and all our coins were heads up. Everything would be all right.
Delia folded her dresses and the blouses and carefully placed them in the bottom drawer. She looked for work, coming home tired and thinner every day, insisting that she preferred her bread without butter and her tea plain, so that we’d still have bread with butter and sugar for our treat. She tried to take in washing, but others had got there before her. Finally, she found a job cleaning offices at night.
“That’s what our mam did when she came over, on her knees mopping floors,” Da said. “There’s Irish progress for you.”
Delia didn’t laugh. She tied a turban around her bright hair and went off after tea, leaving us to Da’s cooking. A pot on the stove with some kind of thin stew he called slumgullion. When one of us was hungry we’d take a bowl and slop some in, and that was dinner.
I’ve heard people say about their childhoods during the hard times, We didn’t know we were poor, and do you know what? They’re lying.
Twenty-two
New York City
November 1950
I told some of the story to Hank as we stood there in the subway, leaning against the wall, and he listened so intently to my whispers that I felt the grip of nerves ease and the time pass. As we climbed the stairs back up to the light, it felt like a miracle to see the sun and everybody going back to the cars and the buses, taking up their lives on an ordinary day.
An ordinary day for them. Not me.
He kept asking more questions and I kept remembering because it was easier than thinking, and soon we were standing outside his mother’s office and we’d walked twenty blocks.
“So you’re a triplet,” he said. “I can’t imagine two more of you.”
“Oh, we’re as different as night and day. We don’t even look alike.”
“So when did you meet Billy, then?”
“That’s another story, a longer one. I met his father first, Nate Benedict.”
Hank’s face changed. “Nate Benedict? The lawyer?”
I nodded. “He knew my father back in the twenties.”
“And… you know him now?”
Hank was suddenly looking at me as though I were someone he didn’t recognize.
“He comes to the club sometimes,” I said. “It’s not a big deal.” Even as I said it, I realized how hollow the words sounded. Even if Hank knew nothing about how I was tangled up with Nate, he knew from the morning paper that Nate was defending a murderer. “Listen —” I started.
Hank looked up at the clock hanging over the entrance to the office building. “I’m late,” he said. “My mother will be worried. I’m never late. Listen, I’ve got to go. Thanks for the walk.”
“It’s okay,” I said, even though it was miles past okay. He had turned away so fast, and now he was almost running. He had to get away, as though just knowing Nate Benedict was enough to taint me.
It was a good thing Billy never read the papers, because when he called that afternoon, there was no mention of what had happened at the Lido. Instead, he asked me if I wanted to join him and his army buddies for an afternoon on the town.
“They’re taking me to — where are you taking me? — oh, Coney Island, because Tom says I have to have a hot dog at Nathan’s or I didn’t see New York. So I guess that means you do, too.”
“It’s sounds swell, but —”
His voice pitched lower. “Look, I’m going crazy, thinking about you. You don’t have to come to Brooklyn. I’ll ditch the guys and come to you. I miss you.”
I heard hoots of laughter and some voice yelled, “Get out the violins, Tommy boy!”
“I miss you, too,” I said. “But it’s only a couple of hours until I have to get to the club. You’d spend all that time on the subway. I’ll see you tonight.”
He didn’t like it, but he said he’d see me at the club. He’d come to the last show so he could walk me home.
I wanted to tell him everything. But “everything” was so much. So I hung up, and after I did, I wished I’d spilled it out over the phone, every last secret, and just let it fall.
He’d know tonight, anyway. So at least I could give him a carefree afternoon on the boardwalk, one last good time with his pals, with hot dogs and roller coasters and the Parachute Jump.