Blood and Oranges by James Goldsborough (latest books to read txt) 📗

didn’t he read of the husband’s duty to ‘love, comfort, honor and be faithful’ to his wife?” She was on the edge of the seat now. “But that would not help his argument would it? Counselor quotes from Leviticus, but I go directly to the words of Jesus to rebut him, Matthew 19:9: ‘Whosoever shall put away his wife, except for fornication, causes her to commit adultery.’” Around the courtroom women were coming to their feet, first a few, then whole rows, then the men began to stand as well.

“Yes!” Angie went on, loudly now—“causes her to commit adultery; those are the very words of Jesus Christ.” She pointed directly at Gil. “That man abandoned me, alone and penniless, while he ran off with other women. What was I to do?”

Wild cheering as Angie stepped down, and again Anzug had to use his gavel. Order restored, his face flushed, his patience run out, he wearily turned to instruct the jury that its time had come to retire and consider the evidence against the defendant on charges of murder and attempted murder. They were not to consider the charge of spousal rape against the defendant because there was no such crime on the books—any of the books.

Booing broke out, and the judge had to ruthlessly gavel again for silence.

“However,” he began, speaking slowly, intoning each word, his eyes on the rows of newspaper reporters, “just because such a crime is not on the books does not mean that it should not be. The law must constantly grow and evolve if it is to stay in touch with the people. But that is not the job of this court or any court. It is the job of the legislatures. It is the opinion of this court that the elected lawmakers of this state and this nation should move quickly to address what this trial has shown to be a most serious lacuna in our laws.”

The boos had turned to cheers, and this time Anzug was slower to pick up his gavel. Hilda Anzug, watching from the audience, smiled.

At sentencing, Gil l’Amoureux got twelve to fifteen years for aggravated assault and voluntary manslaughter. He left the courtroom shaking his fist and vowing revenge. What Angie lost in court, she won in the courtroom of public opinion, which soon made her, next to Mrs. Roosevelt, the most celebrated woman in America, a heroine to women of every age. Newspapers that dared editorialize on the subject of spousal rape defended her, demanding that legislatures get to work to change the laws. She stepped into Willie’s shoes at the temple and didn’t take them off until the day she died—a day, unfortunately, not as far off as the Soldiers might have liked.

Chapter 22

Maggie never used her married name again. She came home from France as Margaret Sinclair Mull, just as she’d left, her passport unchanged. She moved on, coming to regard her eighteen-month marriage to Arnaud and her time in France as belonging to another person. She had loved as well as any twenty-three-year old girl can love, but when she thought back it was more about war than marriage. There was repression there, and she would talk about it if asked, though hated the word “widow,” which she associated with mauve gowns and long strings of pearls. Years later, twice a widow though without mauve gowns and long strings of pearls, she would give her Paris interlude a luster and romance she’d once denied it.

Howard Hughes hired her shortly after Pearl Harbor, though she was certain he wouldn’t. The interview had gone badly. Hughes could not have been more irritating or sexist, though as the perfect man she figured he believed he had that right. She had been prickly in return. He was so damn cocksure of himself and adamant that women couldn’t fly. He didn’t even spare Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, whom he blamed for mistakes that led to her airplane’s disappearance over the Pacific. He referred to her speed records as “women’s records,” as if speed had a gender. Maggie mentioned the planes she’d flown in Europe, and Hughes’s only interest was in the new Dewoitines when she said they could compete with Messerschmitts.

“Neither one could maneuver with my D-2s,” he said.

“I’m not sure about that,” she said, and that was the end of the interview.

He called her back a few weeks later, early in the new year when the nation was struggling to get its footing. Any male who could fly a plane was disappearing fast into the army air force, and Hughes needed replacements. When she arrived at Hughes Aircraft, a stone’s throw from her old stables, he started pumping her about engines—priming engines, regulating fuel pumps, adjusting throttles and props, giving her a verbal diagnostic test. She longed for him to ask something about flying itself, but it was all about maintenance.

“I don’t have any female pilots at Hughes,” he said. “But I try to keep an open mind about things. Might be a need coming up. All my fliers start in maintenance. That suit you?”

She was annoyed but could hardly refuse. Men were being called up every day and she had no other offers. She was also intrigued by this cocky, clever, ambitious man whose name was in the news as much for his personal life as anything professional. He was called the richest man in the world and the most desirable, his name linked to one Hollywood actress or another. He was constantly being summoned to Washington to testify on defense contracts and always flew his own planes. He’d made a series of movies, some, like Hell’s Angels, mediocre, some, like The Front Page, prize-winners. He was tall, dark and handsome, with a wicked smile under a mustache he’d grown to cover up scars from various crashes. He had a little boy’s sense of humor. He was exciting. She understood his appeal to women. He appealed to her.

His