The End of Always: A Novel (17 page)

In the late afternoon, we finally slept. When it grew dark, the neighbors’ dogs began to bark. I woke and heard footsteps on the gravel outside. I sat up and put my hand on August’s shoulder. I said his name.

“Do you hear something?” I said.

He smiled softly but did not stir.

“August,” I said again. “I mean it. Do you hear something?”

He opened his eyes and looked up at me. “Marie,” he murmured. “Go back to sleep.”

“Why are the dogs acting up?” I rolled over on my side, the room dark now and everything unfamiliar. I felt fear rise in my throat and knew that even though I had gotten away, that old feeling stayed with me like a snake coiled around my heart.

“I do not know. They are dogs.”

“No,” I said. “You should go see.” I thought of my father, who might have made his way across town, his ideas his own and still all about me. I thought of his fist, knotted like a stone at the end of a rope. I thought of the curl of his lip when he smiled. I felt my belly clench around its boulder of grief. He could walk in the night unseen. He could climb our stairs unbidden. He could come upon us in the dark and he could make us his own.

But August just pulled the pillow over his head and said something I could not understand. I pulled the pillow away and he sat up and in a suddenly sharp voice told me that it was nothing and he was tired and I needed to stop it. I sat very still and held my breath. He punched the pillow and put it back under his head and lay on his back and looked at the ceiling. I exhaled very slowly. Then he rolled over on his side and leaned over the edge of the bed and fished through the pockets of his trousers until he found a cigarette and a box of matches. He sat up and lit the cigarette and then fell back and lay on his back smoking.

“Find me something I can use for an ashtray,” he said. His voice milder then, as if he had perhaps forgotten who I was and had now remembered. The tiny knot inside of me unclasped, like a leaf unfurling from a bud.

I brought him a saucer that I found on top of the icebox and lay down next to him while he smoked and tapped ash into the plate. The dogs kept barking and the evening deepened. I waited for a step on our stairs, a knock on our door, but none came. Whatever worried the dogs, it was not my father.

Finally I said I was hungry. August ground the cigarette out and stood up. I watched him walk naked into the kitchen and as soon as he passed into the doorway, he was August again, the boy I loved, and not the man with the hard voice. He returned with a block of cheese and some cold ham and a plate and a knife and some rolls wrapped in a napkin. I reached for my chemise and he said to leave it alone. I lay back on the bed and felt thrilled by my own nakedness. “There is more,” he said. When he came back he brought two thick glass bottles of beer and a metal church key. He opened one of the bottles and handed it to me and then set the church key on the windowsill.

We ate our supper and drank the beer slowly and did not say much. The dusk light made the room dim and we decided against candles and let the last of the light disappear over us. I lay on the bed with a pillow propped behind my head, with the wet bottle of beer making a cold ring where I held it on my belly as if my body were a table. I could just see the first star as it hung in the window, a perfect pinpoint of clear, cold light gleaming in the sky. I thought to make a wish but I did not know what to ask for. It seemed that all of my dreams had come true.

When we were done, August wrapped the remainder of the cheese in the napkin that had held the rolls. He set the plate and the knife and the empty bottles on the floor next to the bed. He said my name and lay down on his stomach with his arm around my waist and his face in my shoulder. He told me how much he loved me. “Are you happy?” he said.

I nodded. I told myself that I could not imagine that every footstep belonged to my father. I could not foretell disaster every time a dog barked. And I
was
happy with August. I did not need to tell myself anything about that.

He sighed and burrowed his face into my hair again. He told me that he had never been this happy in his whole entire life. He had never known another girl like me. He would love me like this until the end of my days. He would take care of me forever.

He stroked me as he talked and I felt the weight of his hand on my bare skin and felt my breath catch in my throat. His hand on my skin smooth and strong. His hand on my breast. His lips on my throat. I reached for him then and he lifted me so I could sit astride him and look down at his shining eyes and his luminous face. I leaned down and let my hair fall over us like a curtain. We kissed with soft lips, as if there was a truth that we could find together. And then he groaned and rolled me over and pinned my hands above my head. He would not let me move, but just held me and that was what I wanted then, that and all the world that was him. His very force like a whirlwind tearing through me until I thought I would split and die.

In the morning, I woke alone. I stretched and felt the warmth of the sunlight, the soft breeze from the window cracked on the other side of the room, my skin alive, my bones alive, my heart alive. Joy like a stranger I would have to get used to.

Before long I heard the front door open and close. I was embarrassed by my happiness and shy about seeing August, with whom I had traveled so far the night before that by now he must be unknown to me. I rolled on my side and pulled the sheet over my head. August came in and pulled the sheet back. He looked down at me and laughed. He carried a brown paper sack of rolls. He told me he was making coffee and I should get up and get dressed and go down to the laundry and quit my job, for he was going to take care of me from now on. “I order you to do this,” he said. He reached down and gave me a gentle swat on my bottom. “As your husband,” he said, laughing. His words delighted me as much as they would have had they been the first words of the world. And maybe they were. They felt like words that had made me.

We sat side by side on the little sofa in the front room, my knee draped over his knee. I idly swung my foot and he leaned back and put his hand on the back of my neck. Outside mist lifted from the ground of our new country and vanished. Everything around me as if in a beautiful dream.

As soon as we were through, he kissed me and dropped two nickels into my hand. He closed my fingers around them. He told me that these would be enough to get me down to the laundry and back. Then he stood up and picked up his tool belt and strapped it around his waist. He stood in the doorway holding the door open while I found my coat. He looked like a cowboy I had seen on a long-ago poster for a Wild West show, his tool belt slung around his hips like he carried guns and knew how to use them. I could not believe he was mine forever. I threw myself against him and kissed him again and again. He laughed and took me in his arms and warned me in a thick voice to lay off because he had to go to work. But he cupped my breasts as he said this. Our promise to each other. Our secret prayer.

W
illiam Oliver stood at the front counter with a tall man who was counting out coins. When he caught sight of me, he gave the man his parcel and then opened the front door for him. The man said something to William Oliver, who nodded and said something in return. They both glanced at me. Then the man turned and walked away.

“Mr. Oliver,” I said.

“Be quiet.”

“Mr. Oliver.”

“I think you have lost all bargaining position,” he said. He clenched his fingers. “Wouldn’t you agree? You did not have that much to begin with, but now you have none. None.” He took me by the elbow and walked me hard and fast into the alley. Dark shadow fell over us. In the street, wagons passed in the daylight. “Morning deliveries are almost through, but there is still time,” he said. His voice was hard and low. He tightened his grip on my wrist.

“I do not understand.”

“Of course you do.”

“Let go of me,” I said. “Mr. Oliver.” I pulled away from him. “I do not work here anymore.”

“No?” he said.

“No,” I said. I tried to step away but he squeezed my arm. Then he bent my arm behind me, as easily as if this had always been the plan.

“I think you do,” he said.

“I do not,” I said. “Let go of me.”

“We will see what your father says about that.” He pushed me hard into the wall, his familiar face queer and twisted in the half-light. “Right?” he said. “Right? Your father will have plenty to say, I can assure you. Two more nights in the woods, Mary. What can you possibly have to say for yourself?”

“Stop it.” I pulled away as hard as I could, but he pressed against me and his arm came up across my chest and pinned me against the wall. “It is time, Mary,” he said. “I have been patient with you. I have given you every chance. I have waited for you to come to your senses. You have chosen another path. Not my path,” he said. “Certainly not the path that any thinking girl would have chosen. But your choice has given me certain advantages. I think you know that your time has run its course. I think even you can see that there is only one thing left to do.”

“You are hurting me,” I said.

He loosened his grip and stepped back a little. I curled into myself and tried to pull free, but still he held my wrist in one hand. Then he held my arm against the wall over my head.

“Two nights ago, before things had made themselves entirely clear, I went to see your father,” he said. “I walked into that bar and I sat down in front of him. And he knows me, as I have said before, so I was not surprised when he greeted me. I was even less surprised when he poured a shot for me on the house. We had that trouble over your mother, as you no doubt recall, but we have not had any since. Some men might even suggest that your father and I are friends. Despite that, I protected your secret, even when that boy who claims to love you came in and sat at the bar. He was there for a long time. He tucked into quite a few drinks. When he departed, he left a pile of cash next to his glass. Not so big. Do not get too impressed. But more than I expected. He is a carpenter, after all.”

I drew air in like I was drowning and stared at him. “That is not true,” I said.

“No?” He studied me. “You may have even bigger problems than you realize,” he said. “But I am sure we can find a solution.”

I shook my head and again tried to pull away but he moved as a man in great stillness, which is the way that a man moving with too much force always moves, and shoved my arm back again.

“I am done waiting,” he said. “You understand me?”

I shook my head and he slapped me, not hard, just a stinging slap to show me that he could.

“We can do this here or upstairs,” he said. “You choose.”

I shook my head weakly, tears dripping from my nose. I pushed hard and tried to heave him off of me, as if he could be lifted like a stone or a heavy board, but he just smiled and wrenched my arm against the wall. I turned my face away and he leaned in and rammed his tongue into my ear. He shoved his face into my hair, my neck. He ran his hands over my breasts. He lifted the hem of my skirt and began to fumble with my stockings, his hands on my bare thighs. I tried to let myself fall to my knees: I would crawl away, I would go belly first down the alley, I would get away. But his hand dropped and he tore at my skirt and then, as if he could not wait, he shoved his hips hard against me, bucking in short thrusts until he made a stifled sound and shuddered.

A single blade of grass as sharp and green and plain as day blew slowly in the wind. It ruffled with all the others. There were stones next to it and beyond the stones, a small pool of gray water puddled with a greasy aspect, as if someone had drained cooking oil on the ground. The sound of the interurban came and went and after that the town came back to me. William Oliver stepped back and reached into his pocket. He dabbed at the front of his pants with his handkerchief. Then he told me to get inside and get to work, that I had made my bed and now I must lie in it. He told me that we weren’t through, not by a long shot, but when he said this, something in me splintered and fell. I pushed my shoulders back and stepped away from the wall. I told him that I was married now. My father had given his blessing. I did not work at the laundry anymore. He should take any wages I had coming and give them to my father for the upkeep of my two sisters. We would not meet again.

In the street I wiped my eyes and lifted my chin and walked along the wooden sidewalk. A few women watched me, their faces curious and unsurprised and sympathetic and not unkind. They smiled at me as I made my way along the storefronts and nodded encouragement. One reached out to touch my arm as I passed alone among them.

A Menominee woman in a dark blue skirt with fringe at the bottom walked in front of me, a child in each hand and each child bundled in dark red plaid flannel. When I passed her, I saw that her face had been burned and a wide smooth scar lay over one cheekbone, shiny like the skin on my arms where the laundry vats had burned me. I could feel William Oliver’s hands on me. I imagined everyone who saw me could see them, too, huge handprints scorched into my dress. I thought that I would now be known to everyone as the girl who had let this happen to her. And then I remembered what the talk had already been, that I went into the woods with men, that I was some kind of a whore, and I knew that no one would have any sympathy for me.

There is only one thing to do on an occasion like this. You must have some sympathy for yourself and then you must get on with things. So I set my mouth and walked in long strides and told myself that everything would soon be all right. I would never see William Oliver again. This hour would be over and behind it would come another and soon there would be half a day and then a whole day between me and William Oliver. Before I knew it, he would be a memory, and after he was a memory, he would be someone I would remember only when something caused me not to forget. I promised myself that this was what would come true.

Of course, I also recognized that I was lucky to be alive. There are many girls who meet a man like William Oliver and do not survive long enough to teach themselves to forget.

When I got off the streetcar in front of the dry-goods store, I passed a tea shop where a woman straightened red-and-white-checked curtains in the window and looked out over the street as she worked. I passed the bakery where August must have bought our morning rolls. I looked around for the greengrocer and found it on the corner, its awning shading barrels of spring onions. Everything neat and clean and happy and fluttering in the sunlit wind, as if this was a place where nothing bad ever happened.

Past the greengrocery, the houses were closer together and painted with milk paint, white and yellow and baby blue. They sat back from the street at the top of trimmed yards, as if each had land to spare for nothing but decoration. Big trees shaded the lawns. A man with a mower whirled the blades through the grass. A baby cried. The woman who must have been my next-door neighbor sat on her front porch.

I saw Edwin at the top of the drive. He sat hunched on the back steps, but when he caught sight of me, he unfolded his tall thin frame and came toward me. He reached for my arm and I did not stop him. He patted my arm and smiled and said my name.

I looked around at the neighbors’ houses, where the windows had been pushed open and clean white curtains blew out over the sills, where the woman sat on her front porch. I tried to imagine what she would say, if she saw me talking to Edwin in the yard. The neighbors would be afraid of him. They would not understand. I barely understood myself.

“You had better come in,” I said. “We cannot stand out here.”

Edwin ducked through the doorway and looked around the nearly empty room. I flushed and said that we had just moved in and I had not yet had time to fix the place. I gestured at the couch and chairs and he sat on one of the chairs and leaned forward, looking pained and happy all at once.

“Do you want some water?” I said.

He shook his head. “I saw you,” he said.

“I know.”

“No,” he said. “Downtown.”

“At the courthouse,” I said. “I know. I saw you too.”

He gave me a haunted look. “You were coming outside,” he said.

“Let me get you some water,” I said, but he stood and waved me away with his hand. He paced from one side of the room to the other, moving his lips, patting his leg to a song only he could hear.

Finally he sat heavily in his chair and looked at me. “Did you get married?” he asked.

I nodded.

His eyes were liquid and dark then, his expression that of a man from whom the most important thing in the world has been stolen.

“Edwin,” I said. “It is all right. August is a good man. And you will always be my friend.”

He groaned.

I glanced at the windows and wondered if the neighbors could hear him. If August would find out.

“Why can you not like him?” I said. “He has many good qualities if you would only take the time to give them consideration.”

He gave me a tortured look.

“Edwin,” I said. “Please.”

He reached over and took my hand. “You come with me,” he said.

I understood what he wanted. In the faint candlelight under the church, we had found someplace not even the disciples could reach and were hopeless together in the darkness beneath the earth and in that hopeless togetherness found peace. Edwin could not have been comfortable on that cold floor, but he never complained. He listened while I told him everything. He did not tell me that I was wrong. That I was foolish. That I was making a mistake. That I had bad ideas or ideas I should not have or ideas that would only get me in trouble. He did not tell me I was stupid and he did not tell me to shut up and he did not tell me to get to work. In the last minutes before sleep, when I was suddenly empty and lay on the cot like an unfilled bag of floating skin, my bones dissolved, my organs soft as sand, he made it seem that the world could be a safe place after all. In the morning, he smiled at me and I knew he believed it was only a matter of holding to the thing between us, this single truth.

I pulled my hand from his. “I am married,” I said. “I cannot.”

“You come with me,” he repeated in an exhausted voice.

“No,” I said softly. “I am sorry. I cannot.”

He started to cry.

When I did not say anything more, he hugged his head in his arms and howled. Then he turned and ran through the door. I heard his footsteps on the gravel drive.

Whenever I looked out my living room window, my only view was into the rooms of the house next door. A pretty young woman lived there with her young husband. She had pictures of dappled landscapes in gilt-edge frames on her walls. A silver tea service on her glossy buffet. A breakfront full of crystal and fancy china. I could even see the picture she’d had made at her marriage, which stood on the top of a gleaming piano. She stood in a column of chiffon, her hair pinned up under a cap stitched with pearls, and gazed out into an invisible world. Her expression was easy to describe. It was that of a woman who is confident that each thing that has happened is certain assurance of the many good things yet to come.

Now she stood at the top of my driveway and waved.

“Come see my yard,” she called. She wore a pretty white blouse trimmed with tatting and a navy blue skirt. She had left her shiny brown hair loose under a pink velvet hairband.

She stuck her hand out. “I’m Bertha,” she said.

I was very aware of my stained blouse, soiled by William Oliver’s hands, and of my shabby skirt, also soiled by William Oliver. My mother’s old shoes on my feet still molded to the shape of her step. The shoes had begun to hurt and I felt oafish beside Bertha, like a dumpy girl who does not know how to dress herself. I had not even had a chance to wash my hands.

“I am Marie,” I said. I touched her cool, clean skin with my dirty hand and then dropped my hand to my skirt and wiped it on the folds.

She told me that she and her husband had been married for seven months. Her husband worked for a bank, and they had been very lucky to find this house even though the bank still owned everything but maybe half of the living room because they’d had to take a mortgage. She said that she did not worry about that much because you had to start somewhere. Then she laughed.

Red roses scrambled up an arbor nailed to the porch. I followed her dumbly while she showed me her glads and hydrangeas. She pointed to a garden bed that she’d just had dug. She explained that she would lay out the plants so the pinks and blues would be separated with white, so the foliage would alternate dark green and pale silver, so everything would be orderly and contained. The best part was that she would always know from month to month what was about to bloom. She planned to fill her whole house with flowers. Every room would be resplendent with summer. She repeated this in an enthusiastic voice, as if she liked the sound of the word.

I smiled to show her that I understood what she meant by
resplendent
. I was not just some filthy girl who had moved in next door by mistake. I tried to imagine being the sort of woman who planted flowers to fill the house. The very thought made me shy and a little surprised, as if Bertha had a secret but right away had let me catch a glimpse of it.