A wretchedness had flattened Albert when he heard about Cummings, a spine-wracking fever had forced him to bed for a day. But then he’d stood up, moved on, watched his back, gotten his job at the bank, accepted and framed and hung his indecipherable diploma, married Bea a year later, and so on and so forth. Then last year he’d run into one of the boys who’d been expelled, Tederick Whitlock III, onetime champion sailor and heir, tending bar at the Green Lamp (an underground coupling of the establishments formerly known as the Lighted Lamp and Green Shutters). Albert didn’t recognize Teddy at first, changed as he was, fluid and toothy where he’d been stiff and grim, his shirt open to his bony, aristocratic chest. Older. But Teddy recognized Albert. He took Albert’s money, rose on his toes to lean across the bar, and said, You fuck.
They’d taken up together. Teddy beat on Albert, screwed him, bit him, called him names, and Albert, so much bigger than Teddy, took it as his punishment. For months this went on and Albert thought it would continue going on, a mutual convenience. But then Teddy had questions. He wanted to talk. He wanted Albert to say why he’d lied and when Albert said he hadn’t lied, Teddy said of course he had, and when Albert said he’d had to, Teddy refused to hit him—he said calmly, We all had to. Albert said Teddy’s breeding afforded him leniency in the world, that he didn’t know what it was to be a Jew, and Teddy reminded him that he’d been disowned. He hadn’t seen his siblings in years. Albert said, At least you’re free, and Teddy laughed a quiet, mean laugh and Albert realized he’d fallen in love with Teddy, which had never happened to him before in such an appalling, unfixable way. But Teddy was done. Teddy said he’d met a boy, and I really mean a boy, and then he said it wasn’t the boy at all, actually, it was Albert he didn’t want any more to do with because Albert was despicable and Albert shouldn’t go to the Green Lamp anymore either, because that was Teddy’s livelihood. Albert worked at First National and Teddy worked at the Green Lamp, because I’m so fucking free, and Albert should at least respect that.
So. Albert hadn’t bathed. He’d barely eaten. The whiskey was long gone. And now he’d been sitting at Bea’s awful writing desk for hours without managing to finish a single sentence because Teddy was right, Albert was despicable, and stupid, too, not only in the sense that he’d never learned Latin but in the sense that he couldn’t sustain a thought long enough to figure out what it was that he wanted to say to Bea. The city was coming to life outside, Saturday picnics and paddleboats, children’s balls pounding the paving bricks. People had to know about Albert, of course, but they wouldn’t know unless he did something. What would he do, stick his head out the window, holler? Telling Bea about the court would accomplish nothing, he admitted. She, too, was very good at keeping secrets—she would allow it to slide in between them, another piece of furniture in the sham house of their marriage. And even if people knew, say the boys at the bank, what good would it do now? Teddy was gone and the Green Lamp, too, buried along with Cyril and Cummings beneath the paving bricks and the cobblestone walks and the granite curbs of the city, the fusty air and old trees, all of it pressing down on Albert, all of it propping him up.
His stomach whimpered. He was aware of it as an organ, gaunt walled and angry, requiring his attention. He wondered if this was what drew Bea to eat so little, if she stayed hungry because hunger helped one stop thinking of other things, its hard lump like a ballast, steadying you. He thought he could almost cry from hunger. He thought, I don’t want Bea to stay in Gloucester forever. I would like her to come back. “What are you waiting for?!” shouted one of the boys down in the street. “Throw the fucking ball!” Hunger, thought Albert. My stomach is crying. On Monday he would go into work, say he had recovered from his illness, make it so. He fisted the sheets of paper into a ball, retrieved himself from the table, dressed, and walked toward Charles Street, to find something to eat.
Nine
I’ll tell Mum,” Liam threatened for the twentieth time that week.
“You won’t,” Lucy said.
“Give me a penny.”
“Oh, fine.” She gave one to Liam and one to Jeffrey, too.
They were on their way home from the quarry, cutting through the beech and pine woods above Washington Street. The shade cooled them and they quickly fell into not talking, their feet navigating the rocks and roots on the forest floor. There was a path somewhere near here, but they never took the path.
Lucy Pear was nine and wished she could stay nine forever. She easily hid, beneath a pair of suspenders and one of her brothers’ vests, her newly, barely swollen breasts, which she hoped against all likelihood were done growing. Her hair she would gladly have cut, except that their mother would ask questions. The rest of it wasn’t so difficult, to walk like a boy, and work like a boy, and keep her mouth shut. She was Johnny Murphy. She counted her first week’s pay by touch, in the pocket of her brother’s trousers: five dollars and twenty-five cents. An astounding sum, given that they worked only in the afternoons. A ticket to Canada was twenty-eight dollars and thirty-one cents, Lucy had learned from her sister Juliet, who lived in Rockport now, with three children of her own. Juliet was the oldest of the children, and very resourceful, and because she would never have thought to leave Cape Ann herself, she was the perfect target for Lucy’s questions.
How much is a ticket to Canada?
That depends. Handing Lucy a cookie. Chuckling. Where are you pretending to go? Will you need a berth?