One day, after a particularly bitter bout with Charlie, I poured it all into a letter and before I stopped to think, I went downtown and dropped it in a mailbox by the drugstore. I immediately regretted it, but at the same time, a churning sense of hope fluttered in my chest.
I rationalized it by thinking,Well, if Charlie thinks I’m writing Joe anyway, I might as well be doing it.
We developed quite a torrid long-distance correspondence. This went on for a couple of months, letters flying back and forth across the country.
Until Charlie found the letters. One evening I went to a women’s auxiliary meeting at church—I was wearing that red shirtwaist, only without the belt, because of my pregnancy—and came home to find my hatboxes on the floor and Joe’s letters scattered on the bed.
“What’s all this?” Charlie demanded, wildly waving a page. Hisface was the color of a bruised plum, his scowl so terrifying I could barely breathe.
I was still holding my purse, squeezing the handle so tightly it left marks on my palm. “It’s—it’s nothing.” I set my purse on the dresser and pulled off my gloves, trying to act normal—not because I thought it would calm him, but because I didn’t know what else to do.
“‘I burn for you’? That’snothing? ‘I lie in bed at night and replay the way you felt in my arms.’” He flung the paper on the floor and took a step toward me. I backed up until the dresser bit into my back.
“Are you writing him back?”
“No... I...”
“Liar!”
I cringed at his bellow.
“He says so right here. ‘I was so glad to get your last letter.’” He jabbed a finger on the paper as he spoke, emphasizing each word, using an ugly falsetto as he read Joe’s sentence. “What the hell do you take me for?”
“You’re my husband, Charlie.”
“You damn sure don’t seem to remember that!”
“Quiet. You’re going to wake Becky.”
“You should be worried about more than waking her! You should be worried about losing her. And the new baby, too.”
To say my heart sank is like saying theTitanictook on a little water. “What?”
“If you think I’ll ever allow you to take my children, you don’t know me very well. Becky is legallymydaughter. My parents are her grandparents, and there is no way in hell we’re going to allow a floozy like you to change that. So if you have any ideas about leaving me, you need to know you’ll be leaving the children, too. And if you try to carry on behind my back...” His face twisted into someone I didn’t know—someone terrifying, someone capable of anything. His skin was red, blotched with purple, and I thought he might be having a stroke, right then and there. “I won’t stand for it. I’ll divorce you, and I’ll keep the children.”
He meant it, too. Worse, he had the means to do it. His parents had money—at least, more money than mine. They’d do whatever it took to keep their only grandchildren in town.
After that horrible night, Charlie started watching me like a hawk, and drinking more and more. He began coming home for lunch, early, before the mail was delivered. He went to the mailbox himself. He didn’t say why, but he didn’t need to. He started drinking at lunch.
Another letter arrived from Joe, and Charlie nigh near went berserk. Thank God he passed out from drinking too much too fast too early in the day, or else I don’t know what he would have done. I called his father and told him Charlie had a bug, and that he wouldn’t be in that afternoon.
“Write him back,” he demanded the next morning. He’d stayed home from work, nursing his hangover.
“No. I don’t want...”
His face took on that mottled purple-red color again. He grabbed a sheet of paper and plunked it on the kitchen table, along with a pen. “Sit down and write what I tell you.”
I slowly sank into a chair.
“Dear Joe,” he dictated.
My fingers shook so hard I could hardly hold the pen. It was almost as if my muscles rebelled. He stood over me and made me write that I didn’t want Joe to ever contact me again—that I was a married woman, that I loved my husband, that I wanted to keep my family intact, that I’d finally come to my senses, and that I didn’t know what had possessed me to ever take up with him in the first place. He forced me to write that I didn’t love him or want him in my life, that I wanted him to leave me alone. Charlie stood over my shoulder, breathing hard, telling me what to write and making sure I did it.
I cried. I cried secretly for weeks. But as Eddie’s due date drew near, I started focusing on that—and then, well, once I had him, caring for a baby and Becky and helping my mother care forGrandmother took everything I had. Charlie stopped drinking after Eddie was born. He was kind and thoughtful and tender. He promised me he’d turned over a new leaf, that he intended to be the best father and husband in the world, and it was touching, watching the way he worked at it. I loved little Eddie. I loved Becky. And I loved Charlie, too. He’d been my best friend for most of my life.
Things settled back down, and for most of a year, Charlie and I eased back into what most people would call a happy marriage.
It wasn’t the most physically fulfilling for me, but then, I suspect that was the case for most married women back then. I think that’s why virginity was so highly prized. Men didn’t want women to have anyone to compare them against.
