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Judd tried to act shocked. And because Harry’s chocolaty eyes had the solemn, baleful look of a hound, Judd asked, “Are you in the doghouse?”
“Not in, under. Whatever’s on the doghouse floor, that’s my roof.”
“Because of?”
Harry lit a Raleigh cigarette. “Dames. What else? I have been ordered by the Mrs. not to talk about it.”
Hoping to seem merely conversational, Judd asked, “Say, have you heard from Mrs. Snyder recently?”
Harry tweezed a shred of tobacco off his tongue. “Well, she’s not getting along with the old wet blanket at home, is all I hear. I know Albert, too, through bowling. Have you met him?”
“No.”
“Solid guy, fine artist, but sort of a stick-in-the-mud. She’s not the right girl for a killjoy like him. Anyways, I’m not going to take either one’s side. But I guess there’s another friend gone.”
“Which friend?” Judd asked.
“Al, of course,” Harry said, as if Judd were dense. “You don’t abandon a doll like that.”
Abandonment, Judd thought. That’s what it was. “I have a hard time fathoming how anyone could treat such a lovely woman so badly.”
Harry’s stare was long and interrogatory, and then he got out a postcard invitation from his vest pocket and handed it to Judd. “Are you aware of this ‘Bon Voyage’ party? Hosted bar and everything. Some big fashion-month shebang.” And he added dismissively, “You’re supposed to look nautical.”
“Are you going?”
“Nah. I’m through with shebangs, too.” And then he winked. “But you should definitely go.”
Waiting for him in his Benjamin & Johnes office were retailer inquiries, order forms, an announcement from the Club of Corset Salesmen of the Empire State, a notice of an increase in dues from his Elks lodge, and three neatly typed letters lacking a sender’s name or return address. The first, dated Tuesday of last week, read:
Dear Judd,
Hate to bother you on the job but I have no one in whom to confide, no one but you to whom I can unburdun myself and speak of my troubles, my husband’s neglec, our night after night of arguments, Albert’s cruellty toward our baby. Won’t you see me for lunch sometime? We can just talk.
Judd slit open another that was postmarked on a Wednesday evening:
Dear Judd,
I have been investigating an Ursuline convent for Lora to get her out of this din of inequity Albert has created. She could learn and be safe and far away from a father who has no regards for her. But I cannot bare to part with her. She is all I have of love and happyness.
I feel certain I could get a job in business. Selling stocks and bonds maybe. I need financial advice, your smarts. Oh please won’t you call me? Orchard 8591. Each night I pray, “Dear God, give me back the past.” I would do so much so different. You have shown me all that is possible.
The final letter was postmarked on Saturday:
Dear Darling Mr. Gray,
You must think I’m some loon since you haven’t answered. Please accep my apologies for the desparate tone of my letters. They would certainly scare me if I were a man! I have not wanted to call your office for fear people there will talk, and that would be distructive. I have no other expectations beyond speaking to you since I value your intelligence and mastery of situations. Won’t you call when Al is gone? Eight in the morning to 6 at night. Orchard 8591. We can meet at Henry’s if you’d like to.
Judd did nothing.
Earlier, in 1924, Albert Snyder had felt certain his wife was having an extramarital affair. C. F. Chapman, the publisher of Motor Boating magazine, recommended Albert initiate actions for a divorce and forced him to leave their offices on West 40th Street to have a conversation with Judge Nathan Lieberman, a New York state assemblyman and a high-paid Broadway attorney. The judge reviewed New York’s divorce laws with Albert, urged him to hire a private detective to find proof of Ruth’s infidelity, and then introduced him to an ex-cop named Jacob Sanacory. She was investigated for a week, and at its conclusion Sanacory wrote Judge Lieberman, “We have incontestable evidence on this man’s wife.” And that same afternoon Sanacory telephoned Albert to say, “She’s in your house with a guy right now.”
Albert stood in the front yard
with the gumshoe and vaguely heard a Brooklyn voice and Ruth’s giggling in Lorraine’s bedroom, but though Sanacory got his camera out and egged Mr. Snyder to hurry inside, saying they needed a photograph of the lovers in flagrante delicto, Albert hesitated. “And then what?” he said. “End it? She’s an adequate mother and domestic. With Root I can at least be sure that the house and the girl are being taken care of.”
Sanacory shook his head as he went off, and Albert sat on the front porch for a full hour, inventing ever-bloodier ways to destroy the diddler’s face. And then he did not even do that. “I could have done a lot,” he told C. F. Chapman, “but I would have had to be in love.”
Soon after that the Snyders established an unspoken accommodation: Albert would ignore Ruth’s nights out or counterfeit an acceptance of the lies she told, and she would affect a nonchalance about him.
