Bitter Sweet (65 page)

Suzanne flinched, poked a thumb into her mouth and began sucking, still asleep.

‘You don’t have to wake her’, Maggie,’ Eric whispered, content to stand and watch. For the rest of his life, just stand and watch.

‘It’s all right. She’s been napping for two hours already.’

She stroked the baby’s fine hair. ‘Suza-aaane...’ she singsonged softly.

Suzanne opened her eyes, shut them again and rubbed her nose with one fist.

me vy sine/vtaggte anct lnc watched her come awake, making faces, rolling up like an armadillo, and finally coming up on all fours like a shaky cub bear, peering at the strange man standing beside the crib with her mother.

‘Oops, there she is. Hi, sugar.’ Maggie reached into the crib, lifted the sleepy baby out and perched her on her arm.

Suzanne immediately curled and rubbed and burrowed. She was dressed in something pink and green and her backside was puffy. One of her socks had slipped down, revealing a small, pointed heel. Maggie tugged it up while Suzanne finished her rooting, ‘Look who’s here, Suzanne. It’s your daddy.’

The baby looked up at Maggie with her lower eyelashes clinging to the soft folds of skin beneath, then shifted her regard to the stranger again, still a little shaky on Maggie’s arm. As she stared, steadying herself with one hand against Maggie’s chest, her thumb kept crooking and straightening against Maggie’s T-shirt.

“Hi, Suzanne,’ Eric said quietly.

She remained as unblinking as a fascinated cat, until Maggie bounced her a time or two on her arm and rested her face against Suzanne’s downy head. ‘This is your daddy come to say hello.’

As one mesmerized, Eric reached and took his child, lifting her to eye level where she hung in the air and stared at his black, shiny visor.

‘My goodness, you’re a little bit of a thing after all. You don’t weigh as much as the salmon we catch off the Mary Deare.

Maggie hughed while one happiness seemed to crowd in upon another.

‘And you’re no bigger around either.’ He brought the baby close and touched his dark face to her very fair one, and caught the infant scent of her powdered skin and soft clothing. He set her on his arm, braced her back with one long hand and rested his lips upon her silky hair. His eyes closed. His throat seemed to do the same.

‘I thought I’d never have this,’ Eric whispered, his voice gravelly with emotion.

‘I know, darling... I know.’

‘Thank you for her.’

Maggie put her arms around both of them, laid her forehead against Suzanne’s back and Eric’s hand while they shared the sacred moment.

‘She’s so perfect.’

As if to prove otherwise, Suzanne chose that moment to complain, pushing away from Eric and reaching for her mother. He relinquished her but hovered close as Maggie changed her diaper and pulled up her stockings once again and put on soft white shoes. Afterward, they lay on the bed, one on each side of the baby, watching her untie her shoes and blow spit bubbles and grow fascinated with her father’s shirt buttons. Sometimes they studied the baby, and sometimes each other. Often they reached across the baby to touch one another’s faces, hair, arms. Then they would lie still, with contentment dulling the need to move at all.

In time Eric took Maggie’s hand.

‘Would you do something for me?’ he asked softly.

‘Anyhing. I would do anything foryou-Severson.’

‘Would you go for a ride with me? You and Suzanne?’

‘We’d love it.’

They walked outside together, Eric carrying Suzanne, Maggie bringing a bottle of apple juice and Suzanne’s favourite blanket - enchanted beings still somewhat awestruck at the grandeur of happiness in its simplest form. A man, a woman, their child. Together as it should be.

The breeze touched the baby’s face and she squinted her CyCS.

A warbler trilled in the arborvitae hedge.

They ambled slower; time was their ally now.

‘You got a new truck,’ Maggie remarked, approaching it.

‘Yup. The old whore finally died.’ He opened the passenger door for her.

She had one foot on the running board before she looked up and saw the blossoms.

‘Oh, Eric.’ She touched her lips.

‘I could have asked you back the in the house, but with all the cherry trees in bloom, I thought we might as well do this right. Get in, Maggie, so we can get to the .best part.’

Smiling, beset once again by the urge to cry, she climbed into Eric Severson’s shiny new truck and gazed around at the cherry blossoms stuck behind the visors and the rearview mirror, jammed behind the backseat until they nearly covered the rear window.

Eric climbed in beside her. ‘What do you think?’ he asked, grinning at her, starting the engine.

“I think I adore you.’

“I adore you, too. I just had to think of a way of telling you so. Hang on to our baby.’

They drove through the Door County springtime, through the blossom-scented air of late afternoon, past sloping orchards rimmed with rock walls and birches shining white against new green grass, past grazing cows and bright-red barns and ditches filled with singing frogs. And carne a last to Easley”s orchard, where he stopped the truck between the billowing cherry trees.

In the quiet after the engine had stilled, he turned and captured her hand on the seat\between them.

Maggie Pearson Stearn, will you marry me? he asked, his cheeks flushed, his eyes steady upon hers.

In the moment before she answered, all the sweet bygones came rushing back, filling her senses - the place, the man, the smell of the orchard around them.

‘Eric Joseph Severson, I would marry, you this very minute if it were possible.’ She leaned across the seat to kiss him, with Suzanne on her knees struggling to reach the blossoms in the ashtray. He lifted his head and they searched each other’s eyes, smiled their ghdness once more before Eric braced up and dug into the left pocket of his tight white jeans.

“I thought about buying you a great big diamond, but this seemed more appropriate.’ He came up with his class ring and took her left hand to slip it on her ring finger, where it still fitted loosely. Holding the hand aloft, she studied it, adorned as it had been twenty-four years before.

‘It looks so familiar there,’ she said, smiling.

‘All except for the blue yarn. I don’t know what happened to that.’

With the beringed hand she touched his face. ‘I don’t know what to say,’ she whispered.

‘Say, “I love you Eric, and I forgive you for all you’ve put me through.”‘

‘I love you, Eric, but there’s nothing to forgive.’

They attempted one more kiss, but Suzanne interrupted, wriggling off her mother’s lap to stand on the seat between them. When she was on two feet she closed one chubby fist around a branch overhead and flailed the air with it, a sharp point of one stick narrowly missing Eric’s eye.

He pulled back - ‘Whoa there, little lady!’ - and planted one hand beneath her diaper, another on her chest and returned her to her mother’s lap. ‘Can’t you see there’s a courtship going on here?’

They were both laughing as he reached for the ignition and headed toward Fish Creek, holding Maggie’s hand.

Chapter 21

They were married five days later in the backyard of Harding House. It was a simple ceremony on a Tuesday evening. The groom wore a grey tuxedo with lilies of the valley in his lapel (from the bed on the north side of the house), the bride wore a pink walking suit and carried a bouquet of apple blossoms (from Easley’s orchard). In attendance were Miss Suzanne Pearson (wearing Polly Flinders and eating Waverly Wafers), Brookie and Gene Kerschner, Mike and Barb Severson, Anna Severson (having forsaken slogans in favour of blue polyester from Scars Roebuck) and Roy Pearson, who walked his daughter down from the front verandah to the yard while from the porch came a scratchy monophonic recording of the Andrews Sisters singing ‘I’ll Be with You in Apple Blossom Time’.

On the fresh spring grass stood an antique parlour table holding a bouquet of pink apple blossoms in a milk-glass vase. Beside the table a judge waited in a black robe, its sleeves filling and emptying as breezes drifted in off the bay.

When the song ended and the wedding party stood before him, the judge said, ‘The bride and groom have requested that I read the poem they’ve chosen for this occasion, it’s of the same vintage as the house, and it’s entitled “Fulfillment”.

‘Lo, I hate opened unto you the Rates of my being And like a tide, you have flowed into me.

The innermost recesses of my spirit are full of you and all the channels of my soul are grown sweet with your presence For you have brought me peace; The peace of great tranquil waters, And the quiet of the summer sea.

Your hands are filled with peace as The noon-tide is filled with light; About your head is bound the eternal Quiet of the stars, and in your heart dwells the calm miracle of twilight.

I am utterly content.

In all my being is no ripple of unrest For I have opened unto you the Wide gates of my being And like a tide, you have flowed into me.’

After the reading, Eric turned to Maggie. She laid her apple blossoms on the table and he took both her hands. In the late, low sun her face appeared golden, her eyes the pale brown of acorns. Her hair was drawn back from her face, and her ears held delicate pink pearls. In that moment she might have been seventeen again, and the branches she’d laid aside were those he’d first picked to express his love. No single act of his life had ever seemed so appropriate as when he spoke his vows.

‘You were my first love, Maggie, and you will be my only love for the rest of our lives. I will respect you, and be faithful to you, and work hard for you and with you. I will be a good father to Suzanne and any other children we might have, and I will do all in my power to make you happy.’ Softly, he ended, ‘I love you, Maggie.’

In the brief silence that followed, Anna wiped her eyes and Brookie fitted her hand into Gene’s. A glint appeared in the corner of Maggie’s eyes, and her lips held a wistful smile.

nc aroppea ner gaze o i:nc s nanas - oroaa, strong fisherman’s hands; looked up into his blue eyes, the first she’d ever loved, blue as blooming chicory; into his dear windburned face that would only grow dearer in the years ahead.

‘I love you, Eric... again.’ The merest smile touched their eyes and disappeared. ‘I will do’all within my power to keep that love as fresh and vibrant as it was when we were seventeen, and as it is today. I will keep our home a place where happiness dwells, and in it I will love our child and you. I will grow old with you. I will be faithful to you. I will be your friend forever. I will wear your name proudly. I love you, Eric Severson.’

Out over
Green Bay
a pair of gulls called, and the sun rested at the end of a long golden path on the water. Maggie and Eric exchanged rings, plain gold bands which seemed to catch the fire from sunset and warm beneath it.

When the exchange was complete, Eric lowered his head and kissed the backs of Maggie’s hands. She did likewise, and they moved to the scroll-footed table, accepted a pen from the judge and signed their names to the wedding certificate. Their signatures were witnessed by Brookie and Mike and the simple ceremony was over less than five minutes after it began.

Eric smiled at Maggie, then at the judge, who extended his hand and a hearty smile. ‘Congratulations, Mr and Mrs Severson. May you have a long and happy life together.’

Eric scooped Maggie into his arms and kissed her.

‘Mrs. Severson, I love you,’ he whispered at her ear.

‘I love you, too.’

The circle around them closed. Brookie was crying as she kissed Maggie’s check and said, ‘Well, it’s about time.’

Gene embraced them each and said, ‘Good luck. You deserve it.’

Mike said, ‘Little brother, I think you got a winner.’

Barbara said, “I couldn’t c Iapptcr. Welcome to the family.’

Anna said, ‘It’s enough to make an old woman cry. At my age, getting a daughter-in-law and a new grandbaby all in one day. Here, take her, Eric, so I can hug Maggie.’ When she’d handed Suzanne to her daddy, Anna told Maggie, cheek-to-cheek, ‘I seen this day coming when you were seventeen years old. I can see you made my boy happy at last, and for that I love you.’ Hugging Eric, she said, ‘I wish your dad was alive to see this day. He always favoured Maggie and I did, too. Congratulations, son.’

Roy
told Maggie, ‘You look pretty as a picture, honey, and I’m awful glad that this all happened.’ Thumping Eric’s back, he said, ‘Well, I finally got me somebody to go fishing with and, by golly, I plan to do it!’

They turned toward the house, everyone happy and chattering as they ambled up the front lawn. Suzanne rode on her daddy’s arm, with her mother pressed close to his side.

In the dining room champagne and cake waited.

Mike proposed a toast. ‘To the happy bride and groom who started on our back porch when they were seventeen. May they be as much in love at ninety as they are today!’

There were gifts, too. From Brookie and Gene a pierced-work tablecloth long enough for the mammoth dining-room table, with ten matching napkins. From Barb and Mike a pair of antique candleholders of etched crystal with six white fluted candles to fill them. Anna brought a grab bag: embroidered dish towels, crocheted doilies, six pints of Eric’s favourite thimbleberryjam and a china tea set that had belonged to Eric’s Grandma Severson. The latter brought tears to Maggie’s eyes and a great big hug for Anna.