22

When I got home, I put “That Old Gang of Mine” on the phonograph. For a long time I sat there in the dark, trying not to remember the way Irene’s hair had felt beneath my palm, or the way she’d looked at me just before she’d collapsed in my arms.

But closing my eyes just made it all worse, and leaving them open meant it was all real.

I pulled out my Hollywood scrapbook, but this time the pictures of Mary Pickford’s mansion and palm trees and swimming pools didn’t transport me anywhere. And visions of sharing a marquee with Douglas Fairbanks or Rudolph Valentino didn’t make me want to climb out my window and hop a train to California. Life wasn’t Through the Dark or Mabel’s New Hero or even The Ninety and Nine. I lived in a place where the good guys had become bad guys and the bad guys had turned into good guys. There weren’t any Keystone Cops, and I wasn’t Mabel. There were just people like Jack and people like me. People who had sat around and watched while a girl like Irene had drunk herself to death. I needed to talk to someone, and there was only one person I could think of who would understand.

Though it was after nine o’clock, the butler let me in when I knocked at the Phillipses’ door. A few moments later Griff greeted me from the parlor. He gestured toward the table. “I’m still working on the books. There’s lots of different accounts to go through, so it’s slow going.” He glanced over at me, but I still didn’t quite know what to say, so I sat down on the divan and did nothing at all.

He worked for a while, making notes on a sheet of paper, and then he put down his pencil. “What is it, Ellis?”

“What is what?”

“Whatever it is that’s on your mind. You’ve been sitting there for a full quarter of an hour.”

“I’m tired.”

“You’re never tired. You’re always doing something. And right now, you’re not even fidgeting.”

“Can I . . . ask you a question?”

He closed the book and rubbed at his eyes. “Sure. Ask me anything.”

“When your mother died . . . how did you go on? How did you stop remembering?”

“I didn’t. I haven’t.”

“Then it—it never goes away?” It felt like the bottom of my soul had dropped out and left me with nothing at all.

“It changes. You start remembering other things too. Things besides the death. You start remembering the life.”

“The good parts?” Irene and I’d had fun when we’d roomed together. I wouldn’t mind remembering those parts.

“And the bad parts. All of it. Together.”

“Were you there when she died?”

“No. She was quarantined, along with all the others.”

“What if you had been? What would you have said? What would you have done?”

“Nothing . . . at least, I don’t think I would have . . . maybe . . .” His gaze slipped from mine. “I might have told her I loved her.”

Had I said anything to Irene? I couldn’t remember.

“I don’t know . . . I just . . . as much as you might want to, you can’t stop people from dying.”

But that was just it. Maybe I could have. If I’d dragged Irene out of the speakeasy when I’d first seen her, insisted that she come, maybe she wouldn’t have died. I should have made her take my help. I should have told her I didn’t like that Floyd of hers or the way he treated her. I should have done something.

“You can only . . . I guess, when they’re leaving, actually dying, you can . . .” He swallowed. “You can let them know how much they meant to you. You know?”

“I was at one of those . . . one of those speakeasies—”

“What!”

“And—just listen. Don’t say anything. While I was there, Irene died.”

“Irene Bennett?”

“She . . . I don’t know . . . maybe she drank some bad liquor or something.”

“Irene is dead?” He spoke the words as if he couldn’t quite believe them, and then he slammed the book shut, making me jump. “That’s why all this has to end. One way or another! And the sooner it happens, the better. For all of us.”

“Just . . . will you listen? Please?”

“I’m sorry.” He looked contrite. “I won’t say anything else.”

“Nobody even noticed. She was there, she was laughing and dancing and then, all of a sudden, she wasn’t.” She was alive and then she was dead. Had she even known what was happening?

“Are you thinking it’s your fault?”

“I don’t know, Griff. I mean, it wasn’t me who gave her the drink. I’d told her she oughtn’t be drinking. But I was there.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“But whose fault is it?” Didn’t it have to be someone’s fault she’d died?

He rested a forearm on the ledger. “It’s the fault of people who made a law that can’t be enforced and the fault of the people who could enforce it but don’t and people like the mayor who ought to care but look the other way instead. But most of all, it’s the fault of all the people who think it just doesn’t matter. All the people who don’t care what happens to others just as long as it doesn’t affect them.”

“What would you have done? If you had been there.”

“At that speakeasy?”

I nodded.

“I would have tried to get her some help.”

“But what if it was too late? What if there was no time?”

“Then I would have taken her to the hospital.”

“But what if there was no way to call an ambulance?”

“Then I would have carried her there myself. I would have done what any decent person would do.”

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe there just weren’t any decent people left anymore. “You wouldn’t have left her? Even if you could have gotten in trouble if you’d been there?”

“Is that what people did?”

“I . . . don’t know.”

“As if her death might spoil their good time?”

“I don’t know that it was really like that.”

“Then what was it like? Did they just refuse to notice because it would have been inconvenient? Is that how it was?”

“You wouldn’t have left her there.” He wouldn’t have. I knew Griff wouldn’t have.

“No. I wouldn’t have.” He peered over at me. “You’re shivering.”

Was I? I just couldn’t seem to get warm anymore.

He shifted in his chair, swinging his legs to the side. “Come here.”

I flew to him, to that sure and certain goodness that was Griff. He wrapped his arms around me, and suddenly I was crying into his starched white shirt. “I just . . . I didn’t . . . I couldn’t . . . oh, Griff . . .”

I stayed there for a long time. Well past the point when I stopped crying. Long enough for my hiccups to go away. For my breathing to match the strong, steady beat of his heart. To pull my knees up and curl into his chest. Long enough for him to encircle me with his arms and tell me everything was going to be all right.

But it wasn’t. I knew it wasn’t. Irene was dead and that changed everything.

Nothing would ever be the same.

I almost told him, right there, sitting in his arms, that I loved him, because I did. Really and truly. But I had to go to Hollywood now because I couldn’t stay, not with what had happened to Irene. So I didn’t say anything at all. And after a while, Mr. Phillips came home from wherever he’d been, and I slipped off Griff’s lap, said good night, and went home.

I still couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t get Irene out of my thoughts. I could still feel the awful weight of her body as I tried to hold her up. I could still see the glossy waves in her hair and smell the perfume she wore.

Was it like Jack said? Were people entitled to do what they wanted? Or was it more like Griff insisted? Was the law meant to be obeyed and upheld?

And whose fault was it when people like Irene died?

Jack had been to war and come home. And then he’d become a policeman, for heaven’s sake. He was a real, honest-to-goodness hero. But Jack had done nothing at that speakeasy, and Griff would have done everything he could have.

It was all so confusing.

I rolled over and wondered what the actor William Hart would do. The right thing, probably. But I was starting to think that only worked in the movies. This was real life with real people. And sometimes it was difficult to figure out what the right thing actually was.

Why didn’t people just do what they were supposed to? Why didn’t they just obey the laws? Then no one would ever drink and no one would ever die.

From drinking, in any case.

Because everyone died eventually. Griff’s mother had died of the influenza. Janie’s mother had died of a heart attack. Irene had died from a drink.

You couldn’t force people to choose the things you wanted them to. You could hope. I guess . . . you could make laws that punished them if they did the wrong thing. But you couldn’t make their choices for them.

Even God Himself had always let people choose, hadn’t He?

But that didn’t seem quite right, just leaving everyone to their own devices. That’s what all those people in the speakeasy were doing. But weren’t we supposed to be our brothers’ keeper?

That’s what Griff was trying to do. He was trying to look out for people.

And what was the wrong thing, anyway? Jack said a fellow deserved a drink once in a while. It didn’t seem that terrible of a thing, to want to have a drink. People drank in their own homes all the time. Why shouldn’t that be okay?

Because of the law.

It was the law that had turned them all into criminals, whether they drank at a club or whether they drank in their own dining room.

So maybe . . . maybe the problem was the law. Maybe if there wasn’t a law, then everything would be all right.

I thought about that for a while, but that didn’t make any sense either.

I beat at my pillow to punch it into shape and then lay back down again. Nothing made any sense anymore. I wished I weren’t so stupid. It seemed like there was something about it all I couldn’t quite understand. If the law was working, then people would be better, wouldn’t they? They certainly wouldn’t be worse. But then why were there so many speakeasies? And people like King Solomon? And why were there smugglers out in Buzzards Bay?

The law wasn’t working.

But I couldn’t figure out why.

It just didn’t seem fair a person like Irene had died from just one drink. Or one of many drinks. She’d probably had more than one. But was it right that just one drink could kill someone?

Maybe the problem was speakeasies. If there weren’t any speakeasies, then people just wouldn’t drink. But even as I thought it, I knew that wasn’t right. Of course they’d drink. They’d just do it somewhere else.

People wanted to drink.

That was the problem.

There was a law, but people were stubborn. They just kept breaking it. So maybe there shouldn’t be a law. But then what would happen? People would just drink any old thing whenever they wanted to and wouldn’t that be even worse than now?

But didn’t you have to draw a line somewhere? Didn’t you have to look out for other people when they weren’t willing—or weren’t able—to look after themselves?

Why did people have to be so . . . people-y? Why couldn’t they see drinking didn’t do them any good? The problem was definitely people. They just didn’t know what was good for them, and they wouldn’t make the right choices.

As I drifted off to sleep, I knew I’d figured it out: The problem wasn’t drinking. The problem was people. And what they needed wasn’t a new law; what they all needed was a new heart.