need it, at the end of a phrase, to hold the note strong and clear. Did I still have a reserve somewhere deep inside? Would I ever find it?
An evening came when Da looked at me across the kitchen table and shook his head sadly.
“It’s time, darlin',” he said. That night, he took my suitcase out of the closet, and left it in my room.
The second time I left Providence for New York City, my family took me to the station. Da hugged me, and Muddie did, too. When Jamie hugged me, I whispered, “Come live in New York, I need you there.” When I pulled away, he nodded.
“First I have to finish high school,” he said. “One of us should get a decent education.”
“You’ll get settled in your new place?” Da said.
“Daisy will be waiting for me. She’s says the residential hotel is a safe place — lots of dancers and actresses live there. All girls,” I added, smiling. “No men after ten o’clock.”
“No men, period, is more like it,” Da said. “A nice boy now and then, maybe.”
I climbed on the train and found my seat. They walked along the platform until they found me, and they waved until I was out of sight.
It was almost spring. The branches were fuzzy, as if you needed glasses to see, but you knew it was really the buds of the leaves ready to poke their way out into the world. One day those edges would be sharp and clear and startlingly green.
As the train picked up speed, I thought of Billy. This time, I thought of him as a boy, standing at the front of a subway car, watching the rushing tracks. On the night he died, did he see the light of the oncoming train coming toward him? That brilliant light, that flash, and then everything changed.
There were accidents in life, collisions, damage, and some happened through no fault of your own and some happened because you invited them. I had barely escaped the wreckage. Maybe I’d be haunted by Delia’s death for the rest of my life. Maybe I’d never get over Billy.
I’d been thrown clear of the wreck. I was alive.
The train pulled into Pennsylvania Station and I walked up the stairs into that great vaulting space. People rushed by with places to get to. I was in the middle of it, and I stopped, closed my eyes, and let my