Chapter 3
THAT NIGHT I COULDN'T SLEEP. NO MATTER how hard I tried to rationalize what I had seen that afternoon, to forgive Joe, to minimize the brutal ugliness of the lust I had witnessed, I was reminded of the past: a past that I had been trying to forget, to shut out of my mind; but a past that, nevertheless, continued to haunt me and mock me.
It was not the first time Joe had been tempted by lust-and delivered himself willingly into the hands of his carnal nature. And I wondered again, with that old doubt, if there could ever be a real end to it. After all, he was behind these walls for just such a weakness.
I met Joe when I was fourteen and he was sixteen. It was a casual acquaintance at first; he was simply one of the older boys in the high school I attended, and one of the many older boys that girls of my age quite easily got school-girl crushes on. In Joe's case, I was certainly not his only admirer. The woods, as they say, were full of them. Almost every girl I knew found something in Joe Phillips to admire. Besides being one of the handsomest boys in school, Joe was also the very best athlete. He excelled in almost every sport he turned his hand to-particularly football. When half the boys his age were still gangling and awkward, Joe had put on pounds of muscle and strength, and had developed a casual, masculine grace that was years beyond his age. I didn't realize it at the time, I suppose, but Joe was already the kind of boy that made easy-or at least tempting-bait for predatory females. And our school wasn't lacking in that kind.
I was actually too young to know everything about what went on in our high school, but I got wind of rumors, as girls will, about how some of the older girls carried on behind their parents' backs. The only real involvement concerning Joe came when the superintendent of our high school uncovered a kind of sex club which numbered in its ranks some of the most popular and smartest students in the school. The whole thing was a hushed-up, minor scandal; and I remember that I was shocked, and defensive, when Joe's name was involved.
Nothing happened, of course. The parents demanded that the whole thing be forgotten; and because many of the older students were ready to graduate that very spring, the matter was very quickly glossed over.
For the next year all the kids were extra careful about what they did. If any more sex clubs appeared, they were well guarded secrets. I know that I was never asked to join one. It was about this time, however, that I began dating more or less steadily. The boys I dated were all from good families; and my parents were very strict. You shouldn't get the idea that I felt at all cheated. I was a little strict myself. I had certain ideas about how boys should behave; and if a boy went beyond my code of moral behavior, I let him know about it fast, and in no uncertain terms.
That's why I was a bit uncertain when Joe Phillips called me up for a date.
I remembered the vague rumors about his being involved in the sex club scandal, and although he had come through it-unsullied and more popular than ever, I still had that nagging doubt about his character. But I was only human-and a very flattered human at that. When half the girls I knew were panting to get even a smile from Joe Phillips, I ms being asked out on a date.
I don't think any female alive could refuse that kind of attention.
We went to a movie on our first date. Joe was the nicest thing in the world to me. He was a good conversationalist, and he took particular interest in what I had to say-which was certainly a departure from most of the boys I had dated in the past. He impressed me as not only being an intelligent and well-bred person, but also as a young man with a good future. How wrong first impressions can be and how right!
Even after Joe's trouble, and his subsequent conviction, I never lost the faith in him that was born on that first date. My becoming a nurse just so I could be at his side in Mason Reformatory was living testament to that conviction.
On our second date we both knew each other a lot better, and when Joe asked if he could give me a goodnight kiss I actually smiled.
"You didn't have to ask, Joe," I murmured, loving him for being so thoughtful.
"I won't try to fool you, Mary," he said, giving me a long, honest look. "I'm no innocent character. I've been out with a lot of girls-and believe me, the kissing started a lot sooner than this."
"Then why so slow with me?"
"I ... I like you, I guess. I didn't want to take the chance of not having another date."
I smiled again and this time I kissed him-a slightly longer, more affectionate kiss on the lips. I couldn't begin to understand why kissing Joe made me tremble to the depths of my being. I wasn't exactly innocent myself. I had kissed many boys-or at least had let them kiss me. Sometimes I liked it, and sometimes it was like washing my hair-boring and routine. But with Joe, it was nothing but magic and sudden starlight. We kissed several more times, once or twice letting ourselves get carried away. I had never in my life French kissed, and secretly entertained the idea that there was something terribly depraved and immoral in letting the tongues get involved the ways ours did.
But it seemed right with Joe: and lying awake that night in my room, with my mind alive with pictures of Joe's face and a happy, even selfish, little smile on my lips, I realized that if kissing Joe Phillips that way was sinful, then I was well on my way to becoming the school's most notorious sinner.
Although I wasn't quite able to focus on the realization then, I was falling in love.
Our dates multiplied after that. We went everywhere together: to dances, football games (if Joe was playing, I sat in the stands and screamed my lungs out for him), picnics, lakeshore rides in his old convertible, everything. It's funny when you're in love with somebody, you don't have to do complicated, expensive things. Just sitting alone by a campfire with his arm around your shoulder can be the most satisfying thing in the world. I feel sorry for the girl who has never experienced that kind of rich experience-the richness that money can't buy.
Joe's platonic detachment toward me was pleasant at first. I'll have to admit that I found a certain relief in the fact that he didn't try to paw me. I said earlier that I had gone out with boys from good families; I didn't mean to imply that I had been treated like a Dresden doll. Far from it; and some of the boys from "good" families ought to be in Mason Reformatory on general principles. Many times I had to fight off their advances, pull their wriggling fingers away from my breasts and slap away their hands that tired vainly to slide up my dress. I knew very early just what it was most boys were after.
And I had expected that of Joe Phillips. So when he turned out to be more than a gentleman, I was at first flattered and pleased. It was only after we had been going together for a few months that I became ... well ... puzzled.
It was like that first kiss he had been hesitant to take. He obviously wanted me to think the best of him; and I supposed that, somewhere, hidden back in his character and his moral convictions, was the idea that sex was dirty. I don't happen to believe that. I never did. Even though my mother died when I was very young, my father had taken every opportunity to play both parental roles to me. And in the matter of sex he had been clear, firm and intelligent. I knew what the psychological and physiological makeup of the male was a long time before I experienced it. My father's little lectures were very helpful in many ways; but they didn't prepare me for the tugs of the heartstrings. Being in love and facing the problems of sex can be a very different thing from textbook-solving sexual problems.
And so it became a problem with me.
I wasn't satisfied with those goodnight kisses, pleasant as they were. And I knew that Joe wasn't satisfied either. Even at seventeen, a girl can be awfully sure of her heart-and her body. My heart said that Joe Phillips was the only boy in the world for me; and my body ached to prove the scope of my feeling.
But what could I do? I didn't dare insist on some more intimate relationship. I would be risking weakening that peculiar male pride that insists the sexual advances must be made from his position, and not the females.
And so I played a waiting game.
But one other aspect of that game disturbed me. I knew that Joe was a healthy, in many ways aggressive, young man, and that his needs were as acute as any other similarly endowed male.
How did he satisfy them?
The question nagged me with an ever-increasing frustration. It was so much the reverse side of the coin that I felt cheated. Before, I had been somewhat the pawn of boys who saw in me a physical prize: many of them had asked for dates just "for what they could get." I had cared nothing for them. And now, with Joe-a boy I knew I loved-I was ready and even eager to give my body to him, and he never once demanded it.
It made me wonder if he wasn't demanding somebody else's body in place of mine.
Was I merely the Sunday kind of girl-the one he liked to be seen with because her father was Phil Gray, the attorney?
Was I the good girl, the girl with unquestionable character, somebody who might-in time-make a good wife? And was he, in the meantime, giving the urgency of his hard young body to some cheap girl who was less matrimonial material but very available for a moment's ecstasy in a motel or the back seat of his car?
I hated to admit it, but the question bothered me.
Then two things happened which answered both those questions-the good-girl and the bad-girl questions.
On my eighteenth birthday Joe asked me to marry him. He said that he loved me very deeply and that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. Talk about being on Cloud Nine-I was on Cloud Eighteen!
I could barely make it inside the front door that evening, I was so happy.
My father was still up, sitting in his study reading some briefs for a court case he had coming up the next day. I usually never dared disturb him on such occasions, but tonight was different. I burst into the room like a canon's roar.
He looked up in surprise, and pushed his glasses up on his forehead. "Whoa, there, young lady," he cried. "Is the house on fire?"
"No, but I am, Daddy!"
I hugged him so hard that his glasses spilled off in his lap. He pulled me back away and let his eyes roam suspiciously over my face.
"Does this mean what I think it does?" he breathed, a kind of happy-sad sigh coming from deep in his throat.
"He asked me to marry him, Daddy," I said, and the words were like bells to me. "I see."
"You are happy, aren't you?" I begged.
He kissed me on the nose-a pet place for him since I was three years old-and grinned. "I think Joe is a nice boy," he said. "If you love him...."
"I do ... you know I do!"
"Yes ... but ... so young; both of you, so young."
I felt a lecture coming on, but I was so happy that I had the strength-and I suspected, the wisdom-to counter any arguments Daddy could dredge up from that legalistic mind of his. I waited, but he surprised me by only sighing once more and then kissing me again and patting my arm.
"You know, Mary, that Joe Phillips won't be able to give you ... well ... what you have here-at least not at first. He's a nice young man, but he'll have to carve a future out for himself and that isn't easy.
Material things...."
"Oh, Daddy, I'd live in a cave with Joe. I don't give a hoot for things."
He smiled proudly at me. "You're just like your mother. I'm glad for that. If I thought you only wanted to marry a boy...."
"Joe's almost twenty years old, Daddy."
He nodded. "I'm sorry-a young man, then. If I thought you only wanted to marry a young man for the furs and the cars he could give you, then I would be very disappointed. Joe Phillips can't do that. And I don't mind admitting to you, darling, that I've checked very thoroughly into his young life ... and his parent's...."
"Daddy, you old sleuth!"
"...and I've found out the rock-bottom truth about them all."
"And what is that, pray tell?"
"That they are poor ... but honest ... good people."
"I told you that, Daddy. I told you all about...."
"Yes, and I'm happy to say you were right."
We kissed and hugged again, and I skipped toward the door of his study.
"Oh ... by the way," he called, eyeing me from the depths of his armchair. "When is the wedding to be?"
I gasped and broke into a riot of sighs and smiles. "Oh my gosh," I wailed, "I hadn't even thought about that! But I can tell you one thing-I'm going to wear mother's wedding dress."
I think that pleased Daddy more than anything.
It was a good thing we both had our moment of happiness-because the next day the bottom fell out of my world. And in a way, Daddy's world, too.
I slept late, but when I got up there was a note from Daddy on my dressing table. He said to phone him, as soon as I could.
Downstairs in the kitchen as I munched a piece of toast, I dialed Daddy's office and listened as the clicks made their familiar rounds. Daddy's secretary answered and put me straight through to him.
"Mary?"
"Yes, Daddy ... it's me."
"I'm afraid I have some bad news. I ... wanted to tell you myself before...." He broke off, his voice a peculiar waver of indecision.
I held the piece of toast forgotten in my hand. I waited.
"Mary-Joe Phillips was arrested last night."
"Arrested? For what."
"For rape, Mary."
The word burned into my mind. I couldn't speak. I thought I might simply faint and leave the phone dangling from the wall. But I didn't. I just stood there, my heart banging against my breasts.
"The girl made the complaint to her parents ... and sometime ... well, very early in the morning, apparently ... the police went by Joe's home and woke his parents and...."
"Oh, Daddy-it can't be true! It...."
"I'm afraid it is true, Mary. I've offered to defend him, but I'm afraid it looks pretty bad. The girl is only fourteen...."
I listened to the details with a kind of frozen terror. It was like Daddy to tell me, not to hold anything back. And I expected that, and wanted it. We had always been that way with each other, and he knew it. This was certainly no time to keep secrets from each other, and he knew it.
He told me the girl's name and I didn't know her. I'd never heard her name at all. But I thought she might be somebody from the school. After all, the high school we attended was much too large to be able to know everybody.
Of one thing I was very sure of: it made no difference in how I felt about Joe. The question was: would it make any difference how Joe felt about me?
That terrible possibility took more shape when Joe refused to see me. I had to try three times before he agreed to talk to me. And when he did, he had that terrible, hang-dog look of a man who has been found guilty before even being tried.
I was led into a little room at the county jail, and Joe was brought in. A policeman stood right outside the door all the time, and the privacy was not privacy at all. But it was my first chance to be near him and I didn't intend to let the opportunity slip by without making it clear to Joe that nothing had changed.
"You shouldn't have come here, Mary," he said, hoarsely, not wanting to look at me.
"But I love you, Joe. And I don't care about what you did."
"How can you say that," he moaned. "I've ruined it for us."
"No, I'll forgive you, Joe."
He looked up at me and I almost shuddered at the coldness of his eyes. It was a look I had never seen there before.
"You'll never forget it, though, Mary-and that's what I couldn't live with."
The whole thingbecame a circus of quick "justice" as far as the courts were concerned. Daddy wasn't even allowed to take the case. The judge threw him off the minute he learned that Joe was engaged to me. The papers made a great compassionate attempt to leave my name out of the whole matter-for Daddy's sake. And Joe was characterized as one of the free-wheeling high school crowd who had been given far too much freedom for too long. They made a scapegoat of him. They brought all their pent-up bigotry to bear on one young man, and took the vengeance of a mob.
The girl's parents pressed the charges to the last rasp of the judge's gavel, and Joe was convicted of statutory rape.
The lawyer defending him tried every way possible to prove that the girl was nothing but a greedy little prostitute, and he even produced several of Joe's friends on the stand to make the charge crystal clear.
But the prudes were on the warpath. The girl cried and stammered when it came time for her to witness. To hear her tell it, she was innocent as snow. And she was fourteen.
The charge stuck, and so did the conviction.
When Joe was taken away, a part of my life ended. But a part of it began, too. I made up my mind that I would somehow be near him.
And now, lying in the dark bedroom of Warden Baker's house, I was indeed at the end of another part of my life. I was near Joe, as I had vowed.
But as he had prophesied, I had not forgotten. And what I had seen that day with my own eyes had made me wonder again if my love for Joe Phillips was not a fool's errand.
And a fool's reward.