He watched her back up and took a step toward the car as he thought he saw her start to cry. But before he could advance, she stepped on the gas and roared down the street.
Chapter 8
T he shell pink invitations had been in Winn's possession for three weeks already. Proper bridal etiquette demanded they be mailed four to six weeks in advance. She had lists of addresses from both her side and Paul's, but it seemed there was always some other detail cropping up, some interruption just as she sat down to the task of doing the addressing.
Am I delaying because I think Joseph is right? But even the suggestion made her quail. Attempting to stop the tidal wave of fevered planning that advanced with deadly intent would be like trying to hold back a natural disaster. The plans gained momentum, force and inevitability as they rolled along. The planning of a wedding, Winn learned-much to her dismay-involved so many petty details they managed to detract from the main event, which was the marriage of a man and a woman.
Fern Gardner, for all her being totally inexperienced in such folderol, proved herself as capable and structured as a drill sergeant. Not an iota went unconsidered. She'd made a calendar listing the specific days by which each particular must be checked upon, each decision made, each person telephoned, each piece of frippery purchased. And Winn did consider much of it frippery. Had it been left entirely up to her, Winn would have elected a quiet wedding with a few close friends and relatives invited to her mother's house or anyplace simple and left all the grandstanding for those women much more suited to it.
Yes, she'd enjoyed dressing up and celebrating the day of Sandy 's wedding, but for herself she preferred things much simpler. She was an artless woman of ordinary tastes and would have been much, much happier if all the silly special effects could have been side-stepped.
But Fern Gardner, self-made success, abandoned by her lover at age nineteen, mother of an illegitimate daughter, needed the reassurance and illusion of security attendant with a large flashy wedding. She had only one daughter and that one lucky enough to have attracted a man whom Fern had virtually handpicked. She wasn't about to stint on this most auspicious day of Winnifred's life.
Within the week following Winn's confrontation with Joseph Duggan, her mother called at least eleven times, always for some mindless non-cruciality that made Winn grit her teeth while answering. The realtor called twice asking her to leave the house so he could show it in the evenings. At the hospital Meredith Emery brought brochures of Disneyland and asked how soon her hair would grow back. The furniture store called to say the new living-room sofa, chairs and tables had arrived, and Paul called to ask if they shouldn't take one evening to go out and choose lamps, pictures and also to buy one particular item he'd spied while out browsing on one of his lunch hours; a table-style chess set with inlaid two-toned wood top-perfect for a living-room accent piece.
"A chess set?" Winn echoed, dismayed.
"Not just a chess set. A very special chess set."
"But why?"
"I told you I'd give you another lesson when we had more time. I know you can get the hang of it."
"But, Paul, you know I'm no good at chess."
"You'll learn, darling. I have every confidence in you." He laughed lightly.
Suddenly she experienced a jagged flash of irritation. Unconsciously her back stiffened, and she coiled the telephone cord six times around her finger until it cut off the circulation.
"I'll make you a deal, Paul," she announced with a hard edge to her voice. "I'll come and look at your chess set if you'll agree that for every hour we spend playing it, we'll spend equal time playing racket ball."
A long silence followed, then his chuckle, more patronizing than humored. "Now, Winnifred, you know I'm all feet on the racket-ball court. I've never been a jock and never pretended to be. I'll leave the physical workouts to you."
She yanked the phone cord off her finger and rammed a kitchen chair with her foot till it slammed under the table with a resounding clatter. "Fine! Great! Then what do you say if one or two nights a week we each find somebody else to play our games with? You can find someone with an analytical mind to pore over your chess table with you, and I'll find somebody who likes to rap a ball around a racket-ball court." Naturally the picture of Joseph popped up, dressed in white shorts with his bare belly showing below a whacked-off T-shirt. "Paul, are you there, Paul? What do you say?" she hissed. "Maybe old Rita will oblige you, huh?"
"Winnifred, you're being unreasonable."
"Oh, am I? And what are you being?"
If there was one thing Paul Hildebrandt prided himself upon it was his ability to reason. The electric silence told Winn her words stung.
"It was just an idea, that's all. Naturally, if you're opposed to the chess table, we don't have to go look at it."
Suddenly the back of Winn's nostrils burned. She felt like dropping to her knees and bawling. He thought the issue here was a chess table! Judas priest! For a brilliant man he could be utterly dense.
"Well, what about going out to choose the lamps and other small items?" he was asking.
She opened her mouth wide, drew an enormous calming breath, ran four agitated fingers through her hair and said to the floor, "I don't care. I'd like to do it… whenever you want." But once the words were out, she realized one of the two statements had to be untrue. Which was true? Either she wanted to do it, or she didn't care.
"Day after tomorrow, then? I'll come and pick you up around seven."
"Fine," she answered despondently. "Seven."
"Good night, love. Get some good rest now. You seem a little high-strung lately, and it's probably all the last-minute details piling up."
It was not the details and Winn knew it. The details were being handled with parliamentary punctiliousness by Fern Gardner, who only checked with her daughter as a matter of principle, not because Winn's approval was either sought or necessary. No, Winn's problem had nothing to do with details. It had to do with a curly-haired Irishman whose sexy eyes she could not forget, who played a wicked game of racket ball, drove rusty pickups and kissed like Prince Charming.
Within a half hour of Winn's hanging up after her conversation with Paul, Sandy called.
"Hi, kiddo, how're the wedding plans coming?" Winn had to force herself not to vent her wrath upon her unsuspecting friend-after all, Sandy had no idea of the turmoil within Winn lately. "Pretty well, considering mother's handling all the last-minute glitches with her usual steel-trap deadlines."
"Oh-oh! Something's up."
Winn sank onto the chair she'd earlier kicked so hard. "No, nothing's up. It's just that I have other things on my mind besides wedding, wedding, wedding. But neither mother nor Paul seems concerned."
"The little girl at the hospital?"
"Yes, among other things. She's dying and I-" Winn drew a deep breath and battled the almost irresistible urge to tell Sandy everything, including her feelings for Jo-Jo Duggan, to be honest and open and ask her friend's opinion about the whole matter. But before she could broach the subjects, Sandy went on.
"Well, I have just the thing to take your mind off your troubles and put you in a happy frame of mind. I guess you know what it is. We've talked about it long enough."
Winn covered her eyes and braced an elbow on the table. Oh, no, not the shower.
"It's the shower. I've just been waiting to hear from you until I put the date on the invitations. And it's getting awfully close. I think we'd better have it maybe week after next, or the week following that. Do you have your calendar handy?"
It was staring at Winn from a nail on the wall beside the telephone, and as she looked up at it, it suddenly became blurred by tears. Sandy was waiting for an answer, and here she sat, recalling how Paul had once walked up to that nail and said, "I hope you don't plan to drive nails into the walls of our new house this way." If she wanted to drive a four-inch railroad spike into her wall, by God she'd drive it! On the ugly stucco walls of Jo-Jo Duggan's kitchen there hung a calend
ar with a picture of a tin lizzie, and a header advertising Duggan's Body Shop. Next time she was there, Winn promised herself to check and see what he'd hung it up with.
Apparently Winn took longer to mull over the shower than she'd realized, for Sandy 's voice came across the wire once again. "Winn, have you sent out your wedding invitations yet?"
"No, I've been working on them."
"Well, the shower invitations shouldn't really go out until after people get the ones for the wedding. Don't you think you should get going?"
Fern had called four days in a row to issue the same reprimand. Winn felt pressured and antagonized. "Yes, I'll make sure I have them out by the weekend if I have to stay home from work one day to finish addressing them." But at work Merry needed her, and she'd no more have deserted the child for a single precious day of her remaining life than Winn would have jumped at the chance to own a chess table of inlaid wood.
They chose two weeks from Saturday for the shower and agreed that Sandy would delay sending her invitations until midway through the following week, giving Winn enough time to get her own out first.
When Winn hung up the phone, she resolutely dragged out the box of pink envelopes and notes, the lists of addresses, her own phone book and a pen. She had addressed five when the phone rang again.
"Hello, Winn, this is mother."
What would it be this time? Had the apricot-rose crop failed in Florida? Winn bit back the sharp response and answered, "Hello, mother."
"Have you got the invitations in the mail yet?"
"No, but they're almost done," she lied.
"Winn, have you taken a look at the calendar lately? Those invitations should have been in the mail no later than last Saturday."
"I know, mother, I know."
"And now something else has come up. Perry Smith has just received word that he's being transferred to Los Angeles."
For a moment Winn was disoriented. She couldn't figure out what Perry Smith's transfer had to do with anything concerning her. Evidently her mother expected some moan of dismay that was not forthcoming, for her voice crackled with indignation. "Well, for heaven's sake, I should think there'd be some reaction from you. After all, there's not much time to find someone else to do the singing."
Oh, yes-Ramona Smith, Perry's wife, had agreed to do the music at the wedding and had already discussed the choice of songs with Winn.
"It's not the end of the world, mother. I'd be happy with just the organ, anyway. Mrs. Collingswood might be twittery, but she's wonderful when she touches a keyboard."
"Oh, Winnifred, don't be ridiculous. Whoever heard of a church wedding without vocal music? The songs are all chosen, and they've been planned into the entire service. Don't tell me you have no intention of asking someone else."
"I don't know any other singers, mother. I didn't even know this one. You found her."
"Well, it's imperative that we move fast on this."
Winn's temper snapped. "You move fast on it if you want to, mother. I've made all the fast moves I can stand for a while!"
Her mother's voice softened, but with an effort. "Darling, you're not yourself these days. Why, I swear you sound as if you really don't care about these decisions one way or another."
"Frankly, mother, I don't. If you want a different singer, get one. Tell him he can sing 'Betty Lou's Gettin' Out Tonight' for all I care. And hire a sequined chorus line to dance along with it!"
She could see her mother's stunned face and feel her hurt surprise at the rebuff. "Oh, mother, I'm sorry. Please just do whatever you want and let me know, all right?"
* * *
Thirty minutes later Paul called again. "Your mother and I just had a long talk, Winnifred, and she tells me you just snapped at her and hurt her feelings, and have washed your hands of making decisions about the singer. Winnie, you really shouldn't treat your mother so… so…" He ended with a sigh.
"So what?"
"You know. You're short with her all the time and find fault with everything she does when she's really bending over backward to facilitate matters and help us plan a very high-class wedding here."
"Maybe I didn't want a high-class wedding, Paul. Maybe I just wanted you to pay mother a few glass beads, open a vein, exchange blood with you and slip away to a tepee in the woods." Where had this caustic person come from? Winn was being unfair to Paul, and she knew it but couldn't seem to curb these cutting remarks. She felt him tightly controlling his anger.
"I understand, you're under a lot of pressure right now, so I'll excuse you for getting short with me, but I think you owe your mother an apology."
Dear God-it struck Winn-he's marrying me as much for the mother-in-law he'll inherit as he is for the bride he'll get. Still, she softened her tone. "Paul, do me a favor, will you? Call mother back, and you two discuss the singer and pick one. Will you do that for me, please?"
There followed a moment's pause while he decided how to handle this suddenly unreasonable fiancee of his. "Yes, I'll be happy to. My mother might have a name for us, too. I'll take care of it, darling."
"Thank you, Paul."
After hanging up, she addressed twenty-five more invitations, then dropped her head onto the tabletop and bawled as she'd been wanting to for days.
Her back ached. Her eyelids burned, and she felt like driving an entire box of nails into the kitchen wall, making a regular design of them all around the frame of the sliding glass door and maybe starting across the wall that abutted it. Instead, she left the invitations strewn all over the table, shucked off her clothes and dropped into bed. She was just dozing off when the phone rang-again!
She flung back the covers and stomped out to the kitchen, angry at being awakened and made to get out of bed.
"Hullo!" she growled.
"Hello," came the masculine voice she'd been trying her hardest to forget. Tears burned her eyes again. Her heart slammed against her chest. She covered her eyes with one hand and leaned her forehead against the cool glass of the sliding door in the dark.
"Are you alone?" he asked.
"What do you want, Joseph?"
"You."
The line hummed with a taut silence. Winn's feminine parts surged to life-nipples, stomach, inner reaches all pressing for contact with him.
"Don't," she begged in a voice very close to tears.
"I'm sorry, Winn. I complicate things for you, don't I?"
"Yes, oh, God, yes."
She heard him sigh as if close to defeat, yet unwilling to accept it quite yet. "Are the wedding plans progressing without a hitch?"
"Yes. I'm addressing the invitations."
"Oh." Again there followed a poignant silence. "Will you do me a favor, Winn? Will you send me one?"
"Jo-Jo," she sighed.
"Oh, I won't come. I'd just like one to keep."
"J-Joseph, you are b-being exceedingly unkind."
"Winn, are you crying?" He sounded anxious, as if he'd clutched the phone closer to his mouth.
"Yes, d-damn you, I'm crying."
"Why?"
"B-because! He wants to buy a chess table for the l-living room, and some w-woman I don't even know is m-moving to Los Angeles… and b-because Sandy wants to give me a sh-shower… oh, God, I don't know, Joseph. I only know I'm supposed to be happy, and I'm miserable."
"How's the little girl?"
"Oh, thank you for asking, darl-Joseph. Nobody else really cares how I feel about her around here. Sandy asked, but when I answered, she hurried on as if to avoid the subject, too."
Winn paused for breath, and his soft voice fell upon her ear. "Back up a minute, Winn. Start at the beginning of that."
"I… you don't make sense, Joseph Duggan." But he made perfect sense and she knew it.
"You were about to call me darling."
"No, I wasn't."
"Try it anyway and see how it feels." Joseph Duggan, consummate flirt, she thought. But she knew him to be far more than that now. His voice was odd as he asked, "Is that what
you call Paul?" It was one of the only times she recalled Joseph referring to her fiance by his correct name.
"No. He calls me darling. I call him Paul."
"We've got sidetracked. Tell me about the little girl, Winn."
Why did the name Winn sound more like an endearment from Joseph's lips than the term darling from Paul's?
She told him about Merry's lack of progress, about the brochures from Disneyland. She told him about the singer whose husband was being transferred to Los Angeles, about the argument with her mother, about the shower and the gift registration she was supposed to decide upon at a local department store, where she was expected to choose a china pattern she didn't give a damn about and crystal glasses she'd be uncomfortable drinking from. She told him she'd just made the final payment on Paul's wedding ring, and that her mother was harping about buying something called a unity candle that was to be used in the wedding service, though she herself didn't understand why it was necessary. And she ended by telling him Fern had now come up with the idea of providing limousine service on the day of the wedding.
"Limousine service!" she cried, exasperated. "Of all the phony things."
"Your mother sounds as if she loves you very much."
"My mother is putting on a show she wished for and never had herself. She's playing fairy godmother."
"Then if you have to go through with it anyway, let her. Why do you agree with her one day and buck her the next? You're the one in the wrong, not her."
"But she's railroaded me into all this… this circus stuff I never wanted."
"Then why didn't you tell her a year ago when you should have instead of letting her believe it was what you wanted? Or is it really your mother you're upset about at all?"
"Joseph, I'm tired and I want to go to sleep."
"And I'm frustrated and I want to see you again. Will you drive up to Bemidji with me this Saturday?"
She couldn't believe the man! Five weeks until her wedding, and he suggests she flit away with him like a carefree sprite. " Bemidji! You want me to take off with you just like that and drive up to Bemidji?"
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