The Bride's House (39 page)

The man tried to shake it off. “Watch it. Who do you think you’re talking to?”

“I’m talking to you. You apologize to the lady.”

“It’s okay,” Susan told Peter.

“It’s not my fault if she’s too dumb to get out of the way.” The skier looked down at the hand on his arm.

Susan recognized the man then, a student at DU. She’d sat next to him once at a fraternity exchange. “I’m all right, Peter.” People had turned to stare, and she was embarrassed. She wished he’d brushed it off the way Joe had at New Year’s when the drunk had spilled his drink on her.

“It’s not okay. This punk owes you an apology, and I’m going to make sure you get it.”

“Easy now,” someone said, while Susan whispered that she wanted to leave.

“Who are you calling a punk?” the man asked. Suddenly he pulled away from Peter and swung at him, connecting with the side of Peter’s head. Peter was stunned for a moment. Then he made a fist and smashed it into the skier’s nose. The man dropped to his knees, both hands over his face. Susan wanted to tell Peter to stop, because he had scared her by the way he’d exploded.

“Get up,” Peter said. “Apologize to the lady.”

“You broke my damn nose, you son of a bitch. You’ll be sorry.”

“No he won’t. That’s the end of the fighting.” A man in a jacket with a ski-patrol badge yanked the skier to his feet.

“I’ll sue him. He broke my nose.”

“Forget it. You swung first. I saw it.” He turned to Peter. “You! Back off.”

“I will after he apologizes. Not to me, to the lady.”

People were staring, and Susan’s face was crimson. She touched Peter’s arm.

The ski patroller looked at Peter, then back at the man, who was standing up now. “Well?”

“It’s all right,” Susan interjected, but Peter held up his hand to stop her.

“Sorry,” the man said at last. He glared at Susan, and she hoped he didn’t recognize her.

“That’s not much of an apology,” Peter said, but Susan took his hand and said she was satisfied.

Later, as they walked to the car, Cynthia whispered, “That was so romantic. I’ve never had anybody fight over me.”

Susan reddened, thinking that maybe it
was
a little thrilling that Peter had defended her honor. Still, it had been embarrassing, and she told Peter, “Please don’t ever do that again.”

Peter looked at her, surprised. “Why not? I wouldn’t let anybody insult you. I wouldn’t think much of myself if I didn’t look after my girl.”

Susan smiled wanly, thinking she didn’t like him calling her “my girl.”

*   *   *

In the spring, Peter borrowed Alan’s car and drove Susan to Central City. Except for the time when Susan was in Georgetown during Christmas break, she and Peter had gone out once or twice a week for five months. Susan liked him more than the college boys she dated, although he frightened her a little. He was too serious, and sometimes when he kissed her, she had to push him away, especially when he’d been drinking. There were times she thought he went too far, and she had to be on her guard.

The tulips and flowering crabapple trees were blooming in the parks in Denver, but the mountains were still cold and wet, still gray with winter. They motored up along the Clear Creek, whose banks were brown with the detritus of long-ago mining operations, the creek itself polluted from mine tailings. Peter said he was disappointed. He’d thought that when the snow melted, the mountains would be pretty, like pictures he’d seen of the Alps, all green with snowcapped peaks beyond and wildflowers—not brown with patches of dirty snow, the hillsides covered with scraggly jackpines. “There is no springtime in the Rockies,” Susan told him, snuggling up against him, because the car’s heater didn’t work. Peter put his arm around her.

Alan’s car was a prewar Chevrolet, and just as they reached Central, its radiator began to boil over. So they parked the car and wandered around town, looking at the buildings, peering into shop windows. They prowled through a junk shop that was filled with ore specimens and carbide lamps, lampshades and broken figurines and books misshapen from being soaked by water. Susan picked up a leather-bound
A History of Colorado
and flipped through the biographical section until she came across a biography of Charles Dumas. “My grandfather,” she said, pointing to the steel engraving of Charlie.

Peter took the book from her and read the text. “My God, you’re an heiress.”

He had already figured out that Susan’s family had money, enough to send her away to college anyway, but he had no idea of the extent of the wealth, and she hadn’t cared to tell him. “Oh, my grandfather lost it all. My father had to support him.”

Peter smiled, as if he was relieved. “You want me to buy you that book?”

“Mother has three of them already.”

“Then I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.” They left the store and found a restaurant, sat down at a table by the window where they could look out at the crooked street, ordered cocoa instead of coffee because the coffee looked thick, black as ink. “That your blue star in the window?” Peter asked the waitress, a portly woman in a white uniform with a flowered handkerchief spilling out of the pocket and splayed across her chest.

“My youngest boy, Art. He’s over there in Korea.”

“Well, I hope he makes it back okay.”

“You, too, son.”

“He’s lucky to have somebody at home who cares about him.”

The remark saddened Susan, who said, “You’ll have someone, too.”

“You a flyboy, are you?” A man at the next table leaned over and looked at Peter.

“You’re a smart one. What do you think he’s doing in that uniform?” his companion asked him. Both were old men with a one or two days’ growth of beard, and between them, they had a mouthful of teeth.

“Yes, sir. I’m at Lowry Field,” Peter said.

“Well, good luck to you then, you and your missus.” He nodded at Susan who dipped her head at him.

When the two men went back to their conversation, Susan, embarrassed, whispered to Peter, “Some assumption.”

“I don’t mind.” Peter grinned at her.

The waitress brought their cocoa, two green glass cups in one hand and the coffeepot in the other. She turned to the men to warm their coffee, but at that moment, the door was flung open and a man as ancient as the two seated in the restaurant rushed in, a wild look on his face.

“Well, Billy…” the waitress said and stopped. “What is it?”

“It’s Luke Bascomb’s boy, he’s went and got hisself killed in Korea.”

“No!” the three said together.

Susan and Peter looked at each other, and she said softly, “I’m glad that’s not you.”

“He hasn’t been over there a month,” the waitress said, sitting down, the pot of coffee in her hand.

“He get shot?” Peter asked, putting his hand over Susan’s.

“I don’t know. I just heard the news. All’s I know is the boy’s dead.”

“You want coffee?” The waitress wiped her eyes on her sleeve as she lifted the coffeepot.

The man shook his head. “I got to go call on Luke and them.”

“Okay, then. We’ll go with you.” The two men stood, and one reached into his pocket for change, but the waitress waved them away. “You tell them I’m real sorry. I’ll be over later with a pie. I got a lemon meringue that hasn’t got but one piece cut out of it.”

She returned to the kitchen, while the men went out the door, one of them touching his cap to Susan and telling Peter, “You be careful if you get sent over, you hear, son? You come back to that pretty wife of yours.” Peter nodded and touched his forehead in a sort of salute, and the man closed the door. The restaurant was quiet, except for a radio in the kitchen that was playing “Shrimp Boats.”

Susan squeezed Peter’s hand. “You better keep safe,” she whispered.

Peter smiled, then fiddled with the air force cap that he’d set on the table, straightening it, brushing off a piece of lint.

“Are you afraid?” Susan asked, her eyes searching his.

“Sure I am. You hear something like that, and you know it could be you. Guys don’t get killed because somebody decided there’s a bullet with their name on it. They die because they’re in the wrong place, a foot to the left or an inch to the right of where they ought to be. It just happens.”

Susan shivered when she thought of Peter being hurt, maybe lying dead on some battlefield as barren as the banks of the Clear Creek they had just driven along. She liked him—liked him a lot—and wanted him safe.

“That boy getting killed kind of spoils things.”

It was an odd remark, and Susan didn’t understand it. “He’s dead,” she said a little indignantly. “That does more than spoil things for him.”

“I mean for us. I brought you up here to ask you to marry me. Now it doesn’t exactly seem like the right thing to do.” He let go of the cap and looked at Susan. “But maybe it is. Life’s uncertain, and I guess that means we ought to take what we can get of it before it’s too late.” He added, “That wasn’t what I was going to say. I had this nice little speech thought up, but it seems lame now. So I’ll just ask you. Will you marry me, Susan, now, before I go to Korea?”

Susan felt the blood drain from her face as she looked at Peter, dumbfounded. She hadn’t expected this. She cared about him, of course, cared more than she’d thought she would, but she’d never considered him for a husband. They were just having a good time. Susan couldn’t believe he was serious about her. Maybe she should have seen the signs, but what signs? She tried to think of something Peter had said that she’d ignored, but there wasn’t anything.

She looked into her cup, at the bits of chocolate that clung to the sides, rubbing her fingers across the glass. Of course, he excited her. Peter was so handsome, and when they sat in the car and he kissed her and touched her, she felt a longing so great that she wanted to lose herself. She liked the way his eyes searched for her in a crowd and crinkled with pleasure when he saw her. He was different from Joe—demanding, sexual, and he certainly wouldn’t say no to her the way Joe had.

It would be exciting to be engaged. Sometimes, she thought that half the Pi Phis had engagement rings, some from men who expected to be drafted and sent to Korea. She and Peter could be married in the Bride’s House. Susan stopped. He’d never even seen the Bride’s House, and it wasn’t Peter Fanshaw she’d dreamed of marrying there. It was Joe. And that was the crux of it. She cared for Peter Fanshaw, but she loved Joe Bullock.

Susan realized Peter was watching her, waiting, but she didn’t know how to answer. She stirred the dregs of her cocoa with one of the mismatched spoons, the silver plate worn off at the edges, that the waitress had set down. “I don’t know what to say,” she told him at last, looking up.

“You could say yes.”

“I can’t Peter. I don’t even know you.”

“How long do you have to know somebody before you know she’s the right one?” He said softly, “I know you’re the right one for me.”

“But I’m not even nineteen.”

“You told me your grandmother died when she was seventeen.” He reached across the table and touched the silver snowflake pinned to her sweater.

Susan took in a deep breath, as she thought, Marriage, childbirth, and death, all in a year. That was hardly what she wanted. “I’ve got three more years of college.”

“You don’t have to drop out of school. I’d want you to keep on. I’ll pay your tuition, and when I get back and you graduate, you can work while I go to school. I’ve got it all figured out.” He grinned as he added, “Children can wait.”

Children! Susan’s eyes widened. They’d never talked about children. For all she knew, he wanted a dozen.

“We can elope and keep everything secret until you’re ready to tell.”

She shook her head. “It’s too sudden. We shouldn’t think about getting married until you’re back. You might change your mind or meet somebody else. What’s the hurry?” She thought she should just tell him no. But what if he did find someone else? What if, later on, Joe found somebody else, too, and she really did fall in love with Peter?

He reached across the table and took away Susan’s spoon so that he could hold her hands. “If I get killed, I want something of me to live on, a wife, maybe a kid. All my life, there’s been just me, no family, nothing. I want more than that, even if I don’t come back.”

They sat at the table for a long time, looking at each other. The waitress came over and asked if they wanted something to eat—chili, hamburg steak, ham and eggs, pie. She had apple and cherry. And there were cinnamon rolls, baked that morning. But they said no. Susan was glad for the interruption, because she’d grown uncomfortable. It was as if they’d used up the air in the café. So she put her arms into the sleeves of her coat, which had been resting on her shoulders, and the two of them stood up. As they reached the door, Peter stopped and pulled Susan to him, holding her tight. “You’ll think about it anyway?”

Susan nodded, and she would.

“There’s not anybody else, is there?” Peter knew she dated others. He’d said he was too old to go steady, so he’d never asked her to date him exclusively.

“No. There’s nobody,” she told him. But there was, of course. And that was the reason she wouldn’t marry Peter Fanshaw.