Anna Noyes - Goodnight, Beautiful Women

“It’s awful out there,” I said.

“Now dear, why don’t you just go along,” said my mother, and she picked up her teacup and stared at it in fury like the steaming tea was my face. My father moved his hand from my hair to my shoulder.

“Never mind then,” Nicholas said. He turned toward me on the couch, but looked beyond me to my parents. “The fact of it is I was hoping to ask you to be my wife.”

It felt like a long pause but it was probably only seconds of silence in which I became aware that you’d been standing in the parlor doorway and had now disappeared from it.

There were a number of things I can think of that might have been held inside this moment. In hindsight I thought of my father on the day he got drunk with Nicholas, sitting on the stairs weeping as Nicholas played the piano and I sang. I thought of the sick way my father looked since Ben died, and of the warmth of his hand on my shoulder, a hand that squeezed my shoulder gently after Nicholas blurted his proposal, and less so, much less so, I thought of my mother, who had taken to wearing her robe from morning until evening, and ghosting around the house with her swollen eyes and mottled face. I thought of everyone laughing at the dance and Nicholas twirling you in his arms and the dance hall’s circle of light, and how dark and cold it was as I walked back home alone, through the parlor where Mother was listening to Ben’s old records and father was drinking scotch by the unlit fireplace, neither one of them noticing my bloody skirts or hand, and how cold my bed was at night before you crawled into it, the sound of Mother wailing through the walls, and Nicholas’s parents’ fine house, with the polished silver, two maids, and bathtubs with golden taps, and his fine car. That is, I thought of Nicholas’s money, but also I thought of packing his car with my things and moving away, to any place else, any place other than this one.

In this moment I didn’t think any of those things. I just had a feeling, and I knew I would say yes.

“But what about Eva?” I said.

“Please,” my mother said. “Eva’s not the kind of girl you marry.”

“That was just a bit of fun,” said Nicholas, “while I waited for you. I wish her well. She understands that.”

“This is what your brother would have wanted,” my father said.

That night there were footsteps outside my door and I felt certain it was you but then in walked my mother, smelling of perfume though she wore her nightgown, a silk bundle in her arms. She sat beside me on the bed and smoothed back my hair.

“My little bride,” she said. “I can’t sleep I’m so excited. What are you thinking about?”

“Eva,” I said.

“Now listen, she’ll get over her schoolgirl crush.” She began picking at a knot in my hair. “I’m letting Eva go at the end of the week. Your father and I won’t need her anymore.”

“You can’t,” I said. “Where will she go?”

“To her mother, I suppose. Leaving will do her good. People can only accept charity for so long before it makes them weak willed.”

“Why don’t Nicholas and I take her?” I said. “Nicholas has got enough money to keep her on. She’s a good worker.”

“Listen,” my mother said. All the warmth of her face drained away leaving something cold and hard and revolted, though she continued to play with my hair. “Don’t try to outsmart me. I’m not deaf and I’m not dumb.” Her voice quieted to a hiss. “I’ve heard what you and that girl do. You’ve been very silly children and she is leaving.” I didn’t say anything. I didn’t breathe.

“Now, I can’t sleep until I see you in my dress,” she said.

She stood behind me, adjusting the dress as I turned in front of the mirror. She kept telling me how beautiful I looked and I saw it was true. There was a knock on the door. You opened it and then retreated as soon as you saw my mother.

“Excuse me,” you said.

“Not tonight, Eva,” said Mother as you closed the door behind you.

It wasn’t the end of the week when you left, but the next morning. Breakfast was not served at its usual time. Mother and Father watched as I hugged you goodbye on the porch, and in my memory I kissed you on the mouth, but I know that isn’t right. You whispered in my ear, “Don’t marry him,” and I said aloud for the sake of those listening, “Safe travels,” and we stood on the lawn and watched you walk away toward the train station. We could have arranged for a ride, but there was no time for all that, Mother said, with the wedding plans to be made. My father and mother went into the house and then my mother came back out to catch me crying. She slapped me and said, “Don’t be so ungrateful. Of all the things I could have done, here I’ve given her half a chance to lead a respectable life. And you. This is a kindness.”

There were many white steps leading to the church door. I wore Mother’s silk slippers, and even though it was a warm day the marble held the cold, which seeped through their soles. I wore Mother’s veil, a thick embroidered lace that draped over my head and came down to my ankles.

I’ve kept the wedding picture of Nicholas and me. I look handsome in the photograph. The veil ripples around my face. My hair is dark, and braided in a crown on top of my head. I am seventeen, and I look that young, but I don’t look as nervous as one’s supposed to look at seventeen. Nicholas, in the photo, could be called handsome. The cleft of his chin is a dark gash.

After the ceremony there was dinner in the dance hall — glazed geese and suckling pig with deflated eyes. The guests picked the bones clean, and danced and danced. I waltzed with my father, the musty wool of his tuxedo itching my cheek. Everyone stood outside the hall and waved goodbye as Nicholas and I drove away, tin cans clattering behind us.

The inn we drove to was very fine. It had silver taps in the bathroom. I took off my kid gloves. Sweat from my palms had turned their white satin trim gray. The hot water came gushing out so that I burned my hands. I rinsed my face and put on the gauzy nightgown my mother had picked out for me. It took me time to do up the many pearl buttons. I looked in the mirror, and my eyes were dark and darting, and my mouth was red. I thought about animals that will gnaw their foot off to get free from a trap, but I wasn’t sure exactly what the trap was, in my case, or what being free was either. I was drunk. They had served pink champagne. There were many toasts. I took off my silk slippers. I washed my feet in the bathtub.

I thought Nicholas would have switched the lights out by the time I was done in the bathroom, but all the lights were on and he was lying naked on top of the covers. He was facing away from me, and I hoped he might be sleeping. He breathed with a catch in his throat, almost snoring. I climbed into bed as quietly as I could, shimmying under the tightly cinched sheet without untucking it.

He was stroking himself.

You must know what it is he did, as I must know what he did to you. It went on all night. I think it would have been easier in the dark, for then I would have been allowed the privacy of my face, its contortions. The bedside lamp made a buzzing noise — sometimes I couldn’t hear it, sometimes it filled the room. There was a long, narrow watermark on the ceiling above the bed. He yanked my hair back, and positioned me in many different ways. It grew light outside. When it was over, Nicholas was red and sore, and he handed me a wad of bills from the bedside table and told me to go to the store around the corner for balm. I didn’t think I could walk, but I got up and walked to the bathroom and dressed. I could find only one faint bruise, already forming on my neck. There was only ever that one bruise. My lips were swollen, my chin rubbed raw from the stubble he had grown as the night drew on.