by David Goodis
She told him about her family. It was a small family, just her parents and her brother and herself. An ordinary middle-class family in fairly comfortable circumstances. But her mother liked to drink and her father had his own bedroom. She said they were dead now, so it didn’t matter if she talked about them. They had an intense dislike for each other. It was so intense that they never even bothered to quarrel, they hardly ever spoke to each other. One night, when her brother was seventeen and had just got his driver’s license, he took their parents out for a ride. He came home alone with a bandage around his head. The father had died instantly and the mother died in the hospital. Within a few weeks Newton began to have fits of hysterical laughter, wondering aloud if he’d done it on purpose, actually doing them a favor and giving them an easy way out. A bachelor uncle came to take charge of the house but couldn’t put up with Newton’s ravings and strange behavior and finally moved out.
When Newton was nineteen he married the housekeeper, a woman in her middle forties. She was a short and very skinny woman and her face was dreadfully scarred from burns in a childhood accident. No man had ever looked twice at her and she did her best to please Newton but that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted her to be harsh and nasty and downright vicious. He was always trying to agitate her, trying to make her lose her temper. Whenever that happened he seemed delighted, especially when she’d claw him or throw dishes at him. After seven years she couldn’t take it any more and she went to a lawyer and got a divorce. A few months later Newton married a Hungarian gypsy, a fortuneteller, a tall, bony, beak-nosed woman who already had several husbands in various parts of the nation. She was in her early fifties and used liquid shoe polish to keep her hair black. Sometimes she’d get very thirsty and drink the shoe polish. At other times she forced Newton to give her large sums of money so she could buy cases of expensive bourbon. He had an income of sixty dollars a week from his father’s insurance money and some weeks the entire sixty dollars went for liquor. Loretta was working in a dental laboratory and making forty a week and couldn’t keep much for herself because Newton and the gypsy woman were always asking for money.
When Loretta was twenty, she married a young dentist. For a while they lived in a small apartment. But she was always worried about Newton, she had a feeling there was a bombshell in him and sooner or later it would burst. Her husband kept telling her to forget about Newton but she couldn’t do it, and eventually she insisted on moving back to the house. He refused. They argued. The arguments became worse. Finally he walked out on her. She blamed herself, and got in touch with him, told him she was sorry, and asked him to come back. But she didn’t really want him back. By this time she was very confused and she wasn’t sure what she wanted. She was really relieved when the dentist told her it was no use trying a reconciliation, he cared for her very much but he had enough sense to know when a thing was ended. He advised her to get a divorce. She got the divorce and went back to live in the house with Newton and the gypsy woman.
It wasn’t easy, living there with them. They were drunk most of the time, the gypsy woman made no attempt to keep the house clean, and the sink was always stacked with dirty dishes. There were empty bottles all over the place. Sometimes the gypsy woman would hurl the bottles at Newton’s head. At other times she’d try to crack his ribs with a broom handle. On one occasion she hit him very hard and broke two of his ribs. He sat on the floor, grinning at her, telling her that she was a fine woman and he adored her.
Loretta told herself she couldn’t stay in this madhouse. But she had to stay. She had to look after Newton. He was getting worse, drinking more and more. One time he went out and purchased a skeleton costume. In the middle of the night the gypsy woman heard a noise in the room and woke up and saw the skeleton and began to scream at the top of her lungs. The skeleton moved toward her, laughing crazily, and she passed out cold. After that night, she walked around with a blank look in her eyes. Some weeks later she caught cold, neglected it, developed pneumonia, and died. At the funeral Newton had another of his laughing spells. Then, for some months, he was all right and he got a job in an agency selling foreign automobiles. He worked very hard, and kept away from liquor. He was extremely considerate of Loretta, and extravagantly generous. For Christmas he gave her the little British car, the MG. They had a very nice Christmas dinner, just the two of them. He was gracious and quietly gallant. She was so thankful, the way he was behaving these days. She was so proud of him. But less than a week later he had another laughing spell. And the next day he quit his job. And then he began to drink again.
“When was that?” Kerrigan asked.
“About a year ago.”
“When’d he start coming to Dugan’s?”
“Just about then.”
He told himself to continue the questions. But something stopped him. It was the expression on her face. Her eyes were dry and yet it seemed she was weeping.
“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t look so sad.”
She tried to smile, but her lips trembled.
He said, “I know it ain’t been easy for you.”
Her head was lowered. She put her hand to her eyes.
Suddenly he felt the pain she was feeling. His brain pushed aside all thought of Newton Channing, all aspects of the grim issue he’d been trying to settle. The only thing he knew was the yearning to hold her and hold her and never let her go.
And again he was immersed in the dream that took him away from Vernon Street.
His voice was a husky whisper. “Look at me.”
She took her hand away from her eyes.
He said, “I want to take care of you. From now on.”
Her lips were parted. She held her breath.
“For keeps,” he said.
She was staring at him. “You know what you’re saying?”
He nodded slowly. But his thoughts were spinning and there was the flashing of a warning light. He didn’t know what it meant. He told himself he didn’t want to know.
“It’s gotta be for keeps,” he said. “It can’t be any other way.” And then blindly, in a frenzy of wanting her, needing her, he reached out and took hold of her wrists. His voice was a hoarse whisper. “We won’t quit. We’ll do it tonight.”
“Tonight?”
His eyes were feverish. “I know where we can get a license.”
“But—”
“Just say yes. Say it.”
She went on staring at him. Then very slowly she turned her head and gazed out past the shoreline, looking at the moonlight on the river. For a long moment the only sound was the lapping of the water along the bank.
And then there was the sound of her voice saying, “Yes.”
12
HE DIDN’T MOVE. It was a kind of paralysis, as though he’d been hit on the skull with a sledge hammer, just hard enough to put him in a daze. The air became a tunnel of mist.
“Well?” she said.
He flinched. Again he sensed the flashing of the signal light. But now it didn’t give a warning. Instead it offered the blunt message: Too late now, you’re in it up to your neck, there’s no way out.
His lips moved mechanically. He told her to start the engine. And then, as the MG responded to the gas pedal, he watched the fading of the pastoral scene, the windshield framing a changing picture. He caught one final glimpse of moonlit water and serene meadowland. The car turned onto Wharf Street and he saw the rough cobblestones that smothered all the flowers. He saw the jagged splintered outlines of piers and warehouses. The car was approaching Vernon and now he could see the shacks and the tenements. He began to hear the night noises of Vernon Street, the yowling of alley cats, the barking of mongrels, the dismal drumming moaning sound that came from hundreds of overcrowded rooms.
“Slow down,” he said.
She looked at him. “Should I stop the car?”
“I didn’t say that. Just slow down.”
The car slackened speed. He sat stiffly, staring straight ahead. She kept giving him
side glances.
Finally she murmured, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” he said.
In the distance there was the clattering screech of domestic discord. From some third-floor flat the cracked soprano of a fishwife’s voice was a saw-toothed blade, while the rumbled oaths of the drunken husband were aimed past the woman, past the roof, going up to the sky.
And yet Kerrigan felt envious. The fishwife and her man would wind up in bed hugging each other. They’d stay together because they belonged together. They both came from the same roots, Vernon cradles.
He heard the calm voice of Loretta Channing, the voice of a stranger asking for directions. He scarcely heard his own reply. As he told her to make a turn on Vernon, a chorus of Vernon voices came to him with the sullen query, what’s she doing down here if she don’t know her way around.
On Vernon Street the car was moving very slowly. A stumbling drunk lurched into the path of the car, was missed by inches, and shouted some dirty words to the driver. The words were very dirty and she winced. Kerrigan looked back and recognized the man. It was his next-door neighbor.
She put more pressure on the gas pedal. The MG leaped away from the flood of obscenity.
She said, “I’m glad we got away from that.”
He told himself to keep his mouth shut.
At Third and Vernon he told her to make a right turn and they went down Third going past the street lamps, and toward the middle of the block he told her to stop the car. She looked at him questioningly. He pointed to a two-storied wooden dwelling that had a cardboard placard in its front window. The glow from the nearest street lamp showed two words scrawled in crayon on the placard. One word was in Greek letters. Under it was the same word in English—“Marriages.”
He motioned her out of the car. Then together they stood at the front door and he rapped his knuckles on the wood. There were no lights in the house and he had to rap for several minutes before the door opened. The old Greek stood there, wearing a tattered bathrobe, needing a shave, his eyes clouded with interrupted slumber.
“You got a license handy?” Kerrigan asked.
The Greek blinked once. Then he was fully awake. “Plenty of licenses,” he said. “I always have licenses.”
He was a small man in his middle seventies. His head was bald except for three little bushes of white hair, one above each ear and one in the center. He smiled and showed a toothless mouth. He said, “The ring. You have the ring?”
Kerrigan shook his head. He looked at Loretta. Her face was calm and she was gazing past the old Greek and breathing quietly and not saying anything.
The Greek said, “I’ll find a ring somewhere.”
He beckoned them into the house. In the small and shabby parlor he switched on a lamp, then went into another room. Loretta sat down on a flimsy chair. Kerrigan stood in the middle of the floor, not looking at her. His legs felt heavy, as though weighted with lead.
A few minutes passed, and then the Greek came into the parlor carrying a bottle of ink and a pen and a large sheet of white paper rolled up, fastened with a rubber band. He took off the rubber band and put the paper in Kerrigan’s hand. Kerrigan stared at the scrolled border and the printed words that told him he was looking at a marriage license. He swallowed very hard, and then he walked to the chair in which Loretta was seated and he said, “You sign it first.”
Loretta looked at the Greek. “Is this paper a legitimate document?”
The old man nodded emphatically. “It comes from City Hall. My son works in the Marriage Bureau. Tomorrow he takes it back and puts it in the file.”
She said quietly, “I want to be sure this is legal.”
Kerrigan frowned. “Sure it’s legal,” he said. “Look at the printing on it.”
The Greek said, “Nothing to worry about. I make real marriages. For many years I do this work. Never any trouble.”
“If it isn’t legal,” Loretta murmured, “it’s worthless, it doesn’t mean anything.”
The Greek twitched his lips and looked up at the ceiling. Then he glared at Loretta and said loudly, “This is genuine marriage license. I tell you it goes into the files.”
Loretta got up from the chair and walked to the small table where the Greek had placed the pen and the ink. She picked up the pen, dipped it in the ink bottle, and then for a long moment she stared at Kerrigan. His head was lowered and he was gazing at the carpet. Loretta took a deep breath and signed her name to the license and then she handed the pen to Kerrigan.
He moved slowly toward the table. The pen vibrated in his trembling hand. He knew she was watching him and he tried to keep his hand from trembling. The trembling became worse and he couldn’t move the pen toward the paper.
He heard her saying, “What are you waiting for?”
There was no way to answer that.
“Just sign your name,” she said. “That’s all you have to do. Put your name on the dotted line.”
He stood there gaping at the paper that had her name written on it, with the dotted line waiting for his name.
Then he heard the Greek saying, “Maybe this man cannot write. Many men they come here and they cannot write their name.”
“I can write,” Kerrigan mumbled. As he spoke, he could feel the perspiration dripping from his forehead.
“What is happening?” the Greek asked quietly and seriously. “Why you not sign the paper?”
“Don’t hurry him,” Loretta said. “Let him pull himself together.”
“He looks nervous,” the Greek said. “I think he is very nervous.”
“Really?” Her tone was musing. “I’d say that’s rather strange. After all, this was his idea.”
“Maybe he changes his mind.” The old man spoke solemnly. “After all, marriage is no joke. It is a big step. Many men, they get scared.”
“Well,” she said, “if he wants to back out, this is the time to do it.”
Kerrigan turned slowly and looked at her. She was smiling at him. He pivoted hard, bent over the table, and signed his name to the marriage license.
Then he picked up the license, shoved it at the old man, and said, “All right, let’s get this over with. Where’s the ring?”
The Greek put his hand in a pocket of the bathrobe, groped in there for a moment, and then took out a nickel-plated ring. It was thick and had a hinge that allowed it to open and close. Kerrigan took a closer look and saw it was a ring from a loose-leaf notebook.
“For God’s sake,” he said. “This ain’t no wedding ring.”
The old man shrugged. “It was all I could find.” He looked at Loretta and said, “Later he gets you a better ring. This one here is only for the ceremony.”
He handed the ring to Kerrigan. Then he opened a drawer of the table and took out a Bible. As he leafed through the pages, he said, “The price for the ceremony is two dollars and fifty-two cents. That is total price. Two dollars for performing marriage. Fifty cents for license. You will please pay in advance.”
Kerrigan frowned. “What’s the two cents for?”
“I charge two cents for ring,” the old man said. He kept his eyes on the printed text while extending his palm for the money. Then the money was in his hand and he averted his eyes from the Bible just long enough to count the cash. He put the bills and silver in the pocket of his bathrobe, took a firmer grip on the Bible, and said, “Now the bride will stand next to the groom.”
It was three hours later and Kerrigan had his head buried in a pillow. His eyes were shut tightly but he wasn’t asleep. He was trying to grope his way through the fog of an alcoholic stupor. It was apparent to him that he’d consumed an excessive amount of whisky, and now his brain was crammed with a lot of little discs that wouldn’t stop spinning. His skull felt as though it were swollen to many times its normal size. He told himself he was really in sad shape, and wondered how in hell he’d fallen into this condition.
He begged his mind to start working, to give him some information concerning
tonight’s events, but his thoughts stumbled along a tricky path leading nowhere.
Then gradually the fog cleared just a little, the discs slowed down, and he realized he was coming out of it. As his brain went into gear, he kept his eyes shut, telling himself not to think about now, not even to take a look and see where he was. What he had to do was straighten the track and follow it very slowly and carefully and bring it up to now.
On the wall of his closed eyelids a light showed and then widened and it became a series of pictures that told him what had happened. He saw himself placing the ring on her finger. Then sound came into it and he heard the old man saying, “I now pronounce you husband and wife.” And then the old man was telling him to kiss her. She stood there smiling at him and waiting to be kissed. The old man said, “Go on, kiss her.” He glared at the old man and growled, “Goddamnit, mind your own business.” He heard her saying to the old man, “Please forgive my husband. I think he’s upset about something.”
The pictures continued. He saw himself walking out of the old Greek’s house, and heard her footsteps following. He turned and looked at her and said, “Where d’ya wanna go?” She shrugged and murmured, “It’s up to you.” He said loudly, “I guess we ought to celebrate.” She shrugged again, smiling pleasantly and saying, “Anything you say, dear.” And then the smile faded as she said, “You look as if you need a drink.”
He closed his eyes and saw more pictures. They were in the car and she had it headed down Third Street, then coming up Fourth and arriving on Vernon. She said, “You really need a drink, I know you do.” And then the MG was parked outside Dugan’s Den and they were entering the taproom. The place was empty now and Dugan was getting ready to close up for the night. Loretta put some money in Dugan’s hand and Dugan put a bottle on the bar. She poured the whisky into the jiggers. Then she lifted the glass and proposed a toast. “Here’s to our wedding night,” she said. He lifted his glass, gazed moodily at the amber liquor, then shot it down his throat. Again she tilted the bottle and filled the jiggers. She said, “Another toast. Here’s to my husband.” He looked at her and muttered, “Let’s get out of here. I don’t feel like drinking.” But a moment later he had the glass to his lips and then he was waiting for it to be filled again.
