In the morning, I wondered again if the Conti women were hiding anything more than their own sadness and regrets, but I was soon distracted by Chris’ attempts to talk about her birthday over breakfast.
“No. Not now.” She looked ready to protest. “What part of ‘no’ do you not understand? Not first thing in the morning, for crying out loud. I said I would think about it and I will.” Before I buried my face in my coffee mug, I added, “Go to school before I get seriously angry.”
Her face was on the verge of crumpling when she stormed out the door. There was a loud slam too. I had a second’s worth of feeling ashamed and then decided she needs to respect my stance on this. Plus, respect my need for no serious drama first thing in the morning.
Instead, I worked. I needed to be at my museum job tomorrow, so today I needed to glue myself to the keyboard. Thoughts of Chris were only allowed to seep in occasionally, but during one of those moments, I e-mailed Darcy for a long overdue girls’ night out and some advice.
My new personal, not to say scandalous, material on Michael Conti did not belong in my dissertation. I regretted that. However, I had other, more acceptable information to write up. Add footnotes. Try to link the Navy Yard history to his series of jobs, some of them with mysterious titles such as “Senior Mayoral Liaison to Port Authority.” What the heck did that mean? The Port Authority is the joint New York-New Jersey body for matters affecting regional transportation, including the harbor. Very powerful. Any New Yorker would know that. But what exactly did he do on this job? I had no idea. I needed to dig some more.
And did it matter? Maybe my idea of using Conti’s life to explain and even personify all the changes was not so great after all. My advisor’s deadline was looming and I could not seem to sort it all out.
Maybe I needed to drop it and start writing my concluding chapter. Soon. I would, soon. But I wasn’t quite ready to give up.
Then I thought more about last night and the meeting of these angry women. Annabelle’s joke at our first meeting, that she always thought Jennifer might murder him. It was a joke, right?
I was struggling to dismiss that whole weird scene from my mind, and yet I found it fascinating too, that picture of the Three Fates in a Brooklyn kitchen. I finally admitted I was too distracted to write anymore, saved my work, and dug out Detective Ramos’ card. Maybe he would be interested in what I had learned. Or maybe I was being silly.
“I’ll take my lunch break soon, Ms. Donato. Would you like to join me? Somewhere nearby? We can talk in detail then.”
Out of my cave and into the real world? I looked down at my flannel pajamas.
“Uh. I have a little work to do first. Make it in an hour?”
I hustled to shower and find clean jeans and a sweater with no holes. I would have to tell Darcy about this moment. My stylish friend would laugh, but with me, not at me. I wouldn’t tell Chris, who would definitely laugh at me, and criticize my ancient running shoes, too.
An hour later, there I was, ready for a cheeseburger and with notes for Ramos.
We ordered and we exchanged small talk. When I called him Lieutenant Ramos he told me to call him Danny. So of course I told him my name is Erica. We established that Ramos was Puerto Rican and Donato was my Italian-descended husband’s name.
He glanced at my empty left hand. I said quickly, “He died,” and changed the subject.
After we ordered, he asked to hear about the estranged brother. He wanted to know everything I had learned. When I asked if it was actually useful, he shook his head. “Who the hell knows? A lot of people are happy Conti is dead. We need to look at all of them. It’s not confidential that no one is looking like the obvious perp.”
“Cops really say perp?”
“Not really.” He smiled. “Only TV cops. I can also say, presumed malefactor, but that’s a little pretentious, don’t you think? Bet you didn’t know cops can say long words.” He was still smiling. “Just like a scholar?”
“Ha. I’m a long way from being an official scholar. And actually, I’ve had a few cops in my life, including my late godfather.”
We immediately got sidetracked into a game of “Who Do You Know?” It turned out that we had not a single acquaintance in common in more than forty-five-thousand NYPD employees, but it was fun proving it. We were laughing, saying, “How is that possible?” when Joe walked in.
He was with a woman around my age, very thin and sloppily dressed. I had a twinge of jealousy until I realized she was not his usual type. That is, his usual type before I became his only type. Another glance told me she must be his sister. It was something about their body language. And she had a certain look that reminded me of him.
He stared at us from the doorway and I realized Ramos and I looked like two people having fun on a lunch date. That’s not what this was. It wasn’t. But Joe’s frozen expression said he thought otherwise.
He turned away and walked to a table at the other end of the small room. He was behind me, but I could feel his eyes on my back.
I turned my attention back to Ramos, and returned, deliberately, to the subject of Michael Conti and my evening at Mrs. Pastore’s. He wanted to hear all about it.
When I had finished, he looked at me appraisingly. I wondered if my lipstick smudged.
“Did you ever consider detective work? You’ve got the right mind for it. You’ve got good questions and you pick up the details better than half my supervisees. And there is a certain tenacity.”
I almost laughed. “I’ve thought sometimes that historians are kind of detectives. But you’re kidding, right?”
“Only partly. I know you have a career already. Just saying, if this academic thing doesn’t work out.”
“That’s ridiculous. I don’t want to begin another career.” I thought it was difficult enough to begin the one I had.
“And can you shoot?” He looked serious. All but his eyes. “No? So time on a range. Or you could skip all the rookie years on the job, and become a PI.”
Then his sober expression broke up and we both started laughing at the idea of me chasing crooks or firing a weapon. And I could still feel Joe’s eyes.
By then we had demolished our burgers and it was time to go. There was no way to leave without passing Joe’s table. I sucked in a breath and vowed to be a grownup.
I greeted him with a deliberately friendly voice and a casual smile, also deliberate.
“You remember Lieutenant Ramos, I think?”
He nodded but did not offer a handshake or a polite smile.
“There has been more about the Conti case. I can’t seem to get away from it.” Ouch. That sounded silly, betraying my discomfort.
“I see.”
“Joey! Introduce me? Where are your manners?”
“Yes, of course.” His expression did not change, though. “Erica, my sister, Alex. This is Erica Donato, Allie. She is a…a longtime friend and a client, too.”
She squinted up at me, then smiled politely. Carefully. “Very pleased to meet you.” Like a well-trained little girl. Her eyes looked like a little girl’s, too, uncertain about being with the grownups. That gave me a chill.
“And Lieutenant Ramos of the NYPD.”
“Pleased to meet you too.” She was reciting a script.
Joe looked at me, still not smiling at all.
“Is there another problem for you with this case?”
“Uh, no. Like I said, more involvement fell my way. Tell you later?”
I quickly threw out, “Have a great lunch” before leading the way to the door.
Outside, Danny Ramos gave me a considering look.
“So that guy? He’s not only someone who fixes your kitchen sink, right?”
“Right. Somewhat right. I guess.”
He seemed to consider that. “Well, does it preclude me from asking you to have dinner sometime?” He quickly added with a grin, “We can discuss your next career in detection.”
It made me laugh. “No. No, it does not preclude dinner.”
“Good. I’ll call you.”
I turned down a ride home, planning to do some errands. And I thought the walk would help me sort out…well, everything. It didn’t. My mind jumped from angry families to Joe’s sullen attitude to the murders of Mary Pat O’Neill Codman and Michael Conti. Nothing made sense, and damn, where had this day gone? Chris would be home all too soon.
I had a package when I got home, left on top of my steps where anyone could have seen it, a small item wrapped in brown paper and lots of tape, addressed in Phyllis’ rounded handwriting.
It was a diary, very old, with the leather flaking off the cover. It was faded blush color, perhaps red originally, or a true girlish pink. There was a strap to keep it closed, with a tiny lock. I pressed the brass button and it opened right up. On the first page, in ink turning brown it said: Philomena Palma. My Own Diary.
Tucked inside it was a note: “Darling Chrissie, I found this in the attic, in a box with old furniture doilies. No idea how it got there but I thought you might find it useful for your project. Hugs. Grandma.”
Whoops. I checked the wrapping paper and sure enough, it was addressed to Chris, not me. Now I would have to explain the mistake to her and apologize.
And since Phyllis wanted me to look into Philomena’s life, why in the world had she not sent it to me? I guess she was still angry at me for asking about Communism at the Navy Yard.
But in the meantime, before Chris got home? I had a lot of fast reading to do.
Philomena wrote in the rounded, schoolgirl hand the nuns used to teach. The diary began on the day she started work at the Navy Yard, and she’d pasted a photo on the page, tiny, black and white, blurry, a girl with big smile, in men’s working clothes. I read, and it felt like I heard her voice, breathless with excitement.
The first pages described what it had taken to get there. She wrote how glad she was that the diary had a lock. “I can tell you everything, dear diary.” It was the story Phyllis had told us, but with all the living details.
“My parents! They are so old-fashioned. I had to fight and fight for this. They said it was not nice for their innocent young girl. It was dirty, physical, definitely not dainty. And of course it meant working with men all day, with no supervision, so maybe they were protective about that, too. Anything could happen.
When I said, ‘Like what?’ they told me not to be fresh with them! Mama cried and prayed. Papa said, ‘I’d rather see you dead.’ !!!”
“I cried and shouted and threatened to go live with relatives. Mama tried to get the priest from Sacred Heart to talk to me!!!
Finally my favorite older brother, Frankie, came home from basic training, and Mama told everyone, ahead of time, that the fighting had to stop while he was there. He was going to have a good visit before he got on that troop ship! She made threats about the evil eye but she doesn’t really believe all that. But I was so mad I didn’t care. I told him, and he told them. Boy, did he! He smacked the table and said if they want all the boys like him to come home, everyone had to pitch in and do what was needed. Then he looked at our parents and said, ‘What’s the matter with you? You think you didn’t raise her to be a good girl? You think she would play the puttana?’ They gasped when he said it. Dear diary, it’s a bad word that he’s not supposed to say in front of me.
“Then he said, ‘You think she doesn’t know how to behave herself? She’s not moving far away where you can’t supervise her. And besides, I taught her a good uppercut, so she could take of herself if anyone tried anything.’”
And Mama finally said, ‘How do you say no to the boy who’s going overseas with a gun?”
Then she wrote about the first few days on the job, how stupid she felt with the tools, how she’d made some friends, how the men at the yard stared at them. She wrote, “Some fool, again, shouted something rude and I had it. I gave it right back. That settled it. I smacked my hands together and got back to work. And one of those guys even gave me a thumbs-up. I hope my brothers would be proud.”
I was proud. You go, girl, I thought.
Chris was home. I heard her burst in. She called, “Mom, what is this wrapping paper? Did Grandma send me a present? It’s not even my birthday.”
She stood at the stairs with the brown paper in her hand.
I came out of my office with the diary.
“She sent you this. There’s a note tucked in the front.”
“You opened it. I see my name right here. What’s up with that?”
“I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t look carefully and assumed it was for me.” She looked ready for an argument and I redirected it. “But look at what it is. A real find!”
I handed it to her. “Watch out for the leather flaking off the cover.”
She looked it over, carelessly ignoring the tiny chips drifting onto her shirt. “She sent it to me for my project.”
“Yes, I saw her note. That’s when I knew I had goofed.”
“Mom, it’s a diary. Philomena’s. Do you know how great this is? No one will have anything this…this…is…so…so…”
“Personal?”
She nodded. “It’s more than history books. You know? This was the real Philomena’s. And now it’s mine. Wow. Maybe I could do a monologue of it? Or film it? We need to have a part that is using our imaginations. And no one will have anything like this for their project.”
“Well, they might. There are other diaries, and letters, too.”
“Pfft. I know. Mel has her great-grandparents’ wedding photo. And they were married right at Church of the Pilgrims. You know it? Down the street from school?”
“Yes, of course I do. It’s a famous old church.”
“And one of the guys, Tom Greeley? He actually lives in a house that was his family’s for six generations. Naturally he’s writing about that. Even though he hates it and wants to live on a farm. But still. This! Philomena’s own diary.” She jumped up. “I have to go call Grandma.”
“Chris!” She stopped. “Let me read it too. Okay?”
“Oh. Yeah, sure. Why not? You could make a copy.”
“I would love to but no. Copying is bad for something fragile. Just read fast, okay? Fast! Cause I’m dying to dig into it.”
As she walked away, I heard her saying. “Grandma? You are the best. The diary will put my project over the top. Did I tell you there would be an exhibit of the best projects? What? You want to come? And now mine…” And then her voice faded.
I smiled. I was raising a young historian. Even if she didn’t know it yet, she had that history geek gene. She’d probably deny it if I told her. She thinks of herself as an artist.
One of these days I should figure out what colleges offered strength in both and nudge her to apply to a bunch of them. Let her figure it out for herself, but don’t let her go someplace where she only has one choice. Is it next year we start some college visiting? What do I know? I went to college across the street from where I went to high school.
For now, all I needed to think about was how to get that diary out of Chris’ hands. We could share. I’d taught her about sharing toys in her toddlerhood. I hoped she remembered.