Grief Street

there’s hell to pay?

MALLOY
Nae. You got me there.

ANNIE
If it takes the devil himself to make us remember where we come from, and the promises that brought us to this place—amen, I say, amen!

Twenty-nine

    T wo things were pressing on my mind Tuesday. I thought one and then the other during all eighty miles of the drive up Route 9-W—north out of Manhattan and through the Hudson Valley towns, rising ever more gradually to the high ground and greening forests of the Catskill Mountains.
    First, poor Sister Roberta Lowther lying comatose under blankets in a hospital bed at Roosevelt. I had stopped to see her before heading off with the map and instructions prepared for me by Father Declan; Ruby had made up a box of sandwiches for me, and a bottle of coffee, and an overnight bag with a change of clothes.
    Someone—a nurse maybe—had coiled Sister’s rosary around the bandaged stump of her left arm. I brought the gift of flowers she could neither see nor smell, and set them down on a small table at her bedside.
    Sister’s breathing was shallow, sometimes to the point of Nonexistent. She was attached to a web of medical contraptions. I watched dials slowly pulsing news in tiny red lights: grim news that a person remained alive, thanks only to marines. But mostly I looked at Sister’s unveiled face.
    For the first time, I saw her hair. It had gone thin and straight, and white. But what had it been? My mother’s own curling dark auburn, as I had long imagined? Sister’s face was neither smooth nor ageless now. Under fluorescent light her forehead and cheeks and neck were laced with old woman wrinkles. Someone had pulled her eyelids shut. The skin was so delicate, so nearly transparent, I thought I saw Sister’s blue eyes staring up at me.
    Oh, what betrayal! And here I was little Neil’s own teacher!
    Was that the sentiment in Sister’s eyes? She would not be here like this—violated, mutilated, unconscious—if not for my telling Lieutenant Rankin to send around a unit to her neighbor Monaghan’s house. And for what puny purpose had I done my policeman’s duty—the resolution of a poor man’s crime of cadging meals off restaurants? This I added to the sorrows hanging over my head, sorrows heavy as a snow-laden roof.
    I bent to kiss Sister’s cheek before leaving the hospital and taking to the road. I caught a whiff of her shallow breath: the stinging odor of death.
    And then, the guilt of the last night’s long talk with Ruby. All night, and into this morning, we talked excitedly of our own good luck and future blessings.
    That Monday—the day of the attack on Sister Roberta— had been exceptionally busy for my wife, and long before the performance at Godwin’s house. I had merely dealt with Matson at Sex Crimes and Caras at Central Homicide and Rankin at the station house and Quent the actor-trainer. But by ten o’clock that Monday morning, Ruby had come to terms with a buyer for her South Street property. One hour later, she had likely found us the perfect spot in the neighborhood—a whole house for the three of us.
    The three of us!
    Then by early afternoon, she had delivered a cashier’s check to a midtown law firm. This was earnest money, for escrow deposit against a later purchase conditional on approval of civil and structural engineer inspections of the site.
    “I’m so sorry I went ahead and did this without you, Irish. But you had so much on your mind. And when you come across a deal like the one I dug up—well, you just don’t waste time deliberating.”
    “You were right to take action. Involving me wouldn't have been any good, I would have slowed things down.
    “What do I know from escrow and property inspection and all that?”
    “Nothing, I figured.”
    I was not entirely sure I enjoyed the vote of no confidence.
    “Anyway, where is this perfect house you’ve found for mama and papa and baby makes three?”
    “The place next door to Sister Roberta’s shelter.” Ruby crossed herself. She is a Southern Baptist. But like many non-Catholics Ruby finds the gesture a comfort at times. “You mean—?”
    “Yes, the Hell’s Kitchen house itself. Annie Meath’s house. What did I tell you? Perfect, right? Remember on Sunday, we walked past it after dinner at the shelter? Those pretty double windows—?”
    “But the stoop is crumbled away.”
    “Anything can be fixed. I didn’t tell you at breakfast, but all night I dreamed about that house, and what we’d do to fix