by Ron Hansen
“Aren’t you cute,” Ruth said, and found a penny in her purse for each.
Albert watched the transaction with a mixture of inquisitiveness and Scrooge-like disdain. Curdling clouds were on the eastern horizon and the evening would be cold and wet, but there were still zephyrs that seemed almost sultry and the hints of spring lightened his mood. When the children had raced away, he asked, “Where to now, you three?”
Mrs. Josephine Brown said, “Oh, that nursing job for Mr. Code in Kew Gardens.”
“All night then?”
“Noon to noon.”
Albert frowned at his wife with confusion. “Lora will be joining us?”
Ruth sighed. “We discussed it last week. Remember?”
Albert didn’t. “And now I suppose you’re going shopping?”
“The baby needs Easter clothes.”
“Clothes, clothes, clothes!” he said, but tilted the rake against the house. “In the car, the all of you. I’ll give you a lift.”
“Thank you, Daddy,” Lorraine said.
Albert hatted her blonde head with his hand. “There’s a good girl.”
Josephine and Ruth got into the back seat and Lorraine into the front. Ruth stared at his sandy hair and hawkish profile and realized she hated his head, too, the fine wrinkles in his neck, the gray whiskers on his shaveless weekends, the steel in his eyes when he concentrated, the way he occupied so much space. After he stepped on the floor starter and shifted gears to reverse onto the street, Albert forced Lorraine to reach her hands out to the glove box and tiringly hold them there as a brace against potential accidents. Looking into the rearview mirror, Albert said, “I’m thinking of putting in a flower bed out front this April. Assorted colors of peonies.”
“What a good idea,” Ruth said, as if it were idiotic. “So festive.”
Josephine slapped her wrist. “Don’t take that tone with your husband.”
“What tone?”
Josephine settled more deeply in the seat. “You know very well, May.”
Albert ignored his wife, shifted into third gear, and smiled as he hummed the tune from Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, his cue for his daughter to sing the aria he’d taught her.
She thought a little and sang in Italian the opening verses of “O mio babbino caro.”
Ruth interrupted. “Is that a lullaby, baby?”
Lorraine said, “A girl is telling her papa she’s in love with a handsome boy and she wants to get a wedding ring.”
Albert said in his teacherly way, “Mio babbino caro means ‘my dear papa.’ Lovely melody, isn’t it? And if she can’t have him, she’ll throw herself into the river Arno.” Albert jumped to the end of the aria and Lorraine laughed as she joined her father in singing the Italian.
Ruth said, “Well, I feel left out. How about you, Ma?”
“The lyrics mean ‘Oh God, I want to die,’” Albert said, and grinned into the rearview mirror. “Remember when Florence Easton first sang it at the Metropolitan Opera? In 1918? Were you with me?”
“I hate opera,” Ruth said.
“Oh, that’s right,” he said, and then he was stonily silent the rest of the way to Jamaica Station. And he continued to say nothing, as if he were hurt, when Ruth and Lorraine slid out of the Buick Eight and he headed west with Josephine to Kew Gardens.
The nine-year-old watched as the family car growled away. She asked, “Was Daddy mad at us?”
“Oh, he’s just moody,” Ruth said. “Daddy’s fine.”
Ambling into the downtown Elks lodge, Judd offered a fraternal hello to Chester, the porter, and was cheered that he was remembered from earlier visits to Syracuse. Straddling a bar stool, Judd ordered a gin martini with two green olives, then held the folded blue handkerchief to his nose, a hint of sweet chloroform in its newness. He avoided his face in the wide and distorting mirror that doubled the liquor array. Within a minute he was ordering another martini. He heard the clack of billiard balls in the adjoining room and when he’d gotten the martini, he heard some men protesting a card play. Judd tipsily twirled on his stool like Jane or Lorraine would have and saw at the far end of the lounge four men in their shirtsleeves and ties at a green felt table, earnestly listening as one of them announced the scores thus far in a gin rummy game. Each of them seemed so normal, the salt of the earth. But bored and boring, old before his time, and vaguely irritated with his lot in life. Like he was before Ruth May.
Judd turned back to the bar to order a third martini and announced his intention by saying, “You know, sometimes too much to drink isn’t enough.” But the bartender was avoiding him as he inventoried his cityscape of liquor, his pencil tinking each bottle as he counted it.
So there was nothing for Judd to do but chain-smoke Sweet Caporals in the gentlemen’s club room at the Onondaga. An RCA radio with a gooseneck loudspeaker was tuned to New York City’s WRNY and a soprano named Nita Nadine was singing. A few other commercial salesmen he’d noticed in weeks past were loudly there, but he feared he might give something away if he joined in their conversation. At twelve thirty he requested permission to tune the radio to WEAF for the Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra and forced himself to ignore the night’s scheme by recalling the luxury of so many glorious nights at the Waldorf-Astoria with his lover. And then he thought of their first time. July, was it? In the offices of Benjamin & Johnes. She’d had a sunburn; he took her upstairs. She’d said, I feel like a child on an escapade. And he’d said, We’re not doing anything wrong.
At one, he went upstairs to room 743, and he nestled inside his tan leather briefcase the half-pint of Duncan’s Pure Chloroform and the green rubber chemist’s gloves he’d bought in Kingston, the navy blue farmer’s handkerchief he’d gotten that morning, and a wreath of circled picture wire he’d stolen from the New York office. And he was just snapping the briefcase shut when Haddon Jones rapped on the door with his familiar shave-and-a-haircut, six-bits.
The hotel’s basement coffee shop seemed just fine to him.
Each ordered black coffee and a sandwich of fried ham on rye. Initially, Judd talked about the Benjamin & Johnes Company and his new financial interest in it. Judd called it fractional ownership and he loaned Haddon his gold Cross mechanical pencil so his high school friend could jot arithmetic on a paper napkin to guess Judd’s probable increase in earnings and his need for wider insurance coverage. But Haddon heard himself selling, lost interest in his estimates, and handed the Cross pencil back, and the shop was silent except for the waitress sawing a fresh loaf of bread.
Although tempted to confide his night’s plans, Judd presumed nothing could alter his path and he’d only make his friend a co-conspirator, so he sought instead just an alibi. “Say, Had,” Judd finally said. “I need you to do me a favor.”
His friend sighed and said, “Ho boy,” but he was smiling.
“Nothing strenuous, just a little manly deception. A fib.”
Haddon’s hazel eyes were wolfish. “You going to get yourself some nookie?”
“Remains to be seen. Remember that photograph I showed you once? The blonde?”
“Oh yeah. Her? She’s a doll!”
“We’re meeting in Albany tonight.”
“You rascal.”
Judd fetched a hotel key from his pocket and slid it next to Haddon’s plate. Aware of the usefulness of seeming a dunce at adultery, Judd said, “Don’t want the firm or Isabel to suspect, so I’m hoping you’ll mail some letters for me. So I’ll have the night postmarks on them. And would you phone the front desk to say I’m sick? And hang out the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign? Also, toss the room a little before the hotel maid shows up Sunday morning. I’m afraid you’ll have to make two trips just in case housekeeping gets too helpful.”
Haddon grinned and wagged his finger in a schoolmarmish way. “‘Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.’”
“You’ve been there, too, pal o’ mine.”
Haddon became stern. “Hey, one out of every three husbands do
it. Scientific fact.”
Judd watched for the waitress to head into the kitchen and he got his flask of brandy from his suit-coat pocket, tipping an inch into each of their cups. He smiled as he whispered, “Let’s see if we can’t make that coffee stand up on its hind legs.”
Haddon lifted his cup in salute and sipped it and pleasurably exhaled. He frowned some and said, “I’m trying to remember your nickname for her.”
“Momsie,” Judd Gray said.
Walking from Pennsylvania Station to Macy’s on Herald Square, Ruth decided she would soon be rich and hailed a taxi to instead convey her and Lorraine up to Joseph and Lyman Bloomingdale’s luxurious store at 59th and Lexington. With wide-eyed surprise, Lorraine watched her mother overspend on a girl’s white sateen middy dress with Bulgarian embroidery, a girl’s felt hat with side tassel, and a girl’s size-ten lamé coat, its collar and cuffs trimmed in dyed Viatka coney.
Ruth helped her daughter carry the paper-bundled Easter clothes to Women’s Apparel, where Lorraine overheard her mother whisper to a saleslady, “I have to attend a funeral.” Lorraine then watched, evaluated, and voted as her mother purchased patent-leather pumps, a black silk dress designed by Jeanne Lanvin, and a silk coat with a collar of dyed ermine.
And then they went to the Palm Court of the Plaza Hotel for an extravagant lunch. Looking at the steep menu prices, Lorraine asked, “What can I have?”
And Ruth smiled. “Anything you want, baby. From now on. Anything your heart desires.”
Haddon returned to his office at one forty-five and Judd went upstairs to write a letter to Ruth on Onondaga Hotel stationery, penning Syracuse, N.Y. Sat. 6 p.m. in the upper right corner because the last train to Manhattan left at four. He wrote: How the dickens are you this bright beautiful day anyway? Gee, it makes you feel like living again after all that rain yesterday if we only have a nice day tomorrow now we will be all set—as we have had so many miserable Sundays they are lonesome enough as a rule without adding rain. He mentioned Haddon stopping by for a little smile and that he might run out for a movie or vaudeville at the Strand after supper, but this warm weather doesn’t give one a heap of pep. I feel tired when the day is done. Inquiring if tonight wasn’t the occasion for another bridge party with Mr. and Mrs. Fidgeon, he innocently hoped you have a lovely time and have one for me—but see you behave yourselves. He added that he planned on visiting his aunt Julie in Cortland on Sunday since he hadn’t seen her since Xmas time.
Sealing and stamping the letter, he addressed it to Mrs. Jane Gray in Queens Village and then composed a similar letter to his wife, signing it All my love, Bud, and addressing it to 37 Wayne Avenue, East Orange, New Jersey. After that Judd filled out his weekly sales report for Benjamin & Johnes. Angling the three letters on the pillows of the hotel bed so Haddon couldn’t fail to find them, he washed up and brushed his wavy, chestnut-brown hair; changed into a fresh starched shirt with French cuffs since the morning’s was soaked through with anxious sweat; got into his gray herringbone overcoat, gray buckskin gloves, and fedora; and sauntered down to the Elks lodge for a toot and a chance to fill his flask with whisky.
The Syracuse-to—New York City run was so familiar to him he had the railway timetable memorized and he would normally be so casual that he got to the station just minutes before the four o’clock Empire State Express pulled out. But on March 19th he was earlier and was forced to loiter in a men’s room stall so no one would recognize him. Crude penciled drawings of bosoms and vulvas defaced the stall walls, and as if he were preserving Ruth’s honor, he wetted his handkerchief at the sink to scour them away. Loverboy, he thought.
Haddon fulfilled Judd’s request. Around three forty-five, he left his insurance office to see the newsreels at the Strand Theater and ache his sides through Buster Keaton’s The General. Walking back to the office at five thirty, Haddon scanned his mail and telephone messages, locked up his desk and file case, then waited for ten minutes on the sidewalk in front of the Guerney Building for his wife and the old Studebaker, the flivver he would be getting painted on Sunday. The sky was cobblestoned with clouds. He whistled “Ain’t We Got Fun?”
His wife stayed in the driver’s seat as he got in and instructed her to go to the Warren Street side of the Onondaga. “I have to do something for Judd,” was all he said. Haddon took the elevator up to the seventh floor, tipping the operator a penny, and found three addressed envelopes propped up by the pillows, one to Judd’s employers, one to Isabel, and another to a Jane in Queens Village whom Judd addressed by his own last name. The guy gets around, Haddon thought. He lifted up the telephone and held the hearing piece to his ear as he flicked the cradle. The night manager at the front desk answered. Like a functional character onstage, Haddon stated, “This is Mr. Gray in seven forty-three. I’m feeling ill and I’m going straight to bed. Please hold all calls for me until at least midmorning.”
“Very good, sir,” the night manager said.
Haddon hung the blue “Do Not Disturb” sign on the doorknob, locked the door, and fitted the stamped envelopes in the mail chute so they would be postmarked at the eight o’clock collection.
His wife failed to ask what he’d been doing as she drove them home.
The invitation to the card party at the home of Mr. and Mrs. M. C. Fidgeon on Hollis Court Boulevard had instructed the guests to arrive at eight, but stout, wealthy Milton, a formal sort of man who still wore spats, heard the doorbell at seven and was astonished to see Albert on the front porch in a navy blue, doubled-breasted suit and a regimental tie with that gold stickpin in it. Water from his hair-combing still trickled down his neck and was blotted by his stiff shirt collar. Ruth stood behind him, chagrined, and their pretty daughter found harbor under the mother’s arm.
Milton stabbed at a joke. “Have you come for dinner?”
Walking past him inside, Albert said, “We were just cooling our heels at home. You go ahead with what you were doing and don’t mind us. We’ll just sit in the front room and wait.”
Ruth offered Milton a woe-filled look, like This is what I have to deal with every day.
Riding most of the way to Manhattan with just three others in the smoking car, Judd noticed an Italian newspaper front-page section on the floor under the sole of his shoe. L’Arena from Venice. Tilting forward with drunken effort, he fetched it up and found the language was gobbledygook to him. But Italians were dangerous, were Sacco and Vanzetti or the wild and violent immigrants on Mulberry Street and Staten Island, so he thought he could put the pages to use, fling them somewhere in the house as a false clue, a red herring. With the elaborate movements of alcohol impairment, Judd wrapped the chloroform bottle within the pages, snapped the lid of his briefcase shut, and congratulated himself by finishing his flask of whisky.
And then he found himself in Grand Central Station at 10:20 p.m. Walking across the upper level, he halted at a Pullman window to purchase his return ticket to Syracuse. Reginald Rose, a dark young ticket seller who would be described in the Queens trial as “sheikish,” would remember Henry Judd Gray because of the peculiarity of requesting a Pullman sleeper for a midmorning journey to Albany, as if the harried passenger in fine clothes had figured he would be up all night.
Judd hadn’t eaten, but the odors from the diner at Grand Central Station were so off-putting that he exited the terminal at 42nd Street. Although it was raining, he headed by foot down Fifth Avenue to Pennsylvania Station. Why I walked to Penn Station I do not know, unless it was to kill time. There seemed to be no sound to his footsteps so he threw pennies in front of him just to hear them ring on the sidewalk. Walkers dodged aside when he staggered.
At Penn Station, he bought a hot dog with sauerkraut and tried to read the newest scandals in a New York Evening Graphic but the overhead lighting hurt his eyes, so he just stared at the erotic sculptures of Audrey Munson, imagining Ruth as even lovelier, then walked out into the night and caught a bus for Queens Village, claiming later that he was still undecided about what h
e would do when there.
Serena Fidgeon sought to entertain Lorraine with Favorite Fairy Tales, the only children’s book in the house, but the girl discovered a stack of Motion Picture magazines and filled the night hunched over articles about Colleen Moore, Ramón Novarro, and Norma Shearer. At the folding table, Cecil Hough and his wife, from Far Rockaway, were joined by Howard Eldridge and his wife, from just down the street, while Albert, Milton, Serena, and Serena’s kid brother, George Hough, played contract bridge in the dining room. Dr. George Stanford, of St. Mark’s Hospital, switched between tables when players wanted a break while Ruth just kibitzed, genially chatted, or flipped the pages of Motion Picture with her daughter. All through the evening, Milton served his famous martinis to the card players, but Ruth had found the host in the kitchen with the chrome shaker and requested of Milton, “Will you give my share to Al?”
George Hough and Albert both could be hot-tempered when intoxicated, and by midnight George could no longer let the sleeping dog lie, loudly recollecting for Howard Eldridge the altercation with Albert three weeks earlier when he’d been accused of stealing Albert’s wallet.
With a glare, Albert added, “And seventy-five dollars.”
A fascinated Ruth was on the sofa with Lorraine, watching the argument restart and wondering if it helped or hindered the night’s plot.
Offended once again, George said, “Well, it’s pretty small business to accuse a party of friends of such a thing.”
“Says you,” Albert said.