During most of the high school years, Don and Honey were always Don and Honey. They had two best friends, Annie and Bill. Don thought Bill was “the best.” He liked to be where Bill was, breathe the same air as Bill, admire his strength when he threw a football, cheer him on to victory and touch him as much as he could in that aggressive punch-arm boy way. Bill and Annie were also going steady. Honey watched how Bill couldn’t seem to keep his hands off Annie. He was always touching her and kissing her and trying to feel things he shouldn’t. Annie would laugh and push him away. Honey felt vaguely hungry when she saw them together but also grateful that Don wasn’t like that. She never had to push him away, quite the opposite.
Both Honey and Don had beautiful singing voices. They would sing duets, looking adoringly at each other performing perfectly for the rest of the school. They were inseparable but Honey felt vaguely that she wanted something more. Honey began to act in the school plays and discovered she had a talent for drama. She began to see herself as starring in her own life story. Honey developed into a beauty and other boys began to pay attention to her. Honey she found she liked it. Eventually, one particular young man, whose air of masculinity nearly overwhelmed her, asked her out and she, telling Leone a tale, went.
They went to the drive-in movies in his car. She admired the firm upholstery, he invited her to run her fingers over it in the back seat. He kissed her and touched her and couldn’t seem to keep his hands off her. He whispered in her ear and lightly nipped its pink, curled edge. Her breath came faster and a honeyed, warm tension suffused her body. Oh, don’t stop, don’t stop. He touched her with a sweet insistence she had never experienced before. They fumbled together and then found a rhythm that felt right and good and real. Now, she knew what she wanted. She knew what she’d been missing.
That night she felt wonderful, warm and loved and when they kissed goodbye he promised her that he felt the same and wanted to be with her again and again. Honey entered the front door walking on air and Leone stepping out of the dark and slapped her face. “Where were you?” she demanded. “Who were you with?”
As Leone turned her back, Honey saw over Leone’s shoulder my father sitting, dejected and crying, hugging himself next to the fireplace. “Are you just going to let this happen?” Leone challenged him. “What will people think when they know you are not man enough to hold on to your steady girl?”
“Stop it, Mother!” tried Honey. “I only went out with friends!”
“You! You bad, bad girl!” screamed Leone. “Don’t talk to me and tell me your lies!”
The argument rose in volume and venom. George Edward, who always tried to stay away from argument with his wife, sat in the background, looking worried and annoyed. He wanted to support Honey. He loved his daughter but he knew better than to get between the women in his life. On the few occasions when he had, he’d reaped a bitter reward. Pleasing Leone, he fared no better. “Now, now,” he kept saying and thought wildly about taking off his belt.
George kept looking at Don and then made a decision. “Don,” he said quietly to him, a sympathetic hand on his shoulder hiding the distaste he felt at Don’s unmanly tears. “Go home. Come back in the morning.”
George knew that the arguments between Leone and Honey were the result of steadily increasing, long standing resentment and misunderstanding. Leone’s son, Lyle, was the light of her life, the miracle she’d hoped for, the confirmation and culmination of womanhood. Giving birth to a daughter that September morning in 1930 when Lyle was three simply gave evidence to the world that their family was a perfect one. Two parents committed in marriage, two children, a boy then a girl, no divorce, no scandal just a perfect little picture. Honey’s home birth was greeted by Leone with a kind of ho-hum smugness. She turned the baby over to her father and then rolled over and went to sleep. It was up to George, as he was known to the world, Edward as Leone called him when she was angry, to care for the new little girl that graced his life. His little Carol Darlene, his Honey, his second little daughter, filled a void that had grown out of the losses of his first wife and child.
The arguments between Leone and Honey were the result of steadily increasing, long standing resentment and misunderstanding. Leone’s son, Lyle, was the light of her life, the miracle she’d hoped for, the confirmation and culmination of womanhood. Giving birth to a daughter three years later was simply evidence for the world that their family was a perfect one. Two parents committed in marriage, two children, a boy then a girl no divorce, no scandal just a perfect little picture. Honey’s home birth was greeted by Leone with a kind of ho-hum smugness. She turned the baby over to her father and then rolled over and went to sleep. It was up to George, as he was known to the world, Edward as Leone called him, to care for the new little girl that graced his life. His Honey, his second little daughter, filled a void that had grown out of the losses of his first wife and child.
Now, George grew desperate in the rising furor and his belt slipped the loops of his pants, materializing in his hands. Honey saw her danger too late. “Daddy!” she screamed. “Please! No!” as the belt landed again and again on her back.
“Are you going to stop lying to your mother?” he shouted, tears threatening to unman him, fear and despair at what he was doing clenching his heart and hardening his hand.
“I didn’t lie!” she screamed at him.
It went on and on, Honey stubbornly refusing to bend to either her mother’s will or her father’s beating. It moved through the house until Honey backed up against the bathroom door where she’d meant to find a locked refuge. There she dropped her arm at just the wrong moment and that belt buckle caught the side of her head knocking her unconscious. Instantly George stopped and looked at the bleeding, unconscious girl who was his precious Honey. George’s father beat him, his brothers and his sisters regularly. It was a normal part of raising a farming family of first generation German immigrants at the turn of the century. But this, this was wrong. George knew it suddenly, irrevocably in every cell of his body. He reached down and scooped up his daughter in his arms and carried her to her bed, over his shoulder he caught a glimpse of the expression on his wife’s face. Avid. The word swallowed his mind. Greedy and unforgiving. Triumphant. George’s stomach turned.
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