Evergreen (14 page)

Never, never before.

A tide came sweeping. It rose and receded a little, then rose again, higher. For an instant something called in Anna’s head. She thought she had whispered—perhaps she really had whispered “Please”—but his mouth came down over hers, crushing the word. The tide came swelling, wave after rolling wave. And then nothing, nothing in the world, could have stopped the rushing of that tide.

She was jerked awake. Below in the street a hand organ ground and jangled. “Santa Lucia-a-a,” it sobbed, and stopped. Silence followed. Anna’s heart began to pound. How long had she been lying here?

She heard footsteps below. He had got up and left her to sleep. Her clothes had been picked from the floor and decently folded on a chair.

Slowly she put them on. The room was freezing cold. She trembled. She picked up the scattered hairpins and the combs. Her hands shook, doing her hair. One side of her face was red, roughened by—

She felt weak and sat down on the edge of the chaise, then jumped up and stood there looking at it.
Not good enough for a marriage bed, only for this
, ran through her mind. It looked so naked there, humiliated, a lady’s sofa meant for an afternoon nap, or a book and a box of chocolates. And they had—

But it wasn’t his fault. You’re always proud of being
honest; then be honest and fair. He married another girl? That has nothing to do with today.

Wretched confusion. Oh, wretched.

Paul was at the foot of the stairs when she came down. She passed him and ran to the door.

“Wait!” he cried, seeing her face “Anna, you’re not angry at me?”

“Angry? No.” Only terrified.

“Anna, I want to tell you—you are the most enchanting woman I’ve ever known. And also I want to say, in case you think—well, I want to say that I respect you more than any woman I’ve ever known.”

“Respect me? Now?”

“Yes, yes! Do you think, because of this—? It was marvelous, you know it was, marvelous and natural. Remember that.”

“Natural!” she cried. Her voice cracked. “I have a child, a husband—”

He tried to take her hands, but she pulled away. Her mouth quivered; tears, forced down, burned the backs of her eyes.

“But you’ve done them no harm,” Paul said gently. “Oh, God!” she cried.

“Don’t, don’t feel like that. It’s not a thing to cry over. Anna, listen, I’ve thought about you ever since you left here. I wanted you so. But when you lived in this house you were a girl, a child, and I wouldn’t have touched you then.”

This must be unreal. The thing that had happened upstairs only a little while ago could not have happened.

“And you wanted me,” Paul said, very low. “I know you did. Is that something to be ashamed of, Anna dear, is it?”

Shame. Me. I. Anna Friedman, wife of Joseph, mother of Maury, I did this. On the fourteenth day of March, at noon, I did this.

Nausea lumped and gagged in her throat. “I have to go! I have to get out!” she cried, fumbling with the latch.

“I can’t let you leave this way! Here, sit down a minute, let’s talk. Please, I’m sorry, please—”

But she was blind, was deaf with her terror.

“No! No! Let me out!” The latch gave. The door flew open. She pushed him aside and fled down the steps.

The street was an ordinary New York street in the spring. A cluster of boys played marbles at the curb. A wagon approached, the peddler calling out his wares and prices: asparagus, rhubarb, potted tulips. But she had to run; something was at her back, as in the dark hall of an empty house. She had to run, away and away. Or else home.

She ran home.

Joseph was out with Maury. No doubt they had gone to the river to see the warships that were anchored there. Little boats went scurrying back and forth between the ships and the shore. You could see the sailors on the decks.

She went into the bathroom and ripped off all her clothes. She ran the water scalding hot in the chipped old tub.
Shame
. I wanted to be lifted and folded, I wanted to
feel
. It’s true that I did. I can’t blame him. He wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t known that I wouldn’t stop him.

Her skin began to sting.
Filthy
. She took a bath brush and scrubbed hard up and down. The soft pale skin on her forearms began to bleed. I could drown in here. I could slide down with my face under the water and they would think I had fainted.

The front door opened and Joseph came in with Maury.

“Anna?” he called outside the bathroom door.

She came out pulling a robe around her. “I got a check. It’s on the bureau. You can call Mr. Malone.”

“They gave it to you,” he said wonderingly, as if he hadn’t understood. Then he looked as though he were going to cry and he shouted, “You got it! You really did! Oh, Anna, this will make all the difference in the world! You’ll see, you’ll see.” He began to question her rapidly, excitedly. “How did you ask her? What did she say? Did she want to know anything about me?”

“She wasn’t there. It was the son who gave it.”

“Anna, was it very hard? Yes, it must have been hard for you to ask. But what kind, what decent people! To trust us! You know, now I can tell you the truth, I really didn’t think they would do it! But it was the only way I knew.”

“Yes. Kind people.”

He looked at her. “Is there something the matter? You don’t seem—”

“My stomach. I had a sandwich downtown. The butter tasted bad, I think.”

“Poor girl! Then go lie down, I’ll feed Maury and keep him away from you.”

When he had closed the bedroom door she went back into the bathroom and took another bath. Filthy, I am filthy.

Am
I going to lose my mind?

At breakfast a few days later Joseph watched Anna closely. He was puzzled. “I thought you would be so pleased now that I’ve bought the house.”

“But I am pleased. Very.”

He reached under the table for her hand. “Is it—I’ve been thinking—this is hard to say, but is it because I haven’t come near you at night? I know it is a couple of weeks now, but you see, when a man is worried he doesn’t feel like it. I mean to say, it had nothing to do with you.”

She grew hot. The palms of her hands were wet.
Oh, my God
.

“Have I embarrassed you? But we shouldn’t feel embarrassment with each other. These things are natural, aren’t they?”

“You don’t seem as happy this time,” Dr. Arndt remarked.

“I don’t feel as well this time.”

“Each pregnancy is different. Carry a sweet cracker with you in your purse and don’t wait too long between meals. In another two months it’ll be over.”

Wise and fatherly Dr. Arndt.

Joseph bought a brand-new Model T Ford for three hundred sixty dollars. “I need to get around,” he explained. “Malone and I are going to fix up this house and turn it over fast. We’re going in for real estate in a big way, I tell you! I have a lot of confidence in Malone. He’s honest and he’s smart. The two of us are going places.”

“I’m glad.”

“Have you noticed how things come in bunches? Bad or good. We got the house and we’re having another baby. Things are really looking up!”

“I know.”

“I’ll be able to start paying back next September. I figure I’ll be able to give Mr. Werner a thousand dollars. I really ought to go and thank him personally, don’t you think? For a total stranger to do what he did!”

“People like them are too busy,” Anna said faintly. “A note would be better.”

“You think so? Well, perhaps you’re right. Do you still feel sick today, Anna?”

“Yes. The nausea—it’s dreadful.”

“Maybe we ought to get another doctor.”

“No, it will pass soon.”

If only I had someone to talk to. If I had my mother. But would I tell such a thing to my mother? God forbid. The rabbi, whose wife goes daily down the street with the rest of the women, pushing the carriages to the dairy and the butcher? Dr. Arndt, who will come to deliver my child while Joseph waits in the other room? Impossible.

Ruth came up to visit one day. They walked over toward the river behind Maury on his little tricycle. Ruth prattled down the list of her children. Harry had skipped a year, still at the top of his class. Irving had a business head; no doubt he’d go in with his father. The girls were such a joy; what a difference it made living and going to school uptown! But Cecile was overweight; she had such an appetite for sweets—

The air was heavy. Anna could hardly breathe.

“Why, you can hardly walk!” Ruth cried, becoming aware.

“I’m all right. Ruth, you’ve seen a lot of things, I want to tell you something terribly sad. There’s a girl up here, the women are talking about her, she had—well, she had an affair, you understand. I feel so sorry for her; you see, she’s married and she thinks—she knows her husband isn’t the father of the child. Can you imagine such a terrible thing?”

“You feel sorry for her? I’d call her a whore!”

“Yes, of course, it’s awful! But still, you know, one can feel sorry for such people.… The poor girl, she made a mistake, one mistake, and now—I don’t know what to tell her.”

“What to tell her! My advice is, stay away from her. Friends like that you don’t need.”

“Of course. But what’s to become of her?”

“Why worry your head over such a person? She made her bed, let her lie in it. Right?”

“I guess you’re right,” Anna said.

The new life grew and fluttered awake. Anna thought, I need to love it, I need to long for the sight of its face. But she did neither. Poor thing, poor thing, this creature feeding in her, not wanted in her. At night she lay awake. Joseph’s hand loosened on hers; he liked to hold her hand as they lay together falling asleep. If only she could have turned to him and cried out for help.

If only she could tell the truth! Sometimes the truth came rising to her lips so that she tightened them in fear of its escape. The words had a taste. They had a shape and color: bloody red in the darkness. She could hear their sound as they would fall into the quiet room.

Terror plucked at her skin like something alive, and ran over her body, raising the little hairs on her arms.

Joseph said, “I wonder how Maury’s going to take it? Maury, would you like to have a baby brother or sister?”

He planned aloud. “I hear there’s going to be a vacancy on the corner, five rooms on the second floor. Time we
graduated from this dump! And then in a couple of years,” he said, “maybe well even move to West End Avenue! Might as well aim high, right?” He threw Maury over his shoulder. “How’d you like to live on West End Avenue, son? Think you’d like that?”

My God, he doesn’t see that I am strangling.

She got out a book of poetry. The contents were listed under Consolation: Courage: Suffering. She read from Henley’s
Invictus
(what pompous nonsense!) to Kipling and Shakespeare. There was no consolation. You had to find your own courage. She put the book away.

One Saturday afternoon she said, “I’m going to look for a hat. You can take Maury for a while, can’t you?”

“Of course. But it’s going to rain.”

“I’ll take an umbrella.” She had to get out. Last night she had dreamed about a long, curved, evil knife. Someone was coming toward her raising the knife. But who would want to kill her? She ought to do it herself.

The traffic rolled on Broadway through the rain. If I walked in front of the trolley, just stepped quickly in front as it came down the hill, it would all be over. But then—Maury. My little boy. Oh, my little boy.

She struggled in the wind. Her heart began to pound. The seven-months-old burden pressed down in her enormous belly. No strength. No strength at all. If I fall, I’ll scream, scream it all out here on the street and everyone will know. I’m losing my mind.

The wind drove the greasy rain into her face and soaked behind her collar; wet wool clung to her neck. The wind rose and the rain came raging. The day grew dark. People shouted, jostling for shelter in doorways, anywhere. There was a flight of shallow steps: a post office or a school? There were people scurrying up the steps. Anna followed, into a place that was dry and still.

It was a church. For the first time in her life she had entered a church.

On three sides there were statues and pictures. The vivid young man with bright yellow hair, his body twisted on the
cross. A pale blue plaster woman: that must be Mary, the one they call God’s mother. Anna shut her eyes. I didn’t buy a hat and Joseph will wonder why I spent a whole afternoon just walking around in the rain.

Someone began to practice on the organ, starting, stopping and starting again. The music rose like smoke, circling behind the gilded altar into the corners. She sat down and rested her forehead on the back of the seat and cried.

Dear God, listen to me, if the temple were open I would go in there. No, I wouldn’t, I’d be afraid someone would see me. Dear God, I don’t even know whether I believe in you. I wish I were like Joseph because he believes, he really does. But listen to me anyway, and tell me what I’m to do. I’m twenty-four years old. I have so many years to live through and how am I to get through them?

Someone asked, “Are you in trouble, daughter?”

She looked up at the young priest, in his long black robe with the metal chain around his waist. She had never been this close to a priest. At home when you saw one coming down the road you went the other way.

“I’m not a Catholic,” she said. “I only came in out of the rain.”

“I don’t mind. If you want to sit here you’re welcome. But perhaps you wanted to talk?”

A human being, a good face. And she would never see him again.

“I am in such trouble that I want to die,” Anna said.

“Everyone feels that way at some time in his life.” The priest sat down.

How to begin? “My husband trusts me,” she whispered.
That’s a stupid way to start
. “He tells me I’m the only person in the world he can absolutely trust.”

The priest waited.

“He says he knows I would never lie to him. Never—”

“And you have lied to him?”

“More than that. Oh, more than that!” She could not look at him. Not at the statue or the pictures, either. Down at the floor, at her own hands in her lap. “How can I tell
you? You will think that I am—you will not want to hear, you’ve never heard—”