A Fireproof Home for the Bride (16 page)

Further complicating matters, Emmy’s helpful messenger had vanished. Emmy had eagerly sought Bev’s advice the day after she went with Bobby, but instead found only empty seats and a vacant locker. Hallway whispers indicated the same fate suffered by the Bossert girl, and Emmy could not deny the probability after what she had overheard at her own house. She had written a note for Bev to pass along to Bobby, but now that slight piece of lined notebook paper grew increasingly dog-eared in whichever pocket Emmy held it. She mostly kept it clutched in her left hand, fearful of losing touch, losing the memory of that night, losing her small grasp on the last moment’s fierceness and beauty.

After the first week, Emmy had asked Mr. Utke if he knew what had become of Bev. Perhaps she was sick? Lots of kids had gotten the flu. Emmy had heard of pneumonia taking a long time to cure, and that mononucleosis could knock you flat. He merely grunted at her passel of suggestions, his avoidance an indication that like most good rumors, this one was true. Now three more weeks had passed and she still had not heard from Bev.

*   *   *

On an early spring Friday, Emmy waited for Ambrose to take her on their first official outing to the Spuds’ basketball game. Christian and Karin had apparently decided that no harm could come from an athletic competition. Emmy paced around the carpet in her Jeanies, blouse, and new peach sweater, her hair in a high bouncing ponytail, waiting for the sweep of Ambrose’s headlights to pull up the street. When they finally did, she sprang out the door and ran to the truck, not really minding the thawed-mud-splattered old gray vehicle. Its relative dullness reminded her of where she belonged, and for that, she was increasingly grateful. Ambrose reached across the seat and pushed open the door on her approach. She stopped short, surprised that he didn’t get out of the truck to open her door. She was further dismayed when she saw that he was wearing a western-style brown striped cotton shirt with pearl snaps on the closure and pockets—the kind of thing a person wore to a rodeo, not on a date. A beige cardigan was folded on the seat between them, and the cab was hazy with tobacco smoke. Emmy stepped into the truck, pressing a glove under her nose.

“I thought we’d maybe grab a bite at the Black Hawk before the game,” Ambrose said, taking his red plaid newsboy-style cap off and laying it on top of his sweater.

“Oh, I’m not hungry,” Emmy said, even though she was. She was strangely reluctant to be seen with Ambrose at the Black Hawk, which was certainly going to be full of town kids going to the game. “Popcorn’s fine by me.”

“No, I insist.” Ambrose put the car in gear. “Only the best for my girl.”

“Got a smoke?” she asked, trying to subdue the disjointed feeling of being with Ambrose while wanting so keenly to be with Bobby.

“Here,” he said, offering one with his Zippo lighter. She struck the wheel, touching the smooth surface of the cool metal as she inhaled a long drag that brought the sting of butane into her lungs. “Rough thaw this spring.” Her thumb rubbed the small cross on the other side of the lighter as she handed it back to him, and an image of holding the same object in her much smaller hand floated up—her grandfather’s pipe, the smell of cherry tobacco, the clear blue of his eyes as he held her hand steady. Grandfather Nelson’s hair had still been mostly black before he died, the skin where he parted it on the side showing milky white.

“Not too bad out by us, but the low houses are getting swamped,” Ambrose said, lighting his own cigarette. She watched his profile and tried to see what her grandfather had seen in Ambrose, and whether there was something beyond fealty, or inheritance, or the simple ease of moving the chess pieces across the board in the order they were laid out. The harder she tried, the more she kept coming back to feeling the pawn.

They arrived at the tidy popular restaurant on Center Avenue just as Emmy saw a sleek, familiar black-and-white car start to inch away from the curb.

“Pull over,” Emmy said, opening her door before they had come to a complete stop and running up to the Bel Air, knocking on the window. Her breath came in small bursts as she half hoped to see Bev snuggled under Howie’s arm, throwing her head back in a laugh. The car stopped and the window opened as Emmy leaned down, putting her hands on the sill and looking past Howie. There was Donna Kratz, moved up in the world to the front seat.

“Hey, kid. What’s the panic?” Howie said, chewing a large piece of bright pink gum and looking past Emmy and over at Ambrose. “Going to the game?”

“Yes, we are. Hi, Donna,” Emmy said, fighting against the sting in her vision and trying to figure how to get to the truth with Ambrose close enough to hear. She had to know. “Have you seen Bev?” she asked. Donna shook her head and pulled down her visor, looking in the small oval mirror as she applied fresh lipstick to an already crimson mouth.

“Look, kid. She’s gone to visit her aunt, okay?” Howie bit at his lower lip and revved the engine.

“When is she coming home?” Emmy asked, unsatisfied.

“In about nine months.” Howie raised his eyebrows and hit his palm against the steering wheel. “Get me? Better go feed your hillbilly. He looks hungry.” Howie threw the car into gear and tore off as Emmy stumbled back away from the curb, bumping into Ambrose and almost knocking him over. She could tell by his disapproving grimace that he’d heard everything.

“Let’s go in,” Ambrose said, wrapping his arm around Emmy’s shoulder and guiding her down the sidewalk. During the awkward meal that followed, Emmy made it through a burger and fries without realizing she had eaten, and enjoined light conversation without having any recall of the content, so wholly absorbed was she by the confirmation that her best friend—her only friend—was expecting. How alone Bev must be, wherever it was she’d been sent. Even as she worried over her friend, Emmy’s pride hurt that Bev hadn’t at least reached out, and that Emmy was clearly one of the last to know.

After dinner, they walked the few blocks over to the gymnasium. The flow of excited students and parents swept Emmy along the sidewalk, the proliferation of red letterman jackets with the word
DEACONS
scrawled between the shoulders steadily raising the flesh on her arms. When she read the marquee outside of the building:
TONIGHT AT 7! MOORHEAD SPUDS VS. SHANLEY DEACONS,
Emmy stopped and stared at the sign, her eyes those of a wild animal caught in its own trap.

“It’s the Catholic school over in Fargo,” Ambrose said, mistaking the look on her face for confusion when it was simply sheer, horrible panic. They moved up the sidewalk, toward the door. “A school run by old nuns.” He shook his head in disgust. “They teach them all sorts of communist papist ideas.”

Emmy latched onto Ambrose’s arm to cover her momentary shock at the cool revulsion of his words. “Let’s not go,” she said. “If you feel so strongly about it.”

He shook his head and took some change out of his pocket, handing two dimes to a man sitting at a small wooden table, who in turn placed a mark on the backs of their hands with an inky fingerprint. Emmy looked around at the laughing couples, the clutches of families, the children playing tag in the hallway that led to the gymnasium, and shadowed herself in Ambrose’s height, following him to the popcorn stand, where the salty air made her mouth water as she practiced feeling nothing if and when she should see Bobby.

Ambrose hung her coat on a hook, and when they entered the tensile energy of the junior varsity game in progress, they discovered that the only seats left in the gymnasium were right down front, across from the players’ benches, on the opposing team’s side. Emmy sat in a sea of Shanley fans: Any one of them could be a Doyle, and many looked related to Bobby. Emmy couldn’t focus on the game other than trying to spot a Doyle brother on the floor—she was pretty sure the boy wearing number ten must be Bobby’s brother; he had the exact same smile and curly hair.

Ambrose cheered loudly for the Spuds and was often the only person standing on their side of the gymnasium. More than once he was told to sit down, and Emmy slouched into her sweat-soaked blouse until finally, mercifully, the game ended and the JV Spuds won. A few people on the other side of the gym filed out and Ambrose crossed the floor in his hard-heeled boots, grabbing two of the vacated seats ahead of the fans waiting at the door. Emmy looked in the direction of the exit as she followed him and contemplated an escape. The noise in the gym escalated to a fever pitch, with cheers from both sides of the room thundering as the two teams entered. The Shanley team blurred past her in a hailstorm of pounding basketballs, their red satin uniforms catching the glow of the bright lights that hung from the ceiling. Emmy ducked her head and took her place next to Ambrose, the empty space on the bench accommodating the way she suddenly felt—small enough to disappear.

Bobby wasn’t hard to spot, and at first Emmy did her best not to look his way, instead focusing on the Spuds and telling Ambrose the names of various players in an attempt to latch onto the more tangible aspects of their increasingly awkward date. He, in turn, remarked on which were younger brothers of people he had played ball with in high school, and pointed down the floor, singling out Bobby.

“That’s their best player,” Ambrose said. “I hear he’s pretty good, for a Catholic.”

“Oh,” Emmy replied. “Yes.”

The game began and people all around Emmy stood up and sat down, yelled and cheered, but she mostly did whatever Ambrose did, the tiny strings of assumed matrimony fastening her to him. The gym was hot and Emmy was thirsty, but she didn’t dare move for fear of Bobby seeing her. He was a magnificent athlete, with speed and grace and fierce competitiveness. He handled the ball more than anyone else on his team, and nearly always passed it to a teammate. Emmy watched his beautiful, graceful body—sweaty and lanky in his red uniform—and began to understand that she had hoped for an unattainable thing. He certainly deserved a better mate in life than a girl whose only evident talent was catching a newborn calf in a barn. He’d find a Bev or a Katie or even a Donna—a girl who knew how to wear stylish clothes and throw fancy dinner parties. That wasn’t at all what Emmy had been designed for, and the list of her deficits was almost too long to consider. The sum total would never be enough to fit in his world. She had glimpsed at it, and that would have to be enough.

As the game wore on, she slowly began to tune out the loud demands of city society, turning her ear closer to Ambrose and accepting his quiet words during halftime, when he talked about many things: how many children he wanted to have—five; how soon he wanted to have them—right away; where they would go to school—here in Moorhead, as he had; how he planned on becoming a hugely successful farmer like Paul Howell and move his family into town. It was this last part that turned Emmy’s head as the two A squad teams dribbled back out onto the floor. His dreams were bigger than she’d known, and with the idea of a solid future once again in mind, she placed her hand in his. Calmed, she gazed out at the players and instantly found Bobby. This time he saw her, too, and a large, lovely grin spread across his face as a ball struck him in the chest, uncaught.

Emmy turned to Ambrose and saw him staring past her, at Bobby. “I think I’ve seen enough basketball for one night,” she said, unable to bear another moment of the pining that wouldn’t stop bubbling under her resolve to see things through with Ambrose. She desperately needed to put Bobby, and everything he stood for, out of her sight.

Ambrose squeezed her hand and led her out of the gym, to her coat, and down the sidewalk, wordlessly shepherding her to the truck. If he suspected anything, she couldn’t tell, nor would she deny it if he asked. He didn’t.

They drove east out of Moorhead on the road that had so often led her to the familiar surroundings of home and church. As they left the city limits he reached over and drew Emmy toward him. She went.

“Maybe we’ll have enough boys to create our own team,” he said, pressing her closer.

She didn’t know where they were going and didn’t care. Emmy needed to move forward, and if Ambrose wanted to drive east, then east it would be. He hummed along to Conway Twitty on the radio, some tune about a man being in love with a woman who isn’t in love with him, the country strains of it sounding like any other drive out of Moorhead in her father’s car. Twitty’s aching voice repeated the plea for God to answer his prayers and one day the girl will care, but he knows, he knows it’s only make-believe. Emmy stole a glance at Ambrose, who sang the last few words out loud.

Emmy cleared her throat, searching for something to say. “Well,” she ventured. “Girls are nice, too.”

“Then five girls!” he confirmed. “As long as they’re as pretty as you.”

Emmy smiled, unused to the directness of his compliment. “Do you really want to live in town?” she asked, crossing her fingers inside of a pocket.

“I want more than that.” He turned the truck onto a gravel road that eventually winnowed down to a two-track prairie lane that would soon be sprouting grass through its center and wild pink roses along the sides. “I’ve become involved in the Citizens’ Council,” he said with an air of already improved status. “Curtis thinks that I have what it takes to become mayor of Moorhead someday, but we’ll start with the local township elections next fall.”

“Mayor?” Emmy said, surprised by the mention of Mr. Davidson’s first name and the familiarity that Ambrose attached to its use. She’d somehow assumed that the odd man had moved on, out of their lives, and back to Indiana. “What a thought!”

The muddy road had frozen with nightfall, and the truck bounced hard on the cracking puddles and ruts. Emmy felt a little sick, but whether it was from the jolts or the idea of something physical about to happen between the two of them, she couldn’t be sure. In the middle of this empty little road to nowhere Ambrose parked the truck and switched off the engine. The music stopped and Emmy’s ears rang in the silence following the cacophony of the gym. Underneath it all she could just barely hear her own heart beating.

“It’s become clear to me that things are going in the wrong direction in the world,” he said, his voice lower than usual and oddly authoritative. “The council meetings have shed a lot of light on what’s wrong with this country, and I aim to be part of what sets it straight again.”