Women Who Stay, 13

Chapter 1 ... Chapter 12

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After our confrontation in the park, it was like a storm had broken between us. Janie fielded my questions with grace, and I learned to read her mood and rein myself in. I noticed that she didn't like questions about Antonio when we ate in the Diner. She was freer when we walked outside, or on the rare occasions when the Diner was nearly empty and Sheila was our server.

It was on one of those days, a couple of weeks later, when she told me about the first time she suspected Antonio had been sleeping with men.

"We were still in the Trenton apartment then," she said. "He came home drunk near midnight. I was up nursing Jacob when he stumbled in. 'I hope you didn't drive yourself home in that state,' I said, and he gave me a very cold look. He told me a friend had driven him home. 'Oh, which friend?' I asked -- he didn't have many, you understand, for all his charms. We were alike in that way. And he just smiled, a dreamy little smile, and he went off to bed, and I suspected."

"Did it hurt you?"

She stirred her coffee. "Yes, but not for the reason I think most wives would be. He'd told me about his preference for men by that time."

I couldn't help noticing the revulsion in her tone. It raised my hackles, as it always did when we treaded near this topic. Despite the convivial growth in our relationship, and my near-desperate desire to understand Janie as completely as possible, I was reminded that I still didn't like her.

"It wasn't the adultery I had a problem with," she continued. "It was more that he wouldn't talk with me about it. He locked me out of that part of his life entirely. That's what hurt. That he'd stopped inviting me to know a piece of himself. We only ever talked about his sexuality the once, after he was put away the first time."

"What was the conversation like, when he told you?"

She rolled her eyes. "He was so ashamed. Kept telling me he'd change it if he could. Said he hated that piece of himself more than anything in the world. I told him it was ok, we could get him help. There were all sorts of programs then, mostly run by churches and such, which promised they could make it go away. But a few weeks later, when I brought home some pamphlets for him to look through, he ripped them all up. Said he'd changed his mind about going. He was in control, and he never wanted us to talk about it again."

"Was this around March 1972?"

"What, the first conversation or when I suspected?"

"The conversation."

"Yes, I think so."

"Janie, you realize he killed his first victim in that month. Charlie Filo."

She looked around the diner uneasily. Sheila was in the corner stacking mugs. "Yes, now I know that. But it wasn't until long after he passed that anyone made the connection between Antonio and that case. And I'll remind you, there still aren't any proven connections. Just... timelines," she trailed off. "At Hollow Hill, it was harder to ignore the signs. Especially at the end.

"But the night that he came home, I made a decision. I looked at my baby. I looked at all the things he'd given me for the nursery. I thought, 'Ok, if that's the cost, I'll pay it. I'll never ask again. I'll overlook anything to keep my life as is.' So that's what I did."

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Read on to Chapter 14