Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction (29 page)

Was it pride or protectiveness? Did I assume he had the same devotion, but little emotion to show it? And here was a question I dared not bring to the forefront before: Was Christine his new love? If I were honest with myself, I had thought little about it. He had always been there, from high school on, in the same group of friends, sort of naturally matched up and comfortable with one another. He listened passively to my current raves on women’s subservient position in society and men’s abuse of women. I listened not at all or with accumulating anger to his long-winded stories of hunting, factory escapades, and talk of loose women. He grew up with seven brothers, I grew up with righteous women; he was a man’s man, I was a woman’s woman. I used him as an excuse to not love other men. Here was the thrust of it that stunned me: he was there in mind, but not in my heart. Why hadn’t I seen this before?

The letter blurred on my lap. Sniffling, I collected the pages of my once-precious small stack. Stiffly I walked toward the fireplace, my extended arm holding the papers as if they were already smoking. I threw them into the fire but somehow a few pages separated and his signature page landed on the fire screen.

It was just like Billy, to find himself on a fence.

W
ith these two men in my life, all of a sudden I have mixed emotions. I love ‘em, I hate ‘em. What’s with all this ego and proving themselves? Living at the Lighthouse with women gave me a simple steady feeling of just being. Here at Uncle Joe’s house, I’m more on guard, alert, like needing to keep one ante-up on him, and it’s not different with William Thomas Jackson the Third, aka TJ. Nothing’s easy and it’s a tug-o-war or I’m the ping-pong ball.

“Stop it, I’ve had enough!” I say to TJ as I’m buttoning my blouse. “I told Uncle Joe I didn’t want to go out with you again just for this very thing, and here I am again!”

“Ah, honey, don’t get mad at me,” TJ says, his voice muffled by my neck. I pull back. His lips look swollen and red from all our kissing, which I can handle with the best of ‘em, even enjoy it. And William is a great kisser, the best no doubt. Just ask him. But here’s the thing: he can’t keep it a simple steady feeling. He’s got to make it complicated and mix my emotions up by stirring around my chest and thighs. I’m just not ready for that increased emotion, passion, risk. I try to explain but it comes out sounding whiny and high-pitched and I hate that about us women.

“Can’t we just kiss?” I ask.

“For a while, honey, but we’ve been doing that for a month now, baby, and a man needs more.”

We’re sitting on pillows in front of the radio cabinet listening to Cajun and bebop music and I’m starting to like it, even though I’m surprised at the Negro sounds he prefers, like Dexter Gordon’s sax, because William talks so racist. Plus I’m tired of him making fun
of the Glenn Miller Orchestra and besides that, listening to orchestra just makes me homesick for the nights around Mama’s radio. But it’s hard to get romantic or even want to dance to Queen Ida’s accordion.

He lights two Lucky Strikes and hands me one. I’m beginning to get the hang of this, and I blow out a perfectly shaped o-ring. He does the same with his fine-looking kisser.

“You think you’re such a big cheese,” he says, flicking his ashes with his little finger. “Where’d you get that attitude, when you’re no more than a broad?” He’s looking at me sideways with a cocky grin and I know he’s goading me, so I stay cool.

“If you knew my mother you’d understand; as a matter of fact you wouldn’t dare ask that around her. She’s framed more than one beau with her questioning. They’d come in kind of pumped up about me, and they’d leave like a flat tire.”

“Is that why you’re not married?”

“No. I’ve just never saw the need to marry. I’ve still got time before I lose my teeth.” I give him my Cheshire cat grin to show them off. I’d heard about my beautiful smile all my life.
Your Papa’s smile
, Mama once said before turning her back on me and walking quickly away to avoid any further questions.

“You’ll marry someday.” This isn’t a question but a statement he makes so I study him closely. He’s not meeting my eyes but is examining his cigarette like it’s his invention. I think about flirting with him which I usually enjoy doing, like,
Why whatever do you mean – are you proposing to me, Teee-Jaaay?
But I just can’t bring myself to flatter him any more; he thinks he’s so hotsy-totsy when I can’t get him out of my mind as a drugstore cowboy. You know the type: hangs around on the streets, whistling and trying to pick up dames – sorry, “
broads
”. I haven’t actually seen him do that, though, and he’s harder to figure out than my beaus back in Annan, so I feel all mixed up inside again.

I turn away to the radio and turn knobs trying to get a better station. This FM is one of those big old-timey wooden boxes that sits on the floor like my mama’s. I’d seen newer, smaller ones that
you can carry in both hands, some in the Sears catalogue even have a phonograph player, but with the war on, it seems like no one is updating anything. Poor William came over with his stack of 78’s that I would give my eyeteeth to hear but no such luck at Uncle Joe’s where everything looks and smells old. I think again about what I’d do with such a place and where I’d get the money to modernize it. The telephone’s five-way party line would be the first to go. I could barely hear Mama, what with all the nosy breathing of party-line listeners, and to reach her I had to go through four operators. I might as well live in Timbuktu.

I find a station with less static and Bing Cosby is singing his
White Christmas
. William groans his “not that again!” and I immediately turn the knob back and forth until I hear Benny Goodman singing,
Take a chance on me
.

In one swell swoop, William’s got me down flat and he’s on top. “Kiss me again, honey, you know you like it.”

I give in to the song until it changes to
Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition
, when I have the audacity to giggle during his serious smooch. Nose to nose he murmurs, “Woman, you’re killing me.” He kisses harder, hurting my mouth.

I’m getting braver with all this testosterone in the house and decide to turn his motor off. I push him off me and roll over. I feel pretty smooth myself as I stand and turn on the other floor lamp.

“Why haven’t you enlisted?” I ask, straightening my blouse and skirt.

He’s red in the face now as he sits there on the floor with one arm over his bended knee, the other leg straight out, his hand making and unmaking a fist. “My daddy says I have flat feet,” he finally answers, staring down the long dark hall toward the bedrooms.

“And do you?”

“If my daddy says I do.” He lights another cigarette. “You didn’t have the privilege of meeting him when you met Mother. He’d put the fear of God in you to do what I want.” As an afterthought, he gives me a just-kidding wink.

“Are you saying he’s hard-boiled?”

“Let’s just say his group of buddies has their own Army.” He’s still clenching, unclenching his fist.

I open my mouth to ask more but he steers us away to his immediate needs.

“Stop playing games.”

“How am I playing games?” But I know what he means.

“You’re a tease.”

“I’m not. You’re a handsome guy and I like kissing you.”

“Then why did you let me touch your breasts?”

I finally meet his eyes. “I thought I’d like it but it just made me … all crazy inside.”

“You’re crazy cause you don’t know how to treat a man.”

For some reason this hurts and I want to prove him wrong. I kneel down in front of him. “That’s not true.”

He stands and stretches nonchalantly and looks down at me as if enjoying seeing me like that. My eyes are level with his crotch and he’s still aroused.

“Walk me out to the car. I’ll bring it back to you tomorrow,” he says with a yawn.

I want to please him, to no longer have him mad - he can be fun when things go his way - so I nod and follow.

Once outside, he opens the passenger door to the Duesy, moves the front seat forward and steps aside. I go to the back seat as if planned and then sit there wondering why. He stoops and lowers himself beside me. “Is it back here where you slept, you know, on your way here from New York?”

“Yes, I did, and you
were
listening,” I say with a laugh. It’s hard to tell because much of the time he has a distracted look on his face.

“Show me how you laid, and I’ll lay beside you.” He notices my raised eyebrows and raises his hands. “No hanky-panky.”

I lay down on my side, my arm curled under my head and he spoons behind me and remains still. It actually feels quite cozy and warm in this late-night air, and stupid me starts relaxing. It seems we doze for an hour or two before he starts heavy-breathing in my ear. I try to move away from his groping hands but there’s less room here
to move and his grip is harder around my waist at every attempt. He’s more aggressive than ever before, bruising, tugging, out of control, his pants down, my skirt up – he almost succeeds, except I squeal in frustration, kicking the interior car frame, and the hound dogs hear me and start barking.

William jerks his head up toward Joe’s bedroom window that faces the driveway and we both notice the bedroom light comes on. He gets himself back together in a hurry. His hands now fumbling with his pants gives me a chance to get out of there.

I don’t take any chances this time and I high-tail it directly to Uncle Joe’s room. I see the tail lights from there of my Duesy going down the long laneway. I’m not afraid but “mad as a wet hen”, as Uncle Joe describes my look when he sees me.

I imagine I’m quite a sight, with my mussed hair and wrinkled clothing. I don’t care. I point my finger at him. “Don’t ask me again to go out with that cad.”

Uncle Joe attempts to sit up a little further in bed and flattens down his few strands of white hair across his head. “What happened?” he asks hoarsely, but I can tell that he knows already by his averted eyes.

“What happened is that I tried to please you by giving William a chance, and then I try to please him by being nice to him, and then I find what happens is that neither one of you is trying to please me.”

He chews on this for a minute, moving his jaw back and forth. Finally nodding, he says, “Here’s what I’m going to do. I won’t ask you again to spend any time with TJ. You’re my kin and you come first. You just lay low and I’ll give him a good talking to. If I have to, I’ll talk to his daddy and TJ sure as hell doesn’t want that. Now you go on up to bed and we won’t talk about this again.”

I feel like there are things he’s not saying and I want to question him, but he waves me away and slides back down onto his pillow, turning off his light.

Because of Papa’s last journal entry, I can’t turn to him tonight or I’ll just get mad again. Men! Who said you can’t live without them?

I see even less need for a birth control clinic but with William’s attraction/distraction seemingly out of the way, I have nothing else to do, hence I call Ellen Whitman and actually drive into Savannah to meet with her. But you may have caught on to the fact that I can’t drive just yet because William has my car.

So here’s what happens: Two days after I send him home, I go down to the kitchen to have breakfast with Clary as usual. There sits William as pretty as you please. He grins when he sees me, in a kind of, can that be a shy way? It’s out of character but so cute I can feel myself soften already. But poor Clary is pecking around as nervous as a hen in a storm. I tease her that he won’t bite and he holds his hands up in surrender, yet I spot her look of, can that be loathing? I’ve never seen that look on her before, not even around Uncle Joe and he talks mean to her. “Just when you think you know someone,” I say to both of them and laugh.

A mixing bowl slips out of Clary’s hands and splinters across the floor, giving me a jolt stronger than her coffee. I grab William’s hand and pull him out of the kitchen, saying that men make Clary jumpy.

“I’ve been thinking,” William says as he sits on the living room sofa and lounges back like he lives there.

“That’s a switch,” I say, sitting on the edge of the sofa, a seat cushion away.