What a Woman Must Do

by Faith Sullivan

  Seeing him touch Donna and laugh with her drove Bess wild. She wanted to punch them both. How much worse it would be if the woman were his wife. And it was inevitable in such a small place that Bess would see them together.

  The first time that Bess danced with Doyle, she told him that Donna had guessed at something between them. “But she won’t tell anyone,” she assured him.

  He did not appear panicked. He only said, “We’ll have to be discreet.”

  Bess’s anxious spirit revived. He wasn’t going to tell her tonight that he couldn’t see her again.

  At ten Bess and Donna left by themselves. By agreement, Doyle remained behind long enough to finish his beer, then climbed the iron stairs to the street and got into his car. The girls waited on the step by the side door of Truska’s Grocery Store.

  “Isn’t he perfect?” Bess whispered.

  “He’s very good looking.”

  “Oh, I know, but it isn’t his looks. I mean, not mainly his looks. But, whatever it is, it makes my chest ache, as though somebody’d hit me in the breastbone. And my hands shake. And I feel kind of dizzy all the time, as if I might stagger when I get up to walk.”

  “Sounds like a disease.” Donna giggled.

  Bess shuddered. “Yes.”

  “Have you …”

  Bess shook her head.

  “Will you?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Doyle Hanlon drove up and they rode off, Bess in the middle, Donna on the outside. For those few minutes, driving to Donna’s house, a feeling of cozy conspiracy existed between them. Bess felt tender gratitude toward Donna and she leaned across to hug her friend as Donna opened the door in front of her house.

  “Be careful,” Donna called softly as she waved.

  Doyle headed the car north out of town on the road to Ula, but instead of turning around in Ula, he kept on going, into the country, to a roadhouse where they knew no one and where they could dance. He grabbed an opened fifth of bourbon from the glove compartment of the car and carried it into Ed’s, as the place was called.

  They ordered charged-water setups and two bags of potato chips. Doyle left money on the table for the setups and walked across the room to the jukebox. Bess’s glance followed, drugged by his tapering back. She wanted to take off his clothes and kiss the scar that must adorn his thigh from his motorcycle accident.

  They drank and danced close, Bess’s arms around his neck, his around her waist. She was happy.

  Occasionally, Doyle’s breath grew harsh against her ear and she thought that he wanted to make love to her and that he would suggest leaving. But then he would order another setup. Finally he said, “I’m afraid of hurting you.”

  “I don’t see how that can be avoided,” she told him. “It would be worse if I couldn’t see you.”

  Did being in love with Doyle Hanlon mean that she was a girl of bad character? She’d always assumed that such girls chose and enjoyed their sins. She had not chosen to love Doyle. And it would never be in her power to choose not to.

  There was no place for this to go, no end for it but grief. When she saw the end coming, she would leave him. She couldn’t live if he left her first. Maybe she couldn’t live anyway. She pitied herself and Doyle Hanlon. And Celia and Archer and Harriet and DeVore. She pitied everyone who loved. How did they find the grit to gamble so heavily, and what made it worth the losses? Bess did not believe that anyone ever won. And yet, they played.

  “Last call,” the bartender announced at a quarter to one.

  Doyle ordered and at a quarter past one they left. In the car he reached for her. His kisses weren’t slobbery but light and tender as shortcake. Bess was impatient to go where they invited, however much it hurt. The thought of its hurting pleased her. Years from now maybe he would recall her pain and find a strange comfort in it, a proof that she had cared.

  “I want you,” he whispered against her hair and lay her hand between his thighs where he was hard. “But say no, if you’re frightened.”

  Beneath the layers of his clothing Bess felt a vein throbbing as insistently as her own pulse. She knew little about real lovemaking. What did he want her to do? She ran her hand lightly over him.

  He sighed, laying his forehead against her shoulder. After a moment, he raised his head slowly, as if the movement cost him much concentration. Looking at her directly, he said, “You have to be sure. It’ll be very wrong if you’re not sure. I’m not that selfish. I hope I’m not.”

  “If all the happy minutes of my life were rolled together, they wouldn’t amount to this,” she said.

  He started the car. Silently they drove back through the hushed streets of Ula and on south toward Harvester, turning into the same rutted farm lane as in the afternoon. The Mercury bucked and slewed like a rowboat on a stormy sea as it veered left past the vacant farmhouse. The moon followed them, casting a gauzy mantle over the spectral landscape. Was Archer up in the moon with Celia, his face peering out from the dark side?

  Chapter 23

  KATE

  Kate heard Bess leave. She was too upset with the girl to call out, to ask where she was going or when she would be home. Now she regretted it. She hated anger between herself and Bess and Harriet. When they quarreled, she did not want one of them to leave, especially to go in a car, without someone calling out, “Be careful,” and someone else answering, “I won’t be late.”

  She lay fully clothed on the bed and dozed. About ten she woke breathless with panic, then weepy with self-pity because she was helpless.

  “Calm down,” she whispered. But panic, she knew, did not yield to reason. Sometimes it yielded to light or movement.

  Inching toward the edge of the bed, she willed her legs over the side. In the bathroom she washed her face and slipped into the soft muslin gown, a creeping uneasiness replacing the panic.

  Bess had been furtive today, watchful, and guilty in her manner. Was she guilty of something beyond her horrid behavior toward Harriet? Something to do with the dark blue car?

  Hooking her cane around the cross brace of a straight-back chair, Kate dragged it the few feet across the linoleum floor to the bathroom sink and sat down, resting her arm along the cool surface of the porcelain sink.

  Should she call Donna Olson’s house? Was Bess even with Donna? No, she wouldn’t call, not at this hour. If Bess was there, she was safe; if she wasn’t, Kate had no idea where she might be. The Dakota Ballroom had no dances on Thursday. At length Kate braced herself on the sink and pushed up from the chair.

  The air was cooler downstairs. The windows were all open, and the doors as well. A breeze might come up later. Maybe she would sleep on the daybed on the front porch.

  With the dim light of the street lamp to guide her, she settled into a wicker rocker on the porch. The elms, faithful nocturnal companions, twitched in discontented sleeplessness, rough leaves whispering, relaying messages borne to them on the heavy night air. Kate sat rigid, alert, listening.

  At midnight DeVore Weiss’s car pulled up in front of the house. Kate looked away and debated whether she should try to creep into the living room. She didn’t want Harriet thinking that she was spying. But the pain in the back of her head had returned, an elephant’s foot crushing her skull. She closed her eyes and waited.

  Fifteen minutes later Harriet and DeVore got out of the car and, conversing softly, made their way arm in arm up the walk to the door. She had not turned him down.

  They said good night, Harriet calling after him, “Sleep tight.” Opening the screen door, she stepped in, humming “A Bushel and a Peck.”

  “Harriet.” Kate tried not to startle her, but that was impossible.

  “My, but you gave me a start!” Harriet told her, holding a hand to her heart and advancing into the porch. “Is anything wrong?”

  “Bess isn’t home, and I couldn’t sleep, so I came downstairs. I wasn’t spying. I closed my eyes when you pulled up.”

  “For crying out loud, you don’t need to explain. Should
I make cocoa?”

  “No, it’s too warm, thank you. Go to bed. You have work in the morning.”

  “I’m not sleepy. I feel like I could stay up all night. I sent DeVore home because he has to get up before the birds.”

  “Did you have a good time?”

  “Yes. We went to The Quiet Man and then to the Lucky Club for a beer. Hammy Kretzmarsky said that Bess and Donna had been in and left. Bess is probably at Donna’s. Those two can jaw for hours.”

  “Yes,” Kate agreed, but she was not reassured. “Did you set the date?”

  “Valentine’s Day.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Did Bess say anything after I left?” Harriet wondered.

  “I lay down. We didn’t talk.”

  “You shouldn’t fall asleep early in the evening. That’s why you can’t sleep now.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “DeVore really took to you.”

  “You tell him if I was twenty years younger, I’d set my cap for him.”

  The daybed springs mewled as Harriet sat down and pulled off her high heels. “I’ve been thinking about Bess.”

  “Don’t worry about her. When the time comes to be happy, you can’t put it off. You’re doing the right thing. And you won’t be rid of me, you know.”

  “Oh, I know. Where would I get the courage to be a farm wife if I didn’t have you to teach me?”

  “Get to bed now. You’ll be exhausted in the morning. And the girls down at work won’t give you a minute’s peace.”

  Rising, Harriet gathered up her pumps and purse from the floor, crossed to the rocker, and kissed Kate’s cheek.

  Kate had not expected it, and it shook her.

  “Don’t wait up for Bess,” Harriet told her. “Heaven only knows when we’ll see her.”

  One o’clock. Knives twisted in Kate’s hips. Thank goodness the rocker was easier to get out of than most chairs. You could propel yourself forward with its motion, as she did now, rising to her feet, bent over, holding the arms until she could grab the cane and get it under her.

  Straightening, she dragged along into the house. Once she was moving, things got easier. Passing her desk, where a small fluorescent lamp burned, Kate noticed a sheet of paper on the blotter.

  Aunt Kate—In case you get up in the night and come downstairs—Gone to meet Donna. I love you and I’m sorry you’re ashamed of me. Too much of Archer in me, I guess. Bess.

  Kate stared long at the note, then stuffed it into the pocket of her robe. “Poor little girl,” she whispered, crossing to the wall switch and flicking on the overhead light. “Poor little girl.”

  Opening the top drawer of the sideboard, she withdrew a deck of cards and carried them to the dining room table. Seated, she riffled through the deck, extracting the face cards and aces, returning the others to the box. With the face cards and aces she began laying out a pattern of forecasting that Elsie had taught her all those years ago, some cards facedown, others up. Pausing again and again, she held the unused cards against her chin as she studied and considered, then continued.

  When the sixteenth and final card was revealed, she made a little “unhh” sound in her throat and sat for some time poring over the people and events lying before her on the table. At last she gathered up the cards, returning them to the box and the box to the drawer.

  In the kitchen she set the kettle on to boil and withdrew three small jars from the Hoosier cupboard, each labeled Kate’s. Unscrewing the lids with difficulty, she measured a teaspoon of dried herbs from each jar into a china teapot. When the kettle whistled, she filled the pot with boiling water. While the infusion steeped, she crossed to the open door, staring out toward the back drive and the alley, where the shapes of lilac bushes were a denser black than the rest. Somewhere, Bess was in a car, a dark blue car, with a man Kate did not know.

  Too much of Archer in me …

  Kate poured a cup of tea, flicked off the kitchen light, and headed toward the darkened living room, setting the cup down on the lamp table. Removing the little blue volume of mythology from the bookcase, she turned on the reading lamp and lowered herself to the sofa, to one side so that she could use the arm to push herself up again. Wetting the tip of her twisted index finger on her tongue, she paged through the book until she found the tale of which she never tired.

  “And Demeter braved the Stygian gloom …”

  Later, setting the book aside, she turned off the lamp and sat in darkness. “Celia,” she breathed. When she heard the word, she sighed again, “Celia,” as though it were a charm or invocation. For two days Celia’s spirit had beat itself against her like a branch beating itself against a window in a storm.

  Kate sipped the tea until it was mostly gone, then set the cup aside, and closed her eyes.

  The moon, like a huge china plate, is hanging high in the western sky, lighting her way. She wears a coarse muslin nightgown bleached white as the moon by many washings. On her feet, everyday shoes, thick and sturdy and worn, pick their way through pasture grass, stepping around rocks and cow pies. Following the path trampled by the cows, she holds her hem high to prevent its being dirtied by manure or soaked by the dew lying thick on the grass.

  The moon paints the pasture with hoarfrost though the August night is hot and breathless. She has left the stifling bedroom to come looking for air. There is none to be had, but there is space. Space is almost like breeze.

  Not only heat and breathlessness were stifling her in the bedroom, but also fear. She can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times in life when she has been afraid. But the thought of the man in the gray fedora jellifies her bones.

  He isn’t a cattleman, though Martin says he owns cattle; he surely isn’t a farmer despite the farms he’s bought up. He’s a man who owns things, that’s all he is, a man who owns things.

  Martin has talked with him. She could not prevent it. But he has promised not to decide anything until the harvest is in. Nevertheless Kate is half mad with fear. She paces the pasture in the dark of night, the grove in the heat of day. Back and forth, back and forth, in ever-shrinking paths, as if walls are being thrown up against her on every side.

  She angles around the west side of the pond, then marches along the northern perimeter until she reaches the place where the creek spills out at the eastern end. The cattle come down to the water here, especially in summer, a thin line of willow and cottonwood offering shade. The ground is muck where the cows have slogged in the damp earth.

  On the opposite side of the creek, between herself and the house, the grove of cottonwoods rises up, leathery leaves capturing light from the brilliant moon. Mosquitoes are thick and buzzing, but they do not bother Kate.

  She stops short. Abruptly, as if summoned, she turns and runs, returning in the direction from which she has come, the moon before her. She rounds the western end of the pond, heads back along the cow trail and into the yard. Out at the road, lights veer into the long lane.

  Loping and lunging, slowly they come, two huge and blinding predator eyes. So late. Who would come in the middle of the night? Trouble. Only trouble comes in the middle of the night. The man in the fedora is coming to steal from them when they are most vulnerable and weary.

  She sprints headlong, not minding her feet now, but hurtling forward down the lane toward the light. Flinging out her arms to block the way, she cries, “Go back! Back to town! Don’t come here.” She pitches herself at the car’s radiator. The hood ornament strikes her breast and the car hurls her backward.

  Chapter 24

  BESS

  It sounded as if they’d hit a big rock. Doyle braked the Mercury suddenly, and Bess threw out her hands to brace herself against the dashboard. Seizing a flashlight from the glove compartment, he leapt from the car without a word and unlatched the hood.

  Now what? Bess wondered dreamily, resting her head against the seat.

  Doyle shone the light into the vital organs of the car. The Celia moon had been dragged halfway down the s
ky by its own great weight, so that the car lay in the night shadows of the box elder grove, headlights burning. Luna moths fluttered up, dashing themselves against the lights.

  “Shit,” Doyle muttered.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “I’m not sure. I think I’ve thrown a rod.”

  “Can we fix it?” She could help. She’d learned a little about cars from Mr. Wheeler in driver’s education.

  “No way. Not if it’s a rod.”

  “What’ll we do?”

  He slid back into the front seat and slammed his fist against the steering wheel. “Shit.” Closing his eyes, he swallowed the bile of his anger.

  “Could we get a farmer to help us?”

  “At this hour? The two of us? Anyway, what could he do except give us a ride into town?” By noon the news would be all over the county. Doyle Hanlon and Bess Canby. Doyle’s wife would hear. And his parents. With a deep intake of night air, his anger escaped in a long rough breath, while the taste of resignation lay on his tongue, savorless as month-old bread.

  “I can’t stay out all night,” she told him. “Aunt Kate’ll call Constable Wall.”

  “You’ll have to walk back to town.” He switched off the lights and ignition. Night crept up close.

  “Alone?”

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “I’m not afraid. It’s just … Never mind. How far is it, five miles?”

  He nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said. Right forearm extended through the lower loop of the steering wheel, he batted the keys hanging from the ignition, giving them a last impatient swat. “I’m as green and half-grown as when I enlisted,” he said with disgust, withdrawing the arm and laying his hand on Bess’s thigh. “I’ve made a mess of this.”

  “What will you do?” she asked.

  “Sleep in the old house. We’ve got cots out here for hunting season. I’ll walk to the Geigers’ farm in the morning and call the garage.”

  “What’ll your wife think when you don’t come home?”