my legs one day, I swear to ya” and “Christ, I’m getting married as soon as somebody asks, as God is my goddamn witness” and making lewd comments about the state of the lead actor’s trousers when he looked us over. Pin curls underneath their rayon scarves when they got to the theater, and after the show half of the girls going out with dates, the other half home to their mothers.
Luck doesn’t last, I knew that much. Sometimes over my cup of coffee I’d think about the Corrigans — a long line of lunkheads going straight back to County Galway. One dumb choice after another. The family had sailed to America in 1883 and they were still greenhorns. Always looking at their feet, never up at the sky. We went down in ships, we died in childbirth, we drank or worked ourselves to death, we disappeared without a trace. What chance did I have to break that chain of misfortune?
Where did the bad luck start? Maybe you could trace it back to the night in ’23 when sixteen-year-old Jimmy Mac Corrigan offered to help unload some whiskey on a boat from Canada. Or a Sunday morning in ‘32 when, after three days of rain, Jimmy convinced Maggie Corrigan to skip church because he had a better idea of how to pass the time. Who knew that would result, nine months later, in twenty-year-old Maggie’s last breath as three babies came into the world?
“All those falls from grace,” Aunt Delia would have said in that thin-lipped Irish way. Lust, liquor, and legs — that’s where I came from. That’s who I was.
For a minute when I woke up, I thought I was back in Providence. Maybe it was the sound of the whistle on the teakettle. By the time I’d fallen asleep, the light had been just coming up. I glanced at the clock on the mantel, an ugly big brass number that looked like the first thing you’d grab to bean a burglar.
It was after ten. Four hours’ sleep would have to do. I could hear Shirley and her mother in the kitchen, talking in loud whispers so that they could claim they were trying to be quiet. I didn’t know if I could get up the oomph to be polite this morning. I didn’t know if I could face Mrs. Krapansky flipping through the newspaper with her furrowed dark red nails, the shape of her toes showing through the worn leather of her slippers. Each time she turned a page she’d lick her dry finger. Turn, lick. Turn, lick.
And today, Shirley would have told her mother that I almost messed up the line last night. Not to mention the crack about her age. Shirley was twenty-six and thought she was over the hill. No confidence, no brains. All she had was a mother with her hands at her back, pushing.
I sat up. Hell to pay. No question about it.
“She acts all high and mighty and sneaks around behind her boyfriend’s back. And him in the service and everything! I swear to you, it lit-rally makes me sick.”
I felt bored already; I knew every step of what was going to happen next, how I’d have to go into that kitchen and pretend I hadn’t heard, maybe hum on my way to make tea, ignore it when Mrs. Krapansky complained about the cost of sugar. And then the remarks would begin, little pellets of contempt, putting me in my place.
I got up and stretched, a dancer’s stretch. I could feel Shirley watching from the kitchen so I held it, knowing I was pulling my nightgown up my legs, almost posing now, because my figure was better than Shirley’s, and Shirley knew it, too.
“You’d better get that bedding straightened up quick today. I’ve got guests coming later this morning,” Mrs. Krapansky said.
Guests. Please. That meant Mrs. Maloney from next door. I yawned as I made my way to the bathroom and brushed my teeth and hair, then packed away the brushes and my things in the little pouch I’d bought at the five-and-dime. Shirley had given me one drawer in her dresser and a tiny space in the closet. I packed quickly and pulled my best cardigan on, along with my navy skirt, the most becoming one I had. I wriggled into high heels.
Then I walked out and laid the key and ten dollars on the kitchen table.
“If you think you can just walk out of here —” Mrs. Krapansky said,