Chapter III

Sophie missed her younger sister a great deal. The girls were orphans, their mother had died when Sophie was fourteen and their father three years later, and Sophie, though just a few years older, had really raised Anna.

The last year Sophie didn’t see Ruth and Anna frequently, for Sophie had four children and children take time. Sophie’s husband was a union tailor and was on strike a great deal and she couldn’t dress well or have things as nice as the two younger girls. Not that she envied them, only—well, there wasn’t much use feeling bad by trying to go with them anyhow. They had their own crowd and were younger and smarter and different. But fine girls, of course.

Sophie thought about Anna as she mended always-torn blouses and washed always-dirty dishes. Why had Anna done such a thing? After all the time she had spent raising her! It seemed as if Anna were only a little girl, instead of a woman of thirty-five. But even thirty-five is young when one has a lot to live for. Didn’t Anna have? Sophie had always thought of her two younger sisters as rather happy and fortunate. Surely, Anna had always seemed happy. And yet....

What had made Anna hate the world enough to want to get out of it? She had a nice home, nicer than Sophie would ever have. There surely were no debts. Certainly they got along well enough together, Anna and Fred.

But did they?

People thought that she and Steve got along all right too. You can keep people from finding out things like that, if you’re careful. Hadn’t she done it? For years and years? And she probably would keep on, until the kids were grown up and then—oh, how could she get along any other way? It was more than a habit.

Still, Fred didn’t drink. At least, at first, Sophie was pretty certain he didn’t. You couldn’t be too sure. People didn’t all know about Steve.

Though Steve was working, now, Sophie shuddered and walked quietly, as if he were asleep in the next room. For Steve got paid on Saturday, when he “worked steady,” and on Saturday night he came in, his pay envelope pitifully depleted, smelling horribly of cheap whisky, and cursing. She’d pray the children wouldn’t hear and she’d get him to bed.

In the morning he’d be sick and lay there saying things he shouldn’t, though usually he’d be up and able to work on Monday. It wasn’t that Steve drank more than most men. It was just that he was the sort that shouldn’t drink at all. Even the doctor said he had a delicate stomach and couldn’t stand it. But he did drink, though not so terribly often like some men.

But even when Steve didn’t drink, things weren’t so much better. He had a mean disposition, the kind that can take an innocent phrase and boomerang it into a sneer. He was never quite satisfied about things, about his home, about his children. He hated the Government and joined various political societies, getting into fights with the neighbourhood leaders and hating them in turn. Steve wouldn’t read several of the newspapers, because he “had it in for them” and their policies. He disliked Sophie’s friends and her relatives, and quarrelled because he had to spend the evening with them occasionally. He called Dick a “damned white-collared little snob” and Fred was a “sick roach who hadn’t the liver to have a will of his own.” Steve was not a pleasant person to live with.

Thinking over her life since her marriage and the life of Anna, since her marriage, as she knew it, little things came to Sophie which showed her that Fred was not all that Anna tried to picture him. She saw, now, clearly enough, that Anna had been brave, that she had tried to conceal Fred’s failings, but that, underneath, she hated him for his cruelty to her. Little things that Anna had said proved this. It could be nothing else.

Why hadn’t Anna left Fred? Sophie felt that she would have left Steve years ago, if it hadn’t been for the kids. Anna could have left—any day. Only herself to look out for and she had been a cashier before her marriage and could have always made a living. Still, maybe she did think of that way—and decided against it. Sophie felt that there was something noble, something brave, about what Anna had done. She wished she could do it. She wished it on Saturday nights, when Steve was drinking and on many other nights when he wasn’t. There wasn’t very much use in living, most of the time.

And yet—the kids. They were sweet. They had mean tempers sometimes, especially little Steve, who could be really bad. But then, again, sometimes when they were in bed, they’d let her put her arms around them, tight, some nights, and kiss her in return, too. They were sweet, the kids, and worth a lot of hard things.

But Anna hadn’t any kids. Not a one. If the baby hadn’t died, maybe she could have stood it, too. Still, what is the use of it all? You can’t tell how kids’ll turn out, even if you spend years sewing and cooking and cleaning for them. It’s taking a chance. And the other things ... it’s best to get away from them.

Anna, without any one but Fred, and he mean to her and she trying to conceal it with smiles and jokes and changing the subject ... she had been brave. And one person can’t stand everything. And, looking ahead and seeing nothing but years of Fred and bad treatment or of working to try to make a living, maybe, after all, Anna had figured it out that her way was best. Fred had said they hadn’t quarrelled. But then, Sophie never did trust Fred too much from the first. Of course, he’d have said that. They had probably had an awful quarrel the night before, and rather than go through with it all again....

Well, Anna was dead. It must be good to simply quit and stop quarrelling and working. If she had Anna’s chance to go out, without harming any one else, without leaving any kids for maybe worse treatment ... Sophie knew, in her heart, why Anna had committed suicide, and though she shed many tears over her sister, understanding things as she did, she couldn’t blame her. Maybe Anna had picked out the right path.