The two of them debated the question for a while. Emily noticed that Brian was silent. She went over to add a log to the fire, and stopped to lean over the back of his chair and kiss his cheek. She asked, “What do you think about all of this?”
“I think you both make good points,” he began, but she interrupted.
“You’ve been sound asleep the whole time and haven’t heard a word of it!” she said smiling.
He in turn reached behind the chair and took her wrist and kissed her hand, “Have a little patience with an old man.”
It was only a small gesture, but Paul was struck as he looked on by the fact that it was his left hand that Brian had used to take her wrist.
“Watch that ‘old man’ stuff, pal, I’m older than you are,” Paul said. “Course, I’ve held up better than you.”
Emily just grinned at the two of them and went into the kitchen to make a pot of fresh coffee. “You two are getting punchy.” In a few minutes came the sound of a crash.
They rushed into the kitchen to find her picking up the broken pieces of Brian’s favorite coffee mug. She looked guiltily in their direction and said quickly, “I’m sorry, Brian, I was reaching for your mug and I got it but my foot slipped and it fell.”
“Are you okay?” he asked in return.
“I’m so clumsy lately. Tell me where you got it and I’ll get you a new one.” She seemed disproportionately upset.
“Never mind about the mug, are you all right? Did you fall?” As he spoke, he moved toward her, and, as if by instinct, she backed away.
Paul saw the scene played out and recognized the dynamic. He knelt down near Emily who was still sitting on the floor. “What are you remembering, Emily?”
“I broke my father’s favorite cup once. It had hot coffee in it and it burned my leg right through my jeans. He got really mad.” As she spoke she stared vacantly into space while a tear trickled down her cheek.
“What did he do?” Paul asked gently.
“I was trying to pick up the pieces and clean up the mess, but he hit me and screamed at me to go to my room.” She turned to look at Paul. “I had forgotten all about that.”
The silence in the room was so palpable, it was as if all of time had stood still, as if the pause button had been pressed and had to be pressed again before any action could occur. Finally Brian spoke in a voice so soft, it would have been a strain to hear it had the room not been so quiet. “Emily, could you come over here and sit in this chair for me, please, sweetheart?”
As she moved to comply, she walked with a limp.
“Did you hurt your ankle?” She nodded. “Are you hurt anywhere else?” She shook her head. He handed her his handkerchief and began to examine her ankle. She dried her tears and sniffled while he gently moved the ankle this way and that. When he was satisfied that nothing was broken, he asked her to try walking on it.
“It’s better now,” she said. “I’m sorry about all this fuss.” She looked back and forth from Paul’s face to Brian’s. “Never a dull moment, huh?”
Paul’s voice reflected a deep sadness when he asked, “How old were you when you broke your father’s coffee cup?”
She twisted Brian’s handkerchief around and around her hands. She started to answer, and found she had to clear her throat before any sound would come. “I was five.”
A sound from Brian caused the other two to look at him. “You told me once that you had forgiven your father everything. I wish you’d tell me how you did that, because I never even met him, and I hate him.” There was vehemence in his tone that testified to the strength of his emotion.
“At first I forgave him out of pure self-interest. Hating him was consuming too much of my emotional energy. In time, I realized that he was doing what he had learned from his own childhood. I might as well get mad at Adam. By the time I really understood fully what had been going on, he was dead. Eventually I had to let my grudge against him go so my hands would be free to reach out to you.” She looked at him and saw the pain in his face, the pain he was feeling because of his empathy for her, and it touched her deeply. “There’s so much joy in my life now, I don’t even think about those times anymore.”
When he heard that statement, Paul asked himself. “Why do I find that so hard to believe?”
By the time the first of March rolled around, Brian had decided it was time to discuss the proposal he had made on New Year’s Eve. He planned to bring it up at the end of a special evening. In celebration of Emily’s birthday, they had dinner at one of the city’s finest restaurants. The corner table gave them a perfect view of the city lights beyond the window. The elegant place setting was highlighted by lovely flowers and candles. Emily was dressed in a beautifully cut green suit which blended perfectly with the dark green linen on the table. Brian couldn’t help staring at her, and told her, “You’re getting more beautiful all the time. You look absolutely stunning tonight.”
“Thank you, kind sir. I work at it harder than I used to. As a matter of fact, you look pretty stunning yourself. I’m sure that’s a new suit you’re wearing.”
They discussed various trivia throughout the meal. Brian wondered if there was something chauvinistic in enjoying the sensation of being with a beautiful, eye-catching woman in public. “It’s not to my credit that she’s beautiful, so why should it do anything for my ego to be seen with her? She thinks that people are staring at my hand, but I think that in the case of the men, it’s her that catches the eyes.”
When the meal was over and they were enjoying their coffee, Brian pulled an envelope out of his jacket pocket. “Happy birthday.”
“What have we here?” she asked. Opening the envelope, she found three tickets to the upcoming NCAA college basketball tournament. The popularity of the sport in the city made these tickets one of the hottest properties around, prompting her to exclaim, “Brian, how on earth did you get these? There are people in this town that would just die to get hold of these. How many people did you have to bribe?”
“A colleague owed me a favor, and used these to pay up. Shall we ask Paul, or are you content to have him never speak to either of us again?”
“Oh, we must take Paul. This is a wonderful gift, thank you.”
Brian was quiet as they drove back to his place. He was plotting strategy for how to bring up the subject of marriage without seeming pushy. He settled for a frontal assault, face the whole question outright, get an answer. But then again, he didn’t want to stampede her. He wouldn’t want her to think she was being manipulated. It was all very complicated.
As they made themselves comfortable in front of the fire, Brian decided to go with plain old honesty and see what that got him. “Have you been giving my proposal of marriage a lot of thought?” Can’t be much more direct than that, he figured.
“Of course I have. It’s been keeping me up nights. It’s a very complicated question. You know, there’s still a lot about you I don’t know.”
“Is there really? What do you want to know?” he asked, genuinely curious as to what she would say.
“Well, we’ve never talked about money, for example.”
“Would you like me to submit a financial statement?” he asked.
Emily’s face reflected her embarrassment, “Of course not, it’s just that I ... oh dear, this isn’t what I meant.”
“Emily, I’ve been working hard for twenty years and have inexpensive tastes, so I’m financially comfortable.”
“That’s not at all what I meant. Your money is none of my business. I just wanted to know how you would want to divide up the bills and things like that. I mean, you have a house and you always pay when we go out, and that doesn’t seem fair. I don’t know how people decide those kinds of things when they get married. My parents fought about money a lot. I know I’ve heard of lots of couples breaking up because of money.” Emily was still not at all satisfied that she had explained what she meant.
“I see what you’re getting at, I just don’t think it’s a
problem. When we get married, my house becomes our house, my money becomes our money. If you want to quit your job you can, or if you’d rather, you can keep it. You can do whatever you want. Money doesn’t need to be an issue. What else do you want to talk about?”
“Well, would you want to have children? We should probably talk about that.”
This particular question he had expected, and had his answer already figured out. “I think that would be up to you.”
“Well, that makes it difficult. What if I say I don’t want any children, but it turns out that you really had your heart set on being a father and giving your parents grandchildren?”
“I don’t have my heart set on anything except marrying you. As for my parents, they don’t come into it at all. What would your preference be?”
“I guess it’s pretty selfish, but I think I’d just as soon have you to myself.”
“That would be my inclination, too, but I can live with whatever you want. Any other questions?”
“You know I don’t know anything about men. I don’t know anything about making you happy. I’ve never even had a roommate. What if I snore? What if I have a hundred habits that drive you crazy?”
He wanted to laugh at her worries, but he knew that for her they were quite real, so he only smiled and said, “You already make me happy. If we have habits that drive one another crazy, we’ll work it out. And you don’t snore, at least you didn’t at New Year’s. Do I?”
“Yes, but it’s a very nice snore,” she answered quickly, without thinking, and then went on, “Brian, I don’t know any good way to put this, so I’ll just be blunt and probably offend you. What if we get married and then find out that we’re not sexually compatible? You’re aware that I don’t know the first thing about making love to a man.”
He had thought that this would be the crux of the problem. Very carefully constructing his sentences as if each word was vitally important, he said, “We love one another. We communicate pretty well most of the time. We’ll talk about what we like and don’t like. We’ll explore all the options. We’ll learn how to please one another. I think we have on our side that we’re both patient people. Sweetheart, we can make this work. Marry me, Emily.”
She walked around the room for a minute that seemed like a year, obviously lost in contemplation. When she finally stopped and turned to face him, she said in a thoughtful voice, “You know, I believe I will.”
Brian smiled broadly and said, “In that case, I have one more birthday present for you.” He drew a small velvet box out of his pocket, the contents of which were easy to guess. A lovely diamond cut in an unusual rectangular shape set in a gold setting appeared. “The stone was my grandmother’s. I had the jeweler put it in a new setting. I’ve been waiting all my life to put this on your finger.”
True romance never goes out of fashion, they say. It is always in vogue. But romance and love are not the same thing. Love consists of more than flowers and diamonds, ocean surf and pretty music. Romantic figures appear in their specific seasons. There are delicate ladies wearing lacy spring dresses in the paintings of Monet, and handsome tenors who sing romantic ballads under the summer moonlight. There are poets whose eloquence is easily fired into passion when the brilliant colors of fall are swirling around them. These are the characters that move through the pages of a good romantic story. But the wounded hearts who cradle one another through the dead of winter are the true lovers. And when passion is gone and romance has fled, then comes the cruel time, the blackberry winter. Only the true lovers can survive that season to taste the sweetness to come.
Book Two: Blackberry Winter
Chapter 1
Brian was nursing a painful leg on the Sunday after Emily’s birthday, and so they decided to forego venturing forth. He assured her over the phone that he had such bouts on occasion, and that he would be fine if he left off his prosthesis and instead used his crutches for a day or two. In fact, he spent most of the weekend on the couch. Paul had volunteered to man the kitchen solo for the feast. He appeared at noon, casserole in hand, and set about preparing the rest of the meal. When he got to a lull in the action, he came in to the living room to keep Brian company.
“So, what’s new? Did Emily flip over those tournament tickets?” he asked, grinning.
“Yes, she was thrilled. She says you must go with us. There’s one other thing that’s new, besides the tournament.” He was watching his friend very carefully to catch his reaction. “Emily and I are getting married.”
For a moment, Brian enjoyed the rare spectacle of Paul struck speechless. Then, as if remembering himself, Paul exclaimed, “Hey, that’s great! Congratulations! I’m happy for you both.”
“How’d you like to be my best man?” Brian asked.
“I’d be proud to. This is really wonderful.”
At just his moment Emily arrived. Upon her greeting Paul, he took her up in his arms and kissed her in earnest.
“My goodness, what prompted that? Not that I’m complaining, mind you,” she said. But no answer was necessary when she realized that Paul was giving her left ring finger a close examination.
“Congratulations, Emily. I’m overjoyed for both of you. What a beautiful rock! I wouldn’t have thought this slob could do such a good job picking out a ring. Of course, I can’t fault his taste in women.”
“Well, thank you. Just for that I’m going to take you to the basketball tournament with me,” she said smiling.
Paul excused himself to check on the progress of the dinner, and Emily turned to Brian. He was comfortably dressed in a flannel shirt and jeans. As she sat next to him on the couch, she kissed him warmly and asked, “How are we feeling today?”
“We are feeling fine. We have a best man lined up for our wedding. Now all we need is to set a date. What do we think would be a good day to get married on?”
She ignored his gentle mocking of her use of pronouns and looked a little blank as she answered, “I don’t know. I hadn’t gotten that far in my thinking yet. What about your parents? Won’t they want to be included? And what about the place? Where do you want to get married? There’s an awful lot of stuff to be considered, isn’t there?”
Brian shrugged. “The only thing that matters to me is that we do things the way you want. Whatever, whenever, however you prefer to do things is fine with me. I think weddings are more of a woman’s thing.”
“I don’t know about that. I’ve only been to a few weddings in my whole life, and they always seem sort of stuffy to me. Why don’t we just do a simple little thing with just Paul and maybe a few other friends and your folks. Who on earth will we get to do the ceremony?”
Paul announced that the meal was ready, and Brian set about the business of getting up on his crutches and making his way to the table. Emily looked on with interest. She had never seen this process before. When she realized that Brian was returning her stare, she was plainly flustered, aware they he had an intense dislike of being stared at.
“You’d stare at me too if you saw me on crutches for the first time, wouldn’t you?” she said.
He smiled as if this line of reasoning hadn’t occurred to him and answered, “Yes, sweetheart, I guess I would at that.”
Paul’s dinner was delicious, and served as a fine backdrop for planning. They discussed weddings in general and what specific details would need to be figured out for the wedding in question. It soon became apparent that even a little wedding had to have a lot of preparation behind it. Emily took out her journal and resolved to make a list. “Wedding Things: Minister, church, ceremony, guests, rings, flowers, license, blood tests....” This list got longer as she realized that getting married also meant moving out of her apartment. “This is going to be a lot of work,” she said.
“Yes, but you only have to do it once in a lifetime.” Brian said. “We’ll work it all out, don’t worry about it.”
Paul volunteered a suggestion that was immediately acclaimed as inspired. “Why don’t you get married in t
he Episcopal church back in Vermont?” He snickered to himself with the next thought. “You could let Louise handle a lot of the details. She would thrive on it, and it would save you a lot of worry. That’s the church that seems to have the most significance to Brian.”
Emily liked the whole idea of getting married in Brian’s home town. Besides passing the buck to her mother-in-law-to-be, she would finally get to see Vermont—McClellan paradise on earth. It also eliminated the possibility that any of her obnoxious relatives might hear about her getting married, which suited her just fine.
They discussed the wedding ceremony briefly, and decided to stick to the traditional form and not try to improve on the wisdom of the ages. As ideas popped into her head, she asked them, “Do you have to have bridesmaids at a wedding?”
“Not if you don’t want to, I wouldn’t think,” Brian answered.
“You know I hate to have my picture made. Do we have to have a photographer?”
“Not if you don’t want to,” Brian answered.
“So I can really have whatever I want, huh?”
“That’s the idea,” he answered.
The turning of the wheels of her mind was almost audible, so intent was the look on her face. “I’m going to wear a fancy white dress and carry white stephanotis pinned to my Bible. And I want to get married in the morning while the birds are still singing. Can we have a double ring ceremony?”
He paused slightly before answering, “I’ll gladly wear a ring if you want me to. I don’t see any reason why a wedding ring couldn’t be worn on the right hand.”
The afternoon trickled away in pleasant conversation. Paul took his leave after congratulating them again, and the two sat in amiable, drowsy silence, Brian reclining on the sofa and Emily on the floor in front of him. He made a slight noise of pain as he was shifting his position and she turned to face him. Her voice was soft as she spoke. “I’m only going to ask once, and I’m going to accept whatever you say, and I don’t mean to be a nag, but do you really feel all right?”
Blackberry Winter Page 17