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be
astonished and did his best to lift his eyebrows.
    "It's a long story," she
said. "It was on account of Lucy that I had to marry him. I'll bet you
must have wondered how it was I came to marry a cripple. It's a long
story."
    Her voice was as hypnotic as a
tom-tom, and as monotonous. Already his mind and body were half asleep.
    "It's a long, long story, and
that's why I couldn't write it in a letter. I got into trouble when the Doyles lived above us on Center Street. I used to be kind
to him and go to the movies with him because he was a cripple, although I was
one of the most popular girls on the block. So when I got into trouble, I
didn't know what to do and asked him for the money for an abortion. But he
didn't have the money, so we got married instead. It all came through my
trusting a dirty dago . I thought he was a gent, but
when I asked him to marry me, why he spurned me from the door and wouldn't even
give me money for an abortion. He said if he gave me the money that would mean
it was his fault and I would have something on him. Did you ever hear of such a
skunk?"
    "No," he said. The life
out of which she spoke was even heavier than her body. It was as if a gigantic,
living Miss Lonelyhearts letter in the shape of a
paper weight had been placed on his brain.
    "After the baby was born, I
wrote the skunk, but he never wrote back, and about two years ago, I got to
thinking how unfair it was for Lucy to have to depend on a cripple and not come
into her rights. So I looked his name up in the telephone book and took Lucy to
see him. As I told him then, not that I wanted anything for myself, but just
that I wanted Lucy to get what was coming to her. Well, after keeping us
waiting in the hall over an hour--I was boiling mad, I can tell you, thinking
of the wrong he had done me and my child--we were taken into the parlor by the
butler. Very quiet and lady-like, because money ain't everything and he's no more a gent than I'm a lady, the dirty wop--I told him
he ought to do something for Lucy see'n ' he's her
father. Well, he had the nerve to say that he had never seen me before and that
if I didn't stop bothering him, he'd have me run in. That got me riled and I
lit into the bastard and gave him a piece of my mind. A woman came in while we
were arguing that I figured was his wife, so I hollered, 'He's the father of my
child, he's the father of my child.' When they went to the
'phone to call a cop, I picked up the kid and beat it.
    "And now comes the funniest
part of the whole thing. My husband is a queer guy and he always makes believe
that he is the father of the kid and even talks to me about our child. Well,
when we got home, Lucy kept asking me why I said a strange man was her papa.
She wanted to know if Doyle wasn't really her papa. I must of been crazy because I told her that she should remember that her real papa was a
man named Tony Benelli and that he had wronged me. I
told her a lot of other crap like that--too much movies I guess. Well, when
Doyle got home the first thing Lucy says to him is that he ain't her papa. That got him sore and he wanted to know what I had told her. I didn't
like his high falutin ' ways and said, The truth.' I guess too that I was kinds sick of see'n him moon over her. He went for me and hit me one on
the cheek. I wouldn't let no man get away with that so
I socked back and he swung at me with his stick but missed and fell on the
floor and started to cry. The kid was on the floor crying too and that set me
off because the next thing I know I'm on the floor bawling too."
    She waited for him to comment, but
he remained silent until she nudged him into speech with her elbow. "Your
husband probably loves you and the kid," he said.
    "Maybe so, but I was a pretty
girl and could of had my pick. What girl wants to spend her life with a shrimp
of a cripple?"
    "You're still pretty," he
said without knowing why, except that he was frightened.
    She rewarded him with a kiss, then dragged him to the