CHAPTER 24
She and Bill had stood up together in front of a smalltown preacher, chosen at random because they liked the looks of his small white church and matching parsonage, and because neither of them belonged to a church. Bill Ollenfield, whose job with the State Welfare Board didn't pay quite enough to support a wife, and skinny little Frances Kirby. There was a hole in the sole of her right pump, and she was afraid it would show when they knelt for the benediction. The witnesses were the minister's wife, in a housedress, and a neighbor lady who happened to be calling on her. And the wedding breakfast was coffee and hamburgers in a drugstore.
But the magic was there. Scared and guilty as she had been for the last few weeks, ever since her half-unwilling initiation into love (the hotel room was a dollar and a half, more than Bill could afford, and the night clerk had leered), when she looked into Bill's solemn face she felt untouched and bridal. For the space of a few minutes the parsonage living room was illuminated by a clear, shining light that transfigured everything. And when Bill took her cold trembling hand in his big warm one, her qualms vanished and she felt happier than she ever had before.
Now, in the candlelit quietness of Holy Trinity, she knew for the second time the sensation of reliving her own past. Standing beside Bill as the first strains of organ music filled the vaulted sanctuary, aware of the lacy whiteness that was Mari advancing slowly down the center aisle, she was at the same time standing in that shabby living room. Head bowed, she could see every detail of the rug, tan with faded red lozenges. The minister's thin, kind face glimmered through a sudden mist of tears. In a few minutes she would walk down the village street with her hand still in Bill's, proudly and soundly married, and he would look at her happily, but regretfully too.
"Frankie, I'm sorry we couldn't do it up right, with music and everything. I know it means a lot to a girl, having a church wedding."
"Silly, we're married. That's all that matters."
She actually had her mouth open to speak, here in church. Only the subdued turning of people around her, to look at the bride, covered the sound that had escaped her. She looked around quickly, avoiding Bill's eye.
And here was Billno, Bob, grown to his father's stature, very white-faced and serious, coming out of the vestry with his best man, Mari's law-school cousin. Time and place righted themselves. She was no longer Frances Kirby, at the threshold of grown-up life; she was Mrs. William Ollenfield, standing beside her husband, watching her only son get married.
She remembered the predicament she was in, and bent her head a little, hoping that neither the yellowish light of the candles nor the slanting blue-and-crimson rays that filtered through the stained-glass windows would rest on her swollen and discolored eye. Pancake makeup couldn't be expected to do miracles, after all.
How lovely Mari was, her eyes soft, her mouth tremulous as she passed down the aisle and met Bob before the altar. How young and tenderand how vulnerable. Pity flooded Frances' heart, washing away the last traces of resentment.
The attendants stepped back, leaving them side by side in front of the rectorand God, Frances thought, remembering her childhood belief that the Almighty dwelt exclusively in churches.
"Dearly beloved, we are gathered together"
Tears welled into her eyes. Hampered by white gloves, she fumbled in her purse for a clean handkerchief. She was conscious of Bill's look, which she ignored. I suppose he'd like me to wipe my nose on my sleeve, she thought crossly, dabbing with the fancy bit of linen and lace.
She ventured a glance at him. Why, he wasn't glaring at all. His eyes were soft with pity andshe looked again, increduloussomething that could only be affection. She knew what it was, because it mirrored the emotion that suddenly overflowed her own heart.
"In the presence of God and these witnesses"
She was afraid to look at him. Then, looking, she found herself unable to turn away. His gaze held hers.
As though he had told her in so many words, she knew that last night was no longer an issue between them. Out all night, drunk, promiscuous, raped, beaten and robbed degraded and faithless as she might be, still unsteady on her feet and marred by violenceit didn't matter. He was big enough to bypass it.
There wouldn't be any angry recriminations, any repudiation. There might not even be any discussion. He wouldn't ask for any promises. The matter would be settled by the simple fact of his forgiveness.
He loved her.
Never again, she thought in deep gratitude. I’ll never look at anybody else. Man or woman. Give up the silly job, if he wants me to. Stay home and keep house. Or go back to school and take my degree. If he'll only take me back.
"Pronounce you man and wife."
It was over. How short a time it takes to get married, she thought, and how long it is before you find out what it really means.
She wiped her eyes, unashamed, as Mari put back her veil and lifted her face for Bob's kiss. Nobody noticed. Other women were crying, too, and some of the men wore that tight-jawed red-eared look that indicates suppressed emotion.
Louise Congdon's eyes were still pink when they met in the reception room. "A beautiful wedding," she said mistily. "We already love Bob like a son."
"We adore Mari, too." Frances gave her a wide smile. "If I only hadn't been stupid enough to bump into the bathroom door at the crack of dawn. I look like a prizefighter."
Because nothing mattered now, not even the faint, sickish, recurrent flavor of last night's liquor. What if she was bruised and battered? What if people looked and wondered? Bob was married, and Bill had forgiven her.
She was safe.
"Not at all, my dear, you look charming. I may be old-fashioned but I always think there's nothing like a piece of raw steak for a black eye. I remember when Mari was a youngster, it may seem unbelievable now but she was a terrible tomboy"
Frances listened politely, smiled, turned to shake hands with Mari's spinster great-aunt from Milwaukee.
She kissed Mari and shook hands with Bob, whose greenish pallor had given way to a triumphant flush, and took her place in the receiving line without even bothering to pull the little brown feather hat down over her discolored eye.
People, and more people. Her legs ached, her arms were tired, there was a line of fire across her lower back whenever she bent. She thought, with no particular regret, that she had taken a real beating. The smile on her face felt wooden and silly. Bill looked pleased and tender, though. She guessed she was doing all right.
Faces of strangers, all with the same amiable and rather silly expression, put on for the occasion together with the dress-up clothes and white gloves. Frances shook hands, producing the right comments in rotation. I'm good, she thought smugly. I might have been doing this for years.
And felt, suddenly, the floor shake under her feet. For there was Kay, who certainly had not been invited, looking pretty and conventional, in hat and heels, with a mink stole (Jane's) slung over her shoulders. She made her way down the line, shaking hands. Frances' heartbeat quickened. Here was everything she was leaving behindrapture, heartbreak, the exciting potential of a new affair.
Kay reached her, raised her eyebrows at sight of the bruised eye, then winked and moved on.
She's a wonderful person, Frances thought forlornly, watching her retreating back. Warm. Understanding. We like the same books and the same people. I could tell her anything and she wouldn't be shocked or disapproving, the way some people are. I wish I knew her better.
Like a slap in the face came the realization that while she wanted Kay as a friendnothing more, nothing elseKay's thoughts of her, now visibly budding into plans, involved a great deal more than friendship.
She shot another look at Bill, standing beside her with his head bent, listening courteously to a shrill old harridan in purple chiffon. What she saw was reassuring. What if he was getting a double chin? What if his hairline was beginning to recede? He was Bill. Dear, familiar, safe, the stuff of day-by-day living.
Afte
r all, she admonished herself, life isn't made up of romance. (And Kay was right, there was nothing so very romantic in watching someone you love get drunk and make a fool of herself.) If you got one good, exciting, adventurous episode out of a lifetime, you were probably doing better than average.
She turned for a valedictory look at Kay, now half-hidden in a milling throng of friends and relatives.
Well, I'm not sorry. It was good, and I'll stick to that no matter what. (A pang hit her somewhere in the midriff. Bake, darling.)
"Tired?"
"Hm? Oh, not so very."
"Won't be long now. The breakfast is set for one-thirty." He glanced at his watch. "Should be able to break away around half-past three, at the latest. I don't have to go to the office," he added grinning. "I'll stay home and keep you company."
Her eyes widened. Full realization of what this reconciliation would mean in terms of her relationship with Bill struck her for the first time. His tone, the look he gave herthere was no question about it. This wasn't going to be any platonic marriage.
Well, why not?
Beneath all the fatigue and stiffness, the aches, the nausea and bewilderment, a familiar need was beginning to clamor in her. After all, she thought, shaking hands absently with a stern-looking man, it's been a long time.
The corners of her mouth twitched into a smile.
It would feel good to get home, cold-cream the gunk off her face and take off her shoes, maybe crawl under her own covers for a nap. I need some rest, she thought, feeling very bright to have figured that out. Then I can make up my mind what to do next.
But she knew, glancing upward at Bill's profile, that her mind was made up.
The days and nights reaching ahead were, after all, full of glowing possibilities.
There was the matter of Kay. She would callshe knew the number, she had called before, when Bake was sick. As though Kay's face were within her range of vision, Frances could see her winged eyebrows pulled together in planning.
With only a minimal qualm, she renounced Kay's friendship and whatever possibilities it might hold of emotional involvement. I'll leave the receiver off the hook, she decided firmly.
Bill smiled down at her. "Want to go somewhere and sit down?"
She slipped her hand into his. "All I want," she said softly, "is to go homewith you."
~ ~ ~
AFTERWORD
A new revolution was underway at the start of the 1940s in America—a paperback revolution that would change the way publishers would produce and distribute books and how people would purchase and read them.
In 1939 a new publishing company—Pocket Books—stormed onto the scene with the publication of its first paperbound book. These books were cheaply produced and, with a price of twenty-five cents on their light cardboard covers, affordable for the average American.
Prior to the introduction of the mass-market paperback, as it would come to be known, the literary landscape in America was quite different than what it is today. Reading was primarily a leisure-time pursuit of the wealthy and educated. Hardcover books were expensive and hard to find, so purchasing books was a luxury only the rich living in major metropolitan areas could afford. There simply weren’t many bookstores across the country, and only gift shops and stationary stores carried a few popular novels at a time.
The Pocket Books were priced to sell, however, and sell is what they did… in numbers never before seen. Availability also had a great effect on sales, in large part due to a bold and innovative distribution model that made Pocket Books available in drugstores, newsstands, bus and train stations, and cigar shops. The American public could not get enough of them, and before long the publishing industry began to take notice of Pocket Book’s astonishing success.
Traditional publishers, salivating at the opportunity to cash in on the phenomenal success of the new paperback revolution, soon launched their own paperback ventures. Pocket Books was joined by Avon in 1941, Popular Library in 1942, and Dell in 1943. The popular genres reflected the tastes of Americans during World War II—mysteries, thrillers, and “hardboiled detective” stories were all the rage.
Like many of the early paperback publishers, Dell relied on previously published material for its early books, releasing “complete and unabridged” reprints under different titles by established authors. Within a couple of years it was focused exclusively on mysteries, identifiable by the Dell logo on the cover—a small keyhole with an eye looking through it. Many of the Dell mysteries also featured a colored map on the back cover representing the various locations pertaining to the story’s crime. These “mapback” editions became extremely popular and by 1945, Dell was publishing four new books a month.
The new paperback industry was faced with some difficult challenges during World War II. In particular, the War Board’s Paper Limitation order placed serious restrictions and rations on the use of paper. Publishers began to worry whether they would have enough paper to satisfy both the civilian and military appetite for paperbacks. Manpower shortages and transportation difficulties were also proving to be difficult challenges. In response, some publishers—Pocket Books, for instance—reduced their publication schedules and reset their books in smaller type thereby reducing the number of pages per book. Others simply rejected longer books in favor of shorter ones.
In the end, World War II proved to be a boon to the emerging paperback industry. During the war, a landmark agreement was reached with the government in which paperbound books would be produced at a very low price for distribution to service men and women overseas. These books—Armed Services Editions, as they were called—were often passed from one soldier or sailor to another, being read and re-read over and over again until they literally fell apart. Their stories of home helped ease the soldier’s loneliness and homesickness, and they could be easily carried in uniform pockets and read anywhere—in fox holes, barracks, transport planes, etc. Of course, once the war was over millions of veterans returned home with an insatiable appetite for reading. They were hooked, and their passion for reading these books helped launch a period of unprecedented growth in the paperback industry.
The reading tastes of these veterans were directly reflected in the popularity of certain genres at the turn of the decade. In the mid- to late 1940s, mysteries, romance, thrillers, and hardboiled detective stories seemed to sell better. In the early 1950s new genres—science fiction, westerns, gay and lesbian, juvenile delinquent and “sleaze”, for instance—gained in popularity as readers were presented with stories never before seen in print. Publishers also came to realize that sex would sell books… lots of books. In a competitive frenzy for readers, they ditched their conservative and straightforward cover images for alluring covers that frequently featured a sexy woman in some form of undress, along with a suggestive tag line that promised stories of sex and violence within the covers. Before long, books with sensational covers had completely taken over the paperback racks and cash registers. To this day, the cover art of these vintage paperback books are just as sought after as the books themselves were sixty years ago.
Science fiction titles reflected the uncertain times during which they were written. The Cold War was just beginning, the threat of nuclear annihilation was on everyone’s mind, governments in Eastern Europe were falling to Communists, and Senator Joseph McCarthy was looking for “un-American activities” everywhere in the United States. Many science fiction stories in the early days of the paperback revolution were little more than soap operas or westerns set in space—good guys taking on bad guys while rescuing damsels in distress—that were short stories taken from the pulp magazines. In 1952, however, Ballantine Books changed all that by becoming the first paperback publisher to release novel-length science fiction stories that were sophisticated, intelligent and thematically serious. In 1953, Ballantine Book No. 41 was released—Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451—and the paperback’s science fiction genre launched like a rocket heading to Venus.
The popularity of
this new genre wasn’t lost on new paperback publisher, Ace Books, which became known primarily for its publication of sci-fi titles. Not content with publishing one science fiction novel at a time, Ace came up with an interesting gimmick—the double novel. Priced at thirty-five cents, the “Ace Double” featured two paperback novels bound back-to-back with the back cover appearing upside-down in the racks. The stories contained within these “double” paperbacks were novellas or long short stories, rather than novels, but the reading public didn’t care—they loved getting two books for the price of one! The format also worked to the advantage of Ace Books, as they were able to combine the work of an unknown (and, therefore, less expensive) writer with that of a prominent and popular author. As a result, the careers of more than a few aspiring science fiction writers were launched via the innovative “Ace Double.”
Science fiction would not be the only genre with titles flying off the shelves in the early 1950s, however. And, it is unlikely that even Gold Medal Books knew, in 1950, just how successful its first lesbian-themed paperback original novel—Women’s Barracks—would be. Written by Tereska Torres, and based on her experiences in London with the French Resistance movement during World War II, the book was not intended to launch an entire lesbian genre—it was a story about women during wartime, some of whom happened to be romantically involved with other women. The story simply resonated with men and women alike—both straight and gay—and by the end of 1950 had sold more than a million copies for Gold Medal.
Women’s Barracks also caught the attention of the government, unfortunately, and was singled out by the Gathings Committee as an example of how the paperback industry was subverting the morals of America. The threat of fines and incarceration made the paperback industry skittish about publishing anything that could be considered “indecent” and before long, a sort of self-censorship was in full swing. Many stories featuring characters that lived their lives outside the rules of the prevailing morality of the times soon became dark and punishing, as there could be no happy endings for those who defied convention. Still, the lesbian titles were enormously popular and soon paperback publishers—beginning with Gold Medal—realized sales would skyrocket if they moved from reprints to “paperback originals.”
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