At the corner Edna found Dot. She was standing in front of a shoe store
that had been a saloon a few years before. The empty streets were
drying gradually, sulkily, and a moldy-looking moon moved sluggishly
between gray stripes of sky.
Dot said nothing. She watched Edna’s approach curiously over the
rumpled handkerchief that fluttered between her eyes and mouth with
unnecessary, important little jerks.
“What are you waiting for?” asked Edna.
“Car.”
“Where do you think you’re going?”
No answer.
“Come on home with me, Kid.”
Dot neither moved nor answered, and Edna laughed a low, reassuring
laugh.
“Don’t be foolish now, Dottie. You’ll be better off at my house for the
night than sitting around Penn Station.”
“Aw, Jim’ll be over to your place yelling some more.”
“No,” said Edna. “Jim won’t be over.” She put a hand on Dot’s arm and
pushed her into action.
“Look here, Edna. I ain’t ashamed of nothing, see? Get that straight.
I’d ’a’ told Jim how it was if my father hadn’t been there. Don’t do me
any favors thinking I’m the goat of Jim’s peeve. He’s right. I--I did
fall for Eddie Collins.”
“Oh, don’t I know it, Kid? Come on, forget it.”
“How do you know it?”
“I knew it the night you came over and got me to square things with
Jim.”
“It hadn’t happened then, Edna.”
“No, but I knew it was going to. It happened tonight.”
“Yes, it happened tonight. And,” said Dot, finding Edna’s eyes in the
glare of an arc light, “I’m glad.”
“Who you arguing with, Dottie? Who you trying to convince? I don’t care
a row of pins that you signed over all you have to Eddie Collins. All
I’m asking is, will you sleep at my house tonight?”
Dot picked up her valise, and together they walked down Willis Avenue.
Silently they marched past the dairies and lingerie shops, past
butchers and milliners, grocers and hardware. At the crosstown tracks
they paused for a moment to let a weary trolley take itself westward.
It passed them, uttering a strange, weird noise peculiar to trolleys on
damp nights.
Across the street the lights of Beck’s bakery blinked affably.
“Let’s get coffee and peach pie,” said Edna.
Dot wordlessly followed her into the shop.
“Good evening, Mrs. Driggs,” said the baker. “How’s the little fellow?”
“Oh, he’s fine,” said Edna, “fresh as ever.”
“Well, just like the rain tonight, you gotta take the bad with the
good.” Curious indeed is the hankering of the uptown tradesman to strew
the path of his customer with gems of philosophical wisdom.
Dot was already seated in the back at one of the tables. She had
unbuttoned her coat and was gnawing thoughtfully at a thumb nail.
“Say,” she asked when Edna had joined her. “Why did you seem to be on
Jim’s side up in the house?”
“Gee, you Haleys are dumb. I wanted you to get your clothes.”
Dot smiled apologetically. “I thought sure you’d left me flat, Edna. I
might have known that you wouldn’t. Gosh, what’ll Jim say to you when
he finds out that you and me are still friends?” Dot was too young
and too interested in the string of events that had suddenly unwound
themselves in her placid existence to notice Edna’s expression or to
give her a chance to reply. “I never thought I’d get married so soon,”
she said.
“Well,” said Edna, “‘marry in haste and repent at leisure,’ or ‘he who
hesitates is lost.’ Take your pick, Dot.”
Dot smiled over at Edna. She felt cheerful and thrilled. Tomorrow she
would be married to Eddie. Tonight she would sleep at Edna’s house.
Edna was her friend. Yes, tonight was all mapped out and tomorrow was
her wedding day. The day after? Well, that would be passed in a sort of
dreamy and very delightful stupor. She would be Eddie’s wife. Nothing
annoying was ever going to happen again. Nothing annoying--
“The first week I was married,” said Edna suddenly, “I damn near
starved to death.”
“But I’ll bet you didn’t mind,” said Dot.
“What do you mean, didn’t mind? I could ’a’ killed Marty. He lost his
job right before the wedding, and I didn’t want to postpone it. By the
way, did you and Eddie get around to talking about anything besides how
sweet you were?”
“He never says I’m sweet, Edna. He’s a funny fellow. Funny that I
should be so crazy about him. It ain’t as though he was handsome
either. But gee, Edna, he’s so nice.”
“Down to earth, Kid. Has he got any money saved?”
Dot blushed uncomfortably. This wasn’t at all nice of Edna.
“Gosh, I don’t know. He didn’t tell me nothing about that, and how can
you ask a fellow such a thing?”
“I’ll ask him,” said Edna.
“Oh, Edna, don’t you dare. He’d be wild. He’d think that you were
awfully nosey.”
“No doubt,” said Edna. “He’s not crazy about me now; so I guess I’d
better wait till you start to get slim before asking you over to
dinner.”
“It won’t be that bad,” said Dot, seriously. “I’ll keep my job, and
Eddie gets a nice salary. I’ll bet it’ll be grand.”
“Well, if it ain’t,” said Edna, “it won’t be because you looked on the
dark side.”
The coffee and pie arrived. Coffee in heavy mugs. Pie, a generous chunk
with the crust lying loosely above the thickened mess of peaches. Edna
picked up her fork with a brisk, businesslike gesture. Dot was less
interested. After all, this was the eve of her wedding.
The pie disappeared. The coffee lingered.
“Edna,” said Dot, “was the night you got married the first time Marty
ever touched you? You know what I mean.”
“Yes, and we’d kept company for three years.”
“You were good, weren’t you? Better than me.”
“But I’m sorry now. Look how short a time I had him.”
“Tough, Edna! Gee, it must be awful. I couldn’t stand it if anything
happened to Eddie.”
Edna looked over at Dot’s very young, very solemn face.
“You’d stand it, Kid. You’d be surprised what these old beans of ours
will stand. But you probably won’t lose him unless a blonde comes
along.”
The cue was given. It was time for the conversation to jump back to
pointless pleasantries, but Dot still had another momentous comment
which had to be made.
“I’d kill him if there ever was another woman,” she said. “I might even
kill them both.”
Edna was happily absorbed in watching her empty plate. “Some more pie,
Dot?” she suggested.
“No, I got enough pie. Sure, I’d kill the both of them.”
Edna got up from the table. “Come on, Dot,” she said. “You won’t get
any sleep tomorrow night; so you’d better come along now.”
Dot’s quick blush rushed into action, and Edna laughed. She paid Mr.
Beck his forty cents, remarking as she did so, “Miss Haley is getting
married tomorrow.”
“Fine. Good wishes,” said the baker amiably. “Did you get a good man?”
“The best in the world,” said Dot.
Mr. Beck’s fat stomach shook delightedly, and his blond mustache
quivered in sympathy.
“That’s what they think, eh, Mrs. Driggs? A year from now she’ll be
saying--Ah, well.”
A sudden sigh caused the happy stomach to rise and then fall dejectedly
into still dignity. “Young love is beautiful, but like the flowers and
sunshine, it passes quick.”
“You old crêpe-hanger,” said Dot.
“Ach, your love will be different. It will last for ever.” The twinkle
in his eye was of the variety which fears it will be overlooked.
In silence, Dot and Edna continued their walk. Dot still felt thrilled.
She looked up at the skies. It seemed the thing to do with all this
exultation. The sky was not a promising sight, but nothing could have
quenched her buoyant spirits so long as she knew that shortly she would
be Eddie’s wife.
Edna’s house. She had a hall, too. A long hall through which one had to
tiptoe because the baby was asleep in the back room. Edna called him
the baby, but of course he wasn’t, although one did have to tiptoe. At
the end of the hall there was an abrupt turn; once around the turn,
everything was all right. Visitors could make all the noise they wanted
to. They could play the Victrola or scream conversation at some one
who might be right in front of the baby’s door. Once around the turn,
everything was all right.
The room found there was cut glass, or at least that was a first
impression of it. There was an astonishingly large cut-glass lamp on
the table, that had no proportionable relation to the rest of the room.
The sideboard fairly sagged beneath the weight of nappies, ice tubs,
and fruit bowls. The china closet flashed a glimmering, glassy smile,
and on the window sill a vase with the fashionable “daisy cut” posed
haughtily like a white and dazzling mannequin.
There were portières made of green plush ropes and a couch with a
red, green, and yellow cover. The red predominated, and the couch
opened--two items which had brought the couch and its cover to be part
of the household effects of Mrs. Edna Driggs.
The wall paper was blue. The landlord had permitted Edna her own choice
with the renewal of her lease two years before.
“The wall paper goes with my rug,” she often pointed out to friends on
their first visit.
Sue Cudahy had said, “It didn’t go with your rug to the cleaners,” and
Edna had sort of lost pride in her wall paper since then.
Dot threw her hat and coat on the couch and sat down beside them.
“Hey, get up,” said Edna. “What do you think we’re going to do? Sit
around all night and talk about what you would do if you caught Eddie
with another girl? Get up. I’m going to make the bed.”
“Aw, let’s talk a little while, Edna, I ain’t sleepy.”
“That’s tough, because I am. You can sleep next to the window where you
can talk it over with the breezes.”
Edna’s words came from the closet, where she was tidily leaving her
coat upon a hanger. Dot watched her as she rushed about, pushing the
chairs this way and that to make room for the ever-ceremonious opening
of the couch. When the chairs had been grouped about in a perfectly
suitable manner, Edna gathered her sheets and pillows together so that
all would be in readiness.
“Look out,” she said to Dot. Then, presto, the couch was a bed large
enough for two. Edna could ill conceal the pleasure she felt at having
played so important a part in this startling exhibition of modern magic.
“I wouldn’t be without one of these sliding couches,” she said, trying
to make her voice sound casual.
“I could stand you being without one tonight,” said Dot. “I bet I don’t
close my eyes.”
“Well, if you insist on talking once I’ve said good night, I’ll close
them for you,” Edna warned her. “Now hop out of your clothes and sleep
your last time away from Eddie.”
Dot undressed leisurely. Edna watched her from the bed and kept up a
rapid flow of disgusted comments.
“Say, are you dying? Come on. You don’t have to sew that ribbon now.
Turn out the light, will you? I’m sleepy. Listen, Dot, tomorrow
you’ll be dying for another hour’s sleep, and once my kid is up, your
morning’s rest is just naturally finished. Come on, will you?”
“I’ll turn out the light, Edna, but I don’t think I’ll get in for a
while.”
“What are you going to do? Sit by the window and commune with yourself?
Come on.”
And in the end Dot climbed into bed and was asleep an hour before Edna.
The new day began with Floyd Driggs yanking impishly at Dot’s hair.
He was a solemn-eyed child, strangely unsmiling and incongruously
mischievous. There was something vaguely Japanese in the small, wise
face.
“Wake up, Dottie, wake up. You gotta be married. Who you gonna marry?”
Dot sat up briskly. No sudden realization of this day’s significance
dawned upon her. She had been conscious even in her sleep that this day
was to be different from all others.
“Is Eddie here?” she asked.
The little boy shook his head gravely. “No one’s here but me and Mamma
and you.”
Dot smiled. Of course Eddie wasn’t here. He didn’t know that she had
spent the night at Edna’s.
“Where’s your mother?”
“Mamma’s gone to the drug store to telephone. She says she’s gonna tell
your boss that you’re very sick. Are you very sick, Dottie? Mamma says
no use in you losing your job just because you lost your head. Did you
lose your head, Dottie? Don’t look like you did.”
“Hush, darling,” said Dot. “You talk too much.”
“So do you and Mamma,” said Floyd, in the tone of one who remarks on an
interesting coincidence. “Why do we all talk too much?”
Dot lay down again. No use asking Floyd to go away while she dressed.
She would have to wait for Edna to return and call off her child.
Meanwhile it was pleasant just to lie there and think of Eddie.
The door at the end of the hall banged, and Floyd ran to meet his
mother as though she had just returned from a tour of the Far East.
Dot jumped from the bed and slipped into a kimono which she found on a
chair beside her. The storks flying across the crinkly material with
gay disregard of what is expected in a stork’s flight were supposed to
conjure up visions of sparkling-eyed geishas and the flowery kingdom,
but Hans Andersen was still too fresh in Dot’s memory. It was Hans
Andersen of whom Dot thought while Edna repeated her conversation with
Dot’s boss.
“I said to him, ‘Miss Haley has a terrible toothache and she hasn’t
slept a wink all night and she’s just drowsed off now and I hate to
wake her.’ ‘Well, don’t wake her,’ he says. ‘Let her sleep and tell her
not to come in until she feels perfectly all right again.’ That was
nice of him, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, he’s a nice old duck,” said Dot. “Shall I tell him tomorrow when I
go in that I got married?”
“I would,” said Edna. “He’ll probably think it’s a good joke about your
friend pretending you had a toothache.”
Dot sat down and began to pull on her stockings. If you rush downtown
every morning at eight o’clock, you haven’t the daily bath habit. You
put on your stockings and then your pumps. You keep your nightgown on
while you slide your chemise up under it. Then you take off the gown
and go to the bathroom. You wash your face, neck, and ears and brush
your teeth. Then you wash your hands and arms. Sometimes if there is a
comb near the basin you experiment with different parts in your hair
before the medicine-chest mirror. But whatever you do at that mirror
doesn’t count. Back in the bedroom, the actual hair-dressing is done.
But before that you powder, your forehead first, working downward
to your neck; then rouge on your cheeks, and next your lipstick is
applied. _Then_ you do your hair, and last you get into your dress,
slipping it over your feet so as not to disarrange the hair. Now you’re
dressed.
“Edna, I think I’ll go out and phone Eddie.”
“Have your breakfast first.”
“No, I’ll be right back. It’ll only take a minute. I think I’ll phone
the rooming-house. I don’t think he went to work today and he’s
probably waiting for a call.”
Dot went then, singing as she walked down the hall:
“Stella, be a regular fellar,
Oh, Stella, I love you so--”
At the drug store she changed her dollar into silver and picked out a
phone booth. She knew Eddie’s number. In a minute the shrill annoyed
tones of the landlady came over the wire.
“Could I speak to Mr. Collins, please?”
“Who?”
“Mr. Collins.”
“Mr. Carlton?”
“No, Mr. Collins. Eddie Collins.”
“Oh, no. He isn’t here any more. He moved.”
Silence.
Then Dot heard her own voice asking, “Are you sure? He lived there last
night.”
“Yes, I know. He moved early this morning.”
“Oh,” said Dot.
The landlady was back in her kitchen feeding her family of cats before
Dot remembered to hang up the receiver.
Steady. No panic now. One more place to get him. He must be there. He
must be. Dot waited, listening intently. Every click on the wire made
her brows draw together nervously. She stared into the blackness of the
mouthpiece, waiting--waiting.
“Hello,” said a curt businesslike voice.
“Hello,” said Dot. “Is this the Uptown Radio Shop?”
“Yes.”
“Is Eddie Collins there?”
“Who?” The voice had grown surly and less businesslike. This female
obviously was not going to buy a radio set nor even have her battery
charged.
“Eddie Collins.”
“No.”
“Do you know where I could get him?”
“Nope.”
“Does he--does he still work there?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I do. I’m the girl he’s engaged to.”
“Oh, no. He won’t work here no more. I fired him this morning for
robbing the cash register.”
Here was humor. Dot recognized but did not welcome it.
“Did he leave?” she inquired.
“No, I’m telling you I fired him.”
Dot hung up the receiver after having said thank you. One would never
discover from this feeble wit whether Eddie had quit his job or was
still there. This was the sort of man who is convulsed at the mention
of twins and who slips castor oil into his friends’ coffee cups.
Dot went back to Edna’s. She had left the door unlatched, and quietly
she walked down the hall to the living-room. In the kitchen, Edna was
chastising her son.
“And if you ever do it again I’ll give you another slap. The idea! A
whole pound of butter! Do you think butter grows on trees? I told you
to put a piece of butter in the frying-pan.”
“Well, that was a piece, Ma.”
“And no back talk either. The idea!”
In fact it seemed that the idea was the thing which irritated Edna more
than anything else, the principle of the thing, as it were.
In pursuit of a tablecloth, she came into the living-room. Dot was
sitting at the window staring out at the clothes lines heavy with
frolicsome white shapes.
“Can you beat that?” demanded Edna. “A whole pound of butter the kid
throws into the frying-pan.”
Dot had gathered as much. She turned and offered a horrified shake of
her head in comment.
“The whole pound. I wasn’t watching him, and before I knew it, it’s all
melted. Did you get Eddie?”
“No.”
“No? Where is he?”
“I don’t know and I guess he don’t want me to know either.”
“What’s this?” The tragic fate of a whole pound of butter suddenly
seemed very unimportant.
“He’s moved from his house without leaving a message for me, and they
wouldn’t tell me nothing at the radio shop.”
“Hm.” Edna sat down. Her face wore an expression of deep reflection.
She was recalling her glimpses of Eddie, what he had said, how he had
acted. In the end she patted Dot’s hand comfortingly.
“He’ll be here. There’s a mistake somewhere.”
“Yeh,” said Dot bitterly. “Last night.”
“Oh, you’re one of those trusting girls, eh? When you can see
everything you believe it, but if the light goes out for a second you
begin to doubt.”
“No, but oh, Edna, don’t it look funny? He’s moved away, and if he
wanted to find me, how could he? He don’t know I’ve left home.”
“Don’t be a mug, Dot. What’s more natural than that he should come
here?”
Dot got up from her chair and walked to the couch. “It’s more natural,”
she said, “that he wouldn’t want to marry me at all. He’s like all the
rest of the men.”
Edna laughed. “Listen to Experienced Agnes,” she said to the daisy-cut
vase.
“Well, gee, Edna, you don’t have to have gone with a million men to
know that they don’t want to marry you after you’ve fallen for them.”
“Movies, Kid, movies. This is real life, and Eddie’s a real fellow. If
he didn’t want to marry you, he’d never have told you he would.”
Dot’s lids drooped over her eyes. “You’re just trying to cheer me up,”
she said sulkily. “You don’t like Eddie and it ain’t natural you’d be
praising him so if you were saying what you really think.”
Edna’s lips curled with exasperation. “Right,” said she. “I’m just
being Pollyanna. Eddie’s a filthy skunk. He never intended to marry
you, and by now I’ll bet he’s halfway to Australia. What should he
marry you for? He done his dirty work and is probably laughing a whole
string of ha-ha’s. You might as well become a streetwalker now. That’s
all that’s left for you. As for myself, I’m going to the kitchen to
save that piece of salt pork from Floyd. All men are up to destruction.”
So saying, Edna disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. Dot
considered the room uninterestedly. What was it all for? Something that
Sue Cudahy often said came back to her: You’re born, you kick around
here for a while, and then you die. Sue Cudahy indeed! That she should
complain! It wouldn’t have been Sue to let one rainy night ruin the
rest of her life. And if, by any chance, Sue had been frail, it would
have been like her to spend the night in her lover’s bed in order to
get him down to City Hall early.
Edna called from the kitchen, “Come on, Dot, have some eggs and coffee.”
“No, I don’t think I want any, thanks. I’m going out for a while.”
Edna appeared on the threshold. Her eyes were no party to the
expression of disgust with which her lips were twisted.
“What do you mean, out? Where will you go?”
“Oh, for a walk.”
“Don’t be a fool. Have some coffee.”
Suddenly Dot was crying. Great, splashing tears fell unhampered to the
gay little pink ruffle that trimmed her dress.
“Oh, Edna, I’m so miserable.”
“I know it, Kid, but Eddie will come. I know he will.”
“He won’t. He won’t. Why should he?”
“Because he’s wild about you.”
“He couldn’t be wild about anybody, Edna, he isn’t that kind.”
Dot’s head fell to her arm, and she surrendered with a perverse delight
to being as miserable as the situation called for. Floyd came from
the kitchen to watch. He was interested but rather hoped that Eddie
wouldn’t come. If Dot got married she’d never be able to stay over
night at his house any more. Floyd knew.
Dot’s sobs continued. Edna smoothed the silky brown bob and murmured
encouraging words, to no avail.
“Snap out of it, Kid,” said Edna. “I’ll have the neighbors in asking
what’s the matter if you don’t shut up.”
For answer Dot’s weeping increased.
“You never do things by halves, do you?” Edna asked.
Dot raised a tragic face from her sleeve.
“No, I wish I did, and I wish I hadn’t given in to him.”
Edna envied Dot. She herself was past the age where there was
compensation in dramatizing a bitter disappointment.
“Get this straight, Kid,” she said, catching Dot’s tear-filled eyes.
“Whether you go through life with Eddie or without him, remember that
you didn’t give in to Eddie. You gave in to yourself.”
“Yes, but he ought to come. I want him so.”
“He’ll come.”
“Never--never--never.”
The doorbell rang. Dot jumped and made a frantic daub at her eyes.
“Probably a peddler,” she said, but not very successfully. Floyd ran to
the door, Edna followed more leisurely, and Dot stood in the doorway,
looking down the long hall.
It was Eddie. Edna had been right. She wasn’t, however, the sort of
person to turn to Dot and announce triumphantly, “I told you so.” What
she said was to Eddie, and it was very low. Dot at the end of the hall
thought it sounded like “You’re a fine bozo.”
“Eddie’s here, Eddie’s here,” shrieked Floyd.
Eddie followed Edna into the apartment. He clutched Dot’s hand as he
passed her, and they walked into the living-room.
“I was up to your house,” said Eddie. “The old man was there. When I
told him I was gonna marry you today he looked kind of like he didn’t
believe it. He said you’d moved; so I come on here. Anything wrong? You
been crying.”
Eddie planted a foot on one of Edna’s chairs and rested contentedly.
“Well, it looked funny,” Dot explained. “Your landlady said you’d left
there, and the radio man wouldn’t tell me anything. Gee, I didn’t know
what to think.”
Eddie laughed easily. “Gosh, women are fools.” He looked at Edna as
though expecting her to agree. “You didn’t think I was going to take
you to live in a room the size of a closet, did you? With a single bed
and one chair.” If the mention of the single bed was out of order,
nobody noticed it, and Eddie continued. “My landlady didn’t have a
double room; so I moved across the street. She was mad, that’s why she
didn’t tell you. I’d ’a’ got here earlier only the boss had a couple of
jobs he wanted me to look at and I thought it would be just as well if
I didn’t lose my job today.”
Edna and Dot exchanged glances.
“Now, Dorothea, do you suppose you could stand the sight of some
coffee?” asked Edna, witheringly.
Dot smiled from Edna to Eddie and back again. They met her smile
indifferently. It wasn’t a very encouraging bridal party. Edna looked
as though she had had just about enough nonsense, and Eddie, having
taken his foot off Edna’s chair, wandered about uneasily.
“Come on, Dot,” he said. “Never mind coffee. We’ll get it somewhere
outside.”
“Her master’s voice,” remarked Edna.
“Edna has coffee waiting for me,” said Dot, unhappily.
“Oh, don’t bother about that,” Edna hastily answered. “Run along, I’ll
be glad to see you on your way.”
“Aren’t you coming with us?” Dot paused in the act of planting her
cloche firmly on her head and stared at Edna.
“With you? I should say not. What, me go all the way to City Hall with
what I got to do today?”
“Please, Edna, to see me married.”
“No. Just bring back the certificate and I’ll believe it.”
Dot’s eyes wandered to Eddie. He was sitting on the window sill,
tapping the floor with his foot. She telegraphed him a message of
distress to which he responded feebly.
“Sure, come on with us, Edna.”
Edna shook her head. “No, you’ll manage fine without me.”
Eddie bore her refusal heroically. He shrugged his shoulders, and his
eyes remarked that you couldn’t force a person into accompanying you to
your wedding. Dot picked up her suitcase, and Eddie took it from her.
At the door she flung her arms around Edna’s neck and kissed her. “’By,
Edna, darling, thanks a lot for everything and I’ll be up to see you
tomorrow night.”
“Good-by, dear. Good-by, Eddie.”
“’By,” said Eddie.
Floyd’s impromptu nine thousand, four hundred and eighty-two followed
them out to the street.
“Dottie’s gonna be married,
Married, married.
Dottie’s gonna be married.
Tra la la la--la la.”
“So,” said Eddie when they reached the corner, “you and Edna thought I
ditched you, eh?”
“Edna didn’t,” said Dot, shortly. “She said you’d come.”
“Hm.” Eddie spoke into the cup of his hand where he was lighting a
cigarette. “She probably thought I wouldn’t have the courage to fade
out.”
Dot laughed. “Gee, Edna can’t win in your figuring, can she? What’s
wrong with Edna?”
“Aw, she makes me sick,” said Eddie. “She thinks she’s so God damned
important.”
“Well, she was pretty important last night. What would I have done
without her? My brother kicked me out. I wouldn’t have known what to do
without Edna.”
“You wouldn’t have known what to do without Edna, eh?”
“No. What could I have done?”
Eddie smiled without being amused at anything at all. “Jesus, Kid, you
and I will get along great,” he said somewhat irrelevantly.