A Fireproof Home for the Bride

by Amy Scheibe

  “It’s definitely something, Bobby,” she said, the cold air drafting through the unpaned window at the end of the hallway. “And a little overwhelming.”

  “Maybe this will help,” he said, tucking the flashlight under his arm and taking a small box bearing the words ROYAL JEWELERS out of his pocket. She took a step closer as he opened the dark blue square and withdrew a dainty diamond ring. “Emmaline Nelson,” he said as he took her left hand. “Will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

  The silence hung in the cold air between them as Emmy closed the box with a sudden snap that echoed off of the hard concrete floor. “It would be an honor,” she said, her voice faltering. “But isn’t this all a little fast? We’re so young, we don’t really know what we feel yet.”

  Bobby stared at the box and spoke to it. “I’m nineteen next month,” he said as though he’d rehearsed the words in front of his bathroom mirror. “My mother was seventeen, and Dad was eighteen. My grandparents were just as young, and they’re still married. When you know, you know, right?” He glanced at her, dismay creasing his brow. She took a finger and smoothed the lines there.

  “That’s very sweet,” she said, resting her palm on his hot cheek. “I’m just in no rush, is all.” A thin line of water collected at the rim of Bobby’s eyes, and when he blinked, a drop landed on her hand.

  “There’s no rush,” he whispered. “I’m just tired of not being with you all the time.” Emmy couldn’t explain, even to herself, why everything in her kept saying no, so instead, she gathered her courage and pushed against the resistance.

  “If we can promise to take our time, then yes,” she answered, the swelling in her chest telling her that the words were all in the right order, her deliberation nothing more than fear of the unknown. “I will wear your ring.”

  Bobby exhaled into a huge sigh as he fumbled with the box and placed the ring on her finger. The modest diamond in the center of the setting caught a sparkle from the flashlight before sliding loosely around Emmy’s finger. “I guess I need to have it sized,” she said, spinning the setting right again. The elated lift she’d felt by saying yes evaporated just as quickly. She closed her eyes, attempting to recapture it. Something was wrong. She only felt empty.

  “You had me worried there for a second,” he said, suddenly lifting her up and opening the only door on any room in the half-finished house. Candles glowed here, and a newly lit fire crackled in a hearth at the foot of a small blanket-covered army cot.

  “So this is why you made me wait in the car,” she gently chided as Bobby set her down in the middle of the makeshift bed and knelt before her. He pulled off one of her shoes, then the other, and when he reached up to her waist he drew her close and laid his head on her knee. For a moment she thought he might be crying, so she lifted his head and kissed him. Bobby returned the heat of her kiss and began unbuttoning her blouse, slipping his hands clumsily around her bare back and working at the multiple hooks of her bra. They inched ever closer to the thing she had desired for a year, only to find fear creeping up her skin, telling her to stop before it was too late to turn back. Her body once again betrayed her, though, urging him forward with small moans and uncontrollable thrusts. When he peeled down her stockings and began to kiss the naked flesh around the edges of her underwear, the resistance won, and she stilled his hands, drawing him up and pressing her forehead damply against his. She whispered, “I can’t.”

  Bobby nuzzled against her neck, whispering harshly in return, “Please, Emmy.”

  Keeping her eyes closed, she said the small word again. “No. I want to wait. For everything.”

  He stopped kissing her and refastened her clothes as she felt the moment of passion die away. His calm movements were disappointing; the way he gave in to her wishes with such obedient respect caused her to wonder if the tone she had chosen was one she would regret forever. She leaned forward and slipped her tongue into his mouth, searching for his ardor. He responded, but weakly, and after a few seconds of tepid necking Emmy relented, her suppressed thoughts of the outside world worming steadily back in and demanding she do something more than sit in a half-finished house, making halfhearted love.

  “We should get going,” Bobby said, passing the back of his hand across his mouth. “They’re all waiting to celebrate us.” He stood and quickly extinguished the candles, throwing sand from a bucket on the fire in the grate. Emmy spun the new ring around her finger with a thumb and then stepped into her shoes, following the beam of Bobby’s flashlight down the stairs and under the tarp-draped front door. She glanced back at the house, and a rush of relief to be outside of it passed through her as she gained her momentum and turned away from its blank façade.

  * * *

  “And it’s made entirely out of concrete,” Bob Doyle Sr. proclaimed as he showed Emmy a page torn from Ladies’ Home Journal. He had led her and Bobby to his den moments after they had walked in the front door to a gathered collection of Doyles and O’Neills—Peggy Doyle’s family—shouts of hearty congratulations hurled at their heads as Mr. Doyle had escorted them through the throng and down the basement stairs. A number of boys could be heard playing floor hockey in the other room, and above Emmy’s head echoed the sound of countless feet moving with purpose around the kitchen. The house was much fuller than a typical Sunday, and Emmy realized this day had been planned well in advance of her acceptance. She tried to focus on her future, laid out as it was in the house plans in front of her, but where some girls would feel enlarged by the rapid change in fortune, she fought the urge to press against the paneled walls of the den or to pick up a pencil and add extra windows and doors to the drawing. At the top of the page that Mr. Doyle held out to Emmy was a picture of an unusual, large house—white stucco paint, light red roof made out of some sort of curved tiles, and the arched doorways and windows she’d seen on Plum Circle. It seemed much grander and imposing than the little street could bear.

  “It’s what you call a casa Mediterraneo,” Mr. Doyle continued. “No wood, no rot, no termites. Warm in the winter and cool in the summer, like living in Italy.”

  “Well, it’s certainly exotic looking,” she replied. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Exactly.” He rapped a knuckle on the page. “Didn’t I tell you, Bobby. Exotic. Modern. Nothing will mess with these houses. Not a tornado, not a fire, nothing. Look, it says so right here: ‘A Fireproof Home for the Bride.’ The minute Peg showed this to me in her July Better Homes, I knew we could figure out how to build it. How about that fireplace in the bedroom? She like that, son?”

  “Yes, sir,” Bobby answered, slipping his hand into Emmy’s. “It was one of her favorite features.” Emmy grew hot with embarrassment, seeing the look that passed between father and son. Everyone was in on the joke, it seemed, but her.

  A broad smile creased Mr. Doyle’s face. At thirty-seven, he was six years older than Jim, Emmy thought, and one of the more handsome men she had met. His dark black hair curled the same way Bobby’s did, but gave an eerie glow to the identical blue eyes by the contrast. She had trouble looking directly at Mr. Doyle without her discomfort increasing.

  “I hope you don’t mind my generosity,” he said as he surveyed the plans. “It just makes sense that my son would have the first house I built.”

  “I have to say I’m not used to it,” Emmy said. “The generosity, that is.” Mr. Doyle glanced at her and Emmy realized he wanted her to be more effusive. “So, tell me, how is it that the walls are made?”

  Bobby gave her hand an approving squeeze, and Mr. Doyle’s eyes lit up as he moved his stocky frame around the desk to her other side. He flipped the plans back a page and revealed the basement. “Well, we broke ground back in September, and then in October we poured the basement, capped it, and built the wooden molds we used to pour the concrete into.” He held his hands apart. “One-foot walls. No need for insulation or framing.”

  “September, you say.” Emmy glanced at Bobby. “I guess you’ve been pla
nning things for a while.”

  “Oh, not at all,” Mr. Doyle bellowed, his face brightening. “I started this baby on a whim, with the overflow from the Golden Ridge project.”

  “Golden Ridge?” Emmy asked. Her memory snapped back to Jesse in the cellar, lost and alone. “I thought you were building the interstate.”

  “That too,” he replied. “With a government loan I bought up a few parcels of land over there—helped out some of the victims so they could start new elsewheres. Who’d want to live there, after all that?”

  “Victims like Mr. Acevedo?” Emmy said, keeping her voice even so she wouldn’t reveal her confusion. “Did you help him?”

  Bobby dropped Emmy’s hand as Mr. Doyle clucked his tongue. “Terrible thing, all that.” His voice sounded thin and coppery to Emmy, like a penny trying to pass itself off as a dime. “Acevedo worked on one of my crews, you know.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Bobby mentioned that.”

  “I’ll always look after his needs,” Mr. Doyle said. “I’m still sick about finding Jesse like that, all snuggled up like a baby.” He wiped at his nose with a handkerchief. “There was no way of knowing he’d run away. I’d driven him up to his aunt myself. He seemed happy enough to be there when I left him.”

  “It’s okay, Dad,” Bobby said. An awkward moment of silence was broken by the crash of the door flying open.

  “Hey,” Michael said, leaning his red head into the room. “Mom says five-minute warning.”

  Emmy’s eyes strayed across the top of another set of plans that lay slightly askew under the two-dimensional fireproof house, and snagged on the words Robertson Ridge. “What’re those?” she asked Mr. Doyle as Michael disappeared more quickly than he’d come.

  “Phase two out in Golden Ridge,” he said, expertly rolling the house plans away to reveal a diagram of a well-ordered neighborhood with curving streets and a mixture of small square houses and long rectangular buildings. “We’ll make some low-income apartments teamed with smaller versions of the Plum Circle house. Someday this’ll all belong to my sons—and grandsons, starting with this boy right here.” He reached around Emmy in order to slap Bobby in the middle of his back.

  “Absolutely,” Bobby said, aglow in the light of his father’s approval.

  “Robertson Ridge?” Emmy asked, running her finger across the letters as if trying to smudge the way it all was making her feel like an accomplice to a crime.

  Mr. Doyle’s smile widened. “Robert and son, me and my boy. Only a matter of time before we can fully erase the negative association of tragedy and make this a real community again with affordable housing.”

  “Erase?” Emmy asked. “But what about the people who still live there?”

  “I know this is all a little fast,” Mr. Doyle said, carefully adjusting the papers until the open magazine and the casa were once again on top of the pile. “Why don’t I just leave you two alone for a minute.”

  “Thank you very much, Mr. Doyle,” Emmy said, eager to have him out of the room so she could talk to Bobby alone. “For everything. This is incredibly generous and entirely unexpected.”

  “Bobby’s our first.” He squeezed her shoulders. “Our best. My greatest hope for the future of our business. You’re a good addition to the Doyle family, Emmy. I hope you think so, too.”

  “Of course,” she murmured as he left the room, though she couldn’t help thinking that she was no less a piece of doing good business than a vacant lot in Golden Ridge. “I don’t get it,” she said to Bobby. “Why are they giving us so much?”

  “Are you kidding?” He laughed and smacked his forehead with the flat of his palm. “My folks are nuts about you.” He drew her into a hug and rubbed his nose against hers. She tried not to sneeze.

  “Yes, but this all seems beyond generous.”

  “Not for my girl.” He kissed at her lips. “Besides, it’s you or the priesthood.”

  Emmy pressed him slightly away. “What’s that mean?”

  “It’s a joke, honey,” Bobby said, but his face twitched with a hint of truth. “In an Irish family, the first son is expected to become a priest. I’m afraid that you’ve ruined me.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” Emmy said, sensing something more painful behind his teasing. “If that’s what you want?”

  His face sobered as he took her hand, gazing down at the ring. “This is right, Emmy,” he said. “It has to be.”

  A tremor in the bedrock of Bobby’s love rattled Emmy’s perception. If it was constant, it allowed her to pluck at the seam of her own doubts. If it wasn’t, she would be overpowered by them. “Why?”

  “So much depends—” he began, but another knock came at the door. Bobby told Michael to get upstairs and then lowered his voice. “Please just tell me that you love me?” he asked Emmy. His eyes filled again with the same kind of tears she’d seen earlier that day—though this time she thought there was a caul of deception that she’d been blind to before.

  “I do,” she said, painful tears of her own beginning to gather like spring rain on a frozen windshield. “I love you.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut and held her hand to his lips, a return of confidence sparkling through his dewy lashes. Emmy stilled the chaos inside of her long enough to realize that she hadn’t looked into his eyes in a very long time, and by withholding her gaze she had been denying him the intimacy she had once so freely shared. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking back down at the desk. “But I can’t seem to make sense of all of this.”

  “Growing up happens fast,” he agreed, and turned to the door. “It can make your head spin, I know.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “Sheesh,” he interrupted. “You sure do think a lot, don’t you? There’s plenty of time to work out any details you don’t like, okay?”

  Emmy nodded, even though she couldn’t shake the feeling that there would never be time enough. He led her through the empty basement and up the stairs. The noise from the crowd had reached an excited pitch, and Emmy tried to catch the loose thread that would tie her to the moment and fasten her jangling nerves. She was beginning to understand the meaning of what she and Bobby were entering together by presenting themselves before the chattering well-wishers. The paper shamrocks hanging from the ceiling that she’d found so charming on the way in the door now felt gaudy, alien. And yet they were all so willing to accept Emmy, invite her to become one of them, that she couldn’t help wanting to be drawn into their enveloping embrace.

  As she cleared the top of the stairs, Bobby put his arm around her waist. The group that was packed around the dining room table and lined along the living room fell silent and then burst into applause. As the couple walked slowly into the space made for them, it seemed to Emmy that everyone moved an inch away, or that the walls were receding and absorbing all the giddy faces, the teary-eyed aunties, the squirming children, the red-faced men. There was a full assortment of neighbors, siblings, relatives, and friends, including a very elderly and frail woman snoozing in an armchair by the fire, as well as Sister Clare, Father Munsch, and in the middle of them all, Peggy and Bob Doyle. As Bobby’s father quieted the cheers and began to talk about how much this day meant to him—to all of them—Emmy caught sight of a familiar face at the back of the crowd, but she couldn’t quite place how she knew this slightly older woman. Her hair was a brilliant blond, her features smooth and fine. She was tall and well dressed, with profound color on her high cheekbones. For a small sad moment, as she saw smiling faces filled with tears and joy, Emmy thought maybe it was her own mother in the back of the room. When Mr. Doyle finished his speech, everyone cheered, and Emmy was jostled by congratulants to her place at the table. The woman moved toward her and it wasn’t until Emmy sat down and the apparition vanished that Emmy realized she had only been looking at herself in the breakfront mirror all along. Growing up happens fast, indeed.

  * * *

  “Emmy, this is Father Finney,” Peggy Doyle said, seating an elderly priest to the right
of Emmy. “He’s going to help with your studies for conversion, and Sister Clare has offered to sponsor you.”

  “Conversion?” Emmy asked. She had barely begun to think about becoming a Doyle, and here she was, pressed into the chute out of which she would emerge a Catholic.

  “Yes, my child,” Father Finney said. “We know from Peggy about the beauty of your spirit, and are happy to invite you to join our faith. Jesus takes all comers.” He laughed and tapped her knee with his frail hand. “First we’ll get you into the current Rite of Initiation class, and by Easter, you’ll be confirmed in the faith.”

  Emmy forced her lips into a smile. “I’m sorry, but I haven’t really—”

  “It’s okay, Emmy,” Bobby said from across the table. “Father Finney doesn’t bite.”

  “I barely have the teeth in me anymore,” the priest exclaimed, showing his missing teeth in a grin.

  “That’s a relief,” Emmy said, realizing that it would be disrespectful to voice her concerns at the table of her hosts. She respectfully turned toward the priest. “I would love to hear all about the process, if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t mind in the least,” Father Finney said, buttering a slice of white bread and using it to soak up the glaze from the ham on his plate. “Of course you’ve been baptized.” There was butter on his chin. “And never married.”

  “Of course,” she replied, and silently fell to eating as the priest talked endlessly about the mysteries of faith.