A Dangerous Woman

A Novel

Mary McGarry Morris

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781504048132
• eBook ISBN: 9781504048064
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

The "compelling, suspenseful" novel of a vulnerable misfit in a small town by the New York Times–bestselling author of Light from a Distant Star ( Publishers Weekly).
 
Named one of the five best novels of the year by Time magazine, A Dangerous Woman is the story of the damaged and emotionally unstable Martha Horgan, an outcast in her small Vermont town. She stares; she has violent crushes on people; and, perhaps most unsettling of all, she cannot stop telling the truth. After a traumatic experience during her teenage years, the thirty-two-year-old now craves love and companionship, but her relentless honesty makes her painfully vulnerable to those around her: Frances, her wealthy aunt and begrudging guardian; Birdy Dusser, who befriends her and then cruelly rejects her; and Colin Mackey, the seductive man who preys on her desires.
 
Confused and bitter, distrusting even those with her best interests at heart, Martha is slowly propelled into a desperate attempt to gain control over her own life. The National Book Award–nominated author of Songs in Ordinary Time tells a tale of unnerving suspense and terrifying psychological insight that is "at once thrilling and deeply affecting" ( The New York Times).
 

Twenty-three

Mr. Weilman tapped on the bedroom door, then backed in with a spoon and a jar of applesauce on a silver tray. “Guaranteed to stay down,” he said, unscrewing the lid.

Martha’s dizziness had become so constant that she had to will herself up and out of a chair, slowly, ever so firmly, and the same thing coming down the stairs, her eyes guiding her feet to every step. The worst of it was her shaky stomach. For the past week, she had been living on saltines and ginger ale. Mr. Weilman said it was the same flu that had gone through the neighborhood.

“Baby food?” she asked, shuddering. Just the thought of it sickened her.

“Reba Lewis sent it over,” he said.

“Reba Lewis?”

“In the green house,” he said. “Katie’s mother.”

Reba Lewis was at least the fourth neighbor Mr. Weilman had consulted about her nausea. Laura Barrett had even sent over her own chicken broth.

Mr. Weilman sat on the edge of the bed and offered her a spoonful of applesauce. As soon as she swallowed, her stomach heaved. She gagged, and Mr. Weilman held the tray to her chin. She had never felt this sick.

Wesley Mount had called or come by almost every day, but she still couldn’t talk to him. It was more than this illness; she was mortified every time she thought of her hungry embrace in his apartment. He probably thought she had been aroused by that dirty movie. On her dresser were the five get-well cards he had sent in the last five days. He had also sent a fuzzy yellow wind-up duck that waddled noisily around with a sign that said “Get Well Soon!” Yesterday he had brought her a can of English peppermints and a vase of red gladioli. She could hear him downstairs now, urging Mr. Weilman to call a doctor. There was dehydration to consider here, as well as her electrolyte levels. What seemed a minor imbalance could quickly flare into a critical condition. Mr. Weilman assured Wesley he was monitoring the situation, and he reminded him of his own medical experience these last two years. Wesley countered with his far vaster experience, and what he often saw, the end result of negligence.

“Negligence!” Mr. Weilman’s indignation resounded up the stairs.

“I don’t mean you, Ben,” Wesley assured him. “I mean anyone who ignores the signs of a potentially grave condition.”

She pulled the sheet over her head, and the tented heat swelled with her own staleness. She curled smaller and tighter, drifting in and out of sleep while, from the street and yards below, the children’s voices caught in the flow of her dreams, a cry, a word, a twig, a red feather, a whiffle ball, a frayed paper cup bobbing and glimmering, then sinking out of reach. She ran after them, but they fled, and finally, when she understood that they would never stop as long as she chased them, she stopped and watched them go, watched them grow smaller and smaller, and then they disappeared.

“Martha. Martha? Can you hear me in there? Martha, it’s me. It’s Julia.”

As she struggled to wake up, Julia explained that she had just dropped off tickets for the art auction. “You were in bad shape last week, but now you look even worse,” Julia said, brushing cracker crumbs off the sheet.

She couldn’t even remember Julia being here last week. Without food, she was growing weaker. Her appetite and memory might have dimmed, but it was strange how her senses seemed to have heightened. If Mr. Weilman sighed in the kitchen, she could hear it. Daylight was blinding. The weight of the sheet on her toes was painful. She let herself be propped against the pillows so that Julia could take her temperature. It was normal, Julia told her, staring at her as she shook down the thermometer. She went downstairs, and returned with a glass of ice water, which she told Martha to sip slowly. She backed through the door now with towels and a basin of tepid water. She wrung out a washcloth and rubbed it with soap while she quizzed Martha about her bowels. Had she had any headaches, backaches, chest pain, coughing, sputum, sinus pain, ringing ears, double vision? Julia handed her the washcloth, and Martha took off her glasses. Julia dipped them into the basin and dried them on the towel, reeling out her string of questions while Martha washed her face and neck. She could feel the skin tightening on her bones. The air was sharp with Julia’s spicy perfume.

“Any bladder infections? Any burning? Any discharge?”

As she shook her head, it occurred to her that this illness might be the final, fatal stage of what had been consuming her all these years.

“When was your last period?”

She couldn’t remember. They had always been so irregular she had long ago given up keeping track. They came when they came. Every four weeks. Six weeks. Two months. Blinding migraines and twisting cramps, wrapping up the pads and hiding them in her pockets until she could tuck them deep down in the trash so she wouldn’t have to listen to Frances’s smug sigh, “Oh, so that’s why.” Sometimes she would forget, and by the end of the day her pockets would be stuffed with the foulness. When her periods didn’t come, she was always grateful.

“You must have some idea. Think, now,” Julia said. “Did you have one in July?”

“I don’t know.”

“There was the Fourth. Steve’s party?” Julia coaxed.

“No.” This was so embarrassing, and it certainly had nothing to do with her periods. She had never been sick like this with them.

“June?” Julia asked, returning her glasses.

She couldn’t remember. June. What was June? How could she have forgotten? In June, Mack had come. “May,” she said. The end of May. The night of the PlastiqueWare party.

Julia didn’t say anything for a moment. Her face reddened. “Could you be pregnant?”

“What?” She stared at Julia, stunned by the question.

“Could you be pregnant?” Julia repeated in a choked voice.

“No!” Her hand flew to her mouth. “I don’t know. No! I couldn’t be.”

Julia’s twenty-minute trip to the drugstore and back seemed to take hours. Martha lay on the bed now, with the sheet drawn to her chin. To this point, the procedure had been painless, but so awkward that they had barely spoken. Julia sat on the bed reading the instructions, and then she told Martha to go into the bathroom and urinate into a paper cup and leave it in the sink. When Martha came out of the bathroom, Julia went in with the pink-and-blue box, the pregnancy-testing kit.

Things were clinking in there; water was running; and now the toilet flushed. All she wore under the sheet was her pajama top. She lay with her eyes closed and her ankles locked. The noon heat was heavy, and yet she was covered with goosebumps. The sheet felt cold everywhere it touched her.

She remembered her only other internal examination, her feet in cold metal stirrups, her rump dragged by the tiny pug-nosed nurse to the end of the sweat-damp paper-covered table, the humiliating position an almost unendurable misery, with the doctor’s voice beyond her sheeted legs warning her against the coldness of the speculum widening inside her flesh.

“Please hurry, please hurry,” she whispered, starting to shiver. The possibility of pregnancy brought not a single image to mind. All that was real was this taste of sourness and this fatigue like a vast inertia, a deadness from which she could not rise.

The bathroom door opened, and Julia came out holding up a paper stick. Wincing, Martha hiked the sheet up to her knees. At least the stick was tiny compared with the doctor’s instruments.

“Martha?”

“Go ahead. I’m ready,” she said, uncrossing her legs and pulling the sheet up to her waist. She spread her legs and held her breath, dreading the insertion.

“Oh, I’m not … You thought … No. Oh, Martha!” Julia yanked down the sheet, covering her. “It’s done,” she said, leaning close and explaining the procedure: she had dipped the stick into the urine. “See. It’s pink.” Sighing, she sat on the edge of the bed. “I did it twice to be sure. It turned pink both times.”

Neither one spoke. Martha looked away. What did that mean?

“Pink means you’re pregnant.”

“Pregnant”—what on earth could that possibly mean?

“Do you want to tell me who the father is?” Julia asked.

She closed her eyes, aware that something, a form, a great wonder was beginning to coalesce. Love, she thought. Was that what it meant?

“It’s him, isn’t it? Colin Mackey.”

Martha bit her lip.

“What will you do?” Julia asked.

She turned her head and tried to cover her smile. Julia looked so troubled. She knew she should be upset too, but all she felt was relief.

“You can’t go through with this, Martha. There’s no way. And you don’t have to do it alone. There’s a clinic in Burlington and no one will …”

“I’ll be all right.” She wanted Julia to leave. She had no interest in anything right now other than talking to Mack.

“If you don’t let me help you, then you’re going to have to tell Frances.”

She couldn’t believe Julia was threatening her. “Please go. Please!”

“Martha, you can’t have this baby!”

“Leave me alone. I’ll do what I want.”

“No, Martha. Oh God, no, you can’t.”

“Why? Tell me why,” she demanded, sitting up and wringing her hands to keep them from slapping that smug, perfect face.

“Oh God, Martha, think of it. Think what its … Think what your life would be like,” she said with a look of horror.

“Get out!” Martha said, springing at Julia. “Get out of here!”

After Julia left, she dressed quickly. She felt so lightheaded that she seemed to float down the stairs, then from room to room, with Mr. Weilman dogging her steps, asking her how she felt and what could he get her to eat, what could he do.

“Nothing. I don’t want anything.” She wanted to be alone so she could call Mack.

He followed her into the front hall. “At least you’ve got some color. How about some toast?”

“I have to go somewhere,” she said, pushing open the door to get away from him.

“Where? Martha! When are you coming back?” Mr. Weilman called as she came squinting down the porch steps into the dizzying heat. “I’ll get some fish,” he called. “Some scrod, nice and light.”

All along the street, the children paused on their vehicles, in their digging and games, to watch her. They knew she had been sick, because Mr. Weilman had made them whisper and close the door quietly. They darted out from under their sprinklers and stood dripping on the hot dusty sidewalks, but she would not look at them. Shielding her eyes, she concentrated on walking very slowly; the humidity and the heat were sapping what little strength she had.

She was almost downtown before she came to a public telephone. The traffic was so noisy that she had to lean in close to the phone. Mack answered on the first ring, and he actually sounded pleased to hear from her. “I’ve been wondering how you’re doing,” he said in a tired, lazy voice. She heard his chair creak, and she pictured him leaning back, stretching his long hairy legs across the desk.

“I’ve been sick,” she said, grinning. Her heart might burst at any moment. She was shaky, excited, happy, terrified. “But I’m better now.” She stuck her finger in her ear as a cement truck rumbled by. “I have something to tell you,” she shouted.

“What is it? Martha, I can’t hear you very well.”

“I’m pregnant! I’m going to have a baby!” She waited. “Mack? Did you hear what I said?”

“Umm. Yes.”

“Aren’t you going to say anything? I’m pregnant.”

“Who’s with you? Where are you?”

“I’m at a pay phone. I’m by myself.”

“Why do you think you’re …” He lowered his voice. “… pregnant?”

“Because the test says I am.”

“Test? What test? Who gave you a test? I’m not following this.”

“Julia did. She gave me a pregnancy test.”

“Julia Prine?” Silence. “Why would she give you a test? What’re you talking about? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Silence. “Martha, are you all right? You’re not making sense.”

“I’m pregnant. Did you hear what I said? I’m pregnant.”

“Yes, I heard you.”

“What’re we going ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Praise for A Dangerous Woman
• Title Page
• Dedication
• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six
• Seven
• Eight
• Nine
• Ten
• Eleven
• Twelve
• Thirteen
• Fourteen
• Fifteen
• Sixteen
• Seventeen
• Eighteen
• Nineteen
• Twenty
• Twenty-one
• Twenty-two
• Twenty-three
• Twenty-four
• About the Author
• Copyright Page