CHAPTER THIRTY
MILLY
Lloyd called early on Sunday and announced that he’d be returning home that afternoon. He insisted that Milly not go to any trouble making dinner, but she was immediately filled with panic. She busied herself by cleaning and tidying the house, bathing the children, and baking a cake, but it didn’t stop the constant loop of questions and confusion running through her head. How could they return to normal after he’d dropped this bomb on her? How could they ever live as husband and wife again?
When he’d confessed his affair, with a man, in Los Angeles, Milly had stood up and stormed out of his apartment, running down the stairs, catching her dress on the rough concrete step, and ripping it free until she got into the safety of her car.
A man, she’d screamed into her steering wheel. He’d been having an affair with a man? Handsome, charming Lloyd, who’d proposed to her, who’d asked for her father’s blessing, who’d impregnated her twice—he was having sexual relations with a man? She felt not only betrayed but utterly dejected and horrified. Had she driven him to this, or was this always his disposition? And if he was always this way, why had he taken a wife? Why had he wanted children? She pictured him kissing a suit-clad,blank-faced man and began to sob. In her mind the man looked in stature and style exactly like Lloyd, two Lloyds in love with each other, and she pounded her fists on the steering wheel.
After fifteen minutes, twenty, maybe even more, her breath had begun to slow and she was able to think again. She had wiped her eyes dry and put on her sunglasses. She couldn’t leave, not yet. She feared that if she did, she might never see her husband again.
She returned to Lloyd’s apartment, door still ajar as she’d left it, Lloyd still sitting on the chair. His eyes were red and puffy like hers.
“Tell me everything,” she said quietly as she sat back down on the couch. “I might not understand it, but I will try.”
And he did, to the best of his ability.
“He was an actor that we had on contract; you wouldn’t know him,” he said.
“Are you in love with him?”
“Does it matter?” he asked.
“To me it does,” Milly said.
“Yes, I think so, but I don’t know. It’s all so confusing. I love you, Milly, I do. You have to believe me.”
Milly shook her head and looked away.
“I do love you, Milly, but not in the way you hoped I would. I am horribly ashamed of what I’ve done and of how I feel, but the truth is, I’ve felt this way my whole life.”
“Then why did you marry me?” Milly said loudly now, standing.
Lloyd got up to close the apartment door.
“I thought I was doing the right thing. I didn’t know how else to survive. I’m so sorry.”
“The right thing? For who? You used me. You stole my youth. I didn’t finish college because of you. You used me up and spit me out.”
“You deserve better and I’m sorry. I will make it up to you, I promise.”
“How?” Milly asked, incredulous. How could he possibly make this up to her?
“I’ve got to get out of here. The studio, they found out and fired meinstantly. It’s a crime, Milly. They’re terrified of being put on a list, and so am I. McCarthy’s put the fear of God into all of them, the politicians too.”
“McCarthy’s over,” Milly argued. “He lost his influence two years ago with those army hearings. Him and his Red Scare—it’s finished; everyone knows that.”
“OK, the hunt for Communists may be over, yes. But the fear he put into the public about homosexuals—easy to blackmail into turning against their government—that’s stuck.”
“He’s just a drunk now, Lloyd, a laughing stock.”
“I’m telling you, Milly, it’s not about him anymore; it’s about what he sprinkled, convincingly, in the public consciousness. Men at work don’t go out for a drink in pairs anymore. They’ll be suspected. They only go out in groups. Haven’t you heard Dirksen calling homosexuals ‘lavender lads’? He and his pals want to purge politics, government, Hollywood.… They say the ‘lads’ have secrets and can’t be trusted. It’s real, Milly.”
Milly had heard about it, but she’d never paid it much attention. Now it was all she could think of. What would happen if Lloyd were reported? What if the studio had already turned him in? What would that mean for Milly and the children? She shuddered to think of how her children would be ostracized if the truth came out now.
As she relived the conversation, waiting for his return to their family home, she vacuumed faster, dusted more frantically. Every time he’d touched her must have been an act, a forced gesture. Everything inside her felt as if she were being squeezed, crushed, with the realization that anytime he’d held her hand, kissed her, or worse—when he’d made love to her—he was simply doing his duty. It was never what his heart had desired. She was never what his heart had desired.
At noon his car pulled up, and Milly was so anxious about seeing him she thought she might vomit.
