Chapter VI. 1953
CHAPTER VI
Mary adjusted her dress and then peeked again at the pineapple upside-down cake in its basket.
She never took anything more than a bottle of wine with her whenever she went to visit Vera, but she couldn’t sleep the night before and found herself in the kitchen at five, the flour and sugar scattered across the countertop as she baked.
Her mother-in-law agreed to watch the baby for an extra day, and Mary dressed herself carefully, discarding dress after dress as if she was going to a ball rather than her oldest friend’s home.
She hadn’t called. She feared if she did, Vera would find a reason to keep her away or not answer the phone at all, and she couldn’t sit still inside her house knowing Vera had seen her with Sharon.
She stood on Vera’s front porch, her finger on the doorbell as she tried to still her trembling hands.
Even now, Vera could refuse to speak to her, could leave the door closed on their friendship.
Sin did not account for love, and what Vera had seen surpassed whatever small indiscretions made up their daily lives.
It would be easy to turn her in. To tell Robert she saw his wife kissing another woman.
He would divorce her. Deem her unfit. Take the baby from her.
There would be no place for her back home with her parents either. She would lose everything.
Again, she checked the cake, and then the door swung open.
“Mary.” Vera’s voice was quiet but not surprised.
Mary lifted the basket. “I brought a cake.”
Vera stepped backward, the door opening further, and Mary could have wept with relief as she followed Vera inside. Vera led her to the kitchen, where she took down two plates.
“There’s coffee if you like.”
“No. Thank you. I’m already so jumpy.”
Vera set the plates down gently, her fingers tracing over the pattern she and Mary had spent hours discussing.
“Mary, I—”
“No. Please. Let me tell it. All of it.” She took a breath and held it, weighed it out against the jumble of words pressing against her lips.
“What you saw…” She held the lie there, ready to place it before Vera as truth, but she couldn’t.
It was too much of a betrayal to what she felt for Sharon. Too much of a betrayal for herself.
“Her name is Sharon. I never meant for it to go as far as it did, but she kissed me, and it was like … like the entire world had turned itself inside out, and I couldn’t breathe or think or remember where I was.”
Vera froze, her gaze still fixed on the plates before her. “What I saw?”
Mary felt her heart and stomach churning into something monstrous. “I think I’m in love with her.” The words fell out of her, and she knew she couldn’t call them back even if she wanted to. She needed to say it. To hear it finally spoken aloud. Even if it felt like flaying herself open.
“Oh, honey,” Vera said, and then her arms were around Mary, her hands smoothing her hair as Mary let herself cry for all the things she could not have.
“I can’t see her again. If Robert found out—”
“He’s not going to find out.” With gentle fingers, Vera wiped Mary’s tears and gave her a small smile.
“But—”
“No one saw. I was so focused on myself, I didn’t see, even if you thought I did. And it’s not mine to tell.”
“It’s a sin, Vera.”
“Fuck sin. This is you. Your heart. We can be afraid of what it means to live in this world. Of the judgment. But it isn’t who we are. And those secrets are worth keeping.”
Mary leaned into Vera and let herself go still. Even if there was safety only in this small moment, tucked away inside Vera’s kitchen, Mary allowed herself this sweetness.
Together, they sat in the silence, knowing there would come a time when it would be broken, but it would have to be enough. They had learned to expect so little, but it ached all the same.
“There’s a doctor in the city. He doesn’t advertise. You have to come in the evening only, and getting the appointment is practically impossible. I waited for months, but I finally got the call last week.”
“A doctor?” A cold rush of fear flooded through Mary. She hadn’t even known Vera was sick.
“He fitted me for a diaphragm. I was picking it up.”
“A diaphragm,” she said, the confusion in her voice clear even as her anxiety fled.
She would not judge Vera’s secret, but she didn’t understand it.
Since she was a girl, Mary longed to be a mother.
To be all the things her own mother had not.
The family unit—the father and mother and children—was a commandment The Path’s followers were meant to keep.
Even if she was an abomination in their eyes for what she felt toward Sharon, she had at least fulfilled that singular duty.
And her daughter was such a joy. But if Vera did not see her future as one with a child, Mary would support her in that.
She reached for Vera’s hand and held it.
Vera kept her eyes cast down. “Gerry doesn’t know.
It’s all he talks about lately. A house full of babies.
But I don’t … I never wanted it. I tried to make myself believe I did.
But then it happened, and oh, God, it was like someone was squeezing and squeezing, and I woke up every morning wondering if that was the day I’d finally stop breathing.
And it was a relief. The thought that I might die and not have to push it out of me.
All the blood and milk and screaming that comes after. ”
“You were pregnant,” Mary said, and Vera nodded.
“It was a different doctor that did it. European. I could barely understand him, but he was gentle. He held my hand. Told me I would cramp. That even after he’d finished, I would bleed.
And all I could think about while he was scraping it out of me was that if I died, I wouldn’t have to worry about this again.
No one expects motherhood from a dead woman.
And there are so many of us. So many women who’ve tried to escape only to bleed out.
Senseless. All of it. These shouldn’t be the only choices. We shouldn’t have to feel this way.”
Vera paused and touched her mouth, her hair. “But I didn’t die. And I knew I couldn’t let it happen again.” Her breath came in short gasps, and she drooped over the counter, her face wet with tears as she buried it in her hands.
“Oh, Vera,” Mary said, and put her arms around her friend.
“Please don’t tell anyone. I would lose Gerry. Everything. Please.”
“We both would.” She felt the truth of her words stir an anger within her. They would be forced to wear the mask. To deny their very selves. It felt like willingly swallowing poison. But they had no choice. They were trapped.
“Neither of us will tell anyone then,” Vera said.
Mary pulled Vera in closer and stroked her back. “No. I wouldn’t do that.”