Earthly Vows

by Patricia Hickman

  Angel walked with Fern, following Donna and helping to carry one of Fern’s bags. “Stop looking so sick with worry,” she told Jeb.

  “We’ll come back Sunday instead of Monday,” said Jeb.

  “Not on my watch,” said Donna. “I’ve got our rooms through Sunday night and Brian says they’re the last two available rooms.”

  “It’s up to Jeb,” said Fern. She handed her luggage to him. “Donna, this is my fiancée, Jeb.”

  Donna extended her hand to him. He clasped it. He felt a fool to kiss a woman’s hand. But she was standing there holding it out like everyone was a hand kisser.

  Fern said, “I’ve heard the hotel has chilled air.”

  “It has everything. We’re going to live like kings for three days straight. So when are you two tying the knot?” Donna asked.

  “Soon. When Fern’s ready,” said Jeb.

  “I thought I was waiting on you,” said Fern.

  “Why not marry here at the farm?” asked Donna.

  Jeb turned and found Fern smiling. “Donna has a good idea. Want to marry here at your mother’s place?” he asked.

  “Why not?” She surprised the dickens out of him.

  Angel’s mouth fell open. “No, you mean it? When you get back from Oklahoma City?” She was waving her hands around, excited.

  “Isn’t the dress you’re wearing tonight new?” Donna helped load the luggage into the trunk.

  Jeb said, “Fern, we can do it Tuesday, here in your mother’s parlor.”

  “So what are we saying, that we’re going to just up and do it?” There was a pause. “Donna, I’m getting married next week!” said Fern.

  Donna squealed.

  Fern threw her arms around Jeb. “This is so spur of the moment! We’re nuts!”

  “Not a moment too soon for me, Fern. I don’t think I could wait a minute past Tuesday,” said Jeb.

  Abigail came out on the back porch. She opened the screen door, asking what in the world was going on.

  “Can we do a wedding by Tuesday?” asked Fern.

  “Jeb, she’s joking, isn’t she?” Abigail looked at Jeb.

  “They’re serious,” said Angel.

  Abigail met them out by the car. She kept saying that this was all a joke until she started crying.

  The Skirvin Hotel was a crowned jewel in Oklahoma City’s downtown apex. The two towers boasted 525 rooms, a cabaret club, a drugstore, a handful of retail stores, a rooftop garden, and the prestigious Venetian Room. An air-chilling system cooled a coffee café.

  A red-coated valet waiting under one of the hotel’s overhangs offered to park the Packard. Jeb handed him the key. Fern tipped the man.

  “I’m starving,” said Donna.

  “May I suggest the Coffee Shop inside? You can enter from either the lobby or First Street. You’ll like the stores at the Skirvin too,” said the valet. “The ladies all hit the dress stores first here.”

  Jeb led the way through the glass doors into the marble-floored lobby.

  Fern was admiring the Gothic lanterns suspended from the ceiling, and she knew they were Gothic, of course. “There’s the Coffee Shop.”

  “Fern, since Brian has registered the rooms in my name, why don’t you and Jeb go and find us a table. I’ll check in,” said Donna.

  “Good. I’m up for some tea,” said Fern.

  Jeb and Fern took a seat near a window. Jeb looked out at the construction across the street. “No Depression going on in Oklahoma City.”

  “It’s because of oil,” said the waiter. “Plenty of work in the City, at least for us locals. Those migrants camped around the edges of town do give us grief.”

  Fern ordered vegetable soup and tea. “My sister will have the same thing,” she said.

  “I’ll have the chicken special,” said Jeb. “Coffee, black.”

  The waiter left to fill their beverage request.

  “Maybe Claudia could work here at the Skirvin,” said Jeb.

  “There’s also Packingtown. That’s where they slaughter and package meat. I hear tell the jobs are plenteous there too,” said Fern.

  “Where’s that?”

  “Southwest of downtown. Exchange and Agnew,” said the waiter, reappearing with their drinks. “Here, I got a cousin there that does all the hiring.” He wrote it down and gave it to Jeb. “But the jobs go fast and you have to ask for him, he’s the one who knows everything going on over there.”

  “Who wants keys?” Donna walked up, dangling two sets of room keys in front of her. She seated herself next to Fern and took a sip of tea. “If you two want to take one of the rooms, you’re safe with me. I’m here for the sightseeing.”

  Jeb took one of the keys out of her hand. “I’ll take one. Fern, you and your sister take the other.”

  “Where’d you snag him anyway?” Donna asked Fern.

  “We met in Nazareth,” said Jeb. “I think, though, I snagged Fern.”

  “You’re not the first, just the first to hold on to her.”

  “Look, our food’s arrived already,” said Fern. She shot Donna a look.

  “There’s a good dress store. That valet wasn’t lying. After we eat, I’m going to shop,” said Donna.

  “I think I’ll rest a bit and then clean up for the party. Fern, you?” asked Jeb.

  “Rest sounds good to me too.”

  “There’s a band here tonight. If I’m wearing something new, I’d best skedaddle. You old folks can hit the hay, but I’m out of here.” Donna picked up her key and headed out into the lobby.

  “Donna is spirited,” said Jeb.

  “That’s kind to say it like that. Walk you to your room?”

  “This is a fancy place, Fern. I like seeing you in your natural surroundings. You fit in here much better than Nazareth. Whatever made you decide to leave?” He stood and offered her his arm.

  “Oh, there’s that drugstore. Let’s stop in there and see what hair products we can pick up. It is nice to be back in the City.”

  Jeb walked her to the Skirvin Drugstore. Fern needed to rest, he could tell. The trip had made her anxious.

  4

  BRASS CURTAIN ARMLETS IN THE SHAPE OF old ladies’ elbows restrained the mohair drapes in the Venetian Room. But it opened up the windows and gave the Skirvin Hotel guests seated at the better tables a view of the city by night. A bank of stormy-looking clouds threatened the horizon, but the locals had all given up on rain. The clouds draped the sky and erased any evidence of sundown; but down the main drag the streetlights and the neon signs of the better dining joints did the job of illuminating downtown Oklahoma City. Jeb thought it was a good place for minds to drift from the sight of the tent cities, where migrants camped around the town limits; a body had to be driving in from Shawnee or thumbing it into town to see that kind of thing anyway. It was the part of town that was no different than Arkansas. But here at the Skirvin, worry drifted away with the band music.

  A skinny woman nursing a martini opened a window. A Skirvin Hotel waiter juggled a tray of dishes, correcting a near spill, and that put everyone in a good mood. Lightning ricocheted over the rain-starved plains giving way to deep rumbles of thunder lifting from the throat of early nightfall. The Venetian lanterns dimmed, causing two young women to gasp like kids over cake. For that instant, the place was a slice of Venice.

  Jeb rubbed the toe of one shoe against the back of his pants leg. “Seems like I’ve been here in a dream.”

  A master of ceremonies swayed on the platform, his posture stilted as he introduced a black jazz singer from Chicago. Her hair was blue in the dimmed light and her face emerged from the dark, led by two eyes shining out through the smoke.

  Jeb got the feeling Fern was lightening up about starting over in Oklahoma City. On the way up in the elevator, she listened to his ideas for the Sunday sermon he planned to offer up at First Community.

  She was dolled up for the night. Where some of the women went gallivanting around the dance floor, her head scarcely moved as she walked.
Her dress was made of that soft, supple stuff, the kind of fabric that fell off the bed if you laid it on the edge, material floating and circular around her ankles, the folds undulating. She wore lavender and the dress seemed to swim among the other women under the lights; the beaded dresses flickered and reflected the overhead dance-floor lights like scales on tropical fish. Fern could not have worn that dress in Nazareth. She walked, shoulders back, her slender neck rising out of the beads and the lavender cloth, skin as white as a freshly dusted beach.

  Fern glanced around the Venetian Room looking through a tobacco haze floating above the couples. “Say, who are we looking for, Jeb?” she asked.

  “Rachel Flauvert told me to look for a heavy man with silvering hair. Said he wears an orchid in his lapel.”

  “I forgot his name, Jeb. I can’t remember anything today,” said Fern. She kept touching the brooch fastened at the dip in her neckline that made a sort of X-marks-the-spot.

  “Henry Oakley, wife Marion. I don’t see Donna.”

  The elevator door behind them opened and Donna stepped out.

  “I tried to wake you,” said Fern. “I didn’t know if you were coming or not.”

  Donna had picked up a new green dress, puffed sleeves. She stubbed out a cigarette in an ashtray at the door of the elevator. She spotted Jeb and Fern and joined them in the door of the Venetian Room. “If you-all want me to make myself scarce, I can find plenty to do in this place.”

  “Donna, you ought to join us,” said Fern. “You don’t know a stranger, and Jeb and I don’t know any of these people.”

  Jeb agreed and said, “You know the Oakleys, don’t you, Donna?”

  “Do we know them, Fern? We didn’t go to school with them, but I remember Mother talking about the Oak-leys, or maybe I did meet them, I don’t know,” said Donna. She let out a breath, her brown eyes sizing up the room. “Don’t see too many dance partners,” she said. Most of the guests were seated around the dining tables.

  Jeb held out his hand. “Fern, I’m going to take your little sister for a spin.”

  “Fine, then. I’ll ask around and see if anyone can point out the Oakleys,” said Fern.

  Donna accepted his arm, but asked, “Jeb, won’t you get excommunicated for dancing?”

  “Would it bother you if I did?

  “Not in the least. Your funeral.”

  “A quick spin around the floor over there away from the lights won’t hurt.” He led her away from the dance floor’s center. The singer chose a slow song, good for talking and asking Donna about her sister. Donna knew some steps. “Fern told me you were a good dancer.”

  “Not as good as Fern. She’s good at everything. Dancing, golf, skiing.”

  “I’ve never been on skis. They don’t have too much of that in Arkansas.”

  “She likes golf best. I heard about your golf game this week. Buddy told me.” She even laughed like Fern, the laughter starting out low and throaty and then spilling out of her, her chest lifting and her head falling back.

  “I admit defeat,” he said.

  “That’s why she loves you, I guess you know. Some guys felt threatened by her back in Ardmore.”

  “I once thought you were called Faye. Did I imagine it?”

  “Oh, that. I’m Donna Faye Coulter.” Her dark eyes took in all the dancers moving in around them. “After college, I started going by my first name. I’m settling down. I want to find someone like Fern has, I mean, more seriously than before.”

  Jeb spun Donna and drew her back in front of him. “Did she date anyone seriously? Not that I care, but did she?”

  “Who, Fern?” She coughed.

  “It’s all right to say. The past is the past and all that.”

  The dance ended. Donna clapped like the others, who had milled onto the floor. “Looks like Fern found your dinner party host.”

  Fern and a woman seated at a long banquet table talked. Fern was still standing. Jeb invited Donna to join him and they commenced to walk across the dance floor. He escorted her around several chairs and had one more table to get around when Fern turned and withdrew from the party. She left the Venetian Room and disappeared into the hallway.

  “Big Sister must have needed the powder room,” said Jeb.

  Donna rested one hand on an empty chair at the head of the table. The other hand rested on her hip until her gaze seemed to land on a male guest seated at the banquet table’s opposite end. “I’m going to go and join my sister in the powder room. You get us three chairs, will you, Jeb?”

  She excused herself and left Jeb standing awkwardly alone, staring into the face of their host.

  Eleven or so people were seated around the long table, faces pale in the candlelight, and eyes glassy. One woman across the table smiled and said, “You must be the fiancée of that beautiful woman who just dropped by? And I guess that was her sister just now?”

  The man at the table’s end glanced at Donna exiting the Venetian Room and then looked up at Jeb.

  A woman wearing a gold-threaded outfit garnished right out front with a big bow smiled at Jeb. “Esther, don’t you know her? That was Fern Coulter, Francis and Abigail’s daughter. Can you believe it?”

  The man next to her came to his feet and thrust out his hand. “Reverend Nubey, I’m Henry Oakley.” He was a slightly younger man than Jeb had imagined, thick dark hair that glistened under the low-hanging lights. A bit of salt and pepper at the temple.

  The woman in the bowed dress was his wife, he said, and then she introduced herself as a close friend of Rachel Flauvert. “I’m Marion. I hope we didn’t scare off Miss Coulter.”

  “Did she mention where she was going?” asked Jeb.

  The man seated at the table’s end said, “I’m sure she’ll be back.” He glanced back toward the door and then pulled out an empty chair next to him. “Please have a seat next to me, Preacher.”

  “Walton, I won’t let you hog Reverend Nubey all to yourself. Ignore him, Reverend,” said Marion. She had reserved two chairs, one next to her for Fern, and then a chair across from her for Jeb. Her face reddened when she told Walton, “I’m pulling rank on you.”

  Walton conceded defeat.

  Jeb shrugged apologetically for Walton’s benefit and accepted Marion’s invitation.

  Marion slid a tray of hors d’oeuvres toward Jeb. “Get this away from me. I’ll eat the whole plate of those things.”

  Jeb placed two of the concoctions on his plate, cucumbers pieced together with circles of bread and pasted with creamy spread. Marion took up all of the conversation after that, so Jeb settled back and listened, paying close enough attention to nod or answer with a “yes” or “no” whenever appropriate. His attention wandered down the table when the other eyes became fixed on two new arrivals to the table.

  “Always the last to arrive, those two,” Marion said to Jeb. She excused herself and got up to go and greet them.

  Walton fingered a cigar without lighting it. He seemed as preoccupied as Jeb. His hair was frosted with a bit of gray; he had a thin nose, a slight crook in it, and an easy smile. He was having as much trouble as Jeb paying attention to the women’s chatter. Walton turned once and looked back toward the door. Jeb followed his gaze.

  “I hope your fiancée hasn’t gotten lost,” said Henry.

  Walton leaned toward Henry and said, “Why don’t I go and look for Fern and Donna. They can’t have wandered too far away.” He got up and left the table.

  “I didn’t know Walton knew the Coulter girls,” said Marion, and then she worked her way back down to her chair and told Jeb, “They were young college girls when Walton got out of law school. I thought they ran in different circles.”

  Before Jeb could protest, a waiter filled his wineglass.

  Henry slid his hand over and moved the glass aside. “Most of these folks seated around here are Lutheran, Reverend. I hope you aren’t offended.”

  “Not at all. So Fern knows you, Mrs. Oakley?”

  “I’m Marion to everyo
ne else. May as well call me that. I knew her daddy, so that probably makes me a speck in her constellation, but I watched her grow up, read about her golf matches in the paper. Everyone in law and medicine in Oklahoma all seemed to run in the same circles. Dornick Hills is the hive, if you catch my meaning. The Coulters knew everyone, but Fern didn’t necessarily know everyone her father knew. You know girls, they have their own business to attend to. My mother and Fern’s mother knew one another since college. But I’m older than Fern. Did you know Abigail was schooled in New York?”

  “I think I knew that,” said Jeb. He wondered why Fern and Donna did not return.

  Donna appeared in the doorway, shot out a final stream of smoke, and saw Jeb. She smiled faintly, at least observably pleasant, and sauntered to the table. Jeb got up and offered her the chair on the other side of him.

  She settled herself into the chair, leaned forward to look up and down both ends of the table and then asked, “Where’s Fern?”

  Jeb tossed down his napkin. “I thought she was with you.”

  “She was in the powder room, said she was coming out here,” she said. “I didn’t know I needed to walk her back to the table.”

  Jeb excused himself to the Oakleys.

  Donna apologized. “She can’t have gone far.” She asked Marion, “Is there a balcony in this hotel?”

  “There’s a rooftop garden,” said Marion. “There was a brief rain, somebody said.”

  Donna said to Jeb, “You’ve noticed, haven’t you, that Fern likes to stand outside after a rain?”

  He didn’t say. But he hadn’t noticed. It had been too long since the last rain shower.

  “It’s been so hot and all, I wouldn’t be surprised,” said Donna.

  He didn’t know her well enough to tell if she was irritated with Fern. Jeb had taken a few steps when he heard Donna ask Marion, “Do you know where that Walton fellow went to?”

  “Senator Baer’s gone to look for your sister,” said Marion.

  “Senator?” asked Jeb.

  “Dear one, I thought you knew,” said Marion. “Senator Walton Baer.”

  Fern wasn’t among the group of women who came out of the powder room laughing. Come to think of it, he hadn’t seen her laugh the whole weekend. She was civil most of the day, but not her happy self, not the way she was in Nazareth—not even on the trip all the way from Nazareth to Ardmore. He felt like an insensitive fool to keep nudging her to go to this bash. Jeb found a building diagram down the hall from the elevator. He gave it a look. There was a right turn, and then a small lobby with a doorway leading guests out onto the roof. He had never seen such a sight, a little square of Eden on a hotel roof. Maybe it was like Fern to want to see such a thing, especially by night. He followed the hallway right and found the two glass doors. He pressed his face against the glass to see out. A couple necked near a potted tree. He pushed open the door.