Across the Street from Betty

Ellie had never imagined that loneliness could have a sound, but after three years as Pastor John Bell’s wife she knew it well, knew it in the hollow tick of the kitchen clock when the bills lay open on the table, knew it in the thin scrape of John’s chair when he sat down to a supper that was always too plain for his appetite and somehow too expensive for his conscience, knew it in the way he sighed before he spoke, as though every word he gave her had first been weighed against scripture, duty, and the price of coal. “You bought peaches?” John said that Tuesday evening, looking into the bowl as if she had set jewels before him. “They were bruised,” Ellie answered, her voice already tired. “Mrs. Hanley let me have them cheap.” “Cheap is still money.” “And hunger is still hunger.” John looked up sharply, young face drawn tight with the old man’s severity he liked to wear in the pulpit, and Ellie hated that face most of all, because when she had married him she had thought him handsome in a solemn way, a good man, a man who would keep a roof over her head and speak kindly to her when the world proved unkind, but instead he had brought her to a little white house in a respectable suburb and filled it with silence, sermons, unpaid bills, and arguments that always ended with him saying, “Ellie, you must learn contentment,” as if contentment were something she could sew from scraps. “I am content,” she lied. “No, you are not.” “No, John, I am not,” she said, and the words came out before she could fold them away. “I am tired.” He pushed the bowl back. “You think I am not tired?” “I think you get to be tired out there, among people who call you Pastor and shake your hand and tell you how holy and wise you are, and I get to be tired here, with the beans, the mending, the grocer, and the milkman looking at me like I am trying to pay him with prayers.” John’s mouth tightened, and she knew another quarrel was coming, one of those long, airless quarrels that went in circles until she felt less like a wife than a sinner under examination, but then, through the kitchen window, across the neat little street, she saw Betty Hart step out of her cream-colored automobile. Betty Hart did not step out of cars the way other women did; she emerged, as if every door opened for her because it had been longing to do so, one gloved hand first, then a polished heel, then the smooth line of a silk dress that seemed too rich for daylight and too daring for the suburbs, and although Betty was perhaps thirty-five, perhaps a little more, she carried herself with the certainty of a woman who had stopped apologizing so long ago she had forgotten apologies existed. John followed Ellie’s gaze. Across the street, Betty laughed at something her driver said, a low, bright laugh that drifted over the privet hedges, and John, Pastor John Bell, who preached modesty every Sunday and frowned if Ellie’s neckline dipped below his liking, looked. Ellie saw him look. “Careful,” she said softly. John blinked. “What?” “Nothing.” Betty raised her hand in greeting, not to John, Ellie thought, but to both of them, to the whole starving little house perhaps, and John gave an awkward wave, almost boyish, while Ellie felt something unpleasant and hot move in her chest, not jealousy exactly, because Betty did not look like a woman one could be jealous of, Betty looked like another country entirely. “She does not attend church,” John said, as though that settled something. “No,” Ellie said, watching Betty disappear into the large blue house with white columns, “I expect she has better things to do.” The next afternoon Ellie was hanging laundry in the yard when she noticed Betty on her porch, dressed in pale green, holding a cigarette between two fingers, with sunglasses tipped low on her nose and her mouth curved in the smallest possible smile. Ellie froze. Betty lowered the glasses. “You’ve been looking at me, Mrs. Bell,” she called, not accusingly, not cruelly, but as if she were naming a secret both of them had agreed to keep badly. Ellie’s face went hot. “I haven’t.” “Oh, honey,” Betty said, and laughed. “You have.” Ellie should have gone inside, should have gathered John’s shirts with their damp sleeves and their fraying collars and hidden behind the kitchen door, but Betty came down the porch steps and crossed halfway to the road, and up close she was worse, not younger than Ellie had thought but more alive, her beauty made of confidence rather than softness, with auburn hair pinned in shining waves and lips painted a dark, expensive red. “I was going to have a little drink,” Betty said. “Come sit with me.” “I shouldn’t.” “That was not no.” “My husband—” “Is at the church, I imagine, telling people how to live.” Ellie almost smiled, which was dangerous. Betty saw it. “Come on, Mrs. Bell. One drink. I promise not to corrupt you before supper.” That was how Ellie crossed the street the first time, not dramatically, not with thunder or music, but with wet laundry still forgotten on the line and her heart behaving like a foolish trapped bird. Betty’s house was not merely pretty; it was indecently beautiful, full of velvet chairs, carved tables, fresh flowers in heavy vases, lamps with fringed shades, silver trays, paintings of women who looked bored with men, and carpets so soft Ellie felt ashamed of her shoes. A maid appeared from somewhere in the hall, a slim dark-haired woman in a black dress and white apron. “Clara, bring the white wine, will you?” Betty said. “Yes, Miss Hart.” Ellie stared despite herself. “You have a servant?” “I have Clara,” Betty said. “There is a difference.” “I’ve never known anyone who had either.” “No, I suppose not,” Betty replied, guiding Ellie into a parlor where the sunlight looked trained to fall only on lovely things. “Sit down before you faint from disapproval.” “I am not disapproving.” “You are disapproving a little.” “I’m surprised.” “That is more honest.” Clara brought wine and little sandwiches cut into neat triangles, and Ellie meant to sip politely, but the wine was cold and floral and sweet enough to soften the hard corners of the afternoon, and Betty had a way of asking questions that did not feel like prying until Ellie had already answered them. “So,” Betty said, curling into the chair opposite her, “what is life like as a pastor’s wife?” Ellie laughed once, bitterly. “Holy.” “That bad?” “It is not bad.” “Ellie.” It was the first time Betty had used her name, and the sound of it, warm and unhurried in Betty’s mouth, undid something in her. “It is bad,” Ellie whispered. “It is awful sometimes. Everyone thinks I should be grateful, because John is good and educated and respectable, and he is good, I suppose, or he tries to be, but there is never enough money and never enough kindness, and he speaks to me like I am one more difficult parishioner, and I am so tired of being corrected, Betty, so tired I could scream into the flour bin.” Betty leaned forward. “Does he hurt you?” “No,” Ellie said quickly, then hesitated. “Not with his hands.” Betty’s face changed, and beneath the glamour Ellie saw something older, harder, a bruise that had healed crooked under powder and pearls. “My first husband did,” Betty said. Ellie looked up. “Yes,” Betty continued, voice calm, almost careless, but her fingers tightened around the stem of her glass. “He hurt me with his hands, his money, his friends, his name, his silence, and when I left him, everyone said I was ruined, which was funny because I had been ruined for years and no one had objected while he was doing it.” “I’m sorry.” “Don’t be. I survived him out of spite.” Ellie laughed through sudden tears, and then the tears would not stop, humiliating hot tears that slid down her face while Betty moved beside her on the sofa and put an arm around her shoulders. “Oh, sweetheart,” Betty murmured. “There now.” “I don’t know why I’m crying.” “Yes, you do.” “I should go.” “You can. Or you can sit another minute and let someone be kind to you.” Ellie stayed. Betty smelled of rose soap, smoke, and some dark perfume Ellie could not name, and the closeness felt almost too good, almost wrong in a way that did not make Ellie want to move away. After a while Betty brushed a tear from Ellie’s cheek with her thumb and said, “Come back tomorrow morning around ten. I’ll make breakfast.” “You cook?” “God, no. Clara cooks. I supervise beautifully.” Ellie laughed again, and Betty smiled as if she had meant to make that happen all along. “I can’t,” Ellie said. “Yes, you can.” “John—” “John will not know what you do at ten in the morning unless you rush to confess it.” Ellie stood, unsteady from wine and emotion. “You are a dangerous woman, Miss Hart.” Betty rose with her. “Only to women who are already unhappy.” Ellie crossed back to her house with the sensation that the street had grown wider behind her, as if she had returned from a foreign land, and while she chopped onions for supper she watched a dark expensive car pull up to Betty’s house. A woman stepped out, older than Betty, wrapped in mink despite the mild evening, with diamonds at her ears and impatience in the tilt of her chin. Betty opened the door herself. The woman did not shake her hand. She kissed her cheek. Ellie cut her finger on the knife. That night John scolded her for bleeding on the towel, and Ellie almost laughed in his face, because across the street there were diamonds, wine, secrets, and a woman in green who had called her sweetheart. The next morning Ellie burned the toast because the mink-wrapped woman was leaving Betty’s house at eight-thirty, smiling like a cat with cream on its whiskers, and Betty came to the door in a silk nightgown the color of champagne, barefoot, hair loose over one shoulder. John said, “Ellie, the toast.” “I know.” “You’re staring again.” “I said I know.” “At what?” “At nothing.” He rose and came to the window, but by then the car was pulling away and Betty had gone inside. John’s expression darkened. “I do not like that woman.” “You waved at her yesterday.” “I was being neighborly.” “You were being something.” “Ellie.” “What?” “I don’t want you going over there again.” She turned slowly. “Again?” His face shifted. “I saw you yesterday.” “Then why ask?” “I hoped you would tell me.” “I had a glass of wine with a neighbor.” “A woman like that does not invite another man’s wife for wine out of Christian charity.” “No,” Ellie said, surprising herself with the steadiness of her voice. “She invited me out of ordinary charity, which so far has proved warmer.” John slapped his palm on the table. “Do not speak to me that way.” Ellie flinched, then hated herself for it, and hated him for noticing. “I have a meeting,” he said after a moment, stiff with shame he would rather call anger. “We will speak tonight.” But at ten o’clock, Ellie put on her cleanest dress, brushed her hair until it shone, and walked across the street. Clara let her in. “Miss Hart will be down in a moment,” she said. “She has just come out of the shower.” Ellie sat in the breakfast room before a table laid with coffee, eggs, fruit, biscuits, honey, and little pots of jam, and she was trying not to feel like a thief when Betty entered in a robe of blue silk, her hair damp, her face bare of paint and somehow more beautiful for it. “You came,” Betty said. “I nearly didn’t.” “But you did.” “Yes.” Betty poured coffee. “Then I owe you honesty.” Ellie’s stomach tightened. “About the woman last night?” “And others.” “There are others?” Betty sat opposite her. “I am what polite people call a companion.” Ellie did not understand at first. Betty watched her kindly, giving her time. Then Ellie understood. The coffee cup rattled in her saucer. “You mean men pay you?” “No.” Ellie stared. “Women,” Betty said. “Rich women, lonely women, married women, widows, actresses passing through town, wives of judges, wives of bankers, wives of men who never ask what their wives need as long as dinner is served and the family name remains polished.” Ellie stood so quickly her chair scraped the floor. “That is disgusting.” “Yes,” Betty said quietly. “It can be. When it is dishonest. When someone is forced. When someone is used. I have seen all those things, Ellie, and I despise them. But that is not what happens here.” “You take money.” “I take money because tenderness does not pay taxes and safety costs more than sermons.” Ellie moved toward the door. “I should not be here.” “No, probably not.” “Then let me go.” “I will.” But Betty stepped close enough that Ellie could feel the warmth of her through the silk, and she did not grab her, did not trap her, only looked at her with such naked understanding that Ellie’s anger lost its shape. “Tell me no,” Betty said. “Say it plainly, and I will never touch you.” Ellie opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Betty kissed her once, softly, no more than a question, and Ellie’s whole life seemed to tilt on its foundations, the church, the kitchen, John’s hard voice, the bills, the peaches, the little white house, all of it sliding away while Betty’s hand came up to cradle her cheek. When Betty drew back, Ellie whispered, “I don’t know what I am.” Betty’s eyes softened. “Most women don’t. Not at first.” “I should go.” “Yes.” “I don’t want to.” “Then stay for breakfast.” Ellie stayed for breakfast, and then for conversation, and then for the kind of afternoon that afterward she could remember only in fragments: Betty’s laughter against her shoulder, sunlight on blue silk, Clara discreetly closing a door, Ellie saying Betty’s name like a prayer she had invented herself, and when at last she stumbled back across the street two hours later, flushed and shaken and changed, she felt not ruined but discovered. That evening John said the potatoes were underdone. Ellie began to laugh. “What is funny?” he demanded. “Nothing,” she said, laughing harder, one hand pressed to her mouth. “Nothing at all.” The trouble did not begin all at once, because trouble rarely has the courtesy to announce itself; it arrived in glances, in Ellie taking longer at the market because Betty had said lavender suited her, in John noticing that Ellie hummed while washing dishes, in Betty’s car idling outside the grocer as Ellie climbed in for “just a ride,” in the way Clara began setting a second cup of coffee without asking. “You are blooming,” Betty told her one morning. “I am sinning.” “Are you?” “John would say so.” “John would say a great many things if he knew how little you belong to him.” Ellie turned from the mirror. “Don’t.” “Does the truth frighten you?” “Yes.” “Good. It should. Otherwise it would not be strong enough to free you.” Then came the week John left for a church seminar in Albany, full of importance and clean collars, warning Ellie before he went that he expected the house in order, the accounts written clearly, and no visits to Betty Hart. “I mean it, Ellie,” he said at the station. “That woman is not respectable.” Ellie looked at his hand around the handle of his suitcase, his young face already pinched into the shape of the old pastor he wanted to become, and for one wild moment she wanted to tell him everything, wanted to watch the truth split his world the way Betty’s kiss had split hers. Instead she said, “Have a safe trip, John.” The moment his train vanished, she went to Betty. Betty opened the door and looked her up and down. “Did you bring a bag?” “No.” “Then we shall buy you everything.” “I can’t afford everything.” Betty smiled. “I can.” For six days Ellie lived across the street as if she had stepped into a book written by a wicked woman with excellent taste; Betty dressed her in silk slips and tailored skirts, painted her mouth, showed her how to walk without apologizing for the space she occupied, and Clara, who at first had seemed only observant and quiet, began to speak to Ellie with dry affection. “Miss Hart is making a peacock of you,” Clara said while pinning Ellie’s hair. “I feel foolish.” “You look expensive.” “I’m not.” “That is the trick, Mrs. Bell.” “Ellie,” she said. Clara met her eyes in the mirror. “Ellie, then.” On the fourth night, a woman named Mrs. Vale came for dinner, a silver-haired widow with emeralds at her throat and eyes that missed nothing. “So this is your little pastor’s wife,” Mrs. Vale said. Ellie stiffened. Betty’s voice went cool. “This is Ellie.” Mrs. Vale smiled. “Forgive me. I meant no insult.” “Yes, you did,” Betty said pleasantly. “But I forgive beautifully when paid in advance.” Ellie nearly choked on her wine, and Mrs. Vale laughed, delighted. After dinner, Betty took Ellie aside. “You do not have to stay in the room if you do not wish to.” “Is she a customer?” “Yes.” “And she knows about me?” “She knows only what I allow her to know.” Ellie looked toward the parlor, where Mrs. Vale sat beneath a lamp, elegant and lonely and watching the doorway as if she had been waiting there for years. “What does she want?” “Company,” Betty said. “Flattery. A pretty woman to listen. A hand held without pity. Nothing more unless you choose it.” “Me?” “Only if you wish. She asked whether you might sit with her awhile. I said I would ask you.” Ellie’s heart hammered. “I wouldn’t know what to do.” “Be kind. Be beautiful. Be expensive.” “That sounds like pretending.” Betty touched her chin. “All society is pretending, darling. We simply send invoices.” Ellie sat with Mrs. Vale for an hour, then two, listening to stories of a dead husband who had controlled every penny and every guest list, of daughters who visited only when they needed checks, of a life spent in rooms where no one touched her unless helping her into a coat, and when Mrs. Vale took Ellie’s hand and kissed her knuckles, Ellie did not feel disgusted. She felt powerful. Later, Mrs. Vale left a sealed envelope on Betty’s desk. Betty handed it to Ellie. “No,” Ellie said. “You earned it.” “I didn’t do anything.” “You listened as if she mattered. Do you know how rare that is?” Ellie opened the envelope and saw more money than John made in a month. Her first thought was horror. Her second was freedom. But Betty’s world had shadows under its velvet, and Ellie found them because she was becoming the sort of woman who opened drawers. It was near midnight, rain tapping the windows, when she saw Betty in the study with Clara, both women speaking in low voices over a ledger. “That banker is dangerous,” Clara said. “He is also careless.” “Careless men with badges in their pockets are still men with badges.” Ellie stepped into the doorway. “What badges?” Betty closed the ledger. “Don’t,” Ellie said. “Don’t make me stupid after teaching me not to be.” Betty was silent for a long moment, then opened the drawer again and took out a stack of envelopes tied with ribbon. “Some of the women who come here are being blackmailed,” she said. Ellie’s mouth went dry. “By you?” Betty flinched as if struck. “No.” Clara said, “By men who follow them, photograph them, threaten them, squeeze them until they sell jewels or sign property away.” “And you stop them?” Ellie asked. “Sometimes,” Betty said. “How?” “With money, information, favors, lies, and once, a revolver I did not fire but displayed convincingly.” Ellie stared at the envelopes. “That is crime.” Betty laughed without humor. “No, sweetheart, crime is what respectable men call it when women refuse to be prey.” One envelope bore John’s name. Ellie saw it before Betty could move. “What is that?” “Ellie—” “What is that?” Betty handed it over reluctantly. Inside were photographs of John outside Betty’s house, not entering, not doing anything scandalous, but speaking to a man Ellie had never seen, a thin man in a dark hat. “There is a detective,” Betty said. “Hired by one of my client’s husbands. John spoke to him twice.” Ellie gripped the photographs. “John knows?” “I don’t know how much.” “He followed me?” “Perhaps.” “He paid someone?” “Perhaps not with money.” Ellie thought of the church, the women who smiled at her with pity, John’s warnings, John’s eyes at the window, John telling her no, no, no, as if every road in the world ended at his permission. When he returned two days later, Ellie was waiting in the little white house, wearing a navy dress Betty had bought her, her hair pinned elegantly, her mouth red. John stopped in the doorway. “What have you done to yourself?” Ellie smiled. “Improved.” “You look indecent.” “I look expensive.” His eyes narrowed. “You have been with her.” “Yes.” The word was soft, but it filled the room. John set down his suitcase. “You will pack whatever she gave you and return it. Then you will go to Reverend Cole’s wife and ask her to pray with you.” “No.” He stared, truly startled. “No?” he repeated. “No, John.” “You are my wife.” “For now.” His face went pale. “What does that mean?” “It means I know about the detective.” A flicker crossed his face. There it was. Ellie almost felt sorry for him, because he was not clever enough to hide the truth from a woman who had spent years studying disappointment across a dinner table. “I was trying to save you,” he said. “You were trying to own me.” “You are in sin.” “I am in love.” John recoiled as if the word itself were obscene. “With that woman?” “With Betty.” “She is a prostitute.” “She is kinder than you.” “She is a criminal.” “So are half the men on your church board, but their suits are darker.” He grabbed her wrist then, not hard enough to bruise, but hard enough to remind her that his kindness had always depended on her obedience. Ellie looked down at his hand. “Let go,” she said. He did. The next morning, she carried one suitcase across the street while Clara watched from Betty’s porch and Betty stood in the open doorway, barefoot, frightened for perhaps the first time since Ellie had known her. “You came,” Betty said. Ellie laughed, though she was crying. “I seem to keep doing that.” Betty took the suitcase from her hand. “Are you sure?” “No.” “Good answer.” “But I am here.” Betty kissed her forehead, then her mouth, and across the street Pastor John Bell stood in his doorway looking smaller than Ellie had ever seen him. The scandal broke on a Sunday, because scandals, like sermons, prefer an audience. John preached that morning on temptation, and everyone knew whom he meant, though he did not say Ellie’s name, and Ellie, sitting not in the pastor’s pew but at the back beside Betty, wearing gloves the color of cream and a hat with a small veil, listened to him tremble through scripture while Betty’s hand rested warm and steady over hers. When the service ended, Mrs. Hanley blocked the aisle. “Ellie Bell,” she hissed, “have you lost your soul?” Ellie looked at her, then at the other women, hungry for shame, and then at Betty, who gave the smallest nod, not pushing, only permitting. “No,” Ellie said. “I found my life.” Someone gasped. John stepped down from the pulpit. “Ellie, enough.” But Betty rose. “Pastor Bell,” she said, voice carrying beautifully, “before you continue, you may wish to know that the police are already speaking with Mr. Granger, your detective friend, about the photographs he took of several women in this congregation.” A rustle moved through the church. John’s face emptied. Betty smiled like a knife beneath silk. “Mrs. Vale sends her regards.” By evening, three husbands had left town, one banker had burned papers in his garden, Reverend Cole had developed a sudden illness, and Pastor John Bell discovered that respectability was a roof made of paper when rain finally came. As for Ellie, she moved fully into Betty’s house before the week was out. Not everything was simple afterward, because love did not erase fear, and freedom did not pay every debt without demanding new courage; Ellie still woke sometimes reaching for a life she had hated because hating it had at least been familiar, and Betty still kept secrets too long, and Clara still stood in doorways with folded arms saying, “You two are impossible,” whenever tears turned into kissing and kissing turned into laughter. But Ellie learned the books. She learned which customers wanted champagne and which wanted tea, which women needed compliments and which needed silence, which men could be frightened off with a letter and which required Clara’s cousin with the broad shoulders to stand beside Betty’s car for a few persuasive minutes. She learned that crime was sometimes only survival written down by judges, that sin was often a word men used when women stopped being useful, and that love, real love, did not always arrive cleanly, but sometimes drove up in a cream-colored automobile, wearing red lipstick, carrying danger in one hand and breakfast in the other. One morning, months later, Ellie stood in Betty’s doorway in a dress of deep blue, watching a new young wife across the street hang laundry with the exhausted posture of someone who had not yet named her loneliness. Betty came up behind her and slipped both arms around her waist. “Careful,” Betty murmured. “You’re looking.” Ellie smiled. “I learned from the best.” Betty kissed her cheek. “Do you regret it?” Ellie looked at the little white house where she had once counted coins, swallowed words, and called obedience peace. “No,” she said. “But sometimes I regret how long it took me to cross the street.” Betty rested her chin on Ellie’s shoulder. “Well,” she said, “you’re here now.” And Ellie, who had once believed her life would be measured in sermons, supper plates, and apologies, watched the morning sun catch on Betty’s car and answered, “Yes. I am.” A Story by Germaine Corbeau - Click here for links to all Germaine Corbeau Stories! Quick 👏 Guide: 0 = I got lost! - 1-4 = Nice font... nice images. - 5-9=Read a bit. Nice try!, 10-14=Okay... Pretty good!, 15-19=I actually enjoyed this! - 20=Absolutely legendary!