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Scott and April didn’t know—even Rick didn’t know. Something had gone wrong with me—but I wouldn’t let it stop us from having a wonderful life together. I would let Rick have intimacy with me tonight… and tomorrow, too. I made up my mind. All I had to do was lie there.
Hoping to convey to my wonderful husband that he would ‘get lucky’ that night and hoping to show Scott that I hadn’t really tried to get away from Rick’s embrace, I snuggled closer under his arm. For a moment I had the old cuddling feeling, of being wrapped in his strong limbs, protected from the world.
“No,” I told Scott, smiling as easily as I could and even trying to slip a bit of mischief into my expression. “He’s not going to let me get away.”
“Oho!” Scott said. “Rick, my boy, you’d better take her back to your room right away.”
My composure vanished, and I had to look away again as my cheeks went hotter than the sun. The urge to pull away from Rick—to run away, even, out into the wilderness until I forgot all about this unexpectedly difficult part of marriage—swelled in my chest.
“Look at you, blushing bride,” April said, her voice admiring and a little wistful. “The two of you are as pretty as a picture.”
“Thanks,” Rick said. His arm tightened a little around my shoulders, and I had an instant of warmth toward him that pushed away the embarrassment April and Scott had caused. “We’re actually looking for a place to settle down and start a family. What’s the name of your town, Scott?”
I felt my face threaten to frown. The idea of living near these people didn’t have any appeal to me, whether or not the age gap between my husband and me made us particularly well suited for their town. Indeed, at this moment I wanted to live somewhere no one would notice that Rick had eight years on me, and suppose—correctly, I knew, from what Rick had told me—that he had had intimacy with several women before he had chosen me.
I had stopped him before he could give any details. I had said it didn’t matter. Now, to my dismay, it seemed to matter a great deal.
“Rocky Falls,” Scott said, smiling. “Just your typical midwestern town. Subsidized, of course, the way a nice town needs to be these days.”
“By?” Rick asked.
“Selecta,” the older man answered, nodding. “So it’s a New Modesty town, technically.”
I felt my mouth twitch to the side in mild disapproval. Truthfully, I didn’t know very much about the New Modesty except what my parents had told me. They had approved of the program’s traditional values, and so I—in mild rebellion—didn’t.
Mild rebellion represented all the defiance I had had the ability to muster, living in my parents’ home rent-free while I worked at a café and saved money. From time to time my mom had mentioned the New Modesty to me as a possible path to an adult life, since I hadn’t really met anyone since graduating from high school and entering the working world.
Then Rick had arrived, and my folks had liked him, and no one had mentioned the New Modesty again. I hadn’t felt any curiosity, either; I supposed I had traditional values, wanting to make a loving home for my family the way my mother had for my dad and me. I didn’t want to fight with my daughter, though, the way my mom had done with me, when she wanted to get her ears pierced or to wear jeans on a day other than Saturday.
Really, I guess I hadn’t thought very hard aboutvalues—and I didn’t know why I should have to. I had Rick. I didn’t intend to let him makeallthe decisions, of course, the way my dad had seemed to make all the decisions for my family growing up. I meant to make up my own mind and even maybe vote for someone different from whoever Rick voted for. But a division of labor made all the sense in the world, I told myself. My mom had taught me to cook and to clean, and Rick had worked his way up to a comfortable income and the ability to be his own boss and make his own schedule. Keeping house for him in the traditional way, as old-fashioned as it sounded, seemed to me a very happy fate, since Rick had shown himself such an agreeable and caring partner.
He would never be interested in moving to a New Modesty town. Would he?
“Technically?” Rick asked. His voice seemed to have more curiosity in its tone than I had expected—or found to my liking. As if to confirm that something disquieting had arisen in him, he added, “I’m intrigued.”
Scott smiled enigmatically—as if he didn’t feel he could tell us everything about Rocky Falls, because of our youth, maybe, or because we hadn’t yet shown ourselves worthy of membership of some circle of initiates. I found the expression both irritating and, to my dismay, enticing.
“Of course you are,” Scott said. “Rocky Falls is a very intriguing place. The thing about the New Modesty, as you may know, is that Selecta gives local administrations a lot of freedom in how to implement the basic guidelines—you know, the traditional values stuff. In Rocky Falls that means that what happens in marriages like April and mine—and, if, say, you folks decided to settle down there, in a marriage like yours, where there’s a natural inclination toward the husband’s leadership role…”
I had just been thinking, only moments before, about how happy I felt to have found a guy who would take the lead in bringing home a nice big income. Hadn’t I? And yet I could feel how deeply my forehead had just creased at this older man’s supposition that Rick had—shouldhave—a ‘leadership role’ in our relationship.
Scott had trailed off, and I realized with a new flush of heat to my face that it might have to do with me. As he spoke I had fixed my attention on the fading sunset, but when I turned back to him I saw that he was indeed looking at me, the ironic twist of his smile demonstrating, I thought with an anxious flip of my stomach, much too much comprehension of what lay hidden behind my eyes.
He went on, then, turning his attention to Rick, who didn’t seem to have noticed the pause.
“Well, in our town husbands guide their wives in certain particular ways that set us apart. That probably seems mysterious, but it’s all I can say in mixed company. If you’re interested, there’s a program you two could apply for to come and stay for a week in Rocky Falls and see what you think.”
I had turned back toward the mountains. The last light had nearly fled from the sky, so at least Scott and April—and Rick, even—couldn’t see the expression on my face, or, above all, the blazing hot blush in my cheeks.
What could Scott possibly mean? About theparticular waysthat he couldn’t talk about with women present? At least I knew Rick must feel as repelled as I did by the man’s arrogant idea that we must be like him and his wife because Rick had a few years on me.
Self-consciously I pulled away from Rick a little, not sure whether I wanted to show Scott that my husband and I didn’t have the same kind of ‘husband-led’ relationship he and April did, or I wanted to show Rick that he shouldn’t get any ideas from what this strange near-stranger had said. I froze as I felt my own husband, as if inspired by the other man’s insane talk about the virtues of his home town, tighten his grip around my shoulders rather than letting me go.
I absolutely did not want to look at the older couple on the other couch, and yet I did. I couldn’t tell whether Scott and April had noticed what had just happened—the little conflict that had just arisen between the newlyweds. I had the very uncomfortable feeling, though, that Scott didn’t miss much. When he spoke again, though, his voice sounded casual.
“Well, darling wife,” he said, looking over at April, “we’d best get along. You know what you’ve got coming before dinner.”
The conflict awoke in my mind again: one part of me demanding that I under no circumstances look at April’s reaction to what her husband had just said, another forcing me to turn my eyes to the wife’s face—and emphatically demonstrating its strength in the way I did look, unwillingly fascinated.
