No Dark Valley

by Jamie Langston Turner

  When Matt had appeared at his side there at the window, Bruce had shaken his hand and asked what the baby’s name was. When Matt told him it was Reagan, Bruce had said, “Oh, I get it,” and when Matt had looked confused, Bruce said, “Last names of U.S. presidents—that’s how you’re naming your kids.” Matt, who was in perfect control of himself, had laughed, then told Bruce he was starving and asked him if he wanted to go down to the cafeteria with him and get a cheeseburger.

  After writing about the book of sonnets, Bruce paused and looked at the clock. Five-thirty—time to get dressed for dinner. He wanted to add one more sentence, but first he had to check on something. He left his bedroom and bounded upstairs. Kimberly was in the kitchen, peeking into the oven, where a large heart-shaped pizza was warming. Evidently Matt had heard about the Pop’s Pizza Palace special, too, and had splurged for Valentine’s Day.

  “I don’t want all the details,” Bruce said to her. “Just tell me one thing—did she hold the baby?” Kimberly nodded. Celia had come forward and taken Reagan from her arms, she said, before she had even offered. Bruce went back downstairs. After opening the book of poetry, he wrote at his desk, Celia held Reagan for the first time. He closed the notebook and went to take a shower.

  When Bruce appeared at Celia’s door at six o’clock with a box of Godiva chocolates, she was wearing a red dress he had never seen. He wished there were truly special-occasion words he could pull out at such a time to describe how she looked. All the standard adjectives fell far short. Finally he said, “Wow.”

  He stepped inside, handing her the box of candy, which she set on the couch, where she had the other gifts laid out. She spread her hands to take them all in and said, “Wow, yourself.”

  * * *

  The restaurant was one Virgil Dunlop had suggested to Bruce: Capriccio over in Greenville—a small classy place with real art hanging on the walls. “For a genuine once-in-a-blue-moon type of celebration” was what Virgil had said. And the restaurant lived up to the recommendation. It was clear that the owner of Capriccio knew a thing or two about the fine art of dining out. Everything—music, decor, cuisine, service—was perfect.

  Over dessert, which was something called Bavarian Cloud that the two of them shared, Celia smiled and said, “You know that time Kimberly sprained her ankle and you came to my apartment to get Madison?”

  Bruce almost said, “You mean the time you practically shoved me out the door?” but decided against it. He knew by now, of course, why his mention of the movie The Cider House Rules, about an abortion doctor, had affected Celia so strongly. Instead he said, “You mean the time you fed me sugar cookies?”

  “Right, and the time you tried to show off by throwing your napkin into the trash can.”

  “Yeah, but at the last minute I decided you needed to see I wasn’t totally perfect in every way, so I missed on purpose.”

  “Right, that time. Well, anyway, you were saying something that night about how things that happen to you in real life can seem like something in a fairy tale.”

  “Are you sure I said that?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Celia said. “I always pay very close attention.”

  “You mean like that night a year ago when Kimberly and I came to your apartment and Patsy introduced me as Kimberly’s brother?”

  “She never said that.”

  Bruce shook his head. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the waiter standing a discreet distance from the table, as if wanting to ask something. Bruce motioned him over. “What would you do with a beautiful but difficult woman?” he said.

  The waiter gave a little bow. “I’d bring her to Capriccio at least once a week, sir.”

  In a way it seemed totally wrong—like a desecration of sorts, most certainly an anticlimax—to take Celia to the mall after such a dinner. What a contrast in atmosphere. But Bruce had planned this whole day as seriously as if it were a military maneuver, and the mall was part of it. In the end it would prove right, he knew that. And if Celia complained about the bright lights of the mall seeming a little on the unromantic side for Valentine’s Day, he would remind her that she had started the day by hearing a stump grinder in the backyard.

  37

  The Song of Harvest-Home

  And now for the finishing touch on his day-long Valentine extravaganza. As they walked past the fountain in the middle of the mall toward Hanneman’s Fine Jewelers on the Mall, Bruce imagined years from now telling his children all about today, maybe when his son found the woman he wanted to marry and was planning the details of his own proposal. Perhaps the boy would roll his eyes and laugh about it—“Oh, Dad, how embarrassing! Mom, how could you marry such a dork?”—but then again, maybe Bruce would be able to teach his son that sometimes it was okay to embarrass yourself for a woman.

  He hoped the man he had talked to at Hanneman’s would be ready and would remember everything they had discussed. He had assured Bruce that he would be working tonight, that he would inform whoever else was working with him as to the specifics of the ruse, that they were “always happy here at Hanneman’s to accommodate the customer.” It didn’t hurt, Bruce knew, that the store would be making a nice profit on the ring.

  There were four small display windows at Hanneman’s, draped with black velvet and white satin, all dressed up for Valentine’s Day with organdy bows and red and white hearts and little fat cupids suspended from silver threads above the jewelry. Bruce guided Celia from window to window, and they admired it all together. He knew she had to suspect something. Before they could move to the last window, they had to wait for two fiftyish couples who were crowded together, gawking at the centerpiece.

  As often happened, a story took form in Bruce’s mind, and as they waited, he told Celia that the two women in front of the window were sisters, one of whom had donated a kidney to the other one. One of the husbands was a bus driver, while the other was supervisor of the stock boys at Thrifty Mart. At Christmastime both of the men dressed up in Santa Claus suits and visited the children’s ward at the hospital. The two couples shared a duplex with fake deer in the front yard. They had gone out to eat at KFC earlier and were now walking through the mall to get ice cream sundaes at the Frosty Cup, a dessert all four had obviously indulged in too many times already, judging from the amount of space they filled up, hip to hip, in front of the window.

  “You gonna buy me a ring just like that one, ain’t you, Jake?” one of the women said, and the other woman said, “Yeah, I’ll take one, too.” The men laughed. “Sure,” one of them said, “all’s we gotta do is sell our houses and trucks, and we might could make us a down payment on that baby,” to which the other one replied that he was thinking hard about doing just that, but didn’t they see the little tag that said it was already sold, and ain’t that just the way it goes when you got your heart set on something?

  As the two couples moved away, one of the women wondered aloud what kind of lucky woman would be getting that ring, and the other one remarked that it didn’t look like whoever it was would be getting it for Valentine’s, since obviously her sweetheart had done forgot to come pick it up. As the two couples walked off holding hands, something in Bruce admired Jake and the other man. You could think what you wanted about men like that—overweight and underrefined—but their wives looked happy, and that said a lot.

  Without being too obvious about it, Bruce kept an eye on Celia’s face as they stepped up to the window. In the center of the display a small raised platform rotated, and the ring in the black velvet box on the platform was another one of those things, like Celia in her red dress, that none of the ordinary words for beautiful could approach.

  You could start out with the plain facts, of course: “The one-carat diamond was encircled by rubies, and the twenty-four carat gold band was an eighth of an inch wide.” But there was no way to capture how truly fine it was. The little tag neatly positioned in front of the black velvet box was gold, embossed with the word SOLD in miniature block letters, not something y
ou usually saw in a jewelry case. Bruce was impressed that they had come up with it.

  “Hmmm, pretty ring, isn’t it?” Bruce said, very casually.

  Celia laughed softly without taking her eyes off the ring. “Oh yes, you could say that.”

  “A diamond can be so generic,” he said, “but the rubies make this one unique. I’ve always been partial to rubies, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  “It’s one of the two corundum gems, you know—along with sapphires. An extremely hard mineral, mostly aluminum oxide.”

  “No, I didn’t know that, either.”

  “Of course, diamonds are nice, too,” he said.

  “Oh yes, very.”

  “Highly refractive, diamonds are.”

  “Right.”

  “Which isn’t the same as reflective. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Oh sure.”

  “A crystalline allotrope of carbon—that’s all a diamond is.”

  “Uh-huh.” She leaned closer to the window, her eyes still fixed on the ring. Bruce wondered if she was trying to hide a smile.

  “Interesting, isn’t it,” he said, “that an impure diamond or ruby ends up being used in abrasives, but in their purest form . . . well, there you have it right in front of you.”

  “Yes, there you have it.”

  “Too bad it’s already sold.”

  “Hmm.” A small sigh.

  Bruce couldn’t read the look on her face. Maybe she was only pretending to be wistful, not wanting to spoil it for him. Or maybe she was trying to act only mildly interested, afraid to hope too much. Or maybe she truly wasn’t expecting anything. Maybe she thought the surprises of the day were over.

  She had already teased him at the restaurant, asking him how much of today had been Kimberly’s idea, how many of the gifts she had helped Bruce plan and execute. He had objected, as if insulted, and she had apologized but explained that any woman would find it hard to believe that a man could think it all up, much less have the patience to synchronize all the details. Maybe she was wondering if it wasn’t a little unnatural for a man to do all those things.

  “But, hey,” he said now, “why don’t you try it on for fun anyway? Doesn’t matter if it’s sold or not.”

  “Oh no, I wouldn’t—”

  “Wouldn’t what? Come on.”

  He urged her inside, although maybe she was only acting resistant, and he asked the man behind the counter if they could see the ring in the display window. The man, being the very one with whom Bruce had conspired, replied stiffly, “You may see it, sir, but you know, of course, that it is already sold.”

  “Yes, we know. We read the tag,” Bruce said, very chipper. “But we’d still like to see it, and if you don’t mind my saying so, if it’s already sold, then maybe you shouldn’t leave it on display for other people to covet. Maybe you should pick up the phone and tell whoever bought it to come get it.” Celia shot him a look.

  “In fact,” Bruce continued, unperturbed, “I’ve never heard of anybody buying something at a jewelry store and not taking it home right then, unless they needed to have the ring sized or something, but . . . are you sure this person can be trusted?”

  The man looked at Bruce stonily. “I assure you that our client will be coming for his purchase very soon, sir.”

  Though Celia was looking mortified by this time, she allowed Bruce to slip the ring onto her finger, at which point Bruce smote his chest in a theatrical way, put a hand over his eyes, and said, “Wait, it’s too beautiful. I can’t look at it.” He was secretly pleased at how close he had guessed on the size.

  Another sales associate appeared at the end of the counter, this one a woman with spiky frosted hair, bright coral lipstick, and dangly crystal earrings that looked like little clusters of ice chips. “Say, Quinten, I need that ring from the window,” she said to the man, who was standing beside Bruce holding the empty black velvet box. “I told the man I’d gift wrap it for him.” She glanced at the clock on the wall. “I sure hope he gets here before we close at nine.”

  “Well now, if he doesn’t,” Bruce said, “maybe we can work out a little deal.”

  “The other man has already paid for the ring, sir,” the dour Quinten said. Bruce had to wonder whether Quinten had had some acting experience or was just naturally this kind of person. “Tight-lipped and testy” was how he had requested the part be played, and the guy was doing a bang-up job.

  “Aw, but it looks so good on her finger,” Bruce said. “How about if I offer to pay just a little more than the other fellow? Then when he comes, if he comes that is, which he probably won’t, you can say mistakes were made and you’ll have to order another one and . . . well, you can think of something. I’m sure things like this happen all the time in the jewelry business.” Celia was staring at him now, shaking her head as she pulled the ring off and handed it to Quinten, who was glaring at Bruce with the look of a butler who has discovered a house servant tampering with the silver in the pantry.

  “I am appalled that you would stoop to suggest such a thing,” he said frostily to Bruce. What a very nice line—I am appalled that you would stoop to suggest such a thing. Bruce made a mental note to compliment him on it later.

  Quinten put the ring back into the box and sidestepped it down to the woman, as if afraid to turn his back on Bruce. “Here is the ring, Ms. Ayers,” he said. “Please wrap it quickly.” Bruce wondered if Quinten had ever seen Anthony Hopkins in Remains of the Day. He had the voice and manner down pat. He even looked a little like Hopkins, only with more hair.

  And the upshot of it all was great fun. Bruce insisted that Quinten tell him the name of the other man so he could call and offer him a little margin of profit if he would sell this ring to Bruce and wait for another to be ordered, to which Quinten replied that they did not release the names of their clients and, besides, this ring had been specially designed. There weren’t clones of it sitting around in some factory warehouse somewhere.

  And then Ms. Ayers got in on it, taking Bruce’s side when she returned with the ring box, now ensconced inside a slightly larger gold gift box secured with a gold stretchy cord and affixed with a red Hanneman’s Fine Jewelers on the Mall seal on top. Quinten and Ms. Ayers even staged a little altercation, during which Ms. Ayers went to the display window and got the SOLD tag, telling Bruce that the buyer’s name was on the back of it, at which point Quinten claimed to be “astounded at such a breach of professionalism” and tried to snatch it from her as she tried to hand it to Bruce.

  Celia was standing apart, observing them all with an amused look, as if they were misbehaving monkeys at the zoo. Though Bruce knew they weren’t fooling her, he was still enjoying himself.

  When the truth was made known, Celia laughed and cried at the same time. “Can you tell he teaches middle school?” she asked Quinten and Ms. Ayers. “And coaches drama?”

  And then right there in Hanneman’s Fine Jewelers on the Mall, Bruce put the ring on Celia’s finger again, for real, and asked the question he had been waiting to ask and heard the answer he had hoped for.

  Maybe someday their children would ask Bruce why he had proposed to Celia in such a public venue, surrounded by people he didn’t even know. Why not do it in private, out by a lake under the moonlight?

  And Bruce, though he certainly didn’t dismiss such triteness wholesale, knowing that he himself had resorted to more than his own share of triteness that day and also knowing that any old idea could be freshened up in the hands of a skilled romantic, would wave a hand scornfully and say something like “Why do something so special in such a common way?” or maybe “Well, I was so proud of your mother that I wanted to show her off.” And he would be ever grateful to the mall crowd that night, normally a fairly self-absorbed group, for their smiles and good wishes as he stopped them all along the way to present his future wife and show them her ring.

  Another part of the reason for the mall proposal had to do with Bruce’s vow, th
e one he told her about when he pulled into her driveway thirty minutes later. Besides being memorable because he had never heard of anybody else doing it that way, he said, proposing to her in Hanneman’s Fine Jewelers on the Mall made it easier to keep that vow.

  There in her driveway, sitting in his truck in the waning hours of Valentine’s Day, Bruce told Celia that his vow was a personal decision, something he didn’t want to share with anyone else. He wasn’t saying it was the way everybody should do it, but he was sure it was right for him—and he was hoping she would understand, wouldn’t laugh at such an old-fashioned idea.

  He took a deep breath, then came out with it. Though he wanted to take her into his arms, he said, he couldn’t. Not yet. He wanted to wait until they were married for . . . for things like that.

  “You mean for . . . anything?” she said.

  He paused, then said, yes, for everything. Not that depriving himself of all physical contact now was some form of penance, he went on, some kind of feeble effort to make up for all the thoughtless and godless liberties he had taken in the past, but he had sought God in the matter and felt very sure of his blessing on this decision. Could she go along with such a vow, or did she want to give the ring back and call the whole thing off now that she saw how weird he was? She could keep all the other presents, of course.

  No, she said slowly, she could go along with it. In fact, she liked the idea. She liked it a lot.

  But with this vow in mind, Bruce said, he wasn’t all that interested in an extended engagement, which was why he was wondering what she thought about . . . well, what she thought about a wedding on the first day of spring, which would be just a little less than five weeks away. Could she . . . could they pull it all together by then?

  Celia laughed. “There used to be a time when I thought a decent wedding would take at least a year to plan.”