The Bride's House (36 page)

“Sort of. I joined five years ago, at the end of the war,” he told her. “I never knew my folks—I grew up in an orphanage—so after high school, I went to Alaska and worked on a road crew. Talk about cold. That’s spring outside compared to Alaska.” Peter shook his head, then looked about for the waitress. She had gone off, so Peter went around the counter and poured the dregs of the pot into his cup. The coffee didn’t seem to bother him. “Things shut down in the winter in Alaska, and there’s nothing to do but drink. I did enough of that the first winter, so when fall came around the second time, I signed up for the Air Force. I’d had enough of the cold. Besides, I figured I wouldn’t get anywhere working construction six months of the year. I’m stationed at Lowry Air Force Base.”

“Do you like it?” Several of Susan’s sorority sisters dated military men, but the men were college graduates. Most had been drafted. None were career military.

“The Air Force isn’t so bad, but it’s not what I want to do the rest of my life. I’m planning to go to college on the GI Bill after I get discharged. Maybe I’ll study engineering.”

Susan added up the years in her head, figuring out that Peter was twenty-five, maybe older. “There are some boys in college now on the GI Bill, men, I mean.”

“You go to school.”

She nodded, remembering then that she had been on her way to her friend’s house to study for an exam. She didn’t care now. “The University of Denver.”

“Family? You got family?”

“Just my parents. They live in Chicago.”

“How come you came all the way out here for school?”

“My mother was born here. We spend the summers in Colorado, in a house…” She glanced at Peter in the mirror. His head was turned toward her. “Well, it’s more like a cabin. My grandfather was a prospector.”

“One of those guys who struck it rich?”

Susan had dated more than one boy who was interested in her fortune, and she was cautious about others knowing the extent of her wealth, especially somebody she’d just met, so she replied, “Don’t I wish.”

“I like the mountains. Maybe you’ll take me to your place sometime.” When Susan didn’t reply, he added, “I guess that was out of line. You don’t know me. You might think I’m a masher. But I would like to see you again, maybe go to the movies.”

“You’re right, I don’t really know you.”

“Well, I tried.”

When he didn’t pursue the movie idea, Susan added, “Maybe I could meet you sometime, like for a matinee. I think that would be all right.”

He grinned at her, as if he’d known all along that she’d go out with him. “By the way, I’m twenty-six.”

“Twenty-two,” Susan lied.

“Yeah, right,” and Susan knew he didn’t believe her.

“Almost,” she said. In fact, she was eighteen.

*   *   *

They met downtown the next Saturday afternoon and saw
Samson and Delilah
with Hedy Lamarr and Victor Mature, sitting in the balcony of the Denham Theater so that Peter could smoke. Susan had put on a black dress with a full skirt and crinoline petticoat, hose and high heels, instead of the pleated skirt, sweater set, and penny loafers that she usually wore at college. She had on a hat, too, a black one with a tiny veil pulled back, and black leather gloves. The outfit made her look older, more sophisticated, less like a student. That mattered to her because Peter seemed worldly—and certainly sexier than anybody she’d ever gone out with. She didn’t feel altogether comfortable around him, she thought as she put on her good coat with the fur collar. And that intrigued her.

As it turned out, Peter didn’t notice what she wore. Susan learned later that trappings didn’t mean much to him. She could have worn diamonds, and he wouldn’t have noticed them. They sat through the movie, the cartoon, the previews, the Movietone News, and Peter didn’t so much as touch her hand. So it surprised her later when Peter kissed her hard on the mouth.

They were walking down Sixteenth Street, looking into the department store windows, at the back-to-school displays still up in the Denver Dry, the toys in the May Company, the elegant mannequins in formals and furs in Neusteter’s. The wind blew newspapers and dead leaves down the street, and it was cold, although it was not yet Halloween. They stopped in front of Neusteter’s, Susan studying her reflection in the glass, thinking how unsophisticated she looked compared to Hedy Lamarr, how wrinkled, how unglamorous, with her hair hanging limply under the stupid little hat.

“That might have been the worst movie I ever saw,” Peter said.

Susan agreed, but she was too polite to say so. “It wasn’t so bad.”

“Oh, come on. Admit it.”

“Well.”

Peter stared at Susan’s reflection, too, then he put his hands on the glass window, one on either side of her, and when she turned around, he kissed her. A woman coming out of the store already wearing a Christmas corsage of tiny ornaments clutched her brown paper shopping bag and gave them a look of disdain.

“Oh.” Susan stared at Peter, surprised. She couldn’t make up her mind whether she was shocked at his presumption, kissing her like that and in public, or pleased by his boldness. Whatever it was, she liked it. And she didn’t think about Joe Bullock when it happened.

Peter smiled and said, “I thought we should get that over with.”

*   *   *

Peter was different from the boys Susan had dated both in college and at home. They were polished, tentative when they kissed her, except when they were drunk, and then they were sloppy. Peter had rough edges, and he was self-assured. He scared her a little, too, because he was hard to second-guess. He didn’t kiss her again until their third date, and then he did it as if he had the right to, French-kissed her, and no boy had ever done that. She was sure he had been around, and it gave her pause. What did a man like that want from her? And what did she expect? She’d never marry Peter, of course. He was so different from anyone she knew—so different from Joe, was what she really thought. But Joe was a long way away, and by changing schools, he’d made it clear he didn’t care about her. There was no reason to feel guilty about Peter Fanshaw, Susan told herself. And there were plenty of reasons to like him.

*   *   *

In early December, Charles Dumas died. He was ninety-seven years old. Bert Joy called Pearl in Chicago and told her gently, “Your father went to sleep last night. It looks like he’s not going to wake up.”

Susan’s grandfather had always been a part of the Bride’s House, and Susan couldn’t imagine the place without his presence, the smell of his cigars that mixed with the scents of lilacs, cinnamon, and fresh bread, jam boiling on the stove. He doted on her, walking along the streets with her as he pointed out deserted mine workings on the hillsides and told her about the old days. He even took her into Curley’s, the coffee shop in Georgetown, to show her off.

Charlie liked to go to the post office at mail time, talking with the other old men who gathered there, discussing politics, speculating on metals prices, recalling old times. Sometimes he sat on a bench in the sun as he read through his letters, warming himself, greeting people as they went inside.

On that particular day, Susan tagged along to mail a postcard to a friend in Chicago. The postcard showed a pumpkin the size of a car, with the caption “Third Place Winner,” and Susan thought it was very funny. As they left the post office, Charlie said he wanted to stop for a cup of coffee. “Curley makes coffee as thick as spring runoff, the way it ought to be,” he explained. “You coming, or you going back home?”

“I’m coming,” Susan said, because the café had doughnuts. They went inside Curley’s, where old men sat at the counter with heavy white mugs of coffee held in their rough hands. They dunked glazed and powdered-sugar doughnuts into their coffee, leaving a sugar slick that looked like oil on top of the dark liquid. One man had a white sugar trail running down his beard onto his shirt. Charlie sat down next to him, and Susan climbed onto a stool beside her grandfather, turning around and around on the revolving seat until Charlie put out a hand to stop her. The morning was cold and rainy, and the café was steamy with the smell of wet wool of the men’s jackets.

“Aren’t you working today?” Charlie asked an old man next to him. The man’s long underwear covered his forearms below his rolled-up shirtsleeves.

“I can’t work in this rain.”

“Any excuse will do. He hates work like God hates sin,” a man whose fingers were crippled with arthritis interjected. Susan knew him. He was Joe Bullock’s grandfather.

“I disremember you were in any hurry to pick up a shovel yourself.”

“Come day, go day. God bring Sunday.”

The men laughed, and Susan wrapped her arms around herself. The girl was observant and she liked being in the café with the old men, listening to them tease each other, smelling the burned coffee and the greasy doughnuts. They reminded her a little of the gardeners and caretakers her father employed in Chicago. At noon, those men gathered in the gardening shed in bad weather, or on nice days, they sat outside in the sun, their backs to the stone wall surrounding the property, pouring coffee from thermoses and eating huge sandwiches and meat pies wrapped in waxed paper that they took from their lunch buckets. They laughed with each other and talked in a language that Susan didn’t understand. Once, she brought her little sandwich, the crusts neatly cut off, and sat down with them. They wiped crumbs from their huge mustaches and stood up respectfully, embarrassed, shifting from one foot to the other, saying, “Can we help you, missy?” and, “You got something you want doing?” She realized that they thought it wasn’t proper for her to sit with them and, more important, that they didn’t want her there, and she never again joined them.

Georgetown was different. She wouldn’t have gone into Curley’s by herself, but the old men there didn’t fidget when she sat down, wouldn’t treat her as if she didn’t belong. They accepted her. Mr. Bullock leaned in front of Charlie and touched his cap in a gesture of politeness. Another gummed his doughnut and lisped, “You got a mighty nice young girl with you, Charlie.”

Charlie ordered a cup of coffee and two doughnuts, one for each of them, then glanced up at the man behind the counter who hadn’t moved. “What, you want your money now? You don’t trust me to pay you when I’m done?” Charlie asked and guffawed.

“I’m wondering who this is.” He nodded at Susan. “I don’t very often see a pretty young lady with an old geezer like you.”

“That’s my granddaughter. The Bride’s House is going to be hers someday.”

“Granddaughter? You mean Pearl’s girl?”

“Who else would it be?”

“Well, I was just thinking she don’t look a bit like you. She looks a little like her mother, but then Pearl don’t favor you, either. You sure this one’s yours?” He laughed at his joke, but Charlie didn’t.

“What’s that you say?” Charlie’s face grew black, and he pounded his fist on the counter so hard that he rattled the coffee mugs. The others stopped talking to stare at him. Before the man could respond, Charlie told him, “I said she’s my granddaughter, and don’t you ever question it. You just forget my business.”

The man went to the coffeepot, shaking his head. “Forgetting is what I do best, Charlie.”

*   *   *

“Bert Joy asked me if you were going to sell the house,” Susan’s father said after Charlie Dumas’s funeral was over, and he and her mother were sitting on a love seat in the parlor, Susan across from them.

Pearl, who had been leaning against her husband, his arm around her, sat up. “Sell the Bride’s House? I’d as soon sell my childhood.”

“You want to keep it, then, even though nobody’ll be living here?”

“I can’t imagine not having it.”

“What will you do with it?”

Pearl shifted, trying to get comfortable in the love seat. “Do you remember when this was covered with horsehair? Those hairs used to come loose and scratch the backs of my legs.” Susan’s parents smiled fondly at each other, as if enjoying some memory. Then Pearl added, “I’ll do what I’ve always done—live here in the summer. With Susan.” She looked at Susan across from her. “Do you want to do that?”

Susan gave a sigh of relief although it had not occurred to her that they would ever let the Bride’s House go. “Of course I do. I’d hate it if you sold this place.” “This place,” Susan thought, was her connection to Joe. Without it, there was no reason to return to Georgetown, and she might not ever see him again.

“There, you see?” Pearl told Frank.

The three of them sat silently for a time, Susan staring into the fire that was mostly ashes now. Her mother stood and went to the window, pushing aside the lace curtain and looking out at the street, cold in the moonlight. “I never thought he’d die,” she said, and she began to cry softly. Susan had never seen her mother cry. “He was a hard old man, but I loved him. I hated him, too, but mostly, I loved him.”

When her father didn’t reply, Susan studied him, thinking there had been something between the two men. She remembered overhearing her mother tell a friend that she had married against her father’s wishes, but Susan couldn’t imagine why Charlie would have objected to Frank. Then Frank said, “It’s over.”

“Yes,” Pearl said, dropping the curtain and turning around. “It’s over.” And then she added, “At last.”