City of Hope (14 page)

I took my cigarettes out of my bag and gave him the pack. He took one out and handed them back to me. I nodded for him to keep them, then he took a box of matches out of his pocket and lit it, dragging the first pull gratefully into his lungs.

“Thanks,” he said, stopping to study it. “I'm sorry for what I said.”

“No problem.” I smiled at myself for falling into New York slang. “Your mam's surely more of a lady than I am.”

He stayed silent.

“I saw you the other day in the park,” I said. “You were living at the back of the museum.”

“They kicked us out,” he said, “waited till dark, so they wouldn't be seen. Bastards!” His voice rose in anger. “There was only three families in there, and we kept the place tidy—we weren't bothering nobody.”

This very boy and his little gang had bothered me and, I imagined, many other smart Sunday strollers.

“They got us out of our beds, and stood over us while we packed up. I'd have decked one of them easy, but Mom didn't want no fuss.”

He had the cigarette nearly smoked down to the butt.

“Like I said”—he took two fast drags and threw it reluctantly on the floor—“she's a lady.”

“I'd sure like to meet her,” I said.

He looked at me again, softer this time. “I dunno . . .”

“Hell, I'll follow you anyway.”

“Suit yourself,” he said, shrugging, but he held his step steady beside me.

All along the road I noticed that the gates to the “people's park” were padlocked.

Roosevelt had been elected; “The Great Depression Is Over!” the headline in the paper had read. They were gentrifying Central Park, taking it back to the haven it was before the Hooverville homeless took it over. They had promised to rehouse as many as they could in new developments on the outskirts of the city, out of view. It was business as usual, and nobody wanted to accommodate the raw despair of bodies in doorways and families in makeshift shacks. They wanted to put the bad times behind them. De Valera had promised to deliver Ireland from the jaws of our war. To put us all into whitewashed cottages and bring us back to the days when women churned butter and bred babies, and the men worked the land. I had refused to conform to this vision, despite it being my husband's fantasy. I had worked hard—not for the money alone and for the independence it brought, but also to rebel against the idea that we could return to an old-fashioned Ireland. I would not be complicit in the lie that women were mere homemakers, when my time in America had made it clear to me that we could be so much more. This situation—the stark contrast in social circumstance that I had experienced that evening—was part of the same fiction. Walking toward the steps of the museum, I felt the truth of this family's plight coursing through me, alongside an inexplicable but nonetheless urgent desire to do something about it.

The boy's mother was sitting on the steps of the museum with her head in her hands. A young girl, no more than ten, sat with her arm around her mother's shoulders comforting her; they were surrounded by bags and boxes. Daylight had not quite hit, and the dawn sky I had suspected earlier had been an illusion created by the city lights. She stood up as we reached her and I sensed she was summoning up the energy to berate her son, although the distressed expression on her face suggested that she did not have the wherewithal to do so.

In that moment I did not think about Sheila, or going home; I did not feel the dull ache of John's death, or the urgent need to avoid it. I was free from all thought or feeling other than rescuing this woman from the situation she had found herself in.

I held out my hands and took one of hers with unwavering kindness and said firmly, “My name is Ellie Hogan, and I have come to help you.”

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

The woman was Irish, like me. “There but for the grace of God . . .” Perhaps that was what had motivated me, or perhaps it was just another distraction. She did not take as much persuasion as her son had believed she would, but I knew that would be the case. Desperation and pride are not comfortable bedfellows. I knew what it was to be hungry and cold; to weep for the want of a meal; to linger at a kind neighbor's fire, hoping to carry home some of the heat to your own empty grate. For all that, I had never been without a roof over my head. I could not imagine the hardship of it until I saw that small family sitting with their goods and chattels on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum.

As soon as I said the words “I have come to help you,” I immediately began to panic about how I would follow them through. The woman must have thought I was some class of professional do-gooder; that I had a plan, or somewhere to take them. I had neither. I thought briefly about taking them back to The Plaza, but knew that it wasn't an option. I might sneak them into my room, but if the staff saw me arrive with all their goods, they would certainly know they were a vagrant family and dismiss us at the door. I was so angry at the injustice of their plight, I would certainly have fought it out, but I didn't want to put the woman through that humiliation.

I had only one other option.

“Gather up your bags,” I said, leaning down to pick up the heaviest of them, “and follow me.”

We were not five minutes by foot from old Bridie's bedsit.

The family followed me up the steps of the brownstone and stood behind me nervously, as I rang and rang the bell on the peeling front door. Eventually the Chinese man who ran the laundry answered it, furious and cursing in his native tongue. I swept him aside, apologizing, and assertively signaled the family to follow me up the steep stairs, despite his angry protestations.

Bridie was already at the door, in her nightgown, looking out to see what all the commotion was about.

“I need your help,” I said. She was confused and still half asleep, but stepped aside to let us in.

We crowded into the tiny room, bags and all, and stood there awkwardly. The woman looked about her, clearly thinking that if this was the best I could do, she would have been just as well off staying where she was. Her lips were tight with pride, but she said nothing. Bridie's face had a similar expression, as she had clearly only just come to and was furious at my landing in on her and exposing her unmade bed, her small private world, to strangers.

“This lady and her children need somewhere to stay,” I said, and before Bridie had the words out to object, I added, “Do you know of a place they can rent?”

“There are rooms in the building next door,” she said. Then, looking them up and down she added, “If they have money.”

“They have money.” I looked at the woman and nodded. She looked back at me and a hint of anger flashed in her eyes, so I winked at her and it was replaced by instant relief and gratitude.

“Well, you just got the landlord up out of his bed, and he'll not be best pleased. I'd give him an hour or so to cool down. I start work at six, so I'll talk to him then.”

“Thank you, Bridie,” I said.

“We'd better feed these children then so,” she said. “For goodness' sake, Ellie, pull that cover over the bed and give them somewhere to sit down. You have names, I suppose?”

I had become so caught up in my mission I had forgotten to ask.

“Maureen Sweeney,” the woman said, “and this is Jake and Flora.”

“Maureen, eh? One of our own so,” Bridie said, then handed the kettle to the boy, saying, “Here, lad, make yourself useful and go and fill this. The bathroom is on the next floor down.”

The old lady made porridge with tinned milk and used the last of her sugar to sweeten it, and we ate from her two bowls in rotation. She fed the mother and daughter first. Jake refused when she offered it to him, but she said, “You'll eat it, boy, and be grateful. You need all the strength a full stomach will give you, to look after your mother.”

“Thank you, Bridie,” I said, taking the last bowl. “I'll replace it.”

“Damn sure you will,” she said, “and more besides, for getting me up at this ungodly hour.”

With our stomachs full and our hands warmed with the conviviality of tea, we sat and Maureen shared her story with us, as best she could in front of the children.

Her husband was an American of Irish parentage, a professional man who worked as an accounts clerk in a bank. She herself had come here as a young woman and trained as a nurse. When the children came along, they rented a fine big house in Yonkers, outside the city, and she gave up her job and they lived in great comfort. “We were so happy,” she said. “Patrick was a hard worker . . .”

She trailed off, girding herself against the bad news that was to come.

“As it was, I asked him to buy us a house, but we were so happy in the one we were renting, and he said our money was safer in stock. We lived frugally and went without luxuries, so we could put all but our basic living expenses into shares. ‘We're getting such good rates, Maureen, you'll see. Another couple of careful years and it will all be worth it,' he said. Our money was growing, and Patrick would get so excited reading the papers. He'd show me the stocks-and-shares lists and tried to explain, but I didn't really understand. I trusted him. He was securing our future. When I pressed him for a washing machine or a new dress, he'd say, ‘Soon, Maureen—soon we'll have all the money you could ever dream of. A few months longer,' he'd say, ‘it would be foolish to cash it in now, we'll wait.'”

On Black Thursday they lost everything.

“Patrick tried to shield me from the worst of it, said his job was secure and that he would get us back on our feet.”

She spoke quietly. She didn't sound as bitter as she had a right to. She obviously loved her husband, for his motives, if not his foolishness.

“I discovered that he had lost his job in the bank when I went to buy fish one day and found him queuing for work at the docks. He hadn't paid the rent for months, and we lost the house shortly after that. He moved into the Hooverville in the park to look for work in the city, and I took the children to California, where I was promised work as a nurse.”

Her face betrayed there was no happy ending.

“The job fell through, so I borrowed the money from a cousin to get us back to New York. When we got to where he had been living, Patrick was gone . . .”

“He'll be back, Mom.” Jake's face was burning with shame, but he stood up and looked me square in the eyes. “Pop went off to find work and he'll be back. He'll be back with money in his pocket, and now he won't know where we are—he won't be able to find us!”

Bridie handed him a few cents from her purse.

“Whist now, boy, you're upsetting your mother. The two of you run down to the shop, it'll be open now, and bring us back a loaf. No dithering, mind!”

His mother nodded at him to do as he was told and they left. Bridie and I were enthralled by her story and were anxious for her to finish.

“There's not much else to tell. Patrick just disappeared one day, about a week before we had got back. His buddy said they had been unable to find work. Patrick had left all of his belongings behind him and just—disappeared.” Her voice cracked slightly and she paused. She closed her eyes, rallied and continued. “Patrick's friend Joe moved us into where he had been staying, and when they cleared the reservoir, he helped set us up in the . . .”—she halted over the word “house”— “. . . the place where you found us.”

Bridie and I exchanged a glance, both thinking that the worst must have happened to her husband, and we both noted that our own troubles had been dwarfed by her terrible tale.

“Mother of God! I'm late!”

Bridie leapt up from her chair, gathered herself for work and left. She came back up a few moments later, accompanied by the landlord, who said he was prepared to let us have a room.

When the children returned we followed him to the house next door and up one flight of stairs. He showed us into a filthy room: windows you could barely see out of for soot, two narrow beds, a table and two chairs and a broken cupboard. I opened it and found a dead mouse and no crockery.

“Two dollars a night,” he said. It was an astronomical rate to charge for a hovel. However, we had little choice, and he knew it.

“We'll take it,” I said and took two dollar bills out of my pocket.

“One week in advance,” he said, looking over at the mother and her waifs and holding out his hand for more.

“One night,” I said, looking at him with as much loathing as I could muster without having him turn us away, although I knew that was unlikely to happen once he saw the weight of my purse. “We'll pay again tomorrow.”

He snatched the dollar bills and went.

“I'm sorry, Maureen,” I said, “it's awful.”

“It's fine,” she said. “We'll have it fixed up in no time—won't we, children?”

Jake was already testing the bed and Flora was digging around in a bag, from where she pulled out a cleaning rag and started to wipe around the place.

“They're good children,” I said.

“I've done the best I could for them, under the circumstances.”

We stood for a moment in awkward silence. I felt she wanted to thank me, but didn't know how.

“I'll go now,” I said, “and let you settle yourselves in. I'll be back in a few hours with some supplies.”

Maureen followed me out the door.

There was no suspicion, only curiosity and soft gratitude in her voice as she said, “Ellie—why are you doing this for us?”

I stopped to think about it and answered her, “Honestly, Maureen? I don't know.”

C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN

I had no idea what impulse had driven me to help the Sweeneys, but it had left me feeling elated, and as I walked back to The Plaza I felt a true sense of achievement. The trees overhanging the park railings seemed greener to me than they had before, and such was my feeling of goodwill that I found myself smiling at passersby.