Almost Dark

by Letitia Trent

  “You interested in having dinner with me sometime?” he asked abruptly. He squinted, bared his teeth. He had probably meant to prepare with some small talk, to try and charm her. Joan felt for him—it was hard to say the right thing at the right time.

  Despite her sympathy, Joan moved away, her face twitching, lips turning with something like distaste, like when she got a mouthful of bad milk. His hand fell back to his side. He removed the cigarette from his mouth, blew smoke in the space between them. He looked down at his shoes. She had embarrassed him.

  Joan remembered her job, her savings, her plans for leaving. She forced a smile.

  “That’s a nice offer,” she said. “But I have a boyfriend.”

  She didn’t have a boyfriend, but she didn’t want Tony to think he had a chance. Joan had heard that he’d come on to a few of the other girls, too. It was harmless, though. She’d come across many men like this at the local bars—men approaching or just over forty who were surprised to find themselves bachelors, eager to bag a young, sweet wife, to start late on that life they had seen other people live for so many years.

  “It’s a shame a girl like you gets herself tied down so young,” he said.

  She smiled in response and finished her cigarette. She threw the smouldering butt down to the ground and rubbed it out with the toe of her pump.

  “I’m just the kind of girl who likes to settle down, I guess.”

  Since then, she hadn’t had much trouble from him. A few unnecessary touches as he passed her on the way out the door—nothing that she couldn’t handle. Nothing that everybody else under thirty didn’t get.

  Joan continued her walk to work, picking up the pace as the bells at St. Mary’s tolled nine o’clock.

  Joan checked the threading on her machine, ran a practice stitch across a piece of fabric, and began her day’s work. She smiled as she ran a long, even line up the bodice of a dress, which was covered in a sickly, paisley pattern of tan and pale pink.

  After two weeks, she would never have to see these paisley shirtdresses again. She wanted to stand up and throw the dress on the floor and invite everyone to trample on it in celebration. But she kept sewing.

  Tony went down to the basement, banging his keys against his thigh. He was going to meet Charlotte, the little redhead in the dyeing room. He had first noticed how cute she was, how sweetly her small body fit her skirts and plain, white shirts when he passed her during work about three months ago. He’d taken her out to dinner soon after and learned she was just out of high school but practically living on her own with only a roommate she never saw to keep track of her. None of the girls seemed to know her well; she was from out of town, maybe a farm girl. It was better that way—less gossip.

  He asked her about herself on the first date, which made her blush. There’s nothing important about me, she’d told him, fluttering her false eyelashes in a gesture of shyness—genuine, not the usual imitation shyness Tony saw in most girls her age. He liked to know exactly where his girlfriends were from. He was sympathetic to girls who were from the country, who said shears instead of scissors and wore the wrong kinds of shoes and stockings. It was easier to teach them. They didn’t have ideas about how much they knew already.

  He found Charlotte crouched unsteadily on her heels, hampered by her tight skirt. She warmed her hands by the kerosene heater at her feet. Tony had placed them all around the factory, including here in the basement, where the walls were surrounded by black, cold dirt. Cold as a coffin, he sometimes thought when he was down there counting inventory.

  A can of kerosene, its cap undone, filled the room with a sharp, dizzying smell.

  “Jesus, Charlotte, shut the kerosene.” He shouted more loudly than he had intended. It scared him, an image of Charlotte lying on the basement floor, her mouth and eyes open, poisoned by fumes.

  Charlotte looked up at his outburst—he didn’t usually shout at her but spoke to her as one would a particularly impressionable child. She made a surprised “O” with her mouth. Her face was puffy from crying, with black, thick eye makeup streaked down her cheeks.

  “What’s wrong?” Tony asked. He put the keys in his pocket and went to her, kneeling into the warmth of the heater. “Did something happen?”

  Charlotte sniffled and mumbled, her breath hitching. He shuffled forward and pressed her face against his chest, patted her head. The heater blew against the fabric of his shirt, making an uncomfortable hot spot on his back. He could smell the polyester heating, a smell like when he left a plastic lid on a burner.

  He didn’t like to see women upset, and particularly Charlotte, who seemed more like a bright child than a grown woman. She made him think of his sister, Shelly, who had stayed behind in Poultney and married a boy who worked on the roads, a boy who’d beaten her in the beginning, before Tony told him that he’d snap his neck if Shelly had as much as a red cheek. She was prone to crying, to hysterics, and to collapsing in a heap when something was the matter. She had a softness about her eyes and mouth that made her seem impressionable. That, Tony had to admit, made the idea of hitting her seem sometimes attractive even to him, and he loved his sister.

  Charlotte, too, had a funny softness around her eyes and mouth. If you pressed your fingers into her skin, their impression might remain there for a long while.

  Charlotte raised her head, sniffling. She rubbed her eyes, spreading a swatch of black makeup across her temple.

  “I have something to tell you, Tony.” She sniffled again, staring at her smudged hands.

  She wasn’t just upset—she was a mess. Her hair was dull and limp, and her jumper had a stain, egg yolk or mustard, over the right breast. She’d probably slept in yesterday’s clothes.

  “I went to the doctor,” she said, her breath rising. “I was late with, you know, my friend. I’m going to have a baby.”

  Tony watched her sit and sob, her body quaking. He wobbled slightly at the sound of her crying, the smell of the kerosene, and the damned bad luck of what she’d told him. His stomach quivered at the edge of sickness—he could taste the greasy ghost of his breakfast, bacon and eggs, at the back of his throat.

  Being in the basement didn’t help. It made him queasy to be down there for long. There was something ugly about the air—the lack of circulation, the smell of rot.

  “Just let yourself cry,” Tony said. “Just cry it out and then we’ll talk.”

  Charlotte wiped away her tears with the cuff of her shirt and Tony paced the room. So she was going to have a baby. Something would have to be done. He felt in his pocket for the keys. He would need to lock the door before somebody heard her crying and came down. Then he wouldn’t be able to stop the talking. They’ve probably already heard. Tony imagined a gaggle of women outside the door, waiting to hear what he would say next.

  “We’re going to sit down and talk about this, Charlotte,” he said. She looked as though she might begin to cry again at his words. Tony went to her.

  “Now, I think you know the situation.” He assumed his voice of authority and reason. He stopped rooting for his keys and crouched down, looked her in the eye. Now is the time to comfort, he thought. She’ll stop crying and we’ll go out to dinner tonight and she’ll brush her hair and paint her nails and we can get out of this god-awful box that stinks of kerosene and dirt.

  “I’m going to give you enough cash to get this fixed, okay?” Tony pushed lightly against her shoulder with his fingertips. She looked up at him, but her face was absolutely still, composed, and unreadable.

  “I won’t leave you alone with this problem—I’m going to help you get rid of it.” Tony stood up, his knees popping with the effort. “But let me get the door first—we don’t want anyone barging in on us.” Tony hooked his key ring with his index finger and walked toward the door. He didn’t look behind to see that Charlotte had risen, too. She grasped his elbow, nearly jerked him off his feet.

&
nbsp; “No,” she said quietly, but firmly, in a voice that seemed impossibly calm and assured for a woman who just a moment ago hadn’t been able to string more than two words together. “I’m keeping it,” she said. “You don’t have to marry me, but I’m keeping it.”

  She had hold of his arm at the elbow. Her red, almond-shaped nails dug into his skin.

  “Do you hear me?” she said. “I could never get rid of it. That would be a sin. I can go away. I can live somewhere else. I can leave here and all you have to do is send me a little money sometimes. You don’t even have to visit. You don’t have to have anything to do with me if you don’t want to. I’ll just need a little help. I can work. But I can’t do what you want—I’d be in hell forever, burning, and the baby would be in purgatory.”

  Tony remembered the first night when they had gone to her apartment after dinner—it had been their third date. Before, she had only allowed him to kiss her at the doorstep, in the porchlight, even, the bugs pinging around his ears. In the darkness of the movie theatre, she would sometimes let him set his hand on her leg and move it up slightly, slightly, until just a few inches away from her hip-swell, but that was all.

  “Oh no, mister,” she would say, shaking her head and swatting away his hand. That night, she’d gotten drunk from two glasses of wine—she wasn’t a drinker, she said, her pretty face flushed—and had asked him back to her room. Her housemate was gone for the weekend.

  “You can come up,” she said, her eyes heavy, almost closed. She smiled. He saw the dark red lipstick on her teeth and had to remind himself to look back to the road, away from the dazed look in her face, the red all over her mouth.

  He hadn’t noticed much about her house that might’ve revealed more about what kind of girl she was, about how many men before him she’d let in for a nightcap. It was the usual sad bachelorette’s pad, with its smell of disinfectant, and attempts at hopeful decorations like cherry-sprigged curtains and autumnal-hued fake flowers in a green, fluted vase.

  Beyond the general drabness of the place, all Tony had noted was the crucifix above her bed, the sad, dying Jesus on the cross jiggling almost comically on its long, thin nail when the bed banged against the wall. He’d worried that it might fall and hit him on the head.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, pulling away from her grip. Her fingernails left two long red stripes on his forearm. “You aren’t going to get all holy on me now, are you? I think the time for worrying about sin is well over with.”

  Charlotte grabbed his arm again. She dug her nails in tighter. “I’ve already sinned enough,” she said. “I should take my medicine. I’m going to have this baby. You can’t change my mind.”

  She was angry with him. It was almost too much, Tony thought, that she should be angry with him—what had he done? She’s the one who got herself in trouble. He looked into her eyes, which were smudged and swollen. Her lips, wiped of lipstick, were smaller and thinner than he thought—meagre, puritan lips. Her face seemed stunted, pinched. All of the softness was gone.

  The hard look of her lips, how her shoulders squared against him, caused bile to rise in his throat. He didn’t want to marry her—she was just a child, unable to do the simplest things. She’d tried to make him a poached egg one morning and succeeded only in burning the bottom of the pan. If he married now, he would have to support two more people. Charlotte wouldn’t be able to work, not if he married her—only poor married women worked, and he wouldn’t have people in this town saying he was poor.

  But it would be no better if he didn’t marry her. His mind flashed forward nine months, then two years. Even if he weren’t with her, he would still have to send her a monthly cheque. How much would she need? He had no idea. More than he wanted to give—children had to be fed, clothed, given toys and books. He would have to visit the child, who would be a scandal. That hadn’t changed, not here, where respectable people got married when they had accidents. And if he never visited the child, he would feel guilty—he would know that it was alive, somewhere, with his nose or hair, his talent for numbers. She had the power to ruin his life.

  He could feel blood rising, heating his skin. The air was suddenly suffocating, hot and thick, as though he were breathing little particles of dirt and lint.

  Tony inhaled, gasping, and broke free from her grip. He took her shoulders and shook her until her head snapped backward and forward. Her mouth flew open and she tried to speak. She succeeded only in biting her tongue so hard that he could see blood in the crack between her two front teeth.

  He let her go and slapped her across the cheek. She sank to her knees, holding her ears between her hands, as if to keep her head on straight. Hitting her felt so good he wanted to do it again. It made her quiet, so satisfyingly crumbled.

  “If you make another sound, this whole place is going to know what’s going on down here,” he said.

  Charlotte stood, weeping, her hands over her fevered cheeks.

  Maybe she feels it, too, he thought. Maybe this room is making her head pound, making her sick, crazy. He looked at his arm, his sleeve rolled up to his elbow—she had scratched him and drawn three thin streaks of blood.

  “Now, baby, listen to reason,” Tony said. He looked away from his own blood.

  I have to calm myself, he thought. I have to calm down.

  “I just want to help you,” he said. “I know you aren’t ready to be a mother. And what would your family think of you showing up pregnant at Christmas? Would they let you come home after you did that to them?”

  Charlotte lowered her hands and looked at him, her small mouth hard, false lashes sticky and clumped together.

  “I’m not getting rid of it,” she said slowly. There was a short hitch in her throat when she said it. “I’m not getting rid of the baby for you.”

  “Goddamn it, listen to me,” Tony started, but she surprised him by slapping him square in the chin, jerking his head sharply to the right. The violent movement of his neck caused a jolt of pain from his shoulder to chin, blinding him for a few vibrant seconds. A fine sheen of sweat broke out across his forehead.

  That bitch, he thought. Oh, that bitch.

  He turned to get the door, finally, his hand on his throat where the stretched muscles still throbbed.

  She shouted, “I won’t do it, and you can’t make—”

  “Shut up,” he said evenly, trying not to raise his voice. “Somebody will hear.”

  “What do I care?” she screamed.

  She’s gone crazy, he thought. I have to make her stop.

  Tony stood by the door, his hand on the knob. “Just shut up for a minute, Char—”

  “I won’t shut anything.” She turned to get her purse, which was sitting atop bolts of pink periwinkle fabric. She kept talking, repeating herself—“I’m keeping it, I’m keeping it, you can’t make me”—speaking loud enough for anyone at the door to hear her.

  “I won’t do anything you say anymore, Tony,” she said.

  He felt a shift inside his head, as though something was kicking at the insides of his skull, threatening to split the skin. There’s something wrong with me, he thought, the buzzing in his head almost louder than Charlotte. He was angry. The anger hardly felt like part of him. It was foreign, but he recognized it, too, that old bloom of red at the edges of his vision.

  “You aren’t a good man,” he heard her say, distantly, as though she was outside one of the small, slatted basement windows, shouting down at him through the glass instead of there in the room. She turned to retrieve her jacket and her voice got smaller.

  “You said you would protect me. You said you loved me. You don’t love anybody, you—”

  Charlotte stopped mid-sentence, her mouth open. She reached to touch the back of her head, where a new pain bloomed. She felt warmth spread, drip down the back of her neck. She looked at her hands, which were covered in blood. She felt dizzy and another du
ll but brain-wracking pain hit her. This time, she heard, vaguely, the crack of bones.

  Charlotte had time to think of how she should have gotten her secretary’s degree from the women’s college and worked in Albany for a bank boss or a lawyer, just like her momma had said suggested. She could have done something besides ruin her health and reputation in this factory, on a man who didn’t brush his teeth, who smelled like suffocating, cheap cologne, and who didn’t care one bit about her. Oh look what he’s done, that’s my blood, that’s my blood. And then she remembered the baby, whom she was going to name Gabriel or Annabelle, two names for angels, and how she was going to raise him or her in the country, like she had been—away from the streets and the ugly buildings, with a garden in the backyard and a tire swing that collected water when it rained. She remembered swinging—how it had been the closest thing to flying, how it sometimes made her sick and dizzy, but she did it anyway, higher and higher, and how once the rope snapped at the height of her swing and she’d been thrown clear across the lawn and bumped her head on the ground, scraped her hands on a rock. Her mother had rushed out and cradled her and said, Charlotte, Charlotte, are you okay? Can you hear me? Can you see me?

  Charlotte saw the red pool grow, the fluid filling the space around her cheek, spilling out beyond her nose. At least it’s warm, she thought. At least I can just go to sleep.

  Tony stood above her body, holding a blood-streaked brick in his hand. He dropped the brick, which splattered a few drops on his shoes and split in two.

  “She wouldn’t shut up,” he said aloud. “She wouldn’t stop talking.” He wondered if she could still hear. “I didn’t mean it,” he told her body. “You know I didn’t mean to do it.”

  She made no signs of hearing him—only a few slight jerks, her pumps scuffing against the hard floor.

  He breathed deeply, sharply, and held his chest—he thought he was having a heart attack. The sounds in his head continued, though they were quieter, and the heat faded from his forehead, his cheeks. He could feel the cold in his fingers again.