THREE HOURS TO Port Oriskany, in the rain; steady driving. And then three hours back that night. (Because Wilma wouldn’t allow her to stay away overnight, and where could they have stayed but a motel? “That’s all we need next,” Wilma said sourly, “to have people talking about you and him, and that bitch of a mother of his on the phone with me.”) Marya loved Emmett as she lay close against him, her arm slipped through his, her fingers lazily squeezing his wrist; she loved him when they stopped at roadside cafés like any young married couple, sitting close together in booths, reading menus aloud, nudging each other, whispering private jokes, kissing. Marya’s hair fell to her waist in glossy waves, a thick dark mane that looked black in some lights, chestnut-brown in others, and though she privately knew herself ugly, her hair was beautiful. She allowed herself a measure of pride in it, reasoning that though it was hers it wasn’t her. When Emmett buried his face in it and inhaled deeply, clowning, snorting like a horse, yet genuinely moved to admiration, Marya thought that he was right, he was justified in loving her and in wanting to be her husband; and his desire for her (of which she was much aware) had the power to make her desire him. We love each other, we should get married.

But sometimes the country-and-western songs Emmett liked to play on the radio grated against her nerves, and the places he stopped at, and the food he ordered. . . . Marya particularly found fault with the food, cole slaw doused in sugar, french fries dripping in grease: as Emmett said, you’d think from the way she criticized restaurants she ate in them all the time.

“I’m not criticizing anything,” Marya protested in surprise, “I’m just pointing out what’s wrong. . . .”