The Family Way (Molly Murphy, #12)

“He can go to hell first,” I said out loud. I’d not prepare anything for him tonight. He could come home to a bare table and fare for himself. That might remind him what life without a wife was like and how lucky he was to have me. Then those words “go to hell” echoed around my head. Be careful of what you wish for. One of my mother’s other favorite sayings. Daniel lived close to hell every day. I never knew when he might be dealing with a ruthless gang or a violent criminal, or when I’d open the door to find a policeman standing on my doorstep with bad news. I felt tears stinging in my eyes. I should not have said such a terrible thing, even if I didn’t really mean it. After all he was just behaving like any other man, wasn’t he? Most women in the world were treated by their spouse like helpless, simple creatures who needed guiding and protecting—and chastising when they did something wrong. It was rather like being a pet dog.

Grudgingly I washed lettuce and radishes and put out a pork chop ready to fry. The sun sank lower through my kitchen window until it disappeared behind the silhouettes of tall buildings to the west. I ate my own light supper. Night fell and still he didn’t come. I tried to read by the gaslight. Finally when the clock struck ten I went up and prepared for bed. But I couldn’t begin to sleep. My mind was racing with terrible thoughts. I had made him angry and because of this he wasn’t as vigilant as usual. I got up again and started to pace, going to the front window to peer down at Patchin Place, my ears straining for the sound of feet on the cobbles.

When I saw a constable coming my heart nearly leaped from my throat, but it was only our usual constable on his nightly rounds and I heard his heavy boots die away into the rumble and roar of the distant city.

I sat in bed hugging my knees. “Don’t let him die,” I prayed. Images of myself trying to raise a fatherless child hovered in my brain. I heard a distant clock striking midnight and the city sounds fell silent one by one until all I could hear through the open window was a baby crying and a pair of tomcats yowling at each other on a distant rooftop.

Then suddenly I heard the sound of an automobile. A door slammed. Imperious feet came closer and the front door opened. I was out of bed in a shot.

“There you are at last,” I said as I appeared at the top of the stairs.

He looked up at me. “What are you doing awake? You didn’t wait up for me, I hope?”

“I was worried sick.”

“But you never know what time I’m coming in,” he said. “As it happened I finished working late and went for a bite with a friend.”

The worry and anger exploded together. “A bite with a friend?” I stomped down the rest of the stairs until I was facing him. “While your wife worries about you and pictures you lying dead in a gutter? It’s quite clear that you don’t care about my feelings at all.”

He stepped back, clearly not expecting this onslaught. “Steady on, Molly. You know I don’t keep regular hours. I didn’t leave my office until after ten and I didn’t think you’d be up that late to cook for me.”

“I had your meal all ready and waiting,” I said, but even as I said it I decided that I sounded rather pitiful. “And you’re lucky I went to the trouble,” I said, “after the humiliating way you treated me this afternoon. I was absolutely furious, Daniel.”

“I wasn’t too pleased myself,” he said. “I thought I made it quite clear to you that I didn’t want you in the Lower East Side with all that dirt and disease. I can’t believe that you deliberately went against my wishes.”

My hackles were truly rising now. That Irish fighting spirit was coursing through my veins. “For one thing I was on Broome Street, which isn’t the Lower East Side, it’s Little Italy,” I said.

“You know what I meant,” he snapped back. “I meant any of those areas of pushcarts and crowded tenements.”

“Greenwich Village isn’t exactly a rural haven, is it? I’m risking dirt and disease just as much when I go to the grocery on Charles Street to buy your food.”

“I agree. That’s precisely why I wanted you to go to my mother for the hottest months,” Daniel yelled back.

“If I’d known you’d rather eat out in a restaurant than come home for dinner, then I’d have gone long ago. I only stayed out of loyalty and devotion to you, but the way you order me around, you don’t deserve either.”

“For your own good, Molly. I do it for your own good. You’ve become too accustomed to taking risks. You’re no longer making decisions just for yourself, as I am no longer making decisions just for myself. We’re a family, Molly. We have to pull together.”

I had been raring for a fight, but his rational approach and the tender way he was looking at me took the wind out of my sails. In my heart I knew he was making sense. It did seem as if I were deliberately undermining him. I took a deep breath. “Daniel, you have to understand that I’ve been responsible for my own life and my own decisions for a long time now. If you take my own choices away from me and put them in the hands of your mother, it makes me feel that I’m worthless and useless and have no control over anything. I feel like a damned spaniel.”

I knew I was swearing and did it deliberately to show that women were allowed to use as many bad words as men. He didn’t even react to it.

“But it makes sense to use the experience of others. My mother moves in circles where people are used to hiring servants. Surely it is better for us to find a girl who comes with personal recommendations, rather than letting a complete stranger into our house, isn’t it?”