others. Than the other wives. Ain't she?"
I smile faintly, and Bill tilts his head, unsure how to respond.
I know this isn't the first time he's heard these comments. I've seen the way they look at her. They watch her when she comes to City Hall, they watch her at the social events, they watch the way she walks, hips rolling with no suggestion of provocation but with every sense that she knows more than any of the rest. A woman like that, they seem to be thinking, a woman like that has lived.
Their wives come from Orange County, they come from Minnesota or Dallas or St. Louis. They come from places with families, with sagging mothers and fathers with dead eyes and heavy-hanging brows. They carry their own promise of future slackness and clipped lips and demands. They have sisters, sisters with more babies, babies with sweet saliva hanging and more appliances and with husbands with better salaries and two cars and club membership. They iron in housedresses in front of the television set or by the radio, steam rising, matting their faces, as the children with the damp necks cling to them, sticky-handed. They are this. And Alice ... and Alice ...
Charlie Beauvais, he once said it. Said it to Bill in my earshot. He said, Don't worry, pal, don't worry. It's not that they want her. It's just they have this feeling--and they're off, Billy, they're way off--but they have this sense that, somehow behind that knockout face of hers, she's more like the women they see on the job, on patrol, on a case, in the precinct house. Women with stories as long as their rap sheets, as their dangling legs...
Die a Little -- 41 --
[?]*[?]
Struggling to sleep in the guest bedroom after helping clean up the damage from a late party, I can hear Bill and Alice talking on the back porch, talking soft and close.
"How is it that Lora hasn't been snatched up, anyhow?"
"What?"
"You know. I'm just surprised she isn't married. I mean, you could say the same about me, until I met you. It's just that she seems the type to be married."
"She is the type to be married. She'll get married."
"I'm sure. I just wondered why she hasn't yet, darling. Just curious.
She's so sweet and such a warm girl, and--"
"She was almost married once. About three years ago." I am listening as if it isn't me somehow they are speaking about, as if it were someone else entirely. I hold my breath and pretend to sink into the very walls.
"Oh? Did you scare him off, big brother?"
"It wasn't like that. He was a good friend of mine. A guy who used to be on the force when I first started."
"Did you play matchmaker?"
'Sort of. It just kind of happened naturally. We'd all spend time together, go to movies. He was a good guy, and it made sense."
His tone is shifting, from cautious to grave, and she begins to respond accordingly.
"So what happened?"
"They began getting serious just as he had to leave the force. TB. It was rough, but she stood by him. You know, that's how she is."
"Oh, dear. Did he--"
"No, no. He eventually had to go to a sanatorium, way up by Sacramento or something. He didn't want her to wait for him. He was a shell of the guy he'd once been. Down to a hundred and twenty pounds. He couldn't bring himself to continue with her. He did the right thing. He said, 'Bill, I can't let her tie herself to me like a sash weight,' he said. So he broke it off."
"He isn't still up there--"
"No. They wrote to each other for a while, but it wasn't the same.
Last I heard, he married one of the nurses there and they settled. He works for an insurance company or something."
It really wasn't like this, was it? Was that how simple it was, so explicable in a few sentences, a few turns of phrase? Wasn't it Die a Little -- 42 --
months of high drama, so wrenching, so unbearably romantic that I'd conveniently forgotten that I never really cared that deeply for the amiable, square-jawed Hugh Fowler to begin with?
It had absorbed all the emotional energies of Bill and myself for a
I smile faintly, and Bill tilts his head, unsure how to respond.
I know this isn't the first time he's heard these comments. I've seen the way they look at her. They watch her when she comes to City Hall, they watch her at the social events, they watch the way she walks, hips rolling with no suggestion of provocation but with every sense that she knows more than any of the rest. A woman like that, they seem to be thinking, a woman like that has lived.
Their wives come from Orange County, they come from Minnesota or Dallas or St. Louis. They come from places with families, with sagging mothers and fathers with dead eyes and heavy-hanging brows. They carry their own promise of future slackness and clipped lips and demands. They have sisters, sisters with more babies, babies with sweet saliva hanging and more appliances and with husbands with better salaries and two cars and club membership. They iron in housedresses in front of the television set or by the radio, steam rising, matting their faces, as the children with the damp necks cling to them, sticky-handed. They are this. And Alice ... and Alice ...
Charlie Beauvais, he once said it. Said it to Bill in my earshot. He said, Don't worry, pal, don't worry. It's not that they want her. It's just they have this feeling--and they're off, Billy, they're way off--but they have this sense that, somehow behind that knockout face of hers, she's more like the women they see on the job, on patrol, on a case, in the precinct house. Women with stories as long as their rap sheets, as their dangling legs...
Die a Little -- 41 --
[?]*[?]
Struggling to sleep in the guest bedroom after helping clean up the damage from a late party, I can hear Bill and Alice talking on the back porch, talking soft and close.
"How is it that Lora hasn't been snatched up, anyhow?"
"What?"
"You know. I'm just surprised she isn't married. I mean, you could say the same about me, until I met you. It's just that she seems the type to be married."
"She is the type to be married. She'll get married."
"I'm sure. I just wondered why she hasn't yet, darling. Just curious.
She's so sweet and such a warm girl, and--"
"She was almost married once. About three years ago." I am listening as if it isn't me somehow they are speaking about, as if it were someone else entirely. I hold my breath and pretend to sink into the very walls.
"Oh? Did you scare him off, big brother?"
"It wasn't like that. He was a good friend of mine. A guy who used to be on the force when I first started."
"Did you play matchmaker?"
'Sort of. It just kind of happened naturally. We'd all spend time together, go to movies. He was a good guy, and it made sense."
His tone is shifting, from cautious to grave, and she begins to respond accordingly.
"So what happened?"
"They began getting serious just as he had to leave the force. TB. It was rough, but she stood by him. You know, that's how she is."
"Oh, dear. Did he--"
"No, no. He eventually had to go to a sanatorium, way up by Sacramento or something. He didn't want her to wait for him. He was a shell of the guy he'd once been. Down to a hundred and twenty pounds. He couldn't bring himself to continue with her. He did the right thing. He said, 'Bill, I can't let her tie herself to me like a sash weight,' he said. So he broke it off."
"He isn't still up there--"
"No. They wrote to each other for a while, but it wasn't the same.
Last I heard, he married one of the nurses there and they settled. He works for an insurance company or something."
It really wasn't like this, was it? Was that how simple it was, so explicable in a few sentences, a few turns of phrase? Wasn't it Die a Little -- 42 --
months of high drama, so wrenching, so unbearably romantic that I'd conveniently forgotten that I never really cared that deeply for the amiable, square-jawed Hugh Fowler to begin with?
It had absorbed all the emotional energies of Bill and myself for a
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