The End of Always: A Novel

by Randi Davenport

  He put his hand over his eyes. “It will not happen again,” he said.

  His words ran together. I could barely understand him.

  He dropped his hand to the floor. His hair was matted and plastered to his head. One eye was swollen and glittered through a slit in his purple skin. “Marie,” he said.

  “Stop saying that,” I said sharply. The boy I loved lost in this sloppy man who stank of whiskey and cigarette smoke.

  He raised his head and squinted at me. Then he pushed his palms into the floor and lurched to his feet. He stood swaying and breathing before me, one hand balled into the cupped palm of the other, the look in his eyes flat and unfocused, as if he was a man in a walking trance. He took two staggering steps to steady himself. Then he leaned forward and pointed his finger at me, his swollen eye oozing, his good eye hooded and dim. He had dried blood on his mouth. He had dried blood on his hand.

  “August,” I said. “Stop it.”

  He breathed in harshly and straightened, like a man who has to steady himself before he speaks.

  “August,” I said. I stepped back.

  He staggered a little, his good eye flat and blank, the other swollen and gone.

  “August,” I said. “Stop.” I put my hand up.

  He wrenched the valise from my hand. “You are not going anywhere without me,” he said. His words gurgled together like water running down the drain. He threw the valise at the sofa.

  “August.”

  “Shut up,” he said.

  “Please.”

  “Stupid bitch,” he said. His chin was down and his words came out low and garbled.

  “August,” I said. He started to fall and I grabbed his sleeve. He held my arms and steadied himself. Then he straightened and batted my hands away. He jabbed his finger into my chest. “Stupid,” he said. He stopped and just stood swaying in front of me, breathing hard. Spittle crusted at the corners of his mouth.

  My hand went to my chest. I kept it flat over the spot where he had poked me.

  He stabbed his finger at me again. I tried to push his hand away and he grabbed my hand and held it. His fingers crushing mine, as if the bones could be ground to dust at his touch, the veins flattened until the life had run out of them. He leaned down to look me square in the eye and jerked my hand behind my back.

  “You are a cunt,” he said. “You know that?”

  The smell of whiskey, his breath close to my hair, his hand on mine.

  “You are hurting me,” I said, but he just squeezed my hand tighter.

  I put my other hand on his chest and tried to push him back. It is not possible to argue with a drunk. I knew the best thing to do was to try to keep my head down and get out of the way. But he would not let go. He looked at me and I might as well have been some stranger who had crossed him in the road. He stabbed his finger into my chest again and wobbled and took one step to keep from falling. Then he raised the flat of his hand and slapped me hard, a blunt thump I felt deep in my skull, like pulpy meat had shaken loose and now lay shuddering against bone. Tears sprang to my eyes and I fell to the floor.

  “Cunt,” he muttered again. Then he went into the bedroom. I heard his boots hit the floor as he pulled them off, first one, then the other. The bedsprings creaked as he lay down.

  I stayed on the floor for a long time. When the sparkles behind my eyes faded I lay there and cried. Later, when I knew he was asleep, I got to my feet and went into our room. I looked at him laid out before me in the clean morning light, just a man, his face bloodied, one eye bulging and blue, and his face slack. I listened to him breathe. Then I searched his pockets until I found the wallet that had been stuffed with cash. It was empty. I walked back into the sitting room and sat on the couch and pulled my knees up under my chin. My cheek hurt when I touched it. I put my head down on my knees and wept. Sunlight spread in a flat wash across our yard.

  Bertha worked in her garden with her back to me and I watched her, her apron strung over her dress, her trowel in her gloved hand, her hair tied back with a pretty blue ribbon. She knelt at the edge of the flower bed. When the breeze blew exactly the right way, I could hear her humming to herself.

  The step where I sat was warm in the sunlight. A wagon rolled along the street and then stopped. A man in white pants and a white shirt jumped down and came up the walk. Bertha looked up from her garden when he spoke to her. He wrote on a pad of paper and then turned and walked back to the wagon. He climbed up and slapped the reins and the horse pulled the wagon down the street.

  All of this happened as if far away, the world fractured by the geometrics of a kaleidoscope. I did not want Bertha to turn around. I did not want her to see my hair haphazardly pinned in place, my filthy dress. Instead I wanted to lie down and disappear in a hole with no bottom. But I could not. So I sat on the step with my arms around my knees and my chin on my arms and watched Bertha in her yard. I thought of William Oliver and the feel of his weight as he collapsed against me. I thought of Inge, who would have pushed me into boiling water if she had had the chance. I thought of Martha, who I was sure had no comfort for me, nor any sympathy, and who herself slipped away to walk with George in the shadows under the trees in the park. I thought of my father, who terrified me beyond all reason and who terrified her, and our terror sheared away any bond that might have grown between us and left us alone in our common loss. I thought of Hattie and of the way she danced in the rain. She seemed to move in a place that my father had not yet reached. I thought of August when he first came to me. He had felt familiar for reasons I could not explain. His light eyes and dark grin. His hands on my skull when he kissed me. His words in my mother’s accent. His love raining down like blows.

  For better or for worse, the justice of the peace had said. We had stood in the long rectangle of sunlight on the red carpet and had made promises and taken vows. I thought of August’s body on mine. His head resting on my naked belly. The weight of him and the wind in the trees and the darkness and the two of us the center of the world. I could not bear the idea that I would be cast out from that. Even now I feel embarrassed and ashamed to admit this, but I wanted him with me: a man to whom I would always lay myself open completely.

  He came outside and sat down next to me. He put his arms around me and rested his face against my neck. Then he leaned back so he could see what he had done. He touched my cheek. He held my head in his hands. He kissed my eyes and forehead and mouth. Then he wept. He told me he was sorry. He told me that he loved me. It was not his fault but the fault of the damned drink. He would cut that out. This would never happen again. He reached down and took my hand.

  Our neighbors had their windows open and I could hear laughter and somewhere a woman talking in a very loud voice. I looked up and found a star. I wished that we would love each other forever, just the way we loved each other that night.

  We ate dinner at the tearoom near the interurban stop. August took a table on the side of the room, under a high window through which I could see the sky. The door to the tearoom was propped open to catch the evening breeze and I could hear piano music coming from somewhere out along the street.

  He leaned across the table and took my hands. He asked me what would make things right. He had not meant for things to go so far. He’d had a long day at work and the crew went out together afterward. Just one beer would do no harm. But he had made a big mistake. He had no explanation.

  I wanted my August back. I did not want to see that man again, the one who lay on the floor and slurred my name, the one who came at me out of darkness. But I did not say any of this. The facts seemed beyond words. I told him instead that we needed pots and pans and plates and bowls. I knew the disruption in our housekeeping had not come from a lack of dishes, but I thought we might as well start there. I told him we needed curtains and rugs and furniture. And then I said that he could not leave me alone in that house for a day and a night and half a day again. No lights. No heat. Not even a way to take a bath.

  He nodded. �
��I will give you some money,” he said. “Then you can take care of all of that.” He smiled and dragged his fingernails across the palm of my hand. “I am no hausfrau,” he said. “I do not know what is needed.”

  “When will you give me some money?” I said. I pulled my palm away. I had not intended for my voice to sound so hard. He gave me a quizzical look.

  “Right now,” he said. “Right here.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a dull red leather billfold. This he set on the table between us. Then he leaned forward and extracted a few bills. Held them up so I could see them. Laid them on the table next to the billfold. “For you,” he said. “Take them.”

  I had not seen that billfold before. It was not in his pockets when he came home drunk. It rested between us like a piece of poisoned fruit.

  He watched me. “Is it enough?” he said. “I have more.”

  “It’s enough.”

  “Fine,” he said. “Good.” He smiled and took my hand. “You see? What I said is true. I will look after you.” He patted his shirt pocket and found his cigarettes. He lit one with a match just like the kind he used to pop and cup in his hands while waiting for me in the yard behind my father’s house. He exhaled a long stream of blue smoke and smiled at me again but frowned when he saw that I was still upset.

  “What is it?” he said. “Is it not enough? I will give you more.”

  “That is not it,” I said.

  “No,” he said. “Here.” And he slid more bills out of the red billfold and gave them to me. He told me to put them all away and not to leave money lying around in public. “You are like a child,” he said. But he looked pleased. He inhaled and moved his jaw and popped smoke rings into the air between us. “My brother taught me this trick,” he said. He leaned back and watched the loops of smoke in the air over his head. Then he waved his cigarette at my plate. “Don’t eat all of that,” he said. “It’s too much.”

  I put my fork down. The expression on his face suggested that all was settled and behind us. Our problems had been solved. Now we could have fun.

  “August,” I said. “There is something else.”

  He groaned and stubbed his cigarette out in his plate. He poured sugar and milk into his coffee and stirred it with his spoon. “We have better things to do tonight,” he said, and lifted his cup to his lips and drank and set the cup down. “All right,” he said then, in a tone of voice that suggested I had finally said something to convince him. “If there is more, let me hear it. Whatever it is.”

  He wore a look of faintly annoyed expectation. I felt a ripple of irritation.

  “I want to know what happened when you went to ask my father for his permission for us to marry,” I said.

  He looked puzzled. He dropped his arms to the table and leaned forward on his elbows. “I already told you,” he said.

  “That is exactly what happened?”

  “Of course.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Say what is on your mind,” he said. “I cannot guess.”

  I hesitated.

  “What,” he said. “You cannot even ask a simple thing?”

  I bit my lip. Then I told him that William Oliver had been in the bar when August went to see my father. That William Oliver had said that August never went into a back room, never asked permission, but had left a pile of money on the bar and left. And now I thought that my sister might be black and blue across town because everything that August had told me might not be true. Or probably was not true. Then I stopped.

  He passed his hand over his eyes and looked away from me and then looked back at me with a drowning expression. “Marie,” he said quietly. “What I told you is entirely true.”

  “But he said—”

  “I do not give a damn what he said.”

  “But he was—”

  “So now you do not trust me? What I said is what happened.”

  “Is Martha all right?”

  “I am your husband,” he said. “Not William Oliver.”

  “I know,” I said. “But Martha—”

  “Why wouldn’t Martha be all right?”

  “He would hold her responsible somehow,” I said. I felt tears come to my eyes. “If you did not get permission. He would take it out on her.”

  “I got permission.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Marie.”

  I wiped my eyes with my napkin and the man who sat alone at the table next to ours watched me. “I am sorry,” I said.

  “Then stop it,” August said. “I did what I said. Nothing different.”

  When we got to our house, August took me by the hand and led me into the yard. We stood under the stars. He put his arm around me. I felt myself go soft and loose against him. He ran his hand down my back and then looked up. He pointed out Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. I looked up, too, past his shoulder, but I could not really see the constellations as things separate and apart. I just saw all the stars overhead as if they had become one huge field in which we would always walk. When I was with August, I could put the old parts of my life behind me. I could become the girl I wanted to be. I could promise myself that there were a million ways to be hopeful.

  Inside, he undressed me carefully and slowly. He brushed his fingertips against my lips. He smoothed my hair. When we lay down, he wrapped his arms around my back and we lay still like that for what seemed a long time. When he began to move, he moved very slowly and gently. I clung to him and said his name again and again and called him back to me, the boy I loved. I let the other man slip away.

  The man behind the counter watched me as if he expected me to grab something and run. I smiled at him but this had no effect. I did not mind. It was a pretty day and I had money in my pocket. Let him think what he liked. I would take as long as I wanted to choose my things and he could watch me the whole time. It did not matter.

  I walked up and down the narrow aisles, picking things up and putting them down. Silver cans of peas and beans and potatoes and spinach with bright labels all stacked neatly on the shelves that ran to the back of the store and beyond that, a counter with a cash register and cloth sacks of oatmeal and flour and sugar and popcorn. A jar of stick candy striped red and white and another of brown horehound drops dusted with sugar. I looked down at a pile of newspapers on the counter. The headlines screamed about the strikes up north. I could only imagine what my father must be saying. So many men in chains, I thought, all of them enslaved to masters who did not give a damn. It was amazing that any of them lived through the day.

  Finally the counterman could stand it no longer. He asked if he could help me.

  “Do you have plates?” I said.

  He came out from behind the counter and brushed past me. He showed me a low shelf stacked with china, a blue and white pattern stamped on the face of each plate. “How many do you need?” he said.

  “Four plates,” I said in a soft voice. “Four bowls.”

  When these were wrapped in brown paper, he looked at me. “What else?”

  I fingered the bills in my pocket again. I asked for a skillet and a saucepan and four sets of tableware and a teakettle. The man looked at me as if he did not believe me but he gathered these things and slowly rang them up. He kept glancing at me as if he expected me to stop him. I didn’t blame him. I knew I looked like a poor girl who had no way to fend for herself. The bottom of my skirt had begun to come undone and the cloth had torn where I had stepped on it. My shirtwaist was stained. But I did not care.

  I asked him to cut six yards of white voile and add a spool of white thread and a packet of needles and a pair of shears. I heard the sound of a bolt being turned as he measured out the yards and then the sharp thwack of the long blade cutting through fabric. When I stood in front of him and counted out the money, I saw the look of surprise that passed over his face and felt deeply satisfied that I was able to pay and was not the girl this man thought I was. It was good to have money and be on my own. Then I stepped out into the street and thought of A
ugust again and it seemed the weight of him was something I had known my whole life. Clouds moved over the sun and the wind lifted. The air smelled sweet, like early flowers.

  16

  The days grew longer and warmer. Two weeks passed and then three and then a month. In midsummer the world was overspread with a calm and even light. Sparrows spiraled up from Bertha’s garden and vanished into the trees. In the evening, she watered her beds. In the morning, she cut her flowers. When the days grew hot, she put a fan in the window of her bedroom, where it whirred all night long.

  August and I had no fan. We could barely catch a breeze, even with all of our windows open. And with the windows open, mosquitoes rose from the grass and came into our rooms, as well as flies and moths and shiny black beetles that rose into the air with a whirr. We often sat in the dark, just to try to keep the wildlife at bay. But all of this was fine with me. I liked to think the woods drew closer as soon as the sun went down.

  Every night when August came in, he let his tool belt fall to the floor. He crossed the room and put his arms around me and held me against him. His clothes were sweaty. His skin was sweaty. His hair was sweaty. He smelled of a long day of work. But that did not matter. I could meet him where he stood. He kissed my hair, my neck, my ears. I touched his face. I felt the long muscles in his thighs. I pressed my face against his shoulder and began to strain against him. I could not bear to wait. I felt his breath hammer through me.

  Some nights we fell to the floor right where we stood, with the sky full dark and no light but the light cast by our neighbors’ rooms. I wanted nothing more than to be like this forever, to hold August Bethke and have him hold me.

  If sometimes I felt a little suffocated by August’s desire and thought that in all of his pounding he pressed the air out of me the way you press the air out of a rubber ball, I put those feelings aside. I told myself that I wanted August. I told myself that naturally I would sometimes feel like all of this was too much. That it was all right to feel that way. It was not like I really wanted it to stop. And when he came through the door at night, I had no trouble breathing. I found that the air rushed in and out of me just fine.