Operation Mail-Order Bride

Operation
Mail-Order
Bride

A NOVELLA

Elnora Field

QuillerWorks
Publishing

Operation Mail-Order Bride

How could
this be happening again? The man I loved was moving to a distant city for a great new job. He wanted me to move there with him, but twice in one year was enough. I was still flat broke from my last move—a move I made in order to be close to a lover—and what did I have to show for it? That guy dumped me!

Three years after our high school graduation, my best friend had met a great catch. Tall and blue-eyed, his low-key personality balanced her
vivacious, talkative ways. He was a great catch in material terms as well. Clutching a fresh Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry, Trent was starting work on a Master’s degree when they met. Trent was hired as a technician at the laboratory where Rose worked as receptionist and bookkeeper. She was the first co-worker he met, and he told me later that after a few minutes of conversation, his nervousness about his new job disappeared.

“I got there early and I stood at the lab’s locked door, wondering whether or not I should go around the building trying doors when Rose arrived, introduced herself, and let both of us in.”

As she put her lunch away, started a pot of coffee dripping and booted her computer, Rose reassured and warned Trent about the colleagues he was soon to meet. By the time their boss arrived, she had given him a tour of the lab, assigned him a locker and issued him lab coats and his photo I.D. badge.

“She’s very friendly,” Trent remarked to Dr. Cooper as they made their way down the hall.

“She is?” Dr. Cooper replied. Although he and the rest of the staff were accustomed to relying on Rose’s skillful office management, none of them would have called her “friendly.” She was fond of entertaining me and her many other friends with stories about “the clueless nerds” at the lab, and she often repeated the fact that she wanted nothing more than a professional relationship with anyone there.

One look at Trent was all it took to break her rule.

“He’s a dreamboat, Cassie,” she gushed on the phone as soon as she could reach me at home that evening.

I stifled a yawn as I clamped the phone to my ear with my shoulder so I could use both hands to sort my mail.
Another new love for Rose. How nice for her.
I knew better than to voice my thoughts. If it weren’t for her frequent romantic reports, I might not get any phone calls at all!

“What does he look like, exactly?” I prompted as I abandoned the mail—all junk—and opened a kitchen cupboard. I
had worked overtime that afternoon and I was hungry after my long bus ride. Rose obliged by describing Trent in detail, and did not want to end the call until she had replayed their conversations word for word: first their meeting, then what was said when Trent stopped at her desk at the end of the day.

“I think he’s going to ask me out next payday,” she predicted. “I wonder what he likes to do.”

She need not have worried. Trent’s interests were wide. He enjoyed activities he had never tried before, just as Rose did. She introduced him to the classic films and jazz bands she loved and he took her canoeing and skiing for the first time. Together, they took classes in swing dancing.

They were meant for each other.

When I met Trent, I liked him and thought he was a great match for Rose. He enjoyed my company enough that they included me on evenings out from time to time, but there is a limit to how gregarious a soon-to-be-engaged-and-married couple wants to be, and I found myself spending even more Friday and Saturday nights alone.

I felt resigned to my loneliness and a little sad. One by one my girlfriends were meeting good men, falling in love and marrying. I was the only one who seemed to be out of the loop. I had been avoiding
entanglements since my last breakup. The printing company where I worked was growing rapidly. Nine- and ten-hour days became routine, and I worked most Saturdays. As my social life became more limited, I put in more and more time at the office.

This was the pattern of my life for most of the two years between Trent and Rose’s meeting and their wedding. Once or twice a month, I was invited to a party given by a friend or acquaintance. I went out with a few men—usually someone I met at one of the parties—but none of these worked out to be more than a one-date relationship. I was in my early twenties, but I might as well have been a middle-aged spinster for all the action I was getting.

Rose called me at the shop on a gloomy, frigid Saturday afternoon in early January. As usual, I had worked for the sixth day that week and I tried to turn down her invitation to dinner.

“I’m beat, Rose,” I complained into the phone, anticipating the wait for my bus and the long trip home.

“If you’re beat, why are you working and not curled up in front of the TV, or already in bed with a book?” She knew me well. “You need a dinner that you don’t have to fix, and you need to spend a few hours with people who like you. Come to my place. Eat my food. We’ll drive you home. I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer!”

I gave in. The letdown after the holidays was unusually bad that year. I blamed the two weeks of unrelenting freezing rain and sleet we had endured, but I knew my blues had a lot to do with the fact that after Rose and Trent’s wedding in July I would be the lone single woman of our circle.

I exited the bus near Rose’s building and leaned into the numbing wind. When Rose flung open the door, she gasped from the cold and at my scarlet face.

“Get in here!” she ordered, pulling me over the doorsill. “You look like an arctic explorer on his last legs!”

“But we hope you don’t feel like one,” continued Trent as he approached from the kitchen. “Let me take your coat, Cassie.”

Drawn by a heavenly smell, I moved toward the small dining room table. To my delight, I saw that
Trent had made green chili stew—a hearty, warming dish from his native Southwest. It was such a perfect meal for a bitter northeastern winter evening I could not understand why it was almost unknown in our part of the country. I sighed happily as I took a seat, tasting the air. A basket lined with a scarlet napkin held cornbread sticks shaped like cactuses. No one said anything for the first few minutes as we passed bowls and plates and started eating. Then, I asked about their holiday. They had spent Christmas with Trent’s family in New Mexico.

“It was good,” Rose stated, looking at Trent and nodding. “I like Trent’s parents…”

“…And they like you!” he finished. They leaned close and bumped noses. I couldn’t help but smile.

Rose turned back to me. “We did some sightseeing … hung out with Trent’s relatives … and I met a couple of his old school buddies.”

“What sights did you see?” I asked, helping myself to more stew.

“We toured Santa Fe,” Trent answered, “looking at adobe churches and art galleries.”

“We spent a hilarious evening in a tavern in Albuquerque’s Old Town,” Rose went on, passing me the cornbread.

“What happened?”

“We went there with Trent’s friend Blair Hutchinson. They hadn’t seen each other since graduation, so there was a lot of catching up to do. I know,” she said hastily, seeing my skeptical look, “it sounds as if I’d feel totally left out and bored, but it was fun. Blair knows all these wonderful funny stories about Trent before I met him, and he tells them in this Western drawl.”

“The accent is new,” Trent explained. “Blair’s going to grad school in Texas now, and he’s made a project out of adopting ‘native ways.’ He’s even become an avid Willie Nelson fan.”

I studied them as I nibbled a cornbread cactus. They were up to something. Why else would they go into so much detail describing someone I had never met?

“Late that night, after we all got pretty lubricated, Blair became a little maudlin. He’s having trouble meeting nice women, at least women who are willing to make commitments. He complains that he had to fight off girls who weren’t interested in anything but finding husbands a few years ago. Now that he’s beginning to think about settling down, the only women he meets are
busy pursuing careers. He ended by wailing, ‘I just want to find an intelligent woman who wants to get married and have babies!’ At that point, Trent and I said in unison, ‘We know one!’”

“Me.”

“Of course, you,” Rose agreed. “Wasn’t it right after Thanksgiving that you made almost that identical speech?”

“And now you’re proposing to fix me up with this guy—Blair, is it?”

“Only if you agree.”

I stared at them. They stared back with pleased little smiles. They were so proud of themselves for thinking of this: they could solve the chronic loneliness of two good friends with one blind date!

“I can see one big problem with the arrangement. He’s in Texas and I’m here.”

“But that’s good,” said Rose. “You have months to become acquainted by mail, or on the phone. If you hit it off, you can be each other’s date at our wedding. If you find you’re incompatible, you won’t have a big emotional investment to get over.”

I couldn’t think of any more arguments, and that was the beginning of what became known among my friends as “Operation Mail-Order Bride.”

Rose and I decided that the first order of business was a few good photographs, and volunteered to do a “shoot.” I came over the following Saturday with a suitcase of clothes and props and we burned our way through two rolls of film. She photographed me in and out of my glasses, wearing everything from jeans and a t-shirt to an evening gown. On my way home, I dropped the film off for processing.

When the prints were ready, I took them to Rose and together we pored over them.

“This shot looks so romantic!” She admired one of me in a cotton gauze camisole and half-slip, a nosegay of silk flowers in my clasped hands, softly
side lit by a window.

“Your lace curtain made all the difference. I’m glad it was sunny that day, or that shot and these four might have been a waste of film.”

We picked out eleven good photos of me. I went back to the photo shop and ordered two prints of each: one set for Rose, the other for Blair. I planned to ration them one at a time in a planned sequence. I wanted to present myself as a more and more alluring creature as time went on.

Dear Blair,

My name is Cassandra Jacobs. I went to high school with Rose Schuyler and I know her fiancé and your old friend Trent Mayhew. We got together for supper a couple of weeks ago and they suggested that you and I might get along well. If it’s all right with you, and if you have time—I know you’re in graduate school so you’re really busy—let’s try to get acquainted by mail. This way, if we hate each other, we’ll only be out a few stamps (ha-ha).

I enjoy music and theater, both as a member of the audience and as a participant, though I haven’t had a chance to do that since
high school. I also took a lot of art classes and I keep up with it, doing portraits of people and going on walks with a sketchpad and my pencils or watercolors. My favorite media is oil paint, but I can’t afford to rent a studio and the neighbors complain about the smell if I try to paint in my apartment so, for now, that’s out.

As for outdoor activities, I swim well and I’m a pretty good tennis player. I enjoy long hikes, camping and canoeing.

Hope the weather is pleasant where you are, for it’s been miserable here since New Year’s. It won’t stay bad much longer, though. (I tell myself that every winter, week after week!) I hope this finds you well, and I hope also to hear from you soon.

Truly yours,
Cassie

I folded this letter around the photo that made me look the most mysterious, then sealed, addressed and mailed it before I could chicken out.

I wondered how long it would take him to answer me. I wondered if he would send a photo. I knew he wore glasses and was tall, with brown hair and eyes, but that didn’t tell me much. Rose described Blair as “average-looking” and said she didn’t think I would be embarrassed to be seen in public with him. I wasn’t overly concerned with his appearance. I just wanted an image to put with his name and whatever he told me about himself, when he got around to it.

I didn’t have to wait long. My phone rang that Sunday evening about seven.

“Is this Cassie?” The male voice was unknown to me, but even those three words conveyed the twang of Texas.

“It is. Is this Blair?”

“Yes, ma’am! I got your letter and picture. Thanks for writing. I started a letter to you before yours arrived. I’ll finish it and mail it tomorrow, but I wanted to find out what you sound like.”

“We-e-l-l….” This was new. Was he into voices? If so, I hoped mine was acceptable, because I felt myself warming up to his, even though I knew the accent was adopted. His speech reminded me of the way my Southern relatives talked. It gave me the impression I could trust him.
Whoa, Cassie,
I thought suddenly.
Don’t assume anything of the kind. This is your first encounter with the guy!
“This is what I sound like,” I went on. “I know I sound really nasal. That’s what I notice whenever I hear a recording of myself.”

“That’s not what I notice. There’s a hint of a Southern accent to some of your words.”

“Both my parents are from the South. We moved here when I was nine. I tried to change my accent so I wouldn’t be teased about it, and what you hear is the result.”