Eventually, Lucy Bennet thought that the oddest she would ever feel was on November 11, 1975. That was the day she and Dallas Winston celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary in New York City, where she was raising their eight-year-old daughter and working on her doctorate.
Every year they remained married was another year that felt unreal … odd. Lucy was shocked that back in '65, Dally had accepted her dare to get married; she was even more shocked when he didn't go through with his escape plan when Elenore was born in '67. The oddest and most shocking thing of all was that he'd managed to be a decent father to Elenore.
Dally was not a warm father, nor had Elenore melted his heart or ended the curse of the Beast. In all, he was still Dallas Winston. But he was a stoically supportive father – nodded when Elenore told him stories about her day at school, asked a few short questions where he should have, and offered, casually, to snap the neck of anyone who dared looked at her funny. It was their normal now, but when Lucy thought of the no-count Beast of a hood she despised in high school, it was still a puzzle.
They told Elenore that it was their tenth anniversary when they picked her up from school. For Elenore, it was always the best day when both of her parents picked her up from school. Usually, it was just her dad, and that was OK. She liked that he listened to her. Her mother, of course, always spoke back. There was something nice about the echo.
"What's the point of an anniversary?" Elenore asked. "You're just remembering something that already happened."
"Well, then, I guess I'm not buying you any more birthday presents," Lucy said. "Since, you know, you were already born once."
"Touché, Mom."
"Who the hell taught you how to say touché?" Dally asked. He'd bargained down from fuck to hell since Elenore learned how to speak … at least in front of her. It was the oddest thing that he cared enough to watch himself like that, but then again, the last ten years had been the oddest thing. Lucy Bennet hadn't tamed her Beast. She had, however, gotten to know him, and that made all the difference.
"Mom did," Elenore said.
"Course she did. Your mother and her French. People used to think that made her real obnoxious, ya know."
"You love my French," Lucy said, threading her fingers through her husband's. "Have for ten years, as a matter of fact."
"I never told you that."
"I think that's because your tongue's usually a little busy with the French."
"I don't know what that means," Elenore said from her mother's side, "but it sounds gross. Does that mean it is gross?"
"Nope, not gross," Lucy said. "Remind me to tell you about kissing."
"I'm not even nine yet."
"But one day, you'll be older than that. And if no one talked to you about kissing when you were young, then you'll just go off and kiss somebody you shouldn't."
Lucy had resolved to be as open and honest with her daughter as possible. This meant allowing her to read more grown-up books than any other third-grade student in her class; on the condition she sat down and had long talks with her mother (who, at that moment, was dissertating on Victorian women's literature – buried in books, just like Beauty was supposed to be) about the content. It was entirely a reaction against her own mother's parenting, which was to worry a lot and attempt to shelter Lucy from anything that was potentially controversial. Lucy's father, of course, snuck her banned books when his wife wasn't looking, and without his assistance, there likely wouldn't have even been a Dallas Winston. There most certainly, then, would never have been an Elenore, and there were no thoughts worse to Lucy's imagination than those.
"Dunno, Bennet," Dally said. "You kissed somebody you shouldn't've. Think it worked out OK for you, didn't it?"
"You wish."
Dally rolled his eyes. Some time later, when they arrived back at their apartment, Lucy told Elenore to go into her room and shut the door for a few minutes. She should try to finish up Blubber so the two of them could talk about it over dinner the following night; besides, Mom wanted to have a word with Daddy alone. Much like her father, Elenore rolled her eyes. She might not have even been nine, but she knew what that meant.
As soon as Lucy heard Elenore's door close, she wrapped her body (about which she wasn't embarrassed anymore – not most of the time, anyway) around her husband and kissed him even harder than she had that first night up in his room when they were eighteen. When she moved her lips from his, he smirked – just like he did when they were eighteen.
"We've been married ten fucking years," Lucy said. She was demonstratively impressed.
"Can't fuckin' believe I ain't dead," Dally said.
"Ah, shut up, will you? I mean … my mother thought we'd only make it ten days before we realized we were idiots. I thought we might make it ten months out of stubbornness, but I never would have thought you'd stick around ten years."
"Well, turns out, I don't hate bein' comfortable."
"That's what I am to you? Comfortable?"
"No. You ain't comfortable at all."
Lucy laughed and kissed Dally again. Even after ten years (especially after ten years), it was still odd that he let her take charge that way. He'd never tell her, but he secretly liked the way she jumped on him. It reminded him that somebody gave a damn.
"You remember when we was kids?" he asked.
"I remember when you said things that were specific."
"Naw, you remember. You remember when you told me that I didn't make any sense?"
Lucy nodded. She thought back to that night at the Dingo shortly before her eighteenth birthday when she was beginning to realize that she didn't hate Dallas Winston after all. He'd given her his jacket because she looked cold, and she didn't think that lined up with what she knew of him from all the years she'd lived in the old neighborhood. She remembered it well because it was still true.
"Well, you don't make any sense, either," he said. "You're real strange."
And perhaps another wife would have taken offense. Lucy Bennet was not another wife. She smiled a little and played along, just like she knew how.
"Is that why you think we've made it ten years?" she asked.
"Don't make me answer that."
Lucy's smile grew. She knew he would never answer that, but in his refusal to answer, she knew. He liked her (loved her, even, though he'd still never fulfilled the dare she gave him on their second anniversary to one day tell her that he did) because he thought she was Beauty and the Beast. For every book she read and every poem she wrote, she was busting a bottle to fend off a nasty-looking guy or picking up a crowbar, wondering whether or not she should smash the hell out of some jackass's car. While she'd spent so much of her young adulthood trying to figure out if she was one or the other, Beauty or the Beast, she'd forgotten that she could be both. She was both. Lucy and Dally were two odd Beasts whom no one else really understood. That had to be why it had been ten years, and neither of them had left the other in the lurch. It had to be why, Lucy figured, they could make it another ten ... if they didn't push their luck.
"Well, then, happy anniversary," Lucy said. Her voice was so quiet and hushed it was almost like she hoped Dally wouldn't hear. He still didn't like to use the word happy very often, even if (when) he was. He knew how to be, sometimes, now.
"Yeah," he said, his voice somehow lower and quieter. "You, too."
What an odd little decade.
Hinton owns The Outsiders. In case you've never read it, Blubber is a children's novel by Judy Blume from 1974. It is also great (and very important).