The Invisible Sign

 Sunday, April 22rd, 1951, 

Although her hopes were high, her expectations were barely aroused, and yet Emily kept herself busy ensuring the house was neat and tidy as she readied it for their day together.

Their five children were out…somewhere, avoiding being at home. Some with friends, others had already moved away, and as usual, he was sleeping off his Saturday night hangover.

It was their eighteenth wedding anniversary. Something he’d forgotten so many times in the past that she held little hope that today would be different, but to remind him, she decided to have everything pristine and breakfast on the table when he came down the stairs.

It was an act of desperation, but maybe today would be different. She had to try something to make at least one day better than what they had become accustomed to.

The war was well behind them, and there was no need for him to continue his drunken, self-pitying behavior. Besides, his entire military service was behind a desk somewhere in Florida, that is, when he wasn’t in the brig for being drunk and fighting.

The son of an indigent coal miner, John grew up hard in the mines of the Pennsylvania hills.

Expected to find their own way through life, when they were teenagers, their father would get them drunk and beat them unconscious to teach them to fight and defend themselves.

Although his general nature was peaceful and kind, it was assumed that John nurtured a latent, hateful disposition that allowed him to injure others unconscionably when he was drunk, even those of his family.

They married in 1933, back when she saw him as a hero and protector, and a month after the wedding, their first child was born. By 1943, four more followed, the youngest of them now being eight years old.

When they first met, John was somewhat of a troubadour, carrying his guitar on his back when he came to visit. He was handsome, fearless, and charming, often playing his guitar and singing to her.

Before their first year of marriage ended, she had left him several times, returning home to her parents because of his belligerent drunkenness and womanizing ways.

The home they were living in was bought by John’s father, who also lived with them. Fortunately, he was traveling at the time. Having left the coal mines for employment with the Pennsylvania Railroad, he’d earned a lifetime pass that permitted him to travel at no cost anywhere the P.R.R. lines extended.

At its best, the house was no more than a hovel.

In the basement, beneath the kitchen, sat an ancient coal furnace that had to be regularly tended to. The old wooden floor above it was riddled with holes and gaps that let the heat seep through layers of tattered, worn linoleum, making the kitchen the warmest room in the house.

As Emily finished moving the remainder of the dirty laundry to the basement, she heard him shuffling about upstairs.

He was in the bathroom when she called up the stairs to him that his breakfast was ready.

Pouring a cup of hot coffee for him, she waited expectantly to say good morning and to wish him a happy anniversary.

Finally coming down the stairs, he shouted to her, “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” and instead of coming into the kitchen as she expected, she heard the front door close behind him.

She went to the window and watched as he hurried down the brick sidewalk. She couldn’t even make herself cry. All that she felt was the dull numbness of being left alone again, knowing that he was headed to his favorite bar to nurse his hangover.

She also knew it was unlikely that he would return home any time soon. 

Slowly shaking her head, she switched off the oven, removed the plate of warm food, and dumped it into the trash.

Tears welled slightly as she walked down the basement stairs to the piles of laundry that she would cycle through the old wringer-washer and then hang on the old cotton line to dry. 

The musty odor of the uneven mud floor of the basement soaked into her as she sorted laundry, thinking of the many payday weekends he’d been drunk, and how she fully expected that he would go out and spend the paycheck on booze and women, and the next morning return to the bar to alleviate his hangover.

“Why should today be any different,” she shouted into the dank cold air of the basement as she straightened a pair of his work trousers to push through the wringer of the old potbellied machine.

Tears welled again while that same old pain cut through her heart.

John was a house painter, and a very good one, and every Saturday, the boss would hand him his pay at three o’clock.

Within thirty minutes of leaving work, he would be back on that barstool, ready to buy a round for his buddies or a drink for any woman that was conveniently at hand. 

Yesterday was payday, and there were still a few dollars in his pocket that needed to be drunk away. 

---

On Sunday mornings, the bar was all but vacant except for a few hungover regulars, like John, who showed up to nurse their aching heads and quell their shaking hands.

He sat on his stool at the end of the bar, and within an hour or so, after a shot and a couple of beers, the shakes were wearing off, and that old ‘familiar urge’ for a more sensual form of stimulation began to creep in.

Sitting there only a few barstools away, there just happened to be a particular blond-haired lady to whom he had talked his trash several times in the past, but never made any headway. But it did give him an idea.

Rather than making another attempt with her, there was only one other place where he could find such satisfaction, and with the minuscule vestiges of his paycheck still jingling in his pocket, he emptied his glass, kissed the blond on the cheek, and hastily left for home. 

Still fully unaware that it was his wedding anniversary, he knew that Emily was probably cleaning, cooking, or sewing, ‘as every good wife should,’ and it made her a boring woman, a housewife, no longer the sweet, desirable nineteen-year-old he’d married.

He couldn’t understand why she was not as hungry for his attention as those girls at the bars seemed to be, but she’s a woman, and that’s all that mattered at the moment.

To him, a woman is a means of satisfying the urge, with no one woman better than the other. Despite having borne him five children, he was taught that by right of marriage, she was obligated to what he wanted, when he wanted.

The booze mixed with the image of the blond-haired woman’s thighs and the smell of her perfume all hovered in his mind, piquing his desire and causing him to quicken his pace.

When he entered the house, she was in the kitchen washing the dish that held his anniversary breakfast. She stopped as if frozen by his sudden appearance, staring at him as if a specter appeared before her.

“What!” he asked, smiling sheepishly and tilting his head as if he was trying to read her thoughts. Still looking him in the eye, the tears welled up in hers:

“That,” she said loudly! “That…was the anniversary breakfast I made for you that you walked out on this morning! But I guess I didn’t really expect you to remember it anyway, did I?

She paused, defiantly looking him in the eye.

Why are you home now? she asked. “I guess the paycheck is all gone again!”

She paused for an answer, but none was forthcoming. The plate in her hand was shattered as she angrily tossed it into the sink.

Whereas he would normally meet anger with anger, accusing or blaming her for not satisfying him or being a poor excuse for a wife, doing so to divert the guilt from himself and on to her.

Today was different.

He was truly embarrassed that he’d forgotten their anniversary — again, but he also still had the urge, and she had just proffered the perfect opportunity and excuse for him to turn this to his advantage.

“I’m really sorry darlin,” he said. “I just went to have a beer and I was talking to my buddy about our wedding day and that’s when I suddenly remembered what day it is! Honest! As soon as it popped into my head, I came back. I’m sorry I didn’t get you anything, but, here…”

Reaching into his pocket, he took out the meager remains of his paycheck and laid it on the kitchen table, as one might do if he was paying a prostitute.

He opened his arms, gesturing to her. She didn’t move. He walked to her with his arms held open and pulled her to him.

Putting his arms around her waist and kissing her cheek and neck, he whispered,

“I’m sorry. I am, honest.”

As she leaned into his chest, crying, his hands dropped and cupped her bottom as his unwelcome erection firmly pressed against her hip. 

“Why don’t we go upstairs and I’ll make it up to you,” he said softly.

Gripping her hand, he pulled her toward the staircase, fairly dragging her along, and, like every good wife who longed for things to be the way they were, she followed.

Still, it wasn’t sex that she wanted from him; it was that special feeling of love they’d felt for one another when they first met. That same feeling of love for which she had gladly given him her body when they married, and was about to do so again for whatever little of that love there was remaining in him.

In her heart, she hoped that the essence of lovemaking would relieve, if for only a short time, the lonely emptiness she felt in her daily life.

The performance ended in just a few minutes, and as he lay there asleep beside her, she somehow knew, in her soul, that she had just conceived their seventh child.