A Reliable Wife

by Robert Goolrick

  Alice was nowhere.

  Some said they remembered a girl like her, a girl who had gone away with a boatman. Some said they remembered a girl who had gone to the hospital, dragged kicking and screaming, maybe to a loony bin, maybe to a hospital where you came back better. Catherine searched the hospitals and found nothing. You sink to a certain level, you don’t have a name any more. You don’t have a history or any particular features or friends, and Alice had reached the Chute, the end of the line, the end of hope, the end of whatever it is that makes a person particular in the world.

  “Where is she, Tony?” She begged him. He was supposed to know. He had said he did.

  “Things change. People move. People are always moving around down there, sleeping in each other’s beds, beating each other’s children. She’s there. Just keep looking. Hurt yourself if you want.”

  “I’ll go again tonight. Every night. Now.”

  He was naked in front of her, the last sun glowing on his shoulder blades as he washed himself, his exquisite clothes laid out on a chair. He threw down his towel and turned with sudden exhausted fury, “Why do you care? People lose things, Catherine. It happens. People lose what they love all the time.”

  “I care about her.”

  “You don’t care about anything. You care about getting back something you’ve lost. Like an umbrella on a trolley. Like a locket in the street. That’s all. But I’ll tell you this. She’s not the thing you lost anymore. She’s a hag, she’s nothing. She’s got no face, no name, no place to live. And this pathetic attempt to find your sister isn’t going to change anything. You’re still going to kill my father, you’re still going to live in his palace with me and all that money.”

  His beautiful clothes. His beautiful hair, his hands holding a silver hairbrush, his handsome face in a cracked silver mirror. The way he cared for her and didn’t all at once.

  “Your cruelty is astonishing. Alice—”

  “Was sweet and cute and fresh and not very bright, but she could sit in your lap, just sit in your lap, and make you come. She didn’t have a shred of a soul even then. And she’s dying because she’s not cunning and careful and smart like her big sister and she wants it that way. You disgust her. Your name enrages her. You think she’s not down there? You’ve left your name with every drunk in the place and she’s still not there. Because it’s the place you go if you don’t want to be found. Ever. There’s only one way in, and there’s only one way out, so leave her in peace. Just leave. Go back to Wisconsin. Forget Alice. Do what you promised. It’s what you were born for.”

  But she couldn’t forget Alice, and, in the end, she found her. She stood in her new fur coat against a wall and howled like the wind. A solemn little girl took her by the hand and led her to the end of the street.

  She was finishing off a drunken sailor under a streetlight at midnight in the snow while people passed by and threw pennies and nickels on the cobblestones. When she was finished, she spit on the street, on the sailor’s shoes, and he staggered away without even closing his pants. Alice looked up and saw Catherine, then calmly leaned over and began to pick up the change in the dark.

  “I don’t want you here.”

  “I’ve come to take you . . . to take you someplace nice.”

  “I don’t want to hear about it. I don’t want to know.”

  “I have money. I have money for you.” She reached into her purse.

  “I don’t want it. What would I do with it?”

  “I’ve come here for you. Let’s go to your . . . to where you live so we can talk.” She looked at the row of shanties, lean-tos with candles guttering out in the late dark. “Which one?”

  “Whichever one’s empty. I don’t want you here.” She was counting her money. “Some rich man, I guess.”

  “Yes. He’s rich.”

  “In here.” Alice ducked into an empty shanty, no more than boards stacked against a wall. Catherine ducked and followed her in. Alice reached in her pocket, pulled out a two-penny candle stolen from a church and lit it with a trembling hand. “There. Home.”

  In the flickering light, Alice’s face looked girlish again, softer, golden. The skin across her cheekbones had the tightness of somebody who was going to die. It didn’t matter from what.

  Catherine thought of the sweet dresses she had made, the smocking and the lace and the long pleated hems. She thought of the homework, Alice’s beautiful and careful penmanship, the safe rooms of Philadelphia. She remembered the tiny dog in Gramercy Park. All lost. So much losing in this world. So much loss.

  “I’ll get you doctors. I’ll take you home and . . .”

  “Oh. A home. I bet you got a lot of money in that purse.”

  “I’ll give you some. I’ll give you anything to come with me.”

  Alice leaned back against the wall of the shack and rolled a cigarette. Her hands trembled with the cold. She lit the cigarette and looked at Catherine. “You know, I feel so lazy. I work so hard all the time and I don’t feel tired, I can’t sleep at night, but I feel lazy. Like you could do anything to me and I’d be too lazy to care. But I can’t go with you. I don’t know where it is, but I know it’s too far.”

  “I’d take you on a train.”

  Her face turned hard again. It was just a flicker, her hope, and then it went out. Her cigarette sparked in the darkness. “Catherine. Try to understand something. I never liked you. I told you once. I’m telling you now. Not ever.”

  “I . . .”

  “You could take me away, you could take me to Paris, to some spa far away and make me well, and I’d still be bad.”

  “There was never a moment when I didn’t love you.”

  “Like some little doll baby.”

  “You were all I had in the world. All I loved. I wanted things to be different for you. Sweeter.”

  The candle flickered out. They sat in darkness except for the glowing tip of Alice’s cigarette. Catherine wanted to reach out to her, but she didn’t. “Isn’t there anything I can do for you?”

  Alice hesitated, then grabbed Catherine’s hand, caressed Catherine’s silken skin with her own rough, dirty fingers.

  “Sister, sit. I’m sorry. I’m bad and I’m sick and I say things. But just sit by me. I’m never alone, but I always feel so lonely. So far away from everybody. Nobody holds me. Nobody touches me or calls my name. Sit with me until I sleep. That’s all I need, all you need to do. Please.”

  “Can’t I take you somewhere? Out of here? To a hotel? A hot bath? Clean sheets?”

  “You know, it’s funny. Even if I were well and clean and dressed in a hat and a fine silk dress, I would never leave here. This is all my life is about. I finally found a place I belong.”

  Catherine stood, took off her fine fur coat, and laid it over her sister’s body.

  “That’s nice,” said Alice. “You always looked out for me.”

  “I tried.”

  “Why were you so good to me? I didn’t deserve it.”

  “You were all I had. I tried to save you from some of the misery.”

  “You can’t save anybody. You know that by now.”

  Alice closed her eyes, smoothed the fur of her sister’s coat. “I remember the boats. On the river in Philadelphia. The beautiful men rowing, like spiders skating with the tide, the sun on their strong brown shoulders. So quick they were, here and then gone. You think I’ve forgotten, and I’ve tried, but I remember. The beautiful dresses you made, they must have been beautiful, everything you did was beautiful. And the little shoes, the buttonhook. Where are they now? What happened to those things? You were good to me. So good and kind.”

  “I haven’t been good or kind. What a pair we are.”

  “When I close my eyes, when my head is clear enough, I think you did your best, and I hated you and I was hateful. You were the last nice thing, and I may never see you again and so I say thank you. I’ve never said thank you to anybody, for anything, but I’m saying it to you now.”

  “You�
��re welcome.”

  “As though it were ever enough. You should go now. It’s late. It can get pretty rough. Go back to your nice hotel and your rich man. You tried to save me and you didn’t. It wasn’t your fault.”

  They sat until the cigarette was gone and Alice was asleep, her money clutched in her hand. Rats crawled around them once the light was out, and the cold came in and the snow came down harder, and Catherine looked at the slim outline of her sister’s face, and she thought her heart would break.

  Then she saw it. She saw something descend, an angel was all she could call it, grace made visible, like a mist, like a fog. With golden wings and white hair and white skin the angel floated down, like out of a child’s picture book, like a book of stories from the library, this creature of light and air wafting down from the sky as quiet, as vaporous as breath. She knew this angel, this answered prayer had come to her, and to Alice, and the boards would part and the angel would take her sister in his arms and fly with her around the world, to London and to Rome and to the mountains of South America, the whole brilliant gracious blue spinning mother, and lay Alice softly into a clean white bed with clean white sheets, wholly safe and completely healthy. The angel drew closer. She could hear the soft whoosh of wings, and no other sound but that, the whooshing. She could see the angel’s pure white transparent feet, could feel his warm breath on her frozen cheek.

  Then Catherine watched the angel rise into the dark night sky, his arms empty. Alice lay unredeemed, as inert as an abandoned doll. Catherine knew it was too late; there was an abandonment of hope. Her sister couldn’t be saved.

  And she knew she couldn’t kill Ralph Truitt. She knew she couldn’t bring harm to one living soul. Not anymore.

  The angel was gone, the whooshing only the icy wind off the dirty frozen river, trailing up and into Wild Cat Chute, where Alice Land lay dying.

  The snow was falling harder. The cold got through Catherine’s skin and into her bones. She shivered. She opened her sister’s hand and curled into it all the money she had, dollar after dollar, crumpled bills, whore’s money, dirty money, and she closed her sister’s hand around it. She kissed her on the forehead, wet with the sweat of disease, of dissipation and despair. She wiped a wisp of hair out of her eyes. She watched the snow fall through the open roof and onto her fine new black fur coat over her sister’s sleeping body, knowing the money and the coat would both be gone before her sister woke up.

  These were the lives they had made, she and Alice. Such things happened.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  WHEN IT WAS FINALLY CLEAR to her that Alice was gone forever, had been within reach and had slipped away to despair and death, she lay on her bed in the hotel and wept for two days. She was undone with grief. She wore the plain, austere dresses she had brought from Wisconsin. The maids brought her broth and worried for her, asking if she were sick, changing her sheets, drawing a hot bath for her in the afternoons, plumping her ruined pillows. They fed the bird.

  Alice had been her child, her darling. She had lived a part of her life in the hope that things would be different for her, that she would find a nice man and a little house, something normal, nothing grand, and she would be industrious and motherly. She was prepared not to see her; she was prepared for their lives to become unmanageably distinct; but she had never imagined this.

  She went to church. She didn’t know how to pray, and she asked one of the fathers to help her. She knelt down, her face pale, and she asked for forgiveness, she asked for some reason to go on, and none came. God, as he had always been, was silent. No angels descended, no honey-haired Christ child, no voices comforted her, no miracle brought her back to life. She was dead, as dead as Alice would be.

  The priest blessed her, forgave her sins, and made the sign of the cross on her forehead. She was ashamed to tell him she didn’t understand what he was doing, that the act was meaningless to her.

  Sometimes she didn’t sleep for days. Sometimes she slept around the clock. She never knew, when she went to bed, whether it would be dark or light out when she woke up.

  If it was dark, she would find Antonio. If it was light, she would sit in her room while the maids came and went, reading poetry her husband had given her, the long love poem to everything on the planet, and dreaming of the garden she would make when the spring came.

  She wrote Truitt a letter and told him she was coming home, and was deliberately vague about whether she was bringing Antonio along. She told him she hoped his son would be with her, that he seemed to be coming closer to her point of view. She apologized for being away so long. She hoped his health was good, and asked after Mrs. Larsen. She said that she had eaten nothing in Saint Louis half so good as Mrs. Larsen’s cooking, which was, at least in a way, true. She felt as though her life, her old life, were going up in flames in front of her eyes. Then she wrote to Truitt and asked him to send the railroad car.

  When the railroad car was waiting in the station, she made the walk one last time through the dusk to Tony Moretti’s. The air had lost the sharp heart of its chill. Winter’s back was broken.

  She knocked on Tony’s door, and she found she was trembling, shaking with an old familiar rage. Where was the miracle? Why was she always on the tightrope caught between the beginning and the end?

  He was sleek as a tiger, ready for his night. He loathed her. He pitied her. He needed her. He was struck by her calm, the simplicity of her beauty, which he had not noticed before. But she looked full of something, something new.

  “I’ve come to tell you something. To ask something.”

  “You better come in. At least that.”

  It was so simple, and she didn’t know how to tell him. He was the closest she had ever come to having a sweetheart, and she felt an old fondness for him. She saw the open closet, her useless finery still hanging, the hats and bags, the extravagant dresses, and they seemed like things she had worn a long, long time ago. In another life lost to her now. The dresses were just sad reminders, like the dirty plates from a dinner she had relished.

  “Release me from my promise. I can’t do it. I won’t.”

  “Won’t do what?” He lay back on a long chair, so lean, so muscular and beautiful, his shoes polished and elegant.

  “I won’t kill Truitt.”

  He smiled. “Yes, you will. Listen to me, Catherine. You mean a lot to me, but not as much as you think. There was a time you were the moon and the stars. Remember? Coming home at dawn, sleeping until the afternoon and making love as the sun went down? My body, your body, bathed in the glow of twilight and Chinese lanterns. You found me in that bar, a tough little boy, and you made me feel graceful and sweet and wild with love. We could have that again. We could have it forever. And we will. Out of this filthy city, away from these cold and foulmouthed people. We will have a life of music and luxury and endless delight. You made a promise. For us. I hold you to it.”

  “I can’t. He’s a good man, Tony.”

  “So you love him now?”

  “No. I don’t know if I love anybody, but if I do, I love you. It seems I’ve loved you forever.”

  “Then why?”

  “He went into this with an honest heart, and he doesn’t deserve it. Come home. He’ll be good to you. He’s good to me.”

  “I don’t care. That house and his money are worthless to me while he’s alive. I’m not going to wait until he dies. I’m not going to wait while you sleep in his bed. He killed my mother. You don’t shake hands and forgive. You don’t forget.”

  “We’ve lived the lives we’ve made. I’ve lost. You’ve lost. This memory you have. It was sweet for such a short time. We’ve behaved badly. To each other. In the world. It’s over. We’re over. It’s got to stop.”

  “And it will. It’ll stop the moment Truitt is dead. The minute you send me word Truitt is dead, this whole life is a history at an end. I’ll be sweet as a lamb. We’ll have everything.”

  “I have everything. I have more than I deserve.”

 
He jumped up from the chaise. He grabbed her by the wrists and looked at her with iron fury. “I don’t give a damn what you have. You come here all contrite, awash with remorse, changed you say like some country moron who’s seen the face of Christ in a potato, and you think you can go to Wisconsin and be the little wife in a town that’s named after my father’s father, and none of this will have happened. You think you’ve bought your freedom. As long as I’m alive, you’ll never be free, and you’ll do what you promised. You’ll do what I tell you. You know why?”

  She knew. She knew exactly, but she couldn’t stand to hear it. She twisted her wrists from his beautiful hands; she walked across the room and stupidly felt her dresses, the fabric of her old life, as though it were an exhibit in the Japanese Pavilion. She couldn’t look at him.

  “Because if you don’t, if you don’t kill him, I’ll write him a letter. That’s all it will take. One letter. You think he wants to hear this? You think he wants to hear about his wife in bed with his son? The filthy details? You think he wants to hear his wife is a common whore who’s been doing the same thing over and over and over from the time she was fifteen? Where does his kindness, his goodness go then?”

  “I can’t stand this. I’ll die.”

  “You haven’t died yet. You won’t die now. You don’t die from being ashamed.”

  “I’ll stay here with you. I’ll never go back there.”

  “And live in this filth? This filthy life? I wouldn’t have you. Not now. Not ever. No, Catherine. You’ll go back up there, you’ll pretend to be everything you’re not, a virgin, if that’s what he wants, a duchess, a believer, and you’ll drop poison in his food, just like you said, and he’ll be dead. I can wait. I’ve waited all my life. I despise you, but you’ll lose everything and you’ll end up in the gutter.”