To Be a Virtuous Wife, According to the Manual novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Page Forty-One
On her wedding night Dolores reads the one line her mother's manual gives the marriage bed, decides it forbids nothing, and kisses her husband first.
My mother's book had sixty-one pages, and the wedding night got exactly one line.
I knew because I had read it four times on the church hall steps.
She had handed it to me between the cake and the rice, wrapped in a handkerchief.
"The Good Wife's Guide," she said. "Follow it and you will never have a cross word."
She was wearing her white cotton gloves, so I knew she meant it.
I promised her I would follow every rule.
I am a bookkeeper by trade, or I was until Friday, and I do not make promises I plan to skip.
Now it was eight o'clock on Saturday night, October the eleventh, 1958.
I was Mrs. Harold Rausch, and I was standing in the front hall of a rented house on Sherman Street.
My husband had just carried me over the threshold and nearly hit my head on the lamp.
"Sorry," Hal said, and set me down in the middle of a rug neither of us had bought.
He was six feet two and built, and he was blushing to the tops of his ears.
He was thirty-one. He had been in Korea. He worked the day shift at the tire plant and he smelled like soap and cedar.
I had known him eight months, and he had not once raised his voice.
He had also not once kissed me anywhere but my cheek, because he said a man ought to wait for the ring.
The ring was on my hand now.
"Marlene left a note on the icebox," he said. "Next door. She says the pilot light is temperamental."
"I'll read it later."
"There's a casserole."
"I'll eat it later."
He looked at me, and he laughed once, low, through his nose, which was the sound I had married him for.
"You're nervous," he said.
"I'm organized," I said. "It's different."
I took my overnight case up the narrow stairs and he followed with the rest.
The bedroom was at the back.
There was a double bed with a white chenille spread, a dresser, and a window with the shade pulled halfway.
Somebody, probably Marlene, had put a jar of bittersweet on the nightstand.
Hal set my second suitcase on the floor and said he would see to the furnace.
"The furnace is fine," I said. "I heard it start."
"Then I'll check the doors."
"You locked them."
"Dolores."
"Sit down," I said.
He sat on the edge of the bed with his hands between his knees.
I took the green cloth book out of my case and opened it to page forty-one.
I had marked the page with a bobby pin.
Hal watched me from the bed, and I could see him trying to work out what I was doing.
"What's that?"
"My mother's book. I promised to follow it."
"All of it?"
"Every rule. Page forty-one is the wedding night."
His eyebrows went up. "There's a page for that?"
"There's a line."
I read it to him in my bookkeeper's voice, the one I use for totals.
"A wife's duty in the marriage bed is her husband's comfort."
I closed the book on my finger.
Hal didn't say anything for a moment. Something happened at the corner of his mouth, and he looked at the floor.
"That's all it says?" he said.
"That's all."
"Nothing about how?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing about anything she shouldn't?"
"I looked," I said. "I looked four times. It doesn't say what I may not do. It only says what I owe you."
He lifted his head. His eyes were very blue in the lamplight.
"And what do you owe me?"
"Your comfort."
"My comfort," he said slowly.
"You can't be comfortable with a wife who's standing in the corner like a coat rack."
"Dolores."
"So I've decided it means what it says."
I put the book on the dresser, face up, where he could see it.
Then I crossed the room and stopped in front of him.
He had to tip his head back to look at me, which I liked more than I expected.
I put one hand on each side of his face. His jaw was warm and a little rough.
I'd had eight months to think about it, and I made up my mind in about eight seconds.
I kissed him.
He made a sound I had never heard from him, a short surprised breath against my mouth.
Then his hands came up to my waist and held on, and the kiss stopped being a polite one.
He tasted of coffee and peppermint.
He kissed me.
I got my fingers into the short hair at the back of his neck.
He pulled me in between his knees.
My dress had fourteen cloth-covered buttons down the back, and I felt the first one let go.
Then the second.
His knuckles went slowly down my spine, button by button, and I shivered so hard that I laughed against his mouth.
"Cold?" he said.
"No."
He pressed his forehead to mine and breathed.
"Dolores," he said, very low. "That book says a lot about me."
"Yes."
"And it says nothing about you."
I smiled, and I felt the third button go.
"Exactly," I said.
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