“What are you saying?” he asked, almost too quiet for Milly to hear. “Are you saying you want a divorce?”
She stared at him, not quite sure she’d heard the words right. Of course she didn’t want a divorce. She wanted their marriage to work; she wanted their family intact. Without him she’d be alone. She’d be shunned before she’d even had a chance to make any friends in this town. Her children would be ridiculed. They’d never become part of the community. They’d have people talking about them behind their backs everywhere they went. Neither one of them had expected it to go this far, and yet here they were, saying that terrible, terrible word. But the fact that he was speaking it meant that he’d been thinking about it. Maybe he’d even had this conversation rolling around in his head on the drive home and she’d just given him an easy way to enter into it.
“Doyouwant a divorce?” she whispered back, a single tear dropping onto her cheek.
Lloyd seemed lost for words. “I would never do that to you.”
She knew that another woman would beg him to come back to her, ignoring the fact that the D-word came too easily to him, as if he’d hoped she might want it too. Another woman would put past insecurities out of her head and move forward, not letting him out of her grip. But for Milly this felt somehow inevitable, as if she’d been avoiding it from the day they’d met. He’d always been somewhat elusive—charming andkind, but always a little out of reach. She’d been trying desperately to pull him away from whoever it was who lured him in—Beverly Douglas or some other beauty—but now it was clear he didn’t want to be pulled away, and she had a terrible feeling, deep down, that she couldn’t make him change his mind.
Terrified that if they spoke one more word they’d say or do something they couldn’t take back, she took a swig of the gin, feeling it burn as it went down almost undiluted. “Let’s talk about this tomorrow.”
But they didn’t speak of it the next day, and the weekend was insufferable, both of them pretending they hadn’t had that awful conversation, Lloyd busying himself with the children, touring the club just to keep up appearances.
On Monday morning, Milly was already stirring the cream and sugar into Lloyd’s coffee when she heard him walk into the kitchen and snap the paper open onto the breakfast table.
“Coffee?” she asked, as if the fresh new week were a clean slate, as if her world had not been cracked open and threatened to swallow her whole.
She glanced over Lloyd’s shoulder to the morning paper to see what he was reading:Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is welcomed with a kiss by his wife, Coretta, after leaving court in Montgomery, Ala.
“What a beautiful couple,” Milly said, attempting some semblance of normalcy between them. “They seem absolutely in love, don’t you think?”
“Sure, but I don’t think that’s the point of the article here,” Lloyd said, and Milly read the rest of the caption:King was found guilty of conspiracy to boycott city buses in a campaign to desegregate the bus system, but a judge suspended his $500 fine pending appeal.
“Maybe not, but nice to see he has her support. She looks so proud of him.”
“He almost got thrown in the slammer for 386 days; I doubt she’d love that,” Lloyd said.
“It’s ridiculous, really. Why shouldn’t a Black person be able to sit on the bus just like everyone else. Honestly, who cares?”
“People in the South care,” Lloyd said. “It’s different there.” He took a sip of his coffee, then set it back down. “Hot,” he said before slipping on his jacket and hat and picking up his briefcase.
“So, I’ll see you Friday,” he said, trying to make eye contact to confirm their new arrangement. But Milly looked away. She hadn’t agreed, and she wouldn’t give him her blessing to stay away. “And I was thinking,” Lloyd said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Maybe we should get the guest cottage cleared out.”
She looked up at him now. Just beyond their small backyard was a separate garage that the previous owners had converted into a small guest cottage. It was filled with unopened moving boxes that she’d need to unpack at some point. When they’d bought the place, she’d imagined converting it into a separate playroom for the children, or, in an even wilder fantasy, a reading room for her, a place where she could read her books and magazines in peace. Maybe he had a better plan, a joint effort, perhaps. But he seemed pained. “Given the new circumstances, I could sleep there. I know this is hard for you. I don’t want to make it…”
Milly couldn’t let him finish. She was already hurrying toward the sound of the kids racing down the stairs.
“Come along, you two; breakfast’s almost ready. Chop-chop.”
“What’s for breakfast?” Jack asked. “I don’t want eggy.”
“Chocolate chip pancakes,” Milly said as she took plates down from the cupboard, then helped Jack into his chair.
Lloyd walked over and kissed the kids on their heads, then hesitated at the door, but Milly kept on moving, pouring the pancake mixture onto the griddle, flipping them, and dousing them with more maple syrup than she would usually allow. She filled two mason jars with warmed chocolate milk and placed them on the table.
When Jack and Debbie dug into the first batch of pancakes, Milly finally allowed herself to look up. He was gone. She’d blocked his attempt, at least temporarily. If she let him move out of her bed and into the guest cottage, it would be final. There would be no bringing himback to her; he’d be cutting the ties and she’d be releasing him. She could not let that happen. She had to do something and fast, and she had an idea that might just turn things around.
She ripped a piece of paper out of one of Debbie’s notebooks and began to write:One-bedroom, one-bathroom cottage available for rent during Bal Week. May use kitchen in main house as needed. Short walk to shops on Marine Avenue and to ferry. Must be responsible and respectful. Please call for more information.She scribbled her phone exchange on the bottom right-hand corner.
Before she could change her mind, she walked into town and into Hershey’s Market with the listing in her hand.
“I’d like to post a rental opportunity,” she said to the gray-haired man she’d spoken to in the store earlier that week. “Are you the owner?”
“Yes, ma’am. Tony Hershey. How did your husband like the steak?”
“Excuse me?” Milly said, taken aback, as if he somehow knew what she was doing with this listing.
“You came in Friday, said you were making your husband his favorite steak. How did he like it?”
