Ansel heard himself say, “A father couldn’t ask for more than that,” though he wanted, somehow, to ask for more. He said, “What happened to your first wife?”
“I don’t know. She and her fellow made for New Mexico. That’s all I know. You notice I don’t give her name. I haven’t spoken it since the day she left.” He straightened his back and pushed his glass half an inch away. He was ready to be done, but Ansel took another sip of honeyed lemon juice to coat his throat.
“Do you remember a girl named Olive Teagarten?” he asked.
McNamara said he did.
“Why did she stop working for you?”
“With child, as I recall.” His voice had changed. This was his business voice. “Unmarried and with child.”
Ansel nodded. “But wouldn’t that be the time to give her a hand instead of turning her out?”
“It might seem like it, yes, but then you no longer have the line that can’t be crossed.” His eyes scanned the room before returning to Ansel. “You see, Ansel, you have to think of your other employees of this type. You need them to know there are lines that can’t be crossed.”
“Of this type?” Ansel said but before McNamara could reply, Ellie was pushing through the door carrying a pitcher and asking Mr. McNamara if he would care for more lemonade.
“No, I don’t believe so, Ellie,” he said, scraping back his chair and standing and smiling a broad smile. “But I’m happy to inform you that your husband has granted me my fond ambition of marrying your daughter.”
Ellie let out a small murmur of pleasure, and in the next moment Neva had poured through the door and, hearing the news, said, “When will it be and what will I wear?”
McNamara went to one knee to speak to her eye to eye. “You’ll wear something fetching, we’ll see to that, and, as for when it will be, I suggested tomorrow”—he winked up at Ellie—“but Charlotte said she needs time. She wants to sew her own gown.” He stood again and looked toward Ansel and Ellie. “We’d like to plan on the Friday after Thanksgiving, if that meets with your approval.”
Ansel, in rising from his chair, heard the slightest crinkle of Gilbert’s letter in his pocket. “That seems just fine,” he said.
“Can we invite Miss McKenna to the wedding, Daddy?” Neva asked, slipping her hand into Ansel’s.
“No, sugar,” he said, something he hadn’t called her in years.
“That was my teacher in Kansas,” Neva told McNamara. She extended her arm. “She gave me these bracelets made out of Bakelite.”
“She sounds splendid,” McNamara said, and without missing a beat or stiffening in expression, Ellie told Neva not to get ahead of herself—they had plenty of time to think about the guest list. She turned then to McNamara and in the rosiness of her cheeks Ansel saw that this marriage, too, like the move to California, like the acquisition of the café, was all part of the wall she’d built to protect the life she wanted, and which didn’t require him. “Won’t you stay for dinner?” she said. “It’s meat loaf, grilled onions, and mashed potatoes.”
But the man had gotten what he’d come for. “I’ll have to take a rain check on that, Ellie,” he said, setting his cap on his head. “Just let Charlotte know I’ll stop by around seven.” He smiled at Ansel. “We’re going to go see a movie. The new Buster Keaton is playing.”
73
They’d gone instead to see Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus, which was playing in Escondido. It was a thirty-minute drive, and they passed the time talking about the wedding. Charlotte liked thinking of the dresses and the decorations and the food. Mr. McNamara’s interest was in the guest list and even more especially the honeymoon, but Charlotte didn’t mind this. She’d learned that there would be a good deal of compromise in this marriage, but as far as she could see, she was getting the better end of the bargain. She turned her knees toward him on the seat and said, “I never dreamed I’d come to California and get a job and be married in two seconds flat.”
Mr. McNamara gave her a wide sidelong smile. “And I never dreamed that a Kansas dust storm would blow a goddess all the way to Fallbrook.” He winked. “Buttons please.”
She laughed and said, “Two and that’s all.”
With two buttons undone, she felt like a model for one of those racy true-crime magazines. It surprised her how easy (and secretly pleasing) it was to do such things for him, but it was every bit as easy and satisfying to deny him the larger favors he wanted. She stretched and yawned in a way that he liked. He’d begun buying her underthings, and the brassieres he plumped for were so flimsy she often thought she’d bust right out of them. “Eyes on the road, Mister,” she said, “or you’ll get us both dead.”
74
The next day, Ellie told Ansel she’d made an appointment for him with Dr. Quigley. “I heard you coughing half the night,” she said. “We’re going to have a wedding. You can’t cough all the way up the aisle when you’re giving Charlotte away.”
Ansel had been coughing during the night. And when he wasn’t coughing, he was trying to find his bearings now that the world had shifted. Aldine was pregnant. That was the fantastic refrain. Aldine was pregnant. It seemed so unlikely. And yet not impossible. He’d read and reread Gilbert’s letter. The image of the Teagarten girl kept coming to him unbidden, the hut she lived in, the dead baby wrapped in her arms, the strange look in her eyes. Until opening Gilbert’s letter, staying in Fallbrook had seemed the right thing—it meant honoring his family, which they deserved, and it meant bringing no further dishonor to Aldine, which she deserved, too—but Gilbert’s letter changed everything. If the baby was his, he needed to be there to help, and if it wasn’t—well, she might still need his help.
“What time?” Ansel asked.
“Four o’clock,” Ellie said. “Right after work.”