Her shoulders froze. Then she looked back at me with a smile. ‘Ask me like you mean it and I might.’
I was there that evening, and I asked her with a diamond ring.
I didn’t have that kind of money on hand of course.
I had called Tubs that morning and told him I’d found the woman I wanted to marry. I hated doing it like that, especially telling him I needed the money by that afternoon, but it was the only way to show Molly I meant it. Tubs didn’t ask how long I’d known her. He didn’t even ask her name. He told me to have the jewellery store give him a call when I found what I wanted. I could pay him back come summer.
Molly wasn’t expecting a man on bended knee that evening, but she handled it well. She said she needed a couple of days to think about it, if I didn’t mind.
Nothing at all to think about, I told her. ‘Just say yes and the three of us will live happily-ever-after.’ That was the thing, she said. There were three of us. She wanted to talk to Lucy about it. A few days after that Molly said Lucy had told her it was all right. We set the wedding for early January in DeKalb. For various reasons we spent the rest of that fall, about six weeks in total, living separately. We would meet in the morning and usually late in the evening. On the rainy days, we would steal an afternoon in Molly’s bed while the neighbour kept Lucy.
I finished the semester pretty much as I had started it. I would work most of the day, then drift over for beer and talk in the late afternoon at my favourite bar. A lot of times a whole group of us showed up.
Sometimes only two or three of us were there. Beth Ruby was a regular and wouldn’t let up with the carpenter jokes once she found out I was engaged. I didn’t really care. My attraction to the woman had faded. Molly McBride was the centre of my life, and I was foolish enough to tell her that. That was when Beth started talking about ‘a life sentence of monogamy.’
I told her it sounded good, but even as I said it, I felt a little nervous, the way a man will when he puts a tie on for his first job and thinks that for the next forty-five years he’s going to be doing the same thing.
Never can sure seem like a long time when you’re young.
A couple of weeks before the end of the semester, about three or four weeks before the wedding, I was sitting across from Beth Ruby at the Pub, just the two of us. Monogamy was the topic of the afternoon again, and it was a long afternoon. After we had had enough, I said I was going, had to meet Molly later. Beth asked for a ride home. Beth usually walked because she only lived a few blocks away, but I had given her rides before. She made a show of her bare thighs inside the truck. They were very nice thighs, too. She laughed at me for looking. I wasn’t ready to get married! I’d cheat on Molly with the first woman who came along. I said I was impervious. She opened her legs slowly and said,
‘You would do me right here, right now if I let you.’
I was still looking at her thighs, and I guess I forgot to tell her that I wouldn’t. In fact, I didn’t have a whole lot to say until I was pulling my pants up afterwards.
When I got home, I took a shower. I felt better after that but still guilty. Molly showed up as I was getting dressed. She asked me how my day had been. I told her it had been okay, nothing special. She saw the light on my answering machine and punched the button.
Beth Ruby’s voice was distinctive even on a cheap answering machine. ‘Hey! I can’t believe we did it in your pickup! Thanks for the first, Davey, and by the way, I was right and you were wrong. You’re definitely not cut out for monogamy.’
Molly stood there for several seconds without speaking. Then she just turned and walked away.
I tried calling. I went by her house. For several days she wouldn’t talk to me, but I finally wore her down.
I said I could explain if she just gave me a chance.
Of course I couldn’t, and I think Molly agreed to see me just to hear what I would come up with. We went to the best restaurant in town. We had a couple of mixed drinks and talked about our lives as if we had not seen each other for several years. In fact, it had only been a couple of weeks, the longest and most miserable of my life.
There was no explanation for what I had done, so I settled with saying I was sorry. I didn’t think there was anything I could do to make up for it, but if Molly could forgive me I would do anything. It was stupid, irresponsible, the biggest mistake of my life.
Molly listened politely, but I wasn’t sure I was making progress, so I fell back on an old standby: ‘…it didn’t mean a thing.’
Very quietly but with a firmness I knew meant business, Molly answered me. Was she supposed to feel better because it didn’t mean anything? I tried to explain that. Beth had wanted to prove to herself she could have me if she wanted.
‘Well, she had you.’
What could I do to make things right? Molly looked at me for a long time without responding. Finally she said, ‘Nothing. That’s the thing. There’s nothing you can do to ever make up for it.’
She wondered if I could I forgive her if I had heard something like that on her answering machine right after she had told me she had a boring day. I said I could. I wouldn’t mind sounding like a joke between her and her lover? I tried to argue this, but Molly wouldn’t give it to me. Beth Ruby had turned her into a joke.
I agreed that I would hesitate. But that didn’t mean it would be over! If I thought it would never happen again, if I really believed it, nothing would keep us apart.
Molly considered this quietly. ‘Easy to say, David.’
‘I mean it!’
‘Listen to me,’ Molly said. ‘No matter what you say, I know you believe there’s a difference. Men are excused, women are stained.’
That wasn’t true, I said. There was no difference.
Things like that could happen to men or women!
‘Do you want to marry the town tramp, David?’
‘Of course not!’
‘Neither do I.’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘Be honest.’
‘It was exactly like that.’
‘And if I wanted one last fling, how would you handle that?’
‘Molly…’
‘It wouldn’t mean a thing.’
She was smiling, baiting me with my own words.
‘If that’s what you want,’ I said morosely.
‘It’s not what I want.’
I drew a deep, satisfied breath.
‘You see? It’s okay because you know it won’t happen!’
What did she want me to do? She thought for moment and shook her head. ‘Give me a couple of days to think about it.’
And that was it. Two, maybe three nights later I heard Molly’s key in my door and looked at the clock by my bed. It was after three. I sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Molly appeared at the door to my bedroom backlit by the light in the front room. I could not see her face, but I could tell by the way she moved and by the stink of cigarettes on her clothes she had been out. When I spoke, she came toward me and pulled up the hem of her dress. Touching her thighs I understood at once what had happened.
‘Who?’ I muttered.
‘I didn’t get their names.’
Molly called me the next morning, about two hours later, actually. ‘You still want to get married?’ she asked cheerfully.
‘More than anything,’ I told her.
According to our custom, we never spoke about that night – never again mentioned the name of Beth Ruby.
