TRYING TO FORGET

PREFACE: Here is the first chapter of a new story about the Woman With 
Kids at Home (aka “Mattie Lee”), which addresses an issue raised by 
several of my readers: Her sexuality. Frankly, this issue never occurred 
to me when I saw the film or even when I began writing “A Good, Bad 
Woman,” my first fan story about her. So I was a little bit surprised 
when I began getting E-mails from fans of the film – often mentioning her 
hairstyle or her clothes - asking if she was gay. (One reader, who 
described herself as a gay activist from the Bay Area, went a bit 
further: She noted that Mattie looked and acted quite a bit like “Mo,” 
the protagonist of a comic strip called “Dykes to Watch Out for,” drawn 
by Alison Bechdel, and which runs in a number of gay-oriented newspapers 
and magazines.) I tried to keep this ambiguous in the stories, partly to 
try to please everyone, but also because I didn’t know the answer. 
Mattie, as she appears in my stories, still carries a torch for Kyle, her 
first boyfriend, who she accidentally killed in a car accident long ago. 
She has also had a number of romantic relationships with men. On the 
other hand, none of her relationships after Kyle ever lasted more than a 
few nights; and her lifelong best friend Rose is openly gay. Apparently 
this “non-explanation” wasn’t enough for some of my readers, who wanted a 
clear answer one way or the other (I’ve had a couple of requests to write 
a love scene for Mattie, either with a man or with a woman. As to these 
requests, I’m sorry but you’re not going to get that; at least not from 
me.)



So here’s your answer. The first chapter, which has a light-hearted feel 
to it, shows us how she looks to a stranger. The second chapter (which I 
am working on now) gives us Rose’s perspective. And Mattie Lee will 
reveal the full truth to us in the third chapter.



This story, like my other stories, is fan fiction, protected by the Fair 
Use Doctrine and the First Amendment. It has not been written or posted 
for profit. This story has not been read or approved by Stephen King, 
Frank Darabont, or anyone connected with the film “The Mist” or the 
novella of the same name.





I. Samantha Rubin





Mattie Lee, lying in bed on a hot Saturday morning, drifting in and out 
of sleep, gradually became aware of the sound of the living room TV and 
of the scent of tobacco, booze, perfume and marijuana. At first she 
thought she was simply dreaming, dreaming of her youth and of the all-
night parties she’d had back then with Rose and her other friends. 
Parties where everyone would wake up late the next morning or early the 
next afternoon on the floor, with stiff backs, dry mouths, and raging 
hangovers, not quite sure where there were or how they’d gotten there, 
next to tables piled high with empty bottles, cigarette butts, bongs, you 
name it. How she missed those days, even though they’d gotten her and 
friends nowhere good – most of them had ended up stuck, probably for 
life, in dead-end jobs here in their hometown of Rubidoux; or serving 
term after term in the Army like Rose; or even going to off jail for a 
while like Mattie herself.



But no, it wasn’t a dream. Mattie had only to look at the framed pictures 
of her children – teenagers now, if you could believe it – on the 
nightstand; or at the faded Celtic knotwork tattoos on her arms; at the 
very slight, but visible, pot belly pressing against her tank top; or at 
the old scars on her left knee or on her fingers, hands and wrists, to 
know she was in the present day, with all its ups and downs.




Mattie was sure Rose wasn’t the culprit. Rose, like Mattie, enjoyed 
tobacco; and unlike Mattie she still sometimes got drunk; but she hadn’t 
used marijuana – or maryjane, as she called it - since high school. Sure, 
she wouldn’t want the Judah Benjamin County Sheriff’s Department, for 
whom she worked part time, or the Army Reserve, to find anything on a 
surprise drug test. But her aversion to pot was far more fundamental than 
that. Rose didn’t like it because it put her almost completely out of 
commission. That was the whole point, Mattie had argued good-naturedly. 
It removed you, gently, from the burdens of life for a few hours (or 
more, if you just kept on smoking). Rose wasn’t hearing it. She had 
always been the most physically active person Mattie knew. She got up 
just before the sun (and way, way before Mattie herself), then went for a 
jog or long walk, and followed that with a half-hour or so of weight 
training. Then she would jump in and out of the shower and be dressed and 
ready to go to work while Mattie was either still curled up in bed or 
just beginning to come to life. But if Rose took one hit of marijuana at 
nine o’clock in the evening, she wouldn’t be functioning fully until noon 
the next day. Her body wouldn’t execute her brain’s commands. She’d spend 
an hour lying awake in bed, thinking that she really ought to get up. Or, 
once out of bed, she’d stand there like a dummy, trying to think of what 
to do next.



Her next thought was of Wanda Lee. Wanda was fifteen now, older than 
Mattie herself had been when she began experimenting with drinking and 
drugs. Mattie, now the librarian at McKinley High, knew that stuff – and 
worse - was sold all over the school just as it had been when she was a 
student there back in the nineties. Wanda was, without a doubt, brighter 
than Mattie and used better judgment. But she shared her mother’s genes; 
and Mattie had always wondered whether Wanda wouldn’t someday feel as 
drawn to alcohol, pot and drugs as Mattie herself had been. Weren’t 
scientists these days saying that temptations like that were passed down 
from your folks and hardwired into your brain? And even leaving nature 
aside, there was nurture: Wanda – except for the few unhappy years she, 
Mattie and Victor had had spent as outcasts in faraway Maine - had now 
lived most of her life in a town where even the best, hardest-working and 
most respected people spent a fair part of each day drunk or stoned. 
Almost everyone had a drink – or several drinks – in the evening and on 
weekends. (The unspoken rule was not to be an angry drunk or a violent 
one; the town had suffered its share of deaths that way, going all the 
way back to the Civil War era.) Tradesmen and the relatively few white-
collar workers took amphetamines or even homemade meth to work harder for 
longer hours. And of course Mattie herself took large quantities of 
Vicodin not only to cope with the pain in her knee, but to feel good and 
sharpen her concentration. So it might be perfectly natural – undesirable 
and a shame and perhaps even dangerous, but natural – for Wanda to 
someday want bring a few friends back here and party with them as Mattie 
(and Mattie’s mother Sue and certainly her grandmother before her) had 
once done.



If it was Wanda, though, Mattie was surprised that Rose hadn’t stopped 
her. Rose often teased Mattie about being prudish. Mattie, aside from 
taking more Vicodin than anyone else they knew, had almost no vices. Her 
youthful missteps, many of them made under the influence, had simply cost 
her too much. But Rose had always helped Mattie to raise Wanda and Victor 
on the straight and narrow. If Wanda had, indeed, appeared this morning 
reeking of pot and booze – maybe surrounded by the evidence of her crimes 
-  Rose would be lecturing her, asking her what her mama would think of 
that, maybe even triumphantly dragging her into Mattie’s bedroom like a 
cop who has corralled a robber.



“Rose?” There was no response. Mattie sat up in bed and called her 
friend’s name a second time, again without result. It had been hot last 
night when she’d gone to bed; almost as hot as it was this morning. She 
was not wearing a robe – only a tank top (actually, an ancient Lynyrd 
Skynyrd T-shirt with sleeves cut off, the better to show off her tattoos) 
and a pair of boxer shorts. She pulled on a pair of rubber shower sandals 
and, limping slightly, moved into the living room of the trailer, toward 
the source of the smell. (She would never walk fully normally again, not 
after the car wreck that had crushed her left leg and killed her first 
boyfriend Kyle; the prosthetic knee and the ever-growing supply of 
painkillers helped somewhat, but nothing, not even after seventeen years, 
could give her back her full range of motion).



“Rose? Wanda? Victor Lee? Are you-“ Mattie took a look at the couch and 
gasped in surprise. Seated on the couch, watching TV next to Wanda and 
Victor, was a half-naked young woman with platinum blonde hair, suntanned 
skin, and the figure and face of a bimbo. She was wearing – sort of - one 
of Mattie’s old terrycloth bathrobes. The belt was untied and the robe 
was open. Underneath, the girl had on – sort of – what was either black 
lingerie or a bikini. The top was too small for her, or it wasn’t hooked 
right, and her left breast was largely exposed. Her face – a pretty one 
with high cheekbones, snub nose, and full lips, was much too heavily 
painted and the makeup was now smeared; even from a distance Mattie could 
see kiss-shaped lipstick stains around her mouth, chin, and neck. A pair 
of metal dog tags, in black rubber frames, hung around her neck. The 
woman was sprawled on the left-hand side of the couch; Wanda and Victor 
sat on the right, looking at her somewhat apprehensively. The coffee 
table in front of them was piled with empty and half-empty beer bottles 
and a few miniature liquor bottles for good measure. Directly in front of 
the woman was an ashtray full of cigarette butts. The girl was watching 
TV – it looked and sounded like The Simpsons - with Mattie’s kids; while 
taking a drag off of a joint as though it was the most proper thing in 
the world. As she did so, she was saying something to Wanda and Victor, 
and laughing slightly.



“Excuse me - who the hell are you?” Mattie demanded. The woman jumped, 
nearly dropping the joint into her own lap. “Wanda Lee, what’s going on?”



“Lady, I-“



“You, shut up.” Mattie was surprised to hear that much authority in her 
voice. “Wanda Lee, you tell your mama what’s happened here.”



“She says she’s a friend of Aunt Rose, Mama,” said Wanda. “We got up to 
make breakfast. We found her sleeping on the couch.” 



“She says she’s in the Army,” Victor added.



Mattie crossed the living room with a few quick strides, until she was 
standing between the TV and the three of them on the couch. “Wanda, 
Victor, go to your room and close the door.” Mattie’s kids were looking 

at her almost as fearfully as was the stranger. Mattie smiled, though for 
only a second, lightened her tone. “Go on; don’t be afraid. But do it 
now.”



Mattie watched as Wanda and Victor got up from the couch and left the 
rom. The girl was looking at Mattie as though Mattie had a shotgun 
trained on her. Mattie waited until she heard the sound of their bedroom 
door closing before going on.



“Who are you – and what do you think you’re doing here?”



“Are-are you…” the girl spoke slowly, thickly, the way Mattie herself 
used to do when she was drunk or stoned or had a bad hangover. “-
Rose’s…wife or something? She didn’t say nothing about-“



“No, I’m not. But I’m their mother,” Mattie nodded in the direction of 
Wanda’s room. “You stay the hell away from my children. Did you give them 
any of that dope? Any of that booze? If you did, I’ll kill you.”



“No, no, no.” The girl was shaking her head, perhaps trying clear it. “I 
was just…hung over. We had too much to drink. Smoking…helps. Where’s 
Rose?”




Mattie didn’t know the answer to that one herself. She was almost as 
angry at Rose as she was at this stranger; and she wished Rose would come 
home so she could start scolding her at well. “Never mind that. What’s 
your name?”




“Samantha. What’s yours?”



Mattie ignored her and continued with the interrogation. “Samantha what?”



“Rubin.”



“Samantha Rubin, you’re in big trouble.”



“Where am I?”



“You’re in my house, sitting on my couch, drinking my liquor, smoking my 
cigarettes, watching my TV-“ she pronounced it ‘teevee’ “-and talking to 
my children. And if you’re not out of my house in ten minutes, I’m 
calling the police.”

	

“But…where’s your house?” The girl had some kind of big-city Northern 
accent. The blonde hair and the huge tanned breasts somehow made Mattie 
think of Los Angeles.


“You’re in the South. Where people don’t smoke dope and flash their tits 
in front of little children. We send you to jail for that stuff here, 
d’you know that? How dare you!?” Mattie leaned across the coffee table, 
put her face very close to the girl’s, studied her. Rose, once or twice a 
year and always against Mattie’s wishes, brought one of her girlfriends 
back to the trailer. Sometimes Rose seemed to care for them. Sometimes 
they were just one-night stands. But all the others had looked and acted 
like decent people. Southern girls, usually military, modestly dressed, 
nice and respectful to Mattie - and never, ever, saying anything more 
than a friendly word or two to Wanda and Victor. What the hell had Rose 
been thinking, bringing this silly painted woman into their home? “You a 
stripper? A hooker, maybe?”



“I’m a soldier,” Samantha muttered.



Mattie forced a laugh. “Don’t lie to me, little girl, not about that. 
Rose is a soldier. My father was a soldier.” She reached across the 
coffee table, grabbed at the dog tags, tried to yank them off Samantha’s 
neck. “Where’d you buy these? Or did you steal ‘em?”



“Please, lady, you’re scaring me. I-“ Samantha broke off in mid-sentence, 
leaned forward over the coffee table, and vomited, mostly but not 
entirely into the ashtray. Mattie, who had let go of the tags and gotten 
out of the way just in time, shuddered and rolled her eyes. “Jesus 
Christ.”



“Please lady, where am I? Rose – you know who she is ? – she brought me 
back to this place last night. We – I woke up and she was gone. I don’t 
even know what day it is. I-I-I’m supposed to be back at my base - Fort 
Leonard Wood - at-“



“Well, you ain’t going to have to worry about Fort Leonard Wood no more.” 
Mattie walked slowly, dramatically, to the telephone on the little end 
table to the left of the couch, picked it up, and began punching in a 
number, actually the number of her desk in the library at McKinley High. 
“I’m calling the MPs to come get you. I’m gonna swear out a complaint 
against you,” she continued, her voice rising, “and you’ll get a BCD – 
that’s a bad conduct discharge, in case you didn’t know - for wrecking my 
house and smoking dope in front of my babies.”



Samantha grimaced, then covered her face with her hands, and for a moment 
Mattie thought she was going to throw up again. Instead, she began to 
cry. “Where am I?” she wailed.



Mattie finally relented, hung up the phone. She could see by now that the 
girl was harmless. And frightened. And too stupid – or at least too hung 
over and too stoned - to know how to behave any better. “You’re in a town 
called Rubidoux. It’s about an hour West of Salem. Rose lives here. She’s 
my friend-“



“I swear I didn’t know about you, lady. She said-“



“Never call me ‘lady’ again, you fool! Try ‘ma’am’.”



“Yes…ma’am. She didn’t tell me about you. She told me she was single. I-I 
wouldn’t have…if I’d-” Samantha began to cry again.



Mattie rolled her eyes again. “She’s not my girlfriend,” she said 
wearily. “I’m not even gay.”



For the first time, Samantha looked at Mattie with something like relief. 
“You’re not?”



“No. Rose and I grew up together. We’re best friends. She-” Mattie 
thought of adding that Rose wished they were lovers, but thought better 
of it. That was none of the girl’s business. “That’s all.”



“But then…why’re you so pissed at me?”



“If I have to explain it to you,” Mattie said slowly, her voice rising, 
“you probably wouldn’t understand. I’m angry at you - and also at Rose, 
by the way - because you wrecked my living room.“ she gestured to the 
coffee table covered with bottles, butts and Samantha’s other wrongdoing, 
“I’m also angry at you because you were smoking dope in my house. That’s 
a felony here, Miss California, and I’ll never be able to get the smell 
out of the carpet or the drapes. Likewise the smell of your puke. And I’m 
really angry at you because you were doing all that in front of my 
fifteen-year-old daughter and my twelve-year-old son. And I’m really, 
really angry at you because while you were doing all that in front of my 
kids you were dressed like a fucking call girl!” Mattie picked up a 
cushion from a chair and threw it at Samantha, hitting her in the chest. 
Samantha finally got the clue and pulled Mattie’s robe tight around her.



“What do you want me to do?”



Mattie shrugged. “Clean all this up. Then get out of here.”



“How do I clean it up?”



“Haven’t you ever done any work in your life?”



Samantha was silent for a moment, as if thinking about that one. Finally, 
she said she hadn’t. She began to cry again, though more softly this 
time.



“I’ll get you some things.” Mattie disappeared into the kitchen for a 
minute or two and then returned with two buckets – one filled with water, 
one empty but for a sponge and a rolled-up paper grocery bag. She 
intended to stand over Samantha, making the girl feel as guilty and 
inadequate as possible, as she watched her cleaned up the table. She 
ended up pushing her out of the way and doing the work herself after 
Samantha nearly set the paper bag on fire by putting the still-burning 
joint inside.



While cleaning up, Mattie asked Samantha for her MOS. She was strangely 
annoyed to find that Samantha apparently really was in the Army, knew 
Mattie was asking about the work she did there.



“98G. I’m a radio communications interceptor.”



“I don’t believe you. You’re too stupid to do that.”



“You’re right about that,” Samantha said quietly. “I’m no good at it.”



“Of course not. Why’d someone like you join the Army in the first place? 
Let me guess: They paid for your college?”



“No.”



“No, you wouldn’t need that. You don’t know how to clean up after 
yourself. You used to have a housekeeper, right?”



Samantha sighed audibly. “Yeah.”



“When I was your age, I used to waitress in a resort town in Maine. Every 
evening in the summer, I’d clean up after rich kids like you. I’d hafta 
clean up their puke all the time. Just like you’re making me do now.” 
Mattie gestured to the puddle of vomit and the rest of the mess that 
she’d initially told Samantha to take care of, the mess she was somehow 
cleaning up herself. “You should be so-o-o proud of yourself.”



“Look, let me-” Samantha reached for the sponge. Mattie grabbed her right 
hand, turned it over, looked at the palm and fingers. “You really are a 
princess, aren’t you? You say you’re a ‘soldier’ but you got no blisters, 
no calluses, no cuts. Look at this-“ Mattie, still gripping Samantha’s 
hand, held up her own hand – her larger, rougher, and very badly scarred 
right hand – next to it so the girl could see the difference. Then she 
pushed the girl’s hand away.



“So if you didn’t need the money, why did you join? You wanted to prove 
something?”



“No,” Samantha looked away from Mattie, down at the floor.



“Then you wanted to rebel?”



“No. I…” Samantha paused, as if wondering what to say to this hostile 
stranger. “I…joined to get laid.”



Mattie, surprised by the girl’s honesty, laughed. “At least that explains 
what you’re doing on my couch. And how was my best friend?”



“La-“ Samantha began, then corrected herself. “Ma’am, what do you want me 
to say to you? I’ve told you I’m sorry. But you won’t stop. I know you 
don’t like me. No one likes me down here-”



“Gee, imagine that!”



“Most of them treat me like you’re doing now. It is because I’m gay? Is 
that it?”



Mattie shook her head. “A few people, maybe. And if they give you grief 
for that, they shouldn’t.” She took a deep breath. “Three boys, from our 
high school, beat up Rose when she was seventeen. She was in the hospital 
for a week. They broke four of her fingers. One of them stuck his own 
dirty finger into her eye. She was afraid it’d keep her out of the Army. 
It didn’t – thank God – but she’s had to wear glasses ever since.” Mattie 
was silent for a while. “But no, I don’t think that’s why people don’t 
like you here. Everyone here knows about Rose. I’m sure the Army knows 
about her, too, even if she thinks they don’t. They don’t care. They 
respect her. They need her. If people here don’t like you, it’s not 
because you’re gay. It’s because you’re useless.”



“Or is it ‘cause they know I’m Jewish?”



Mattie, who had been holding the ashtray a few inches above the table so 
she could wipe the glass underneath it, dropped it back onto the table 
with a bang. “Is that what you think, you silly little girl? Is that what 
you really think? You know that little thing that happened in New England 
a few years back? The Mist? I lived through that that-“



“I’m sorry-“



“Shut up and let me answer your question. When I was up there, I had a 
neighbor, a Jewish neighbor, named Gene Fisher. Before that thing 
happened, he – and another Jewish couple, the Turmans – were just about 
the only people in my town who treated me and my kids with any respect, 
the only people who didn’t think it was okay to spit on us just because 
we were from someplace else and because I talked funny. The morning that 
mist rolled in, he saved my life. Saved my babies’ lives. I didn’t know 
anything bad was gonna happen – like you, I’m none too bright - but 
somehow I think he did know something was wrong. The last time I saw him, 
he was going back to his house next door, to pick us up in his car and 
take us to the store. He told me to be careful and to lock my babies in 
the house and to stay inside until he came back. I never saw him again. I 
almost got killed just walking down to the corner store like a damn fool. 
But thank God I listened to him about the kids and left them at home. I 
never got a chance to thank him and I probably never will. I’d cut off an 
arm for him, give my life for his. But for seven years, I haven’t even 
been able to find out if…” Mattie paused as a lump formed in her throat 
and as her eyes were clouded by sudden tears. “…if he’s still alive. And 
for the rest of my life, I have to remember that he was probably killed 
while getting into his car, getting into his car so he could do me a 
favor.”



“Wait,” Samantha said, a note of recognition, and then of excitement, 
dawning in her voice. “I know who you are. I’ve seen your picture. In-in 
the history books, the books about the mist. You’re the woman with the 
two kids – the Woman With Kids. That’s what they kept calling you.”



“That’s me,” Mattie confirmed, her voice again under control. “But you…do 
not…know…who I am. Not if you don’t know that Rose is my lifelong best 
friend and not my lover. Or if you don’t know about people like Mr. 
Fisher. Or if you think I don’t like you because you’re gay, or because 
you’re Jewish. You know, I didn’t even think you were Jewish, until you 
asked that damn question.



“No, I don’t like you, Samantha Rubin, because you’re dumb and silly and 
inconsiderate. Because of everything you were doing wrong in front of my 
kids. And because you couldn’t understand why I was angry. First you 
thought I was jealous because of Rose, then you thought I had it in for 
you because you’re gay, and then you thought I didn’t like you because 
you’re Jewish. But whatever the reason, it couldn’t have been your 
fault.”



“Look, miss-“



“Ma’am.”



“I’m sorry. Ma’am. I know what you think of me.” The pot seemed to be 
wearing off; Samantha’s speech sounded a bit more lucid than it had even 
a few minutes earlier. “I had a twenty-four-hour pass. I couldn’t wait to 
get off base. One of the girls in my unit told me about this one place-“



“The Rialto, right?” The Rialto, a roadhouse in the neighboring town of 
Bavaria, was the only bar within maybe fifty miles that had an openly 
lesbian and bi clientele. Rose did quite a lot of prospecting there.



“Yeah. So I went there and waited for something to happen, for someone to 
put me out of my misery, you know? And then, there she was-“ Mattie noted 
how Samantha’s voice had momentarily slowed down, softened, taken on 
almost a kind of reverence with the word ‘she’ “-talking to me, buying me 
drinks. I think she saw I was unhappy, homesick, and she kept trying to 
get me to smile. I’d try to turn away from her and she’d keep sticking 
her face in mine, making these silly faces, trying to get me to laugh. 
She’s funny. She’s kind.”



“She is.” Mattie smiled in spite of herself. For thirty years now – God, 
had it really been that long? - Rose had been the rock in Mattie’s shaky 
and uncertain life, holding her hand through crisis after crisis.



“And she’s so pretty – I like that kind of girl. The kind I hoped to find 
in the Army. My first lover was a Sheriff’s Deputy. Rose reminded me of 
her.”



Mattie waved a hand. “I don’t want to hear this. And if my kids are 
listening – and I’m sure they are, through the wall of Wanda’s room – I 
don’t want them to hear it either.”



But Samantha pushed on. “She got me a shot of whiskey, and then another, 
and I think a third one, and she finally started saying, ‘come home, come 
home with me.’ She said my problem was…I just didn’t have any good 
memories of this place. Which is true. I was so lonely and Rose – she 
reminded me of my friend. When we got here, I was so drunk I couldn’t 
even walk. So she-“ Samantha started to giggle “-she actually carried me 
over the doorway, like a bride, and carried me into her room-“



“I said, that’s enough.” Mattie looked for a way to change the subject. 
“Where’s your clothes? You weren’t walking around town in that tiny black 
thing, were you?”



“No. They’re…” Samantha paused, uncertain. “I think maybe…the bathroom?”



“I’ll find ‘em. Because I still don’t like you and I want you out of here 
just as soon as Rose gets back.”



“Can I help with that?” Rose gestured to the table, which was now almost 
completely clean.



“Just hold that bag open for me.” Samantha kept the edges of the paper 
bag apart as Mattie dumped the refuse in.



Mattie found Samantha’s clothes – a pair of cowboy boots, blue jeans, a 
black tank top cut off at the midriff, and a jeans jacket, in an untidy 
pile, mixed in some with Rose’s own clothes, in a pile next to Rose’s 
bed. She brought them back into the living room. Samantha got up from the 
couch and started to take off Mattie’s robe. Mattie held up an arm like a 
traffic cop. “Change in the bathroom. You can take a shower if you want.” 
That sounded a little too nice, so she added, “you stink of pot.”



After Samantha retreated into the bathroom, Mattie went into the kids’ 
room. She briefly told Wanda and Victor that Aunt Rose had brought “that 
stupid woman” home with her. She asked them if Samantha had given them 
anything to drink or to smoke (“no, Mama”). Mattie then said good, and 
asked them if they could please go next door to Mrs. McQueen’s and see if 
she needed any help with anything. (Wanda and Victor instantly understood 
that Mattie was preparing to ambush Rose when she returned and that she 
didn’t want the kids to be around when it happened.) They hugged their 
mother goodbye and went next door. Mattie finished straightening up the 
sofa and the coffee table; placing the garbage bag strategically on the 
table so that Rose would see – and smell – the mess inside as soon as she 
came through the front door. Then Mattie sat down on the sofa, lit a 
cigarette (she used a saucer as an ashtray; she didn’t want to touch the 
real ashtray after what Samantha had done in there) and waited for her 
old friend to return.



Rose – eyes bleary behind her wire-rimmed glasses, and herself smelling 
of sweat and beer - came through the front door while Samantha was still 
in the shower. She was holding a bag with the logo of the local grocery 
store. Inside, Mattie could see a small carton of eggs, bottles of 
Tabasco sauce and seltzer water, and various other hangover remedies. She 
nearly dropped the bag as the scent of pot and puke reached her. 



“Oh my God,” Rose said, sounding guilty and even a little scared, as she 
saw the look on Mattie’s face and sniffed at the air. 



“Not God,” Mattie corrected her, “just your little friend Samantha.” 
“You’ve outdone yourself this time, Rosie. Now don’t you say a word.” And 
Mattie proceeded to tell Rose about how she’d found Samantha that 
morning, half-in and half-out of her black lingerie, smoking dope in 
front of Wanda and Victor. How she’d puked all over the table. How she 
seemed to have no idea she’d done anything wrong. Rose tried to interject 
once or twice. Each time Mattie cut her off. By the end of Mattie’s 
lecture, Rose was simply standing there, silently, head down.



“First,” she said when she sensed Mattie was done, “I’m-“



Mattie clapped her hands over her ears. “Don’t say it! That stupid little 
girl you brought home told me about eight hundred times how she was 
sorry. She didn’t mean it and neither do you. She’s sorry she got caught, 
that’s all. She’s sorry I wasn’t nice to her. Why’d you bring her into my 
house? Why’d you come on to someone like that…that surfer chick with the 
big boobs - fifteen years younger than you if she’s a day - in the first 
place?”



“Okay,” Rose held up her hands palms-first, like a suspect getting ready 
to surrender to a police officer. “It was a dumb-ass thing for me to do, 
all right? I never told her it was OK to do those things in front of 
Wanda and Victor – I’d never have brought her back here if I’d known 
that’s what she would do.”



“Did you think of calling me last night, asking me if you could bring 
somebody back?”



“I-I should have. But it was too late, and-“



“And you…were…too…drunk.”



“Yeah,” Rose almost whispered, as she lowered her head.



“I love you Rose,” Mattie said. She said that to Rose often, and vice 
versa; and when they were in a good mood, the other always jokingly 
added, “but not in that way.” For now, however, Mattie was too angry and 
Rose felt too guilty to say anything funny. “But this is my house; and 
those are my children. I have to protect them.” She paused, as if 
anticipating an objection from Rose. “And I’d say the same thing if you’d 
brought a boyfriend home.”



And then there was the sound of the bathroom door opening up. Samantha, 
fully dressed except for her boots, emerged into the kitchen area. 
Without her makeup, and clad in her tank top and jeans, she no longer 
looked like such a clown but she still could not have passed for one of 
the town’s residents. She was tanned, not sunburned; was dressed too 
neatly; seemed too well-built and healthy; and above all (as Mattie 
grudgingly admitted to herself) the girl just seemed too happy.  If 
anything bad had happened to her that morning, she seemed to have 
forgotten. “Hi, hon!” she chirped.



Before Rose could say anything, before she could set the tone of the 
remainder of Samantha’s time there, Mattie told her to get the girl out 
of her home, right now, back to Fort Leonard Wood or at least to the bus 
stop on Pyrite Street.



Samantha ignored her. “Honey,” she said to Rose, “I didn’t know you had 
such a famous friend. You know, I remember seeing her picture – that one 
with her two kids – when I was back in high school. At first, I didn’t 
even know it was her. She looked so young back then,” she enthused.



Mattie turned her back to them. “You get her out of here, Rose, get her 
out of here and don’t you bring her back,” she said as quietly and as 
tonelessly as she could.



“Come on.” Rose pulled open the front door and shooed Samantha outside. 
“I’ll be back around noon, okay, honey?” Mattie didn’t answer.





II. Rose and Samantha





Rose didn’t see any point in scolding Samantha for her behavior in the 
house. Mattie already had, probably going way too far, and she didn’t 
want to hurt the girl’s feelings any further - partly because she hoped 
to see her again.



Rose drove Samantha back to Fort Leonard Wood, stopping only for 
breakfast at a diner on the edge of town. On the road, Samantha asked why 
Mattie had been so angry with her.



“Well…she’s got a point,” Rose shook her head sadly. “She loves Wanda and 
Victor; she doesn’t want them to grow up getting drunk and stoned like 
she and I did when we were kids. And there you were-“



“-showing ‘em how it’s done.” Samantha looked down at her hands and 
smiled, faintly, uncertainly. Rose grinned broadly and punched her 
lightly in the shoulder. “But that isn’t the only reason she was mad, was 
it?”



“No,” Rose said, her smile gone. “It’s not.”



“She’s your wife, isn’t she? Your partner?”



Rose lowered her head, looked sad. “Absolutely not. We’ve been best 
friends since we were five years old. I saw her grow up, day by day. She 
lived next door to me, we went to the same school, we hung out every 
evening, every weekend. We always did everything together. So when we got 
to be that age, our early teens, and I realized I liked girls, I just 
figured she’d feel the same way.” 



“One day when we were fifteen, we got tattooed together. We’d planned it 
for maybe six months, trying to figure out what design to get; taking a 
job to pay for it…” Rose didn’t mention that they’d earned the money by 
boosting several cars for Ted Maxwell, a dapper hood from Jefferson City. 
“The tattoo shop in town wouldn’t do it for us; he knew we were underage. 
So we drove out to Salem, went inside the first place we saw, and showed 
the guy fake ID’s.



“After it was over, we both used our fake IDs to get drunk and then we 
headed back home. That’s how we used to do it – fill up on booze and then 
drive the car down the empty roads at eighty miles an hour.” She paused. 
“We did that until…until Mattie Lee wrecked the car.” She didn’t mention 
to Samantha that Mattie had killed her boyfriend in that wreck. Samantha 
might be pretty, sexy, and generally fun to be around, but she wouldn’t 
understand what that event had meant not only to Mattie but to Rose.



“Anyway…on the way back, I decided to see if I could interest her.”



Samantha herself was interested. “Do tell…”





“Okay. I was driving, and I pulled us off the highway, onto this access 
road about ten miles out of town. I drove us to the top of a hill. I’d 
gone there before, with my first. There’s no one around for miles, so no 
one could see us. That’s just about the only thing wrong with this town; 
if you’re gay – or even if you stand out some other way, you’re 
Protestant, you like to read, whatever – you don’t want to advertise.



“Mattie Lee asked me what was going on. I didn’t tell her; I showed her. 
I leaned over and kissed her on the lips.“



“What did she do?”



Rose laughed at the memory. “She was so surprised. She said, ‘you 
didn’t!’ I took that as a yes. So I kissed her again…and this time, she 
kissed me back. There we were, best friends since we were five years old, 
locking lips and French kissing. I was so happy. You see, I always 
figured that me and Mattie Lee and me were together for a reason. There 
had to be a reason why I ended up next door to her; why we became best 
friends; why we grew up together. And when I realized I liked girls, I 
realized that was the reason. We were going to be a couple. I had this 
picture in my mind of the two of us, much older, about the same age as we 
are now, living together. I don’t know how we could have done it in a 
town like this, but we would have found some way. People liked us; Mattie 
Lee’s father was a war hero.”



“So all this was going through my head while we made out. But then I went 
too far. I took things to the next step and touched her breast, her 
little breast. I think that was when she understood what it meant, what 
it would mean for her, how it would change our friendship.



“She put her hand on my wrist, and for a moment I wasn’t sure whether she 
was trying to push it off or keep it on. Maybe she was trying to decide 
herself, trying to decide what we would be to each other, trying to 
decide how to spend the rest of her life.



“And,” Rose sighed, “she pushed my hand away. She took her mouth off 
mine, took her other arm off my back, and tried to get as far away from 
me as she could. But she was in the front seat of a car, so she couldn’t 
get too far away, could she? It turned out her door hadn’t been closed 
all the way, and as she leaned against it, it popped open and she toppled 
backwards onto the hill. THUD.” Rose was laughing again, but only 
slightly.



“I told her I was sorry-“



“I’ve seen how well that line works with her,” Samantha said ruefully.



“But with me it wasn’t a line. I was worried that I’d thrown away a 
lifelong friendship by trying to turn it into something that maybe it 
wasn’t meant to be. But, thank God, I hadn’t killed off the friendship. 
I’d only stunned it. For a couple of days.



“I helped her into the car and we drove home. No drinking, no talking, no 
music like we always had before. I told her I would never make her do 
something she didn’t want to do; and that I would never do that to her 
again. She said, ‘I know, Rosie,’ in this tiny little voice. I asked her 
if we were still friends. She started crying, said ‘I don’t know.’ She 
put her face in her hands and wouldn’t look at me. And then I started 
crying too. So there we were, we were supposed to be celebrating our new 
artwork, and instead we were in tears and couldn’t talk to each other.



“She stayed in her mama’s trailer for two days after that. She didn’t 
come to school, where we were supposed to be showing off our brand-new 
tattoos; she didn’t come over; she didn’t call me. So I went over to her 
house and her mama turned me away at the front door. Mattie Lee hadn’t 
told her what happened, but she knew anyway. She hadn’t liked me for a 
long time, and when she found out I had a thing for girls it was the last 
straw.”



Samantha had stopped smiling. She knew from painful experience what 
coming out could do to a relationship, even a close one. Her mother, with 
whom she’d always been close, now only spoke to her about once a month 
for a few minutes. If Samantha asked her what was wrong, she would always 
tell Samantha, in a monotone voice, that she knew very well what it was.



“Finally, on the third day, she came to see me. I opened the door and she 
gave me a hug.”



“No kissing this time?”



“No, ma’am,” Rose grinned. “No kissing. We cried in each other’s arms. My 
folks saw us, and I’m sure they knew what it was all about. But it didn’t 
really bother them. Anyhow, we went in my room and quieted down. Mattie 
said our friendship was the only thing in the world that mattered to her. 
But she looked on a lover – she’d been with Kyle already, and I think 
maybe one other boy – different than a friend. She couldn’t see how we 
could stay together as both friends and lovers. So I told her my big 
theory: That we’d been put next door to each other, allowed to grow up 
together as best friends, because we were meant for each other. I told 
her it’d just be a…continuing-? A-“



“An extension?”



“That’s right. An extension of everything we’d done before. And I told 
her there was no one else on Earth I’d rather be with than her. If she 
went with me, no marriage to some deadhead in town would break us up, we 
could live together, and we would be with each other – grow up and grow 
old - right up through the end.



“And Mattie Lee asked me why we couldn’t have all that but without sex. 
She said she loved me already, but as a friend. We’d already shared most 
of our lives and she didn’t see no reason we couldn’t keep on doing that. 
We could stay in town, even live together, or we could join the Army 
together – this was before…her accident, you see. She said she didn’t 
really care about my thing for girls one way or the other. So I could 
have any girls I wanted…except her. She wouldn’t be jealous of them 
because she didn’t like to do that stuff herself. And of course we’d 
never, ever fight over a man; she didn’t have to worry about my stealing 
Kyle.



“Was that good enough?”



Rose though about that one for a moment. “For me, the most important 
thing by far was still having the friendship with Mattie Lee. I couldn’t 
have gotten along without her, not with all those years of memories. I 
would have been…empty without her. My own past wouldn’t mean nothing to 
me. And it wouldn’t matter if I found a thousand girls to sleep with; I 
wouldn’t want to because part of me would be crying for Mattie Lee and 
knowing I was the one who drove her off.



“But another part of me still wanted her as a lover. I was attracted to 
her. Still am. I’d seen her naked a few times – like when we went 
swimming or camping or whatever – and I kept remembering how good she 
looked. And it would have made so much sense to me – we’d always done 
everything together, so why not this?”



“It’s different,” Samantha told her, “you know it is.”



“That’s right. So I told her she had a deal. We hugged each other, cried 
some more, and then spent the rest of the day together. And we’ve been 
together ever since – except for those years she spent in Maine while I 
was overseas.“ Rose didn’t tell Samantha that she and Mattie had also 
been apart during the year Mattie was locked up in prison or the six 
weeks she had been in a psychiatric hospital after attempting suicide. 
“After the national guard rescued her from the mist, I found her in the 
refugee camp and brought her back home, along with her two kids. That 
was…let’s see…seven years ago, and we’re still living together.



“But every once in a while, I think of her in that way. She knows I do; 
but she knows I can’t help it and I won’t act on it.”



Samantha brightened. “And that’s where I come in.”



Rose patted her hand, afraid to do more in a public place. “That’s right, 
honey.” She leaned closer to Samantha and began to talk in a more 
conspiratorial tone of voice. “Now, next time – there will be a next 
time, won’t there? –“ The younger woman nodded “we have to find someplace 
else to go. I know this motel near the Rialto; that’s where we should 
have gone last night…”





III. Mattie and Rose


Rose drove Samantha the rest of the way back to Fort Leonard Wood, 
dropped her off in the visitors’ parking lot with a kiss (and also an 
exchange of phone numbers and E-mail addresses) and then turned around 
and headed back to Rubidoux. Rose’s normal driving speed was somewhere 
around fifty miles an hour on surface streets and a full eighty miles an 
hour on the highway, but today she found herself carefully observing the 
speed limit signs; stopping at yellow lights; and generally delaying her 
return to Mattie Lee as long as she could. Although Mattie had largely 
gotten her temper under control years ago – months sometimes went by 
between the screaming and crying fits - she was still a force to be 
reckoned with when she got angry. And Mattie, Rose knew, wanted to make 
this unpleasant for her. Driving slowly (and choosing surface streets 
over the highway whenever possible) helped to put off the confrontation, 
but Rose also had the (vain) hope that Mattie would have calmed down by 
the time she returned.



Mattie hadn’t. When Rose got home, Mattie was seated on the couch, her 
old-fashioned pince-nez glasses clipped to her nose, reading a book of 
stories by John Millington Synge, the nineteenth-century Irish 
playwright. The library job had been good for Mattie. It not only gave 
her a purpose and a way to spend her time. It had inspired her to become 
literate as well. True, her range of interests was somewhat narrow – she 
wouldn’t read anything not connected to Ireland or the South and would 
never, ever read anything connected in any way to the mist. Her interests 
ran deep, though; and she had learned a great deal about the history she 
shared not only with Rose but with most of the other townspeople: 
Descendants of Irish Catholic immigrants who had arrived just in time to 
fight for the Confederacy in the Civil War, only to face the conflicting 
horrors of Reconstruction and attacks by the anti-Catholic Ku Klux Klan 
afterwards. The town’s longtime residents were conscious that not only 
had their forebears lost a war, but their service in that war had not 
been recognized or appreciated and they had been treated like outsiders 
well into the 1960’s, when the civil rights movement gave local bigots a 
much larger target.



“You got rid of her?” Mattie asked without looking up from her book. She 
had thrown away the garbage bag and sprayed enough Lysol in the living 
room to mask the remaining smells. She had also gotten dressed, in blue 
jeans, sandals, and a very loud orange, white, and brown flowered 
sleeveless nylon blouse that she often wore when she was in a bad mood. 
Staff at McKinley High actually joked, behind her back, about keeping a 
lookout in the parking lot to see what she was wearing each day; this 
person would supposedly run through the administration wing, whispering 
“orange and brown today” if she was spotted wearing the horrid blouse. 
After one of Mattie’s tantrums – which apparently involved a dispute over 
who was supposed to take apart an old desk in the library - one of the 
newer staff members, not knowing Mattie’s history, had told Rose it was a 
wonder Mattie hadn’t had a killer of a heart attack. Rose thought briefly 
of asking her if she’d seen the vertical surgery scar that began just 
under Mattie’s collarbone and plunged down the center of her chest, but 
decided against it. Mattie had, in fact, suffered a heart attack shortly 
after returning home from New England and the horrors in the mist; the 
result of a supposedly accidental overdose of antidepressants. Rose 
didn’t want anyone asking about that, certainly not asking Mattie.



“She’s gone.”



“Don’t you ever bring her – or anybody like her - back here. You can talk 
about that stuff all you want, but don’t stick it in my face.”



Rose lowered her head. “If you want to lecture me, go ahead. I said it 
this morning: I screwed up.”



“No, you’re in luck. I don’t want to talk about her anymore,” Mattie said 
as she turned away from Rose and back to her book. Rose knew this wasn’t 
much better; for the rest of the weekend Mattie would be sulking; keeping 
to the house; responding to all of Rose’s questions or comments with one-
word answers; and no fun at all.



“You know,” Rose suggested, “I wouldn’t have a problem with it if you 
brought a man back here.”



“I don’t know anyone.”



“Well, I know there’s men interested in you. What about that coach, 
what’s-his-name, Mr. O’Neill?” Thomas O’Neill was the coach of McKinley 
High’s football team, aptly named the Cavemen.



Mattie shook her head. “Mr. O’Neill is trying to screw every woman on the 
staff, one by one. I heard he’s doing it in alphabetical order.”



“Yeah, and your last name is ‘Allen,’” Rose joked, “so he couldn’t have 
gotten too far, could he?”



Mattie wasn’t amused. “Forget it.”



“What about that history teacher, the one-“



Mattie held up her hand. “I’m done with that.”



“I think that’s part of the problem, honey. You’re still young, still 
pretty, and Wanda and Victor could use a father. And you know I love you, 
but you should make some friends besides me.”



“I won’t have anything further to do with men. Not in terms of sex.”



“Is it because of Kyle? You said yourself that he wouldn’t want you to be 
alone.”



“That’s part of it,” Mattie admitted. “Kyle was so good to me, we were so 
right for each other, I can’t see how I could settle for someone else. I 
tried once, and look who I got. Tim.” Tim was Wanda Lee’s father, a man 
about whom Mattie Lee knew almost nothing other than the lies upon lies 
he’d told her. He had courted her, told her he loved her, and had 
disappeared two days after she told him he had made her pregnant.



“I told you I’d find him and kill him for you if you want.” Neither of 
them was smiling as Rose said it. “But even that didn’t make you lose 
interest in men. You had boyfriends in New England. A new one every time 
I came to visit you.”



“Anyone who said they loved me,” Mattie said bitterly. “You don’t know 
how bad things were up there.” Rose had a fairly good idea. Mattie had 
been lured up to rural Maine to care for her Aunt Judy, who was sick with 
cancer, in return for inheriting Judy’s house. Although Rose had been 
stationed in Afghanistan, and then Iraq, during this period, she had kept 
in close touch with Mattie because her friend had told her some – not all 
but some – of what was going on. Judy had abused her, physically and 
mentally, for nine terrible months before she died. Mattie was left 
almost penniless, trapped in a tiny, cold house she couldn’t use or 
repair. “I finally learned my lesson when I got pregnant with Victor Lee. 
I don’t even know who the father is; and whoever the hell it is left me 
to have him all alone!” Mattie’s voice was rising.



“Well, honey, from what you told me about it, you were-“ Rose almost 
said, ‘going a little too far.’ Instead, she finished with “-a little too 
lonely in those days. Didn’t you say you were seeking, like, four guys at 
the time?”



Mattie looked down at her hands. “Not quite. I had all four of ‘em at 
once. One right after the other. In one evening. And that was the last 
time I ever made love. Will ever make love.” She turned to face Rose. 
“Does that answer your question?”



“Mattie Lee, you never told me it happened that way.” A terrible 
suspicion was beginning to dawn on Rose. “Mattie Lee, were you-” she 
couldn’t get the word out at first. “were you raped? Is that how it 
happened.”



“No. Nothing like that.” And then Mattie told her what had really 
happened, in three words spoken in a tiny, hoarse, exhausted voice. Rose 
was close enough to hear, but she was sure she hadn’t heard or understood 
correctly.



“What did you say?”



“You heard me, Rosie. Don’t ever make me say it again.”



“Honey, I don’t think I understood. What did you-“



“I said: ‘They. Paid. Me.’” Mattie spat out each word from between 
clenched teeth. Her face - except for her red-rimmed eyes and her 
irrepressible freckles - was white; the cords in her neck stood out; and 
her hands were shaking. She looked to be on the verge of a seizure.



“Oh my God,” Rose looked at Mattie – her hangover, the lost morning, the 
silly argument about her silly friend Samantha forgotten. “But no. You 
told me it was some guys you met at some party at that school, that 
university, when you were working at the pub. They were friends and you 
got to know them, right? You said you weren’t sure which, but-“



“Don’t you understand!?” Mattie screamed, and then she was crying again, 
covering her face with hands – her disfigured hands with the cigarette 
burns on their backs, the wrists with the shiny white scars and the pinky 
fingers, both slightly crooked now, ringed with stitch marks at the 
joints where they had been reattached - because she was unable to look at 
her best friend, unable to look at anyone now. “I lied to you, Rosie,” 
Mattie said, a half a minute later, when she had voice under control. “It 
was the only time I ever lied to you…and that was the only time I ever-“



“It’s all right, honey,” Rose maneuvered around Mattie on the couch, 
sitting behind her smaller friend, almost putting Mattie in her lap, 
holding her in her strong embrace, rocking her gently.



“I’m sorry. But I couldn’t have told you, I couldn’t.”



“Yes, you could have. What do you think I would have done?”



“You wouldn’t have seen me the same.”



“Of course I would have, honey,” Rose gently stroked Mattie’s short red 
hair, rocking her slightly as she did so. “You had no money, you were all 
alone in a strange place, you-“



“That don’t make it all right,” Mattie, crying softly, shook her head 
again. “The only thing I can say is I did it because of Wanda Lee. She 
was three years old, and she had an ear infection. Her left ear hurt her 
and every day she could hear me less and less. I took her to the doctor. 
He wanted to do an irrigation, I think he called it, and get the wax our 
of her left ear. And he showed me something – some pink stuff – he said 
would clear it up right away. But the whole thing cost over five hundred 
dollars, and I couldn’t afford any of it. I had no money, no insurance.” 
She pronounced it IN-surance. “I wrote to mama, told her what was wrong, 
asked for some money for little Wanda Lee. I never heard back from her. I 
know she was made at me, but was that fair…to punish…Wanda Lee as well?” 
Mattie was crying harder now, and Rose held her tightly.



“I was waitressing at the pub at University Village. I asked my boss for 
an advance, a loan, anything. He said he’d already given me two advances 
and that I still owed him some money. I tried to get a loan – looked in 
the phone book, went from bank to bank – but they wouldn’t help me 
either. All the while, little Wanda’s getting sicker and sicker, starting 
to cry. How she loved music. Still does. I couldn’t imagine her going 
through life without hearing.



“This’d been going on for almost three weeks when someone said they’d 
‘help’ me. One of the guys I worked with said he’d heard I needed a lot 
of money real fast. I told him yeah. He asked me how much and I told him 
five hundred dollars. He…he asked me how far I’d be willing to go to earn 
it.” Mattie covered her hands with her face, sniffed, and then resumed 
her story. 



“I knew what was coming. ‘The oldest profession,’ they call it. “I knew I 
wasn’t going to be the same if I did something like that, but I knew I 
wouldn’t be able to live with myself if Wanda Lee became deaf. So I told 
him yeah. He said to keep quiet about it. The next night, when I came to 
wait on my section, there were these four guys – young, real handsome 
like models, well-dressed – sitting at one of the tables. They smiled at 
me, they talked me up a little bit, but it was mostly just chit-chat. But 
they kept looking at me, even when I moved away. Stealing glances when 
they thought I couldn’t see them. I kept asking myself, ‘is it one of 
them? Am I going to have to make love with one of them?’



“The pub closed about two hours later. I had the late shift – it paid a 
little more – and I was locking up. Then the guy I worked with calls my 
name. He took me into the manager’s office. And there were those four 
young men, looking at me like I was completely naked. All of them – or at 
least three of them - were grinning all the while. He told me what I’d 
have to do for my five hundred. All four of them. I almost ran out – I 
had no idea if something like that was safe or whether it’d kill me. But 
then he took out the cash, told me to count it. And as I did, I thought 
of Wanda Lee. This – thing – would last only one night. If she lost her 
hearing she and I would live with it all our days. And I thought of all 
the other men I’d been with in those days – all they had to do was tell 
me they loved me, even if I knew it was a lie – and I thought, ‘this 
isn’t much different. So I took the money.’”



“One of the guys said he didn’t want to do it in a tiny little office. He 
said they had a house they all shared together. I don’t know if it was a 
frat house or what. And all at once I got scared. I didn’t know what – or 
who – might be waiting for me in their house. There could be twenty other 
guys and I might never get out alive. So I said, ‘what about a motel?’ 
but one of the guys said it was ‘too obvious.’ Can you believe it? Those 
were the words he used! So I told them to take me to my house. I said I 
had a little baby girl there, she was sleeping, and we couldn’t disturb 
her. One of them said not to worry. We got in their car – it was a 
Mercedes or a BMW or something – the kind with a big back seat – and I 
told them how to get there. All the while, one of them was stroking my 
hair, almost like I was a fucking cat.”



Rose shook her head. “Honey, none of this is your fault. Do these guys 
have names?”



“I’m sure they do. But only one of them gave me his name.”



“Who? Do you remember his name, Mattie Lee? Tell me who!” she demanded. 
“I’ll find him, even if it takes me ten years. I’ll kill him!” Rose was 
actually screaming by then.



“That won’t do no good,” Mattie said, fresh tears welling up in her eyes. 
“What’s done is done; and I’m sure he’s long gone by now. And he was the 
only one who was nice to me.”



“None of this was ‘nice,’ honey,” Rose said, still breathing heavily with 
rage. “They used you. Took advantage of a poor girl with a sick child and 
who had no choice. I’m sure the Devil’s preparing a few seats for them in 
Hell. And I hope they get raped there.”



“Please stop. You wanted to know what happened, why I haven’t made love 
in twelve years, and now I’m telling you why. 



“So we went into my bedroom. Wanda Lee was sleeping in the next room and 
I wanted to be able to hear her if she started crying. I also think I 
just wanted her close to me right then. I went into the bathroom and 
changed into one of my nightgowns. They said it wasn’t very sexy but I 
couldn’t have stood it if I had to be naked in front of them, not the way 
they were leering at me. I begged the others not to watch while I was 
doing it with one of them. So they agreed to wait outside. And I lay down 
on my bed – the bed where I used to sleep with little Wanda when she had 
nightmares – and let them come at me, one by one.” Mattie broke down 
crying and could not continue for nearly a minute. Rose rocked her back 
and forth, softly whispering an old Irish folk song to her.



“Only the last of them was different. His name was Mike. Mike D’Amico. By 
that time, I felt like I was almost dead. I was crying, I was covered 
with their sweat and I smelled of their cologne. Like they’d somehow 
become a part of me, you know? I thought I’d never be able to get it off 
me and that made me cry all the harder. And I looked up and I saw this 
guy looked ready to cry as well.



“He knelt down by the side of the bed and said he had no idea it would be 
like this. A regular girl, who wasn’t a pro, a mother with a sick little 
kid. He said he was very sorry it had happened; that he wasn’t going to 
touch me; that he knew he couldn’t make things right but that he’d do 
whatever he could to help me. He gave me some money – I think three 
hundred, all the cash he had on him – and told me to get something nice 
for Wanda Lee. And he offered to take me to a doctor. I got scared – what 
I’d done was against the law and I didn’t want anybody finding out – so I 
told him no. And then, he took out his wallet again and wrote me a check 
for a thousand dollars. I told you these guys were rich, right?” Mattie 
managed a very small laugh. “He said that was all he could afford right 
now, but if I needed more, to write him at the address on the check. He 
also gave me his number. He told me to put all that away – the check, the 
cash – and that it was all over. I thought I’d been there all night, that 
it was almost morning. But I looked at my watch and it only said twenty 
past midnight. I’d closed the pub at 10:30. Almost two hours in hell, 
with only one person treating me like a human being.



The others came back in. They wanted to take me out for a drink. I was 
still crying, and I felt like screaming at them to get out but I was 
afraid of what might happen if I did. So I just told them I was tired – 
which was true – and asked them to let themselves out. And so they left 
me.



“So Wanda Lee got her medicine, and thanks to Mike we had some money – 
thirteen hundred dollars – left over as well. I never saw any of them 
again. I quit my job at the pub just as soon as I could get another lined 
up. I couldn’t face the man at the pub who’d gotten me into this; and I 
knew I couldn’t face any of those boys again, except maybe Mike. When I 
found out I was pregnant with Victor Lee I wrote to him. I’d written down 
the address on the check. I couldn’t bring myself to write about what had 
happened. I just asked for help. A week later, he sent us another check, 
this time for two thousand. The money was nice – Wanda was healthy again 
and she and I were eating good food and we could dress right – but it 
kept reminding me of that night. I didn’t write him again. A few years 
ago, I tried looking him up on the Internet. Silly of me.” She smirked 
again. “There must have been a hundred and fifty Mike D’Amicos.



“That night, after they had gone, while I was cleaning myself up, I swore 
I would never make love again. Not for money, not for someone telling me 
he ‘loved’ me, not for anything or anyone. I broke it off with the guys I 
was seeing at the time. I didn’t mean nothing to them anyhow and they 
meant almost nothing to me. And pretty soon I had my hands full carrying 
Victor Lee-“



“You mean, you had a bellyful of Victor Lee.” Rose instantly regretted 
her attempt at humor, but Mattie, perhaps relieved to be at the end of 
the tale, surprised her by laughing. “That’s right. After I had him, then 
I had my hands full. And so there was no time for men. I spent most of my 
time caring for my babies or working. And-and I made sure there was no 
spare time. I kept my promise.”

 

“So you really meant it,” Rose said quietly. “You haven’t touched a man 
in twelve years.”



“That’s right. From time to time, I’ve tried. With men who were kind and 
polite. One of the soldiers stationed at the Arrowhead Project, that base 
the terrorists attacked with the mist. But I could never go through with 
it. I’d think of what happened that night, those three big men crushing 
me and sweating on me while I squirmed and held back my tears, and I’d 
just freeze. Or I’d think of Kyle, of the one man who really loved me.” 
This was too much for her and she wept again in Rose’s arms.



“So now you know. I’m frigid. And if not for Wanda and Victor Lee, I’d be 
an old maid.”



“We won’t let you become an old maid,” Rose squeezed her hand. “We’re 
gonna get you some help, just like we did a few years ago with some of 
those other things.”



“No. I can’t be helped. There’s nothing left inside of me. I love you and 
I love my babies but I can’t feel- what? Passion? Lust? – anymore.



“You’re very unhappy about this and that can be helped. On Monday, I’m 
going to ask around the Sheriff’s Department – they’ve had some 
experience with this kind of thing, you know – and see if there’s someone 
you can talk to. You can do anything you want, honey. You deserve to be 
on the same footing as me – straight, of course,” she quickly amended.



“I’m sorry if – I mean that – I spoiled your time with Samantha,” Mattie 
offered.



“No, honey, you didn’t. She was in the wrong.”



“But so was I. This…thing is part of the reason why I was so mad at her.”



“Well, that’s not going to be a problem much longer. You can learn from 
your mistakes, Mattie Lee, not run away from them. You said you liked men 
who were – what, kind and decent?”



“Yeah,” Mattie had stopped crying, at least for now. “Men who like me. 
Who like Wanda Lee and Victor Lee. Who don’t just want sex.”



“Then you can have someone like that. We’ll stick with it until you do. 
And…and Kyle would have wanted it that way.”



The mention of Kyle’s name brought new tears, as it almost always did. 
Eventually, though, they stopped, as they always did. Mattie and Rose sat 
on the sofa, holding hands, looking out their small window. Wanda and 
Victor came back in around five. Rose made them all dinner – some fish 
with corn on the cob. Early on, Wanda and Victor asked a few questions. 
Mattie – who could never tell her babies what she’d just told Rose – 
simply said that everything would be all right. All four of them finished 
dinner in silence. Mattie took her evening Vicodin and a sleeping pill 
and soon grew drowsy. Rose carried her, like a beautiful bride across the 
threshold, into her bedroom, gently lowered her onto the bed, and shut 
the door. And Mattie dreamed that Kyle had never died, had grown up with 
her and was Wanda and Victor’s dad, that Rose lived with them, and that 
they would never, ever be separated again.