Peg went into work the next day just like always. She packed her purse and her lunch and when she passed Jimmy’s dresser slid the drawer open and pulled out his favorite Italian stiletto. She had a feeling today. A different feeling, as if a timer had been set. As if the world was changing. Suddenly she didn’t feel so safe.
She went into work anyway. Times Square was already humming when she reached it, and Officer Paretti kissed her on the cheek. The store was quiet, as everybody waited by the radio for President Truman to make the surrender official. A few car horns broke the odd hesitation, but it was as if the city waited, too, holding its breath, the jubilation corked and pressing hard.
At 7 P.M. the world went mad. Even before President Truman finished telling the nation that Japan had surrendered, New York exploded in noise. In the butcher shop Peg could hear bells and whistles and horns. Shouts, singing, feet running past. She danced a jig with Mr. Goldfarb and Phil Dawson and Susie Beilstein, who ran the cash register out front. And then, with a big smacking kiss to the cheeks of the girls, Mr. Goldfarb told everybody to go home.
“It’s a day for celebrating,” he said, shooing them like recalcitrant children. “Go. Celebrate.” And for his contribution, he gave them all sirloin steaks for their parties.
Peg headed straight home. They’d been preparing a party on the block for the last two days, when the news seemed imminent. Peg carried her steaks as if they were the surrender agreement itself.
On her way, she shared the jubilation of her city. She laughed and danced with a couple of cops on Thirty-third and waved at the cars who passed, horns and radios blaring. She reached Times Square to see the news ticker proclaim JAPAN SURRENDERS, on a constant crawl around the building, and she stopped to savor her favorite place reacting to this moment of history. In the greater scheme of things, it didn’t matter what happened to her. The war had ended, and all the boys were coming home. All the mothers and fathers, the wives and children and cousins and friends around the country could take a good breath and rejoice.
She was standing there flat-footed when the sailor caught her. He was laughing, dancing down the street like Gene Kelly, grabbing any woman he could and kissing her. Grabbing Peg around the waist, he spun her, the bag of steaks hitting him on the backside. She couldn’t help laughing as she met him mouth to mouth. His hand supported her back and his nascent whiskers scraped her cheek. A puff of laughter, a cheeky grin, and he was off to another conquest.
The photographer, a tweedy, balding kind of man, flashed his own smile and followed. Peggy was still laughing.
Suddenly the laughter caught in her chest. When the photographer trotted by, she finally saw past him to where another sailor stood. But this sailor wasn’t laughing or dancing. He was just looking. At her.
Jimmy.
Standing not ten feet away, smiling as if he were in better spirits than anybody in the city. Maybe Peg was the only one who saw the murder in his eyes. Maybe she was just too familiar with it to miss it. She froze, the instinctive reaction of all hunted animals. She knew better than to look away. But a shriek behind her, then laughter, told her that the sailor had captured another partner. She couldn’t resist looking.
The photographer was there, too. Snapping as fast as he could, just beyond the couple. Peg couldn’t blame him. It was a great picture, like ballet, that girl in all white surrounded by the sailor in his dark navy blues. It was a picture she had once kept in her own mind of the future. Jimmy home from the navy, her proud in her nursing whites. She wanted so badly to not move, not let them out of her sight. Not lose that pretty picture she knew now would never come true.
Jimmy was home.
“What the hell ya doin’ here?” she heard just behind her and knew that he was there.
Run! her brain screamed. Her heart collided with her chest, right there between the fourth and fifth ribs. She had started to sweat, because she knew it was too late. It had been too late when she’d kissed that sailor.
“When did you get in, Jimmy?” she asked, turning to face him with her purse and lunch pail and sirloins clutched in sweaty hands. “I didn’t get another telegram from you. I didn’t know you were coming today.”
He stepped closer, his nostrils flaring as if he could smell the fear on her. The sailor and the photographer had moved on. Peg couldn’t hear the horns or bells anymore. She heard Jimmy’s breathing. Assessing it for change.
“I sent it,” he said. “And I waited for you for fuckin’ hours. Hours, Peg.”
Peg could barely breathe. “I was working, Jimmy.”
“Yeah, that’s what Mrs. Peabody said. So I decided to come surprise you. Give you somethin’ to celebrate.” He swung an arm wide to take in the humanity around him. “Seems you found somethin’ else already, huh?”
It was all Peg could do to keep from flinching. Surreptitiously she looked around them, wanting only to get out of the middle of this crowd. If Jimmy really was in a mood, she didn’t want to be here.
“Oh, did you see the kids?” She tried to smile. “Haven’t they grown?”
But he wouldn’t be distracted. “We’re not talking about the kids here. We’re talking about you. And what you’ve been up to since I’ve been gone. Whatever it is, it stops now. You hear me?”
“I haven’t been up to anything but taking care of the kids and working, Jimmy. And Mr. Goldfarb already knows I’m quitting when you get home. But look.” Smiling again, she held up her booty. “He gave us a gift.”
He grabbed her by the arm. There would be bruises, she knew, angry red finger marks left behind on her Irish white skin. Her stomach roiled. Would he do it here? In front of all these people?
“Steaks?” he demanded, his breath accelerating, his fingers punishing. Reminding her who was in charge. Who was stronger. “Just what did you do to get those?”
He’d just gotten back, was all she could think. Couldn’t he have given her a day? Maybe a week when she could believe that maybe this time it would be different?
She wasn’t even going to make it home.
“I did my job,” she said, refusing to cower. Not anymore. Not one more time.
He almost spit in her face. “Bullshit. Nobody gives steaks away f’r nuthin’.”
He was dragging her over toward Forty-fourth. She let him. Even so, she lifted her head. Stared straight at him, where she never would have before. She wasn’t going to be ashamed anymore. “I. Did. My. Job. You’re the one with the dirty mind, Jimmy.”
He hit her. Nobody saw it; he caught her in the kidneys. Jimmy loved the kidneys, because nobody could see those bruises but him. Peg gasped and buckled. Her lunch pail hit the ground with a clang. But she held on to her purse. She held on to the meat, as if it were more important than protecting herself.
“I’ll just bet you did your job,” he rasped, dragging her along the sidewalk. “I saw you with that sailor back there. I hope you got a lot of money from all the sailors who were here when I wasn’t, cause you ain’t gettin’ any more. And if I think you’re bein’ free with anybody else, I’ll beat the crap out of you. And then I’ll take the kids away. See how you like that.”
She knew better. Still, she yanked back. “You’re not taking my kids anywhere.”
This time he broke a rib. A couple of people paused in passing, and he glared them down before shoving her into an alley by the Majestic. It just figured, she thought, struggling to breathe past the relentless agony in her side. He’s going to beat me to death in sight of Billy Bigelow.
“I’ll do whatever I damn well please,” he assured her, catching her by the hair and pulling, his mouth against her ear. “Don’t you get it? They’re my kids. You’re my wife. Je-sus, Peg, did you have to make me remind you this soon? Couldn’t you have let me have a little peace, a good home-cooked meal before you pissed me off?”