A Fireproof Home for the Bride

by Amy Scheibe

  “There’s no one there, so I can’t ask,” Emmy said.

  “Perfect,” Bev said. “I really need someplace to meet Howie without my parents finding out.”

  Emmy smiled shyly at the feeling of being needed by Bev. She knew her father wouldn’t be home until at least eight, and her mother and Birdie were out at the farm. “I don’t see why not.”

  “Thanks, kid.” Bev grinned. “You’re a real peach.”

  * * *

  Bev drove north on Eighth Street and crossed over Main. As they passed the winter-shuttered windows of the Dairy Queen, Emmy saw Howie’s sleek hot rod glide out of the empty parking lot and into the lane behind them. A train was crossing up ahead, and Bev coasted to a stop as they waited for a long line of freight cars to rattle by. They were loud and heavy, and Bev had turned the radio up full the moment she’d started the car. Jerry Lee Lewis was blasting out of the speakers, his throbbing voice and the vibrations from the thundering rails putting Emmy on the edge of the aqua seat. Bev pushed the lighter into the dash and pointed at the glove compartment.

  “Do me a favor, would you,” she shouted. Emmy pulled out a fresh pack of Camels. Bev took them from her and tapped the small square box daintily against the palm of her hand before extracting two cigarettes and lighting both at the same time. She gave one to Emmy and turned down the radio.

  “Want to hear more about Jo? I have to admit, I’m a little obsessed with her,” Bev said, exhaling a thick cloud into the space between them. She then continued to talk without waiting for Emmy’s response. Her heart jumped greedily as Bev began to pour out the details of Josephine Randall’s life, including her days as a suffragist with Bev’s grandmother, and how she started a newsletter just for women during the Second World War—information on rations, war effort meetings, help for new widows, and other ways to get assistance while the men were so far away. According to Bev, Josephine also took care of her elderly relatives, and for the longest time never married or showed any interest in men. “Which led to the kind of gossip you might expect about a woman who always wore pants,” Bev said with a knowing smile.

  Emmy wasn’t sure what kind of gossip she was supposed to expect, so she kept quiet as her cigarette burned unsmoked in her hand, the paper slowly receding into rings of ash as Bev rambled on about Josephine’s love for her older cousin Raymond, who was sent off to Minneapolis, with the parental expectation that he would find other interests. Bev tapped her fingers on the steering wheel in time with the passing train. “That’s what my parents want.” She glanced in the rearview mirror and smiled with her lips pursed. “Anyway, Josephine stayed on the family estate, living with Raymond’s widowed mother while taking occasional trips east and beyond. I think she lived a sort of double life, wandering for a few weeks in Morocco or Prague, then coming home to spoon-feed Raymond’s mother on her deathbed. Can you imagine?”

  “No,” Emmy said. She marveled at the details of Bev’s storytelling, suspecting that just a smidge of it might be embossed with her friend’s romantic gilding.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if she secretly went on those trips with Raymond,” Bev said wistfully. “At least I hope she did. Otherwise it would be just too, too desperate a life to live without him.”

  “But you said they married,” Emmy said, dropping an inch of ash into the tray before extinguishing the stub.

  “Right, they did, about ten years ago, after his mother finally died. There was a bit of gossip, but Josephine has never cared what people say about her.”

  Emmy leaned against the seat. “At least they’re together.”

  “Not exactly,” Bev said, rolling down the window and tossing her cigarette out into the street. “Raymond died two years ago, heart attack. He was quite a bit older, but the years they had together were good ones. And like I said, I’m pretty sure they didn’t go all that time completely without contact, though it is tragic to think so.” She looked again into the rearview and pressed her lips together, corrected a small curl that had flipped the other way on her forehead. “How do I look?”

  “Perfect.”

  “‘Chances Are’!” Bev said, cranking the radio dial. “Oh, God, Mathis is my absolute favorite!” The train ended and the gates went up. The cars in front of them crept and then moved forward more swiftly. Emmy listened to Bev’s sweet harmonizing as they bounced up and over the rails, into the north side of Moorhead, where the houses quickly diminished in size and quaintness. These were modest two-story homes with atticlike second floors, mostly square boxes with small square yards, many built in the years after the war to provide cheap housing for veterans. Emmy thought about her great-aunt, whose life was so different from Lida’s. At the last note they swung in front of the Nelson house, and Emmy suddenly realized how tiny and careworn her life looked from the outside. In the wake of Bev’s colorful love story of Josephine Randall, here Emmy could see only the brackish end point of Adelaide Randall’s choice. Having the family’s history revealed changed nothing for Emmy.

  Bev killed the engine and in the side mirror Emmy could see Howie already leaning against the front of his car, carefully combing his hair into place. Bev shook some tiny Sen-Sen squares into her hand and tossed the pack to Emmy before bolting from the car.

  Emmy watched in the reflective oval as the scene unfolded. She considered what forbidden love must taste like, and how it could unravel even the most neatly woven lives. It looked a good deal more exciting than kissing Ambrose. The idea of his stiff frame bending enough to accommodate the kind of temperature that existed between Bev and Howie made Emmy feel something akin to despair. A spiraling sense of panic wormed inside of her, and her eyes filled with the frustrated tears of hewing too closely to her mother-manicured life.

  Emmy dried her eyes on her beige sleeve and opened the door. Bev spun around and smiled, her hair messy, her coat undone. The couple’s happy gaze fell upon Emmy and she let herself feel the pull of it and its heat, moving her forward, into life.

  * * *

  At half past five Emmy meticulously refolded the note from Bobby Doyle and yelled upstairs to Bev that it was nearing six o’clock. For the previous hour Emmy had been alone in the kitchen, first finishing her homework, and then preparing her father’s supper from a slab of veal that Ambrose had sent home with them on Sunday. Stroganoff, that’s what she’d made, from a recipe in The Fargo Forum. She didn’t have any broad noodles, though, so potatoes would have to do. As the sauce had simmered, she’d read Bobby’s neatly penciled words for the millionth time, even though she knew them all by heart, and also knew that they were nothing more than a collection of symbols that over time would point to a tiny moment of her premarriage history.

  For the third time she heard her own bed scraping in little bursts against the floor above, Bev’s shrieks and giggles, Howie’s low “atta girls’” growled as much as spoken. Intercourse had never been a great mystery to Emmy, who’d seen plenty of couplings on the farm, but this was different. Though she had been embarrassed by the noise at four o’clock, now she was sighing in boredom, having finished her homework and exhausted all the possible ways she could think of to ask her father about Josephine. He had never been much of a storyteller, and besides, they clearly considered it a closed subject.

  Minutes later the couple came racing down the stairs, Bev pushing Howie in front of her and out the door before she circled back over to Emmy and drew a small but thick black book from her schoolbag.

  “Thanks,” Bev said, her lips fuller, her cheeks redder than they had looked earlier. “This is for you. I just finished it. It’ll blow your mind!” On the cover of the book was a striking image of a train station with a woman standing on the platform under the large letters Peyton Place. Just the Sunday before, Pastor Erickson had decried the book as filth to the nodding congregation.

  “Oh, I can’t have this in the house,” Emmy said, backing away from it with her hands up. “My mother would kill me if she found it.”

  “So don’t let her f
ind it,” Bev said with a wink, and dropped the book onto the table. Her nonchalance was emboldening. “You are the best friend, ever.” She hugged Emmy quickly to her chest and went out to her car, giving a little wave as she disappeared into its plush interior. That car is bigger than this room, Emmy thought, swinging the door shut and lifting the book from the table. She had two empty hours to fill before anyone would be there to object.

  * * *

  During study hall the next morning, Emmy was asked by the monitor to report to Mr. Utke’s office. Emmy had assumed that after her parents had shown no interest in the high scores she had routinely earned on the aptitude tests, she had fallen off of Mr. Utke’s radar completely. It was with dread that Emmy approached the window-paned door stenciled with REINHOLD UTKE, and saw five other kids, four boys and a girl, waiting in the hard-backed chairs. Just as she leaned against the wall, Mr. Utke opened the door and Katie Howell, the Moorhead Spud most likely to succeed, walked out, laughing as though she’d just been visiting an old friend.

  “I’ll certainly try!” she exclaimed, and gave Emmy a warm smile as she passed. No wonder everyone likes her so much, thought Emmy. She doesn’t need to give me the time of day, yet here she is, smiling at me as though we are friends. Emmy stood up straight and returned the smile as Katie sailed past her and yelled down the hall to one of her actual friends. Mr. Utke glanced over the seated group, a look of exhaustion on his face, and then brightened when he saw Emmy.

  “Miss Nelson, come right in,” he said. “The lot of you can wait.” As he closed the door behind her he said, “What you have there is the Society for the Prevention of Doing Anything Constructive. They’ve been meeting in the chemistry lab at lunchtime and leaving cryptic formulas and obscure quotes on the chalkboard. Mr. Stenoin has asked me to put them someplace else.”

  “Oh,” Emmy said, still standing as Mr. Utke wheeled his chair up under him to his desk with a harsh creak. He looked at the papers on his blotter for a moment, motioned for her to sit down and it was then that she saw it: a copy of Peyton Place on the left side of his desk. She suddenly felt sweat drip down her spine and she knew she must have been the color of a freshly cut beet. The bookmark that was sticking out of the pages was Bobby Doyle’s well-folded note. She straightened her skirt over her knees and sat as still as she could.

  “Miss Nelson,” Mr. Utke said, still looking through the glasses on the tip of his nose at an open file. He had straggly gray eyebrows, and a small brown mustache lined his thin top lip. He was somewhere around her father’s age, Emmy guessed, but stouter and with slightly more hair. “Is it possible that you are unaware that this book”—he laid his hand on it and paused, as though trying to remember which one he meant—“this book is not allowed on school grounds?”

  “Yes,” Emmy said, staring down at her damp hands. He quickly looked up at her, over the lenses.

  “Yes, you are unaware, or yes, it’s not allowed?”

  “Sorry. Yes, I’m unaware.”

  “Well, it was banned by the PTA. Imagine my surprise when it turned up during locker check this morning, in your possession. You’re one of the few kids who has never missed a day or given any teacher any trouble, Miss Nelson. Don’t think that goes unnoticed.” He folded his hands. “We’re very disappointed in you.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Emmy leaned forward to take the book off the desk, and he moved it out of her reach. She had been up most of the night reading and desperately needed to know what fate would hand Selena Cross.

  “I’ll take care of it,” he said, and then pulled the note out of the book and handed it to her. “You may keep this.” She got up to take the note from him, and then turned to leave without meeting his eyes.

  “Not yet,” he said. She sat back down. He propped his fingers together and rested his bottom lip on his thumbs. “I would tell your parents about this—it’s the school policy—but I know that they’re under some strain right now, with your grandmother’s illness.”

  “Pardon me for interrupting, Mr. Utke, but how do you know about my family?” Emmy asked, embarrassed that her story was so pitiable.

  “I grew up in Glyndon,” he said, a tiny smile finally softening his stern expression. “I need an assistant. One of my girls has had to drop out of school.” Emmy knew that the girl in question was Karla Bossert. It was common knowledge that she was pregnant and had been sent off to her grandmother in Duluth to wait out her time.

  “Thank you,” Emmy said. “But I’m afraid I’m not much of a typist and I don’t know steno, so I can’t imagine how I could be of use.”

  “Just show up after school and let me worry about the rest,” he said, folding the newspaper that lay on his desk and handing it to her. “Read something useful, please. Your critical thinking scores are much too high to waste on prurient pulp.”

  The bell rang, but Emmy didn’t shift, confused by whether she was being punished or rewarded, yet feeling that it was a little bit of both.

  “Well, go on.” Mr. Utke stood. “I’ll see you later.”

  * * *

  Bev caught up with Emmy in the hall just after Emmy had closed her locker at the end of the day, determined to try her best to accomplish whatever task Mr. Utke had in mind.

  “Hey, doll,” Bev said affectionately, putting an arm around Emmy. “Why so glum, chum?”

  “Mr. Utke’s put me on his after-school staff,” Emmy said, returning the hug. The girls walked down the hall. “Seems Peyton Place is not exactly recommended reading.”

  “Oh, gee.” Bev stopped and smacked the middle of her forehead with her palm. “I’d heard they were doing a locker sweep, but I didn’t know for what. Wow.” Emmy was cheered by the warmth of her friend’s voice. She turned and looked at Bev, at the pink cashmere coat slightly open, revealing the dress that she’d recently shown Emmy in Vogue magazine: a bright green no-waist sack-style dress that obscured Bev’s curvy figure, in loud contrast to all the pinch-belted shirtwaist dresses and flaring poodle skirts populating the halls. Bev shrugged. “Well, it’s better than detention, though, right? What do you say I come back and give you a ride home when you’re done?”

  “You’d do that?” Emmy asked.

  “Of course, silly. Mother won’t mind—she wants to meet you anyway—so you think we can swing by my house first?”

  “I don’t see why not,” Emmy said as they continued down the thinned-out hall and stopped in front of Mr. Utke’s office.

  “See you soon.” Bev released Emmy’s waist.

  “Don’t be late.” Emmy waited a moment before opening the door for the second time that day. A girl looked up from a filing cabinet where she sat with a stack of files on her lap, working her way through the alphabet.

  “There you are, Emmaline,” Mr. Utke said, strolling in behind her. “Thank you, Betty, you may leave the files on the shelf until tomorrow.” The girl set the neat stack where she was told and silently left the office, eyes focused on her feet. Mr. Utke motioned to a chair set in front of a small table. “Sit down, please.”

  Emmy sat, looking at the blank sheet of paper, pencil, and a book titled The Caine Mutiny set out for her.

  “I don’t have any work for you today, so I want you to just read for the next hour. Feel free to take notes.” Mr. Utke moved to his desk and worked there quietly.

  She put her hand on the top of the thick book, opened it to the first chapter, and began to read.

  After what seemed like ten minutes, Emmy felt Mr. Utke’s tap on her shoulder. “Time to go,” he said.

  “May I take it home with me?” she asked, not wanting to stop reading.

  Mr. Utke laughed. “Sure you don’t want your other book instead?”

  * * *

  When Emmy walked out of the school doors and into the dark, frigid early evening, Bev’s car was not there. Emmy scanned the reaches of the parking lot before she realized who was standing right in front of her: Bobby Doyle, leaning against his cream-and-red pickup truck, grinning widely. She’d alrea
dy started to descend the short flight of steps and caught herself, nearly tripping down the entire set. She stopped where she was, a jolt of hot energy surging through her, a warning in her head telling her to go back inside the school.

  She forced one foot down in front of the other, hoping to make her descent without further gracelessness, keeping her eyes glued a few inches in front of her feet. She knew she looked a fright. It was the night she usually washed her hair, which meant it was slightly too limp under her brown cloche hat. Beneath her battered but trustworthy coat she had on a heathered sweater that her mother had knit. As the most comfortable thing she owned, it was the least flattering. Her mother had attached the wrong cuffs to the wrong sleeves and so it would occasionally twist under a coat, which was happening now as Emmy tried to pretend that the sight of Bobby meant nothing more to her than a worn-out piece of scribbled-on notepaper.

  “Hello,” she said, walking slowly up to Bobby and lifting her eyes to his face. He was even more handsome than she remembered, with a brimmed baseball-style cap that folded down to cover his ears and most of his hair. One small curl had snuck out and down his forehead, and Emmy wished she could spin the hair around her index finger. “Why are you here?” she asked, letting her hand drop to her side. Impossible, but his smile grew wider. His teeth were perfectly aligned and shone brightly in the glow of the parking lot lamps.

  “Bev thought you might be mad,” he said, his hands jammed deep inside the pockets of his red letterman’s jacket. “But it was all my idea.”

  “Mad? No.” Emmy walked to the passenger side and waited for Bobby to open the door. He laid a hand on her back and once again she felt that curious warmth. She stepped up into the truck and leaned against the seat while she waited for Bobby to get in his side. The engine was running and the cab was warm. This had always been her favorite part of winter: the immersion in a well-heated car right after absorbing the chill of an icy night wind.

  “I’m not the type to take no answer for an answer,” Bobby said, putting the truck in gear and driving slowly out of the parking lot. “And even though Bev tells me you have some sort of fella out there, I’m still not giving up hope. In fact, I’m just going to drive you home, because Bev couldn’t make it, and she asked me to do her the favor. But don’t expect me to do it without trying to convince you that I deserve a shot.”