Authors: More Than Memory

Dorothy Garlock (26 page)

BOOK: Dorothy Garlock

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“Calm down—”

“If you tell me to calm down again, I’m going to . . . going to hit you in the mouth!” she yelled so loudly that Kelly sank down, then cowered on the floor.

“There’s a world of difference between city street gangs and a bunch of high-school kids out celebrating a basketball victory. I realize you didn’t know that.”

“You think I’m a fool, don’t you?” She watched him move about the kitchen as if he lived there. He took a pan from the cabinet and milk from the refrigerator.

“You need something hot to drink, and so do I.”

“Then go home and get it,” she said in what she hoped was a nasty voice. “Miss Home Ec wouldn’t approve of your being here.”

“What’s she got to do with it?” He spoke with his back to her.

“I don’t want to disrupt your orderly life. If you’re hanging around thinking you’ll sleep with me again, Lute, you might as well go. I’ll not sleep with you again . . . ever. Go find Miss Home Ec, she’ll be glad to oblige you.”

All the resentment that had been bottled up inside her was pouring out. She wanted to pierce his calm shell, somehow find a way to make him suffer.

“The way you oblige Norris Smithfield?” he turned abruptly, and her bitter gaze locked with his while her mouth tightened with anger.

“Yes, if you must know, and the way I obliged you!” she hissed, and the bleak look that crossed his face brought a pleased little flutter to her rapid heartbeat.

His eyes assessed her critically, moving, she knew, over her hair to her tear-wet eyes and the lips that were trying so hard not to tremble. She did her best to return his gaze coolly, but she was very near the breaking point.

“Where’s the chocolate?”

She looked at him as if he had lost his mind. Her face was tight with emotion, and her eyes, though glazed with tears, looked defiantly into his.

“I don’t want you here, Lute. This is my house,
and I don’t want you here.” Her voice was savage, raw.

He turned his back to her and began to open cabinet doors. He found the box of chocolate mix and set it on the counter alongside two mugs.

“Don’t make me lose my temper, Nelda,” he said softly.

“Then don’t make me lose mine. I’d appreciate it if you’d go. You got rid of those kids. That’s all I called you for. I can handle things from here on. I’m going to that lousy sheriff tomorrow to file a complaint. You know those hoodlums. You’ll have to name them, or be in contempt of court.” She knew that she was being unreasonable, but she couldn’t seem to stop spewing her anger.

“Don’t do that, Nelda.”

“Don’t do it?” she echoed. “This is my home. I own it. I’ve got a right to be here and not be bothered in the middle of the night.” Her voice began to break. “You never had any respect for my feelings. You never even tried to understand how I had to get out and make a living for myself after Becky died,” she blurted angrily.

“You never understood my feelings about anything, either. Now shut up and drink this.” He set the cup of warm chocolate down in front of her, picked up his own, and stood with his back to the counter.

His intense gaze was focused on her face, but she refused to look at him. The smell of the chocolate was nauseating. She pressed one hand to her abdomen and willed her stomach to settle down. It
would be the final humiliation if she had to throw up.

“If you’re sure the boys were doing more than trespassing, if they threatened you or tried to break into the house, you should file a complaint. But you must be very sure before you make a charge that will stay on a boy’s record for the rest of his life.”

“Chauvinist!” she spit. “We must protect the boys! What about me? If you’d found them raping me, I suppose you’d have thought I lured them in here! That I was ‘asking for it.’”

“There are times when I’d like to shake you!”

“Why don’t you? Are you afraid of the gun? Here it is!” She took it from her pocket and slammed it down on the counter.

“Do you know how to handle this thing?” Lute reached over and picked it up.

“You’re damn right I do. My darling daddy taught me. A woman alone has to look after herself.”

“I imagine you could have found any number of men to look after you,” he said dryly. Then before she could retort, he asked, “Do you have a permit for this?”

“An Illinois state permit. I suppose
here
they don’t give gun permits to women.” She said it as sarcastically as she could, drawing in her lower lip, her voice stiff with brittle cynicism.

“We’re not as rednecked as all that.” His voice was caustic, his lips tight in an obvious attempt at self-control.

Nelda tried to tense her body, to stop the trembling. Her eyes flicked restlessly, trying to avoid him,
but his presence seemed to fill every corner of the room.

Damn you! Damn you! Get out of here!

She glanced at him. He was watching her with a taut expression.

“Why didn’t you call your friend, Norris?”

“He lives on the other side of the lake. It would have taken a half hour for him to get here.”

“Too bad. It would have been a good excuse for him to stay the night.”

“He doesn’t need an excuse,” she said rashly, looking up to meet angry blue eyes. His face was harsh and powerful, the jaw jutting in his obvious effort to control his temper. Nelda sucked in her breath and bent her head over her cup, pretending to drink.

“Are you moving in with him?” The words sounded as if they’d been torn out of him.

“Why would I want to do that?” She enjoyed seeing him squirm for a change. But then, he probably didn’t care with whom she slept, just so it wasn’t Norris. For some reason, he didn’t like him.

“Why not? He hasn’t had a woman out there for a while.”

“You don’t know anything about him. Just because he’s rich and free to do as he pleases, you and the rest of your narrow-minded friends would like to think him a cad, a debaucher of young women, the sexual sultan of north Iowa.” Her anger was making her defense of Norris too vehement, but she couldn’t make herself stop.

“So it’s like that, huh?”

“Like what, Mr. Know-It-All?”

“You’re in love with him!”

Hysterical laughter bubbled up in her throat. She had finally touched a raw spot! She turned her face up to meet his accusing stare.

“I can’t believe you!” She started to deny that she was in love with Norris, then cut herself off. She was tired, and it was suddenly easier to let him think what he wanted to think.

“How long are you going to be here?” he asked quietly.

“I haven’t decided. I may stay and take up farming. What kind of a lease do you hold on my land?” She paused, her mind racing. “Norris will furnish me with all the equipment I need.”

He was silent for so long that she looked up, surprised to see a grin on his face. It infuriated her.

“I suppose you think I don’t have brains enough to farm: can beans, freeze corn, slop hogs, feed chickens, et cetera, et cetera—” It was crazy. The words flowed out as if she had no control over them.

The eyes that blazed into hers were astonishingly bright with anger.

“If you think this is such a corny, stupid place, why do you stay? I’m getting a little bit tired of you running down my hometown. You haven’t changed a bit. You’re a snob, Nelda, just like your old man. I can still hear him say: ‘
I never thought my daughter would stoop so low as to get herself knocked up by a rutting wet-eared, hog-slopping hayseed.’
That’s exactly what I am, what I’ll always be, and what I’m proud of being.”

“Hear! Hear!”

He looked as if he hated her. “Don’t threaten me with taking up permanent residence here. You wouldn’t last a season, with or without Smithfield’s help.”

“Get out!” she ordered, surprising herself that she could even speak.

“Hurts, doesn’t it, to hear the truth about yourself,” he jibed, and strode toward the door.

Rage and frustration such as she had never known boiled up inside Nelda. She stood up abruptly, knocking her chair to the floor in the process. When he turned and grinned at her anger, she lost control. Her hand found his empty mug on the table, and she threw it at him. He dodged and it went crashing though the pane on the kitchen door and thumped on the floor of the porch. The sound of shattering glass was faint in her ears that were filled with a thunderous pounding.

Lute looked at her with astonishment. “What the hell—”

She stood wide-eyed, with the back of her hand to her mouth, while the realization of what she had done penetrated her scrambled mind. Then with a cry she ran out of the room and up the stairs to her bedroom, shut the door, and threw herself down on the bed, pulling the pillow over her head.

She cried bitterly. She had made an utter, complete fool of herself. She cried until her mind was numb with grief, knowing that she had destroyed any respect Lute might have had for her. She sank deeply into the pit of her misery, letting it close in over her.

When the storm of weeping passed, she took off her robe and crawled under the covers. She was shaking almost uncontrollably. She lay flat on her back, staring at nothing, as if her eyelids had been rendered powerless to close.

She could hear the sound of hammering down in the kitchen. Lute was still here. He was boarding up the window she had broken out of the door.
Good of him,
she thought bitterly.
Why is he bothering? It won’t mean anything to him if I freeze to death.

A feeling of desperate loneliness flooded her heart. Even her dog had deserted her to stay downstairs with Lute. She wasn’t wanted or needed by anyone in all the world except the tiny life that grew inside her.

At that moment she vowed never, never to tell him that she was pregnant with his child. He would be insufferable. If she didn’t marry him, he might even try to declare her unfit and take the baby from her. Oh, God, no!

Lute thought her stupid and useless. He didn’t consider the work she did as real work. He hadn’t shown the slightest interest in it. He hadn’t asked her about Aldus Falerri’s nightclub or about the prints she was working on.

They had needed each other when they were young and thought the whole world was against them, but now—. Trying to keep the pain in her heart at bay, she decided that tomorrow she would ask Norris how to go about renting an apartment in Minneapolis. It was ridiculous to stay here any longer.

“Nelda, are you all right?” Lute pushed open the
bedroom door. Kelly trotted in and flopped down beside the bed.

“You’re always asking me that. What do you care?” she responded dully.

“Don’t be foolish. I asked if you were all right.”

“I heard you. I may be a stupid, useless city woman, but I’m not deaf.”

“Stop being childish. I didn’t realize you were so shaken by what happened.”

“I’ve had it, Lute. I’ve given it my best shot and it didn’t work. You’ve won. The phone calls . . . the other thing, and now this. I’ll remove my irritating presence from here as soon as I can.”

“What other thing?”

“Nothing. A figure of speech.” She wasn’t about to tell him about the blanket disappearing from the porch.

“What other thing?” he repeated. When she didn’t answer, he said, “Is that bastard still calling?”

“Yes. But don’t worry about it. It’s probably some high-school kid getting his kicks out of talking nasty to an older woman.”

“What did he say?”

“Things unfit for your delicate ears, Lute.”

Nelda knew that he was looking at her, but she continued to look at the ceiling. Beneath the covers her hand stroked back and forth over her belly.
It’ll be just you and me, Baby.

“I had a piece of plywood in the truck. I nailed it over the broken glass in the door. It’ll keep the cold out until you can get it fixed. Call Miller Hardware. John Miller will come out and put in a glass.”
He paused. “Nelda, did you hear me?” He came to the side of the bed. “Nelda, why is it always like this between us?”

“Like what?”

“We’re like a cat and a dog when we’re together.”

“Don’t you mean like a stallion and a mare in heat?”

“I didn’t mean that, and you know it,” he said heatedly.

“No, I don’t know it. Go home. I’m sorry I called you. I’m not your concern. I won’t bother you again.”

“It was no bother.” He sat down on the edge of the bed. “You don’t look well. Have you had a setback from the flu?”

“No. I’ve not had a setback. I’m just not the robust type. You’ve got me confused with Miss Home Ec, the all-American girl. I’ll never be able to lift hay bales and milk cans. I’m just not built that way.”

Now it was his turn to be silent. She looked at him with calm resignation.

“Go home, Lute,” she said softly. “I’m getting my act together, and I’ll be out of your hair soon.”

BOOK: Dorothy Garlock

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