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“Never mind,” he said with his face pressed between my breasts and his hand exploring beneath my gown. I didn’t stop him from doing what he wanted to. I clung to my pain. He didn’t love me enough. He’d had others, perhaps a hundred. And he’d always acted like I was his one and only girl. How deceitful, like Papa.
“You’re so beautiful, so soft and sweet. Your skin is so smooth,” he murmured, his breath coming faster, as if all that he did to me was all he needed, and nothing I did or didn’t do mattered at all. His hand was now beneath my bodice, cupping my breast, kneading it, molding it to the shape of his hand as his lips came down hard on mine. I’d been kissed by him many times before, but not like this.
Panic put me back in the rocking chair, made me a child again and terrified of that playroom where awful things came inside and filled me with shame. The lightning flashed and made my nerves jump so that I bucked upwards. Arden took that for beginning passion, for his lust sizzled more and the shoestring straps of my nightie broke as he pulled it down, baring my breasts for his lips and tongue to play with. I arched my neck and forced my head back into the pillow as I bit down on my lower lip to keep from screaming. I squeezed my eyes together and tried to endure the humiliation of everything he did. Inside I was sobbing, just like when they’d ripped off the First Audrina’s pretty new dress and torn off her silk underclothes.
Crying, I was crying, and he didn’t hear me or see my tears. My eyes popped open when next the thunder clapped. The lightning lit up the room enough for me to see his handsome face just above mine, rapt looking, out of himself with the euphoria he was experiencing.
All this touching, caressing, kissing was giving him pleasure while it gave me terror. I felt cheated, angry, ready to hurt him with my screams when he tugged off my nightgown and threw it away like a rag. They’d done that!
His hands were all over me, finding everything but what he seemed to be seeking. I hated where he had his hand and was glad when he swore to himself as his fingers worked madly. Then he sighed and rolled on top of me, and I felt his hardness.
Oh! The rocking chair, I was in it again, rocking to and fro. I saw the woods, heard the obscene words shouted, heard the laughter.
But it was too late. I felt him jabbing deep into me, thick and hot and slippery wet. I fought to free myself, buc
king, kicking, scratching. I clawed deep into the skin of his back, raked at his naked buttocks, but he didn’t stop. He kept on jabbing, causing the same kind of shame, the same kind of pain as they had caused her. His face … was that Arden’s boyish face with his hair plastered to his forehead, his eyes bulging as he stared before he turned and ran? No, no, Arden hadn’t been born then. He was just another like them, that was all. All men alike … all alike, alike … like …
Blurrily I was drifting, losing sense of reality. Aunt Ellsbeth had been right when she said I was too sensitive. I should never have led Arden on and allowed him to believe I could be the perfect wife.
I couldn’t be any kind of wife at all.
His hot ejaculations came then. Scream, scream, but the thunder overhead muffled my cries. Nobody heard, not even him. I tasted my own blood on my lips from the bite of my teeth that tried to cut off my screams. Only Arden who loved me. This was the way physical love had to be … and one more last heaving thrust nearly ripped me apart … then, spinning off, all terror and shame faded. Blackness mercifully took me, and I felt nothing, nothing at all.
Morning light wakened me. Sylvia was slouched in the corner of our bedroom playing with her prisms, her nightgown riding up to her hips. With her vacant eyes looking at nothing, her lips parted and drooling, she crouched there as limp as a rag.
My husband rolled over, came awake and reached for my breasts as if they belonged to him. He kissed them first, then my lips. “Darling, I love you so much.” More kisses he rained on my face, my neck, all over my naked body, and Sylvia was there, though I’m sure he didn’t see her. “At first you seemed so tight, so scared. Then, all of a sudden, you seized hold of me and eagerly surrendered. Oh, Audrina, I was hoping you’d be like that.”
What was he saying? How could I believe his words when his eyes were pleading the way they were? Yet, I allowed him to fake his satisfaction, realizing that he’d had some, while I’d had nothing but pain, shame and humiliation. And far, far back in my perforated memory was the scent of blood, of damp earth and wet leaves … and Audrina was stumbling home, trying to hold the shreds of an expensive dress together to cover her nudity.
Part 3
Home Again
As we drove up our long curving drive, I saw Papa standing on the front porch, as if he’d known in advance this was our day to come home.
He towered there, a formidable giant, wearing a spanking new white suit, white shoes, with a bright blue shirt and a white tie with silver and blue diagonal stripes.
I quivered and looked at Arden, whose eyes met mine with a great deal of apprehension. What would Papa do?
With one hand I clung to Arden’s arm, my other held Sylvia’s, as all three of us slowly ascended the steps to the front porch. All the time Papa’s fiery gaze clashed with mine, silently accusing me of betraying him, failing him. Then, done with me, he turned those dark, piercing eyes on Arden as if to weigh him and his strength as an opponent. Papa smiled warmly and thrust out his huge hand for my new husband to shake. “Well,” he said genially, “how nice to see all of you again.” He pumped Arden’s hand up and down. Endlessly, it seemed.
I was proud to see Arden didn’t wince. To squeeze too firmly in a friendly handshake was Papa’s way of determining a man’s physical strength and emotional character. He knew his powerful grip hurt, and a man who grimaced was crossed off his list and labeled “weak.”
Turning to me then, he said, “You have disappointed me deeply.” Casually he patted Sylvia on the top of her head, as if she were some pesty puppy. Three times he kissed my cheeks, one, then the other, but at the same time he managed to reach behind me to pinch my bottom so hard I wanted to cry out. This kind of pinch was meant to test a woman’s endurance, and her reactions were noted, labeled, filed.
Let him label me as he would. “Don’t you ever pinch me like that again,” I said fiercely. “That hurts, and I don’t like it. I have never liked it—and neither did my mother or my aunt.”
“My, what a saucy bit of baggage you’ve become in four days,” he said with a wide, mocking grin. Then he reached to playfully pat my cheek, and it felt like a slap. “You didn’t need to elope, my sweetheart,” he said in a soft, loving purr. “It would have been my pleasure, my joy, to walk you down the center aisle and see you wearing your mother’s beautiful wedding gown.”
Just when I thought nothing he did could ever surprise me, he caught me off guard. “Arden, I’ve been talking to your mother about you, and she tells me you’ve had some difficulty finding the kind of position you want with a good architectural firm. I admire you for not accepting a thirdrate job in a second-rate firm. So until you find the kind of position you really want, why not accept a junior account executive position with my brokerage firm? Audrina can help teach you the ropes so you can pass the exam, and, of course, I’ll do what I can to help. Though she knows almost as much as I do.”
This wasn’t what I wanted. Yet, as I glanced at Arden, I saw he was very relieved. This offer would solve a lot of problems. Now we’d have an income and could rent a small apartment in the city, far from Whitefern. Arden appeared very grateful and glanced at me as if I’d overex-aggerated Papa’s desire to keep me all for himself.
How like Papa to take a situation he disliked and turn it around to his advantage. Good-looking young account executives were much in demand, and Arden was smart and good with math.
“Yes, Arden,” he expounded, putting a friendly, fatherly arm over my husband’s shoulders, “my daughter can teach you the fundamentals, and the technical side, too.” His voice was smooth, easy, relaxed. “She is almost as knowledgeable as I am, and perhaps even better since the market is not a science but an art. Audrina has a stranglehold on sensitivity and intuition—right, Audrina?” He gave me another smile of great charm. Then, while Arden wasn’t looking, he quickly reached to pinch my bottom again, even harder. He smiled, and when Arden glanced our way again, Papa was hugging me lovingly.
“Now,” he continued, “I have another wonderful surprise for you.” He beamed at both of us. “I’ve taken the liberty of moving your mother out of that miserable little cottage. She is now established upstairs in the best rooms we have.” His polished smile shone again. “That is, the best next to my own.”
