When Mary arrived home that Friday in September, she opened the door to their rooms and was hit by the odor of linen that needed washing, rotting banana peels on the counter, the single window shut tight. The letter she’d sent to tell Alfred what time her train was due was open on the table, and she could see that he’d made an effort to flatten the folds. He might have gotten work. It happened that way sometimes: no prospects on the horizon and next thing someone comes looking for him with a tip about a company looking for a driver, or need for a man who could shovel coal.
Mary set about stripping their bed and washing the linens, but when she had everything soaking in the tub, she couldn’t find any soap. She decided to run down to the grocer. Not wanting to break one of the new paper bills Mr. Warren had given her, she went to the jam jar of coins they kept by the stove for the gas meter. But there was no jam jar, no coins, and after seven weeks of missing him, of hoping he was getting on, Mary was as furious as she’d been the day she left. Sometimes — and staring at the empty space where the jam jar used to live was one of these times — Mary felt she’d tripped into a space beyond fury, a place where all of this was so astonishing that perhaps she was the one who was wrong. She took a deep breath and went over the facts: I told him to not dare touch the gas money. Do not dare, I said to him. And he looked at me like he wouldn’t dream of it. His look said: the nerve of you to say that to me. I told him I’d send word when I was due home and if he could have the rooms straightened a bit. After a seven-week job I don’t want to walk into a pigsty. He was insulted. And now Mary stood in the middle of the kitchen and contemplated the naked bed in the next room, the dirty plates and mugs on the sideboard. She could walk out the door with the same bag she’d just hauled from Oyster Bay, and leave him to manage the sopping bedsheets. She smiled. That would be a surprise to him.
But if he’s working, Mary reminded herself, he might have needed those coins to make himself presentable. Unpeeling one bill from the thick fold in her pocket and leaving the rest hidden in the closet, she went down to the street to buy a cake of soap. She hoped that by the time she came back, washed the sheets, and hung them on the fire escape, Alfred would be home.
But the dinner hour came and went, and still, Alfred did not return. She went down to visit with Fran.
“And how’s Alfred?” Fran asked. “Glad to have you back?”
“Oh sure,” Mary had said, avoiding her friend’s eye. “Of course he is.” Mary knew for a fact that Fran’s Robert came home for lunch on any day when he could take the full hour.
When five o’clock arrived, Mary wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and went out to look for him.
For several blocks around their building, quitting time found the streets thick with men: men rushing for streetcars, men leaning against buildings and in door frames. As Mary crossed over Thirty-Third Street she observed that even the horses were wild at quitting time. Several water wagons were heading in a line toward the stables on First, and each horse that passed bent its long muscular neck and turned a vein-threaded eye toward Mary.
Once she crossed Thirty-Fourth Street, she could see the blue door of Nation’s Pub on the next block, the flag above, the pair of potted plants that welcomed patrons inside. She walked by the wide door without slowing her pace, granting herself only a small sideward glance as if the place meant nothing to her, no more than any other business that lined the avenue. The late-summer afternoon brought a cool breeze, and Mary pulled the sleeves of her sweater over her hands. Her knuckles felt like two rows of rough stones.
When Mary passed Nation’s again, she took a better look. The window next to the door was clouded, but yes, she thought she saw him, slumped at the end of the bar. Yes, that was the posture he would have after so long sitting. She had no plan except to pass by and confirm that he was there, that he was safe, that he wasn’t in any trouble. Once she found him, she planned on going back to their rooms to wait. Or to pack her things and leave. Or to go about her business and sleep, pretending there was no Alfred, and that she was obligated to no one but herself.
But on her third pass, the bright blue door swung open, and a man stepped out. Mary looked past the open door at the man she thought was Alfred — a blond man, she saw now, heavyset, his nose a bit like Alfred’s, yes, but nothing else. Then the door slammed shut. He’s told them about me, Mary supposed. Our arrangement. Might have said how much it suits him. Might have had a laugh about it. He was cruel when he drank, but then when he drank more he was kind again. It all depended on the dose, and sometimes Mary hoped that if he had to drink at all that he would drink past cruelty and into the Alfred she loved, the one who loved her and told her that he would never have lived so long without her, and my God, she was beautiful. Did she know? Why didn’t he tell her all the time? Just one or two drinks past kind Alfred was helpless Alfred, and this was the Alfred she feared she’d meet later on that night. There was no arguing with helpless Alfred, no high horse to ride out into the city streets and away from him. Helpless Alfred would get home around three or four in the morning and would call for her from the bottom of the stairs. One by one, doors would open from the first floor to the sixth. He’d sit on the very first step, head in his hands, and shout for her without pause, and when every person who had a door onto the stairs woke up from his shouting, they’d shout for her, too.
“Where were you?” he’d ask when she finally ran down the six flights. She used to bother with tying her robe, but not anymore. “Why didn’t you hear me?”
“I was all the way upstairs,” she’d say in a whisper, hoping to shush him. “I was asleep. I didn’t hear you.”
“Jesus Christ, Mary,” Mr. Hallenan on the first floor would say. “Where the hell were you? Why didn’t you hear him?” Mr. Hallenan didn’t care who in the world saw the graying hair on his belly.
Then Alfred would put an arm around her shoulder, his other hand on the railing, and she’d haul him up the six flights. In their rooms, she’d take off his shoes, his stinking socks, his pants and shorts. Sometimes he’d realize he was naked and he’d cry: long ugly sobs full of phlegm that shocked and embarrassed her every time. Sometimes, when she was lucky, he just sank into their bed and went to sleep. The worst nights, even worse than when they fought or when she had to strip him, were the nights when she finally got him upstairs and he sat by the window for an hour or so, looking at the quiet below, before staggering to his feet and going out again. More than any other kind of night, those were the ones that drove her to the agency to ask for another situation, one that would keep her away full-time, somewhere far away, where the train back to their rooms would be too long, too expensive for a day’s journey. It was a night when he came back home only to go out again that had driven her to Oyster Bay.
Standing outside Nation’s Pub, she tried to think of what else she could do to pass the time and stop herself from wanting to see him, but it was no good. She needed to know what he’d made of his weeks away from her. And she needed to know how he was faring. A body could not hold up long against such an assault, and all summer long, before leaving for Oyster Bay, she’d observed him becoming weaker, his pants drooping around his hips, his broad chest narrowing inside his shirt. His face had taken on a gray-green tinge, and the skin at his neck had loosened, become slack.