Tommy must have seen the bruise when I was pourin the tea. Maybe he asked Joe what happened after I left, or maybe he just remarked on it. Either way, Joe St. George wasn’t a fella to let opportunity pass him by—not one like that, at least. Thinkin it over on my way home from the market, the only thing I was curious about was what Joe told Tommy and the others I’d done—forgot to put his bedroom slippers under the stove so they’d be warm when he stepped into em, maybe, or cooked the beans too mushy on Sat’dy night. Whatever it was, Tommy went home and told Yvette that Joe St. George had needed to give his wife a little home correction. And all I’d ever done was bang off the corner of the Marshalls’ mantelpiece runnin to see who was at the door!
That’s what I mean when I say there’s two sides to a marriage—the outside and the inside. People on the island saw me and Joe like they saw most other couples our age: not too happy, not too sad, mostly just goin along like two hosses pullin a wagon… they may not notice each other like they once did, and they may not get along with each other as well as they once did when they do notice each other, but they’re harnessed side by side n goin down the road as well’s they can just the same, not bitin each other, or lollygaggin, or doin any of the other things that draw the whip.
But people aren’t hosses, n marriage ain’t much like pullin a wagon, even though I know it sometimes looks that way on the outside. The folks on the island didn’t know about the cream-pitcher, or how Joe cried in the dark and said he wished he’d never seen my ugly face. Nor was that the worst of it. The worst didn’t start until a year or so after we finished our doins in bed. It’s funny, ain’t it, how folks can look right at a thing and draw a completely wrong conclusion about why it happened. But it’s natural enough, as long as you remember that the inside and outside of a marriage aren’t usually much alike. What I’m gonna tell you now was on the inside of ours, and until today I always thought it would stay there.
Lookin back, I think the trouble must have really started in ‘62. Selena’djust started high school over on the mainland. She had come on real pretty, and I remember that summer after her freshman year she got along with her Dad better than she had for the last couple of years. I’d been dreadin her teenage years, foreseein a lot of squabbles between the two of em as she grew up and started questionin his idears and what he saw as his rights over her more and more.
Instead, there was that little time of peace and quiet and good feelins between them, when she’d go out and watch him work on his old clunkers behind the house, or sit beside him on the couch while we were watchin TV at night (Little Pete didn’t think much of that arrangement, I can tell you) and ask him questions about his day durin the commercials. He’d answer her in a calm, thoughtful way I wasn’t used to… but I sort of remembered. From high school I remembered it, back when I was first gettin to know him and he was decidin that yes, he wanted to court me.
At the same time this was happenin, she drew a distance away from me. Oh, she’d still do the chores I set her, and sometimes she’d talk about her day at school… but only if I went to work and pulled it out of her. There was a coldness that hadn’t been there before, and it was only later on that I began to see how everything fit together, and how it all went back to the night she’d come out of her bedroom and seen us there, her Dad with his hand clapped to his ear and blood runnin through the fingers, her Mom standin over him with a hatchet.
He was never a man to let certain kinds of opportunity pass him by, I told you, and this was just more of the same. He’d told Tommy Anderson one kind of story; the one he told his daughter was in a different pew but the same church. I don’t think there was anything in his mind at first but spite; he knew how much I loved Selena, and he must have thought tellin her how mean and bad-tempered I was—maybe even how dangerous I was—would be a fine piece of revenge. He tried to turn her against me, and while he never really succeeded at that, he did manage to get closer to her than he’d been since she was a little girl. Why not? She was always tender-hearted, Selena was, and I never ran up against a man as good at the poor-me’s as Joe was.
He got inside her life, and once he was in there, he must have finally noticed just how pretty she was getting, and decided he wanted somethin more from her than just to have her listen when he talked or hand him the next tool when he was head-down in the engine compartment of some old junk truck. And all the time this was goin on and the changes were happenin, I was runnin around, workin about four different jobs, and tryin to stay far enough ahead of the bills to sock away a little each week for the kids’ college educations. I never saw a thing until it was almost too late.
She was a lively, chatty girl, my Selena, and she was always eager to please. When you wanted her to fetch somethin, she didn’t walk; she went on the run. As she got older, she’d put supper on the table when I was workin out, and I never had to ask her. She burned some at first and Joe’d carp at her or make fun of her—he sent her cryin into her room more’n once—but he quit doin that around the time I’m tellin you about. Back then, in the spring and summer of 1962, he acted like every pie she made was pure ambrosia even if the crust was like cement, and he’d rave over her meatloaf like it was French cuisine. She was happy with his praise—accourse she was, anyone would have been—but she didn’t get all puffed up with it. She wasn’t that kind of girl. Tell you one thing, though: when Selena finally left home, she was a better cook on her worst day than I ever was on my best.
When it came to helpin out around the house, a mother never had a better daughter… especially a mother who had to spend most of her time cleanin up other people’s messes. Selena never forgot to make sure Joe Junior and Little Pete had their school lunches when they went out the door in the mornin, and she covered their books for em at the start of every year. Joe Junior at least could have done that chore for himself, but she never gave him the chance.
She was an honor roll student her freshman year, but she never lost interest in what was goin on around her at home, the way some smart kids do at that age. Most kids of thirteen or fourteen decide anyone over thirty’s an old fogey, and they’re apt to be out the door about two minutes after the fogies come through it. Not Selena, though. She’d get em coffee or help with the dishes or whatever, then sit down in the chair by the Franklin stove and listen to the grownups talk. Whether it was me with one or two of my friends or Joe with three or four of his, she’d listen. She would have stayed even when he and his friends played poker, if I’d let her. I wouldn’t, though, because they talked so foul. That child nibbled conversation the way a mouse’ll nibble a cheese-rind, and what she couldn’t eat, she stored away.
Then she changed. I don’t know just when that change started, but I first saw it not too long after she’d started her sophomore year. Toward the end of September, I’m gonna say.
The first thing I noticed was that she wasn’t comin home on the early ferry like she had at the end of most school-days the year before, although that had worked out real well for her—she was able to get her homework finished in her room before the boys showed up, then do a little cleanin or start supper. Instead of the two o’clock, she was takin the one that leaves the mainland at four-forty-five.
When I asked her about it, she said she’d just decided she liked doin her homework in the study-hall after school, that was all, and gave me a funny little sidelong look that said she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. I thought I saw shame in that look, and maybe a lie, as well. Those things worried me, but I made up my mind I wasn’t going to push on with it no further unless I found out for sure something was wrong. Talking to her was hard, you see. I’d felt the distance that had come between us, and I had a pretty good idear what it all traced back to: Joe half outta his chair, bleedin, and me standin over him with the hatchet. And for the first time I realized that he’d prob’ly been talkin to her about that, and other things. Puttin his own spin on em, so to speak.