Chapter Two. Dorothy
TWO
Dorothy
“Toto!” I stand on the edge of the porch calling out into the dark. He’s been gone the entire day. Probably curled up in a ball somewhere sleeping off his meal. “Toto!”
Across the field, I see a flash of light.
It winks on, then winks off.
Like a trained dog (not Toto, of course), my belly tightens.
I turn to the screen door. “I’m going for a walk to find Toto.”
“Don’t be out too late,” Aunt Em says from the sink.
The walk to the neighboring farm takes me about ten minutes if I follow the road.
Seven if I cut across the fields. I’m in a hurry to feel something, so I take the shortcut, careful to step over the rows of corn shoots sprouting from the earth.
It’s been drier this year. We’re in desperate need of a good rain.
I come around the Gilbert barn from the back side and find the door thrown open. All the animals are tucked in for the night. Edward Gilbert sits in a spot of light cast from a nearby gooseneck lantern. He’s in a metal lawn chair, Toto curled up in his lap.
“There you are,” I say and Toto’s ears prick up, his eyes barely opening. “He caught a rabbit earlier,” I tell Edward. “Haven’t seen him since.”
Edward pats Toto’s fat belly. “I think he stuffed himself.”
I’ve grown up with Edward, first as my best friend, then as something more. We used to send each other coded messages with our flashlights, the light winking in the dark.
When we were kids, he was shorter than me by several inches, scrawny and a little clumsy. Now at twenty-five, he’s got a foot on me, and the rougher farm work has given him strong hands, broad shoulders, and hard muscle.
Edward lifts Toto off his lap and sets him on a nearby hay bale. Toto yawns but curls up again and closes his eyes.
“Want to go up?” Edward asks, nodding at the ladder to the hayloft.
“Yes.” I knew what I wanted before I came over here.
Because he’s a gentleman, Edward lets me go up first on the off chance I should slip and fall.
Even though I’ve been climbing this ladder, and ours back at home, for years and years with no incidents.
Sometimes I think he does it just so he can see up my dress, which means he’s not quite the gentleman he’d like to believe he is.
Which is fine by me. I wish he would be less of a gentleman some days.
But knowing he appreciates the view makes my belly spin with anticipation.
As soon as we’re up in the loft, Edward takes my hand and brings me gently into him. He presses his mouth to mine, his tongue darting out for a taste of me. He walks me back to the pile of loose hay in the corner where our quilt is already spread out, waiting.
I fall back with an umph and reach for his belt. We both fumble over the metal clasp, finally getting it undone. Then he’s on top of me, his hands roaming over my body.
I remember, vividly, the first time we made love. Our clumsy movements. Our desire permeating the air. The heat between my legs, the hardness between his.
When he enters me now, I groan in pleasure and he whispers sweet words in my ear.
“You’re so beautiful, Dutchie.”
In all the years we’ve been meeting in the barn, Edward has only ever been gentle with me. Like I am a glass figurine that he’s afraid to crack with too much pressure, too much heat.
I may have been born somewhere beyond the Kansas farmhouse, but everything I am now was forged beneath that violent storm.
And I can’t help but wonder if the insatiable appetite I have for something more is because of it, if deep down the girl I am is a girl who yearns for bruises and ash and blood.
Maybe that’s why I’m incapable of letting love in. Because there is no room for things that feel soft and gentle.
And safe.
Use me, I want to say to Edward. Make me feel something so deep it leaves marks on my skin.
But the thought of voicing this wickedness to him makes my stomach roll with embarrassment.
Edward would frown at me. He would blush. He would tell me he respects me too much to treat me that way.
But sometimes I just want him to throw me against the wall.
The warmth of the barn surrounds us, and we shed more clothes as our movements grow more frenzied. Some of the pressure builds. Edward grows harder inside me. He’s getting closer. I would know his impending orgasm just as well as my own.
I hook my leg around his hips and coax him over, switching positions so I’m straddling him. So I’m in control. I grind against him, close my eyes, pretend I am somewhere else, with some other man.
The guilt whispers in the back of my mind. You should be grateful for Edward.
But another man … a different man … maybe his words would not be so sweet. Maybe his touch would be possessive.
I tighten at the thought. Edward moans up at me.
“Oh yes, Dutchie,” he says, using the nickname he gave me when we were kids. I urge him to sit up so I can wrap my arms around his neck using him for leverage, fucking him harder and faster, chasing the only thing that makes me feel something.
A bead of sweat slithers down my spine.
Moonlight spills in through the hayloft window, painting Edward in silver light. I watch as his face slackens with his pleasure. Every time he comes, it’s like this, like he is mystified by it, a little bit drunk.
“Did you come?” he asks me.
“Not yet.”
“Should I—”
“I’m almost there.” I squeeze my eyes shut and carry on the fantasy in my head.
Come for me, the faceless, nameless man says. Don’t disappoint me.
I clench up and rock my hips forward and hit the right angle, the friction reaching a crescendo.
I finally come.
And it’s only then that I see in color.
We sit in the open window of the hayloft, legs dangling over the edge.
I’m dressed again but Edward is still shirtless and I can’t help but admire the swell of his biceps, the rise of his chest.
He hands me a joint.
I take a hit and exhale.
When the smoke meets the air, it curls around the full moon.
Edward points to a grassy field just beyond the corn shoots. “See that stretch of land over there?”
“The field where we used to play Kings and Castles?”
His grin is lopsided and bashful. “That’s the one. My father says he’ll give it to me so I can build my own house, start my own family.”
I should hand the joint back. Instead, I take another hit and let the smoke hang in my lungs, let it burn and burn.
“I’d like to start my own life,” he admits.
My mouth is dry and I roll my tongue around looking for sustenance that isn’t there.
“Picture it,” he goes on. “A saltbox house. Just like the Pembery House in town. White maybe? With black shutters? Or red with white shutters? A red barn to match. There’s enough land there for a garden too.
I know how much you love your poppies. We could plant a whole garden of them if you wanted. ”
I hand the joint back. He pinches it between his fingers and lets it smoke out.
I sense his excitement. The hot, rolling wave of it pressing against my skin.
I know what he’s going to say before he says it.
I do not feel excitement.
There is only dread.
“Marry me, Dutchie,” he says.
I meet his eyes. His earnestness makes me want to scream.
He asks me to marry him at least once a week. Sometimes twice. But it’s never been attached to a vision of the future with a house and a barn and a garden.
I could love him, in my own way. But is it enough? Is it ever enough?
When I think about a life with Edward, I feel empty inside.
The guilt returns.
“I can’t leave Uncle Henry and Aunt Em,” I tell him, which is what I always say, which is true. But sometimes, I wonder about who I was before I came here. I wonder about my parents and if they’re alive. I wonder about the woman who is always shouting in my memories but never heard.
Who is she?
And better yet, who am I?
When I turned eighteen, I started looking into my past. I started with newspaper clippings from the storm that tore through Kansas the year I arrived. I scoured birth records, asked around at local hospitals.
There was nothing. Not a shred of information. Which can only mean I haven’t looked far enough.
I won’t abandon Em and Henry, but marrying Edward means I will never truly leave. And if I can never leave, there will never be the possibility of learning who I am. That emptiness will never be filled.
Edward reaches over and squeezes my hand. “Em and Henry will be right next door.” A very good point.
“But that’s ten minutes—” I argue.
“Seven by the field.”
“And if something happened or if a cyclone came through…” I trail off.
He sets the joint in a nearby canning jar. “You make me happy, Dutchie. I could make you happy too.”
I look out over the barnyard, then to the field of corn. The perfect rows. The leafy shoots.
I smile at him, hook my arm through his, and kiss him on the cheek. “You do make me happy.” And it’s true. He does. He makes me happy, but would this?
That voice returns, whispering truths I’m often too afraid to face.
Edward isn’t my future. He’s just a distraction.
My steps are heavier on the walk back home. Toto trots beside me.
“What am I to do, Toto?” He looks up at me, shaggy hair hanging in front of his eyes, and says nothing. “You’re no help.”
He yips at me, then bounds ahead.
I cross the dirt road. A chill breeze kicks up and I rub my arms, trying to ward off the goosebumps. The air has changed since I was otherwise occupied in the Gilbert barn. The heat of the day is gone, replaced by something sharper.
As I walk up the rickety front porch and reach out for the screen door, a voice calls out to me from the dark.
“Come sit with me.”
“Jesus.” I put my hand over my heart, feeling the sudden rapid thump of it. “You scared me, Em.”
The rocking chair creaks. As I near, I smell the sweetness of the tea in her hands. She takes a sip, her gaze trained on the horizon. “He ask you to marry him again?”
I sigh and take the matching rocker beside her. “Yes.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I avoided answering.”
She shakes her head. “That boy is smitten with you. He’s a good one, you know. Reminds me of Henry.”
He’s one of the best. There truly must be something wrong with me if I’m so resistant to committing to him.
I lay my head back against the carved spindles of the chair and give a push off the porch with the toe of my boot. “I can’t leave you both.”
Aunt Em clucks her tongue. “Don’t use us as an excuse.”
“Why not? It’s a good one.”
She takes the last drink of her tea, then balances the empty cup on the curve of her knee. “Take me and your uncle out of the scenario. What’s your heart tell you?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Em—”
“You’ve ignored your intuition your entire life. It’s time you start listening to it.”
It’s always been Em who’s tried to convince me I have a keen ability to just know. She likes to remind me of the time a traveling salesman came to the farmhouse trying to sell cleaning supplies and I, at the ripe age of nine, told Em he was a bad man and she shouldn’t let him in.
A few days later he was arrested for assaulting a farmer when they let him into their house.
“Even if that were true,” I say now.
“It is,” she counters.
“How do you know the difference between intuition and doubt?”
“How did you know about the salesman?”
See?
I huff out a breath and give the porch floor another kick. The rocking chair creaks.
“I barely remember that.”
She’s quiet again and the night creeps in, filling the void. Field crickets and tree frogs, the rustle of the barn animals.
“You want some advice or just space to vent?” she finally asks.
I roll my head along the chair’s back so I can look over at her.
Some of the light from the lantern hanging over the barn door skims her face, fills the dimples around her mouth.
She may be nearing seventy, but I’ve always thought she looks young for her age.
Her struggle with her hands, the loss of control she once had, must frustrate her to no end.
Everyone who grows up on a farm knows about death.
And yet when I think about losing Em or Henry, it feels like carving out a part of myself. Something impossible to lose.
“I always appreciate your advice,” I tell her.
The chair creaks again as she gives it another push. “Imagine that tomorrow, Edward Gilbert tells you he’s proposed to another girl and that she’s accepted.”
I blow out a breath. “Cutting right to the heart.”
She shifts away from me, her face no longer in that slant of light. I can’t see her expression but I imagine her grinning. Aunt Em has the best smile. Like crocuses breaking through the hard crust of winter. The kind of smile that makes you think of warmth and strength.
“Go on,” she coaxes.
I let her imagined scenario play out in my head. Edward breaking the news to me, me knowing that our relationship is over, that I will no longer have to dodge his proposals.
I almost feel relief.
I suck in a breath and then let it out.
Aunt Em gets up. Her movements are slow, her back slightly stooped before she finally straightens out. As she passes me, she gives my shoulder a squeeze. “It’s your life, Dorothy. Just make sure you choose it, whatever it is.”
I nod up at her.
“Good night, my sweet girl,” she says.
“Good night, Aunt Em.”
Inside the house, the light goes out and a few seconds later, I hear their bedroom door click shut.
I give myself another push in the chair.
The wind kicks up and dust swirls in the yard.
I leave the rocker and head inside, determined to make a choice in the morning.