Ironweed (1984 Pulitzer Prize) - William Kennedy [26]
“I’m chilled to my bones,” she said.
“It’s chilly, all right.”
“I mean a real chill, a deep chill.”
Francis put his arm around her and walked her up the steps of Jack’s house. It stood on the east side of Ten Broeck Street, a three-block street in Arbor Hill named for a Revolutionary War hero and noted in the 1870s and 1880s as the place where a dozen of the city’s arriviste lumber barons lived, all in a row, in competitive luxury. For their homes the barons built handsome brownstones, most of them now cut into apartments like Jack’s, or into furnished rooms.
The downstairs door to Jack’s opened without a key. Helen and Francis climbed the broad walnut staircase, still vaguely elegant despite the threadbare carpet, and Francis knocked. Jack opened the door and looked out with the expression of an ominous crustacean. With one hand he held the door ajar, with the other he gripped the jamb.
“Hey Jack,” Francis said, “we come to see ya. How’s chances for a bum gettin’ a drink?”
Jack opened the door wider to look beyond Francis and when he saw Helen he let his arm fall and backed into the apartment. Kate Smith came at them, piped out of a small phonograph through the speaker of the radio. The Carolina moon was shining on somebody waiting for Kate. Beside the phonograph sat Clara, balancing herself on a chamber pot, propped on all sides with purple throw pillows, giving her the look of being astride a great animal. A red bedspread covered her legs, but it had fallen away at one side, revealing the outside of her naked left thigh, visible to the buttocks. A bottle of white fluid sat on the table by the phonograph, and on a smaller table on her other side a swinging rack cradled a gallon of muscatel, tiltable for pouring. Helen walked over to Clara and stood by her.
“Golly it’s cold for this time of year, and they’re calling for snow. Just feel my hands.”
“This happens to be my home,” Clara said hoarsely, “and I ain’t about to feel your hands, or your head either. I don’t see any snow.”
“Have a drink,” Jack said to Francis.
“Sure,” Francis said. “I had a bowl of soup about six o’clock but it went right through me. I’m gonna have to eat somethin’ soon.”
“I don’t care whether you eat or not,” Jack said.
Jack went to the kitchen and Francis asked Clara: “You feelin’ better?”
“No.”
“She’s got the runs,” Helen said.
“I’ll tell people what I got,” Clara said.
“She lost her husband this week,” Jack said, returning with two empty tumblers. He tilted the jug and half-filled both.
“How’d you find out?” Helen said.
“I saw it in the paper today,” Clara said.
“I took her to the funeral this morning,” Jack said. “We got a cab and went to the funeral home. They didn’t even call her.”
“He didn’t look any different than when I married him.”
“No kiddin’,” Francis said.
“Outside of his hair was snow-white, that’s all.”
“Her kids were there,” Jack said.
“The snots,” Clara said.
“Sometimes I wonder what if I run off or dropped dead,” Francis said. “Helen’d probably go crazy.”
“Why if you dropped dead she’d bury you before you started stinkin’, “ Jack said. “That’s all’d happen.”
“What a heart you have,” Francis said.
“You gotta bury your dead,” Jack said.
“That’s a rule of the Catholic church,” said Helen.
“I’m not talkin’ about the Catholic church,” Francis said.
“Anyway, now she’s a single girl,” Jack said, “I’m gonna find out what Clara’s gonna do.”
“I’m gonna go right on livin’ normal,” Clara said.
“Normal is somethin’,” Francis said. “What the hell is normal anyway, is what I’d like to know. Normal is cold. Goddamn it’s cold tonight. My fingers. I rubbed myself to see if I was livin’. You know, I wanna ask you one question.”
“No,” Clara said.
“You said no. Whataya mean no?”
“What’s he gonna ask?” Jack said. “Find out what he’s gonna ask.”
Clara waited.
“How’s everythin’ been goin’?” Francis asked.
o o o
Clara lifted the bottle of white fluid from the phonograph table, where the Kate Smith record