He stared at the tiny smudge of blood on his clean white cotton polishing glove. He must have soiled it when he picked up the cushion from the kneeler. Just a drop. As if a needle or a pin had pricked a seamstress’s finger. He looked down at the cushion, ran the glove over its surface. Nothing more. Just the one drop. He wondered what that meant.
In Jerry’s experience there was never just one drop of blood. The girls and women his wife and her mother aborted often gushed blood, and sometimes shoving cotton batting or towels up inside them didn’t stem the flow. When that happened they bled until they died. It wasn’t the fault of Jerry’s wife; she’d aborted dozens, maybe hundreds of unwanted complications without a problem. She always made that clear before she started working. Always told the patient and whoever brought her that there was risk involved in what they were about to do. Hardly anyone backed out. Almost every one of the girls laid down on the table and gritted her teeth.
Jerry would take the mother, boyfriend, or girlfriend who accompanied the patient out into the parlor where he collected the money and talked to them through the worst of the moaning. No screaming. The women chewed down on a piece of soft wood and clutched the sides of the table with desperate hands, but they didn’t scream. Bridget made it clear. One scream and you were off the table and out the door, aborted or not.
Jerry’s job was to clean up when it was over. Usually there wasn’t much mess, but sometimes there was blood everywhere. On the table. On the floor. Soaked into towels and rags that had to be steeped in cold water and salt, then dipped into vinegar to loosen the stains. Jerry scrubbed the floor on his hands and knees, fumes of vinegar or ammonia stinging his nose and his eyes, eating into the skin of his hands until it was rough and red. His wife drank a cup of tea and pointed out spots he’d missed. Sometimes her mother was there, but usually she tended to her own business behind the shop she and her son ran.
Both women were dead now. Jerry’s wife died of a summer fever that burned the life out of her in three days. Father Mahoney gave Bridget conditional absolution and prayed for the souls of all the babies she’d killed, though you could tell he’d rather have consigned her to the flames of hell. He heard Jerry’s confession, too, and didn’t fire him from his job at Saint Anselm’s. Nobody could clean and polish like Jerry. Nobody kept at it until what had been stained and dirty was as fresh and sparkling as new. Jerry liked to clean more than anything else he had to do to stay alive.
Bridget’s mother tended to her during the worst of the fever, then went home, laid down in her bed, and burned up just like her daughter. The son sent word to his brother-in-law when she breathed her last. Jerry helped clean the bedroom where the dead woman lay and then the storeroom where she had emptied her clients of their unwanted burdens.
Girls in trouble who didn’t know Bridget was dead continued to come by the apartment with tears in their eyes and a few hard earned coins clutched in desperate hands. Who else could they turn to? Couldn’t he help them out? Everyone knew he’d assisted his wife many a time. Surely he knew what to do, didn’t he? He directed them to Neil, his brother-in-law.
Jerry took the blood-soiled glove off his hand, worrying the spot that shouldn’t be there, rubbing and wrinkling the glove until he’d made it worse. By the time he put it to soak in cold salted water, he’d need to add vinegar or ammonia. What he’d found two weeks ago had also been blood, but not bright red and liquid as this drop had been, and not at the foot of the altar.
It had been a dark smudge in a far corner of the vestibule that he’d first thought was a bit of greasy dirt. But it hadn’t come up the way dirt did. It had stuck stubbornly to the grout in between the marble slabs of the floor, grout Jerry had painstakingly scoured with a small brush. He knew it was blood because he remembered what old blood looked like when he’d cleaned his mother-in-law’s apartment. He’d washed down every inch of that space, then gone home to scrub his own apartment again. And again. He was still cleaning it, though his wife and her mother were no longer bloodying it up.
Women were always bleeding, always leaving their dirty blood around for people to step in or get on their clothing. He didn’t know why they were like that, so dirty. Only that they were.
CHAPTER 20
Madame Jolene’s whores slept until early afternoon most days. Weekday nights were nearly as busy as Saturday night when clients could be counted on to be both numerous and raucous. Not that Madame Jolene permitted displays of drunken enthusiasm that would warrant the intervention of her bouncer or the well bribed police; it was just the way men were.
The house was quiet during the morning hours. Except for the two maids moving through the downstairs parlors cleaning up the remains of last night and setting things to right for the evening to come, hardly anyone else was awake. Bawds who didn’t get their beauty sleep very quickly began to look their ages. And then some. Their profession wasn’t kind either to bodies or to souls; it showed on the wrinkled, raddled faces of the few old timers who hadn’t yet been reduced to haunting street corners or tenement cribs. Madame Jolene’s house was a safe place to be if you had to earn your living on your back, but it wasn’t a sinecure. Any girl who neglected her basic health or appearance was out the door before she could beg for a second chance. Business was business, the madam cautioned each new hire. Just getting by wasn’t good enough.
Sally Lynn Fannon had been one of Madame Jolene’s favorites since she began working at the brothel nearly three years ago, a skinny, hungry virgin willing to sell that precious commodity as soon as she could. Anything to stave off the slow starvation that had already melted any hint of plumply voluptuous flesh from her bony frame. Jolene took her in, instructed her in the ways of whoredom and the house, fed her until her hair shone and her skin lay smoothly over pinchable flesh. Then she put her out for bid. Discreetly, of course. The winner paid a considerable price for Sally Lynn’s innocence, rendered up on command without a whimper or demur. That obstacle lucratively out of the way, the newly initiated whore settled into the life with commendable industry and success.
Except that it was all a lie.
Sally Lynn remembered every step along the path of her near destruction.
The first time had been a quick groping in an upper hallway, skirts bunched up around her waist, a finger and then something considerably bigger thrusting inside her, an explosion of wet heat, and a stifled moan. She never made a sound, never said a word. She knew what would happen if she refused him—abrupt dismissal without a reference. As close to a death sentence as you could get without the actual rope around your neck. He was gone the next day, back to Harvard, leaving behind nothing of himself and the encounter except sore and bleeding female parts.
Four weeks later Sally Lynn lay atop Bridget Brophy’s kitchen table, holding herself as still as she could while the abortionist inserted a long, slender knitting needle into what had begun to grow inside her.
Fortunately for her patient, Bridget was sober that day, her hand steady, and the knitting needle freshly washed in carbolic after its previous use. Jerry had been on one of his cleaning binges; not even his wife’s tools, usually concealed in a dirty towel shoved beneath a loose board in the kitchen floor, had escaped his bucket of boiling water and bar of lye soap.
Bridget fixed a pot of hot tea when the procedure was over and the table scrubbed clean again. Sally Lynn was her only client that day and she was feeling generous.
The day before, while Jerry was polishing Saint Anselm’s, she’d added a few more coins to the stash she kept hidden from her husband. One by one she’d dropped what she thought he wouldn’t miss down into the hollow uprights of their metal bed frame, alternating bits of rag with the silver so the money wouldn’t rattle when he pulled the bed out to clean under and behind it. The endless scrubbing drove her wild; she was leaving as soon as she had enough squirreled away to set up somewhere on her own. She hated being dependent on what Jerry earned working at Saint Anselm’s, but there didn’t seem to be much of a choic
e. Rent had to be paid, food and drink bought. Bridget had an unquenchable thirst for whiskey when she could afford it, beer in buckets when she was down to Jerry’s last penny.
“You’re small,” she said. “That could be worth something if you want it to be.”
“What does that mean?” Sally Lynn asked. It didn’t hurt as much as she’d been afraid it would, and there wasn’t much bleeding. She’d stood up to use the chamber pot after her first cup of tea, and a lump had plopped out. Mrs. Brophy had been inordinately pleased with Sally Lynn and with her own expertise.
“You’re lucky is what it means. The next time a man asks if you’re a virgin, say yes and hold out for as much as you can get.”
“Won’t he know? They say a man always knows.”
“It doesn’t exactly grow back, but a girl as narrow as you are, if she’s only done it a few times and then doesn’t do it for a while, gets tight again. Sometimes there’s a bit that wasn’t torn the first time. That’s why I say you’re lucky. A good whorehouse has clients who pay well for the young ones.”
“I’m not a whore, Mrs. Brophy.”
“Yes, you are. You just weren’t paid for it and it looks like you’re not going to get caught at it. You’re a smart girl, Sally Lynn. I can tell because you got yourself to me in time. The dumb ones keep hoping it will go away by itself. They wait too long, and then they get desperate. They try to get rid of it themselves after someone like me turns them down. Those are the ones who die, poor little tramps.”
“How long will I bleed?” The conversation was making Sally Lynn more uncomfortable than what Bridget Brophy had done to her.
“Four or five days. Like a regular cycle.” Bridget set her tea cup down and leaned across the table. She curled her fingers around one of Sally Lynn’s hands and held on tight. She was about to give advice she was pretty sure the girl wouldn’t want to hear.
“Just make sure you get yourself out of that house before the young master comes back.”
In her desperation, Sally Lynn had revealed more than she intended.
“He’s the only one who can swear to what happened. Other than you and me. And Jerry.” Bridget glanced at the motionless form of her husband leaning against the stove with his bucket of carbolic and dirty rags at his feet. He never left her alone with a client afterwards in case something bad happened. Even more than his wife, Jerry didn’t like to take too many chances.
“That boy will be at you again or he’ll get you dismissed if you don’t accommodate him.” Bridget dug her fingers into Sally Lynn’s wrist so the girl had to pay attention.
“The missus won’t give me a reference if I leave sudden like. She’ll suspect something is up with me.”
“I do business at one of the best houses in the city,” Mrs. Brophy said proudly. “I know someone who works there; she got me in with the madam for old times’ sake. You’ll have to wait a while, a month or two maybe, but by then you’ll be as good as new. You’ll be able to fool anyone who examines you. Take my word for it.”
“I’m not a whore, Mrs. Brophy,” Sally Lynn repeated.
But she was. One of Bridget’s predictions came true sooner than Sally Lynn anticipated. The young master came home from Harvard unexpectedly; she was out the door without a reference the morning after his arrival. A month and a half later, starving but intact again, she went back to the Brophy apartment.
Bridget escorted Sally Lynn to Madame Jolene’s rear door.
*
When Big Brenda appeared in the kitchen to put on the day’s first pot of coffee, Sally Lynn was dressed to go out. She was hungry, but for what she had in mind, hunger would be a good thing. She’d put on a couple of inches around the waist in the past month or so, and the other thing hadn’t happened either, so she was starting to worry that she might be caught again. It was early enough to get it taken care of; maybe she’d combine a quick consultation with her other errand. It was a shame that Bridget Brophy had died of a fever, but Bridget’s mother had been the one to teach her everything she knew and she’d seen to Sally Lynn once before when she’d tried to earn a little extra and gotten careless. She hoped she was still doing business.
She’d stop by Saint Anselm’s afterwards. Sally Lynn hadn’t been to Mass very often during her days as a professional harlot, but she’d always felt soothed and calmed by the mystery of what a church promised. She remembered and cherished that consolation from a childhood that hadn’t lasted nearly long enough. Youth ended at the age of thirteen, when she put on a kitchen skivvy’s plain gray dress and apron and plunged her arms into a sink full of greasy water and burnt pots. The hot water and the bending over nearly killed her at first. Her hands and arms were always red and chapped, and her back felt like it would snap in two when she straightened up. But Sally Lynn was tough; she’d survived.
By the time she was seventeen she’d worked her way out of the kitchen and into the upstairs hallways and bedrooms of the house. Which was where the young master had found her.
“Going out then?” Big Brenda asked. She was trying to decide between making corn griddle cakes or sticky buns. “Does the madam know?”
“I wasn’t about to wake her up to ask permission.” Sally Lynn started to reach for a piece of the ham Big Brenda was slicing, then remembered where she was going and why. “She won’t mind as long as I’m back before the first client arrives.”
“See to it that you are,” Brenda admonished her. She was only the cook in this establishment, but she liked to pretend otherwise. She’d had ambitions to own a house of her own, to dress in black silk and manage a stable of girls like Madame Jolene. But that dream had evaporated when reality chained her to a stove. Cook she was and cook she always would be.
“Can I pick up anything for you on my way back?” Sally Lynn never minded doing an errand for someone else. She was good-natured that way.
“I don’t think so, love. But it’s kind of you to ask.” Brenda touched the whore’s cheek affectionately with a hammy forefinger. “There now. Run along, and if Madame says anything I’ll speak up for you.”
*
Sally Lynn sat alone in the quiet of Saint Anselm’s for nearly half an hour before anyone else intruded. In the dim church, she felt peaceful and loved, surrounded by banks of flickering candles, welcomed by the red eye of the sanctuary lamp. She could never explain satisfactorily to herself or to anyone else why she liked sitting in empty churches; it was just something she’d done ever since she could remember.
Voices whispered to her in the silence, warm, friendly reminders of people she had lost, some she had never known in this life but grew to be on familiar terms with because of the tenderness in their tones. They never reproached her for what she did, and she never felt the need to explain or excuse herself. It was like reliving those few wonderful floating moments just before she drifted into sleep after a hard night. She was as light as air, and just as transparent.
She recognized the priest who came into the church through the sacristy, genuflecting before the altar, then standing there with head bowed for a few moments. His name, she recalled, was Father Brennan, too handsome a man to be a priest, with a lovely English accent that held hints of a melodic Irish brogue. The women of the parish loved him, though every now and then someone would wish aloud that he’d learn to be a bit faster in the confessional. This was America, after all. Time was money.
Sally Lynn never went to confession because she didn’t think she had anything to confess. She and her voices had long ago made peace with the only way she could earn a decent living. There wasn’t any anger or malice in what she did. She usually didn’t mind the poking and prodding, and the clients were sometimes absurdly grateful for a smile and a well meant lie. She always told each of them how wonderful he was; even the most chary businessman believed her.
Lately though, ever since Mr. Nolan had begun bringing the nun’s habit, the priest’s cassock, and the whip, she’d suffered bouts of uncertainty. What she did wasn’t the problem
. It was how she was dressed while she was doing it that bothered her conscience. She wasn’t a real nun, and she never intended any disrespect toward the Brides of Christ, but there she was, standing barefoot in her brothel bedroom dressed for all the world as if she’d taken the vows of a Benedictine or a Sister of Charity. She wasn’t sure which religious order the habit Mr. Nolan handed her was meant to signify; she had a strong feeling it would be better not to ask.
It had been almost three weeks ago that she’d seen Mr. Nolan talking with Father Brennan, just there, in the main aisle before the altar. Then Father Brennan had disappeared into his confessional booth and Mr. Nolan had gone to kneel beneath one of the stations of the cross. Sally Lynn had sat as still as a rabbit caught out in the open who believes itself invisible if it doesn’t move. Mr. Nolan never so much as glanced toward the dark corner near the rear of the church, which was her favorite spot. He’d never once asked her to call him by his first name the way many of her other clients did, so she never thought of him as anyone but Mr. Nolan.
She hadn’t come to Saint Anselm’s last week; she’d been too tired and too sore to venture out into the windswept November streets. The voices waited patiently for her. Whenever she chose to come, they cushioned her aches with their concern for as long as she stayed. And it didn’t matter what church she went into; they were always there, as if they knew where she’d be before she did.
Several times she’d taken an omnibus up to Saint Patrick’s, the immense gothic cathedral that never failed to awe and diminish everyone who entered it. She wondered if she had time today to get up to 50th Street, decided she didn’t, and sank back into the pew she’d almost left. Saint Anselm’s wasn’t magnificent like Saint Patrick’s, but it was a comforting, homey church, its smells of furniture polish, melting candle wax, and the steaming outdoor garments of parishioners as familiar as the strong perfumes and even stronger body odors of the brothel.
Lies That Comfort and Betray Page 21