Cast Me Gently (7 page)

“I don’t know if I made a very good impression on your friend,” Ellie said ruefully.

“Oh.” Teresa chuckled. “You have to excuse her. Bernie can be kind of abrasive, but she’s got a good heart. No matter how tough she talks, she loves those kids. She’s had three batteries stolen from her car, right there in the school parking lot, and I think at least one radio. She could teach anywhere, but she sticks it out at Holy Rosary.”

“I like her better, knowing that.”

“You held your own,” Teresa said with some admiration. “Believe me, that’s not easy to do with her. She’s like a terrier, a big dog in a little dog’s body.”

Ellie laughed. “She seems like someone who will always let you know where you stand with her,” she said. “I like that.”

Teresa snorted. “Yeah. That’s for sure. With Bernie, what you see is what you get.” She took a sip of her coffee. “What did you mean when you said Louise saved your life?”

“Ah.” Ellie sat back. She seemed surprised at such an abrupt change of topic and, for a moment, Teresa wondered if she would answer. “I told you my mom died when I was in high school, so that meant foster care for a couple of years. My brother, Daniel, was still in Vietnam during that time. I was almost eighteen when he was discharged, and I thought…” She paused to take a sip of her coffee, and Teresa noted a slight tremor in her hands. “I thought he’d come get me and we’d make a home together somewhere, but… Daniel wasn’t the same.” Her eyes shone with tears and she turned to look out the window as their soup and sandwiches were brought to the table.

Teresa focused on her soup as she waited to see if Ellie would continue.

Ellie took a bite of her sandwich. “Anyway, I was legally allowed to be on my own once I turned eighteen. I got an apartment, the cheapest one I could find while I worked three part-time jobs—that was when I started at Kaufman’s—but still, there were times when all I had left was three dollars to get me through to my next paycheck. Usually, I brought peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to work, but sometimes I would go to Louise’s with the others and just order a cup of soup or something.”

“Nothing else?” Louise had asked that first time, eyeing Ellie closely. “No, thank you,” Ellie replied, keeping her eyes down. But then, “Miss, I think you made a mistake—” Ellie said when she tried to pay her tab and Louise gave her the whole two dollars back in change. “No,” Louise cut in. “It’s right. I double-checked it.”

“Somehow, she always knew,” Ellie said, smiling now. “When I had been paid, she gave me correct change. But when I was down to nothing, she never took my money.” She blinked and looked up at Teresa. “So you see, she literally saved my life.”

Teresa stared at her, almost wishing she hadn’t asked. She ate her lunch, feeling guilty. She had never known a time of hunger, other than in between meals. There may have been lean times when her parents struggled with the store, and meals had been heavy on homemade pasta with no meat, and maybe Christmas and birthday presents were smaller, but they had never gone without.

Ellie seemed to read her mood. “It’s okay,” she said lightly. “I got through that period. Got a job as a teller, and a steady paycheck. Everything’s good.”

Teresa glanced up at her. “So, who were the extra sandwiches really for?”

“I told you. Friends.” Ellie smiled. “When I can, I buy extra—Louise cuts me a break on the price—and I give them out to some of the street people around there. Doing for them what Louise did for me.”

“Isn’t that dangerous?” Teresa asked. “What if they robbed you or something?”

Ellie laughed again as she regarded Teresa. “They’re homeless, not criminals. They don’t want to hurt anyone. They’re just hungry and cold.”

But Teresa pictured the mob in the mornings knocking Mrs. Schiavo down over a few loaves of bread and she didn’t believe for one second they wouldn’t do the same to Ellie. Her mind was filled with images of Ellie—young, alone, hungry.

“Would you like to see a picture of Daniel?”

“Yes.”

Ellie reached into her backpack and pulled out the photo. Teresa took it. It was grainy and yellowed, showing a smiling young man in army fatigues.

“He was in basic training,” Ellie said. “One of his buddies took it. It’s not the best, but it’s the most recent picture I have.”

Teresa handed it back. “He’s nice looking.”

“So, what are you going to do for your store for Thanksgiving?” Ellie asked as she zipped the photo back into her backpack.

Teresa caught the deliberate change of subject. “I don’t know. Hadn’t really thought about it.”

“Would you like some help?”

“Yes,” Teresa said, and her heart quickened in a way that was becoming familiar and had nothing whatsoever to do with the store. “I’d love some help. Otherwise, my mother will be pulling out all the Italian saint statues again.”

“And dressing them up as pilgrims and Indians?” Ellie giggled at the thought.

Teresa laughed. “Something like that.”

“Are you available this Saturday? I could come over mid-morning,” Ellie said.

Teresa’s expression brightened. “Saturday.”

In a better mood, she finished her lunch and walked Ellie back to the bank where her VW was parked.

“Shit, how long can your mother stay mad?” Bernie used to whisper when Sylvia was in one of her snits.

“Forever,” Teresa would reply with a roll of her eyes. “Or until the next time she wants to tell me I’m wrong.”

When she got back to the store, Sylvia was still cool. “Sometimes, silence is golden,” Teresa said to herself, ignoring her mother. She checked the prescriptions that had been dropped off while she was out. She filled them, and went out to deliver a couple of them to their older customers who couldn’t get around easily. A light rain had begun to fall, making the chill day seem even colder.

At five, Sylvia left to go home and make dinner. Teresa closed up the pharmacy and busied herself watching the front of the store, restocking shelves, watching the clock. Sylvia came back long enough to drop off a plate of risotto and chicken for Teresa’s dinner.

“I don’t know why I bother,” Sylvia grumbled. “I should let Mrs. Schiavo feed you.”

Teresa hid a smile. “Thanks, Ma.” Her stomach rumbled with hunger as Sylvia left to go back home. A couple of customers came in, so Teresa left the covered plate in the office while she waited on them. When the customers had gone, Teresa retrieved the plate and sat on the stool behind the cash register. Sighing in anticipation at the steamy aroma of the risotto, she raised a forkful to her mouth and suddenly remembered Ellie’s tale.

“I wonder,” she mumbled. She went to the back of the store, pushed the door open, and peered out. The cold rain was still falling, making it hard to see in the gathering darkness, but she thought she made out the gleam of two pair of eyes watching her.

She grabbed an umbrella from the office and went outside. There, sitting against a rusty chain-link fence separating their parking area from Mrs. Schiavo’s next door, was Dogman and Lucy. They had pulled the sleeping bag and an old plastic garbage bag up over their heads and were huddled together for warmth.

Timidly, she approached. “Here,” she said, holding out both the umbrella and the plate.

Dogman’s eyes met hers, and even in the dim light cast by the lamp on the back of the store, she could clearly see his stare. Silently, he accepted the plate and took the umbrella, clamping it between his knees so that it sheltered both him and Lucy.

Teresa hurried back inside out of the rain, pausing at the door to look back. Dogman had taken a forkful of risotto and was holding it out for Lucy.

“Oh, better not tell Ma about this.”

CHAPTER 7

“But why do you
have to go?” Ellie sobbed.

With a patient sigh, Daniel turned from packing his suitcase and sat down on the side of his bed. “Come here, Jellybean.” Ellie sat beside him, and he wrapped an arm around her. “I got drafted. I don’t have a choice.”

“They’ll send you to Vietnam,” she said, crying against his shoulder.

“Maybe,” he shrugged. “But maybe not. They need soldiers all over the place. Maybe I’ll be assigned somewhere else.” He pulled away and lifted her face to make her look at him. “You’ll have to take care of Mom until I get back. Make sure she doesn’t work too hard. You understand?”

Sniffling, Ellie nodded. Daniel kissed the top of her head. “Be good, Jellybean.”

A raspy tongue and a squeaky meow woke Ellie in the dark as KC licked the salty tears from her cheek. She sat up against the headboard, pulling KC to her. She hadn’t had one of those dreams in a long time. She reached for a tissue and blew her nose. Talking to Teresa had roused a lot of old, unwelcome memories the last few days.

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Not unwelcome,” she whispered. She didn’t want to forget, no matter how much it hurt to remember.

She didn’t want to forget Daniel, looking all handsome and proud in his new army uniform; she didn’t want to forget her mother, even when her hair was falling out, and she had become skeletal from her cancer and the awful treatment. She didn’t remember much of her dad, but she did remember sitting snuggled up next to him on the couch on the weekends, reading together—he reading the newspaper and she reading a book. The smell of newsprint always reminded her of him. “Reading can take you anywhere you want to go in the world, Ellie,” he used to say, and sometimes, he would get distracted by her book and end up reading along with her.

The house had had to be sold when her mom died, but there were so many bills that there was no money left over, the lawyer said. The only thing they hadn’t been allowed to take was Ellie’s small college fund. When social services couldn’t reach Daniel—the army said he was deployed on a classified mission in some undisclosed location, but Ellie knew it was Vietnam—they had placed her with a foster family in Duquesne Heights. The Lockes were nice enough people, especially in the beginning, sympathetic to everything Ellie had been through— they even got her KC as a kitten—but they weren’t family.

Daniel had come to see her one time, when he was home on leave. It was like a stranger had walked in the door. His face was stretched, making his eyes look sunken in his face. He refused to wear any part of his uniform.

“You don’t know… It’s not good to be in uniform here,” he’d said. His eyes darted around like he expected someone to jump out at him at any moment. Together, they’d gone by their old house, gone to the cemetery to see their mother’s grave, in a completely separate section of the cemetery from Dad’s. “Well, no one expected two such young people to die,” the man from the funeral home had said matter-of-factly. Daniel had left her with the Lockes that night, dashing her fleeting hopes that he would come home and they could be together again. “You’re not coming back?” Ellie had asked, her chin quivering. Avoiding her eyes, he shook his head. “Can’t. Gotta get back.” He gave her a rough hug and said, “You’re in a good place here. Be good, Jellybean.”

As soon as she turned eighteen, she had come back to Squirrel Hill. The house, of course, belonged to other people now, but she liked to visit it sometimes, liked to imagine that it remembered her. She managed to find a tiny apartment a few blocks away—not much more than a sleeping room actually, with a hot plate and a shared bathroom that doubled as the kitchen sink. It was smoky and dirty, but the landlord let her keep KC.

When the war in Vietnam ended, there was no word from Daniel, no sign that he had even come back to Pittsburgh—not until she visited her mother’s grave on Christmas Day in 1976, and saw a colored ribbon draped over the top of the tombstone. As she drew nearer, she saw that the red and blue ribbon held a Bronze Star. She looked around, her heart thudding wildly. The cemetery was empty, but she knew. “He came back.” When she moved to a new apartment, she had stayed in Squirrel Hill, figuring the best bet for Daniel to find her someday was to be in their neighborhood. She kept a photo of him with her at all times, stopping street people to ask if they knew him. She often saw other men with old army caps or jackets. Their eyes had the same haunted look Daniel’s had had, and she knew they must have seen terrible things in Vietnam.

“Oh, Daniel,” she whispered now, reaching to her side and sliding open the drawer of her bedside table. From inside, she lifted the heavy medal with its red and blue-striped ribbon. “Where are you?”

She slid back down under the covers with KC pressed to her chest and fell back into a restless sleep. She woke to a knocking sound and couldn’t at first tell what the sound was. Her bedside clock read six-ten as she sat up. Rubbing her eyes, she went to the living room and unbolted the lock on the door.

Sullivan bounded into the room. “Ellie! I—”

“Sullivan, do you know what time it is?”

“What? No,” he said, looking around.

“How much coffee have you had?” Ellie asked, dropping onto the couch. “Have you been to bed at all?”

“No, I was working. Ellie, I found this incredible research this guy in Australia is doing.” Sullivan paced excitedly as Ellie’s eyes followed him. “This could completely change my approach to my research. It could change everything!”

He looked at her with a caffeine-fueled gleam in his eyes. She sighed.

“Let me get dressed and then we’ll go for a walk.”

She could hear his agitated footsteps as she quickly pulled on some warm clothes and went to the kitchen to feed KC. “Be back soon,” she whispered and gave the cat a quick kiss on the head.

She grabbed her backpack as they headed down the stairs. From experience, she knew she only had to listen as Sullivan talked about things she barely understood, having to do with half-lives of certain elements and weird biochemical reactions and whatnot. She’d learned it was better to do this while walking since he couldn’t sit still anyhow when he was amped up like this.

The sun was not yet fully up, and the world was visible only in tones of gray. Leftover campaign posters flapped limply from where they were stapled to telephone poles. As they walked, Ellie’s eyes darted here and there. She spied a telltale cardboard shelter in an alley between two buildings and veered away from Sullivan.

Crouching down outside, she coughed and said, “I’m not here to hassle you. I’m looking for someone. A man named Daniel. He’s thirty-one. Have you seen him?”

There was a rustling from inside the cardboard, and she saw a scarf-muffled face peering out at her. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman.

“Have you seen someone named Daniel?”

“No,” said a croaky voice. “Go away.”

“Thank you,” Ellie said, standing up. She leaned back down and tossed a dollar inside the entrance to the shelter before walking back out to the sidewalk where Sullivan was waiting for her.

“What are you doing?” he hissed.

“Just asking about my brother.”

“You’re crazy! Walking up to street people like that.” He flung his arm back in the direction of the alley. “You’re going to get mugged or beat up.”

Ellie laughed. “No, I’m not. They’re not going to hurt me.”

“How do you know that?”

She shrugged. “I’m one of them. They just know.”

He stared at her. “You are not one of them. You have a job and a home. Maybe you were almost one of them once upon a time, but not now.” He grabbed her arm and made her stop. “Ellie. Listen to me. I don’t care if Daniel is out there somewhere. You are not one of them. And you are going to get hurt if you keep walking up to them like that.”

Ellie pulled her arm free and walked on. Sullivan had to hurry to catch up. “I’m not going to get hurt,” she said. “And Daniel is out there somewhere. I know it.”

Sullivan walked beside her for a few blocks, neither of them talking. “Want to get some breakfast?” he asked at last.

“I can’t,” she said. “I told Teresa Benedetto I’d help her with a Thanksgiving display at their store.” She stopped. “I should get back.”

“Ellie, I’m sorry. I—”

“I know, Sullivan,” Ellie said quietly. “But I have to believe he’s out there. I have to.”

“Maybe I should do that.”

Teresa looked back. Her rear end had knocked over half the trees in their model of Central Park.

When Ellie had arrived that morning, she had with her an artist’s folio. “I thought—I hope you don’t think I was being presumptuous—but I already planned…” She unzipped the folio and pulled out cardboard and construction paper models of Central Park, buildings, cartoon characters. “How about if we build a model of the Macy’s Parade in your window?”

“Are you allowed to do Macy’s when you work for Kaufman’s?” Teresa asked.

Ellie laughed. “It’s only against the rules if you work for Gimbels.”

“This is amazing,” Teresa said, looking over the detailed miniatures.

Ellie reached back into the folio and pulled out a bag of plastic toy soldiers. “Our band and our balloon-handlers.”

Teresa shook her head. “You thought of everything,” she said, but when it came time to set up the window, “I’m like a bull in a china shop,” she confessed. Every time she shifted, she knocked something over.

Ellie lithely climbed into the front window and straightened all the knocked-over trees. Carefully, she strung up the fake balloons—Popeye, Superman, and Donald Duck, anchoring them to the toy soldiers who were now serving in the parade. As a finishing touch, she sprinkled the scene with soap flakes to look like snow.

People stopped to watch, pointing and smiling. Mrs. Schiavo and Mr. Campagnolo from the shoe repair shop came by as well.

Teresa went outside. “What do you think?” she asked Mrs. Schiavo.

“It looks wonderful,
molto bello,”
she said. “Like watching the parade on the television.”

Some of the passersby came into the store to browse, enticed by the aroma of coffee and chocolate. Sylvia was kept busy making cappuccinos and lattes, but earlier that morning, she hadn’t been happy about Ellie’s arrival.

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” she’d whispered angrily to Teresa. “She knows nothing about us. Why are you bringing her here?”

“Ma, she knows retail,” Teresa said. “We sold four times as much at Halloween as we ever have before. Why are you arguing about this?”

At Ellie’s suggestion back when they did the Halloween window, Teresa had talked her father into ordering Thanksgiving-themed tablecloths, napkins and candles.

“Your store isn’t big enough to move expensive items like china,” Ellie had said. “But you could do specialty items, like serving platters and extra touches that people will buy to make their tables look nice. And what doesn’t sell this year will save for next year. This kind of merchandise doesn’t go out of fashion. Do the same for Christmas and you’re set. As soon as Thanksgiving is over, people start their Christmas shopping.”

Ellie’s advice was already bearing fruit, as customers began buying some of the things Lou had stocked.

The decorating of the window took most of the afternoon. “What do you think?” Ellie asked. She shivered in the cold as she stood out front with Teresa to survey their work.

“I think it looks great,” Teresa said. “The best holiday window we’ve ever had. I can’t thank you enough. I never would have been able to do this by myself.”

Early dusk was falling as they went inside to clean up the leftover bits and pieces.

“I wish you’d let us pay you,” Teresa said. “This was a big job. And all the materials you used—”

“Oh, no,” Ellie said. “This was fun. I never get to do the real windows at Kaufman’s, only the displays in my department.”

“Well, the least we can do is feed you dinner,” Teresa said. “One thing the Benedettos know how to do is cook and eat.”

Ellie laughed. “That, I will say yes to.” She glanced over to where Sylvia was cleaning the espresso machine. “Are you sure it’s okay?”

Teresa waved a hand. “Ignore her. She has a natural distrust of anyone not Italian. She’ll get over it. Come on.” To her mother, she said, “Ma, I’m going to head home and get some dinner started. Ellie’s coming home to eat.”

She didn’t stay to see her mother’s reaction, and Ellie followed her out the back door to where the VW sat.

“What?” Ellie asked as Teresa looked around in the gathering darkness.

“Nothing.”

There had been no sign of Dogman and Lucy for the past few nights, not since Teresa had found the empty plate and fork left at the back door that next morning with the umbrella neatly rolled up beside them.

Teresa drove them home, just a few blocks from the store, and parked on the curb out front.

“Oh, what a nice house,” Ellie said, looking up at the brick foursquare with its broad front porch and red door.

Teresa looked up at it, feeling as if she were seeing it with new eyes, Ellie’s eyes—“well, that’s how I felt about everything in those days,” she would remember later. “Like I was seeing the world through her eyes.” It was a nice house, she realized, warm and inviting.