Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(8)

I know I got a real good voice, everybody says so—at least, everybody who’s ever heard me sing. But stuck in this backwoods dump, I got no chance of being discovered. ‘Benjamin’, I keep saying, ‘If I ever hope to have a singing career, I have got to get to New York City!’ I suppose I could talk ‘til the moon turns blue, but the only thing that ever comes of it is me and Benjamin having the same old fight.





On the Eastern Shore of Virginia

In a place where irrigation canals snake across flat stretches of farmland and a scream can drift for miles before anyone hears it, Susanna Doyle told Benjamin she was leaving him. It wasn’t the first time she’d said such a thing, nor was it the first time he’d answered, “Like hell you are!”

Theirs was a fight that had gone on for years. It was raging long before Ethan Allen was born; it began three days after she stood in front of a Justice of the Peace in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and swore that she’d love, honor and obey Benjamin for the rest of her natural life. She did none of the three. The ink on their marriage certificate was not yet dry when Susanna took to saying she thought she’d made a mistake. “I thought we was gonna move to New York City,” she’d moan. “I thought we was gonna live in a place where a singer has opportunities!”

Benjamin was so crazy in love with the curve of her body and the shank of dark hair tumbling down her back, that he deafened his ears to such talk. The first time she threatened to leave, he placated her with a fancy dress he special ordered from Sears, after that it was a imitation sapphire ring, then it was some perfume and lacy lingerie. Once, when he came home with a ruby-colored satin nightgown, she threw it back into his face. “I don’t want this crap,” she screamed, “I want to go to New York City!”

Had she asked for a simple thing such as the moon or all the stars in the heavens, Benjamin would have turned himself inside out to get it for her—but as for going to New York, such a thing was not possible. Susanna was a woman who would be blinded by the bright lights of Broadway. She would be drawn away from him just as a moth is drawn from the safety of darkness to the brilliance of a flame. She’d spend her days tromping from audition to audition, allowing men with fat cigars and hairy hands to paw her beautiful body. In time, her face would take on the tawdriness of the city and the song in her throat would sound bitter as the croaking of a frog.

It seemed to Benjamin that Susanna should understand the pitfalls of such a life, but instead of being grateful for the way he looked after her, she screamed at him, threw tantrums, heaved heavy glass pitchers at his head, and set her lips into a pout. “I’m suffocating out here!” she’d shout. “There’s no excitement, nothing to do but watch those damned soybeans grow!”

When she finally turned her back on him in bed and curled herself into a ball so he couldn’t touch her breasts or find his way inside of her body, he agreed to take her to New York City. “Just for a vacation,” he said. “After the winter harvest, we’ll go for a three-week vacation.”

Throughout that entire fall, Susanna danced from room to room singing songs into the bowl of a wooden spoon. She’d stand on the front porch and belt out Boogie-woogie Bugle Boy to an audience of sunflowers, or climb atop the kitchen table and take bow after bow. “I’m good as any of those Andrews Sisters,” she’d say, “I just need to get discovered!” In the middle of planting a row of soy beans Benjamin would come to the house for a drink of water and there she’d be, wriggling through the living room in a brassiere and panties. “You think Maxine Andrews can do this?” she’d ask; then she’d shake and shimmy till every inch of flesh on her body was quivering. She’d start in a standing position, but before she was done she’d be down on her knees with her back arched in a way that caused her bosoms to bust loose of the brassiere. Afterwards, she’d throw her arms around Benjamin’s neck and kiss him with such passion that it brought about lovemaking.

Mid-morning on a Wednesday in early November Benjamin got to thinking about Susanna in her red lace brassiere, so he stopped working on the tractor and went looking for her. Instead of singing into a spoon, she was in the bathroom with her head hanging over the toilet. “Those pork chops we had last night must’ve been spoiled,” she groaned.

Benjamin dipped a washcloth in cold water and held it to her head. “I don’t see how that’s possible,” he said, “I ate a plateful and I’m feeling fine. Matter-of-fact, I was thinking you might want to slip on that lacy brassiere…”

“Asshole!” she said; then went back to puking in the toilet bowl.

By afternoon Susanna was feeling fine, so she raised the window and hollered for Benjamin to come back into the house. When he walked through the door, there she was atop the kitchen table, wearing a pair of red high heel pumps and a little bitty apron tied around her waist—not another stitch. “You still in the mood?” she asked, then slid down and wrapped her legs around his neck.

That’s how it was with her; Benjamin never knew from minute to minute whether she’d be crawling up the leg of his pants or jumping down his throat. Why, just the thought of such a woman in New York City scared him to pieces. Anything could happen. He could fall asleep thinking everything was just as it should be, then wake to find she’d run off with some agent or songwriter. He could go out for a newspaper, return and discover her in bed with the elevator man. Even worse, she could disappear without a trace, slip down some dark alley and never be heard from again. Benjamin began to think going to New York, even if it was only for a vacation, was definitely a bad idea.