Circled Heart (40 page)

“Yes, you are,” I protested vehemently. “Look at Cox’s.”

“You know why I started Cox’s? Because I wanted to get as far with you as I could, so I thought to myself, what can I do to get Johanna Swan’s attention? And Cox’s was born just like that. There wasn’t a noble goal anywhere in sight.”

“So what? You know all I care about are actions and results,” I retorted and took a little time to clarify which actions I was particularly interested in at the moment.

“I liked holding you like this when you were ill,” he went on softly a while later. “I liked being able to comfort you when no one else could. I liked how you called for me when you were frightened. I’ve never been that important to anyone before. I like it when you leap to my defense. No one’s ever done that before either. Just the opposite, in fact. I like the way you run at life full tilt, Johanna. In a way I can’t quite grasp, I seem to come alive with you. Without you nothing has meaning or joy. There. Does that help you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”

For a fleeting moment I recalled Allen Goldwyn’s grief-contorted face before I answered Drew’s question in a way he would understand. He is not a man for ambiguity.

Much later, after words that only Drew and I need to know, I found myself in a deliciously precarious position on the sofa. I had placed both my palms up against his chest and said breathlessly, “I’m all right with this whatever you answer, but you never did accept my proposal, and I’d just like to know—for curiosity’s sake—if you plan to make an honest woman of me afterwards.”

My words stopped him cold. He pulled away and looked down at me, handsome but flushed and decidedly preoccupied, tie gone and shirt open, his hair ruffled because I’d just spent considerable time running my hands through it, hazel eyes slightly glazed, breaths coming as short and shallow as mine. I watched the reckless, primitive emotion fade from his eyes to be replaced by a more sedate and rueful expression, and then with a sigh he disentangled himself and stood up.

“You, Miss Swan, are already the most honest woman I know. Yes, I accept your proposal.” He began to button his shirt.

I stood, too, talking as I tried to rearrange my skirts. “Marriage, you mean? Or some other arrangement?”

“Marriage, Johanna. What else would I dare offer the daughter of missionaries?”

“I‘m not going to change, Drew,” I warned, suddenly struck by the enormity of the words we’d just exchanged. “I’m still going to work at the Anchorage and walk in suffrage demonstrations and bully people to get what I want. If that matters to you, you should say something now because if you don’t, you’ve got me for life.”

Drew put both hands on my shoulders and pulled me close. “Promises, promises,” he whispered before he found the hollow of my throat. “Work and demonstrate and bully all you want, my love. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

Like a French poem is Life; being only

Perfect in structure

When with the masculine rhymes mingled

The feminine are.

Epilogue, 1938

With my usual self-absorption and because I was young and in love, I thought my marriage concluded the story. I scribbled down the details of 1912 and tucked the telling away in an old hatbox. I’ll read it again when I’m old and gray, I thought, and moved on with my life. Of course, with years between then and now, I realize our wedding was a beginning and not an ending at all. Theo, our youngest son, is at an age of curiosity, fourteen and one to pester both Drew and me with questions about life, so I recently pulled out the manuscript I wrote twenty-five years ago and reread it over several evenings.

During that time Drew periodically stopped to read over my shoulder. Sometimes he read in silence, remembering, as I did, the joy and the grief of that time. Other times, he dropped a kiss lightly on the back of my neck and whispered something into my ear I will not repeat but that warms me in a way that has not changed from our wedding night. In all respects, Drew Gallagher was a man of pleasant surprises from the start.

The morning after accepting my marriage proposal, Drew appeared at the front door of the house on Hill Street, smiled at me as one casual acquaintance to another, and asked to see Grandmother.

“Why?” I asked, following him into the parlor.

“Johanna, my business is with your grandmother.”

“If you plan to ask her for my hand in marriage, you needn’t bother. In two weeks I’ll be twenty-four years old. I can decide what to do with my own hand.”

“So I noticed last night,” he commented and in spite of my best intentions, I blushed like a schoolgirl, which I could tell delighted him. He had pity on me, though, and continued, “I’m going to do everything properly if it kills both of us. Besides, what can it hurt? It may be an outdated custom to you, but it’s still respectful, and the gesture will please your grandmother.”

“One of the reasons I love you,” I said over my shoulder as I left to tell Grandmother of Drew’s presence, “is that you are right more often than I am. I can’t say that about many other men.”

Grandmother was both unsurprised and approving. What she actually said, according to Drew, was, “That’s very courteous of you, Mr. Gallagher, and for the record, you have my blessing. I knew the two of you would suit from the first moment I met you, so I feel some vindication. But even if I loathed you, we both know that if Johanna wants to marry you, neither your wishes nor mine hold any weight in the matter whatsoever.”

Drew came downstairs and immediately bent on one knee in front of me.

“Get up right now,” I ordered, horrified. “You don’t have to do that.”

“Yes, I do. You told me I did.”

“Did I?” I stopped, arrested midthought with remembering. “Well, I was wrong. That’s not important. The other part, though—”

“The part about covering you with kisses, you mean?”

“Exactly. Now that part is important.”

Sometime later, after comfortably picking up where we’d left off the night before, Drew set me away from him, started to speak, cleared his throat because his voice had gone husky, and reached into an inside pocket for a small black velvet box. The ring it contained was gloriously beautiful, its large center diamond stone surrounded by a circle of amber, all in a setting of gold. Spectacular.

“I love it, but it’s too expensive, Drew. Is it right to spend this kind of money when there are so many needy people?” I didn’t take the ring off, however, despite my pang of conscience, just kept staring at it on my finger, mesmerized by the radiant depth of color.

“Yes, it is right, my love. Very right. But knowing your love of barter, I contacted a man this morning to begin work on the second phase of the Cox Experiment. Another building exactly like the first. Will you let that be a fair trade for the ring?”

I blinked back tears (apparently not completely recovered yet, I thought in self-defense) and murmured, “Yes. That seems equitable. Thank you.”

He grinned at my tone of concession, brushed a tear from my cheek with his thumb, and asked, “May we set a wedding date now? Tomorrow would be fine with me or this afternoon if we could arrange it. With spring around the corner, the nights are getting shorter. We’re losing valuable time.”

Tears gone, I smiled and promised, “We’ll have to wait a little longer than a day but don’t despair. I’ll make it up to you.” With my natural predilection to skip any wordy parts and get straight to the action, Drew would be the first to concede that I kept my promise.

The lake returned Jennie to us the first Sunday in May, her remains snagged on an old pier along the northern coast and only recognizable by her long, fair hair and a few tattered remains of her ice-blue velvet dress. The news of her body’s recovery was meaningless to Aunt Kitty, who lived out her years in a state of delusion, telling anyone who would listen that her daughter was marrying into the Boston Milfords, turning down Jennie’s bed every night, and setting a place for her at the table. My Uncle Hal played his part in the charade, loved Aunt Kitty until the day she died and even after, always believing it was his fault she didn’t love him in return, always blaming himself for her disappointment and sad life, forever carrying the burden of a debt he did not know how to repay. Uncle Hal’s gone now, that good and faithful man. I miss him. Peter and Crea named their first son after him and with a natural willingness to please, Harry Rourke McIntyre turned out to be as good-natured and affectionate as both his father and his grandfather. I think the boy and his sisters were a joy and comfort to Uncle Hal during his last years. Certainly I saw him laugh more in their presence than during any other time of his life I could recall.

I married Andrew Gallagher June 21, 1913, in a small ceremony in our parlor on Hill Street. Because we were a family in mourning, the ceremony and the guest list were modest. It was not I, after all, who was expected to wed that year. I chose a plain wedding dress of deep cream edged in delicate brown lace so I could also wear the amber earrings Drew gave me for Christmas. To match your eyes and your mouth, he told me, and I wore the earrings that day as a promise of everything I willingly gave him. He did not miss the message.

In his way of always keeping me just a little off balance, Drew announced that he had found the perfect sermon text for the wedding and asked if I thought the officiating minister would be offended by the suggestion. “Song of Solomon, chapter eight, verse seven.” He paused, then hastily added, “If you agree, Johanna. It is your wedding, too, of course.”

“Thank you for that concession, but that’s not why I was taken aback. I had no idea you studied the Scriptures.”

“I didn’t, but I’m marrying the daughter of missionaries so I’m sure that will have to change”

“What is Song of Solomon, chapter eight, verse seven?”

When he quoted the passage, my heart gave a twist and I saw a sudden, jumbled procession of faces in my mind’s eye: Douglas Gallagher was there, and Jennie and Allen, Aunt Kitty and Uncle Hal, my parents, my little brother Teddy, and my grandparents. All of them, in body or in spirit, would be with us on our wedding day.

“Does it suit you?” Drew asked gently.

I blinked back tears to respond, “Yes. No wonder I love you.”

Song of Songs, chapter eight, verse seven: Many waters cannot quench love.

I worried that my black eye wouldn’t fade before the ceremony, but fortunately I was able to cover the residual discoloration with face powder. Drew was in better shape because the scrape on his cheek gave him the look of a roguish Caribbean pirate. Still, we were a rough looking pair on our wedding day.

I had headed off for New York City to join the largest suffrage parade ever planned, scheduled for the tenth of May. As I traveled on the eastbound train, someone wordlessly sat down beside me. When I turned to greet my new seat partner, there sat my beloved smiling at me.

“I thought you had business that couldn’t wait,” I said, taking a brusque tone because as always I was stirred by his proximity, one reaction that has not changed one little bit all these years later.

“Why should you get to have all the fun?” He picked up my gloved hand and kissed the back of it. “Besides, I have some sympathy for the cause. Do you think only women believe in equality and justice?” I didn’t answer, just snuggled my shoulder closer to his and sat, content. In an odd sort of contradiction, I am always content when I’m with Drew, even when we argue or when he encourages me to slow down and think things through and I am hell-bent for action and will not listen. Even then he satisfies me. Especially then.

The march down Fifth Avenue began peacefully, thousands of women and by newspaper accounts almost five hundred men besides, until some of the hooting observers on the sidelines became hostile and then violent. One rough man leaped out in front of me and when I moved to push past him, he twirled me around. His rude handling of me made me lose my temper. I reached a hand to brush him off and he apparently thought I meant him some harm, never mind that he was at least eight inches taller and a hundred pounds heavier than I. He swung his arms forward, hit me squarely in the eye, and knocked me down—an accident, I believe now, but all Drew needed to tear into the man like an avenging and furious tornado. By then our entire side of the street was engaged in a shameful but invigorating melee and the police elbowed their way through, breaking up altercations, and arresting anyone suspicious, which—incredibly—included Drew and me. We sat in a paddy wagon on our way to the police station, both of us trying to nurse the other until almost simultaneously and without warning we began to laugh, one of those wonderfully cathartic and exhausting laughs that makes a person cry and ends in edgy hiccups, just a tenuous moment away from starting up all over again. We spent the night in a jail cell with other suffrage supporters and some of their roughest protesters all locked together in common misery. In the morning, released and out in the street, I gave Drew a critical look.

“How do you always manage to look so darned presentable? You were in a knock-down fight and just spent the night in a crowded and repulsive holding cell, yet you look like a man on his way to the opera. I on the other hand—” I looked down at my torn skirt and tried ineffectively to smooth down my hair “—am a mess. Look at me.”

Drew put both hands on my shoulders. “I am looking at you and you aren’t a mess. You are a beautiful sight. Every moment with you is such an adventure, Johanna! You’re the only woman who can make me feel completely alive.” He laughed out loud, then kissed me passionately right there in the middle of the sidewalk, people excusing themselves around us and more than a few ribald comments made in passing. None of that mattered. In his usual predictably accurate way, our life together has been and is an adventure still.

Grandmother died in the influenza epidemic of 1917, ill one day and literally gone the next, her weakened constitution unable to fight off the deadly illness. Her spirit stayed strong, but her body could not do the same. May grieved her passing even more than I. I was pregnant that year and had awful dreams of losing both Grandmother and the baby to the terrible pandemic of that time, but despite my secret fears, our Richard was born healthy, strong-willed, and vocal. His great-grandmother’s spirit lives on in him, and I don’t believe the proximity of her death and my son’s birth was an accident.

Following the ratification of the nineteenth amendment on August 26, 1920, I cast my first vote in a presidential election. My candidate lost, but that was hardly the point. That first time the action itself mattered more than the result. Perhaps women would have had the vote sooner, but The Great War interrupted the suffrage movement and rightly so. Life is about priorities after all. Thousands of young men died in the mud of Europe’s forests and fields, and the vote for women could wait for world peace.

I have to thank women’s suffrage for a more delicate gift besides. Our David was conceived at the Mediterranean villa where our family vacationed following the election, the holiday we had promised each other years before to celebrate the momentous occasion. A warm and loving child from the start, David seemed to reflect the sun and blue waters of his beginning.

In the last year of the war, the papers reported Carl Milford’s death. Apparently he abandoned his heritage of water and ships because he died in air combat as a flying ace over the skies of Germany. Unmarried, the paper said. Perhaps I had wronged Carl. Perhaps he loved Jennie more than I suspected and water became a horror and a reminder to him of what he had lost. Perhaps like Uncle Hal he was at the mercy of a woman unable—for all his heartfelt devotion—to love him in return.

Now I think, as unbelievable as it seems, that a second war threatens world peace, and this war strikes closer to home. Our Theo, fourteen as I write and a boy of energy and adventure, will soon be an age ripe for soldiering. Sometimes at night I think about my sons going off to war and it is almost more than I can bear. I turn and pull myself against Drew so I can hear the sound of his heartbeat in my ear, the same comforting sound I remember as he held my soaked, shivering, and freezing body, the same steady rhythm that still keeps nightmares at bay.

A man of surprises, that Drew Gallagher. He argues with the statement but it is obvious he is a better father than I am a mother. His consistent, calm, good-natured, and loving parenting was a necessary balance to my prosing on passionately about the need for tolerance and justice and personal integrity. I once overheard young David ask his older brother Richard if he thought it was a sin that he didn’t like wax beans since Mother said many people didn’t have enough to eat. I felt an instant and dreadful guilt at the little boy’s troubled question. David, our middle child, the one with the tender conscience and now in divinity school, always took everything to heart, the only one of our three sons as troubled by dreams as his mother.