“Where have you been, Grace?” Julia said, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth. “You haven’t been on the bus. I’ve called, stopped at the house.”
“I haven’t been well, I guess.” It’s true enough. “Is everything all right? Did something happen?” Grace began to stand so she could reach out and touch Julia’s arm, but Julia pulled away.
“It’s nothing,” Julia said, and busied herself rinsing out the dirty dishes.
“You should stay home today,” Grace said. “Take a break from going to the church. Spend some time with the girls.”
Julia waved away Grace’s suggestion and pushed aside the ruffled café curtains to watch the twins through the window. The sound of metal chipping away at loose paint still echoed through the backyard. “I wonder,” she had said, “if things will ever be good again.”
Holding four large silver trays, Mrs. Nowack shoulders her way through the black curtain separating the back of the bakery from the front, and holds it open for Grace.
“You’re sure it’s no bother?” Grace says.
Out on the street, Julia’s car finally rolls through the intersection, turns right, and disappears. Grace should have stayed with Julia, should have asked again what was really troubling her. But there was a bus to catch and Grace was eager to leave Alder and all the things that reminded her of how much was lost. The thing that troubled Julia was most likely the thing that troubled everyone on Alder Avenue. Six days and Elizabeth is still missing. Julia will be fighting her imagination, trying to escape the visions of Elizabeth alone, frightened, or dying or dead. Grace fights the same visions, but they don’t spring from her imagination. They spring from the memory of the night those men, that man, came for her.
“You are seeing I have no customers,” Mrs. Nowack says. “Come, we are having plenty of time for pierogi.”
“Do we leave the baby here?” Grace asks. “Unattended?”
Mrs. Nowack lets the curtain fall closed and sets the trays on the counter. Through the round glasses perched on the end of her nose, she squints at Grace. “You know there is being no baby, yes?”
Grace nods. “Was there ever?”
“You are seeing only a mother who wishes her baby had lived. One child giving birth to another. Too much sadness I am thinking, and this is what happens.”
Grace slides her feet across the gritty tile, slowly so she makes no noise, and at the carriage, she pinches a corner of the quilt and pulls. The quilt falls away from the empty bassinet. She wonders, if the women knew what happened to her, would they coo to her and touch her softly on the shoulders and back as they had done for Cassia.
“It is being like Elizabeth, yes?” Mrs. Nowack says. “Who knows what all this sadness will be doing to us.”
Grace shakes out the quilt and drapes it over the carriage.
“Coming,” Mrs. Nowack says, picking up her trays. “We are having much work. Busy is good. Busy is very good.”
Outside on Willingham, two more police cars drive past. This time, their lights flash, their sirens whine. They don’t stop at the intersection like the other two police cars but drive straight through the stop sign and head toward the river.
Letting the black curtain fall closed, Mrs. Nowack sets her trays back on the counter and walks across the black-and-white tile to the front window. Yet another police car drives past.
“Or perhaps today is not being the day for our work.” She shakes her head and makes a clicking sound with her tongue. “I am afraid we are having bad news. It is being best you go home.”
Julia should have said no to Arie and insisted she and Izzy come with her to the church. If she weren’t thinking only of herself, she would have, but as Arie stood before Julia with her freshly scrubbed face and neatly combed hair, begging for a chance to stay home, Julia thought it might be easier if she left the house by herself. She could have never explained to the girls why she wanted to drive by the factory on the way to the church or what she was hoping to find there.
All of Willingham Avenue’s shops are closed today, their windows dark, except for the bakery. Julia stares straight ahead at the factory’s parking lot. It’s only half full of cars, all of them owned by men Julia doesn’t know. They’ll be cars that belong to men who never met Elizabeth, men who live east of Woodward or north of Eight Mile. They’ll be cars that belong to men who work two shifts to make up for men who search. Where Willingham dead-ends into Chamberlin, Julia rests her foot on the brake and lets the car idle. No women stand in the warehouse next to the factory. The ladies said the women come on payday, tempt the men, put themselves on display in the windows. But the warehouse door is boarded up and every window is empty and black. The glass is broken out of a few and plywood has been nailed at all angles to keep out the trespassers.
Julia didn’t really expect to find Bill’s car here. She’ll find it at the church, or he’ll be out driving through one of the neighborhoods Grace’s husband marked off on the map. She should have never let her mind wander to the dead woman on Willingham when Bill sat at the dining-room table, his head buried in his arms, and said that he was so very sorry. But what else was she to think? What else could torment a man? What other than guilt and remorse? She flips on her right blinker, turns off Willingham onto Chamberlin, and her mind wanders to what became of Elizabeth Symanski.
In the church basement, Julia circles the room, raving about the splendid smell that met her the moment she climbed out of her car. Making her way to the end of the rectangular table draped with a freshly washed and ironed white linen, Julia unwraps her banana bread, apologizing all the while that she didn’t go to nearly the trouble of the others. She thinks to ask one of the ladies if Bill has been through for lunch yet, but because the casserole dishes are full and the coffee cups sit in perfect rows on the square card table she knows none of the men have arrived. She also doesn’t ask because she’s afraid the ladies will hear doubt in her voice, or fear, or panic.
Today, there is talk of a funeral. Julia hears this in snippets of conversation that flow about the room. With the arrest of the colored man from the Filmore, the ladies assume Elizabeth will soon be found. Julia isn’t certain anymore if she saw Elizabeth walk through that gate. What does she remember because it actually happened and what does she remember because she wants so badly for it to be true? When the police asked her, which they did three times, they said they wanted only to establish a timeline. They weren’t trying to place blame. This is how life works, they said. Sometimes it’s a messy thing to behold. Relax. Close your eyes if it helps. What do you know to be true?
After Julia has unwrapped her banana bread, sliced the first loaf, and set out the butter to soften, she fills two pitchers to freshen the water in the percolators. As she moves about the room, stacking the coffee cups and filling the creamers, the ladies follow her with their eyes. They shift their gaze when Julia smiles at them, but look back the moment they think she has turned away. They know something but don’t want to tell Julia. Or maybe they are blaming Julia for what has happened, maybe worrying about what will become of her, or perhaps they can see in Julia’s face or in her eyes or in the way she walks that she is slowly sinking into the fear of what her own husband may have done.