CHAPTER ONE NEWS
CHAPTER
ONE
News
Cora hadn’t noticed how little she and Roscoe had been seeing of each other until she started trying to avoid him and found it so easy.
He was barely home these days, and she spent every hour she could at Green’s Whiskey.
When he did come home, Roscoe sat reading and re-reading his overseas letter that he never spoke about but carried around with him everywhere he went.
When she came home from work as late as she reasonably could, and found Momma gone to her prayer meeting and Roscoe out who knew where, she felt grateful to have a few minutes to herself in the house.
Then she saw Roscoe’s jacket hanging on the peg with his letter peeking out of his pocket, and her curiosity got the better of her. She slid the letter out and read.
It was a love letter from a woman in a place called Pontypool.
The air rushed out of her as Cora realized Roscoe had gone off to Europe and had an affair.
Roscoe. And the woman wanted him to come back.
Her brain raced so hard she felt like her head would burst. This was the woman he’d tried to write to in those crumpled letters under the dresser.
Ever since he’d returned a year and a half ago, Cora had felt paralyzed, unable to ask for a divorce, ask him to leave.
She couldn’t turn her back on him after what he’d been willing to do for her, but she couldn’t love him either.
It made her sick to think of the time they’d wasted trying to honor a marriage that had only ever been a sham.
She should have been beside herself, but she felt relieved.
Cora sat perched on the couch when Roscoe came home, the letter tucked back in his coat pocket.
She’d waited over an hour to speak to him, but a dark storm played across his features, making her bite back the careful sentences she’d crafted to say, telling him she knew about Megan and admitting about Lee.
The important thing, she’d planned to say, was that now they could both be free.
‘What the hell are you trying to do?’ he growled when he saw her sitting there. The strength of his fury surprised and confused her. She wondered if he’d been drinking again.
‘What is this?’ He waved a newspaper in his hand.
‘I don’t know.’
But she did. It was one of the articles that had come out that week. She and Lee had pored over all of them. She hadn’t told Roscoe about them and had hoped he wouldn’t see.
‘Greedy Negro Vets Blame America for Woes.’ He stabbed at the article. ‘With a picture of you and Lee.’
He threw the paper at her, but it landed short, falling to her feet with her photo staring back. In it, she looked shocked and scared, swarmed by reporters, with Lee looking ready to fight.
‘They just showed up taking pictures,’ she said.
‘I told you not to talk to that Pittsburgh reporter, but you had to go running your mouth off.’
He took a step closer to her. His whole body seemed to vibrate with tension. ‘You couldn’t leave it alone.’ He clenched and unclenched his hands by his sides.
‘I only wanted to—’
‘You should have listened to me.’
‘But—’
‘Now look what you’ve done. Did you think you could say your piece and that would be the end of it?’
Cora slumped in her seat. She had thought that. She’d spoken anonymously to an out-of-state Negro newspaper. She didn’t know it would lead to her picture in the local Florida press.
She swallowed the anxiety building in her throat and said, ‘You don’t change things if you don’t speak up.’
‘You sound like Lee,’ he spat. ‘And this,’ he pointed to the photo of the two of them, ‘makes me look like a damn fool.’
Her anger spiked. ‘Well, Lee makes a lot of sense. And he’s been helpful and supportive.’
‘Not like me? Is that what you’re saying?’ he almost snarled. He was nothing like the sweet man she’d known.
‘I asked you to do the interview with me, and you said no.’
‘Of course I said no. Any sane man would say no. Unless …’ He glared at Lee’s picture and then back up at Cora. ‘Are you sleeping with him?’
Her stomach sank. She couldn’t answer.
‘Are you?’ he repeated, his voice cold.
The air soured in her throat and swirled with guilt in the pit of her belly. She breathed it out slowly, and he read the truth in her silence.
‘Son-of-a-bitch! I’m killing myself trying to do right by you, and this is what you do? You put a curtain between us, and open your legs for that two-bit punk!’
A few hours ago, Cora would have flinched at his words. She would have blamed herself and begged his forgiveness, but her eyes flicked to his coat where his lover’s letter sat tucked in his pocket.
She stood to face him, faking a calm she didn’t feel. ‘Don’t pretend that you’re some kind of saint.’
‘After everything I did for you,’ he shouted, ‘that’s what you say to me?’
‘I appreciate what you did, Roscoe, but how long,’ she said, a tremor shaking her, body and voice, ‘am I supposed to stay grateful? Thank you, Roscoe. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Do you expect me to say it for the rest of my life?’
‘I made sacrifices for you.’ He thumped his chest with his fist. ‘I honored my commitment.’
‘No, you didn’t.’
‘I’m here. I came back. I could have walked away from you, but I didn’t.’
‘I know about her!’
She rushed to his hanging coat, and dug in the pocket for the letter. ‘You gave up on commitment long before you ever made it home.’
She waved the envelope at him, and he drew back, like she’d pulled out a rattlesnake. Then, eyes furious, he lunged forward and snatched it from her.
‘You have no right to judge me and Lee, after you spent the whole war with your British whore.’
She saw the blow coming and flinched away from him, but it still connected with her jaw and flung her sideways, sending her sprawling to the floor. The pain radiated from her ear down to her neck, and her teeth had cut the inside of her cheek. She tasted blood.
Shock and pain pinned her to the floor while, above her, Roscoe shouted in a frenzy. She blinked to clear her head, but it hurt too much to concentrate.
She peered up at her husband towering over her.
His eyes blazed like a stranger’s and she realized he might hit her again.
Instinct told her to curl into a ball, but fierceness had taken root in her and refused to let her.
She spat out the blood pooling in her mouth, lifted her chin and looked him in the eye. She was done cowering.