To Sail Beyond the Sunset (14 page)

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Maureen, but it is written right here in the Constitution that the father of the bride has no rights whatever in a wedding. He gets to pay the bills and he must give the bride away. Otherwise they don’t let him out of his cage. Did you tell your mother why you wanted to catch the earlier train?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did she say?”

“She said that all the planning had been done on the assumption that the Smiths would arrive on the ten-forty-two, soon enough for a four o’clock wedding but not for a noon wedding. I said, ‘But, Mother, they are already here.’ And she said that it was too late to change everything. And I said, ‘Who says so? And why wasn’t I consulted?’ And she said, ‘Keep quiet and stop wiggling. I’ve got to pin this over again.’ Father, this is dreadful. I’m being treated like a prize cow about to be shown at the fair. And I’m listened to just as much as that cow.”

“Maureen, it probably is too late to change anything now. Stipulated, your wishes should have been followed. But now it is less than forty-eight hours till your wedding and when Adele takes the bit in her teeth, she doesn’t listen. I wish I could help you. But she won’t listen to me, either.” Father looked as unhappy as I felt. “Grit your teeth and wait it out. Once Brother Timberly says, ‘I pronounce you man and wife,’ you no longer have to pay any attention to anyone but Brian. And I see that you have a ring in his nose; you won’t find that too difficult.”

“I don’t think I have a ring in his nose.”

The Reverend Timberly had been told that the Methodist Episcopal service was to be followed exactly, none of these modern innovations. He had been told also that it would be a single-ring ceremony. The muttonhead didn’t listen on either point. He stuck in all sorts of stuff (from his lodge rituals, I think; he was a Past Grand Chancellor of the Knights and Lords of the High Mountain), stuff that had not been in the rehearsal, questions and responses I didn’t recognize. And he preached, telling each of us things we didn’t need to hear, matters not in the wedding service.

This went on and on, while my feet hurt (Don’t buy shoes by mail order!) and my corset was stifling me. (I had never worn one before. But Mother insisted.) I was about to tell Brother Timberwolf to stick to the book, stop improvising (it was getting closer and closer to train time) when he reached the point where he wanted two rings and there was of course but one.

He wanted to back up and start over.

Brian spoke up (and a groom isn’t supposed to say anything but “I will” and “I do”) and said in a whisper that could not be heard more than a hundred yards, “Reverend, stop stalling and stick to words in the book…or I won’t pay you a red cent.”

Brother Timberly started to expostulate and looked at Briney—and stopped suddenly, and said, “By​Authority​vested​in​me​by​the​sovereign​state​of​Missouri I pronounce you man and wife!” And thereby saved his own life. I think.

Brian kissed me and we turned and started down the aisle and I tripped on my train. Beth was carrying my train and was supposed to move it off to the left.

It wasn’t her fault; I turned the wrong way.

“Briney, did you get any wedding cake?”

“Never had time.”

“Me, too. I suddenly realize that I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast…and not much then. Let’s find that dining car.”

“Suits. I’ll inquire.” Briney got up, was gone a few moments. When he came back he leaned over me. “I found it.”

“Good. Is it in front of us, or behind us?”

“Behind us. Quite a bit behind us. They left it off in Joplin.”

So our wedding supper was two stale ham sandwiches from the news butcher and a bottle of soda pop, split.

About eleven o’clock we finally reached the Lewis and Clark, where Briney had a reservation for us. The hack driver had apparently never heard of that hotel but was willing to search for it as long as his horse held out. He started away from the depot in the wrong direction. Briney spotted this and stopped him; the driver gave him an argument and some lip. Briney said, “Back to the depot; we’ll get another hack.” This ultimatum finally got us there.

I suppose that it was only to be expected that the night clerk had never heard of Briney’s reservation. But Brian can’t be pushed around and he won’t be intimidated. He said, “I made my reservation by mail three weeks ago with a postal money order deposit. I have my receipt right here along with a letter of confirmation signed by your manager. Now wake him up and put a stop to this nonsense.” Briney shoved the letter under the clerk’s nose.

The clerk looked at it and said, “Oh,
that
Mr. Smith! And the bridal suite. Why didn’t you say so?”

“I did say so, ten minutes ago.”

“I am very sorry, sir. Front!”

Twenty minutes later I was in a wonderful tub of hot, soapy water, just like Chicago six years earlier. I almost fell asleep in the tub, then realized that I was keeping my bridegroom out of the bath, and pulled myself together. “Briney! Shall I fill a tub for you?”

No answer. I dried off a bit, wrapped the towel around me, aware that I was a scandalous sight (and a provocative one, I hoped).

My gallant knight was fast asleep, still in his clothes, lying across the bedspread.

There was a silver bucket just inside the door—ice and a bottle of champagne.

I got out my nightgown (virginal white and perfumed; it had been Mother’s bridal nightgown) and a pair of bunny slippers. “Brian. Briney. Please wake up, dear. I want to help you undress, and open the bed, and get you into it.”

“Murrf.”

“Please, dear.”

“I wasn’t asleep.”

“No, of course not. Let me help you off with your boots.”

“I c’n get’em.” He sat up and reached for them.

“All right, dear. I must let the water out of the tub, then I’ll run a bath for you.”

“Your water is still in the tub?”

“Yes.”

“Let it be; I’ll use it. Mrs. Smith, you couldn’t get a tub of water dirty; you would just impart a delicious flavor.”

Sure enough, my gallant knight did bathe in my bath water (still lukewarm). I climbed into bed…and was sound asleep when he came to bed. He did not wake me.

I woke up in darkness about two or three, frightened to find myself in a strange bed—then remembered. “Briney?”

“You awake now?”

“Awake some.” I snuggled closer.

Then I sat up and got rid of that nightgown; I was getting bound up in it. And Briney took off his nightshirt, and for the first time both of us were bare all over and it was wonderful and I knew that all my life had just been preparation for this moment.

After an unmeasured time that had started out slowly, we both took fire together—after that, I was lying quietly under him, loving him. “Thank you, Briney. You are wonderful.”

“Thank you. Love you.”

“Love you, my husband. Briney. Where’s your cat? In Cincinnati? In Rolla?”

“Eh? No, no. In Kansas City.”

“Here? Boarded with someone?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You haven’t picked it out yet, Mo’. It’s the kitten you’re going to give me. Bride’s present to the bridegroom.”

“Oh! Briney, you’re a scamp!” I tickled him. He tickled me. It resulted, by stages, in Maureen being disgracefully noisy again. Then I got my back scratched. Having your back scratched is not the only reason to be married, but it is a good one, especially for those spots that are so hard to reach by yourself. Then I scratched his back. We finally went to sleep all tangled up in each other like a basket of kittens.

Maureen had at last found out what she was good for, her true destiny.

We had champagne for breakfast.

Ring the Cash Register

From having read candid autobiographies written by liberated women in the twentieth century, especially those published after the second phase of the Final Wars, ca. 1950 et seq., I know that I am now expected to tell in detail all aspects of my first pregnancy and of the birth of my first child—all about morning sickness and my cyclic moods and the tears and the loneliness…then the false labor, the unexpected breaking of the bag of waters, followed by eclampsia and emergency surgery and the secrets I spilled under anesthesia.

I’m sorry but it wasn’t that way at all. I’ve seen women with morning sickness and it’s obviously horrible, but I’ve never experienced it. My problem has always been to “stay on the curve,” not gain more weight than my doctor thought was healthy for me. (There have been times when I would have killed for a chocolate éclair.)

With my first baby labor lasted forty minutes. If having babies in hospitals had been the expected thing in 1899, I would have had Nancy on the way to the hospital. As it was, Brian delivered Nancy, under my direction, and it was much harder on him than it was on me.

Dr. Rumsey arrived and retied the cord and cut it, and told Brian he had done an excellent job (he had). Then Dr. Rumsey took care of the delivery of the afterbirth, and Briney fainted, poor lamb. Women are more rugged than men; they have to be.

I’ve had longer labors than that one but never a terribly long one. I did not have an episiotomy with the first one (obviously!) and I did not need a repair afterward, so on later births I never allowed a knife to be used on me down there and so I have no scar tissue there, just undamaged muscle.

I’m a brood mare, built for it, wide in my thighs and with a birth canal made of living rubber elastic. Dr. Rumsey told me that it was my attitude that made the difference but I know better; my ancestors gave me the genetic heritage that makes me a highly efficient female animal, for which I am grateful…as I have seen women who were not, and they suffered terribly and some of them died. Yes, yes, “natural selection” and “survival of the fittest” and Darwin was right—stipulated. But it is no joke to attend the funeral of a dear friend, dead in her golden youth because her baby killed her. I was at such a funeral in the twenties and heard a sleek old priest talk about “God’s will.” At the graveside I managed to back away from the coffin such that I got him proper in his instep with a sharp heel. When he yelped, I told him it was God’s will.

Once I had a baby in the middle of a bridge game. Pat it was, Patrick Henry Smith, so that makes it 1932 and that makes it contract we were playing, not auction, and that all fits together, as Justin and Eleanor Weatheral taught us contract after they learned it and we were playing at their house. Eleanor and Justin were parents of Jonathan Weatheral, husband of my first born, so the Weatherals were a Howard marriage themselves, but they were our friends long before we knew that about them. We did not learn it until the spring Jonathan showed up on Nancy’s Howard Foundation list of young male eligibles.

In this bridge game I was Justin’s partner; Eleanor was Briney’s partner. Justin had dealt; contract had been reached and we were about to play, when I said, “Put your hands face down and put paperweights on them; I’m having a baby!”

“Forget the hand!” said my husband.

“Of course,” agreed my partner.

“Hell, no!” I answered in my ladylike way, “I bid the bloody thing; I’m damn well going to play it! Help me up from here!”

Two hours later we played the hand. Dr. Rumsey, Jr., had come and gone; I was on Eleanor’s bed with the table, legs collapsed and supported by pillows, across my lap, and my new son was in my partner’s arms. El and Briney were on each side of me, half seated on the bed. I had bid a small slam in spades, doubled and redoubled, vulnerable.

I went down one trick.

Eleanor tilted her nose at me and pushed it up with the tip with her finger. “Smarty, smarty, missed the party!” Then she looked very startled. “Mo’! Move over, dear! I’m about to have mine!”

So Briney delivered two babies that night and Junior Doc had to come back just as soon as he reached home and grumbled at us that he did wish we would make up our minds; he was going to charge us mileage and overtime. Then he kissed us and left—by that time we had long known that the Rumseys were Howards, too, which made Junior Doc a member of the family.

I called Ethel, told her we were staying overnight, and why. “Is everything all right, dear? Can you and Teddy manage? (Four younger ones at home. Five? No, four.)

“Certainly, Mama. But is it a boy or a girl? And how about Aunt Eleanor?”

“Both. I had a boy, Eleanor just had a girl. You youngsters can start working on names…for mine, at least.”

But the best joke was another matter entirely, something we didn’t tell Junior Doc or the children: Briney put that little girl into my sweetheart Eleanor, and her husband Justin put Pat into me…all at a weekend in the Ozarks to celebrate Eleanor’s fifty-fifth birthday. The birthday party got a bit relaxed and our husbands decided that, since all four of us were Howards, there was no sense in bothering with these pesky rubber sheaths…when we could be ringing the cash register.

(Cultural note: I mentioned that Eleanor got pregnant on her fifty-fifth birthday. But the age of the mother on the birth certificate Junior Doc filed was “forty-three,” or close to that. And the age filed on mine was thirty-eight, not fifty. In 1920 all of us had received a warning from the Howard Foundation trustees, delivered by word of mouth, to trim years off our official ages at every opportunity. Later that century we were encouraged and helped to acquire new identities every thirty years or so. Eventually this became the full “Masquerade” that saved the Howard Families during the Crazy Years and following. But I know of the Masquerade only from the Archives, as I was taken out of that turmoil—thank Heaven and Hilda!—in 1982.)

We rang the cash register five times, Brian and I, during the Mauve Decade—five babies in ten years, 1900-1910 Gregorian. I was the first to call it “ringing the cash register” and my husband went along with my crass and vulgar jest. It was after I had recovered from unloading my first one (our darling Nancy) and had been cleared by Dr. Rumsey to resume “family duties” (so help me, that’s what they called it then) if we so pleased.

I came home from that visit to Dr. Rumsey, started dinner, then took another bath and used some scandalous perfume Briney had given me for Christmas, got into a lime-green negligee Aunt Carole had given me as a wedding present, checked dinner and turned down the gas—I had it all planned—and was ready when Briney got home.