The Bride's House (31 page)

“The train was late,” Pearl explained. “You’re looking well, Papa.”

“At my age, it’s a surprise I’m looking like anything at all.” He added, “I’m in my ninety-seventh year, Bert. Did you know that?”

“Who doesn’t? If you hadn’t told everybody in town, we’d have thought you were a hundred, being so cranky like you are.”

The two men laughed, and Charlie said, “How’s your day going?”

“There is nothing wrong with it at all.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear it. I guess you could say it’s always a good day for me when my daughter and granddaughter come to see me.”

“Okay, then,” Bert replied.

Charlie escorted the two women into the house, into the parlor, which had always been red, faded now to the soft shade of dying roses. The room contained Susan’s grandmother’s two love seats and her bric-a-brac, and of course, Nealie’s portrait still hung in a prominent spot. Susan’s mother had made only one change. The year before, she had thrown out the dead bird under glass that Nealie had purchased when the Bride’s House was new. Nearly all of its feathers were gone by then, and Joe had told Susan it looked like a baked Cornish hen. Charlie had noticed at once that the bird was gone and raised his voice in protest. After all, Nealie had bought it. “She bought a plucked bird?” Susan had asked her mother, who smiled but told her to hush.

Like her grandfather, Susan did not want the rooms to change, and she looked at them with satisfaction, glad that he had not replaced the Victorian furniture or repapered the walls. When the house was hers—for of course, she expected it to pass down through her mother to her one day—she would reupholster the frayed furniture and store some of Nealie’s knickknacks, update the kitchen and bathrooms. But she would keep the feeling the house gave her, the sense of family, the warmth that the Chicago mansion with its formal rooms kept up by servants never seemed to convey. The Bride’s House was home to Susan, just as it had been to her mother and her grandmother. As a little girl, she had promised herself she would live there someday. For Susan, the Bride’s House represented not just the past, but the future—a future with Joe Bullock.

“We expected you earlier, daughter. Mrs. Warren left supper on the table, where it’s cold, and she’s gone out. Now if it had been your aunt Lidie, she’d have had a hot supper waiting for you,” Charlie Dumas told his daughter, Pearl.

After Pearl moved to Chicago, Charlie had had a succession of housekeepers, who lived in Aunt Lidie’s old room off the kitchen. Mrs. Warren was the latest. Pearl had thought to engage a nurse, but Charlie “bore easy maintenance,” as Mrs. Warren put it, saying she could meet the old man’s needs. “It doesn’t seem right, Aunt Lidie not being here,” Pearl said.

“I’ll be the next to go,” Charlie told her. Then he turned to Susan. “I’m not the only one who expected you to be here earlier. You already had a caller—called twice, in fact.”

“Joe Bullock?” Susan couldn’t help but blurt out. She hadn’t seen him since the fall, and she could hardly wait.

“Not unless he wears a dress. It was Billy Purcell’s daughter. Billy, you remember him, Pearl. He never was no-account anyhow, and now he says he’s disabled to work. His money goes easy.”

“I thought he’d found God.”

“Oh, he confessed religion, all right. He sings and shouts on Sunday, but then he raises the devil with his neighbor on Monday. Nothing much good ever hatched out of that family. It’s a wonder young Peggy turned out as well as she did.”

The two older people continued talking, unaware of Susan’s disappointment that Peggy Purcell and not Joe Bullock had inquired about her. Susan had hoped that Joe was as anxious to see her as she was him. She’d even allowed herself to dream he would be waiting on the porch, talking to her grandfather. He’d rush to Bert’s truck and tell her, “I’ve been counting the minutes.” And then sometime during the summer, he would tell her how much he cared about her, maybe even propose. After all, she was eighteen. Several of her friends were already engaged.

Of course, that was only a dream, although it was one she’d had since she was eleven, when she’d decided she was going to marry Joe. He’d been in college for two years now, however, and maybe he’d forgotten about her. How awful to think she had cared about him what seemed like her whole life, and he never even knew it. What if he’d already found somebody else, and she’d never get a chance with him? Maybe it was Peggy Purcell—Peggy with her long blond hair and her smashing figure. She didn’t need a padded bra, hadn’t even when she was fourteen.

Susan would find out about Joe soon enough, of course, because Peggy would come by the Bride’s House at breakfasttime the next day. Peggy had done that since she was a little girl, when she’d discovered that the housekeeper served hotcakes and bacon, waffles, eggs, cornbread, and cinnamon buns and she was welcome. “Peggy’s mother doesn’t make anything but mush. Those Purcells never have had plenty to eat,” Charlie had said after Susan complained once that Peggy was mooching. And Susan had been ashamed of herself.

*   *   *

Susan was right about Peggy showing up. As she started down the stairs the next morning, she heard the harsh sound of the bell, the rasping of metal on metal, and heard her mother open the door and say, “Why, Peggy, don’t you look pretty. Susan will be so happy to see you. Come in and have breakfast with her.” And Peggy, dressed in short shorts and a plaid blouse whose tails were tied at her waist, her blond hair held with barrettes and turned under in a pageboy that made a
V
down her back, flounced into the house, more grown-up than she had been in the fall. Perky, Susan thought, sexy, resigned that nobody would ever apply either of those words to her.

The girls said hello, looking each other over, and Susan was reminded of the way dogs sniffed each other before committing themselves. Although she’d often borne the brunt of Peggy’s ill humor, Susan was fond of her friend, and said, “I was just about to have breakfast. Want some?”

“All right, I guess.”

The two went into the dining room where Charlie was getting up from the table. “Pearl, I could use your help with a few letters,” he said, and Susan exchanged glances with her mother. This happened every summer, her mother holed up in the study with her grandfather. Susan knew the letters were of no consequence, that her grandfather simply liked to keep her mother with him—and away from her own work. Pearl Dumas Curry wrote a newspaper column about patriotism and sacrifice, American drive and ingenuity, all values that were prized during the war and were still popular in 1950. Susan found the columns a little cloying, but out of loyalty, she read them. Besides, she never knew when her mother might mention someone from Georgetown.

To everyone’s surprise, most of all her own, Pearl had become a newspaper columnist. She’d begun writing on a trip to Europe with Mrs. Travers and had never stopped. At a dinner party when Susan was still a child, her father, Frank, had bragged to the editor of a Chicago newspaper that his wife was “quite a writer. You ought to read her work.”

“Indeed,” the editor replied, for he had heard that remark often enough and didn’t care to read another dilettante author.

But Frank was persistent, and Susan in tow, he had showed up at the editor’s office with a sheaf of Pearl’s work. The man liked what he read and printed an essay about a Georgetown prospector who’d donated the two dollars he’d set aside for winter shoes to buy war bond stamps. The essay had resonated with readers, and Pearl was offered space in the paper for a weekly column. Within months, the column was syndicated, and now, a little more than five years after she was first published, Pearl had a book of her columns. Once Pearl had mentioned Joe, and Susan, thrilled to see his name in print, had mailed him half a dozen clippings. Susan’s friends were a little in awe of her having a famous mother, but to Susan, Pearl was simply her mother.

The two girls chatted through breakfast, telling each other what they had done in the past months. Susan hoped Peggy would mention Joe Bullock, but she did not, and Susan would not bring up his name for fear Peggy would figure out she cared. Then Peggy would prod and tease and maybe even tell Joe, and that would be so embarrassing. After a time, Susan said, “Oh, I forgot. I brought you something.”

“Not another doll,” Peggy said. When the two were small, Susan had brought her friend Storybook Dolls, tiny china dolls dressed to illustrate stories.

“Of course not,” Susan replied, a little embarrassed that Peggy would think she would consider such a childish gift.

They went to Susan’s room, which seemed almost as big as the Purcell house, and Peggy flopped down on the carved walnut bed, the one Susan’s grandmother had chosen when she had furnished the house. A spot of mud the size of a half dollar dropped from Peggy’s sandal onto the white lace spread, and Peggy flicked it off, spreading the dirt across the lace. “So what did you bring?” she asked.

Susan had not yet unpacked, and went to her suitcase, taking out something wrapped in tissue, handing it to her friend. Peggy removed a wide piece of black elastic with fasteners on each end. “It’s called a cinch belt,” Susan explained.

Peggy held it up. “Too small.”

“You put it around your waist and pull it tight—
cinch,
get it?”

Peggy stretched the belt until she could fasten it, then looked at herself in the big mirror over Susan’s marble-top dresser, preening a little. “Wow!” she said, admiring the way the elastic made her waist smaller, her bust and hips larger. Susan couldn’t help but be jealous. A cinch belt on her was like putting a sash on a yardstick, but the belt made Peggy even curvier. Joe would compare the two of them, and Susan would come out second best.

Peggy studied herself in Susan’s mirror, then looked down at the tiny drawers on either side of the long mirror, where Susan kept gloves and scarves, jewelry. Peggy removed a charm bracelet, looking at the charms one by one. Susan had bought them on trips to California and New York, and even to Europe. “I have a charm bracelet,” Peggy said, holding Susan’s bracelet shoulder high, then dropping it onto the marble beside a Bible that had belonged to Nealie. She picked up a silver hand mirror that had been Nealie’s, too, and glanced at herself in it, then banged it on the top of the dressing table as she put it down. Susan was used to Peggy’s carelessness, knowing it was done from jealousy, but still, she resented the hostility. It wasn’t her fault that she was rich. She didn’t flaunt it. Peggy didn’t have to put her down for it.

Peggy removed the stopper from a crystal bottle and smelled it, then returned it, but not before a drop had spilled on the dresser scarf. “Too sweet. It smells like Evening in Paris,” she said disdainfully, although the perfume was an expensive one.

Susan gave a tiny shake of her head, thinking it was odd that they were such good friends. There were other girls her age in Georgetown. But Peggy was the smartest and funniest and the most fun. Besides, Peggy and Joe were close, so Susan couldn’t be friends with him without being Peggy’s friend, as well. Pearl had explained once that coming from the family she did, Peggy couldn’t help but be envious. The girl would never have the money or the opportunities Susan did, so Susan should be understanding, kind even, when Peggy made cruel remarks. So Susan overlooked Peggy’s rudeness and concentrated on her friend’s good qualities—her liveliness and sense of adventure. Besides, she knew, as the summer progressed, Peggy would lighten up.

Peggy rummaged around Susan’s dresser and picked up the bracelet again, flipping through the charms. “Joe gave me a charm. Did I tell you that? It’s a little piece of gold ore. He told me I was as good as gold, if you know what I mean.” She raised her chin a little, running her tongue over her teeth.

Susan didn’t know what that meant. Had Joe kissed her? Maybe they’d necked. Or petted. Susan was dying to know, but she didn’t dare ask, because she didn’t trust Peggy to tell the truth. Besides, Peggy would be coy, would string Susan along and make her feel stupid. She’d probably said that just to get Susan’s goat. So instead, Susan asked, “How’s he anyway?” She said it slowly, with what she hoped sounded like a lack of interest. Then she went to her suitcase and straightened the things Peggy had rumpled, not because she was neat but because, like her mother and grandmother, she blushed easily, and she was afraid the red face would give her away.

“Who?”

“Joe Bullock.” Just saying the name out loud pleased her, and she wished she could say it over and over again.

“I heard he got, what-do-you-call-it, pinned.”

Susan turned around quickly and found Peggy staring at her. “Oh really?” She tried to sound casual, although her heart was beating wildly.

“But he said he didn’t. I think stuff like that, you know, like going steady, is dumb, don’t you? I told him I’d never go steady.”

“He asked you?” Peggy smirked and looked away, and Susan gave a tiny sigh, almost certain that Peggy had lied. “So is he here this summer?”

“Sure. I saw him last night.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Who?” Peggy asked again.

“Joe.” Susan cringed at the way she couldn’t shut up, but she
had
to know about him. Peggy was sure to figure out how she felt.

“He’s working at the Texaco station. He always was crazy about cars. He’s going to buy Mr. Joy’s rattletrap.” Peggy paused and glanced over at Susan. “We’re going to the movies tonight. You can come if you want to.”