Sharon Morrissey had spent a great deal of her life before coming out in therapy, and even after all these years she could hear the sound of her therapist’s voice, telling her just what he thought of the way she fell in love.
It didn’t matter.
Sharon Morrissey was one of those people for whom the world was either well lost or not lost at all, and she wasn’t about to change into a creature of logic and reason at this late date.
6
It was ten minutes to nine by the time Candy George got to rehearsal, and by then she was probably the only person in Bethlehem who hadn’t heard that Tisha Verek was on her way to file an injunction in the federal circuit court that would shut the Nativity Celebration down. Candy hadn’t heard for the same reason she never heard everything—because in spite of the fact that her house was within walking distance of the town library, her husband Reggie had arranged things so the two of them might as well have been in Kathmandu. Candy wasn’t entirely sure where Kathmandu was. She hadn’t been too great in geography, or in anything else, either, when she was still in school. She did know that Kathmandu was far away and not on the local telephone exchange. There was something about the name that caught at her. Boston, New York, even Montpelier, all seemed impossibly exotic and far away. When Reggie got like he got and things went really bad, Candy couldn’t imagine hitching a ride to the nearest Greyhound station and getting on a bus. She couldn’t imagine using her little plastic bank card to take the fare out of the account she shared with Reggie. She couldn’t imagine much of anything. When Reggie got really, really bad, Candy got confused, so confused she couldn’t remember where she was or who she was with. It all seemed to come together somehow: Reggie and her father; Reggie and her stepfather; Reggie and Reggie; beaten beaten until the blood flowed on the screen porch out at the farm; beaten beaten until the blood flowed in the storeroom at the pharmacy; beaten beaten until the blood flowed on the brand-new sheets from Sears Reggie had bought her to go along with their brand-new bedroom suite. First Candy got confused and then she got depressed, because there didn’t seem to be anything else but this. Sometimes she wondered about the women she saw on television. Where did they get hit? How did they keep the bruises from showing? What did they get hit for? Lately Reggie had taken up a new and terrifying hobby. He’d brought home a lot of leather straps from a sex store in Boston and started tying her to the bed. He’d brought home a lot of leather whips, too, and what he did with those Candy wouldn’t think about even when it was happening. Her head ached almost all the time now, and she thought her life was over. She had turned seventeen years old exactly two weeks, four days, and twenty-two hours ago.
The rehearsal was being held in the auditorium in the basement of the Episcopal Church. The town had been talking about building an auditorium to hold the Nativity play in for several years, but never got around to it. Candy went down the back steps and through the back basement door and into the locker room. Then she took off her jacket and hung it on one of the hooks that lined the wall. As soon as she was free of the jacket, she felt better. She took in the multicolored tinsel garlands the Episcopal Church ladies had strewn around on everything and the pictures of the Christ Child in the manger done by children in the Sunday School. When the committee had first approached her about taking the part of Mary in this year’s Nativity play, Candy had been sure that Reggie would make her refuse. He wouldn’t even let her get together for lunch with the girls who’d been bridesmaids at her own wedding. Then there was her mother, whom Reggie hated. If Candy never saw her mother again as long as she lived, Reggie would be only too pleased. That was why it had come as such a shock when he had taken to the idea of her being Mary, wearing a pale blue robe and talking somebody else’s words in front of strangers for three weeks straight. It had tickled him in a way Candy couldn’t explain. It was as if it was something he had done himself, that he had a right to be proud of. When Candy dared, she resented it. It was something that had come to her and that she wanted to keep for herself alone.
Of course, Reggie wasn’t about to let things get out of hand. Since rehearsals for the play had started, he had upped the frequency of his rages, moved their game just a little farther out on the way to out of control, done everything he could to let her know that she would die without him. She was beginning to think she would die with him. This morning she hurt so badly she could barely walk, and it was a condition that was only going to get worse. She could feel the hot on her kneecaps and high up on the insides of her thighs. Reggie was different from Candy’s father in many ways, but most of all in this one. Candy’s father hadn’t cared a damn about who saw Candy’s mother black and blue. Reggie was always extra careful to hit Candy where it wouldn’t show, and once—when it had been all over for the night and she had been curled up on their new Dupont Stainmaster bright green carpet, trying too hard to breathe—he had told her that he always hit her in ways that would keep anyone she complained to from being able to prove it. That little lecture had been more than confusing. It had been hallucinatory. Who did he think she was going to complain to? And what would she complain about?