Sweet Everlasting (41 page)

“Perfectly immaterial.”

“Oh hell, Mother,” he laughed, “Now I suppose I’ll have to go talk to the old gasbag.”

“Don’t swear, Tyler. And don’t be vulgar.”

“I hate this new tactic, by the way.”

“I have no idea what you mean.”

He chuckled and turned away—then back, remembering. “Abbey said a girl came to see me a few days ago. A Miss Hamilton?”

“That’s right. Catherine Hamilton, I think she said. Who is she?

“Well, that’s it—I don’t remember anyone by that name in Wayne’s Crossing.”

“How odd.”

“What do you think she wanted?”

“To see you, she said. But she wouldn’t leave a message. She was a pretty thing; I assumed she was one of your conquests.”

He returned her playful smile automatically. But the mystery nagged him. He’d only made one “conquest” in Wayne’s Crossing, and she wasn’t Catherine Hamilton. And he was the last person Carrie would look up if she happened to be “passing through.” Who had his visitor been, then?

The Symingtons were agreeable people, not gasbags at all; it was no hardship to exchange pleasant conversation with them while nibbling on smoked ham and salmon tarts. The subject of the surgeon general’s successor never came up. Ty moved easily from the Symingtons to the Dunaways to old Mrs. Waterton, lingered with his Uncle Andrew and Aunt Sally, and flirted for a few mechanical minutes with Adele. His cousin Teddy joined them, eager to tell stories about his first semester at Princeton. Adele wandered away. Tyler sipped from a cup of punch, smiling and nodding at the appropriate moments while Teddy detailed his strategy for making freshman crew coxswain.

Then he remembered.

The memory came to him on the sound of Carrie’s voice, husky from disuse and soft from shyness. That first night. While they sipped iced tea with mint vinegar, and she blurted out her life story.

My father was John Hamilton, my mother was Rachel.

He shoved his punch cup into his startled cousin’s hand and bolted from the room.

His mother’s genteel laughter sounded from somewhere at the back of the drawing room. He started for her, then changed course when he caught sight of Abbey’s lavender dress at the end of the foyer. She was moving toward him, arm in arm with Helen DeWitt, her best friend. Both women stopped when they saw his face. Abbey started to speak, but he seized her by her forearms, silencing her.

“What did she look like?”

“Who?”

“Catherine Hamilton—how did she look?”

Helen murmured politely and sidled away. Abbey looked flustered. “She—I told you, Ty, she was pretty, she had on a Lady Randolph hat, the rain had wilted the feather—”

He came very close to shaking her.
“What did she look like?”

“Well—I think her hair was brown—”

“Brown!”

“No, red, maybe. Light; there was blonde in it, too. She had blue eyes, I think—oh, Ty, I can’t remember!”

He gentled his grip on her and spoke as calmly as he could. “Was she tall and slender, Ab?”

“Yes. She was, yes, taller than I—”

“And she had reddish-gold hair. Slippery hair, shiny, a lock or two of it falling around her face.”

Abbey nodded dumbly.

“And her eyes were gray-blue, and cloudy because she was sad.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

He closed his own eyes and let go of Abbey’s hands. “It was Carrie. My God, it was Carrie.”

“Who is she?” Abbey asked fearfully.

“She’s—Carrie. Carrie Wiggins. Hamilton, now.” Empty-headed, he pivoted and started for the stairs. Abbey followed. When he halted and wheeled back, they almost collided. “What did she want?” he demanded. “Tell me again, everything she said.”

“She didn’t say much at all. Mother spoke to her more than I did. She only stayed a few minutes. When I told her you weren’t here, she looked—more than disappointed, she looked …”

She didn’t want to say it. “Tell me,” he commanded.

“She looked … defeated.”

He stared at his sister’s troubled face, picturing Carrie’s, straining to understand why she’d come. Two weeks ago she’d told him she was marrying Eugene.

“I invited her to your party,” Abbey remembered.

He almost laughed. He brought the heels of his hands to his eye sockets and pressed.

“She said she couldn’t come, she was going home that night.”

“She was going home?”

Abbey nodded.

He backed up a step. “I’ll go,” he muttered. “No—I’ll call. Who?” He took another step backward. “Stoneman’s still in Harrisburg. At least I think he is. Frank—would he be in his office on Christmas Eve? What time is it?” Abbey was gaping at him. “What time is it?” he repeated, then remembered he had a watch of his own. He yanked it out of his waistcoat and flipped it open. “Almost three. He might be there.”

“Ty, what can I do to help?”

“Nothing. No—tell Priest to call a hansom. No, wait. Never mind, it’ll be faster walking.”

“Where are you going?”

“Broad Street Station, I hope. But first—Abbey, I don’t have time to talk!” He backed into Uncle Andrew in the foyer. “Excuse me,” he mumbled, whirled, and raced away to the telephone.

Pennicle’s was surprisingly crowded, considering it was Christmas Eve, but Carrie didn’t know anybody else in the restaurant. Anybody but Eugene, of course, who sat across from her at their table in the corner. She’d been struggling since they got here not to make comparisons between this evening and the only other time she’d ever eaten at Pennicle’s, and so far she’d succeeded middling well. But when Eugene lifted his beer mug and touched it to her glass of milk in a toast—“To us, Carrie”—there was no stopping the rush of memories of that night when Ty had done the same thing. Only he hadn’t toasted him and her, he’d toasted the start of her “new career.” “What are you two celebrating?” Mrs. Stambaugh had wanted to know, and Carrie had felt light and airy as a balloon when Ty explained about the “imminent purchase and publication of Carrie’s new book.”

Tonight Mrs. Stambaugh wouldn’t speak to her except to ask her what she wanted to eat. Respectable women like her and Mrs. Quick wouldn’t even look at her. Since she’d found out about the baby, Eugene’s mother could barely say two words in a row to her, and Mrs. Starkey wasn’t exactly a leading light in Wayne’s Crossing society. Eugene had had to bully her into attending her own son’s wedding.

Carrie crumbled a piece of bread on her plate and looked across the table at the man she was going to marry at ten o’clock tomorrow morning in the Odells’ parlor. He was wearing his second-best suit, which had black and white checks and a gray vest, and he’d put on a cheery red tie for the occasion of their pre-wedding dinner on the town. He’d recently acquired side-whiskers, and the oiled mustache he was so proud of met them at the tops of his ruddy cheeks. He looked healthy and prosperous and well fed. So well fed, in fact, that a disinterested corner of her mind wondered if he was going to get fat in a few years. It wasn’t hard to imagine. Not hard at all.

He blotted his lips with his napkin and caught her eye. “So,” he said, which was how he started most of his sentences. “You’re not saying much. What’re you thinking about? You nervous about tomorrow?”

“Yes, a little,” she smiled. “Aren’t you?”

“Nah,” he scoffed, “nothing to it. Stoneman still giving you away?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

“He wasn’t sure he was feeling up to it,” she said tactfully. Well, that might not be the whole truth, but it wasn’t a lie. Dr. Stoneman was furious with her because she’d said yes to Eugene. She hadn’t seen him since the night before last, when she’d returned from Philadelphia and he’d kept asking if Ty knew about the baby. She’d kept dancing and sidestepping and never answering the question head-on. She’d told Eugene what really happened in Philadelphia, but no one else. She felt she owed him the truth, but couldn’t it be her private business from the rest of the world? As much as she loved her friends, sometimes the fact that everybody knew everything about everybody else in Wayne’s Crossing got her down.

“Anyway,” she went on, “Mr. Odell said he’d give me away if Dr. Stoneman wo—can’t.”

Eugene made his disgusted face, which involved looking like he wanted to spit. She never spoke to him about Dr. Stoneman, but Eugene was too smart not to know that the old doctor disliked and disapproved of him. It was disheartening to see the years stretching out ahead of her, and to know that her husband and one of her favorite friends weren’t going to get along with each other.

But Eugene had asked her what she was thinking, and it wasn’t really about Dr. Stoneman or the ceremony or her pre-wedding jitters. She put her hand out and touched the sleeve of his coat with one finger. “What I was thinking,” she began softly.

He was immediately alert. “What?”

“I wanted to ask you something.”

“What?”

She smiled—to let him know everything was fine, she hadn’t changed her mind. “Maybe it’s not the time.”

“No, go ahead and ask.”

“All right, then. What I’d like to know is why you want to marry me. You’ve never said, and I—I’d just like to know.”

He smirked and lowered his voice in a tone that was part affectionate, part mocking. “What do you want, love words?”

It wouldn’t hurt, she couldn’t help thinking. But she said, “No, just the truth.”

His smart-aleck smile faded; he shifted in his chair. “Does there have to be a reason?”

What a strange question! Carrie couldn’t think how to answer.

“Oh, hell,” he said gruffly. He picked up his beer glass, but set it down when he saw it was empty. “I always liked you,” he said in a funny, embarrassed voice. “You know.”

“No,” she admitted, equally shy. “Tell me.”

“You’re good. You make me feel …” He paused for so long, she thought he’d given up. “Easier in my mind. About things. More like a man.” He laughed uneasily, as if he wished already he hadn’t said that.

She sat still, thinking it over, feeling sorry for Eugene and realizing that words probably weren’t going to be the best way for him to communicate serious thoughts to her during their life together. But maybe they’d find other ways. So what he said next floored her.

“There’s something nobody knows. Nobody outside my family.” She had to lean forward to hear his near-whisper over the clatter of cutlery and the drone of voices around them. “When I was a kid, my old man used to whale the bejesus out of me every chance he got. I’m not talking about a normal licking—any kid needs that once in a while. I’m talking about near to killing me.”

“Oh, Eugene—”

His hand cutting sharp through the air told her she’d better not offer any sympathy. “The best day of my life was the day the sonofabitch dropped dead. I was only ten, didn’t have my growth yet. I only had one regret then and I’ve still got it, got it right now this minute—that he died before I got a chance to beat the living shit out of him.”

She recoiled, appalled by his violence, and even more by the raw hate burning bright as a bonfire in his eyes.

Then he grinned at her, and the hate went back into hiding. He pushed his plate away and crossed his arms on the table. “I was a pretty mean cuss from then on. I could lick anybody, any age, from the time I was fourteen. I enjoyed it. Sometimes I still do.” The cocky smile loosened and he fell silent, twirling his empty beer glass around the wet rings on the table. “I can’t say it in words exactly. You know, what you asked me. It started a long time ago. Remember that day on the bridge, Carrie?” He said it without looking up, twirling the glass in slow circles.

“I remember.” He had never mentioned that day to her, nor she to him, not in five years. She swallowed and held her breath, knowing something important was coming.

Finally he looked up at her. She’d never heard his voice so gentle. “You were perfect for torturing, Carrie. You couldn’t do anything back. You couldn’t fight, you couldn’t even talk. And I thought you were so pretty. Even then. I wanted to see you. You know—naked. But I also wanted to hurt you as bad as I could.”

She whispered past the tightness in her throat, “Why, Eugene?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know, I just did.” He looked baffled.

“Then why didn’t you? Why did you stop them? Why, Eugene?” she persisted when he just shook his head.

He stared off past her shoulder for a long time, then went back to twisting his glass. She thought that if they were anyplace but in a crowded restaurant, neither one of them could’ve found the courage to have this conversation. He glanced up at her, then quickly away again. “I think—” He cleared his throat. “Maybe because when you looked at me, I could see myself. ‘Make him stop,’ you kept saying with your eyes.” He dropped his chin and stared down at his big hands, lying loose and open now. “Make him stop, Mama,” she thought he said.

She leaned forward and slid both her hands into his. He squeezed her fingers so hard they hurt, then dropped them and shoved back in his chair. “Come on, let’s get out of here, it’s late. I told all the boys I’d be over at the Blue Duck by ten.”

Carrie stood with him. “Your last night of freedom?” she teased him lightly.

“Hell, yes. Gotta get in my licks before they clamp the ball and chain on me, don’t I?”

They walked home without saying much. The sky was cold and clear; there was no moon, but a million stars. As usual, Eugene nibbled on a toothpick, rolling it from one side of his lips to the other with his tongue. At Truitt Avenue, he popped a clove in his mouth. He was always particular about his breath, but she knew he was chewing the clove now because he was planning to kiss her.

On the Odells’ front porch, she invited him to come in for a few minutes.

“Into that crazy house? No thanks, not on your life.”

She had to smile, because even out here she could plainly hear the sounds of crying babies and screaming children. “Eppy told Charlotte she could stay up a little later because it’s Christmas Eve, and now Emily’s fit to be tied. Of course, Charlotte won’t last past nine-thirty.” She could tell Eugene wasn’t listening. “Well. I guess I better go in.”

“Why don’t you invite me into the little house you’re staying in, Carrie?”