by Sofia Grant
June didn’t dare look at Charlie. She’d never told another soul the truth, though she was pretty sure Francie and Vi weren’t the first to have guessed. As hard as she tried to cover the bruises, when she looked in the mirror, she could see that something had changed; her eyes looked haunted, and worry had etched lines into her skin.
“I thought I was careful when I ran away,” she went on, “but I made a mistake, a bad one, and Stan followed us here. I think he’s been spying on me—he must have seen me in the garden with you. He probably paid off one of the staff to tell him what room I’m in.” Stan could be charming; he’d probably convinced the security guard he only wanted to sneak in to surprise his girlfriend. “And now that I think about it, he must have paid someone to tell him where we went to dinner that first night, because he showed up and made a scene with the maître d’. He didn’t see me and I didn’t tell Francie and your mother who he was; I was too ashamed.”
“But how did he know where you were staying? Francie told me you had reservations somewhere else before you met them.”
“You don’t know Stan. He’s the kind of man who would go from one place to the next until he found me. Once he realized I wasn’t at the Twilight Inn, he probably just asked them where else women stay when they come for a divorce. There’s only a handful of ladies’ hotels unless you go outside the city limits, so it wouldn’t have taken long to try them all. I’ve been traveling under my maiden name, but he has a picture of me in his wallet.”
“That’s a lot of trouble to go to, to hunt you down like this. Doesn’t he have a job? Responsibilities?”
“He wouldn’t care,” June said with feeling. “He thinks of me as his property, you see. He’d be furious that I dared to leave. And he won’t stop until . . . he won’t stop. I’m just hoping I can avoid him until I get my divorce, and then Patty and I can leave and go somewhere he’ll never find us.”
Why was she telling Charlie all this? He was barely more than a stranger . . . but he made her feel as if he truly cared. And it felt so good to tell someone, after years of being trapped in her marriage, trying to hide the evidence of her husband’s anger under her clothes, making excuses whenever she hurt too much to go to church or a meeting at school.
“June—you can’t keep living like this. Fearing for your life.”
“I don’t have a choice. Stan wants me back, and he’ll just keep after me until I give up and go with him. And if I go to the police, he’ll find a way to take Patty away from me. I know that sounds crazy, but you don’t know him. He’ll take her just because he knows it would kill me. I can’t lose her, Charlie . . . I can’t.”
“The police will lock him up,” Charlie said, barely concealing his anger. “A man like that shouldn’t be out on the streets—there are laws against the things he’s done to you.”
June was already shaking her head. “He’s smart. He knows how to talk to them. My neighbors called the police out twice, but Stan . . . by the time they left, they were cracking jokes and shaking his hand. When I had to go to the hospital because he hit me so hard I needed stitches, he told them the old hen house collapsed while I was out hanging the wash, and he acted so worried about me, pestering them to let him see me, to see for himself that I was all right. He had every last one of them fooled, even the nurses. And the thing was . . . I think he fooled himself too. He was sorry—he’s always sorry, and he tells me it’ll be different, and I think he believes it when he says it.”
A single tear had escaped and was sliding down her cheek. Charlie leaned over and brushed it away with his thumb, so tenderly that June wanted to rest her cheek on his hand, to allow him to comfort her. But comfort wouldn’t keep Patty safe.
“June. If it isn’t safe for you here, then we need to take you somewhere else. I know lawyers—judges. Let me take you back to San Francisco. You’ll be safe there while we build a case against him.”
“You can’t go anywhere—you’re here for your mother’s funeral!”
Charlie shook his head impatiently. “Then you and Patty go on ahead without me. I’ll have someone meet your train and take you somewhere safe.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” June said. “Not until after. Your mother was kind to me, Charlie, when she had no reason in the world to be. She took me in and made me feel like—like I mattered. Besides, a few more days won’t make a difference. Patty is safe during the day, because she stays with another guest at the hotel and nobody knows about it but Francie, and certainly not the guards. At night she’s with me and I’m going to keep the window locked. Francie is paying me enough that I can go anywhere I want once I’m divorced. I haven’t decided yet, but I’ve got family in Oregon—and one of my cousins is a deputy there. They’d look after us.”
“At least let me move you to my hotel. He won’t know—we can get you a suite on the high rollers’ floor, where there’s security around the clock.”
“Charlie, that’s very kind, but no. The best thing you can do for me right now is drive me to the house and let me get to work. I appreciate your help, and your kindness, but I’m not some naïve little girl. I’ve been looking out for Patty her whole life, and I’m not going to let anything happen to her.”
“My mother would never forgive me if I let something happen to you,” Charlie said, but he knew he was beat.
“I promise I’ll be fine,” June said, relenting as he turned the key in the ignition and eased back onto the road. “I’m sure your mother would be proud of you for offering to help. But right now I just want her to have the best memorial service possible, the one she would have wanted.”
“I’ll say one thing,” Charlie said. “You’re as stubborn as she was. I can see why the two of you hit it off.”
June lay her head back against the seat, feeling the warmth of the sun on her face. It was only a brief respite from the mistakes of the past and the worries ahead—but for a few glorious moments she forced thoughts of Stan out of her mind and tried to remember what it was like to be just a girl going for a drive with a boy.
Chapter 45
Francie
Francie’s stomach growled, but the thought of eating nauseated her. She’d tried to get out of bed once already and made it as far as the bathroom, where she drank a glass of tap water before being overcome with dizziness and a pounding headache and crawled back into bed.
Since then she’d been unable to stop thinking about last night. Every time she went over it, she remembered some mortifying new detail. Why on earth had she thought all those cocktails would help? At first, they had made it easier to see Arthur with Bill. It had almost been a relief, to find that Bill was perfectly ordinary—nice, and a bit shy. After the second cocktail Francie had felt clever, as if everything that came out of her mouth was witty and people were interested in what she had to say.
But then . . . then it got kind of blurry. The sparkling conversation took a nasty turn as she kept drinking. Arthur had said some things, and so had Alice, and all of a sudden it felt as if they were ganging up on her—laughing at her. And they wouldn’t listen—they didn’t seem to understand how mortified she would be when people found out about Arthur, how her friends would talk about her behind her back, how she’d suddenly be left off invitation lists and her name would be a magnet for pity. “Poor Francie,” they’d say, until someone made a joke, and then they’d all laugh.
Arthur said he was careful, that no one had to know, but it made Francie dizzy just thinking of how many people he might run into in a week. San Francisco was a small town in some ways, at least for people like them—for Francie’s entire married life, she’d moved in the same small circle, shopped in the same markets, and sent her children to the same schools. All it would take was a chance sighting at a gallery, a careless moment in a movie theater when Arthur and Bill thought no one was watching, and her social life might as well be over.
But no, the two of them and even Alice seemed to think that their new life was something to celebrate. Who had given the
m the right, she wanted to know? She had a vague memory of Arthur driving her home, and having to pull over so that she could get out of the car and . . . oh, it was mortifying to think about. She’d only gotten that drunk twice before in all the years she’d known Arthur, and the first time was actually her first experience with alcohol, at a dance. They’d practically been children! They’d grown up together in a way, learning to make a home and raise a family. She knew every inch of his body, from the delicate shells of his ears to his broad, flat fingernails, to the mole on the small of his back that he hadn’t even realized was there until she told him.
And yet last night when he pulled over to the side of the road, he’d stayed in the car with his face averted, to give her privacy while she vomited on the ground. Even in her drunken state she’d noticed and felt deeply ashamed, as though it was a stranger waiting in the car. In a way Arthur and she were strangers now, with new identities—one a homosexual, the other a divorcée. But did that make all the years they’d spent together a lie? She couldn’t bear it—in fact she’d cried several times this morning thinking about it, making damp spots on the pillowcase.
She remembered a conversation they’d had the week before Arthur had popped the question. The engagement wasn’t exactly a surprise; they’d discussed it at length before it happened. Partly, it was because they’d been dating only six months and Arthur had wanted to make sure he wasn’t rushing her (he wasn’t—nearly every one of Francie’s friends was married, and she was ready), and partly because Arthur was methodical about everything he did. Or at least that’s what Francie had thought at the time, since all the questions he asked her were practical: where she wanted to live, how many children they would have, whether they would have a dog or a cat, how they would cope with their aging parents. They’d even discussed which newspapers to take and what stationer they would use.
But one evening at dinner at the little neighborhood restaurant that had become their favorite, he brought up a subject they had never discussed before, one for which Francie was not prepared. She had actually thought Arthur might be planning to propose that night and was wearing a new dress she’d bought with her mother only that afternoon.
Arthur waited until Francie had finished eating. He’d barely touched his own dinner, which Francie had chalked up to jitters.
“Francie,” he said rather formally, after the waiter had taken their plates away, “you may have noticed that I’m not the most . . . affectionate man.”
“But that’s not true!” she said. “You’re wonderfully thoughtful—I’ve kept every one of those lovely letters you wrote me. And you always walk me to the door, and you’ve sent me so many roses I could fill the back garden with them.”
“Ah, yes, well.” Arthur dabbed absently at a smudge of sauce on the tablecloth with his napkin. “That sort of thing, yes, of course. And you must know how fond I am of you.”
Francie smiled; that was her exceedingly proper boyfriend’s way of saying “I love you.”
“And I of you, silly.”
“But there are other aspects of a marriage . . . physical aspects, shall we say . . .”
He trailed off helplessly, and for a horrible moment Francie thought he was trying to ask her if she was a virgin. Of course she was! She’d lived in a sorority at college, then moved back into her room in the house she grew up in with her parents—Francie had known since childhood that she would live at home until she married.
“Arthur, if you are wondering if I am . . . intact . . .” She whispered the word, glancing around the room at the other diners to make sure no one could hear.
“Oh no, not at all!” Arthur was aghast. “Francie, I would never think that of you—I hold you in the highest esteem. You’re the most wonderful woman I’ve ever known.”
“Well—good, then.” Francie wondered if she was expected to ask him about his experiences. It was a conversation many of her girlfriends had with their fiancés, one which many men apparently resisted, though the consensus among her circle was that most men arrived at marriage these days with a fair bit of experience. Some girls even thought it was for the best—better, the thinking went, that someone knew what to expect on the wedding night.
“Yes. Well. It’s just that, I’ve noticed, something about me is that I don’t have strong appetites in that department. Don’t get me wrong, the doc assures me that my health is tip-top, that I should have no trouble fathering children, but I’ve never been a man who experiences strong urges.”
Slowly, Francie was catching on to what Arthur was struggling to say. And it was a wonderful relief! On the few occasions she’d allowed herself to think of the marriage bed, it had been with a good measure of trepidation. All that her mother would say on the subject was that procreation among married couples was blessed by God and therefore nothing to be ashamed of, when the time came—but she offered precious little in the way of details, and since Francie’s parents had slept in separate beds for as long as she could remember, Francie was dubious that her mother had much wisdom to offer anyway.
Ever since adolescence, Francie had found that she didn’t have the same interest in these matters as her friends did. In fact it was rather a shock the day she and her best friend reclined naked on the floor in front of the mirror in her mother’s dressing room with their legs spread, staring in wonder at the mystery between their legs. Her friend had recently begun menstruating and been given a pamphlet published by the Kotex company by her mother, and the pair had pored over the illustrations—but the reality was nothing like she’d envisioned. It was all so . . . unexpectedly pretty, the folds of pink flesh slightly ruffled, like the petals of her mother’s prized picotee tulips.
But when Francie had begun dating—and yes, petting, since Francie was a bold and curious girl—she’d been disappointed to find that boys’ explorations moved her very little. They squeezed her breasts and pinched her nipples as if they were trying to pick blackberries; they rubbed between her legs as if trying to start a fire with the friction between her cotton panties and her crotch. It was quite underwhelming.
She enjoyed kissing Arthur, loved the soft warmth of his lips, the sweetness from the hard candies he was forever sucking. She liked it when their foreheads touched, when she felt the brush of his eyelashes against her cheek. She loved it when he circled his arms around her and pulled her tighter, burying his face in her hair as though he found comfort there. She loved him, with all her heart, and when they held each other, she felt content.
“I, em, also do not have strong urges,” she said haltingly. “Not that I would know, of course, but I’ve never been inclined . . . I haven’t especially enjoyed . . .”
Damn this awkwardness between them—it was as though there were no words for the things they were trying to express. Of course Francie knew the crude terms men used as shorthand for depraved acts—she had older brothers, after all—but how was she to reassure Arthur that she would be perfectly happy for things to proceed slowly—even, if possible, antiseptically.
“Well, that’s good then,” Arthur said, taking her hand. “Isn’t it? We’ll want children before long . . . but I promise to always be respectful.”
“Thank you, Arthur,” Francie said, her voice thickened by emotion. “I’m so glad we feel the same way. As long as we’re together, I know it will be fine.”
And it had been, for the most part. Margie came along almost precisely nine months after their wedding day, Jimmy twenty-four months after that. By the time Alice came, the frequency of their lovemaking had decreased to once every month or two, but they still often held each other as they drifted off to sleep, and Arthur kissed her every morning before he left the house and again first thing when he returned. They rarely quarreled, and Francie secretly thought she was luckier than many of her friends who had to fend off their husbands’ advances several times a week.
By the time Alice was in high school, sex took place so rarely that when it did happen, Arthur and Francie were shy with each other, fu
mbling in the dark. The funny thing was, Francie did remember the very last time. It had been eight years ago, and she remembered the date because it had been their anniversary. They’d ordered wine at dinner, but Arthur, who was getting over a bad cold, drank little, and Francie was tipsy when they got into the taxi to go home. Alice was visiting Margie and Roy in Sacramento, and Francie had felt emboldened walking into the empty house, almost daring when she changed into her satin nightgown. She came to bed and turned off the light and began stroking Arthur’s back, and when he didn’t respond, she reached lower, under his pajamas—and Arthur had said, “Oh—I didn’t realize—give me a moment, darling, will you?” And then it had taken him quite a while, the movement of his fist making the bed shake, until he finally rolled over and climbed on top of her.
So, not a passionate marriage, but she’d always thought it a strong one. Until the day when Arthur finally told her the truth. He’d always been discreet, he said, almost pleadingly, and never allowed any of his infrequent assignations to move beyond a single, anonymous night. There was no question that they’d stay married, and if anything, their friendship grew stronger after Francie got over the initial shock. She refused to think about where Arthur went on those rare nights he stayed out late, and things continued much as they always had—until Arthur met Bill.
Bill was different, he said, almost in apology. Bill was kind, and funny, and thoughtful—he was sure that Francie would quite like him if she’d met him at a party, for instance. In that moment, seeing the light in her husband’s eyes, Francie knew that she’d lost part of him forever, but—it seemed strange now to think of it—she had accepted this loss with equanimity. After all, doesn’t everyone have to accept disappointments in a long marriage? She certainly didn’t have the body she’d been so proud of before bearing children; she no longer paid close attention when Arthur talked about his day.
