Wrapped in her mink, Joanna wandered through the streets, window-shopping and listening to the Salvation Army bands playing carols. On the twenty-fourth her horoscope advised her:
This is YOUR month and ’tis
the season to be cheerful, so
take advantage of the jollity
and try to enjoy yourself …
She obeyed the instructions and kept smiling eagerly and fixedly at the passing crowds, as if she were waiting to greet someone amid the merriment. She gave a dollar to a seedy-looking Santa Claus on Market Street. ‘Thanks,’ he said, glancing at her legs. ‘I gotta Xmas present for you too, baby.’ And he reached down and zipped open his red trousers, showing her his cock wrapped in strings of tinsel.
She went into a department store and roamed up and down the aisles. The loudspeaker was playing ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.’ Thousands of people swarmed around her. She bought a sweater. She walked through a forest of giant blinking cardboard Christmas trees. There were children everywhere. She saw scores of Jessicas, clinging to their parents’ hands, passing her by, leaving her behind apart from their joy. She was no longer smiling.
The Eye, too, saw his daughter wherever he looked. She was with her real fathers: harried, happy, capable men who held her tightly and gently so she wouldn’t go astray in the tumult, and who would guide her home tonight to the warm rooms of comfortable houses with holly on the windows.
He lost sight of Joanna. When he found her again there was a man with her.
He never learned his name, it was all over and done with so quickly.
They wandered along the street and into a cocktail lounge, where they sat together drinking grogs for the rest of the afternoon.
‘Yes, I’ve been dashing all over the country,’ she said, ‘for months and months.’
‘You’re lucky to be able to travel,’ the man replied. ‘I just don’t have the time.’ He was in his fifties, calm and serious. A good man, obviously, someone who was never cruel or shy.
‘But I’d like to rest for a while now.’ She lit a Gitane, leaned back, looked around the dim room. ‘Here.’
‘Why not? Philly’s a nice town. I think you’d like it.’
‘Rent a house and just sleep and …’ She touched her silver disc. ‘I’m so weary.’
‘I could help you to find a house. That’s no problem.’
‘That’s no problem, no.’ she laughed. ‘The problem is –’
‘What?’
Standing just beyond their table was a small Christmas tree. Joanna stared at it. In a corner of the lounge a pianist was playing ‘Jingle Bells.’ Frost covered the windows, clouding the light with snowy cumulonimbus grayness.
‘The problem is,’ she said, ‘what will I do tomorrow? Or the day after that. Or next Christmas.’ She had begun probably with the intention of telling him some story. But she was meandering now, speaking almost to herself. ‘How long can I rest? Time passes so quickly. And it’s so expensive. It costs a fortune to buy a day or a year from life. We have to pay rent to live in the world. Every time the earth turns the landlord wants his money. And my purse is always empty – I spend all my time and all my money – and I have nothing to show for it. Absolutely nothing. All I possess is a sense of loss. I’ve lost everything.’
‘What have you lost?’
They stared at each other. She smiled at him. ‘Are you a banker?’
‘No. What makes you think that?’
‘You look like one of those people ...’
‘What people?’
‘In a bank, sitting at a desk in a roped-off cubbyhole. Every time I try to cash a check the girl behind the counter goes over and whispers to you and you both look at me. And you pick up a phone and call somebody in another cubbyhole and finally the girl comes back and says, ‘Do you have any identification, please?’
‘I’m in advertising.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No you’re not, you’re a banker asking me why I have a debit.’
‘I simply asked you what you lost.’
‘Well, I’ll tell you. I lost my childhood and my youth. My father and husband. My daughter. And my mind – that’s going too now, my memory keeps playing tricks on me. All my thoughts are muddy. And my eyes –’ she squinted at him. ‘I’m becoming myopic. Everything’s a blur. I need glasses. What will I do when I’m old and broke and blind and out of my head?’
The pianist was playing ‘La Paloma.’ The waiter brought them two more drinks.
‘Who requested that number?’ she asked him.
‘I dunno,’ he said morosely.
‘La Paloma,’ she grimaced. ‘They were playing that the night Daddy left New York. We saw Hamlet with Richard Burton. Before that we went – we went ice skating all morning. And in the afternoon we walked up Riverside Drive to Grant’s Tomb – a magnificent day. There were huge gray ships with orange smokestacks in the Hudson. The sun was shining. There were lilacs in the park. Who was it who said “The Earth cannot answer”? It’s not true! The Earth can speak. It can sing to you. Trees and streets and lilacs can play music in your eyes, if you listen, and if you’re a smart young girl, walking along Riverside Drive with your father. After the theater we went to a party somewhere on the East Side, I think. Everybody thought I was his girlfriend, or pretended they did – “I picked her up on Forty-second Street,” he’d say when they kidded him. Then we went to Kennedy and he caught his plane. It had been such a long day, all morning, afternoon, and evening; and we were together every single minute. But it was the last day and the last night. I never saw him again.’
‘Where did he go?’
‘Who knows?’
‘What happened to him?’
‘He just flew away. He bought me a sweater. It didn’t fit. A red sweater. And the loudspeaker was playing “La Paloma.” They said he had a heart attack. Now, whenever I come out of a bank I pretend he’s waiting for me on the comer. But he doesn’t need money anymore – it’s a shame, because it would be nice to buy things for him. I’d like him to meet my daughter, too. He doesn’t even know he’s a grandfather. We could all live together in that house you’re going to find for me. But of course we can’t. They’re both dead and I’m getting drunk.’
He didn’t laugh or mock her. He didn’t reach across the table and take her hand and say ‘Let’s get out of here and go somewhere else.’ He couldn’t follow all of what she was trying to tell him – or trying to tell herself – but he understood most of it. He opened his wallet and showed her a photo. ‘My little boy,’ he said. ‘He died when he was only three years old.’ He wasn’t being maudlin – there was no mawkishness in him; he was just showing her a picture of the way things were. ‘You’re very fortunate if you think time passes quickly. For me it moves very slowly giving me all the leisure I need to endure my sorrow.’ He smiled. ‘You can grow incredibly old when every hour seems to last forever.’
And that was that.
She sat there a moment, smoking her cigarette and listening to the pianist play cadenzas. Then she picked up her mink, her purse, and the package containing the sweater. ‘Excuse me a second,’ she said.
She never came back. She spared him.
The Eye followed her. She walked along the pavement, her head bowed, her coat hanging from her shoulder. He moved behind her, almost at her side.
It was dusk. The street lamps were on; the hurrying streams of shoppers pushed around them. It was cold and wet and slippery, a Christmas-card evening, adorned with colored lights and wreaths, clamoring with bells and car horns, bright with golden shop windows shining on the snow. And she was just in front of him, only inches away, her cheeks glowing, her breath misty, her woolen cagoule sparkling with dots of frost. She pulled on her mink. He reached out, held it by the collar as she slipped her arms into the sleeves. She didn’t notice. She was crying.
He sent his shepherding love ahead of her, parting the crowd so that she could pass untouched. At the intersections he changed the stoplights from green to red, blocking the traffic so that she could cross the streets in safety.
He would never forget this particular twilight. Years later, looking back across all their voyages together, this walk along Penn Boulevard would become his fondest memory. He would wake from a deep sleep in the dead of night and remember Philadelphia, Christmas, and the snow. He would hear the far-off carols playing their evensong and taste the winter air they breathed and feel the frozen grief of the solitude that divided them. That was the year I gave her a pear, he would tell the darkness.
‘All flights have been cancelled,’ the girl behind the counter said.
‘For how long?’
‘Just until the blizzard lets up some. You’ll probably be able to leave tonight, if you don’t mind waiting.’
Joanna checked her luggage and sat down in the lounge. The airport was jammed with stranded passengers standing at the windows glaring up at the black sky. A charter mob, submerged in baggage, filled one corner of the room in a vast sprawl. A young man behind her was complaining shrilly to two Japanese, ‘Well, if I’m not in D.C. by noon tomorrow, maybe I ought to take a train.’
She tried to read, then gave it up and just sat back and waited. Her finger was bothering her. She bit it gently, massaged it. A piped choir was singing ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem.’ Then an orchestra played Erich Wolfgang Korngold film scores. ‘I knew coming to Philly was a mistake,’ the young man behind her wailed. Frank Sinatra sang ‘Strangers in the Night.’ ‘It is to be wondered at,’ one of the Japanese said, ‘why snowplows do not unearth the runways.’
Then the loudspeaker called her name, her real name.
She lumped up, astonished. She thought she’d dozed off and simply dreamed it. The announcement was repeated. She went over to the information desk. A hostess gave her a small gift-wrapped package. ‘A gentleman left this for you,’ she said.
‘When?’
‘Just a few minutes ago.’
‘Who? Who was it?’
‘He didn’t leave his name.’
Joanna opened it. It contained a large fresh yellow pear in a cellophane bag. Pinned to it was a card. She pulled it off, read it. Printed on it was a handwritten greeting: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
She looked around the lounge, her eyes narrowing. She saw the young man talking to the two Japanese. She saw a Lufthansa steward. She saw a man in a parka, another man bundled in furs like an Eskimo, two boys holding skis, another boy carrying a guitar.
‘Where are you, you sonofabitch?’ she whispered.
She saw several charter flight men drinking cans of beer, a man in an El Al uniform, a black reading Out, a man in a Chesterfield reading Playgirl, another man reading a paper, another smoking a pipe, another asleep …
She walked over to the man in the parka, squinted at him. Then she moved to the black and scrutinized him closely. He glanced up at her. ‘Anything I can do for you, ma’am?’ he asked uneasily. She walked on, passing the Eye, and stood before the man in the Chesterfield. He smiled at her politely. ‘I don’t think we’ll get out of here tonight,’ he said. She went back to her chair and sat down. She shrugged and ate the pear.
At ten o’clock the loudspeaker announced that there would be no more takeoffs until tomorrow morning. Joanna was asleep. A janitor woke her, rattling a mop and bucket in her ear. ‘Hey!’ he yelled. ‘We’re closing up!’
‘Merry Christmas,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ he growled.
She went outside. The young man who had to be in Washington D.C. by noon tomorrow was running around trying to find a taxi. ‘I’m going to catch a train,’ he told her.
‘Me too.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Baltimore.’
‘I’m heading in that direction myself. Be my guest!’
His name was Henry Innis. He was an antiques dealer from Alexandria, thirty-one years old, unmarried, and at the time of his death was carrying approximately twenty-nine thousand dollars in his briefcase, the tax-free commission of a furniture auction he’d negotiated that afternoon in Philadelphia.
Killing him was no problem. At a quarter to twelve they went to Penn Station and caught a Washington local. There were almost no other passengers aboard. They had a bottle of bourbon, and he died of arsenic poisoning somewhere after Wilmington.
The Eye was in the coach behind theirs, doing a crossword puzzle. At the Aberdeen stop he glanced out the window and saw her crossing the platform, going into the waiting room. The train was already moving. He ran up the aisle and jumped out the door.
It was three o’clock in the morning. She walked through the cold bleak empty streets, muttering to herself. She found a church that was open and slept in a pew until dawn. The Eye spent the rest of the night sitting on a bench in a transept, reading a prayerbook. There were a dozen other derelicts there – bums, drunks, nighthawks lighting candles, old women with rosaries, one fat man in a Santa Claus outfit snoring behind the altar. A roving dip moved in on Joanna. She woke just as he was reaching for her purse. She drove him off, then went back to sleep. A teenage fag tried to pick up the Eye.
‘Christmas Head?’ he whispered.
‘Get lost.’
The boy backed away into the shadows. The Eye looked up at the statues. St. Joseph, St. Anthony, St. Mary, St. Christopher … and one he didn’t recognise. He went over to it and read the name on the plaque. Saint Rita. He’d never heard of her. She was in a pale blue gown trimmed with silver. A golden flower glowed on her throat. She had a Modigliani profile. He dropped a quarter into the slot and took a candle from the rack. He lit it, fixed it before her O dark saint, he prayed. Protect my two girls. Don’t let the sharks eat them. Keep the fucking FBI away. And give Maggie shelter from the cold tonight.
And tell me – what is a goddamed capital in Czechoslovakia?
At six o’clock they caught a Greyhound back to Philadelphia. By nine they were in the airport again. Joanna ate an enormous breakfast – scrambled eggs, wheatcakes, a filet mignon, a salad, pie. Then she checked out her luggage and flew to St. Louis.
They rented two cars and followed the Mississippi south through Waterloo, Red Bud, Chester, Carbondale, Ware, and Thebes. She spent the rest of the year in a motel in a place called Mound City near Cairo. Her name was Victoria Chandler (blond wig).
On New Year’s Eve she went to a bar in Wickliffe, a rat-eared clip joint filled with tough-looking drunks. The Eye’s radar picked up the jinxed vibes and he tried to warn her about the place.
Get up and leave, Joanna.
Just a couple of drinks.
You’ve already had five.
Get away from me! Who are you anyway?
Go home to bed.
Who’s talking to me?
Come on, let’s split!
Leave me alone!
By two in the morning she was petrified. A jukebox was yowling country music. There were only a half-dozen hardcore boozers left at the bar. One of them, a big truckdriver type, closed in on her. He leaned across the table, took her by the shoulder, shook her. ‘Hey, blondie,’ he said. ‘Let’s go outside and get some air.’ She flopped and wallowed in her chair, trying to rise. He grabbed her arms, yanked her to her feet. He dropped her, and she slid to the floor. The jackals at the bar watched and cackled.
The Eye came out of his corner. ‘Beat it,’ he told the trucker. ‘I’ll take care of her.’
The trucker pushed him away, ‘Buzz off, fuckhead! The broad’s with me!’ Luckily he was too drunk to hit anything. The Eye sidestepped the first two meat-cleaver blows and pounded him in the stomach. The truck driver went down, came up swinging murderously. The Eye caught a wild left across the cheek, jarring his teeth, then got behind him and clubbed him on the back of the neck, decking him again. This time he stayed down. Nobody else tried anything.
The Eye lifted Joanna, took her purse, pulled her to the door.
Outside he dragged her across the parking lot, found her keys in the purse, unlocked her car, heaved her awkwardly into the rear seat. He found her paperback Hamlet in the purse, too. He held it under the light and leafed through its pages. Hundreds of lines and passages were circled in red and Xed in orange and underlined in black and asterisked in green and blue and brown. He read a verse at random:
… from her melodious lay
To muddy death.
The drunks were stumbling out of the bar, howling and singing. He drove through the lot to the highway, honking his horn as he passed them.
‘Happy New Year!’ they shouted.
The rising sun woke her, burning through the windshield in a shower of pink lava. She sat up in the back seat, opened the door, peered around. The car was parked on the bank of the river. She climbed out to the ground, pulled off her wig, threw it aside. She leaned against the fender and held her head moaning. Then she whirled, snatched up her purse from the seat, searched it frantically. She found her money, counted it. It was all there. She sagged with relief, hanging on the door, her knees trembling. She sat down on the rocks, put her face in her hands. The tremors passed. She bit her left index, rubbed it against her knee. She looked at the sky, at the river. She kicked off her shoes. Lifted her skirt, removed her stockings. She rose, undressed, hung her soiled clothing across the hood. Nude, she waded into the icy water. She dived lithely into the swift current and swam in a wide semicircle away from the bank.
The Eye, standing in a copse up on the edge of the road, watched her, smiling ruefully.
He hoped she wasn’t planning to drown herself, because he didn’t know how to swim.