Danny had hugged her. "She turned out a pretty good little girl, although Doss was more than half of it. She is what she is and we'll go have dinner with her every Sunday night and act proper."
Joanne had glanced around the kitchen and frowned. 'Everything's still here, but you and Frank have pushed it a little beyond casual living, haven't you? Don't worry. I'll fix
And she had. She'd vacuumed out bushel basketsful of 73
it.
dog hair, scrubbed the sticky linoleum, and made new curtains, but she hadn't really changed anything. She'd given him his home back and loved him.
The table was covered now with jars and jars of jam that she'd canned while he'd been out patrolling stinking taverns with Sam. He wondered if she hadn't plunged into a flurry of canning more out of anger than anything else; she did this/ sort of thing more and more lately.
"I have nothing but time on my hands," she told him flatly. "I have no one to take care of but you—and you're never here, and if you are here, you're asleep."
His sense of serenity vanished. She was changing, and he couldn't deal with her. He'd heard that women grew more and more like their mothers as they aged, and wondered if he was destined to end up with another Elizabeth Crowder instead of the wife he'd married.
Danny was more bewildered than angry; he'd wanted kids too, but he'd never thrown it up to Joanne when she didn't get pregnant. He'd never pushed her into Doc's office, and he'd gone along with her plans to go when she wanted to, but he felt sick at the idea of putting his manhood on the line, of having Doc or anyone else know if there was something wrong with him. She didn't understand what she was asking of him.
He looked under the breadbox for his note. There was always a note—something silly or sexy or teasing. He ran his hand under the tin box but came up empty. And there were no cookies or sandwiches on the counter either, nothing to indicate that she was glad he'd come home to her.
He turned on the radio on the windowsill and listened to the weather and the farm report while he ate a bowl of cold cereal. He didn't give a goddamn about the weather or the price of hogs, but the familiar drone of the announcer's voice filled the empty kitchen. He put the cereal bowl in the sink and ran water over it so the Wheaties wouldn't stick and harden, turned off the light, and walked down the hallway, unhooking his gunbelt and hanging it over the
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halltree. Joanne didn't like to have his service revolver in the bedroom, and it was close enough if he needed it.
She lay exactly as she had before, turned away from him, and she didn't stir as he padded through the room to the bathroom. He urinated, flushing the toilet as noisily as he could, letting the water run full force in the sink as he washed his face, hoping she'd wake up and reach out for him when he came to bed. And then he saw the familiar square blue cardboard carton that held her Tampax. The top was torn raggedly, and two of the white paper-wrapped cylinders were missing. Again. Without wanting to admit his anxiety about it, he'd been counting the days crossed off on her calendar and noted that she'd been five days overdue. And now she wasn't overdue anymore, and she'd blame him. There was just a brush of dried blood on the toilet seat when he flipped it back down.
He'd laughed when Fletcher had a vasectomy and Sam kidded him about shooting with an unloaded gun. Well, he wasn't laughing now. Danny leaned on the sink with both hands and stared at himself in the mirror. O.K. O.K. Damn it to hell. He'd go and do it, but he wouldn't tell her. He didn't want her to know for certain that she'd married a eunuch. Joanne wasn't asleep. She'd heard the truck coming up the lane, and said a prayer, as she always did—thanks for Danny's being safe. She'd sent him off in anger, and she'd gone to bed without leaving one sign for him that she cared if he got home or not. If anything had happened to him, it would have been her fault for sending him off that way. She was barren. Barren. It was the loneliest word she'd ever heard; she'd never done anything worthwhile, been anything worthwhile, and now she never would. Danny could be proud of his job, and he had friends who understood him. He saved people, for God's sake. And she canned plums.
Without moving, she watched him through half-closed eyes. He hung his uniform shirt carefully over the chair by
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the dresser, creased his pants and draped them over a hanger, lined up his boots, and she thought he was beautiful. The tanned broad shoulders and back, and the white buttocks that made him look like a little boy. He wasn't the slim, perfect Danny she'd fallen in love with, but the trace of a belly only made him dearer to her. She fought the rush of love. She had to be stubborn, as stubborn as he was, because if he wouldn't do this one thing she asked of him, she knew they were lost.
No, they weren't lost. She was lost.
She had never wanted anything more than to be like everyone else, to be accepted, but if it hadn't been for Sonia Hanson—Sonia, square and broad-faced and stump-legged, but full of confidence and loyalty—Joanne wouldn't have had a girlfriend in high school. Walt Kluznewski had adored Sonia ever since first grade, and if he'd looked twice at Joanne, Sonia would have blamed him and not Joanne.
She'd asked Sonia once, "Sonie, why don't they like me? I mean, they act like they like me when we're all out there leading cheers, and then they just walk away after, like I wasn't even there."
Sonia had snorted in disbelief. "Joanne, you're so dumb! You look like Elizabeth Taylor, and every single bitchy one of them would gladly kill to look like you. Besides, at least half of them are panting after Danny, and he's nice and polite to them, but he belongs to you. They're so jealous they almost wet their pants, so they try to make you miserable. Just ignore them."
"I can't help how I look."
Sonia laughed. "Neither can I, and I'm lucky big old Waltie doesn't mind. He likes me and I like you and Danny loves you, and high school doesn't last forever. Before long, we'll all be fat, jolly married ladies with babies and nobody will remember who did what at Natchitat High."
It worked out for Sonia. She married Walt and had three kids in three years, and Walt Kluznewski ran his Standard station with a big grin on his face in hot summer or icy winter. All the really smart girls in their class went off to college and then settled down in Seattle or Spokane. The
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rest of them got married and turned into housewives who seemed to accept Joanne. She ran into them at the Safeway, most of them pushing one baby in a shopping cart, and carrying another one under their belts. She was invited to baby showers and Tupperware parties, but Sonia was still her only friend.
Nobody wanted a thirty-one-year-old cheerleader. She was never the one anybody called when they needed a shoulder to cry on. She never really pleased anyone—not even Danny. Sooner or later, he would look at her and realize how dull she was, his pretty little wife who cleaned his house and spoke sweetly to his friends, and was afraid to ask him why he cried out in his sleep. She knew it was important to him that she be in the farmhouse waiting for him when he came back from his other life, but that was only for now. Maybe not even for now; maybe there was already another woman out there who was alive and vital. And not barren.
She shifted slightly and felt a gush of warm blood between her thighs. She had tried so hard not to bleed this month, willing herself to breathe gently, to handle her body as if it were breakable, not even running for a whole week of mornings and evenings—when running was all she had that belonged only to herself.
"You awake?" Danny whispered, and she lay silent. "Hey, babe, you awake?
I'm home."
She was resolute, drawing her body so tightly into itself that she barely touched the sheet beneath her, breathing deeply in a semblance of full sleep. She felt the bed sink under his weight, heard him sigh, and smelled his faint male sweaty odor, and stronger than that, shaving lotion that he must have just splashed on. She had fantasized long ago about being in bed with Danny, but it had never been what she thought sex was supposed to be. If she'd ever had an orgasm, she hadn't recognized it as the powerful sensation she'd read about, or heard other women hint at. Danny was so quick, treating intercourse as an athletic event where the swiftest won. Sometimes she had a glimmer of what it might be, a curious tickling buzz, but Danny was already past her
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response before it could grow. He always came with a last triumphant thrust, and he dismissed her a moment later with a friendly pat on the shoulder before he turned away and fell asleep.
His beautiful hands, the hands that were so delicate in woodworking and fly-tying, were clumsy when he touched her, and he seemed to have no idea where the center of her sexual feeling lay.
"Tell him," Sonia said. "Tell him what makes you feel good. All those ex-jocks are like that. They can romance a football but they wouldn't know a clitoris if it bit them on the nose—and it should." And Sonia had dissolved into giggles.
"Oh, I couldn't. Sonia, I just couldn't. That's awful. It would hurt his feelings, and what if I didn't like it either?"
"Don't knock it unless you've tried it. You have to think of it as teaching braille to a blind man. De-klutzing therapy. Joanne, you keep assuming that men are more than ordinary human beings. They aren't. You have to give them some kind of roadmap."
"Doesn't Walt get angry?"
Sonia laughed. "He stomps and fumes, and once he put his fist through the wall in the bathroom, but he eventually gets the point. See, we talk to each other. He doesn't have to guess what I'm feeling or thinking, and I don't go around resenting him."
Joanne looked up sharply. "I don't resent Danny."
"No? You resent the hell out of him, but you won't admit it. You're still trying to be the Ideal Couple of 1967, but you're blowing it, kid. That was fourteen years ago. We're all grown-ups now, and you're still trying to be perfect and you're losing yourself in the process."
"Then I'll lose him too. I couldn't live without Danny."
"Oh yes you could and stop being such a wimp. Look at me. Take a good look." Sonia stood up and twirled around, displaying her ballooning figure, barely squeezed into a T-shirt and red shorts, her thick ankles rising out of black oxfords and encased in Walt's white socks. "If/can ask for something for myself and still keep Waltie racing home to
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me at night, you certainly can. Danny's nuts about you. Just try him." It sounded so easy when she was listening to Sonia, but Sonia believed in Sonia, and Joanne still felt like a shadow.
She was happy that Danny was home, relieved that he lay beside her in the big bed that felt so empty when he was gone at night. She felt him roll toward her, and then his heavy arm slide across her ribs, his hand caress her breast. She stiffened.
"Joanne? Honey?"
He pulled her against him tightly, his body curving around hers, urging her silently to soften to him. His penis, half-hard already, pressed her buttocks.
"Danny, I can't. I started my damn period. I can't do anything."
"I know. I don't want that; I can't help getting excited when I touch you. I can't control that. Just let me hold you while I fall asleep. Just let me kiss you."
"I taste awful. I haven't brushed my teeth, and I'm all sweaty and yucky." She felt her body relax against his; she didn't want to be angry and alone.
"You always smell good to me, you always taste good, and I need you. We had a hell of a night, and I just kept thinking about being back here with you." His hands moved over her, as if he were gentling a flighty horse. "Sam got hurt— but he's O.K.—and your goddamn goose bit me, and you didn't even leave me a note, and I was afraid you'd run off with the milkman."
"You fool," she whispered, turning over. "We don't even have a milkman. We have a cow."
He made her laugh, and she couldn't stay angry, picturing Billy Carter attacking him. She rolled over and kissed him on the mouth, tasting cigars and toothpaste, feeling the thin sheen of perspiration on his chest, and his penis nudging her belly. He forced her hand around it, and his breathing grew harsher.
"Baby, Joanne, do it for me?"
She kept her fingers still, tried to move them away, but he held her wrist firmly. "Do it, please?"
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"I hate that."
"No, no, it's O.K. Just for a little while. Just slow . . ."
She grasped him more firmly and moved her hand tentatively up and down, feeling the silky foreskin slide over the end of him. His breathing accelerated, and she felt him slip away from her, become oblivious of any part of her but her hand servicing him. She shut her eyes against it, removed herself from it.
"Faster ... do it faster, babe." He lay supine, his back arched. "Make me come."
Something in her mind balked. She didn't want to be back in his '64
Chevy, doing what he asked of her, helping him spill useless seed. She didn't feel guilty as she had then, only tired. And alone. She took her hand away from his penis, and she heard him swear softly before he bolted out of bed and headed for the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. She couldn't hear him in there, but she knew that he was masturbating himself because she'd failed him.
She heard the rush of the faucet, and then his tall shadow walked back to their bed. He patted her on the shoulder, as if she'd been with him when he came, and then he was asleep, sprawled over most of the bed. Her eyes hurt as she watched the sun slide down the bedroom wall like hot butter, bringing with it the heat of another long day.
She couldn't sleep now, and she slid beneath his heavy arm and stood up. She stripped off her gown and panties and tossed them into the bathroom sink, sluicing cold water over them. The dark blood and water swirled together in a pink froth and eddied away. She didn't cry until she was in the shower where he couldn't hear her. She wasn't even sure what she was crying about—the blood that meant another chance gone or the man who lay asleep in the room beyond.
She shrugged into her jogging clothes and felt under the bed for her Adidas. Danny slept fitfully, fighting whatever demons haunted him. She put a hand on one heaving shoulder and he practically leapt off the bed, and then quieted as she stroked his back. She shut the bedroom door quietly and left him to his day's sleep.