One day, she thought, I won’t have to wait for someone to give me a ticket as a treat. My problem will be choosing among the different plays I want to see. I’ll step out of one of those shiny black sedans that pull up before the theater, straighten my skirt, and stroll through the door as if I belong there.
I won’t go see Mr. John Raitt in Carousel, though, she thought as she passed him smiling down at her from the poster, handsome in his striped shirt and cap. Not again. A few weeks ago her boss, Mr. Goldfarb, had given the two girls who worked for him the tickets he and his wife were going to use. Peg had been beside herself. The seats had been great. The music had been gorgeous and Mr. Raitt magnetic and strong. But how could anyone think Billy Bigelow was heroic? How could a hero say that he could love you so much that he hit you? Her father had loved her mother like that. He’d loved her so much he’d beaten her to death.
So Peg turned away from Mr. Raitt and she kept walking. And in another block she reached her very favorite place in New York.
Times Square.
Every time she walked out of Forty-fourth onto Broadway, she paused to take it in. Not the buildings; those were deteriorating just like Broadway. Burlesque shows were replacing legitimate theaters and seedy hotels springing up where the Astor had acted as cornerstone. Peg couldn’t think of a door along Times Square she’d want to walk through right now.
But she stood there just the same, just like every other time, taking in the people. It was like reaching the delta of a river to find the sea, she always thought, a seething, flowing current of humanity, moving, moving, just like waves in a wind. She imagined Times Square as where everything began and ended, where the energy of the city was born to stream away into the different boroughs, the tide funneled through the high walls of skyscrapers. Even on a dull day it was a place of color, people, and neon, the news ticker sliding across One Times Square so that no one could escape the moment.
Just this way had she stood with her mother, holding hands, eyes wide on the wash of energy and life that was New York. Every day they had stopped here on the way home from school. Now she knew it was so they didn’t have to get home so soon. But then she was sharing magic with her mother.
“There you are, Mrs. O’Toole,” a raspy voice called as she waited for the light. “Thought I’d missed you today.”
Peg smiled as she turned to see a wide, smiling, graying cop head her way. His hat was pushed back on his head and his baton was in his hand, just like in the movies. Peg often wondered if the movies had copied him or he was copying the movies for the benefit of the tourists who spawned upstream to Times Square in the summer.
“Off to work,” she said, smiling back at him.
He shook his head. “Still don’t like you coming home after dark. Sure you couldn’t get that early shift back?”
“Better pay in the evening, Officer Paretti. Besides, I like seeing the neon all lit up and sparkling when I come back.”
One furry eyebrow lifted. “You can protect yourself?”
She chuckled. “You’d be surprised. Working for the butcher has built muscle.”
He shook his head. “Tiny thing like you. Just not right. You should be working in a store, somethin’ like that. Not choppin’ up chickens and steak.”
“If a store paid as much as the butcher does, I’d agree with you. But I was lucky to have Mr. Goldfarb hire me. Best surprise of my life, getting that job. After all”-she leaned closer-“my tips come in chicken livers and ham hocks.”
“It’ll sure be good to have all the boys home from the war, won’t it?” he asked, absently nodding to a family in Bermuda shorts and cameras. “You poor ladies have been handling too much of the burden, you ask me. Ain’t natural.”
Peg knew she should have agreed. Should have told him that she was relieved to know that her Jimmy was coming home safe. Instead, she patted Officer Paretti on the arm and let the tide carry her across Broadway. And for another eight hours she shared a crowded, white-tiled back room with Phil Dawson, her knives flashing as she cut away steaks and roasts, ribs for barbecuing and flank for stew meat. And when the slicing was done, she grabbed the parts bucket and cranked the contents through the grinder to make hamburger. Her arms were on fire and her back ached like a sore tooth, but she actually liked what she did. There was something neat and predictable about it, a real sense of accomplishment. Mr. Goldfarb said that he would always be grateful that she was the one who answered his ad that day back in ’41, because she worked hard, never complained, and never missed work. She always smiled when she came in and smiled when she left.
Peg heard about the atomic bomb, of course. Everybody did. But it didn’t really make a difference to her one way or another. Jimmy was coming home whether the Japs surrendered or not. And he’d promised to be home soon.
Mildred Peabody saw that Peg was beginning to lose weight. Peg blamed it on the heat even as she spent the evening out on the street hitting fungoes to Mikey. Mr. Goldfarb noticed that Peg wasn’t smiling as much. Peg told him it was because after the one telegram she hadn’t heard any more from Jimmy, and it made her nervous.
“Of course,” he comforted, patting her arm. “Who wouldn’t be nervous, after all this time? Don’t you worry, child. Your worries are over. He’s coming home to you.” Then, his bristly gray eyebrows drawing together like amorous caterpillars, he shook his head. “Although where I’m going to find another butcher as quick as you, I just don’t know.”
For the first time since she’d known him, she hugged the old man, both of their white aprons blood-spattered and grimy from the day, her own hair drooping against her sweating neck. “I’m going to miss you.”
And for the first time, Mr. Goldfarb hugged her back. “You deserve better.”
Surprised by a flash of anger, she leaned back. “There is nothing better, Mr. Goldfarb. I’ve been very happy here.”
Safe. She’d been safe. It was what she felt every day when she walked down the front steps of her brownstone, when she battled the tides of Times Square. When she wielded knives as sharp as razors, mere inches from fingers and veins and faces. It didn’t take Officer Paretti to tell her that New York was dangerous. Too many alleys, too many crime-thick shadows. But as often as she crossed those perilous streets late at night, as long as she’d lived without a man to protect her, she had never once felt threatened.
Mr. Goldfarb lifted a hand and patted her face. “You sure your navy boy doesn’t want to be a butcher?”
She laughed. “Oh, Mr. Goldfarb, you’ll have plenty of butchers coming home. Besides, Jimmy’s a hod carrier.”
The old man shrugged. “He couldn’t lift cows instead?”
It was like an omen. A few nights later Peg was up listening to Cab Calloway on the radio. It was at least one in the morning, and the heat was still stifling in the old brick building. The kids were tumbled over the floor like puppies, the living room windows wide open to catch a breeze. The radio was playing softly into the night, and Peg was figuring out her finances at the dining room table. Jimmy still wasn’t home. Peg wasn’t holding her breath.
“We interrupt this program to tell you…”
Peg looked up.
“We’ve had word that Japan will sign the treaty. They will sign…”
That was it, then. It was truly over. No reason left for Jimmy to return to the navy. He’d loved the navy. Peg thought it was the freedom of it, the escape from wearing responsibilities. And she sympathized. But he was well and truly caught back in civilian life now. Cornered. Constrained. Committed to making a living, to being a father and a husband and a neighbor, answerable to all. Peg wondered if he’d do any better at it this time than he did before.