Miss Julia Renews Her Vows

by Ann B. Ross

  Sam looked at me, raised his eyebrows, then with a half smile said, “In what way?”

  I nudged him with my elbow. “You know in what way. I’m talking about how she’s been able to get a new husband almost before the last one is cold in his grave. I mean, let’s face it, she’s neither young nor attractive, and no one would say she has a scintillating personality. She’s probably pretty well off, but I doubt she has enough to blind a man to what she doesn’t have. So what’s her appeal?”

  “Speaking for myself, she doesn’t have any.”

  “Well, but she does, or at least she has had to a lot of men. Why, Sam, she’s married and buried and married again over and over, with practically no turnaround time. And I’m trying to understand what they see in her and exactly how she does it.”

  “Well, Julia, some women just have that little something extra.”

  “I knew you’d know! What is it?”

  “My guess is that it’s . . .” He leaned over and whispered, “erotic knowledge.”

  I jerked back and stared at him. “Erotic . . .? No, Sam, that couldn’t be it. How would Francie Pitts have that? Where would she get it? And,” I went on, frowning, “what is it, anyway?”

  “Oh, ways to please a man, I expect. Sensually speaking, that is.” Sam picked up the newspaper from the lamp table. “I’m just guessing. Did you see that article about the Methodist church getting a new preacher?”

  “No, and don’t change the subject. If there’s something to know about pleasing a man, I want to know it. I have a man to please, too, you know.”

  Sam put his arm around me and whispered against my hair. “You please me just fine.”

  Well, I wasn’t too sure about that. Why else was he trying to get me in a marriage enrichment counseling session? Was he hoping that Dr. Fowler had the inside scoop on erotic knowledge and would disseminate it? An image of Dr. Fowler lecturing on explicit sensual matters sprang full blown into my mind. My eyelids fluttered at the thought.

  By the time Etta Mae returned, after having dropped Binkie off, Sam and I had moved on to other subjects, although I was still mulling over the apparent hole in my erotic knowledge storehouse and wondering how I could fill it without attending class. Independent study was one option, though I wouldn’t know where to start. But one thing was for sure: if Dr. Fowler and Francie Pitts were the only experts in the field available to me, I’d just stay ignorant and hope Sam would resign himself to doing without the frills.

  But I had to put aside this fascinating, though worrisome, subject to concentrate on Etta Mae’s problem. On her return, she had confirmed that our estimated driving times were pretty much on the money. “Now if I can just convince Lieutenant Peavey that it takes me thirty-five minutes to change clothes and do my makeup, I’ll be okay. Mr. Sam,” she went on, turning to him, “do you think I ought to demonstrate how I did it? He could sit in my living room and time me, and I’d do everything just like I did last Thursday.”

  “I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Sam said, smiling at her. “He has a wife, so I expect he knows how long it takes.”

  She didn’t seem all that convinced, but she put it aside to shower us with thanks for helping her in her time of need. “But I’d better be getting back and begin looking for a job. Miss Julia, if you start feeling bad again, just give me a call. I don’t expect I’ll be busy anytime soon.”

  We urged her to stay on, but she said she didn’t want to wear out her welcome. She finally consented to have dinner with us, after which she’d pack her things and be off. I hated to see her go but mentally reserved the right to call her back on duty if I needed to be sick again, come Monday next.

  When Lillian tinkled the dinner bell, we all went into the dining room and took our places, still discussing how long it took women to dress.

  Wanting to put a stop to it, I said, “It all depends on why she’s dressing. I mean, what she’s dressing for. If she’s going to a party, as Etta Mae was, then naturally she’ll take a few more pains with her toilette.”

  Etta Mae frowned at the unfamiliar word, and Lloyd got tickled, putting his hand over his mouth as he giggled.

  “Toilette,” I said sternly, “simply means one’s overall grooming. Among other things.”

  “Yes’m,” Lloyd said, his eyes dancing with delight at teasing me. “I’m laughing at the other things.”

  When I arrived at Mildred’s house later that evening, after seeing Etta Mae off, I was surprised at the number of women she’d invited. She must’ve been truly disturbed about the attack on Francie to have gone to so much trouble to arrange for a safety demonstration. I walked in along with three others, and Mildred directed us toward her large drawing, room, where rows of folding chairs had been set up in a semicircle facing the Adam mantel of the fireplace.

  Smiling and greeting the others, I strolled through the spacious foyer and through the double doors to the drawing room. The front-row chairs were already taken, which suited me fine. If the well-muscled instructor I envisioned wanted to demonstrate some defensive technique with a volunteer, I preferred to watch from the back row rather than be singled out as an assistant.

  As I began to sidle to a few empty seats in the back row, I glanced toward the fireplace and nearly lost my breath. Seated there, in a Chippendale wing chair upholstered in blue and gold brocade, was none other than Dr. Fred Fowler, a smug little smile on his face as he surveyed the eager crowd who’d come to sit at his feet.

  I was paralyzed with outrage. False pretenses! That’s how Mildred had gotten me there, letting me think I’d learn some kind of judo mumbo jumbo to protect myself, then springing on me the very one whom I’d gone to such extreme measures to avoid.

  Then, drawing a heaving breath, I regained some sense. Mildred had done no such thing. She knew nothing of my antipathy toward the man nor anything of my previous dealings with him. It wasn’t her fault that I was there, but it would be my fault if I stayed.

  I turned to edge back through the crowd, my mind set on getting out of there and getting home. Before I could move, though, I felt a steady push behind me.

  “Julia,” Emma Sue Ledbetter whispered, nudging me along. “I’m so glad to see you. Let’s sit together.”

  “This is not what I expected, Emma Sue. I’m going home.”

  “No, don’t do that. Look, I brought some paper to take notes. Here’s a pad for you.” Emma Sue handed me a small, yellow legal pad. “I’m going to take down word for word what Dr. Fowler says so Larry will see what he’s up to.”

  I was momentarily confused. “You knew he’d be here? I thought there’d be a self-defense instructor.”

  Emma Sue frowned at me. “Where’d you get that idea? Larry asked Mildred to have him. He’s hoping that when some of the wives get to know him, they’ll get their husbands to go with them to the enrichment sessions. Hardly anybody showed up on Monday, you know.”

  “Oh for goodness’ sakes,” I said, shuffling my feet as people moved past us. “I’m not feeling well. I’ve got to go.”

  “Oh, sit down, Julia,” Emma Sue said. “I need you to help me. If we’re going to get out of being enriched, we have to get the goods on him.”

  She gave me a little shove and I moved over to two empty chairs. Sitting down, because she wouldn’t give me a way out, I was relieved to find that I was behind Harriet Malone, who was about as wide as she was tall, and she was tall. I couldn’t see Dr. Fowler at all. Even better, he couldn’t see me.

  “Now, Julia,” Emma Sue whispered as she handed me a pen, “take good notes and get down everything he says. I hope it’ll run Larry up a wall.”

  Intrigued by this time at the thought of being of one mind with Emma Sue Ledbetter—it was so unusual, you know—I settled down in the safety of Harriet’s broad back to await Dr. Fowler’s self-incrimination.

  A few stragglers were still coming through the foyer, and there was a lot of talking and greeting of friends as those in the drawing room took their time in findi
ng seats. And all the while, Dr. Fowler complacently surveyed his captive audience, his rimless glasses flashing occasionally as he glanced from side to side. I eased my head to one side to look beyond Harriet’s shoulder, taking in as much of Dr. Fowler as I could while he was gazing in another direction.

  Lord, how could I have ever seen anything in him? Well, of course I’d not seen anything, having kept my eyes closed through the whole episode. But there he sat in a brown suit, yellow shirt and striped tie, one leg crossed over the other, exposing a sliver of white shin between pant leg’s end and the top of a brown silk sock with a yellow clock up the side. His red hair had lost some luster and thickness in the intervening years, although it had had little of either to begin with. He’d shrunk with age somewhat as well, though he’d barely been my height before, and I wondered how old he was. Seventy-five if he was a day was my guess, and going around the country advising married couples on how to stoke embers. Most unseemly, I sniffed, and quickly jerked back behind Harriet as his gaze swept the room.

  At that point, I noticed the two stacks of thin paperback books on a table beside his chair. Thinking at first that he might hand them out to his audience, I was aghast to see three women go to him, pick up books and hand him money. He was selling them! Of all the inappropriate things to do in a private home, this took the cake.

  “Look, Emma Sue,” I hissed as I elbowed her, “he’s selling those books. Does Mildred know that?”

  “Larry told her he had to,” she said. “He’s self-published, you know, and it’s one of the ways he makes his living.”

  “Well, I think it’s a tacky thing to do.”

  “I guess,” Emma Sue said, “but I want one. Somebody said they’re workbooks. You know, homework for married couples, and they have illustrations, too.” She leaned close to me and whispered. “You get one for me, Julia, and I’ll pay you back later. It wouldn’t do for people to see me buying one.”

  “Emma Sue! I will not! You can get it yourself if you want one. But I don’t know why you would. Illustrations? You know what they’ll be, don’t you?”

  “No. That’s why I want one.”

  My eyes rolled back in my head just as Mildred walked to the center of the room and introduced Dr. Fred Fowler, who would speak to us about the joys of a Christ-centered marriage.

  As Mildred moved to the side, Dr. Fowler straightened up in his chair, cleared his throat and cast a small knowing smile on his audience. I scrooched farther down behind Harriet Malone, gritted my teeth and wished I were anywhere but where I was.

  Chapter 24

  Dr. Fowler started off by telling us that marriage is a sacred covenant designed by God to demonstrate the relationship of Christ and his church. Nothing new there, I thought.

  He went on speaking in a soft and persuasive tone so that the sound of his voice curled around us as we all quieted and strained to hear—a psychological trick, I thought to myself, to keep our attention.

  He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “Art thou bound to a husband? Then you must render unto your husband his due, for the marriage bed is undefiled. Seek not to be loosed, for a wife must not depart from her husband.”

  He sat back and smiled as if he’d proclaimed a precept we’d never heard of. Unfortunately for him, most of us had. Shocked at how he’d paraphrased and conflated Scripture, I glanced at Emma Sue, who knew her Bible backward and forward. She was staring at him, her mouth open, a look of amazement on her face. Then she bent to her legal pad and began scribbling as fast as she could.

  Without looking up, she whispered, “Write, Julia. Get it all down.”

  I glanced at her notes, then tried to catch up by jotting down what I remembered. But by that time, Dr. Fowler was rattling on with a full head of steam, and I’d missed how he’d gotten there.

  “Has your marriage grown stale?” he asked, as if he already knew the answer. “Are the fires dying down? Do you wonder where the passion has gone? Have you ever asked yourself, ‘Is this all there is?’ Has your coming together become a growing apart? Then,” Dr. Fowler said, his voice gaining strength as he rose to his feet, “then, you are in the grip of one or more of the insidious marriage busters. And what is a marriage buster? It’s anything done, or not done, to hurt your spouse.”

  He sighed dramatically, then resumed in his quiet voice. “I could list twelve of them, but we’re limited in our time together, so I’m only going to speak of one, the worst one. And that is refusing your husband the comfort of the marriage bed, or, just about as bad, enduring rather than participating in that comfort. Do you push him away? Are you too tired or too sick? Do you roll your eyes? Make a cutting remark that lessens and deflates him? Your unwilling or lackadaisical response to his needs will bust up a marriage quicker than anything.”

  Emma Sue leaned close and whispered, “Is he talking about what I think he’s talking about?”

  I nodded, my mouth stretched so thin and tight I couldn’t get a word out.

  “There is no other blessing under the sun,” Dr. Fowler declaimed, “more to be desired and honored and practiced than that of the physical coming together of a man and wife. It is the physical and spiritual communion of two entities. Now I’m going to give you a news flash: men are different from women.” He stopped then and smiled, awaiting the ripple of laughter that a few granted him. “Men are different in their needs and in the frequency that those needs demand to be met. It is the wise wife who recognizes this and who makes herself available at all times and in all ways. But she should not only be available, she should be enthusiastically available. And not only enthusiastically available, but—hear me now, for this is one of the secrets to a happy marriage—she should often be the initiator and the instigator of those actions that will stimulate and arouse her husband to a release of those tensions and built-up resentments that are part and parcel of any marriage.”

  There was dead quiet in the room as we absorbed and parsed his words. Emma Sue was taking notes as fast as she could, mumbling under her breath, “Wait till Larry hears this.”

  I couldn’t respond, but it struck me that Larry just might agree with Dr. Fowler.

  The good doctor took up his cause again. “My dear sisters, I know that you may be shocked, you may think it’s too much to ask and you may wonder if I know what I’m talking about. But I assure you I do. Study after study has shown that when a married couple makes every effort to conjoin daily in that sacred act of coitus, their marriage is strengthened beyond anything the world can do to destroy it.”

  There was a loud gasp from every mouth in the room. I couldn’t tell if it was caused by hearing that unusual word in a public and mixed gathering or by the prospect of a daily ration of it. I was outraged at the thought of both or either one. Recalling an article I’d read of a preacher whose mind was so filled with images of marital congress that he displayed a double bed beside the altar as a show-and-tell item, I wondered if both the preaching and the psychological professions hadn’t taken a wrong turn somewhere.

  Dr. Fowler waited until the effect of his words had run its course, then he said, “When you get home tonight, take a look at your vitamin bottle. You’ll see the initials RDA, the recommended daily allowance. That’s my prescription for you, too, and if you follow the RDA of marital intercourse, believe me, you will begin to see the sparks fly and your marriage will be immeasurably strengthened.” Dr. Fowler allowed himself a smile at his own cleverness as his gaze swept the room. I ducked lower over my pad.

  “Now,” he went on, holding up a warning finger, “a word of caution. I’ve emphasized how important it is to keep your husbands satisfied and content, but you women are in just as much danger if you allow yourselves to become closed off and antagonistic to married lovemaking. You will set yourselves up to become prey to the natural instinct to couple with the opposite sex and therefore become self-made victims of uncontrollable desires that can spring up in the most unsuitable places and with the most innocent of men. It is up to you to constra
in and restrain the animal instincts we all possess in both your husbands and in yourselves. I could give you example after example of cases in which a woman has taken leave of her senses simply because, for one reason or another and sometimes through her own fault, she has been denied a suitable outlet. The loss of self-control in a man is bad enough, although often understandable, but when a woman loses control of her emotions, it is a sad and pitiable thing to witness.”

  I thought I’d faint dead away. Did he intend to give a specifi c example? Was he talking about me? I bowed my head and patted my chest, dread filling my mind to the extent that I feared I’d melt in mortification.

  Then, in the midst of the shame that filled my soul, it came to me that he’d referred to many examples. Did that mean he’d been accosted by other women? Had there been others whom he’d led down the primrose path? It was beginning to sound as if Dr. Fred Fowler was an itinerant psychological seducer, and I hoped Emma Sue was getting it all down.

  I groaned softly and whispered to Emma Sue, “I’m feeling sick to my stomach.”

  “Me, too,” she murmured, her pen flying over the pad.

  “Now,” Dr. Fowler said, “Mrs. Allen, our gracious hostess, has prepared refreshments for us, so let’s take a short break. Afterward, I will give you, well, let us say, some kindling to restart the fires of your marriage. There are some very simple and easy-to-learn techniques that I guarantee will stoke the smoldering embers of your marriages into blazing flames.”

  He turned aside, and the noise level began to rise. Chair legs scraped against the floor and people bustled, talking to one another as they prepared to adjourn to the dining room.

  Then Dr. Fowler, with Mildred’s help, regained our attention. “Please feel free,” Dr. Fowler said, “to come up and purchase one of my books. They’re only fourteen dollars and ninety-five cents each, and they’re handy reference guides. One stack is specifically for women, and the other is for men. You would be wise to purchase one for your husband, as well as yourself. That way you’ll both be on the same page.” He laughed at his poor joke, and some simpleminded adorers joined him.