Warnings: Trigger warning for abuse (let me know if I should add any more).
Notes: Missing scenes set between the end of Jumping Tracks and the beginning of Armistice. Can be read as a continuation of To Be Brave, although it is not necessary to read one story in order to understand the other.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Michael Maclennan and Adrienne Mitchell/Shaw Media.
It's close to two in the morning. Betty and Kate, the last two awake, are resigned to cleaning up the aftermath of the euchre party. They weave their way through the hallway, picking up glasses and ashtrays and piling them on sideboards. Kate can't stop thinking about something Gladys said, a few hours ago.
As Kate sat holding her hand, Gladys said hollowly, "I met James just after my brother Laurence died. I used to wonder, 'How can I possibly be this happy, when Laurence hasn't been gone four months?' And now … now that it's all changed, all I can think is that I wish Laurie were here. I can't stop thinking that this happened because I didn't mourn him enough. Like I'm being punished."
Kate spoke from her heart. "I've got two brothers, Gladys. Richie and Walt." (Richard and Walter. The Rowleys are not the sort of people who give pet names, but it's always been one of the only rebellions Kate allowed herself, to call them by friendly nicknames inside her head.) "It was the hardest thing in the world to walk away from them, but I knew I had to do it. Do you know why? It's because we have to trust that God wants us to be happy," Kate told Gladys firmly. It's something she's been trying to tell herself ever since she left her family. Sometimes it's hard to make herself believe it, but right then, watching Gladys teeter on the verge of tears for hour after hour, it seemed like the truest thing in the world. "He would never punish you for finding happiness, especially after you lost your brother."
Gladys Witham is Kate and Betty's friend now. It still seems a little odd sometimes, the idea of being friends with someone who moves through an entirely different world to women like Kate and Betty – but perhaps the time for staying still and accepting realities is done. After all, if Kate can change her life for the better, why not Gladys? She tried explaining as much to Gladys, when the dancing wound down and she had discovered Gladys in the corner, trying her utmost not to cry. Betty's tactics for dealing with Gladys' broken heart were rather less hands-on. She plied Gladys with drinks, sent death glares at anyone gawping at her, and prevented Phyllis and Susan from playing anything too sad on Moira's Victrola. Kate isn't sure how helpful they were, but twenty minutes ago, as Gladys' taxi pulled away into the night, she mouthed her thanks at them and gave them a brave little wave out the back window.
All of a sudden, Kate spies something crumpled between the legs of a chair. "Oh, dear, Gladys forgot her wrap." She holds the magnificent fur in her hands, feeling its weight and remembering how small Gladys looked after she had taken it off.
"More like she left it deliberately. I'd say you can probably keep it." Betty pats the fur wrap like a disobedient kitten, making a face at how impossibly soft it is. "God, you make out like a bandit, being around Gladys. She's certainly keeping you in silks and furs."
"Leave her alone, Betty. She's all right," says Kate sternly. "Surely you know that now, after the suggestion box and everything that happened. Maybe she's not like us, but she's one of my best friends here, after you. I'm glad she came over."
After a moment's hesitation, Betty speaks again. "It was brave of her to come out tonight. If - if the one I was with stepped out on me, I'd probably lock myself in my room, down a bottle of whiskey and play Gloomy Sunday on repeat." She says it all in a touchingly earnest rush, with only the occasional hiss on an S betraying the fact that she, like everyone who attended the party and particularly those who were keeping Gladys company, has had rather a lot to drink.
"Gloomy Sunday?"
"Another Billie song. A word to the wise: don't ever listen to it when you're already sad. It's brutal."
Kate realises that this is the first time, ever, that Betty has made any reference to how she might behave with a boyfriend. She wonders, all at once, whether Betty's been jilted before. Or maybe she's the same as Kate; maybe she hasn't ever had a boyfriend. Kate has trouble imagining Betty hanging on a man's arm. She has even more difficulty imagining Betty winding her arms around some man's neck and pressing her mouth to his.
Kate blushes as she's assailed by a barrage of very uncomfortable mental images. She feels like a film projector in her brain is beaming what she's thinking right onto her forehead. Any moment now, Betty's going to frown, lean forward and gasp, "Oh, Kate, is it true?"
Sometimes it feels so blatantly obvious that Kate hasn't had any real friends in years that she wonders how Gladys and Betty can stand to be seen with her. If only she had had a normal childhood and adolescence – tripping off to the same schoolhouse and church every week, going to parties and pictures and dances, getting her first job in a shop or office at sixteen – she wouldn't do such weird things like picturing her best friend in a clinch with some anonymous stranger. She would be like all the normal girls.
Thank goodness for Gladys and Betty, because they're not normal girls either. It's less obvious with Gladys, whose beauty and breeding is like a glare that makes people shade their eyes or even turn away. Betty wards off scrutiny with her sense of purpose, her air of unflappability, of supreme confidence. But all three of them want something real, and they're scared, so scared that they might never get it. Kate, Betty and Gladys all want to be taken seriously, to be part of the world on their own terms. And Kate is realising, day by day, that all of them want to be loved, too. Loved for themselves.
It's something Kate's never allowed herself to think about too deeply. She knows she'll be married someday, of course, but she didn't like to dream or make plans about it. When she was under her father's thumb, it seemed impossible.
It's par for the course, trying her hardest not to think about how much she wants to be treated romantically, but suddenly, Kate can hardly stand the idea that her two best friends have been ill-treated by men they loved. Kate wants so much to grab Betty's hand and say, "You know, you could get anyone you wanted. You wouldn't have to change a thing. Any man would want you, even if you don't act like a lady. Even if you wore your pants forever and a day, smoked in the house, made smutty jokes and all the rest of it, they'd be crazy not to want you to be their girl. If I were a man, I'd never step out on you."
But she can't. It sounds so funny. Who is Kate to be thinking of how she'd treat women if she were a man?
Betty surveys the hallway, which is now free of breakables and safe for the rooming house women to stumble down half-asleep and hung over. "I guess I'll be hitting the hay now."
"Why, are you sleepy?"
"I might not go to bed for a bit. Why do you ask?"
"I just thought … you could come to my room, if you like."
Betty gives a shrug, but she's smiling. "Well, if you insist."
"Welcome to my lovely abode," jokes Kate as she shows Betty in. There's this weird sense of anticipation that she can't put her finger on. Why does she feel so keyed-up and strange, having Betty in her room? They've been in each other's rooms lots of times.
"Charmed, I'm sure." Betty stands in the middle of the room, rocking back and forth on her heels, as Kate closes the door. "So, what do you feel like doing?"
She's never asked that before. Usually, she comes in, sits down immediately and lights up a cigarette. Perhaps she's picked up on the strange atmosphere too.
"Whatever you want to do, Betty." Kate realises how wishy-washy she sounds. "I thought we might just talk together for awhile." She gestures to the bed. "Make yourself comfy."
They seat themselves on Kate's bed, facing each other. "Shoes, Betty," Kate reminds her, grabbing a pillow and placing it next to Betty as Betty pulls off her shoes, without untying the laces, and drops them to the floor.
"Some party," Betty comments after a moment's quiet.
"Some party," Kate agrees. "I'm glad we could be there for Gladys."
"Yeah. She's not so bad, old Gladys. In small doses."
"Goodness, you sound ready to pop the question," Kate teases her. "Should I be jealous?"
Betty stiffens abruptly and begins hunting through her pockets for her cigarettes. Kate regrets her joke immediately. She wants to apologise, to swear that she didn't mean it to sound so funny, but that would just make it more awkward.
"Betty?" she ventures timidly.
"Hmm?" Betty has located her cigarettes, but seems to have mislaid her matches. Kate watches as she puts the cigarettes aside in defeat before reconsidering and turning out her pockets. Betty seems very intent on not meeting Kate's eyes.
"Can I ask you something?"
"What?"
Kate hesitates. "Did you ... always want to work in a factory?"
Betty finally looks up. She laughs, recognising Kate's awkward attempt at lightening the mood. It sounds like she's been holding it in for longer than they've been in the room.
"Well, I was hardly ticking off the days on my calendar, waiting for a war to begin so I could make bombs. I saw the ad in the paper, same as you." Same as Mother, thinks Kate, who never actually saw the advertisement herself, but was informed about it after Mother had secretly sent in an application on her behalf. "But yeah, I like it on the floor at Vic Mu. I'm not really cut out to be a secretary or a shopgirl."
"I never thought I'd be able to do anything like this. I don't mean just working in a factory, but … all of it. Living away from home, working with my hands, just sitting here talking to you. I thought I'd always just be stuck. Even when Mother and I started planning that I should leave someday, for the longest time I thought she'd be coming with me. I nearly changed my mind when I realised I'd be on my own. I never even thought..."
The corners of Betty's mouth lift in a smile. "Feels good, doesn't it? To surprise yourself."
"Definitely," Kate agrees. She shifts a little on the bed, to make herself more comfortable, and goes on, "Did you always want to do a sort of more … well, a man's job?"
"You're forgetting I grew up on a farm. On a farm, there isn't much that needs doing that isn't usually a man's job. I just feel comfortable that way." Betty thinks for a moment before chuckling ruefully. "When I was a kid, I wanted to be an acrobat or a bareback rider. Or both. You know, for the job security."
Kate can see it so clearly: Betty as a skinny ten-year-old, her grass-stained frock dangling into her face as she performs a handstand on the back of a patient cow. She laughs in delight. "And how did that go?"
"I balked at wearing tights and a tiara for a living. My folks didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed. They knew it was about the girliest thing I'd ever consider doing, probably the only chance of me turning out graceful."
Before Kate quite knows what she's saying, the question tumbles out of her. "Betty, have you ever had a beau?"
"Nope." Betty says it with a practiced casualness. "I was an old maid by the time I was sixteen."
Kate nods, her suspicions confirmed. "I've never had a boyfriend either."
"Well. I had one once, I think."
"Oh?" Kate asks.
"I don't know. Does it count if you're all of fourteen and it only lasts a week?"
Kate can't stop a giggle from escaping. "I'm sorry, I'm tipsy. I didn't mean to laugh, I swear."
Betty smirks, but it's a fond sort of smirk. She rearranges herself to sit cross-legged. "That's all right, I forgive you. I'm not quite so thin-skinned that I'll boohoo if you rib me about my one-week romance from fourteen years ago."
"Anyway, I'm hardly an expert." Kate can't help but ask, "Why only a week?"
Betty looks hard at her. "I told my folks he tried to take liberties. My mom sent my brother Joe, the oldest, to tell him not to come around again. Maybe he did take liberties, I don't know. He might've been a perfect gentleman. It all feels strange when you're that young and you've never been felt up before. Truth was, I just didn't like kissing him."
"Sounds like you were a smart girl," Kate says. "You have to - to like kissing them, otherwise it couldn't work."
They look at each other. Kate is suddenly hyper-aware that Betty's knee is touching hers, so gently. Who is she to be dispensing advice? Kate's never kissed anyone in her life.
"Yeah," says Betty softly. Her eyes flicker briefly to Kate's mouth, appraising it, taking it in, the most obviously unkissed mouth in all of the rooming house, all of Victory Munitions, all of Toronto, Canada, the world. Betty has been kissed, even if she didn't enjoy it. Kate wonders what the boy thought about it.
And just like that, Kate gets the feeling again. It's a feeling she's had before, on and off, since she was in her teens, usually when she was stressed and in close proximity to a beautiful young woman. It's this powerful, rushing feeling of wanting … wanting to move into a woman's space, lock her arms around them and do something completely inappropriate like nuzzle the place where their neck and shoulder meet. Kate's had so few meaningful relationships with people outside her family that it hasn't happened very often, but she does recognise it to a painful degree. It's a feeling of wanting so badly to be close to someone and knowing that she just can't.
But she's not stressed, just a little tipsy. Betty is Kate's very best friend, not some anonymous woman who's given Kate directions when she was lost in the rain, or cut her a break when she couldn't come up with enough change for groceries. Suddenly, all of Kate's good intentions to reassure Betty are lost in a wave of confusion and anger. Yes, anger, the thing she's never been allowed, but it's directed inward, so Kate lets herself keep feeling it.
She moves backward, increasing the space between them so she won't do anything stupid. "I think I'd like to go to sleep now, Betty." Her voice is firm, but gentle. After all, she's not angry with Betty. Betty's not the one who's scarred for life.
Betty blinks, taken aback by Kate's sudden change in demeanour. Kate hates to push her away. Kate needs to push her away. "Oh. Oh, sure. I guess I'll see you in the morning."
"Sure thing." She tries to use her eyes to tell Betty that it's all right, that she's not mad, that this is just for self-preservation, but it's plain to see that the message doesn't get through. Betty leaves in such a hurry that she forgets both her shoes.
The door shuts and Kate is alone with her thoughts. Kate doesn't want to be this way any more. Betty is so important to her, but how can she know if it's a true friendship when she keeps having those desperate, cloying, wanting feelings she remembers from her life before?