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“Come up to the roof, Jack,” Sarah said, and there was no room for argument. The gentleness wasn’t entirely gone from her voice, but there was an edge now too. The past few days couldn’t have been easy for her, and Jack wondered what she was thinking. Maybe she wanted to kill him. Maybe he would let her.
“We need to talk.” Sarah set her muddy basket on the tarpaper surface of the roof and began lifting pieces of lace out of it. She frowned at the mud caked into the delicate piecework as she lay each piece flat on the laundry table, using the palm of her hand to flatten out the wrinkles and her fingers to straighten twisted bits. “You can help. Get me some water from the pump, and that bucket with a washboard in it.”
Jack obeyed in silence. He had no idea what Sarah wanted to talk to him about, or whether he knew what he wanted to say to her. If he had the right to say anything to her. Whether he could say anything that would come out the way he wanted it to. Whether he could say something that explained anything. Let alone everything. He didn’t want to abandon everybody, he didn’t want to die, he wasn’t sure what was going to happen to him now, he wasn’t sure he could handle one more person yelling at him or being mad or disappointed or sarcastic or resigned.
The rooftop cistern held water warmed by the sun. Jack filled the enamel wash bowl for Sarah and lugged it to the table, the ridged washboard tucked under his arm. He set up a washing station, the bowl next to the board on the weathered tabletop. Sarah drew a bar of soap from her pocket and set about cleaning the lace, sudsing the delicate pieces and rubbing them carefully but firmly against the metal washboard face. She didn’t smile. Her expression was somewhere between annoyance and pain. “Jack,” she said. “Explain.”
“Can you fix that?” Jack asked, not because he was trying to get out of answering but because he hadn’t heard what Sarah had said. He pointed at the mudstained corner of a lace panel. “How bad is it?”
“We’ll see when the washing’s done,” said Sarah, grimly going back to her scrubbing. “The sun will fade the stains as much as the soap.”
Uneasily, Jack turned away from Sarah, toward the ladder leading down off the roof. Perhaps he was free to leave, now that his job was done. He didn’t say anything, but Sarah noticed his eyes on the exit.
“Jack,” she said, in a tone that insisted he stay, “what happened?”
“What do you mean what happened. Didn’t they offer me a deal, and I took it.” These could have been questions, but when Jack said them they weren’t. Nothing was a question. Betrayal was betrayal. Jack didn’t want Sarah to think he was making excuses for himself.
Sarah paused before she spoke. “Why? And don’t say money, only. What else.”
“It was money,” Jack sank to the ground, letting out a sigh as he did it. If Sarah wouldn’t let him leave, he was going to pretend that he wanted to be here. “Only. Nothing else.”
Sarah delicately unfurled the petals of a lace flower and smoothed them flat, using the heel of her hand to press them into shape. “Four years in jail,” she said. “That didn’t count?”
“Yeah, like that ain’t something I faced before and got out of.” Jack found himself jealous of Sarah, of the lace in front of her, stained and tattered as it was. Tangible evidence of her work, her time, her talent. The words Jack put out into the world were the opposite of lace, they were balloons that provided a few hours of amusement at most, then floated into the sky and popped. His stomach hurt, like someone was pulling laces inside of him. “It was money, Sarah. A way out.”
“So, you get paid now that you saved us?” Sarah arched an eyebrow at Jack, then ducked her head back toward her lace. “You were thinking about money when you rammed Murray Delanskey with your head?”
“Well, you giving him a split lip didn’t exactly stop him for that long, did it?”
“You didn’t answer my question.” Sarah slammed the heel of her hand particularly hard against the lace spread on the tabletop. She winced, her hand and wrist still sore from the impact of the brick wall she’d accidentally hit after purposefully making impact with Morton Delano’s face.
“Well, you got his name wrong,” Jack said. “The one you hit is Shithead. The little one is Dipshit. It’s important not to offend, you know?
Sarah let out an involuntary giggle, then bit her lower lip. She slid her eyes toward Jack, trying to look forbidding, but her resistance failed. He was smiling at her. She smiled back.
“Their mother worked really hard to choose good names for them,” Jack lay back against the sun-warmed tarpaper roof and draped his forearm over his eyes. “It wasn’t easy for her. You shouldn’t laugh, Sarah.”
“Offending ogres is the least of my worries.” Sarah rolled her eyes, carefully spreading lace over the clothing line so that it would dry without losing its shape. “Not only is Mr. Pulitzer depriving my family of my brothers’ wages, his hired goons destroyed weeks of my own work. The Dooloopies deserve none of my respect, and they’ll receive none of it.”
“Yeah, well,” Jack said. “Fair’s fair.”
Sarah didn’t say anything. The sight of her piecework drying on the line brought heat to her face. Her eyes pricked with tears. To redo weeks of work was no laughing matter, and she would lose her reputation as a reliable seamstress who delivered good product on time. For what? Two assholes acting on behalf of Pulitzer, a man who didn’t care if they lived or died. Why fight those no better off than yourself, when your suffering came from on high? It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense. Fair’s fair – who was Jack kidding? He didn’t even believe that himself.
“In the end we’re all dust,” Jack said. “We’ll get swept up in the same bin. My ashes with Mooley Delousy’s. Pulitzer will be in there, too. You’ll probably outlive us. That’s justice, right?”
“This isn’t over.” Sarah heard herself say the words. She didn’t choose to say them. “Pulitzer’s going to pay for this.”
“Yeah, well, find somebody that wants to hear that and can do something about it.” Jack’s voice was flat. “Anybody. I’ll wait.”
Sarah reached into her apron pocket and pulled out the folded, grease-stained copy of Denton’s article about the rally. “Read this,” she said. “Then tell me no one’s listening.”
Jack sighed and accepted the article from Sarah. He rolled onto his stomach and spread the piece of paper out on the roof in front of him, just as Sarah had smoothed out the lace. He shaded his eyes with his hand to read the words, then gave Sarah a quizzical look. “What is this, something about the rally?”
“Just read it, Jack.” Sarah stretched her arms out behind her and tilted her face toward the sun.
Jack rubbed his finger over one of the grease stains. “Were you wrapping up salami in it?”
“You’ll have to talk to Les about that,” Sarah said. “Read the article first.”
“Buncha lies,” Jack muttered.
Sarah set her jaw. “If it was lies, the papers would have printed it, right?”
Jack muttered something so quietly Sarah couldn’t quite catch all of it. “Smartass” was the one word that stood out.
She swatted at Jack’s shoulder. “Shut up and read.”
He frowned. “I’m reading.” And he read.