“I do love you,” he said.
“Do you?”
“I said . . .”
“It’s easy to say now. Wait . . .”
“For what?”
“Till you’re sure that you mean it. Till you’re sure that I’m not forcing it out of you.”
“I am sure,” he protested.
“Then it’s all right. We’ll be okay.”
“Good to feel you.”
“I’ve done the right thing. I’ve done right by myself. Waiting for you. I’m sorry for what I said before, but I had to for your own good.”
August, and the heat was more oppressive than ever. Jay, like Metternich before him, to whom he bore an unconscious likeness, defended the policy of the status quo. Rhoda, to her unutterable dismay, had been correct in her surmise: a lover’s troth plighted in the zeal of pre-connubial ecstasy had the same validity as a confession extracted by the police after rubber hose treatment. Her influence decreased proportionately with the degree of intimacy she permitted Jay. But now that she had given herself to him, she was caught in the ineluctable trap she had set: her hunger for him surpassed his for her, and she found herself making time schedules of her family’s daily movements so that she and Jay could be in the house alone. Matinees and matutinal visits allowed them the greatest privacy, but somehow they left her listless and dissatisfied. Her lunch hour, a period of her day that formerly had been neutral, now took on a ritual significance. The mere mention by her boss of: “Lunch, Rho . . . ?” brought her out in a cold sweat, red flushes and a fit of stammering that made the simple “yes” or “no” reply a trial of anguished and tortuous explanation. After a while, she began to wonder if the word lunch itself contained any hidden double entendre that she had not been aware of. As a consequence, she dropped it from her vocabulary and whenever anyone used it in her presence she attempted to find in the tone of voice, the facial expression, a clue to the meaning intended by the inquisitor.
But despite the surface guilt she displayed, or thought she displayed, over her meetings with Jay, she was without real guilt, and she thought that she had never been happier in her life. Her luminous hazel eyes possessed a warmth and a sun-flecked crystalline brightness that sang with joy, and her body, now that she and Jay had both discovered it, emerged as though from a long period of narcoleptic sleep as a vessel of manifest beauty. It became for her, like Myrna’s clarinet, an instrument capable of exquisite melodies and harmonies. She had always been a big girl, supple, full-breasted, with marvelous heavy hips, strong-limbed and agile, although with a tendency to fat. Her body, almost without her realizing it, even though she was more profoundly conscious of it, took on a new firmness, a tensile thickness. It was as if she were holding a printed page too close to her eyes and excluding peripheral vision, so that she lost sight of the expanding contours of her body.
On a Saturday morning when she knew the bathroom would not be in continual use, she took a long leisurely bath. She had just stepped out of the bath, reached for a towel when Myrna walked in.
“Sorry, didn’t know you were still here,” Myrna said, handing Rhoda a towel.
“You’re home early.”
“I worked overtime on Wednesday and the boss gave me off the rest of the day. Want to do some shopping, and I thought I’d take Miriam with me, and after we’d go to the park.” She watched Rhoda drying herself. “Like to come? Or are you seeing Jay?”
“Not till tonight. Saturday’s his busy day.”
“Why aren’t you working?”
“I wasn’t feeling well and . . .”
“Really, what’s the matter?”
“Don’t know . . . I just feel rotten.”
“Go to the doctor for a checkup.”
“Maybe I will.”
“Hey, just a minute,” Myrna said anxiously, “look at your stomach!” Rhoda peered down at herself. “You’ve got a potbelly.”
“What are you talking about?” she said fearfully. “I haven’t got my girdle on.”
“Girdle? He’s . . . Jay! You’re pregnant. He’s knocked you up, the bastard.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Oh, honestly, Rho, do you think I’m an idiot or something? Don’t you think I know what’s been going on?”
Rhoda tried to ignore her.
“About a week ago, I called for you at lunchtime at work and they said you’d left already. So I looked for you at The Fountain and then I went home to get a sweater. When I came in I walked by the living room, and there you were . . . with him.”
“You never said . . .”
“What was there to say? Was I supposed to warn you? A little late for that. Should I have embarrassed you by saying I saw you? Nothing for me to do, except keep my mouth shut and forget . . .”
“Does Poppa . . . ?”
“Don’t think so. Better if you don’t say a word. Jay know?”
“I doubt it.” She was excited and yet disconsolate.
“He’ll marry you, won’t he? I mean even if you weren’t . . . You’re keeping company. Everybody knows that, even Momma and Poppa. I ran into Howie the other day, and he’s heard from Poppa that you’re spoken for. Wants to meet Jay . . . usual older brother business. I think he hopes to make a touch on Jay. Oh, maybe that’s not fair to Howie, he was excited really.”
Fully dressed, Rhoda examined herself in the mirror.
“You really can’t tell when I’m dressed.”
“But how long’ll that last . . . another month or so? You’ll tell Jay.”
“Guess I’ll have to . . .”
“Well, if he tries any tricks, Poppa’ll have to speak to him.”
“Oh, no I wouldn’t want him to . . .”
“Somebody’s got to fight for you. You want the same thing that happened to me to happen to you? Spoiled my life. Can’t have children. God, I hate Jay.”
“You don’t,” Rhoda said.
“I do and I don’t. I hate him because he gets away with murder with everybody, and at the same time I don’t hate him because he’s too good-looking to hate, and the trouble is he knows it and uses it.”
“He’s got a good heart and he’s good to his mother.”
“So was Dillinger.”
They both laughed half-heartedly.
“I’ll see him this afternoon,” Rhoda said.
“Oh, Christ, no, this is the end,” Jay said, throwing his hands helplessly in the air. “As soon as I stand on my feet, this. Well, you can’t have it, so forget it.”
“Oh, of course, I’ll just forget about it. Sorry I bothered you.”
They were standing in the gutter, behind his pushcart, and the street was rank with the smell of garbage and putrefying food. Broken wooden boxes lined the curbside, and flies were conducting a hallelujah dance on spoiled fruit. Rhoda could barely stand the odor.
“It should come to this,” Jay groaned.
“Whose fault is it? Mine or yours . . . ? You’re supposed to be the expert.”
“The question is, am I the one?”
She slapped him hard across the side of the face, and he almost lost his balance.
“Okay, I’m sorry. I can’t stand here talking. I’ll see you tonight, and we’ll work something out.” He kissed her on the cheek. “Bear with me . . . it’s such a shock that I don’t know what I’m saying.”
At seven o’clock in the evening, she was surprised to see him pull up in front of her house in an old black Model T Ford. He did not come inside, but blew the horn twice, and she went out. She opened the car door, and he flicked his index at the seat.
“You shy or something?” she said indignantly. “Since when don’t you come into the house? And where’d you get the car?”
“Barney loaned it to me.” He started up the engine, and they started the drive across Brooklyn, towards the Manhattan Bridge, in silence.
The summer evening was warm and sultry, and people sat in front of their houses on bridge chairs, gasping for a breath of air. Tw
o-family houses and overcrowded apartment houses rolled by Rhoda’s eyes in an unchanging montage of poverty.
“Where we going?” she asked finally.
When they came out of the Holland Tunnel on the Jersey side, he replied. “Scranton.”
“What for?”
“What do you think?” he said harshly.
“Don’t you even ask me how I feel?”
“What’s to ask?”
“Is this the only thing that you can think of? Nothing else?”
He turned off at the exit marked Union City and proceeded slowly to the center of town. At a light, he fished out a piece of paper from his pocket and studied it. He drove for another five minutes, and they found themselves in front of a theater that was a riot of dancing neon lights. Several hundred men stood in line outside, waiting for the darkened box office to open. Rhoda read the sign outside: ALL NIGHT BURLESQUE – THIRTY LOVLIES EXPOSE THEMSELVES TO A NIGHT IN A MOROCCAN HAREM.
The door on Rhoda’s side was suddenly opened, and Barney Green gave her a pat on the arm.
“Shove over, huh. I’ll get in the back.”
“No, it’s okay, Rhoda’ll go in the back.”
“I will not,” she said angrily.
“Jay, use your kopf. What’re you arguing over nothing?”
Rhoda moved forward, and Barney climbed in behind them.
“So Rhoda, what’s new? Long time no see.”
“You know what’s new, or you wouldn’t be here.”
“He’s doing us a favor,” Jay interposed.
“You can die from such favors.”
“Glad to see you got a sense of humor, Rhoda. But believe me, it’s for the best. You’re both too young to get saddled with a kid. You got your lives to live.”
“Can I quote you on that?”
“Shut up,” Jay said.
“Don’t tell me to shut up. You think you’re talking to one of your whores? I’m pregnant with your child.”
“Calm. Calm. Let’s have some calmness, kids. No point in losing your head.”
“You know, don’t you, that this ride is costing Barney ten dollars that he gets for the act he’s supposed to be doing tonight . . . plus gas and wear and tear on the car.”
“That what it’s costing, Barney? Gee, you’re really a sport.”
“One more crack and . . .”
“Yeah, go on.”
Jay got back onto the main highway, and the car picked up speed. He kept it at a steady forty. Rhoda looked out of the window. It was still light. She had never been to this part of New Jersey, and she was curious to get to Pennsylvania, for she had never been there either. She wondered if it would be much different from upstate New York, or if the people spoke with different accents. Jay turned sharply; the air that blew into Rhoda’s face became foul. She had never before smelled anything like it, and she fought to contain the nausea that welled up in the back of her throat.
“Close the window, will you!” Jay’s voice was filled with irritation.
“What is it?”
“What is it, the little lady wants to know? It’s Secaucus,” Barney said. “Never heard of it?”
“Never.”
“It’s where they kill all them pigs,” Barney explained. “Like the Chicago stockyards, only here it’s pigs. The pigs from all over the country are sent here for slaughter. Once when I was working a club in Trenton, I pick up a little Polack piece, and before I can make with the thing, she insists on me taking her back here. So we drive and drive and finally get to Secaucus, and she says she’s only got an hour ‘cause she’s gotta get to work in the slaughterhouse at four. So right outside the joint with the pigs squealing like mad we make it. She was a packer there. Afterwards, I walk her in, and she asks if I want to watch for a while - you know, the pigs being killed. I figure, what’ve I got to lose - it’s an experience I never had and maybe it’ll be interesting? Funny thing was that after a while, I didn’t mind the smell. I got used to it. So we go to a room on top, like a barn, and there are about ten guys all with big meat cleavers in their hands - the biggest ones I ever saw - and what happens is this: they get the pigs all jammed up, so they got no room and there’s a terrific noise of them squealing and moaning and pushing each other ‘cause they can’t help it. And about one a second is like forced into a small wooden opening and one of these butchers pins the head on a block and whams it off. Then he yanks it out and hands it still squirming to one of these packers who skins and guts it. Never seen anything like it. It was fascinating, and I’ll tell you something - amazing. It makes you sexy. I mean I had the urge come over me like I never felt it before, so I grab the Polack, and she says it makes her sexy too. So she cuts out, and I follow at a slow trot and there’s like no place to make it in except in the empty pig pen, and that’s where we went. Honest, it was fabulous. What was her name? Jeannie Something, one of the best, no kidding.”
“Sounds sensational,” Jay said.
“We’re making good time. Ought to be in Scranton pretty soon.”
It had grown dark, and Rhoda stared out of the car window as they reached the outskirts. Black factories, with huge cylindrical smoking chimneys set back from the road, glowered on what had once in the distant past been countryside; like the dead risen, they stood thundering black smoke that drifted into her face and made her eyes smart. It was a strange, foreign country, a country in which she feared she might die. She became dizzy and breathless.
“You’re very quiet all of sudden,” Barney said to her, hoping for a reaction to his story, and when none came he continued. “You’re taking this in the right way, Rhoda. To be honest, I didn’t expect you to take it any other way. Smart girl. You and Jay are going to make it in a big way. I got loads of confidence in you.”
“Things are better now than they’ve ever been,” Jay affirmed. “We’ve got a future, don’t we, Rhoda?”
She did not answer, and now they were driving along the main street, which contained scores of brightly lit bars. Wherever she looked there were bars and girls leaning against walls. They’re both frightened, terrified, she thought, and they want me on their side because they need me. They can’t stand up to me, but they don’t know yet that I know that. She made a vague attempt to examine her motives: had she got herself pregnant to trap Jay? If this was the case, then she had an obligation to herself, not to him, to go through with it, because nothing could be gained by holding him. If they married because she was pregnant, the cornerstone of their relationship would be reduced to sand and the whole structure would totter the moment the scaffolding was withdrawn. She probed her mind, and discovered that there had not been any plan - at least any plan that she herself had devised. She had given herself to him in the muddied and ambiguous hope that she could make something of him: provide him with a character and identity that he did not possess and never would, unless it was shaped by love.
Jay parked next to a noisy bar, overflowing onto the sidewalk with loud drunken men talking Polish and shoving each other to make more elbow room. Jay opened the car door, and she waited for Barney to get out. Like a general on an inspection tour, he moved through the pack of men with Rhoda and Jay trailing him. She could see from the smiles he got that he was well-known to them and that they approved of him. At the bar, they made room for him, and a woman wiped the chipped, scratched wooden surface in front of him with a sopping rag.
“Usual, Barney?”
“Er. Yeah, two rye boilermakers. Doubles. Rhoda, what would you like?”
She ignored him. The room was stiflingly hot, and the men, with their sleeves rolled up, collars open, revealing tattered, dirty undershirts, sweated and drank. She had never seen a bar so crowded and with so many drunken men pushing each other without breaking into open fights. A man with two beer mugs was propelled out of the mob, all fighting for service. He was dead drunk, and his head hit the top of the bar with a dull thud. The woman who had served them took the two mugs out of his hands, filled them with beer, then lifted his h
ead up. He took some money out and was almost pushed to the ground as others fought to squeeze in his place.
“Sally here yet?” Barney said, all business.
“Upstairs, waiting for you.”
“Sure you won’t have a drink, Rhoda?”
“C’mon” - Jay put his arm around her shoulder – “have one. Good for the nerves.”
“My nerves are okay. But you have another drink.”
“Same again,” Jay said.
They had three more rounds of drinks before Barney made a move.
“She’s waiting . . . better go upstairs, or she’ll think it’s a stand-up.”
“One more,” Jay said. He turned angrily to a man behind him.
“Cut out the shoving, buddy. Can’t you see I’m waiting to be served.” The man threw out his arms helplessly, and indicated the men behind him who had shoved him into Jay. Jay swallowed his drink in one gulp, took a quick sip of beer and pushed after Barney and Rhoda, who were slowly making their way to a staircase at the back of the room.
On the first floor, Barney took a right turn, and she followed him down a long badly lit corridor.
“It’s a hotel. They got rooms here for people that want to stay the night.”
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