The night Annie had arrived, coffee grounds in her hair, she had told Max about Walter, talking for hours about Walter’s friend, Junior, the coffee cup hitting her on the head, the way Walter spoke to her. “He’ll never let me be whatever I am…he doesn’t like me, you see. He can’t stand me…”

“You mustn’t go back,” Max had said. Eva had long been asleep. Max made up the couch for Annie.

In the two weeks before she once more found a job—she had told the Greek she wasn’t coming back that next morning—she tried to locate Johnnie Bliss. She went to the boarding house where he’d lived.

“That unholy man has gone to his destiny,” the landlady said. “Shame on you for knowing him! He’ll be thrown from a car after being shot by gangsters. If I knew where he was, I wouldn’t tell you. I’m a Christian woman.”

She called St. Vincent. The phone had been disconnected. Perhaps they’d run out of credit, and Andrew was driving a laundry truck now, happy Andrew.

Sometimes Annie recalled sitting in a chair holding a woman’s hairpins in her fist, the torn stocking across her lap. She was unable to evoke the anguish she’d felt then. That she’d been married to Walter Vogel, that they had lived together at all was without reality. When she got a job working in a small ceramic plant, she used her maiden name. Eva said, “You’ll have to get a divorce someday.” The thought of divorce was more substantial than the marriage had ever been.

She stayed with the Shores for two months. With her first paycheck of twenty-five dollars she bought them a bottle of whiskey, a stuffed dog for Thomas and a collection of Hardy’s poems. She was very happy coming into the apartment with her packages. Thomas tossed the dog across the room, then crept after it on all fours. Eva said she shouldn’t have spent her money on such silly things, but thanks anyhow, and Max took the book and put it on a table next to their bed. Annie saw the book there from time to time as she set the table for supper. She felt sinful and triumphant. She’d gotten into their bedroom.

Eva distressed her more and more. Eva never really looked at her. Eva said, “Everything is all right,” all the time. Thomas’s tantrums were natural at his age; it was all right that Annie had married someone like Walter—at her age. Fern was all right—it was hard on unmarried women in a male chauvinist capitalist society—yes, Fern was all right because her growing untidiness and eccentric ways were appropriate to what was causing them. Marriage was all right, and death was all right.

When Eva stood for moments at the kitchen counter, looking down into the sink, what was she thinking about? That it was all right to stare down into a sink? Eva moved clumsily; when she was tired, she looked old and heavy.