Megan Abbott - Bury Me Deep

And that Mr. Lanigan. He’s one of those. All those big fellas strutting around with fancy waistcoats and running the town. Well, he’s an Elk. A Grand Knight with the Knights of Columbus. He sits on the Chamber of Commerce, handing out favors. If he weren’t a papist, he might be mayor.

All those comers, every June they send their wives eighty miles straight up into the mountains. The Hassayampa Mountain Club, they call it. Then, back here in town, they make hay all summer long. The office girls. Girls that work in the shops. And the nurses. Always the nurses. And there was talk of Marion being Mr. Lanigan’s summer gal, only it was still spring. I didn’t talk of it, but others did.

See, I walk in the Lord’s path of kindness, and I figure I’ll tell Marion that there’s buzzing in the air and she might do best to keep her quarter, to walk in churchly ways. After all, she is a married woman and, the way it sounds, those girls are running a regular operation there. Wild parties and who knows what. Those girls have no starch in their pleats, do you know what I mean to say? When Louise Mercer walks, there’s nothing that stays still. And the other one, one hears tell, she haint stood upright since Hoover took oath and sunk us all.

But Marion, she don’t care to listen. Like I said, she liked their lively ways.

It had been only a month, thirty-four days. Yet Marion could no longer remember the before of it. Her body, she would rest her hands on it and it was changed. The face in the mirror, hers yet not the face that had been there before.

Her fingers on the calendar, so glad that the blood had come, would go to church twice that week for the blood, had gone twice last week asking for it.

Fingertips on the calendar, she saw forty-six days before Dr. Seeley might come for Easter.

IT WAS IN THIS MODE, this reckless mode, that she, fevered head to toe, laid herself open. Would that she had her head about her, she would not have let him talk her, breathless and confused, into stealing away to the third-floor supply room at the clinic, three oxygen canisters rolling, rolling endlessly across the long floor as her legs curled and curved about him.

That evening, she had gone after work to Diamond’s department store intending to purchase the straw, grosgrain-ribboned hat of taffy pink in the front window with the five dollars Joe Lanigan had given her, twisting the bill between her breasts, saying, “Here’s a little candy, Marion. Show me something.” Once she arrived, however, she found herself in the undergarments department, lips tearing between her teeth, softly fingering lingerie. The salesgirl slipped the shirred ribbon garters and peach crepe de chine step-ins into a slim box of deep blue. Jostling on the streetcar, she tucked her hand in the bag and rested it on the top of the box the whole ride.

But he did not appear that night and apologized the next day, on the telephone, as she covered her face with her hand, elbow resting on the typewriter. What’s more, he could not see her tonight either. Why could she not manage two days without, and what would she do if Dr. Seeley arrived, if money held and he forbore, and arrived in town now just over five weeks away.

That night, he with a daughter’s birthday dinner and she off to Louise and Ginny’s and Louise was going to henna her hair and Ginny decided that Marion should go platinum.

“Oh no, Ginny, Dr. Milroy wouldn’t like it and I don’t think it suits me.”

But Ginny, lips gleaming, was jiggling soap flakes into a footed dish tingling with peroxide and teary ammonia.

“Have a cocktail, Marion,” Louise said. “So’s you won’t notice while Ginny burns you like morning toast.”

An hour later, they were rubbing her head with a soft towel, one on either side of her, and when she looked into the waved mirror, it was like a swirling puff of cotton edged in bright silver. Trying, she could barely see herself from six months ago, the long thick sandy mane she had to soak in castor oil. Now she saw this twirling silver pinwheel. Who did she think she was, and Ginny twisting a tube of violet lipstick and dragging it across Marion’s lips dizzily, her happy breath on Marion’s face?

“What did you do to our fair girl?” A voice rang out from the front door, and wouldn’t you know it was Joe Lanigan there, carrying a creamy wedge of birthday cake.

“Joe!” Ginny squealed, and Louise ran over to take his coat.

Marion stood, shaking her hair, which felt unreal to her, like someone else’s silk trimming.

“Don’t she look like Joan Bennett?” Louise said, taking the cake wedge from him and lifting it to her outstretched tongue for a taste. “Isn’t she a dream?”

“It was my idea, I’ll have you mark it,” Ginny piped up.

Joe Lanigan, he was looking at Marion and she felt her neck still wet from the sink. She felt the front of her shirt clinging to her and she felt his eyes on her. It did things to her.

“Do you like the new Marion?” Louise said.

“I like all Marions, old and new,” Joe said, running his icing-edged hand along his mouth. “And I like how many Marions there are. And how many you have to give,” he said, winking at this last bit.

“Look at Gent Joe getting an eyeful,” Marion heard Ginny say.

“So you like what we proffer, Joe,” and this was Louise. But Marion could only focus on Joe. She felt her skin raise up under his eyes. And she knew she was in trouble.

By the time he had walked over to her, her legs were quivering, vibrating—all with Louise and Ginny seeing everything. Knowing for certain what they may have only guessed before.

“Marion,” he was saying, and he was putting his hand in her hair and then he was right up against her.

“Maybe they want to be alone, Lou-Lou,” she could hear Ginny say, giggling.

“I don’t suppose they mind either way,” said Louise, as Joe Lanigan was pressing Marion into the small bedroom, pressing her against the shutter doors, skin pinching, his hand flat on her wet front, “but I’d just as soon play Parcheesi.”

“The hell you would,” Ginny was saying. “Wouldn’t you like to see Marion’s pretty skin?”

“I don’t need to watch that to see Marion’s pretty skin, Ginny.”

“What, dear heart, might you be suggesting, and please pass the peanuts, I got terrible hungry, just like that.”

From one of the girls’ twin beds beneath her, springs squeaking, Marion could hear them play Parcheesi, the dice clattering.

“I’m eating your pawn, Lou-Lou.”

“Eat away, little brute. Show me your teeth, and your tongue.”

AN HOUR LATER, maybe more, floating in and out of sleep on Louise’s bed, the peroxide tingling in her nose, her head, she could hear Louise talking, or thought she could, through the door.

“Remember, Gent Joe, remember. Remember, because I surely do. Watch the way my gums move up and down and up and down. When I have the inclination, I just can’t stop talking.”

And he, and she could hear the laughter in his voice, keen and sharp, and she could feel it jigsaw in her stomach as if his hands were back on her: “How could I forget, Louise? I wouldn’t want to. We all marvel at that gorgeous mouth of yours, don’t we? It’s worth all the noise it makes.”

“Don’t play. You got enough to play with.”

“That I do.”

Then Marion shook her head and felt a swell of the ammonia all through her head and there were no more voices, no voices except her own, recalling her own past words to Dr. Seeley, Remember me. Do not abandon me here. Remember me.

What could her letters to Dr. Seeley say now after so many days of this? Dr. Seeley, I have let this man in, this smiling gentleman, and the things he has done to me, could I list them for you? Could I share the time he pulled the ribbons from my dress and wrapped them tight round my baby wrists? Could I share the time he rubbed me raw, my face flat on the Oriental carpet of his drawing room, my face speckled red, knees strawberried raw, and not one curl of regret as he ruined me, Dr. Seeley, over and over again? Is this something I can share with you, Dr. Seeley, and have you forgive me still? Especially after your own sorrows and the ways in which I have punished you for them, for your private weakness? For some things there can be no forgiveness, nor even words. Some things are meant only to be fevers in the brain.