“Ah, but these things happen.” Clara drank coffee from a barely chipped cup. “After a few years of marriage one starts to yearn for something more exciting. I was just surprised because she was so religious before. She was always at church, do you remember?”
“Oh, I do.” I did not hold back but rolled my eyes. This was Clara, after all, and I knew she would not judge me. “She is a little less concerned with it now; she teaches Sunday school but isn’t otherwise involved. As long as she did not go with him, I cannot see what harm it does if she became a little weak in the knees.” In my mind, an image of that love bite I had seen flashed before me. It was years ago, though, and had nothing to do with this Peter.
“No, of course not.” Clara’s lips twisted up in a secretive smile. “But I heard him invite her to see the Javanese orchestra play the next day. I wonder if she went.” I looked over at my friend. The years had not been good to her, though not quite as cruel as they had been to me. Her curls had turned a steely gray and deep lines had lodged in her face. Her nose, which had always been prominent, seemed both longer and broader. She still had that same smile, though—that same way of telling a story. I had missed her every day since I moved away. She had been more of a sister to me over the years than the one I paid to have cross the ocean.
“If she did, she didn’t tell me,” I said, a little annoyed that Bella had not told me of this handsome man herself. “Then again, she is a married woman—and he a married man. They may not want to let anyone know if they visited the Midway together.”
Clara leaned a little closer. Her finger drew invisible circles on the tabletop. Even if the room was new, the table was not, and she had drunk countless cups of coffee there before. Perhaps even drawn the same circle in that exact same spot. “Has she done it before?” She had lowered her voice. “Does she . . . find her ‘entertainment’ outside the marriage bed?”
Again, I saw that love bite with my inner eye. “Not that I know,” I said, “but she doesn’t tell me everything. Never did.” I put down the mending in my lap and sighed. “Their marriage isn’t good, I can tell you that much. The way she speaks to him sometimes, it is . . . repulsive. I can barely stand to listen as she taunts him and mocks him. It’s not right for a woman to treat her husband like that.”
Clara was not laughing anymore. She knew me well enough to tell that I was upset. “She has always been a little different, Nellie, that’s nothing new. One must wonder what sort of man he is, though, to let her go on in that way.”
“Ah, he doesn’t understand her.” I shook my head. “He doesn’t understand what he does wrong, and so he cannot correct it either—or talk to her about it.”
“He is not so bright?”
“He is . . . different from us; a little rigid perhaps. He thinks there is only one way to be in this world, and then, when people turn out to be different, he doesn’t understand how that can be. He is simple in that way, I’ll admit to that, but he is the man she married.”
“She makes a fool of him?” Clara toyed with her cup, swilling the remains of her coffee around the bottom.
“That she does. He is no match for the likes of her. He rarely, if ever, puts up a fight.”
“And a fight she must have.” Clara nodded with a thoughtful expression. “That man, though, Peter Gunness, he seems a decent sort. Many a tired wife has tried to sway him since he arrived, but the word is that he will not. He is true to his wife.”
“A rare kind of man indeed,” I said, and then instantly regretted it. I knew of many men who were true, my husband among them. “I fear that his resistance will only make her more determined, though.” I could not help but laugh again; it was all so wicked.
Clara rose to fetch the kettle and fill our cups. She was just as at ease in my new home as she had been in my old one, and it touched me to see it. “I must admit that he seemed a little smitten as well,” she said, “or perhaps it was just compassion. Perhaps he thought that whole scissors affair intriguing. It’s such a silly thing, you know, how something as ordinary as a pair of scissors can suddenly be used as a weapon. Perhaps he admired her for it.”
“Oh, she would certainly like that.” I picked up the mending again. “What is he doing in Chicago?”
Clara sat back down again; the fresh coffee steamed in our cups. “He is working at the stockyards—is a butcher by trade.”
I could not help but chuckle again as I slid the needle through the fabric. “She has always been drawn to such skills,” I admitted. “When she was a girl, she would always go as close as she could to the butchering; often so close that she was blood-splattered in the face when she came home. If she was allowed to, she would stay on until the creature was all taken apart.”
“I can see how Mr. Gunness is alluring, then.” Clara squinted as she threaded the needle. “Perhaps she has retained a glow for the bloody trade.”
A cold shiver ran through me. “It’s hard to grasp what moves her, but perhaps a man with a cleaver does just that. What about the wife? Why is she not here?”
“She is sickly, they say. He means to go back home to her when he is done with his work here.”
“Oh, that’s a good thing, then. At least whatever is between them will shortly come to an end.”
“Indeed,” Clara agreed. “It will not do to have domestic disturbance now that she has that girl to care for.”
* * *
—
It had taken me a while to get used to our new apartment. I could not believe the sheer number of doors. Whenever I opened one, it seemed like another one appeared before me. I had a proper pantry and a sitting room as well, which was something I had never had before. I bought two chairs cheap, and added a little table, so that John and I had a place to sit at night when the dishes in the kitchen were clean and our son was about to go to sleep on the bench. He had turned into such a fine young man, and I could not have been prouder when he started working alongside his father and earned his own wages. Olga was not too far behind; a few years and she would be making it on her own. What would we do then, with only Nora, my youngest, for company?
I could relate to Bella when such thoughts came upon me, how she must have suffered through the years without children. It was different with Jennie, though; she would stay even as other foster children came and left. That little girl was a blessing.
I often looked after her while Bella ran errands, either at our apartment or at their house on Elizabeth Street. I felt that she was a little mine as well, since she called my sister Mama. She had a sunny disposition, and Nora enjoyed being with her as well, as they were almost the same age. The two of them would play for hours, making up their own little world. Though things were not good between Mads and Bella, the child seemed to be—so far—untouched by their discord.