Chapter 1

         I awoke, opened my eyes and winced, feeling as if a car had rolled over me and crushed my head. Stretching up, I reached through a slat of gray moonlight and turned on the bedside lamp. It was 9:00 p.m. Except for the ticking of the clock and the dripping of water from the bathroom faucet, the house was quiet. Apparently my husband, Gene, and my children were still driving back from Minneapolis, thank heaven. But as I was thanking my luck, the full impact of what I had done crushed in upon me and I started to cry. I despised myself. But I didn't have time to sit and cry. If I hurried, I could clean up the house, take a shower, brush my teeth--and Gene would think I had spent the weekend nursing my flu, as I had said I would.

         I moved from the bed and carefully bent over to pick up the Seagram's bottle under the night table, the overflowing ashtray beside my shoe, the two white coffee mugs that held the dregs of the coffee-bourbon mix. In a minute I would come back for the pizza box and the stale slice of pizza on the floor.

         In the kitchen, when I set the ashtray in the sink, I saw a note at the end of the counter near the stove. Gene's upright, squeezed handwriting, the writing as contained as Gene himself, stared back at me. Trembling, I reached for it. I knew that it would be telling me he had come in, taken one look, and left--for good.

        If only I hadn't gotten drunk, I thought, this weekend wouldn't have happened. But then, a moment of truth and I understood that from the beginning I had been heading like an arrow for this day--drinking and not loving Gene.

        I remembered the beginning.

        September, mid-fifties.

        Gravel crunched under our spiked heels as Lisa and I sauntered across the parking lot fronting Freddie's, a grayed-out frame tavern next to the railroad tracks in Bellwood, Illinois. My pencil-slim skirt and a blue cashmere sweater tucked under the skirt waist and held in with a wide, black belt were the height of fashion, and I tossed my curls back with perky confidence. I looked quite pretty, I hoped, because in Freddie's I would be celebrating my second-to-last day as Muriel Hansen. On Friday I would become Mrs. Eugene Canfield. Earlier I had explained to Gene that tonight Lisa and I would shop at Marshall Field, then eat a pizza and see a film. The lie was a necessity; for Gene, a conservative person who did not frequent bars, would not have approved of this celebration.

        I bent to run my fingers along my stocking seams, while Lisa impatiently tapped her toe against the gravel.

        "They're already straight," she said. Lisa was always in a rush.

        "I'm coming, I'm coming," I said.

        "Hi," I called to Freddie over Lisa's shoulder as we entered.

         Freddie's wave was nonchalant. "Hi, girls." A pause, then, "Two old-fashioners with two cherries?"

        "Yes," we said. I smiled at Freddie, appreciating his memory.

        We hiked up onto stools at the long, curving bar. The air was thick with smoke, the bitter smell of' beer, the beat of jukebox jazz.

        "What time is it?" I asked Lisa.

        "I don't know," she said hurriedly and turned, not to me but to a man on her left who was asking, "Can I buy you that drink?"

        "Fine," Lisa said.

        I lighted a cigarette and watched the smoke wind toward the ceiling, then glanced around. A couple of stools away to the right a thin young man with a pointed chin, a beak-like nose, and a mass of slicked-down black hair dragged at a cigarette. On the stool beside him a wizened man hunched over his drink. At the end of the bar a young couple huddled close. Nobody here of much interest, I thought, while Freddie placed my old-fashioned on the bar. Since Lisa already was occupied and I was determined to celebrate, I leaned over the empty stool and said to the man with the black hair, "Have you ever seen Freddie out from behind the bar?"

        He snorted, then laughed. "Never! Freddie's always in there." He swept his eyes over me in appraisal, taking in my snug skirt, slim waist, soft sweater. He studied my eyes. "Blue's my favorite color," he said.

        "Like some company?"

        "Sure."

        While he moved to the adjacent stool, I imagined the fit Gene would have if he knew I was here. Gene would never think of doing such a thing. Mom often said, "He's a fine young man," and Dad said, "He's got his head screwed on straight."

Gene thought I shared his system of ethics; I wanted to and I planned to, but not tonight. I had to have this last night for me, because I didn't love Gene.

        I took a sip from the old-fashioned, and the black-haired man leaned close and said, "I've never seen you here before."

        "I come sometimes."

        "Do you live in Bellwood?"

         "No, in Elmhurst."

        "A pretty ritzy place."

        "It's okay." With Gene still strongly in my mind I added, "I think some people set their standards too high. A person's got to be human."

        "Right," he said.

        "Gene's got his too high."

        "Who's Gene?"

        "A friend--a boyfriend, I guess."

        "Serious?"

        "No, not really."

        Evidently pleased about that, the black-haired man laughed. "Like another drink, honey?" he asked.

        "Yes."

         He signaled Freddie with his finger. We had the drink and many more, until my head became foamy and the barroom took on a splendor and the black-haired man became a fine person, a friend.

        I murmured, "Gene thinks I drink too much sometimes. He made me promise I'd drink only three drinks a night, but not until two days from now. Tonight it's okay to drink more."

        "What right's he got to tell you how much to drink?"

        I paused to give that some thought. "None. When you think about it, it's none of his business." I dropped my voice confidentially, "It's Gene's fault I'm quitting college." I was lying, but right then it seemed to be entirely Gene's fault.

The black-haired man's eyes held disinterest. "Don't you want to hear?" I challenged.

        "Shoot," he said.

        "I can't say," I said, suddenly morose. "It's too sad." And I almost cried as I thought about my clipped-off senior year and my clipped-off degree in English education and my hasty decision last week to marry Gene and not finish college. But what else could I have done? My junior year had been a two-semester stretch of drinking parties with little studying in between. If I returned to school, I would fail those difficult courses scheduled for next semester.

        "Gene did you a favor," he said.

        "He did not. I loved college."

        "College is for birdbrains," he said and went on to expound on his view of education and self-righteous people.

        "I don't like negativism," I inserted into the monologue, depressed by his sour outlook and beginning to think him not so fine, not such a good friend. I'd had enough of him. "I've got to go. It's late."

"It's not late," he argued, his sharp chin jutting belligerently. "Stay."

         Ignoring him, I turned to Lisa and whispered, "Let's go somewhere else."

         "I can't. I've got to get home," she said. "I work tomorrow. You too--or did you forget?"

        "Nuts." I had forgotten that tomorrow would be Thursday and I would be on the nine-to-five shift at Millie's tobacco and gift shop.

        While Lisa wrote out her phone number for her new boyfriend, the black-haired man changed his approach: "Don't go now, honey--things are getting good."

        "I told you, I've got to go." I frowned in irritation as I drained my glass, set it on the bar, and slid from the stool.

        He grabbed my arm and demanded, "Have another drink."

        "Let me go!" I pulled away and stepped back.

        "Let's go," I urged Lisa. "He's getting nasty."

        Behind Lisa, I wobbled toward the door, followed by the black-haired man's curses.

        "Can you drive?" Lisa wondered aloud.

        "Of course." But my head spun and the door wavered.

        "I'm just fine," I assured her.

         I poked along in Dad's Packard toward Elmhurst. When drunk, I always drove five or ten miles under the speed limit.

         "Can't you speed it up?" Lisa asked, impatient again.

        "Do you want me to wreck my dad's car?"

        "No."

        "Then relax," I said. "Did I tell you that after I'm married, I can't drink more than three drinks a night? Gene made me promise."

        "Sneak them," was Lisa's advice.

        "Maybe," I said as we inched around a corner. "But maybe three's enough. Three's a lot, you know." Lisa's shrug was noncommittal.

         Three drinks would do for me, but they sure wouldn't do for my parents; to them three was just a start. In my childhood, as now, Mom and Dad had been periodic drinkers, drinking around-the-clock for five or six weeks, then sobering up for five or six weeks. But even when drunk, they had been kind and loving to my sisters and me and had often taken us along to the taverns.

        I liked best going to the Dewdrop Inn. Dad would put Mom, my sisters Chris and Ellen, and me in his Packard; then instead of driving to the Dewdrop Inn via St. Charles Road, we veered into the quarter-mile field next to our house. "Hold on!" he yelled every few hundred feet. "Keep your hat on!"

        "Watch out!" my sisters and I shouted in high excitement each time we neared a tree.

At the Dewdrop Inn while Dad and Mom drank shots of bourbon chased with water, my sisters and I put nickels in the slot machine, played cards, and giggled at the sign on the ceiling: "What are you looking up here for?"

        "Don't look up," we said to each other, but we always did. Some of the men at the bar fussed over us, saying that we were pretty and sweet and that we had lovely hair. These comments made me feel uncomfortable. But Francie, the owner's wife, an immense woman, always gave us sweet looks. And she fried us hamburgers and poured all the Cokes we wanted.

When it was time to leave, we got into the Packard and bounced back through the field. At home Mom and Dad continued drinking, either at the kitchen table or in bed. As a child, I considered taverns, kitchen tables, and beds as normal places for drinking.

        Though my parents were kind, I yearned for a sober mom and dad and swore I would never drink like them. Yet here I was....

        Lisa broke into my reverie. "Muriel, you've sat through a green light."

        I slammed down the gas pedal and the car leaped into the intersection.

        "Not now!" Lisa screamed. "The light's red!"

        I jammed on the brakes, glanced into the rearview mirror--clear--and backed up. "Nuts," I said in apology. "I was thinking. I've decided not to drink after I'm married. I mean it. Tonight at Freddie's I had my last. I'm not going to be like my parents."

        When the light switched to green, I cruised across the intersection and on down St. Charles Road.

        "Turn," Lisa commanded. We were at her street, lined with huge homes, separated from each other by immaculate lawns.

        I turned and said, "If Gene knew where I'd been tonight, he'd pass out."

        "Look, going to Freddie's was your idea, not mine. I didn't drag you there," Lisa said as I pulled up to her house.

        "I didn't say you did." She reached for the door.

        "See you at the wedding," I said as she climbed from the car.

        "See you."

        "I wasn't accusing you of anything," I called after her, because I hated to have any ill will between anyone and me. I liked peace, a smooth world with no fights.

        "Okay," she called over her shoulder.

         I drove slowly back past the large houses, the high school, then across the railroad tracks. Just beyond the tracks I came to our narrow frame house with its flaking paint and worn hardwood floors that shook each time a train rumbled by. If only I lived on Lisa's side of the tracks, I thought, then turned into the drive, passed between the hawthorn tree and Dad's West Suburban Roofing Company sign, and parked before the garage where he stored his shingles. I hurried upstairs and was asleep moments after I got into bed.

         Gene called me the next morning at Millie's. "How was the movie and pizza?"

         "They were good. We had cheese and pepperoni." This would be the last lie between Gene and me, because I wouldn't be drinking again. At least, I decided in a flash, from now on I'd seldom drink. I would not exclude festive occasions, that is, very festive occasions, ones where it would appear odd to abstain-such as weddings.

        "I missed you," Gene said.

        "Weren't you with Dan and Bill and Gene Anderson?"

        "Yes, but the whole time I wished I were with you."

         "I wished I were with you too." Another lie, but only a small one.

         "Can you come to dinner tonight" My parents want you to meet a couple of aunts."

         "Okay."

        "Till then, darling," he said. "I love you."

        "See you tonight," I responded.

        Later at the Canfields', Mr. Canfield, always an affectionate man, greeted me with an enthusiastic hug. Though Gene was quiet, his father was not. He loved to talk--to lean back in his recliner and spin stories of his country youth.

Mr. Canfield led me into the living room. "Have a seat," he invited. "Gene's not here yet, but he should be home in five or ten minutes." Introductions to the two aunts followed.

        I realized that I was hugging my purse like a pillow, as I did when I was nervous and feeling insecure and wanting others to like me. I set the purse down beside my chair.

        Aunt Sarah leaned forward. "Are you excited about the wedding?" she inquired and continued without a pause. "Where will you live, downtown or out here? Is Gene still working for that place near the Loop--?"

        "Yes," I broke in. "It's Harza Engineering Company."

        "You'll live downtown?"

        "No, at my parents' cottage on Lake Michigan." Two pairs of eyes waited expectantly. "We don't have a place here yet." Aunt Sarah and Aunt Elsie nodded, which I took as a signal to continue. "We'll be looking soon." They nodded again.

        "The wedding's tomorrow, you know."

        "We know," said Aunt Sarah, smiling at Aunt Elsie.

        "Your wedding was so lovely," said Aunt Sarah, turning to Aunt Elsie. "Remember? Mother served those little sandwiches--"

        "Hors d'oeuvres," interrupted Aunt Elsie. "She made them with chicken and egg salad."

        "You didn't have hors d'oeuvres," retorted Aunt Sarah firmly. "You had cold cuts--turkey and ham."

It turned out that the hors d'oeuvres had been served at Cousin Nancy's wedding reception; and further, they remembered, Cousin Nancy had had a three-tiered cake.

        To me it was as if they spoke a foreign language, for weddings in my family were not a matter of hors d'oeuvres or cold cuts or cake. At a Hansen wedding my father drank far too much and said (again and again), "During the Depression Old Henry and I sold sewing machines and slept under bridges and ate peanut butter sandwiches." And Mom, also into the drinks, sniffled that no one loved her and that no one ever would and that all her life she would be friendless.

        Gene's mother taught Sunday school, his father was an accountant; they both attended church, rarely missing a Sunday. We Hansens never went to churches or anyplace besides the taverns. Gene's mother and father are such regular people, I thought.

        About that time Gene walked in, a gray suit on his six-foot frame, carrying a briefcase. Dad has never carried a briefcase, I thought as Gene leaned over and kissed the top of my head. "Darling," he whispered, so that the aunts would not hear.

Hours later, after chicken and dumplings, a few country stories by Mr. Canfield, and more reminiscing from the aunts, we got into Gene's Chevrolet. In his careful way, Gene kept the car below the speed limit; he did not believe in breaking the law. In contrast, when I was sober I would drive the highways at 80 or 90, enjoying the free feeling of the speed.

        "You'll kill us," Gene would scold when he was my passenger. Though put off by my boldness, he also delighted in it.          "You make me feel happy," he would tell me, viewing me as a joyful free spirit. He didn't know of my insecurity, thinking my excessive drinking came from an impetuous nature. I had promised to cut back and he thought I would. He was like the painter who loved the woman on his canvas, and I usually chose behavior that would confirm his picture of me.

I wondered if my mental "painting" of Gene reflected the real person. He held himself erect, carrying a calm manner on a tall frame. Large bones, broad shoulders, and hard muscles in his arms and legs gave me a sense of his strength and ability. His hair was brown, his eyes pale blue. His face was not particularly handsome but attractive in a rough kind of way. Above all, he was intelligent. With all those credentials, I knew I should love him. I wanted to love him. But he seemed so quiet and rather dull. I really was looking for someone more flamboyant, like me. But Gene was the best of the men I knew, and I felt I must get married.

         We were at the St. Charles Road intersection and a collie darted in front of the car. He braked hard and snapped,    

       "Stupid, idiot mutts!"

        "I like dogs."

        "I hate them."

        "Your folks have one."

        "They shouldn't."

        "I'd like one after we're married."

        He smiled and I knew that if I insisted, he would buy me a dog. I thought again about our dissimilar families. "Your parents are pretty religious," I remarked.

        "They've always been like that."

        "Does it bother you?"

        "No."

        "Why aren't you religious?" I asked.

        "I just don't like church."

        "Why not?"

        Because he was contemplative, Gene paused a moment before answering, then said, "My parents belonged to four or five churches and--"

        "What's that got to do with not liking church?" I interrupted.

         "I heard too many doctrines. Every church thinks it's got the answer."

         "So?"

        "So, which one's got it?"

        "You're turned off."

        "Completely."

        "I'm turned off, too," I admitted, remembering the day I had left church and the Reverend Dr. Kinder and God. "Do you believe in God?" I asked.

        "Not really. He might exist, but I don't think so."

        "Sometimes I pray."

        "Then you believe in God?"

        "I don't know. It seems like I'm praying to the air."

        "You probably are, but what's the difference. If God's around, He's around. If He's not, He's not."

I liked the way Gene had expressed that. "Right. If He's here, He's here."

        Gene shrugged, glanced from the road to me, and patted the seat. "Come on over, gal."

        I moved close to him and he brushed my hair with his lips and said, "I love you."

        "Hmmm."

        "Tomorrow you'll be mine forever."

        "I know."

        We turned into my parents' driveway. Gene parked and pulled me into his arms. "I can't tell you how much I love you, darling."

        "Neither can I." I lifted my head from his chest. "But I've got to go. There's a lot to do before tomorrow."

        I reached for the door handle. "Not so quick, honey." Gene gathered me in close and kissed me. "Forever, gal," he whispered.

        I won't think about forever, I thought, and left him.

________________________________________________

        Minutes before the wedding, I wanted to rush from our living room and ship out to sea like Ishmael in Moby Dick. As did Ishmael, I felt damp and drizzly. I can't go through with this marriage, I thought. But how could I cancel it when the caterer was in the kitchen, the presents on the cedar chest and the fiancé and guests in the living room? I couldn't.

        So I married Gene in my living room in front of the piano, watched by the guests and by Richard, my family's Airedale.

The reception began. It flowed from the living room to the dining room to the upstairs family room, all through the house. And rushing from room to room was my Aunt Red, her red hair tumbling lower and lower on her forehead, now almost into her eyes, as she drank champagne. Given her speed and her hair, I figured she was probably on her ninth or tenth glass. Aunt Red paused in the family room, sank to the floor, and sang, "I'm better than an orange, better than a carrot . . ."

        I stood before her and hummed along while I drank my champagne. From the corner of my eye I saw Dad coming toward us, weaving slightly, but not stumbling. "Stop the singing, Red," he said. Whenever his sister sang, he demanded that she quit.

        "It's a good song, Dad," I said.

        He listened. "Not bad."

        "She's got a good voice."

        "Old Henry was quite a singer," Dad said, adding that Henry had sung "Hallelujah, I'm a bum" in the clearest tenor in Chicago. Which reminded Dad that during the Depression he and Henry had eaten peanut butter sandwiches by day and slept under bridges by night. I quickly moved on.

        I went downstairs and found Mom in the living room, sitting on the piano bench, her face long, her eyes misty. I hugged her and asked, "Why so sad?"

        "You're leaving me."

        "No, not really. We won't be far away."

        "It won't be the same," she said and sighed, then went to refill her glass.

        Although I had drunk seven or eight champagnes, I figured it was my wedding reception, one of those special occasions, and that I should be having fun. Gene would understand. I got up and started up the stairs. Halfway up, I met Gene. "Come," I said. "Maybe we can sing."

        "I think we ought to be going."

        "I don't feel like going. Why should we go?"

        "Because I want to be alone with you and"--he studied my face--"I think you've had enough."

        "I think I'm okay." I was in better condition than Aunt Red, who might be singing, and Mom, who was probably crying, and Dad, who would be talking about bridges and Henry.

        Gene stepped down to my step and kissed me lightly. "Darling, let's go."

        "But--"

        "It's time for our honeymoon," he urged.

        "All right," I sighed and reluctantly followed him from the reception.