“Sometimes I think about when we met,” she’d said to him on that early-August morning when they last fought. Even in a weakened state he was no fool and knew the ultimate point she was driving at. Once upon a time, not so long ago, he’d worked, he’d been strong, he’d been handsome. Years ago, she had an employer who held back two weeks’ wages because he thought she was in league with a tutor who’d stolen jewelry from his wife, and Alfred had gone directly over to that grand, glossy black door on West Eighteenth Street, the entrance the family and their guests used, and put the man straight. When Alfred came back and handed over her wages, Mary was so relieved that she sobbed into her hands like the kind of woman she considered her opposite.
“What could you have said to him that I didn’t already say?” she’d asked, looking at the bills fanned out on the table.
“Nothing,” Alfred had said, and then grinned. “I guess I had a different way of putting it.”
She’d been over the story before, hoping to shame him into seeing the difference between now and then, hoping to light the fire that would drive him back to the way he was. On that morning in August, the day she left for Oyster Bay, Alfred wouldn’t even humor her.
“Leave then, why don’t you, if you’re so disgusted. Go on.”
Mary knew women were supposed to be the softer sex, a species so warm and nurturing that God granted them the gift of bearing children, caring for them, looking after a home, nursing the sick to health. But sometimes Alfred made her so angry that all the warmth went out of her body and instead her thoughts became murderous, if she managed to have thoughts at all.
Mary pushed open the door to Nation’s and took one step inside. One man glanced up and then nudged the man next to him, who nudged the next man, and so on. There was a plate of crackers, cheese squares, and a few slices of bread on a table near the back, and Mary’s quick eye told her they’d been out since morning; the cheese had gone hard at the edges. The man behind the bar tucked his apron into his belt and came around. “I’m sorry, but—”
“I’m looking for Alfred Briehof. Have you seen him? He hasn’t been home.”
“Jesus,” one of the men at the bar muttered. “Briehof has a home?”
“Are you…?”
“I’m his—”
“You’re Mary.”
“I am.”
“He left a while ago. Did you check with the chestnut man on Thirtieth Street?”
“Was he…” Mary hoped he wouldn’t make her say it. “All right?”
The bartender shrugged. “He was all right, I guess.”
Mary tried to decide what to do.
“I think you should go home,” the bartender said as if hearing her thoughts. “He had that mopey look that means he’s homeward bound.”
What do you know about his looks, Mary wanted to ask. I’ll kill him, she vowed. I’ll stand behind the door and get him before he even enters the room. Fran had killed a man in Jersey City a few years back. Robert was on nights at the time and the man had broken into their rooms, was standing at the foot of her bed, and she’d grabbed her husband’s spare gun from under the pillow — the one he’d left for her for exactly that sort of crisis — and shot him dead.
“Thank you,” Mary said to the bartender, and left.
What Alfred did when Mary was away was never clear to her. She wanted to ask Jimmy Tiernan, who lived on the third floor and went to Nation’s himself sometimes, but whenever she thought she had her chance, Patricia Tiernan appeared over his shoulder and gave her the daggers. Fran didn’t have a door on the stairs and claimed to never hear Alfred on the nights he howled. Joan had a mind the size of a thimble, and all that thimble contained were thoughts of future babies she’d have with her husband. Once, when Joan mentioned that they’d been married going on six years and hoping all that time, Mary had snapped, “My God, Joan, do you need the formula written down for you? Do you know what goes in to making a baby?” But as she watched Joan close her eyes against her question, keeping one long, delicate finger on the lid of the coffeepot, Mary realized Joan would never have a baby. “I’ve heard it takes a long time for some women,” she offered by way of apology. Joan must have forgiven her because she continued to wave Mary inside whenever she caught her passing.
It was useless to ask Alfred himself, because according to him he never drank more than he could handle, and when Mary was gone he never drank at all; he only worked or tried to get work. The longest she’d been gone without returning home was three months, but even on the jobs where she was close enough to get home for the odd Sunday, one day was not enough to see what was happening. Who helped him up the stairs when he called and called but never got any answer? Not Mr. Hallenan, who hated both Alfred and Mary. Not Jimmy Tiernan, who wouldn’t be allowed out. Maybe he got up the stairs himself. Or maybe he slept wherever he landed. Or maybe he told the truth, that when Mary was gone he didn’t drink at all. Maybe that behavior was something he saved for her, a punishment, perhaps, for always leaving.
• • •
In some of the homes where Mary had worked, the families had pots and pans by the dozen, sinks with two chambers, iceboxes that could keep a hock of ham frozen for a whole summer. In the rooms she and Alfred shared, they had one skillet, one tall stockpot for boiling, and one small saucepan. But those three vessels were enough for two, enough for the sort of meals Alfred liked most.
That evening, in case he would return, Mary walked downtown from Nation’s door and then east, to the butcher on Second Avenue that stayed open until six. When she finally got there and smelled the raw meat combined with the sawdust on the floor and the fresh herbs on the counter for those who liked to take home their cuts already seasoned, she knew that he would come home.
Back in her own silent kitchen, she cleared off the cluttered table and used it to prep. She filled the pot with water. She rubbed the small pork tenderloin she’d purchased half-price with plenty of salt and pepper, a bit of nutmeg she grated, a pinch of cinnamon, a dash of sugar, a teaspoon’s worth of onion powder she measured with her cupped hand.
After a while, she heard noise on the stairs, steps on the fifth-floor landing. She opened the door and waited.
“Mary,” he said, and stopped climbing two steps from the top. He clutched the railing.
“Are you all right?” she asked. Not seeing him for a long time and then seeing him again was a famine and a feast her body knew the rhythms of better than her mind. The light was dim, and Alfred, with his dark hair and eyes, his dark clothes, threatened to fade into the paneling, the deep wines and forest greens of the cheap wallpaper the building’s owner had pasted up so many years ago. Mary couldn’t stop herself from walking over to him. She couldn’t stop herself from holding out her hand. He was every bit as handsome as he’d been when she was seventeen and he twenty-two. He was every bit as strong.
“I’m all right,” he said, taking her hand between his and drawing it closer for a kiss.
“I made supper,” she said to him, tugging him gently up the last two steps until he was standing in front of her.
He put his hands on either side of her head and then cupped her face. He clutched her shoulders and pulled her to his chest.
“Thank you, Mary. I’m very glad.”
• • •
Things stayed good between them for two weeks, and then like a balloon with the tiniest puncture, they started to sink. He came home later. He wouldn’t touch what she cooked. Instead of talking with her in the mornings, he rolled over and stared at the wall until she left to spend the day cooking down at a firehouse social, or a church hall, or a company picnic, or one of the other day jobs she’d arranged by grasping at connections, following up on every rumor, showing up at doors with her knives folded neatly in her bag to say that she heard there was need of a cook.