“Do you like it?”
Alfred laughed. “You know you’re the only person who’s asked that?”
“I know if you don’t like it you won’t keep going.”
Alfred pointed to a step where they could sit. “For now, I like it. The boss says the horses like me. There’s not much to it, really, except brushing them and feeding them and making sure the stalls are clean. I run the ones who don’t get assigned a truck on a given day, and there are a few injured ones, but there’s not much to do for them until they heal. If they heal. I had to put one down. That was the only really bad day, and it was hard going back after that. He was hit by another truck on the corner of Madison and Fiftieth and his leg broke at the ankle. I had to go up there and shoot him.”
Alfred put his hand on her hair and traced his finger along her hairline, around her ear, down her neck. He stopped at the collar of her blouse. “But why are we talking about me? How about you? You look well, Mary. God, it’s good to see you.”
Mary brought his broad hand to her lips and kissed it. She studied his face. “You said I was the only one who asked whether you like it. Who else would ask? I mean, who else have you told?”
Alfred shrugged. “What do you mean? I tell whoever asks me what I do.”
“You seemed surprised that no one else has asked if you like it. Who would ask that, except for me?”
“What are you getting at?”
“Nothing.”
“All right.”
“I’m only saying that it’s a funny thing to say. That I’m the only person who asked that. To say it when you wouldn’t expect anyone else to ask that. Would you?”
“Mary.”
“Are you seeing someone?”
He pulled his hand away. “Why would you ask that? Are you?”
“Am I? Are you serious?”
“There’s people out there. You’re not alone. That gardener.”
“You’d know the lunacy of that question if you’d really read my letters. If you’d written more often—”
“Look. No point discussing it now, Mary, is there? With you coming home?”
“But I told you in the letters how lonely I was, how worried I was about you. If it was you out there I would have written every week. You know I would.”
“Well, you’re a better person than I am, Mary. Isn’t that it? I’m a beast with no regard for anyone but myself, and you’re a paragon of virtue.”
It wasn’t supposed to go like this, arguing over a past neither of them could change, criticizing each other’s choices just like they’d been doing before she was taken. She was hurt. She was very hurt. But she had to make her mind change the subject if they were going to be together again once she got home. She’d resolved to not start up on him the first time she saw him after so long, that she’d be pleasant and forgiving and that they’d start from scratch if he was willing, but as usual she found it impossible to stop. Just as her mind was warning her not to say something, her lips were already saying it. Alfred shifted on the step. He wore that expression of disdain that had made her so wild before she left, like every word she spoke was something to recoil from.
“And you hardly ever wrote back. I didn’t know if my letters were sinking to the bottom of the river.”
“I wrote back.”
“A handful of times.”
“More than that, Mary.” Alfred sighed. “What could I have done? It’s been hard for me, too, you know.”
“Look. The last thing I want to do is argue with you. Not now. I’ll be home soon and that’s all that matters.”
“About that. Might as well tell you now.”
“Tell me what?”
“Home. It isn’t on Thirty-Third Street anymore. I moved. Had to. Couldn’t afford that place without you. And a few of the women in the building got involved in the Temperance League and were driving me crazy, waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs, sliding pamphlets under the door. A few of them followed me one afternoon saying Bible verses, and when I got to Nation’s the men chewed me out for leading them there.”
“Alfred! Why didn’t you tell me?” They’d lived in those rooms together for thirteen years. She loved the place. She imagined she’d always live there. In her letters to him she’d asked about the place, about the people in the building. Brief as they were, he’d never said anything in his letters about having trouble with the rent, so she’d assumed — hoped — he hadn’t gotten too far behind. She tried to shake off her disappointment. Home was wherever Alfred was. “So where have my letters been going?”
“Held at the building. Driscoll keeps them for me. I collect them when I’m over that direction.” Mary didn’t know Mr. Driscoll very well, but remembered he was one of the few in the building Alfred liked talking with when they crossed paths. He’d been a florist, Mary remembered Alfred telling her, until his joints got so painful he couldn’t work anymore.
“And where have you been staying?”
“Orchard Street.”
“Oh, Christ.”
“It’s not bad. I rent my bed from a family and meals are included. There’s a son. Samuel.”
“What’s their name?”
“Meaney.”
Mary wondered where her things were now — her pots and pans. Her clothes. The silver teapot that had been Aunt Kate’s. Let it go, she breathed. Let it go. She reached for every piece of information he gave her and tried to make the parts fit into a whole. Alfred coming and going on Orchard Street, sitting down for meals with a family she’d never seen, careful of himself around Samuel, heading out to the Crystal Springs stables and working a full day. She wanted to ask him about drinking, if Mrs. Meaney waited up for him, if they helped him to his bed at night and took off his socks and shoes and reminded him to wash his sheets once a week.
“So where will I go? Later today?” Mary asked.
“Come to the stable. I’ll be there late anyway. My room on Orchard isn’t big. And with the boy there I doubt they’ll allow you to stay. Or—”
“Or?”
“Or you could stay with someone until we get a place of our own again. Someone in the old building?”
Mary heard her name called from the end of the alley. The break was almost up, and Mr. O’Neill wanted to go over what would happen next before they reconvened. Her guard had fallen asleep with his hat pulled down low over his eyes. She wouldn’t be foolish enough to try to escape today anyway. Not when she’d be free in a matter of hours.
“I have to go,” Alfred said. “I’m late as it is.” They brushed the crumbs off their laps, and then he took her into his arms and hugged her, lifting her off the ground for a moment before setting her back down. “I’m sorry, Mary. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. We’ll figure it out later. When we see each other. We’ll figure it all out. I promise.” He told her the address of the stable.
“Yes. Okay. Later.”
“A lot has changed, Mary. You’ll see.”
She’d been a child when she met Alfred, only seventeen, more than twenty years of her life tied to this person, no way to untangle that knot now. They’d moved into the rooms on Thirty-Third Street in the summer of 1894, when Mary was twenty-five. Aunt Kate had died of pneumonia over the winter, and Paddy Brown had gone from saying very little to saying nothing at all.
“Kate loved Alfred,” Mary said gently to the old man on the day she told him that she’d be moving out, that she and Alfred had found a place together.
“Kate thought he would marry you,” Paddy Brown said as he felt along the mantel for his tin of tobacco. Mary found it for him, pried it open, removed a plug, and offered it on her palm. When he got the pipe started she sat by him, and he put his hand on top of her head. “Take the things she wanted you to have,” he said after a while. It was the longest conversation they’d had in six months.