Edward climbed into the cold leather bench seat of the car and sucked air through his back teeth at the shock to his backside and thighs. Which three prisoners had made the escape? The radio announcement hadn’t given names. There was just one he needed to be worried about. One inmate who’d cause problems for Edward in the world outside the prison walls. Vivian was going to be sore at him when she woke up and found he’d gone to work after all, but she’d get over it. Inmate eleven-three-oh-five was the one he was worried about.
His mouth was set in a grim line as he worried about that one inmate, and prepared for the chaos that would greet him when he walked through the gates. He was already a half hour late due to Vivian’s paranoia. But, as the car rumbled down the road, Edward’s mind went back to the conversation he’d had with his wife before he put her to bed. He chuckled to himself as he recalled her demands. A telephone. Only a woman would want a telephone in the house. All the better to gossip with, my dear!
Chapter 11
Betty Miller wasn’t the biggest gossip in Wooster; Vivian would’ve given that trophy to Bell’s own Ruth Craven. She considered Ruth a friend, just not a friend you tell your secrets to, if you wanted to keep them secret. Betty Miller was not only not a friend, but she had an uncomfortable grip of influence in town. And now, after that telephone call, she had a secret that threatened to destroy Vivian, and Vivian had already felt the destruction begin. She was all alone with the black dread that hung over her thoughts like a death shroud as she walked to work that morning, a faint pink rimming the horizon. It had snowed a little the night before, so her worn ankle boots were making fresh tracks up the sidewalks.
How stupid did you have to be to agree to work an evening shift one day, and then a morning shift the next? Pretty goddamned stupid. The recent turn of events had the black dread extending to Vivian’s self-talk. She was being much harder on herself than was usual. The self-talk sounded like her mother. But, really, she had some seniority now, and needed to remember that when Leona was making the schedule. Leona was getting on in years and needed some reminding. Never mind. She’d still have time to make the spaghetti tonight. For Edward. For Edward. She stomped her boots with the words, and on the second “Edward” hit a patch of hidden ice with her right boot that threw her into a clumsy slide with pocketbook flailing around her head as she struggled to stay upright. Her insides shivered with the threat of the fall, and once she’d found her footing again she huffed and straightened her coat and her Beulah Bechtel hat. Now she felt angry and foolish. At any other time she would’ve laughed at herself. Laughed and said, “Whooopsies!” and been thankful she hadn’t landed on her backside. But today hot tears began to threaten. She shouldn’t have bought the hat. She was being punished for her pride in buying the hat.
There was no one she could talk to. Not about this. She’d have liked to confide in one of her coworkers, but her friendships with the women at Bell were kind of, what was the word . . . superficial. Oh, sure, she’d told Pearl about having all of her teeth yanked by the dentist just so she could have a full set of dentures that were straight and even and looked nice, like Joan Crawford’s, even though she felt a little silly about it. And, yes, she’d told Dorothy about her botched hysterectomy (after Charlotte there’d be no more Dalton babies), but that doctor with a butcher’s license took everything out and then just tossed it back in willy-nilly. It’d been a disaster. She’d been left without a proper belly button, but what did she need a belly button for anyway? Dorothy’d been kind about that. “Who’s going to know, Vivy? Don’t give it another thought.”
And Ruth. Good old Ruth. Always one for gossip, you couldn’t tell her any secrets, but Ruth was great if you wanted a casual snipe and gripe about married life. Ruth’s husband made Edward seem like a regular Rhett Butler. But only Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler from the movie, not the one from the book. Charlotte had told her the movie was also a book. Sometimes Charlotte showed off like that, and it got on Vivian’s last nerve.
Those social confessionals with Pearl, Dorothy, and Ruth were never more than surface skimming, through all the years she’d known them working at Bell. Nothing too deep and nothing too dramatic. Vivian couldn’t have any of her friends or acquaintances thinking her life was anything other than just fine, because the people with problems were the ones who got talked about. Don’t wiggle around like a whore, don’t embarrass yourself. This was one storm she was going to have to weather on her own. And it was a downpour. A grab your slicker and galoshes, cats and dogs, gushing rainspouts and flooded cellars downpour.
It’s raining, it’s pouring, your husband is snoring . . .
But, had the storm already hit Ohio Bell on East Liberty Street? Had Betty Miller leaked the gossip from her no-good, mealy mouth? It’d only been about twelve hours. Nothing moved that quickly in Wooster.
Although it would’ve been plain impossible for the rumor to have made its way out of Mrs. Betty Miller’s mouth yet (it was probably still just percolating in her brain), Vivian still felt like people might’ve heard. Her fear had eaten her common sense like it was a casserole. Her heart pounded in her throat and her skin prickled as she crossed the threshold of the switchboard room. It was a different kind of nervousness than she’d felt when she’d first returned to work at Bell, after Edward had finally quit that horrible job at the prison and they’d moved back to Wooster with little Charlotte. She’d only been away a couple of years, and Leona was still there, and most of the operators she’d started with were still there, Pearl, Dorothy, Ruth, and they were glad to see her. But she’d still felt a little like the new girl, and that made her a little anxious about her first day. That anxiety was nothing compared to the paralysis she was feeling now.
“And so I says to him, ‘Sure ya do,’ and then he says to me, ‘You’d better believe it,’ and so I says to him—Hiya, Viv!” Ruth interrupted her story to greet Vivian and offer her usual friendly wave.
Vivian paused and tensed, wondering if Ruth had interrupted her story because she’d been talking about her. Was there something exaggerated in Ruth’s greeting? Did her fingers flutter just a bit too much in that wave?
“You’d better get a move-on, cutie-pie,” Laura Eagan teased, with a quick swat at Vivian’s backside as she passed her.
Vivian jumped, and then forced a twitchy smile, moving toward the cloakroom. Laura was about ten years younger than Vivian. She was still unmarried, and probably thought being cutesy and baby-talking was the way to get herself hitched. Vivian had made that mistake once. She’d tested out the baby talk with Edward on their second date. He’d cocked an eyebrow at her like she was sitting there on the park bench in diapers, sucking on a teething ring. From that point on, he sang nursery rhymes to her to remind her how ridiculous the baby talk was, and to make her laugh at herself. But Laura Eagan hadn’t had the benefit of a second date with Edward Dalton. Lucky her.
Laura was newer to Bell, and Vivian wouldn’t say she knew her all that well. She wondered if that’d been a sneaky, knowing look in Laura’s eye, or if it was just the usual flash of bitterness that sometimes escaped when she was trying to be flirty and cute. I’ll give her a cutie-pie.
“You just gave up your break,” Dorothy said in a low tone, with her hand covering her mouthpiece. She nodded at her watch as Vivian pulled out the rolling chair beside her.
Vivian couldn’t tell if Dorothy seemed angrier than usual about how late she was because she was wearing the brown eyebrow pencil today. Vivian was on time, most of the time, but when she wasn’t, Dorothy was the first to let her know. But was her reaction more than just annoyance about the time? Or did she know something, and had she already passed judgment on Vivian? Her face felt flushed and her heartbeat was stuttering a rapid SOS.
She lowered herself into the chair and self-consciously pulled herself up to the counter. Her hands shook as she pulled the headset over her hair. The lights flickered in front of her, and the resentment rose in her like bile, overtaking the anxiety. Star
ing at those blinking betrayals, remembering each and every word of the overheard conversation the night before, she felt the resentment boiling back into the fury.
“Vivian!” Dorothy hissed, and motioned to the blinking light on the board.
Vivian picked up the rear jack and jammed it into the board so hard that the whole thing shuddered. She ignored the stunned faces of the other girls and answered the call as if it were just another day. Her diction was just a little sharper, and her tone just a little more forceful than usual.
“Number, please.”
She’d made it through an excruciating day at the switchboard.
Excruciating:
1: causing great pain or anguish: agonizing
2: very intense : extreme
And now she stood at the kitchen counter in her white ruffle-edged apron, holding the knife firmly in her right hand and, with her left over the dull side of the blade, crunched evenly through the carrot on the cutting board. With each crunch Vivian remembered the surprised “Oh!”s and “No!”s of Betty Miller’s voice last night over the phone line, as she listened to the story that would ruin her life. Edward had already left for work by the time she got out of bed that morning, but now he was sitting at the kitchen table reading the paper, calm as you please, as the spaghetti sauce bubbled on the stove.
“Anything interesting?” Vivian said over her shoulder, the bite in tone emphasized in the consonants.
“Hmm?” Edward didn’t look up.
“I said, ‘Anything interesting?’ there in the paper tonight?” Vivian enunciated each syllable through her teeth. “Any interesting stories?”
“Unh,” was Edward’s reply.
He finally looked up to see her standing there facing him and staring, supporting her right elbow with her left hand, the large knife waving back and forth like one of those Fourth of July flags they gave you at the parade.
“You going to cut me if I don’t tell you something interesting?” He grinned as he looked at her, then looked back to the paper and took a sip of his beer. “Well, okay, then, they separated those Siamese twins in Chicago.”
“Siamese twins,” Vivian said flatly, then turned and took another carrot from the counter.
“Mmm-hm.”
Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch.
“Joined at the head, but didn’t look anything alike, according to this. Imagine that.”
Charlotte breezed into the kitchen, took one look at her mother’s rigid posture, the knife crunching through the carrot, measured the tension in the air, and promptly breezed right out again, her scarf-tied ponytail disappearing in a wisp around the corner.
Later, there was silence at the dinner table as Edward, Vivian, and Charlotte swirled strands of sauce-soaked spaghetti in their spoons and deposited the neat coils into their mouths.
“This is really good, Mother.” Charlotte, as usual, tried to ease the tension with a compliment about her mother’s cooking, which was mediocre at best.
“Thank you, Charlotte.” Her voice was terse. “It’s the recipe Mrs. Tomasetti gave me.”
“So, it’s genuine Italian?” Charlotte had taken the first few bites and decided, with some surprise, that she would most definitely be having seconds.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Tomasettis,” Edward mused. “They live in Frogtown? With the rest of the Guineas?”
Vivian pursed her lips into a tight line. Maria Tomasetti worked with Vivian at Bell, and lived in the southeast part of Wooster, along with the rest of the Italian population. Vivian and Edward both called the area Frogtown, and couldn’t have told you why. Just like they used the term “four-flushers” when complaining about the rich people in north Wooster. They said it, but couldn’t have told you where it came from. Did “four-flusher” mean they were so wealthy they all had four toilets in their homes? Did it mean they were so wealthy and wasteful they flushed their toilets four times each time they used the bathroom? The Daltons really didn’t know. What they knew was that the four-flushers were rich, awful, and probably up to no good with all that money they had.
The romantic fireworks that had brought Vivian and Edward together and sealed their union in the beginning had fallen and settled into a dampened pile of unsexy, but comfortable domestic ash, like it did with most married couples. Their partnership had grown into something mainly bonded by time, their daughter Charlotte, and their mutual dislike of anyone too different from them. On a normal night, Vivian wouldn’t have even blinked at Edward’s reference to Frogtown or the word “Guinea.” Tonight, she resented the way it came out of his mouth. Instead of responding to his question, Vivian stabbed her fork violently around her plate until it finally pierced a limp piece of iceberg lettuce.
The next morning, the Second Morning, Vivian opened her eyes and remembered everything all over again and the flush of anger rose to the surface of her skin. The spot next to her in the bed was empty. Edward always got up early on Saturdays and went straight to his workshop, and was probably hammering or sawing something at that moment. Vivian considered how satisfying it would be right then, to be hammering or sawing, using heavy or sharp tools to pound or slice, and her fury gained momentum as she climbed from the bed and into her slippers and robe.
What she was also reminded of, as she moved about in a kind of heated daze, was that she didn’t have anyone to share that fury with. It was fuzzy, her thoughts about her coworkers and the friends she didn’t really have outside of work. Who had time for friends when you had a job and a family? Her hands shook as she took the dress down from the hanger. Who could she burden with this? Because she sure as hell didn’t want to suffer this alone. Her sister Vera? Ha! That was a good one. Vera’d probably take an ad out in the paper to tell everyone else the news; host a goddamned party to celebrate Vivian’s misfortune. Vivian’s thoughts were pointed, sharp, but her legs had begun to wobble and her head to swim. She needed to stay angry to keep going.
If Vivian ever confided in any of her siblings, it was Henry, but Henry had gone and married Norma Barfield, whom Vivian couldn’t stand, and had moved to Fredericksburg. They didn’t really talk too much anymore, and she missed him. There was also Violet. Sweet, steady, warmhearted Violet. The only problem was, Violet was currently siding with Vera on everything. It hadn’t mattered when they were kids. Violet was always too young. But now she was grown-up and had her own family, and she and Vera were thick as thieves. Although, let six months pass and Violet would probably be mad at Vera for something, and then she’d go running to Vivian and the two of them would put their heads together to complain about Vera. But that wasn’t right now. Right now Vera and Violet were teamed up, and Vivian had no one to turn to. The discontentment, panic, and fear were like physical lumps she could almost see growing inside her head, her stomach, and her throat. No one to turn to. Nowhere to turn.
After Charlotte cleaned up the breakfast dishes, she scurried back upstairs to her room and Vivian was left alone at the kitchen table. Five minutes later Charlotte bounded back down the stairs, grabbed her coat and ice skates from the hall closet, and was out the door into the cold morning, headed to Christmas Run Park. Vivian watched her disappear, wishing she could follow. So young, so casual, so careless. Youth is wasted on the young. She’d never really understood that saying. Not now, and not when she’d heard it the first time, when she was in her youth.
She pushed her chair back, stood, and stalked into the living room, where she picked up one of the sofa cushions, held it to her face, and screamed. With her eyes scrunched shut and her mouth wide open, she screamed into that cotton-batting-stuffed beige cushion for a full ten seconds, and when she finally pulled the cushion away from her face she felt light-headed and had to sit down. She dropped onto the sofa, holding the cushion to her chest, the way she used to hold her dollies when she was little, and breathed slowly until the dizziness passed.
She stood up, replaced the cushion with a
sound smack, returned to the kitchen, and tied on her apron. She banged around the cabinets and drawers, and took out the oversized mixing bowls, measuring cups, and the flour, baking soda, brown sugar, molasses, and all the other ingredients, and did what she always did at this time of year. She made her fruitcakes. And if there was any rat poison left in the box, maybe she’d make a special cake for Edward.
Christmas Fruitcake (double batch)
6 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups butter
2 1/2 cups white sugar
8 eggs
3 cups raisins
2 cups red and green candied cherries
1 1/2 cups dates, pitted and chopped
1 1/2 cups candied pineapple, diced
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts
1 cup flaked coconut
4 teaspoons lemon juice
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Grease pan.
In a large bowl (but not the green one because the salad dressing smell wont come out) whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix in raisins, dates, cherries, pineapple, walnuts, and coconut. Stir until all fruit is coated.
In another large bowl, mix the butter and sugar. Add lemon juice, and eggs; mix well. Stir in fruit mixture. Spread batter into prepared pans.
Bake for 2 hours or until toothpick comes out clean. Cool completely on a wire rack.
Chapter 12
Vivian hadn’t smashed the alarm clock into her husband’s Adam’s apple that first night, she hadn’t stabbed him with the kitchen knife the night after that, and she hadn’t poisoned him with a tainted fruitcake. Because, what if it wasn’t true? But it was. What if that conversation she’d overheard had just been hateful, idle gossip; the kind Betty Miller was always involved in? This wasn’t idle.
The Operator Page 8