Valentine

The novel introduces the precocious 11-year-old Debra Ann Pierce, or D.A., who lives on the same street as Corrine Shepard and (now) Mary Rose Whitehead. D.A. struggles to adjust to her mother’s disappearance the day after Valentine’s Day nearly a month ago. Without warning or explanation, her mother drove off. The girl is certain that her mother will return, probably before the Fourth of July. Until then, she’ll keep the house tidy that she shares with her father.

Now, with no friends in school (except her two imaginary friends, Peter and Lilly), D.A. spends her afternoons biking around town, although since the arrest of Dale Strickland her father has limited how far she can ride. One afternoon in early spring, she watches as a man, “short and skinny as a scarecrow” (69), runs along the edges of a field near the strip bar (a seedy dive that D.A. knows not to go near) until he comes to one of the massive drainpipes put in to control flooding—ironic given the years of drought. He disappears into the pipe. Over the next several days, D.A. returns to watch him. On impulse, after she knows his schedule, she ventures into the pipe and finds the rudiments of a living space, a bed of blankets and a lawn chair. Inquisitive, the girl pokes through his mail and finds out that he’s a Vietnam veteran named Jesse Belden. She decides that this homeless stranger will be her “project” (71).

Over the next several weeks, she leaves gifts, at first little things like gum and crayons but eventually bags of food. In turn, he leaves a heartfelt thank you note. One day, thinking Jesse isn’t home, D.A. ventures in. He’s sleeping, and the girl is nearly next to him before he wakes up (his tour of duty left him deaf in one ear). The two talk. Over the following days, they play cards and share bologna sandwiches. D.A. reads to him from her favorite book, Charlotte’s Web, with its “message about sadness and change” (77). In turn, Jesse shares his story. He came to the oil fields for work—he stayed with his cousins but couldn’t get field work because of his hearing. He got a job as a custodian at the strip club but didn’t make enough to pay his cousins room and board. To cover his back rent, his cousins confiscated his truck and kicked him out. Now he struggles to earn enough money to get his truck back and go back home to Tennessee.

Next, the novel shares the story of Ginny, D.A.’s mother, and her decision to abandon her family the day after Valentine’s Day. With little planning, she drives off, Joni Mitchell on the radio, library art books in the back seat. She remembers getting pregnant, 15 years earlier, in high school and how quickly Jim Pierce married her and they settled down. Her dreams of going to college and studying art were gone, and she tried to love her family: “What kind of woman runs out on her husband and her daughter? The kind who understands that the man who shares her bed is, and always will be, just the boy who got her pregnant” (91). The further she drives, the wider her eyes grow at the unfolding beauty around her. By the time she reaches Nevada, however, all the beauty leaves her uneasy: “All this wild, green beauty and still, always, a hole in her heart the size of a little girl’s fist” (95).

For Mary Rose, it’s now June. Dale Strickland’s trial is scheduled for August. The District Attorney has charged Dale with aggravated sexual assault and attempted murder, and the sentence could be life. Mary Rose is being harassed with late-night phone calls. Most nights she can’t sleep and sits at her kitchen table with the house lights on, her loaded Winchester close by. She hasn’t talked to Glory since the morning after the attack. Her husband, when he comes to town on weekends, makes it clear that he wishes she’d never opened the door that morning. Alone most of the time, Mary Rose remembers when, a few months back, she found out she was pregnant. Her first reaction was to take Aimee and drive to the nearest abortion clinic, certain the marriage was too shaky to support another child. However, she decided not to go through with it. Now she has infected milk ducts in her breasts, which makes nursing an agonizing experience.

When Odessa receives news that Gloria’s mother has been deported, Mary Rose understands the forces lining up against the girl. The town, spearheaded by the minister, defends Dale. A preacher’s son, raised by a good family back in Arkansas, Dale is here to work the oil fields. As for Gloria, the town spreads rumors that she’s “promiscuous” and that her uncle is trying to shake down Dale’s wealthy family; the newspaper prints these stories as gospel. Mary Rose is haunted by her showdown with Dale. She confronts the members of the church Ladies Guild when they slander Gloria and refuse to even say the word “rape.” Angered, Mary Rose throws a glass of water on the Guild’s president and storms out. Her husband later tells her that he didn’t marry “the town lunatic” (125). The two nearly come to blows—his hand curls into a fist and Mary Rose arms herself with a big wooden spoon.