What Was I Thinking? (27 page)

“Bert, this ‘purity’ stuff is ridiculous and
you ought to know it. You lived in the real world for
three years
. How could you not know that sex was normal and a
normal woman like me would be experienced?”

“In the real world?
In the real
world?
This
is the real world,
you featherbrain! I thought you were pure because in the
real world
, purity is the only way to show you’ve reserved your
love for your husband alone.
The only way to ensure that your
children are born healthy, with a father.
The only way to protect
yourself from some disgusting disease! Are you mad? Are you wanton?”

“If it’s that important, why aren’t you
pure
?” I snarled back.

He looked quite affronted.
“Because
I’m a man.
Men have needs. That’s quite another thing.”

“It most certainly is not. Women have needs,
too.”

“Addie, I assure you…” he trailed off when he
saw my death look.

“Don’t try to assure me anything about female
sexuality, you Neanderthal. You made it quite clear last night that you are
completely ignorant on that topic!”

I stomped out, slammed the door, and went back
to my own room.

Chapter Thirteen

Reality

I didn’t know what to do with myself. I felt
caged in my room, but I couldn’t stand the thought of running into anyone in
the hall. I desperately wanted a shower, but that just wasn’t an option. The
thought of sitting down in the tub disgusted me. I wanted the water to rinse
the night away.

I wanted to cry, I wanted to yell at someone,
and I didn’t know what I wanted at all.

I stood by the window and looked out, wondering
why I was so confused. I had made more than a few choices in life that I had
later regretted, and Bert wasn’t the first man in that category, but I didn’t
know if I had ever been so confused about my choices. Last night I had been so
in love and had thought the sex was so…sexy.

This morning, I couldn’t bear Bert, and the sex
was so bad I had told him so. I had never, ever done that before.
Never imagined that I would ever be angry enough, selfish enough,
to destroy a man’s fragile ego like that.

But, honestly! I just barely stopped myself
from stamping my foot. How dared he try to assure me that women didn’t have
needs?

I sighed, and leaned my forehead against the
windowpane, which was still cool this early in the morning. The sex, or at
least my inconsistent view of it, was the easiest thing to explain. Last night,
I had been with a man for the first time in many, many months. It was a man I
thought I loved, who said he loved me. We had had weeks of foreplay. It was the
sheer reality of having sex again, of release that I had found so wonderful.
And the insatiability, I thought, smiling to myself. That was pretty nice, too.

As for Bert having no knowledge of female
sexuality, well, that wasn’t a very nice thing to say, but on reflection, I had
to stand by it. He was gentle, but he didn’t know the first thing about giving
a woman pleasure. In fact, he probably didn’t know that was possible. He had
looked kind of…gobsmacked…when I had the first orgasm of the night.

I started to sit down on the bed, and then
remembered I felt too gross to sit. I went back to the window and leaned some
more, watching Joshua working in the vegetable patch. Probably digging up the
last root vegetables of the fall, I thought idly.

So what was I going to do about Bert? I wasn’t
positive I actually regretted last night, but I was fairly sure I didn’t want
to repeat it. Teaching a man how to be a good lover didn’t seem like much fun,
even assuming I could get said man to agree to be taught. I didn’t want to be
in a serious relationship without sex, and I sure as
hell
wasn’t going to marry him knowing the sex would be both lousy
and rare. I thought briefly of an old Woody Allen joke and almost smiled.
But not really.
I never liked Woody anyway, and I wasn’t in
a smiling mood.

Putting aside sex for the moment—only a moment,
mind—I wasn’t sure Bert and I could manage to like each other with such
differing views on sexuality and appropriate behavior. I knew some couples
could have love without liking, and plenty of people had marriages without
either love or liking, but neither was acceptable to me.

Why had I loved Bert? Not so hard to answer,
really. In my own world he had stood out as being unusually courteous,
romantic, and considerate. He alone had helped me when my life was falling out
of control. He was also indisputably intelligent, educated, creative, and
cultured. So in the modern world, he had seemed perfect.
Except
that I had ignored the red flags about his attitudes to sex and had never even
seen the side of him that didn’t understand why I might need to work.

In fairness, as far as he knew until last week,
I didn’t want to work. I met him when I hated my job passionately and he had no
reason to think that was just circumstantial. And he was a very nice man, a
good man, within the limits of his own time and culture. But probably not the
man for me, and he probably realized that now, too.

I hated being fair. I wanted to be angry,
resentful, insulted, and superior. But the fairness was built in and I’d
already thought it through. I was going to have to settle for being cranky for
a few hours and then figure out what to do.

I shook myself, and opened the door to see if
the bathroom were available. Yes, the door was standing open. I gathered all of
my toiletries and my only pair of modern panties, glad they were dry from the
last hand-washing, and went to do my best with the tub.

I sort of improvised a shower, letting the
water run out as I soaped up under the tap, until at last I felt that the last
stickiness of the night before had gone down the drain. I dried, put on my
wonderful cotton undies, wrapped back up in the damned robe, gathered my stuff,
and scuttled back to my room.

I never wanted to see that robe again, and—oh,
no. I had forgotten my nightgown and slippers in Bert’s apartment. One of the
maids had probably already—I caught my breath and remembered. Bert had a strict
rule that no servants
ever
came into
his apartment, at least not without his direct supervision. He would be the one
to find my things and he would give them back to me privately, I was sure.

I was dressed at last and sitting in front of
the mirror trying to detangle my hair, missing conditioner, air conditioning,
and Diet Coke desperately, when I abruptly remembered what Bert had actually
said
in his recriminations. Right before
he had called me a wanton, he had said, “Protect
yourself
from disgusting diseases.”

Oh, no. I hadn’t given a thought to protection
from disease last night. When I was making my plan, I had thought about my
cycle, and had been sure that the risk of pregnancy was very low, but
disease…in my own time, I would never have considered unprotected sex. It just
wouldn’t have been an option. But here, long before AIDS, I hadn’t given it a
thought at all.

What I had forgotten, though, was that it was
also before penicillin and there were plenty of nasty diseases going around.
Diseases a man might catch by taking his
needs
to wanton women and prostitutes.

I looked at my own white face in the mirror and
shuddered. I had absolutely no idea what to do. Bert seemed healthy, but I
dimly remembered that some STDs had no symptoms, or could go dormant but still
be contagious. The truth was
,
I had no idea what the
symptoms might look like, or what I could do about any of this. I certainly
couldn’t ask Augusta.

I could ask Bert, I supposed. It would offend
the snot out of him, but I could ask. Of course, if he knew he had something,
he probably wouldn’t have asked me to marry him, much less let me pull him into
bed. But he could be contagious without knowing it. That could even happen in
my world.

Oh, if only I could click my ruby slippers
three times and go home to Kansas. Home, where I understood the world, where
penicillin existed, and where I could look up symptoms on WebMD. But I
couldn’t. I didn’t have any ruby shoes at all.

I gave up on my hairstyle. A Gibson Girl updo
was hard enough any time, but with trembling hands and eyes that kept filling
with tears, it was just out of the question. I made a thick French braid and
tied the end with a dark green grosgrain ribbon, to match that green and white
shirtwaist I liked so much. Sarah had altered it to fit me better, since I
liked it so much, and Augusta said it suited me better than it had her.

I ignored the shoes I had pulled out and put on
my tennis shoes instead. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I did know I
needed to be completely alone. I was going for a very long walk and I was going
to think.

I could hear Augusta in the dining room when I
got downstairs. I couldn’t just leave without telling her, but I couldn’t face
anyone yet. I slipped into her morning room and wrote her a brief note, saying
I had gone out for the day and I would be home by supper, but probably not
earlier.

I went to the fair. I hadn’t planned to, but I
started walking toward Skinker, deep in thought, and when I looked up, I was at
the entrance. I paid my fee and went in, thinking that at least I could get
something to eat here.

My spirits lifted as soon as I entered. I
couldn’t stay morose with so much noise, color, and excitement. The smell of
fair food was everywhere and I became even more aware that I’d missed
breakfast. I wandered until I found a waffle vendor and ordered one with
confectioner’s sugar and butter. It was wonderful.
So much
for my new, healthy lifestyle.

Well, this was just like dieting in my old
life. Within a week, I had always found a good reason to break my own rules.
Coffee was served with the waffle and I sipped at it, thinking
bleah
, and reminiscing about Diet Coke
as my morning caffeine. This switch was actually an improvement in my
nutritional habits, but I still didn’t like it.

When I had finished, I set off in search of
that clandestine Coca Cola vendor. It might not be my favorite, but even
sugared Coke would be a treat, and I needed a treat. I walked randomly for
hours, going into exhibits that appealed to me, following the crowd, watching
little children in adorable little outfits run around.

Eventually, I got curious about the food
vendors, both official and unofficial. This fair was rumored to have introduced
all kinds of new foods to the American diet, including peanut butter, ice cream
cones, and hamburgers. If I remembered right, every rumor had a rebuttal and
there was no consensus at all about what had been invented here and what just
made memorable impressions at the fair.

Still, it was interesting. I began walking
along the smaller lanes, looking at all the minor booths, trying to count the
types of foods I saw. I made special mental notes of the big surprises, like
the vending machine for bottled water. I marveled at that. Had I been asked, I
would have guessed that bottled water was invented in the eighties, at the very
earliest. And vending machines? I would have guessed the fifties, or maybe the
forties at the earliest.
Amazing.

I walked on, noticing the pinch in my toes, the
bounce in my tired breasts, and the stinging on my nose that meant I was
getting
a sunburn
. It was October, so I hadn’t thought
about the sun and I had rushed out of the house without a hat. Sunscreen didn’t
exist, of course.

Sunscreen.
I stopped dead. Now,
there
was a business. I was a chemist
who had worked for a cosmetics company, so I knew what ingredients were
involved. It hadn’t been invented before, but it was the sort of thing that was
probably invented and forgotten many times and places before it really caught
on. And the fair was filled with new inventions and wild ideas. This wouldn’t
draw undue attention. Not compared to a vending machine or the giant Ferris
wheel.

I turned around and sought out the Coca Cola
vendor again to ask him about opening a booth without official permission. He
wouldn’t talk to me. I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised.

I walked on, and kept thinking. A lot of the
smaller vendors seemed very unofficial. Many were just individuals pushing
carts or carrying baskets with their wares. I could do that.

I wondered briefly if I should start a bra
company instead. I sure needed more than the one I’d been washing out in my
bath and hanging to dry in my wardrobe, with a spare towel carefully folded and
positioned below to catch the drips. It was wearing out from all the use and I
could only wear it a couple days a week anyway because the humid St. Louis
climate meant it took days to dry.

Thanks to my mornings with Augusta, I could
hand-sew quite capably these days. And a bra would not be a shocking
anachronism. I knew from my arguments with the TAPI costumer that someone had
actually patented a bra in 1905. She had said that was the reason I couldn’t
have one as part of my costume, but I figured that meant at least a few women
were already experimenting with the idea by late 1904, and I wouldn’t upset the
natural flow of history by selling a few.