Marching to Zion by Mary Glickman Read Free Book Online

snaked down her back and bounced about like a thing alive. After their dance, Fishbein’s daughter went straight up to Bailey and tugged his jacket for another round.
    Aurora Mae and Mags went off to have the talk her mother would have given her had she been alive. Aurora Mae, who was virginal as far as the bride knew, gave her what wisdom she possessed from listening to the complaints of wives who came to her for something to start their bleeding or something to stop it, for draughts that might renew their husband’s interest or for others that might keep him away. Be careful how you start out, she told her. Men don’t like change. How you start out is how you’ll end.
    Once evening fell, Mags and George stood in the doorway about to leave. She threw her bouquet. It hit Tawny in the chest, bounced off, and fell into old Aunt Lily’s lap as she sat nearby, a wallflower sitting all by herself nodding her head. Everyone laughed. The party went on long after the bridal couple left.
    That first night, Aurora Mae’s words of advice echoed in Mags’s head. They cautioned her as she undressed behind the closet door and put on the nightgown the ladies of Miss Emily’s had given her, the sum of her trousseau. The words rattled her as she fiddled with its straps, trying to get the thing to hang right so that her small breasts weren’t swamped in satin and lace. The words burned into her with a roiling heat as George McCallum took his time to open her up and ready her. They paled to a whisper as their lovemaking became a joining of two who wished to please each other, not just the one eager male making it up as he went along, loving trial by gentle error. Then Aurora Mae’s words came crashing back when the screams of Fishbein! Fishbein! Fishbein! started, followed by the sounds of smashing and breaking, the great knocking of toppled furniture and hurled objects upstairs. How you start is how you’ll end, the rhythm of splintered wood and shattered glass warned above the ruckus. How you start is how you’ll end.
    Alarmed, George and Mags McCallum stopped and held each other, gasping for breath and staring at the ceiling, waiting for the clamor to cease, which it did soon enough. They murmured a decision to ignore the girl’s tantrums from now on, and they finished what they’d set out to do, although Mags McCallum was some distracted, thinking again and again, how you start is how you end. She wondered what kind of omen Miss Minnie’s fit had delivered, but she did not want to hurt her husband’s feelings, so she kept her worries to herself.
    Despite Miss Minnie’s outburst, the marriage got off to a good start. They spent their days at work, the evenings were full of tenderness. They had no visitors. Fishbein’s was not a place people visited by choice, which was just fine with the McCallums. They were getting to know each other and found, as luck was with them, that a loving life was as easy to achieve as falling off a log. Their nights and times off were a mirror image of the workday. They did everything together, the cleaning, the shopping, the cooking, the laundry. If she picked up a dust rag, he picked up a broom. If she broke an egg of a morning, he pulled out the coffee. When Mags tried to make George just sit and let her do for him, he’d say, I don’t want to be away from you. And she’d think she was the luckiest woman alive. For a while, she was.
    Until the United States plodded its way into the Great War, the only blot on their lives was Minerva Fishbein. While her eruptions were few and far between, she found occasion to unnerve them regularly. Sometimes, while they sat on their little porch, rocking, devoted to low, loving conversation, an odd snuffling noise from the balcony above disturbed them. They knew it was Miss Minnie, eavesdropping. Another time, they’d be making their dinner and the patter of Miss Minnie running down the kitchen steps and throwing open the door would startle them. She never