Read Online Five Women by Rona Jaffe - Free Book Online

what was going on.
    Felicity felt helpless, knowing there was nothing she could do about the situation anyway. She never wanted her father to find out. Her poor father, a victim—working so hard, loving her mother, trying to give them everything he could—she only wanted to protect him and save him from learning about something that would make him miserable and humiliated. In a way, keeping the secret made her feel less helpless, knowing she was helping to keep peace in their home.
    Peace was important, and you had to get it where you could find it. She already knew that. If her father didn’t know about Jake he wouldn’t be angry at her mother. When Jake was there her mother wasn’t angry at them. She was loving, kissy and happy.
    â€œHello, cherubs!” her mother trilled. She had her hair tied back and she looked radiant. She was making steak and potatoes and green salad for Jake—he always got a real meal—and there were peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on the kitchen counter for Felicity and Theodora, as usual. The two girls licked their lips like two little cats and exchanged glances, resenting Jake’s delicious-smelling lunch and their mother’s attention to him.
    â€œHello, Mom. Hello, Jake.”
    â€œHello, young ladies.”
    Jake smiled at them. He was the most gorgeous black man Felicity had ever seen in her life. He looked like a movie star. He always wore a suit and a tie when he came to their house, because he sold office supplies to people in companies. But in their kitchen it also made him look as if he had come over all dressed up for a date with her mother; which this was. There was an open bottle of red wine on the kitchen table, and he had the bottle opener in his hand.
    Carolee poured milk for her daughters, smoothed their hair while they ate, and kissed them when they were finished, smiling at them and at Jake as if they were one big cheerful family. Felicity loved it when her mother was so nice to her, but deep inside she was also slightly nauseated because her father was being left out and deceived. She felt so sorry for him. She knew it was a terrible thing to be trapped in an unhappy marriage—her mother had told her so often enough—but although she understood her mother, she didn’t have to approve of the way she was supposedly solving her problem.
    â€œLet’s go,” Felicity said to her sister as soon as they had eaten.
    â€œIt’s still early,” Theodora whined, but she knew it was hopeless and let Felicity drag her away. She liked these moments with her mother and wished they would never end.
    School let out at three o’clock. There were extracurricular activities for another hour and a half for those who wanted them, or you could stay in the school library and study, which Theodora always did, gnawing on her stash of candy bars. Felicity usually went to a friend’s house nearby or played in the street with the few other kids who would have her, and then she picked up her sister and they went home. Neither snow nor wind nor early darkness stopped them from staying away from home as long as they could in those afternoons, because they knew what their mother would be like when they came back.
    Jake would have left. He had a job and, equally important, he had a wife. The remains of lunch would be cleaned up, and the bottle of wine finished. Another bottle would be open on the kitchen table, and their mother would be drunk and morose.
    â€œIf it weren’t for you two kids I could leave this marriage and be happy,” Carolee would often say. “But your father would get this house and custody of you, and then I’d have nothing.”
    It confused Felicity when her mother said that. Were her children really that important? Sometimes she thought her mother hated them, like on these days when Jake had gone home to his wife.
    Felicity and Theodora walked into the house and went directly to their rooms to