had her camera handy. She’d get down low, shoot up from the surface of the table.
“The world is going to hell,” Dooley’s brother was saying. “Pardon my language, ladies, but it’s the truth. Kennedy, Oswald, Ruby, civil rights. Women thinking that they can do anything a man can do.”
“But shouldn’t they be allowed to try at least?” Charlotte said. “What’s the harm?”
Bill didn’t hear her and charged ahead, lifting his fork higher and higher with each point he made.
“It’s a battle for civilization, just like in the movies,” Bill said. “Fort Apache. That’s what a place like Woodrow is like. We’re the only ones left to fight off the Indians. We’ve got to circle the wagons, protect what this country stands for before it gets turned upside down by people who are all turned inside out. The Negro, for example. What most people don’t realize, the Negro prefers a separation of the races just as much as you or I do!”
Dooley and his father nodded along. Charlotte was curious to know when exactly the Negro had confided this preference to Bill, but she lacked the energy—or was it the courage?—to ask him. Bill was the second-most successful lawyer in Logan County and had never lost a case. Dooley’s father was the most successful lawyer in Logan County. If Charlotte dared dip a toe in a discussion about politics, the men would genially and implacably expose the various flaws in her logic, the way one might pick every last bone from a fish.
Charlotte’s sister-in-law touched her arm and gushed about a new pattern—a free-line overblouse on a pleated stem—that she’d discovered.
“It’s a terrible tragedy, what happened,” Dooley’s father said, “but the silver lining is that Johnson is an improvement on Kennedy. Johnson isn’t nearly so liberal. He’s from the South and understands the importance of moderation.”
“I can’t decide between a thin plaid wool or a whisper-check cotton,” Charlotte’s sister-in-law told her. “What’s your vote?”
Charlotte glanced over and noticed that Joan was watching her. Seeing what? Charlotte wondered. Learning what?
After dinner the men retired to the living room, the children went outside to play, and Charlotte started on the dishes. Dooley’s mother followed her into the kitchen. Charlotte tried to shoo her away from the dirty plates, but Martha ignored her and began to scrape.
“How have you been, dear?” Which meant, Charlotte knew, How has he been?
“Just fine,” Charlotte said.
“Those girls are little angels.”
“Well. Accounts vary.”
Martha placed a plate on top of the stack. “We spoiled him terribly,” she said after a moment. “The youngest, you know.”
Charlotte shook her head. “No, Martha,” she said. If anyone was to blame for the man Dooley had become, it was Charlotte. As his girlfriend she’d been stupidly blind to his flaws. As his wife she’d indulged him because the alternative was too difficult to contemplate.
“We’d like to pitch in, Arthur and I,” Martha said.
Charlotte shook her head again, the familiar ritual. “You’ve done too much already, Martha.”
“We know how hard it can be for a young couple.”
Charlotte’s eyes welled without warning, a hot, stinging shame. She turned to wipe down the stove so that Martha wouldn’t see. So that Martha could slip the folded bills into the pocket of her apron.
“Really,” Charlotte said. “It’s not necessary.”
“We insist,” Martha said. “We just wish it was more.”
Thirty minutes later they were gone, Dooley’s parents and his brother and sister-in-law, their three boys, all of them headed home. Five minutes after that, Charlotte was filling the roasting pan with hot water and dish soap when Dooley strolled into the kitchen, his coat and hat and gloves already on.
“We’ll need some milk for tomorrow morning, won’t we?” He gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I better run up there before the store closes.”
“Your mother gave us another three hundred dollars,” Charlotte said.
He rubbed the back of his neck. Dooley preferred to enjoy the fruits of charity without having to acknowledge the tree or the picking.
“Well, dang it, Charlie,” he said. “I don’t want their money. We don’t need it.”
She wanted to laugh. Instead she turned off the hot water and stepped away from the cloud of steam. “She insisted.”
“Well, next time you tell her no, Charlie. You understand?” He started edging toward the door. “Anyway, I better run up and get that milk.”
“And you’ll be back in a jiffy,” she said, “right after you have just one drink.”
That stopped him in his tracks. His expression reminded her of the picture that had been on TV all afternoon: Lee Harvey Oswald bent double, his mouth a startled O as Jack Ruby fired a bullet into his stomach.
Charlotte had surprised herself, too. But in for a penny, in for a pound. “We can’t keep on like this,” she said.
“Keep on like what?” he said.
“Let’s sit down and talk about it, honey. Really talk, for once.”
“Talk about what?”
“You know what.”
His face darkened, a gathering storm of righteous indignation. When he was drunk, he swore that he would never in his life touch another drop of liquor. When he was sober, he swore that he had never in his life touched a drop.
“What I know,” he said, “I know the girls are going to need some milk for their cereal in the morning.”
“Dooley …”
“What’s the matter with you, Charlie? Why do you want to ruin Sunday for everybody?”
She felt her energy drain away. He would keep at this, keep at her, for as long as it took. When you stood between Dooley and a bottle, he was the surf pounding the cliffs to sand. Surrender was the only sensible course of action.
“Go ahead,” she said.
“Don’t you want the girls to have milk for their cereal in the morning?”
“Go ahead. I’m sorry.”
He left, and she folded the tablecloth. She swept up the crumbs under the dining-room table and checked on the girls in their room. Rosemary had no fewer than three different Disney True-Life Adventures books open before her. Prowlers of the Everglades, The Vanishing Prairie, and Nature’s Half Acre. Joan was carefully clipping squares from sheets of colored construction paper. The dog lay curled between them on the bottom bunk, his usual spot.
“What are you doing, sweetie?”
