might have been frayed by the loss of a car, and the frequent telephone calls he had received, detailing flooding in various business enterprises in Louisville. Mrs. Brady responded with no less emphasis, informing her husband that she knew their daughter like she knew herself and that she was never prouder of her than she had been that day. He could sit back and let her end up a dissatisfied, unconfident stay-at-home like his sister had been—and they all knew how that had turned out—or encourage this bold, enterprising and hitherto unseen version of the girl they had known these twenty years and let her do the thing she loved. And, she added, at some pitch, that if he listened to that fool Van Cleve over his own daughter then, why, she was not sure who it was she had been married to all these years.
Those were fighting words. Mr. Brady met them with equal force, and although their house was large, their voices echoed through the wide, wood-paneled corridors and on through the night until dawn broke—unheard by the comatose children, or Izzy, who had fallen abruptly off a cliff of sleep—at which point, having reached an uneasy truce, both exhausted by this unexpected turn in their union, Mr. Brady announced wearily that he needed an hour of shut-eye at least, because there was a big day of cleaning up ahead and Lord only knew how he was supposed to get through it now.
Mrs. Brady, deflated a little in victory, felt a sudden tenderness for her husband and, after a moment, reached out a conciliatory hand. And it was like this, as the light broke, that the maid found them an hour and a half later, still fully dressed, and snoring on the huge mahogany bed, their hands entwined between them.
EIGHTEEN
An enterprising grocer in Oklahoma recently sold two dozen buggy whips in two days. Three customers however said theirs would be used for fishing poles, while one was sold to a mother who wanted to “whale” her son.
• The Furrow, September–October 1937
Margery was washing her hair on Sunday morning, her head low over a bucket of warm water, sluicing and wringing it into a thick glossy rope, when Alice walked in. Alice muttered an apology, half asleep and a little groggy—she hadn’t realized anyone was in there—and began to back out of the little kitchen when she caught sight of Margery’s belly, briefly visible through her thin cotton nightdress, and did a double-take. Margery looked sideways at her, wrapping a cotton sheet around her head, and caught it. She straightened up, placing her palm over her belly button.
“Yes, it is, yes, I am, just over six months, and I know. Not exactly part of the plan.”
Alice’s hand flew to her mouth. She recalled suddenly the sight of Margery and Sven at the Nice ’N’ Quick the night before, how she had sat on his lap all evening, his hands wrapped protectively around her middle. “But—”
“Guess I didn’t pay as much attention to that little blue book as I should have done.”
“But—but what are you going to do?” Alice couldn’t take her eyes off the roundness of it. It seemed so unlikely. Margery’s breasts, she saw now, were almost obscenely full, a hint of blue veins criss-crossing her chest where her robe had slipped to reveal a sliver of pale skin.
“Do? Not much I can do.”
“But you’re not married!”
“Married! That’s what you’re fretting about?” Margery let out a hoot. “Alice, you think I give a fig what people around here think of me? Why, Sven and I are good as married. We’ll bring the child up and we’ll be sweeter to her and to each other than most married people around here. I’ll educate her and teach her right from wrong, and as long as she has her ma and pa to love her, I can’t see as what I’m wearing on my left hand is anyone else’s business.”
Alice couldn’t get her head around the idea that someone could be six months pregnant and not care that her baby might be a bastard, that it might even go to Hell. And yet faced with Margery’s cheerful certainty, her—yes, looking closely at her face, one might even call it radiance—it was hard to maintain that this really was a disaster.
She let out a long breath. “Does . . . anyone . . . know?”
“Aside from Sven?” Margery rubbed at her hair vigorously, then paused to check the dampness of her hair