She gave a shout of hoarse laughter that changed to a coughing fit which left her breathless and slightly purple. She lay quietly for a few minutes, panting in short, gasping breaths.
“Hard to believe folks cared so much about one pregnant unmarried teenager, ain’t it,” she said finally. “Here we got half the people outa work in the community-that’s life and death, girl. But back then I guess it seemed like the end of the world to folks. I mean, my own ma and pa, even, throwing me out like they did.” Her face worked for a minute. “Like it was all my fault or something. Your ma was the only one stood up for me. Even when my folks come around and decided to admit Caroline was alive, they never really forgave her for being born or me for doing it.”
Gabriella never did anything by half measures: I helped her look after the baby so Louisa could work the night shift at Xerxes. The days when I had to take Caroline to her grandparents’ were my worst torment. Rigid, humorless, they wouldn’t let me into the house unless I took my shoes off. A couple of times they even bathed Caroline outside before they’d admit her to their pristine portals.
Louisa’s parents were only in their sixties-same age as Gabriella and Tony would be if they were still alive. Because Louisa had a baby and lived by herself, I’d always thought of her as part of my parents’ generation, but she was only five or six years older than me.
“When did you stop working?” I asked. I called Louisa occasionally, when my guilty imagination conjured up Gabriella’s image, but it had been awhile. South Chicago hovered too uneasily at the base of my mind for me to willingly court its return to my life, and it had been over two years since I’d spoken to Louisa. She hadn’t said anything then about feeling bad.
“Oh, it got so I couldn’t stand anymore about-must be just over a year. So they put me on disability then. It’s only been the last six months or so I couldn’t get around at all.”
She flicked the covers back from her legs. They were twigs, thin bones a bird might use but mottled greeny-gray like her face. Livid patches on her feet and ankles showed where her veins had given up carting blood around.
“It’s my kidneys,” she said. “Darned things don’t want me to pee properly. Caroline takes me over two, three times a week and they stick me on that damned machine, supposed to clean me out, but between you and me, girl, I’d just as soon they’d let me go in peace.” She held up a thin hand. “Don’t you go telling Caroline that, now-she’s doing everything to see I get the best. And the company pays for it, so it’s not like I feel she’s digging into her own savings. I don’t want her to think I ain’t grateful.”
“No, no,” I said soothingly, pulling the cover up gently.
She reverted to the old days on the block, to the days when her legs were slim and muscular, when she used to go dancing after getting off work at midnight. To Steve Ferraro, who wanted to marry her, and Joey Pankowski, who didn’t, and how if she had to do it over, she’d do it the same, because she had Caroline, but for Caroline she wanted something different, something better than staying on in South Chicago working herself to an early old age.
At last I took the bony fingers and squeezed them gently. “I’ve got to go, Louisa-it’s twenty miles to my place. But I’ll come back.”
“Well, it’s been real good to see you again, girl.” She cocked her head on one side and gave a naughty smile. “Don’t suppose you could find a way to slip me a pack of cigarettes, do you?”
I laughed. “I’m not touching that with a barge pole, Louisa-you work it out with Caroline.”
I shook out her pillows and turned on the TV for her before going off to find Caroline. Louisa had never been much given to kissing, but she squeezed my hand tightly for a few seconds.
3
Caroline was sitting at the dining-room table, eating fried chicken and making notes on a colored graph. Chaotic stacks of paper-reports, magazines, flyers-covered all of the small surface. A large pile near her left elbow teetered uncertainly on the table edge. She put down her pencil when she heard me come into the room.
“I went out for some Kentucky Fried while you were in with Ma. Want some? What did you think-kind of a shock, huh?”
I shook my head in dismay. “It’s terrible to see her like this. How are you holding up?”
She grimaced. “It wasn’t so bad until her legs wouldn’t support her anymore. She show ’em to you? I knew she would. It’s really tough on her not being able to get around. The hard part for me was realizing how long she’d been sick before I noticed anything. You know Ma-she’d never complain in a million years, especially about anything as private as her kidneys.”
She rubbed a greasy hand through her unruly curls. “It was only three years ago, when I suddenly noticed how much weight she’d been losing, that I even knew anything was wrong. Then it came out she’d been feeling off for a long time-dizzy and stuff, her feet numb-but she didn’t want to say anything that might jeopardize her job.”
The story sounded depressingly familiar. People on the hip North Side went to the doctor every time they stubbed their toes, but in South Chicago you expected life to be tough. Dizziness and weight loss happened to lots of people; it was the kind of thing grown-ups kept to themselves.
“You satisfied with the doctors she’s seeing?”
Caroline finished gnawing on the chicken thigh and licked her fingers. “They’re okay. We go to Help of Christians because that’s where Xerxes has their medical plan, and they do as much as anyone could. I mean, her kidneys just aren’t working at all-they call it acute renal failure-and it looks like she may have some bone marrow problems and may be starting with emphysema. That’s our only real problem-she keeps going on about her damned cigarettes. Hell, they may have helped get her into this fix to begin with.”
I said awkwardly, “If she’s in that bad shape, the cigarettes aren’t going to make her any worse, you know.”
“Vic! You didn’t say that to her, did you? I have to fight her about them ten times a day as it is. If she thinks you’re backing her up, I might as well quit on the spot.” She slapped the table emphatically; the teetering pile of papers flew across the floor. “I was sure you of all people would support me on this.”
“You know how I feel about smoking,” I said, annoyed. “I expect Tony would be alive today if he hadn’t had a two-pack-a-day habit-I still hear him wheezing and coughing in my nightmares. But how much time is smoking going to shave from Louisa’s life at this point? She’s in there by herself, got nothing but the tube to keep her company. I’m just saying it’d make her feel better mentally and won’t make her any worse physically.”
Caroline set her mouth in an uncompromising line. “No. I don’t even want to talk about it.”
I sighed and got down on the floor to help her with the loose papers. When we had them all collated again I looked at her suspiciously: she had reverted to her tense abstracted mood.
“Well, I think it’s time for me to push off. I hope the Lady Tigers go all the way again.”
“I-Vic. I need to talk to you. I need your help.”
“Caroline, I came down and pranced around in my basketball uniform for you. I saw Louisa. Not that I grudge the time with her, but how many items you got on your agenda tonight?”
“I want to hire you. Professionally. I need your help as a detective,” she said defiantly.
“What for? You give SCRAP’s money to the church Lenten fund and now you want me to find it for you again?”
“Goddamn you, Vic! Could you stop acting like I’m still five years old and treat me seriously for a minute?”