Chapter 1

1972

Rhonda Wilson sat bleary-eyed and looked at her best friend, Janet. She’d known Janet for a long time, ever since they’d been in school together. They’d graduated in 1960, and both had gotten married. Each was the other’s Maid of Honor.

Things had gone sour for Janet within a year. Her husband, a star of the basketball team, was vicious when he drank. He didn’t drink often, but two trips to the emergency room were enough to convince Janet that she’d do better trying things on her own. She worked at the grocery store, which wasn’t glamorous but, after twelve years, she was a supervisor, which paid the bills. She’d tried marriage again, in 1965, but managed to find another abusive man. She’d been what she called clean and sober since her second divorce.

Rhonda finished her third martini with a gulp. She knew she shouldn’t drink so many, and so quickly, but she was miserable. She looked back at Janet, who was smiling and refilling her glass already. Janet was fishing for information. Rhonda knew that. As she studied her friend, she was trying to figure out whether to give Janet what she wanted ... or not.

Janet had fared fairly well in the battle with age ... not that thirty was so terribly old ... but Rhonda felt old. Living with a secret did that to a person ... made you feel old. At least it did that to her.

She didn’t have to stand beside her friend, looking in a mirror, to know that she had not fared quite as well as Janet had. Janet still had an hourglass shape. They played tennis every Saturday on the high school court and, in the summer, went swimming together at least twice a week. Rhonda had been in the locker room enough times to know that Janet’s breasts were still firm and pointed, though the tips of her breasts seemed to pull downward. It made her silver dollar-sized areolas and nipples, both shockingly pink, seem to be looking down. She still had her long honey blond hair, with the same light sprinkling of slightly darker hair between her legs.

By comparison to her friend, Rhonda felt very plain. Her brown hair, neither light nor dark, hung limply to her shoulders whenever there was the slightest trace of humidity in the air. Her own breasts were still firm and round, but only took a B cup to contain. Some fat had already settled on her hips, and neither tennis nor swimming made it go away. Her brown mat of pubic hair was luxurious, but then, what did that matter? Nobody ever saw it. Especially not Herb, her husband.

That was her secret ... the one she’d kept for eleven years. Herb worked at the fertilizer factory, outside of town and had, ever since they’d graduated from high school. She’d been surprised at his interest in her, back then. Back then she’d carried thirty pounds too much weight, and had pimples that wouldn’t quit. Glasses had capped off an appearance that she was quite sure would prevent her, forever, from getting a man. Then, in her senior year, Herb Wilson asked her to the prom, right out of the blue. She’d accepted gladly, and, within a month, he had asked her to marry him. She kept pinching herself, thinking she was in a dream.

During the first year of her marriage she had lost the weight, changed her diet, and gotten contacts. She had done all those things because her husband made love to her infrequently, at best, and with no enthusiasm, at worst. There were times when he couldn’t perform at all.

It took her a whole year to figure out that he was a homosexual.

He had finally admitted it to her, tearfully, and had also admitted that he had chosen her to “cure” him. It hadn’t worked. What made his penis rock hard was ... another penis. He had a boyfriend, at work. Two, in fact. Rhonda was amazed there were three homosexual men in the whole county, much less in one little town. That they all worked at the same place just about blew her mind.

That was when she went to work, thinking to get enough security to quietly get a divorce, like her best friend had, so soon before. But that hadn’t worked out.

First off, she had only a high school education, and the only jobs she could find wouldn’t support her, on her own. She was still only working part time. And Herb begged her not to divorce him. They could stay married, he said. He’d give her money. They’d live a lie, but people would believe that lie. He threatened to kill himself if she exposed him, and used every other trick in the book to manipulate her into staying in the marriage, so that people would think he was normal. She’d never had a boyfriend before Herb. Sex with him had been both awkward and unfulfilling. The ten or fifteen times he stayed hard long enough she’d felt some distinct tingles of pleasure that she assumed must be the vaunted orgasm that girls in school had so raved about. They were okay, she guessed, but nothing to write home about.

Rhonda realized she had drained the martini that Janet had so recently poured her, and stared at the glass. She was snockered. That’s what she was. She began to giggle. Snockered ... blitzed ... drunk as a skunk ... at two thirty in the afternoon. Herb was at their house, sleeping in his soundproofed room.

“Sweetie,” cooed Janet, pouring more clear liquid into Rhonda’s glass. “I know you’re unhappy. Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”

“Not happy!” blurted Rhonda. “No ... mean am happy! In fact, I’m sloshed!” She perked up enough to sing the line from the James Brown song. “I feeeeeel good, duh, duh duh, duh duh, duh duh!”

Janet leaned forward and snatched the martini away from her friend. She’d given her too much. You never knew, with Rhonda, when she’d had enough. The woman was as tight-lipped as the government was before they finally released the Pentagon Papers, just last year. And Janet just knew, deep in her gut, that Rhonda had a secret just as juicy and just as shocking as the Pentagon Papers had been.

She sighed. Her friend was too far gone, now. She’d have to try again tomorrow. Best to just let her go to sleep, right here in the living room. Lord knows she didn’t have much to go home to. Herb worked the night shift at the fertilizer plant ... had ever since they were married. How could a woman live with a man who went to work at 10:30 at night and got home at 8:30 or 9:00 in the morning, after his wife had gone to work? By the time poor Rhonda got off work, at noon, he was asleep in that fortress he’d built that blocked out all sound and all light. He didn’t get up again until an hour before he left for work. For perhaps the thousandth time Janet wondered how Rhonda maintained her sanity. She only got to see her husband twice a week, on his days off. Even then, he slept the same hours, to keep his rhythm going.

Maybe that was all it was that was making Rhonda seem to disappear a little more each day. Janet knew she couldn’t have survived ten years of that herself.

Of course the bright side was that Janet got to spend every afternoon with her friend. She watched as Rhonda’s head tilted further to one side, and her eyes went glassy.

She got up to straighten her out on the couch, so that she wouldn’t develop a crick in her neck. There wasn’t much to do on a winter afternoon, but if they thought of something, she didn’t want Rhonda to be under the weather, and unable to do it. She saw that Rhonda’s blouse was tangled, and had pulled tightly across her chest. That wouldn’t be comfortable either. She’d just unbutton a couple of buttons, and get a blanket for her.

Her fingers went to the buttons. One came loose, and then the next. Rhonda’s eyes opened wide, but it was obvious she was looking at nothing.

“Doan tuch me...” she mumbled. Then, as her eyes closed again, she added “Go tushh ... girlfriend”.

Janet stood, frozen. She couldn’t believe her friend had thought she was molesting her. It was ridiculous! They hugged, sometimes, but not that often. And the disgust in her drunken voice! Surely she didn’t think her best friend in the whole world was a lesbian!

Her mind jarred. That didn’t make sense. She must have been talking to someone else, in her mind. It could only have been Herb. She had thought it was Herb undoing her blouse. That had to be it. And she had told him to stop! What was that other part about? Girlfriend? Did Herb have a girlfriend? That was it! Herb was cheating on her! She knew it ... or suspected it anyway ... and she’d told him to go to his girlfriend!

Maybe she’d gotten the secret out of Rhonda after all!

It took three hours, but Rhonda finally woke up. She was lucky to be the kind of person who rarely got a hangover. Generally, she didn’t drink all that much, or all that often ... just when things came to a head, like they had the night before, when a man she’d never met came out of Herb’s bedroom with him, while she was standing at the refrigerator in her nightgown, looking for a bedtime snack. It had been awkward, even though Herb’s “girlfriend” as she thought of it, hadn’t given her a second glance.

She yawned and stretched, noticing the blanket over her, and smiled. Janet was such a good friend. She looked around, but didn’t see anybody. Her mouth tasted foul, so she got up to go to the kitchen. She was as at home in Janet’s house as she was in her own, and knew there would be orange juice in the fridge. She was pouring a glass when Janet walked into the kitchen from the direction of the utility room.

“You’re up!” said the woman, cheerily. “How do you feel?”

“I’m fine,” said Rhonda.

“No, you’re not,” said Janet firmly. “And we need to talk about it.”

“What did I do now?” asked Rhonda, trying to think back on what she might have done after all those martinis.

“You got drunk in the middle of the day, for one thing,” said Janet.

Rhonda turned and stared. “And who mixed up all those martinis?”

Janet acted like she hadn’t said a word. “Please, Rhonda ... talk to me. I can help. I know I can.”

“Help with what?” asked Rhonda.

“Your problem,” said Janet.

Janet’s suspicions about Herb were gelled, but not completely set. If they were wrong, it could completely wreck their friendship, and she didn’t want that. At the same time, she was unable to control her desire to meddle in her friend’s business, though that’s not how she would have characterized it.

“What problem is that?” asked Rhonda, not cooperating at all.

Janet took a chance.

“I know about Herb, Rhonda,” she said flatly.

Rhonda’s mind jangled. While she didn’t get the pain that went with hangovers, sometimes her mind wasn’t quite as smooth as it should be when she got up from sleeping one off. The first thing she thought of was how, last night, Herb had brought his lover out, right in front of her. That was the first time he had been so blatant about things. Always before, he had been circumspect, and discreet. What if he’d also done something ... in public ... that was indiscreet.

“What did he do?” she asked, her voice shaky. “Who was he with?”

Janet was in a pinch, now. She had nothing, other than a few mumbled, drunken words, to base her theory on. Rhonda’s reaction, though, suggested that she at least had suspicions too. Her mind raced.

“They were ... um ... holding hands,” she said, tentatively.

“In public?!” Rhonda moaned. “Shit! He’s always tried to be so secretive about it. I can’t believe he’d do that in public!” She actually wrung her hands, and then looked at her friend. “Who else saw them? Where was it?”

Janet was elated. It was about Herb, and Rhonda did know. In fact, she’d apparently known about it for some time. She tried to hedge.

“I don’t think anyone else saw them,” she said carefully. “I was really shocked by it, though. I didn’t know for sure if you knew about them or not.”

Rhonda moaned. “I’ve known since a year after we were married. I couldn’t tell you, Janet. I couldn’t tell anybody. Are you sure nobody else saw them? Where was it?”

Janet was mystified. This had been going on for ten years? And she’d never suspected before this? How could Rhonda put up with a cheating husband for ten whole years? In her eagerness to find out more, she slipped up. The lie came easily to her lips.

“It was in the canned goods aisle. It was late, and nobody else was there to see. I just turned the corner into the aisle and there they were.”

Rhonda’s mind had cleared, possibly due to the surge of adrenaline that entered her bloodstream, when she thought her husband’s secret had been discovered, and that her life was about to be involved in a train wreck. Janet’s description, though, didn’t make any sense at all. Herb rarely went to the IGA at all. She did all the shopping, and he gave her a list of the things he wanted. Further, the IGA closed at eight, and Herb was invariably in bed until at least nine.

For the first time since getting up, she concentrated on her friend’s demeanor. Janet was her best friend, but that didn’t mean that Rhonda was ignorant of her faults. Janet’s biggest fault was that she was a busybody, and poked her nose into everybody else’s business. Rhonda had always believed that was because Janet, like herself, had no real life of her own. So, like an emotional vampire of some kind, she fed off of the excitement, pain, and other emotional goings-on of the people around her. She had that look about her right now, in fact. Her eyes were bright, and she was slightly flushed, leaning forward a bit, as if she were ready to ... feed.