The Bride's House (43 page)

“I was trying to figure out why you wanted to meet me.” When Joe frowned, she said, “You know, your note.” She reached into her pocket and handed it to him.

Joe glanced at the note and thought a moment. “Some things are easier to put in writing. Are you going?”

“Do you really want me to walk down there by myself?”

“I guess I wasn’t thinking. Asthma’s at the filling station. I’ll pick you up, eight o’clock. Is that okay?”

“I guess so,” Susan said, wishing Joe weren’t so mysterious. She was still thinking this might be a trick. Maybe he was being a jerk, and he and Peggy had cooked up something.

*   *   *

Susan dressed carefully. She put on a sweater set and her best shorts, a little makeup, and at eight, she climbed into Joe’s truck for the drive to the cemetery. To her relief, there were no signs of other vehicles, so it didn’t seem as if this was a game. The gate was locked, and they parked Asthma and walked up the road, Joe carrying a six-pack of Coors. The two sat down on the grass, and he took out a church key and opened two beers, handing one to Susan. “Here’s to us,” he said, tapping his beer against hers. He leaned back against a tombstone and looked up at the sky.

“So what are we doing here?” Susan asked.

Joe gave an embarrassed laugh. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense, I suppose, but it seemed like a good place to talk. Nobody’s ever around at night—except snipes.” He grinned. “I stood up Peggy tonight. She’ll be furious, but I don’t care. You’re the one I care about.”

Susan put her arms around her knees and looked up at the sky. She didn’t understand why they couldn’t talk at her house on the front porch or in the gazebo, but the idea of meeting out there in the starlight seemed romantic. She was happy that Joe wanted to be with her instead of Peggy, and he’d just said he cared about her—whatever that meant. After all, he cared about Pearl and Frank and baby snipes.

“I come out here sometimes when I want to get away from everything. It’s a good place to think. There’s so much I want to do, and what if I’m just some dumb lug with no talent.”

“Don’t say that.” Susan dropped her knees to one side and twisted around to face Joe. “You’re smart and you’ve got compassion and ambition. Mother says so, too. I shouldn’t tell you this, but she wrote Governor Stevenson, recommending you for a job if he gets elected.”

“She really did that?” Joe drained his can of beer and opened another, offering it to Susan, but she shook her head. She’d barely tasted the first one.

She looked away, embarrassed. “I told her to.”

“You did that for me?” Joe was still a moment, then set down the beer can on the gravestone. “You’re really something, you know that?” She leaned against him and tilted her head toward the sky. There was no moon now, only the darkness and the pinpoints of starlight. “Do you know how I feel about you?” Joe asked.

Susan shivered. “No.”

“You’re cold.” She’d left her cardigan in the truck, so Joe leaned forward and took off his jacket, putting it around her shoulders. Susan hoped he’d continue what he’d started to say, and in a moment, he did. “I can talk to you better than anyone. You understand. You’d make a great politician’s wife.”

The words thrilled her, although they were vague, just like at Christmas, and Susan was wary. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“Last winter, I started to tell you, but I was tight as a dollar bill then, and I just sort of let it slip out. I shouldn’t have clammed up afterward like I did, and I’m sorry. I was too embarrassed to even write you, because of the mess I’d made of things. But now, well, I have only a year left of college, and … oh hell, you know what I’m saying.”

Susan was confused. She didn’t dare assume anything. Don’t lead me on again; please ask me to marry you, please, she prayed. “I guess I don’t,” she said.

“I didn’t put it very well.” He stood and swiped at a grass stem, pulling it up by the roots, then breaking off the stem and shredding it. He lifted Susan to her feet. “I really want you, Susan. That day I pulled you out of the tire, I thought we’d killed you, and I was scared to death. When I heard your voice, I decided I was going to marry you. Do you remember that? You didn’t even know who I was.”

“Oh, I knew. I’ve always known who you are, Joe.”

He held her against his chest. “I guess I ought to just say it outright. Will you marry me?” He looked almost as surprised at the words as she did.

Susan felt the wind on the back of her neck, blowing her hair into her face, and she brushed it away as she stared at Joe. She shivered, but not from the cold. She couldn’t feel anything but a warmth like pinpricks of flame under her skin. She was so happy she couldn’t speak.

Joe searched her face in the moonlight and said, “I’d get down on my knees, but it’s sort of rocky here.”

Susan smiled, her face glowing. “Of course I’ll marry you. I’ve been in love with you my whole life.” She looked at him with such tenderness in her heart.

Joe grinned at her and gave a sigh of relief. “That was easier than I thought.” He kissed her again, and holding hands, they sat down in the grass.

“I didn’t know this was why you wanted to meet me here,” Susan said.

“Neither did I.” Joe made a pillow out of his jacket, then gently pushed Susan down until her head was resting on it. “But I think it was a pretty good idea.” He kissed her, and then his hands began to roam over her body. She could feel his mouth on her neck, on her breast. A grass stem poked her back, scratching her. She squirmed a little, thinking there were red ants at the cemetery but not wanting to take her arms from around Joe’s neck. Suddenly, he stopped and sat up. “This isn’t a good idea. We should wait.”

“Wait?” Susan asked.

“Until we’re married. I don’t want to spoil things.”

“But Joe,” Susan protested, thinking he had done this with Peggy. And after all, she had had that night with Peter. “It’s not wrong.”

“You’re not a tramp, and I’m not going to treat you like one. You’re worth waiting for.” He put his arms around her and held her tight and they sat in the moonlight for a long time, Susan thinking she, too, could wait.

*   *   *

Joe came by the next night, but not until late. He’d said he would, and Susan had sat in the front parlor in the dark waiting for him, sat on a Victorian love seat, tossing a marble egg from hand to hand, asking herself if Joe really would show up. What if this was another New Year’s, and in the daylight, he’d come to his senses? But he had proposed, had really asked her to marry him, not just hinted at it. And she’d said yes. Still, the waiting nearly killed her.

She got up and looked through the leaded-glass window in the dining room door into the dark street, then went into the study and sat down at Charlie’s desk—Pearl’s now—playing with an ore sample that Pearl used as a paperweight. She wandered back into the parlor and stood rearranging lilac branches, although she could barely see the blooms in the light that seeped into the room from a street lamp. It didn’t matter, because Susan had never been much at arranging flowers. She bent and put her face to them, taking in the scent.

And then Joe was at the door. She hadn’t heard him come up onto the porch, and she gave a sigh of relief. He knocked instead of using the bell twist, which gave out a screeching, metallic sound that would have made her jump.

“What are you doing in the dark?” he asked.

“Thinking about you.”

“About last night.”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been thinking about it, too. You’re haven’t changed your mind, have you?”

She shook her head, then asked, suddenly apprehensive, “Have you?”

“Not on your life.” He led her over to the love seat, and they sat down. “Is your mom still away?”

“She’ll be back tomorrow.”

He put his arm around her and kissed her, then moved to the love seat across from her. “I guess I ought to ask your dad for your hand? You don’t think he’d turn me down, do you?”

“I doubt it. And if he does, we’ll elope, like my parents did. Father’s coming out in August. We could announce our engagement then and get married in June, after you graduate.”

“I don’t want to wait that long. I was thinking more like Christmas.”

Susan hadn’t turned on the lights, and she stared at Joe in the dark. She’d always planned to be married in June, with the reception outside, around the gazebo. But she thought of the Christmas she had just spent in the Bride’s House, of the evergreens and poinsettias and candles, and she put the palms of her hands together, her fingers at her lips, and decided that would be the most beautiful wedding she could imagine. “Perfect. Oh, Joe, that would be perfect.”

“It’s not too soon?”

“Are you crazy? I don’t even want to wait
that
long.”

He reached for her hands and squeezed them. “Me, neither.” Then he turned serious. “About last night. I mean…” He glanced down at their hands. “It’s not that I don’t want to, you know, sex. I just think we ought to wait. We have a whole lifetime. I guess I’m just old-fashioned or something.” He grinned. “I think girls are the ones who are supposed to give this speech.”

“But you and Peggy…” Susan couldn’t finish. She didn’t understand why he would have sex with Peggy and not her.

“Peggy and I what?”

“You know.”

“Had sex? Are you crazy? I’ve never cared about Peggy that way. Peggy’s the kind of girl who’d try to trap a guy. I’m not that dumb.”

Susan stared at him in the dim light, thinking no, Joe wasn’t that dumb. How could she have been so stupid as to believe Peggy? And then she wondered, If she’d known the truth about Joe and Peggy, would she have tried sooner to stop Peter?

*   *   *

Susan avoided Peggy after that, because she did not want to tell the girl of the engagement. Except for telling Pearl, who was overjoyed at the news and promised Susan could have her grandmother’s wedding ring, Susan and Joe agreed to keep their engagement quiet until Frank arrived and Joe could go through the formality of seeking his approval. Then they would announce the engagement at a party before school started. In the meantime, Susan and her mother would go to Denver to pick silver and china patterns, to engage a caterer and musicians and arrange for flowers. “We’ll go to Daniels & Fisher to see about a gown. My own wedding dress came from there, although it was twenty years old when I got married in it,” Pearl said.

Susan did not want Peggy clouding her happiness, so she did not seek her out, although she also felt sorry for the girl. After all, from the time she was a girl, Peggy, too, had dreamed about marrying Joe, and she would be hurt and disappointed, angry at the news.

Eventually, the two young women did run into each other, however. “You’ve been avoiding me,” Peggy said. Then before Susan could deny it, Peggy added, “Well, I don’t blame you. That was sort of a dirty trick.”

“What are you talking about?”

Peggy gave a mean-spirited laugh. “You know what I’m talking about.”

“No, I don’t.” Susan was uncomfortable and said, “I have to get going.”

“Hey, I’m sorry. I know Joe doesn’t care about you, but you were so snotty. I thought you’d realize what a jerk he could be when he didn’t show up.”

Susan was confused. “I have no idea what you’re saying.”

“Sure you do. The note. I wrote it. I put it on your car.”

“What note?”

“Hey, don’t be embarrassed. I said I was sorry.” Peggy didn’t look the least bit sorry. “How long did you wait at the cemetery, anyway?”

Susan looked at the other girl, stunned. No wonder Joe had been surprised when she’d shown him the note. He hadn’t written it at all, just pretended he had when he was confronted with it. But it had turned out well. He had proposed because of that note. If they hadn’t gone to the cemetery that evening, Joe might not have proposed at all, might have put it off or changed his mind. So Susan ought to be grateful to Peggy. “You wrote it?” she asked.

Peggy laughed again. “You probably waited there in the graveyard half the night for him, then had to walk home by yourself. I bet you haven’t spoken to him since.”

“You wrote the note?”

“Are you deaf?” Peggy looked smug. “I told you I did.”

“How odd. Joe never told me.” Susan mulled something over for a moment, then could not keep herself from saying, “Then I have to thank you. Joe proposed that night. We’re getting married in December.”

*   *   *

In August, Susan came home from hiking to find Pearl waiting in the parlor, a telegram in her hand. “This came for you,” she said.

Telegrams were hardly a novelty. Pearl received them all the time. “I opened it by mistake. I’d thought it was for me,” Pearl said. She stood and handed the folded yellow paper to Susan, who read it and looked up, stricken.

“Peter’s dead,” Susan said, as if Pearl hadn’t already read the telegram. “Oh, Mother.” She began to sob, and Pearl put her arms around her daughter.

“I’m so sorry.”

“He was such a nice guy.”

“Yes, he was.”

“He wanted to get married, but I couldn’t.”

Susan sat down on the love seat and Pearl went into the kitchen for a glass of water, handing it to her daughter then sitting down next to her. “You can’t be blamed for not loving him. You are marrying someone you really love. I’m sure Peter understood.”