You don’t know anything about me, Jolene told him in an effort to satisfy herself of her integrity. I expect soon to know everything, he said flashing a big handsome smile that could have been a leer.
He was so damn cocky. She almost resented that there was never any doubt in his mind as to what she would say. He insisted she quit her job and move to a hotel at his expense until the wedding day. Oh, what day is that? she said, teasing, but he was a wild man: The engagement will necessarily be short, he said, slipping a diamond ring on her finger.
A week later they were married in the chapel of the First Methodist church there in Tulsa that looked like Winchester Cathedral. Brad G. Benton brought her to live in his apartment in a new building that had a swimming pool in the basement and a gym on the roof. They were high enough to see out over the whole city, though there wasn’t that much to see in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
So once more her fortunes had changed and little Jolene was a young matron of the upper class. She wanted to write to someone about this incredible turn in her life, but who could she write to? Who? There was no one. In that sense nothing had changed, because she was as alone as she had always been, a stranger in a strange land.
Things in the marriage were okay at first, though some of Brad G. Benton’s ideas were not to her taste. He was very athletic and no sooner satisfied in one orifice than she was turned over for the other. Also, he seemed not to notice her artwork. She had bought an easel and set up a little studio in what was designed to be the maid’s room, because the Indian woman who cooked and cleaned had her own home to go to each evening. Jolene painted there and stretched her canvas, and she took a figure-painting class once a week where there were live models. She did well, her teacher was very encouraging, but Brad took none of this in. He just didn’t notice — he was too busy with his work and his workouts and his nights out and his nights in her.
It turned out that Brad G. Benton’s family was prominent in Tulsa. Not one of them had come to the wedding, their purpose being to define to her what white trash meant. At first she didn’t care that much. But she’d see their pictures in the newspapers being honored at charity events. They had wings of buildings named after them. One day, coming from shopping, she looked out of the cab window as it passed a glass office tower that said BENTON INTERNATIONAL on a giant brass cube balanced on one of its corners in the plaza out front.
She said to Brad, I would think they had more respect for you if not for me. But he only laughed. It was not so much that he was a democrat in his ideals, as she was to realize, it was part of his life’s work to do outrageous things and raise hell. It was how he kept everyone’s attention. He loved to twist noses out of joint. He was contrary. He hadn’t joined the Benton family enterprise as he was supposed to — it was a holding company with many different kinds of business in their hands — but had gone off on his own to show what he was made of.
Jolene knew that if she wanted to prove anything to his family, if she wanted any kind of social acceptance in Tulsa, Oklahoma, she would have to work for it. She would have to start reading books and take a course or two in something intellectual and embrace the style of life, the manners, the ways of doing and talking by being patient and keeping her eyes and ears open. She would attend their church, too. As wild as he was, Brad was like his father, what he called a strong Christian. That was the one place they would have to meet and, she was willing to bet, speak to one another. And how then could the family not speak to her?
Oddly enough, she was looking as good as she ever had, and Brad took her once a week to dinner at the country club to show her off. By then everyone in town knew this so-called Cinderella story. Grist for the mill. He was heedless. He just didn’t worry about it, whereas she could hardly raise her head. One evening, his father and mother were sitting at a far table with their guests, who looked as if they were there to serve them no less than the waiters. Brad waved — it was more like a salute — and the father nodded and resumed his conversation.
Through no fault of her own Jolene had stepped into a situation that was making her life miserable. Whatever was going on with these people, what did it have to do with her? Nothing. She was as nothing.
To tell the truth, she had made Brad for a creep that first time he came on to her at that cocktail party. He’d padded into the kitchen, stalking her like some animal, taken the empty champagne tray out of her hands, and told her redheads smelled different. And he stood there sniffing her and going, Hmmm, yes, like warm milk.
AFTER HER BABY WAS BORN, when Brad G. Benton started to bat her around, Jolene could not help but remember that first impression. Every little thing drove him crazy. It got so she couldn’t do anything, say anything, without he would go off half-cocked. He took to hitting her, slapping her face, punching her. What are you doing? she screamed. Stop it, stop it! It was his new way of getting off. He would say, You like this? You like it? He’d knock her around, then push her down on the bed. She grew accustomed to living in fear of getting beaten up and forced against her will. She was still to learn what they would teach at the shelter — it happens once, that’s it, you leave. But now she just tried to see it through. Brad G. Benton had been to college, he came of money and he wore good clothes, and she was flattered that he would fall for her when she hadn’t even a high school diploma. And then of course there were the apologies and the beggings for forgiveness and the praying in church together, and by such means she slowly became a routinely abused wife.
Only when it was all over would she realize it wasn’t just having the baby; it was their plans for him, the Bentons’ plans for her Mr. Nipplebee. He was an heir, after all. The minute they’d found out she was pregnant, they went to work. And after he was born, they slowly gave it to Brad in bits and pieces, what their investigators had learned about her life before. Never mind that she had tried to tell Brad about her marriages, her life on the road. He never wanted to hear it; he had no curiosity about her — none. She had appeared in Tulsa as a vision, God’s chosen sex partner for him, a fresh and wet and shining virgin with red hair. All those beatings were what he was told, and all those apologies were the way his love for her was hanging on. She would feel sorry for him if she could because he was so wired, such a maniac. It was as if his wildness, his independent choice of life, was being driven from him, as if it was the Devil. It was those parents slowly absorbing him back into their righteousness.
One day Brad G. Benton appeared at the door to her little studio room when he ordinarily would be at work. She was ruling off a grid on one of her canvases as she had been taught. Brad! she said, smiling, but there was no recognition in his eyes. He kicked the stool out from under her. He broke the easel over his knee, he bashed her canvases against the wall, tore down the drawings she had pinned up there, and then he squeezed tubes of paint into her face as he held her down on the floor. And he began hitting her as she lay there. He punched her face, he punched her in the throat. When he got off her, she could hear his breathing — it was like crying. He stood over her, kicked her in the side, and as suddenly as he had come he was gone.
She lay there moaning in pain, too frightened and shocked even to get up until she thought of the baby. She dragged herself to the nursery. The Cherokee woman who had heard everything sat beside the crib with her hand over her eyes. But the baby was sleeping peacefully. Jolene washed her face and, wrapping up her Mr. Nipplebee, she took him with her as she dragged herself to a doctor. She was told that she had had her cheek fractured, two broken ribs, contusions of the throat, and a bruised kidney. How did this happen? the doctor asked her. She was afraid to tell him, and, besides, it hurt too much to talk. But the nurse in the office didn’t have to be told. She wrote out the name and address of a women’s shelter and said, Go there right now. I’ll order you a cab. And in that way, with her precious in her arms and only what she wore, Jolene left her marriage.