Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2016

Copyright © Kathleen Tessaro 2016

Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016. Cover photographs © Condé Nast Archive/Corbis (woman); Mariko Abe/Getty Images (mirror).

Kathleen Tessaro asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007419869

Ebook Edition © June 2015 ISBN: 9780007419869

Version: 2017-11-29

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my dear friend ROBERT TROTTA, whose remarkable character has forever shaped the fate of my son for the better and given me proof time and time again of true heroism in this world. I am beholden to you, sir.

Epigraph

A man’s character is his fate.

HERACLITUS, Fragments

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Part One

Boston, February 1932

Somewhere in Brooklyn, November 1931

Boston, February 1932

Binghamton State Hospital, New York, 1931

Boston, February 1932

Part Two

Acknowledgements

Reading Group Questions

Author Q & A

Keep Reading

About the Author

Also by Kathleen Tessaro

About the Publisher

Looking back is a dangerous thing. I’ve spent much of my time studying other ages, searching out the treasures of ancient worlds, but I’ve always found it best to move forward, eyes front, in one’s own life. Hindsight casts a harsh, unforgiving light, and histories too tender and raw are stripped bare of the thousand shadowy self-deceptions that few of us can afford to see ourselves without.

But even the most conscientious of us can forget. The past dangles before us, as innocently as a loose thread from a sleeve. For me it began with a few lines in the local newspaper.

“Renovation works scheduled to begin at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.”

It had been years since I’d been there. I’d thought of going, many times, and even gotten so far as to be standing on the front steps before something stopped me. I suppose the place held too many memories, maybe even a few ghosts. Is there anything more haunting than the ambitions of youth?

But one of the great myths of age is that it brings us wisdom. It had been too long, I decided, folding the paper. This time I will knot the thread, tie the untidy end of my past or cut myself free of it.

And so, like Orpheus in the underworld, I talked myself into turning back and looking one last time at what I shouldn’t see.

I made the mistake of going on a rainy Saturday afternoon in March. The museum was full of families with small children careering from one room to another. They’re encouraged to touch everything these days—sticky handprints on all the glass cases.

I managed to avoid being tackled by toddlers and found my way to the Art of the Ancient World wing. The room I was looking for was sealed off with a red velvet rope and a sign that read “Closed to the Public.” I stepped round the rope, behind the sign, and into the abandoned gallery.

It was cool inside, and wonderfully quiet. There were tins of unopened paint and folded dust sheets, a few cigarette butts floating in some empty Coca-Cola bottles, but no work had actually begun. They hadn’t moved any of the displays yet or stored away the artifacts. Above the marble arch of the entrance it read “The Treasures of the Golden Age” in gilded lettering. I could see from where they’d constructed the scaffolding that they were probably planning to rub it out.

The mural was still there, though faded and cartoonish—Greek temples and dancing nymphs, satyrs playing flutes. I was surprised to feel a nostalgic twinge of sentimental affection for it, even though I hadn’t liked it at the time. Aging does that; it makes you amenable to far more ambiguous feelings and opinions than the inflexible black-and-white thinking of youth.

I walked past the statues of the mythical brothers Kleobis and Biton, frozen in rigid perfection, and paused by the vase and plate by the Harrow Painter, the archaic red-figure master. I even read the plaque beneath them, although I already knew what it said.

I remembered the first time I’d seen them, and the thrilling, slightly terrifying anticipation came flooding back, like déjà vu. Among the finest aesthetic accomplishments of their age, they’d been entrusted to my care one strange, ill-fated evening.

How young I’d been! How desperate and frightened and arrogant, all at the same time!

I continued, moving from case to case.

And then there it was, in one of the cabinets along the far wall: the black agate ring. I wasn’t sure it would be there; I just had a feeling.

Even after all these years the sight of it made my skin go cold.

“Excuse me, madam?”

The voice startled me. I turned.

A young guard was hovering tentatively by the entrance as if he didn’t dare disobey the sign.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry, madam, but this gallery is closed.”

I feigned surprise. “Really?”

He nodded. “Can I help you? Are you lost?”

I didn’t answer right away. Instead I looked round one last time. The thread of my past unspooled before me—memories, dreams, and regrets.

“Do you need some help?” he repeated, louder this time.

I shook my head. “No, thank you.” And lifting my chin, I pulled myself up to my full height, tucked my handbag under my arm, and marched past him. It’s a trick I learned from my mother—when in doubt, act like you know what you’re doing, and you’ll be treated like you do.

And of course, if you can convince others, there’s a chance that someday you might just be able to convince yourself.

Part One

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.

SOMEWHERE IN BROOKLYN, NOVEMBER 1931

I was falling, too fast, with nothing to stop me … down, down, gathering speed …

I came to with a jolt. I was sitting on the side of a bed wearing only my slip and stockings—a wrought-iron bed in a cold, dark bedroom. Only it wasn’t my bed or my room.

Suddenly the floor veered beneath me, the walls spinning, faded yellow flowers on the wallpaper melting together. Please, God, don’t let me be sick! I pressed my eyes closed and held on to the bed frame tight.

I had to think. Where was I, and how exactly had I gotten here?

It had been a long, dull night at the Orpheum dance palace on Broadway where I worked. The joint was full of nothing but out-of-towners and hayseeds—guys with little money and lots of expectations. By the time we’d closed and I’d cashed in my ticket stubs, I was ready for some fun. Another girl, Lois, had made a “date” with a customer, and he had a friend … Was I game?

Why not? After all, it wasn’t like I had anything to lose.

I remembered two big men, grinning like excited schoolboys, in New York for a convention and laughing the way tourists do—too easily and too hard, willing themselves to have the best night of their lives. One was reasonable-looking, and the other—well, let’s just say no one was going to mistake him for Errol Flynn or Douglas Fairbanks. But there’s that old adage about beggars and choosers, and tonight I felt like a beggar for sure. The last thing I wanted was to be alone and sober at the same time. So we all piled into a cab. Hip flasks were passed round; I remembered Lois sitting on someone’s lap, singing “Diggity Diggity Do.”

We drove to Harlem, to a place called Hot Feet. There was a band from New Orleans and a chorus line of smooth-skinned Negro girls dressed up with grass skirts and bone necklaces, shaking and shimmying for all they were worth. The moonshine had kicked in by then, and I was feeling a bit less rough round the edges. Lois was sure she saw Oweny Madden and the boxer Primo Carnera at the next table, and one of the guys, the ugly one, forked out for a bottle of real gin.

God, my mouth was as dry as the Sahara! What time was it now? What had happened to Lois?

I tried to stand. My head pounded, my stomach swooned. Easy does it. Not too fast.

Someone shifted in the bed next to me.

Shit. Please don’t let it be the ugly one.

I tried not to look. A face you never saw was a face you never remembered. I’d learned that much in New York.

I eased myself up. My knees were sore, and there were holes in my stockings. I guess I must’ve fallen. Going over to the window, I pushed aside the curtain. The street was residential, narrow row houses with uneven terraces crammed together, lamps glowing eerily over abandoned lots between. I searched for something familiar on the skyline, a bridge or a building, but couldn’t see anything. One thing was certain: I was definitely on the wrong side of the river.

I seemed to remember talk of going to a hotel to carry on the party—someplace like the Waldorf or the Warwick. So why was I stranded in some cheap boarding house in Queens or Yonkers with no idea where I was or how I was going to get home?

The man rolled over on to his side and began to snore. I had to get out of here, before he woke.

Where were my clothes?

I nearly stumbled over something and picked it up. But this dress wasn’t mine.

Then a memory came of the day before. I’d borrowed a dress from Nancy Rae, the girl down the hall at the Nightingale boarding house, where I rented a room. It was Nancy’s good-luck dress, a hunter-green serge she’d been wearing when she landed her job at Gimbles; all the girls wanted to borrow it for interviews. I’d given her a dollar for the privilege and even gotten up early to steam the box pleats of the skirt through a towel to make them crisp and sharp without going shiny. When I finished, they fluttered open like a fan round my legs.

See that’s the thing about luck—it has to be courted. You have to seduce it; reel it in slowly without arousing suspicion. It’s so precious that every tiny thing matters—what you wear, which side of the road you walk on, the tune you whistle, or how many birds you see out the window. Nancy Rae’s hunter-green dress had stood in fate’s presence and felt its light touch. And when fate favors anything, you’d best pay attention.

I’d been working as a taxi dancer at the Orpheum for months, waltzing with strangers night after night for a dime a dance. But when I saw the advertisement in the back of the Herald for “a young woman of exceptional executive secretarial skills,” I knew that my luck was about to change.

So I gave Nancy the dollar, ironed the dress, and set out first thing in the morning with my notebook and résumé in hand.

But when I arrived at the address, a full hour ahead of time, there were already fifty girls ahead of me, lined up around the corner of the office building, all clutching notebooks and reference letters, all looking hungry and determined and ferociously confident. I lasted three hours waiting in the cold before the girl ahead of me, a short brunette with a frizzy permanent wave and a big run in her stocking, turned round and announced, “You know they’re not going to see all of us, don’t you? I’ve been standing in lines for months, just trying to get my foot in the door. I tell you, we’re waiting here for nothing, like a bunch of saps!”

No one answered her. You can be six inches from someone’s face in New York City and they can still stare straight through you, like you’re not even there. But when I looked around, I could see from the other girls’ faces that what she said was true.

Then she leaned in closer. “I know a guy who runs the door on a joint off Lexington. If you sit at the bar and are friendly to the customers, they don’t mind serving you for free, especially if you’re good-looking.”

I didn’t know why she was telling me. Did I look like the kind of girl who was at home on a barstool? I lifted my chin a little so I was looking down at her and sneered, “What of it?”

She wasn’t put off. “Besides”—she jerked her head at the others, shivering ahead of us—“today’s not our day, sister.”

There were an awful lot of us. The line stretched right up the block and disappeared round the corner. And it would be so nice to sit down and get warm. I didn’t have any money for breakfast that morning, so my stomach was playing a selection of squeaky, off-key tunes all on its own.

Still, if they could only see my qualifications, give me a chance.

The poodle-haired brunette wasn’t waiting any longer. “Fine!” She rolled her eyes, the voice of reason in a world full of idiots. “I was trying to do you a favor, but if you want to catch frostbite just to be told thanks but no thanks, that’s up to you!”

“Is it heated?” I’m on the thin side, being warm is something of an Achilles heel for me.

She shot me a look like I was from the backwoods of West Virginia. “Sure it’s heated! And they got free peanuts at every table, as much as you can eat.”

As soon as I stepped out of line, the girl behind me shoved forward like I was all that was standing between her and destiny. I tossed a sad smile her way just to show her I knew better. I was off to be fed and watered for free. I’d graduated from waiting around.

The poodle brunette had a name like Ivy or Ida or Elsa, and once inside the club on Lexington, she told me right where to sit and how to play it. She got us both a basket of peanuts and we ate as much as we could stand before she brushed the shells off the table and swung into action. Hers was an entirely democratic brand of lazy hospitality—everyone was included in its warm glow, but no one was singled out; every guy figured he had a chance. Maybe because of this she was a past master at getting men to buy more rounds. It wasn’t long before the morning slipped into the afternoon and the afternoon into the evening. I probably ate a pound of peanuts that day. Soon it was time to head over to Broadway to begin another shift at the dance palace.

Now here I was, eighteen hours later, tripping over Nancy Rae’s lucky green dress, crumpled in a heap on a stranger’s floor.

My life was full of cracks, ever-widening gaps between the person I wanted to be and the person I was. When I first came to this city, they used to be small enough to laugh off or ignore. But over the past year they’d grown wider, deeper. I’d fallen in one again last night.

This was the last time, I promised myself.

The very last time.

I found my coat in the corner, thrown over a chair. My new hat, the one I’d splurged on when I got my first job, had been stepped on, squashed into a flat felt circle, the black net that had framed my face so charmingly torn and dangling miserably from a few threads.

I got dressed. Unfortunately I’m good at this—navigating creaky floorboards and sleeping men, finding clothes in the dark. It’s a loathsome talent.

All I needed now was my handbag.

I searched the floor, the bedside table, then on the dresser. A watery blue beam of moonlight streamed in from the crack in the curtains. An old-fashioned gold pocket watch and a pair of cufflinks sat on top of it. Next to them was a photograph of a dark-haired woman holding a toddler. Both were smiling—big, wide, foolish grins. “To Daddy, with all our love” was written in a woman’s rounded hand across the bottom right-hand corner.

I wanted to throw up.

The guy in the bed snorted, coughed. I spotted my bag, jammed between the bedposts, and eased it out.

The room was quiet except for the snoring and a gentle ticking sound; a steady march of time.

I picked up the watch. Solid, smooth, and heavy, it had a pleasant, reassuring weight. My fingers closed round it; it fit neatly into the palm of my hand.

Three twenty-three a.m.

Plenty of time to get back to the boarding house and sleep it off before work tonight. Plenty of time to re-iron Nancy Rae’s dress before returning it. Maybe I’d buy a paper on my way home, get a head start on finding another job. That’s what I told myself. But more likely I’d just stay in my room, too ashamed to let the other girls see me coming in at dawn, lock the door, and lie in bed all afternoon, listening to the music of the landlady’s radio seeping through the floorboards. And I’d imagine how maybe soon things would be different; a man would come into the dance hall who was decent and kind or I’d stumble across a real job or maybe finally I’d just give up altogether, go home …

Tomorrow my luck would change. Tomorrow I’d try again.

Only I had to get through tonight first.

I don’t know why I took the watch. Maybe it was just an accident. Or maybe because of the stupid hopeful grin on the woman’s face in the picture, or because of the way the man in the bed smelled like mothballs and sour sweat. Maybe just because it gave me something to hold on to.

I don’t know why. But I did.

And I really wish I hadn’t.

Because after that, things got a lot worse.

New York City was the knife’s edge of opportunity—modern and progressive. A place where a girl could leave her past behind and get a job and a life that really mattered. Every day smart young women with bobbed hair and cherry-red lips poured out of the subway stations at eight in the morning to take over the world, and no one batted an eye. No one cared either when they ended the day sipping cocktails in underground clubs next to their male colleagues.

I told everyone that I went to New York City because I didn’t want to end up just another pair of hands in a typing pool. Sharp, efficient, able to anticipate every need before it arose, I saw myself rising through the ranks and becoming indispensable to a high-powered corporate executive. I wanted freedom and excitement; that’s what I said. And that was partly true, but it wasn’t the whole story.

I had just enough ability to make my hubris seem like healthy ambition. Even after the Crash hit, I’d always landed on my feet in Boston; even been able to take my pick of jobs. I thought I could make it. And for a short time, I suppose I did. I got a job at a brokerage firm working for the CEO and bought myself a fancy new hat to celebrate. But after six months the business went bankrupt and they found him underneath his desk, burning pages from his address book. After that I received an extended lesson in humility.

Turns out I wasn’t as uniquely talented as I thought, that the city was crammed to the gills with girls with the same credentials, and the landlady at the Nightingale wasn’t very patient when it came to rent. I ended up working as a taxi dancer at the place on Broadway, the Orpheum. They were short on redheads and prided themselves on catering to all tastes. So I got a job dancing with strangers.

I went from top of my typing class to bottom of the pecking order in the girls’ locker room. I rented a secondhand gown from one of the other dancers and borrowed a pair of slippers until I got paid. The other girls weren’t particularly nice or mean, just jaded and tired. And luckily for me, there wasn’t that much competition in the redhead section. You have to sit in groups round the edge of the dance floor, blondes with blondes, brunettes with brunettes, and the guys stroll around eyeing you up the way a woman looks at an apple at a fruit stall—trying to find one that’s not too bruised, not too soft. Some girls winked and flirted, others carried on chatting among themselves as if ignoring the customers sharpened their appetite. I used to close my eyes and try to drift inside the music—I didn’t like to see the look on the guys’ faces if they passed me by.

You think you’re lucky when you’re chosen, but of course now you’ve got a whole other world of difficulty ahead of you—keeping their hands where they belonged was a full-time job, and one that had to be done with a smile on your face. And it’s not easy to make small talk with a guy who doesn’t speak any English, or who’s trying to hustle you for a free date. But every misfit in the city is your sweetheart for the next three minutes—the gropers and the bullies, the small-town Casanovas; the shy boys, the physically deformed, foreigners fresh off the boat; older men, looking for company. You have to charm them while letting them know you’re not for sale. Only you are, really.

Of course I didn’t tell Ma where I’d landed. I made up a story about being a private secretary to an eccentric millionaire—Mr. Halliday. I gave him odd habits and a demanding personality. That explained away the late nights and why I was never at the boarding house when she called. And also why I never came home.

After all, it was only meant to be temporary. But it turns out there’s a lot of money to be made as a taxi dancer—almost forty dollars a week sometimes. And I pretty much had the redhead market cornered after about a month. I found that if I had a few shots while I was getting ready and then kept myself topped up through the night, it was just about bearable. I wasn’t the only girl with a bottle in her locker—most of us had something. And it wasn’t like we went out of our way to hide it either. The management knew the score and never bothered anyone unless a girl was stupid about it and got sloppy or sick.

Pretty soon a few of us started going out after the dance hall closed, just to finish up the night. That’s when the clubs got really interesting. Sometimes I’d make it back to the boarding house and sometimes I wouldn’t. It wasn’t something I was proud of. Sleeping all day, working all night, in a city like New York gets lonely.

But then I took the watch.

Turns out that guy was really fond of that watch; his father had given it to him, and his father before that. Turns out too that he remembered where I worked and showed up the next night hell-bent on getting it back.

By that time, I didn’t even remember I’d taken it. But he found it in my coat pocket, so there was no way I could talk my way out of it. He started making a scene, right there in the middle of the dance floor, shouting that I was a thief and a liar, and then the management had no choice but to let me go.

Only that wasn’t enough for him. He figured I still owed him something. And when I came out of the back entrance of the building after cleaning out my locker, he was waiting there to get it.

You have to give it to New Yorkers—they’re pragmatic people. They don’t get involved unless they have to. They can turn a blind eye, ear, or anything else you want to name. When he was done, he left me lying in the alleyway. Somehow I managed to get up, button my coat over my torn dress, and walk twenty-three blocks back to the Nightingale.

Then I ran a bath, poured another drink, and took a razor blade with me into the bathroom.

That’s how I ended up at the Binghamton State Hospital, otherwise known as the loony bin.

BOSTON, FEBRUARY 1932

In the end, Ma won; I found myself standing in the empty outer office of the Belmont Placement Agency in Dewey Square, wearing the gray suit. I’d lost weight; the jacket sagged around my bust like a deflated tweed balloon. I tried to cover it up with my scarf, but it was hopeless.

I wondered where everyone was. I’d known the woman who ran the agency, Maude Williams, since I began secretarial school. As a star student, I was singled out as early recruitment material, and she gave me the pick of any position I wanted. It wasn’t long ago I’d been sitting across from her, turning down extra pay because I couldn’t wait to get out of Boston. But things had changed. There was a time when Maude had a receptionist of her own; when these dingy little rooms were crammed with girls, ready to go anywhere Maude sent them. Now I was the only one there.

On the way the trolley had passed by Boylston Street, near the Common. Crowds of homeless sat huddled around campfires in a makeshift shantytown. There’d been outrage and shock over their invasion before I left, but now there were twice as many. They had become invisible in their poverty, sleeping on cardboard boxes in doorways, selling apples on street corners. It wasn’t quite as bad as New York and the sprawling Hooverville that had taken over Central Park, but still it sent a chill up my spine.

In the North End, too, there were things I hadn’t seen before—big signs hung from the front gates of the shoe factory and the railroad yard: “Jobless Men Keep Walking—We Can’t Feed Our Own.” And on Hanover Street this morning, the corner was crowded with men, maybe fifty or sixty. They were all waiting for the construction trucks to drive past on their way to the building sites in the city, looking for day workers. When they stopped, all hell broke loose—swarms of bodies engulfed them, shouting, shoving, clambering aboard. The foreman had to push them down like animals, banging on the side of the truck to start moving again.

Please God that didn’t happen to me.

I jammed my hands into my pockets.

“Ouch!” Something sharp stabbed my palm, and I pulled out a bent safety pin. Another one of Ma’s superstitions: “A crooked pin in the pocket brings good luck.”

A minute later I was sitting across from Maude—short and solid, somewhere in her late fifties, a hard smear of red lipstick highlighting her thin lips and thick black glasses framing her eyes. Straight-talking and unflappable, Maude was the first and often only port of call for anyone looking for a truly professional secretary. Or at least that’s the way it used to be.

“Jesus, kid!” She took a hard drag on her cigarette and leaned back in her desk chair. “I never thought I’d see you again! What are you doing back?”

“Guess I’m not cut out for the big city after all,” I said.

She nodded sagely. “Not many people are. Though I have to say, you look a bit, well, underfed. And I can’t say I like that hairstyle on you.”

“I’ll never go to that hair dresser again!” I laughed, automatically running my hand through the short curls. “It’ll grow back,” I reassured her. “Faster than you think.”

“Have you been sick or something?”

“No, no, I’m fine. Maybe I was a little homesick.”

“Perhaps you should take it easy. Rest up. Why not come see me in another week?”

It wasn’t like her to worry about anyone’s health.

“I’m right as rain. So”—I sat forward, gave her a smile full of history and complicity—“what have you got for me?”

Maude flicked a bit of ash into a mug, where it fizzled in the remains of her cold coffee. “Nothing.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I haven’t got anything for anyone, kid. Don’t you read the papers? The whole country’s out of work.”

This wasn’t the reception I’d been expecting. Maude always had some lead tucked up her sleeve.

“But, Maude”—I tried to laugh, but it came out forced, like a broken machine gun—“there has to be something!”

She picked up a single sheet in her in-tray. “See this? This is it—I’ve got one job. And about two hundred girls waiting for my phone call. And I’m sorry to say, kid, but you’re not what they’re looking for.”

“What is it?”

She squinted as she read the heading. “A temporary clerk/salesgirl.”

“But I can do that!” This time my laugh sounded real—full of relief. “I don’t care if it’s not secretarial. I’m not going to be picky!” I added graciously.

“Yes, but not just any clerk. It says”—she referred to the paper again—“‘The girl in question should be a young woman of quality, well-spoken and professional, able to create a favorable impression with affluent clientele.’” She peered at me over her glasses. “Allow me to translate: that’s ‘No Irish redheads, thanks.’ They want a blueblood. Or at least someone who passes for one. It’s one of those fancy shops on Charles Hill.”

“Look, I can’t go home with nothing, Maude. You don’t understand. I’ve got bills, debts to pay.”

“No, you’re right,” she said flatly. “I’ve never had a bill in my life.”

“What about the telephone company? They always need girls, don’t they?”

“Not anymore. They let fifty go last month.” She stubbed her cigarette out in the mug. “I’m sorry, really. I am.”

“What’s the address of this shop?”

“Oh, no!” She shook her head. “No, I’m not taking any chances! I need this commission!”

“I know how to speak properly and which fork to use at dinner!” I had an idea. “You know what? I’ll just dye my hair blond!”

“Are you kidding me? And end up looking like every two-bit secretary I already have on the books, all of them trying to be Joan Blondell or Jean Harlow? These people want a young woman of quality, not a chorus girl!”

“Please, Maude!” I was starting to sound desperate. “Just give me one chance. That’s all I’m asking.”

She winced; the conversation was painful for both of us. “I’ve known you a long time, Maeve. And you’re a smart girl with a lot of potential. But my God, if you haven’t got lousy timing!” A buzzer sounded in the room next door. “Things are tough here. Real tough. Maybe you should’ve stayed in New York.”

She got up and went into the waiting room to unlock the door.

I grabbed the paper from her in-tray. A card was attached to the bottom. I tore it off and shoved it into my pocket.

It wasn’t until I got outside in the street that I took it out again and looked at it.

WINSHAW AND KESSLER

Antiquities, Rare Objects, and Fine Art

Under the address were the following lines:

EXTRAORDINARY ITEMS BOUGHT, SOLD,

AND OBTAINED UPON REQUEST

Absolute discretion guaranteed ______

R. H. Stearns had long been established as the most exclusive department store in Boston. Located in a tall, narrow building overlooking the Common, its hallmark green awnings promised only the finest, most fashionable merchandise inside. Already the windows were dressed with pretty pastel displays of spring fashions in stark contrast to the customers, still bundled in thick winter coats and furs, browsing through the long aisles.

I didn’t go in through the polished brass doors, though, but went round to the back of the building. Normally visitors were prohibited from using the staff entrance, but I managed to walk in behind a couple of cleaning girls unnoticed. There was only one person who could help me now, and unfortunately, she wasn’t going to like it.

The alterations workshop was a large windowless room in the basement between the stock rooms and the loading bay, filled with long rows of sewing machines, ironing boards, and clothing rails. The constant clattering of the machines echoing off the cement floor and ceiling made it sound like a factory. Twenty or so women worked side by side, wearing white cotton calico smocks over their street clothes. The department was presided over by Mr. Vye, a very particular, exacting man in his mid-fifties who sat at a desk near the door. He assigned each garment, liaised with the customers, and oversaw the final result. Everything had to go through him, including me.

Ma had a sewing machine at the front of the room in a prime position. It was widely acknowledged that her abilities with difficult materials like silk, taffeta, organza, and brocade were extraordinary, and as a result she was the first choice for eveningwear alterations. Behind her on a dress form was a fitted gown of black velvet with rhinestone straps. When I arrived she was kneeling on the floor, pins in her mouth, taking up the hem.

Mr. Vye scowled at me, an intruder in his domain. “May I help you, young lady?”

“Oh, that’s my daughter!” Ma got up, brushed the stray threads from her knees. “You remember my daughter, Maeve, don’t you? She’s just come back from New York!”

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” I apologized. “Only I wondered if I could have a quick word with my mum.”

He nodded begrudgingly, and we went into the hall.

“I need a favor, Ma.”

“Tell me what happened at the interview. Did they have anything for you?”

“There’s not a lot out there, but there is one job. Only I need your help.” I lowered my voice. “Ma, I have to dye my hair.”

“Dye your hair?” She recoiled as if I’d just slapped her across the face. “Certainly not! You have beautiful hair! It was bad enough when you cut it. Only fast girls do that sort of thing!”

“But it’s for a job, Ma!”

“What kind of job? A cigarette girl?” She folded her arms across her chest. “Absolutely not!”

I would’ve happily taken a job as a cigarette girl, but I didn’t tell her that.

“Look, I don’t want to look fast, or cheap,” I explained. “Which is why I came to you. It’s for a job in Charles Town. An antiques shop. They want a woman of quality.”

“Really?” Now she was indignant. “And what are you, may I ask?”

I lost my patience. “What do I look like, Mum? Do you think anyone’s going to figure me for Irish? Why don’t I just go in clutching a harp and dancing a jig?”

“There’s no need to be vulgar!” But she frowned and bit her lower lip. We both knew she’d spent years erasing all traces of her Irish brogue for exactly the same reason. But dying one’s hair was vulgar and brazen as far as she was concerned. She tried to sidestep the question. “Well, I can’t help you tonight. I’m going to mass.”

“We can go to mass any night! And we haven’t got time—the interview is first thing tomorrow morning!”

But she dug in her heels. “I’m afraid I have a prior arrangement, Maeve.”

“If you help me, it will turn out all right, I know it will. I won’t look cheap or fast. But I can’t manage it on my own. Please!”

I could feel her wavering between what she thought was respectable and what she knew was necessary.

“Who knows when I’ll have another chance?” I begged.

“Maybe. If you come to church.” She drove a hard bargain, leveraging my eternal soul against the certain depravity of becoming a blonde. “But I’m warning you, Maeve, this is a terrible, terrible mistake!”

Nonetheless, she took me up to the ladies’ hair salon on the top floor and introduced me to M. Antoine. M. Antoine was French to his wealthy clients and considerably less Gallic in front of staff like Ma. Originally from Liverpool, he’d apparently acquired the accent along with most of his hairdressing skills on the boat on the way over.

He gave me the once-over from behind an entirely useless gold pince-nez. “It’s a shame, really.” He poked a finger through my red curls. “I have clients that would kill for this color!”

I avoided my mother’s eye. “Yes, but you can see how it limits me, can’t you?”

“It’s true,” he conceded, “especially in this town. Some people have no imagination.”

M. Antoine sent us home was a little bottle of peroxide wrapped in a brown paper bag, which Ma quickly jammed into her handbag as if it were bootleg gin. “No more than twenty minutes,” he instructed, firmly. “The difference between a beautiful blonde and a circus poodle is all in the timing. And remember to rinse, ladies, rinse! Rinse as if your very lives depended on it!”

The sign above the door read “Winshaw and Kessler Antiquities, Rare Objects, and Fine Art” in faded gold lettering. It swung back and forth in the wind, creaking on its chains like an old rocking chair.

I stood huddled in the doorway, waiting.

Maude’s voice rang in my head: “The girl in question should be a young woman of quality, well-spoken and professional, able to create a favorable impression with affluent clientele.”

A blueblood.

I’d looked the word up the night before. The term came from the Spanish, literally translated sangre azul, describing the visible veins of the fair-skinned aristocrats. But of course here in Boston we had our own special name for these social and cultural elite, Brahmins—old East Coast families who’d stumbled off the Mayflower to teach the English a lesson. There was an even more telling lineage behind that word; it referred to the highest of the four major castes in traditional Indian society. The Boston Brahmins were a club you couldn’t join unless you married into it, and they didn’t like to mix with anyone who’d floated in on one of the newer ships, landing on Ellis Island rather than Plymouth Rock.

Adjusting my hat in the shop-window reflection, I wondered if it would work. The effect was more dramatic than I’d expected. I looked not just different but like a whole other person; my eyes seemed wider, deeper in color, and my skin went from being white and translucent to a pale ivory beneath my soft golden-blond waves. But would it be enough?

To my mother’s credit, she’d been thorough, covering every inch of my scalp in bleach at least three times to make certain there were no telltale signs. And when it was rinsed clean, she wound it into pin curls to be tied tight under a hairnet all night. When I woke, she was already up, sitting by the stove in her dressing gown sewing a Stearn’s label into the inside lapel of my coat. “It’s one of the only labels people ever notice,” she said. “And a coat from Stearn’s is a coat to be proud of.”

“Even though it’s not from Stearn’s?” I asked.

“They won’t know that. They’ll look at the name, not the cut.”

For someone who didn’t approve of what I was doing, she was dedicated nonetheless.

Now here I was, on a street I’d never even been down before, in my counterfeit coat and curls.

It was almost nine in the morning, and no one was around. In the North End everything was open by seven; there were people to greet, gossip to share, deals to be struck. The streets hummed and buzzed morning till late into the night. But here was the stillness and order of money, of a life that wasn’t driven by hustle, sacrifice, and industry. Time was the luxury of another class.

So I practiced smiling instead—not too eager, not too wide, but a discreet, dignified smile, the kind of gentle, unhurried expression that I imagined was natural to women in this part of town, an almost imperceptible softening of the lips, just enough to indicate the pleasant expectation of having every desire fulfilled.

Eventually an older man arrived, head bent down against the wind. He was perhaps five foot five, almost as wide as he was tall, with round wire-rimmed glasses. He glanced up as he fished a set of keys from his coat pocket. “You’re the new girl? From the agency?”

“Yes. I’m Miss Fanning.”

“You’re tall.” It was an accusation.

“Yes,” I agreed, uncertainly.

“Hmm.” He unlocked the door. “I ask for a clerk, and they send me an Amazon.”

He switched on the lights, and I followed him inside. Though narrow, the shop went back a long way and was much larger than it looked from the outside.

“Stay here,” he said. “I’m going to turn on the heat.”

He headed into the back.

I’d never been in an antiques store before—the dream of everyone I knew was to own something new. And I knew all too well the used furniture stalls in the South End where things were piled on top of one another in a haphazard jumble, smelling of dust and mildew. But this couldn’t have been more different.

Crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, the floors were covered with oriental carpets, and paintings of every description and time period were crowded on top of one another, dado rail to ceiling, like in a Victorian drawing room. There were ornate gilded mirrors, fine porcelain, gleaming silver. I picked up what I thought was a large pink seashell, only to discover that an elaborate cameo of the Three Graces had been painstakingly etched into one side. It was the most incredible, unnecessary thing I’d ever seen. And there was a table covered with maybe thirty tiny snuffboxes or more, all decorated with intricate mosaic designs of famous monuments, like the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Great Pyramid at Giza, none of them bigger than a silver dollar. It was more like a museum than a shop.

Little cards with neatly printed descriptions were everywhere.

Here was a “17th-century French oak buffet,” a “gilded German Rococo writing desk,” a pair of stiff-backed “Tudor English chairs” in mahogany so old they were almost black. Tall freestanding cases housed porcelain vases, pottery urns, a trio of Italian Renaissance bronzes. A row of bizarre African wooden figures squatted on the floor, staring through round cartoon eyes, comical and yet shockingly sexual at the same time. And the prices! I had to keep myself from laughing out loud. Five hundred dollars for a dresser? You could buy a brand-new automobile for less! Near the back of the shop in glass display cases trinkets, watches, and fine estate jewelry were arranged against waves of dark green velvet. The ticking of half a dozen clocks hanging from the wall, ornamented with inlaid wood and gold, sounded gently.

The place even had a smell all its own, a rich musty scent of aging wood, old textiles, and silver polish. This was the perfume of centuries and continents, of time.

Now I knew why they’d wanted a “young woman of quality.” People didn’t come here to replace a table or sofa; they were collecting, searching out the rare and unique. They wanted a girl who knew what it was like to acquire things out of amusement rather than need. Who sympathized with those whose lives were so pleasantly arranged that they hungered for beauty and meaning rather than food.

The old man returned, took off his hat. His thinning hair was weightless and fine, circling the widening bald spot on the top of his head like a white wreath. “It’ll warm up soon. I’m Karl Kessler.” He gave a tug at his suit vest, which was struggling to cover his stomach. “What was your name again?”

“May. With a y, of course,” I added. (I didn’t want to use the Irish name Maeve.) “I was named after the month of my birth,” I lied.

“And do you know anything about antiques, May with a y?”

“Oh, I know a little.” I tried to seem casual. “My family had a few good pieces. I was wondering, that buffet over there … is that oak, by any chance?”

“Why, yes. It is.”

“I thought so.” I flashed my well-practiced smile. “I’m so fond of oak, aren’t you?”

He fixed me with a sharp black eye. “Where is your family from?”

“New York. Albany, actually. But I’m here staying with my aunt.” I ran my fingers lightly along the smooth finish of a Flemish bookcase, as if I were remembering something similar back home. “You see, I had a particularly troublesome beau, Mr. Kessler. We all thought it best that I get away for a while.”

“And you can type?”

“Oh, yes! I used to type all Papa’s letters. But to be honest, I’ve never considered a sales job before.” I frowned a little, as if pondering the details for the first time. “I suppose it means working every day?”

“Yes. Yes, it does.” He nodded slowly. “But I thought the woman from the agency was sending me a girl with secretarial skills?”

“Dear old Maude!” I gave what I hoped passed as an affectionate chuckle. “You see, she’s a family friend. I told her I’d try to help her out. Though, as it happens,” I added, “I did attend the Katherine Gibbs Secretarial School. Of course, it was more of a diversion than a necessity. But if I do something, Mr. Kessler, I like to be able to do it properly. I was taught that excellence and hard work are virtues, no matter what your situation.”

“I see.”

“And the wages?” I didn’t want to seem overeager. “I suppose they’re … reasonable?”

“Twenty-five a week. Does that seem reasonable to you?”

“I’m sure it will do very nicely.”

“So”—he leaned back against the counter—“do you have other interests?”

“Oh, yes! I like to travel and read, English literature mostly. Also I do a little painting and drawing …” I tried to remember what the heroines in Jane Austen novels did. “I’m terribly fond of long walks and embroidery.”

He nodded again. “You read a great deal?”

“Absolutely. I love books.”

“So you know how to tell a story?”

“I certainly hope so, Mr. Kessler.”

“Well, selling isn’t so different from telling a story. Everything here has a history. Where it comes from, how it’s made. Why it’s important. Once you understand that, the rest is easy. For example, take this piece.” He walked over to a small writing desk. “This is an eighteenth-century German Rococo Toilletentisch. This little table had many uses in its day. Primarily it would have been a dressing table, which is why it has a mirror in the center. Inside, below the mirror, the wash utensils would be stored.” He opened up the small drawers. “And to the sides, jars, combs, and jewelry. But that’s not all. There’s space for writing and working, playing card games. These tables are light enough to be easily carried from room to room. Mechanical fittings enable them to change use, for example from tea table to games table. It’s a fine example from the workshop of Abraham and David Roentgen, specialists in constructing such furniture.”

“Why, it’s ingenious!”

“Isn’t it?” he agreed. “But that’s not why someone would buy it. Someone would choose this little table over all the other little tables on this street for one reason alone: because it belonged to Maria Anna Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s older sister. Because this little table, with all its uses, sat in the same room, day after day, with the world’s greatest composer as he learned his scales as a boy.” His hand rested tenderly on the delicate inlaid wood top. “She wrote in her diary here, the same diary that her brother would later steal and fill with false entries about himself, all in the third person.”

“Really?” Suddenly I pictured it in a room with a harpsichord and a violin, overlooking the cobblestone streets of Salzburg, snowflakes dancing in the icy winter air. “How do you know all that?”

Mr. Kessler gave a little shrug. “You doubt me? I believe it because that’s what I’m told. Just as I believe you’re from Albany and used to type all your father’s letters.”

My heart skipped a beat, and I felt the heat rising in my cheeks. “Why … I’m not sure what you mean …”

He raised a hand to stop me. “A good counterfeit is as much a work of art as the real thing. Perhaps even better, May with a y. You see, I spoke to the lady at the agency yesterday afternoon. She rang to say she had a nice, reliable girl for me named Roberta, but she needed my address again because someone had stolen my card.”

I opened my mouth but nothing came out. I’d pushed it too far.

“And that, Miss Fanning, is how you sell an antique table. With a story and a smile and a healthy dose of truth and lies.” He cocked his head to one side. “The woman from the agency also told me to be on the lookout for a very determined redhead. I’m beginning to wonder, is your hair really blond?”

“Well, it is now!” I headed to the door.

“Where are you going?” he called.

I whipped round. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re angry!” Mr. Kessler chuckled. “Well, that beats all!”

“You think I’m funny?” Embarrassment vanished; now I was furious. “There’s nothing funny about it, Mr. Kessler! I’m flat broke, and I need a job!”

“And I still need a clerk. In fact”—he ran his fingers through his beard—“a blonde from Albany would suit me very well.”

“Ha, bloody, ha!” I flung open the door.

“Hold on a moment! I need a girl who can make sales and keep the books, and who fits in with my customers.”

“What about Roberta?”

He gave a distinctly Eastern European shrug, a kind of slow roll of the shoulders that came from centuries of inherited resignation. “I doubt Roberta has your dramatic intuition. Now calm down and close the door. Let’s see your dress.”

“Why?”

“Come now!” He made a soft tutting noise, as if he was luring a stray cat with a saucer of milk. “No one’s going to hurt you.”

I closed the door and took off my coat, careful to hold it so the label showed. I was wearing the navy blue knit. It was the nicest outfit I owned, and even at that, I’d spent the night before darning moth holes beneath the arms.

Mr. Kessler opened up the jewelry cabinet and took out a long string of pearls and a pair of pearl clip-on earrings. “Here,” he said, handing them over. “You can wear what you like from the display, as long as it goes back at the end of the day. If a man comes in, he likes to see the jewelry on a pretty girl. It’s the easiest way to sell it.”

I wasn’t sure I understood. “Are you hiring me?”

“If you can keep the fiction for the customers, you might be rather useful. I’m looking for someone adaptable, with a pragmatic disposition. And I have to admit, your stories have flair.” He winked, tapping the side of his nose. “The bit about the persistent beau was clever. You’ll be good at selling.”

“But … but aren’t you afraid I’m going to steal something?”

He gave me a rather surprised look. “Are you?”

“Well, no.”

“You’re an actress, May with a y. Not a thief,” he informed me. “A real thief doesn’t warn you of their intentions.”

I followed him back behind the glass counters to a room divided into two offices. He hung his coat up in one and pointed to the other. “You can use that desk. It’s Mr. Winshaw’s.”

“Won’t Mr. Winshaw need it?”

“Mr. Winshaw isn’t here. Do you drink tea or coffee?”

“Coffee, please.”

“So do I.” He gestured to the back storage room. “There’s a sink in the bathroom and a kettle on the hot plate.”

Then he went inside his office and closed the door.

I stood there, unsure of what exactly had just happened.

Then I slipped the pearls over my head. There was no mistaking the real thing. They were heavy with a creamy golden-pink luster. The echo of some long-lost perfume clung to them; sensual, sharp, and sophisticated, it could be muted by time but not silenced.

Instantly they transformed that old blue knit; when your jewels are real, your dress doesn’t matter.

But no sooner had I put them on than an eerie feeling came over me, at once familiar yet anxious and uncertain.

The pearls reminded me of someone—the girl on the far ward.

BINGHAMTON STATE HOSPITAL, NEW YORK, 1931

She was wearing pearls. That was the first thing I noticed about her. Large and even, perfectly matched, falling just below her collarbone over the thin blue cotton hospital gown. She strolled into the day room of the Binghamton State Hospital with its bare, institutional green walls and floor stinking of strong bleach like she was wandering into the dining room of the Ritz. Willowy and fine boned, she had blue eyes fringed by long, very black lashes and deep brown hair cut in a straight bob, pushed back from her face. A navy cardigan was draped casually over her shoulders, as if she were on her way to a summer luncheon and had turned back at the last minute to grab it, just in case the weather turned.

The rest of us were in the middle of what the nurses referred to as “occupational therapy,” or making ugly hook rugs. The girl with the pearls moved slowly from table to table like visiting royalty, surveying everyone’s work with a benign, interested expression.

“Oh, how interesting!” she’d murmur, or “What an unusual color choice!”

Then she stopped beside me. Up went a perfectly plucked eyebrow, like a question mark. “Well, now! Surely that’s the most deeply disturbing thing I’ve ever seen in my life!”

“Well, no one’s asking you, are they?” I was tired of crazy people. And this place was bursting with them in all shapes and sizes.

“There’s no need to take it that way. It’s a very powerful piece.”

I glared at her. “It’s not a piece. It’s a rug.”

“A very angry rug, if you ask me.” She sat down, picked up a hook. “Go on then—show me how you do it.”

I wasn’t in the mood for a demonstration. I was only here because the staff made me come, hauling me out of my usual spot in the rocking chair by the window. “Ask the nurse if you’re so interested.”

She laughed. It was a drawing-room laugh—the practiced jocularity of a hostess, high and false. “Don’t be so serious—I’m only teasing you!” She nodded to the other women in the room. “You’re the best of the lot, you know. An artist!”

It wasn’t much of a compliment. There were maybe a dozen of us rounded up for the afternoon session, all dressed in shapeless blue smocks, heads bowed over our work. There’d been a lice outbreak, and we’d all been clipped. But this girl still had a good head of hair. She must be new. The two of us were the youngest in the room by maybe ten years, although it was hard to tell for sure.

“So you’re a connoisseur, is that it?” I pointed to a thin, wiry woman in her mid-fifties with no teeth, furiously hooking across the room. “Mary’s pretty good. Why don’t you go bother her? She doesn’t speak. Ever. But she can make a rug in an afternoon.”

The girl twirled the hook between her fingers. “But you have talent—a real feeling for the medium, possibly even a great future in hooked rugs. Provided of course that people don’t want to actually use them in their homes. So”—she leaned forward—“tell me, how long have you been here?”

I yanked another yarn through. I’d been here long enough to wonder if I’d ever be allowed out again. Mine was an open-ended sentence: I needed the doctor’s consent before I’d see the outside world again. But I wasn’t about to let her see that I’d never been so alone and terrified in my life. I gave a shrug. “Maybe a month, I don’t know,” as if I hadn’t been counting every hour of every day. “What about you?”

“I’m just stopping in for a short while,” she said vaguely.

“‘Stopping in’?” I snorted. “On your way where, exactly?”

She ignored my sarcasm. “Why are you here? In for anything interesting?”

“This isn’t a resort, you know,” I reminded her.

“Are you here voluntarily or as a ward of the county?”

I gave her a look.

“You never know”—she held up her hands apologetically—“some people come in on their own.”

“Did you?”

For someone who liked asking questions, she was less keen on giving answers. Crossing her legs, she jogged her ankle up and down impatiently. “They say it’s an illness. Do you believe that? That we can all be magically cured?”

“How would I know? Where did you get those pearls?”

“My father gave them to me.” She ran her fingers over them in an automatic gesture, as if reassuring herself over and over again that they were still there. “I never take them off.”

“Neither would I.”

“I like them better than diamonds, don’t you? Diamonds lack subtlety. They’re so … common.”

She was definitely crazy. “Not in my neighborhood!” I laughed.

“Well …” Her fingers ran over the necklace again and again. “He’s dead now.”

“Who?”

“My dear devoted father.”

I considered saying something sympathetic, but social niceties weren’t expected or appreciated much here. Besides, I didn’t want her to feel like she could confide in me.

The girl watched Mute Mary across the room, working away. “What are you really in for?”

“What’s it to you?”

“Come on! Your secret’s safe—who am I going to tell?”

I don’t know why I told her, maybe just so she’d shut up and go away, or maybe in some sick way I was trying to impress her. “I cut myself with a razor blade.”

She didn’t miss a beat. “Deliberate or accidental?”

“Deliberate.” It was the first time I’d ever admitted it aloud.

But if I expected a reaction, I was disappointed; she didn’t bat an eye.

“So no voices in your head or anything?”

“No. What about you?” I looked across at her. “Do you hear voices?”

“Only my own. Mind you, that’s bad enough. I’m not entirely sure I’m on my side.”

Actually, that made me smile—for the first time in weeks.

“So at least you’re not really insane,” the girl with the pearls cheerfully pointed out.

“What about you? Why are you here?”

“Oh, they’ve given me all kinds of diagnoses. Hysterical, suicidal, depressive, delusional … Big Latin words for ‘a bad egg.’ This place is all right, actually. Not like some of the other ones I’ve been to before.” And she smiled again, as if to prove her point.

“So why haven’t I seen you on the ward? And why isn’t your hair cut?”

She picked up a ball of red yarn. “I don’t know. Are they meant to? I’d prefer they didn’t. I’ve just managed to grow it out from the most frightful French bob.” She stifled a yawn. “God, I’m tired! The woman in the room next to me moans all night.”

I stopped. “You have your own room?”

The nurse walked in and clapped her hands. “Work tools down, ladies! Stack your rugs on the table and follow me. It’s time for exercise.”

I got up and stood in line with the others. Then Mrs. Verdent, the head nurse, appeared in the doorway, casting a dark shadow across the floor. Instantly everyone went quiet.

Mrs. Verdent’s mouth was twisted into an expression of permanent disapproval and her white linen uniform was tightly fitted, covering her formidable curves so completely that she gave the impression of being upholstered rather than dressed. She scanned the room before advancing ominously toward the girl.

“I’m not sure you’re meant to be here,” she said pointedly.

“I quite agree.” The girl stood up, brushed off her hospital gown. “Have them bring the car round while I get my things.”

The joke did not go over well.

We all held our breath in dreadful anticipation of what would come next.

Mrs. Verdent’s eyes narrowed and her voice took on a subzero iciness. But she remained remarkably calm, far more civil than she ever was with any of us. “You’re not meant to mix with others. You know that. It’s time you went back to your room.” And taking the girl firmly by the elbow, she escorted her out.

“Good-bye, ladies!” the girl called out as she was trundled down the hall. “It’s been a real pleasure! Truly! Keep up the good work!”

As luck would have it, one of the other girls at the Nightingale Boarding House worked an early shift at a diner and found the bathroom locked from the inside at five in the morning. When no one answered, the landlady got the police to knock down the door, and there I was, passed out, job half done.

Had I known what would happen next, though, I would’ve paid more attention to what I was doing. I was committed to the Binghamton State Hospital in upstate New York, declared temporarily insane, induced by extreme intoxication.

The building itself might have been nice if it were used for any other purpose. Formerly the Binghamton Inebriate Asylum, it was a rambling Gothic Revival structure with ornately carved wooden staircases and high vaulted ceilings. The main entrance featured stained-glass windows depicting scenes of Jesus healing the sick, helping the lame to their feet in rich jewel tones that cast rainbows on the parquet floor. All the other windows were covered in metal mesh. Wide, gracious corridors led from one terrifying therapy room to another, and though the hospital was set on acres of rolling green landscaped lawns, the grounds were deserted; no one but the gardeners were allowed outside.

The first week I was there, they gave me the famous belladonna cure, known among the patients as “puke and purge.” Regular doses of belladonna, herbs, and castor oil were meant to “clean out the system.” But all I remember is being doubled over with stomach cramps, vomiting, and diarrhea, drifting in and out of hallucinations. Two large nurses dragged me to and from the toilet to the bed, occasionally hosing me down with cold water in between. The doses came every hour on the hour for three days straight. And then the hydrotherapy and chemical shock treatments began. Only after another week of those was I finally deemed lucid enough to meet with Dr. Joseph, the psychiatrist.

With his closely trimmed beard, spectacles, and shiny bald head, Dr. Joseph looked like a modern-day Santa Claus. But looks were deceiving. Beneath his benevolent exterior, he held our fate in his hands. Without his signature on the release papers, none of us was going anywhere. Every question he asked was a test, each answer proof of either recovery or illness, and all the while he took endless notes with a shiny silver pen. It must’ve had a broken nib because it made a soft scratching noise on the paper like a thorn scraping against skin. I couldn’t work out if more notes meant a right answer or a wrong one.

He wanted to know everything—why I went to New York in the first place, about my job, why I’d tried to do myself in.

I gave him the edited version—told him about the customer who accused me of stealing, described the scene he made on the dance floor. I could still feel the shame; the humiliation of being escorted to my locker by the manager, the other girls standing around, watching, more indifferent than sad … Lois hadn’t even bothered to look me in the eye.

“I felt so exposed.”

“Exposed?” More scratching, pen against paper. “What do you mean by that exactly?”

How could I explain it? A feeling that all my life I’d been heading down an endless hallway lined with mirrors, running as fast as I could, doing anything to distract myself and avoid seeing my own reflection.

“Miss Fanning,” he prompted, “you were saying?”

I realized my mistake at using such an open-ended word. “I don’t know. That was a stupid thing to say. I don’t know why I said it.”

“And that’s what precipitated the incident? Losing your job?”

“Yes.”

He seemed unconvinced. “Are you sure nothing else happened? Before?”

I didn’t understand.

“You may have been aware,” he continued, “that we performed a complete physical examination on you when you were admitted. I have the results of that examination here.” He paused, resting his hand on a folder in front of him. “Are you certain there isn’t anything you want to tell me, Miss Fanning? Something you would like to confide?”

I looked down at my hands folded in my lap.

“The report says you’ve had an operation within the past six months. An abortion. You were pregnant when you came to New York, isn’t that right?”

My head felt weightless and my mouth dry.

“And the father? Who was the father?”

“No one … I mean, someone I knew in Boston,” I managed.

“That was the real reason you left, wasn’t it? You were running away.”

I couldn’t answer.

Sighing heavily, he leaned back in his chair. He already had low expectations, and still I’d managed to disappoint him. “Most women see children as a blessing.” He waited for me to explain myself but I had no excuses. We both shared the same poor opinion of me. “Can you see that your problems are of your own making?” he asked after a while. “That in trying to escape life you’ve only made yours worse?”

“I guess I’m not like other women,” I mumbled.

“No, you certainly are not. There’s a line between normal and abnormal behavior. You’ve already crossed that line. Now you must work very hard to get back on the right side of it again. Make no mistake: it will require all your efforts. You’re in a very dangerous position.” He held out his hands. “Look at where you are, Miss Fanning. You’re a burden on society. Sexually promiscuous, morally bereft; if you don’t change, then this is most likely where your descendants will end up too. I’ve seen it time and time again. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

The mirrored hallway came to an abrupt end; the reflection I’d been avoiding stared back at me, ugly and void of hope.

“Do you want to spend your life locked up in institutions?”

“No, Dr. Joseph.”

“Then stay away from dance halls, strange men, and speakeasies. And avoid drink all together. No one likes a fast young woman, and a drunkard is repulsive in the extreme.” He stared at me hard. “It’s a matter of discipline and character. Of willpower. I’ll be frank: you have a long road ahead of you.”

His words frightened me. “But I will be able to leave? I mean if I try very hard to change, will you let me go?”

“If you cooperate and do what’s required, you’ll be released in due course,” he allowed. “But it’s up to you to continue to reform your ways out in the real world. Otherwise you’ll end up right back inside.”

He made a final note to my file and then looked up.

“When a person becomes dependent upon the habit of escaping their difficulties, they lose touch with reality and deteriorate rapidly. But there is hope. Remove the habit and sanity returns. It will take effort, but if you change your ways and monitor yourself carefully, you can recover and be like everyone else. You can live a normal life.”

He let me go after that, back to the dayroom with the rows of rocking chairs and wire-mesh-covered windows.

I sat down and stared out at the gray winter sky.

A normal life.

Who in the world wanted anything so small?

I only saw the girl with the pearls one more time after that, two weeks later.

It was a Tuesday morning, just before they let me out. Tuesdays and Thursdays were treatment days. Extra orderlies were called in, banging on the doorframes of the wards with wooden clubs to round the patients up. “Time for treatment! Get in line! Treatment time!”

Treatment was a form of shock therapy that took place in a room at the end of the ward. Outside was a long row of wooden chairs that went all the way down the hall, overseen by nurses and orderlies standing with their backs to the windows, keeping the line moving.

It was early morning and the sky was clear and bright. Outside, a thin coating of snow was melting on the sunny side of the sloping lawn.

One by one, we all went into the room, and the line moved down. I wanted to be last; to feel that after I was finished, there would be only peace and stillness.

But I didn’t get my wish. Instead a nurse appeared at the other end of the hallway with another patient from a different wing. It was the girl. Even from a distance, I knew it was her from the way she moved, as if she’d spent her entire life walking from one cocktail party to another balancing books on her head. The nurse was talking quietly to her, hand on her elbow, pulling her gently along. Her eyes were wide with fear, footsteps slow. For all her bravado and sophisticated talk before, she was clearly frightened now.

The nurse put her in the chair next to mine.

“You’ll see.” The nurse gave her a terse smile. “It will be over before you know it.”

Instinctively, the girl reached for the pearls but they were gone now; confiscated by the staff. She wrapped her arms around herself and curled inward.

I hadn’t liked her much before, or rather I’d resented the way she’d swanned in, pretending to know everything. But now I felt for her, bent double with apprehension, cradling her dread like a mother with an infant.

We sat for a few minutes before she said, quite softly, “Tell me about a time when you were happy.”

Normally I would’ve ignored her. But today I was getting out, about to be free again and in the unique position to give her what she was asking for—hope.

I thought a moment. “There was the time at my second cousin Sinead’s wedding, after the ceremony, when we were in the church hall, having a ceilidh.”

“A what?”

“A ceilidh. It’s an Irish word. It means a dance, but with traditional music, proper reels. There’s always lots to drink, plenty of food, people fighting …”

“At a wedding?”

“Wouldn’t be an Irish wedding without it.” I leaned forward, elbows on my knees. “You see, the first thing you need to understand is that I was tall for my age. I’ve always been too tall. And skinny as a broom—no figure to speak of. So I was never much to look at as a kid, and I always felt pretty awkward. But that night I had one important advantage. My mother, she’s a very good dancer, and she taught me. A step dancer, they call it. There’s quite a lot of fancy footwork involved, and it takes real skill. For some reason I was good at it too, which was a miracle because I was all arms and legs. But when I got going and felt the music pulsing through me, I could really dance. And that night, for the first time in my life, I was nothing short of magnificent, dancing with everyone, showing off.” I smiled a little. “People stood round and watched me, clapping and cheering!”

The door at the end of the hall opened again, closed.

The girl’s face drained of color. “Go on,” she said. “Then what happened?”

“Some of the men took to teasing me. I suppose I looked ridiculous bouncing up and down with my red hair. They were calling me Matchstick because I was so thin, and my hair, well, I guess it looked like a flame. I wanted to get even with them, show them. So when the band took a break, they offered me a whiskey. I think they were trying to make a fool of me. I’d never had one before, but I lied, I told them I had. And then I drank it down in one. I don’t know how I did it, but I managed not to cough or choke. Well, that shocked them.”

“I’ll bet it did!”

“They thought it was funny. ‘She holds her whiskey like a man!’” I could still remember the way the liquor felt, burning down the back of my throat like fire. How it hit me like a punch to the stomach. It was like I’d never been born until then. Everything inside me suddenly felt warm and right and comfortable. “So they gave me another and I drank that too. Same thing, right back. And now I was their mascot, see. And when the band came back, I danced even harder.”

“So you were the belle of the ball.” She wanted to believe in fairy tales today, happy endings.

“Well, not quite.”

“Maybe you’ll do that again someday. When you get out.” Her eyes scanned my face, searching for something to cling to. “Don’t you think?”

“Sure. Maybe.”

I didn’t tell her that at some point my legs gave out, and the next thing I knew I was being sick, out in the alleyway behind the church. One of the men took me out, tried to hide me from my mother. I was dreadfully ill the next morning. Ma made an awful fuss with my cousin, and we never went to another ceilidh again.

“Your turn,” I said. “Tell me about a time you were happy.”

She looked out of the window covered in metal mesh that separated us from the sharp winter air, from the blue skies, snow, and sunshine. “I don’t have any memories. That’s why I’m here. To get rid of them all.”

BOSTON, FEBRUARY 1932

On the way home from my new job, I stopped by Panificio Russo on Prince Street. Open for business from six every morning till late at night, it was more than a bakery, it was a local institution. Just before dawn you could smell the bread baking, perfuming the cold morning air. Rich butter biscuits, dozens of different cannoli and biscotti, delicately layered sfogliatelle and zeppole, little Italian doughnuts, were made fresh each day. Traditional southern Italian cakes like cassata siciliana vied for space with airy ciabatta and hearty stromboli stuffed with cheese and meats, and fragrant panmarino made with raisins and scented with rosemary, all stacked in neat rows. Three small wooden tables sat by the front window, in the sun, where the anziani, the elderly men of the community, sipped espresso and advised on all manner of local business.

Well known throughout Boston, Russo’s delivered baked goods to many restaurants and hotels in the city. But they were first and foremost a family-run business and a proud cornerstone of North End life. It was widely known that once Russo’s ovens were hot and their own bread under way, poorer families from the tenements were welcome to bring their own dough, proofed and ready, to the kitchen door to be baked. Children waited in the back alleyway, playing tag and kick-the-can until the loaf was pulled out and wrapped in newspaper so they could hurry home with it, still hot. When a family finally graduated in fortunes from the alleyway to buying their bread from the front of the shop, Umberto Russo proudly served the woman himself, and his son Alfonso would make a treat of a few choice pastries.

I’d grown up with the Russo children and could remember when the bakery was little more than a single room with an oven. They were famous for their tangy sweet zaletti, dense breakfast rolls flavored with orange rind, vanilla, and raisins, and covered in powdered sugar. There was a time when I’d come in every morning to get one on my way to work. It had been a while since I’d been able to afford such treats, but now things were looking up.

The front of the shop was run by the three Russo women, sisters Pina and Angela and the formidable Maddalena Russo, their mother. They were all small and voluptuous, their figures accented by the white aprons pulled tight round their waists. I watched for my chance to catch Angela’s eye as she bustled from one end of the counter to the other, slipping between her mother and sister in an unending, seamless dance as they ducked down, reached over, slid around, or stretched high to grab the string hanging from the dispenser to tie the boxes tight. Above them, a picture of the Virgin Mary smiled calmly, radiating feminine modesty.

With her broad round face and large brown doe eyes, Angela looked just like the portrait of the Holy Mother that watched over them. Her hair curled gently, spilling out of her black crocheted hairnet to cascade softly on her cheeks. And she had a natural grace and gentleness that belied her often surprisingly sharp sense of humor.

I tried to remember the first time I’d met Angela and the Russo family but couldn’t. They’d simply always been there. For a while we’d all lived in the same tenement building, the one I still lived in now. The Russo children, especially the older boys, had “owned” the front stoop by virtue of being in the building the longest, but were gracious about sharing it with us younger ones. Angela and I were inseparable growing up: playing jacks and skipping rope, making little woolen dolls from old socks with button eyes that we pushed up and down the block in a broken-down old baby buggy that was used for everything from grocery shopping to junk collection. I was on my own a lot during the day while Ma worked piecing blouses together. But Mrs. Russo always made an extra place for me at her table, even though she already had five mouths to feed.

Angela and I made plans to run away from home and become professional dancers at eight; fell in love with the same boy, Aldo Freni, with his unusually long dark lashes, at ten; and were caught stealing lip rouge from the drugstore at thirteen, and received the same number of lashes as a result. She was the closest thing I had to a sister. And yet it was months since we’d spoken. My shame at my circumstances in New York had prevented me from writing, and she’d gotten married while I was in the hospital, a wedding I was meant to take part in as the maid of honor. Pina had to step in instead. Ma made excuses for me, told them the same tales I told her of eccentric millionaire bosses and unexpected trips abroad. But now that I was here, I felt a sudden attack of nerves and regret. The Russos knew me, could see past all my fictions.

It was Pina who spotted me first. When I left for New York, Pina was a newlywed. Now she was heavily pregnant. But though she may have enjoyed the rosy-cheeked sensuousness of a Rubens nude, there was nothing soft in her manner. “Oh, my, my!” She thrust her chin at me. “Look what the cat’s dragged in! Jean Harlow!”

Angela turned, and her face lit up. “Ciao, bella!” She made it sound light and natural, as if she’d only seen me the other day. “I didn’t recognize you! What have you done to your hair?”

The tension in my chest eased. Still, I couldn’t help noticing the wedding band that flashed, catching the morning sun as Angela expertly whipped the string around a cake box and tied it in a knot.

“Mamma mia!” Angela’s mother gasped, holding her palms to the heavens. “Maeve! What have you done to your beautiful red hair?”

All eyes turned.

“I cut it and … well …” I was turning red. “It’s for a job, actually.”

Pina snorted. “What, are you a Ziegfeld girl now?”

“Not exactly. A salesclerk. But no Irish.”

There was a time when the city was full of signs declaring “No Irish Need Apply.” We were considered little more than vermin. Then the Italians came, and suddenly we moved up a little in the world, only not quite far enough.

“Yeah, well, I’m surprised to see you here at all.” Pina folded her arms across her chest. “I thought this town wasn’t good enough for you. That only New York City would do.”

“Stop it!” Angela glared at her sister. “Just because you’ve never left Boston!”

“I don’t need to leave Boston. And evidently neither do you!” Pina laughed, nodding at me. “I hope you left a trail of bread crumbs so you could find your way home.” Pina always had a tongue like a stiletto blade. Even as a kid, she had a preternatural talent for verbal vivisection.

“Basta!” Her mother shot Pina a look. “We’ve missed you. Your mother told us you had important business in New York and couldn’t come to the wedding,” she continued evenly, resting her hands on her hips. “We’re sorry you couldn’t get away.”

Guilt stung beneath my smile.

“I’m sorry too. I mean …” I looked across at Angela; I was speaking to her more than anyone else. “I was working as a private secretary for a very wealthy man. Quite a difficult character, very demanding … I wanted to come, really I did.”

We all knew I wasn’t being honest. My story didn’t explain why I hadn’t written or called.

“Well, I’m just glad you’re here now,” Angela said, in that way she had of simply closing the door on anything difficult or unpleasant. “It’s good to have you back.” Then, popping a fresh loaf of bread into a paper bag and handing it across the counter to Mr. Ventadino, she flashed me a naughty smile. “La mia bella dai capelli biondi!”

“Ah, bella!” Mr. Ventadino laughed, eyeing me up and down. “Molto bella!”

The old men at the tables by the window laughed too, and Mrs. Russo rolled her eyes. “Girls! Comportatevi bene!”

Comportatevi bene—Italian for “behave yourself”—was the constant refrain of our childhood. When we were together, five minutes didn’t go by without Mrs. Russo saying it, usually with a rolled-up newspaper in her hand, ready to whack one or both of us on the back of the head.

Mrs. Russo turned to me, her face serious. She had a way of looking straight into your eyes, as if she could see right down into your soul. “Come stai davvero?”

“Bene. Meglio, grazie. E tu?” I answered.

When Mrs. Russo spoke in Italian, I knew all was forgiven.

“Bene, bene.” As she counted change and handed it to Mr. Ventadino, she shook her finger at us. “You girls need to grow up. And you!” She gave Mr. Ventadino a dark look too. “Dovreste vergognarvi di voi stesso! And how is your mother, Mae? I hope she’s well.”

Mrs. Russo had the knack of switching between conversations; she could reprimand Mr. Ventadino and still set an example for her daughter of civilized manners without missing a beat.

I stepped aside so Mr. Ventadino could slink past. “She’s fine, thank you.”

Mrs. Russo always asked after my mother, even though she didn’t entirely approve of her. After all the years they’d known each other, theirs was nonetheless a formal acquaintance, maintained by courtesy rather than affection. I suspected it had something to do with the fact that Ma had never married again, a fundamental feeling Mrs. Russo had about the wrongness of a young widow raising a child on her own when she could have easily taken another husband and had more children. In her world, independence was an extravagance, a kind of selfishness.

In truth, I’d always been torn between Ma and the formidable Maddalena Russo. I’d spent so much time in the Russos’ household growing up that she was a second mother to me—only of the more traditional variety.

Small and strong, fiercely disciplined, and certain of everything, Maddalena Russo never doubted, never questioned. She knew. The Russo home was strict, loud, vivid, and real. Nothing else existed nor needed to exist beyond the North End. It was an entirely self-sufficient universe. When I was younger, I used to pretend that I’d been left on the Russos’ doorstep one night as a baby, and they’d adopted me as their own. It was a betrayal I couldn’t resist, and my affection was transparent to everyone—including my mother.

“Is that a new hat?” Mrs. Russo nodded approvingly. “Very handsome!”

“It used to have a net, but it was torn … my mother fixed it for me.” I was babbling. “Anyway, I stopped in for a zaletti. I’m celebrating, you see. I got a job today.”

“Congratulations!” Angela beamed.

Pina passed a tray of fresh biscotti to her mother. “What you need is a husband!”

“Maybe I’m not the marrying type.”

Mrs. Russo clucked reprovingly. “Why do you say that? Any man would be happy to have you!”

“I don’t know.”

“Of course you know!” Pina and her mother looked at each other and laughed. “Don’t talk crazy!”

Reaching over, Angela handed a zaletti wrapped in waxed paper across to me. “I’ll stop by later.”

“I’d like that.”

I tried to give her a nickel for the zaletti, but she wouldn’t take it. “Go on, now. Tell your mother the good news.”

I lowered my voice. “I really am sorry, Ange. About missing your wedding.” I knew I’d hurt her, and I knew too that she had too much pride to let me see how much. “How was it?”

“It was lovely.”

“You should’ve been there.” Pina wouldn’t leave us alone for a minute. “Oh, that’s right! You were too busy taking notation for millionaires. One of these days, Jean Harlow, you’re going to have to wake up and realize you’re just like the rest of us.”

When I got home, Ma was scraping carrots in the kitchen. “Is that you, Maeve?” she called when she heard me come in.

“Who else would it be, Ma?”

“There’s no need to be sarcastic. Where have you been?”

I paused in the doorway. Potatoes, onion, celery … she was making a stew again. There was only ever the smallest bit of beef, a cheap cut softened with the hours of slow braising. She made it last through the week, adding extra potatoes to cheat it out.

“I got the job, actually,” I told her, setting the zaletti down on the table with a flourish.

She stared at it; I think she’d half hoped I wouldn’t get the position and then would dye my hair back. But of course work was always better than no work. “Good,” she said finally. “So, what’s it like?”

“Fancy. Very posh.” I hung up my coat on the hook in the hallway, pulled off my gloves. “You know, they have a silver service there that costs as much as a house! I showed it to a woman this afternoon.”

“Did she buy it?”

“No. But only because apparently it was missing lobster tongs. Have you ever even heard of lobster tongs?”

She frowned, began paring the potatoes into quarters. “Do you get commission?”

I checked the coffeepot on the stove. “I only just got the job, Ma!”

“You should ask for commission.”

“It’s just me and the old man.” I poured a cup. It had been too long brewing and was bitter and strong. I drank it anyway.

“What difference does that make?” She tossed the potatoes in the cooking pot. “A sale is a sale!”

“Yeah, well, I haven’t made a sale yet.”

“And they’re not going to fall into your lap!” she warned, pointing the paring knife at me. “You need to be friendly. Outgoing.”

“I am friendly!”

“But you’re not outgoing, Maeve!” She scraped the carrots so hard one snapped in two. “You’re an introvert. Even as a baby you were quiet. All that time spent in your room reading!” She shook her head. “Too much time daydreaming—that’s always been your trouble! You have to make a concerted effort. You need to act like you’re the hostess at a party!”

What had gotten into her today? “Didn’t you hear me? I got the job!”

She stopped, wiped her hands on her apron. “Mrs. Shaw’s retiring next week.”

“Does that mean …”

“It means they’ve hired a new saleswoman in Ladies Wear. And it isn’t me,” she added bitterly.

Here was the crux of the matter. Unfortunately we’d been here before, and I’d exhausted my repertoire of conciliatory clichés.

“I’m sorry, Ma. You’re too good at your job, that’s the problem.” It was a stupid thing to say, but I had nothing left.

She stirred the stew on the stove, staring fixedly into the pot. “You’re lucky. You don’t realize it, but you are. You can really make something of yourself. It’s too late for me. But you can be somebody.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“You mustn’t waste your opportunities. Do you understand?” She turned. “You can be anything you want, anything you set your mind to, Maeve. You’re so clever, so much more capable than I ever was.”

“That’s not true.”

But she was serious. “You mustn’t fail yourself. Do you understand, Maeve? You mustn’t settle.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Who’s that?”

“Angela said she would stop by.”

“Angela?” Suddenly she seemed small and forlorn, caught off guard. “Tonight?”

I got up. “I’ll tell her I’ll see her another time.”

“No.” Yanking the strings of her apron, she pulled it off, handed it to me. “Keep an eye on dinner. I’m going to lie down.”

I poured some fresh coffee into one of my mother’s Staffordshire willow-pattern teacups and passed it to Angela. “Sugar?”

“Yes, please. These are nice.” She held up her cup, admiring the delicate blue-and-white oriental design. “I’ve never seen these before. Where did they come from?”

“They’re my mother’s. A wedding gift.” I smiled. “But we only use them on special occasions.” I wanted to make things up to her.

“I’m honored!”

I sat down across from her at the kitchen table. “I’m sorry we don’t have any cream.”

(In truth we never had it.)

We divided the zaletti in half on a plate.

“Here’s to you and your new job!” Angela raised her cup.

“Here’s to you and your new husband!” We took a drink, and then I asked, “So, what’s it like, being married? I want to hear everything!”

“Oh, Mae!” She blushed, gave me a slightly embarrassed grin. “I don’t know! It’s different. I mean, from what I thought it would be like.”

“How?”

Cupping her cheek in her hand, she pretended to concentrate on stirring the sugar into her coffee. “Faster!” she whispered back with a giggle. “Seems no sooner do we close the bedroom door than … you know, he’s on top of me!”

“Well, men are like that. You have to slow them down.”

“Mae!” She gave me a stab in the ribs. “You shouldn’t know these things! And it hurt.” Her face flushed pink again. “He kept apologizing!”

“What about the rest of it? You know, the bits that happen outside the bedroom.”

She rolled her eyes. “I hate living at his mother’s house. It’s like being a bug in a glass jar; everyone knows everything you’re doing all the time. But we haven’t the money to move yet.”

I lit two cigarettes on the stove and passed one to her. “No one’s got any money. At least he has a job.”

“Oh, he’ll have more than that when he graduates from pharmacy school—he’ll have his own business. We’ve got our eye on that corner shop on Salem Street. It would make a perfect drugstore.” She tilted her head, looking at me sideways. “What about you? How was New York?”

“Fine. Good to be home.”

Her eyes met mine. “Really?”

She could always see right through me.

I felt an awkward flush of shame, took a long drag. “Well, maybe it didn’t go quite the way I planned.”

“You never answered my letters.”

“No … I’m really sorry about that.”

“Are you upset at me?”

The hurt in her voice pricked my conscience. “No, Angie. Not at all. I wanted to write, really I did.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t want you to worry, that’s all. It was hard.” I shrugged, tried to smile. “I had troubles.”

“What kind of troubles?” Her voice became stern, maternal. “What happened, Maeve?”

I wanted to tell her; I wanted to be able to tell her. But it was all so far away from anything she was used to, and it had been so long since we’d really spoken. Instead I grabbed at a half-truth, hoping that any confession might draw us closer again.

I inhaled. “I got in the habit of going out after work, hanging out in clubs. I guess I started to drink too much, Ange.”

“Oh, Mae!” The shock and disappointment in her face surprised me. “You mean bootleg gin?”

I knew Angela didn’t approve of drinking. In fact, I’d always hidden how much I’d drunk from her, knowing she thought of it as something only men did and distinctly unladylike. Wine was the exception, but like most Italians we knew, she didn’t count wine as alcohol. The homemade version her father and brothers made in the summer and kept stored in wooden barrels in the basement of the shop was sweet, fruity, and mild. Not even the police bothered to confiscate it. But still, I’d expected her to be more worldly and understanding.

“I wasn’t the only one! Everyone drinks in New York,” I said, “men, women, young, old, Park Avenue right down to a bench in Central Park! But it sort of sneaks up on you. And it does make everything messier …”

“Then just don’t drink.”

Nothing was complicated for Angela. It was one of the things about her that I loved but also resented. Everything that was black and white for her was gray for me.

“Well, I didn’t want to, not really,” I tried to explain.

“Then just don’t! Honestly, Mae!” She’d run out of patience. “They put anything in that stuff! You should hear the stories Carlo tells me!” Brushing some loose crumbs off the table into her hand, she shook her head. “You really need to settle down. You’re too old for that sort of foolishness.”

That was always the answer, no matter the question. If only I would settle down, behave myself. When we were younger, it was a reprimand leveled at both of us. But Angela had since become the model daughter, sister, and now wife. I was alone in my delinquency.

Tears welled up in my eyes. She was right, of course, and I suppose exhaustion and the stress of the day had gotten to me.

I started to cry, something I hadn’t done in almost a year. “I’m so sorry about the wedding! About everything! I’m really sorry I let you down.”

I hate crying; I’d rather be caught naked than with tears on my face.

Angela put her hand over mine. “I just think if you stopped running around and got married you’d be better off,” she said gently.

I wanted to laugh, but couldn’t muster it. “Believe me, no one wants to marry me now!”

“Mickey did. Remember? Probably still does,” she added hopefully.

A year ago, no one thought my old boyfriend Mickey Finn was good enough. Now he was an opportunity.

She lowered her voice. “He doesn’t know what you got up to in New York, does he? So don’t tell him. Any man is better than no man, Mae.”

I stared at her. We were so different now. Tapping my ash into the ashtray, I brushed the tears away with my fingertips. “It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry I’m weepy. So”—I changed the subject—“how’s the rest of your family?”

Frowning, Angela ran her finger along the milky-white porcelain edge of the willow-pattern teacup. It was so delicate, so fragile you could almost see the light through it.

“That’s not everything that happened, is it? You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

She knew me well enough to know I was deliberately shutting her out. I stared down at the uneaten zaletti.

She took a deep breath. “You’re better now, though? Right?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “It’s all in the past.” Outside the window, the evening sky softened, and the men standing round the chestnut stove below were reduced to shadowy outlines, the ends of their cigars glowing and bobbing in the air as they spoke. “It’s good to be back.”

Winshaw and Kessler was quiet. Not just quiet but holding its breath, waiting. After the constant jostling and hustle in New York City, it was strange to walk down an almost empty street each morning, unlock the door, and step into a world dominated not by people but by things. There was a sense of solemnity and guardianship, like being in a library or a church. And like a church, the shop had a muted, remote quality, as if it were somehow both part of and yet simultaneously removed from the present day. The essence of aged wood, silver polish, furniture oil, and the infinitesimal dust of other lives and other countries hung in the air. I could feel its weight around me, and its flavor lingered on my tongue. Time tasted musty, metallic, and faintly exotic.

Almost everywhere else, time was an enemy; the thief that rendered food rotten, dulled the bloom of youth, made fashions passé. But here it was the precious ingredient that transformed an ordinary object into a valuable artifact—from paintings to thimbles.

I’d never been around such extraordinary things. I was content to sit and hold the carved cameo shell for half an hour at a time, running my finger over its variegated, translucent surface, wondering at the imagination that brought the Three Graces to life. The regular clientele, however, were not so easily mesmerized. Most, in fact, were disconcertingly focused.

“Do you by any chance sell eighteenth-century naval maps?”

“You haven’t any Murano glass, have you? Nothing common, mind you. No red earth tones. I want something special. Do you have anything blue? Perhaps influenced by Chinese porcelain?”

They weren’t casually browsing, but on an unending quest for very specific prizes. And they would accept no substitutions.

“I can’t even get them to look at anything else!” I complained to Mr. Kessler one afternoon.

He took off his glasses, rubbed them clean with his pocket hankie. “Perhaps it’s better if you don’t even try.”

He didn’t make sense. “But how am I meant to sell anything?”

Instead of answering he asked, “Are you by any chance a collector, Miss Fanning?”

“Me?” I laughed. “I haven’t got that kind of money!”

He gave me a reproachful look. “It’s not about money. You know that. Tell me, did you ever save anything when you were a little girl?”

“Well”—I paused a moment—“I had a cigar box that I kept under the bed.”

“And what was inside?”

“Just junk. Kid’s stuff. Maybe a clothes-peg doll or some buttons strung together on thread. Ticket stubs my mother saved from the pictures or the foil wrapper from a bar of chocolate that still smelled sweet if you pressed your nose into it. Nothing special.”

“And yet you kept it. See!” He smiled knowingly. “You are a collector! You collected for nostalgia, the most natural, instinctive thing in the world.”

“Nostalgia?”

“Sentimentality. You sought out little pieces of the world you wanted to live in—a world of chocolate and pretty buttons and picture shows—and you created that world as best you could.”

I thought about the old wooden box, the earthy, sweet smell of tobacco that remained from the cheap cigars. Mr. Russo had given it to me, much to Angela’s indignation, after a meeting of the San Rocco Society one evening when we were five. He was a very quiet man. It was unusual for him to say anything or show any affection. But I could remember how he’d swayed a little that night, unsteady on his feet from too much red wine as he bent down to hand it to me. “Here you go. Something for your secrets,” he said in his thick accent.

For a while I shared it with Angela, but she campaigned relentlessly until she got one of her own. Together we used to scour the streets for old chocolate wrappers—gold and silver foil peeking between the grates of gutters or sparkling in the dirt of empty lots. We pressed them flat with our fingers and stacked them in neat little piles, taking almost as much pleasure in smelling them as if we’d eaten the chocolate ourselves.

As I got older I kept other things in the box too, things I didn’t show to anyone else, not even Angela—a man’s black bow tie I’d stolen off a washing line when I was eight; a used train ticket I’d seen a stranger toss into a rubbish bin, stamped from Boston to New York. I’d pretended the bow tie belonged to Michael Fanning and that the ticket was his too—that he wasn’t really dead, he was only traveling and someday he’d be back. That’s when I began to hide the box under my bed, where no one could find it.

“Can you remember why you did it?” Mr. Kessler asked.

“I suppose it gave me comfort—the sense of having something only I knew about.”

“Anything else?” He pressed.

“Not that I can think of …”

“It gave you two things,” he elaborated, “purpose and hope. Think of the hours you spent looking for treasures—were they pleasant?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “They were.”

Patrolling the streets for discarded candy wrappers and ticket stubs had kept Angela and me happily occupied for most of a summer. And it had also given us, as Mr. Kessler pointed out, a tangible link to the movie-going, chocolate-eating world we longed to someday inhabit. They weren’t just wrappers—they were talismans, gathered in the faith that each one drew us nearer toward the fruition of our dreams.

“Of course not everyone collects out of sentimentality. Some only appreciate usefulness and market value; they want items with excellent craftsmanship and aesthetics—porcelain, glass, furniture, and clocks fall very much into this category. A brilliantly functioning timepiece is a triumph of engineering, as is an exquisitely turned Adam chair. These things consistently maintain their value and often prove to be wise investments. These customers are easy to please—quality and tradition are what they want. You have only to convince them of a piece’s merits and they’re sold. Then there are the true connoisseurs, in search of the distinctive, obscure, and unknown.”

“In what way obscure?”

“See these?” He pointed to three tiny silver containers in the jewelry case, each in the shape of a heart with a latched lid. “These are Danish hovedvandsaeg—extremely rare, made somewhere between 1780 and 1850. They hold sweet smelling spices and were popular as betrothal gifts. You can see their charm, can’t you?” He regarded them with affection. “I have a customer who collects them exclusively, but he won’t touch these because he believes them to be too pedestrian. I blame myself.” He seemed dismayed by his own lack of foresight. “It’s the heart design—too common for his taste. He wants something more unusual now. And yet only about three other people in the whole of Boston even know what a hovedvandsaeg is.”

Each container was over a hundred dollars. It wasn’t difficult to understand why someone would invest in something practical like a chair or a clock, but these? “How can anyone afford to spend so much on a tiny little trinket?”

“Well, we don’t sell as many as we did,” he allowed, “but for many serious clients, collecting isn’t a luxury but a necessity—like an addiction. I know people who will go without food or new shoes to buy just one more piece.”

“They would do that to their families?”

“Few of them have families; most are unmarried men, often professionals who have money to spare and no one to tell them how to spend it. In fact”—he peered at me over the tops of his glasses—“just the sort of people who might be swayed by a pretty blonde.”

“Yes, but I don’t seem to have much influence,” I reminded him. “If I haven’t got what the customers want, they’re out of the door before I can stop them.”

“That’s my point, though. These aren’t just customers, they’re pilgrims, searching for a holy grail. So ask them about the journey. Get them to tell you about the other pieces they have. Listen. And before you know it, you’ll be able to show them almost anything you like. But they like to feel they’ve discovered things for themselves. There’s something furtive about a real collector; it has to do with the thrill of the hunt. And then, of course,” he added, “there are the eccentrics.”

I had to laugh. “It gets more eccentric than eighteenth-century Dutch spice boxes?”

“Oh, yes! I have one man who only wants to buy rare porcelain that’s been repaired in some unusual way, long before the days of glue. Exquisite teapots with ugly twisted silver spoons for handles, platters held together by metal staples and twine, broken glassware with shattered bases replaced by hand-carved wooden animals. Actually, I have to admit, as an anthropologist, he’s one of my favorites.” He leaned against the counter. “You see, a well-curated collection always tells a story. His tells a tale of resourcefulness and industry; of people who had the foresight to salvage something even though it will never be pristine again. I like to think of it as the moment when aspiration meets reality.”

“You were an anthropologist?” It never occurred to me that he had been anything other than a shopkeeper.

“That’s right. I taught at the University of Pennsylvania.” He seemed to grow several inches as he said it. “But this is absorbing too, in its own way.” He cast an eye round the shop like a ruler surveying his kingdom. “It’s anthropology of another sort. You see, in its purest form, collecting is designing—selecting objects to create sense, order, and beauty. To us, we’re simply selling a serving dish or an ivory comb. But for the buyer, he’s fitting another intricate piece into a carefully curated world of his own construction. At its root is an ancient belief, a hope, in the magic of objects. No matter how sophisticated we think we are, we still search for alchemy.”

I thought of the cigar box, of the black bow tie and train ticket.

And then suddenly I remembered the gold pocket watch in New York; the thick chain and the solid, satisfying feel of it in my hand. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up; I knew why I’d taken it.

Some distant part of me knew it belonged in the box under my bed, too.

Even with Mr. Kessler’s expert sales advice, business at Winshaw and Kessler continued to be slow. Every day Mr. Kessler put three bills into the cash register in the morning and took them out again, often unsupplemented, in the evening. It didn’t bode well. But he remained unfazed. “We’re hunting for bears, Miss Fanning,” he told me. “You don’t need to catch one every day, just a few a season.”

The last thing I wanted was to be out of work again. I liked having heat in the mornings and the luxury of being able to afford new stockings rather than darning and redarning the same pair until they were more cotton thread than silk.

So I made work for myself. Each morning I went in determined to prove myself indispensable by rearranging displays, cataloguing inventory, polishing, and cleaning. And I enjoyed it. After the bleak emptiness of the hospital, the shop was a feast for not only the senses but the imagination too. While dusting the furniture, I found myself pretending this was my drawing room filled with fine antiques. Or as I polished silver, I mulled over which pieces might give the most favorable impression of excellent taste. (The plain English serving dishes were elegant without being ostentatious.) Sometimes when Mr. Kessler was out, I took all the jewelry from the cases and tried it on in different combinations, mixing Victorian opals with strings of red coral beads and Art Nouveau cloisonné bangles. I was playing dress-up, like a child—pretending to be a woman of means and charmingly eclectic sensibility.

Mr. Kessler seemed more bemused by my industry than anything else. I asked a thousand questions, wanting to know when and how and even why things were made, their worth, how long they’d been there. He was used to being alone, and while he enjoyed teaching me things, he perhaps wasn’t quite prepared for the way I set about rehanging all the paintings by “mood” rather than period or displaying the glassware in rows of color instead of style. Some of my methods were more successful than others. It turns out china collectors, for example, are extremely particular about mixing patterns and makers and they wasted no time setting me straight.

But gradually, in spite of my overzealousness, a precarious order began to prevail. There was only one place that remained impervious to all my improving efforts.

Even though he’d been away a long time, nothing had been touched in Mr. Winshaw’s office; the drawers were bulging with letters and receipts; books and piles of old newspapers and journals were stacked high, all just as he’d left it. A fat tabby called Persia slept curled up on the old red velvet seat cushion of his chair. Stubbornly territorial, he guarded the place like a sentinel. I was allowed to use the office for paperwork and to take my lunch sitting at Mr. Winshaw’s massive Victorian desk, amid this spectacular monument to disarray. At first it was maddening; I had to physically restrain myself from throwing things out. But there was also something intriguing about being privy to the intimate belongings of a complete stranger. Scientific journals, volumes of world mythologies, old playbills, and overdue library books formed unstable, teetering towers around me as I unwrapped my daily meal of two hard-boiled eggs from waxed paper and peeled them. Atlases from different corners of the globe and translation dictionaries for half a dozen languages bore cracked spines from excessive use. Correspondence from countries like Australia, Cuba, and India remained tantalizingly unopened, crammed into cubbies.

But this wasn’t just messiness or neglect. It was knowledge, rich, chaotic, and diverse.

And everywhere there was evidence of Mr. Winshaw’s constant intellectual curiosity; notes jotted down on the backs of envelopes, dog-eared pages in books, underlined passages, and articles torn from newspapers. Like an excavation site, different eras of obsession were layered one on top of another. Here was an entire collection of books on African art, and on top of that a thick stack of newspaper articles explaining German Surrealist cinema. Then came an examination of eastern American Indian rites and rituals. What his interests lacked in cohesion, they more than made up for in variety. Sometimes I’d open one of Mr. Winshaw’s books and find myself unexpectedly lost in another of his fascinations—like the making of medieval tiles. But the most compelling thing was the map of the ancient world that hung on the wall above his desk, with pins marking destinations. At lunchtime I stared at it, wondering at the places he’d been, the things he’d seen, and where he was now.

“Where exactly is Mr. Winshaw?” I asked Mr. Kessler one day.

He looked up from a pile of invoices he was going through, peering at me over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses in a certain way he had, like a mole poking its nose aboveground to sniff the air before venturing out. “Well, I haven’t heard from him in some time.”

“When will he be back?”

“I’m not sure.” He put the papers down, taking off his glasses and rubbing his eyes with his fists. “You see, Winshaw’s an archaeologist—a serious archaeologist, not just an academic. A year ago, an opportunity came up that was too good for him to miss; he joined a dig with an old friend of his, Leonard Woolley, in Iraq. What used to be Mesopotamia, the ancient city of Ur.”

I’d studied the map long enough to remember where that was. “In Arabia?”

“Yes. But the truth is, I’m not exactly certain where he is now. Winshaw’s something of a loose cannon. It’s a bit worrying,” he conceded. “There’s been violence in that area. Bombs, air attacks on local tribes. But I’m fairly certain he’ll turn up sooner or later.”

“Fairly certain?” He appeared disconcertingly calm. “But what about his family? Haven’t they heard from him?”

“Oh, he hasn’t got a family.”

“Couldn’t we write to Mr. Woolley?”

Mr. Kessler took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and cleaned his glasses. “There’s no need to jump to conclusions. Winshaw occasionally wanders off course. But he always turns up again, usually with something extraordinary. If it will make you feel better though, here’s an address, a postal box in Baghdad.” He took a note card from his desk drawer. “Actually, you can send his mail on for me. Could be important. Now, are you any good with numbers, Miss Fanning?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have a look at these.” He handed me a thick ledger bulging with loose receipts. “Don’t lose anything. That’s the only copy I have.”

I went back to Mr. Winshaw’s office, put the ledger down.

Leaning in closer, I studied the map again. Tattered and frayed, it was worn at the edges as if it had been hung and rehung on many walls over the years. It was drawn in a delicate, florid style, painted in rich, sun-bleached colors that were the fashion at the turn of the century. Here was ancient Egypt with the pyramids, and the golden walls of Troy; another pin marked the island of Crete, home of the mythical Minotaur. It reminded me not of a worldly man but of a small boy planning future expeditions, eager to discover the world of his heroes—to walk in the footsteps of Virgil and Homer, and see with his own eyes the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Great Colossus, and the Sphinx. The very fact that it existed, pins and all, betrayed a child’s ambition and enthusiasm, as well as lasting awe.

A shiny silver pin marked the ancient city of Ur in Mesopotamia.

Was this where the story ended?

I sat down in the wooden swivel chair. Its arms bore the initials of several previous owners, the kind of boyish vandalism of students. I had an almost irresistible urge to open all the drawers, go through every book and paper. But Mr. Kessler was just across the narrow hallway, door open.

Reaching for a pen, I brushed against a stack of books. A thin old volume toppled to the floor, a book of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poems. It had naturally fallen open on a dog-eared page of “Ulysses” on which certain lines had been underlined in pencil.

How dull it is to pause, to make an end,

To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!

As tho’ to breathe were life! …

… that which we are, we are:

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Something quickened in my chest as I read it, an indefinable excitement and longing.

… that which we are, we are … to shine in use …

Someone, presumably Mr. Winshaw, had scrawled “Yes!” in the margin.

I’d read The Odyssey in high school and admired the mythic realm of skies tinted rose and gold by dawn’s light fingertips and a wine-dark sea; of a life defined by bold actions, loyal companions, and true hearts. But I’d never read this poem before.

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

My eyes were drawn to the emphatic “Yes!”

Yes!

The word moved me, though I wasn’t sure why. Perhaps because it had been such a long time since I’d felt pure, unrestrained enthusiasm for anything.

Mr. Winshaw was still alive; I felt sure of it.

A man who believed in “Yes!” couldn’t simply disappear from life without ripples extending to every shore.

Dear Mr. Winshaw,

My name is May Fanning. I’m Mr. Kessler’s new assistant at the shop, and he’s asked me to forward your post on to you. I realize we haven’t met, but there is a great deal of concern here as to your current whereabouts and welfare. We are both, Mr. Kessler and I, eager to know that you are safe. If you would be so kind as to drop us a line or, indeed, any form of correspondence, it would be greatly appreciated. Likewise, if there is anything we can do on your behalf, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

I paused.

I was alone in the shop. The ticking of the clocks and Persia’s deep purr were the only sounds.

“Occasionally,” I continued,

I have used your desk for brief periods in order to complete paperwork and I have come to admire the great map on your wall. I am curious as to whether you have been to all those places and what they were like.

Again, I stopped. He might, quite rightly, find the idea of me sitting in his office intrusive. Then again, I reasoned, this letter would most likely rot in the postal box in Baghdad, along with the rest of his mail.

I envy you your freedom, Mr. Winshaw. I wish I too could leave Boston behind. I would like nothing better than to be somewhere new, where people weren’t so bound by convention and narrow-minded ideas of right and wrong, good and evil. I think there’s nothing duller than trying to be good nor any task more thankless. If I were you, I would stay missing as long as I could.

Sincerely,

May Fanning

Well, that was childish.

I tore the sheet off the writing pad and began again.

When I had finished the second letter—a brief, polite inquiry—I looked for envelopes in the drawers of his desk. Failing to find any, I took one from Mr. Kessler and then packaged up the rest of Mr. Winshaw’s mail into a small parcel covered in brown paper and twine and took it to the post office. It took three clerks twenty minutes to figure out the postage to Baghdad. They were naturally curious about who I was corresponding with, what was in the package … I exaggerated a little, explaining it was my husband, the famous explorer, who was abroad and that I needed some urgent signatures on very important business documents.

By the time I left, they were looking at me differently—as if I was fascinating, handling difficult situations on my own, braving the absence of my beloved with dignity and poise. The fantasy lent the afternoon a certain tender hue of melancholy, an imaginary sadness and courage that made everything just a little more interesting.

So I pretended that, in my own way, I’d somehow said “Yes!” to life too.

I was walking past a barbershop in Prince Street when I spotted it, hanging in the window. “Boxing,” the poster advertised in bold red letters across the top, “Five Bouts, Thirty-Six Rounds at Boston Garden.”

I don’t know why I stopped; maybe out of habit, maybe just because things had been going well and I had to test them, poking and prodding at my own happiness the way a child picks at a newly formed scab.

I read through the list of names, searching, looking for the one I wanted to find. And sure enough, there it was, down near the bottom: Mickey Finn.

A sudden wave of loneliness hit me hard. I had my freedom back, a new job, money in my pocket, but still my chest ached the way an empty stomach gnaws and clutches for food that isn’t there.

Michael Thomas Finlay.

For years he’d been as much a part of my life as my right hand.

We’d grown up together, been in the same class for a while in grammar school. But as soon as he’d grown tall enough, in sixth grade, Mick had been pulled out to work on the docks, loading and unloading with his father, brothers, and uncles. Still, I saw him every Sunday at church, sat next to him in confirmation class. When I learned how to waltz, he was my first and only partner.

I must have been staring—there was a rap on the window, and when I looked up the guys in the barbershop were laughing and blowing kisses at me.

I ignored them, walked on. But the emptiness in my chest grew and spread.

I could still remember the first time Mickey kissed me, in the alleyway behind the cinema; the soft, warm pressure of his lips on mine and, most of all, the way he held me—gently, as if I were made of delicate glass he was afraid of breaking. No one before or since had ever thought I was that precious. It was a pure, uncomplicated affection, almost like siblings, based on unquestioning loyalty.

Of course Ma didn’t like him. He was black Irish, she said, with his thick dark hair and brown gypsy eyes. He’d been taken out of school and would never amount to anything.

But I didn’t want anyone Ma approved of.

Then Mickey’s brother started boxing, and Mick took to hanging out at the Casino Club. As luck would have it, he turned out to be even better than his brother; just the right combination of height, muscle, and speed. And there was money to be made, a lot of money, for just one night’s work.

Everyone knew all the best boxers were Irish. Kids from nowhere could rise to the top of the boxing world in no time—going from brawling in basements and back lots to Madison Square Garden in a matter of months. We watched their breakneck rise to stardom on the newsreels every week—Tommy Loughran, Mike McTigue, Gene Tunney, and Jack Dempsey. Punching their way out of tenements straight into movie careers and Park Avenue addresses.

The first time I went to a fight, I was terrified. But Mickey won that night, and my fear became excitement. Soon I looked forward to the sweaty, raw nerves that snapped like electricity moments before the bell sounded; to the fighters, dancing in their corners, skin glistening, muscles tense. All the chaos, the smells, the din of the crowd, the rickety wooden chairs, the hot roasted peanuts and calls of the ticket touts; gangsters smelling of French cologne sitting cheek by jowl with old-money millionaires; the blood, the fear, the speed, the unholy fury of it all, I came to relish every bit. And Mickey, at the center, fighting, conquering the world.

Overnight he had a manager and a nickname—the Boston Brawler. His face appeared on fight posters, and his name climbed up to the top of the listings. And afterward, in the pubs and clubs, we drank and danced and felt the glorious relief of those who’d outwitted fate. With our pockets crammed full of bills from Mickey’s winnings, the future was ours for the taking.

Mick was my champion, punching his way out of this drab, relentless grind into a new life of unfettered possibility.

Only it turned out Mick was a good boxer, not a great one. Someone else came along, an Italian; they called him the Boston Basher, and Mick couldn’t seem to get out from under his shadow.

And then I got pregnant. Suddenly our limitless future shrank to the size of a one-bedroom walk-up in the South End and a dockworker’s pay packet.

He would’ve married me, had I told him. But I never did. I didn’t tell anyone.

I went to New York instead. There was more work there, I said; better opportunities and a chance to really make something of myself.

We talked about what we would do, how we would live when I got back. But we both knew that wasn’t going to happen.

And Mick was such a stand-up guy, he even loaned me the money to leave him.

The Casino Athletic Club on Tremont Street was located up a steep flight of stairs on the second floor of an old grain warehouse. It smelled of generations of young men, training nonstop, in all seasons; of sweat, fear, and ambition. As soon as I stepped inside, a thick sticky wall of perspiration engulfed me. There were four rings, one in each corner, weights, punchbags; the sound of fists slamming against flesh and canvas beat out a constant dull tattoo. It was a familiar sound; I’d spent hours here, smoking and watching Mick train. Pausing in the doorway, I scanned the hall. Then I spotted him.

Mickey was in the far left-hand ring, sparring with a tall Negro man. His trainer, Sam Louis, was hunched over the ropes, shouting, “Look out, Mick! Come on! Look lively!”

And seated on a folding chair and wearing a molting chinchilla wrap over a cheap red dress was Hildy.

Of course.

Poor old Hildy was a permanent fixture at the Casino Club and something of a running joke. When she was younger, she’d worked in the office. With her blond German hair and blue eyes, she broke her fair share of hearts. But as the years passed, her sharp tongue and ruthless gold digging earned her the nickname Sour Kraut. Now she moved from man to man, shamelessly latching on to anyone she could. I looked around and wondered which of these saps she’d been bleeding dry lately. It had to be someone new, someone who didn’t know her game.

I watched as the other boxer, a big man, landed a heavy right to Mickey’s jaw. Sam blew the whistle and they stopped, heading back to their corners for water. Mickey spat out a mouthful of blood into a bucket and Sam mopped him down.

Now was my chance. As I moved through the gym, men stopped and a few catcalls and whistles followed. I knew better than to take it personally—it was just because I was a woman in a place women didn’t go—but I flattered myself into thinking that I was still worth whistling at.

Across the room, Hildy looked up, irritated that someone else was getting attention. And when she saw me, her eyes narrowed and her mouth twisted tight. Tossing the magazine down, she flounced over, barring my way. “What are you doing here?”

“Hi, Hildy.” I looked past her to where Mickey was doubled over, hands on knees, catching his breath. He hadn’t seen me yet. “I need to talk to Mickey.”

“What for?” She had a honking Boston twang and far too many facial expressions. Right now she was glaring, gaping, and smirking, all at the same time.

“What’s it to you, anyway?”

Across the room, Sam gestured at us, and Mick looked up. Surprise spread across his face. I gave a little wave.

He said something to his partner, who nodded, and climbed out of the ring.

“I’ll tell you what it is to me: you owe us money!” Hildy spat the words out.

Now she had my attention. “Us?”

“Yeah, us!” Her upper lip curled in triumph. “What Michael earns is my business now too!”

I felt like I’d taken one of Mick’s left hooks straight to the kidney.

He was behind her now, staring at me like I was the Ghost of Christmas Past.

No longer the golden boy, Mickey wore his history on his face; resignation weighted his brow, and his nose was flattened out from being broken too many times. But if anything, it only added interest to his dark eyes, black hair, and well-muscled physique. Although handsome, Mickey was and always had been slightly unsure of himself, self-deprecating and shy. It was the most attractive thing about him. But now his battered features bestowed a gravitas that had been lacking before.

With one look, I’d always been able to win him back. I searched his eyes. “Us? Really, Mick?”

He laid a hand on Hildy’s shoulder. “I’ll deal with this,” he said in his soft, lilting brogue.

My heart disappeared through the bottom of my stomach. I hadn’t been sure what I was doing here, why I’d come. But now I knew I’d been kidding myself, imagining that after all we’d been through, he might still want me.

Hildy flashed him a warning look.

“Let me deal with it,” he said again.

“I know you—you’ll end up giving her more!” she hissed.

It was charming the way they both talked about me as if I weren’t standing right in front of them. “Actually”—I pulled my chin up—“I just stopped by to pay you back, Mickey.”

“See?” He gave Hildy a gentle push, back toward the chair. “I’ll handle this.”

“Well, you better!” She marched into the office instead and slammed the door. It echoed dramatically through the hall.

Mickey ran his hand across his eyes wearily, like a man forced to mediate between his mother and his wife. “Jesus, Maeve!”

“Jesus yourself!” I shot back. “What are you doing, Mick?”

He pointed a finger at me. “I don’t have to answer to you! You left! Remember?” Still, the color rose in his cheeks, and I knew he was embarrassed.

“Sure.” I shrugged. “You don’t have to answer to anyone. Least of all me.”

“Damn right I don’t!”

“I guess I’m like a bad penny: you just can’t get rid of me.”

He sighed, shook his head, but his eyes softened. At six foot three, he was one of the few men who could ever look down on me. “Aw, now, you know I didn’t want to be rid of you, Maeve. I never wanted that.”

I nodded to the office door. “You do now.”

A shadow of guilt flickered in his eyes. “What did you expect me to do? Wait?”

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