Fever (10 page)

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.

“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.

September, October, November: they moved around their rooms keeping furniture between them. Once, just before Christmas, they’d been about to pass each other on the stairs when Mr. Hallenan stepped out on the landing and said the missus had kicked him out. Alfred and Mary had looked immediately to each other and laughed, she facing up the stairs, he facing down. They’d laughed together at Mr. Hallenan’s expense, and for one instant they stepped outside of that particular moment in time.

Sometimes, very late at night, he told her he knew that all the cruel things she said to him were the truth, and it was easy to talk to him then, to pile on more and more because in those moods he would just accept it, tell her she was right, absolutely right. But during the day, whenever she caught him sober, and worked up the courage and energy to face this thing that was eating away at them, she’d take a breath to speak and before she uttered one single syllable he’d already be cringing, closing his eyes, looking away, bracing himself for the volley that would follow, and it was that cringe, before she’d even said a word, like she wasn’t even allowed to speak, like she wasn’t even allowed to raise the slightest objection to the way he was living his life, the way he winced before she’d even fully turned from the counter, that had driven her to the office to find a situation that would keep her away from him. She told Mr. Haskell, who ran the agency, that a regular day off to come home didn’t matter to her. She was willing to go as far as Connecticut. She’d go up to Tuxedo if they paid her enough, and gave her a private room.