Archive of Our Own ^beta

First times are a drug. They catch you with their power. It’s never better than it is the first time. She felt that on the bus and the ghost of that memory haunted her. The first time she made a choice she thought was for herself. The first time she pushed aside what others, her mother, always asked her to do. The first time she left that stifling town for something new. Something wonderful.

She met him in Tulsa. At the hotel, just like he said. They were married. He had everything ready. She never thought she would marry someone like him. And their wedding night. Another first time. Not because it was her first time, although it was. But because it was magical. And it was magical because of him. The words her said to her before they both left the stifling town kept running through her head. And that night he kept murmuring over and over, ‘baby baby baby’. ‘You’re so beautiful’ ‘I can’t believe you’re mine’.

She was beautiful for him that first night. And for many days after as well. For quite a long time she was beautiful for him. He worked as a bell hop and she got a job as a shop selling dresses. Of course she was good at it. The owner paid her cheap and gave her a couple dresses a month that she had to wear to work. She smiled and fluttered at the customers but that was easy because she knew she was going to see him after. He might even be waiting for her outside the shop.

At first he was. Every day. Waiting.

And then one day he was late. But he was there the next day so she forgot about it. But then, a month or so later he was late again.

Her mom had been wrong about one thing. The money wasn’t too bad. They lived in a tiny place, just a large room with a kitchenette and an alcove off the side for a bed. It was hers. It was theirs. She loved it.

It took her probably longer than it might have taken another woman to figure it all out though. His words kept running through her, distracting her from the present. Those words he said back in the stifling town before he hopped on the train to meet her in Tulsa,

‘Baby I got a chance with you. It won’t be big time, but that isn’t important is it? Listen baby, you’re the only real thing I ever wanted. Ever! You're mine! I’ve got to claim what’s mine or I’ll be nothing as long as I live!
You love me, you know it! You love me! You love me!’

And before that, even prettier words,

‘You make me feel important… no you make me feel patient.’

The word patient caught her. Because she already knew she made men feel important. She had never cared about being big time. Maybe because, in her own way, she already had that. She had learned long ago that if she smiled at a boy something happened to him, he puffed up somehow. She had that effect. At first she marveled at it and then she used it and then she tired of it. And she was tired of it for the longest time. But no one else had ever told her she made them feel patient. As if they didn’t have to push their way to the top because they were already at the top. She had brought him up to the top with her. She just wasn’t strong enough to hold him there.

She leaned down and scooped up a shovel of dirt. The air was clear here. Clear and bright. From what she could see in the almost darkness the sun would be up soon. Not a cloud in the sky.

She liked the desert. The dry air. The clean bright sky. No clouds cluttering up the place. It was a far cry from Tulsa and the stifling town. She never said the name of the stifling town, not out loud or in her head. No matter how often her mother wrote and begged her to return or wrote and carefully asked her how she was. Sometimes she mentioned Alan, saying he was with this or that girl, she was surprised at first how those words just shed off of her, as if her mother was talking about someone she had never known.

Shoveling was heavy but with each scoop she felt herself getting lighter. It was sand here. Sand and wind and hot hot sun. A different kind of heat than in the stifling town. Less humid. Dry and direct. It didn’t try to suffocate you, just burn the hell out of you.

It wasn’t until years into it, years of being married that she really started to feel it. It took her a long time to recognize the pattern. His pattern. Perhaps it was the pattern of a lot of men. His inability to keep any money he earned. His drinking. The gradual absences and then the flurry of self-pity at her sorrow. Her mother had been right, he didn’t, no he couldn’t support her. He drank too much. There were other women. She cringed in remembrance of her own words: ‘You don’t love someone because he’s perfect’. She wondered why she had said that. It was almost like someone had put words into her mouth. Made her say something that she didn’t believe. Or at least she hadn’t known that she didn’t believe it.

Sometimes she felt her life had been tailormade to bring her to this point. She was the pretty one. Her sister was the smart one. Of course her sister was pretty too but then stars were always hidden by the sun. She wasn’t the smart one though and that made all the difference. People expected plans for Millie. From her they expected marriage to a wealthy man. Maybe even the wealthiest man in town. He was the only one who might deserve her. She never thought that. She was never comfortable with Alan the way she was comfortable with Hal. And somewhere along the way she realized she may have mistook comfort for love.

She shoveled some more sand, dropping it too close to the edge of the hole. Some slid back down. It was more of a depression than a hole. She would have to throw the shovelfuls out farther.

Why had she fallen for him? Because she was scared. Because she didn’t feel like she fit in. Because she was bored. That was the only true answer she could give herself and when she thought it, when she tentatively spoke it aloud it was the most banal thing in the entire world. The stifling town was boring. It was boring and staid and stifling. She never fit in, not at Alan’s place, not at the club. Not anywhere that her mother wanted her to be. She was much more at home in her tiny studio apartment with the faded wallpaper and peeling paint above the tub in the bathroom.

The sky was changing from deep blue, almost black, to a brighter blue. The air was cool but she didn’t feel it at all. She dug deeper. In her bare feet she could feel the coolness of the hidden layers of sand. She wanted to roll in it. To cool off her skin until she shivered. Maybe she would head north after this. For an instant her thoughts flew east but then she shook her head. She wouldn’t bother Millie. Her sister had gone to college and become a famous author just like she said she would. Sometimes she saw Millie’s picture on a book in bookshop. She never read them. It was enough to know that they were there.

You can forgive a man a lot of things when you’re pretty. She knew that when she was young. They treat you nice. They protect you from other men. They buy you things. They apologize. They hold you higher than other girls. It’s a hard floor you hit when you get older. She marveled the first time a man ignored her. It almost took her breath away. It was love/hate at first experience. She experimented with it. Dressing slovenly and not fixing her hair. She could walk down the street and it was almost as if she wasn’t there. For the first time in her life she walked across the street and didn’t have men look at her.

It didn’t matter with other men. It only mattered with him. One time she was experimenting. Heading downtown on her day off. No makeup, her clothes not chosen to flatter and she saw Hal stumble out of a bar. It was the middle of the day. He had left that morning as if he was going to work. She edged her way closer. Watching him as if she was at a zoo. He staggered and stumbled. He had gained weight since they had been together. Watching him it seemed as if he had lost his center of gravity. She wondered if he had ever had one.

She slipped closer to him on the sidewalk and her heart began a wild tattoo. He had never seen her like that, deliberately. In the mornings he told her she was beautiful. But he had never seen her in the afternoon on a day when she really didn’t care.

She took a deep breath and started to walk past him.

“Hey baby,” for a moment her heart stopped, “could ya’ give a man a dime?”

She almost giggled out loud. He didn’t know it was her. She was going to keep walking but then something bright took over her, something wild and sweet and she turned and looked at him. He was familiar and strange all at once. He looked at her and she knew he didn’t recognize her.

“Hey baby,” he continued, “Do you wanna get a drink?”

She didn’t say anything. She smiled at him. She watched him change, even in his drunkenness, it was as if she had punched him in the face.

“Baby, baby, baby! I knew it was you! What are you doing here?”

He tried to take a step and swayed scrabbling at the wall for support.

Every word he had ever spoken to her fled. Released into the air like once caged birds. She was free. And from that moment she decided she would be free. She thought her sister might be proud of her. Really proud of her.

The sand was slipping back into the hole. She shifted around and began digging from another side. Shifting it farther out from the edge. It was too dry. Nothing was sticking. The hole wouldn’t be deep enough. She looked around. The road was straight, disappearing on both sides into nothingness. There were hills in the distance, striated with reds and yellows and browns, but she couldn’t see the colors of them yet. A thin bright line had just begun touching the horizon.

It didn’t have to be deep. Just enough so that when she covered him up she couldn’t see him. She started at one end and dug until the hole was as deep as her knees. She had to reach down and pull the sand back so that it wouldn’t slide back in.

It was a new day. She had some money saved up. She had her driver’s license. She could go anywhere she wanted to. And still, if she dressed right and did her hair and put on makeup she could give herself an easy time of it.

It was a different world now. Kids were different than when she was young. Somehow, while she was focused on her own little life, the world had exploded around her. Everything she had wanted seemed small and unworthy. War protests seemed to be everywhere. She guessed, or maybe her mother had told her, that Millie had taken part in one. She knew so little about everything. She didn’t want her life to be just that.

It was as deep as it was going to get now. She moved away from the hole and threw the shovel to one side. The trunk was already open. She reached in, grabbed at the heavily wrapped body and pulled. She heaved it up over the lip of the trunk and it flopped out, hanging down towards the sand.

It was a shame it had to be the way it was. She would have been fine with a divorce. There would have been no accusations from her. But he said no. He said no when he was drunk and even more when he was sober. He refused to discuss it like an adult and instead became emotional, once almost punching a hole in the wall. And then he insisted on knowing what she was doing at all hours of the day. He showed up to walk home with her after work. Instead of her heart leaping as it did in the beginning, her stomach would turn and her arms and legs would tingle and get heavy. Her feet dragged when she saw him waiting. He would cling at her hand, sometimes grabbing her arm, as they walked. Their steps always out of sync.

She tugged the feet over the lip and the entire package collapsed to the ground. It was easier to drag it across the sand. The thin bright line across the horizon had grown a head. Light, bright light touched the ground all around her.

She pulled him across the sand and pushed him into the hole. Retrieving the shovel she stood and looked down. It was perhaps the first bright thing she had ever done.

“On earth as it is in heaven,” she whispered and threw down the first load of sand.