Just before his marriage to Stella, Jack had visited Mary Carney, who was now married for a second time. Her daughter Judy, then twenty-one, remembers the morning clearly. ' My mother was hanging clothes out on the line in the back, and he asked her to marry him and she said, "No. You've never stopped drinking." He said, "You'll never see me again. I'm gonna leave here and I'm gonna drink myself to death." And he did. She always felt guilty about that.' According to Gregory Corso, 'Because he was a catholic, he didn't want to commit suicide, but he wanted out.'
