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  I look at her dead on, trying not to blink. She straightens up and says, “You, me, and the officer, Ruby, are going on a walk right now. We still have to see your mom—provided you have one.”

  If only I didn’t—just this once.

  6

  Little Nell’s

  POETRY ISN’T really good for anything except making you feel better. That’s why it’s art. If it was good for something, it would be useful and practical, like a cooking pot or a bicycle. If it’s not, it must be there for some other reason, but it might not be something you can name. Right now I’m using it to keep from panicking, which I seem to be doing a lot of lately. The problem is if you don’t write it down you may not remember what you’re thinking. But I don’t think Mrs. Levitt is going to wait for me to pull out my notebook, so all I can do is try out the words in my head.

  The crowd snakes and weaves

  Like the Great Wall of China

  On a cab ride

  Out on a Saturday

  Sunny with arms and chins

  All moving at eye level and they all

  Have a Somewhere as they go.

  I look around for Sophie but she must have scattered with the rest of the protesters. We cross West Seventh and head over to Waverly, with me leading the way. Little Nell’s building is all lit up with artists coming and going, and she’s on the highest floor. I’m taking the stairs as slow as I can to give myself time to figure out what to say when I get in the studio. I’m also trying to figure out what painting Nell-mom is working on and how Mrs. Levitt will see it.

  There’s a picture of a horse, because Nell-mom likes horses. If you look at it one way it’s sort of old-fashioned, what they call a tableau. The horse is pulling a buggy down Bleecker Street and it’s a long time ago, like another century. Only the horse is kind of transparent and the people in the buggy are really skeletons.

  Another painting was started a week ago. It’s all halves of things, half women eating half fruits in half chairs. I’m not sure if Nell-mom’s done with it because I think she wants to leave it half-finished.

  My favorite is the canvas she painted black, with a red stripe down the middle ending in splatters down to the edge. Most of her paintings don’t have names but that one is Life. Nell-mom is also working on a basket of apples, but I don’t think they’d appeal to a social worker because they’re all withered and wormy, in a basket of blood. Some even have faces that look like they’re screaming.

  I’m not sure which one of these paintings we’re going to see but as soon as we set foot in the studio—me, Levitt, and the policeman—I wish I’d brought them somewhere else. Instead of a painting with bloody apples or gashes, we see Nell-mom painting a man with no clothes on, holding a saxophone. Even worse, Ray is watching them, his fingers dancing in the air like he’s trying to show the man how to play.

  The man turns his face as we get closer and I recognize him by his mustache, which is dark and bristly. He owns a gallery on Charles Street and sometimes buys one of Nell-mom’s paintings. They were friends in high school, but not in a romantic way, and I think his name was Charlie then. When they came out here, he changed his name to Chaz. I’m guessing Nell-mom doesn’t have to pay him, but other than that I can’t see why she’d want to paint him in his birthday suit.

  Nell-mom’s face is spattered with orange and green. She’s got a streak of yellow in her hair, and her fingers look like she dipped them in blood. She’s concentrating on her painting so hard, and Ray is so busy explaining the saxophone, that neither one of them sees us coming. Nell-mom is all hunched over because the studio’s in an attic and the ceiling is sloped. When she looks up—BANG!—her head collides with the ceiling.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  Her face is as white as a sheet. “Ruby?” Nell-mom yelps.

  “Ohhhh!” Mrs. Levitt puts her hands over my eyes as soon as she sees Chaz.

  “What’s going on?” says Nell-mom.

  “I’m Gayle Levitt. I work for the state,” Mrs. Levitt tells her. “Is this your daughter?”

  “Of course she’s my daughter! What is this?”

  “She was caught stealing today,” Mrs. Levitt says. “And she tried to run away from us. That’s why the officer is here.”

  “I wasn’t stealing!” I say, pushing Mrs. Levitt’s hands away.

  “Stealing what?” Nell-mom asks.

  “Outside a fruit stand.”

  Nell’s mouth drops open.

  “We understand your daughter doesn’t go to school.”

  “Of course she does!” Nell cries.

  “She goes to a store called Blue Skies. And we don’t really know what she’s doing there.”

  Nell-mom looks from me to Ray and back at me again.

  “You’re not aware of this?” asks Mrs. Levitt.

  “Of course I am,” Nell-mom says.

  “And who is this young man?”

  “I’m her son,” Ray answers, and Mrs. Levitt shakes her head.

  “Your son?” Mrs. Levitt’s voice sounds a little tighter than it was a minute ago. “And why are you here?”

  “I was bringing her lunch,” says Ray. “And then she thought—she asked for the saxophone.”

  “I see,” Mrs. Levitt says. “But should you really be here when there’s a man with no—hmmm.” She clears her throat.

  “Now, Levitt,” says the policeman. “At least he ain’t totally in the buff. I mean, he’s got, you know. His horn.”

  I guess we’re all supposed to laugh at this, but of course nobody does.

  “It’s not a horn,” says Ray. “It’s a saxophone.”

  “Oh really?” the policeman says.

  “It’s played with a reed,” Ray says. “I mean, a sax is a woodwind, okay? It’s not like a trumpet.”

  “Oh yeah?” the policeman says. He looks like he’s about to bust out laughing but Ray doesn’t notice. He’s just going on about woodwinds like that’s the most important thing in the world. “So if you can’t dig that—”

  “I can dig it!” says the policeman. “What I can’t dig is if there’s any kind of indecency in a public place.”

  “What are you talking about?” Nell-mom scowls. “I’m painting a model and my son is showing him how to hold the saxophone. And this is not a public place. It’s a studio and people are painting in them all over the city!”

  “And you think it’s proper for a child to be in here?” Levitt says.

  “He’s fourteen and I’m not—this is an artistic rendering,” Nell-mom sputters.

  “Well, let’s just say I question it, shall we? Your daughter wanders the streets stealing apples and doesn’t go to school, and—”

  “I keep telling you I don’t steal!” I say, but no one is listening to me.

  “By the way,” says Mrs. Levitt, “where does your son go?”

  “Frankly it’s none of your business. We have a right to teach them at home,” says Nell-mom.

  “But they’re not at home, are they? My concern is for these children and what kind of life they’re leading.”

  “I don’t need your concern,” Nell tells her. “My children are just fine.”

  “How about this?” Mrs. Levitt replies. “I’d like to visit you at home this week to be sure they’re being treated properly. They also need to be tested by the state so we know they’re being educated in compliance with state guidelines. Are you in Monday?”

  “No,” says Nell-mom.

  “Not even late in the afternoon?” Mrs. Levitt asks.

  “I don’t—I’ll have to let you know.”

  “Well.” Mrs. Levitt hands Nell-mom a card with her name and phone number printed on it. “Give me a call Monday morning, all right? I can always stop by in the evening if you work during the day.”

  She turns away, nearly colliding with the pol
iceman, who is staring at Nell-mom.

  “By the way, are you a missus?” he asks.

  Nell-mom doesn’t answer and after a minute, Levitt turns to leave and the policeman follows her. It’s so quiet in the studio, we can hear the clickety-clack of Mrs. Levitt’s shoes as she walks down the hall to the stairwell. And then Nell-mom looks at me.

  “Don’t worry,” I tell her. “I gave her the wrong address.”

  Nell-mom shakes her head slowly, but doesn’t say anything. I keep thinking she ought to be screaming or at least turning purple but she’s just staring at me and I’m getting the weirdest feeling. It’s like when Gary Daddy-o had a fight with her and left for two days, and we had no idea where he was or where to find him. Instead of crying or yelling, she just sat and stared out the window, or paced up and down the hall. It was like a silent movie with people moving and no sound.

  And here I am doing the one thing I was told never to do, which is to get “the man” involved in our lives; we call it “the man,” but it’s the state or boss man or anyone who has the power to make you miserable. But all Nell-mom can do is stand there while Chaz gets off the platform and says, to no one in particular, “Maybe I better get dressed.”

  Nobody answers him, so after a few seconds he hands Ray his saxophone and goes behind a screen in the back of the room. I look at Nell-mom and then at the floor. I want to tell her how all I did was touch an apple I had no intention of stealing, and how Tattoo Tina set the whole thing up because she hates me, but for some reason my throat feels tight and when I try to talk, it’s like I swallowed a block of wood.

  I wish Nell-mom would bark at me or throw something. But instead she starts blinking like she’s trying not to cry, and then her mouth is trembling and she turns and runs out of the room. All I can do is look at the paintbrush she left on her easel, dripping paint all over the floor. I should probably clean it, but I just stand there with my hands in my pockets, trying to remember the lines I made up on the way over here. I sort of do but don’t, really. I try to start over again.

  Crowds. Weaving.

  Sunny Saturday.

  Filling streets in a weave of colors

  Like a snakeskin up-and-down

  breathing

  Going where?

  But there is nowhere

  If Nell-mom is crying, it means I messed up really bad. If she doesn’t know how to fix it, then it might be it can’t be fixed. I try not to think about it, see if I can get somewhere with “Sunny Saturday.” But the words won’t come.

  7

  Maybe

  WHEN NELL-MOM was a kid, her mother picked her up after school to bring her to the antique shop their family owned in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. There wasn’t much to do there but the couches were cool, if you judge by the pictures in our living room. They had a red velvet sofa with big, rounded arms that came from a saloon in the 1800s before Sheboygan was a town. But on this particular day, Little Nell and her mother were on the way to their shop because there was a shipment coming, and no time to spare.

  They were in a big black car like you see in old pictures of the 1930s, and there was a song on the radio called “Makin’ Whoopee!” Nell had just got her report card and she was telling her mother all her grades, and her little brother Eric was in the backseat jumping up and down begging for ice cream. They were on a two-lane road going into town and there was a farmer in front of them driving a cart and he was going slowly, like a tortoise on its back, Nell’s mother said. And the size of his cart made it really hard to see around him.

  Nell remembers what was on the radio because when her mother decided to pass, she was also yelling at Eric to be quiet and puffing on her cigarette and didn’t see the car in the other lane and as soon as she got up by the farmer, they were hit and Nell heard “Whoopee!” and then a tremendous BANG! and she jerked forward into the windshield.

  When Nell woke up in the hospital, they said she would have a tiny scar on her forehead but no one would notice it and she was very, very lucky and Eric was lucky, too. The only one who wasn’t lucky was Nell’s mother, who would never be able to walk again, not even with a cane. That meant her father had to close down the store and work on the railroad, so his kids wouldn’t see him very much. Nell and Eric had to live with their grandmother, who was mostly okay but drank a lot so they were always late to school.

  Their teacher complained, of course, so the social worker got involved, and Nell and her brother went to a foster home. Their foster mother made the kids sleep with their hands outside the covers, so they couldn’t do anything naughty, she said. They couldn’t even put their hands under the blankets when it was cold.

  The last day Nell-mom was in her grandmother’s house was her birthday. I think she was turning nine, and I’m trying to remember how old her brother was, when I realize Chaz is talking to me. “What happened to your mother?”

  “Um, she had to go.”

  I’m not sure why Nell-mom wanted to paint him. He’s a little paunchy and his hair’s going gray, so his mustache looks kind of weird in comparison. I know gallery owners like to check out the art scene, and that may be what he’s doing here. I just wish he hadn’t been doing it today.

  “Is she okay?” says Chaz. “She’s not upset, is she? Wow.”

  Before I can answer, he rushes out of the studio. Then Ray looks at me and says, “You really did it, Ruby.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Thanks.”

  “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  “You go,” I tell him. “I need to clean up.”

  He stands in the doorway trying to decide what he should do.

  “I got stuck in a closet today,” I say.

  “What?” I tell him about trying to ditch Mrs. Levitt and meeting the Soroccos.

  “Sounds kind of funny,” he says, smiling.

  “Not to me.”

  “I don’t know why they got all crazy in here. I mean artists paint this stuff all the time. What’s the big deal?”

  How do boys get so dumb? Do they, like, study for it or something?

  “You and me,” I tell him. “We’re the big deal.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” he says. “It’ll be okay.”

  It’s really hard getting Ray to worry. He’s a lot like Gary Daddy-o, who says while everything matters, nothing matters very much. I think that’s another one of those Zen sayings. What it really means is if you want to get through life without falling apart, you can’t let every flippy little thing get to you. Gary Daddy-o is so Zen that when he and Nell-mom fight, he lies down on the floor and stops talking. After a while, she’ll sit down next to him and they’ll start laughing or something. Once in a while, she’ll just storm out, but that’s how it goes because being in love is no romance. At least that’s what Nell-mom says.

  “Want me to wait for you?” Ray asks.

  “Nah.” I pick up a bottle of turpentine and pour it into a cup to clean the brushes. Ray nods and after watching for a little bit, he goes.

  It feels good to be doing something, even if all I’m doing is swirling red and black streaks through my fingers, watching the brushes turn soft and brown. Nell-mom will be too upset to make dinner, so Ray will have cereal but I’m really tired of Cheerios. If Gary Daddy-o gets home before dark, he’ll either grab a hot dog on the way or eat at Les and Bo’s if they’re playing music together. I think he’s going on tour tomorrow in Philadelphia and if Nell-mom tells him what happened he’ll be going out on a “sour note.” That’s what he likes to say when we mess up.

  I look up at the clock on the wall. What if I were to show up at Les and Bo’s, too? If Gary Daddy-o’s there, I can tell him my side of the story and if he’s not, I can at least get something to eat. On weekends, they order Chinese food or cook something Oriental. It takes me about a minute to realize the clock doesn’t work and I have no idea what time it is. By now, I’m so hungr
y I could eat gum wrappers.

  By the time I get downstairs, the streets are crowding up with weekend people and it takes almost half an hour to get to Christopher Street. Les and Bo live in the tallest building on the block. It has glass doors and a tiny hallway with buzzers, mailboxes, and a second door leading to the stairs. I push the doorbell and wait. One, two, three, nothing. Nobody’s home.

  I’m halfway outside when all of a sudden I hear buzzzzz. I grab for the inside door, but I’m too late and the buzzing stops. I ring again and when the buzzer sounds, I push open the door. I hear a trumpet and someone else on the drums before I even get upstairs. A woman with a cigarette dangling out of her mouth opens the door and points to my shoes. You always have to take them off before they let you in.

  At least fifty zillion people are inside but the pulse of the music is so strong it just pulls at me. This is it, I’m thinking, the heart of the Beat world and it’s here at Les and Bo’s. It’s like they put their hands around the city’s throat and squeezed, and all the life came up into their apartment. Les is playing his sax by the window, facing the street so all I see is the dragon on the back of his red kimono. He has white-gold hair worn Roman-style and a chain around his neck. Bo is playing jazz riffs on guitar, shaking his head from side to side. He’s from Alabama and calls himself an Authentic American African. I just call him Bo.

  The rug feels really good on my feet, thick and soft. I look around for Gary Daddy-o but can’t find him. Then I see Ray, right next to Les and staring like he’s hypnotized, with fingers twitching like he’s playing the same notes. I guess he didn’t want to go home either. Les has been teaching Ray on sax for the past three years and says one of these days Ray will be good enough to play at the Village Gate. Right now, he’s so wrapped up in Les’s playing he doesn’t even see me—but I don’t mind.

  There are cartons of Chinese food around the living room and everyone’s spooning it onto paper plates. Someone hands me a plate piled high with rice and pork and I wolf it down, but when I look around for something to drink all I see is red wine. I’m so thirsty I go into the bathroom and lean over the sink, scooping water into my mouth from the tap. When I come out, I see plates of pistachio ice cream. I’d never put pistachios in ice cream but I guess that’s what’s cool about it.