The Woman Who Loved Jesse James Read Free Page A

kept silent.
    Mrs. Peabody refilled our cups. “Enough of worrying about the future,” she said. “Tell me what your mother is wearing to the wedding. And your sister.”
    “Mother is wearing the best dress she made before the war,” I said. “Lavender checked taffeta with leg-o’-mutton sleeves. Lucy has a new dress—white cotton lawn worn over big hoops and trimmed in yards and yards of handmade lace.”
    “I heard the groom’s friends talked about kidnapping the bride tonight and having a chivaree,” Esme said.
    “Bowling told them if they tried he’d shoot to kill.” I shivered. “I don’t know if he meant it, but my father spread the word he wouldn’t stand for any trouble where his daughter is concerned.”
    “She’ll have enough on her mind with the wedding night, without worrying about a bunch of drunken young men dragging her away from her new husband,” Mrs. Peabody said.
    “Is it so awful?” Esme asked. “The wedding night?”
    Mrs. Peabody let out a bawdy laugh. “Who told you a wedding night is awful?”
    Esme blushed. “I overheard my mother talking to my older sister, Liz, before she was married. Mother told her a lady doesn’t enjoy lying with a man, but it’s necessary in order to bear children, so the best thing to do is to submit quietly.”
    “That’s the biggest bunch of horseshit I ever heard!”
    The words were as shocking as the sentiment behind them. “My mother says men always enjoy marital relations more than women,” I said. “That it’s part of women’s punishment for what happened in the Garden of Eden, when Eve tempted Adam.”
    “So Adam holds no blame for taking the apple from Eve?” Mrs. Peabody waved away the notion, then leaned toward us and spoke in a confiding tone. “Believe me, girls. Women can enjoy sex every bit as much as men—provided they’re with a man who knows what he’s doing.”
    “But how would we know if the man knows what he’s doing or not?” Esme protested.
    “You know because you learn for yourself what pleases you and you inform him if he comes up lacking.”
    Esme and I exchanged glances again. We had eavesdropped on enough conversations among the older, married women to know that men had strong sexual urges. It was a wife’s duty to satisfy these urges, but the closest I had ever heard any woman come to admitting to enjoying the marital bed was once when my Aunt Zerelda said her husband, Dr. Samuel, was ‘considerate’ of her feelings in this regard.
    “Don’t look so owl-eyed, both of you,” Mrs. Peabody chided. “Don’t tell me you’ve never touched yourself for pleasure.”
    Esme and I couldn’t even look at each other now. Yes, I had touched myself. I had enjoyed discovering the changes in my body as I grew into my womanhood. And sometimes, on lonely nights in my rooms, the caressing and fondling of my own body had been a kind of comfort. But I would never admit such depravity to anyone else.
    “It’s all right if you have,” Mrs. Peabody said cheerfully. “Everyone does. It’s how we learn about our own bodies. And about the most pleasurable ways to be touched.”
    Cicadas hummed in the trees just beyond the porch. Or was that my own head, buzzing with this onslaught of dangerous ideas?
    Esme looked as distressed as I felt. “Is it true what people say—that you and Mr. Henry are lovers?” she blurted.
    Mrs. Peabody frowned at her. “My relationship with Mr. Henry is a private matter,” she said.
    “But he’s a married man,” Esme protested.
    “A man whose wife is an invalid, whom it would be dishonorable for him to leave.” She leaned toward us. “I don’t expect either of you girls to understand this now, but I want you to listen to me and take what I have to say to heart. When you find a man you truly love, with both your body and your heart, you will be willing to endure a great deal of pain for those moments of pleasure. Not merely sexual pleasure, though that is not to be undervalued, but