May 1945:
“Jesus!” Chuck bellowed somewhere beyond the ladies’ room door. Moira opened the door a slit, reeling back, a hand over her gasp, trying to unsee her husband Chuck standing at the full-length mirror, his gelatinous belly hanging over his boxers, his bulbous parts squished down in a pant-leg.
Upon closing the door, she resumed her soul-searching at the frilly hotel vanity, her face in the mirror, her eyes glaring back. She powdered her nose from multiple angles, wondering if Chuck saw her as she saw herself, her telltale nose and earlobes. But, alas, she made good use of her dark wavy hair, obscuring her ears. Was she doing the same with her father? He’d stuck out at the wedding, a NYC Jew, educated, well-spoken, not of the same world as Chuck’s frumpy, potentially hysterical mother, a shapeless matron, shrill and garishly made-up, clinging to Chuck like a wife, disapproving of all, except Chuck, of course, though Moira could hear the irritation in his voice when he spoke to his mother, his bristling at her whiny demands and supposed helplessness. But he’d decided his mother was going to live with them. He’d leave Moira with her, at home, with their future kids.
***
Moira’s mom died when she was nine, and Chuck’s father ran off when he was seven. Moira had been a daddy’s girl—something else about her life she’d never shared with Chuck. Her dad’s unwavering belief in her academic ability propelled her through grad school. She’d made better grades than the boys, the men, who didn’t want to date her, though she’d never acted like a smarty pants. It didn’t help that she had a “stein” at the end of her name. She’d been quick to tell everyone she wasn’t a practicing Jew.
After Moira turned twenty-five, single with no prospects, her dad began voicing second thoughts about her working. He’d gotten more religious when news of the Nazi camps came out. He’d started talking about grandchildren. Moira had been happy working in the research lab, but indeed it was true that the few women in her field of chemistry were homely and alone.
***
“Jesus!” Chuck stood at a full-length mirror, surrounded by tropical-themed décor, challenging him to sunny, juvenile fun. Sex with a Caribbean whore? Looking back at him was a man with a belly, flaccid and jiggling, his boxers so tight, his balls pushing out.
“You okay, Chuck honey?”
Moira, his wife of eight hours, stuck her head out the ladies’ room door, skittering back, closing the door. He lit a cig (which was not what the sissy Brits called them). He sucked in the smoke, blowing it out, twisting his reflection around in the mirror, a sluggish fashion model, taking in his flabby ass, his naked paunch, the extra thirty pounds mostly sagging around his middle, the irony not lost on him that he’d come back less mannish from the navy.
He yanked the hotel robe across his bulk. Battle of the bulge in all the wrong places. He lit another cig, took a hit. Screw-it! He’d done his naval (ha, ha) duty like a man, fulfilled his obligation to Uncle Sam, like his duty to Jesus Christ, according to their preacher earlier that day, apparently envisioning this night.
Sonofabitch! He tripped over some wedding gifts, falling to his knees. “It’s okay, Moira!” he said, standing on wobbly tree-trunk legs, his robe pulled open. The gifts better damn well be worth it. Too many god-damned fools had gathered at the wedding! Moira’s father, for one. The man kept mentioning so and so’s brother, or someone’s cousin, or some other unlucky bastard who’d gotten himself killed in the war, and he hadn’t seemed impressed with Chuck. Even Chuck’s lawyer-friends had looked at him funny. So what if Chuck had a heck of a good time in the war? He’d been an officer from the start, assigned to a ship that hadn’t seen any action. The Nazis and Japs had been off on their own ships, eating schnitzels and whatever crap the Japs ate. What the hell! Well, he’d gotten a few pats on the back from the lawyers, some of them old school pals. Some jealous, no doubt. Chuck, at thirty, was starting his own law practice. A “hotshot,” they said. But in Chuck’s mind, this career move was long past due.
***
Moira met Chuck six months ago, a dream husband according to her new friends, mostly Chuck’s colleagues’ wives, some of them younger than she, many married with children. It’d sounded a bit crazy at first: Chuck’s insistence they get engaged after three months. This was followed by a two-month stint of letter-writing when Chuck went off on his naval duty. Max is a great cook, he’d written. Moira had then suffered a sudden eagerness that led to impatience. She’d wanted her fiancée home, sometimes sounding so desperate in their letters (her face now hot with shame) that Chuck was somewhat cold and delayed when responding.
He’d come back different somehow, more than just the weight. She’d hurried up to him as he’d disembarked his ship. She’d said nothing about his weight. What followed was a countdown to their wedding, a whirlwind of preparations, paid for by Chuck. They’d both seemed to glow with the attention, the respect due the betrothed.
Hadn’t she looked forward to this her entire life? The marrying part, the belonging, laying with a man, her husband, then a family all her own. Even Chuck, in his rare probing about her life, had said she must yearn to be the mother she never had. Her last memory of her mother? No one asked. She’d been a girl, unable to fully comprehend, her beloved mother so pale, her slender hand reaching out to Moira.
Had a tiny part of her nine-year-old self been glad to have her mother out of the picture? Freudian bullshit! She imagined Chuck saying this, if she dared bring it up.
***
Chuck dimmed the lights, better for Moira. He wondered what the heck she was getting into, shutting herself up like that in the girls’ room so soon after they’d crossed the threshold. I love you, she’d said more than once since they’d checked in. Going to change into something else, she’d said, still in that Rita Heyworth getup that his colleagues’ wives had advised on, her make-up way more than she usually applied, the streetlights from the window hitting something chalky on her face. I love you, she’d said before closing the ladies’ room door. Not like his mother? He lit a cig. Why the hell was he thinking about his mother, for God’s sake? I love you, my little man, his mother used to say, like he was her husband.
His mother… the problem was she’d never known where to stop, even sometimes showering in front of him as a boy, a sack of a woman, her tummy and jugs. Don’t cry. Tears are unmanly, his mother said when Chuck was seven, after his dad, the Colonel, ran off with a Quaker WAC.
He took a swig of Jim Beam from a flask in the robe pocket, reassessing himself in the mirror, the cig hanging out his mouth. Still tall, dark and handsome if you blurred your eyes a little. The new secretary in his office sure flirted with him. Bettie Ann? Just Ann? Funny, Bettie Ann reminded him of Betty Sue. Both Betties were husky and sweet, with that raucous backcountry way of speaking which, even now, made his cock Sieg Heil.
***
I did it my way…. crooned Sinatra, the music wafting its way into the ladies room where Moira sat. And more, much more than this….
More preening. Hadn’t Chuck said she looked exotic? Early on, after they’d met? Her Ava Gardner eyes, he’d said. His friends were mostly law students, different somehow, and they seemed to like her. They loved Chuck. A whizz-kid, they’d called him. Yes, Chuck was smart, when he deemed something worthy of speaking.
Of course she hadn’t told Chuck about Bill Burke. She’d met him about a year before Chuck. He was tall and dark-haired like Chuck, with deep-set eyes, even deeper than Chuck’s. It jolted her. Something ugly yet alive! A tweak in her private parts, more tragic and piercing now that Bill Burke was more fully a stranger….
THUNK! Good God. Earthquakes in the Caribbean?
“I’m okay, Moira,” Chuck bellowed from somewhere beyond the door, then coughing up another storm. She tried to picture him on the bed that awaited.
If he didn’t enjoy himself, he’d surely leave her. She’d heard that men like it most when their wives feel pleasure along with them.
It didn’t make sense that Bill Burke disappeared. She’d enjoyed his kisses so much. After he’d left, she been so lost, barely making it through life.
Chuck had come along like a salve, his bearish body enfolding her. His kisses and fondling so overwhelming, it seemed nothing much was required of her. Such a great catch, her new friends said of Chuck. Love grows, they’d said.
***
Had Chuck ever screwed a girl he was supposed to love? His only steady girl would’ve been Betty Sue in college. He took a couple more slugs of JB, lit a cig. Whew boy! Freud would’ve had a heyday with that Betty Sue, her Southern drawl, her heavy breathing, getting on top of him, claiming she liked sex, making un-lady-like noises, but she’d eventually settled down, lain back, carried away by the joy of having the man of her dreams inside her.
He stubbed out a cig, lit another. His college buddies nicknamed him Dr. Freud, due to his circuitous route to law school. He’d never told them he’d thought studying psychology would make him less shy and reserved. He’d hated being called that as a boy. And who didn’t want to learn how to read people, especially when you go into business. The textbooks made him cringe, though, their obsession with children of divorce, boys of absent fathers. That over-sexed Freud interpreting everything. Yet he had to admit Freud was knowledgeable about women, their need to live through their husbands’ experiences, their peckers. Old Jew must’ve stolen this from someone else.
“Everything going okay in there, Moira?” He was back at the ladies’ room door, finding the right tone. “Moira darling, come on out.” She was busy douching or whatever to prepare for the big night. Whoops! Jim Beam dribbled down his front. He hid the flask, stumbling like a pathetic drunkard. He rubbed himself, still engorge-able.
***
“Moira, darling, come on out Moira darling…” Like Gary Cooper but with more of the Bogart brooding nature, her roommates had said of Chuck when she’d brought him to the dorm after their first date. It was a blind one set up by acquaintances, with Chuck already an alumnus at their prestigious, but still very Southern, university.
She opened the door a crack. Sweat beaded Chuck’s face which was too pale, bloated, his slicked-back hair a dull dark. A flash of childish disappointment on his face? “Get on out here,” he said, taking her hand, guiding her out into the hotel room, darkened, tropical.
***
The nervous virgin stood before him. The poor girl had on a negligee, but it was too long, too much granny lace. She’d washed off the tawdry makeup.
“To us!” he said, handing her some champagne, “to a great life,” his arm up in a toast, his cock on the losing end of a seesaw. “Till a painful gruesome death do us part,” he added with a gruff chuckle. Moira giggled, nervous-like. “Drink up,” he said, thinking it best he get her drunk.
“I’m so glad I met your mother,” she says outta the blue.
What’s she getting at? He hadn’t told Moira, but his mother had wanted to keep Moira’s surname off the wedding invitations, even suggesting they not invite Moira’s dad. Moira won’t take care of you right, his mother said. He hadn’t tried to explain that Moira had finished her graduate degree, in chemistry of all things. She knew how to fit in and not make a blubbering useless disgrace of herself.
“So proud… of you…” Moira said, her speech slurring. “A hot…” She burped, like surprised at her own cuteness, covering her mouth. The booze didn’t look right on her, but he had to give her credit, a woman who could grasp how sharp he was. She raised her glass, taking more sips.
“Have a seat,” he said, taking her elbow, leading her to the bed, where she sat down and crossed her legs, wobbly.
What lay beneath her primness? He used to think he could rid her of it, pull out something hidden. But no, that might be grotesque, no better than her looking like a scared little bird, trying to smile, needy as all the others.
“Anything wrong, Chuckie?”
He still couldn’t shake their fight, from a few days ago, when she’d fallen prey to some busybodies, some women in her Bridge club who’d recounted what their husbands, some of Chuck’s colleagues, had said. Some hooey about him stealing clients from his old boss and mentor, Ol’ Wendall. Just a bunch of gossipy hausfraus, he’d told Moira. She’d chuckled, saying she’d be joining them soon.
He liked her quiet sense of humor and also her dark wavy hair which fell now over her shoulders. She was exotic for an Ohio boy like him.
“Chuck, honey, what’re you churning over?”
“Celebrating,” he said.
“My husband!” She raised her glass to where he was standing above. “A good man.”
“A good woman,” he said, thinking she didn’t look obviously Jewish.
“To your practice. Your office… the pretty girl secretary!”
“My swivel chair!” he said.
“Your pencils!” she said, her tone kinda raucous, chuckling at her joke.
“Now that’s enough,” he said. “Love you, sweetie.” He took her goblet.
“Wha’s wrong Chuck?”
He sat down, stubbed out a cig. “Come here, sweetheart.” He took her arm, coaxing her closer, the insistence now moving up from his cock, an inconsolable need at odds with his rational mind. All he had to do now was keep thinking about the Betties.
God-Damnit! What’d she just do? Jerked away? A tiny movement, no doubt timeless.
***
Ahhh! A roast beef on top of her! His eyes glazed, otherworldly, all his focus lower, down there. She recalled the gynecologist, his hand so cold and rational, then Bill Burke, his dark eyes condemning her to feel!