What a Woman Must Do

by Faith Sullivan

  Outside, the midnight air was thick and hot as afternoon. No small breeze lifted the hair at her pinched temples. Beyond the parking lot, she sat down on dusty grass and hugged herself.

  Twenty years ago, with fifteen dollars and a train ticket, Harriet had left Sioux City, left two old parents and two brothers who had always been indifferent toward her at best, and who had become resentful, even hostile, as she worked her way through business college while the boys became a shoe salesman and a hotel clerk, respectively. The family had resented her ambitions and her hoity-toity ways. Their lives weren’t good enough for her. That was what they thought. And she’d been unable to convince them otherwise.

  Kate and Martin had been different. They’d treated her with respect from the start, congratulating her cleverness when she landed a job with the Water and Power Company in the middle of hard times. The Drews had only recently lost their farm—well, sold it, but for pennies, and Harriet had been able to help out a little, paying them room and board. Harriet wasn’t sure what would have happened to Kate and Martin if Kate’s maiden aunt Hattie hadn’t passed away, leaving a timely little legacy of several thousand to the Drews. Martin had been able to set up Drew’s Body and Lube with his cousin Arnold and buy the house they’d been renting.

  The Drews had been family to Harriet. Bess had been like a daughter to her. Even if Harriet didn’t have DeVore Weiss, she still had Kate and Bess. And she had her career. Wasn’t she office manager at the Water and Power Company, with half a dozen women working under her? Maybe this was her portion. It was a sight more than many women had. Why, then, was she craving all the time, craving something to wrap around her, as though she’d never in her life been warmed through?

  At length she stood up, pulling her skirt around to check the back for dirt and grass. She was not going to vomit. She’d gotten past that. She’d better get back before Rose had the police out looking for her. Rose. If Rose married Ernie and Harriet was left just to stand and watch, it would be time to join the Ladies’ Aid Circle.

  In the Dakota Ballroom, the madness had gone on without Harriet, the pounding beat of hundreds of feet bounding around the floor; below that, the heavy pulse of bass drum and tuba; above, the whine of accordian and the scream of cornet.

  Through the big, open windows she saw the smear of dancers, like people caught on a wild carnival ride. Strains of a fast rendition of “Goodnight, Irene” blasted her like a hot wind from the Badlands.

  There was DeVore in his blue plaid sports shirt, wheeling round and round with the short woman from Ula. And there, clinging to Ernie, was Rose in her red sheath that was too close-fitting across the abdomen and her short hair that was permed too tight. And wasn’t that Bess with Doyle Hanlon, his right arm holding her waist close to him? How gracefully her back arched as she tossed her head, laughing at something he said.

  Harriet wished that the night was over, and she and Bess were home with Kate.

  Chapter 10

  BESS

  On the drive to the Dakota, Bess had sat in the front seat between Doyle and Earl, laughing as the two men razzed each other and teased her as well. That they might be vying with each other for her laughter hadn’t occurred to her.

  She didn’t know much about men. Since Archer’s death, she had had no men in her immediate family. Aunt Kate had told her to hang on to her memories of Uncle Martin so that she would always know what a good man was.

  Because of their unfamiliarity, Bess was all the more drawn to men. Not that she imagined them to be more commendable than women, but their mystery was a challenge and attraction. For that reason she had heroes rather than heroines: Harry Truman, Laurence Olivier, Rupert Brooke, and Beethoven (never mind that those last two were long dead).

  The appurtenances of masculinity intrigued and delighted her. They must be clues to what men were: the pleasant stench of beer and the smell of pipes and cigars (after ten years her great-uncle Martin’s pipe smoke still lingered in Aunt Kate’s house); the perfume of aftershave lotion and leather gloves; the bluish tinge on a jaw where whiskers had been shaved away; body hair and baldness; small mannerisms like the trouser-hitching-up that men were always performing when they stood up, even when their pants weren’t falling down.

  Great-uncle Martin had executed an elaborate hitching-up, but that had something to do with his hernia. Bess had never seen Uncle Martin or Archer or any man naked. She’d seen pictures of statues and paintings of naked men, but damned few. And mostly the sex organs in these were teensy, nothing to cause you to hitch your pants up all the time as if you were putting your unwieldy equipment away in some pocket inside your trousers. Maybe this trouser hoisting was merely a ritual, like backslapping and arm punching.

  Bess studied the men on either side of her, full-grown specimens, not just high school boys. Here was a glimpse into that masculine mystique about which she was ignorant. Here were two live specimens, and not just high school boys.

  Of the two, Doyle Hanlon was the more handsome and also the more complicated and intriguing. Often Bess had dismissed boys who were exceptionally good-looking. Archer had possessed a beautiful face, and look what that had been worth. Handsome is as handsome does, Aunt Kate never tired of saying.

  Then too, very good-looking boys frequently expected you to fall all over them. Doyle Hanlon wasn’t like that. He was cocky, but it had nothing to do with his looks. His cockiness was full of self-mockery: hadn’t he spoken of his limp as being distinguished? Did he really limp, she wondered, or did he only imagine that he did? Or was the limp a condition to which he’d become wedded and from which he could not be divorced, though it had ceased to exist? Or was it a ruse for attracting girls like Bess? No. It wasn’t a ruse.

  By the time Jim Arliss had found booths for them and they’d ordered beers, it was eleven. Two hours of music left. The Dakota was not a grand place. It was dimly lit, for very good reasons, and hazy with smoke, especially in winter when the windows were shut. The booths were sticky with ancient beer and sweat, and a woman was a fool to wear a good dress there, but women did anyway.

  Bess and Boyd and Earl danced a butterfly. Donna and the Arlisses were in front of them. Across the way Harriet and Rose danced with DeVore Weiss. Bess felt a stab of anger. Would Harriet actually break up the family she’d been part of for years to marry that long-necked gander? He probably hadn’t cracked a book since high school, if then. Bess was sure his kids were illiterates. Why would someone like Harriet want to mother a bunch of illiterates who smelled of sour milk and cow manure?

  A long time ago, Harriet had put her arms around Bess and promised never to leave her. She’d sat on the back step holding Bess and telling her the wonderful things they would do together—flying on airplanes and seeing things that almost no one in Harvester had ever seen. In all their talks after Celia’s death, hadn’t it been implicit that Harriet would always belong to Bess? Who would ever love Harriet’s pretensions and her scrawniness as Bess did?

  Harriet nodded to Bess but didn’t smile. Clearly she was provoked to see Bess with a married man. Well, Bess was just as provoked with her and she wasn’t going to smile.

  If Harriet married DeVore Weiss, then that was that. No way would Bess take her back. Bess did not feel good about this, but she felt certain.

  The bandleader announced “The Tennessee Waltz” and Doyle asked Bess to dance. A plump woman in a vivid print jersey dress who was breaking in with Billy and the Six Fat Goats had begun to sing, trying hard to sound like Patti Page.

  As Bess and Doyle made their way toward the floor, he joked, “If I see any old friends, don’t expect me to introduce you.” Bess laughed, flattered that this clever, handsome man would make such an allusion to the lyrics, but realizing at the same time that it wasn’t quite proper. She wasn’t his “true love,” after all.

  The entire evening with him was not quite proper. Not scandalous. They were in a group. They’d done nothing indecent. But it would be scandalous if it happened again. A cold cur
rent of loneliness brushed her brow. Spinning between the other couples, finding the paths of least resistance, they were dancing on an ice floe, cut off from custom.

  “ ‘I remember the night and the Tennessee Waltz …’ ” the vocalist belted, a mournful catch in her voice.

  “What are you going to study at college?” Doyle asked as they danced.

  “Literature, I think.”

  “What do you like to read?”

  “Poetry. Novels. D. H. Lawrence when I can get hold of him. Waugh, Huxley, Fitzgerald, Faulkner.”

  “And what will you do with them? Teach?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t like kids,” she said, forgetting that Doyle Hanlon was a father. “I like grown-ups.”

  “How can you tell the difference?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Take me, for example. Do I look grown up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I’m not. I’m a spoiled kid. I ran away to the army to grow up and got a busted leg instead.”

  Was he trying to warn her, or was he simply making self-deprecating conversation? If he were warning her, wasn’t that presumptuous? Did he assume that she was becoming infatuated with him? Bess wished that she could see her face in a mirror and know what showed there. Did she look confused and light-headed, warm one minute and cold the next?

  Jim Arliss asked her for the next dance.

  “When do you have to go back?” she asked.

  “Monday.”

  “That’s not much time.”

  “I wish to hell I wasn’t going back.”

  “I can imagine.” Her words sounded insincere in her ears. She was glad he was leaving because he seemed the kind of boy who could be persistent and troublesome. Yet she did feel sorry for him. She wished him away, but not to war.

  “I’m not yellow,” he assured her.

  “I didn’t think you were.”

  “I’m point man in my platoon.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The point man goes first. If there’s a mine in the road or snipers, he catches it.”

  “My God.”

  “I’m not trying to make out that I’m a hero. Somebody has to be point man. I’ve never even skinned a knee over there, so they call me ‘Lucky.’ With a name like that, I figure I have to be the point man.”

  Jim wasn’t drunk, but he’d had quite a few beers and maybe he had a bottle tucked away somewhere and was ordering setups. In any case, he was speaking more slowly and precisely than earlier.

  “You with that guy?” he asked.

  “What guy?”

  “You know what guy. The one that was in Korea. The one that drove you out here.”

  “Well, he’s not my date, if that’s what you mean. He just gave me a ride, like you and Bob gave Donna a ride.”

  “You could come with us.”

  He was right. There was plenty of room in their car, but she hadn’t wanted to go with them.

  “You letting him take you home?” he asked.

  “I’ll get a ride with him,” Bess explained, resenting the question but not daring to ignore the implications. She didn’t want it noised all over St. Bridget County that she was seeing a married man. “But so will Earl,” she told Jim. “I’ll be dropped off before Earl, if that answers your question.”

  He looked unconvinced. “If you’re worried about your reputation, let me and Bob take you home.”

  Again, Bess didn’t answer. She was angry. What right had this Jim Arliss?

  “I can show you a good time,” he continued. “You learn a lot over there, and it ain’t all about killing gooks.”

  “I’m not looking for a ‘good time,’ ” Bess told him. “What do you think I am?” So much for decent Catholic boys. But he probably was a decent Catholic boy who’d learned too many things in the war and had had too much to drink tonight.

  “What do I think you are? I think you’re somebody making eyes at a married man. And he’s making them back at you.”

  “And I think you’re drunk.”

  “Sorry,” he said, oddly contrite.

  At the end of the song, he saw her back to her booth. “I’m going to ask you again,” he said. He still wanted to take her home.

  Bess felt trapped, and it was her own doing. She didn’t want Jim Arliss to take her home. She wasn’t attracted to him, and he’d expect her to neck with him in the backseat of the car all the way to Harvester. He’d end up angry at the perfunctory good-night kiss, which was all he could expect, and it would have been a handshake if he weren’t headed back to Korea.

  Plenty of boys had gotten only a handshake after seeing her home from a dance. More than one had complained to his buddies that she was a frigid, stuck-up bitch. If the boy was returning her home from an event for which he’d called and asked her out, she kissed him good night. It seemed only fair. Occasionally she found a boy with whom she really wanted to neck, but those had been few and far between.

  She wondered why it was that the boys she liked—the ones with sufficient brains and character—were generally the ones without sex appeal. She realized that when it came to sex appeal, there were no absolutes. One girl’s heartthrob was another girl’s deadly bore. But in the unique world of her own tastes, the sexy boys rarely carried on an intelligent conversation, and after a couple of evenings of necking with them, Bess lost interest; whereas, try as she might, she could seldom get herself heated up over the boys with whom she enjoyed talking. Why wasn’t she one of the lucky girls who enjoyed necking with everybody?

  “He wants to take you home,” Doyle observed of Jim Arliss. “It’s all right if you want to go.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then don’t.” As he spoke, he grasped between his thumb and forefinger the fabric of Bess’s sleeve, which had become crushed, and perked it up to its former fullness. It was an oddly intimate act, not lost on Bess.

  “I feel guilty.”

  “About not going with him?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s the uniform.”

  “Is it?”

  When the next ladies’ choice, a set of three slow waltzes, was announced, Bess asked Doyle. She could see that Jim Arliss was disappointed and angry, but maybe now he would give up the idea of taking her home. If he told everyone in the country that she was seeing Doyle Hanlon, what could she do?

  But she worried about Aunt Kate. Kate had had enough scandals. If word got back to her that her grandniece was seeing Doyle Hanlon, Bess didn’t know what it would do to her. Of course, she wasn’t seeing him, only letting him give her a ride home. But people misinterpreted innocent acts, especially if you’d had a drunken father. If you had a riffraff father like Archer, they believed anything of you.

  “What happened to your smile?” Doyle asked during the waltzes. “You’re not letting the soldier spoil your evening, are you?” He squeezed her hand as if to waken her.

  Chapter 11

  KATE

  Leaving the stove light burning in the kitchen and flicking on the porch light, Kate set out for Frieda’s. More and more, even these few steps across the street were a painful adventure. Frieda always said, “Arnold will come with the car.” But Kate didn’t want Arnold to come with the car. You had to keep going on your own steam as long as you could.

  Kate did not like to think about becoming a cripple. Dr. White had said, “There’s not much that we can do about this kind of arthritis, Kate. Try to keep moving.”

  “How long before I can’t move?”

  He had shrugged. “Couldn’t say. The disease can slow down, even stop its progress. I’ve heard of that.”

  Maybe. If she forgave Archer. But if the crippling didn’t slow down, what then? She would not allow Bess to care for her. She would not allow the child to be tied down that way.

  And her herbs—camomile oil and comfrey poultices and such—hadn’t relieved the stiffening. But how could they, since hate was what caused it?
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  If she were unable to get around, she would have to give up the house. That thought made her dizzy with panic. She stopped and looked back at the place where she’d lived since they had lost the farm and moved to town.

  This was the house where she’d learned to live in town, as well as she ever had learned. What she had endured here over these twenty-some years and what she had loved here were impressed upon the wallpaper and into the grain of the oak floors. To leave the house would be to leave witness and friend.

  What would become of her? Would she live at the Friendship Arms Nursing Home at the west end of town? She smiled at the small, sour joke in her mind. Going west. To die. Well, she hoped that was all a good distance down the line.

  The move to town had crushed her to the point where she thought she would never recover. In some ways she never had. The farm was with her, waking and sleeping. And these past months, with her conjuring, it had been her sole refuge from pain. Still, this house had understood, had not taken offense.

  She did not blame Martin for the loss of the farm. Hard times had taken it. Hard times had come early to farmers, long before the stock market crash. She and Martin had hung on way past the point when others might have given up. If it hadn’t been for her garden, they would never have lasted as long as they did. You couldn’t eat fields of feed corn and rye, and what those brought at market didn’t pay for the seed. Thank God, the old folks had died before the farm was sold. They had died believing that Martin and Kate could hang on.

  Fishing the soft linen handkerchief from the bodice of her dress, Kate dabbed at her eyes, provoked with herself for falling again into a bleak reverie. She was getting soft in the head.

  Frieda was too adept at reading her mind. She would fuss if she thought that Kate was down in the dumps. Kate couldn’t stand Frieda’s fussing, so she’d better slap a smile on her face. Stepping down off the curb cautiously with one foot and then the other, Kate looked both ways and proceeded.