“Poor Jack.” Rose opened her eyes and smiled, remembering that night. Jack Nash had spent a big part of his life under a heavy cloud of suspicion.
But then she caught sight of the alarm clock on top of the bureau again and instantly she was on her feet. The morning was flying past and she’d miss her wash time if she didn’t hurry. With a swoop of her arm she pushed the pile of dirty clothes she’d collected into a pillow case and flipped it over her shoulder; then she left her apartment and hastened toward the back stairs.
It was two buildings Mary Jean owned—looking at them from the street the grocery store occupied the one on the corner, and a small shoe repair shop took up the front half of the building to its right. The back half of the second building was used as storage space for the grocery, and the second floor where the apartments were located spanned both buildings. An enclosed staircase between the two stores led from the street to a landing off which both apartments opened and then continued on toward the back, where the stairs leading down to the grocery was located near a rear exit into the alley. The basement stairs were built against the back wall of the grocery at a right angle to the main staircase and the door to it opened between the other two exits. The Nash apartment was in the front above the shoe repair shop and Mary Jean’s apartment was at the back. The second floor above the grocery had once been a doctor’s office but had been empty for years and was rented out occasionally for wedding parties or neighborhood meetings.
Rose breathed in deeply of the musty smell peculiar to basements and cellars, mingled with the scents of steamy soap-water and damp clothes drying on lines that crisscrossed the long narrow space—she found it comforting. In the corner at the end of the stairs there was a partially enclosed coal bin, and a monster furnace with big pipes growing out of it in all directions like the tentacles of an octopus almost filled the front half. A laundry sink, the washing machine and adjoining rinse and starching tubs were crowded along the inside wall.
After Rose got the clothes agitating in the water and the rinse tubs filled, she sat down on an old wooden bench that was pushed against the side of the stairs. She thumbed through some magazines Mary Jean kept there to pass the time till the clothes were ready to rinse and hang. Rose loved to read the movie magazines, but she took her greatest pleasure from the romance periodicals that called themselves “True Love Stories” and “Secret Love” and “Secret Romance.” Some of those set her heart racing and gave her goose bumps. She’d often thought about writing up her and Jack’s story and sending it off to one of them. She believed their story was a lot more interesting than most and a lot more passionate than any of them.
Today, to her disappointment, Rose found she’d already read them all, except for one that she thumbed through without much interest. Fashions!, of all things—she turned up her nose with scorn. In this day and age with everybody so hard up! She herself hadn’t had a new dress since … but it was best not to think about that. And then her thoughts turned to the blue silk Jack wanted her to wear tonight. That dress was a real store-bought one. The first she’d ever owned that hadn’t belonged to somebody else before her. Up to then all her new dresses were homemade and never what you could call stylish. Not that she’d cared about that—until she married Jack and learned there was a whole other world out there. And Jack bought her a slew of new dresses when he was making money at the lumberyard. That blue silk was the first, though, and the most beautiful.
Jack let her pick it out herself at Miss Anna’s in Maysfield, which was the finest ladies’ wear store around. Truth be told it was so fancy they spelled “shop” with two ‘ps’ and stuck an ‘e’ on the end of it! Rose giggled to herself. Jack had, right out of the blue that first morning after they’d run off and got married, announced to her that he was going to buy her the prettiest dress in town. And then he took her to Miss Anna’s Dress Shoppe and told her to pick out whatever she wanted and never mind the cost. When she put that dress on and came out to see how he liked it, he just stood there and stared at her with his amazing blue eyes like she was a big plate of meat and potatoes and he was hungry. Then he said to the saleslady, “Don’t put that in a box, she’s going to wear it, and bring us some silk stockings and a set of your best undergarments.”And then he asked the lady to show Rose some “high heeled dancin’ slippers!”
By then there was a whole crowd of ladies standing around just gawking at him, and that was the first time Rose felt a little twinge of jealousy. But that was okay—knowing it was she he loved made her proud and playing jealous was just kind of a fun game. Anyway, that purchase was unbelievably extravagant and maybe it was even sinful to spend money like that, but Jack wasn’t much took-up with sin or with the Bible either, for that matter. He pretty much did whatever he felt like doing. Not that Rose worried a whole lot about his lack of religion. She was certain salvation would come to Jack Nash one way or another. God knew how much she loved him, after all.
When Rose had pinned the last sock to the line and emptied the washer and rinse tubs, instead of returning to her lonely apartment, she opened the door next to the one she had just exited and stepped into the bright and bustling grocery and meat market run by Leo and Viola Wesselman, the couple she now considered her own family. Jack’s too, since neither of them had any blood relations who claimed them anymore. And today, because there were in-store customers and Viola was busy filling their orders, Leo put Rose right to work packing boxes with delivery orders. Thus what was left of the morning passed quickly into afternoon when all three of them took their lunch in turn, upstairs with Mary Jean as had been their practice for years. That was so Leo and Viola didn’t have to go far from the store when it was open and Mary Jean didn’t have to eat alone. Nowadays, if Jack was working, Rose usually joined them. And today, being excited and all, she almost did that one thing Jack told her not to—though she had to bite her tongue a passel of times to keep from blabbing his secret.
And then sure enough, Jack got that job he was hoping for. And Rose thanked Jesus, although she never was sure exactly what kind of job it was. And she was kind of disappointed because by the time he got home that night, it was too late to go anywhere to eat and too bitter cold for a romantic stroll. But she had dressed up like he’d asked her to and so Jack turned the radio down low and they danced to celebrate anyhow. With only the lights from the street to illuminate the parlor, they could pretend they were in some swanky hotel ballroom. Just before they went into their bedroom, Jack whispered in her ear that they had just taken the elevator to the twentieth floor, and then he led her across the room to the window and with his arms around her they imagined they were looking out at beautiful Lake Michigan all a-shimmer in the cold blue moonlight.