Mad Men: An Elvira Education (Patreon)

Joan always thought her life would be divided into two halves. Fun and marriage.

Fun was boys and stolen kisses and flirting and playing hard to get.

Marriage would be like her parents. An obligation.

Apron-strings on her like stripes on a prisoner’s uniform. No more dashing, unpredictable guys winning her affection like knights going into tournaments. Just a vow to give it to one person for existing. She’d cook and clean and he’d pretend to appreciate it, all while really lusting over some young girl like she had been.

It was a dreary fate, but how else was she supposed to support herself? Let alone have kids.

Then she met Eric Duke. Just another junior executive like all the rest. The only thing distinguishing him was that his momma had raised him right enough that he didn’t stare (and Joan knew how hard that was, her wearing the clothes she did and the body she did). And he was cute.

They were all at least cute at Sterling Cooper. You didn’t get through the front door without a father rich enough or ballsy enough to score the homecoming queen and pass on a nice figure to wrap in the bespoke three-piece you paid for.

But before Joan knew it, Eric was her kind of cute. She couldn’t get his face out of her head. His eyes, crinkling at the corners into crow’s feet—tragicomic-serious in a young face gone mature before its time. A handsome maturity, with his disarming smile baring straight, white, perfect teeth.

So pale next to the deep tan of his broad-jawed face, his fitness-nut physique… the tan that showed when he reached for something high up and a band of belly skin came out from under his shirt, or when he unbuckled his belt to sit down comfortably after a long day and his trousers slouched their way down the vee of his groin, just enough to see the darkness of the hair below his waist.

Was she in love with him or did she just want him so much she could never get enough of him? And did it make a difference? She’d finally found someone who made the prospect of marriage indistinguishable from… fun. It was enough to make Joan want to run out for a marriage license; wake the justice of the peace.

But she was sensible. A girl who worked in an ad agency should know about things being too good to be true. She did her due diligence. Dated him and played with him and kept him interested with a little teasing. Then enough teasing to tease herself—to make Joan not mean it when she told him to hold off on battering down the castle gates.

He just about listened; was only enough of a scoundrel for her to respect him. They got enough of a feel of each other for her to conclude he was no daffodil and him to conclude that she didn’t wear any padding.

Well, a man like that you didn’t string along. One morning she woke up and realized she’d had Eric in her life long enough to know his temper, which wasn’t bad, and know how much he drank, which wasn’t much, and know how he was with his nieces and nephews, which was enough to convince her that he’d be able to hold a baby long enough for her to take a nap now and then. It was time to marry him.

She let him walk in on her before she got into the bath—a bath that had grown positively tepid while she waited. Hiding herself behind her hands and not making a strenuous effort of it, she told him that you’d think they were man and wife, the liberties he was taking with her. And after she’d already spent the night, risking a stain on her slip like some kind of strumpet.

Those ad men were never as clever as they thought they were, but her Eric was at least bright enough to take a hint. And for a while, things were just perfect. She had a ring on her finger and a wedding dress on layaway and every secretary in the office pool dying to know what he’d done to get her through the church doors and to the end of the aisle.

Joan, practically a married woman, was far too genteel to answer them. But she did take her husband’s hiking boots to work one day, muddy all over, and gave them a shine over lunch. Saying how that silly guy of hers always made such a mess; she just couldn’t stand it. There would certainly be a lot less fishing trips in his future.

Even Peggy noticed what big boots Eric wore.

It felt like a prank, she was having so much fun going through with this long-held-over expectation. As she pictured her future with greater and greater clarity, it was only natural that she lost sight of the present. Joan had convinced herself of the marriage, but she hadn’t bothered to persuade Eric. And at the moment, he was in dire need of being assuaged…

***

Eric went through Joan’s place like a burglar, slowly and methodically filling up his carryall with the things he’d left over there across the last few months. He couldn’t go on like this anymore. He couldn’t take another look at Joan, seeing the unblinking ignorance on her lovely face. It was like watching a baby play under an anvil, one dangling by a fraying rope. He had to get away, search within himself, find out what he wanted in life.

A sad smile dawned on Eric’s face. He knew what he wanted: Joan. He just couldn’t have her. Not without that anvil inevitably falling.

He strained picking up the heavy carryall, bulging with reclaimed possessions. He’d left more things with Joan than he’d counted on. There was a metaphor in that, but indulging himself with some sophistry seemed gruesome when he had tears in his eyes. The time for making a grand poem of things was over. He had to shut the book.

Step by step, he carried the bag downstairs. When he reached the landing, he heard the click of a key in the door. Eric could only stand there, watching the knob turning, knowing it had to be Joan. Fate wouldn’t let it be anyone else.

“Eric,” she greeted him, a smile on her plump lips. “What a surprise, catching me fresh from the ride home. Not even enough time to powder my nose…” Her eyes lowered to the carryall on the floor. “What’s that? Are we going on a trip?”

Eric forced back his tears. “There’s no easy way to say this: I’m leaving you.”

A shudder went through him, but there was no phrasing it any better. All he could do was make it worse by hemming and hawing like this was Joan’s first rodeo. He kept his stare level with the top of Joan’s head, afraid that if he stooped to meet her eyes he’d cry like a kid.

Joan said nothing. She simply stood there as though she hadn’t heard him right. Eric tried to summon up some loathing for her to make this easier—wasn’t it sickening the empty-headed way she kept that sweet, coy look on her face, as though she hadn’t understood him but was pretending she had to keep the conversation on an even keel?

He couldn’t manage it though. He was breaking her heart and she couldn’t even give him the slap he deserved.

What a gal she was.

What a heel he was.

“I said I’m leaving you.” Eric hefted the carryall up onto his shoulder. “Would you move out of the way please?”

Joan’s eyes moved from vacant placidity into a sharp, searching look over his features. Eric felt he was being scoured by the usually doe-eyed redhead. “Like fun I am! You’re not going anywhere.”

Her smile vanished, replaced by a set to her jaw worthy of any sergeant of the Big Red One. She moved, but only to block the door and kick it shut.

“Look at yourself! Look where you are! You think I let just any mac drop into my place whenever he feels like it? Uh-uh. You’re committed; so am I. If you want out, you’d better give me one darned good explanation.”

Her shoulders shook with a sudden laugh.

“You only get that love, honor, and obey rap if you go ahead and marry me—not for a few kisses. So what is it? Another woman? Sister? Some China doll you caught a yen for while you were overseas?”

“It’s not another woman and I’m not asking you to obey me,” he told her plainly, taking a step around her extravagant figure. Even now, there was the urge to brush against her, feel a little of the heat simmering inside that lush body… the more he saw her, the more he wanted her, and he could hardly bear to look away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Joan grabbed him by the arm, making him drop the carryall to the floor.

“Now that’s too bad, because I want to talk about it and I want to talk about it right now.” Her mouth grew hard. “Cold feet? That it? I thought you were too grown-up to cling onto the bachelor lifestyle, but I guess those overgrown JDs at Sterling Cooper make it look jazzy. Or maybe you take all those jokes about them hating their wives a little seriously. Well, let me tell you something. You’re through being a loner, mister. I decided I was going to make a husband out of you and I didn’t mean maybe!”

Eric jerked his arm away. “Don’t I get a say in the matter?” He grabbed the carryall again.

“Go ahead. Say whatever you want to say,” Joan snarled. Then she snatched the carryall from him and threw it against the wall with a thud. “Now say it without your luggage in your hand like you’ve got a taxi waiting and ten minutes to catch your train!”

“You want the truth? You silly little girl, you really want to know?”

“Darn right! I don’t take a man’s ring like a cheerleader with a letterman jacket. You leave now and I’ll be playing guessing games for the rest of my life, wondering why my bed’s so cold. So you tell me—were you just stringing me along? Seeing how much you could get out of me? Did you take it a little too far when you got down on one knee…? Caught up in the heat of the moment? Now you figure, what, that I’m not going to spread my legs until we’re out the chapel door, so you might as well pull the rip-cord and bail out? Go on—tell me that’s the heel you are!”

All the fight went out of Eric. He limped over to the chair along the wall and sat heavily, slumped over like he’d taken a punch in the gut. “You really think that of me?”

“I don’t know what to think of you. A half hour ago, I would’ve thought you’d sooner fly to Venus than give me up. Now I’m burning your fingers; you can’t get rid of me fast enough! Mind letting me know what’s so rotten in me? Maybe I could get rid of it before the next fellow comes along, if I still want anything to do with men—you might have boobed things up for the whole gender, you clod!”

A grin sparked on Eric’s lips. He loved the fiery redhead routine; didn’t know how he’d thought she would wave a white flag with only one dainty hand. “It’s me. My… needs. There’s something I thought I could do without, because I couldn’t get it from you. And everything else, you’re good for. Anything a guy could want from a dame, you’ve got enough of it to last through two winters. You’re smart, you’re funny—you put on a dress and it’s like a firework going off.”

“So what’s missing?” Joan demanded, arms crossed, in no mood for flattery after Eric had kicked her down the path to her mascara running.

“Nothing, nothing—it just hit me that if I marry you, it’ll be forever. I’ll never have this thing, not without stepping out on you. So I’d either hurt you by doing that or hurt you by being dissatisfied with you… just as well not to set you up for that. I can’t do without this, Joan. Even for you.”

“So what is it?” Joan asked, softening a little—enough to stoop down and take his hand. “Drugs? Men?”

Eric shook his head. “Nothing like that.”

“Seems to me you’re making an awful big assumption, mister. You think there’s no way I can give you whatever this thing is you want. Don’t you love me enough to let me give it the college try? If it were another woman, I’d be pulling her hair out by now. You think I’m not going to fight for you against whatever’s keeping us apart?”