First, sex had been imaginary. She had imagined it with her cousin Vic and combined it with her religious heresy: Like First Communion, she and Vic would have First Coming together. When she stayed overnight at the Vitales’ she’d think of Vic coming down the hall in the quiet night to her room and softly pulling down the blankets and lifting up her nightgown to look at her. She would take his hands and guide them to her and she would put her hands on him. He would get into bed with her. Afterward he’d be conscience-stricken and talk of having to go to confession.

(“Why do you have to confess, Vic?” . . . “My God, are you kidding? Marguerite! It’s a sin what we did!” . . . “Why? Didn’t you like it?” . . . “Of course I liked it! But it’s still a sin.” . . . “Don’t you want some more? Put your hand here and feel me.” . . . “Are you crazy? It’s a mortal sin! Just touching yourself, just even thinking about it. And you go to a Catholic school!” . . . “That’s why I don’t believe all this sin business. All the boarders, and probably the nuns, too, do it every night with the crosses hanging over their beds.” . . . “God, Marguerite, you better stop talking like that!” . . . “Are you afraid lightning’s going to strike you, Vic? Let’s go down to the cellar and put wine on ourselves and then lick it off.” . . . “Jeez, Marguerite, it’s a mortal sin, just talking like this is a sin.” . . . “You’re just superstitious, Vic, like all Italians.” . . . “Aren’t you Italian, too?” . . . “But not superstitious like you—come on down to the cellar, I’ll show you.” . . . “It’s a sin, don’t say I didn’t tell you.”)

Then there was Lennart, who referred to her body as her shape and had to drink to function, so that sex with him was his drunken breath and bumbling, drunken maneuvers, his big hands, the lines of anguish on his squeegee face.

After a week she and Lennart drove back to Gloversville.

Success, she thought as she looked at the ring on her finger. Now she was married and she could tell her aunts and Sammy and her mother and all the rest of them to go fry ice. She had done it—she had gotten out of the Tudor house. How would they live? Where? And she’d look at the big man by her side and wonder who he was.