Page 26 of The Launch

Jo scuffs her tennis shoe along the pavement, kicking the tire of the Cadillac gently with her toe. “Her name was Margaret—isMargaret,” she corrects herself. “And they were high school sweethearts. They got married really young, and Margaret was always a little…” Jo lowers her voice to a whisper, as if the palm trees might overhear the discussion and spread it around the neighborhood. “She was always a littlecrazy.”

“Aren’t we all, honey.” Frankie is smoking like her life depends on it as she watches Jo intently.

“So Bill and her parents put her in this home, and eventually he asked for a divorce. When we met, I was twenty and he was twenty-three, and we got engaged and married as soon as we could.”

“And did Margaret agree to the divorce or is she, like…totally medicated and out of it?” Frankie looks awed.

Jo shrugs. “I’m not sure. I’ve never met her. She’s in Arizona, which is where they grew up. Bill was stationed in Minneapolis at the Air Force base when I met him, and we lived there for our entire marriage until we came here. He doesn’t talk about Margaret much. Actually, he doesn’t talk about her at all, and I usually don’t even think about the fact that he was married to someone before me.”

Frankie gives a low whistle. She pushes away from the Cadillac when the front door of the house swings open and a man stands there, watching them.

“Evening,” Jo says to the man with a wave and a half smile. She grabs onto Frankie again and starts walking, dragging Frankie with her once more.

“So why are you telling me this now? Did something happen? Did you guys fight about Margaret?”

“He got a letter from Desert Sage today—that’s where Margaret lives—and they want more money. Apparently, she’s become a danger and she needs a higher level of supervision.”

“Jeez Louise, Jo.” Frankie is totally animated now; she seems to have snapped out of the lazy funk she’d been in earlier. “I really didn’t think you had anything juicy like this in your past.”

Jo sits down on a curb and lets her head drop dejectedly. “I wouldn’t say it’s inmypast, exactly—this is more Bill’s secret, and therefore I probably shouldn’t have told it, but it’s definitely seeping into my life today, and now I can’t stop thinkingabout this poor woman. She’s probably locked up somewhere in Arizona in a room with no bedsheets, possibly scared and certainly confused.” Jo looks up at Frankie, who is standing over her and looking at Jo with concern. “What if she asks for him? What if she doesn’t remember that they’re divorced? I’ve basically got someone else’s husband, Frankie. Istolesomeone’s husband.”

Frankie sighs and sits on the curb next to Jo. “Honey, he’s yours now. After a dozen years and three kids, he’s definitely yours.”

“I feel that way most of the time,” Jo says. “I would say ninety-nine percent of the time I don’t even remember that Bill was married to someone else before me, but then it comes crashing back, and I just have visions of him…with another woman. You know,” she looks at Frankie pleadingly. “Withanother woman.”

Frankie’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh. Right. Okay.” She taps her cigarette pack against her hand. “I think I’m gonna need another smoke for this conversation.”

“It’s just…can you imagine, Frankie?” Jo drops her voice. “Picturing your husband with someone else—knowing he’s been with another woman?” She gives an involuntary shudder. “I know a lot of men are more experienced than their wives, but I guess there was a part of me that always thought that whoever I married would be having their first time on our wedding night as well.”

Frankie chokes on her smoke. “Oh, Jo,” she splutters. She’s laugh-coughing as she bends forward at the waist, putting her forehead against her knees while they sit there together. “Wait—was your wedding night your first time? Actually?”

Jo blinks at Frankie. “Of course.” Realization dawns over Jo. “Wasn’t it yours?”

Frankie stares back at her, looking like she’s waiting for the punchline. “No, darling. No, no,no.”

Jo flushes in the twilight. Her cigarette is long gone, so she has nothing to do with her hands, and instead wraps her arms around her shins. “It’s just how I was raised, I guess.” She averts her gaze. “I’m not judging you or anything.”

“I’m not judging you either,” Frankie volleys back, still chuckling as she takes a drag on her fresh cigarette.

The women sit in silence, their shoulders nearly touching. Two boys about Jimmy’s age ride by on bikes with playing cards stuck in the spokes of their wheels. Theclick-clicksound of their bikes fades off into the distance as the boys turn a corner together.

Jo is lost in thought; Frankie smokes and looks off into the distance. The notion that she and her new friend are from different worlds is not a new one to Jo, but she realizes as she sits there that Frankie has had a whole wild life in New York City, while Jo has essentially just gone from her parents’ house to her husband’s house, and spent the intervening years raising kids. Meanwhile, Frankie has done interesting things, cavorting with actors and dancers, drinking in smoky bars, and—obviously—having sex with men she never married. While Frankie was dancing on Broadway, Jo was taking secretarial courses at Miss Smith’s Typing School and then working at the front counter of the dentist’s office. It had not occurred to her to let her prom date get past second base, nor did she even once consider taking things further with Bill before the wedding, though she understood that there was a whole school of thought surrounding the testing of sexual chemistry between two people before making a lifetime commitment. But the very idea of that had seemed completely foreign to her as a twenty-year-old—the kind of thing that other girls did, but that Jo never would.

“You know,” Frankie says, finally breaking the silence between them. “It might be nice to never know anything different than being with Ed. But I also think I learned some important things about myself before I met him.”

“Like what?” Jo turns her head and looks at Frankie, who smiles knowingly and taps the ash of her cigarette onto the pavement.

“Oh, like what pleases me. I knew some men who were, shall we say, not very interested in the satisfaction of the women they were with, and I discovered that I did not like that. I prefer a lover who takes his time. Someone who cares about me and about how I feel in bed.”

Jo is about to say something, but the reality of her unworldliness is almost palpable to her. Instead of speaking, she just nods.

“I appreciate a man who appreciates me is all I’m saying,” Frankie goes on. “And let me tell you, Josephine Booker, not all men appreciate women. Some are quite cruel. So if you have a man who loves you and kisses you and treats you like a whole person, then you are way ahead of the game.”

Bill has never treated her any other way than what Frankie is describing, so again, Jo says nothing. The two boys on bikes circle the block once more, passing by Jo and Frankie without looking at them. It’s after dark and Jo wouldn’t like Jimmy out here on his bike at this time of night, but these aren’t her children, so she lets it go.

“Anyhow,” Frankie says, bumping Jo with her shoulder. “This is a bigger talk than either of us bargained for, but I still liked it. Most days I don’t get to talk about anythingrealwith anyone. I remember, in New York, I had three roommates, and sometimes we’d split a cheap bottle of wine and talk late into the night. Sometimes it got real like this, and I always fell asleepthinking how great it was to have girlfriends. I mean, men are nice and all, but women reallygeteach other, you know?”

Jo nods. “I do know. I had some great friends in Minnesota, and I miss them.” She thinks of the girls she’d grown up with; they’d been there for one another through the births of all their children, they’d shared secrets about nursing babies, about talking to their husbands, about fighting with siblings. But in all the years she’d been friends with Sally and Genevieve, they’d never peeled back the most intimate layers of their lives and talked likethis, which makes Jo wonder whether they’d ever really known each other at all.

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