Sweet Everlasting

by Patricia Gaffney

  “Her what?”

  “She couldn’t decide, that or the something crepe de chine—Abbey said—”

  He laughed, and started on the crystal buttons running down the bodice of Carrie’s blouse. “I like yours better.”

  “No! Ty! I mean it!”

  She did seem to mean it, so he settled for covering her left breast with his hand and her right with his mouth, and he could feel her hard nipples right through the thin silk and whatever she was wearing under it—not a corset, praise God. Her hopeless moan was music to his ears; he sucked on her and nibbled at her until she arched up and yelled. “Shh,” he admonished lovingly. “Somebody might hear, and they’ll think we’re fighting.”

  “We are! Stop, I’m not doing this! Oh God, Ty, this is wrong, don’t shame me. Ah! It won’t matter, it won’t matter.” She said it like a mantra, but he’d gone back to the crystal buttons, and she wasn’t lifting a finger to stop him. When he uncovered her breasts at last, she shuddered and let him touch her.

  But she couldn’t stop fighting him with her tongue. “I know what you’re doing,” she claimed, teeth clamped, eyes shut. “Let me go, set me free. I did it for you—be fair, let me go—”

  He lifted his mouth from her breast to say, “Sweet Carrie, what you did was an unnatural act, and I’m correcting it. I’m righting a terrible wrong.” He used his knee first, subtly, then his hand, less so, to push her skirt up. He got his fingers on her thigh; it was trembling, and clamped to its mate like a jealous lover. “New drawers?” he wondered, fingering an unseen lacy edge, but his real attention was on finding the opening in them between her legs. She was tense and straining, tight as a drum, resolutely against this seduction. Without a qualm of conscience, he stroked his palm across her plump little pubis, deliberately making her tremble. He’d never lost his mind in a sexual situation before, not even with Carrie, but right now joining with her was his sole goal; even saving her from Eugene Starkey came in a pale, distant, barely remembered second.

  He shifted onto his side beside her. “Touch me,” he suggested into the wild tangle of her hair, pressing his swollen sex harder against her hip. “Please.”

  She made another helpless sound and threw one arm over her forehead. “If I do, will you stop?”

  “Yes,” he lied unhesitatingly.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Do it anyway.”

  He didn’t care anymore about her scruples, her convoluted honor, what reasons she’d decided to use to explain away giving herself to the wrong man. She reached out a blind hand and he seized it, pressing her palm where he needed it the most. No relief; he only ached worse, wanted her more. But at least her shaky legs had come unglued, and now he knew two places where she was wet—her face, from the tears that wouldn’t stop their slow trickling no matter how high he took her, and this sweet, tight, throbbing furnace between her thighs.

  “Let me come inside you,” he whispered, urging her with a slick-fingered, slow-moving bribe. “Unbutton my pants. Touch me, Carrie.”

  She tried to—after a whole minute she even got one button undone—but in the end the whole thing was beyond her. She let out a high, frustrated wail. “You’d make a terrible surgeon,” he consoled her tenderly, and brushed her clumsy fingers aside.

  That was the moment he heard the knock, and realized sickly that it wasn’t the first one.

  Carrie had the identical realization at the same instant.

  Now there was scuffling and commotion—that too had a familiar sound—and then a sharp rap on the door, as if the knuckles administering it were fed up.

  Fed up—then they might go away! Tyler seized on a conscious choice to make motionlessness his first line of defense. Carrie ruined it by rolling out from under him and jumping to her feet. At almost the same moment Eppy’s voice, simultaneously alarmed and exasperated, came through the still-closed door, along with another rap. “Carrie? Carrie, open this—Stop it, now, I mean it, get ahold of yourself.” The last part was muffled, as if spoken to someone other than Carrie.

  Tyler sat up and put his feet on the floor. He raised jaundiced eyes to his beloved, who was trying to button her dress. Pity was far from his mind, even when he saw she was no better at it than she’d been with his trousers. Her pleading look left him cold.

  “Please!” she finally begged, in a heartrending croak.

  He snarled. But he got to his feet. His blood still pounded; he felt like the unwilling survivor of a brutal drowning. The door burst open while he was still tying his tie.

  He’d expected Eppy, naturally, or one of the children, but it was Broom who barreled inside on a rush of cold air, elbows churning, chin twitching.

  “I couldn’t keep him out to save me,” Eppy explained from the doorway. “He—” Her mouth snapped shut as her eyes took it all in: the rumpled sofa, Ty’s dishevelment. And Carrie. Poor Carrie. Everything about her was a dead giveaway.

  “Hi, Doc,” Broom said mechanically, without a flicker of surprise at Ty’s presence; it was Carrie he’d come to see. He made a beeline for her and threw his jerking arms around her. “Don’t do it!” he begged in a pitiful, braying voice.

  “Broom, don’t do this again,” Carrie started, patting his shoulders to soothe him.

  “Don’t marry Eugene!” he cried, and promptly burst into tears.

  Eppy had gone beet-faced with righteous ire. “Dr. Wilkes,” she said in a high, vibrating contralto, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave!”

  He didn’t move. “Carrie and I haven’t finished.” The sentence struck him as the ultimate in tragicomic ambivalence.

  “I beg to differ.”

  “Carrie?” he tried, desperate.

  She lifted her head and looked straight at him over Broom’s shoulder. Chagrin, sadness, and determination mingled in her flushed face, but she said, “My answer’s the same,” in deadly, cold-blooded earnest. “Go away, Ty. I can’t talk, can’t—” She started to cry, too.

  “This is a goddamn circus!” he shouted.

  Humor unexpectedly leavened the indignation on Eppy’s face. “That’s exactly what I say, every day of my life.” She widened the door. “Doctor?”

  He ground out a few more swear words, damning everything indiscriminately. Carrie wouldn’t look at him at all now. Short of kidnapping her, he couldn’t think of anything else to do. Grabbing his coat, he stalked past Eppy, who evidently intended to escort him out to the street. Before she could slam the door shut behind them, he threw a last glance back. For his pains, he got to see Carrie and Broom sobbing in each other’s arms, holding on like children in a thunderstorm.

  25

  “YOU PULLED YOUR HAIR loose again, didn’t you? After I just got done fixing it.” Eppy quit biting her nails long enough to smack her hands against her hips in frustration. “Now you look just like you do every day, and here I was trying to do something special.”

  “It’s all right, though, isn’t it?” Carrie asked anxiously. “I’m sorry, but you had it so tight my head hurt.”

  “Well, why didn’t you say so?” She made a face. “Sorry—I don’t know which of us is more nervous, Carrie, you or me. You look beautiful, you really do. You should start getting into your dress soon, though; it’s almost nine-thirty and people are going to be coming any minute now.”

  Start getting into her dress? How long could it take? But Carrie said not a word, just stood up to take off her old flannel robe, because contradicting Eppy in any way this morning only made her crazier. She waited in chemise, drawers, shoes, and stockings while Eppy went over to the closet in Charlotte and Emily’s tiny bedroom and fetched Carrie’s wedding dress—the blue merino she’d worn for Ty in Philadelphia. The mirror over the child-size dressing table was so low, she had to bend her knees to see herself above the waist. Did her stomach look thicker today? Maybe—maybe not. But it wasn’t her imagination that her chemise fit tighter across the bosom than it ever had before. Oh Lord, what if her wedding gown didn’t fit?
>
  It fit, although maybe not with quite the same youthful swing as it had a week ago. “Lovely,” Eppy declared, buttoning her up in back, smoothing the soft wool over her shoulders. “Are you going to wear that silver heart Eugene gave you?”

  “Yes, I thought so.” In the mirror, she saw Eppy looking doubtful. “Don’t you think I should?”

  “Oh no, wear it, by all means. I just …”

  “What?” Carrie turned around.

  “Nothing. I got married in this”—she drew something out of the pocket of her own best dress, a limegreen taffeta with ivory lace collar and cuffs—“but that pretty dress of yours probably doesn’t need another thing.”

  “What is it? Oh, Eppy, it’s beautiful. I’ve never seen it before.” It was a cameo brooch carved on a pale pink shell, surrounded by a dainty silver filigree.

  “It was my mother’s. I was saving it for Charlotte’s wedding—first, then the other girls’, one by one. But if you’d like to wear it, Carrie, I’d be very glad and proud.”

  Tears were never far away these days; hugging Eppy, Carrie had to squeeze her eyes shut and scrunch up her face to keep them back now. “I’m very glad and proud to wear it. Thank you. Thank you for everything!”

  Eppy hugged her back and took a secret swipe at her own cheeks. “You don’t think it’s too much?”

  “No, it’s perfect.” She pinned the brooch to her breast and bent low to inspect the results in the mirror. “It’s truly perfect. Now if only I didn’t look like a day-old corpse,” she added wanly.

  “You look like no such thing. You look positively—”

  “Eugene’s here!” Charlotte swung the door open so hard, it struck the side of the bureau with a bang that made Carrie jump. “He’s got on a striped suit that’s sort of brown, and a high collar, and a bow tie, and a vest! The vest’s sort of tan, with all this gold stuff—”

  “Go out and sit down, Charlotte, you’re supposed to be minding Fanny. That’s your job, I told—”

  “Okay, and Eugene’s mother’s got a cane and she takes up two chairs, one for herself and one for her foot because her leg’s got gauze or something wrapped all around it, and she has to keep it up in the air because the fleas bite it.”

  “She’s got phlebitis,” Eppy corrected, “and don’t you say one word to her about it, hear me? What’s your father doing?”

  “Talking to Eugene. Eugene’s got his hair all—”

  “All right. Go out now, I told you.”

  “Okay, and Eugene’s sister’s name is Ethel, and she looks like him only her hair’s lighter and she’s fatter, and she asked Daddy if we got the piano tuned yet, and he said—”

  “Charlotte! Go find Fanny right now.”

  On her way out, Charlotte slammed the door.

  Eppy rolled her eyes. “I’d better go and greet them, plus I’ve still got some things to do in the kitchen. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I should be helping you, I feel silly just sitting in here not doing anything, while you—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, you’re the bride. Besides, everything’s under control because this is going to be the simplest wedding breakfast anybody ever sat down to. I hope it’ll be nice, though.”

  “I know it will be.”

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Fine!”

  Eppy looked skeptical, but she was too harried to argue. “I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  Sinking down on the tiny stool in front of the dressing table, Carrie saw in the mirror what Eppy was worried about. “Day-old corpse” was no exaggeration at all in Carrie’s opinion. She looked pale and dazed, as if she’d been locked in a closet for years and somebody had just yanked her out into the daylight. Brides ought to look excited, not tense and wire-tight and anxious. Her mouth had a strange, unnatural set, and the dark circles looked like bruises under her worried gray eyes from the sleepless night she’d spent wondering what was right to do. Last night Ty had said he loved her. If she could believe him, her way would be clear. But she knew what his sense of honor and duty was capable of, and she was afraid to put faith in his words. The dreary truth was, nothing had really changed. Maybe if Eppy and Broom hadn’t come when they did and she’d given in and let Ty have his way with her, maybe then something would’ve changed.

  No, that wasn’t right either. The yardstick to measure her decision by ought not to be whether or not she and Ty had been lovers; it ought to be love. So she was back to that again: not believing him when he claimed to love her, because he was courtly and gentlemanly enough to pretend to in order to protect his child and her honor.

  How could she know, how could she be sure? Her awful unsuitability always got in the way. She could never get over her horror of dragging him down, of holding him back. If she could just see a picture in her mind of the two of them married, if she could imagine them as a family in some setting other than in the cabin on High Dreamer—but she was cursed with knowing a fantasy from reality. She could see him in her life, but never herself in his. Certainly not at the Camp in Scarborough or the Schuylkill Regatta, and not at the Cape May cottage. Marry Ty? The son of the woman who wanted him to become president? He said he wasn’t interested in politics, but what if he changed his mind? Too late. If she married him, she’d already have become a great, heavy stone around his neck.

  The sound of the wedding march being played on the Odells’ old upright broke in on her circling thoughts. She jumped up and started pacing. Did Ethel have to practice the dratted song now? And Louie was tied up in the backyard, barking and barking and barking. Eppy wouldn’t let him in the house, and Carrie couldn’t blame her; but he wasn’t used to solitude, and his incessant howls and yelps were driving her wild. Between Louie and the wedding march, her nerves were shot.

  Last night, after Carrie had sent Ty away and then Broom, Eppy had come back and tried to advise her. Don’t do anything rash, was her main recommendation. Pregnant women go a little mad, she’d counseled from experience, so don’t trust your emotions. Carrie hadn’t wanted to hear that, since every emotion she had was screaming at her to go off with the man she loved and damn the consequences. But Eppy thought she should marry Eugene. “I’m sure he’s a decent man under all the swagger,” she’d said hopefully. “And you’ll be happier in the long run with someone who’s your own kind.”

  Oh, it was true, it was true, she knew it but she hated it! And Eugene needed her—Ty didn’t. She’d also cried last night for the little boy whose father had beaten and abused him so cruelly. Was it any wonder Eugene had turned into a bully? No, the wonder was that he’d reformed. And anyway, she’d given him her promise. That meant something. She’d never deliberately broken a promise in her life. Eugene would be devastated if she went back on her word now, and he didn’t deserve that. Ty … Ty would forget her if he didn’t see her. She thought. Wouldn’t he? But how could she know? And now there was the baby to consider.

  Oh God, the baby. She wrapped her arms around herself, remembering Ty’s arms around her last night, the way he’d stroked her stomach and the things he’d said. How she’d needed that! She hadn’t known, hadn’t known. He might not truly love her but he wanted the baby, that she couldn’t doubt. Maybe they could make an arrangement. He could have it half the year, or less if that didn’t suit him, and she—she—she could …

  She found the edge of the bed and collapsed on it just before she broke down in a spasm of bitter, wracking sobs.

  Eppy caught her that way before she had time to pull herself together. “Oh, baby,” she comforted, holding Carrie in her arms, rocking her like she’d have rocked Fanny or Mary Ann. “Is it that bad?”

  “No, I’m all right,” Carrie snuffled, her face buried in Eppy’s handkerchief. “I’m just … oh Lord, you know.”

  “I know. I brought my rouge pot, but it looks like you won’t need it.”

  Carrie laughed wetly and blew her nose. “Who’s here?” she asked, to keep from having to talk herself.


  “Reverend Coughan. Eugene and his mother. Ethel—but you’ve heard her. And Broom—my Lord, I’ve never seen him this bad before! I can’t even get him to take his coat off.”

  “Is Dr. Stoneman here?”

  “No, not yet.” Eppy patted Carrie’s sagging shoulder. “But there’s still time, he might still come.”

  She nodded without much hope.

  “But Eugene did say …”

  “What?”

  “He said it’s getting late, and he doesn’t want to wait past ten. He says Frank should give you away.”

  “Oh.” Dr. Stoneman wouldn’t stand up for her, wouldn’t even come to her wedding. She wanted to lie down on the bed and sob.

  “Mom!”

  This time even Eppy jumped, Charlotte’s shrill little voice was so piercing. “What!”

  “Daddy says come out now.”

  “Why?”

  “He says he wants to tell you something!”

  Eppy got up from the bed, sighing. For the first time, Carrie saw the full extent of her fatigue. “Well, you’ve about pulled your hair apart completely, I see,” Eppy said with a grin. “Do I dare trust you to get your own veil on by yourself?”

  “I’ll manage,” she whispered, smiling back broadly, because otherwise she was afraid she’d cry again.

  Eppy widened her eyes and made a madwoman sound, pretending to tear out her own hair. She followed Charlotte out and closed the door behind her.

  Carrie’s veil was a decorous length of maline the same blue as her dress. She repinned her hair as neatly as she could and fastened the veil to the top of her head. She felt like turning the veil the other way around so it would cover her face instead of trailing down in back, but Eppy said that style wasn’t fashionable nowadays, and what’s more, it was pretentious. Well, people would just have to look at her face, then. No need for rouge, that was for sure; she didn’t even have to pinch her cheeks. And her eyes, which had only been tired and puffy before, were red-rimmed and bloodshot now. Oh, what a beautiful bride! What a lucky man Eugene was!