The Wicked City

by Beatriz Williams

  “Ginger,” he says, “be serious for once. Don’t lead a fellow on.”

  His hand still rests atop mine, inside the hollow of my lap. I lay my thumb over the joints of his fingers and lift his hand to my cheek. “Oh, Billy. Just drive, all right? Take me somewhere safe and warm. And for God’s sake, feed me. I haven’t had lunch.”

  Billy chucks me on the cheek and returns his hand to the steering wheel. “Hungry, are you?”

  “Famished.”

  2

  WE DON’T say another word until Billy turns left off the main road onto a smaller one, following a signpost that says GLEN COVE 4 MI.

  “Glen Cove?” I inquire. “This is your idea of a country retreat?”

  “What’s wrong with Glen Cove?”

  “Nothing’s wrong with Glen Cove. Full of rich folks, I hear. Nice spot, if you can afford it.”

  “If you’re asking whether I can look after you—”

  “I’m not asking anything.”

  “Just you wait, Ginger. I know where I’m going.”

  He seems to know where he’s going, all right. The Hudson bends confidently into the curves in the road, into the turn down a narrow lane, the turn down a narrower one. Here and there, you can glimpse a house or two, big and rambling and nestled in gardens. I imagine, in the coming of spring, the landscape will take on a wholly different look: lush and verdant, leaves bursting out every which way, softening the edges and disguising those beautiful bricks from view. But for now, it’s all bleak and sort of ravishingly exposed, like a lady who’s shed all her clothes and her cosmetics. For some reason, I think of Millie Macduff, bare faced and monochrome in the unforgiving light of a noontime luncheonette.

  The Hudson slows and makes a steady right turn between a pair of stone pillars. There’s a word carved into one of them, stately Roman capitals, but we flash past so quickly, I only catch the first letter: P.

  “We’re staying here?” I say. “Some mansion?”

  “No, not the main house. Friend of mine is letting me have the old gamekeeper cottage. I’ve spent the last month fixing it up with my own two hands.” He holds up one of them for inspection.

  “What about college?”

  “I quit college. Two days after we last met, I marched right in and tendered my resignation.”

  “Quit college! What the devil were you thinking?”

  The drive is gravel and hasn’t been raked since September, probably. Since all good families returned to their metropolitan homes in time for the Metropolitan Opera. Billy grips the wheel to keep the Hudson steady. Ahead of us looms a castle, turrets and all, lonely and magnificent, but Billy turns the car at the last second, down a track leading away from said castle and around the side of a hill.

  “I was thinking about you,” he says. “I was thinking about how you need a fellow you can trust, a fellow who’s ready to give up everything for you. As soon as I woke up and saw you in the chair that morning, all curled up like a lost kitten, why, I knew what I had to do.”

  “Oh, Billy. You darling thing. You didn’t need to do anything of the kind.”

  “Yes, I did. There comes a time when a fellow needs to decide if he’s a boy or a man, and I figured that time had come for me. My bell was tolling. Look! There it is. Our new home.”

  Well. I don’t know much about gamekeepers or their cottages—River Junction being the kind of town that likes to cut out the middleman in such matters—but I have to admit, the place has got some charm. Made of the same old gray stone as the castle up the lane, big mullioned windows, tree out front that might just prove to be a lilac, in the coming of May. A gigantic rhododendron looms next to the door, pregnant with about a thousand buds. Billy brings the Hudson to a stop on the drive, sets the brake, and rests his hands on his knees.

  “Well? What do you think?”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  “Wait until you see the inside. Come along.”

  He hauls himself free of the car and swings around to open my door. I allow him the niceties; they mean so much to him. He tucks my arm into the crook of his elbow and leads me forth past the probable lilac, branches scratching the cold wind, and when we reach the stoop he releases my arms and swoops me into the air.

  “Billy! What in God’s name—”

  “It’s tradition, isn’t it?”

  And my stomach lurches as he we dive over the threshold, my pulse goes all nuts in my neck, and I squeeze my eyes shut and think, It’s perfect, you need a place to hide out, Billy adores you, you adore him, let’s play lovebirds until this whole sorry affair dies out of mind, until Duke’s in hell and Anson’s maybe with him. Let’s live in shabby comfort, let somebody take care of you for once. Billy kisses the top of my head and whispers something, I can’t hear what. When I open my eyes a few seconds later, we’re standing in the middle of a cozy parlor strewn with cushions and afternoon light, everything my childhood home was not, and Billy sets me on my feet and wraps his arm around my shoulders.

  “I’ll get the fire started, shall I?”

  3

  THE WOOD’S already laid in the inglenook fireplace, and while Billy sets the whole thing ablaze I wander through the rooms. There aren’t many. The parlor, the kitchen. A kind of small den lined in shelves, containing a desk messy with papers. Upstairs, two bedrooms and a small bathroom. The larger bedroom’s got a tall four-poster, all made up in fresh white linens and a paisley counterpane, topped by a half-dozen plump pillows. You can imagine its purpose. The second bedroom’s got two twin beds: the natural outcome, I guess, of the first bedroom. I stand between them for a moment or two, caressing an old wooden bedpost with one hand. My chest hurts. There is a panic rising inside me, the old panic. The window looks west, where the sun is just beginning to touch the treetops, and distant Manhattan gathers its breath for an evening of no good.

  But I am not thinking about Manhattan just now. I am thinking of my mama, and the time she nearly died giving birth to Angus. Though I was but six or seven at the time, still I recollect every detail of those terrible days, every terrible second counting down on the clock in the kitchen. How Duke sat beneath that clock, chair pulled right up to the edge of the kitchen table, and drank bottle after bottle of rye whiskey, rising only to visit the outhouse. How his eyes glassed over and his hair lay in greasy pieces about his forehead, the most untidy I have ever seen him, before or since.

  At one point the scene grew so desperate, so hopeless, that Laura Ann Green did bring me up to Mama’s bedroom to say good-bye. The place was a dump. Bloody rags in the corner, bloody water in the chipped blue-and-white bowl on the washstand. The sweet-sour smell of sickness. Wee Angus inside the cradle in the corner, howling his lungs out for want of milk. And Mama on her bed she shared with Duke, except now there was only her, my thin, pale mama, spread in the middle of four stout bedposts, like they was some kind of medieval instrument upon which you might persecute a traitor, stretching his four limbs until you tore him clean apart. That was the picture I kept in my head, anyways: Mama’s bed as a rack of torture, killing her inch by inch.

  She wasn’t properly awake. Kind of delirious, as I now understand, and I could not then comprehend the words she said to me. I said how I loved her. How she couldn’t die. And she said something about God’s will and penance, that exact word, which I went to the library to look up afterward, because we kept no dictionary in our house. Penance meant punishment for sin. Meant you had done wrong and now you was paying for it. And though Mama did get better, by some miracle, some act of mercy—not mercy for her, mind you, only for us who did love her—I never could banish that sight of her on that bed. Those four posts, stretching her to death.

  4

  BY THE time I return downstairs, the fire’s lit up like Christmas and crackling hot. Billy stands back and sets his proud knuckles on his hips. “Now, that’s better. Warm enough for you?”

  “Yes.”

  He looks more slender than I remember. Slender and tallish, golden hair polis
hed. Skin smooth as satin over those rounded, even features. He’s taken off his overcoat, revealing a vest of brown cashmere wool over his starched white shirt, the sleeves of which are rolled up his forearms as a man settling into his evening chores. His mouth tilts upward as he watches the wild dance of this fire he built himself.

  I slip my arms around his dear woolen waist and say his name.

  “Do you like it, Gin? Do you really?”

  “It’s wonderful. Awfully homey.”

  “I cleaned it all up, painted the walls. Brought in some furniture.”

  “Where did you get the furniture?”

  “Fuzzy let me raid the attic in the Big House.”

  “Who’s Fuzzy?”

  “Pal of mine. It’s his parents’ place. They’re here in the summer, mostly.”

  “Of course they are. But do they know we’re here in the spring, Billy dear?”

  An infinitesimal pause, and then: “Of course they do.”

  “Oh, Billy,” I sigh out.

  “Don’t you worry, Gin. Don’t you worry about a single thing. I just couldn’t let my parents find out, not yet. Not until—well, until things are settled.”

  “Settled. Now, that’s an interesting word.”

  “Darling.” He turns me in his arms so we’re face-to-face, and the chocolate light of sincerity just beams out of his eyes. “Don’t you see? I’ve built us a nest, you and me, just like I said I would. That dream I had, the one I told you about. You and me in the countryside. No more slaving away in a typing pool all day and then cheapening yourself in gin mills at night. I’m going to write, and you’re going to keep house and—well, whatever you like. Whatever makes you happy. I’ll do anything for you, Gin. Keep you safe and warm and happy.”

  “Until your parents turn up and talk some sense into you.”

  “Well, now. I figure if we stay here long enough, why—well, they can’t argue if there’s a grandchild on the way, can they? They’ll just have to welcome you in. And once they get to know you—”

  “A grandchild on the way?”

  His ears turn red. “We could try, couldn’t we?”

  “Dear Billy. And if they don’t welcome me in, after all? Your parents?”

  “Well, of course they will.”

  “I mean if they take one look at my hair, listen to me mangle my vowels and my verbs, and they say to you, William Marshall, you’re the damnedest fool, and there I am, all knocked up and nowhere to turn—”

  “Why, where did you get an idea like that? My parents aren’t like that, not a bit. They’re not so snobby as you think. Anyway, you sound just fine. Why, you could hardly tell that—well, that—”

  “That I be some rough-cut stone the old mountains done cast off, is that right?” I reach behind me and find his hands. Pull them gently away from the small of my back. “And then Pater takes you aside for a stern chat and tells you he’s writing you out of the will—”

  “Aw, he’d never do that! And I don’t care if he does. I’ll marry you anyway, Gin. That’s right. I want you to marry me, with or without their blessing. I’d marry you this second, if I could.”

  “Would you? Would you really? Have you got a ring and everything?”

  “Not yet. But I will. As soon as I save up enough—”

  “Save up from what? There’s no money in poetry, Billy-boy. Even I know that. And sooner or later you’d get the itch, you’d get sick of babies squalling while you’re trying to write, you’d get sick of all this rustic charm and say to yourself, Lord Almighty, Billy-boy, you might have had yourself a grand ten-room joint on Fifth Avenue and a nice blond wife with a lockjaw accent, and instead you’re living in sin in a gamekeeper’s cottage on a dollar a day, kids crawling over your lap, your faded-up hillbilly doll withering before your eyes, nagging you about your dirty socks—”

  “Don’t talk nonsense, Gin. That’ll never happen.” He takes me up again. “I love you. I love you madly. This past month, why, it’s been torture. Getting this place ready, making all these grand plans, and then expecting to hear any day that you had taken up with some rich fellow who was showering you in diamonds, like you deserve. All I’ve got is this place, and my heart, and these two hands to labor for you. And I hope that’s enough, darling Gin. I hope you’ll accept them.”

  Well, what are you going to say to a speech like that? I’m not made of old gray stone. I’m made of tender woman’s flesh, and what’s more, I’ve just had a dreadful shock, a dreadful disappointment, my beating heart liketa broke in bits. My poor arms yearn for some kind of comfort. Billy looks on me with his soft, handsome young face. Skin all warm and gold. Eyebrows crooked to a plaintive peak above his nose. Arms wrapped around my ribs. Hands cradling the back of my head. So terribly, terribly close. Within easy reach.

  “Billy,” I whisper. “Sweet Billy-boy.”

  His lips are pink and round. I close my eyes and think of that bed upstairs, and me and Billy atop that bed, locked between those four posts, underneath the paisley counterpane, skin against skin, Billy’s lean chest rising and falling in the light of the moon. Nights and days and weeks and years of me and Billy; kids with Billy, one after another; cooking and cleaning for Billy, keeping house with my Billy-boy in the lilac-scented Long Island countryside while my true heart lies in bits on the floor of an empty Tenth Avenue tenement. The pain in my chest grows and grows, until I’m sick with it. The back of my throat turns bitter. My eyes sting.

  “Gin, you’re crying. What’s wrong? You’re not unhappy, are you?”

  “I don’t deserve you, Billy.”

  “Gin, don’t—”

  “I’ve made a terrible mistake, Billy. I’ve been awfully selfish. I shouldn’t have come here. I shouldn’t have—have taken you up to begin with. Like you were some kind of toy.”

  “Gin!”

  He calls after me. Runs after me and snatches my arm and demands to know where I’m going, what I’m doing. What he’s done wrong. His expression’s so distraught, I can’t stand it. Choke up. Can’t speak. Just shake my head, and maybe that’s enough, maybe the sight of my wet face repels him entirely, for he does drop my arm like a lit match and turn an elegant shade of pale. I dart for the door, throw it open, run down the stony path to the Hudson parked outside. Billy keeps the key in the ignition; he’s that kind of boy.

  5

  I LEAVE THE motorcar at the Glen Cove railway station, keys under the seat, and take the train back into the city. The sun falls, the buildings light up. The carriage is nearly empty, the atmosphere saturated by stale cigarettes and perspiration, and I peer out the window at the glitter assembling ahead. Just before we plunge beneath the East River, a sensation of panic seizes my breast once more. I clutch my pocketbook and try to breathe until it eases: breathe and breathe under the dark, soothing weight of the tunnel. In the steely, rhythmic clack of the wheels on the tracks, like the operation of a typewriter.

  We throb to a halt at Pennsylvania Station. I gather up my pocketbook and my composure. Buy myself a ham sandwich and eat it right there in the center of that dirty, glorious space, standing next to the big brass clock, surrounded by a mess of harried suburban businessmen, of working girls, of housewives hurrying home to Long Island after a hard day’s shopping in the city. Staring at the sooty columns, wondering where on God’s crawling earth I’m supposed to go next. What I’m supposed to do, now that I’ve got no job and no lover, no safe harbor left. The sandwich is as stale and tired as I am, the last one left on the automat shelf, salty enough to sizzle your tongue, and I’m too hungry to care. I finish the last crumb, smash the waxed paper into a ball, and toss it into the trash.

  What I really need is a drink.

  6

  MAYBE I’M making another big mistake, taking a seat at the far end of the Christopher Club bar. Laying my pocketbook on the counter and asking Christopher for a gin martini, dry. I cross my legs at the knees and contemplate the shelves of empty, immaculate glasses—they keep the bottles tucked away from v
iew in joints like this—while mine host mixes my drink in silence.

  I say silence because it’s utterly still, there inside that familiar room, just me and Christopher and the empty tables. Too early for business, see, and in fact he’s only opened up on my account, because he’s a good fellow and because I’m his best customer. He sets down the glass—strange to hear the clink, which is ordinarily drowned in music and conversation—and gives me a look that says, What’s eating you, sister?

  “Aren’t you going to pour one for yourself?” I ask. “I won’t tell.”

  “Naw, I don’t take liquor.”

  “Not at all?”

  “Not a drop.”

  “Well, now. That’s irony. Cheers, anyway.”

  Christopher nods. Wipes down the counter. Asks, grudgingly, if I’ve had a tough day at work.

  “You could say that.”

  He’s got a young face, our Christopher, terribly young. Did I ever mention that? Plump and fresh as a new peach. Medium height, square frame, dark hair wet and slick. Always wears a black vest and white apron, shirt forever crisp, collar as sharp and neat as if his own mama straightened it for him before he left for work. On his left jawbone there is a small, black mole, his only remarkable feature, which I study for some time before I pipe up again.

  “Say. I’ve got a question for you.”

  “No law against that, I guess.”

  “What do you know about that platinum doll who sits on the stool at the other end? The one with the stilts all the way to China.”

  “I don’t know nothing about nobody, Gin. Not in this business.”

  “Because I always figured she belonged to you.”

  “Now, why would you think a thing like that?”

  “I don’t know. Just a hunch. Air of coziness about the two of you.” I open up my pocketbook and locate a packet of cigarettes, nearly depleted. Light one up, but my heart’s not in it. Like some old morning ritual that now turns your stomach, like you went and upchucked your porridge one fine day and can’t ever eat porridge again. I allow myself a shallow breath anyway, it’s something to do, and I watch Christopher’s wary face as he replies.