Emilia Mae liked how Xena always said “we.” It made her feel as if she was a part of something. Xena smelled of earth and cinnamon, and Emilia Mae found that comforting. One night, when Xena was explaining how “we” make squash soup, the conversation took a different turn. “Squash soup was Wallace’s favorite. He claimed that mine was as smooth as God’s ermine robe.”
“What robe? Who’s Wallace?” asked Emilia Mae.
“I’m not sure if God even has an ermine robe. Wallace, my ex-husband, always said things like that. I never knew if he was making stuff up. That man had a way with words.” Xena shook her head. “I should’ve known that pretty words do not the man make. Our daughter, Frances, was stillborn. After that, Wallace would have nothing to do with me in the intimacy department, if you know what I mean. Then I discovered that he had been two-timing me with another woman since before Frances’s birth. I threw him out, and he pleaded with me to take him back, but I said never. How can you trust a man like that? Terrible, terrible, the betrayal. Betrayal, Emilia Mae, that’s the worst thing a person can do to another person. You’re much too young to understand this, but believe me, it’s true.”
Emilia Mae had to bend over to shout into Xena’s good ear. “My mother. She’s resented me since I was born, thinks I literally have the devil in me. She told Sam Bostwick all these good things about me just so I’d get this job and she’d get me out of the house. I’d say that counts as betrayal.”
“That is terrible,” said Xena, cutting a radish into paper-thin slices. “What about your father? Didn’t he have something to say about that?”
“My mother’s a bully. My father tries to stand up to her, but she’s so overpowering he gives up. I wish he were stronger.”
“Sounds difficult.”
“Yeah. I’m used to it.” Emilia Mae looked down at the tomato she was chopping and smiled. This was normal conversation, unlike the silly chitchat that went on at the bakery, one of many advantages of working at the Neptune Inn. Food here was plentiful. Other than Xena, food had become Emilia Mae’s main companion. She knew she ate more than she needed. Xena was no help, always pushing leftover banana bread or cherry cobbler her way. “Go on,” she’d say. “It puts a shine in your eye like nothing else.”
Eventually, other things put a shine in her eye. Men started paying attention to her. An old man, at least fifty, asked Emilia Mae if he could touch her hair. She shrugged. The man closed his eyes and wove strands of it in and out of his fingers like sand. “So soft,” he muttered, his breath coming faster. She didn’t mind one bit.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned, she said in confession. It made me feel special.
Father Daley, her priest at St. Bernadette’s, made her say seven Our Fathers.
Another man, pale as Swiss cheese, told her that her hips were beautiful: “Ripe for childbearing.” He fondled them in a way she knew was wrong, but his hands against her body made her tremble, so she let him.
Bless me Father, for I have sinned. But it felt good.
Father Daley warned her: “God does not forgive all transgressions” and made her perform penance for three days.
Emilia Mae wasn’t a looker, but she was eye-catching. By sixteen, she was big-bosomed and statuesque. Her baby fat was more sexy than flabby. Her auburn hair fell nearly to her waist. Against her pale skin, her chestnut eyes gave off an orange glow, as if they’d been baked into her head. She still thought of herself as plump, but more than that, she enjoyed being noticed.
The men who came through—lost souls, most of them—noticed her. They noticed how she batted her eyes and elongated her neck when she talked to them. A couple of them said she was the prettiest girl they’d seen in a long time. Some were wounded and coming back from the war overseas, so she probably was the only girl they’d seen in a long time. One fellow was missing teeth; another had a wild stare. Emilia Mae figured most girls would never pay them any mind. But she did. When the men touched and held her, she imagined she was getting the warmth and love she craved from her mother. At confession, she told Father Daley: “I’ve never fought in a war, but I understand how it feels to be alone, and these men are as alone as it’s possible to be. I listen to their stories. I offer whatever advice and encouragement I can. Sometimes, I even make them laugh.” Father Daley remained stone-faced. “Leave the encouragement to God.” Three more days of penance.
One man told Emilia Mae he’d enlisted at eighteen. “My father was an officer in World War I. The only way I could prove to him that I was a man was by becoming military. But I’m not the man he was. Sometimes I cried in front of the other soldiers because I was so scared. One time, a land mine went off not fifty feet from where I was standing.” He turned away from Emilia Mae. “I was so terrified, I messed myself. That’s when I got stuck with the nickname Shit Pants. Shit Pants? If my father ever found out he’d kill me.”
Emilia Mae understood how disgrace could have no mercy. She told the man he was brave to have stayed. “If it were me, I’d have run away, and I’d be Shit Pants for the rest of my life.”
Another young man, who had studied to be an army chaplain at nearby Fort Slocum, admitted how he didn’t feel he had any godliness in him. “Just the opposite, truth be told. I’ve done every sinful thing it’s possible for a man to do and still be alive. Things I could never tell anyone. I was hoping religion would absolve me, but deep down, I’m bad to the core.”
“My mother always says I was born with the devil in me,” she said. “Who knows, maybe I was. So what are people like us supposed to do, sit around and watch our souls rot? At least you’re trying.”
Emilia Mae gave these men carnal comfort when they asked for it. Until she came to the Neptune Inn, all Emilia Mae had known about sex was what she’d read in Tropic of Cancer and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. Sex was messy and complicated. It was also considered a mortal sin by the Roman Catholic Church. Turned out, she liked it. Liked the warm shiver of how it felt, the ease with which her body responded to it. Mostly, the men came at her like a drill. They pushed and grunted as if trying to make a point, and from the noises they made they seemed to enjoy it. She never lost complete control, but their hunger made her feel desired and powerful.
“If it weren’t for those men, the Germans would have taken over the world, or something like that,” she told Father Daley. “Allowing them my body is the least I can do for my country.”
Father Daley shook his head but said nothing. That was around the time that the Oz brothers took their leave.
Then, on a rainy day in August 1947, a real estate broker from Albany showed up. He seemed to be in his late twenties, with mud-brown eyes and wavy dark hair. He was a little shorter than her and stocky in build. He wore black and white wingtips with taps that tick-tocked against the wooden floors. The way he pursed his lips, it looked as if he might break into a whistle at any time. Because it was a Wednesday, he was the only guest at the inn. Emilia Mae served him dinner. He asked if she’d join him. “Why not?” she said and sat down at his table. His name was John. He told her that the Neptune Inn was cheaper and cleaner than any place in New York City. “I’ll be going back and forth a lot,” he said, giving her a sidelong glance.