ago. Our parents had a rather lusty relationship.”
“You could say that. They enjoyed each other, and as soon as Pete was back home and able he was ready to go. But there was a problem. Liza had no interest. At first Pete thought it was because his body was scarred and ravaged by war, and not what it once was. But she wouldn’t respond. Finally, they had a big fight and she told a tale, the first of several. She concocted a story about having a miscarriage not long after he left home in 1941. She had three of them, you know.”
“Four,” Stella said.
“Okay, four, and by the time Pete left for war, they were convinced she could never have more children. Well, supposedly, she was pregnant when he left but they didn’t know it. When she realized it, she told no one because she was afraid of losing another baby and didn’t want to worry him. He was at Fort Riley, waiting to be shipped out. Then she miscarried, or so she said, and because of the miscarriage she had some lingering female problems. She had discharges that were unpleasant. She had seen doctors. She was taking medicines. Her body was doing things she couldn’t control, and she had lost the desire for sex. It embarrasses me to say that word in front of you two.”
“Come on, Aunt Florry. We know all about sex,” Joel said.
“Both of you?” she asked, looking at Stella.
“Yes, both of us.”
“Oh, dear.”
“Come on, Florry. We’re all adults here.”
“Okay. Sex, sex, sex. There, I’ve said it. So when she was never in the mood, he was upset. Think about it. Poor guy spent three years in the jungle half-dead dreaming of food and water, and also thinking a lot about his beautiful wife back home. Then Pete got suspicious. According to her story, they got pregnant right before he left for Fort Riley, early in October of 1941. But in late August of that year, Pete wrenched his back pulling a stump and was in terrible pain. Sex was out of the question.”
“I remember that,” Stella said. “When he left for Fort Riley he could hardly walk.”
“In fact, his back was so bad the doctors at Fort Riley almost discharged him for medical reasons. He was certain that there had been no sex in September because he thought about it a million times when he was a prisoner. Her story was that she got pregnant around early October, kept it quiet for a couple of months, and planned to tell Pete in a letter if she made it to three months. She didn’t. She miscarried in early December, two months in, and never told anyone. Pete knew that wasn’t true. If she indeed got pregnant, then it was in late August. His point was that she was more than three months along when she claimed to have miscarried. He studied the calendars and pieced together a timeline. Then he ambushed Nineva one day and asked her about the miscarriage. She knew nothing, which, as you know, was virtually impossible. She knew nothing about a miscarriage, nothing about a pregnancy. Pete knew that if Liza was three months along, then Nineva would know it. She delivered a hundred babies, including me and Pete. Once he was convinced Liza was lying about the miscarriage, thus the discharges, thus the total lack of interest in sex, he became really suspicious. She was fanatical about cleaning her own undergarments, and Nineva confirmed this. With time, he waited for the right chance and was able to confirm the discharges. There were small stains on her delicates. And she was taking a lot of pills that she was trying to hide. He wanted to talk to her doctors, but she flatly refused. Anyway, the clues were piling up, the lies were breaking down. Something was physically wrong with his wife and it wasn’t caused by a miscarriage. He’d been through three of them, remember?”
“Four,” Stella said.
“Right. Nineva had said some things about Dexter Bell and how much time he spent with Liza after the news that Pete was missing and presumed dead. We all remember how horrible that was, and Dexter was at the house a lot. Turns out that Pete had never really trusted Dexter, thought he had a roving eye. There was a rumor at church, one I never heard, about Dexter being too friendly with a young woman, I think she was twenty. Just a rumor, but