David Goodis - The Moon in the Gutter

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.”

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.