A Fireproof Home for the Bride (17 page)

Emmy smoothed her coat on her lap, unsure of what to make of this newly voiced ambition, rooted as it seemed to be in the dinner table conversations she’d had so much misfortune trying to engage. She felt unsettled by her inclusion in his plans, seeing as how she hadn’t had much time to consider being a farmwife, much less a town wife. That she might someday be required to stand next to Ambrose and agree with his views in a very public way was dumbfounding.

“I know you share my love of country,” he continued excitedly, sounding less like himself—and more like his father—with every word he spoke. “But things are changing and we need to prepare, or our way of life will be destroyed. Black Monday could happen here, if we allow the liberals to take away our Bibles and our right to choose the way we want to live.” He reached past Emmy and opened the utility box, drawing from it a folded newspaper and turning on the dome light. Emmy squinted in the harsh glare, surprised to see the words
The Citizens’ Council
instead of the customary
The Fargo Forum.

“Look,” he said, pointing to a headline that read “Forced Immigration Seen as Leftist Scheme.” “It says right here, ‘Forced immigration and forced integration are twins in the struggle to destroy American Sovereignty.’”

“Where did you get this?” she asked, quickly scanning a few other headlines, all of them seeming to align on the same spectrum of distrust and fear of communism, the NAACP, and in particular, President Eisenhower. She pushed away the paper.

“It’s what everyone should be reading,” he said, a glow in his eyes matching the fire of his words. “Instead of that filth written in the
Forum.
I tell you, all of our newspapers and radio and television just fill people’s heads with ideas that are foreign, corrupt in morals. The compass needs to be reset before the commies take over every corner of government, forcing us to abandon our Bibles and our traditional patriotic way of life.” Ambrose turned off the light and stuck the paper under his seat.

“I thought it was the liberals,” Emmy said, unable to make sense out of the concepts he was rapidly declaiming with such fervor.

“They’re one and the same, Emmaline.” He rolled down the window a crack and flicked his cigarette through the small space.

“I don’t see how segregation can possibly matter here,” she said as he rolled it back up and in the next movement brought his right arm around Emmy’s waist. “We’re all the same.”

“That’s just it.” He pulled her closer. “It says in the paper that an entire suburb of Chicago has been settled by southern Negroes, and parts of Saint Paul are rapidly filling. It’s only a matter of time before we’re seeing the same thing in Fargo Moorhead.” The disquieting quality of his words had sent her to shivering, and he held her tighter. “Look, I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with Negroes, but we have enough problems with outsiders in general, not to mention most immigrants are Catholics. We don’t need more.”

“What’s wrong with Catholics?” she asked. “There were plenty in that gym and they didn’t seem so bad to me.”

Ambrose clucked his tongue, a sound that raised the hair on the back of Emmy’s neck in frustration. “It’s simple,” he said, squeezing her arm. “They listen to the pope, not the president. They’re un-American.”

“You can’t be serious,” she said, pulling away slightly. “I know plenty of Catholics and they are as American as the rest of us.”

He drew her tighter. “On the face of it, maybe,” he said. “But over time, through school boards and city councils, they have tried to change good Christian policies that undermine the will of the people, and they run that school over in Fargo for immigrant children, in
Spanish
.” He laid a heavy hand on her upper thigh. “It’s all connected, Emmy, with the eventual overthrow of the government. We won’t sit by and watch what our ancestors built for us be taken away by a heathen population.”

“I guess I haven’t given it enough thought,” Emmy said, frustrated by her own lack of knowledge.

“Well, I have, plenty,” he said excitedly. “It’s what the council is dedicated to—defending peace, good order, and domestic tranquility in our community, and the preservation of our state’s rights. You’ll see. Everything is going to be just fine, with men like Curtis and my father leading the way.”

Emmy sat still in Ambrose’s arms, sensing his face coming ever closer in a kiss, moving his mouth on hers, even as she felt like pulling away and telling him No, I won’t see, because it doesn’t make sense. She broke the embrace and shifted toward her side of the cab, all of her steadfast efforts to convince herself that she could do this thing—marry this man, be his wife, and follow his ways—skittering away like tailless mice, uncatchable in their flight.

“It’s gotten cold,” she said, hoping he would be satisfied with the one kiss and take her home for the night. Instead he turned the truck and the heat on, took off his cardigan, and drew it around her. He sat back for a moment before reaching under the seat, having made a decision of some kind. He brought up a small bottle and unscrewed the top, offering it to her first.

“Schnapps,” he said. “Peppermint. You can’t tell our parents.” She looked at the bottle, stunned that he could so easily reconcile one moment’s speech on morality with the next moment’s abandonment of a piece of their own religion’s code—and top it off with a vowed lie. With a shaking hand, she took the minty-smelling liquor from him and sipped a small amount, hoping for the kind of reckless high she’d had in Howie’s car to chase away the creeping dread. She coughed against the sickly liquid and handed it back. He drank down half without stopping, handed it back to her. They passed it back and forth in silence, pretending that they weren’t going to hell as the heat blew out at Emmy and warmed her on the outside as the booze warmed her on the inside. He switched the truck off, and the silence of the prairie night filled the cab.

“I didn’t know you drank,” she said, feeling the prickle of the alcohol hot on her face.

Ambrose looked at her. “There’s a lot you don’t know.” He laid his thick hand on her neck and rubbed, his calloused touch scratching at her delicate skin. Too hot. She wasn’t inclined toward more kissing, even as her body started to tell her it wasn’t such a bad idea. She removed his hand and awkwardly scooted away, remembering how much sweeter Bobby’s cab had smelled.

“Please,” she said. “I’d like to go home.” The attempt to deny her baser instincts felt sluggish in her tingling mouth.

“Shhh,” he said. “Come here.”

She slid toward him, and he was suddenly at her, kissing her hard on the mouth and wrapping his arms around her body. She fell across the seat as he pushed her down onto the length of it and stretched out on top of her, the points of his boots tapping against his door. She couldn’t fully inhale with the pressure, yet her body automatically reacted and she arched up at his kiss, meeting him full on the lips, leading him back down when he pulled away in surprise. This could be her strength, she thought as they continued, the pull and push of necking developing a rhythm she controlled. There was none of the tender feeling of place she had felt with Bobby, the sweet seesaw of drawing together and pulling apart. This was a mismatch of throttled desire, and the more keenly he responded, the less she wanted to go further. She broke the clumsily mashing kiss, staring up at the starlit sky through the window as his mouth sucked away at her neck. Suddenly repulsed, she pressed him away with both hands.

“No more,” she whispered, wanting to be clear about her change of course. He closed his eyes, and roughly pushed his right hand up her shirt as the left one became entangled in her hair. His hand was on top of her brassiere, then it was under it, next it was unbuttoning her pants at the side of her waist, and in a rush of panic, she began to fight every advance, pushing to make him stop, begging for it to end.

“I know your game,” he said, gathering her wrists tightly into one hand in front of her and lying heavily on them as his other hand went to work. Her pants were down in seconds despite her attempt to raise her knees in defense, and it was only the moment that he moved his restraining fist to gain a better position that she was able to free her right hand and slap him hard across the face. He grabbed the offending hand and twisted it away from her, ignoring the rest of her pleas. The shock of inevitability silenced her and she began to sink back in time—past Howie’s face leering at her on the curb, past the dulcet moment of staring into Bobby’s eyes, past the sounds of her bed and her friend Bev getting this very thing done to her, but with the kind of joy and appetite that were painfully missing in this moment. From far away she felt his thighs pin her legs apart and she saw him long ago in the broken cornfield, bracing the doe for evisceration. The piercing pain that followed elicited a curdling growl from her throat, and she found her right arm free enough to pull back and land squarely on his slackened jaw. In return, a sharp sting of pain sliced at her cheek.

“How dare you,” she hissed. She wasn’t scared now; she was furious. Ambrose held still for a moment as the ugly fire slowly died out of his eyes, and then he sat up and slumped behind the wheel, silently adjusting his trousers.

Trembling, Emmy collected her torn clothing and dressed herself in the hot, stifling odor of the cab. A storm began to brew in her that threatened her reason. Leave this place, it said. Open the door and walk away. The buttons on her shirt were half missing, her pants were damp in spots, and her bra was impossible to refasten. Get out before he does it again.

“I want to go…” she started, but he muffled her shaky words by loudly turning over the engine and reversing the truck up the road the way they had come. The radio blared to life, and as she listened to Johnny Cash sing about a teenage beauty queen, Emmy gathered her unasked-for mementos: buttons, ribbon, glove. She smoothed her hair and refastened her ponytail with a shaking hand, pulling her sweater over her torn blouse and buttoning it up as best she could. All the while, she watched his face in the flickering lights of town as they drove into Moorhead and past the familiar landmarks. His jaw moved as though he were chewing on something inedible, his cheeks drained of color from the effort. Only when they pulled up in front of the small house did she break her stare.

“This won’t happen again,” she said, her voice hushed but hard.

He smoothed his left hand across the dashboard as he prepared to offer whatever defense his silence had conjured during the drive. “Emmy…”

She threw open the door, her body quick to leave the space before her mind was forced to consider more words. “Good night, Ambrose.”

*   *   *

“Emmy, is that you?” her mother called from the darkened living room as Emmy slipped into the house. “Come in here and say good night.”

The floor sloped down under Emmy’s left foot as she tried to take a step in Karin’s direction. Holding her sweater more tightly with one hand as she smoothed her hair with the other, Emmy peeked around the corner to see her mother knitting by a dim light. Karin looked up and smiled.

“How was it?” she asked, setting down the yarn.

Emmy moved her hand over her tender cheek and said, “He hit me,” in a bewildered tone. She waited for her mother to rise and ask her more, to prod Emmy through the entire chain of events with outrage and shifting plans, until the ultimate solution of not marrying could be arrived at without Emmy’s instigation.

“How did you provoke him?” Karin asked, holding still in her chair.

Emmy took a dizzy step forward. “I don’t know,” she answered. She misjudged the distance and nearly tripped. But
hadn’t
she made him think she was willing, and hadn’t she indeed struck first? How could she begin to explain the sequence of events when she didn’t fully understand what pieces of it were due to her own desires? She had drunk the schnapps, returned the kiss—and yet also slapped his face and begged him to stop.

“Go lie down,” Karin said, picking up her knitting. “I’m sure he’ll forgive you.”

Slowly turning her aching body, Emmy made her way up the stairs and into the bathroom. In the harsh light over the medicine cabinet, she took a disassociated inventory: pale green bruise high on her cheek, dark blue smudge on her neck—how had that happened?—light red mark on one wrist, a darker one on the other where they had been crossed and held. She gasped and, feeling a sharp pain in her stomach, sat uneasily on the edge of the tub, peeling off her jeans and standing naked before the sink, the white of her slim thighs cool against the porcelain as she tried to scrub the bloody evidence out of her clothing, the murky water swirling around the drain until it finally ran clear. Though they had been groped, her breasts sloped in their resolute fashion, full and round above her soft belly. Emmy put a hand on her navel, knowing that what had happened could lead to a more complex situation than she was prepared to handle. Had her mother moved up the wedding date with this sort of event in mind? A tap at the door startled her, and she grabbed her nightdress off its hook on the back of the door before responding.

“Are you better, Emmaline?” her mother asked through the thin wood. The knob began to turn and Emmy slipped the edge of her foot against the door. She closed her eyes and wished for the assurance that telling her mother everything would somehow bring forth any other outcome than more advice on how to make amends.

“Yes,” Emmy said instead, clearing her throat of the stoppered emotion enough to sound almost normal.

“This is what happens,” Karin said in a faraway voice. “It’s how it is.”

“What?” Emmy squeaked. Beyond all reason and nearing complete collapse, she collected her clothes from the floor and opened the door, where her mother stood, both hands wrapped around her own throat, as though saying the few words had left it aching.

“Dad?” Emmy asked, fearing what she might hear next.

“No, not him,” Karin said slowly, her eyes slanting to her bedroom door, a hint of gratitude underneath the sadness. “Now go to bed.”

Emmy bundled past her mother down the hall and to her room, shoving the dual disappointments to the back of her mind. Mercifully, Birdie was out at the farm, and in the moonlit hours that stretched before her, Emmy systematically sewed the buttons on her shirt, fixed the zipper on her pants where it had been torn from its seam, and mended her brassiere, working until all evidence of her shameful evening was meticulously erased by repair and her eyes smarted from the chore. When she finally rose and turned out the light, the sound of a revving engine drew her to the window, where she watched, horrified, as the old brown pickup truck crawled down the street until it disappeared from view.