Junior couldn’t find this swing ready-made and he had to commission one. It cost a fortune. He didn’t tell Linnie how much. She asked, because money was an issue; the down payment on the house had just about ruined them. But he said, “What difference does it make? There’s not a chance on this earth I would live in a place with a white lace swing out front.”
It arrived raw, as he’d specified, so that it could be finished to the shade he envisioned. He had Eugene, his best painter, see to that. Another of his men spliced the ropes to the heavy brass hardware, a fellow from the Eastern Shore who knew how such things were done. (And who whistled when he saw the brass, but Junior had his own private hoard and it was not his fault there was a war on.) When the swing was hung, finally—the grain of the wood shining through the varnish, the white ropes silky and silent—he felt supremely satisfied. For once, something he’d dreamed of had turned out exactly as he had planned.
Up to this point, Linnie Mae had barely visited the house. She just didn’t seem as excited about it as Junior was. He couldn’t understand that. Most women would be jumping up and down! But she had all these quibbles: too expensive, too hoity-toity, too far from her girlfriends. Well, she would come around. He wasn’t going to waste his breath. But once the swing was hung he was eager for her to see it, and the next Sunday morning he suggested taking her and the kids to the house in the truck after they got back from church. He didn’t mention the swing because he wanted it to kind of dawn on her. He just pointed out that since it was only a couple of weeks till moving day, maybe she’d like to carry over a few of those boxes she’d been packing. Linnie said, “Oh, all right.” But after church she started dragging her heels. She said why didn’t they eat dinner first, and when he told her they could eat after they got back she said, “Well, I’ll need to change out of my good clothes, at least.”
“What do you want to do that for?” he asked. “Go like you are.” He hadn’t brought it up yet, but he was thinking that after they’d moved in, Linnie should give more thought to how she dressed. She dressed like the women back home dressed. And she sewed most of her clothes herself, as well as the children’s. There was something thick-waisted and bunchy, he had noticed, about everything that his children wore.
But Linnie said, “I am not lugging dusty old boxes in my best outfit.” So he had to wait for her to change and to put the kids in their play clothes. He himself kept his Sunday suit on, though. Until now their future neighbors, if they ever peeked out their windows (and he would bet they did), would have seen him only in overalls, and he wanted to show his better side to them.
In the truck, Merrick sat between Junior and Linnie while Redcliffe perched on Linnie’s lap. Junior chose the prettiest streets to drive down, so as to show them off to Linnie. It was April and everything was in bloom, the azaleas and the redbud and the rhododendron, and when they reached the Brills’ house—the Whitshanks’ house!—he pointed out the white dogwood. “Maybe when we’re moved in you could plant yourself some roses,” he told Linnie, but she said, “I can’t grow roses in that yard! It’s nothing but shade.” He held his tongue. He parked down front, although with all they had to unload it would have made more sense to park in back, and he got out of the truck and waited for her to lift the children out, meanwhile staring up at the house and trying to see it through her eyes. She had to love it. It was a house that said “Welcome,” that said “Family,” that said “Solid people live here.” But Linnie was heading toward the rear of the truck where the boxes were. “Forget about those,” Junior told her. “We’ll see to them in a minute. I want you to come on up and get to know your new house.”
He set a hand on the small of her back to guide her. Merrick took his other hand and walked next to him, and Redcliffe toddled behind with his homemade wooden tractor rattling after him on a string. Linnie said, “Oh, look, they left behind their porch furniture.”
“I told you they were doing that,” he said.
“Did they charge you for it?”
“Nope. Said I could have it for free.”
“Well, that was nice.”
He wasn’t going to point out the swing. He was going to wait for her to notice it.
There was a moment when he wondered if she would notice—she could be very heedless, sometimes—but then she came to a stop, and he stopped too and watched her taking it in. “Oh,” she said, “that swing’s real pretty, Junior.”
“You like it?”
“I can see why you would favor it over wrought iron.”
He slid his hand from the small of her back to cup her waist, and he pulled her closer. “It’s a sight more comfortable, I’ll tell you that,” he said.
“What color you going to paint it?”
“What?”
“Could we paint it blue?”