Why Should She Care?

Her isolation and humiliation is almost palpable. Hughberta’s dark hair, bright eyes and quick tongue made her an easy target. An out-of-towner, over thirty years old, openly co-habitating with her boss!
Well, let them talk. Who cares what fantasies the scurrilous minds of this dumpy river town find entertaining. She’ll live her life as she damn pleases. It’s nobody else’s business where she sleeps. This “business “ arrangement is fine with Cletus, so it’s just fine with her. Just fine. Fine and dandy.
They can put that in their pipe and smoke it.

Hughie was never an insider. Really poor in a city that was just bursting with prosperity in the hot-cha twenties, her dresses were plain; her coat was a cast-off from her much taller sister. Already a reluctant party-goer, she shunned further social gatherings after uproarious laughter assailed her rendition of The Charleston, which was made ludicrous not by her dancing (she was always light on her feet), but by her creative ensemble. Diaphanous gowns with tight, sequined bodices quivered softly upon their nubile bodies in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s pre-Depression Midwest. Those golden flappers may not have been the norm in Minneapolis, but they were the ideal- to be emulated. Hughberta was no Daisy.

Confronting society’s expectations with a defiant posture became a kind of autonomic response. Defiant postures are, by definition, inflexible and inflexibility affects not only one’s reactions, but one’s vision.

Sidelong glances, barely suppressed snickers, obvious even to her as she walked alone through the door of the Circle Tavern at five-fifteen, were tossed off like a straight shot of Jack Daniels: stupid gossips with nothing better to occupy their pea-sized brains. She was right, of course, about their mean-spiritedness, but that resolute demeanor rendered her just as incapable of seeing the truth as those judgemental patrons at the bar. It took more than a few Whiskey Sours, more than a few solitary nights in a chilly booth at the Circle Tavern before she let her guard down, looked around and saw what everyone else in Prairie duChien could see: an unmarried woman living with a man who all too often wasn’t there.