Don't Tell Me Twice - Jackie Davis-Martin

Virginia bundled up the papery flowers and took them back to the car. Why had she brought them in to begin with? Was she going to ask Stewart his opinion of the hall decorations she had in mind? She stood behind her car, one hand on the open trunk—Jonah and the whale—she wanted to be swallowed by something—and marveled that a half hour ago, in the midst of her anxiety over Henry, she had actually considered bringing Stewart into a decision, no matter that it was a small one.

Her car’s place was the driveway extension. Stewart’s car was in the garage and behind the car were suitcases. She brought one into the house, feeling once again displaced in her own life. In movies the suitcase was always in the top of the closet and the person who decided to leave would lift neatly folded shirts from a drawer placing them squarely into the case. If the character walked to the closet to choose a few random dresses, she was always stopped, hangers in hand, by someone.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Stewart said. Virginia was standing at the closet, about to pull skirts away from their clamps. The suitcase on the bed gaped, as the car had. The world was aghast.

“I’m leaving,” Virginia said.

Stewart sank on the bed next to the suitcase, peering into its contents—sleepwear and underwear—pushed and shoved. Virginia could tell what he was thinking: such disarray.
“”Are you now?” he said. He leaned back, arms propping him on diagonals.

He really was a handsome person; she just couldn’t think man. Her eyes filled with tears. “I don’t have to be told twice.” The tears were of frustration; she’d pulled the paisley skirt out—and didn’t even like it—and several others had fallen in a heap on the closet floor on top of her shoes. It was all such a mess.

“No one’s told you once. Told you what? Where the hell do you think you’re going to go?”

“I don’t know. Fran’s tonight—or for a few nights. I’ll find an apartment.”

Stewart laughed, then got up and placed his hands on his hips in a firm gesture of impatience. She thought bizarrely of Aunt Jemima, or an old TV program—Beulah. “You will do no such thing,” he announced. “I will not have you whispering and dragging my name through your disgraces in someone else’s house. You’ll stay right here. I’ll move into the library.”

Stewart called the second bedroom the library because it had bookshelves. She could have said Of course, what difference will it make anyway? but she didn’t. She allowed him the moment.

“I thought you didn’t like that skirt,” he said on his way out.

The pantomime of taking action had distracted her for a while, but now, with twilight descending through the windows, she felt the fear of loss. Henry! What was Henry doing? Would she ever be with him again? She lay on the bed next to her case. This had always been a sad time of day for her. Darkness protected and sunlight brightened. But this! This nether-light, this threatening uncertain neither here-nor-there light, always made her feel incomplete.

She was incomplete. Thirty--with two husbands behind her (oh that the second was that—behind!) a lover belonging to someone else—permitted for the moment to stay in her own house. She flung her arm across the suitcase and cried silently.

The phone on the dresser jarred the silence: once, twice. She couldn’t speak. Suppose it was Stewart’s mother? Or the principal? Stewart picked up downstairs.


“Well, you certainly have a nerve,” he was saying. “Yes. She’s here.”

Virginia rose slowly, as though she would disturb what she thought she heard, and watched herself in the mirror as she cradled the receiver. “Virginia!” Stewart was yelling.
“Guess who.” He slammed his end so resoundingly she heard that, too, in the bedroom.

“Are you there?” Henry whispered. “I’m at a payphone.”

Virginia sank onto the edge of the bed, tears streaming now with relief, with joy.