Liberty Street

by Dianne Warren

  “You look way different since you started wearing makeup,” Daphne says. “Anyway, I have to run. I’ll phone you.”

  Frances stares after her and wonders what that was all about. She doesn’t expect Daphne to call her. She hopes she doesn’t.

  She and her mother are making supper later—Frances is peeling potatoes and Alice is browning pork chops on the stove—when Alice asks, “What is it that you like about that man?”

  Here it comes again, Frances thinks. He’s too old for you.

  “Joe, you mean?” she says. “His name is Joe.”

  “All right, then,” her mother says. “Joe. What is it that you like about Joe?”

  It’s the first time her mother has asked a serious question about him. Maybe, Frances thinks, she is genuinely interested in the answer.

  She says, “We like the same things, movies. I like the fact that he’s not a stupid teenager. And he doesn’t know me from school, which counts for a lot. And I don’t really care about our ages, so don’t start on that.”

  “Please don’t let this go too far,” Alice says. “He’ll have . . . expectations. Surely you know that.”

  Frances sighs and digs at a potato eye. Her mother is very fussy about the eyes. She wants no black spots on her boiled potatoes. “Do you mean sex, Mother?” she asks. “Is that what you’re talking about? You should just say it.”

  “A man that age is not going to go out with a girl for long before he . . . well, you know what I mean. Young people were meant to go out with other young people. I’m warning you, Frances. This will not go well if you continue to see that man. Do you want to end up like Myrna Samples? Two pregnancies. Honestly.”

  “Joe. His name is Joe, and I have no intention of ending up like Myrna Samples. How stupid do you think I am? And by the way, Myrna had her baby, and she and Buddy broke up and she’s keeping the baby anyway. That’s what comes of a girl dating someone her own age. Now Myrna is saddled with a baby. Anyway, quit talking as though Joe Fletcher wants to marry me.” She whips at a potato with her peeler and takes a slice of skin off her knuckle. “Damn it. See what you made me do?” She grabs a Kleenex and wraps it around her knuckle.

  “A man wanting to marry you is not my biggest fear,” Alice says. “Quite the opposite.”

  “That’s it,” Frances says, throwing her potato peeler into the sink. “Peel your own damned potatoes.”

  “My potatoes, are they?” her mother says. “I suppose you aren’t planning to eat them.”

  Frances is about to say something else, but then she sees that her mother has that look on her face again—the one that says Frances is her greatest sorrow in life—and Frances can’t stand it, can’t stand to be in the same room as that look, and she leaves, goes to her bedroom and wonders again what happened to the mother of her childhood, the one who would put on her sunglasses and head for the lake on a hot day, we two girls. This mother is whiny and dismal, and there’s no pleasure to be had in fighting with her, none at all.

  She resolves not to take the bait next time it’s offered.

  A FEW WEEKS after Frances’s eighteenth birthday, Joe picks her up and they go to a special double feature, two Clint Eastwood movies, one of them with a little too much suspense. As they’re walking out of the theatre, she instinctively tucks her hand into his arm (Clint Eastwood’s arm), and then, when she realizes what she’s done, she pulls it away, embarrassed. But Joe picks it up and tucks it back in, and they leave the theatre like that, with plenty of eyes watching them. Let them gawk, Frances thinks, pleased with this new step, the idea of herself on Joe’s arm. Well, not just an idea. She really is on his arm!

  When Joe drops her off, after midnight, her parents have gone to bed, but when she gets inside she can see the light under their bedroom door. Through the closed door she says, “Joe Fletcher isn’t as bad as you think. If you have to know, he hasn’t even tried to kiss me.”

  There’s no answer, but the light flicks off.

  The next day, Daphne phones to ask if she still wants to visit Myrna, and Frances hears herself saying yes even though she knows that she should be coming up with an excuse, knows that an overture of friendship from Daphne Rose is not to be trusted. Daphne says she’ll meet her in town in front of the school and they can walk over to Myrna’s house together. Frances doesn’t even know where Myrna lives.

  Frances gets there first, and when Daphne arrives, she says they should buy the baby a present, so they go to the drugstore—the only store open on a Sunday—and pick out a package that contains a flannelette receiving blanket, a sleeper, and a little cap that looks too small to fit anything but a doll. They buy some wrapping paper and a card and some tape, and sit on a bench on the sidewalk and wrap the gift and sign the card.

  “What should we say?” Daphne asks. “How about ‘All the best for the future, from your friends Daphne and Frances’?”

  Phoney as baloney, Frances thinks, but she says, “Sure, why not.”

  When they get to Myrna’s house, it turns out Daphne hadn’t told her they were coming. Myrna’s mother answers the door and Daphne says, “Hi, Mrs. Samples. We’re friends of Myrna’s.” Mrs. Samples looks as though she might be about to send them away. Frances wants to ditch Daphne and run, but then Mrs. Samples says, “I’m glad you’ve come, girls. She’s feeling a little blue. The baby blues, I think.” No mention of Buddy and how the blues might be because of him, and how Myrna’s been left with a baby and no husband.

  Myrna is lying on the couch in the living room, wearing a pink terry-cloth bathrobe and looking as though she’s been in a war. She looks shocked to see Frances—actually glances away before staring at her again to double-check—and she barely acknowledges Daphne. Frances thinks she’s maybe made her biggest mistake ever by coming. Maybe Myrna and Daphne aren’t even friends. She remembers the catfight at school. Then Myrna sits up on the couch and apologizes for the way she looks, and Daphne hands her the baby gift. Myrna opens it and looks at it and puts it on the couch beside her without saying anything, not even a thank-you. Mrs. Samples brings in three glasses of Coke on a tray and sets the tray down next to a box of tissues on the coffee table. When she sees the gift, she holds it up and says, “Oh, isn’t that cute? Adorable.” Then she leaves again, saying, “I’ll just let you girls talk.” Frances hears a baby cry from another room, and she notices that Myrna doesn’t turn her head toward the sound, ignores it, and Mrs. Samples calls, “Don’t worry, Myrna . . . I’ll get him,” and then the baby is quiet. There’s no mention of Mrs. Samples showing the baby to Daphne and Frances.

  Frances doesn’t know what to do or say, so she picks up a Coke from the tray and takes a sip. Daphne does the same. Myrna’s goes untouched. Then Daphne turns to Frances and says, “So, Frances, tell us all about Joe Fletcher.”

  Frances almost chokes on her drink. Now she knows what this is all about.

  She sets the Coke down on the table. How could she not have seen that coming?

  “There’s not much to tell,” she says. “You’ve seen us at the Roxy.”

  “Oh, I bet there’s more to it than the Roxy.”

  “No,” Frances says. “That’s it.”

  She knows she should leave, just get up and go, but she takes too long deciding and Daphne says, “Are you on the pill? You’d better be because, you know . . . or maybe you don’t know. You were never that swift when it came to boys, were you? Maybe Myrna and I should fill you in, so you know what happens when you let a boy . . . well, not a boy exactly. I guess we’re talking about Joe Fletcher. Tell us, Frances, what’s it like to have an old man’s hands under your sweater?”

  As Daphne says all this, she keeps looking at Myrna, inviting her to join in, expecting praise for bringing her a gift—not the baby gift but a better one, the opportunity to be a high school girl again, to have some fun with Frances Moon.

  “You know,” says Frances, standing up from her chair, mad only at herself for not seeing what Daphne was up to, “I’ve got some re
ally pressing things to do this afternoon. Like wash my hair. Watch paint dry. Things like that. And high school’s over, Daphne. Grow the hell up. Congratulations on the baby, Myrna. Thank your mother for the drink.”

  Then Myrna says, in a tired way, as though she too has had enough, “Daphne, you are such a mean fucking bitch. Get out of my house. And don’t look so shocked. What did you think? That we’re in a girl gang, you and me? Get out. This second, or I’ll rip every hair out of your head.” Then she picks up her glass from the table and throws her Coke all over Daphne.

  Daphne jumps up, saying, “What the hell? You slutty whore!” and it’s one of the most satisfying things Frances has ever seen: Daphne standing there sputtering, with Coke dripping from her bangs. For a minute it looks as though she might lunge across the table at Myrna and there’ll be a repeat of the schoolyard brawl that got them both suspended, but then Mrs. Samples comes into the room to see what’s going on. Daphne pushes past Myrna’s mother and heads for the door, shouting that she’s going to get Myrna for that, she’ll be sorry, she’d better watch her back.

  “We’ll see, you psycho bitch,” Myrna shouts after her.

  Both Frances and Myrna’s mother stand speechless until Mrs. Samples finally says, “I’ve never liked that girl.”

  “Well, join the club,” Myrna says. “Why’d you let her in?”

  “I thought you needed the company.”

  “Thanks for nothing.”

  “I’d better go,” Frances says. Then she apologizes to Mrs. Samples for the Coke all over the furniture.

  “Why are you apologizing?” Myrna says. “It’s not your fault.” She sits down again, carefully, and then she starts to cry because her stitches hurt.

  “Myrna, honey,” her mother says.

  “Sorry,” Frances says, “but I’d really better go. I’ve got my mom’s car and she might need it.”

  Myrna grabs a tissue in a way that says the box on the table is there for crying and not for ordinary runny noses, and says, “Really? Joe Fletcher? The guy who works at Borsa’s? I always thought you’d be the one to get away from here.”

  Frances is surprised to learn that Myrna thinks anything at all about her.

  “No,” she says. “I don’t want to go anywhere. Not really.”

  “You’re out of your mind, then.”

  Frances doesn’t want to hear that, not from Myrna Samples, not after her mother has finally stopped harping about university. “So anyway,” she says, “good luck with the baby and all that. I’ll see you around.”

  She practically runs out the door, and then she does run down the sidewalk, taking a roundabout way to where she’d left her mother’s car in case Daphne is hiding somewhere, waiting to ambush her.

  After she gets home, she spends the rest of the afternoon lying on a lounge chair by the house, suntanning with baby oil and iodine, trying to pretend it’s still summer, picturing Daphne with Coke dripping from her hair, pleased that Myrna stood up for her (sort of), and thinking about Myrna’s stitches, certain that she herself will never be tempted to have children.

  She thinks about what Daphne said—hands under your sweater.

  It’s an unusually hot day for the end of September. Sweat beads up on her bare skin.

  JOE HAS A sister named Martha in a town called Deer Valley, and he wants Frances to go there with him for Sunday supper. When Frances tells her mother where she’s going, Alice gets a worried look on her face and says that when a man wants to introduce you to his family, he’s planning something. “Marriage, Frances. For God’s sake, put an end to this. You can’t be hoping for a marriage proposal.”

  Marriage? Her mother is losing her mind. The word “married” seriously applied to her, Frances Moon, before any other girl in her graduation class, before even Myrna Samples, when she’d had only one date in her entire high school career? Her mother is certifiable, and she tells her so.

  She and Joe arrive at a small, dark house on the edge of Deer Valley. The lack of privilege revealed by the house’s interior is disconcerting. Frances has never been in a house like it. It has only two rooms: a combination living room and kitchen with a wood stove, and a second room with a curtain rather than a door, which Frances assumes is the bedroom. The house appears to have sunk into the ground since its construction, and the doorways are so low that Joe has to duck. Martha is wearing a dark navy dress and black stockings and oxford shoes. She looks like a nun, or maybe a Hutterite. She’s older than Frances’s mother and is very much a spinster lady, and also, it turns out, a religious holy roller with a deep suspicion of young people. It’s immediately obvious the reach of her suspicion extends to Frances.

  Joe and Frances sit on the small couch while Martha puts the food on the table. Every piece of furniture in the room is topped with at least one crocheted doily; you can’t sit without knocking one out of its place, and Frances finds herself straightening the doilies behind her obsessively until Martha calls them to the table. Martha behaves as though they’re late, as though the food has been waiting for hours, as though it must be Frances’s fault that they’re late (when, as far as Frances knows, they are precisely on time).

  At the dinner table, Martha picks up Frances’s left hand and Joe’s right, and launches into a prayer. After that, the word “Lord” finds its way into almost every sentence that comes out of Martha’s mouth, as though she’s channelling him into the conversation. Martha makes pronouncements such as, “I do not approve of the young people in this new generation. They have grown away from the Lord and behave scandalously.” Frances is actually afraid of her, thinks she might be a witch. In an effort to impress Martha, she says, hearing the nerves in her voice, “I don’t go around with the kids in town much.” Then it turns into an interview, with Martha asking the questions (presumably on behalf of the Lord) and Frances sitting primly with her hands folded in her lap, trying not to hyperventilate with fear.

  “If you don’t run with the other teenagers, what do you do?”

  “Oh, I help out at home” (pretty much a lie), “and I read a lot” (the truth).

  “You read?”

  “Yes. I read all the time.”

  “And what do you read?”

  “Novels, mostly. My mother bought me a set of classics. Jane Eyre, like that. I go to the library a lot.”

  “Novels are nothing but lies and romance. What do you think is the point of these romances you read?” (She hadn’t said romances.)

  “No point, I suppose. Entertainment.” Then, trying to show off her brains, “Maybe an exploration of, you know, the human condition.”

  “There is no point in reading made-up stories. Lies, that is. The only book of which I approve is the Good Book.”

  “Well, that too.” (Frances isn’t even sure there is a Bible in her house.)

  “And which book of the Bible is your favourite?”

  She tries to remember which book contains the story of the birth of Jesus, thinking that’s bound to be an acceptable one. She can’t, and ends up saying Genesis.

  Martha says, “I am particularly fond of Revelation. It describes events to which I am looking forward, when all the sinners on this earth will get what’s coming to them. I suspect that includes you.”

  Then Martha indicates that the interview is over and turns to her carrots and potatoes and roast beef, and Joe gets Frances out of there not long after their plates are clean, before Frances is forced to offer to help Martha with the dishes.

  When they’re on the way home, Joe says, “Don’t mind her. You did fine.”

  Frances has the thought that she’d spoken more words in response to Martha’s questions than Joe had ever heard her say. She’s mulling this over, thinking about the conversation and Martha’s zeal for the end of the world, when Joe does in fact ask her to marry him, although his proposal is not phrased as a question. They’re driving down the highway and he says, “I wonder if you might want to get married. To me, that is.”

  Stunned. Dumbfounded
.

  Her mother was right? She must not have heard correctly. She doesn’t immediately say anything because she so believes this must be the case. He’s never even kissed her. They’ve never really even talked about anything. It’s one thing to walk around with a little voice in your head saying, Frances Moon has a boyfriend who looks a bit like Clint Eastwood, but marriage? That is something else altogether. And does he look anything like Clint Eastwood? She sneaks a glance. Not really.

  On the other hand . . . there’s an unfamiliar path ahead of her here, at this moment, and curiosity leads her to wonder where it will go next. What will he say next? How will he explain himself? What does a man do who has just asked a girl to marry him, and especially when that girl is her?

  Here’s what he does. Instead of driving Frances straight home, he pulls off the grid road and bumps the truck through an open pasture and up a little hill that overlooks a creek bed. The windows are down and the air is rich with the smell of fall and the sound of crickets. It’s still and warm. Body temperature. The radio is on the country station, Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn. Joe is sitting on his side of the bench seat, Frances on hers, until he slides over next to her, and she can feel that body temperature up against her thigh. Joe puts his arm around her and pulls her toward him.

  “I know you’re young,” he says, “but I’ll treat you right.” Then he kisses her. It’s the first time she’s ever been kissed. And he really kisses her, like in the movies, not just a peck on the lips. She can hardly breathe, the intensity of a warm body so close, a man’s body. The curiosity path stretches out, inviting her to choose, choose, and she can feel the heat of him in her mouth.

  He stops, even though she doesn’t want him to.

  “What do you say?” he says.

  “I’d better think about it,” she says. (Was that her voice? It didn’t sound like her. Also, it was a stupid thing to say—“I’d better think about it.” He might think it meant no.) “It’s just . . . well, you know, we haven’t known each other that long.”