And after Vivian’s trip up to Syracuse, she had the full story.

Chapter 38

Vivian had the full story, all right, but what she didn’t have was her driver’s license. And knowing who did have her driver’s license caused a heavy pit of dread to settle in Vivian’s stomach. There it was, sitting right next to the pile of festering anger that had Edward’s name on it. If she made it through to summer without having an exploding ulcer, it would be a miracle.

If she hadn’t had the dentist extract every one of her teeth, for purely cosmetic reasons, she was sure they’d be falling out by now. That had always been Vivian’s solution: if something was giving her trouble, have it yanked out. Her teeth, her uterus, gray hairs on her head, chin stubble, and lately the cords at Bell’s switchboard whenever Betty Miller was trying to place a call. But Vivian couldn’t just have Edward yanked out of her life.

The idea of leaving him. Whooo, mercy, that was a doozy. Where would she even begin? Rent a room over the Laundromat and prostitute herself, like Daisy Stucker whose husband, Joe, had died in a horrible farming accident, leaving her with thousands of dollars in debt that she hadn’t known about? Vivian wouldn’t have to go that far, she did have her job at Bell. But if she kicked Edward out she’d be alone. Did she want everyone in town pitying her for having to live alone? Because that’s what you were doing if there was no man in the house. Even if you had six kids to take care of. You were living alone. She couldn’t decide which would be worse: having people talk about her because she was alone, or having them talk about her because she’d turned to prostitution so she could eat.

When it came right down to it, Vivian didn’t think she could manage solely on her salary. The money from Bell gave the Daltons just enough extra to be able to buy new clothes when the old ones wore out, and to afford a nicer cut of meat at the butcher’s on Saturdays. But it wasn’t enough for a person to live on. That was the reason Bell hired women in the first place. They worked cheap. If Vivian let herself think about it for too long, she’d work herself up into a lather about how unfair it was, and how women ended up trapped in their marriages with mouths to feed, and how there was no chance of them ever getting out of that, and the next thing you know she’d be waving a sign or wearing a pair of trousers. So she didn’t think about it too long. Just long enough to know that leaving Edward wasn’t an option for her at this point in life. The cheese stands alone. That was all fine and good for the cheese, but it wasn’t going to work for her.

To his credit, Edward had been bending over backward to please her. He’d even splurged for Valentine’s Day. He’d paid a visit to Bowman Street Barber Shop and had Elmer take a little off the top and a lot off the sides and back, and while he was at it, he trimmed up the nose and ear hair as well. (He knew that Vivian hated that he’d been getting lazy about his grooming habits.) And there were a dozen red roses from Barrett’s sitting in the Daltons’ crystal (first) wedding vase in the middle of the dining room table on Friday. Where had he even found that thing? Vivian hadn’t seen or thought about it in years. He must have gone into the basement and rooted through boxes, unwrapping all the newspaper-wrapped knickknacks in order to find it.