in himself, and started.
“Is it true,” Tom whispered to me as the road unfurled outside the tinted window, “what Liz told me one night, down there in the Garden, that you never …”
“That I never what?”
“Never consummated, with this husband of yours that you’re burying.”
“That’s none of your goddam business,” I told him, “what I did with my husband. Is that clear?”
He didn’t answer. “Is it or isn’t it?”
“… O.K.”
Perhaps a hundred people were there in the chapel, and Dr. Fisher read the service. He gave a brief sermon, of no more than five minutes, about Earl’s “exemplary, Christian character.” Then once more I was at a graveside, listening to another service, seeing another man throw earth on a coffin. And once more I was thanking the minister, this time telling him myself, not waiting for Ethel to do it, that he would be getting his donation in the mail. Then I was back in the car with Tom. When we got to the house the servants were already there and opened for me to come in. I turned to Tom, held out my hand and said, “Thanks for coming, Tom.”
“I thought you might want to be with me, Joan.”
“I do-but I’m not asking you in. It wouldn’t … it wouldn’t be right. Or at least it wouldn’t feel right to me, which amounts to the same thing.” I was thinking, also, of how it would look to the staff-and to the police, if word got back.
“Then O.K.,” he said. “I’m off.”
Suddenly I felt weak, like I had after the incident with Lacey at the airport, and like I had then, I wanted him with me desperately. I said, “Tom, wait a minute. I
I went in and called to Myra that I was “going out for a little while.” I hastily threw together a bag, then stepped out the front door again, told Tom to let the car go, and led around to the garage. I got my car out, moved over to the passenger seat so he could get in behind the wheel, and told him to drive.
“And where am I driving?”
I closed my eyes and put my head back against the cushion. “Anywhere you choose, Tom. Even take me to the Wigwam again, I won’t mind. Just you decide.”
The car pulled off onto the highway and we rode along in silence, I with no more sense of where we were than a child being driven by her parents. Once, Tom put his hand on my leg and I shivered beneath it, not from excitement but from relief. It was like a cool cloth on a burn.
He pulled to a stop and bade me open my eyes. We were outside a small house with shingled roof and a little patch of lawn-nothing lavish or breathtaking, but wholly respectable, and I followed him inside gratefully. He shut the door, and I turned to him. Closing my eyes again, I inhaled. He asked: “Joan? Are you all right?”
“… Tom, this smell.”
“I’ll open some windows-”
“No. I want to smell it. It’s you.”
Then I was in his arms, and then he was carrying me back, back to his bedroom, sliding my zippers, kissing my neck. And so, the day of my husband’s funeral, I consummated with my lover for the second time.
32
Once again it went on until well into the evening, what with “retakes” and a brief break for food, eaten standing in Tom’s kitchen without a stitch on, spooning scrambled eggs straight out of the pan. When we finally sank into sleep, it was not even in each other’s arms, just lying any which way across the mattress.
I woke, hours later, to the ticking of his clock by my ear. I felt neither happy nor sad, not pleasant or troubled or anything, just empty, like I’d been drained of all the bad things that had been filling me up, but also all the good things; I felt like I could start over, and like I had to.
I got up quietly and crept out to the front room, where I slipped my dress over my head and my shoes onto my feet. I was afraid the sound of the door opening would wake him, but it didn’t. I stepped outside as briefly as I could, the early morning air raising gooseflesh all over my arms as I retrieved my bag from the back seat of my car. I’d grabbed a change of clothes, a fistful of makeup, a comb and brush, a few other things, and I tucked myself in the half-bath in his front hall to put myself together. The space was cramped and I didn’t dare turn on the light, but with the door half open I could see well enough in the mirror to get myself decent.
He still hadn’t woken when I was finished, and I stood in the bedroom doorway watching him sleep. The faint light coming through his curtains fell glancingly across his naked torso, and I felt something for him that was a mixture of desire and gratitude. But I knew, too, that I wouldn’t wake in this room with him again. I craved him still-I always would, and some night it might be with the same intensity, like life itself was nothing compared to the touch of his hands on my body and of his body in my hands. Perhaps tonight. Perhaps every night. But he was part of the life I was leaving behind, not the one I was beginning, and a girl has to grow up sometime. You learn, often the hard way, that satisfying a craving is no guarantee you end up satisfied in the long run.
I didn’t leave a note this time. I just left.
I put my car away in the garage and came inside in my stocking feet, one shoe in each hand, and found my way upstairs without encountering any of the servants. In my bedroom I undressed and drew myself another bath, and once I’d washed and dried and put on a clean nightgown I lay down and didn’t wake until noon, when Myra came knocking at the door to say I had visitors downstairs.
I saw them waiting by the couch with their backs to me, examining the bookshelves, and I almost walked the other way, toward the front door. But some sound from me must have alerted them, because they turned, and then I had no choice any longer. I walked into the drawing room to meet them.
Sergeant Young was in uniform again and wore an unhappy expression, while beside him Private Church looked neutral as ever. Church was the one who spoke: “Joan White … formerly Joan Medford … formerly Joan Woods … you are under arrest, for the crime of murder…”
After that I heard no more. His voice was just sound, wind howling, as I watched him walk toward me with both hands outstretched, and between them, linked by a short chain, a pair of gleaming metal cuffs.
33
Of the drive to the station in their squad car I remember nothing at all, except for the heavy metal grill that separated the front seat, where they were, from the rear, where they’d put me. Sergeant Young helped me out of the car when we arrived, assistance I needed because I couldn’t use my hands, and then kindly stood between me and the flashbulbs exploding as we made our way into the building. Once inside, I was booked and stripped bare and issued a prison outfit of some heavy, uncomfortable fabric softened only slightly, and scented harshly, by a thousand rugged launderings. They didn’t have a brassiere in my size, so I did without, a decision I swiftly regretted as my nipples were soon rubbed raw against the inside of the shirt.
They stuck me in a cell, and there I waited, alone, with nothing to see or to do, except for taking trips from the bunk that was attached to one wall to the sink that was attached to another. It wasn’t cold, but I was shivering. I wrapped the thin blanket with which the bunk came supplied around my shoulders, and I sat, and I thought about what was in store for me.
I’d known Private Church was out for blood-he’d made that plain. But what he could possibly have found from Sunday to Tuesday that would have justified arresting me in connection with Earl’s death, I couldn’t imagine. I wished now that I’d used the car ride to ask them. Though probably they wouldn’t have said, they might, and at least then I’d have been less completely in the dark.
But I hadn’t. I’d been too shocked, too dumbfounded, even to speak in my own defense. I’d sat then as I sat now, staring straight ahead and wondering what my life would be from this point forward. I heard Ethel’s cruel words echo in my head
