I Cook Because I Eat: Why Can’t Heroines Cook?

 Olivia Benson of Law & Order SVU prepares 

Salade Nicoise for herself and her son. He won't like the olives.  

I don’t understand why liberated heroines can’t cook. We need to eat, therefore, we need to cook. Eating fast food is not the answer. The more time you and your family spend in the kitchen cooking real food, the less time you and your family will spend at the doctor’s office and the hospital.

I'm a 50 year macro, wife and mother who cooks from scratch at least three times a day and has over 80 articles and 7 books to her name, plus I ran my own PR business for 10 years. (I started late in life.) I make it work. Why can't strong women heroines face up to the challenge of feeding themselves and their families?

I’m tired of that old feminist chestnut of “Oh! I can’t cook!” I get it, Simone de Beauvoir! It can be perceived as “endless drudgery and domestic slavery.” Wake up! Every person who told me that they couldn’t cook is - guess what? Dead! One woman, a minister, told me she wouldn’t even butter bread because it was too much like cooking. What do you think happened to her? She dropped dead in her driveway on her way to teach an aerobics class to heart patients.

Wake up! Every person who told me that they "couldn’t cook" is - guess what? Dead! 

Often, I’ll be watching - or trying to watch - a TV show about a female detective when suddenly her kid asks for breakfast or dinner and there’s no food in the house. “What?” she calls from gruesome files of dead victims, “What?” “There’s no food!” the child repeats. “I’ll go shopping after work.” Somehow, we know that’s not going to happen. I lose interest in the show.

Another one asks her son if his girlfriend’s fake breasts can make coffee. I’m thinking, are you seriously telling me you can’t make a cup of coffee for yourself - by yourself? You can solve crimes but you can’t boil water? Again, not going to watch it.

I tried to find one. I Googled TV detectives that cook. Lots of TV detectives. None cooking. I did get The Gourmet Detective. My heart skipped a beat. But, no, she’s the detective, he’s the professional gourmet come to lend a hand in the investigation.

Eliminating those fictional heroines who actually are chefs like Jane Adler (played by Meryl Streep) in It’s Complicated and Kate (played by Catherine Zeta-Jones) in No Reservations, I found two who cook - one, Erica Barry, playwright, (played by Diane Keaton) in, aptly named, Something’s Gotta Give. She’s not intimidated by the kitchen. She can whip up breakfast, dinner, snacks, picnics at will or romantic midnight scrambled eggs for two when the electricity goes out. The other is Olivia Benson (played by Mariska Hartigay) of Law & Order Special Victims Unit. Olivia does not consider herself to be a very proficient cook, but she takes time out of her busy crime-solving, victim-soothing job, to bravely go where most TV detectives don’t dare to go, into the kitchen to make dinner when she and her son, Noah are hungry! Wow, what a concept!

I have found a few in real life.

Thinking back over literary history, I realized Emily Dickinson was the family baker. Her father insisted on only eating her bread because he liked it better than any other. Emily loved baking. She made cakes, cookies, candies and puddings. She often made treats for the local children, and because she was so reclusive, she would lower a basket full of cakes from her window to the children. Emily became quite famous in town for her baked goods. It was only after she died that her sister, Lavinia, found almost 2,000 poems that Emily had written, some of them started on the backs of recipes or random kitchen wrapping papers. Emily once said, “People must have puddings” and “Love’s oven is warm.”

Emily Dickinson

“I am going to learn to make bread to-morrow. So you may imagine me with my sleeves rolled up, mixing flour, milk, salaratus, etc., with a great deal of grace. I advise you if you don’t know how to make the staff of life to learn with dispatch.” 

                                                                    – Emily Dickinson to Abiah Root, September 25, 1845 (L8)

Emily Brontë

writer, poet, baker

Also, the Brontës - Charlotte was challenged by the kitchen, but Emily was something of a kitchen goddess, it seems. The village prized her bread over that of any other baker. She also cooked mutton as a common staple, turnips, potatoes and apple pudding. Oh, and she gave us the incomparable Wuthering Heights among other works, including lots of poetry. 

Jane Austen knew food.

Jane Austen’s household was humble and crowded with sisters, cousins, nephews, neighbors and friends. Many hands pitched in and Jane displays an intimate knowledge of many dishes in her work, often ascribing certain dishes to certain characters to make a point: “a pyramid of fruit which confronted Elizabeth Bennet at Pemberley…Or of the cold beef eaten by Willoughby on his journey of repentance to see Marianne.” (Maggie Lane) 

Okay, so I found some heroines that cooked and somehow managed at the same time to be superhuman in their work. If artists in real life can feed themselves and their families, why can’t fictional ones?

We all need to cook! Our health and the health of our families and our future as human beings depends on our ability to feed ourselves and keep ourselves well.

Even if you hate to cook, you still need to find a way to make meals successfully. I find that planning meals around brown rice really works for me - brown rice and broiled salmon with broccoli; brown rice and pinto beans with guacamole, tortillas and salad; brown rice and broiled chicken with potatoes and green beans, you get the idea. It’s quick, simple, tasty and nutritious.

Give me heroines who can feed themselves and their families good quality food! Do we have to go all the way back to Nancy Drew? She not only stopped the investigation for meals - she did the dishes too! And, might I add, still got her perp!

P.S. Laura of Garden Answer is a busy, professional gardener, mother and wife who stops work to cook meals for herself and her family; she tries to make a new recipe every week. 

Laura and her son making chicken curry with ingredients from her garden.

Here’s a list of busy professionals who love to cook - stars who cook!

 Also Gwyneth Paltrow and Emily Blunt (stars love her roasted potatoes!)

©Patricia Goodwin, 2022

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her latest novel is Low Flying, about two women suffering psychologically abusive marriages who find and nurture each other. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.

Within this blog, Patricia writes often about non-fiction subjects that inspire or disturb her, hopefully informing and inspiring people to be happy, healthy and free.

***Disclaimer: The information on this blog is not meant to substitute for medical care. Please consult your physician before beginning any new dietary guidelines. 

Meeting Gloria Steinem

Meeting Gloria Steinem At Boston University

A few years ago, I had the honor of meeting one of our culture’s most important feminist icons, Gloria Steinem at the Boston University Barnes & Noble Lecture Series where she was promoting the book ENSLAVED, edited by Jesse Sage and Liora Kasten of the American Anti-Slavery Group in which true stories of modern day slavery are told. Sadly, slavery, though officially outlawed in every country in the world, still occurs. Approximately 15 to 30 million people are still enslaved. Here are some photos of me meeting Gloria, an amazing and very moving experience for me.*

When I was about seventeen, I heard Gloria Steinem make a remark I was not ready to hear. It shocked me, but it stayed with me. In response to a question about abortion, she said, “Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”

All of recorded history ran out from under me as when the tide on the beach takes the sand out from under your feet and leaves you dizzy. I realized I had been conned. By religion, in particular, which plays on good people's innate sense of responsibility by creating guilt where it might not exist and using this guilt to control people's lives.

I asked myself, what if society had given us a different set of rules? We would think differently about many things, including abortion.

One’s opinion of abortion is not the issue. One should never tell another woman what to do. The issue is power. Power over us. Power over our lives. We need to take that power back. That’s why I wrote Atlantis, poems about the United States being another Atlantis. Not because I think the United States is about to sink into the ocean. But because I think we can stop our country from destroying itself and the rest of the world with us.

I gifted her a copy of Atlantis, which seemed to please her very much. I had to tell her how she had influenced me.

Gloria’s response when I told her that a statement of hers had changed my life was to sit back and listen. As I explained, she answered, “I didn’t say that! It was said by a female Irish cab driver, in Boston!”

We went on to talk about religion, and needless guilt about sex. That's when I made her laugh, which was great!

She made some excellent comments on imperialism, which always results in slavery, the subject of the evening.

It is always sad and terrifying to me, especially on a night when we were speaking with women who had escaped real slavery, that people who should otherwise be free, have actually chosen slavery in so many ways. 

*(You'll notice, behind Gloria's head, ironically, sadly, in keeping with the recent #metoo movement is a poster for one of Harold Bloom's books - Harold Bloom, the Yale professor who sexually assaulted his graduate student, another feminist writer, Naomi Wolf in 1983. Whenever I see this photo, his name rankles.)

©Patricia Goodwin, 2019

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse. Previous poetry books, Atlantis and Marblehead Moon are currently out of print. However, you may read excerpts from these works at patriciagoodwin.com.

The Rape of the Mind

Joan Castleman wins the Nobel Prize in Literature

There’s a line in the episode, “Homo Homini Lupis” of Law & Order Criminal Intent in which Detective Bobby Goren, ever champion of women, says to the perp, “You raped her mind, you raped her body, but SHE GOT YOU!” The rape victim, a little girl, was able to draw the creep’s tattoo from memory, “every tiger stripe, every letter, every number.”

As I watched The Wife, I kept hearing that line. Though I did not know the outcome of the story, I could feel the rape of Joan Archer’s young mind. Joan is writing her husband’s books. Why? Because it’s 1968 and we are told, society doesn’t want to read books by female authors. Joan has been able to “sell” her husband, Joe Castleman, to a publisher by promising the waspy house their very own Jewish author. (Literary movies often name the characters after characters in famous fiction and I couldn’t help but hear the name of one of lit’s most famous liberated, feminist characters, Isabel Archer*, a woman who also gets “caught.”) The young Joan is beautifully and delicately played by Glenn Close’s daughter, Annie Starke. As we watch her writing, we can sense the tension slowly building. At least, at least, Joan, young and old, gets to keep her words. One of my favorite scenes is when the elder Joan (played by Oscar! Oscar! Glenn Close) is on the phone extension listening to the Nobel representative congratulating her husband on his work: I could see her mind listening to his praise, taking it all in, as though he were speaking directly to her about her own accomplishment. Of course, unknown to him, he was speaking to her.

Colette etching Willy's name in the glass

Interestingly, also out this year is a similar story, a real life story about the writer, Colette, another female author forced by society’s lack of interest in the female voice, to write under the shadow of her husband’s identity. 

But, was society uninterested in the female voice? Colette wrote a series of novels about the mind of a young girl, Claudine. These were very popular, both when the public thought they were written by Willy and when they thought the books were written by his sensational wife. Eventually, Colette leaves Willy and writes more books under her own name. Her authorship becomes known.

Both these women got to keep their words. The books existed. Women had written them. 

Alice &

But, another movie troubles me. The Girl in the Book (2015). This story is about Alice, a young girl with exciting potential. Her parents are literary; she has every advantage of wealth, education, and social contacts. She has talent, and more importantly, a voice. We hear her words as she writes them down: they are cool, sophisticated, poetic yet precise. But, Alice is extremely lonely. She comes home and ritually calls, “Hello?” to an empty house. One of her father’s authors, a ruggedly handsome much older man, pays attention to her. As Alice cries, later in the story, “You were the only one who ever seemed to see me!” She doesn’t realize until it is too late that his attention was the grooming process of a pedophile. 

He raped her body. He raped her mind. 

He stole her words.

Far worse, he stole her confidence by constantly criticizing and undermining every one of her efforts while he was busy racking up her brilliance for himself. He writes a Lolita/Catcher in the Rye type of novel called "Waking Eyes" that becomes wildly successful with the kind of success every writer desires - the book becomes a classic. In fact, he writes several more books on his own that do not catch fire.

He took her talent. He took her ambition. He took her faith. 

What kind of a man needs to rape the mind of a little girl to get his words?

A very, very small man.

Does Alice “get” him? Does she get her words back? 

I won’t tell you. I will say that it is a long, tortuous journey for Alice. A tenuous effort to grasp that which does not exist yet, that which is forming. 

Colette and Joan Castleman were lucky. They got to keep their words. 

Another favorite scene in The Wife is the very last scene. Joan's husband has passed away from a sudden heart attack and she is flying home from the Nobel ceremony in Stockholm. What will Joan do now? we ask ourselves, as Joan looks up at us from the blank page of her notebook. She smiles.

Oh, yeah!

*Isabel Archer, The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

©PatriciaGoodwin, 2019

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die: A Historical Novella of Marblehead, Telling of Two Murders Which Happened There, 301 Years Apart (2011), about Marblehead legends and true crime, and its sequel, Dreamwater(2013), about the Salem witch trials. Her novel, Holy Days(2015) is about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her poetry books are  Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse (2018); Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, (2017), illustrated by the author; Atlantis (2006), and Marblehead Moon (1993). All Plum Press. Her poetry has been published in nthposition.com, Pemmican Press, Radius: Poetry from the Center to the Edge and The Potomac, among others. For more work and information, please visit http://patriciagoodwin.com/. 

The Pretty Door, The Beauty in the Tragedy

Cover of TIME magazine, October 11, 2018

the beauty in the tragedy

In 2006, I published my poetry book, Atlantis, poems about the United States possibly being another Atlantis. One of those poems was The Pretty Door (posted below). I couldn't help thinking of that poem when I saw the latest cover of TIME magazine. The cover is meant, I'm sure, as a tribute to the courage and the veracity of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford. I saw all that, and I agreed, yes, she is brave and true, but I also saw something else, something dangerous that perpetrates male entitlement - the beauty in the tragedy. Beauty being beautiful women. Beautiful women as victims. It's an age-old theme of literature and art. How many stories and poems and paintings of beautiful women tossed about by love or war or myth, one breast revealed in the turmoil, whilst standing over her are any manner of monsters and gods. This idea goes way beyond the GOP. They wish they could bottle it and sell it like they have the waters of Michigan. My answer to those who think only old, white Republicans do this - Chappaquiddick. The only difference between the privileged white preppies of the Democratic party is that when they are working, and not partying, they are trying to help, not hurt poor people.

Justice Sexualized

The popular feminist answer right now to all of this injustice is to get women in, to vote for women and somehow that's going to stop male entitlement in the courts. It hasn't so far, as long as women keep wanting to please the powers that be - men. Let me quote Gloria Steinem on this idea, I'm paraphrasing - "Let's get a feminist in the White House; it doesn't necessarily have to be a woman." Let's face it, I just watched three girl suits standing by while one of them blabbed about why she was voting to confirm a criminal. There's a special ring in hell for her, along with Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin and all the women who voted for the Cheeto, another accused rapist.

Three Girl Suits

"Let's get a feminist in the White House; it doesn't necessarily have to be a woman."

- Gloria Steinem

The Pretty Door

This only opens the pretty door

hair eyes nose mouth

this time

God didn’t play a joke

or did He?

Pretty opens 

not the talent door

bend over, clean the bathroom, make the coffee, 

here, take out the trash

not the smart door

bend over, clean the bathroom, make the coffee, here, take out the trash

Pretty opens the rich door

“You are the equal of Kings!”

when she passes

for white bread

in a white world

she’s self-educated

that’s the key

when learning to speak

She mimicked her favorite actresses:

Myrna Loy as Nora Charles

Maureen O’Sullivan as Jane

Meryl Streep as anyone

She practiced grammar and

took an etiquette book from the library

in order to pass

for a short while

angels sing

“She shall have Springtime

wherever she goes.”

“...and, as she passed, 

she took the Spring.”

“Wear a veil to hide your looks - and 

keep it down!”

“Women’s faces have too much power!”

Beautiful women are the last minority

no one will care

if they suffer

except that they look so good doing it

and, when they are murdered,

they make sexy victims on the evening news

every one of them

fears being stopped

by a cop 

on a lonely highway

as much as a black man

they are about as safe as a black man

“He told me to step out of the car… 

he threw me against the car

and frisked me.”

“I rested my hand on the seat next to me.

He took it as an invitation.”

“He was waiting for me…”

“you could sometimes see

her twelfth year in her cheeks or her ninth

sparkling from her eyes;

and even her fifth would flit 

over the curves of her mouth

now and then”

Her face only opens the pretty door

since she was twelve, she couldn’t 

walk down the street 

in peace

lying in a pool of blood

she had a restraining order

don’t sit next to a man unless you want it

“They put us in a trailer, it was so hot in there,

I couldn’t breathe.

I pushed my nose into a crack in the side. 

I thought, this is it.”

“She was sleeping soundly

and upon her eyelashes there lingered tears.”

this still happens in Atlantis

©Patricia Goodwin, 2018

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.

Prey

Here I am posting a chapter from my novel Holy Days because yesterday's testimony of Christine Blasey Ford brought it back to me in full force. What is described in this chapter was not the only experience I had of sexual assault; it is the one very like Dr. Ford's. Mine was not an assailant of privilege. He was a rough sort of person, an older boy, elite in his own way in the neighborhood.  Also, Holy Days acknowledges the Stockholm Syndrome of childhood, not the popular reaction of rage and revenge so prevalent now. The passage about the lion may not appeal to most victims. However, it was very real to me. I was 8 in this photo; the assault happened 4 years later. I looked about the same.


PREY

Before I tell you what happened, I want you to know, Marie and Jakey had done what I did hundreds of times before. The only unusual thing was: it was me who walked across the street to the Likus’ house to look for Ma. 

      What was equally unusual: Rick answered the door instead of one of the girls.

      I was only slightly taken aback. After all, he lived there and, if Ma wasn’t at home, she was probably at Annie’s.

      “Is my mother here?” I asked him, warily.

      “Yeah,” and he stepped back to let me in.

      I stepped into the dim hallway.

      The second I was in the darkened hue of the Likus house, the second I smelled the musky odor of Likuses, the heavy, bodily odor of their chaos and mystery, the second I saw the amused face of Rick’s pal, Frankie Campbell peering at me from the end of the hall, I knew in a flash of absolute terror - Ma wasn’t there!

      I turned to run out, but landed right in Rick’s arms.

      Down the dark tunnel, he carried me and every step was a jolt I emphasized, almost comically, with a cry of “Rick! Rick! Rick!”

      He threw me down on the couch and jumped on top of me.

      I scrambled underneath him.

      “Don’t! Rick! Don’t!”

      Frankie stood in the corner. He was blonde and narrow, smirking nervously.

      “You’re fuckin’ nuts, man,” Frankie told him.

      “Come on!” he said, struggling with me. “You can do it too!”

      He unsnapped my dungarees. The zipper slid open though I grabbed at frantically.

      He unclenched my fingers, threw my hands down and held them over my head.

      He laughed. Neither of us could move.

      “Gloria!” he smiled down at me, his blue eyes sparkling against his dark skin, against the raw, white flesh of his scar like a twisted, agonized bolt of lightning from his damaged mind.

      At that moment, I was terrified of him and I hated him, but I recognized him. He was the Nazi. A small part, a very strong small part of me wanted to throw my arms around him and pull him down on me. I’ve often wondered, though I hardly need to wonder, what I would have done if Frankie hadn’t been there, standing, watching idiotically, altering the chemistry of the room. In my memory, I think of it sometimes as the death embrace of animals, the lioness teething upon the throat of her victim. I know she must love her prey: how much of her hunger and her agony she’s put into pursuing it’s delicious flesh and blood that will feed her and her babies and keep them alive and I know her mate has teased her throat with his teeth in much the same way when he took her and the love embrace and the death embrace are almost identical. So it was with me and Rick as we looked into each other’s eyes in stalemate that dark afternoon. And I was the prey who entered into a special, familiar, and just relationship with its killer. I loved him and hated him as surely as I loved and hated myself.

      But, I had too much to live for and I had to go on living. I couldn’t let him! When he let go of me to unbuckle his belt, I pulled at his hands hysterically, not letting him. He laughed and laughed. He never once hit me. I didn’t even know till years later that women were hit, or worse, during a rape. Then, he grabbed my pants legs around my thighs and yanked hard; traitors, they slid down to my knees.

      “Wow! Look at this!” Rick said about my underwear, tiny bikini panties with little pink rosebuds.

      “Hey, Likus, isn’t that your grandmother coming?” Frankie drawled stupidly from the window.

      “Shit!” Rick spat.

      Rick picked me up by the shoulders and threw me off the couch toward the direction of the kitchen. I landed awkwardly in my bunched up pants, but before I could fall over, he had picked me up again and pushed me further toward the kitchen and again, I was being flung out the back door where I landed on my shoulder in a heap by the garbage pail, fish and banana peels cooking in the hot sun, buzzing with flies at the foot of his back steps. I could hear him answer his grandmother while his face was still toward me. He latched the backdoor shut.

      I struggled to come to my senses. I couldn’t be seen like this and in Rick’s backyard! I didn’t know whether to run first or pull up my pants. I pulled up my pants and zipped the fly.

      I knew I couldn’t simply walk out the driveway to the front.

      Shaking with terror that I might be seen in Rick’s yard, possibly I already had and with my pants down, I hid myself in the thick tangle of brush that grew against the tall wooden fence that separated the Likus’s yard from the Strummer’s. I considered the track side, but the fence there was even taller and since, I had to throw myself over, I didn’t know what kind of shopping cart or soaked mattress or broken bottle I’d land on down by the tracks. The Strummer’s yard beckoned me with the soft, green memories of its apple tree.

      Thorns of scrub rose sliced at my arms and ankles as I tried to gain a foothold on the smooth fence. By sheer will and emergency, I smashed myself into the boards and catapulted my aching body over. I tumbled on to the grass.

      I let myself stop for a minute. I panted heavily, hoping for that moment when my breath would come easily. I wanted to cry. I think the tears started to come and I wiped them away and they continued and I wiped them away again, streaking my face with dirt and blood from my hands.

      Johnny came out of his house and rushed toward me. I was so glad to see him! He was married and didn’t live there any more, but he was home on leave from the Army before going to Vietnam, I remembered all this at once, in my daze. But, there was something wrong about him! His hair was gone! His beautiful, sun-filled hair! And his expression was wrong! He wasn’t happy to see me! He looked furious!

      “Get the hell out of my yard!” he yelled at me.

      His handsome face was twisted. His sunny hair had been shaved along the bumpy round of his skull like a prisoner of war.

      “I couldn’t help it,” I mumbled, stunned and unsure what was happening.

      “Get up!”

      He also pulled me by the neck, like a small animal, and threw me in the direction he wanted me to go, toward the front walk. I thought, “If Rick’s watching, he’ll laugh.”

      “What are you doing, Johnny?” A soft voice called him sweetly from the front door. “Who is that?”

      I looked up through my tears to see the vague shape of a woman wavering there behind the blackened screen door. It was Johnny’s mother.

      “Why it’s Gloria! Gloria Wisher! Hello, dear! How is your mother? I never see her anymore!”

      “Fine,” I sniffed.

      I figured she must be drunk. She didn’t have the slightest idea what was going on. She had never called my mother or spoken much to her unless she happened to be out on the porch when Ma walked by. But, Celia Strummer never came out of the house these days. I didn’t even think she was a nurse anymore. I was surprised, somewhere on top of my misery, that she even knew my name.

      The metal gate made a high-pitched squeal like a caught pig as I opened it and Johnny Strummer, my beloved sun-kissed sweetheart, kicked me real hard in the behind and sent me flying forward out the gate so fast I fell hard on the cement scraping my palms, tearing my pants open and raking my knees in long, bloody scratches.

      His mother was shocked.

      “Johnny!”

      “And stay out!” he screamed, crazily. “Get back in the house!” He turned and strode up the porch steps toward his mother.

      I could hear her voice, retreating, protesting sweetly, that she “didn’t see why -”

      I went home, to my room, to mourn and lick my wounds and gather my strength. Maybe Johnny was mad at me because I hadn’t gone for a ride with him. Maybe he was mad because he’d had to get married or because he had to go to war. But, really, it didn’t matter why. It was an odd circumstance of my life that so many people had behaved so strangely for so long that when, suddenly, someone I’d trusted and believed in, like Johnny or my pediatrician or Daddy, for no reason viciously struck out at me, when it had happened for the thousandth time, I simply went home, washed and salved my wounds, and prepared myself for the next onslaught. Rick had caught me off guard, but I never thought for a moment he’d acted out of character. Somehow, in Revere, that was a virtue. It created a warped kind of trust.

©Patricia Goodwin, 2015

Patricia Goodwin is the author of When Two Women Die, about Marblehead legends and true crime and its sequel, Dreamwater, about the Salem witch trials and the vicious 11-year-old pirate Ned Low. Holy Days is her third novel, about the sexual, psychological seduction of Gloria Wisher and her subsequent transformation. Her newest poetry books are Telling Time By Apples, And Other Poems About Life On The Remnants of Olde Humphrey Farme, illustrated by the author, and Java Love: Poems of a Coffeehouse.