It takes Vee a full minute before she can talk. By then she is scavenging around the bed for her clothes as Benjamin follows and dodges her at once, apologizing and trying to convince her not to go.
“Get away,” she says. “Please get away from me.”
“I’m taking some time off,” he says. “But I can’t stay here forever. I have a son.”
Vee would cover her ears if she could but she must pull on her dress, her coat, her hat. She stuffs her stockings into her bag and her bare feet into her boots. “Nothing has to change,” Benjamin says, and she remembers him musing just yesterday about how this land wasn’t his family’s to claim, how it belonged to the Indians and how someday there would be proper reparations made, remembers how even as he said this he rested back in his bed, clearly unprepared to go anywhere or give anything up. She runs, for the second and last time, away from the beautiful house.
* * *
An hour or so later, Vee opens Rosemary’s front door as silently as possible. She would prefer to stay outside forever, walk the miles to the nearest coffee shop, walk until she reaches another planet, but she is without scarf or gloves, both of which she left at Benjamin’s in her rush to flee, and her bare feet feel close to frostbite inside her boots. She doesn’t want to see Rosemary, not yet. She has told her about a man named Benjamin up in the woods, told her enough to make Rosemary smile, and though Rosemary has not asked for more—Rosemary has been distracted, Rosemary has seemed more and more often not quite herself—she knows enough that Vee cannot now tell her that Benjamin has a wife and child. Vee is not a woman who sleeps with married men.
Yet she is, apparently.
She hears the children playing outside, on the other side of the house.
She will slip upstairs, lie down, pull herself together.
“Vivian.”
It’s Philip calling her, as no one calls her.
“Just a minute,” she calls, her voice shaking. She bends to untie her boots, a process mercifully slowed by her numb fingers, so that by the time she is following Philip’s voice into the living room she has managed to take a deep breath. Her chest vibrates painfully, and she realizes, as she enters the room to find Philip lying on the couch with one forearm flung across his eyes, that what she is, more than angry, is hurt. She and Benjamin joked a few times about both being on the lam, but now it turns out he really is, of his own choosing—Vee is alone in having been sent away.
“Are you okay?” It’s almost comical, hearing herself ask these words even as her body longs for a private place in which to cry. She tries not to look at him, in his wrinkled shirt, no tie, and gold-toe socks. She has never seen him without shoes on. Alarm sings in her ears, telling her there is danger here and her hurt must wait, though of course the danger is not unrelated to the hurt, the danger is the married man laid out before Vee, Vee who did not intend harm but harmed nevertheless. “You have to leave,” Philip says, his eyes still covered by his arm.
“Where’s Rosemary?”
“Not here.”
“What’s wrong?”
“This is my living room.”
“Yes?”
“So why must I be talking to you right now? Why must you be here? You’re not a good influence.”
“I …” Vee flounders, bewildered. “Do you mean the cigarettes? She hasn’t been smoking anymore. Hasn’t been drinking, either.”
“I mean you. Just you.”
“What are y—”
“You’re a slut. Where do you go, Mrs. Alexander Kent? When you leave here for hours at a time. For whole days now, apparently. Do you think I don’t know?”
Vee didn’t know that Philip knew, but now that she does, she thinks, Of course. “Do you think I don’t know about the cross?” she says. It’s the first insult she can think to hurl at him. Then, seeing his confusion: “They burned a cross on your lawn, Philip R. And apparently your wife didn’t even tell you. She protects you, and what do you do apart from some dishes like you’re the goddamned messiah incarnate and not just another jerk who stares at her friends’ tits and—”
“You have a way with words.”
“You think smut is hard to come by?”
“I mean,” says Philip, in a calm, awful voice, “that you shouldn’t have trouble finding somewhere to go. Rosemary told me the women at the group loved you.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Vee snaps. The women at the Jewish consciousness raising group—clearly Philip cannot say consciousness raising—loved Vee because Rosemary, without asking Vee’s permission, told them Vee’s story, the same story the two friends had still not discussed in any detail, and one of the women said, My goodness, you’re Vashti! and all the others oohed and aahed. Apparently Vee was living the story of some queen banished a million years ago in ancient Persia. But Vee did not know or care about any of this and was peeved that Rosemary had offered up her story. She did not love the women back, as Philip clearly hopes she did. She starts to explain this, how she is not going to live with one of the Jewish libbers, when suddenly Philip bolts upright on the couch, looks at her, and hollers: “We were fine before you came! Everything was fine!”
Vee takes in the hatred in Philip’s gaze. Something has slipped in him—he is nothing if not a contained man. “I don’t understand,” she says. “You’re fine now.”
Philip laughs, a whistling, scary laugh. Vee hears the children, somewhere outside. “Where is Rosemary?” she says, suddenly afraid, not for herself now but for her friend.
“Wouldn’t you like to know.” Philip covers his face with his hands. He stays like that as he takes a deep breath, then he rubs gruffly at himself and appears again, the skin under his eyes a startling, bruised blue. “You probably think she’ll tell you not to listen to me,” he says. “Tell you to stay. So stay right here. Wait. Hear it for yourself.” His voice has dropped to a monotone. “She’ll be home soon. She called a little while ago.”
“From where?”
“The hospital.”
“Why is she at the hospital?”
“She lost the baby.”
“No.” Vee drops to her knees.
“It started two nights ago.”
“My god.”
Silence. Then Philip says, “You’re so upset. Yet you haven’t even asked how she’s getting home.”
“I can go get her,” offers Vee.
“You’re too late. You weren’t here. A friend is driving her.”
“I could stay with the children, so you can go.”
“I’ll say it again. You weren’t here. You’re too late.”
Vee’s fingertips throb with returning heat. She lets out a wail. Then Philip is standing above her, snatching her up by the shoulders. “What gives you the right to cry,” he says, his face inches from hers, his eyes, on her chest, devastated and dry. “Who do you think you are?” Vee steps backward, out of his reach, but he’s on her again, his hands on her breasts this time, squeezing and pushing her away at once. “Get out,” he says. “Get the hell out.” She feels the shove coming. She understands that she will fly backward into the table behind her and that she and the weird sculpture will fall together into the wall. Then the door opens to Rosemary, and behind her the children, and behind them a white sky. The children have been running and are red-cheeked, gawking, the girl with a look in her eyes that sets Vee’s blood pounding. But it’s Rosemary whose face, pale as the sky, terrifies. “Lionel,” she says, addressing her oldest in a voice like an empty tunnel, “take your brother and sister upstairs. I’ll be right there.” She does not look at Vee as she tells her to pack. Vee does not look at Rosemary’s abdomen. Then Rosemary is walking up the stairs with excruciating care, matching her feet on each step, her hand white from its grip on the banister. And soon she’s gone.