be Mrs. Kathleen Benedict, living in the family apartment. I would have a right to be here. And here, I would sit at my own table and write letters to Billy. Another wife of a soldier sitting at the kitchen table. Come home, darling. I’m waiting for you. But the difference would be this: Our story would have a happy ending. He would come home.
Nineteen
Providence, Rhode Island
September 1950
After Billy threw my belongings onto the Mid-Cape Highway, I swore we were through, and it didn’t seem like he’d put up much of an argument. Still, he lived in my head. We had terrific conversations in which I explained how his jealousy had driven us apart. Jamie slipped out of the house with a guilty expression on weekends, and I knew he was going to see Billy. They had spent a lot of time together over the summer, and just because Billy and I weren’t speaking didn’t mean that they had to stop.
I caught Jamie alone after school one day. “So how is he?” I asked.
“He’s okay.”
“You know, I didn’t want to hurt him. It’s just he gets so jealous for no reason.”
Jamie crossed past me to get to the kitchen. “You don’t know what to do for him.”
“What do you mean? What should I be doing?” Insulted, I trailed after him. Jamie and I had our squabbles, but this felt like a real criticism, and it stung. Jamie knew me better than anyone, even Billy. “Let him think he owns me?”
“He’s not like that.” He took the milk bottle out of the fridge and put it down. “You don’t know how hard he’s trying. Would you just think about it for a minute? His mother should be in the bughouse, but everyone pretends she’s okay. And his father… you know about the Kefauver Committee hearings, right?”
“Sure I do.” I didn’t read the paper much, but you couldn’t walk down the street without knowing about the mob hearings — there were headlines every day in the paper, and everybody was talking about it. Senator Kefauver was going after organized crime, and he had scheduled hearings all over the country. Kansas City, Chicago — they put the hearings on television, and even though hardly anyone had a set, people piled into bars to watch it. Everybody knew they’d be coming to New York and Kefauver would be going after the big mobsters like Joe Adonis and Frank Costello.
Jamie sighed when he saw I didn’t get it. “They’re saying the hearings might come to Boston, and if they come to Boston, that means Providence, and Nate could get a subpoena. Nobody’s saying anything, but who knows how things will shake out?”
Da’s words came back to me, about how Nate was in it up to his neck.
“So maybe it’s better that you broke up with him,” Jamie said. “He’s got a lot on his mind.”
“Whose side are you on?” I asked my brother. “He threw my whole wardrobe to the seagulls!”
“I’m on the side of true love,” Jamie said. He smiled, but his eyes looked sad. “However it falls.”
I’d been back to school for only a week when I found Billy waiting at the tree where we used to meet. He swung into step beside me and we didn’t say a word. Silently, he handed me a pear.
If he thought a reference to our first real meeting would undo me, he had another thing coming. I took a bite, and it was sour. I threw the rest to the squirrels.
We walked without talking. Finally, as we passed Prospect Terrace, he gently took my elbow and steered me to the railing. We were high above the city, and we could see the river glinting below and the dome of the statehouse. On the other side of the railing, Roger Williams looked out at the city, tilting back and raising one stone hand in a regal hello. We’d learned it all in school, how he’d founded Rhode Island on the principle of religious liberty. Everybody should have their own God and get along, said Roger. It was a nice story, but I was still waiting to see how it was all going to work out. Billy and I shared the same religion, but that didn’t mean our worlds were the same. Fox Point was a long way from Federal Hill.
Billy reached out his hand, and after a moment I put mine in his. To refuse him was more than I could do. We laced our fingers together.