Disclaimer: Nope, I don't own any of it.
Note: I originally posted this on 03/26/2012 (under a different account). It was previously titled Fool. Then I deleted it and tried rewriting it into an original piece, but it didn't work out very well. So now, years later, I'm finally reposting the fanfic version back up, completely revised and with a different title.
Faded
He thought she didn't see it, but she did. The restlessness, the discontent, the roving eye.
The fondness for the whiskey bottle.
He came home late from the factory at least twice a week, always crawling into bed with a hasty change of clothes and a well-rehearsed story. Once upon a time, she might have believed his excuses. Once upon a time, she was a silly girl who made eyes at the first handsome boy who came her way, but Sarah wasn't that girl anymore.
She knew Jack was a liar. He always had been.
He thought she didn't notice the perfume on his clothes or the distracted way he looked at her, like he was seeing through her instead. She wasn't blind and she wasn't stupid either—no matter what the neighbor women might whisper about her—but she was also good at pretending that nothing was amiss. So she kept her mouth shut and tried to pretend.
Sometimes she could almost pretend that Jack was still the boy she loved. The boy she thought she had married. Mama had warned her not to marry a boy who wasn't Jewish, didn't she? She had warned her, but Sarah didn't listen. Sarah didn't care.
And now Sarah was trapped.
Sunday morning she sat in her armchair, a worn, faded relic she had brought from the tenement her parents still lived in, and stitched shirts she would later sell for extra money. How many of these shirts would end up on the backs of dock workers and factory men, coal shovelers and carriage drivers? How many would end up with perfume stained on the collar from a late night on the town?
Did it really matter? Did she truly care anymore? She felt so numb, so frozen inside from all the pretending, that she hardly noticed when she pricked herself on her sewing needle.
A key fumbled at the lock on the door, but she didn't bother to get up and help. Let him struggle a bit, the way she struggled each time he came home late. The key finally turned the lock and he strolled through the door, a little bleary-eyed, a little worse for wear if you studied him close enough. But Jack could still stand tall and radiate boyish charm, even when hungover, and made a big show of greeting little Jacky and baby Esther, who played together on the rug. At least the children could always get his attention. Sarah suspected he would have packed up long ago, bound on a train for his beloved Santa Fe, if it wasn't for the children.
At least he loved someone besides himself.
"Sorry I'm late," he said, raking a hand through his rumpled hair. "Some of the fellas down at work needed my help 'cause a machine broke down, so I spent the night at Richie's place. I knew ya wouldn't mind."
Lies.
"I saved breakfast for you," said Sarah, refusing to look at him. "I left it on the table."
He thanked her absently and headed for the table, walking right past her without a kiss on the cheek or an inquiry about her day, and she wondered who he really spent the night with. A dancer from Irving Hall with supple legs and wild curls? Kid Blink's wife, who she caught making eyes at Jack just a week ago? Or perhaps a whore, the easiest of them all?
Maybe it was all of these. Maybe it was none. Maybe he spent the night near the train station, poring over a cowboy dime novel, dreaming of wide open skies out West. For all his nights soaked in whiskey, cigarettes, and strange perfume, Jack's one true mistress had always been Santa Fe.
Santa Fe, his first love.
And Sarah had kept him from her.
She kept him in New York, after the newsies strike had been won. Every time he started to get restless, every time he started itching to go west, Sarah reeled him back in with home-cooked meals and kisses on her parents' fire escape. When that wasn't enough, she gave him more. She gave him everything, letting him have her out by the rooftop garden, under New York's hazy twilight.
And when she found out little Jacky was on the way, she knew she had him for good. They were quickly married, and for a little while, Sarah was happy.
For a little while, she thought Jack was hers to keep.
Until Jack started talking once more about Santa Fe, filling her head with fantasy images of living out west. Fairytales, in Sarah's opinion, and she told him so.
Finally, he shut his mouth on the matter, and soon he started coming home later and later.
You drove him to it, she told herself. And maybe she had. Jack was a cowboy at heart, made for open air and a life on horseback. And here he was, barely twenty years old, supporting a wife and two kids on his grueling factory wages, trying his hardest not to grow up.
Sarah doubted he ever would.
What would her parents say, if they saw the truth behind the facade? That Jack was nothing but an overgrown boy who sought his long-desired freedom in saloons and brothels and God only knew where else? Her mother would only purse her lips, the way she did when she learned her little Sarah was getting married awfully quick, and tell Sarah "I told you so." Her father, for all his gentleness, would have no choice but to agree.
And what about David? What would David say if he knew that Jack's attention had strayed elsewhere?
What would David do?
Break Jack's nose, probably, which would serve Jack right, but what would it solve? A punch in the nose wouldn't be enough to make Jack grow up.
It wouldn't make Sarah adore him again.
She felt nothing but a great weariness and stitched listlessly, hardly caring if she made a mistake or not. At least she could rip out the ruined stitches and start all over, unlike her marriage.
Jack wandered lazily in from the kitchen, one suspender threatening to come off his shoulder. "I'll be takin' a nap if ya need me for somethin'. Try to keep the kids quiet, all right?"
Sarah nodded mutely. Little Jacky galloped on an imaginary horse across the rug.
Jack wandered away to sleep off his hangover and Sarah tossed her sewing aside, enjoying the way it fell to the floor in a crumpled heap.
Sunday evening she sat in the same chair, turning the pages of a lady's magazine while he sat nearby and read the paper. The children had reluctantly been put to bed. She had Jack to herself until the sun came up and he had to go to work, though she knew perfectly well that she didn't have him at all. He belonged to his stubborn visions of hot, dry desert air and his cowboy fairy tales. He belonged to his dreams.
He rustled his paper, turning to a new section. She flipped a page of her magazine. He drank from his whiskey bottle and lit a cigarette, even though she hated it when he smoked in the apartment, and rustled his paper again.
"Jack," Sarah said softly.
He didn't hear her over the crackling newsprint and kept on smoking.
"Jack," Sarah said again.
"What?" he said, not bothering to take his cigarette from his mouth.
I'm sorry, she almost said, but the word died on her lips. Sorry would mean that she was wrong and Jack was right. Sorry might put her on a train west, where she didn't want to go.
"Never mind," she said, and dropped her eyes back down to her magazine.
Monday morning he got dressed in a crisp clean shirt and matching suspenders, ready to toil away his day and spend his evening without her. He was handsome as ever, if a little worn out. Esther stopped screaming when he held her, and little Jacky begged him not to go. How could Sarah leave him, when the children worshipped him the way Sarah once worshipped him? The way Les and all the newsies thought he was a gift to New York?
Where would she go if she did leave him? Her mother would never let her hear the end of it.
Jack absently touched her shoulder before heading out the door. "I'll see ya tonight," he said—though he probably wouldn't.
Fifteen minutes later, the milkman arrived. He was probably close to her father's age, with nice blue eyes and a neatly trimmed beard, yet he looked at her with something boyish in his eyes as he handed her the milk bottle. Something she had always noticed, but never gave much thought.
She saw the way he looked at her each time she came to the door and paid him for the milk. It had been so long since Jack had looked at her that way, she thought she was immune, but she felt a sudden longing stir within her as she met the milkman's eyes.
Sarah took the milk and set it aside, paying him with a smile instead of the usual coin she gave him. "Would you like to come inside a moment? I've got a pot of coffee ready."
He smiled back at her. "Coffee sounds just fine, ma'am."
"Please, call me Sarah."
She took him to the bed she shared with Jack and let him have her, not caring that other tenants expected their milk. Let them wait a while. It didn't matter if the walls were thin, or if the neighbors could hear the milkman's name on her lips. This was her escape, her only escape, from a world that had faded before her eyes.
And Jack would never suspect that she had learned to play his own game.