Chicago 1887–1893
For the first few years of our acquaintance, James was a fever I could not shake. He would often come to my door just as Mads left for work, and rap at the wood with his clever fingers, and I did not tarry in letting him in.
If I suspected he would come, I gave the children a little laudanum in their milk so they would sleep while James and I made use of the bed in the empty room. Our trysts were never quiet, never calm, but they never brought me back to the lake. Perhaps because I gave as much as I got. Often I would find myself on top of him, pinning his arms to the bed while I rode him; other times I would find his hand around my throat. I would force his head between my legs; then he tied me to the bedposts. It was shameless what we did, but in the end, it was just a game without a victor. I never felt bested with James Lee; he never aimed to make me feel small, and I found that I enjoyed our fight on the sheets. It made me feel alive. James could make me feel more in a night than Mads could in a lifetime.
When James was not there and the house felt dark and empty, I would sometimes slip inside that room with its walnut bed, and curtains of green damask drawn before the windows, just to take in his scent and savor it. It was like a whiff of summer on a rainy day, a taste of sweet caramel when all you had to eat was unsalted gruel. I felt that I cheated the house of my misery by keeping that room for us two.
I could have tolerated the endless cooking, the washing and the ironing, the sweeping and the folding, if Mads could have only been quiet. I had no quarrel with wifely duties—I knew what was expected of me—but I could not stomach his constant complaints. The words he whined at me whenever he saw fit, to spend less when he never earned more, our pantry void of fresh meat. I had not married him to live like a poor woman, and I had told him so many times, yet he never as much tried for a better position. Never even reached for a grander life than he had. How could I be blamed for losing my temper?
The meekness I thought I wanted when I accepted his marriage proposal served me no good in the end. He was weak—that was what he was—but still he felt it in his right to judge me. The resentment grew in me like a boil. Had it not been for James and the relief he brought, it might have come to proper blows. As it was, I was sometimes moved to hurl something at him, or land a hard slap on his cheek.
I was still a respectable churchgoing woman, though, and did not want it any other way, even if Mads was a disappointment. I had worked so hard to leave my sorry past behind, to climb as far as I had come, and I was not about to abandon the fruits of my labor, even if I despised my husband with his crisp shirts and polished shoes, his relentless demands, his whining and sulking. I wanted the house, even as I loathed it, even the mold-infested pantry. I had sworn to be a woman to admire—just to spite—and that was what I would be.
James Lee did not understand it.
“You should elope with me,” he said one day at my table. His eyes were mischievous, his voice honey sweet. “Just think of what we could accomplish.”
I snorted. “The two of us could never build a wholesome life together.”
“Is that what you want? A wholesome life?”
“Isn’t that what everybody wants?”
He lit his cigar with a sputtering match and puffed on the body until the tip smoldered. “I don’t understand you—never did.” His face was obscured by blue smoke.
“Be as that might, the two of us together would never work.” James could always excite me, but he belonged to the shadows in my life, slithered there as a hot, sweet secret, fiery and strong. He was my lover and my friend—not a husband.
“You are not one for sentiments, that’s for sure. At times I have thought you liked me—loved me, even—giving me of your time and your mind. Other times I think you quite despise me.” I could not read his expression just then.
“Can’t I do both?” I was fanning myself with a newspaper, chasing away the heavy cigar smoke that wafted across the table.
“You do know how to please a man. Too bad it’s all lost on your husband.” His eyebrow rose a little.
“Men are easy.” My gaze fell on the window, where a few flies were battling for freedom. “Give them good food and comfort, let them talk about themselves . . . I’m not much to look at, but I know how to flatter.”
“You are quite lovely, I’d say.” James laughed. “Did you ever consider widowhood?” His eyebrows rose teasingly. “It would be easy; you know that.” He always made murder sound as simple as picking ripe fruit from a tree. It was tempting the way he said it, as if we were children about to do mischief.
“Sometimes.” In truth, I thought of it often. Especially when I was lying awake next to my husband, listening to his wheezing snores, imagining what it would be like to have him convulsing on the sheets. I remembered how delicious it was when Anders died, and so longed for that same feeling. I was angry with Mads for not giving me what I needed, for talking to me as he did, for being nothing but a rat, shivering and helpless. For forcing me to live with him, day after day through our marriage bond, and yet—I always thought better of it.
“I need his income. What I get for the children isn’t enough.” My pantry would slowly empty without him; my clothes would fall into rags. I would have to take in filthy lodgers, and maybe even wash and mend. I did not worry about suspicion—husbands die all the time—but I did worry about money. “He is not much of a man, but I need him.”
“I’m sure there are other ways.”
“Of course, but I don’t much care for them.” James meant I should kill my husband and join in his enterprise, but the life of a thug did not compel me—where was the spite in that? I leaned back in the chair and folded my arms over my chest. “I tinker with his coffee sometimes. I add a few drops of the children’s medicine, or a few grains of rat poison if he has been difficult. It serves him well to lie there with stomach pains—it leaves him weak for a time too; it gives me time to think.” Being with James had emboldened me. I did not pick the fruit from the branch, but at least I dared to taste it. I could punish Mads, or silence him for a while, and that, at least, was something.
I wanted my husband gone, but I could not afford it.
James Lee could always distract me. “Come here,” he said when my mind grew bitter, and when I arrived, he pulled me down in his lap. His kisses were hard and tasted of tobacco; his hand in my hair was not kind. “Show me the button,” he whispered, just to have me remove my shirtwaist so he could lay his hands on my breasts through the corset. Soon enough I was on the table with my skirts pushed up around my waist, and he was in me, hard and ready. Just where I wanted him to be.
I never grew tired of James Lee.
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