Chapter IV. 1953
CHAPTER IV
The following Monday came and went, and if Mr. Letting remembered anything about what happened between them in his office, he didn’t let on.
Still, Mary jumped every time his office door opened.
So much so that the other girls teased her for it, asking if she had ants in her pants.
She smiled back at them and told them she had too much coffee and it had been a long night with the baby.
They made sympathetic sounds but didn’t question her further. Their worlds were filled with the office and dinners and dates, not babies. They wouldn’t want to sit together at lunch and talk nappies and colic and diaper rash, and for that, she was grateful.
For lunch each day, she wandered out of the building, but rather than eating, she spent the hour back inside Rich’s hoping she’d see Sharon again. But every day, a different gray-faced woman stood behind the hat counter, and every day, Mary’s heart sank a little further.
That Saturday night, her mother came for dinner, and Mary spent the evening tugging at her dress and fussing over the pork roast as her mother pursed her lips in the way that clearly meant she would hold her tongue while they were in front of Robert, but once they were alone, she had an earful of criticisms to offer her daughter.
After her mother left and Robert and the baby were asleep, she slipped outside, the hem of her nightgown growing damp as she walked farther and then farther still into the woods.
It didn’t matter she could barely see or that she stumbled three times.
She walked on until she was certain she wouldn’t be heard, and she screamed until her throat felt raw.
Around her, the nocturnal creatures sent back their own cries, and she felt like one of them. A wild sister locked in a lovely domestic cage.
For two more mornings, she rose and went through the motions of her day. Feeding the baby, rocking the baby, cooking, cleaning, waiting for Robert to finish moving over her body while she floated somewhere above—a distant, disconnected thing as he grunted and rooted against her like an animal.
And then, like some miracle, Sharon was finally there.
Leaning against the counter, her hair falling over her shoulder in rippling gold as she laughed at whatever the man standing before her had just said.
Mary’s heart squeezed painfully, and she wished she had been the one to make Sharon laugh like that.
The man leaned forward, his hand creeping across the counter to where Sharon’s rested, and Mary ducked behind a display, suddenly ashamed.
Why had she come here? It was likely Sharon would find it strange, off-putting even, that Mary came back specifically to see her.
Maybe the connection Mary felt over their lunch was only on her part, and Sharon flitted from person to person, always effervescent but never settling.
From her hiding spot, Mary watched as Sharon straightened, her hand casually trailing along the counter and away from the man’s before she lifted it to her mouth to stifle another laugh.
Mary could have laughed herself. How many times had she done something similar in the hopes of ending a man’s advances?
A subtle maneuvering of the shoulders, a quick pivot of the hip or the chin, so there was no certain path for him to access any part of her body he might have deemed in desperate need of touching.
Emboldened, Mary lifted the first hat she touched, stepped out, and cleared her throat. “Ma’am? I was wondering if you could tell me if this comes in navy? If you’re helping this gentleman with a purchase, I’m happy to wait, but I really am in a hurry.”
“Of course! If you’ll excuse me,” Sharon said, and stepped out from behind the counter and hurried to Mary’s side.
Confusion creased the man’s brow, but he ducked his head in assent and backed away from the counter. Even as he left the women to their business, his eyes burned against them, and Mary held her breath until he was well and truly gone. Only then did the stitch in her side come undone.
“You’ve no idea how much I was hoping for someone to come along and save me,” Sharon said.
Mary flushed, her newfound confidence draining away. “I shouldn’t have interrupted—”
“Nonsense.” Sharon waved a hand in Mary’s direction. “He was a creep, and the fact that it was a friend scaring him off and not just any old customer was the cherry on the sundae.”
“A friend?”
“Of course, you goose. I felt like I knew you so well after last time I assumed I had your telephone number, but then I realized I didn’t.
So, I couldn’t call and ask you, but I was so hoping we could do lunch again.
That is, if you’d like to.” Sharon looked up through her lashes, and Mary wondered if everyone she did that to felt as if they were melting.
“Can I tell you a secret?” Mary asked.
Sharon looped her arm through Mary’s. “I’d die if you didn’t.”
“That’s why I came.”
Sharon squeezed Mary tighter. “I knew it. I felt it in my heart. Can you wait ten minutes? I’m not due off the floor until then.”
“Sure,” Mary said, but she knew she would have waited twenty or thirty minutes if it meant sharing a tiny table with Sharon Hutchins again. Even if it meant Mr. Letting would fire her for being late. None of that mattered.
But exactly ten minutes later, Sharon hurried toward her, and they swept out of the store, and Mary wondered if she wasn’t floating just a bit. If whatever magic lived inside Sharon hadn’t somehow also found its way into her.
The remaining minutes of her lunch hour passed far too quickly, and Mary only realized later she hadn’t actually eaten at all—only poked at the salad on her plate while she and Sharon talked without seeming to need to draw breath.
They talked about Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman, which Mary didn’t believe anyone other than herself had read.
The dark magic of her prose bewitched both of them, held them breathless and transfixed.
Reading her books was like looking into the sun before an apocalyptic devastation.
Sharon explained more of her beliefs—the transmutable energy in nature. Those natural cycles that flowed through and supported every living thing. No good. No evil. Only an equality of desire and, should she will it, a practice that allowed her to fix and alter such energies to her liking.
Had anyone from The Path heard their conversations, they would have called such things blasphemous, but Mary was fascinated.
There was nothing wicked about Sharon. She was kind.
Gentle. And funny. Mary hadn’t laughed so much in years.
There was a comfort in their conversations she’d never found with anyone.
With Sharon, she was able to forget the need to say or do the right thing.
With Sharon, anything Mary said or did was the right thing.
They met again the next day. And then the next, and the next, and soon, it had been three weeks, and Mary found herself coming back to the office later and later. Why would she want to return to the predictability of her life when she could let Sharon dazzle her?
The girls raised their eyebrows as she settled back at her typewriter, but they said nothing, and Mr. Letting had not yet noticed because his own lunches stretched for two, sometimes three hours.
There were still mornings he hovered over Mary’s shoulder, his gaze fixed on her chest, but she was just one of many, and he didn’t seem to notice her unless she was directly before him.
Even though there was no need, Sharon was a secret she kept.
She told no one she’d made a new friend in the city, not even Vera.
A part of her knew she should feel guilty, but it felt important for a reason she couldn’t quite identify.
So when Sharon asked her over lunch if she’d like to have a cocktail with her after work, Mary knew it was yet another secret she would keep.
Lunch with a new friend, even one she’d not talked about, was explainable.
No one would have reason to suspect she was behaving as anything other than the good, Christian wife and mother she was expected to be, but such dismissal did not extend to cocktails in the city with an unknown woman who was not a member of The Path.
Despite her worry, Mary couldn’t help but anticipate their meeting.
This was a new direction in their friendship. One that brought them closer.
She phoned her mother-in-law and told her she had to stay late to catch up on a project, and for a moment, a bubble of guilt lodged itself in her throat.
Lying was a sin. She grew up knowing that.
But her excitement was powerful, and the thought of a shadowed corner and the sound of glasses clinking overrode any sort of Christian guilt she should feel.
Mary chose the restaurant, but she let Sharon order—two sloe gin fizzes—and she sipped the drink slowly, warmth flooding her cheeks as the alcohol took hold.
Around them, the crystal on the tables glittered as the daylight faded into candlelight.
The booths slipped into shadow as waiters drifted here and there like pale ghosts, their smiles pasted on as they poured wine and then vanished.
Mary had asked the girls around the office for recommendations for a quiet, tucked-away spot, and she’d chosen this one for the privacy it afforded.
It was the sort of enchanted place where it was easy to get lost. To lose yourself, if you chose.
“Is this real silver?” Sharon held a fork up to the flickering light and squinted.
Mary smothered a smile. “Probably.”
“If I had two more of these”—Sharon rattled what remained of her drink—“I might decide to accidentally take a couple of them home with me.”
Mary laughed and let herself lean into Sharon—the space between them shortening as Sharon made no effort to pull herself away.