The Wilful Daughter (27 page)

Fixing the place, hanging the curtains and the draperies, furnishing the kitchen, the linen on the bed, had been the job she enjoyed with her sisters. It took their minds off of Willie’s death. It took their minds off June’s disgrace.

It put their minds on women things, marriage things. Things that she felt they should have been allowed to think about long ago.

But she couldn’t get up and look around now because she might disturb her sleeping husband.

Husband.

She had not thought to have a husband since John Wood had gone to war and died. When the letters stopped coming and the words stopped coming, she sensed doom. John had been dead two months before she found out, the anger between the two families was so great. His death, the inability to have him as a husband, had left her wanting no husband at all.

She bought home no suitors.

She refused invitations to parties, to dances, to church socials, to school functions. She took on the guise of an old maid, but in actuality she felt more like a widow. As this widow/old maid person, she found fault with every man the Blacksmith deemed suitable.

She had still been a dutiful daughter in her father’s house. She would sit and listen to them try to impress her father and then, when they were gone, sure that the Blacksmith would make Minnelsa at least be seen with them in public to prove they were courting her, he would say: “Now, daughter wasn’t that a nice fellow?”

She would reply coyly, “Yes, Papa.” The Blacksmith would sit back on the chair on the porch, relaxing in the knowledge that he had just created the perfect match. She could see her father calculating, with pride, the dividends he would receive with a banker for a son-in-law, or the lawyer from Virginia or the doctor with the impeccable credentials. She would watch her father’s head swim with excitement and then, once she knew he was lost in the dream, she would, without looking up from her book or her sewing, say: “But, Papa. . .”

And the Blacksmith would pause in his reverie. “Yes, daughter?”

“
His teeth are bad. Did you see the stains and the holes?”

“
Teeth can be fixed,” he would say staring at her.

“
I know father. But after all he is a highly educated man. One would think for appearance sake he would . . .” Then she’d throw in: “It might be hereditary.” She’d add the stories she had heard about families with histories of bed teeth and bad gums. The expense, the ugliness. By the time she was finished the Blacksmith considered the lawyer a liability because of his teeth.

And the banker a liability because of his seven unmarried, and unattractive but dependent, siblings.

Bira understood what was going on and comforted her husband by telling him to let things pass for a while. To let it rest.

And so it rested. And while it rested, Minnelsa concentrated on her poetry, on her students, on her family, her mother, her brother and honoring her father-love was not what she felt for him. Until she saw the Piano Man she had not thought: husband/married/wife.

She fingered the ring.

It had been so quick, but not quick enough to make her forget John-a lifetime of courting, a lifetime of love. The man next to her, he had taken her in the light so that she would never fear him in the dark. He had been gentle with her because of his love for her, and slow because he wanted to teach her, teach her what it meant to be a wife.

Wife. Husband. She was her own family now, with him. Soon there would be a baby, June’s baby. But he had promised they would have their own. If she could still have a baby. She was old, old enough to be June’s mother, old enough. . .

She was a wife. The weight on the bed moved next to her and she wondered would he awake and touch her as he had the morning before? A wife of two days and less hours. So this was married - another body in the bed. A body that could tell you what to do with your body. A body that could fill your body, and control your body.

Another body that could make your body loose control.

She had tried not to like, to control, the uncontrollable things he made her feel. But when the heat rose in her when he kissed her, when he removed the lace robe from her shoulders and the ribbon from her hair, when he kissed her again harder than she had ever been kissed in her life, and when he touched her where she had never been touched before, two thoughts, two things that should have not been in her mind, came to her in her bridal bed.

She thought: Would it have been like this with John?

She thought: Was this the pleasure that June felt when she gave herself to the man that fathered her child?

The thoughts left but not quickly enough for her to forget they had joined her on what was to be a special night. The thoughts started to leave when he laid her under the cool linen sheets. They moved to the door when he touched her in places she did not know would cause a spark (even a fire, as she felt later). They were gone when he lay his naked body on her naked body and loved her.

Loved his wife.

Husband-wife. She touched the ring again. It was almost breakfast time for her father. But at what time would her husband want to eat? They had not left this room much of late. Breakfast for two, not six, not eight.

For him. Her husband.

This was why she could not sleep yet, and hadn’t really slept only rested, between the loving and touching and being a wife. She decided to just lie there and think about it.

And she smiled.

* * *

Two thoughts followed the Piano Man into the bedroom of the small but beautifully decorated cottage on his wedding night.

He thought: I have been with two virgins in my life and they were sisters.

He thought: she is not her sister.

She was his wife. He was married now and that was what he did not think about when he disrobed her, when he touched her, when he let the passion he felt overcome him and took her so quickly that he was suddenly unsure of himself. But she would not know, would not understand that he was too quick and unsure. This was new to her and she depended on him to teach her

His wife. He did love her. Respect her. She would make the best wife. Faithful, understanding. Of course there would be no trips to Miss Emma’s with her, the oldest of the Blacksmith’s daughters. The one he had been told would never open up to any man. She opened up to him. She had yet to say I love you. After all they hadn’t known each other that long. But he knew she would say it, would whisper it in his ear when they were lying alone in the dark and he was doing for her everything that a dead dream could not do. She would never question him about his love for her either, because he knew she deserved it. The fact that she was willing to take his child, although she did not know that it was his child, and make it her own, touched his heart. He had wanted June to go to the woman in the woods, the one who knew the ways. . .

Maybe this was better. In case, at thirty-four, if Minnelsa couldn’t have a child, they would at least be able to be a family and raise one together.

But he could never tell her it was his.

So he loved her now and would love her as long as he could. And he would leave June outside the door whenever possible.

But she wasn’t June.

Her skin wasn’t young even though it was smooth and delicate. Her bones were not small. June’s waist he could surround with both hands. And worse, but this would change with time, Minnelsa was scared to love him, to touch him. For this he had left on the lights and showed himself to her while she blushed and pretended not to see what she needed to see, to know, to understand to be a good wife.

But she had enjoyed it. She had enjoyed it and not understood how she could enjoy it. Was this not some sin against God, this lying with a man for pleasure and not to make a baby to populate God’s world? They had both agreed with her father that they would not try to have any children until after June’s baby was older. But Minnelsa was his wife, and he wanted to, needed to love her and to be with her in that way until she understood what it meant to be a wife. What it meant besides cooking and cleaning and a ring on her finger to show off in public. He needed to show her that, teach her that while he figured how to get the most of the property he now owned.

And he knew he had it all because he had married one of the Blacksmith’s daughters.

* * *

People have weddings on Saturday so they can rest on Sunday, all day Sunday. Ain’t no minister going to complain that the newly married couple didn’t show up for services. The Lord works in mysterious ways. He could tell the congregation but he says nothing and lets them all wonder what’s happening on the other side of town in the marriage bed of a new man and wife. Women blush as they think of their first night, of things they didn’t know and were never explained to them before. Men poke out their chest with pride at how they were giants that night to their women. Her king, her protector. That once in the arms of their beloved, the man they knew could do no wrong, even though come Monday he still had a low paying job at the factory or cleaning somebody’s stable or barn, it didn’t matter. For two nights after a Saturday night wedding, he was king and she was queen. He gave her all the love and attention she needed. And she gave him all of her.

In those two nights what had once been a child in a woman’s body, what had once been a girl with breasts that she knew attracted men, or lips that she thought were made just for kissing, what had once been innocence, was now all woman. When he walked in from work that Monday evening, be it bank, stable, saw mill or law office, she would no longer be a girl. She would know how to tell him what to do.

So the Blacksmith, his ageless wife and their three unmarried daughters entered the church that Sunday beaming. No one questioned that Minnelsa was not there for she was now Mrs. Peter Jenkins. No one questioned the absence of June. They assumed that the old lady, Ella, was still in need of family care. And since they all had, at one time or another, gone to take care of some sick or dying relative none of them thought the worse, even though many of the young men assumed that June was being sent away to cool her heels away from the likes of them and their lust.

But they all thought about William Junior not being there. The congregation all considered how small the proud family looked with so few members. The young men started thinking that now was the time to start courting the daughters for the obstacle, an unmarried oldest sister, was no longer in the way.

After church the changes brought on by the wedding began. The oldest of Ross’ brothers, the son who was the assistant to the father, asked Jewel if he could walk her home. The doctor stopped and tipped his hat to Bira, spoke to the Blacksmith, and asked Rosa a few questions as he steered her away from the crowd. The assistant pastor, who had been eyeing Fawn all through the wedding and the morning services, beamed as she told him how much she had enjoyed his sermon.

The Blacksmith approved of each of these men only slightly more than the few men he had allowed to court his daughters during Minnelsa’s engagement, but said nothing as Bira took his hand and led him away. He would let them enjoy this attention of lesser men for a while. He would let them enjoy this happiness.

Only Bira was unhappy, an unhappiness that did not show until Monday morning in the kitchen.

She woke as usual with the Blacksmith still clinging to her. His loving was familiar and as passionate as in his youth. He never left a stone unturned to please her. But there is no pleasing a woman whose children are all grown and moving on. Most women didn’t have the luxury that Bira had. For thirty-four years all her children were at the breakfast table and dinner table, all her children slept under her roof. Now one was dead, one was gone to bare her child, illegitimate though it may be, and one was married.

She brushed her hair thinking about this, thinking about the silence now of the breakfast table without Willie and June. A silence that had only befallen them yesterday when the rush to plan the wedding was over and life, finally, moved on.

She went to the kitchen and found the daughters moving about as usual but with new tasks. Someone else had to get the wood that the hired boy now chopped and Willie and June once brought in. Someone had to do Minnelsa’s duties.

The daughters didn’t seem to mind though. They were talking of the suitors, of their sister’s marriage, of things that women talk about when they are happy and don’t mind cooking and cleaning. They were not in love, they were just alive.

“
Jewel,” Bira said as her daughter rolled out the flour for the biscuits, “don’t make so many this morning. They only go to waste.”

“
I’m sorry, Mama. Is something wrong?”

The other sisters looked at Bira who suddenly felt old and tired. “Nothing’s wrong, daughters. But without Minnelsa and June and Willie, we don’t need as much food. All of you cook less,” she said and left the room.

This did not damper the girls’ spirits. They cooked less meat and bread and made a smaller pot of coffee before Rosa said: “I wonder what Minnelsa’s doing now?”

“
Rosa!” Jewel exclaimed pretending to be shocked. “What do you think she’s doing?”

“
She’s not cooking breakfast, that’s for sure.” Fawn said. The other two giggled like naughty children. “I bet she’ll never have to get up before dawn to cook the Piano Man’s breakfast. Artists like to sleep late.”