Part 20

Ruth almost wished that she had the courage to kill herself, or something. It was mighty hard, living with one man and loving another one. And spending the days chatting about other things, never talking about what you want to talk about or getting near the one you care for. Never daring to tell any one about things! Maybe, if she and Anna had confided in each other.... But, it was too late for that now. Anna had loved and found it hopeless, and gone out.

Ruth knew her love was hopeless, too. For, though she loved Towers and felt that he loved her, she knew that he was too little to take her away with him. She loved him none the less for his prudence, for she was rather a coward and hated scandals and things like that herself. Anna’s suicide was bad enough. The family would never quite recover from it. Oh, well, life was pretty messy after all. Here she had to keep on, day after day, and Towers was the only one she cared for. Nothing else, no one else mattered. If only Towers and she could go away some place, away from every one and be happy together! And she never could do that, she knew. After all, hadn’t Anna done the wiser thing?

III

Sophie missed her younger sister a great deal. The girls were orphans, their mother had died when Sophie was fourteen and their father three years later, and Sophie, though just a few years older, had really raised Anna.

The last year Sophie didn’t see Ruth and Anna frequently, for Sophie had four children and children take time. Sophie’s husband was a union tailor and was on strike a great deal and she couldn’t dress well or have things as nice as the two younger girls. Not that she envied them, only—well, there wasn’t much use feeling bad by trying to go with them anyhow. They had their own crowd and were younger and smarter and different. But fine girls, of course.

Sophie thought about Anna as she mended always-torn blouses and washed always-dirty dishes. Why had Anna done such a thing? After all the time she had spent raising her! It seemed as if Anna were only a little girl, instead of a woman of thirty-five. But even thirty-five is young when one has a lot to live for. Didn’t Anna have? Sophie had always thought of her two younger sisters as rather happy and fortunate. Surely, Anna had always seemed happy. And yet....

What had made Anna hate the world enough to want to get out of it? She had a nice home, nicer than Sophie would ever have. There surely were no debts. Certainly they got along well enough together, Anna and Fred.

But did they?

People thought that she and Steve got along all right too. You can keep people from finding out things like that, if you’re careful. Hadn’t she done it? For years and years? And she probably would keep on, until the kids were grown up and then—oh, how could she get along any other way? It was more than a habit.

Still, Fred didn’t drink. At least, at first, Sophie was pretty certain he didn’t. You couldn’t be too sure. People didn’t all know about Steve.

Though Steve was working, now, Sophie shuddered and walked quietly, as if he were asleep in the next room. For Steve got paid on Saturday, when he “worked steady,” and on Saturday night he came in, his pay envelope pitifully depleted, smelling horribly of cheap whisky, and cursing. She’d pray the children wouldn’t hear and she’d get him to bed.

In the morning he’d be sick and lay there saying things he shouldn’t, though usually he’d be up and able to work on Monday. It wasn’t that Steve drank more than most men. It was just that he was the sort that shouldn’t drink at all. Even the doctor said he had a delicate stomach and couldn’t stand it. But he did drink, though not so terribly often like some men.

But even when Steve didn’t drink, things weren’t so much better. He had a mean disposition, the kind that can take an innocent phrase and boomerang it into a sneer. He was never quite satisfied about things, about his home, about his children. He hated the Government and joined various political societies, getting into fights with the neighbourhood leaders and hating them in turn. Steve wouldn’t read several of the newspapers, because he “had it in for them” and their policies. He disliked Sophie’s friends and her relatives, and quarrelled because he had to spend the evening with them occasionally. He called Dick a “damned white-collared little snob” and Fred was a “sick roach who hadn’t the liver to have a will of his own.” Steve was not a pleasant person to live with.

Thinking over her life since her marriage and the life of Anna, since her marriage, as she knew it, little things came to Sophie which showed her that Fred was not all that Anna tried to picture him. She saw, now, clearly enough, that Anna had been brave, that she had tried to conceal Fred’s failings, but that, underneath, she hated him for his cruelty to her. Little things that Anna had said proved this. It could be nothing else.

Why hadn’t Anna left Fred? Sophie felt that she would have left Steve years ago, if it hadn’t been for the kids. Anna could have left—any day. Only herself to look out for and she had been a cashier before her marriage and could have always made a living. Still, maybe she did think of that way—and decided against it. Sophie felt that there was something noble, something brave, about what Anna had done. She wished she could do it. She wished it on Saturday nights, when Steve was drinking and on many other nights when he wasn’t. There wasn’t very much use in living, most of the time.

And yet—the kids. They were sweet. They had mean tempers sometimes, especially little Steve, who could be really bad. But then, again, sometimes when they were in bed, they’d let her put her arms around them, tight, some nights, and kiss her in return, too. They were sweet, the kids, and worth a lot of hard things.

But Anna hadn’t any kids. Not a one. If the baby hadn’t died, maybe she could have stood it, too. Still, what is the use of it all? You can’t tell how kids’ll turn out, even if you spend years sewing and cooking and cleaning for them. It’s taking a chance. And the other things ... it’s best to get away from them.

Anna, without any one but Fred, and he mean to her and she trying to conceal it with smiles and jokes and changing the subject ... she had been brave. And one person can’t stand everything. And, looking ahead and seeing nothing but years of Fred and bad treatment or of working to try to make a living, maybe, after all, Anna had figured it out that her way was best. Fred had said they hadn’t quarrelled. But then, Sophie never did trust Fred too much from the first. Of course, he’d have said that. They had probably had an awful quarrel the night before, and rather than go through with it all again....

Well, Anna was dead. It must be good to simply quit and stop quarrelling and working. If she had Anna’s chance to go out, without harming any one else, without leaving any kids for maybe worse treatment ... Sophie knew, in her heart, why Anna had committed suicide, and though she shed many tears over her sister, understanding things as she did, she couldn’t blame her. Maybe Anna had picked out the right path.

IV

After his wife’s death, Fred Clark went to live with his brother Philip and Phil’s wife, Myrtle. Fred missed his wife a great deal, especially during the first few months after her death. A companionship of ten years—and as close a companionship as a married couple, living together in a city apartment, without children, are bound to have, is not easily forgotten.

But, in a few months, Fred grew accustomed to life at Phil’s house, which was not much different from his old life. It was the same social stratum. Fred enjoyed the company of his two little nephews and liked to bring small presents home to them when he came in early on Saturday afternoon. He got along quite well with Myrtle, a pleasant-faced pale woman, who was glad of the extra money that Fred paid into the housekeeping fund.

Fred’s share of the expenses, as proportioned by Phil, was much less than he had ever paid for the upkeep of his own apartment and he was able to begin saving money immediately after the funeral expenses were paid.

Often, when he was alone in his room, Fred thought of Anna and of her death.

At first he had been too startled, too numbed into silence to think that there had to be a reason for her suicide. It had seemed more like an accidental death, something that had taken Anna unawares as it had taken him. He and Anna had shared so many of their sensations that it seemed hard for Fred to believe that Anna had done this thing herself.

But, gradually, the unreality of the situation wore away and Fred came to know that Anna was really dead—and by her own hand. And, as he realized that she had killed herself, at the same time came the realization of the motive for it, the only possible motive. Anna had killed herself because she was poor! It had been under the burden of a continued poverty that must have eaten into her spirit as he had often felt it eat into his, that Anna had decided not to live any more. Anna had never said anything to Fred about it. He was surprised, now, that she never had—for he thought that she had told him everything. And yet, he had felt the same thing so often himself that he was not surprised to find that Anna had felt it and that it had been too much for her.

They had never really experienced the pangs of poverty, it is true. Fred felt that it would have been easier to bear if they had. He had always “done well,” in that he had made a living. Each month, by hurrying around to dozens of little, retail groceries, he had sold enough spices to maintain his simple household.

But each month there had been the fear that, perhaps, there wouldn’t be enough for the month to come.

Each month some household article had advanced in price and had to be purchased less frequently or not at all. If he and Anna went to the theatre—balcony seats—there could be no other luxuries that week or the week that followed. Even a guest in to dinner—and the Clarks had little company—made a difference in the household money. New shoes were to be talked over, several weeks ahead, at the dinner table. A new suit meant that they had to start saving for it a month or two in advance, and, if one made a mistake and bought the wrong suit, which happened quite often enough, the suit had to be worn just the same, throughout the season. Fred had to look neat all the time. And Anna had a certain position to uphold too. She had to prove to “the girls” and to the rest of her small world, that she was the wife of a prosperous city salesman.

Anna was not extravagant. Fred knew that. He could picture her, brow-knitted, looking over small household bills, trying to find which could be reduced without radically altering a fairly comfortable manner of living. Anna cleaned her own gloves and her own thin waists. Outside of a few ice cream soda “treats” for “the girls” she spent little money foolishly.

Fred knew that Anna had always been a true wife to him. He knew that he was the only man she had ever cared about and that she had cared for him sincerely and devotedly. He knew that there could have been no other trouble. He knew only too well why Anna died.

Fred had felt like that—himself. He and Anna must have lain on the same bird’s-eye maple bed and thought the same things about living. Only, Anna had ended it and he had kept on.

He hadn’t wanted Anna to work. He didn’t believe that married women ought to have positions. A woman’s place is in the home, he always maintained, and a position for Anna, as a possible way out of their poverty, had never entered his mind.

But, how often he had wished for money, for some of the smaller, cheaper luxuries! He had often gone to sleep wondering how many years more he could keep up the strain of spice-selling, the constant hammering of it, the continued striving to make a living. Always, in the end, he felt himself beaten, saw himself, before he had reached old age, being overtaken by real poverty, finding that he was unable to sell enough spices to support himself and Anna. There was nothing else he could do as well. He knew that. Selling, selling, day after day, just for the privilege of living in a little, stuffy apartment and never enough left over to put some by. No wonder the outlook had been too much for Anna. He hadn’t known that she had felt deeply about it—or cared. And she had cared, so very much.

Now that Anna was dead, things were different. Fred wondered if Anna ever looked down from Up There and saw that her sacrifice had not been in vain. The burden of supporting two was lifted. He paid Myrtle each week, bought little things for the boys and little extras for himself that he never could have afforded before—a more expensive brand of cigarette, a new cane, some collars of an odd shape, and each week he put a little money into a savings account.

Fred felt years younger. He was preparing for old age. There was something to look ahead to. But—to have kept on the other way ... trudging always to a poorer future.... It had looked mighty black. Too black, sometimes. Fred had considered, often enough, the very thing that Anna had done. He had been insured for three thousand dollars, in her name, and he felt that her sisters would both rather look out for her—they had good homes—and she could have stayed with them and gone to work at an easy job, if necessary. It seemed such a cowardly thing to do—to step from under, and he had never quite got to it, after all. And now—he was free.

But Anna—wasn’t she free, too? Hadn’t she taken the way out, as she saw it, a way that meant no more scraping and saving, no more using up of left-overs, of planning for new bargain shoes three weeks before the soles ran through the old ones? It was sad enough, losing Anna, but when he thought it over, Fred understood perfectly. It was the simplest solution. He didn’t blame Anna at all. Compared to living on, doing without nice things, planning to keep on doing without them, and with the strain drawing tighter and tighter, Anna had certainly chosen the better way.

V

On the morning that she committed suicide, Anna Clark waked up at seven. The round nickeled clock on the bird’s-eye maple dresser awoke her as usual. She yawned and stretched her arms above her head as she did every morning. Then she nudged Fred, sleeping rather noisily with his mouth not quite tightly closed, as he always slept. Then, as she never missed doing, Anna got up and shut off the alarm, went into the bathroom, hung up the towels that Fred had thrown on the floor the night before, and took a hurried bath. She put on her “morning clothes” that hung in the disorderly, tightly-crowded closet. They differed from her “best clothes” in that the cheap lace edging of the underthings was badly worn and that, instead of a dark skirt and a georgette waist—her usual afternoon outfit—Anna wore a checked gingham dress. Anna had three morning dresses. Two were blue and white and one pink and white. The pink and white one was slightly faded. By wearing aprons over them, when she cooked, one dress looked plenty clean enough to wear mornings, and when she got dinner, for a whole week.

After she had bathed, Anna went back into the bedroom to dress and again waked Fred, who always fell asleep after the first waking. This time, Anna talked to him about what had happened to both of them the day before. She had been with Ruth to call on Mrs. Ambier, an old friend, who had just had her third baby at a neighbourhood hospital.

“She doesn’t look strong,” Anna said. “She ought not to have any more children.”

Fred didn’t remember whether or not Mrs. Ambier had looked strong the last time he had seen her—for several months, Mrs. Ambier had not performed her accustomed social duties—but agreed that, if she looked badly, there should be no more children.

Fred told Anna about old Klingman, one of his regular customers, and how he made him taste the pickled herring and other Klingman-prepared specialties.

“He’s quite a character,” Fred added.

While Fred shaved, Anna got breakfast. It was the usual breakfast. There was half of a large orange for each. When oranges were smaller, Fred and Anna each had a whole one, but grapefruit and large oranges were always divided. Then there was oatmeal, cooked the night before and left standing, wrapped in a towel, on the radiator all night. It’s just as good that way, Anna always told her friends, as if prepared in a fireless cooker—and a great deal less trouble. There were two soft-boiled eggs apiece—on alternate mornings the eggs were scrambled—but to-day was the day to soft-boil them.

Some mornings there was toast, but this morning the bread was soft enough to be eaten without toasting—and coffee. Before putting the eggs in water Anna went to see how far Fred had progressed with his dressing. He was putting his shirt on, which meant that Anna would have to hurry things a little—as she always did towards the end.

Breakfast was at eight-thirty. Before sitting down, Fred got the paper, which the boy had left at the door, and read it as he ate. He was not too absorbed in the news to listen to what Anna had to say nor pass morsels of the last twelve hours’ happenings to her.

After eating, Fred looked at his watch, a $2.50 Ingersoll, which kept just as good time for him as a gold one that he had had given to him when he was twenty-one, and found that he was a trifle late. He tried to be at the office at nine-thirty, starting from there on his rounds of spice-selling, after dictating a few business letters and handing in reports that he had not attended to the night before.

As usual, Fred was a trifle late. He folded his paper irregularly and thrust it into his overcoat pocket. It was early in the fall and slightly cool. He kissed Anna good-bye a bit hurriedly, as usual, but he remembered later that the kiss she gave him in response was no warmer, no colder, for that matter, than the kiss she usually gave him. It was the last time Fred saw Anna alive.

After Fred left, Anna gathered together the breakfast dishes and washed them in the sink, without a dishpan. She preferred this method because it was quicker. The water was not very warm. It scarcely ever was warm enough to wash dishes properly and she frequently spoke to the janitor about it. With the use of a cleaning powder, she got the dishes fairly clean and dried them slowly.

After putting the dishes away, Anna made the one bed. Then, with a carpet sweeper which needed oiling and squeaked badly she went over the brightly coloured rugs in the living and dining-rooms. She did the bedroom on alternate days. She dusted the furniture with an irregularly shaped piece of cloth, the tail of one of Fred’s old shirts.

A package she had ordered the day before came up the dumb-waiter. Anna opened it. It was a bargain shirtwaist and she noticed that one of the sleeves was sewed in crooked. She took it into the bedroom, glanced at the clock and saw that it was nearly ten-thirty.

Anna tried on the shirtwaist. It fitted well enough, except where the sleeve was wrong. She could wear it that afternoon and fix it—in half an hour—some other time. The collar was rather nice.

She picked up a woman’s magazine—she had subscribed to it and two more a few months before, “to help a boy through college”—and read two stories in it. The second story was quite pathetic and she wiped her eyes at the ending.

She looked over the back of the magazine at the cooking recipes and found a simple recipe for spice cakes with one egg. She found she had all the ingredients in the house and Fred and she both liked spice cakes. She went back into the kitchen, propped the magazine against the built-in cabinet, using a yellow mixing bowl, and made the cakes, following the recipe carefully, humming a little to herself as she cooked. Anna was not especially fond of cooking. She had been housekeeping for ten years.

While the little cakes were baking—she had poured the batter into muffin tins—she read some more of the magazine. When the cakes were done, she spread them on a clean towel, and, as soon as they were cool enough, bit into one. It was quite good. If the cakes had failed, those who wondered about her suicide might have found the spice cakes and considered them as a motive. But the cakes were so good Anna ate two of them. She put the others into the cake box along with a stale piece of baker’s cake, left over from three days before, gathered up the crumbs, washed the dishes her baking had soiled and went into the bedroom. It was eleven-fifteen.

She washed and started to change into her “afternoon clothes,” choosing the new waist that Ruth found her in. The ’phone rang just before she finished dressing. It was Marie Cluens, one of “the girls,” asking her to come over in the afternoon. Marie was expecting a few other callers. Anna said that Ruth was coming for her and if Ruth had made no other plans she’d be glad to go.

She was all dressed, and looking at herself in the bird’s-eye maple dresser mirror. She approved of her looks, for, at thirty-five, it was quite all right to have a few wrinkles and a sprinkling of grey hair. Most women of thirty-five looked older.

Then Anna remembered that she had neglected to put on her spats. She had bought some tan ones, a few weeks before, while shopping with Ruth, who had bought grey. Spats are awkward things to button, after one is dressed, when one hasn’t a maid, and Anna had taken on a few extra pounds recently. She finally managed to button them. Then, suddenly, button-hook still in her hand, after she had finished buttoning her spats, Anna sat upright on the bird’s-eye maple chair and thought, for the first time in months, about herself.

Here she was—buttoning spats! She hated to button them. What a bore, what a terrible bore it was, to button them! And, to-night, she would have to unbutton them, and to-morrow afternoon, she would have to take the spots out of them, if there were any spots, and button them again.

And it wasn’t only spats. Of course she didn’t have to wear spats. It was the other things. Anna thought of all of the other pieces of clothes she wore, her vest, copied after its more expensive Italian silk sisters, her “Teddy-bears,” the delicate and modest name “the girls” had taken to calling their combinations, then corsets, stockings, camisole, skirt—every garment requiring buttoning or fastening or tying or pinning. Each one had to be pulled in place or puffed or tied. And, in the evening, each one had to be taken off again.

Anna thought of how, each morning, she had to go through the same process of bathing and putting on a number of things. Then, she had to get breakfast and wash the dishes. Then she had to clean and do some washing, usually those same underneaths, and then dress again. And then go out and then come home and cook dinner—and eat it—and then wash more dishes and then spend an evening at something tiresome—and then undress again. Life stretched out before Anna—a void of little things—punctuated only by dressing and undressing.

The worst of it was, after she was dressed, there was nothing to do. There is some object in dressing if one has an appointment, a little secret meeting, a half hour’s flirtation, a dinner, the meeting of new people, adventure, anything. Then, indeed, may one dress without heeding the buttons. But Anna knew that there were no surprises in her day—that there never could be—that nothing could come that would be pleasurable enough to make up for the thousand unbuttonings.