Read the book: «Rare Objects»

BOSTON, FEBRUARY 1932

I opened my eyes.

It was still dark out, maybe a little after six in the morning. Lying on my back in bed, I stared at the ceiling. I could just make out the wet patch in the corner where the roof leaked last spring and the wallpaper had begun to peel away—pale-green wallpaper with pink cabbage roses my mother had put up when we first moved in, over twenty years ago. At the time, it seemed the epitome of feminine sophistication. Outside, the rumble of garbage trucks drew closer as they made their way slowly down the street, and I could hear the faint cooing of the pigeons Mr. Marrelli kept on the roof next door; all familiar sounds of the city coming to life. They should’ve been reassuring. After all, here I was, back in my own room; home again in Boston. But all I felt was a dull, gnawing dread in the pit of my stomach.

I couldn’t sleep last night. Not even Dickens’s Great Expectations could still my racing mind. When I did finally drift off, my dreams were disjointed and draining—full of panic and chaos, running down endless alleys from some black and terrible thing, never fully seen but always felt.

I hauled myself out of bed and put on my old woolen robe and slippers, navigating the narrow gap between the end of the bed and the stacks of books—I collected secondhand editions with broken spines bought from street stalls or selectively “borrowed” from the library: Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Dickens, Thackeray, Collins. Great heavy editions of Shakespeare and Milton, Yeats, Shelley, Keats. “You’ve read them already, why do you need to keep them? All they do is take up space!” my mother complained. She was right—there was no room for anything, not even a chair. But where Ma saw only old books gathering dust and smelling of mildew, I found comfort and possibility. Other worlds were within my grasp—better worlds full of rewarded ambition, refinement, and eloquence. I clung to them as a pilgrim whose faith is proportional to the extremity of their need clings to a relic or a prayer.

Shuffling into the bathroom, I paused to press my hand against the radiator in the hallway. Stone cold as usual. I don’t know why I kept checking. The triumph of optimism over experience. Or good old-fashioned stubbornness, as my mother would say.

Turning on the bathroom light, I blinked at my reflection. It was still a shock. I used to have long hair—thick, copper red, and uncontrollable, a dubious gift from my Irish heritage. Now it was cropped short, growing back at least two shades darker in deep auburn waves. It made my skin look even paler than usual. I put my finger on the small cleft in my chin, as if covering it up would make it disappear entirely. It always struck me as a bit mannish. But I couldn’t hold my finger there forever. Bluish-gray shadows ringed my eyes, the same color as the irises. My eyes looked huge—too large, too round. Like a madwoman’s, I thought.

I splashed my face with cold water and headed into the kitchen.

My mother was already up, sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper and smoking her morning cigarette. Even in her curlers and dressing gown, she sat upright, straight back, head held high, at full attention. Regal. That was the best word for it. Apparently even as a young girl she was known as Her Majesty in the Irish seaside town she grew up in. It was a nickname that fit her in more ways than one.

The rich aroma of fresh coffee filled the air. It was a tiny room, mostly taken up by the black cast-iron stove recessed into the mantelpiece. On one side there was a built-in dresser and just enough room for a small wooden table and a couple of chairs. Two narrow windows looked out over the street below and a clothes airer was suspended from the ceiling, to be lowered with a pulley. The rest of the neighborhood used the public lines hanging between buildings, but not us. It was common, according to my mother, and that was the last thing we Fanning women wanted to be.

Ma frowned when I walked in—anything out of the ordinary was cause for suspicion. “What are you doing up this early?”

“I couldn’t sleep.” I checked the gas meter above the sink. It was off. “It’s cold,” I said, knowing that I was asking for trouble.

She shot a long stream of smoke at the ceiling, a combination of exhaling and a world-weary sigh. “When you get a job you can stuff the meter full of quarters. Now eat. You need something in your stomach, especially today.”

“I’m not hungry.” I poured myself a cup of strong black coffee and sat down.

The heat, or lack thereof, was always a sticking point between us. But since I came back it had become the central refrain of almost every encounter. It’s funny how some arguments are easier, more comforting, than real conversation.

I looked round the room. Nothing had changed except for the Roosevelt campaign leaflet pinned on the wall with the slogan “Happy Days Are Here Again.” Otherwise it was all just as I remembered it. Above the stove were three books—Mrs. Rorer’s New Cook Book: A Manual of Housekeeping, a copy of Modes and Manners: Decorum in Polite Society, and a small leather-bound Bible—our entire domestic library. Next to that, displayed on the dresser shelves, were my mother’s most precious possessions: a photograph of Pope Pius XI, a picture of Charles Stewart Parnell of the Irish Nationalist Party, and in the center of this unlikely partnership, a small wooden crucifix. Below, my framed diploma from the Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School took up the entire shelf. And on the bottom a genuine blue-and-white Staffordshire willow-pattern teapot with four matching cups and saucers sat waiting for just the right occasion, a wedding gift brought all the way from Ireland.

“So”—Ma decided to get straight down to business—“what are you going to wear today?”

“My blue dress. Maybe with the red scarf.”

“Really.” She sounded distinctly underwhelmed. “That dress isn’t serious enough.”

“Serious enough for what? It’s only an employment agency.”

She ignored my tone, folding the newspaper neatly. It would be saved and used again—to line the shelves of the icebox or wash windows, maybe even to cut out patterns for clothing. I used to wonder what it felt like to waste something; as a child I couldn’t imagine anything more delicious or sinful than the extravagance of throwing things away. I’ve wasted a few things since then; it’s not as liberating as I imagined.

Ma made me an offer. “I’ll tell you what, Maeve. You can borrow my gray wool suit. I pressed it last night, just in case.”

She said it as if she were handing me the keys to the city.

And in her mind, she was.

Ma worked in a high-end department store called R. H. Stearns in downtown Boston. She’d been there years in the alterations department, working as a seamstress. But her real ambition was to be a saleswoman. More than anything she fancied herself a fashion adviser to wealthy women—the kind of society mavens with enough money to buy designer gowns and a different fur for every outfit. To this end she wasted precious quarters on copies of Vogue and McCall’s every month, poring over them, memorizing each page. She’d bought the gray suit years ago when she first began applying for a sales position, but they passed over her year after year. Perhaps it was because she was so skilled a seamstress, or perhaps because they thought she was too old, at forty-three, or maybe too Irish. But in any case the gray suit, the proud uniform of her future self, still hung in her wardrobe, outdated now.

“The blue dress fits better,” I told her.

“This is a job interview, not a date.” She was hurt. I could hear the wounded pride in her voice, as if she’d just proposed, been turned down, and now had to get up off her knees from the floor. “Also I fixed that hat of yours, the one with the torn net. I steamed it back into shape but in the end I had to take the net off.” She got up, went to the sink. “Where’d you get a hat like that anyway, Maeve? It’s a Lilly Daché! They cost a fortune!”

Trust her to notice the label.

“It was a gift,” I fibbed.

“Well, you certainly didn’t take care of it. And a ‘Thank you’ wouldn’t go amiss.”

“Cheers, Ma.”

She started to wash up.

I stared out the window, pressing my palms tightly against the coffee cup for warmth. Sitting here in the kitchen just before the day truly began, looking out into the darkness, calmed my nerves. The city was shadowy, lit only by streetlamps. But still the North End was already awake and opening for business.

The fruit seller across the street, Mr. Contadino, was setting up his stall, squinting as he cranked open his green-striped awning in the icy wind, the air swirling with snowflakes. He had on a flat cap and a heavy woolen vest under his clean apron, and a pair of knitted fingerless gloves protected his stubby hands. Soon he would light the chestnut stove—a large iron barrel near the shop doorway with a coal fire in the base and fresh chestnuts roasting in the top. He sold them tender and hot in little brown paper bags for a penny. Contadino’s chestnuts were a glowing beacon of civilization in the North End. The smell of the buttery flesh roasting and the delicious combination of cold air and the crackling fragrant heat radiating from the belly of the stove made it all but impossible not to stop as you passed by. Men collected there, speaking in Italian, smoking, laughing, warming their hands. In the morning they held tiny steaming cups of espresso, and in the evening cigar smoke, sweet and luxuriant, billowed around them in clouds.

As Ma was fond of pointing out, Contadino knew what he was doing. That chestnut stove brought him twice as much trade as any other fruit seller in the neighborhood had. “See, the Italians are smart. And they don’t drink. We made the right choice; we’re better off here.”

Here was the North End of Boston. Waves of immigrants had made the North End their home over the years. It had been a Jewish ghetto before the Irish took over, but most had since moved south; it was firmly Italian now. We had second cousins living in the South End, but Ma always considered herself a North Ender, valuing privacy over familiarity. “We don’t have to live in everyone’s back pocket,” she used to say.

“A suit looks more professional.” Ma hated to lose an argument. “Just because you’re not working doesn’t mean you can’t look respectable.”

Respectable was one of Ma’s favorite words, along with ladylike and tasteful. Quaint, old-fashioned words. To me they sounded as relevant as bustle and parasol; faded echoes from another era when good looks, pleasing manners, and modesty were all that were required in the female arsenal. Nowadays, they just made you seem backward.

“I’ll think about the suit,” I told her, watching as Mrs. Contadino, wrapped in a shawl, came out into the cold with her husband’s coat. He waved her away, but she won in the end; he had to put it on before she would go back inside.

Then I remembered what day it was.

“It’s the eighth today, isn’t it?”

I saw her smile. Maybe it pleased her that she didn’t have to remind me. “That’s right. It’s a sign. Mark my words: it’ll bring you luck!”

Underneath Ma’s worldly exterior a superstitious child of Ireland still lingered, clinging to all the impossible magic of the supernatural.

“Do you think?” I swallowed some more coffee.

“Absolutely! You were born at night, Maeve. That means you have a connection to the world of the dead. If you ask for their help, they’re sure to come.” She topped up my cup. “I’ll be going to mass later if you want to join me. I’m sure he’d like it if you came too.”

It had been a long time since I’d been to mass. Too long.

I looked out at the pale gray dawn, bleeding red-orange into the sky. “Go on, Ma, tell me about him,” I said, changing the subject. It was also a tradition, something we did every year on the anniversary of my father’s death. And who knew, maybe today it would make a difference; maybe against all reason, my dead father would lure good fortune to me.

“Oh, Maeve!” She shook her head indulgently. “You know everything there is to tell!”

Every year she protested—not too hard.

“Go on!”

And every year, I insisted, for old times’ sake.

She paused, teasing the moment out like an actress about to play a big speech. “He was a remarkable man,” she began. “A graduate of Trinity College in Dublin. A true gentleman and an intellectual. Do you know what I mean when I say that?” She took a long drag. “I mean he had a hunger for knowledge; a deep longing for it, the way that some people yearn for food or wealth.” She smiled softly, exhaling, and her voice took on a tender, dreamy tone. “It made him glow; like he was on fire from the inside out. His eyes used to burn brighter, his whole being changed when he was speaking on something that interested him, like literature or philosophy. He was good-looking, yes,” she allowed, “but if you only could’ve heard him talk … Oh, Maeve! His voice was a country—a rich green land populated with mountains and rivers …”

She had the gift, as the Irish would say, an ear for language. Her talents were wasted as a seamstress.

“He drew you into other places. Other worlds. He made the obscure real and the unfathomable possible. He would’ve been a great man had he lived. There was no doubt. His brain was like a whip.” She flicked a bit of ash into the sink, pointed her cigarette at me. “You have that. You have a sharp mind.” Her words were an accusation rather than a compliment. “And his eyes. You have his eyes.”

There was just one photograph of Michael Fanning. It sat on the mantelpiece in the front room, a rather startling portrait of a handsome young man staring directly into the camera. His broad, intelligent forehead was framed by waves of dark locks, and his features were fine and even. But it was the fearless intensity of his gaze and the luminous pinpoints of light reflected in his black pupils that drew you in. It was impossible not to imagine that he was looking straight at you, perhaps even leaning in closer, as if he’d just asked a question and was particularly interested to hear your answer. It was an honest face, without artifice or pretension, and as far as I was concerned, the most beautiful face in the world.

I’d never known him. Ma was a widow and had been all my life. But his absence was the defining force in our lives, a vacuum of loss that held us fast to our ambitions and to each other. He’d always been Michael Fanning, never father or Da. And he wasn’t just a man but an era; the golden age in Ma’s life, illuminated by optimism and possibility, gone before I was born. I’d grown up praying to him, begging for his guidance and mercy, imagining him always there, watching over me with those inquisitive, unblinking eyes. God the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, and Michael Fanning. In my mind, the four of them sat around heaven, drinking tea, smoking cigarettes, taking turns choosing the forecast for the day.

“What time are you going to mass?”

“Six o’clock. I want to go to confession before.”

Confession.

Now there was the rub. I certainly wasn’t going to confession.

“Well,” I said vaguely, “I’ll see what I can do, Ma.”

My parents met in Bray, a small seaside town in county Wicklow, Ireland. Fresh from university, Michael Fanning turned his back on his family’s considerable resources to teach at the local comprehensive, where Ma was a student in her final year. After a brief and clandestine courtship they married, against both their parents’ wishes, when she was just seventeen. They planned to immigrate to New York, where Michael’s cousin was already established. But he contracted influenza, and within three days was dead. No one from either family came to the funeral.

With what little money remained after burial costs, seventeen-year-old Nora set sail for America rather than turn to her family for help. The only ticket she could afford landed her in Boston, and so I was born six months later, in a tiny one-room apartment above a butcher’s shop in the North End, with no heat, hot water, or bathroom. I was delivered by the butcher’s wife, Mrs. Marcosa, who didn’t speak English and had seven children of her own, most of them kneeling round the bed praying as their mother, sleeves rolled high on her thick arms, shouted at my terrified mother in Italian. When I finally appeared, they all danced, applauded, and cheered.

“It was one of the most wonderful and yet humiliating days of my life,” Ma used to say. “The Marcosa children all loved to hold you because of your red hair. They found it fascinating. The whole neighborhood did. I couldn’t go half a block without someone stopping me.”

She took in seamstress work during the day, piecing together cotton blouses for Levin’s garment factory nearby, and in the evenings she traveled across town to clean offices, taking me with her in a wicker laundry basket, wrapped in blankets. Setting me on the desks, she made her way through the offices, dusting, polishing, and scrubbing, singing in her low soft voice from eight until midnight before heading back across the sleeping city.

But she always hungered for more. And even when she joined the alterations department at Stearns, she’d already had her sights set on moving from the workroom to the sales floor. She enrolled in Sunday-afternoon speech classes from an impoverished spinster in Beacon Hill, taking me with her so that I could learn to enunciate without the telltale lilt of her brogue or, worse, the flat vowels of the Boston streets. I suppose that’s something we have in common—the unshakable conviction we’re destined for better things.

Year after year she continued to apply for a sales position, ignoring the rejections and snubs, refusing to try elsewhere. “It’s the finest department store in the city,” she maintained. “I’d rather mop floors there than anywhere else.” She could endure anything but failure.

Stubbornness is another trait we share.

She still wore the plain, slim gold band her husband had given her on her wedding ring finger, not just as a reminder but also as a safeguard against unwanted male attention.

“Your father would’ve been proud of you, Maeve, getting your secretarial degree.” She took a final drag from her cigarette, stubbed the end out in the sink.

I looked down. “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

“Well, I do.”

All my life, she’d been a medium between this world and the next, advising on what my father would’ve wanted, believed in, admired.

“He had everything it took to really be someone in this world—intelligence, breeding, a good education. Everything, that is, except luck. I just hope yours is better than his.” She sighed.

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. You’re a clever girl. A capable girl.” Leaning in, she scrubbed the coffee stains out of the sink. “It’s just a shame you lost that job in New York.”

A knot of guilt and apprehension tightened in my stomach. This was the last thing I wanted to talk about. “Let’s not go into that.”

But Ma was never one to let a subject die an easy death if she could kick it around the room a few more times.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” she went on, ignoring me. “Why did Mr. Halliday let you go after all that time?”

“I told you, he’s traveling.”

“Yes, but why didn’t he just take you with him, like he did before? Remember that? You gave me the fright of my life! I didn’t get a letter from you for almost six weeks!”

It was if she knew the truth and was torturing me, the way a cat swats around a half-dead mouse. I glared at her. “Jeez, Ma! How would I know?”

“It just doesn’t make sense. You’ve been his private secretary for almost a year, and then, out of the blue, you’re suddenly out of work and back in Boston!”

“Well, at least I’m home. Aren’t you glad about that?”

She gave a halfhearted shrug. “I’d rather have you make something of yourself. You were on your way in New York. Now you’ll have to start all over again.” Scooping some porridge into a bowl, she set it down in front of me. “I’ll hang the gray suit in your room.”

I gnawed at my thumbnail. I didn’t want porridge or the suit. The only thing I wanted now was to crawl back into bed and disappear.

She gave my hand a smack. “What are you doing? You’ll ruin your nails! Don’t worry so much. With your training and experience, you’re practically a shoo-in.”

I prodded the porridge with my spoon.

My experience.

If only my experience in New York was what she thought it was.