Maggie Flynn met me at the door. She was now the sole proprietor of the establishment her mother had maintained for nearly fifty years. Edna Flynn had been driven from Ireland by the Great Hunger. She’d come to Canada on a coffin ship, Edna said, then drifted south, where she’d finally found work as a charwoman at a rooming house in Royston. Slowly, by small, nearly imperceptible steps, the rooming house had turned bawdy.
Edna had never formally lent herself to that particular task, as she often said, but on occasion she would “take a fancy” to some young sailor, and together they’d drift upstairs to one of the bedrooms that ran down a long gaslit corridor. In the morning, a few coins inevitably lay neatly beneath the lantern on the bureau. Since Edna was by no means dull, she’d early realized that this added up to prostitution, and yet, even after she’d become the sole proprietor, incontestably a madam, she’d never allowed anyone, neither her customers nor any of her “girls,” to use that term in connection with what took place in the upper rooms of her house on Blyden Street.
Her daughter Maggie had no such reservation, however. Once her mother was dead and buried, all pretense that the men who tramped up the wooden stairs came for “social” purposes went out the window with as little ceremony as a tub of fish heads. Still, Maggie seemed to prefer the “regulars” to the transient seamen who came but for a night and were never seen again. The regulars, mostly older men from neighboring towns, often married, with businesses and professions of their own, these were the “heart and soul” of her operation, Maggie said, and I always believed that she’d chosen that phrase purposefully, because it conveyed the high regard for permanence and stability that creatures like ourselves, impermanent, unstable, doomed by time to disappear, yearn for without surcease.
She was wearing a bright dress of royal blue that evening, a dress I’d never seen. The rest was familiar, however, a rawboned woman whose hair would have been gray but for a dye of strawberry blond, and whose breasts would have drooped quite noticeably had they not been laced up in an old-fashioned corset. But for all that, Maggie had a curiously quiet, almost contemplative
manner, not at all that of the rowdy, loudmouthed saloon matrons portrayed in western movies.
Ten years had passed since the first time I’d turned up at Maggie’s door, and hardly a week had since gone by without my returning to her house on Blyden Street. I was a regular now.
“Hello, Cal,” Maggie said as I took off my hat.
“Good evening, Miss Maggie.”
She led me inside. “Welcome home,” she said.
I took my usual seat in the parlor, poured a whiskey and lit a cigar, then waited, quite contentedly, for a woman to descend the stairs, cross the room, and with all the innocence of a blushing virgin, take my hand.
She came down a few minutes later, then led me back up the stairs. Halfway down the corridor to her room, we passed the bathroom, its door casually open. Mr. Castleman, dressed in black wool pants and a white undershirt, stood before a mirror, straightening himself up after his latest activities. A pair of suspenders dangled to his knees as he combed the few remaining strands of his hair. He glanced at me as I strolled by, nodded courteously, and continued grooming himself.
Farther down the corridor, I saw Polly Jenks alone in her room, slowly fastening her garters. She smiled thinly as I passed, then plucked two bills from the bureau.
Once in our customary room, I stretched out on the old four-poster and glanced about the room my customary lady had prepared as I preferred it—no candles, no flowers, no photographs on the Victrola.
“Polly’s leaving,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Oh, yeah? Where’s she going?”
“Back home. Iowa. Says she’s getting too old for it.”
“Well, she’s been at it a long time. She’s probably pretty tired.”
She gave me a quick, suggestive smile, then lied through her teeth. “I’ll never get tired of you.”
She stepped behind a translucent screen and began to undress, folding each garment carefully as she removed it, then laying it over the top of the screen. Once naked, she put on the bright red silk robe she’d bought in Portland. She’d had it only a couple of years, but it was tattered at the sleeve, worn at the lapel. I’d never learned whether she wore it because she thought men liked it, or because she liked it herself, fancied it gave her a touch of class.
She’d taken her hair down, and it fell in a dark brown wave over her shoulders. She shook it playfully, like a girl, though the lines around her eyes, the slight sag beneath her chin, put the lie to any pretense that we could steal a single second from the clock. She had a plump, well-rounded body, the sort that, depending upon the position, either rode heavily upon you or provided an ample cushion for your weight. I guessed her age at around forty-five, though I’d guessed almost the same nearly ten years earlier, when I’d first showed up at Maggie Flynn’s. In truth, I no longer cared how old she was, or that her body had lost its tone, or that her breath had grown more labored during sex, a line of sweat forming on her brow and along her upper lip. I had reached that whoremaster’s plateau where nothing was felt but what lay between my legs, all other flesh but a sea of flesh, soft and serviceable, but hardly different from my hand.
“So, what’s new in Port Alma?” she asked as she curled onto the edge of the bed and began to untie my shoes.
I mentioned the only thing that came to mind. “We had a fire.”
“My goodness,” she said, feigning shock. “I bet the whole town came to see it.” She set my right shoe under the end of the bed, then started untying the left one.
I plucked the cigar from my lips and pressed its still faintly glowing tip into the little glass ashtray on the table beside the bed. “My brother thinks it was arson. That a man was trying to kill his little girl.”
Her fingers stopped for an instant, then started again. “Let’s not talk about that,” she said. She drew off the second shoe, placed it beside the other, then crawled up the bed and pressed herself down upon my chest, her mouth poised just over mine. “It must be really interesting though, your job.”
“Not really. And the pay’s lousy.”
She smiled and tossed her hair. “Well, you manage to have enough for me.”
“Barely.”
She kissed me once, then remembered and pulled back. “Oh, sorry. I forgot.”
“It’s all right.”
“I usually remember that you don’t—”
“It’s all right,” I assured her.
She lifted herself up and let the robe fall open, now working to get back into the rhythm of our sessions. “So, what’s my name tonight?” she asked.
It was a routine we’d acted out for years. I’d pick a name for her, usually from ancient drama or mythology, tell her the story behind it. “Antigone,” I said.
“That’s a pretty name,” she said. “What’s her story?”
Billy’s face swam into my mind, more innocent than his years, still battling lost causes, still believing he would win them. I felt all my tenderness sweep out to him, embrace him and wish him well, and I knew that
no feeling would ever touch me more deeply than this, a true and decent hope that it would all come to him in the end, every wild hope and foolish dream. “Antigone loved her brother,” I said. “He was all she ever knew of love.”
I
left Blyden Street at the usual time, offering my usual good-bye, “See you next week,” as I stepped out the door.
Once away, I got in my car and headed in the general direction of town. The road was unpaved and pitted, as though the city fathers had decided to make it as difficult as possible for men like me to escape the bars and whorehouses in which they’d spent the night.
It was a Sunday morning. The canneries were silent, nothing moving but the gulls and the sea. Farther along, the shanties and rusty warehouses of the waterfront gave way to the homes of the dock and cannery workers, small, wood-framed, with cramped, snow-covered yards hemmed in by unpainted picket fences.
Once downtown, I pulled up to Carpenter’s Cafe, took the booth in the front window, ordered the special of eggs, bacon, toast, coffee. The waitress was in her forties, with brown hair pulled back and wound into a bun. Her upper arms jiggled as she scribbled the order upon the pad.
“Anything else?” she asked.
“No.”
The local paper lay folded on the table. I opened it, scanned a story about FDR’s latest scheme to save the nation, another about a boat that had run aground on the beaches to the north, then folded the paper again.
By that time breakfast had arrived. I ate it listening to the first church bells summon the faithful to morning Mass. I could feel a cloud settling over me, and to escape it, I quickly drained the last of the coffee and returned to the street. But rather than get in my car and go directly back to Port Alma, I decided to take a walk.
I didn’t know where I was going. Nor did I care. I simply headed up the hill, into a neighborhood of homes that had clearly seen better days. Even from a distance I could see paint peeling from their wooden clapboards, roof edges curled backward, strips of caulking that drooped from beneath rotting windowsills.
At the top of the hill, I turned back to observe the view. Below, the town spread out in a tangle of streets, a crescent bay beyond it, ragged lines of sea foam tumbling over the wintry beach.
I was still staring at the town and the bay when I heard the slap of a screen door. I turned and saw a woman stroll out onto a wooden porch. I recognized her right away. It was Rachel Bass, Hap’s widowed cousin. She stood on the same porch she’d occupied in his photograph, the rusty tin thermometer still nailed in place beside her shoulder.
She was wearing a dark green dress that fell almost to her ankles, but otherwise she looked much as she had in the picture Hap had given me and that now
rested somewhere in the clutter of papers in my desk drawer. She remained quite still for a moment, the broom in her right hand, then began to sweep the porch.
The screen door slapped again a few seconds later, and a small girl darted out of the house. The child scrambled down the stairs, leaped onto a rusty tricycle, and began careening about on a sidewalk that had only recently been cleared of snow.
She played alone for a while; then, as if something had silently called to her, she turned and bounded back up the stairs, rushing past her mother and into the house.
For a time I waited, expecting the child to return. When she didn’t, I strolled over to where Rachel Bass continued to sweep.
“Good morning,” I said.
She looked toward me, lifting her arm to shield her eyes from the sun.
“I’m Cal Chase,” I added. “I work for your cousin. In Port Alma.”
She came closer and lowered her arm, so that I could see that her eyes were dark blue. “You work for Hap?”
“Yes,” I replied. With nowhere else to go, I added, “He showed me a picture of you.”
She smiled. “I guess Hap’s out beating the bushes for me.”
“I recognized you as I came up the road,” I told her.
“You’re walking?”
“My car’s down the hill.”
“So, what did Hap tell you?”
“I know that you lost your husband. That you have a daughter.”
She pointed toward the house. “I rent rooms. That’s how I make a go of it.”
“You once taught school, Hap said.”
She nodded. “Years back.” She leaned on the broom and continued to study me. “What are you doing in Royston?”
I had no choice but to lie. “I decided to take a drive. You know, get out of Port Alma.”
“Looking for adventure.”
“I guess.”
A silence fell between us, one we both tried to breach at the same instant.
“Look…”
“Well, I…”
We laughed.
“You go ahead,” Rachel said, smiling.
“Well, when I saw you, I remembered your picture. Just thought I’d say hello. I’ll tell Hap we ran into each other.”
She smiled quietly. “You do that,” she said.
I shrugged. “That’s all, I guess.”
She knew I was leaving, perhaps had swung by only to take a look, window-shop, nothing more, and that somehow, according to my own secret scale of things, she had failed to measure up. Even so, she took it in her stride.
“Well, I’m glad to have met you,” she said. She offered her hand. “Good-bye, Mr. Chase.”
I pumped her hand, then released it, turned and headed back down the hill to my car. I knew she was watching me, perhaps even hoping that I might swing around, stroll up to her again, boldly invite her to dinner or a dance. In earlier years I might have done just that, followed the normal route of courtship, marriage, parenthood. But by then I felt sure that I’d walked the rogue’s path far too long ever to abandon it, that the call of romance was one I would never hear, nor, if I heard
it, be foolish enough to heed. That world was for Billy, strewn with roses and punctuated with breathy, melodramatic sighs. I could imagine my mother looking on approvingly as he sank deeper and deeper into the trough of such romance, offering me only a sidelong glance, a whispered judgment:
Stay with your whores, Cal. You lack the heart for more.
S
now fell thickly as I left Royston. It continued to fall for the next hour, growing more dense as I neared Port Alma.
It was as I approached Pine Road that I thought once again of Molly Hendricks, saw her in my mind as she’d last appeared to me, a small figure crouched and freezing as she trailed behind her father, leaving tiny footprints in the snow.
As I came to a halt in Hendricks’s driveway, the snow suddenly stopped and a burst of sunlight swept down upon the blackened heap that had once been the house. Beyond the rubble, the shed stood, all its somber details brilliantly visible in a dazzling light, its weathered roof, the rusty tools nailed to its clapboard sides, two tiny windows, each covered with what appeared to be thick woolen blankets.
I’d gotten halfway to it when I noticed that there were no tracks in the snow around it. Clearly, neither Hendricks nor Molly had been outside for a time. They might be huddled in the shed, of course, but no smoke came from the black pipe that pierced its roof, and in the cold, it seemed unlikely they would have remained inside without a fire.