Little Deaths(65)

“I was so shocked—it was the first time anyone had spoken to me, like directly to me, in weeks and weeks. I looked right back at her and she smiled and she said, ‘Yeah, you’re still in there. You’re no more crazy than I am. You’re depressed, is what you are.’

“And then it got easier. She would come and talk to me and when she was there, I could eat. She spoke to the doctors and they eased up on the meds, and I started to feel . . . well, like me again. I cried more, but I wasn’t numb anymore. It felt good to just feel again, you know?

“And eventually I was eating and showering and combing my hair, and I guess they didn’t have no reason to keep me in there. So they let me go.

“Only I lost my apartment and my job and my family didn’t want to know me. My mother came to visit while I was in the hospital and they told her about the baby. She said I was a sinner and I wasn’t her daughter no more.

“I got another job and a room but . . . well, I was drinking a lot and not sleeping much and I got fired. I got another job and the same thing happened again. Finally my money ran out. I guess I was desperate. I went out and watched the whores around Times Square and I practiced walking and talking like them. Then I got an eighth of rum inside me and I went out and got me my first john. And here I am.

“You know, sometimes I think about my mother. I want to call her up and say to her: you think I was a sinner then? You should see me now. You should see what happens to girls like me. Only she’s dead. Car accident in sixty-two. There ain’t no one left now.”

Pete asked her, “Did you try to find your baby? Find out if there was a record of her adoption?”

She sighed. “There ain’t no record.”

“But there . . .”

“Whatever happened in that hospital, it wasn’t official. I never signed nothing. Either they put me down as unfit to sign, or they said I died giving birth, or they put fake names on the papers. My baby don’t exist no more. What I think—Lou just sold her to some rich couple who couldn’t have kids. I think that’s what the Mexican girl was trying to tell me.”

She threw back the last of her drink. “Whatever happened, it was a lie and I don’t know how to untangle it. It was almost twenty years ago. She could be anywhere. I can’t go through every family in New York looking for her.

“You know what? Maybe it’s for the best anyway. Look at me. What do I have to give a kid?”

She shook her head.

“So . . . what now? Why are you telling me all this?”

“Because Lou didn’t just take my kid away. He took the choice away too. I think we could have been okay, me and my baby, but he decided that wasn’t up to me.”

Her face was wet and he heard the anger rising in her voice.

“I know what you think of me. What men like you think of me. I’m a drunk. I’m a whore.”

She raised a finger, jabbed him in the chest.

“But you don’t judge me, mister. I don’t need no more judgment on me. You’re a reporter? You write my story. You write what I told you. People need to know. They need to know about that man. What he’s capable of.”

She turned away and waved at Sam to pour another drink. Pete couldn’t think of a single thing to say that seemed adequate, so he put her thirty on the scarred and sticky table, and then put down another ten. He walked away, her face and her tears scored into his memory, thinking about what Lou had done to her.

And then he thought of Ruth. She’d been a waitress when she’d met Lou. Just like Bette.

Pete thought about the bars he’d drunk in himself. About the women who’d waited on him, and the men who watched them.

The after-work crowd always peaked around seven p.m. A man like Lou Gallagher, a man with deals to do and money to make, wouldn’t notice a woman like Ruth Malone in the hot press of bodies. His eyes would skim over her, he’d dismiss her as just another waitress. He’d shout his order over the throb of voices and she’d nod and write it on her pad and he wouldn’t even notice her walk away.

But when the crowd had thinned a little, he might notice her then. He might let his eyes rest on her a moment: on the tits in the no-longer-crisp white blouse, on the ass in the tight black skirt, on the muscular legs and the cheap heels. Then he’d move on, looking for someone who could buy him a drink instead of serving him one.

By nine, when the bar was quiet and he’d had more than enough for a weeknight, he might come back to her. Let his eyes linger on her red-gold hair, the way she laughed and moved, the husky way she spoke.

He might tip her more than he normally would. Smile at her. Offer to buy her a drink that he knew she wasn’t allowed to accept.

And by ten-thirty, the room a blur of color and light, he’d be sliding her number into his wallet. Slowly, letting her see the wad of notes in there. He’d get up to leave and he’d take her hand in his. Let her see the signet ring on his little finger, raise her hand to his mouth and kiss it. Gently. Letting her know he’d like to be kissing her somewhere else. He’d treat her like a lady, like she was something special.

Bye, baby. I’ll call you.

He’d wink at her; he’d walk away knowing she was watching.

A man like that, a man like Gallagher, knew that guys like him were Ruth’s only hope of getting out.


Some nights Ruth would sit with Frank and drink until she couldn’t feel anymore: four fingers of bourbon to every one of his bottles of Bud. The voice of Johnny Carson or Ed Sullivan boomed over laughter and applause, the picture on the screen blurred into a haze of red and green, and she sank down into the couch and let the mess of color rub at her eyes. When she woke, hours later, tears drying on her cheeks and her throat sore, he was sometimes still snoring beside her. Despite herself, she was oddly touched, as though this was loyalty. She lay back again, let her eyes rest on his heavy familiar face, leaned into his warm familiar smell and found something like comfort.