Chapter 7
"How's your daughter, Valerie?" Sissy asked, looking up while tossing salad. "She's what, nine now?" Valerie, as usual, didn't bring food, leaving that for someone else. There was always plenty of food, but the others found it annoying.
"I know it's a cliché," she said, running a hand through her pixie-cut dark hair, "but Molly is nine going on twenty-nine. She's quite the little person, elegant and dignified. When we shop she turns her nose up at everything I pick. I always thought I had good taste, but let me tell you, that little girl of mine is quite the fashion guru. She's very particular what she wears to school every day, and smart! She amazes her teachers, they tell me." Valerie was animated, clearly delighted by Sissy's interest in Molly.
"You're not proud of her, are you?" Marty's tone said she was commenting, not asking.
"She's the center of my life. I don't know what I'd do without her." Cora was surprised to see Valerie's eyes shining with emotion, which seemed uncharacteristic.
"Does she see her father?" Sissy asked, as the women filled their plates and took seats around the kitchen table.
"He's in California. She visits him every summer, by court order. I'm a wreck while she's gone, afraid he's trying to take her from me. Now that Thanksgiving is coming up, I'm getting nervous he'll try to pull something. I've had a visit from a social worker, thanks to him, and I just found out he's got a detective trying to prove I'm unfit. I'm furious!"
"I'm sure you have nothing to worry about," said Jean.
Valerie went on and on about Molly as the women ate. In an effort to open up the conversation to other topics, Jean turned to Cora. "How is the library election campaign going?"
Cora laughed. "It's not much of a campaign-I just get signatures and write a bio for the paper."
"Do you think you'll be re-elected?" Sissy asked.
"I hope so. I've been on the board for ten years, and I think I've done a good job. Voters don't pay much attention to the Library Board, but with only three people seeking two positions, I think I have a good chance." Cora's words were positive, but her eyes shifted uneasily and she focused them on her plate.
"How would you feel if you didn't win?" Betty asked, picking up Cora's concern.
"Pretty bummed, I guess," she admitted. "I suppose it could happen. Many voters just pick a name that sounds good to them and don't know anything about the candidates." She hesitated and set down her fork, blinking rapidly. "I really enjoy serving the library. I'd feel like a failure, like my work was no good, if I didn't win."
"Well, I'm going to tell everyone in town to vote for you!" Betty said.
"Me too," Jean echoed, wiping her lips with a napkin.
"Thanks. Would you mind spreading the word and sending some emails? I guess it's more important than I let on." Cora looked around the table with a sheepish grin.
"Say, Cora," Lu said, "I hope I'm not insulting your Irish heritage when I tell you Italian food is a whole bunch better than Irish food."
"You wouldn't say that if we were having her corned beef," said Marty.
Valerie remained silent, looking alternately at her nails or the empty plate in front of her. The moment of enthusiasm she had shown earlier seemed to have spent itself. Cora guessed she was sulking since she was no longer the center of attention, or because no one had picked up her empty plate. The plate would probably still be sitting there when she left.
"Have you heard from Joe and Rosie," Marty asked, helping Betty carry empty dishes to the sink. Joe was Cora's other son, Rosie his wife. They lived two hundred miles away, which meant Cora saw little of her grand-daughter Maria, soon to be a year old. Both professionals, Joe and Rosie needed to be where the jobs were, and that was not, unfortunately, Lemont.
"I did," she replied. "I hope the weather is decent in December, so we can drive out for Maria's first birthday."
"Juggling new jobs, and a new house, and a new baby. I have to give them credit," Lu said.
Cora wore a worried expression. "Yes, I'm sure it's hard. But that's the life they chose."
"Say!" Betty threw in, sitting back down at the table. "What's going on with your angel? Any more funny stuff?"
"Well, yeah, some," Cora admitted. "Nothing earth-shattering. Let's not waste time talking about Angel though. Maybe if there's time later...."
Marty led the discussion of Frank McCourt's autobiography, Angela's Ashes, as the women nibbled dessert. "Cora," she prompted, "you told us all about Italians at our last discussion, and you're not even Italian. You are Irish, though-I bet you have some Irish stories."
"Uh...yeah...okay." Cora grinned, meeting the women's eyes, hinting she was ready to hold court. She forked a last bite of cake into her mouth and washed it down with a swallow of coffee.
"I spent a lot of time as a kid with my Irish grandmother. She was born in Chicago, but you'd never know it to talk to her. She was always talking about the 'auld sod' and being 'full of the blarney' and stuff like that. She didn't have a brogue, but pretended to, and talked about living in Ireland, although she'd never been there." She set her hands on the table, interlocked the fingers, and leaned forward.
"She'd take me to visit her stepfather, who lived to be a hundred and three, cared for by his three spinster stepdaughters. They lived on the south side of Chicago on a double corner lot, and had chickens, goats, puppies and cats, like a farm right in the city. I heard them call people 'shanty Irish', but their own life wasn't any different." She laughed, shaking her head. "They put on airs, as they described it!"
"Did the men drink, like McCourt's father?" Marty asked. Not only was Marty Irish too, but her children were descendants of the people Cora was talking about.
Cora shrugged. "At weddings and wakes. Irish wakes were big social occasions, more like parties, and they went on for days. Irish women scrutinized the obituaries, and showed up at the funeral parlor if the obit mentioned anyone they knew, even if they never met the deceased."
Betty laughed. "I heard that!"
Cora was on a roll. She settled herself more comfortably in the straight-back chair, leaning back and crossing her legs at the ankles. "The women cried when they arrived, wailed for a while, but then they'd sit talking and laughing in loud squeaky voices. The men paid their respects, then went next door to the tavern-there was always a tavern next to an Irish funeral parlor, which I suspect was a requirement for an Irish wake. They hung around on the sidewalk in front, no matter what the weather was, red in the face, talking and laughing, some not too steady on their feet-who cared?-most of them lived within walking distance."
"Did Grandpa join them?" Marty asked, leaning over the table. "Did he drink?"
"I only saw him drunk at parties, weddings, or funerals, and then he was a happy drunk, not a mean one. Everyone thought he was the life of the party, but it embarrassed me, and I didn't think he was very funny." Cora rolled her eyes and shook her head.
"There are a lot of Irish in Lemont." Betty said. "You must know that from your work at the historical society."
Cora nodded. "True. The Irish came to build the first canal, in the 1840s and 1850s, and many of them stayed. They used to say all you needed to build a canal was a pickaxe, a wheelbarrow, and an Irishman." Cora put her hands together and made a chopping motion, and the women laughed. "And-" she went on, "they spent a lot of time in Smokey Row."
"Smokey Row...really?" asked Sissy, raising her eyebrows in question.
"That's what it was called. Hard to imagine, looking at this sleepy town now, but there were over a hundred brothels, taverns and gambling joints in the center of town, quite the den of iniquity. Most closed down toward the end of the twentieth century, after the workers finished the canals and moved away."
Frannie was uncharacteristically quiet. She stared at her plate and pushed cake around without eating it, and didn't seem to be paying attention. Betty asked, "Is something wrong, Frannie? You haven't said much today."
Frannie put her elbows on the edge of the table, rested her chin in her hands, and let out a slow breath. "I'm not sure I want to talk about it. It's very personal," she said. The women looked at each other, wondering if Frannie would say more. Cora experienced a moment of chagrin that she hadn't noticed her friend was uncharacteristically quiet.
Watching their expressions, Frannie went on. "I don't say much to you all about living in the black community. It's a part of me I'm not sure you'd understand."
The women squirmed and looked at the tabletop, uncomfortable. Frannie was leading up to something, but she might be right-they might not understand. She was welcome in their circle, but they weren't so sure about being invited into hers.
Frannie turned her gaze away, and looked out the window at the leafless trees in Cora's yard. She appeared to be thinking over what to say. "You all know I moved back into Mama's house, right? Well, now I'm not so sure that was the right thing to do."
"Why not?" Betty asked.
Frannie turned to Betty, who all the women knew was a sympathetic listener. "The folks there are still pissed at me for leaving the neighborhood so long ago. They can't forgive me for hooking up with a white man. That wasn't accepted so much back when I did it. They call me uppity."
"Maybe they have a point," mumbled Valerie. The others ignored her.
"So, are they giving you a cold shoulder?" Lu said.
"They're mad at me, too, because my brother, he told them Mama's house should belong to him, not me, since I left and he stayed, and I got no right living in it. They think I stole it from him."
"That's not fair," said Betty, banging a fist on the table, and looking at the other women for approval. "You're the one who quit your job to take care of your mama when she got sick. He never showed his face except to hold out his hand. That's why she left that house to you."
"I was surprised when you moved back there too. You never said why you decided to do that," Marty said. She selected a cookie from a plate remaining on the table and broke off a small piece.
Frannie clasped her hands under her chin and rubbed them together, then she looked at Marty. "I gave up a lot to live with Mama and take care of her, but by the time she died I knew I really didn't want to be a working woman anymore. I'm not good at pretending to be someone I ain't, and you got to do that on a job, to get along-act like everybody else. That's not me. But it won't be too long, only a couple of years, before I can collect Social Security, and with my savings, and living rent-free, and a little money coming in if I rent out the downstairs apartment, I can make it till then. So I thought I'd give it a try."
"So I don't understand," said Sissy, picking up a fork and pushing it around, squeaking a little on the empty plate. "Are the neighbors making it that bad for you? Just forget about them."
"It's my brother making trouble." Frannie said, closing her eyes and shaking her head. "He didn't live with Mama or help her, but he thinks since he stayed in the neighborhood when I left, her house should be his. He's so angry, and he's riling up everything and everybody."
"Riling them up? How?" asked Betty.
"Well, he thinks the court screwed up big time when the judge told him the house was rightfully mine."
"Your brother took you to court?" Sissy asked, jerking upright and staring open-mouthed. "That son of a...."
"Your own brother, how awful," Betty said, placing a hand sympathetically on Frannie's arm.
"Yeah, well, the neighbors, they side with him, he's got them all riled up about it."
"They'll come around, Frannie," Cora said. "Just give them time. But why didn't you say something? We had no idea you were going through this."
"I don't like passing my troubles on to nobody," Frannie said.
"So why are you doing it now then?" Valerie, her mouth partly obscured as she rested it on her open hand, grumbled under her breath.
"That wasn't called for, Valerie," Lu, sitting next to her, leaned over and whispered.
"So he's angry, so what? What's he going to do? You won in court," said Jean.
"Well, I thought, okay, so he is my brother, and he's in a bad way, doesn't have a job, maybe hanging with the wrong people. I'm not gonna give him the house, he'd just lose it, but maybe I can let him live downstairs, just for a while, 'til he can get on his feet, maybe I can help him better himself. Maybe get rid of some of that anger, too, if I'm nice to him. So I try that."
"Uh oh, I got a feeling this isn't going to turn out good," said Lu.
"You got that right," Frannie said, shaking her head again. "That man's dang worthless, and no way he's ever gonna let me help him. Well, he's gone now though."
"What do you mean? What happened?" asked Marty.
"He come home one Friday night, just over a week ago, real late, and he been drinking, and he come in my apartment-he still got a key, I made a big mistake there not changing the locks when I moved in, but who knew? He drug me out a bed, started yelling, ranting, how I robbed him of his home, how I'm asking him for rent all the time-like he ever paid me rent, fat chance that ever happen. He act like I'm the cause of every bad thing ever happened to him, and he done nothing to help himself." She wrinkled her nose and curled her upper lip in disgust.
"That must have been pretty unpleasant," said Jean.
"Don't I wish that was all that happen! You know it's not my style to talk nice when I get upset." Cora noted that the more distressed Frannie got the more she slipped into vernacular. "He picked up a big heavy mug and threw it through the window, glass falling all over the place. He came over to me, and he pushed me with both hands, and I fell into the counter-almost went down on the floor. I had enough and I started giving back to him, and we're standing there and we're yelling as loud as we can yell, and then he hauled off and he punched at me with his fist, but I turned and he missed my face, but he hit my shoulder and this time I do go down, and I let out a scream, loud as can be, and the next thing I know there's banging on the door, and it's the police, and I guess a neighbor called them."
"Oh wow! So what did they do?" asked Jean, her eyes open wide.
"Well, these two policemen came in-Michael left the door open, of course-and we're both still screaming at each other, and the police are trying to shout over us, yelling 'Just calm down now'," but we're too much into yelling and we don't stop. Then Michael he moves real sudden toward me, and then the police went crazy."
"They didn't know what you guys were going to do," said Lu.
"That's right, they didn't know, and so they both grabbed Michael, and not too gentle either, and they put handcuffs on him, and when he stopped struggling they asked me, 'You alright ma'am?' and I say I'm okay, only madder than hell, and they say to Michael, 'You live here?' and he says no, that he lives downstairs, and they take him down there to talk it out."
"I hope they did more than that," Cora said, trying to catch Frannie's gaze.
"Well, two more policemen come then, a man and a woman, and they were real nice to me. We sat down to talk about it, and they said when they get a call like this they're expected to arrest someone, and they wanted to know if I want to bring charges."
"What did you do?" asked Betty.
"Well, he's my brother, my only kin, but I told them I tried to help him but now I know I can't, and I don't want him living in my house no more, I'm scared he might hurt me if he gets mad again, and it seems he's mad all the time. I never had no dealings with the police before and I don't know about rights or anything, I only know I don't want Michael near me no more, whatever that takes, and that's what I told them."
"So did they arrest him?" asked Marty, wide gaze riveted on Frannie.
"I guess so. They didn't exactly tell me, but they called someone on their phone, and said the judge gave what they called an emergency protective order. They said because I was a 'complainant asking the person to leave the premises,' that's the words they used. They took him away, and gave me the name of someone to change my locks, and said he can't come here no more." She paused for a moment, took a deep breath, and sipped some coffee before continuing.
"I don't know where they took him and I don't want to know, but he must of got religion or something because he ain't been around. He came only one time, with another policeman, and I let him get his stuff from downstairs, and he took everything, even stuff that belongs to me, but he's gone now, and it's worth it to have him gone. Girl next door, she says she heard he went to Vegas where he knows a guy, gonna give him a place to stay."
"Are you sure?" asked Cora, her eyebrows raised in doubt.
"Well, he's gone for now anyways, and maybe he'll learn how to behave before he comes back. I got those locks changed though, and I sleep with a big old butcher knife under my pillow, just to be safe."
"So if this is all over, why do you say you're not sure you should be living there?" asked Jean.
"No one talks to me. Everyone looks away when they see me coming. I have no friends there and I feel uncomfortable and alone. I thought I was going home-it's not what I expected. It's not a good place to be, but I'm determined to stick it out."
Cora noticed a small quiver in Frannie's frown. She realized Frannie's story explained a lot about her friend's personality. Her bravado and stubbornness were defense mechanisms that compensated for the realities of her life. Having rejected her only living relative, and rejected by the people she grew up with, she now sat in a room of white women trying to explain her misery.
"I understand why you would do that," said Lu, nodding her head as she looked around the table at mostly doubtful faces. "Sometimes you just have to prove you have the guts to be where you are. I've had to fight my way through life too. Maybe not so hard as you, but still I've had my battles. If you can't prove it to yourself, you just don't have what it takes to keep on going, you lose your confidence. If you don't have your self-image, you have nothing, your life goes in the toilet."
Valerie, who had been rubbing her ear with her thumb and forefinger, said, "Well, I don't understand!" Cora thought she acted like a selfish little girl. "Why are you forcing yourself on those people, staying where you're not welcome?" She laughed, but no one joined her.
"Can't you see she's upset? You're not helping with comments like that," said Lu.
"Well, is that the end of the story finally?" Valerie said. She wasn't about to back down.
Frannie, provoked, sat up straight and glared defiantly at Valerie. "These are not bad people, they just need time to get to know me again. They think I'm the one who did something wrong."
Valerie let out a breath dramatically. "Why am I even trying to argue with you? These 'good' neighbors-you're only getting what you asked for!"
Frannie said. "I'm just trying to make my life best as I can, and now you're blaming me too. It's hard enough to be talking about this. I'm sorry I ever told you!" She brushed tears off her cheeks, her emotions obviously at a volatile point.
"Are you happy now, Valerie?" asked Lu, glaring at her across the table.
"You think I made her cry? Well, guess what-"
"That's enough!" Cora interrupted. She stood up abruptly and loomed over Valerie.
Valerie looked up at Cora, momentarily taken aback, her jaw dropped. "I-," she started.
"Just-stop-talking!" Cora enunciated between clenched teeth. There was shocked silence in the room as the women looked at each other, then at Frannie, Cora and Valerie in turn.
Cora continued calmly. "We've all had enough of your rude and mean comments, Valerie. You're not welcome here anymore."
"What...are you asking me to leave?" Valerie snorted and gave a one-sided smile. "We haven't decided what book to read next time-"
"No, you don't get it, Valerie. No next time. I think I speak for everyone here when I say we don't want you to return to book club, not next time, not ever. Just leave, please, before this gets uglier than it already is?"
Lu's eyes sparkled with approval and she nodded slowly.
Valerie looked around at the others and saw no support. With a flushed face, she narrowed her eyes, stared at Cora and said, "You'll regret this!" Then she grabbed her purse and stomped out.
"Oh dear!" said Betty.
After Valerie left, the women looked at each other uncomfortably.
"I'm sorry to be the cause of all this," said Frannie, chin in her hands and staring at the tabletop.
"Don't be! We're all glad it's over, and it wasn't you to begin with. Valerie was just using you as her target of the day, ticked off because you took the spotlight off her. I think I speak for everyone when I say we're very ashamed at how she talked to you," said Lu, with a warm smile.
"I'm so glad to be rid of her. I was starting to dread coming, knowing she'd be here. I had to bite my tongue not to be as rude as she was," said Sissy, nodding.
"But I'm still worried about your safety, Frannie," said Cora, with a wrinkled forehead. "Let's assume this son of a bitch is gone, are there any other threats? Is it safe where you live?"
"It's not a bad place to live. You all could walk down the street and be fine, but you probably wouldn't feel comfortable about it. People hang out on their front stoops and socialize in good weather. Most have jobs and pay their bills. There's some homes with no father living there, but no drive-bys or that kind of thing." Frannie's eyes remained downcast, not looking at her friends.
"Is there anything we can do to help you?" Betty asked, resting a hand gently on Frannie's arm.
"Not much you can do. You're sure not going to follow me home and confront my demons, and even if you did it'd only add fuel to the fire." She looked up now, and glanced around the table. Everyone's eyes were on her. "No, I have to figure out how to fight my own battles. Just knowing I have friends here who think kind about me, that's the best help you can give me."
The women resettled themselves in their chairs, fidgeted, and reached for cookies. Cora thought they seemed somewhat at a loss. She knew them well enough to know they sincerely felt empathy for Frannie and wanted to help her, but also that they didn't understand the life she led and probably felt their own lives were better. They didn't consider themselves to be bigots, but Cora couldn't begin to define where bigotry began or ended.
"Maybe if there was just one person in the neighborhood you could get through to, it could make a difference? Is there anyone you think you might be able to turn into a friend? Someone others might listen to?" Betty finally suggested.
"It's awful to think about, but maybe you can use this experience to your advantage," Lu said. "Surely someone is shocked at what happened, and isn't speaking out. Watch people, see if anyone looks guilty, ashamed, something like that. Look for someone who will meet your eyes. Then try to find an opportunity to gain that person's favor."
"You all know I'm not so good at schmoosing and pretending stuff. Blunt and outspoken, that's more like me." Frannie said. She barked a laugh, but it was a poor imitation of her usual infectious good humor.
"We know you have a soft side, Frannie-maybe now's the time to show it. There's a saying-people respect you for your strengths, but they love you for your weaknesses. Think about that while you're trying to get a little love from the neighborhood." Sissy said.