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I didn’t want to turn back to Rick, but my body made the decision for me: I turned my head to look at my husband, afraid of what I would see in his eyes.
He looked back at me very steadily.
“What the hell?” I hissed. “What’s going on?”
John Franklin raised his voice for the first time. I turned to see that he had stood up, and had extended his hand to his wife, inviting her to rise as well. Heather Franklin had folded her arms tightly across her chest, clearly attempting to appear defiant. The red in her face, though, and the sparkle of tears at the corners of her eyes, gave the lie to the strength of her resistance.
“I’ve tried very hard to be understanding, Heather,” John said, the decision in his voice sending a shiver up my spine. “But it’s time for you to learn your lesson the old-fashioned way. You know your behavior is out of control. We’re lucky the New Modesty program accepted us as inquirers, and we’re getting on that plane whether you can sit comfortably on the flight or not.”
Heather’s face dissolved into tears. “John!” she said. For the first time since the argument had begun, she seemed to remember that other couples surrounded her, and to my dismay she looked at me. I tried to make my face sympathetic, but I knew that I almost certainly looked horrified instead. I looked away immediately, and I saw her husband looming over her, a severe expression on his face.
My heart seemed to flip over in my chest, and a distressing tremor seemed to take hold of my lower body. That expression… a little angry, a little disappointed, maybe a little reluctant to force the matter, but above alldetermined… I didn’t want it to, but it reminded me of Rick—notmyRick, really, the kind, loving man I had gotten to know gradually during our courtship, but the resolute man who had built a business and knew how to manage it.
I turned to him again, my heart pounding in my chest, hoping I would see on his face a very different expression from the one on the clearly insane John Franklin’s. Instead, I saw the very same determined look, along with the shade of reluctance that said,I didn’t want it to come to this.
“Do I have to get a skycap, Heather?” Miss Haddon asked, her own sweet voice more severe than I had imagined it could get. I noted with a chill how the agent had switched to Heather’s first name, as if the bride had lost the right to be treated as an adult. “Or will you obey your husband?”
Oh, no.I had checked that box. It couldn’t somehow be, like, legally binding, right? It just couldn’t.
“But…” Heather said, her eyes widening. I thought I could see in her expression that she, too, had tapped on the checkbox, and that it had just occurred to her, too, that there might be something more to that agreement than an old-fashioned vibe.
I looked over at Rick. He lowered his chin, his face set into the same resolute visage I had seen a moment before, though perhaps with even more decision. My breathing started to speed up and grow ragged.
“No buts, Heather,” John Franklin said. “Get up and come with me, or I’ll get help bringing you to the private room for your lesson.”
I heard a little whimper come from deep down in my chest. My eyes went to the third of the young wives here in what suddenly seemed a much less comfortable sort of airport lounge: her mouth was agape and her eyes wide as she also watched the Franklins’ mortifying little drama.
Lesson.That word, more than any of the many other disturbing things going on a few feet away from my luxurious leather-upholstered seat, set me off. I turned back to Rick.
“Take me home. Now,” I hissed.
Rick moved his head in a gesture that seemed like it would be a nod, but in fact represented only an increase in the intensity of his steady gaze. He remained silent for a period that almost certainly lasted less than a second but to me seemed to stretch on for an hour. I had the chance in that moment to look at my reaction—mywholereaction to the impression that my husband had been going to nod. To say, yes, he would take me home.
I had felt a tiny bit of relief. I tried to focus on that, and to push away the utter confusion I felt about the other part of my reaction—the part that seemed to come as much or more from my body as from my mind.
I didnotfeel let down,I told myself.I didnotfeel disappointed at the thought Rick would just drive me home and this nightmare of a marriage would simply go away… no disappointment that I wouldn’t get to see what happened to Heather Franklin or to the other girl who seemed just as horrified as I did by Heather’s mortifying circumstances… and for fuck’s sake no let-down that I wouldn’t get to see what it might have to do with me, and whether my husband might turn out to be like John Franklin… or like Scott.
But the way Rick had moved his head, it became immediately clear, didn’t represent acquiescence at all.
“You consented, Dee,” he said quietly.
“Not…” I realized my voice had gone way up in volume, and I decided I didn’t want to try to control it. “Not to… tothis.”
I saw Miss Haddon glance over at me, and then turn her face the other way, looking over her other shoulder at the reception area. I followed that gaze and saw that another agent, who had almost exactly the same composed expression on her face, was looking straight back at me. I felt the blood drain from my face and then return in a massive blush as the second agent got up from her desk and began to walk toward me and Rick.
My eyes swiveled back to the third young wife, to see that she had fixed her eyes on her young husband. He watched her the same way Rick watched me, I noticed with a lurch in my stomach. The fourth wife in the lounge, the slightly older one, was deep in hushed conversation with her own husband, knowing smiles on their faces.
The crazy idea that they wouldn’t have enough skycaps to handle all three of us floated into my mind. Could I yell, “Let’s make a break for it, ladies!”? If I just started to run, would Heather and the other girl follow suit, until we pushed past the skycaps and burst out the door of the airport into the free air and could run away and live on our own in the wilderness, not worrying about marriage or husbands ever again?
I stood up. I didn’t really have any expectation that any of the other wives would help me, and of course they didn’t.
“Dee,” Rick said. “Sit down, please.”
I looked down at him, feeling like a wild animal whose fight-or-flight reflex had just kicked in, along with a dizzying shot of adrenaline. I recognized, somewhere in my rational mind, that although my tender, loving Rick made up an essential part of the man I had married, so too did the decisive, even dominant guy who looked back at me—and I realized that I loved that part of Rick, too.
Not just loved. I felt my forehead crease.Wanted. I wanted… that.
A sob burst from my chest. I turned away from Rick and the approaching agent.
