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a tractor!” Franny cried, pointing out the car’s window.
    Sarah looked at the farmlands on both sides of the highway. “Yes, baby. I see.”
    Perched beside Sarah on the bench seat of the sedan, Franny smiled and watched the country rolling past her window. Dressed in a pink frock with white trim, hair pulled into a bun at the back of her head with a red bow, she kicked her legs aimlessly, her heels thumping on the car seat. She grinned at Sarah, eyes sparkling, and exclaimed at the passing animals and buildings as they drove.
    Sarah sneaked glances at her daughter as she drove. Little Rock diminished behind them; before them lay Gethsemane, her family home. Little Rock was the only home Franny had ever known.
    Sarah’s hand went to the bruise on the line of her cheek, the tenderness there. Luckily, it hadn’t discolored too much, just yellowed a bit and that was easily covered by concealer. He’d been dead drunk and insensible. When she refused his embrace, turning her face away from his gin-laced breath, he’d swung, his fist catching her on the chin, sending her reeling. She had hit the wall and sat down, hard, on her ass. He dragged her by the hair to the bed, but when he mounted her, he couldn’t get hard. The booze had finally unmanned him.
    When he was sleeping, she went to the kitchen and stood there for a long time with a knife in her hand, looking at the ceiling. Finally, she shoved the knife back in the drawer and gathered up as many suitcases as she could find. By morning, she and Franny were packed.
    He came down the stairs like he was in some war-torn European country, wary and tense. She was waiting for him. In measured tones, Sarah informed Jim that she was taking Franny home to Gethsemane, to the Big House, the house she grew up in, to help take care of her mother, dying of lupus and beginning to suffer from dementia.
    There was no mention of the bruises on her face. She felt like a coward for not confronting him, but the only thing that kept her coherent was the thought of what Franny might think of her, of Jim, of herself.
    Sarah’s eyes remained dry as she told him they were leaving, and Franny looked back and forth between her parents trying to discern what was actually being said. Jim cursed her, picked up his paper, and opened it with a pop. He remained sitting, and slowly drank his coffee as Sarah gathered up their bags, loaded Franny into the car, and drove away.
    She couldn’t understand why their marriage took this sorry course; it seemed so wonderful and bright when he’d first come back from overseas—wounded, yes, but alive and the whole world celebrating victory. Sarah held that victory close to her heart and took ownership of it, as if it were her own. And in some ways it was her victory. She’d stayed chaste and worked at the local radio factory, assembling pieces of communications equipment, radios, receivers, speakers. There were always men wanting to sleep with her—and some she wanted in return—but she remained firmly and obviously married, as steadfast as Penelope. She’d written to her husband every day, filling her letters with happiness and the minutia of life at home, at the radio factory, ending each letter with a smear of lipstick and a spray of perfume. At Jim’s homecoming there was happiness and love and warm nights spent sweating in bed, his body over hers, arms pinioning her to the mattress, waist to waist, and she’d never felt anything like it before. She’d loved that; his body, how he moved with such freedom on top of her. He inspired her, he changed her. She found she could discard the matronly inhibitions that the world—her society and relations—exacted upon her, and in the bedroom be free, free of thought and speech, everything distilled down to the slap of flesh on flesh, sweat pouring, lips finding lips.
    But the war took its toll on Jim too, the silvery scars on his chest and legs, his nightmares and hollow-eyed days. And as those days passed,