sails on a river and a white excursion boat, up from New York, passed as they sat on a bench under a tree looking across the broad stretch of summer-blue water. They could hear the band on board playing waltzes. Of course, with his limp, they never danced.
Oh, the plans she had that sunny May waltzing rivery day; Once they were established, she would put in tables, redecorate the shop, put up curtains, set out candles, serve chocolate and tea, then, later, buy the shop next door (it was empty that first day she saw it) and start a little restaurant, not one like the Muellers’, for working men, but for travelling salesmen and the better class of people of the town. She saw heir husband in a dark suit and bow tie showing diners to their table, saw waitresses in crisp muslin aprons hurrying with loaded platters out of the kitchen, saw herself seated behind the cash register, smiling as she rang up the checks, saying, ‘I hope you enjoyed your dinner,’ sitting down with friends over coffee and cake when the day’s work was over.
How was she to know that the neighbourhood was going to deteriorate, that the people she would have liked to befriend would consider her beneath them, that the people who would have liked to befriend her she would consider beneath her, that the building next door was to be torn down and a large, clanging garage put up beside the bakery, that the millinery shop was to vanish, that the houses facing the river would be turned into squalid apartments or demolished to make place for junkyards and metal-working shops?
There were never any little tables for chocolate and cakes, never any candles and curtains, never any waitresses, just herself, standing on her feet twelve hours a day summer and winter, selling coarse loaves of bread to grease-stained mechanics and slatternly housewives and filthy children whose parents fought drunkenly with each other in the street on Saturday nights.
Her torment began on her wedding night. In the second-class hotel in Niagara Falls (convenient to Buffalo). All the fragile hopes of the timid, rosy, frail young girl who had been photographed smiling in bridal white beside her unsmiling, handsome groom just eight hours before disappeared in the bloodstained, creaking Niagara bed. Speared helplessly under the huge, scarred, demonically tireless, dark, male body, she knew that she had entered upon her sentence of life imprisonment.
At the end of her week of honeymoon she wrote a suicide note. Then she tore it up. It was an act she was to repeat again and again through the years.
During the day, they were like other honeymooning couples. He was unfailingly considerate, he held her elbow when they crossed the street, he bought her trinkets and took her to the theatre (the last week in which he ever showed any generosity to her. Very soon she discovered she had married a fanatical miser). He took her into ice cream parlours and ordered huge whipped cream sundaes (she had a child’s sweet tooth) and imiled indulgently at her like a favourite uncle as she spooned down the heaped confections. He took her for a ride on the river under the Falls and held her hand lovingly when they walked in the sunlight of the northern summer. They never discussed the nights. When he closed the door behind them after dinner it was as though two different and unconnected souls swooped down to inhabit their bodies. They had no vocabulary with which to discuss the grotesque combat in which they were engaged. The severe upbringing of the Sisters had left her inhi-bited and full of impossible illusions of gentility. Whores had educated him and perhaps he believed all women who were worthy of marriage lay still and terrified in the marriage bed. Or perhaps he thought all American women.
In the end, of course, after months had passed, he recognized that fatalistic, lifeless rejection for what it was, and it enraged him. It spurred him on, made his attacks wilder. He never went with other women. He
Oh, the plans she had that sunny May waltzing rivery day; Once they were established, she would put in tables, redecorate the shop, put up curtains, set out candles, serve chocolate and tea, then, later, buy the shop next door (it was empty that first day she saw it) and start a little restaurant, not one like the Muellers’, for working men, but for travelling salesmen and the better class of people of the town. She saw heir husband in a dark suit and bow tie showing diners to their table, saw waitresses in crisp muslin aprons hurrying with loaded platters out of the kitchen, saw herself seated behind the cash register, smiling as she rang up the checks, saying, ‘I hope you enjoyed your dinner,’ sitting down with friends over coffee and cake when the day’s work was over.
How was she to know that the neighbourhood was going to deteriorate, that the people she would have liked to befriend would consider her beneath them, that the people who would have liked to befriend her she would consider beneath her, that the building next door was to be torn down and a large, clanging garage put up beside the bakery, that the millinery shop was to vanish, that the houses facing the river would be turned into squalid apartments or demolished to make place for junkyards and metal-working shops?
There were never any little tables for chocolate and cakes, never any candles and curtains, never any waitresses, just herself, standing on her feet twelve hours a day summer and winter, selling coarse loaves of bread to grease-stained mechanics and slatternly housewives and filthy children whose parents fought drunkenly with each other in the street on Saturday nights.
Her torment began on her wedding night. In the second-class hotel in Niagara Falls (convenient to Buffalo). All the fragile hopes of the timid, rosy, frail young girl who had been photographed smiling in bridal white beside her unsmiling, handsome groom just eight hours before disappeared in the bloodstained, creaking Niagara bed. Speared helplessly under the huge, scarred, demonically tireless, dark, male body, she knew that she had entered upon her sentence of life imprisonment.
At the end of her week of honeymoon she wrote a suicide note. Then she tore it up. It was an act she was to repeat again and again through the years.
During the day, they were like other honeymooning couples. He was unfailingly considerate, he held her elbow when they crossed the street, he bought her trinkets and took her to the theatre (the last week in which he ever showed any generosity to her. Very soon she discovered she had married a fanatical miser). He took her into ice cream parlours and ordered huge whipped cream sundaes (she had a child’s sweet tooth) and imiled indulgently at her like a favourite uncle as she spooned down the heaped confections. He took her for a ride on the river under the Falls and held her hand lovingly when they walked in the sunlight of the northern summer. They never discussed the nights. When he closed the door behind them after dinner it was as though two different and unconnected souls swooped down to inhabit their bodies. They had no vocabulary with which to discuss the grotesque combat in which they were engaged. The severe upbringing of the Sisters had left her inhi-bited and full of impossible illusions of gentility. Whores had educated him and perhaps he believed all women who were worthy of marriage lay still and terrified in the marriage bed. Or perhaps he thought all American women.
In the end, of course, after months had passed, he recognized that fatalistic, lifeless rejection for what it was, and it enraged him. It spurred him on, made his attacks wilder. He never went with other women. He
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