The Bride's House (42 page)

Peter turned to Susan. “Your folks know Stevenson?”

“Well, yes.”

“Anybody that rich is bound to know him,” Peggy said. “Frankly, I like Ike.” She giggled.

“Yeah, Peggy, you and me both,” Peter agreed. “He’s a military man.”

“The worst President we ever had was General Grant. Generals make lousy Presidents,” Joe said.

Peter leaned back in his chair again, his hands behind his head, his chest out. “You mean like
General
Washington?”

Susan had to laugh. “Good one,” she said, while Peter grinned at her.

“He’s the exception,” Joe said, not wanting to concede. “In general, they’re not very good.”

“In
general,
” Susan punned, and Peter toasted her with his beer bottle, while Joe glared.

The evening wasn’t going well. It certainly was not going the way Susan had planned it. Instead of being jealous, Joe was annoyed, with her as well as Peter. He probably had decided Peter was an idiot, might even think Susan was one, too, for dating him. Perhaps he thought she couldn’t do any better. That idea angered Susan, because Peter was perfectly nice, a man who had done all right for himself. So what if he planned to vote for General Eisenhower instead of Governor Stevenson? “Why don’t we have another round?” she said, hoping they would find another topic of conversation along with it.

“We’re going to the movies,” Joe said, as if meeting Susan and Peter hadn’t been important. “You coming, Peggy?” And Peggy said she was. Susan felt a wave of disappointment watching the two stand up together, Joe with his arm around Peggy, as if she was his property.

Then as Peggy reached for her glass to finish off the beer, a young man bumped into her, making her spill the drink. “Watch it, twerp,” she told him, and the boy laughed as he headed for the door.

“Hey.” Peter started to grab the man, but Susan put her hand on his arm. “That’s her brother,” she told him.

“Some luck, huh?” Peggy said. “I’ve got two more at home just like him. I wish I’d been born an orphan. Yeah, I should have been Little Orphan Annie. Orphans are lucky.”

Joe laughed as if Peggy had said something witty, while Susan tried to think of a retort—for Peter’s sake—but he took her hand and squeezed it and she was still.

“Well, see you around,” Joe said, when the four of them stood outside. He turned to Susan with a look she didn’t understand, and she thought maybe it was disdain. To hell with you, she thought.

The two couples parted, Susan and Peter watching Joe open the door of Asthma for Peggy, then pulling away without waving or looking back. Susan shrugged, thinking she should apologize to Peter for Joe, but she didn’t want to talk about him.

“Hey, why don’t we drive up into the mountains?” Peter said. “I’d like to see them at night.” They went back to the Bride’s House for Susan’s convertible, and she drove west on the highway, through Silver Plume, toward Loveland Pass.

“Pull off here,” Peter said, when they came to a side road, a trail that led through the pine trees.

Susan stopped the car. She’d been mulling Peggy’s words as she drove along, embarrassed by what her friend had said. “Peggy didn’t mean anything by that orphan business. She doesn’t know about you. What she said was insensitive and crude, but she didn’t do it on purpose.”

“Most people don’t understand what it’s like—growing up in a dormitory without a single thing to call your own. Even your name. I was dumped at a fire station, and some nurse named me after her boyfriend. That girl doesn’t know how lucky she is with a bunch of brothers, even if they are jerks. If I die in Korea, nobody’s going to be sorry, no father or mother or grandparents. Nobody.”

“I would.”

“Would you?”

“Of course I would.”

“Then let’s get married, before I leave. Let’s not wait. We’ll have a couple of weeks together, and then if something happens to me, you’ll get the survivor benefits.” He removed a strand of hair that the wind had blown into her eye. “But maybe you don’t need them. You’re not who I think you are. This car, that house. You’re rich, aren’t you?”

“Sort of.”

“So why did you pretend you weren’t?”

“I didn’t really. I just didn’t want you to know about the money. People treat you differently when they find out you have it. When I was a kid up here, Peggy acted like I was an outcast because we’re rich. So I keep my family to myself. But if you want to know, my father’s head of a molybdenum company, and my mother is a famous newspaper columnist.”

“Pearl Curry.” Peter thought that over. “Pearl Something Curry. Oh yeah, that’s why her name sounded familiar. I’ve heard of her. They sell a book she wrote in the PX. That’s your mother?” Susan nodded, and then Peter said something that surprised her. “I wish you were just ordinary. If you were, you might need me. Like I need you.” He put his arms around her and kissed her, and when she kissed him back he began pulling at her clothing.

“Don’t,” Susan said, straightening up. “We can’t do this.”

“Why not?” When Susan didn’t answer, Peter tugged at the buttons on her blouse. Then he unfastened her bra and gently pushed her back against the soft leather seats of the car and kissed her.

“No, don’t. We can’t.” Susan put her hands against his chest.

When he turned to her, Peter’s face in the moonlight was a series of soft gray planes. The starlight reflected in his eyes. He took her hands and kissed them. “It’s exactly right. Come on, Susan. We both want this.” He pushed at her clothes and then at his own. “I’ll stop if you really want to,” he murmured.

Susan closed her eyes and felt a shiver that went all the way through her, and then a longing so great it brought tears to her eyes. Why shouldn’t she do it? After all, Joe and Peggy did, and Joe had made it plain he didn’t care about her. She felt Peter’s hands move over her, and for an instant, she confused him with Joe. But then she knew he wasn’t Joe, and she didn’t want to do this thing with him. “Peter, don’t. I don’t want this,” she said, trying to push him off her. But it was too late, and Peter didn’t stop. And when it was over, Susan blamed herself.

*   *   *

Susan offered to take Peter to Denver on Sunday, but he told her no, that he didn’t like the idea of her driving back on the highway by herself. “I’ve done it a dozen times,” she said.

“If we say good-bye here, I can remember you in the mountains, remember the way you were last night.” His eyes were soft and warm. “Are you okay?” Susan glanced at the ground, embarrassed, but Peter told her, “Look at me. There’s nothing wrong with what happened. It’s what people do when they love each other.”

Did she love him? Maybe a little, or she would have tried sooner to stop him. But enough to marry him? Not yet, she thought as the two walked from the Bride’s House to the bus stop beside the Red Ram, carrying Peter’s flight bag between them.

“If anything happens…” Peter said, but she shushed him, and he didn’t finish. Instead, he took her hand, and they stood in the summer sun until the bus arrived.

He sat on the far side of the Greyhound, where Susan couldn’t see him, but she stood there until the bus pulled away, watching until it disappeared down the highway. She felt regret as well as an overwhelming sadness that she didn’t understand. She was confused, too, and she didn’t want to go home, didn’t want to face Pearl. That morning, before the two had gone downstairs, they’d had a disagreement. She’d asked her mother, “How come you don’t like Peter?”

“I like him perfectly well,” Pearl insisted.

“No you don’t. You’re different with him, stiff, not like you are around Joe.”

“That’s because I’ve known Joe for twenty years, and I just met Peter.”

“Is it because he hasn’t gone to college?”

“Your father never finished college. Your grandfather had only four or five years of schooling.”

“He didn’t even know about our money, so you don’t have to worry that he’s a fortune hunter.”

Her mother turned to Susan with a fierce look. “How can you say that? Such a remark is beneath you, Susan. I would never accuse a young man of that. It’s a horrid thing to say! Despicable!” Susan had never seen her mother so agitated, and she stared as Pearl got control of herself and added, “It’s just that I think you can do better.”

So instead of going back to the Bride’s House and her mother, Susan walked up Rose Street and circled around, finally going into Kniesel & Anderson to buy a bottle of Pepsi, because she was hot from the sun. Susan liked the old store with the bins of tomatoes and heads of lettuce, the displays of washing powders and canned goods, jars of licorice and jawbreakers and Double Bubble gum that were lined up on the counter. She didn’t see Peggy until the girl spoke. “So are you going to marry that guy?”

“Peter?”

“Well, duh. Who else do you think I’m talking about?”

Joe, Susan thought, but she knew that wouldn’t happen. “Peter’s going to Korea.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Susan rubbed the toe of her sandal over the worn wooden floor. “Why do you care?”

Peggy grabbed Susan’s arms with her hands and dug in her nails. “I care because I have this sneaking little suspicion you’re after Joe Bullock. He’s mine. You try to take him away from me, and you don’t know what I’ll do. Don’t you dare ruin it for me. Do you hear?”

Susan stepped back, as Peggy dropped her hands. “I’m not marrying Peter Fanshaw so that you can have Joe,” Susan said. “All my life, you’ve told me what to do. I’ll date anybody I like, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Don’t cross me,” Peggy said.

“I think I just did.”

*   *   *

Susan found the note on her car the afternoon her mother left for Denver. Pearl had a doctor’s visit, a hair appointment, and errands to run, and since Bert Joy was going down to Denver to see his sister, Pearl decided to ride along and spend two nights at the Brown Palace. Susan stayed in Georgetown.

She didn’t know when the note had been left. She’d gone out to put the top up on the Merc because she was afraid it would rain and had found the piece of paper tucked under her windshield wiper.

Meet me at the cemetery at 8. Walk down. I’ll drive you back. Don’t tell anyone. I have something to tell you.

Joe

She had never received a note from Joe, and she read it three times, confused, worrying at first that this was some joke, another snipe hunt maybe. But they were too old for such things now. Perhaps she should ignore the note. If Joe asked, she’d tell him she hadn’t found it, that it must have blown away. But what if Joe did have something important to tell her, some surprise? Maybe this was another New Year’s, but this time, he wouldn’t back off. Not likely, however, not after the disastrous evening with Peter at the Red Ram. Still, if she didn’t show up, she’d always wonder. Susan shoved the note into her pocket and looked about to see if Joe was watching, but no one was around.

She went upstairs, thinking she might clean her room, but she was nervous, fidgety, and couldn’t help pondering what Joe wanted. She ate lunch, taking it into the yard by the lilac bushes, which were blooming now. The smell of lilacs, no matter where she was, made her think of the Bride’s House. The scent comforted her, just as the old house did.

Susan thought of Peter then, thought what a shame that he had no sense of home, no place to remember, to bring him comfort when he was in Korea. He had told her that she was what he would remember, she was what he would come back to, and he wanted to think of her in the mountains—in the mountains and the Bride’s House. He’d said it almost as if he’d wanted to be a part of those places, too. It bothered her that she hadn’t told him yes or no, but she couldn’t. She brooded over what had happened between them. It was her fault. She should have known what Peter wanted when he suggested the drive in the mountains, and she should have stopped him when he first began fumbling with her clothes. She should have known he wouldn’t stop. But she’d been angry at Joe. What had happened had been as much about Joe as Peter.

Susan sat near the lilacs for a long time, stretched out in a lounge chair, thinking about how she wished Joe had been in the car that night instead of Peter.

“I could have robbed your house, and you wouldn’t even have known.”

Susan shook herself from her reverie and shaded her eyes. “Joe?” She hadn’t encountered him since that night at the Red Ram two weeks before and was surprised to see him.

“You’re lucky I didn’t come to rape and pillage.”

Susan swung her legs to the ground, excited that he had stopped by. “My poor luck.”

“No lie.” He grinned and sat down on the lounge beside her. “Your friend isn’t such a bad guy. I wasn’t very nice to him. Maybe I feel a little guilty that he’s going to Korea and I’m not.”

Susan liked that. “I don’t think he minded.”

“Or maybe I was just jealous that he was with you.”

Susan mulled over the remark, wondering if Joe really meant it, and didn’t reply

“So what are you doing out here?”

“I was thinking about you.”

“That’s good.”