by Nicole Kelby
After, he lay with her in her small bed and kissed the salt from her forehead, until just before dawn. “I need to meet the delivery soon,” he said. Kate, of course, had work.
She knew she would miss him that day.
“After mass, on Sunday,” she said. “I’ll give you a hand at the shop, if you like.”
After.
Patrick was surprised but pleased. “Will you wear the suit to church?”
“It won’t be done for a quite a while.”
“Good. Save it for our wedding, then. We have to save something for the wedding, don’t you think? Father John is going to be blessedly angry at us.”
“Should I wear the hat, though? Just for fun?”
Patrick pulled her back into his arms again. Apparently, she should.
The raspberry-pink hat looked slightly odd with her navy-blue polka-dot dress, but Kate did wear it to church on Sunday anyway. It made Patrick laugh when he saw it. “That looks like an exclamation point on your head.”
It did. She didn’t care. Just wearing the hat made her incredibly happy.
The Sunday nine a.m. was not their usual mass. Nine a.m. felt like lunchtime to Kate, but they were taking Little Mike with them. “He keeps asking where his auntie Kate is,” Maggie said. Organizing a small child into proper clothing took more time than Kate and Patrick ever imagined. When they finally wrestled him into his blue tweed suit with the tiny bow tie that never seemed to clip on straight, the three of them walked hand in hand down Broadway, to church. The air was crisp and not too cold yet. Christmas was still a month away. Little Mike had an endless stream of questions about Santa Claus and his reindeer.
“Does the baby Jesus ride in the sleigh, too?”
“No amount of Yeats can prepare you for the theological musing of a four-year-old,” Patrick said.
The boy dawdled; Kate and Patrick did too. When they finally arrived at the Good Shepherd, Father John was making a pre-mass announcement. It was all about Rome: what Rome wanted, what Rome hoped for. Who cares about Rome? This is Inwood, Kate thought. Just swing a little incense about and get on with it.
The Good Father was wearing his gold brocade and white silk vestments. The embroidery on the back was so Schiaparelli, so intricate with bejeweled lilies, that Kate found it all, even the announcements, uplifting. But she couldn’t eat it.
Fasting was difficult enough, and the longer Father John talked, the longer it would be before they had their promised breakfast of pancakes at the Capitol Restaurant. Little Mike was a bit whingey. Soon, the boy would be bouncing off the ceiling. Kate picked him up and stood him on the pew, between herself and Patrick. It was rude, of course, but it calmed the boy.
“Who looks smart?” Kate whispered in Little Mike’s ear. “Who is the most stylish?”
He pointed at Father John. The boy had a good eye.
Kate could hear Patrick’s stomach growling. Little Mike was sucking his tiny fist, but Father John went on talking about various ideas to “modernize” the Church.
“Tambourines, perhaps. They’re very popular.”
“He’s going to turn us all into Protestants,” Patrick whispered.
After mass, at breakfast, Kate and Patrick sat at the counter of the Capitol instead of in a booth so that Little Mike could spin around on a stool. They ate their fill of pancakes until they smelled like maple syrup, and drank glasses of milk with paper straws. Patrick showed Little Mike how to balance a spoon on the tip of his nose. And then they all did it—all three of them—smiling at the waitress, who was not amused. They left the diner laughing, each holding one of Little Mike’s hands. They slowly walked him home, stopping at shopwindows along Broadway to show the child things like steel snow shovels and tins of fruitcakes stacked in the shape of a pyramid—any excuse to hold his small hand in theirs for just a little while longer.
When Patrick and Kate arrived at Harris Meats after dropping Little Mike at home, the butcher shop was stone-cold. The heat had been off all day. Patrick tasted like maple syrup when he kissed her. But it was just one kiss. “You need to change your clothes,” he said. “Pork has a stench to it, and you’ll never get the smell out. After, you’ll have to bathe, too. Rinse your hair with lemon juice.”
Kate could only hope that her pink pillbox hat would be saved from the stench. She took it off and, along with her good wool coat, laid it on Peg’s chair, upstairs in the apartment, just to keep it safe.
Patrick put on his white coat and opened the walk-in refrigerator. “Once you change, you can do the sausage. I’ll do the black pudding, unless you don’t mind the sight of blood; then you can do the pudding.”
Kate did, indeed, mind the sight of blood. She must have turned pale. “It does take some getting used to,” he said.
As soon as Kate changed into Peg’s “butcher’s uniform,” as Patrick called it, she knew it was a mistake to offer to help. The dress was cheap nylon and two sizes too large. Kate tied a length of butcher’s twine around her waist. None of it fit her—not the dress or the stench of pig or the buckets of blood. It didn’t feel like a world that Kate could ever get used to.
The walk-in was even colder than the shop. It was dimly lit by the red exit sign over the door, which made it look like a sideshow barker’s vision of hell. The earthy smell of blood and rot made Kate feel ill. She pulled the cord above her head and turned on the light for Patrick with a click. “How can you see without light?”
“I know where I put things. There’s light enough with the sign. No need to waste electricity.”
The bare bulb swung. It was too bright, and it blinded her for a moment. When her eyes adjusted, Kate saw the poor half cow was still strung up on a hook. The long metal shelves were filled neatly with dozens of pale plucked turkeys, headless, two rows deep, and organized according to size. Patrick handed her a bucket. “This is back fat. You’ll need that,” he said. The fat was ground like hamburger and pure white. “It’s cold enough to work in the shop, so we’ll work there.” He turned off the light. “It’s brighter, too. No need for lamps.”
Kate looked out the front window of the shop. It was just half past two, but Broadway was deserted. Telephone operators worked on Sundays, but perhaps they were between shifts. There was no one around at all. The massive building looked like an abandoned hive.
“Ready?” Patrick asked.
She was not. Everything in the butcher shop had a place except for Kate. She didn’t even know where to stand.
“Wash your hands first, then put your gloves on,” Patrick said. “Very hot water and then very cold. If your hands are warm, they will taint the meat.”
Kate had no idea that making sausage was such an intricate process. On the long table, Patrick placed gallon buckets of pork cubes, back fat, and several small bowls of spices. Kate recognized the sage, but that was all. The rest was a mystery.
“It’s all about balance,” Patrick said. “Too much fat, and it’s greasy. Too lean, and it’s tough. It must be both salty and savory. You need to learn to balance things. No high notes. Just the same thing over and over again.”
Kate wasn’t sure if Patrick was talking about a butcher’s life or the sausage, but she knew she’d never liked sausage all that much. After four hours of making it, she liked it even less.
By half past seven, they were exhausted. It took Kate a twenty-minute hot soak to get the scent of pork off her skin, and she still reeked of it. Very barnyard.
“It should wear off in a couple of hours,” he said, and found her an old blue flannel shirt of his to wear until she was “less piglike in aroma.” Patrick rolled the sleeves up twice, but the shirt still came to her knees.
While Kate had been in the bath, Patrick had showered downstairs in the shop with a hose. “I don’t mind cold water,” he told her. He warmed a can of tomato soup for them both, poured it into coffee mugs, and served it with saltines. “I’d fry up a few chops, but after all that sausage, it takes a while for me to be hungry again.”
Kate understood. She couldn’t even bear to hear the word sausage.
It was very cold in the apartment. “I’ve been in the States for twelve years, and I’m still not much for paying for heat,” Patrick said. He handed Kate his mother’s sweater. “It was her favorite.” It was quite old. The wool was pilled, and it smelled like bleach, but it was better than many of Peg’s clothes, which held the odd scent of violet perfume and dust. There was an entire closet full of them, hanging just the way his mother had left them.
“What are you saving these for?”
“I’m really not sure,” he said.
Patrick clearly missed her. So did Kate.
The tomato soup was not fit to eat. It was an off brand that Kate didn’t know. It didn’t taste like real tomatoes. Awful stuff. She finished it quickly and was still hungry—starving, really—but it would have been rude to ask if there was any other food in the house. And she couldn’t just get up and root around. It wasn’t her pantry. Even though Peg was gone, it would always be Peg’s.
Patrick was exceedingly quiet, as was Kate. There are different kinds of silences. This one was filled with words that could not be said.
At least they had the television.
“Would you like a glass of water?” Patrick asked.
“Yes. Thank you.”
It felt as if they were strangers again.
Modesty was in short supply. Dressed in Patrick’s shirt and his mother’s sweater, watching television alone like that, made Kate uncomfortable, although My Three Sons was very nice. He’d turned it on straightaway. The widower had such sweet boys, all different ages, although they looked very Scottish, and with a name like Fred MacMurray, you had to wonder.
“Lovely hair, though.”
As soon as Kate said that, she took off Peg’s sweater. She was starting to sound like her, yammering on and on. “Lovely hair”—Kate couldn’t even believe that had come out of her mouth. Although it was true—MacMurray’s hair had quite a roguish swoop to it—but still.
Patrick was lost in thought, not watching the telly, just sitting with the blue light tinting his face, and his tired blue eyes.
Kate wasn’t sure exactly when she drifted off to sleep, but when she awoke, it seemed very late. The station was signing off for the night.
“This is WCBS-TV in New York City, transmitting by authority of the Federal…”
The screen went dark, and there was a high-pitched tone, like the squeal of an electronic pig. Kate turned off the set. She’d had quite enough of pigs for a lifetime. Still sleepy, it took her a moment to realize where she was.
“Patrick?”
The apartment was dark. It was not the same sort of darkness that Kate was used to. Her apartment was quieter and faced the river. His was right on the busy end of Broadway. Once the television was off, Kate could hear how loud the apartment really was. Up and down the street, pubs were letting out. Even on Sunday, some kept back-door hours for those who worked overnight and needed a quick pint with an egg cracked into it, a “liquid breakfast,” before dawn. At this hour, after midnight, most of the bleary eyed were drunk and weaving their way home—from sidewalk to street and back again. Some sang the old songs, some the new. Some shouted to each other. Some shouted to God. Not Kate’s God, but a sullen God in a heaven that clearly had no time for fools. There were fire trucks and screaming patrol cars racing to one spot of trouble or another. There were telephone operators leaving their shifts or arriving. Wolf whistles, too. Patrick’s apartment was on the second floor, right over the shop, so everything seemed closer and louder because it was.
Living here would mean a lifetime of closing times, Kate thought, and shuddered. She couldn’t imagine how Peg dealt with all this noise.
“Patrick?”
Her neck hurt from sleeping in the chair. Patrick had covered her with a blanket and tucked in the edges, and that had woken her up briefly. But he hadn’t said he was going out. He hadn’t said anything. He had just tucked the blanket around her and kissed her forehead.
“Patrick?”
He wasn’t there. Kate wanted to go home and sleep in her own small, white bed. She wanted to be where she knew all the creaks in the floorboards and the voices of the neighbors coming home. But she couldn’t just leave; that wouldn’t seem right. Kate felt her way along the wall, looking for a switch, but no luck.
“Patrick?”
He wasn’t sleeping in his room. She knocked twice.
“Patrick?”
Nor was he in the bathroom. Kate finally found the light switch by the front door and flipped it on.
“Patrick?”
Kate opened the apartment door and went out onto the landing. The stairs down to the shop were badly lit. A couple of lightbulbs were out. Kate thought for a moment that she heard Patrick’s voice on the street; she held her breath and listened closely. It wasn’t him.
Kate was a little dizzy from lack of food; she walked down the stairs carefully. She didn’t want to fall. Unlike at home, there’d be no one to find her here if she did. The front door was locked but not bolted. Patrick was out. Somewhere. The door to the shop was also open.
“Patrick?”
She was whispering now. His white wool fedora was hung on the rack next to a neatly starched butcher’s coat, ready for the next day. Someone opened the front door. There was a jingling of keys.
“Patrick?”
“Kate?”
He seemed surprised to see her. He was locking the front door behind him. He must have noticed that the door to the shop was open.
“You’ve come down for a midnight snack, have you?” he said, but his cheer seemed false. He’d changed his clothes. He was wearing a black sweater under his dark coat and dark pants. His silver hair was combed, although it seemed disheveled somehow. He’d had a drink or two. He smelled of stout.
“I’ve got burgers,” he said. “With onions for nightmares.”
He was holding a greasy white sack in his right hand. He said he’d run down to the pub and Mrs. Brown had thrown a couple of patties on the griddle. “I woke up hungry.” There was the overwhelming scent of seared beef and raw onion. Yellow mustard, too. But there was something else. Something he wasn’t saying.
“It’s so late for food,” she said.
“Consider it breakfast.” The hamburgers were wrapped in waxed paper and still warm. “They’ve very fine burgers, Kate.”
Kate felt that Patrick was hiding something. Another woman? It was difficult to tell. He seemed quite sad as he led her up the stairs and into his room. They ate the hamburgers on his bed, which was as small as her own. The white bedspread, the white sheets—it all felt very familiar.
When they were finished, Patrick turned his back and took off his shirt. She kissed him on his neck and then realized that she’d never told him about the pink suit, her suit—their suit now—and that the Wife planned to wear it to India. She knew he’d be as proud as she was, but before Kate could say anything, Patrick slipped out of her arms.
“Kate,” he said. “I was thinking about today. And you—”
Her heart nearly stopped.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and she was. Kate was sorry she wasn’t Peg or an old-fashioned girl. She was very sorry she wasn’t the kind of girl Patrick thought she was. But Peg’s ring was still firm on her finger, it wouldn’t budge.
“Nothing to be sorry about. I just got to thinking. This life I offer you isn’t grand.”
“It’s fine—”
“It’s not the Chez.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” she said. He kissed her so gently; Kate hoped that was true.
Chapter Nineteen
“In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”
—Coco Chanel
The problem with a pink pillbox hat is that everyone notices it. Especially if worn in December at four-thirty a.m. And if it had been worn to church the day before, as Kate had worn hers, a pink pillbox would be impossible to miss
. In a small place like Inwood, one quick kiss outside the butcher shop is all it takes to get noticed.
A week later, Father John came to the shop to speak to Patrick in person.
“A few of the parish ladies are not fans of Kate and are raving about ‘moral grounds.’ They’ll object if you try to announce banns and marry in church. They don’t know Kate like we do.”
As soon as the priest left, Patrick closed the shop and arrived unannounced at the back door of Chez Ninon. DELIVERIES ONLY, the sign read.
“We can talk later,” Kate said.
“We can’t.”
It was the middle of the afternoon. There was no privacy at all. There was barely enough space to stand in. Tarnished tinsel hung from the fluorescent lights overhead. Perry Como crooned on the radio. Christmas was less than a month away, and nearly every mannequin had been pulled out of storage. The clients all needed something: smoking jackets and velvet dresses for family dinners, or formal gowns and full dress tails for New Year’s Eve. All the back-room girls, even the mice of Ready-to-Wear, were pitching in.
“Did you hear what I said, Kate?”
They were standing in a sea of headless mannequins. Whispering. “Let it snow,” Perry sang. Outside the long banks of windows, Manhattan braced itself for sleet. Patrick was pale. Kate felt awful about that but was relieved that he’d taken a moment and put on a coat and tie and nicked his face with a quick shave and a splash of cologne. He was presentable. Unexpected and unwelcome—but presentable. “We need to apply for a license right away. We can marry at the courthouse. It’ll stop the talk.”
Although the mannequins were headless and deaf, the back-room girls were not. The hum of the sewing machines, the chatter of gossip: it slowly wound down around them until all Kate could hear was Maeve’s raspy breathing; her cold had gone from bad to worse, and there was no hiding the sound of it, not even over Perry’s insistent refrain. “Let it snow. Let it snow. Let it snow.” Patrick stood so close to Kate that he could kiss her, but he didn’t. “This kind of talk is bad for business,” he said.