by Mary Burns
Eveline with a colored man? Him the same fancy one gave her the stockings, the jewelry, the silver compact we’d looked in? It flummoxed me, it did, me who only the day before’d decided Eveline to be made of more than the impression she gave. What to think? I followed the bob of her hat—a fluffy confection of feathers and ribbon made a nest for a tiny silk canary—until the path they strolled curved and I could no longer see them or hear their voices. She had her nerve, Eveline did. A colored man. You didn’t see that much, but I’d heard of it and seen examples of the children made from such matches, in Florida and plenty here, the lighter skin folk you found more often in jobs involved the public. Light like that one of hers, tea with a drip of milk in it.
But soon my own man was striding towards me, gripping the necks of two bottles of Dr. Pepper with one hand and, just as suddenly as it disappeared, the enchantment returned and I forgot all about Eveline.
The world and all had taken to the lake that day. As we got closer I could hear the shouts of children, maybe boys swimming naked as some of them’d do, and someone far off playing music on a trumpet or some such. Desmond moved his hand down from my elbow and took my slick hand into his.
“All right, darlin’?” He squeezed and then I did not feel hot but cold, like February slush in my shoes, my eyes swimming before I did, and then, how many minutes later I don’t know, we were there. Ten minutes, half an hour, two days? And me thinking of that old priest talked about marriage, and thinking, too, of Eveline and even though she didn’t go to church, even if I knew she went with coloreds, I did not think her a bad sort, though the priest would have thought her so.
It wasn’t done much. People said it was unnatural to mix the races, same ones thought everything should be separate—separate places in the cars, in the theaters, separate restaurants, separate neighborhoods, separate schools. He looked good enough, a gentleman in that suit of his and the hat. Later, when I got to know him, I found he was a gentleman. Still, Eveline had her nerve. Not as simple as good and bad, life and its complications, is what I came to understand.
Back then I couldn’t say what I thought, not with Desmond parting the bushes like they were the loveliest glass-beaded curtains and inviting me into that dappled copse already cleared, the weeds flat as if he’d prepared it for me. But no, there’d been others before us, you could see it in the left behinds, papers from sandwiches or some such thing stuck to the bushes. And there beyond, as before, the lake doubling all the light sent down by the blazing midday sun.
“Here we are then, darlin’, just as I promised. And isn’t it better without the crowds. Like we’re the only ones on earth, wouldn’t you say? Just like Adam and Eve?”
He peered down at me, grinning, and I rolled my lips together, wondering if he wanted to go for a kiss, and would it be right? No question it would not be right, not by what the priest said, but weren’t the voices of the priests lost in the din of romance novels and movies like the wonderful Broken Blossoms, while me, I was thinking again of how life unfolds if you let it, and could something naturally rolling out of events be wrong? Just a flicker in my mind in that standing moment before he turned.
“I’m goin’ to test the water while you put your bathin’ costume on,” said Desmond. “I bet it’s peachy warm today and better this time of day without the midges.”
Loved the swimming, he did, and my mind moved ahead to the children we’d have—as many as the Lord’d give us, but I hoped for four, two of each—and how he’d want them all to swim and what a fight there would be if I gathered them round me for safety. How he’d laugh at me, but maybe not with the affection he was after showing me that afternoon, the joking. The thought worried me as I undid what I’d done up a couple hours before—unbuttoned the shirtwaist and spread it on the bush nearest, stepped out of the skirt and put it on the same, lifted the petticoat up over my head and shook it before it, too, came to rest on that sustaining bush, its few leaves a sick green for want of water. The air met my skin for the seconds before I tugged the bathing costume up over the bloomers were part of it. I managed to get the top under the loosened chemise and then I slipped that off. Onto the bush.
There I stood decent, my drawers hid in my cloth bag with the extra stockings I’d thought to bring, though I still lacked the slippers girls wore in the photographs I saw in the Sunday supplements. It was still shoes for me, ordinary shoes I took off when I spread my towel and lay my hat on top my cloth bag. Then I could breathe and I did, eyes closed, till I heard the rustling meant he was coming back, and didn’t I bite my lip to stall the cry wanted to rise from all the wanting inside me, the dimple when he smiled, him tilting his head to the space beyond our nest.
“I’ll be just a minute, Maeve.”
Directly in front there’s only the lake lapping at the sand and the little stones, no froth on the curling waves today—it was that calm, lovely—and not far off, on either side, there were pairs and a group of children splashing. More lovely still when he dropped down beside me on a towel of his own and, as if it were not warm enough, flames licked at the small space between our two bodies. He took out his flask.
“Courage?” he asked, extending it to me.
I turned him down.
“You’re not one of them temperance types, I hope.”
That dimple again and his brow wrinkling as he squinted against the sun. I assured him no, I was not, but I’d wait a bit, for what if the drink made me senseless and I lost my footing and went under? Wasn’t courage, so much as a trap, I saw in that bottle but I never said. No, instead I got him talking about himself and the war and how he’d been ready to go but they didn’t want him because of that eye of his wandered sometime.
“Have you noticed?”
Wouldn’t a took Anna Eva or Houdini himself to read the mind of Mr. Desmond Malloy, but a body resists, tells herself stories. We were there for the swimming, like half the city spread out along the grit bordered the lake, and it was kind of him to offer to instruct me. If he thought I looked like Dorothy Phillips, well, I didn’t mind opening myself to the comparison. And if it might be his Bridgeport political connections the reason for him missing the war, as much as the eye tended to stray, couldn’t it be the good people after compensating me for Packy? Putting in my path a man whole save for that eye, and a car man about to accept an increase in pay? He was a sort of magician, Desmond, with the power he had to make me believe.
“But they’ll be plenty of time for that talk, later, darlin’. Let’s make the most of the day. Come to me.”
He stood and extended his hands, but I got myself up, trying, trying to avoid that touch, all the while him blathering about how this was the hour, and there couldn’t be a better place, and wasn’t it why he’d brought me here instead of one a them spots where the people crowded and splashed, and some you’d never want to be sharing the water with anyhow. “There aren’t but a few bits of stone on the bottom. There…that’s right…come, Maeve, come with me.”
A spout of cool water shooting up my spine, circling my neck, my shoulders, joining all them little blue streams beneath the skin, goose bumped again. Him leaving me at the edge to go deeper, standing out where the lake covered his knees, bending down and scooping up the water and laughing. Me saying, “Don’t,” and him only laughing more, and urging me.
“It’s grand, it’s grand, Maeve. I can’t give you any kind of lesson if you don’t go past your ankles.”
Me recalling the Thursday last, the little fishes not so bad, the truth being it not as deep and frightening as I’d thought. Remember, remember, said me to myself as he shook his head and dove under and came up again and there he stood, his wet costume bulging in places I was not supposed to look, just as I’d not been meant to look when first my eyes darted there and away, then back again. His hair flopping over his face, white skin luminous as the moon in my dream and the actual water not cold as what ran in my veins at all, but not
as hot as the air, and me moving forward till I was in to my knees and squealing.
“Does it get any worse?”
Him laughing. “’Course it does, darlin’, if by worse you mean the deep of it. There’s enough water to float a ship big as the Titanic.”
Was it the mention of the disaster came the year after Margaret and me boarded the Mauretania and suffered our first crossing stopped me before I’d got halfway out to where Desmond stood? Or was it Janet, the thought of her maybe out there, under the water somewhere, because weren’t there invisible currents could have carried the dear child from the north of the city down here?
He scowled, impatient, like. “Suit yourself,” he said. “I’m only offerin’ an opportunity.” Aimed himself right into and under the lake so I couldn’t see him for what seemed a terrible length of time. Angry with me then? Ready to toss me over for some other girl, prettier, not only prettier but more fun, liked to swim?
Didn’t that get me moving out towards him till I felt something on my leg. I screamed, thinking it one of them eels, when it was only himself, Desmond Malloy, his hand where it should not have been on my stockinged leg, pinching me, pretending to be a big fish, then rising up dripping and gasping and putting his wet arms right around me, and me with the fright sinking into them. Oh. Then I could feel the bulge I was not supposed to feel and pulled myself away, tried to, and thought of Margaret and St. Patrick’s and Mammy and Da and the young ones we’d left and the Sisters of Perpetual Grace and the Blessed Virgin herself, who’d never known a man.
But I was in a trance like some magician’d worked, for my head turned up to Desmond’s down coming one and we were kissing and oh, I should a got away, but I didn’t and he was pressing closer in, his body arching over me, and me thinking this is not the gentleman he promised to be, but that thought, too, a sparrow you see in the verge so quickly you’re not sure you see it at all. A flock of them thoughts rose up. Me with no leisure to imagine where they would nest, and if I’d ever needed to speak up it was then, but his tongue was after sneaking through his lips right into my mouth, and then I did pull away because I was out of breath. Another tongue touching mine. His tongue! My stockings were wet all the way to my bloomers and my parts lit up like the Palmer House at Christmas holidays. For once in my life I was stopped where I stood.
His voice’d gone husky. Him frowning like he wasn’t happy, and saying, “Maeve, darlin’. You don’t have to swim if it frightens you, dear. You’ve had a splash, and you’re cooler, aren’t you? And I’ve heard the stories of them immigrant ships. It’s a wonder you’re here at all.”
“It’s not that so much but little Janet. The police want to drag this very same lake where they think he threw her body.”
“It’s that worryin’, is it?”
Nice, understanding, and maybe the music in my head would stop, a player piano speeded up like, warping the melody. I could dress and we would stroll back to the park and find a lacy tree limb to sit beneath and he’d buy us slices of watermelon and we’d listen to the fellow on the squeezebox or one of the others with their hats on the ground to collect coins. Except he was leading me back to the copse and arranging our towels side by side while me, I was thinking about the clammy feel of my wet stockings. He coaxed me down and took out his flask again and then I did take a gulp to stop the shaking came from the wet stockings, or was it my own heart beating so fierce it got me trembly.
Also, because what else was I not after doing that day? Kissing a man in the middle of Lake Michigan, drinking whiskey. Shouts occasionally rose and drifted over on the still air and he’s saying, “There, there, dear heart, don’t worry yourself about the child. She’s probably just fallen asleep somewhere in the sun.” And didn’t I want to accept that as the answer to the mystery, improbable as it was, but then he was lowering me and caressing my buds through my bathing costume and didn’t I understand then what my da meant about them blooming and I rolled away.
“No, no,” I said, getting to my knees, my feet, pushing through the bushes where my clothes awaited me. I heard him laughing, even singing, and daft as I was I realized my towel lay behind, with him. There I was standing in my wet stockings—having forgotten I’d brought dry ones—and struggling to get the chemise right over my damp skin. Did. Hurried with the petticoat, so it was only my over clothes missing when he rustled through them same shrubs and held the towel up.
“Forget somethin’, darlin’?” His voice deeper and softer so with the whiskey. Him reaching out and me falling towards him and us shuffling, would have been comical but no, not to us, nothing comical about that fierce yearning drove us back to our poor bed where he found it easier then to find my buds, and didn’t he kiss them and didn’t they blossom then into the most tender white flowers. And then his hand was moving down to where it shouldn’t and I moved it away, not opening my eyes but the once to see his face near mine, eyes half closed and the tiny red gold hairs sprouting in his beard and chafing me as he whispered, “Shh, shh, Maeve, darlin’. I’ll be gentle, I will, dearest, my own.”
This is what I mean. This is what I mean about it all being so natural, one thing leading to the next and no planning involved. But me, I wasn’t thinking so much then, only feeling slickness down there—not the same sweat’d lathered my hands minutes before when we hurried over the trampled grass to our wedding bower there. Then him fumbling with his bathing costume and climbing on top and that club—which is how I recall it, the feel of it, even though it’s dirty to even think such thoughts—oh, yes, but that, like a billy bare against my skin.
Poking, poking at my most private place, hurtful it was and I bit my lip but never hollered and him saying over and over, “Shh, shh, my own. Maeve, don’t worry,” like a lullaby and then he’s in, in me, us joined the way men and women do, and I never felt anything like it, lovely full, in the one moment I relaxed before he started moving. The two of us coupled, the emptiness filled.
In the pictures, the orchestra music swells in a wave when lovers embrace and the screen shows a sky with billowy clouds, or some grand body of water sparkling. I saw the sky above me, not a cloud, only the haze same as hung over the city most days that summer. But for the most of it, I kept my eyes closed, as if not seeing meant it didn’t happen. Was that it? Also, with my eyes closed the touches, the kisses, the parts of my body I never knew pressed deep into memory. I could feel them long after, even now.
Furious moving, chug-chug, a train forcing me into the ground beneath the weeds, caught sand maybe wounding something tender, him saying he’s sorry and it wouldn’t hurt for long and next time, next time… Odd how we are driven to it despite the pain, even him, because he cried out same as if he’d injured himself, and then he sighed and it was over. He kissed me and flopped over onto his back. “You’re a peach, darlin’.” It’s what he said and me after believing it, and caressing the stubbled cheek of him whose eyes went droopy, him being drowsy with the sun and the swimming. Nodded off.
But me? How could I sleep with all ran through my mind, and I am sorry to say it was not poor Janet anchoring my thoughts at that moment. But not sorry then, no, though I knew we’d done wrong, at least wrong as the priest saw it. It never felt wrong. Uncomfortable yes, but it would not always be so. No. We’d be in a bed soon. I smiled, thinking, dreaming and not of food, but of the future we’d have, me and Desmond. If this was the bargain, I’d kept my part and Desmond had shown up when he said he would, dependable as dependable could be when you thought of all was going on.
Margaret need not worry at all, at all, for here I had someone with a future as bright as the city itself. Even if trouble nibbled here and there, Mayor Thompson and all the big men at City Hall would make it right, not that I was pondering the mayor, not that Sunday afternoon in Chicago, with the sweet whistle of his snore coming through my ear. Growing late by then, the sun angled in across the tops of the bushes and our little hideaway truly dim, but it still hot,
even hotter with his half-clothed body so near, and me considering, despite my fear, maybe I would sit in the shallow part of the lake for a spell, be just the thing.
But I must a dozed a little too before something woke us both. Laughter? Boys was it, startled us? I looked over at the man meant to be the husband Packy never got to be, face bunched, gathered, wrinkled. He sat up and shook his head.
“What a day,” said he, and I smiled—not with my teeth showing, just gentle like, understanding.
“Sorry, darlin’. Are ye all right? We should a been in a grander place, with soft pillows. Will you forgive me?”
I reached up to smooth that hair of his back from the peak and he grabbed it, my hand, and pulled me to standing next to him, and I have to say I didn’t mind at all sinking into that manly chest where I could hear his thundering heart.
“We’ve got to go. I should a been down at the barns. You better finish dressing.”
“Isn’t the big meetin’ for tomorrow night?”
He peered at me. “How would you know that? Oh, yes, you’re the one for the papers. Thing the papers don’t tell everyone is there’s a meetin’ every night.”
“But it’s your day off, sure?” I called from the tangle where my skirt hung, and the shirtwaist. I could feel the wetness around the vent in my drawers and already schemed how I’d rinse them out while Margaret slept.
“May be a string of them off if the bosses don’t give in to us. And don’t believe all you read in the papers. There’s no Bolshie tryin’ to influence us. I’d never go for that. We’re just ordinary men after a fair wage.”
It pained me a bit to follow him out onto the grass, him walking that fast, and a chafing down there, and though I’d finally remembered to put on my dry stockings, I must have rolled a pebble into them. I said nothing.
The park looked tired after such a day, yet people were lingering, some of them maybe tired, too. Others packing their baskets, resigned, and didn’t it seem God had tossed us all down on the earth like so many dice and some of us came up a six. The dream Desmond and me’d been in began to fray at the edges and spill right open as we neared the streaming streets. He let go my hand and hurried ahead as if late for an appointment, which he was so. At the car barn. There’d be no supper, not even coffee, should we want it on such a day, but he stopped for another Dr. Pepper, a soda I never drank after that week. It was not a taste I liked, but how could I refuse Desmond, parched as I was?
