Chapter 10: Husband

I found him at the shop.

I had not expected that.

I came down Wickenden Street at six with the photocopy folded in my fist.

Through the bad window I saw a big man on a stepladder, holding the front door off its hinges.

Bram had been fixing the sticking door all afternoon.

Pearl was holding the ladder and telling him a story about a ham.

He saw my face through the glass, and the screwdriver stopped moving.

Pearl saw it too.

She let go of the ladder, took her cardigan off the hook, and went out the back without a word.

I walked in, and the bell over the door rang, uncertainly, on its one good hinge.

I laid the photocopy on the counter beside the blue tin and smoothed it flat.

"Cecily Wexler gave me this at four o'clock," I said. "In front of thirty women and a tiered stand of sandwiches."

Bram came down off the ladder.

He crossed to the counter and looked at the paper.

He did not touch it.

He read it, and I watched the color leave his face.

It was a very big face, and it didn't hide anything.

"She had it checked," he said, at last, hoarse.

"Is it true?"

"Yes."

"We're married."

"Yes."

"We've been married for seven years."

"Yes, Etta."

The shop was so quiet I could hear Gloria's strings ticking as the temperature fell.

"How long have you known?"

"From the day I left."

I made a sound that wasn't a word.

"I never filed it," he said. "I said I wouldn't."

"I said it in the kitchen, the day you told me to see to the paperwork."

"I thought that meant you'd walk away."

"I know you did. I meant it the other way."

"You never said which way you meant."

"No."

"For seven years."

"I wrote Pearl every December," he said.

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