Daughters of Eve (4 page)

"The face doesn't matter," Ann said.

"Of course, it doesn't. You caught the man's spirit in the arch of the body. The features of the face would have added nothing."

She had understood it so quickly, and yet Dave's reaction to the same drawing had been bewilderment. "When are you going to finish it?" he had asked. To Dave "a really good painting" was "The Valley of the Good Shepherd," a brightly colored representation of Christ in flowing robes surrounded by a collection of adoring sheep, which his mother had removed from an outdated calendar and taped to her kitchen wall.

"Miss Stark kept my sketches," Ann said again now, and left it at that.

"So what else did you do today?" Dave asked her. The question was more than ritual. His unfeigned interest in the details of her days was to Ann one of his most endearing qualities. "You had a club meeting this afternoon, didn't you? Did your minutes go over all right?"

"Well, nobody booed." Ann paused. "Something odd happened after the initiation ceremony, Dave. Tammy ran out of the room."

"Why did she do that?"

"I don't know. I didn't see it happen. I was busy welcoming the new members, but Kelly saw her from across the room and tried to go after her. By the time she'd gotten out to the hall, Tammy was gone."

"Maybe she wasn't feeling well," Dave said reasonably.

"It wasn't that. We phoned her from Kelly's house as soon as the meeting was over. She was home by then, and she really sounded funny. She said, 'Something's going to go awfully wrong there this semester, and I don't want any part of it.' She's going to drop out of Daughters of Eve!"

"I didn't think she could," Dave said. "I thought you told me nobody ever did that. Once you're in you're in for life."

"Well, Tammy says she's dropping, and once she makes her mind up about something, she usually, goes through with it. I just can't understand it. We have so much fun in that group, and all our friends are there. She'll miss out on everything. It'll wreck her senior year."

"Do you know what she meant about something's 'going wrong there'?" Dave asked, a note of worry in his voice. "People don't just grab ideas like that out of the sky."

"Tammy does," Ann said with a nervous little laugh. "She gets these premonitions, and, weird as it sounds, sometimes they turn out to be right. I remember one time..." She let the sentence fall away, incompleted.

"One time, what?"

"We were sitting at a booth down at Foster's," Ann said slowly, "Tammy and Kelly and I, and this guy came in and ordered a Coke. We had none of us ever seen him before, and Tammy told us something about him—and it turned out to be true"

"Maybe she was just remembering something she'd heard somewhere."

"No—that wasn't it."

It had happened over a year ago. It was the end of the summer, and the man had been red-faced and sweating, with his short blond hair plastered to his head. He was dressed in boots and overalls, and was evidently a local farmer, come into town on an errand during the noon hour. He had stood at the counter, swigging the Coke in great thirsty gulps, the muscles in his arms and shoulders standing out in corded lumps beneath the damp material of his cotton shirt.

"Why would anybody wear a long-sleeved shirt on a day like this?" Kelly had wondered.

"To keep from getting burned when he's out in the fields, I guess." Ann had glanced across at Tammy. "Hey, what's with you? You're staring at that guy as though you know him."

"I feel as though I do," Tammy had told her. "He's going to be—important—I think—to one of us."

"You've got to be kidding!" Kelly had exclaimed, and Ann had said, jokingly, "To you, Tam?"

"No," Tammy had said. "To you."

They had all laughed then. The mere idea of fastidious, artistic Ann Whitten becoming involved with a hayseed was ridiculous. Even Tammy had not truly believed it. She had told Ann later, "I get these feelings, but I can't always trust them. That was one time when I thought I was freaking out."

Yet she had been right. The impossible had happened. Here Ann sat now with her head on the "hayseed's" shoulder, as contented as a cricket who had waited all day to settle upon the comfort of the hearth.

One of the living-room lights went off and a moment later the front door opened.

"Annie," Ann's mother said through the screen, "did Dave ever get here?"

"I'm here, Mrs. Whitten," Dave said. "The chores ran late tonight. We're just sitting here hashing over the day. Want to come and join us?"

"No, thanks," Mrs. Whitten said. "Dad and I are going to turn in early. I just wanted to check that you had got here and Ann wasn't sitting out there by herself worrying over you. Remember, it's a school night."

"I'll remember," Dave said. "I'll be leaving in a few minutes. My day begins pretty early too, you know."

"'Night, Mom," Ann said. "See you in the morning."

"All right, dear. Good night."

The door closed, and Ann felt Dave's arm tighten around her.

"Your folks sure are nice about it," he said softly. "About my being over here so much, I mean."

"They like you," Ann said. "You know that. Dad really respects you, taking over the running of the farm the way you did after your father died. He says that with all you hear today about the irresponsibility of youth, it's great to see a young man who's not afraid of hard work."

"You know, on the way over here I was remembering how we met. At first I didn't think you'd go out with me," Dave said. "When Holly introduced us at her brother's wedding, you gave me a long, funny look that made me feel like I must have my suit coat buttoned wrong or corn stuck between my teeth or something. I thought, oh, boy, here goes nothing; this girl is used to dudes."

"It wasn't that," Ann said. "I just thought I'd seen you before someplace. Then you smiled, and I thought, nobody has eyes that blue—that absolute, clear, pure blue like pictures you see of the Mediterranean."

"I almost didn't go to the wedding. I hadn't seen Gary Underwood since high school."

"I almost didn't go either. It was such a pretty day, I was going to go sketching down by Pointer's Bridge. Then Holly called and asked if I'd help pour the punch at the reception, and there I was, stuck." Ann laughed. "Do you call that fate or what?"

"Fate for you, maybe; luck for me. For this guy named David Brewer, it was the luckiest day in the world."

He bent his head to kiss her, and it was a long kiss, not a light one as the other lass had been. Dave's arms locked around her and pulled her tight against his chest, and Ann could feel the pounding of his heart so clear and strong that it might have been her own. Her mouth "went soft beneath his, and her eyes closed, and she let herself be drawn into the lass as she had, on that first day, been drawn into the blue of his eyes.

When it was over, he didn't release her, but kept holding her tightly against him. He was breathing hard, like a man who had come running a long way.

"I love you," he whispered. "You know that, Annie? I love you so darned much I could almost die."

"I know," Ann whispered back. "I love you too."

"Enough to marry me?"

She was silent a moment. Then she said quietly, "I think I do."

"You mean that, honey?" He loosened his hold and drew away from her enough so that he could look down into her face. His own was lost in shadows, but she knew it so well that she could see it in the darkness.

"Don't tell me that unless you mean it, Ann. I couldn't stand it if I thought you were saying yes, and then it turned out I was wrong."

"I love you," Ann said. "I'm sure of that. It's just—marriage... is such a big step. I need to get used to thinking about it."

"Well, so do I when it comes to that. We've both of us got plenty of time for thinking. You won't graduate till next May."

"A June wedding?" A series of pictures flashed before her. Modesta Community Church with its windows wide and the scent of lilacs pouring through them with the June sunshine. Tammy and Kelly in identical pink bridesmaid's dresses. Holly Underwood at the organ. Herself in the white satin wedding gown that had hung for twenty years in a plastic bag in the back of her mother's closet, waiting for a second use. Her father tall beside her, and at the aisle's end, Dave, huge and handsome in his Sunday suit, his blue eyes shining with pride and happiness as he watched her come slowly toward him.

June was a time for weddings, for new beginnings. In May the life she had known for twelve long years would be over. No longer would her days be regulated by a schedule of classes, club meetings, and school-centered social activities. Her friends who were fellow seniors would be zooming off in all directions. Tammy would be leaving to follow her sister Marnie to college, and Kelly to attend secretarial school in Adrian, while Fran would undoubtedly pick up a scholarship at the state science fair and be off and flying. Life would be opening wide for all of them, and for herself—what? A waitressing job at Brummell's Cafe on Main Street? A position as salesclerk at Williams Five and Dime? There had been a time when she had dreamed of attending art school somewhere, but her father's forced retirement because of a heart condition had made that financially impossible.

June—a time of beginnings—and why not marriage? Wasn't that what her mother had done the June she was eighteen? Her parents would be pleased. Her mother had always hoped that Ann would marry somebody from Modesta and settle close by, and Dave's farm would provide a good life, a clean, wholesome, solid fife—and whom would she ever want to marry if not Dave?

"It's a real nice house," he was saying now. "And there's even that little side bedroom where you could set up your painting stuff."

"Have my own little studio?" She was touched by his having thought of such a thing.

"Why not? There's plenty of room. And you'll have my mom to talk to when I'm out in the fields, or you could pack us up a picnic and come down and meet me at noontime, and we could sit by the creek and eat, and you could do your sketching."

"Like we did this summer." It had been a beautiful summer of blue skies and sunshine, and even the heat had not mattered, because the creek that ran along the edge of the fields at the south end of Dave's land had been clear and cold and the grassy banks had been dappled with shade from the willows.

"And at night we'd have dinner together," Ann said dreamily. "In the winter we could eat by the fireplace and listen to the wind whistling around the comers of the house, and it wouldn't matter because we'd be inside together, and when the evening was over neither of us would have to drive home."

"We'd be home," Dave said. "So, is it 'yes,' my gentle Annie?"

It was his own pet name for her, and the tenderness with which he used it touched her deeply.

"It's 'yes,'" Ann said, and at that moment, in some far corner of her mind, she heard the voice of Tammy Carncross raised in warning.

Something is going to go awfully wrong this semester! it cried.

With Dave's arms warm around her, Ann called back silently, For somebody else maybe, Tammy, but not for me!

CHAPTER 4

It was Friday, the sixth day of October.

"I hate to say no to you, Ruthie, but I have to," Mrs. Grange said firmly. "I know you're disappointed and I'm sorry, but what you're asking is impossible at this particular time in our lives."

"It's not impossible! Other girls get to do what they want to after school!" Ruth glared across the table at her mother. "Why do I have to be different from everybody else?"

Immediately she wished she had not asked that. It was the question for which her parents always waited, and both of them had their mouths open with the answer before the last words had reached their ears. Miserably she glanced around the table for support, knowing as she did so that there would be none. Eric was shoveling food into his mouth as though he had not eaten for weeks, and Peter was off somewhere in outer space. Only Niles was paying attention to the conversation, and he was leaning back in his chair, grinning. Niles delighted in arguments.

"Because your family—" both her parents began simultaneously.

"I'm sorry," her mother said, and her father continued, "Because your family is not like 'everybody else's.' Four kids are a luxury these days, daughter, and don't you forget it. By today's standards, ours is a big family, and it takes two wage earners to keep it going."

And whose fault is it we have this "luxurious family"? Ruthie wanted to yell at them. Nobody forced you to keep on having babies! With an effort that almost choked her she swallowed the accusation and struggled to bring her anger under control. From experience she knew that shouting would get her nowhere, and her only hope was to reach them with calm reason.

"You don't understand how important this is," she said carefully. "It's not just any old club I've been asked to belong to, it's Daughters of Eve, a national organization. There are chapters all over the country, not just here in Modesta. Wherever I go for the rest of my life, I'll have sisters."

"What are you looking for, Sis, quantity or quality?" Niles asked puckishly. "If that tub of lard you brought home from school with you this afternoon is an example of the 'daughters,' I'd say Mother Eve should have stopped with her original two sons."