“Frank hasn’t been able to part with Maureen’s things. Everything is as she left it. I found what I was after right away. And there it was in black and white.”
Jeffers scratched behind his ear. “I still don’t get it.”
“When Bitsy hugged me that night, she slipped a note into the pocket of Maureen’s beautiful dress. And there it remained, yellowed with age. I’ll never forget the words: I can’t bear the lies anymore. I don’t belong and never will. This has to end now, tonight. I’ve studied the tides. The river will take me where I need to go. Please tell Harold I’m sorry. Tell him I had no choice.
L. C. pulled a breath. “She killed herself? Wow. I didn’t see that coming.”
Jeffers’s eyes bugged. “Bitsy Grainger offed herself? You’re sure?”
“At least we finally know what happened.” Colleen raised her wineglass. “To Bitsy Grainger. She took the only way she could see to end her suffering. Rest in peace.”
The whole group joined the solemn chorus. “To Bitsy Grainger.”
Jeffers stood abruptly. “Excuse me a sec. Nature calls.”
“Off the record, Jeffers. You hear me?” But the reporter hurried toward the men’s room, tapping away. L. C. sputtered in disgust. “That wormy creep. He’s going to tweet the end of your story. He’s going to post it all over creation and claim it’s his. I’m going to go flush him and his damned phone.”
Colleen set a hand on his. “It’s okay, L. C. Truly. Let it go.”
“But he’s a lazy, nasty, unethical jerk. He doesn’t care what he steals or who he hurts.”
“And he’ll get just deserts: a life sentence with himself.”
The next morning, Colleen bundled against the morning chill and hailed a cab to Sutton Place. She took a final stroll through Bitsy’s old neighborhood and then headed toward the charming patisserie she’d discovered on First Avenue. Their cappuccino was world-class.
She perched on a bistro chair at a tiny table in the rear and placed her order: Bitsy’s favorite drink and a croissant. Then she plucked the iPad mini from her tote.
Reuben Jeffers’s scoop had garnered the lead in today’s edition of A-List. “Missing Beauty Mystery Solved!” The piece recounted all the details Colleen had hoped to see: Bitsy’s childhood in Myrtle, Mississippi; her betrayal by Ray Adlen and his downward spiral; Harold’s move to Costa Rica and his children’s lawsuit over the terms of his will. Best of all, they included a manufactured replica of the suicide note Colleen claimed to have found. Jeffers had swallowed her story whole and spat it back unverified. Unscrupulous though he was, he should have known better. Colleen wrote fiction, after all.
But there was no going back. Jeffers’s story would be reposted in predictable perpetuity, and it would gather the heft that passes today for truth.
Colleen’s order was ready. She checked to be sure the time was right, paid, and stepped outside.
Near the corner, an old woman hunched against the chill in a hooded camel coat. She appeared to be homeless. “Can you help me, please? Can you help-”
Colleen approached. “Here, my friend. For you.” She passed the croissant and cappuccino.
The woman cradled the cup and took a sip. Her wrinkled eyes narrowed with pleasure, but Colleen still caught a hint of moonstone gray.
“Bless you, my friend,” she said and sipped again. “Heaven, right?”
JUDITH KELMAN is the award-winning, best-selling author of seventeen novels, three nonfiction books, dozens of short stories, and hundreds of articles and essays for major publications. In 2008 she founded Visible Ink, a unique writing program at Memorial Sloan-Kettering that enables all interested cancer patients to reap the benefits of written expression with the one-on-one help of a volunteer writing mentor. She lives in New York City.
DIZZY AND GILLESPIE by Persia Walker
Faded glory. That’s how I’d describe Mama’s apartment. At least, that’s what I’d say when I was feeling generous. When I wasn’t, I’d say it was a dilapidated piece of shit. But Mama loved it. Loved her seven big rooms, all sprouting from that tunnel of a hallway like branches from a tree. High ceilings, hardwood floors, and a maid’s quarters. Not really a living room, but a parlor and a dining room, with nearly floor-to-ceiling windows. Sounds grand, don’t it?
Built in 1910, that place was meant for the wealthy. But that was then and this was now and it was old-past old. It exuded sadness and disappointment. It stunk of mildew and dust, of ancient asbestos and long-dead vermin. The high ceilings leaked streams of filthy water, the tall walls were buckled, and the floor was treacherous with slivers.
Mama wasn’t blind to all the problems. She simply didn’t care. The place had been her home for nearly forty years. She had grown up during the Depression, dirt poor and hungry, in a rambling broken-down farmhouse. Determined to get ahead, she left Virginia when she was fifteen and grabbed a Greyhound bus for New York. That was in 1932, when the whole country was still struggling and chances for a colored girl with a ninth-grade education were next to nil. She had gone to work in Long Island, as a maid in the homes of moneyed white folk. Not often, but sometimes, she would talk about their grand homes. And sometimes I’d wonder: did this place of faded grandeur remind her of the homes she’d worked in? Maybe in her eyes, the dull floors still shone and the sagging walls were still ramrod straight.
Mama was ninety years old. She had lived in Harlem for some seventy-odd years, and she was still proud to be there, in the legendary mecca of black folk. Nowadays, a lot of black Harlemites were heading back down South, where life was slower and money went further. But you couldn’t tell Mama that. She still believed that Harlem was the only place to be.
She was especially proud to be in Hamilton Heights. It was a historic landmarked district, with rows of stately townhouses and stone terraces. It was home to an ethnically diverse community of actors, artists, architects, professors, and other intellectual bohemians. Certainly, parts of it were lovely.
“This is one of the nicest neighborhoods in all New York City,” Mama would say.
Then I’d say, “But I’m not complaining about the neighborhood. It’s this building.”
And that, of course, was a bald-faced lie. ’Cause I was most definitely complaining about both.
The gentrification that had hit Central and East Harlem had pretty much left West Harlem alone. At least our little part of it. That stretch along 135th and 145th Streets, between Broadway and Amsterdam? It was sad. Cheap landlords, run-down tenements. There were a couple of good restaurants along Broadway, but they were probably going to close soon. The atmosphere of an open-air drug market had certainly calmed down, but sometimes it felt like the dealing had just gone underground.
Then, there was the other Hamilton Heights. It was gorgeous. Convent Avenue, Hamilton Terrace, Sugar Hilclass="underline" they were stunning-but they had always been stunning. Until fairly recently, they’d been among Harlem’s best-kept secrets. Even with as well-known a place as City College being on Convent Avenue, Hamilton Terrace, for example, escaped general notice. It was a forgotten enclave. A city apart. Even the air over there was different.
Over there. That’s how I thought of it. That was over there. And this was over here, where the people were holding on by the skin of their teeth.
“Well, if you don’t like it, leave,” Mama would say.