The block looked worse in daylight than it had at night. Cars were parked at all angles. One was abandoned in the street, black showing around the hood and windshield where a fire had burned the engine block. I left the Chevy in front of a hydrant. If the traffic patrols were as assiduous down here as the street cleaners, I could probably stay until Labor Day without getting a ticket.
I went around to the back, where Louisa always used to leave a spare key on the ledge above the little porch. It was still there. As I let myself in a curtain twitched in the house next door. Within minutes everyone on the block would know a strange woman was going into the Djiaks’.
I heard voices inside the house and called out to let people know I was there. When I got to Louisa’s bedroom I realized she had the television on at top volume-what I thought were visitors was only General Hospital. I knocked as hard as I could. The volume went down and her scratchy voice called out, “That you, Connie?”
I opened the door. “Me, Louisa. How’re you doing?”
Her thin face lighted in a smile. “Well, well, girl. Come right in. Make yourself at home. How’s it going?”
I pulled the straight-backed chair next to the bed. “I just went down to see Connie and your folks.”
“Did you now?” She looked at me warily. “Ma never was one of your biggest fans. What’re you up to, young Warshawski?”
“Spreading joy and truth. Why did your mother hate Gabriella so much, Louisa?”
She shrugged bony shoulders under her cardigan. “Gabriella never went in much for hypocrisy. She didn’t keep to herself how she felt about Ma and Pa kicking me out.”
“Why did they?” I asked. “Were they mad at you just for getting pregnant, or did they have something special against the boy-the father?”
She didn’t say anything for a few minutes, but lay with her eyes on the television. Finally she turned back to me.
“I could kick your ass right out the back door for poking around in this.” Her voice was calm. “But I know what happened. I know Caroline and how she always twisted you around her little finger. She called you down here, didn’t she -wants to know who her old man was. Spoiled stubborn little bitch. When I blew up at her she called you in. Isn’t that right?”
My face was hot with embarrassment, but I said gently, “Don’t you think she has a right to know?”
Her mouth set in a tight line. “Twenty-six years ago a goddamn bastard tried to ruin my life. I don’t want Caroline anywhere near him. And if you’re your ma’s daughter, Victoria, you’ll do your best to keep Caroline from prying into it instead of helping her out.”
Tears smarted in her eyes. “I love that girl. You’d think I was trying to beat her, or kick her out on the street instead of protecting her. I did my best to see she got a different shot at life than I did and I’m not watching that go down a sewer now.”
“You did a great job, Louisa. But she’s grown up now. She doesn’t need protecting. Can’t you let her make her own decision on this?”
“Goddamn you, no, Victoria! And if you’re going to keep on about it, get your ass out of here and don’t come back!”
Her face turned red under its greenish sheen and she started coughing. I was batting a thousand with the Djiak women today, getting them furious in descending order of age. All I needed to do was tell Caroline I was quitting and I could make it four for four.
I waited for the paroxysm to subside, then led the conversation gently back to topics Louisa enjoyed, to her young days after Caroline was born. After talking to Connie I could see why Louisa had relished that time as one of freedom and gaiety.
I finally left around four. All during the long drive home through the evening rush hour I listened to Caroline’s and Louisa’s voices debating in my head. I could understand Louisa’s strong wish to protect her privacy. She was dying, too, which gave her desires more weight.
At the same time I could empathize with Caroline’s fear of isolation and loneliness. And after seeing the Djiaks close up, I understood why she’d like to find other relatives. Even if her father turned out to be a real jerk, he couldn’t have a crazier family than the one she already knew about.
In the end I decided to look for the two men Louisa had talked about last night and this afternoon-Steve Ferraro and Joey Pankowski. They’d worked together at the Xerxes plant, and it was possible she’d gotten the job through her lover. I’d also try to track down the grocery clerk Connie had mentioned-Ron Sowling or whoever. East Side was such a stable, unchanging neighborhood, it was possible that the same people still owned the store and that they would remember Ron and Louisa. If Ed Djiak had come around playing the heavy father, it might have made an indelible memory.
Making a decision, even one to compromise, brings a certain amount of relief I called up an old friend and spent a pleasant evening on Lincoln Avenue. The blister on my left heel didn’t stop my dancing until past midnight.
6
In the morning I was ready early, at least early for me. By nine I had done my exercises. Skipping a run, I dressed for the corporate world in a tailored navy suit that was supposed to make me look imposing and competent. I steeled my heart against Peppy’s importunate cries and headed for the South Side for the third day in a row. Instead of following the lake down, this morning I went west to an expressway that would spew me into the heart of the Calumet Industrial District.
It’s been over a century since the Army Corps of Engineers and George Pullman decided to turn the sprawling marshes between Lake Calumet and Lake Michigan into an industrial center. It wasn’t just Pullman, of course-Andrew Carnegie, Judge Gary, and a host of lesser barons all played a part, working on it for sixty or seventy years. They took an area about four miles square and filled it with dirt, with clay dredged from Lake Calumet, with phenols, oils, ferrous sulfide, and thousands of other substances you not only never heard of, you never want to.
When I got off the expressway at a 103rd Street, I had the familiar sensation of landing on the moon, or returning to earth after a nuclear decimation. Life probably exists in the oily mud around Lake Calumet. It’s just not anything you’d recognize outside a microscope or a Steven Spielberg movie. You don’t see trees or grass or birds. Only the occasional feral dog, ribs protruding, eyes red with madness and hunger.
The Xerxes plant lay in the heart of the ex-swamp, at 110th Street east of Torrence. The building was an old one, put up in the early fifties. From the road I could see their sign, “Xerxes, King of Solvents.” The royal purple had faded to an indeterminate pink, while the logo, a crown with double X’s in it, had almost disappeared.
Made of concrete blocks, the plant was shaped like a giant U whose arms backed onto the Calumet River. That way the solvents manufactured there could flow easily onto barges and the waste products into the river. They don’t dump into the river anymore, of course-when the Clean Water Act was passed Xerxes built giant lagoons to hold their wastes, with clay walls providing a precarious barrier between the river and the toxins.
I parked my car in the gravel yard and gingerly picked my way through the oily ruts to a side entrance. The strong smell, reminiscent of a darkroom, hadn’t changed from the times I used to drive down with my dad to drop off Louisa if she’d missed her bus.
I had never been inside the plant. Instead of the crowded noisy cauldron of my imagination, I found myself in an empty hall. It was long and dimly lit, with a concrete floor and cinder-block walls that went the height of the building, making me feel as though I were at the bottom of a mine shaft.