The Divorcées: A Novel

by Rowan Beaird

Mary Elizabeth listens politely, and Lois can’t tell if she’s actually interested or if Southern girls are simply better at feigning it.

she began to feel stronger. As if a spirit, not of someone dead but of someone yet to be, were passing through her.

The clothing makes the girls sit differently, resting their elbows on the table and slumping ever so slightly into their chair backs, a foot dangling at their knees. It’s not that they act like men, but like girls when no men are present.

Though the girls say nothing, she knows what they must be thinking: that she’s not one of them.

This is how Lois first conceived of marriage: as a poorly played chess game no one ever seems to win.

And when Lois had to leave the room, to bathe and change clothes, how panicked her mother became, kneading the stiff cotton sheets as if she were now the daughter—Lois the attendant mother neither of them had. It pleased Lois, it frightened her. She finally had her mother’s attention, but she feared no longer being the child.

“As awful as it is, marriage is the only way for a woman to get any freedom, trust me.

“Don’t apologize. It’s rare in life to have something to truly apologize for.

I just felt that—if I stayed with him—I’d, not explode, exactly, that sounds too violent or exciting even, but collapse in on myself. That I’d disappear.”

she thinks of how all it takes to get something is to not want it so badly.