Cinderfella (2 page)

“I can't believe you're finally home,” he said as he set Charmaine on her feet.

It sounded so permanent,
finally home,
but she wouldn't argue with him now and ruin this homecoming. Her mother's hug was gentler, but no less loving.

After Ruth was introduced and arrangements were made for the luggage to be delivered, they all walked from the depot to the house. Charmaine was positioned comfortably and closely between her parents.

“You're too durn skinny,” her father said as he slipped his arm over her shoulder.

“She is not,” her mother said with a despairing sigh. “She's perfectly lovely and looks very grown up.”

Charmaine didn't correct her father with the admission that she was far from skinny, nor did she tell her mother that at twenty-one she
was
grown up. She was too busy looking past her parents to the bustling town that was familiar and at the same time very unfamiliar. There were two mercantiles
and
a feed store, and with customers coming and going they all seemed to flourish. The bank had doubled in size, and there was a restaurant right next door. The post office now had its own building, leaving the funeral parlor the lone occupant of a building they had once shared.

The boarding house, the single three-story building in town, had expanded and was freshly painted. Right next door to the boarding house was a small pharmacy, and there was a sign in the window that advertised ice cream. At the end of the street stood the newly built stone schoolhouse, a building that had recently replaced the log cabin where the children of Salley Creek had attended school for thirty years.

There were lots of people out and about, most of them strangers to Charmaine. Some of the faces that turned her way were vaguely familiar, but names eluded her. Eight years hadn't seemed like such a long time until this very moment.

Ruth was evidently unimpressed. She kept her eyes on the boardwalk and followed silently.

Memories flooded Charmaine as she walked down the boardwalk, sandwiched between her parents who were chattering happily. The move from the original ranch cabin to the big house at the edge of town, when she was six years old. That crotchety old schoolmaster, Mr. Warren. Her first heartbreak at the age of ten, when Zachary Middleton had told her he didn't play with
girls.
She could almost taste the lemon drops her father had always bought for her when he purchased his tobacco from the mercantile.

She remembered Ash Coleman laughing at her when she declared she was going to marry him one day, and how well she recalled watching him ride away with his father, laughing still, a man at sixteen while she was still a puny and unformed twelve.

He'd called her Runt, after hearing Jeanette use that dreaded nickname once as they left church. It had always been the bane of Charmaine's existence that she wasn't tall and willowy like her sisters. She'd always been short, and though she'd been a late bloomer, her breasts and hips had rounded quickly. Even now, she wished for a leaner and taller frame, a more austere silhouette. There were some people who simply refused to take you seriously if you were short, and rounded in the wrong places.

A squeal that was uncannily familiar after all these years made Charmaine stop in her tracks. She whirled around in time to catch the woman who hurled herself forward.

“I can't believe you're really here!” Eula said as she squeezed once and then stepped back, her hands resting comfortably on Charmaine's arms.

The voice hadn't changed, but Charmaine was sure she wouldn't have recognized Eula if she'd passed her on a Boston street. Not only was the dark-haired woman considerably taller than she'd been at thirteen, but she'd put on several pounds with each of the two children she'd given birth to, a fact she'd complained about in her frequent letters. Charmaine, to her own dismay, had barely grown an inch in height since leaving Salley Creek. She stood a mere five-feet-one-inch tall, if she stretched out as much as possible. She had to look up into Eula's face.

“Neither can I. Can you come home with me now? Talk to me while I settle in? We have so much to catch up on.” A visit with Eula would also postpone the inevitable confrontation with her father.

Eula shook her head quickly. “I can't. This is a busy time of the day for us. The only reason Winston allowed me to run out here and greet you is so I can give a message to Mrs. Haley.”

Eula straightened her spine and turned to face Charmaine's mother. “Winston is certain he can have those supplies for you in two weeks, and Mrs. O'Neal is going to help me with the masks.”

“Two weeks?” Maureen Haley repeated, obviously disappointed.

“Masks?” Charmaine looked to her mother for an answer.

“Two weeks, ma'am, and that's paying extra freight costs for the materials that are coming in from San Francisco.”

Maureen Haley had always been unfailingly practical, and she was calm now. “That doesn't leave us much time for preparation, does it? Oh well, we'll just have the party in three weeks.”

“Party?”

Eula turned her smiling face back to Charmaine. “Why, everyone's so excited they're about to bust. Just think of it, a masked ball right here in Salley Creek. I've already started working on my gown.”

“I'm supposed to return to Boston in two weeks.” Charmaine directed this statement to her mother, who continued to smile serenely.

“Another week or two won't make all that much difference, now will it?” she replied.

“Not a bit,” Stuart Haley thundered.

Charmaine rolled her eyes at her father's hearty and much too jolly interruption. Fortunately, no one saw but Eula, and her only reaction was a slight lifting of dark eyebrows.

“There's nothing in Boston,” he declared with finality, “that won't still be there in a month or two.”

Charmaine sighed. Had her two weeks already turned into a month or two?

Eula hurried back to the mercantile and to her husband, Winston, and Charmaine was physically turned about by her father's big hands on her shoulders.

 

The air that drifted through the open window was cool, almost cold, but Ash didn't make a move to close it. Fall was a busy time of the year for him, though he always enjoyed it while it lasted. Winter was close behind, and that meant bouts of snow and ice, and wind that was truly cold.

In the moonlight, the farm was peaceful. The barnyard was quiet, the fields beyond were perfection in the soft light of the moon. In the house all was quiet as well. No one stirred but him. He was the restless one, the one who roamed the house or stood at an open window long after dark.

He heard it, a soft peal that carried on the wind. Midnight, struck on the Salley Creek clock that old Randall Salley had erected before his death. His gift to the town, he said, a monster of a clock that sounded each hour of the day. Ash couldn't always hear the chimes from miles away, but when the air and the wind were right, the sound carried to his window like a soft and plaintive cry in the night.

The peal of midnight reminded him that another day had begun, another day that promised to be just like the one that had passed.

He closed the window softly.

 

She'd been home five days, and already she was beginning to feel like the child her parents treated her as. They refused to accept that she was no longer thirteen, that she had thoughts and plans of her own.

There wasn't a single ally in this house, not even the one person who shared her predicament. Ruth was quite unhappy with the change of plans. An extended visit to Salley Creek, Kansas, was not on her agenda, but like Charmaine she saw no way out. Instead of joining forces and commiserating, Ruth preferred to take her frustration out on Charmaine.

These evening meals were becoming a tedious routine. Her father went on and on about how wonderfully the ranch was doing, and how great some man or another was, and how splendid it was to have his baby home.

After the first three nights, she'd quit trying to tell him that she was
not
his baby any more.

She wanted to go home. Home to Boston. It wasn't just her father who had her distressed. Eula, her oldest and dearest friend, was so changed. She had become everything Charmaine had preached against in the past two years. How could poor Eula be truly happy? She was a virtual slave to her husband's whims, working in his store, keeping his house, bearing and raising his children. And yet she seemed to be happy, poor thing.

Charmaine had at first had such hope for her other friend, Delia. She was a schoolteacher, a dedicated professional, and an independent woman . . . but a brief visit had quickly revealed that Delia had one desire in life. To find a man, get married, and settle down into the same drudgery Eula groveled in.

It had been Eula who'd shared the news about Ash Coleman, remembering that Charmaine had once been smitten. John Coleman, Ash's father, had passed on last year, and Ash was sharing the ranch with his stepmother — a woman Charmaine had never met or heard about — and two stepbrothers.

It occurred to Charmaine, then and now, that she really should stop by the Coleman farm to pay her respects to Ash and perhaps meet the rest of the family. That would be, certainly, the civilized and proper thing to do.

Her father was going on again, as he speared a large chunk of beef, about the plans for the masked ball. He really seemed to think that if he threw a party she would stay. Goodness, he didn't understand her at all.

“Stuart, you should see the dress we're making for Charmaine,” her mother said between delicate bites of beef. “It's the most gorgeous creation, snow-white with just a touch of peach in the bodice and skirt ornamentation. Seed pearls are sewn into the neckline and into a floral motif on the full skirt.”

Her father winked at her and smiled widely. “Sounds like a wedding dress to me.”

Charmaine took her napkin from her lap and placed it, slowly and gently, on the table by her plate. She couldn't go on this way, not for better than another two weeks. Her father had to understand who she was and what she wanted. Now was as good a time as any to get this over with.

“I've made a very important decision, recently.” Charmaine's voice was low and composed, but the calm was all an act. Her heart pounded, and her palms began to sweat. “I do hope you'll understand and support me.” She straightened her spine and took a deep breath before continuing. “I'll probably never marry.”

“What?” her father leaned forward, head tilted to bring one ear closer to this unthinkable statement.

If she explained, surely he would understand. “Women are meant for more than breeding and submission to a man's pleasure, and what other reasons —”

“Charmaine Haley!” Her father shot to his feet, and his face turned an alarming shade of red.

“Now, now.” Maureen Haley patted the hand her husband had placed on the table and now leaned against. “I'm sure Charmaine didn't mean what she said.” A censuring look that was surely meant to convey an order to agree shot from Maureen to her daughter.

“I
did
mean what I said,” Charmaine insisted gently. “There's an entire world outside Salley Creek, and it's growing and changing every day. There's more to life for an educated woman than a sorry existence of emotional servitude and physical subservience.”

Stuart Haley narrowed his eyes as if he couldn't believe that this was his daughter he was looking at. “Howard filled your head with this nonsense, didn't he, that puny little pompous ass.”

“Now, Stuart —”

Charmaine interrupted her mother. “Howard is an intelligent and well-respected physician, your son-in-law, and the father of your granddaughter. I think it's inappropriate for you to call him a pompous ass.”

“What has he done to you?” With a sigh, her father took his seat.

If only she could make him see that what she was doing was important, necessary, and
right,
she could enjoy her visit here and then return home to Boston with a clear conscience. And perhaps in the future they could avoid these awkward moments. “I've assisted him in several seminars, distributed educational manuals, and spoken with those women who were uncomfortable discussing personal matters with a man, even one who is a physician.”

“Personal matters?” he asked dully, as if he didn't really want to know. “Personal matters such as what?”

“Marital continence, for one.” She tried not to blush, but this was, after all, her father. “Contraception, if the more desirable self-restraint is impossible. The unhealthy influence of the bicycle and romantic novels on young women, for another. Then there's the physical detriment of the corset, and the —”

“Marital continence?” he repeated in a monotone. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“Of course. Healthy marriages don't depend on a physical relationship.” She forgot, for a moment, that these were her parents. “Once a married couple has all the children they desire, abstinence is the healthiest course of action for everyone involved. The myth that the marital embrace is necessary —”

“Maureen, make her stop.”

Charmaine bit her lower lip as she studied her father's unnaturally pale face. “I didn't mean to embarrass you, Daddy.”

His shock gave way to anger. She could see it, as the color came back to his face all at once, his jaw hardened, and his gray eyes glinted like steel. She could see it, as the hands that had been flat on the tablecloth slowly balled into fists.

“Boston!” he spat. “I never should have sent you there, and you're not going back!”

“Daddy!” Charmaine shot to her feet as her father had. They stood at opposite ends of the long table and faced one another defiantly. “You can't —”

“This discussion is over,” he said as he turned away. “I think I'll skip dessert tonight, Maureen. I've lost my appetite.”