“Gosh-dang, I sure love to dance,” she said. “I’d rather dance than play cards, and I love to play cards.”
“I know. You’ve beat me enough times.”
She laughed and asked, “You have a nice Thanksgiving, Eddie?”
“Very nice. And you?”
“We tried. It was hard without Krystyna. But just about everybody was home, and that helped a lot. All of your sisters and brothers come home?”
“Only about half of them, thank heavens. The house can’t hold many more.” They danced awhile, then he asked, “So who did you come with tonight?”
“Mickey and Dolores.” Her brother and sister-in-law who lived in Sauk Center and were undoubtedly home for the holiday.
“So you riding back to your folks’ with them?”
“I guess so.”
They danced a few more steps before he suggested noncommittally, “I could take you.”
She looked up at him. “You want to?”
The truth was, he didn’t know if he wanted to or not. The song ended and they stepped apart, dropping their hands. “Sure. Get your coat and I’ll tell Mickey you’re riding with me.”
“Okay.”
It was one o’clock in the morning when the dance ended. Dozens of cars pulled out of the parking lot at Knotty Pine, lifting dust from the gravel and dispersing to the north and south along State Highway 71. Eddie’s truck was in the line heading north. Irene sat squarely in the passenger seat as he drove through the main drag of Browerville and out the other end—six blocks of sleeping village beneath a few dim streetlamps. The line of cars petered out the farther they got from town. He turned right onto County Road 89 and bumped over the railroad crossing where Krystyna was killed. Without looking at him, Irene reached over and caught his hand and squeezed it so hard his wedding ring cut into his finger.
“I’m trying real hard to get over her. To move on,” she said.
“So am I.”
“So I’m not going to cry right now, are you?”
“Nope,” he said.
“Good for us.” She tried to release her hand, but he held it there on the seat between them and could feel her thumb stroke his while she stared straight ahead at the dried weeds whipping past on either side of the gravel road. Up ahead they could see a set of taillights; behind them, none. He drove holding her hand, wondering if he was merely responding to his brothers’ teasing or if he really wanted to start something with Irene. It had been nearly three months since he’d had any physical contact with a woman, and it was good just holding a hand. The movement of her thumb was so welcome it began to work its way into his vitals. The great swell of his loneliness was relieved by the knowledge that she had a crush on him and had for a long time. He realized he could probably do anything with her that he wanted.
Her parents lived up ahead about a half mile, around a sharp left-hand curve, and as they drew closer, the tension in the truck increased. He slowed down and released Irene’s hand so he could shift into second before turning right onto a field access, where he stopped between a line of trees and a stubbled cornfield. The cornfield disappeared when he shut off the headlights, and as he killed the engine some bright autumn moonlight came streaming through the windshield.
Irene didn’t say anything. Neither did Eddie. Something like this—loveless—he thought, was better done without words.
He turned and put a hand on the back of Irene’s neck and they met in the middle of the seat, tilting to fit into each other’s arms. Her lips were warm and plump and somewhat shy, and he sensed her tentativeness matched his own. He played with her lips awhile before nudging them apart and when he touched her with his tongue her breath issued in a gust against his cheek. He felt her relax and sensed that she was as relieved as he that they’d taken this first step at last, a step that everyone had expected from them.
He gave the kiss a chance to do its work, letting it grow deeper, then deeper still as he tested himself and found his body rising to the occasion while his emotions dragged behind. He wanted to have feelings for Irene, wanted very badly to, and perhaps they'd put in an appearance in the course of his seduction. He ended the kiss with feigned reluctance, keeping his face just above hers, testing the moment and her willingness to go on.
“Irene?” he whispered, his arm clear around her head, his fingertips kneading her cheek and jaw.
She made a mewling sound in her throat, half elation, half anguish, and drew him to her once more to resume what they had begun.
He knew—how could he not know?—all those years she’d banked her attraction for him. He was male, and human, and the knowledge floated on his mind and drove his hands to explore her. She was alive and passionate, and kissing her reminded him of the great sexual void in which he’d been living these past three months. Touching again, fitting himself against a willing body again, running his hands over another’s flesh began to falsely fulfill him.
He twisted around with his neck to the moonlight and pressed her against the seat back at an angle to ease his access. He slid his hand inside her cloth coat and onto her abundant breast. So different from Krystyna’s, so much fuller. But it lifted against his palm, acquiescing, inviting him one step further, one step further. In time he opened the quarter-sized buttons down the front of her dress and unhooked her brassiere. When he lowered his head and kissed her naked breast, her head fell back and her breath rampaged. He reared up, covering her mouth with his again, and they began listing and let themselves go until he half-lay upon her in the cramped space, with one leg pressing her red skirt tight against her girdle. Then he ran his hand up her leg, rucking her skirt up to her hips, lifting himself to clear the way. He explored the top of her nylons, her rubber garters, and the tight elastic girdle that was warm and faintly moist from all the dancing she’d done that night. He freed her two front garters and found his way inside her underwear, waiting for some inundating feeling of love to overwhelm him and carry him the rest of the way into this carnal act.
None came.
Only lust and a sense of wrongdoing.
And the realization that Irene was pushing on his shoulders, telling him to stop.
He let his hand flag and drift away from her moist flesh.
They lay a while letting their breath steady, then he pushed himself up. Their limbs were still tangled and her skirt still bunched at her waist, one arm was out of her clothing.
“Eddie?” Irene whispered.
“I’m sorry, Irene.”
“You feel guilty? like you’re betraying her?”
“Something like that.”
“Me, too.”
She shifted her weight as if to free her leg, and he moved so she could do so. She covered her breast with her fallen coat. In the moonglow they pushed themselves upright and sat side by side, disheveled, feeling depleted and wrong.
He had tried her because it was expedient. She was the simplest answer to his loneliness, and his children’s motherlessness, and his womanless house. She was what everyone expected him to do, and it would have solved so many of his problems if it had worked. But it hadn’t taken him long to find out there had to be love in it first.
She had encouraged him because it was expedient. He was the simplest answer to her loneliness, and her childless life with her aging parents. Snagging him was what everyone expected her to do, and she maybe could have done it, even without getting pregnant, certainly by getting pregnant. But she was a good Catholic girl who had been taught the Seventh Commandment. Furthermore, she was Krystyna’s sister, but she could never be Krystyna for him.
He slumped, and groaned softly, let his head fall back against the seat with his eyes closed.
“Oh, hell, Irene, I don’t know...”
Disappointment settled between both of them, sitting there beside the ghost of Krystyna.
“I know,” Irene commiserated—a meaningless conversation to anyone but them. A long time slid by while they did battle with their guilt over what they had almost done.
“Can I ask you something, Eddie?”
“Hm.”
“You didn’t stop because... well, because you found me repulsive, did you?”
He lifted his head to find her staring at the blue white corn stubble and the starlit sky.
“No, Irene. I stopped because it’s wrong.”
She looked at him squarely. “You sure?”
“Yes.”
She sat in silence awhile, then said, “Could I tell you something, Eddie? Confidentially, I mean?”
“Sure, Irene.”
It took her a while to get started. He knew whatever she had to say was difficult for her.
“There was this man once a couple of years ago. Doesn’t matter who, just this man who said he’d drive me home from a dance at Bink’s. I went with him, and he parked and tried to force me to do what you and I just started to do, but I fought him and told him no. He got real mad and called me a stupid fat c-u-n-t”—she spelled it out—“and said that I should be grateful to him for even trying to lay me because nobody else ever would. Then he drove me home like a maniac, only he didn’t take me up to the door. He stopped clear at the end of our driveway and made me walk the rest of the way. He shoved the door open and said, ‘Get out, fatso. The walk will do you good.’ A girl doesn’t forget something like that, Eddie, getting humiliated that way. That’s why I’m... well, I’m grateful for how you treated me tonight, because all this time I thought that man was right.”
Eddie’s heart felt as if it would burst with pity. He put his hand on the back of her head, and her chin dropped. “Oh, Irene,” he said, and took her in his arms again. She hugged him hard and burst into tears.
“Oh, Eddie,” she said between sobs. “I’ve loved you for so long that I c... can’t even remember when it started.
I thought Krystyna was the luckiest w... woman on the face of the earth and you were the best husband and father.
I w... wanted your children to be mine, but I know they c... can’t be. I know you don’t l... love me, Eddie...
“That’s not true, Irene. I do love you.” He kept petting her head with his wide rough hand while she wept against his neck. “Not the way I loved Krystyna, but for your goodness, and your kindness, and the way you treat your parents, and how good you’ve been to me and the girls. You have so many wonderful qualities, Irene, any man would be proud to call you his wife. What that other man said—well, you just forget it, because it isn’t true. You just wait and see. One of these days one of these guys around here is going to open up his eyes and see what he’s been missing, and you'll be raising a batch of kids of your own and you’ll never pine for anyone else again.”
“You really think so, Eddie?”
“Why, shucks, yes.”
Her weeping subsided and she heaved a big broken sigh, still curled against him. He continued holding her, realizing everyone had their own private heartbreaks to go through; his wasn’t the only life with sadness in it.
Finally, when the worst was over, he teased, “Hey, Irene, you making a mess of my suit jacket?”
She managed a single choked laugh and pushed herself from him. Her clothing was still awry and he was sitting on enough of it to limit her movement. “Reach me my purse, Eddie. There’s a hanky in it.”
He put her purse half on her lap, half on his, and she snapped it open, blew her nose and mopped her eyes and put the hanky away again. She rubbed her entire face with the length of both palms and drew an immense, shaky sigh.
“Feel better now?” he asked.
“Not exactly.”
She looked up at him and they laughed at themselves, just once, quietly, the laugh of friends who’ve come through a bit of hell together and will have an even stronger friendship for it.
“Here, let’s get you decent,” he said, disengaging his legs from hers and making motions of helping her put herself back together.
“I can do it, Eddie,” she said.
But he pushed her hands aside and replied, “I know you can, but so can I. I’m the one who messed you up, I’ll put you back together again... that is, if you don’t mind.”
“You mean you really want to, Eddie?”
“Yes, I do. It’s something Krystyna let me do now and then, put her clothes back on. And I enjoyed it just about as much as taking them off. So... well, heck... as long as we both have to go to Confession anyway, might as well get as much out of this as we can, huh?”
He couldn’t get her garters snapped onto her nylons, but they enjoyed a chuckle over it while he tried and failed. She did it herself, and when her skirt was pushed back down he made her face away from him so he could hook her bra. Then he turned her around by the shoulders and buttoned her dress up the front and held her coat so she could slip her arm back into it, and buttoned it, too, all the time hoping she’d realize that a man who was repulsed by a woman’s body would never do such a thing.
When she was all in a piece, she squared herself on the seat and he sat with one wrist draped over the steering wheel, looking over at her. The earlier tension was gone, in its place a friendship cemented.
“Hey, Eddie, one more thing,” Irene said.
“What’s that?”
“Don’t get me wrong. Now that we know where we stand and there’s no obligations between us, just kiss me once more as if it were real, ’cause that was the sweetest thing I ever felt in my life.”
He took her in his arms, not too loverly but not exactly brotherly, and curved to her and kissed her as she’d asked, taking plenty of time and vowing he would never make jokes about fat girls again.
When the kiss ended and his hand remained on her shoulder, she said with a sad smile, “If you ever change your mind, Eddie, you just let me know.”
He, too, smiled and said sadly, “I will, Irene.”
Then he drove her all the way to her door.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The next day was the first Sunday of Advent when, by tradition, the Christmas crèche was put up in church, where it would remain until the Epiphany. After High Mass the trustees of the parish stayed behind to help Eddie carry up the statues, manger and canvas from the furnace room. At the left front of the church, they stood a backdrop of fresh green balsam pines. In front of the pines was erected a canvas cave that looked so much like real stone the children all believed it was, and wondered how it got there whenever it magically appeared, and where it went afterward, and who could carry stones that large and heavy. Inside the cave went electric lights and the manger scene itself—Mary and Joseph, the three kings, sheep and shepherds, and above the mouth of the cave a beautiful statue of an angel watching over the nativity scene, with a flowing ribbon in her hands and a beatific smile on her face.
Eddie had kept the girls with him while he worked with the men. There was a general rule: no talking in church, not even whispering. The girls were told to sit in the front pew and watch, and not get in the way. It wasn’t long before they grew impatient and came over to whisper, “How much longer, Daddy? We want to go home.”
“Not much longer. Now go back and sit down and don’t get in the way.”
They did as ordered, but soon Lucy returned, whispering, “Daddy, can Annie and me talk, too?”
“Not in church. In church you have to be quiet.”
“But you’re talking.”
“Because I have to tell the men what to do. Now go sit down and stay out of the way.”
She was back in a few minutes, saying, “Daddy, I’m hungry. When are we gonna go?”
“Not long, then we’ll go to the Quality Inn for dinner.” Then Anne, whispering, “Daddy, I have to go to the bathroom.” The church was old and had no public rest rooms. He pulled out a ring of keys and handed them to Anne. “Here. This is the key for the school. Go to the west door—you know, the one you go out of for recess, the one the sisters use—and use the girls’ bathroom. Come right straight back... and don’t lose the keys!”
“Okay. Come on, Lucy.”
As they headed down
the aisle, he said, “And button up your coats and put your mittens on.”
They looked incredibly small pushing through the tall swinging doors into the vestibule. Even though they walked to and from school together every day, watching them go away from him through the dim, vacant church filled him with protectiveness and love. He thought a quick prayer: Lord, don’t ever let anything happen to them. I don’t know what I’d do.
At the school building, Anne’s nine-year-old hands had trouble getting the key in the lock. Plus, she had to go—bad. She was dancing around with her legs half crossed, and Lucy at her side telling her to hurry up, when Sister Ignatius saw them from the convent kitchen and supposed they were up to mischief.
She opened the door and stuck her head out. “Girls, what are you doing there? School building’s locked up for the weekend!”
Anne and Lucy turned around. “I’ve got to go to the bathroom, and my daddy said I could go in the school. He gave me his keys to open it up, but I can’t get it in the lock.”
Sister Ignatius thought of her thick wool shawl hanging upstairs in her room, but she was in the middle of making gravy for Sunday dinner, and was disinclined to go out and help the children without her wrap, given her age and her rheumatism.
“Come on in here,” she called, “you can use the bathroom here.”
The children scampered along the sidewalk and up the stone steps into the warm, fragrant kitchen.
“Take your boots off and leave them on the rug,” the old nun said.
They pulled their boots off and one of Lucy’s shoes stayed inside. Anne helped her prize it out and put it back on. When it was rebuckled she turned to Sister, brushing a small side ponytail out of her eyes.