Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

The newsstand was out at the curb, but it faced inward, toward the subway entrance. This was highly advantageous and Mrs. Maloney, the lessee, had to pay considerable for the concession. However, she made considerable, so the arrangement was to no one’s disadvantage. Mrs. Maloney was a woman of remarkable hardihood and, considering her occupation, surprising years. She habitually wore a coat-sweater in the colder seasons, and drank hot coffee from a container, but never stayed away from her stand. She must by all appearances have already been at the very top of her sixties. She had, however, a nephew — himself far from a youth — who spelled her at mealtimes and performed the harder details for her, such as lifting the papers from the ground to counter. She was, incidentally, called simply “Mom” by all and sundry. Very few actually knew her name.

The driver called out, “Hello, Mom,” jumped down, ran around to the open back of his truck, and hoisted a towering bale of 9 o’clocks, bound around with hairy hempen cord. He staggered a few bow-legged steps, then dropped the newspapers on the sidewalk with a detonating and dust-producing thud.

He said, “Any returns?”

Mom said, “Twanny-four.”

He scowled — he didn’t like returns — but picked them up from her counter and went back to his truck with them. He had to — that was the arrangement.

This completed their dealings until tomorrow night. The truck speeded off to feed the next stand along its delivery route.

Mom’s aforementioned nephew ran out with a short sharp-edged implement and flicked the hempen binding apart. Then he hoisted the massive bale — but by segments, not all at one time — to the counter. Mom in turn disposed a portion of them underneath the counter to wait their turn, placed the rest on top of the counter for immediate sale. The topmost paper invariably — and tonight was no exception — had to be discarded as unsalable. Either the rope had cut it into tatters at the edges, or the pitch to the pavement had smudged obliterating dust into it.

Mom glanced, but with only perfunctory interest, at the undamaged one right below as she threw away the top copy. The covering leaf which folded and went around to the back, was a peculiar pale-green color. The fill, however, was white. On the pale-green outer page, in lettering the size of the top line of an optician’s chart, blazed the words: BLONDE BEAUTY SLAIN. In the space left was a photograph. The two, however, had nothing to do with one another; for in minuscule print, almost invisible compared to its titanic reference, was the footnote: story on page 2. This was called a teaser or hook, the idea being first to catch the reader on the outside and then draw him into the inside. Its psychology was, to say the least, illogical — for it could have been assumed that the reader had already purchased the paper by that time anyway.

Mom sat back, propped her elbows up, and waited. From that point on it was up to the customers.

A man came along, peeled the top newspaper off the pile, threw a dime onto the one below. Quick as a flash, Mom threw down a nickel, and the dime was gone.

The man—

The man put his key in the door and went in, and he was finally home. It always surprised him that so small a flat could produce so much noise. Not that he minded it; he would have missed it — it wouldn’t have been home without it. He wouldn’t have wanted to come in here and find it deathly quiet; it would have frightened him.

She had just spanked Terry and he was howling in the corner. The little girl, who made much less direct noise, but far more indirect, than her brother, was squatting on the floor in front of the blaring television. Even the meat balls were contributing to the din, hissing and sputtering away.

The little girl ran to him and kissed him. Then the little boy. Then he went to her and kissed her. She was harassed, he could tell. He didn’t blame her.

“What kind of day did you have?” he said. It was the wrong thing to have said — he could tell right away.

“What kind of a day did I have?” she declaimed. “You can well ask that! You can well ask!”

She interrupted the recital that he knew was about to come by turning her head sharply. “Milly, turn off that thing! You’ve had enough now! It’s giving me a headache.”

Then back to him again. “I had my usual glamorous day. What else? You didn’t expect it to be any different, did you? I know I don’t — not any more.”

He turned away from her, sought out his usual chair, and sank into it, weary, the paper he had just bought unopened on his lap. This had to be got through, he knew. More and more frequently lately, this had to be got through.

“It’s housework, housework, all day long!” she went on gratingly. She was coming and going, putting plates on the table now. “Doing the dishes, making the beds, cleaning, cleaning! And when it comes to washing clothes, I never get through. I no sooner turn around, and they’ve gotten themselves all dirty again.”

“Kid are kids,” he said leniently. “You were that way when you were a kid. I was too. You can’t keep them locked up in a glass case. It isn’t right.”

“That’s easy for you to say, you don’t have to wash their things.” The meat balls had finally appeared. They all gathered around the table, which was in the one main room. She resumed: “Then when I do get to go out, in the afternoons, where do I go? The A. and P. or Safeway, Safeway or the A. and P. That’s my outing. That’s my recreation. I have to push a cart through the street both ways, coming and going. I’m so sick of standing on check-out lines and having arguments with people in back of me, people in front of me. I’m so sick of looking cans of corned beef in the face. Today they short-changed me a dollar, a whole dollar.”

“Don’t they give out those little paper tapes with the items listed on them?”

“It wasn’t on there. It was in the change he handed back to me; I had a terrible time about it. They had to empty out the whole cash register. Then coming back, a taxi made a right turn into Amsterdam Avenue and tipped over my shopping cart, and I had to pick up everything all over the street.”

“Were you crossing against the light?” he said uneasily. “Don’t ever—”

“No, but they changed too quick for me.”

“My day wasn’t good either,” he said. But he said it uncomplainingly, as if to show her what to do with a day that wasn’t so good.

“Yes, but with a man it’s different,” she caught him up immediately. “You get out of the house at least, the first thing in the morning, and don’t come back to it again until the evening. You don’t have the kids in your hair the whole livelong day—”

She had stopped eating now, overcome by her frustration.

“Eat,” he urged gently. “Don’t let it get you.”

“I can’t help it. I should never have—”

He seemed to know what she’d been about to say. “Should never have married me?” He finished it for her ruefully.

“No, not you. I should never have married at all. I should have been like my sister. I should have listened to her—”

Here comes her sister again, he thought, but forbearingly.

“She has a maid, she has a gorgeous apartment, she dresses like a queen—”

“I know, I know,” he said patiently. “You told me many times.”

She put the kids in the bedroom. When she came back he laid down the paper and looked at her, with a sort of understanding pity, a sort of pitying understanding. “Let the dishes go,” he said. “For once. Come on, I’ll take you to the movies. Get your hat. It’ll take your mind off things.”