“What do you mean, ‘all it has to offer’?”
“It’s so big, well laid out for entertaining, and in a great neighborhood. Best of all, it’s close to your family and our friends. What a shame we’ll be fixing it up just to sell it and move back to Antioch, over the hill.”
“But that’s our plan,” I said. I turned around and scooted away so I could prop my feet on his lap. He obligingly grasped one foot and began to massage it.
“Plans can change,” John replied. “Think how comfortable we feel here.”
“This house is cursed,” I blurted. “It has bad memories for me, of hard labor, joyless days, a cheating heart. I can’t forget that. How can you?”
“Those are memories from the past. This is the present. You’re with me. We can create our own future here, make our own memories, like today’s wonderful party with family and friends.”
“Minus
your
family,” I snipped. John winced. He dropped my foot and I quickly apologized. It wasn’t his fault that his kids lived on the other side of the country.
“My third cousins, Sarah and George, were here,” he whimpered as he lowered his quivering chin. Sarah and George Green were “kissin’ cousins”; at least that’s what John had called them when he first introduced us. They were Jason’s parents, a sweet, elderly couple from Danville who never contradicted John’s relationship claim. In later years I would wonder why, but this was now and I had to squelch this latest idea of John’s. I ignored his cousin comment and returned to the subject at hand—staying in my Concord house.
“We can’t afford it, plain and simple,” I insisted. “We need to sell it to get ourselves on an even keel. Remember? Besides, I own it jointly with Bryan.”
“I’ve thought hard about that, calculated things, and I think I found a way for us to stay here. That is, if you really want to.”
John slowly, cautiously laid out his strategy. He outlined, in full detail, how we could get a second mortgage on the house and buy Bryan out. Then, if we still wanted to sell, we could wait until the real estate market perked up. We could even get extra money to pay for the improvements. He baited me and it worked. I grabbed the hook and admitted it sounded like a reasonable thing to do.
“The problem is, I don’t think I’ll qualify for a second mortgage,” I said.
Then it came. With all the finesse of a well-seasoned fisherman, he began to reel me in. “I’ll cosign on the loan,” he offered. “We’ll work to get it paid off as soon as possible.” It didn’t dawn on me at the time, but by doing this, John would get his name on the title of my house. For now, I was only paying attention to the adventure of it all.
“Sounds logical. Promise me we’ll work hard to get rid of the second mortgage.”
“Nothing would suit me better.”
We began at once to make plans about how I would approach Bryan, what our offer would be, and how soon we thought we could get it done. “Hey, I’m turning into a prune,” I said, looking at my wrinkled hands and standing up. “We’d better get out.”
“Just one more thing,” John said, reaching out and putting his hand on my arm. “It’s about the grand theft charge.”
I froze and didn’t say a word. I had stuffed that episode into my little bag of unresolved problems and given it no thought for more than a month. Now here it was in front of me. I was afraid of what might come next, afraid it might blow our new plans out of the water. Could I marry someone right before he headed off to jail?
“Don’t look so worried,” John said. “It’s good news. I heard from my attorney, Max Rosberg. He says he can get the charges dropped.”
“Dropped? How?” I sat back down. This
was
good news.
“Remington Rand will drop the charges if I pay for the typewriters.”
“How much will that cost?”
“Only four thousand dollars,” John said blithely, “but . . .”
I grabbed the side of the tub with my free hand, bracing for whatever was to come next.
“But what?”
“I also have to pay Rosberg’s fee, another four thousand.”
“That’s eight thousand dollars,” I sputtered. “You don’t have that kind of money.
We
don’t have that kind of money. Oh, my God, what are we going to do?” Fear made my legs weak. I dropped onto the edge of the hot tub. My perfect day was sinking.
“Now that we plan to get a second mortgage, I figured we could add that eight thousand to the amount we were going to get. There’s plenty of equity in the house to cover it.”
“I don’t think so,” I snapped. “That’s
your
obligation. Why don’t you call your grandmother if she’s got so much money?”
“You know I can’t right now. The family is upset as it is. I need you to help me.”
“I’m not going to merrily hand you over eight thousand dollars, especially since I don’t have it!” I jerked my arm from his grasp and climbed out of the tub. Grabbing my towel, I headed across the deck toward the house. John was quick to follow and blocked the door before I could get in. “Wow, you move pretty fast for someone always in pain,” I said. “Get out of my way.”
“Please, Barbara,” he implored. “Listen to me. I don’t expect you to just give me the money, I want to borrow it. I’m asking for a loan.”
“Loan?” He had my attention. He was a master at getting my attention.
“Yes. I will pay you back. I swear. We need to get this over with and move on with our life together. Don’t you see how it muddies up the water if it’s still hanging out there?”
He did have a point. He always had a point. He was able to make whatever he suggested sound like the perfect solution. Once more I lowered my boundaries and became the good little girl. “Okay. But remember, it’s a loan, l-o-a-n. And you will pay it back.”
He put his arm around me and gave me a tender squeeze. “Of course. You’re my gal. I love you so much.”
I relaxed into his embrace as we went inside, and my thoughts drifted to my upcoming bridal shower and a vision of our wedding day: white chapel, John in dress uniform, trumpets blaring as we emerged under an aisle of crossed swords, smiling, ready to spend the rest of our lives together. Too soon I would discover that dreams don’t create reality.
SIX
The Wedding
A month later, on a sunny October afternoon, John and I checked into the Westgate Hotel in San Diego.
“Here on vacation?” the desk clerk queried.
Definitely not,
I thought.
No, we’re on an exciting secret mission, like undercover agents . . . unmarried ones.
But not for long. Our clandestine wedding was only hours away. I giggled when John asked for the bridal suite.
“Isn’t this place as palatial as I promised?” John asked as we passed the curve of the sweeping brass staircase and stepped into the mirrored elevator.
I nodded. One thing about John, he had good taste.
Expensive
taste. This fancy hotel was definitely living up to his earlier descriptions. Seeing it took my breath away. When the bellhop opened the door to the bridal suite, I pinched myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Gilded baroque glistened everywhere . . . on the white paneled walls, the elegant French period furnishings, the framed mirror above the marble fireplace, even the old-fashioned telephone.
“Well, what do you think?” John grinned as he closed the door and walked back into the living room.
“It’s everything you said, and more.” I ran to John, put my arms around his neck, and tiptoed to reach his lips. “Thank you,” I whispered.
We quickly settled into our love nest. While I unpacked what few things we had brought, John telephoned the Clays to let them know we had arrived.
“They’ll be over in an hour,” John said as he put the receiver back in its cradle. He glanced at me perched on the king-size bed. “Unpacked already?”
“Didn’t have much. Don’t forget, this is a one-night stand.”
“Well, I’d hardly call it that.” John laughed, as he made his way into the bathroom and closed the door.
In the silence of the room, left alone for the first time that day, I felt somehow lost. Maybe I hadn’t done the right thing, planning a wedding without family and friends. Was the decision to run away and get married as romantic as it had originally sounded? Then John emerged from the bathroom, stripped to his underwear, and my heart flipflopped back to the excitement and my need to share it.
“Can I call my mother now?” I pleaded, trying hard not to let my doubts show. I didn’t want to ruin this day, of all days.
“Okay, but don’t take too long,” he said. “The Clays will be here any minute.” He came over and put his arm around me, swaying as he sang, “because we’re going to the chapel and we’re gonna get ma-a-arried.”
I smiled and dialed my parents’ telephone number. John went off to get dressed.
“Mom, guess what?” I chirped. “We’re in San Diego, getting ready to go down to Tijuana and get married!”
Dead silence on the other end of the phone told me at once what my mother’s reaction was. “Last week at the shower you said that you hadn’t set a date,” she said. “Why so sudden? You’re not pregnant, are you?”
“No, Mom.” I explained that John had come home on Thursday, excited about finding a deal with the airlines. If we bought two coach tickets to a destination at least five hundred miles away, we’d get two tickets to Hawaii for only $50 each. “So let’s run away and get married,” John had said, making it sound crazy romantic, yet practical, too. “You know our funds are tight.”
He was right, again. We really couldn’t afford a big wedding. Oh, we were flush with the second mortgage money we’d received the day before, but that money was earmarked for Bryan, Max Rosberg, and Remington Rand.
“We’ll surprise everyone,” John continued. “We won’t tell a soul. And,” he winked, “the Hawaii trip will be our honeymoon.”
Hawaii, beautiful Hawaii. I could feel the warmth of the trade winds, hear the soft
plink
of the ukuleles, taste the cool piña coladas. We could go to Maui, Molokai, and the Big Island and enjoy the bridal suite at a fancy hotel. John instinctively knew how to play to my weaknesses. . . . exotic travel, a great bargain, and what sounded like a fairy-tale wedding.
As I talked to my mom, my chest tightened. I hadn’t been up for the elopement idea at first; it sounded too bizarre for adults our age. But for every obstacle I mentioned, John had an equally sound reason to overcome it, offering up something exciting in its place. As he talked, I could actually believe that running away to get married in a foreign country, without telling family, made all the sense in the world. As for friends, he’d get one of his customers to stand up for us. The Clays lived in San Diego, and could meet us at the hotel. Now, here I was in that hotel, getting closer and closer to being the admiral’s wife, and trying to make my mom believe the fantasy too.
“Mom, I thought you and Daddy liked John.”
“We do. He’s a nice man, but...” Her voice trailed off. I knew what she would say next....words of disappointment and disapproval to guilt me because we were not marrying in a Catholic church. “Don’t throw away your upbringing,” she pleaded.
“I’m not. You know how I feel about the Church, how I was treated as a divorced Catholic. Like a leper. Worse! At least they minister to lepers. Anyway, John said if I want, we can have a church wedding later this year, in Mexico City. Today is the first step, the prerequisite civil ceremony.”
My show of independence gave me a lift, and my earlier doubts began to dissipate. I was my own woman, quite capable of living my own life, thank you very much.
“I’ll call you when we get home, Mom,” I said. We ended our conversation politely and briskly. Not on the best of terms, but at least not on the worst.
I picked up the telephone once more. Pam would surely share my joy. I felt hurt when she, too, sounded cool and distant.
“Running off to Mexico is no different than when you and George went up to Reno to get married,” I challenged.
“Yes, it is. We had the date planned and several couples went with us.”
“Well, I have to admit I thought my second wedding would be fancy, with friends and family around. But, what the heck! It’s so romantic this way.”
“If you say so,” she replied, and diplomatically ended our conversation.
“Why are they such wet blankets?” I whined as I set the receiver down. “You’d think they’d be happy for me.”
“They’re just jealous,” John said as he put the final knot in his blue-and-gold striped tie—colors of the naval academy, as he’d pointed out to me more than once. “Don’t let it get you down. They’ll be okay when we get back. Trust me. We’ll show them true happiness.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “You’d better get dressed; the Clays will be here any minute.”
I disappeared into the dressing area. When I emerged several minutes later, John let out a low whistle. I twirled, feeling the soft white chiffon circle my legs, and remembered the romantic evening when John first declared his interest in me, speaking French, the night Jenna wore this dress. Practical me, I made it my “something old” at a time when I couldn’t afford the “something new.” Even if I could have splurged on a bridal gown, I hadn’t had the time to shop.
The doorbell rang. The Clays had arrived. John introduced the Clays as J.R. and Carrie, explaining that J.R.’s name was really John, but when there was more than one John in the crowd he’d go by J.R., the initials of his first and middle name.
“How about a toast?” J.R. said, handing John a cold bottle of champagne.
“And a wedding present,” Carrie smiled, presenting me with a silver-and-white box.
We settled into the living room as John went into the kitchen. “Look what I found,” John announced as he emerged. “Champagne glasses. They thought of everything for this suite.”
Like a little kid at Christmas, I tore into the wrapping paper. I held up a crystal-and-silver salad bowl. “It even has a silver serving set,” I beamed. “Isn’t it grand?” John nodded and popped the cork. We drank a toast to a beautiful wedding and a long life together.