She shook her head. Her ears were ringing, as if there were an echo in his voice.
“No, of course not,” he said. He twirled his cap nervously in his hands. “You would have notified the precinct, correct? Well, I have no real news for you, Mrs. Butterworth. We have correlated your description to all homicides and injuries currently known in the city and surrounds. Nothing, unfortunately. Well, really, fortunately might be more to the point. What we have, ma’am, is basically nothing at the moment. I did speak with your landlord, and he apprised me of the fact that Mr. Butterworth pays twice yearly, always in full, by cash. So that would have been the last of June. You now have a bit under three months remaining until it is due again. I assume you knew all of this.”
“No, sir. Actually, I did not. The flat was his, you see, and I just moved into it with him when we married.”
“And are you on his bank account?”
Her stomach tightened. “No. No, I am not.”
“Do you know the bank with which he is affiliated, Mrs. Butterworth?”
There was a long silence while she turned her head aside. “No, Officer. Actually, now that I think back on it, I find that I am not aware of his ever going to a bank here, or even mentioning a bank. Perhaps he handled his finances from Memphis, where much of his work was centered.” Alice looked up at Sergeant Ames. “How odd that seems now . . . not to even know. We simply never discussed the financial side of—”
“So, you are not aware of how your rent and other finances were handled?”
“No.” Again, she turned aside, feeling a surprising sense of shame. “No, you see Mr. Butterworth was . . . was reticent to discuss finances with me. He said . . . he said those things were a man’s duty and I need not bother my head with such things.” Another pause. “Well, he seemed to take any curiosity on my part as an affront to his ability to take care of things.”
“I see. A matter of manhood, then. A common enough stance, I suppose. To be expected, in spite of the havoc it creates for women in crisis.” Ames twirled his cap again and slipped it onto his smoothly oiled hair. “Well, I’ll not bother you any further, Mrs. Butterworth. At least you may rest assured of a roof until the New Year.” He tipped his cap and stepped away. “You’ll notify us if you have any news.” It was not even a question that trailed above the click of his boots, his retreating back in the stairwell.
*
The following morning Alice made no attempt at eating. She slipped on her pale gray walking skirt and a simple white shirtwaist. Nothing fancier. From the hall tree she took her shawl, her narrow-brimmed straw hat, her parasol, and pulled her gloves on at the same time she tried to close the door. The whole effort resulted in one glove and the parasol on the hall floor and a self-reprimand at her perpetual clumsiness. With the door finally locked, her belongings retrieved, Alice descended the stairs and set off for Carson Pirie Scott & Company, sure that she might return to her old job.
But such was not the case. The manager was new and had no positions unfilled. And no, he was not in need of extra hands for the holidays two months hence. She might inquire again at the time. And no, he would not keep her name and information for mailing in case of an opening. If such should happen, there were at least two to three inquiries for such jobs every week. And no, neither her past position there nor any reassurance of her advanced skills was of any import at this time. She was welcome to inquire again as often as she liked.
Though she had a roof, Alice knew she had little to cover food for more than perhaps two months, if she was exceptionally frugal and ate a small meal only twice a day. She had let herself become dependent on Howard for all finances, and now there was no Howard. She trudged home, dragging her abandonment with each step, her very eyes now fatigued.
Alice let herself into the empty flat and closed the door, then leaned her back against it. It was a way to feel something, the sturdy wooden frame supporting her. She was lost in the utter emptiness of it all. Had he, in truth, abandoned her, left her here alone with nothing? There had been no anger, no argument, no distance more than the ordinary. A simple goodbye of no great import, an ordinary goodbye, like all his other impersonal goodbyes. Was he injured? He had identification. Surely word spread through the official means—police, rail workers, company workers. But there was no more word than there was Howard. And Alice, with barely the means for subsistence.
In the hours that followed, Alice gathered herself with simple determination. With that sustenance, she gained strength. Her thoughts began to center. She had let six months pass by without purpose, nursing her grief, attending Howard’s coming and going, using all her strength to maintain some glint of normalcy in his presence, weeping private tears when he was absent. Perhaps, she thought, she might inquire at the White Way Dry Cleaning five blocks from the flat if they might have occasional inquiries for alterations. She had to assume they did. All the staff were familiar with her there because of the unusual frequency with which she had delivered and fetched Howard’s cleaning. Indeed, it proved they did have need and were all too happy to find an experienced seamstress in possession of her own private sewing machine, a useful gift from Howard—she choked at the memory—before baby Jonathan was born. Her fevered baby who had died in the desperate bath to save him.
Alice ran her fingers along the machine, the smooth surface of the metal, feeling its cold, its lifelessness. Yet if she put her foot on its pedal, rocked it as she had rocked her sweet son, it would whir to life, though her baby never would. She remembered her bulging belly, the alterations to her clothes, her anticipation and joy as she handled those soft fabrics, creating a layette, stitching the edges of soft infant gowns for the coming birth. She remembered the hours of that birth, the mess when her water broke, the absence of Howard, gone to fetch the midwife and failing to return in time, the last impelling pains, blood on the sheets—Howard’s sheets—and the penetrating warmth of her infant boy slid from her as she held him, white and waxy. She had never felt such love, visceral and penetrating. Her thoughts ran back to his first bath in the sink to cleanse him, his soft skin emerging. And then to the last bath, only months later, the cold water in the sink to reduce his fever, her own fever, struggling into the kitchen with fresh towels, Howard’s perfectly groomed hands holding him, Jonathan’s beseeching eyes blank under the water.
She had not touched this sewing machine since the day her baby died. Now perhaps Howard was also dead. But she was not. She was alive. She had to face that being alive necessitated feeding herself, keeping a roof over her head. Her skills for doing so were finely honed, if limited. Now she had a way to use them to sustain herself.
CHAPTER 8
As Alice opened the door to the flat, something under her foot slipped with a slight crackle. Looking down past the dirty edge of her skirt, Alice saw the equally dirty edge of an envelope. As she reached down, she only just recognized the garbled handwriting: her brother Gifford’s. He’d struggled through the fourth class at school before he gave it up to go work the farm with their Pa. The envelope was ragged and smeared, posted September 14, 1899, ten days ago, to her previous address, with markings of redirection, the first old flat marked out, the new one scratched almost illegibly up one vertical edge. It was her first news from the farm in two years. No one wrote to her from home. She swiveled side to side, flapping the envelope in the air. Then sat, held it in her lap, her hands gone numb. Alice did not want this letter now; this letter could only be dire news. She dreaded opening it more than receiving news of Howard. In time—she had no idea how much—she picked up a knife from the table and slipped it into the fold.
The letter was short but nonetheless difficult to make out.