Other Shepards Read Free

Historic Manhattan, and 176 Waverly’s official history has been long overboiled inside my head. “Designed by a student of the popular architect James Renwick, this Victorian Gothic style building—note the leaded-glass fanlight over the door, the wrought-iron stair railing, the open-box newels—was built in 1883. During prohibition , Waverly Place was lined with s peakeasies .” (A speakeasy is a place where people could sneak off to buy and drink alcohol during prohibition, which was a law in the 1920s that banned liquor from public and private establishments. After years of hearing the bullhorn-wielding tour guides yak about this, I finally looked up both words.)
    The tour always winds up with the story of New York mayor James John Walker’s mistress, an actress who lived in our house during the Roaring Twenties. It is rumored that some nights the furtive but well-dressed ghost of “Beau James” can be seen sneaking down the short flight of steps to the sidewalk, where he dissolves into mist as soon as his foot hits the pavement. I have never caught sight of the mayor’s ghost, although not for lack of trying. Geneva maintains she’s seen him on several occasions, wearing a swirling opera cape and a top hat. She says his eyes are more bashful than you might expect, all things considered.
    Waverly is a bent, quiet street, where the most commotion on a given day is the yips of two sparring poodles. In the summer, the poplar and ginkgo trees provide a spangled shade from the sun, although the crushed ginkgo berries under our shoes smell like vomit.
    Geneva snuffles at the yellow tulips as she waits for me to unlock the front door. “They don’t smell,” she says. “Maybe we should have got roses or lilies.”
    “Tulips are more cheerful. Besides, you’re allergic to roses.”
    “And don’t tell about Carr’s.”
    “You already said. And why would I tell?” I try to bite back the snap in my voice, but I’m tired and distracted, thinking about how I should start digging into my French homework, which tonight means correcting the test I flunked.
    “Someone’s here,” Geneva whispers. I follow my sister’s gaze to the dining room window.
    “No, no one.”
    “Someone,” she insists. “A lady.”
    “Ooh, maybe it’s the mayor’s mistress,” I say. “Waiting for one last afternoon of illicit love.” But I watch the front windows as I jiggle my keys impatiently at the slide and dead bolt locks. A lady? The parents almost never have visitors. Certainly no one unexpected. I can tell from Geneva’s breathing that she’s curious, too.
    “Hello!” I make my voice brave, like a returning hunter, as we enter the house. “Who’s there?”
    “No one, just me. Annie. Annie the painter.”
    It was not fear, exactly, that stirred inside me when I heard her voice, although I have lived in New York City my entire life, and know its many terrible tales of intruders and muggers and worse. I probably should have spun right around and hustled both of us out into the safety of the street. But when my sister tugged at my elbow, stepping past me and walking through the swinging doors into the kitchen, I remember feeling mostly surprise. It was such a strange thing for her to do. And I wondered if Geneva had read my mind, and was trying to be the big sister for a change.
    The only thing I could think to do was to follow her.

two
annie
    “W HAT WAS YOUR FIRST impression?” my sister would ask me time and again after we had met Annie, and long after we stopped knowing her. “The first, number one thing that hit you?”
    “That she wasn’t a redhead,” I always answer. I associate the name Annie with the Little Orphan and the one of Green Gables. Both redheads.
    This Annie’s hair is brilliant blond and wispy, its pollen yellow tint reminding me of the baby picture of Mom that sits on Dad’s desk. Her complexion is bright; her forehead, nose, and chin are flushed, as if she has crept too close to a fire,