Chapter 3

Sunday, the day after Earl's confrontation of Susan, seen from her view by the writer, an admittedly partisan recorder.

When she first woke Susan was surprised to find Jen's warm body in the bed, lying back against her so that her own left arm stretched across to cup Jen's breast. As she became more aware she realised that she had been disturbed by Jen's attempts to disentangle them before their intimacy became too apparent. "You were crying in your sleep." she was told. "I felt lonely, so I joined you for company for us both." Reassured that her actions had been welcome Jen went to prepare coffee and toasted homemade bread for them both.

While she was alone Susan did wonder how consistent their tangle of bodies had been with Jen's regular claim that in Susan she had found the big sister she had always been sure that she needed. An odd claim as not only is Jen three years the elder but she is a big bodied woman while Susan is so skinny that many wonder - wrongly - if she was once anorexic. At work their relative status was such that any emotional entanglement beyond strong friendship would be regarded as an abuse of her position and probably a breach of her contract. Even if Jen accepted the career plan that she was shortly to be offered it would still be wrong morally for them to become lovers though the formal change of status would allow this, if only reluctantly. Jen would still be seen as her protégée and someone who had probably slept her way to promotion. For every reason they must remain mutually adopted sisters; loving and intimate but sisters. All the same it would be easier if she didn't know that Jen was at least as much attracted to other women as she was to men and that her own present emotional distress left her conscious of this in a way she never had been before.

Susan wasn't sure how she did it but when Jen rejoined her in bed it was plain that she was a sister not a potential lover. After eating she lay down in their crumbs and went back to sleep with her arm lightly across Susan's waist. Susan was sad to be reminded again how good it is to lie in bed with someone who makes no unwelcome emotional demands. When had life with Earl stopped being like that? She was now clear that she knew why; all that remained was to decide what to do. Regrettably the more she thought the fewer ideas she had that seemed remotely hopeful.

She surprised herself by being able to take refuge in the positive feeling about Jen and instead of yet more introspection, she slipped further down the bed and settled down to begin planning for their new roles at work. Somehow this made it easy to go back to sleep herself and she woke feeling that with such a satisfying future she could surely ride out the storms with Earl. If they failed and split up she would just concentrate on being a fulltime career woman though she couldn't quite imagine what that life would be like. The last time she had been single she was twenty five; now at thirty two she couldn't imagine going back to the California sunshine and promiscuous fucking life style of those days - particularly not in Seattle!

She got out of bed when she realised that Jen was not only up and dressed but shouting up to offer her the choice of lunch in bed or in the garden. While she was in the shower the doorbell rang and soon Jen came to ask what to do; she had looked out of the window and seen Earl standing politely well back from the door. Susan didn't really want to go home with him and accepted Jen's theory that the wrangle would surely be less painful if she sat in on it. In any case Susan would be welcome to stay another night, as many nights as she pleased indeed, if return home turned out to be too painful to contemplate. "Wear full war dress!" she insisted as she went to let him in.

So it was a good half hour before Susan came down, dressed in business suit, stockings and heels, with discrete makeup. She found a scene of surprising calm: Jen and Earl, drinks in hand, in the yard talking vegetable growing. As she wasn't dressed for gardening she poured her own drink and volunteered for cook duty while they put some of the theory into practice - by pulling weeds. It put off the confrontation as well as getting her brownie points for doing the job she knew Jen liked least. Though she had been marketing for Jen she had brought the sort of stuff that she normally chose for herself and with familiar ingredients she cooked a meal to please Earl; it seemed foolish to forget the well known route to a man's heart and Jen would like anything someone else had cooked.

The meal was treated with due respect and eaten in silence but it had no long term good effect as Earl went straight on to 'insist' that Susan come home with him. Everything went downhill after with her saying that she knew she had said she would be back at lunch time but now she had decided that she preferred to stay put and that anything he wanted to say had best be put in terms appropriate to an audience. He raised his voice; she lowered hers and acted managerial and calm.

The ground he chose to begin on was the one which she had most feared would lead to counterattack rather than conciliation; the question of vows and their observance or otherwise. OK! They had agreed that his parent's feelings could be conciliated without damage to their principles so the wedding had been in a church, the one nearest her parent's place that was allied to the denomination chosen by his family. They had both been firm in agreeing that though they supported much of the moral view espoused by that church they were not accepting its code as ruling their lives. All right they hadn't crossed fingers as they said the religious words and they had certainly committed themselves to a life as a loving couple but for him to dwell on the words was perverse.

He still pushed so she went on the warpath about his activities: "So tell me Earl Conroy. How many times since we married have you been to a strip club or anywhere that women are on display naked or half dressed?"

"You don't know! You don't see what it has to do with two nights of my time! Do you think that I wasn't offended? Do you think I didn't wonder how far it went? Do you forget how often I told you that I didn't like it? Do you remember how often I told you that none of my employers ever found it necessary to debauch our clients when we did business with them?"