Dear Rita,
Happy New Year! And it is a happy new year. Especially with your letter and the good news it contained. Relief flooded through me as if he were my own son. Oh, Rita, we are so fortunate, aren’t we? In so many ways.
It’s my birthday today. I’m a New Year’s baby. Twenty-four years old. I feel much older than that. Levi helped Robbie make me a beautiful candlelight meal—we combined New Year’s Eve and my birthday. The children were so well behaved. Corrine is such a happy, sweet baby. She sat smiling and eating her macaroni in her high chair. They made me Pasta Puttanesca. Do you know it? Quite fancy and something I ate frequently when my parents returned from Italy. (Mother used to have our cooks experiment with dishes she liked when she returned from exotic places.) I think its meaning has to do with women of the night.
Which could have something to do with what happened after the children were asleep. Can I blame it on the dinner, on the wine, on the name of the meal...? Can I blame it on the war? Or should we blame Robert? Robert who wrote to Levi (not me) about the horrors of the war. About fearing he would not return. About Levi taking his place in my home and my heart if the worst should happen. Imagine.
On my wedding night I was ready for the moment. The giving in to pent-up passions. Robert is a quiet lover. Gentle and graceful. A comfortable breeze of a man.
Tonight started innocently enough. Most terrible things do, right? We were cleaning up together, and dancing around the living room to “The Pennsylvania Polka.” I just love the Andrews Sisters! But then, as luck would have it, an older song came on the radio, “Someone to Watch Over Me.” It never fails to make me cry. So I started to sing along to it...and teared up a bit while I did.
“You okay?” Levi said from behind me, putting his hands on my hips and meeting their sway. And I should have pulled away, but the music...that song... A weaker moment there never was. A weaker woman there never was. I turned around and we were in an immediate embrace. We danced a lovers’ dance, his head buried in my neck, mine taking in all of the familiarity of years and years of wondering what it would have been like if I’d chosen Levi and not Robert. The curiosity overwhelmed me.
“I love you, I love you, I love you,” he crooned into my hair.
And that was all it took. I closed my mind to the world. To propriety. To everything.
Levi was a storm. We stumbled together across the living room like clouds in the sky full of rain. Falling half on the couch and the floor. Buttons flying, fabric tearing. I think I was crying. I don’t remember. Clapping thunder and lightning all around. Fierce and frightening. Not like the love that Robert and I make. This was the sort of thing that even in the act felt doomed, but like flying off a cliff...exhilarating.
I doubt I’ll recover soon. My heart flutters in my throat and a shiver goes up my back just thinking about the placement of his hands. That, above all else, is what made me toss up my entire birthday meal after Levi left. The Guilt. Shame. Oh, Rita. What have I done?
“I am a wretched wife,” I said to myself after I scrubbed my body raw in a scalding hot tub. I might be able to wash the sin from my body, but how do I purge it from my mind?
Please don’t hate me.
So, so much love,
Glory
P.S. I’ve been thinking so much about your Roylene lately. Maybe because she had a fall from grace, too? I don’t know. But, please let her know that if she needs anything, I’m here to help. Okay?