"What was that thing, anyway?" Ethel asked.
"An alien from outer space," said Beverly with a grin. "Or were you talking about the waitress?"
Outside the diner Marietta said she had to get home. Henry, her little boy, had been with a babysitter all afternoon and he was a handful. He could be loud. Instead of using words he would push his head against people when he wanted something. He took things apart too, clocks and telephones, and left them in a hundred pieces on the floor.
The only babysitter who had any patience with the boy was Bonny, a pastor's wife. Bonny refused payment for helping out, but she urged Marietta to bring Henry to Sunday services. She wanted him baptized, too, but this was more than Marietta could agree to, just to hold onto an agreeable babysitter. It was bad enough to come home and find Henry clapping his hands and laughing while Bonny sang hymns.
"Give him our love," said Ethel.
"I'll do that," Marietta said.
They watched her cross the street at the corner ahead of them. When she was well out of earshot, Beverly said:
"I think he's a little bit retarded."
"Who?" Ethel asked.
"Marietta's boy, Henry."
"He may be slow. He isn't retarded."
"How do we know? She's never had a real doctor look at him, just some green intern over at County Hospital."
"I guess an intern knows more than we do," said Ethel.
"Does that seem right to you?"
"What?"
"Don't most children go to the doctor at least once a year?"
"Marietta's aunt taught her a lot. She's as good as a nurse."
"If that's true, why doesn't she see her aunt's clients and set up shop as a midwife?"
"I don't know," said Ethel. "I think she does well enough selling those candles and soaps and things. I don't think Delphine ever had a license, and Marietta probably hated all that stuff."
"Abortions."
"For one thing, Delphine cared for women who didn't have anybody else to turn to. Nowadays women have choices. They can drive to a clinic in the city. Why would they go to somebody's house for that? No. Marietta's right to make a living selling nice little jars of honey with ribbons on them, and scented soap. She's smart."
"She'd make a lot more money doing readings and casting spells and telling people she's a white witch."
"But she isn't."
"Oh?" Beverly asked. "Is that what you really think?"
"She's got insights, or, what does she call them?"
"Intuitions."
"Right. She's always had strong feelings about things."
"And where does that come from? See? You don't want to speculate, do you?"
"Bev, I think she does all right. She's the only one of us who doesn't have to live at home."
"Well," said Beverly. "That's true enough."
They walked on, past the movie theater. There was another line in front of the ticket booth, but now the heat of the afternoon seemed to have beaten everyone down. People fanned themselves lazily with souvenir cardboard fans handed out by a theater usher. The fans were shaped like the alien in its earliest form, when it clung to the red haired man's face.
Without consulting one another Beverly and Ethel naturally wandered into the ice cream shop and ordered double cones. They took the only vacant table, next to the window where it was too warm. They sat licking the cones, with fast-melting scoops of pistachio and vanilla threatening to run down their fingers.
A husband and wife passed the shop with their four children. One child was asleep in a stroller with its arms dangling on the sides. The oldest child, a boy with unevenly cut hair, was dragging his feet and whining that he wanted to see the monster movie. His father rolled his eyes toward the ice cream shop window and gave the women inside a look of pure, unveiled envy.
"Well, I'm keeping my word," said Ethel.
"About what?" Beverly asked.
"Not having babies. You know."
"That was nothing but a joke. A bad one."
"I'm not joking," said Ethel.
"No. I mean: what we did. It didn't work anyway."
"Why do you say that?"
Beverly looked out the window. Then she said:
"That magic stuff was a game. Marietta was showing off. Like the time she predicted that boy would break his arm, on the beach. She said she predicted it. How are we supposed to know if that's true?"
"You believed it back then."
"I did not. And the oath was just a game. I didn't even do it right."
Ethel started to speak, and Beverly interrupted:
"We could have burned down half of Skillute. It was crazy. Stupid kids."
Ethel looked at the ice cream droplets on the table between them. She watched the weekend shoppers wandering by.
"Something else happened that day," she told Beverly.
There was a pause between them. Both young women looked out the window for a moment.
"I know," said Beverly. "That was bad luck, Ethel. I'm sorry it happened."
"No. Before the fire at home, I saw something."
"Something in the woods?"
"Yeah," Ethel admitted. "We found something, but we left it there. That's not what I mean, though. I saw a face. I heard noises, at home, when I was by myself, and I saw a face at the window."
"You mean a prowler?"
Beverly's interest was piqued now.
"You think a prowler set the fire?"
"No," Ethel said. "No. I just had this feeling."
"Okay."
"I had this feeling."
"Yeah?"
"Like maybe somebody followed me home that day."
This was the first time Ethel had said the words out loud. She watched Beverly's face, measuring her reaction.
"Who do you think followed you?"
"I," Ethel began. "I don't know."
"Well, did you ever see them again?'
"No."
Beverly wiped her hands with a paper napkin and tossed the last bite of her cone into a trashcan. She said nothing.
"So, what about you?" Ethel asked. She smiled. "Are you planning on sticking to the oath? I mean, whether you believe it now or not."
Beverly took her time retrieving lipstick and a compact from her purse. She applied her lipstick with care and checked it twice before answering.
"I wouldn't have a child if you paid me."
The Women (1989)
Beverly decided to marry Rex Dempsey despite the trashy side of his family. That branch included two adult cousins who couldn't read or write. Beverly had never imagined she would end up related, however distantly, to someone who couldn't write his own name on a piece of paper. She imagined Rex must have seemed like a genius to that part of the Dempsey clan.
She was bookkeeping for a construction sub-contractor and the money wasn't good. Skillute, along with the rest of the state, was in a slump that kept getting worse. The office where Beverly worked was on the firm's latest construction site, in a trailer surrounded by a muddy field and surveyed by an aggressive murder of crows. She had to pack a lunch every day because there was no place to go on her break. She had worked at many locations. This one was the worst.
She spent her days reading balance sheets and financial statements. She avoided conversation with the dirt- and sweat-stained laborers who tramped through the trailer. The only people Beverly talked to on a regular basis were the owner of the firm and the woman who answered the telephone, an anorexic named Darla with eczema and a pixie haircut, who flirted shamelessly with any man who got within ten feet of her.
Beverly was living in a tiny apartment in Kelso. She spent more time than she wanted to with her parents. They had more room and more food than she did. In truth she was bored to death with her family. Especially her mother with her endless complaints about her colon and her lack of grandchildren and Beverly's advancing age.
The first topic was too ugly to think about and the second made Beverly laugh bitterly. As far as she
could see, her mother had no right to grandchildren. If she wanted them so badly she could hound Beverly's brothers and their overweight wives. The third topic was supposed to be off limits.
"Twenty-eight isn't old," she reminded her mother.
"You're thirty-one," her mother replied. "Almost thirty-two."
"Twenty-nine."
"We're not bartering over the price of a watermelon, here, missy," her mother said. "I ought to know how old you are."
Beverly wasn't against getting married. She was tired of dating men who didn't open doors for her, and didn't compliment her on her outfit, and didn't remember to buy flowers on her birthday. She was bored with her job and her life as a single woman in a town where single meant going to the movies with her girlfriends and buying small portions of food at the grocery store. The baggers smirked at her and wished her a good weekend in a tone that said they knew she had no plans. She needed a change. Almost any change would do.
"I'm not going to spend my life playing bingo with purple-haired old ladies!" Beverly declared the day she announced her engagement.
Rex Dempsey owned a drywall business. The first time he walked into the trailer for a meeting with Beverly's boss, she took note of his height, exactly six feet, his strong jaw line, and his perfectly pressed shirts and pants. He was a man who took care of himself. What she also noticed, and this swayed her, was that he removed his hat as soon as he walked through the door, and his voice was low and deferential when he said he had an appointment.
Of course Darla was all over him, serving coffee and spilling it on his shoes. She even had the gall to ask if he was married. Rex turned to Beverly and gave a little nod when he answered:
"I've never had the pleasure, but I hope to someday."
She talked her parents into a good-sized wedding at a Methodist church where the minister wasn't picky about whether or not couples were members of the congregation. Beverly told the minister she believed in God on principle, but she didn't see any reason to make a big show out of it.
Ethel altered the wedding dress, a Chanel knock-off from a boutique in Portland, to which she added a flourish of pearls at each wrist. The skirt was lace and the bodice and sleeves were made from satin. The entire dress was ivory, a color that satisfied Beverly's mother. They had argued about whether or not white was appropriate. Beverly said that white was acceptable for a first-time bride. Her mother said it would be bad luck, and she could only blame herself if something terrible happened.
Ethel and Marietta constructed the bridal bouquet, a small cluster of dendrobium orchids cinched with ivory silk. Later they watched it sail into the hands of a scrawny young woman Beverly described as "one of my husband's hillbilly cousins."
The young woman, the cousin, had teased her hair and twisted it into a bun for the occasion. When she caught the bridal bouquet she smiled like she had won the lottery. Her joy revealed a crooked row of tobacco-stained teeth. The wedding photographer captured the moment, but later on Beverly plucked that picture out of the album and briskly tore it to shreds.
"I don't even know that girl's first name," she told Ethel. "Why would I want her ugly face in my wedding book?"
Rex and Beverly lived in a bungalow he built on two acres of wooded land he'd inherited from his father. It was cozy and pretty, but not the ostentatious home everyone expected the bride would demand.
"Oh," said Beverly. "I hate the way some people show off every penny they have, don't you? I wouldn't live in one of those hideous fake colonial things for all the money in the world."
Ethel complimented Beverly on her decision, saying:
"If I could, I'd have a nice two-bedroom with all-new fixtures and everything clean and modern. It's like a fresh start on life, isn't it?"
Marietta was pleased, too, until she heard about the two-acre lot where they were building their home. Then her smile faded and she asked:
"Are you sure you want to build there? That road doesn't even have a name, does it?"
"What difference does that make?" Beverly asked, more than a bit peeved. "We're on the general mail route. That's all that matters."
"Wouldn't you be happier living closer to town?"
"No, I would not," said Beverly. "I don't want a house next to the train station, with all that dirt and noise. Our place is set back by itself, with plenty of forest separating us from our hick neighbors, and I can hear birdsong in the morning. What could be better than that?"
Rex wasn't rich but he did all right by local standards. Beverly was delighted with their home and her emerald green lawn with its tulip beds, windmills, and wooden geese. She ran her home like an efficient business: plenty of visitor turnover, and no lingering after hours.
They didn't plan to have children. Beverly said she couldn't. Rex didn't seem to mind. The drywall business kept him busy six days a week. He did a bit of traveling around the Northwest. She handled the books for him and filed their taxes every spring.
Only once in a while they were troubled by little events. There was nothing worth reporting to the sheriff's office, just irritations that they chalked up to childish pranks. One time a skunk got into the second bedroom by way of a window Beverly was sure she had closed, although she couldn't remember if she had locked it. The bedspread and mattress were ruined. Beverly took the opportunity to talk Rex into letting her convert the space into a storage room. She reasoned that they seldom had sleepover guests anyway, and if they ever needed a spare they had the hideaway sofa bed in the living room.
Another time someone dug up Beverly's tulip bulbs overnight. The prankster left a trail of shredded bulbs from the yard to the woods.
In the winter the plumbing would sometimes creak. It sounded like an old person groaning in her sleep. Rex had a friend make a few adjustments and the noises went away.
On two occasions Beverly baked pies and left them cooling on the small front porch, only to have them disappear. She cursed the unkempt children of her poor neighbors up the hill beyond the woods. Rex told her a hungry raccoon probably snatched the pies, but she thought this was unlikely since the culprit left no trace at all. Not a crumb.
Aside from such minor incidents Mr. and Mrs. Dempsey led a pleasant life. After the first five or six years Mrs. Sherman stopped asking if they were sure they weren't going to have children. Beverly was in her late thirties, and people finally assumed she was right about not being able to have a baby.
The Dempseys were happy together for ten years. Then one evening Rex died of a massive coronary at the supper table, right in front of Beverly.
"He loved pecan pie with fudge sauce," Beverly told her friends.
That was what Rex was eating when he got a funny look on his face and slid sideways off his chair. He landed hard on the black and white checkerboard linoleum.
"He loved my pecan pie with fudge sauce, more than anything."
Beverly handled her husband's passing better than people expected. She was a practical minded person. She had loved Rex dearly and she would miss him every minute, she said, but she liked her life, its balance and its simplicity. Because she had lived frugally, she had plenty of savings left, plus a substantial insurance policy. She would live in the same house, do her gardening, and keep all the habits she had before. She might even redecorate the place, to keep her mind off her sorrows. The enemy would be loneliness, but she could face that. Apart from Rex there were only a few people she'd ever bothered getting close to, and they were nearby. She would mourn for an appropriate amount of time, but she wouldn't grieve. It wasn't her nature.
The Women (1999)
Beverly heard the news first. She reported what she knew to Marietta over a game at the bingo hall.
Marietta played bingo now and then. Beverly played once every week. She said it kept her in touch with her neighborhood. One time Ethel teased her:
"You feel young when you beat those old people at their favorite game."
Beverly winced at that, because it was true. Ethel never mentioned it again.
Beverly went on getting dressed up, having her hair done, and then strolling into the bingo hall like a middle-aged movie star. Sometimes she wore sunglasses all day and if anyone mentioned it, she would tap her forehead and say in a flat tone:
"Macular degeneration. Pray you don't have it, too, someday."
She waited until they were settled in and the game was underway. Then she blurted to Marietta, between rounds:
"Ethel is marrying Burt Sanders. She's already moved in with him. They've shacked up and now they plan to get married by the justice of the peace. Can you beat that?"
Marietta said nothing. They were sitting opposite one another at a long folding table draped with plastic. Beverly was gripping a pink daubing pen in each hand. On the table she had lined up six of the old-fashioned bingo cards favored by the regulars and dutifully supplied by staff on request. She hawked over the cards with both arms lifted slightly at the elbows, ready for action.
Marietta regarded the women on either side of them, sharing the table. The redhead next to Beverly squinted through narrow bifocals. Another lady, older than all of the rest, leaned over her cards with one protective arm curved around them like a schoolgirl afraid of copycats.
"N-34!" The caller shouted from the stage at the front of the room. "N-34!"
Beverly dotted two cards with her daubers. The redhead next to her grinned and pushed the bifocals up an inch on her nose. The fluorescent lights high overhead gave an occasional flicker, as if there were an electrical short or one of the lamps needed replacement.
"Bingo!" An eighty-three-year-old man at the next table yelled.
"Oh, damn it," said Beverly. "He's not even a regular. Wouldn't you know it? I was going for that toaster, too. Mine has a broken cord."
She returned her attention to Marietta.
"Did you hear what I said? Ethel's getting married, and she's moved into a house right down the road from me."
"Not that old place Joe Sanders used to live in?" Marietta asked.
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