Knossos

Janey Sparrow never refused an outright request, never let on if a favor went too far. So at least, mentioning the phonograph, Con didn’t expect Janey to say no.

“No. Can’t. Belongs to us both. Me and Dexter.”

“But I asked him,” Con lied. She added, “You know I see him.”

They were both checking the mail. Janey slammed her tin hatch shut and yanked out her tiny key. “Come on up.”

Sparrow’s apartment was a hothouse. Orange insulation gum squashed around the windows sealed in smells of ketchup and insecticide. Following Janey down the dark hall Con counted on Sparrow being out. Saturday mornings she went cleaning. Top dollar—we got the partying ladies over a barrel, Sparrow would say, but since the Retreat there’d been no ‘we’; Edith no longer barged in, and Cherry stayed home.

Opening the bedroom door Janey cast a suspicious glance backward. “Can’t think what you want it for.”

Under dust the phonograph looked new. Turntable and speaker in one smooth brown chassis, a transparent hinged cover. Janey handled it respectfully, coiling the unplugged cord around three times and then settling the package, heavier than expected, in Con’s arms. “Don’t let Lordie fool with this. He looks at anything cross-eyed, it breaks.”

“I’m careful.”

“Want instructions how to work it?”

“I know how.” She surveyed the room—the dust-free square on the bookcase and the two Jesuses and a naked mocha-colored doll on Janey’s bed, seeking inspiration. Some friendlier remark. “Wow. Guess you’ll be starting high school next year. Like Lordie. That’s exciting, huh.”

Janey shrugged. “My Ma wants me somewhere private. She’s fed up with the System.”

“Oh be serious. Private?” Con felt a queasy envy. If a feeble specimen like Janey could go private, maybe Lordie could too—maybe there was some government program, some trick Sparrow knew—“How? Which school?”

“Nation of Islam, it’s called.”

Con’s fingers slipped on the phonograph case. “Oh, no. They’re cracked, Janey. I met some. Don’t you stand for that. Even your Ma—”

“I’m plenty old enough to winnow the wheat from the chaff. According to my Ma.”

“Jane? Jane! Where’s my mail? Who’s that you’re jabbering to?”

Before Con could vanish, Edith Sparrow’s gel lacquered head craned round the kitchen door. “You,” she said. “And I spoke a prayer you might be Dexter.” The door widened. “Now you’re here, come say a proper hello.”

Con obeyed. The breakfast table was fanned over with newspaper sections, the metal chairs looked rickety. She had nowhere to set her burden down.

“Where you taking that machine?” Sparrow’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t tell me he sent you. If he thinks—”

“No ma’am. Just upstairs. To borrow.”

“I said she could,” piped Janey.

“Well aren’t you being generous.” A gentle smirk nudged Sparrow’s gold glasses. “My my, Constance child, where’ve you been hiding? Can’t say I go much for those doo-dads in your hair.” Janey, whose two stubby braids ran flat down her skull, giggled. “So how’s the family? Cherry keeping well?”

“She’s fine.”

“Who’s she seeing?”

Rufus seldom stopped by. Though Cherry did go out some evenings—alone, by cab—she’d brought no new friend home. “No one, I guess.”

Sparrow’s brow wrinkled in studied surprise. “Working herself ragged for that low-life Material Foundation, I take it.”

“But I thought it was your—”

“Not me, honey! I may have started gullible reading that high-toned claptrap but I walked into Sodom and Gomorrah with these eyes wide open and I tell you if it hadn’t been for my heartsick responsibility over your mother I would have hightailed straight out the gate. Listen. You tell Cherry …” Con listened to silence, watching Sparrow remove her glasses, to knead her eyes. “Just say I said … history is history. We can’t pick and choose and spit the bad parts out. Tell her … I’ve got no axe to grind. I hope she realizes.”

Con turned, dismissed, but Janey blocked her. “What do you want it for? New records?”

“Just teaching records—German.”

“Pee-yoo.”

“Don’t mock learning!” Sparrow lunged, wheeling Janey around. “You look out—Constance here is aiming toward interpreter some day. Know what that is? Striking a blow against Babel, is what. A fine, respectable career.”

Con saw a real emotion flood Janey’s face.

She wasn’t an interpreter, not yet. Runner’s the job description, Jason had said: running enemy lines. In her job being a girl didn’t matter, and looking seventeen or so was okay, and the main point was being white. For missions she concealed her hair style under Cherry’s silk scarf, and wore Cherry’s old fawn car coat. She ascended the steps of City Hall slowly, weaving through the tide of petitioners and bureaucrats. The marbled cardboard briefcase she carried looked like leather; its cloth string was knotted double. Jason’s papers were inside. His sealed letters and copyright-stamped proposals, dictated while driving or brainstorming in the back office, day or night, and typed up for him by women who believed in him, day or night.

First thing is to pass the guards, Jason had forewarned. You be cool, pigs won’t hassle you like they do my boys, no matter how smart my boys are dressed. You sign in your name, time, who you’re looking for, and then you—proceed. Next thing is—no, I won’t lie—you get lost. Oh mercy … Me and Stokely’ve hiked around in there for weeks, due to the fact that even if we hit on someone willing to give directions, how you going to explain to a blind man which aisle to turn? But you’ll be okay. Deskmen and fuzz and whatall scattered all over those corridors of power, bored out of their skulls, glad to help. They’re racists is their only little problem. Uptight. Nerves me just hearing those scared squeaky voices … Now. Let’s talk about your main mission. You lay those envelopes in the hands of whosever name’s on the front. He in the gent’s, let’s say, you wait. You ambush the man.

Now—climbing the steps to her own apartment holding the phonograph in her arms and Edith’s peace message in her head—she felt the glow of Jason’s trust. He would reach out and after the thumb-linked high sign pull her close for a dry, grateful kiss: that’s my girl.

So what’s it like, your job? Lordie kept pestering. It’s like the Minotaur story, she had answered, except lots of different Minotaurs in separate caves. And no ball of string.

‘Corridors of power.’ Jason said his silver tongue came from having devoured every book the Illinois Pen had to offer, before it was lights out for good. Words were ideas—without words, he said, person’s an animal, just re-acting. Some nights, if Jason needed a guider, Con went along to basement halls filled with housewives, dudes, children, all challenging, interrupting, yelling ‘Right on, Brother! Tell it like it is!’ Jason leaning on his cane, giving that bittersweet smile, knowing just when to hush them by starting up again.

To unlock the door she had to set the phonograph down. Mail spilled from her pocket, all for Ms. Cherry Appel: thick foundation packets, blade-thin bills. If Con still watched for some answer from Fritz, that was a reflex closer to superstition than hope.

The apartment was frigid. She skirted the pearly hump of Cherry sleeping, head burrowed beneath the sofa cushions. A cigarette lodged in her dangling hand had burned right down to its lipsticked filter; the ash hung curved, miraculously intact.

Lordie was out. She eased the bedroom door shut behind her.

Jason had paid her yesterday, for her second week, and the check, daffodil yellow, protruded like a love letter from under her pillow. Twenty five would go to Cherry, ‘room and board’, the other half she had rescued with a lie. Jason was the one she felt guilty toward. Some days he never even sent for her. You got family needs you, and schoolwork, he countered. That’s our deal, see?

So free afternoons she drifted with Lordie again, jogged beside him … They dozed in the library and cruised the Army-Navy aisles, managing to swipe a pair of real fur-lined gloves. Just like olden days! Lordie had cried, leaping loony with glee, outside. Yes, except that these days Lordie talked a blue streak, spouting visions and schemes and his warped opinions of the world in general, as if he’d been storing stuff up for a year at least.

He only wanted her to listen. She could listen, again … The purple crocodile had vanished. Dexter was real, keeping a certain grave distance in the office but never putting her down. She knew it all had to do with time, with her turning sixteen, then seventeen … She saw Dexter and herself balanced on a see-saw, against an endless summer sky … Who was watching? Jason. She always pictured Jason watching. Never blind.

Living up to the ‘deal’ about school was hard. No one at LHS this year remembered her reputation as a student who could occasionally pull off a stand-out, straight A test. She had no credit left. When the chem teacher browbeat her into removing her jeans jacket she thrust her arms straight up in his face—here! No bruises, jerk. No needle marks.

Who needed that crap? But the special display in the library had caught her eye immediately, the banner advertisement: “Parlez-vous like a Native with LingoDisc, in the Privacy of Home!” For ten bucks she had bought her library card out of hock. Now, hunkered in front of the phonograph, she shook ‘Stunde Eins’ from its beautiful wrapper: a rosy spired castle, fired by sunset, reflected in a still, dark lake.

“Ich bin fuenfzehn Jahre alt.”

“Heute ist der … zwoelfte November, neunzehnhundertzweiundsiebzig.”

“Ich heisse …” What, then? “Konstanza Appelbaum.”

She spoke into pauses which weren’t long enough; her tongue felt drugged. The record’s voice was baritone, her own sounded thin and reedy, in between.

Un-speak-a-bly rude, Cherry spat, leaning so close Con saw powdered craters in her skin. How do you think I feel? Like a pariah, is what. Frankly no stunt your brother pulls surprises me anymore but you, Cutie—. Who in hell are you kidding, nobody learns diddlysquat lying around listening to geblabber records—don’t give me that look. Anyway that’s not the real reason, is it? The real reason is, you’ll take any excuse to shut me out—

Lordie had no interest in the records, at all. After returning to Janey for earphones Con murmured her lessons into near-silence.

“I’m studying—hard—already. Real—stuff,” he panted, lying on his back on his mattress, raising two twenty-pound handbells overhead to vertical and down again, in a hypnotic triangle. He idolized the handbells, bought used off a kid at the Y. “I’m acing—honest—math—”

“I know. That’s neat, Lordie.” She watched his stomach suck in as the prow of muscles across his shoulders bulged. Hardly any fat clung to his stretched out body, just a few puckers here and there. Even his face was hardening, nose-bones and cheekbones beginning to show through. Would he look much like their father? Would she know?

Like Cherry, Lordie didn’t trust the records. “What’s the—big—idea? You better not go—to Germany—or anywhere—weird—”

“No. That’s not why.”

“We’re going to have—a house somewhere—the Roost, or—”

Lordie’s newest dream: a house on the ocean, on stilts, telescope aimed at the horizon. He’d seen this glass-walled fortress in a magazine.

“If you go—to Germany—or anywhere—I’ll kill myself.” He curled up, smiling with pride. “There. Sixty. Not bad, huh? Spy this.” He rose on his knees for the next exercise. His stained jockey shorts sagged down one hip. Con resented his parading around in this grungy underwear, though Cherry, oddly, didn’t seem to mind. For God’s sake, Con had grumbled, it’s practically winter. Put some pants on.

So? So? Don’t boss me, Con. You’re the one wants me to get tough.

The stories in Ada’s book only vaguely echoed any fairy tales she’d heard before. Characters like Ilsebill, the fisherman’s greedy wife, or the Warlock with his den full of butchered virgins stayed so vivid that she had to retell their stories at night to Lordie. She wished geometry or chemistry would stick in her mind so. The stories all carried warnings but no answers. Most of the characters, whether human or beast, rich or poor, harbored an evil obsession. The truly innocent weren’t always saved.

Jason was moving toward some major shakeup. He dropped hints to the dudes, to Dexter and even Con—his words got swapped around, compared. Despite nervousness they were all comforted by Jason’s conscious manipulation—he wouldn’t hurl any bolts from the absolute blue. He’d stand for no back-talk, either. Con, for instance, was to steer clear of the office a while. The neighborhood.

On a Wednesday afternoon, at three, she met Dexter under an El overpass. Outside their tunnel the sky was crammed with black-bellied clouds. Car lights skimmed a tangle of graffitti on cement walls and below, the shine of human piss. Dexter had only one envelope to hand her.

“Jason he’s been on the phone half the night and all morning. Man’s hustling, now the decision’s coming down. Jason said impress on you how much is riding on this one. You book it, you can make it. Hey. Downtown’s crazy today. Keep that secure. Watch your back, on the trains.”

She stuffed the letter in her hip pocket. “Don’t worry.”

“Jason is so hyped. This goes through, get ready for some changes.” He lowered his voice. She smelled the warm peppermint breath. “I don’t mean just on the street. We know we got the lowest bid—don’t ask how we know—”

Headlights flashed, leaving the negative image of his fierce sober face. But Con was grinning, caught up in his secret joy. Dexter knew the whole score. Nothing Jason did he wasn’t part of. Suddenly she saw with absolute certainty: Dexter was the prince. The man’s man. About to be somebody.

“Be careful. Anyone talks to you, talk dumb. There’s a couple big-stakes players downtown who—shit.” He turned as a police cruiser approached, braking, to examine them. Con faced into the blinding glare with a dismissive wave. The cruiser crawled away.

“Dexter—you coming home tomorrow?”

“What’s tomorrow.”

“Your Ma’s got a turkey from the Salvation. We’re all invited. They asked me to make sure you knew.”

“Oh …”

“Well there’s no law—” She couldn’t read his expression; the tunnel now was that dark.

“Con. Just hold on a sec. Something I’ve been meaning to tell you—”

“What? Go on.… Something bad?”

“Not bad … only, I won’t be here. I’m going. Going to LA—cause once this thing goes through, we are expanding. Nobody can stop us! This whole country’s watching! Listen. Jason’s got me fixed up. All set. Contacts, a car—there’s business, in LA. Look, girl—this is between us only.”

“Sure.” She stood expecting some shock, like waiting for a blow to land. Another car passed and by a trick of the sweeping headlights Dexter was the one caught looking frightened. She moved. The folded letter crackled, stabbing her skin. He’d always been leaving, right from the start. “Well. Sounds good.”

“So tomorrow, I guess don’t look for me.”

“Fine. ‘Bye.” Con turned, striding toward the steely light, hands jammed in her pockets, really stung by the cold now after standing still so long. Outside as she climbed the stairs to the El station the wind smacked full force, and then the stairs rang behind her again.

Dexter’s long arms reached out so suddenly she nearly lost her balance. He blocked the wind.

“Now where’d you dig up that ugly coat.” His lips moved soft on her cheek.

“Cherry.”

“Uh huh. She sure saves out the best for you … Oh, Con. I wish you could see yourself, standing here. Whether you know it, about as good as grown. When’re you cutting loose? Here is nowhere, we said that, here is just plain hell—”

“Soon. Maybe soon.” Her words muffled by his billowing satin jacket.

“Well. Keep in touch, you promise? Let me know how things go. I’ll send you my address …”

“Sure.” Maybe. Oh right, you will. Hi and goodbye from sunny California, life’s a beach …

As if he had all the time in the world, Dexter followed her up to the platform and into the train and then rode beside her all the way to the Loop. Con swaying from the strap, Dexter gripping the bar above. Rocked, buffeted, deafened, they studied their reflections paired in the night-blackened window. On State Street Dexter wouldn’t speak or give up until she allowed a kiss. His second kiss left a chill mark on her forehead and then he let go of her, vanished in the crowd, taking some different direction.

“Don’t forget your leftover wine, now. I’ve got no use. And the string beans. My, those were first-rate beans!”

Con cradled the bean dish, Cherry held her wine bottle by the neck. Edith and Janey followed them to the door, where Lordie waited with a glum far-off look. Sparrow, laughing drily, had appointed him ‘Man for the evening’; he’d carved or rather as Cherry said mutilated the whole turkey, finally slicing his own thumb. A wad of Kleenex flowered from his clenched right hand.

“That Dexter sure missed out this time, hm?” Sparrow raised her chin at Con.

“He did. Thank you. It was really a nice dinner.”

“You tell him so, you hear?”

“I will.” She felt a pang, nearly pity. You still don’t know, do you?

Janey whispered, “Get it? I want my record player back.”

The Appels trooped upstairs. Saying she had to work, no rest for the weary, Cherry poured a fresh glass of wine before settling down to stare at her rented typewriter on the kitchen table. In the dark front room Lordie and Con gazed out at shivering wire stars newly hung on streetlamps.

“Where’s the Ams,” asked Lordie.

“Basement lockup. You know that.”

“Let’s hol them back—just for Christmas.”

“Lordie, it’s weeks till Christmas. Anyway. Christmas sucks.”

“You’re in a rotten mood.”

Con found herself back in the kitchen, picking at cold sliced beans with some kind of nuts stuck on. ‘French style.’ Cherry had never cooked this before. Earlier, down at Sparrow’s with Sparrow bugging her to tell what kind of lowlife all-fired important Devil’s business Dexter was so tied up in, Con hadn’t eaten much.

Behind her Cherry scrabbled through papers, too quickly, her nails clicking. “I wasn’t raised like this, you know.”

“I know.” Con tugged open the fridge.

“God knows I wasn’t raised to this. Oh Jesus, Cutie … you don’t have the foggiest what I’m talking about, do you? Thanksgiving, we had … oh. Beeswax candles. Linen cross-stitch napkins I wouldn’t dare wipe my mouth on, heh heh. I always wore my brown velvet skirt, my Pilgrim skirt—”

“We’re out of milk.”

“My God can’t you even listen to me? For once just listen?”

Con turned around. “Please don’t now. Please.” She felt lousy for Cherry, having to write those letters. Begging letters. Even the rich Foundation begged. Everybody needed more than they had. She used to beg to Fritz and would still, if she could find him … Jason begged. Yesterday’s big fat important letter—begging, was what it was. “It’s late, Cherry. Don’t work. In the morning I can type some too, okay? And I’ll get milk, so don’t …”

Cherry stood up. Under the kitchen light her face looked stripped, all fine veins. A skinned grape. “Late. You bet it’s late.” She grabbed for a stapled list, scrunched it, threw it at Con: the paper helicoptered to the floor. “Wa-ay too late. I don’t suppose it ever occurs to you I could have been someone. I was going to be someone! Only for the past ten years I’ve had you kids around my—stones around my—”

Con bent down for the paper. “Well I’m sorry.”

“Why you sarcastic little bitch!” Cherry’s hand lashed out, meeting Con as she straightened.

“There,” said Cherry. “You made me—”

Pain seared one side of Con’s face, her neck. She touched her own hand to the blaze and felt a small and solid object drop into her palm which she tried to open but for a moment the fingers stuck. For a moment she didn’t recognize her turquoise earring, her red shining hand.

“You tore my ear.”

Cherry sat at the table again, as though she’d never moved.

All Con saw were the red dashes racing down her jacket, seeping into the faded blue. She made it into the bathroom running, both hands cupped to hide the wound, a quick excuse on her lips in case Lordie, pale blur hunched on the sofa, should glance up. He didn’t. She slammed and locked the door.

The open-mouthed face in the mirror was stark white. Livid constellation of pimples on the forehead. Braids unravelling, kinky wisps like a cartoon of surprise. Her concealing hands—here is the church, here is the steeple—widened to show red streaks fanned down her neck, red thumbprints on her jaw. Her shirt collar, crumpled and gummy, had soaked up the most blood, but it was the denim jacket Con felt helplessly close to crying for: a piece of her self, irreplaceable, snagged and frayed from two whole years. The ear throbbed like a heartbeat.

“It’ll clot. Bleeding’s good. Washes.” She needed the sound of her own voice.

The sink was rimmed with a tideline of coiled dark hairs. Cherry’s pastel rose razor, with a few more hair commas, bit into the soap. Con lifted the razor, rinsed it and held it beneath her chin. She looked fearsome that way, like a crime already committed. Her heart settled, minute by minute, and her mind emptied, thought by thought, until it was cold.

“Con? Hey—” Lordie’s raspy call, through the keyhole. “You okay? Can I come in?”

“Naws. Sure I’m okay. Just getting washed.”

“But Con—”

“Buzz off.”

“Listen!” His mouth pressed against the door. “I got to get out. She’s horb anight, I can’t—She’s calling me horb names. I got no control left—”

“Okay. Go.”

“Meet you at the drugstore. Soon as you’re ready, okay? Promise?”

“Promise.”

She heard his sneakers hiss down the hall and the bang of the front door. Relieved that he’d left, knowing he had to. He was stronger than Cherry. He had high-kicked her in the belly last weekend, the last time she went for him.

Cold water ran thundering into the tub. She punched her jacket below the surface and then stripped off her shirt to submerge it too. With the wrung out shirt she scrubbed her neck until it felt raw. The jacket twirled slowly, in a pink lake.

The rip in her ear looked disgusting, really. She started to tear apart the braids, finger-combing them wild and frizzy to cover the wound—

Outside, Cherry coughed. Con held her breath. “Constance?” A cough, again. “I’m waiting for you.”

On the radio sometimes a DJ lost track or went to the john or whatever and left a record rotating on the same few notes, over and over. You wanted to scream, but to who? Now Con made herself not scream.

What she needed was a fresh towel. Clean clothes. Alcohol to disinfect, at least … She saw Lordie, a pinpoint image at the far end of a telescope, slouched at the drugstore counter. Saw Dexter hurtling away in some snazzy car at a hundred miles an hour, through the desert night. Then saw Fritz, smiling gently into the telescope. Unseeing.

No way out. But you can wait, Cherry. You can wait for me. Forever.

“Sweetie? Believe me, I don’t even know what happened … Please, I just want to talk this out …” Her voice all melted, bubbling liquid. “I need you, Sweetie, please. Your brother’s off in some snit again, I’m so confused, don’t start sulking now! Please, we have to talk, that’s all I want from you is that so much to ask? Oh God, Cutie … Don’t you know you’re all I’ve got? If we can’t talk to each other—then what kind of people are we?”