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December, 1950
She finds the letters. They're not hard to find, really. A box in the attic, Caroline looking for Christmas ornaments. She's only just confirmed her own suspicions: they'll have another baby, this time next year, and she's almost giddy with the news. Darrel, before Junior was born, said he wanted as many daughters as he did sons. So far they've gotten two of the latter, and Caroline would be lying if she didn't admit she was dreaming of a little girl, maybe the spitting image of Sodapop, maybe something new all by herself.
The box they’re in is the spitting image of the one they keep the ornaments in. Maybe, she’ll think to herself later, the trick would have worked any other time of year. But it’s December, and when she opens the box it’s to bundles of well-worn envelopes, hand-writing flowing, the name in the corner unfamiliar. Faye Blue Thunder.
Caroline Curtis is not a woman prone to curiosity, nor to misbehavior. She married a boy from Texas, which was about the most wild thing she could have done, doubly so because he was part-Mexican. Her folks hadn’t been too happy about that one, but it’s not like Darrel was like the rest of them, out on the West Side. He didn’t look it first of all; only tip-off was that he was almost wily as any other of the men who made a home there. It was here that the similarities stopped. He worked hard, wasn’t prone to drinking, and bought her this house as a wedding present, nearly seven years ago.
She wasn’t naive. She knows how the money was made. But he doesn’t do the dirty work anymore, he says. They’ve got legal businesses to funnel everything through. He’s a roofer, earns enough for their little family, treats her well. He’s never given her any reason to doubt anything that has to do with the two of them together.
Except...She’s got a letter in her hand addressed to Darrel Curtis, and the address under his name isn’t this house. It’s a PO box. And she doesn’t recognize the sender, can’t remember meeting a Faye recently, and not one whose last name would make her taste frybread, the way this one might, if Caroline were to say it out loud.
She flips, hurriedly, through the stack of letters in her hand. It’s all the same handwriting, the same name, the same PO address. She can feel a faint trembling start, holds her hand out in front of her and watches how her fingers shake with it. Downstairs, Junior is playing with the old train set that Darrel said he’s going to replace for Christmas. Sodapop is down for a nap. She was only planning on being in the attic for a few minutes at most, just long enough to grab ornaments.
Instead, she opens one of the envelopes, hands still shaking. Her husband’s name in someone else’s handwriting stings, and she drops the letter before she can finish it. Takes a ragged breath, tries to make sense of the words. Date marked 1949, the words I’m pregnant, then a steadfast announcement of keeping it. Of knowing that Darrel had a wife and children at home. It’s enough to make her sick, and she barely gets the box covered and shoved into a corner of the attic before she’s rushing down to the bathroom, retching until she cries.
When she looks up, Junior’s there.
“Mama?” he says, faded green train car in his hand, and she tries to smile at him.
“I’m alright, baby,” she says, and gets up, flushes. Looks at herself in the mirror, tries to imagine what Darrel sees when he looks at her. Hair like cornsilk, eyes a matching cornflower blue. She wonders what this Faye woman looks like, if she’s from Indian Country like her name suggests, and tries not to curl her lip at the thought. Instead she bends at the waist to wash her face and brush her teeth, and afterwards guides Junior back to the living room, where they stay until dinner, when Darrel finally gets home.
She wonders if it’s obvious. If she’s acting any different, or speaking oddly, or looking at him with the truth clear across her face. If she is, Darrel doesn’t show it. Coos at Junior and Sodapop instead, compliments her cooking, and then retreats to the backyard with both boys, no doubt to play in the scant two inches of snow that they’ve gotten so far this season.
Inside, Carolina braces herself against the sink, not because of nausea but to keep herself from slumping to the ground like she so desperately wants to. Maybe she scrubs the dishes a little more severely than normal. Maybe she loses herself to thoughts of this other woman and the baby she was pregnant with the summer before last. She does the math. That baby’s not even a year old, if she kept her after all. Sodapop’s only just turned two. She presses one palm to her belly, takes a shuddering breath. She won’t be giving Darrel his first daughter. The thought stings worse than knowing he strayed.
Somehow she keeps it bottled up until it’s just the two of them, Junior and Sodapop both asleep in their bedrooms. She’s sitting at her vanity, rubbing Pond’s into her skin, when he comes up behind her. He rests his palms against her shoulders, and she can’t help but lean into his touch. She thinks of this home they’ve created together, their children safe and sound. When she looks at herself in the mirror she can’t recognize herself, but she knows Darrel always will.
He says, Texas twang strong as ever, “You doin’ alright there, darlin’?”
“Of course,” she says. She keeps her eyes on her face, the mirror shiny as it always is. When she speaks next, her voice doesn’t waver: “How’s Faye doing?”
She sees the words hit him in slow motion. His grip on her tightens for a split second, all the muscles in his forearms standing out in stark relief. All too soon he lets go of her, and when he takes a step back she turns. She doesn’t bother standing, just looks up at him, ready for bed in her nightgown, while he stares at her in open shock.
He doesn’t deny it. Instead he asks, “What?” like he’s hoping she’ll say something different. As if his reaction doesn’t tell her all the truth she really needs.
“I found the letters,” Caroline says. She tries to take in the sight he makes while she speaks. Those are the hands that have held her, that have comforted her, that have offered their love every way they could. The two of them met a few months after Darrel arrived in Tulsa, Caroline freshly graduated and working at one of the childcare facilities that sprung up after the Community act was signed the year before. He said he was picking up a buddie’s little girl, the first time they met, and she thought it was an excuse until she asked to be their flower girl when they wed a year later.
He’s never given her any reason to doubt. All the things he got up to, none of it mattered. He had cleaned his act up, he said. She had visited him at work before, to drop off lunch and some snacks for his coworkers on summer days, when the boys wanted out of the house and she was missing him. Any other day Caroline would say her husband is an honest man. Today, she knows he’s one who shows it all on his face. If she weren’t trying to hide how badly she’s shaking, she would find it a little funny.
When he says nothing, she says, “Did she have a girl?” and still, he stays silent. She’s angry when she speaks next. “Well? Did she get rid of it? Where is she?”
“Caroline,” Darrel says, reaching out for her, and she stands, shakes his hands from her. She can feel herself trembling, can feel heat rising to her face, knows she probably looks like the bubblegum-pink swatch she was looking at while at the fabric store the other day, when she was fantasizing about giving Darrel his first daughter.
“How long,” she says. Her voice, at least, doesn’t break. Darrel shakes his head, palms up in surrender. She can hear her teeth grind together. It aches to speak: “Are you gonna lie to me again?”
He swallows. Straightens up, sets his jaw. When he finally answers it’s like a lightning strike straight to her heart. “Two years,” he says, “in November,” and she nearly stumbles. Sits down, heavy, at her vanity again, still facing Darrel, her expression no doubt devastated.
It would have been possible to ignore the love confession. To pretend that everything she read was an exaggeration. First love is always like that, Caroline thinks, even if Darrel was her first love, too. Maybe she had hoped this woman—this girl, whoever she is—had simply been lovesick, had gotten pregnant just a few short weeks after meeting her husband. But Caroline’s always been good at numbers. She remembers the exact time it was when she started counting contractions for both her children, remembers every single detail of their births down to the minute.
The month after she gave Darrel his second son, her body tender in the aftermath, he was seducing some Indian girl, no problem. This wasn’t a week-long affair blown out of proportion, not even a month. This was a relationship he built behind her back. She has to cling to the ottoman she uses as a chair to keep her balance. Otherwise she might topple over, and Caroline isn’t sure she’ll be able to pull herself back up.
She says, rage finally coloring her words, “Is she from Indian Country? I ain’t heard of no Mexican Blue Thunders,” and Darrel’s jaw goes tight again. She knows it for the answer it is, hisses, “Why didn’t you pay for her to get rid of it?”
She has to pretend it doesn’t hurt to receive the look he gives her. It’s something like disappointment, but deeper. Darrel’s her best friend, she thinks. Her best guy, the man she wanted to marry no matter what her friends and family said about Mexicans, even the ones that could pretend they weren’t. They’re supposed to be a team. She didn’t realize how long it had been since that was the truth.
He says, clearly angry, and it’s only then that Caroline can finally drag her gaze away from her husband, “I ain’t that kinda man.”
“But you’re the kind to cheat on your wife,” she says, eyes fixed to the photo of them on her nightstand, the two of them beaming widely. It was at her birthday party, she remembers, shortly before he proposed. A wave of nausea hits her; she’s not sure if it’s the rising hysteria or the baby she still hasn’t told Darrel about. She says, “You didn’t leave. Guess you’d rather have a blonde than a red—”
“Don’t.” His voice is so loud; she flinches. She doesn’t look at him, hears him take a breath. “Her name’s June,” Darrel says. Something about the way he says it reminds her of how he speaks to the boys. The delicate way he holds them, the love she can see in his eyes.
The jealousy that rips through her is violent. That, or maybe the morning sickness isn’t just for dawn, because when she stands again it’s to dart to the bathroom. She doesn’t realize Darrel’s followed her there until she feels him carefully sweep her hair back away from her face. She doesn’t push him away from her until she’s finished, and even then she doesn’t get back up. Instead she leans her head against the toilet lid, glad that she had scrubbed it down earlier, before Darrel arrived home from work.
She says, “I’m pregnant,” and looks up at him. His expression is unreadable. Caroline’s never had trouble reading his feelings. Seems like, up until today, he was always an open book. She feels her lower lip start to tremble, and when Darrel drops down into a squat to reach out and cup her face, she lets him. She lets him wipe away the tears, lets him gather her into his arms like he always does, when the days are rough and she needs that little bit of comfort from the man she thought could do her no harm.
“It don’t change anythin’,” he says against the crown of her head, and Caroline doesn’t believe him, but she doesn’t correct him, either.
June 19, 1949
Darrel,
Jim’s still in love with that ruca out in Brumly, last I asked, so don’t think he’s gotten any smarter. Says she’s different than all the rest, that he’ll marry her soon now that Sonny’s getting bigger. I say he’s just acting stupid, but you knew that already. Said I was just being stubborn, like me and you wasn’t about as lovesick back when we first met neither. I got the flowers you sent. Thank you.
I should have said something to you last we saw each other but I couldn’t. And I’m not saying it here instead because I expect something or because I’m afraid of what you’ll say. I just couldn’t. I’ve never done this before, and I think back to what it’s been like, the last couple years off the rez, waiting for Jim or someone else to come on down and stay with me. It was so lonely until then, just me working, getting by with the little I made, even if I was sending as much as I could up to my ma. It was lonely until Jim came down and then you was around too and here we are. Guess that’s what I’m getting at.
Guess it don’t matter that we were careful, too. I don’t want to beat around the bush anymore, even if it’s your favorite thing to do just to get a laugh out of me, so here: I’m pregnant.
I know it doesn’t change anything. I know you love that wife of yours and the two boys you’ve got by her. I ain’t trying to take you away from that, Darrel. I wouldn’t ever ask you to. But I ain’t gonna risk dying just to get rid of this baby and if that means it’s the end of us then it’s the end of us. Course I think that’d be a real shame, on account of I really love you.
But I ain’t ever had nothing that’s just mine, you know that? Feels like I’ve spent my whole life doing things for someone else. I ain’t complaining—it’s just a fact. I took care of my ma on the rez until I couldn’t, until it was a better idea for me to come on down to Tulsa and get a job that paid just a little bit more. Even then I was taking care of her, sending money to Celeste so they didn’t have to worry ‘bout bills, so she could keep Jim out of trouble. Then Jim came to stay with me and even if he ain’t around much this little apartment ain’t mine anymore. And you ain’t never been just mine. Don’t think I’m complaining, neither, sugar. That’s just the way things are.
This baby’s fixing to be mine, is how I see it. Don’t matter if after this letter you stop coming by and pretend we wasn’t nothing but a good time. I’ll admit it’ll hurt like nothing else in my life has, worse than when my pa died and left me and Celeste to take care of our ma and Jim, worse than knowing maybe that I couldn’t keep Jim outta trouble, even if you say your Kings are family. It’ll hurt. I hope you don’t disappear after you read this, and that you’re still reading this, but I know if you do it’ll be just fine. I don’t got to be alone ever again.
That’s all I want to let you know. I’m keeping her. And before you go asking, I got good reason to think it’s a girl. Three generations of first-born daughters—I ain’t fixing to break that tradition.
I hope you write soon.
Faye x