He was quiet for a time; then he said quietly, “I just have a bad feeling about going ahead without him. Ida does, too.”
Ida. Why doesn’t Ida just go peddle her fish? Charlotte lifted the small metal disk she used to secure the fabric, and as she expected, the cut wedge of charmeuse poured off the table like a white waterfall. She didn’t reach to pick it up but instead pressed the cold steel into her palm. Marrying McNamara would transform her. She would be a California society woman. She would have her dog again. She would have curtains that matched the sofa and she would have a whole wall full of books, more books than she had ever seen in one place at one time. With McNamara, she wasn’t clumsy and catty but clever and desirable. She became what he saw, and what he saw was the person she’d always wanted to be. He did that to her, made true the mirror that all her life had been distorted.
She dropped her eyes. “You’re not sure anymore,” she murmured. “It’s just an excuse.”
He drew up the long triangle of silk and laid it back on the table. He shook his head slowly and tried to pull her into the long-limbed net of himself. She twisted away but he held on until she stopped, and pulled her to him, and this time she let her hips rest against his inner thighs, her chest against his chest, and it gave her a certain kind of reassuring pleasure to note the immediate effect she had on him. She looked over his shoulders and, strangely, without alarm, saw Lavinia Gulden staring through the window at them. Charlotte did something that surprised her: she gave the girl a wink and a small, knowing smile before pushing McNamara away from her.
When she glanced again at the window, Lavinia was gone.
“How about December ninth?” he said, his voice low and husky now. “It’s just two more weeks. Believe me, it’s harder for me to wait than you.”
“And what if he doesn’t come back? Would we postpone again?”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
The smell that lingered from their embrace was from the Wrigley’s fruit gum he carried in his pockets. “He didn’t like giving up and coming here,” Charlotte said. “He would have stuck it out if Neva hadn’t been sick. Probably until we were all half starved.”
“But he didn’t say what he was doing?”
“He’s checking the farm and he had something official to do with the bank.” She let her eyes settle deeply on his. “I just think that it’s going to be hard for him not to extend his visit, and he’s not like a lot of people—he doesn’t like big parties and big social events.” This wasn’t 100 percent true, so she added something that was. “When he married my mother, he said the wedding party could be as large as she wanted as long as it wasn’t more than he could count on his toes.”
“Well,” he said, “where your parents live doesn’t affect whether I’m going to marry you.”
She noticed that he’d said “parents,” that he assumed, as anyone would, that two parents would live in the same place.
There were footsteps outside, and the sound of scraping. “I’d better go,” he said.
“But if he doesn’t return, we won’t postpone again?”
“No,” he said. “We won’t.”
“Honor bright?”
He made a small laugh. “Honor bright.”
As he neared the door, something occurred to her. “How am I going to tell the girls?” she asked. This, the smallest problem, now seemed the most galling.
“What girls?”
“The girls in my class. The ones who are making the centerpieces and all.”
“Can’t we just save them?”
“They’re autumn-colored. Autumn and Christmas aren’t the same color.”
“They are in California,” he said, and pushed through the heavy steel door with a dapper doff of his hat to the cluster of girls waiting to come in.
“He looked happy, Miss Price,” one of them called out to Charlotte.
“He should,” she laughed. “I just granted him a two-week reprieve.”
They groaned as one. It was endearing, really, the way they took her wedding planning on as their own. “So my father can have time to get back,” Charlotte said, then, glancing at the sprawling cloth, “and to give me time to finish this vexsome dress.”
She laughed, and the girls did, too.
Later on, she did the job her mother gave her, and she wrote:
Dear Dad,
Jim thinks it would be better if you were here for the wedding and Clare, too. We’re going to have it on December 9th instead so please hurry back. Clare’s using his leg to get all kinds of attention. Poor kid is pretty bad off, though.
She wondered what would happen if she said Dr. Quigley sure seemed to be spending a lot of time at the lunch counter, but instead she just said,
We all wish you’d hurry back, and me especially.
Love always,
Charlotte
91
There was a Bitler Feed Store calendar on the kitchen wall, but no clocks. One freezing night Ansel stood in front of the calendar and figured out, more or less, what day it was. He did it while Aldine was asleep because they tried not to talk about Clare, Charlotte’s wedding, Ellie, or Neva. They tried not to talk about anything outside the little cocoonish world they’d made for themselves. Since the telegram delivery he’d listened so keenly for cars that even in his sleep he would think he was hearing the popping whir of tires and would bolt up in bed, listening until Aldine would stir and say, “What?” and he would say, “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
Night was also when he walked to the end of the drive and pulled on the stiff metal lip of the mailbox, feeling around in the hollow box for letters. He’d done it four times and his hand had found nothing.
Counting up as best he could, he came to Thursday, November 23. He’d left Fallbrook on the fourth, so he and Aldine had been together a little over two weeks and no one had come to accuse them of stealing the car. Perhaps the baby would come that night or in the morning and he could take the doctor’s car back to Emporia and explain. This was the concern above all others, the fear of being arrested and branded a thief. The other problems were there, though. They waited in the corner like Ellie’s radio.
If today was Thanksgiving, Ellie’s birthday was two days ago and Charlotte’s wedding was tomorrow. He ran his finger along the tacky edge of the counter, and then let go. He was tired now, more tired than he let Aldine see. Sometimes when she thought he was working in the barn he lay down to sleep, hoping that sleep would make him stronger. He would have been glad to lie down in the house instead, to pull her close beside him and listen to her talk if she felt like talking, to let the elliptical vowels and tongue-licked r’s lull him into believing he could live in the mere sound of her.