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PART II
ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS

57B

… wherein the besties are at Kresge’s discussing Trey’s extracurricular activities and Dot’s nascent scheme …

“What about it? Go to the speak with me?”

“No! Trey is nice to me and gives me everything I want and has asked me to respect two wishes. One of them is to not go to the speak. Oh, you know what he did this morning?” Marina told her about the tutor.

“What?! But that would mean I would never get to see you!”

“You could come over and be tutored too. You’d be so far ahead of your classes you could maybe test out and get a jump on college!” Now Marina was getting excited. If both of them were—

“I don’t want to go to school in the summertime! I want to run around with you when I’m not helping Daddy. After all, you don’t even get out of bed until after noon.”

“It’s just six hours a week!” Marina protested. “Two hours on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, maybe dinner—”

“Hold your horses, sister! You’re going to be alone with a man younger than Trey over six hours a week in your house? Having dinner with him?”

Marina blinked. “Well, yes. I’m married now. I’m a Missus.”

“That’s not the point and there are people who don’t pay attention to Missuses. Look at your father—grandfather. What if he’s the type of man to force himself on you? What if he gets a crush on you? What if—”

“Augh! Nobody is going to get a crush on me.”

“Trey has one.”

“Oh, he does not.” But the fact that Dot thought he did was a strange sort of thrill. “How can you have a crush on somebody you’re married to?”

“So his is more than a crush, but you can have a crush on a married woman and a married woman can have a crush on a man she’s not married to. Marina! That’s playing with fire.”

Marina gaped at Dot. “Do you really think that little of me?” she whispered, hurt to her core.

“No!” Dot said desperately. “I think that little of strange men and before you think I’m cuckoo, remember I thought Trey was up to no good.”

That was true.

“It’s just not seemly.”

“If Trey doesn’t care, why should you?” she asked defensively. “If he thought it would happen, do you think he would’ve arranged for it?”

Dot was getting ready to protest, but stopped and thought about that for a second. She snapped her mouth shut. “No. That’s not like him. But it would still make me uncomfortable. There’s temptation.”

“I’m not tempted,” Marina said flatly. Then something occurred to Marina. “Did you … were you tempted to be indecent with Gene?”

“Yes!” she snapped, then clapped her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide. “Um,” she squeaked through her fingers. “I just … I wish he’d kissed me,” she admitted weakly.

Marina’s eyes were as wide as Dot’s. “Oh. What— What does it feel like to want to?”

Dot, taken by surprise at Marina’s question, propped her chin in her hand and looked out the window. “Well, I don’t know exactly,” she mused after a while. “It’s like a tingle in my belly.”

“Oh, I get that on the Wildcat,” Marina said, waving that off.

Dot scowled. “Doesn’t Trey even kiss you like, you know, that?”

“Um … well … yes. Sometimes.”

“And you don’t get that tingly feeling?”

Yes, but she wasn’t going to say it because it wasn’t in her belly. It was lower, in her between. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” she grumbled. “What we do and what everybody else does aren’t the same, I guess.”

Dot heaved a put-upon sigh.

“Do you want to come over and be tutored with me or not?”

“Mama wouldn’t allow me to be alone in the house with an unmarried man even if you were there to chaperone and besides, no. I told you. I don’t want to go to school in the summertime.”

“It’s not really that improper, is it?”

“What would your mother—er, grandmother—say?”

Marina’s heart hardened a little. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t trust anything they ever taught me now. It’s like I’m learning things all over again. Trey is the only person I’m accountable to and he thinks this is a good idea and this is the only way I’m going to be able to do what he wants me to do.”

Dot looked confused. “What he wants you to do?”

Suddenly, Marina was embarrassed and she looked down at the table. She picked up her napkin and started fiddling with it.

“Marina,” she drawled threateningly. “Don’t make me tickle it out of you.”

“I … I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to laugh at me—”

Dot gasped. “I would never laugh at you!”

“Oh, well, I mean, give me your bless-your-heart look. But Trey thinks I can go to college and—” Marina gasped at Dot’s look of skepticism. “See? See? I knew you’d give me that look!” Angry again, hurt, she started to slide out of the booth and leave Dot to catch the bus. She didn’t care how mean it was.

“No!” Dot cried. “I’m sorry! Marina, listen! Married women don’t get to go to college!”

Marina stilled.

“That was what that look was. They have a baby and then, boom, they’re stuck at home. I know you can do it. Now I know, I mean, and I am sorry I didn’t see how really smart you are before and I’m really glad you have Trey for that. But you’re going to have a baby and then what? I help take care of my siblings. I see what Mama has time and energy for and college isn’t it! It’s why I don’t want to have children, or at least not till I graduate from college. Marina, listen to me!”

“It can work,” she muttered resentfully. “Your mother has you. Trey can hire a girl. He already said he would.”

Dot’s mouth opened a little. “Uh, that’s true. I never thought of that. But Marina, I don’t doubt you can—”

“And then he wants me to go to law school,” she blurted.

Silence.

“That’s … queer,” Dot said in a daze. “Women don’t … ”

“They do too! There’s a woman municipal judge, just up the street there!”

Dot gaped at her. “A judge?!”

“Trey told me that. He says some of the smartest people he knows are women and it doesn’t matter anyway. He said Carrie Nation almost single-handedly got Congress to pass an amendment to the Constitution. He says Mother is very smart, even though he hates her. He studies smart people, even women, and Marie Curie is one of his favorite people to study. He likes smart women, don’t you see? That’s why he hates girls like Ruthie so much. It’s always over small things, small bits of power. It’s not smart. It’s not important.” Marina had no idea where those words were coming from, but Trey had told her that when she was passionate about something, the words just flowed. “And since he has female employees, it hurts the business if they get like that.”

“But law school?”

“He says that’s just how my mind works. If you came over for tutoring, it’d be like it was before we met Trey and Gene. Please?”

“Hrmph. I’ll ask, but I don’t think Mama will let me. I just— Marina, it’s really not a good idea. How about a lady tutor? If he likes smart women so much, he can hire a lady, can’t he?”

“He said he interviewed a bunch, but the one he hired could teach me the way I learn best.”

“Maybe I should come just to chaperone him.”

“Maybe you’re afraid you’d get a crush on him,” Marina teased.

Dot rolled her eyes. “Well, I guess, if Trey can be around a hundred loose women every night and not be tempted— Or else he is and he’s doing it or controlling it or … something. Mmm. I’ll ask. That’s the best I can do.”

Dot was at Marina’s house promptly at three-thirty Wednesday to chat before Mr. Carville arrived at four. He looked a lot younger than twenty-one. He was bashful with her and Dot, intimidated by Trey, and the perfect teacher for how Marina learned. They would start at the beginning of algebra and just work their way through the book, stopping for as long as it took for Marina to grasp a concept.

Dot wanted absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Carville after he shyly greeted her with the same smile other boys gave her.

“Dot, he looked at me the same way,” Marina said impatiently the next day. “He’s just shy and we aren’t in a regular classroom where he can stand up at the board and be cool toward his students. He would have too many at once and he’d be the authority figure. That’s what Trey said.”

“Marina, he’s handsome.”

“I noticed. What does that have to do with anything?”

“It’s easier to be tempted with someone who’s handsome.”

Marina blinked. “Are you?”

“No! I’m still— I mean— Um.”

“You’re still heartbroken over Gene.”

“Doanwannatalkaboutit!” she snapped, then whined, “Marina, can’t you ask him to change his schedule so we can go to Kresge’s more than twice a week? Please?”

“No! We are going to be having dinner and then he’s got barbershop quartet after.”

“Don’t give him dinner!”

“Dinner is part of his pay. He doesn’t know how to cook.”

“Pack it up so he can take it home! Marina—!”

“Argue about this with Trey,” Marina finally huffed. “I want to be a good wife.”

“Marina,” Dot said soberly, “this is a really bad idea. Just remember: I was right about Trey. He wanted something from you and he did what he had to do to get it. He only cares about what he wants, just like your father. Grandfather. The reverend.”

“Dot,” Marina pled, “please stop speaking ill of Trey. Yes, you were right and yes, I should’ve listened. But he’s not my sort-of beau anymore. He’s my husband and he thinks I’m smart. It was either Mother or him, and so far, I like living with him a lot better than living with Mother, now that I can see you were also right about her. Even if he weren’t nice to me, I’m stuck with him for the rest of my life—”

“You know people can get divorced now.”

Marina gasped, her eyes wide. “Dot! I don’t want to be one of those women! A divorcée?! Why, it’s, it’s—I don’t know what. Why would I divorce a man who’s nice to me, even if he did— And he said he wouldn’t! I don’t want to spend my life hating my husband!”

“But I was right and you don’t know. Do you want to be stuck with him knowing or not knowing?” Dot challenged.

Marina didn’t answer because she didn’t know—

—until washday and saw lipstick on his collar.

Again.

57B

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