The Bride's House (32 page)

Susan tried to sound nonchalant. “Maybe,” she said, “if I haven’t seen the movie. What’s on?” She didn’t care if she’d seen the motion picture a dozen times.

Peggy shrugged. “I don’t know. Some detective thing. If we’re not there, go on in.” Susan thought that over, trying to figure out if she had just been caught up in one of Peggy’s devilish tricks. It happened every summer.

*   *   *

For as long as she could remember, Susan had had to prove herself each June after she arrived in Georgetown, perform some sort of initiation, before she was accepted as one of the gang of children who roamed the town and the mountains around it. Only when she was older did she realize that was because she was wealthy. The others wanted to make sure she did not put on airs or consider herself superior. Once, she had had to float down Clear Creek in an inner tube. The creek was at flood stage, and Susan’s body was numb with the snowmelt that carried her, swirling her along the creek banks. If she’d fallen through the inner tube, she’d have drowned, but she held on, and Joe fished her out after she got caught in some branches.

Another time, Peggy dared her to climb one of the pine trees in front of the Bride’s House. Susan was afraid of heights, and she shivered at the thought of going eighty or ninety feet up into the air, but she was more fearful of the disdain if she didn’t take the dare, and started up the tree.

At first, it wasn’t so bad. She went from limb to limb, more than halfway to the top, worrying more about scratching her legs than about falling. But then she looked down and realized she was fifty feet above the others. Her hands began to perspire, and she started to shake, grasping the branches of the tree so hard that the needles made her hands bleed.

“Go on. You have to go to the top,” Peggy called.

Susan looked down, saw Joe watching her, and she reached for a higher branch to pull herself up, but her hand slipped, and she threw herself against the trunk of the tree. She wasn’t in any real danger of falling. After all, she was holding on with one hand, and her feet were firm. But the idea of going higher made her almost ill. Her breath came fast, and she could feel her heart beat so hard that she thought it would knock her out of the tree. “I can’t,” she called.

“Scaredy-cat,” Peggy yelled.

“I am not!” Shaking with fear, Susan reached again for the branch above her.

“Oh, forget it. Nobody else ever got that far,” Joe said. “Come on down, Susan,” he called. But Susan was petrified, and she could go neither up nor down.

Peggy scoffed at her. “You’ll starve up there if you don’t come down. We’ll have to go up there and get your bones.”

But at last, Joe climbed up the tree, until he was beside Susan. “It’s okay. You can do it. I’ll be right below to catch you if you fall, but you won’t. You’re as game as anybody,” he told her. Then quietly, branch by branch, he talked her down.

“Well, you didn’t make it to the top,” Peggy said when Susan jumped from the lowest branch onto the ground.

“Neither did you. Remember?” Joe defended Susan, and nothing more was said. The others gathered around Susan, and she was one of them for the summer.

The worst time, however, was the tire. Susan had been eleven that summer, and Peggy had announced she’d come up with a new game. She told Susan to meet her and Joe and the other kids at the top of Taos Street, and Susan had agreed, apprehensive about what challenge Peggy had in store for her this time.

She walked slowly up the hill, conscious that her feet were still tender and she was wearing sandals, while the others were barefoot, except for one boy with scuffed high-top shoes.

“Where’s Joe?” Susan asked.

“He went to get the tire,” Peggy replied, giving Susan a strange smile. “I told him to. He’ll be here after a bit.” She walked a little ways away so that she could see over to Rose Street. “I think that’s him coming.” The others turned and watched Joe roll a large tire up the hill.

When he reached them, Joe grinned at Susan. “Hi, ya,” he said. “You grew some.”

“Everybody grows in a year,” Peggy told him.

“Did Peggy tell you about our new game?”

Susan shrugged. “Not really.”

Peggy grinned at her. “Here’s what you do. You climb inside the tire, and we roll you down the hill. It’s pretty simple.” A boy snickered, and Peggy told him, “Shut up.”

Susan stared at her. “You want me to go down the hill inside a tire?”

“You bet.”

“That’s crazy! What if I get hit by a car?”

“Oh, don’t worry. Somebody will stand down on Sixth Street to let us know when the coast is clear.”

“Swell,” Susan said. This sounded like the worst game she had ever heard of. If the tire didn’t get hit by a car, it might roll into Clear Creek, and she’d drown. Or it could run into a house or a rock pile, and she’d get knocked out. The rolling would make her dizzy, and she’d throw up, and the kids would laugh at her. What if the tire landed in the yard of the Bride’s House and her mother saw her? “That’s the dumbest game in the world. Who’d do that?” she asked.

“Joe did it,” Peggy said. “So did I. So did all of us.”

“From all the way up here?” The street went straight down the mountain for three blocks. In fact, in the winter, it was the sledding hill.

Peggy shrugged, and then she turned to Joe and said in a loud whisper, “I think she’s chicken.” Joe turned and looked at Susan as if thinking Peggy was right.

Susan swallowed hard then. There was no worse insult. If the kids thought she were chicken, they’d never let her live it down. It would be a disastrous summer. She couldn’t bear it if Joe looked down on her. Maybe he wouldn’t want anything to do with her. “Okay,” she said at last.

“Don’t worry. The tire always falls over before it gets very far.” Joe grinned. He held the tire, while Peggy helped Susan curl up inside it. She felt claustrophobic, and her back hurt from being bent over. The edges rubbed against her skin, and the rubber smell made her nauseous.

“I’ll shove it off,” Peggy volunteered, elbowing Joe aside. She held the tire stationary at the top of the hill, then gave it a hard push.

Susan held her breath as the tire began to roll down the mountain street, gathering speed. The kids had forgotten to station someone on Sixth Street, and Susan thought she’d get hit by a car. She tried to recognize Sixth, but she couldn’t because everything was a blur as she turned over and over. Maybe she’d passed it already. The tire sped up, she knew that. There was a flash of green, and Susan feared she might be veering over to the creek. The tire would sink to the bottom, and she’d drown before she could get out. But she kept rolling, her heart wild, the taste of her breakfast in her mouth. Her back hurt so much from being curled up that she thought she’d never stand up straight again—that is, if she lived. The tire kicked up dirt, all but smothering her, making her cough, her eyes water. A dog barked as she rolled past, and someone yelled, “Stop that fool thing!” Another voice called, “Those darn kids. Somebody’s liable to get killed.” She was the somebody, Susan thought. Maybe the tire would knock down an old man or a little kid, and she’d be arrested.

Then suddenly, the tire slowed. The feel of the ground beneath the tire changed, and she knew it had left the dirt road and was on grass. The tire bumped against something, wobbled a little, then circled, and finally, it fell over and was still. Susan heaved a deep sigh, relieved and a little surprised that she was still alive. This was the worst trick Peggy had ever pulled, worse even than climbing the tree.

That was not the end of it, however. Susan gripped the tire to pull herself out, but she was stuck. The edges of the tire held her inside, and now she had a new fear. What if the kids didn’t help her out? Maybe they were scared that she was hurt and they would get into trouble. What if they scattered? She’d have to stay there until somebody discovered her. There might be rats or snakes in the grass. A mosquito bit her, and with her arms pinned to her sides, she couldn’t slap it. Susan shivered. Then she saw a broom and heard a voice. “Don’t you worthless kids run that tire into my fence!”

“Get me out of here,” Susan called.

The woman screamed. “The devil’s inside that tire.”

Then Susan heard laughter, and someone said, “Oh, it’s just Susan Curry.”

“Well, you could have knocked her dead, running that tire right smack-a-dab in the middle of the road. And wouldn’t that be something? Now get her out of there.”

“Nobody ever rolled that far before. It’s a record.” That sounded like Joe.

The kids were around the tire then, gripping Susan, pulling her out. She wobbled and would have fallen if Joe hadn’t caught her. Her stomach churned. She felt like vomiting, but she couldn’t, not in front of everybody.

“You okay?” Joe put his arm around her waist to hold her up.

“She’s probably sick,” Peggy said. “I bet she throws up.”

“Leave her alone,” Joe said. “I wouldn’t feel so good, either, if I’d gone that far. Are you all right, Susan?”

Susan nodded, although her back ached and her head hurt. She was dizzy, too. But she stood up straight and looked at the bunch of kids around her. “That was fun,” she said. And then she turned to Peggy. “Who’s next?”

Peggy studied her a moment, scowled, but then she smiled a little and said only, “You don’t have to be so biggity acting.”

Joe grinned. “Good going, Susan,” he said. It was the highest praise he could give her, and Susan basked in the words. That was the moment she decided she was going to marry Joe Bullock.

*   *   *

Peggy worked at a clothing store called the Miner’s Daughter, and she left shortly after breakfast. Susan unpacked, then sat down at the dressing table and picked up the hand mirror. It was silver with an
ND
monogram on the back and was part of a set that included a hairbrush, comb, and shoehorn that her grandfather had bought for her grandmother. She liked using it, liked the sense of connection it gave her with the women who had lived in the Bride’s House before her.

She ran her finger over the engraving, the flowers and vines that swirled around the monogram. She loved Nealie’s bric-a-brac as much as the fusty old house. The Bride’s House was warm and safe with its sense of permanence, and it was the place she went in her head when she was lonely or unhappy. She dreamed of living there with Joe. Susan never pictured the boys who had courted her in Chicago—and there had been several, since seventeen was not too young to be engaged—in the Bride’s House. Only Joe.

Susan placed the mirror on the dressing table, got up, and went downstairs, waving to her mother, who was taking dictation in the study. “I’m going to walk down to the park,” she called, knowing as she said it that her goal was the Texaco station. She should wait until she ran into Joe or he stopped by the house, but it had been nine months! She couldn’t wait any longer. Joe didn’t have to know she was there. She’d stand across the street and get just a glimpse of him.

So Susan went to the highway and stared at the white station with its two gasoline pumps, and then she saw him filling the tank of a prewar Plymouth. Happy just to see him, she watched as he replaced the pump, took a rag, and cleaned the windows. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, his arms golden in the sunlight, and Susan wished she could run her hand over his skin.

The driver held out some bills, and Joe went into the station and returned with change, handing it through the window to the driver. He watched the car pull out onto the highway, and then he glanced across the street and pushed back the hat with the red star on it. He recognized Susan and grinned, and his smile made her glow.

She crossed the road, aware that her hands were sweaty from the sun and that the wind had whipped her hair. She had on a pair of old shorts from last summer and a blouse that hadn’t been ironed. Why hadn’t she put on something decent, something like what Peggy had worn? Joe would think she looked just like another grubby tourist.

“Hey,” Joe said. “When did you get in?”

“Last night.” She looked down at where the toe of her sandal dug into the asphalt so that he wouldn’t see how she blushed just from the pleasure of being with him. “Mr. Joy drove us up from Denver.”

“That’s some truck he’s got.”

“It has a shift in the floor.”

“I know. I’m going to buy it from him—two hundred bucks. Cool, huh?”

The boys Susan dated in Chicago drove new cars—convertibles with leather seats and automatic transmissions, radios and whitewall tires. They’d have looked down on a 1927 Ford truck with a cracked windshield and a blanket covering the ripped seats, but at that moment, she’d rather ride in Bert Joy’s truck than any other vehicle in the world. “A steal,” she said.

“I can work on it here at the station when we’re not busy.”

“Are you ever not busy?”

“Not yet.”

The conversation was easy. There was no fencing as there had been at first with Peggy. It was as if the two had seen each other only yesterday. “What’s with the bow tie?” Susan asked.

Joe touched the tie. “Texaco makes us wear them. It’s leather.”

“Oh, I thought you just had good taste.”

“I do. I hang around with you, don’t I?”

A man inside the garage called Joe, and he said, “I have to go.” Then he asked, “Hey, do you want to go to a movie tonight?”