He walked across the bridge and then jumped the trolley on the Brooklyn side, held tight to the bar, and after a long time hopped off at Coney Island, where, passing the Loop-the-Loop and packs of young girls pressed into circles, talking behind their hands and laughing, he remembered bringing Mary there when Aunt Kate was still alive and watching her as she danced with other girls. Even then it was a rare thing to see her so joyous, and even more rare as time went on, but it was worth the wait and even severe Mary, even worried Mary, even Mary with a cook’s slouch was worth a hundred Liza Meaneys.
• • •
It was nearly midnight when Alfred got back to Liza’s rooms, and after climbing the narrow stairs he listened at the door for a minute to discover whether she was still awake, waiting for him, or if the boy was still studying at the table. He thought about what he’d say, whether he’d hold her or if that was wrong, whether he’d tell the boy himself or let her do it. He heard nothing, and there was no light under the door.
It will come as a shock to her, Alfred knew. She might not be able to make ends meet without him. She mightn’t be able to send the boy to school. But she’ll take on another boarder. A woman would be better for her, and the neighbors would like it more. I’ll send her a letter, he decided as he turned and made his way back down to the street. It would be kinder to Liza to avoid the shame of having to watch him leave, or the temptation she might have to beg him to stay. It would be more honorable to allow her to face that on her own and then she could tell Samuel whatever she liked. Alfred would simply never return to Orchard Street at all. As for the few articles he’d left behind in her place, she could do what she liked with them.
Then he remembered he had thirty-one dollars saved in a coffee can on the top shelf of the pantry, and that stopped him as he crossed the first-floor landing. He looked up the dark stairwell and listened. After a few seconds, he shook his head and waved his hands in front of him as if he were scattering that paper money in the breeze. He stepped toward the heavy front door, believing he’d made his decision, but he thought of that money again as he placed his hand on the knob. He could see it as a stack, turned on its side and curved against the can. It smelled of coffee. What would Liza do with it? Buy books for the boy?
He climbed the stairs again. He placed the palm of his hand against the door and then turned the knob, slowly, slowly, so that the lock wouldn’t pop like a gunshot and wake her up. He pushed it open only far enough to slide his body inside and in three steps he was standing at the pantry, peering toward the top shelf. Empty. He scanned the lower shelves, the counter, the curio in the corner. The floorboard creaked as his thumb grazed the miniature collectable bell she’d gotten from Philadelphia, years and years ago from her husband, the boy’s father, dead at twenty-seven. Alfred was rooted in the still silence until he remembered the small hollow in the brick wall between the window and the curio, a little space gouged out long before his arrival and impossible to notice unless a person went looking for it. Liza had pointed it out to Samuel as a good place to keep his earnings, and Alfred went up on tiptoes now, reaching around the curio to find it in the moonlight. There was his coffee can, and next to it, a chipped sugar bowl full of the boy’s earnings. Graceful as a ballerina, he leaned down, plucked up both, and barely felt the floor under him as he slipped out the door, back to the hall, down to the street.
For the first time since taking the cure, he reached for the flask that held the medicine, and there on the dark sidewalk he tipped it into his mouth, pretended it was whiskey, and swallowed every drop. When he was finished, he waited to see if the medicine would do the trick, if it would take all that wanting away and turn it into satisfaction, into the calm easiness of sobriety as Dr. Oppenheimer had described it, the peace of needing nothing, of feeling sound in body and mind. Instead, he felt violence in his belly, and as quick as he could lean over, he vomited on himself and all over the step. He stumbled to the curb and vomited over the dog shit there. He dropped down to his hands and knees and vomited again. When he saw in the dim light of the gas lamp a policeman coming up the street with his hand on his club, he moved along as quickly as he could. He stuck close to the buildings and walked north until he came to a church with a small cemetery beyond its gates. He tried to vomit again but nothing came because there was nothing left, so he retched drily behind a headstone, wrapped his coat more tightly around his body, stumbled over to a bench, and slept.
In the morning, cold to the bone and with an aching neck, he made his way to Washington Square Park. The Borriello boy had said the laundry Mary worked at was almost on the park, but he hadn’t had a chance to tell him which side, how close “almost” was. Buttoned into the inside pocket of his coat was his thirty-one dollars, plus Samuel’s eleven. Eleven dollars was nothing compared to the dinners he’d put on their table, compared to all the pencils and books and scratch pads he’d purchased. The groceries, the new kitchen curtains, all acquired with the money he’d given her. She’d made out well, he told himself, the thick stack of money a lump on the left side of his coat.
He began searching at the park’s south end but found no laundry. There was a laundry a block from the park’s west side, but when he went in to inquire about Mary, they didn’t know who he was talking about. It was the same at the two laundries he found within a few blocks north of the park. Then, on the park’s east side, he spotted a sign and knew it must be the place. He watched a Chinese move around the front of the store, and then had a glimpse of her, passing through a back room, carrying a stack of folded clothes. Though the vomit had dried on his pants and shoes, the stench seemed as strong as it had been when fresh, and when he touched his hand to his face he knew that he needed a wash and a shave. He was hungry. He wanted to rinse his teeth. The Chinese came to the door, noticed him, and turned his back.
He needed to make himself presentable. He needed to consider what he’d say. Instead of speaking to her right then, as he’d planned, he walked to the old building and got himself into Driscoll’s rooms by the key Driscoll left over the frame of the door. He stripped in Driscoll’s kitchen and then went into the old man’s closet to find a shirt, pants, fresh socks, hurrying out of the contaminated room as quickly as he could. He found Driscoll’s blade and cream. When he was finished, and standing in the kitchen with Driscoll’s bedroom door shut tight, he made a mug of strong black coffee and sipped it beside the stove. He felt jumpy, as if being chased, as if those pursuing him were crouched outside in the street, spying on him from the upper floors of the buildings lining the avenue. He placed Driscoll’s key on the table and locked the door behind him.
• • •
He walked directly over to the laundry—it was near quitting time—but she would not see him. A Chinese looked him up and down with those inscrutable eyes and told him that she could not be disturbed. He told the man he would wait as long as he had to. He raised his voice and sent it toward the back of the shop, where the sounds of cranks and pulleys and the sudden hiss of steam went on as if he weren’t there at all. The smell of damp clothing and hot irons filled the small space, and he wondered if she smelled like that now—where before she’d smelled of fruit and fresh bread, now she might smell of starch and laundry powder. She’d heard him. He could feel it. She was listening. He told the Chinaman to call the police if he wanted to. He didn’t care. And then, not fifteen minutes later, he was back on the street again, walking into the wind that pricked his face like a hundred thousand needles, turning a shoulder to slice through the throngs hustling about with their packages tied up with string. He circled around the neighborhood for a while, and then went back to the laundry and stood outside the door.
“Mary,” he said, when she finally came out, as he knew she would, eventually. Two other women had already left, and the sign on the door said CLOSED. “I need to talk to you.”
She stayed several feet away from him on the sidewalk and wrapped her scarf around her head. “No, Alfred, I don’t think so. I think the time f
or talking is past.”
“I didn’t marry her, you know.”
Mary leveled a look at him. “And? What am I supposed to do? Thank you?”
“No! I only—”
“Go away, Alfred. Please. Leave me alone.”
He watched her walk away, and he waited for her to stop, look over her shoulder, think of something more to say to him. But she turned onto Greene Street and disappeared.
• • •
He needed to change his tack. He needed to find a way to explain himself. In the short term, he realized he shouldn’t have locked himself out of Driscoll’s flat. He had his stack of money but he didn’t want to waste it, so he walked over to Eighth Street, to a delicatessen where an old friend from his coal-hauling days worked slicing meat, and asked to sleep in the pallet in their supply room.
In the morning, he waited outside 302 East Thirty-Third, but he must have arrived too late and missed her. He passed by the laundry a few times to kill the hours until they closed, but didn’t catch any glimpses of her. Christmas was now only eight days away. Pale children begged from morning until night, and there was a Santa on every other block. The markets smelled of clove and cinnamon and the men hocking evergreens were asking astonishing prices for trees that by New Year’s would be brown and brittle and back on the curb.
What he needed was courage. What he needed was to figure out exactly the right thing to say. He shoved his fists deep into his coat pockets because when he set them free his arms felt out of rhythm with his body. He put up his collar. He walked faster. His flask was empty now, and he kept reminding himself to go to Oppenheimer’s office for more of the medicine, but it was like the old prayers of his childhood: his mind said the words but the words were meaningless and he barely heard them. The thought of filling it with something better came to him innocently, the first time, as he passed a pub he used to like. But as soon as the thought entered his mind it gained traction, and wouldn’t be pushed away. He tried to think instead of how he and Mary would talk, finally, and how life would go on, but every time he let his guard down there it was, an itch in his chest demanding to be scratched. He walked and walked and bought a comb for his hair and better socks for his feet, but there it was, squatting in the corner of his mind and smirking at him. If I limit myself to a dram, he considered. His groin tingled. He felt his pulse in the soles of his feet and his fingertips. If I tell the barman it’s only the one, and to not under any circumstances sell me another. If I drink it up quickly and then go on my way. If I never do it again after this.
He walked back to the pub he’d passed that morning. Quickly, quickly, he caught the barman’s eye and held up his first finger. The barman found a bottle, and Alfred nodded. The barman found a glass, set it on the bar, poured from one vessel into the other, all of which Alfred watched closely, as if trying to spot the sleight of hand in a card trick. The barman restored the bottle to the shelf and placed the glass in front of Alfred. Alfred removed his hat, swallowed it down, and returned the empty glass to the bar.
“Jeez, brother,” the man said, eyeing him. “We don’t run tabs here.”
“I have money.”
The second time, Alfred looked at the amber liquid for a moment before swallowing it in two long gulps. The polished wood of the bar stretched out to his right and curved into the shadows at the back of the room. The glasses lined up in neat rows behind the barman caught the faint sun coming through the windows. He felt nervous out there in the city, the tendons and sinews of his body mimicking the hectic pace all around him, leaving him exhausted, leaving him unable to relax, his ears always cocked like a hare waiting for the sound of approaching hounds. Here, Alfred noticed, the encroaching city stopped its march at the door, and at the center of his body the heat from those two small drams worked better than any overcoat, worked better than the warmest feather bed. The others seated at the bar were silent except for a pair of gentlemen toward the back discussing something in a whisper. There was no music playing, and the barman had not even bothered to put out the token plate of cheese. Alfred felt a familiar calm traveling outward from his belly. He had lost his mother as a boy but he knew that feeling was what a boy feels when he steps into his mother’s arms, that tenderness, that fierce compassion. He shifted in his stool to find the familiar position. He rested his chin to his fist.
He counted the days since he’d shown up for work at the stable, and wondered if he still had a job. If they fired him, maybe it would be for the better. That way when he got his fresh start with Mary he’d find something else. He ordered a beer with his whiskey. He could move furniture, maybe. He could go out and harvest ice instead of waiting in the stables for it. When the quitting hour rolled around he didn’t bother going over to the laundry, deciding instead that he’d have better luck catching her outside their old building. He didn’t bother with dinner or supper. The other men left and a new group took their places. His stack of cash was getting lighter, and sometime after supper, after the barman had cleaned the glasses and wiped down the top of the bar, he asked Alfred if he had somewhere to go. Alfred straightened up, leapt from the stool, hurried out to the street.
The laundry had been closed for several hours, so Alfred sat inside the vestibule of 302 East Thirty-Third Street for six hours before she appeared. He was leaning with his back against the wall, his legs stretched out in front of him, when he opened his eyes to find her looking down on him with a newspaper under her arm and an umbrella in her hand.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“Waiting for you.”
She leaned over to sniff the air, and then like she’d been scalded she jumped, pulled her long skirt to the side, and tried to step past him to the front door.
“Wait,” he said, and quick as could be he reached for her ankle. He felt that delicate knob of bone move under his thumb as she tried to wriggle free.
“Let me go,” she said with that fierce look she got whenever she was angry. He let go. “What do you want? Why are you here? I wish you’d keep away from me.”
“Didn’t you hear me say I’m not married? I didn’t marry her.”
Mary gave one of those quick breathy laughs he knew marked the point when she was about to lose her temper completely. He stood and stepped back until he was against the wall. He’d forgotten what she could be like. He’d forgotten everything. She held her pointing finger one inch from his nose.
“You stay away from me, do you understand? Don’t come to the laundry. Don’t come to this building. Don’t look for me on the street.”
“You don’t mean it. I know you don’t mean it.” He thought of her stooping over him in the early mornings. He thought of her pushing his clothes into the tub, and wringing them, and shaking them out in two deft snaps before hanging them by the stove. He thought of the soft swing of her breasts while she worked, and the swell of her bare white hip in the morning, and the way she was careful about her hands, always rubbing the fingertips in lemon to take away the odor, and how he wanted to kiss those hands now and tell her that she could not send him away. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes, she would listen to a story he told her, about the bar, about some person he’d met there, and if the story was funny she’d laugh. She’d drop what she was doing, sink into her side of the bed, and laugh. Sometimes, not often, she would ignore the dawn light that insisted it was time to wake up, and instead she’d roll over toward him, throw her arm over his chest, make a nest in the crook of his arm. Even when she was upstate, or in New Jersey, or across town at a situation that didn’t permit journeys home, he never felt alone knowing she would be coming back to him.
She made a small choked sound now, a sound he’d heard out of her only once or twice since she was seventeen. She drew a deep breath, and when she looked at him again she had composed herself.
“Please,” she said, and he felt sobered.
“But Mary, I know it would be different now. I haven’t—”
Mary moved forward quickly as if she was
going to hit him, all that rage simmering just below the features of her face, leaving a mottle of her cheeks, a man’s rage, as they’d noted in the newspapers, an animal’s rage, an immigrant’s rage, something that required four, five, six generations to be properly bred out. But it was only a flicker, and when he blinked she had already drawn herself back, closed her eyes, and then, after a beat, descended the front steps to the sidewalk. “I mean it, Alfred,” she said, and next thing she was gone.
He roamed the city to clear his head, pausing only on park benches and barstools. He spent that night stretched on the long seat of a Model T parked under a tree on Fifty-Seventh Street, the owner’s blanket pulled up to his chin, and then spent the next day at Nation’s Pub. When the car was gone the next evening he found another. He went on this way for a few days, until he remembered the ice company stable, and how warm it would be there with all the animals lined up in their rows, the doors and windows shut tight. Since it was now just a few days until Christmas, there would be no one there except the poor soul who got elected to come by to feed the animals, shake out fresh straw.
The stable was empty. Alfred scrambled through a window that stayed closed all winter but was never locked. Inside, staggering now with exhaustion, he pushed bunches of hay together on the dirt floor, found a spare horse blanket. He’d tell whoever came that he was back on a shift, that he was meant to be there. They would believe him.
Fever: A Novel Page 23