Circle of Love(10)

“Leave us alone!” a woman yelled. “Think you’re better than we are, do you? Come to take our children away?”

The woman in the window leaned so far out she almost fell. “Mind your own business, Sophie!” she screamed. “I seen what happened. Tommy tried to snatch the lady’s bag.”

“You begrudge the poor lad a few coins? Miss La-de-da’s got many more where that come from!” Sophie yelled back.

“Poor lad, my eyes!” someone said, and laughed. “Best little thief, you mean. Mark my words, he’ll be off to prison one of these days.”

Soon bystanders were shouting at Frances, at Tommy, and at each other.

Suddenly the sharp shriek of police whistles split the air. Tommy looked up at Frances, and as their eyes met, she loosened her hold on his wrist. He slipped from her grasp and disappeared into the crowd.

A policeman elbowed his way through the crowd of people, many of whom took off in a hurry. He asked Frances, “Were you hurt, miss? Were you robbed?”

“No, Officer,” Frances said. “Nothing happened to me. I’m all right.”

“No thanks to Tommy O’Hara,” the woman in the window called. “He tried to snatch her bag.”

“He didn’t succeed,” Frances said.

“I know the boy. You have witnesses. You could bring charges,” the officer said.

Frances thought of her brother Mike, who’d been tempted to become a copper stealer and had been caught. Without the help of Reverend Brace, who had asked the judge to let her brother go west for a second chance, Mike could have been sentenced to time in a prison called the Tombs. If she brought charges against Tommy, most likely he’d be sent to the Tombs. It was doubtful that anyone would come forward to give him another chance.

“I have no intention of bringing charges against the boy,” she said.

The officer nodded and wrote something in his notebook. Then he raised his eyes to hers. “Beg pardon, miss, but you don’t belong in this part of town. If you’ll tell me where you’re going, I’ll see that you get there safely.”

“I’m staying at the Children’s Aid Society on Amity Street,” Frances said.

“Then I’ll walk you there,” the officer told her.

Frances smiled at him. “Could you make it Fifth Avenue instead?” she asked. “There are some places on Fifth that I want to see again.”

“Again?”

“I once lived here,” Frances said.

For an instant he looked puzzled. Then he returned her smile, apparently reassured by her mention of Fifth Avenue. “To Fifth Avenue it is. My pleasure,” he said.

Frances and the officer chatted amiably. As they reached Fifth Avenue and Twenty-second Street, he said, “If you’re going to be in New York a few days, maybe you’d like to attend the Policemen’s benefit picnic supper on Saturday. I’d like to escort you.”

Surprised but pleased, Frances smiled. “Thank you,” she said, “but I must decline. I’ll soon be going home to … to … Kansas.” I almost said ‘to Johnny,’ she thought, as a rush of loneliness washed over her.

Frances parted with the officer. Just down the street, near Madison, she looked up at the square gray stone building in which she and Ma used to scrub floors at night.

It’s not nearly as large as I remembered it, she thought with surprise. She pictured cranky Mrs. Watts and mean Mr. Lomax, who sent her on errands, threatening to dock her pay if she was even a minute late.

To her surprise, Mr. Lomax suddenly emerged from the building and strode toward her. Frances froze in place, momentarily terrified, just as she had been when she was a child. She’d received nothing from this thin, hawk-faced man but scoldings and recriminations.

But as Mr. Lomax looked up and saw Frances watching him, he tipped his hat and smiled.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Lomax,” Frances said quietly. She relaxed, surprised that she no longer hated him. He was a pitiful thing, wrapped inside the shell of his own mean-spiritedness, and he no longer had power over her.

“G-Good afternoon, ma’am,” Mr. Lomax stammered. She could feel his puzzled gaze on her back after he had passed her, and she giggled to herself, knowing that he’d wonder all day who she was and how she happened to know his name.

Frances walked up Madison to Twenty-third Street, where trees were thick and green and summer flowers bloomed in well-cared-for beds. Little girls in high-buttoned boots and tucked cotton dresses walked with their mothers or nursemaids in the late-afternoon sunlight, dodging the small boys in matching jackets and pants who darted and raced in games of chase and tag.