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The women in the neighborhood told tall tales, whispered gossip and falsehoods. Something to pass the time when the housework was done and the children were at school, and it was just them. When they were allowed to exist for a short while, just them with no men to keep them obedient and silent, when the kitten heeled shoes were kicked off and painted toes sunk into shorn grass.
It was usually kept light, fashion and the children, gossip about who was pregnant or trying to become pregnant. But there was a tale, passed in hushed tones like a prayer, about a woman who may or may not have ever existed. There were signs of course, a man who lived alone, a mechanic shop with a name of a previous owner, but there were no guarantees because there couldn’t be. Not when it was a tale to be whispered from one woman to another, not when they were taught that a woman’s word should be taken with a grain of sand.
Her name may or may not have been Elizabeth Allen, at least at birth. She was said to have a penchant for trouble, and was said to have a childhood that her husband wanted to erase entirely. For she was quickly tamed when she went off to school, said to have received her MRS degree as the joke went, and became Mrs. Betty Thawne before her first year of college was up.
Eobard Thawne was a professor of hers, saw all that blonde hair and those blue eyes, and courted her properly over the course of a month.
She was said to have dreams, but they all had dreams beyond the scope of marriage, and they didn’t matter. He asked or demanded, and she said yes or shrugged, and they were married on a Wednesday in the summer. They settled down in the town, in a little house on a hill with a white picket fence.
A man named Eobard Thawne lived in that house on the hill, with a white picket fence that left paint flakes on the sidewalk in front of it, chipping without any repairs in sight. He didn’t talk about having a little wife, and it was easy for everyone to write it off as fantasy. Because what happened next was something out of a fantasy.
For Mrs. Betty Thawne had a little car, a cherry red coupe that none of the women could tell the make of, and that little car broke down when she was on her way back from the grocery store on a rainy day. She was lucky to have broken down in front of Captain’s Automobile Repair, another little detail of the story that happened to make it sound like it was fictitious.
But, to go along with the story is to buy into the fantasy, and it was nice to be able to float away into fantasy for a little while. There, on the lawn of the woman who was trying to cover a bruise on her cheek with foundation that didn’t quite hide it, the women were going to indulge her. It was nice to fade into the past of ghosts, sipping on glasses of lemonade that left condensation on bared legs from women sitting in a way that wasn’t entirely ladylike.
It was better to pretend like it was all entirely real. And pretend they would, at least for a little while.
A man with work rough hands came right out, and they hitched her little cherry red car right in to work on it. She had learned about the man before, that his name was Leonard Snart and that he had a reputation among the locals, that he liked to not only look but touch. That he was content to take whatever he wanted, consequences be damned.
And, yet, he sat her down in his office with a hot cup of coffee warming her hands, a towel around her shoulders. She learned more about him than the people in the town had, that he smiled with his whole face and he laughed loudly, uncaring if people heard him. And that he was a perfect gentleman, keeping his hands to himself even as he leaned against his desk in her personal space.
Most importantly, he listened to what she had to say, another thing that made the story feel like something out of a romance novel. When she talked about her husband’s annoying habits, Leonard nodded his head in sympathy. When she talked about something amusing that happened to her neighbor, he laughed along.
Betty was a woman who had been told that she talked too much by everyone she had ever met. Her mother, who was a gentle woman, had called her a rambler with affection, yet everyone else lacked all forms of affection when they told her to stop talking as much. Yet, when she apologized to Leonard for talking too much, he shrugged her off and told her that he liked listening to her talk.
From then on, it was easy to rationalize her decision to go and visit him more often. If she lied to her husband and said she was visiting a friend she had made up the street, it was just because he wouldn’t understand.
At that point in the story, there would be two schools of thought amongst the women. The women who get stars in their eyes, and the women that would call Betty Thawne some rude names. Of course, it would all depend on who would be telling the story who the villain of it is, a cruel husband, a shrill and thoughtless woman, a greedy homewrecking mechanic.
As you may be able to tell, this version of the story had a clear bias. The woman with the black eye and a dream of being able to escape, idolizing a woman who got away.
Slowly, Betty began to fall in love with Leonard Snart, with his work rough hands and his open ears.
Slowly, Leonard began to fall in love with Betty Thawne, with her kind eyes and way of speaking. More importantly, he was falling in love with the Elizabeth Allen that had been told that she would need to change to be loved.
He told her as much one night, stood outside the kitchen window while her husband slept in the living room in front of the television, leaning in and pressing a kiss to her lips.
And, so they carried on in secret, in the back office of Captain’s Automobile Repair, stealing away to her marriage bed while her husband was at work. They shared each other as husband and wife would, and he gave her pleasure like her husband never had.
It didn’t take her too long to fall pregnant and there was no question as to who the father was. Still, she couldn’t help but feel excited and Leonard shared in her joy. He knelt before her and kissed her stomach where it would start to swell in a matter of weeks.
In some versions of the story, Eobard found out and beat his little wife. Some particularly adventurous women tell a tale of a great fight, in which Leonard is victorious and they run off together into the sunset. In that backyard, the version of the story was told in which they plan an escape in secret.
Betty was starting to show and, with how often her husband had been working, her extra-marital affair would have been no secret. They both needed to leave, not just Eobard but the town itself. And leave they did, right as her stomach was beginning to swell.
In the dead of night, Betty Thawne laid down next to her sleeping husband. An hour later, Betty Allen got out of bed, grabbed her packed bag, and met her Leonard out on the corner. She hopped on the back of his bike and held him close as they rode off for the coast together.
The story ended there of course. If Betty ever existed, she existed in a different place from the walls of their town. Regardless of whether or not she existed, she existed in the minds of the women who needed her most, saying her name with a reverence that should’ve been reserved for their husbands. Her story was important and the women would continue to tell it as long as they needed it, and some of them would need it until their very last day.
After all, what was the harm in just telling a story?