The Bride’s House

by Sandra Dallas

  They pushed open the pocket doors and entered a parlor that was dominated by a carved wooden fireplace set on a slab of dark granite. “Lookit, there’s the bedroom next to it. You could lay in bed and see the fire,” she told Will.

  “I think that’s the back parlor. The bedrooms must be upstairs.”

  “What would anybody do with two parlors?”

  Will grinned at her and took her hand, as they went through the parlors into the dining room. Sun came through the bay window onto a chandelier, its dozens of crystal prisms catching the light and turning it into rainbows. “I’d put up wallpaper, yellow wallpaper with gold in it,” Nealie said. Then she entered a glass room connected with the dining room, a solarium, Will explained. Nealie didn’t know the word and frowned. “For plants,” Will added.

  “Geraniums?”

  “That and bigger ones, too, like palm trees.”

  “Trees inside the house? Imagine that! I’d plant an oak tree so I could build a tree house in it.” There was wonder in Nealie’s voice.

  “Who’s in here?” a man called, and Nealie cringed against Will, wondering if somebody had taken them for robbers. The man came into the room and glared at them, but he recognized Will and said, “Mr. Spaulding, I didn’t know ’twas you.”

  Will apologized, saying they had discovered the door unlatched and were tempted to peer inside. “It’s the finest dwelling Miss Nealie’s ever seen.”

  “That it is, built like a rock, as strong as the tipple at the Sharon.”

  Will nodded approvingly. “I like a well-built structure. Do you think it will stand for a hundred years?”

  “And more. Looking for a house, are you?” When Will didn’t answer, the man added, “It’s for sale. The folks that built it, the wife don’t like Georgetown. They’re going to live permanent in Denver.”

  “If I were in the market, this is the house I would buy,” Will said, casting a sly look at Nealie. “Miss Nealie says it’s a house for a bride.”

  “It’s a house for somebody with money, that’s what it is.” The man told them they might as well see the rest of it, and he showed them the kitchen, with a fine cookstove and water pipes running to a sink. “You can bucket the water right there in the kitchen,” Nealie said, thinking that with such a luxury, she would hardly have to lift a finger to cook. Then they went upstairs to see the bedrooms, rooms as big as the parlors. “This one’s where your bride would sleep,” the man said. Will looked at Nealie, and she turned away, embarrassed.

  They went outside then and looked up at the house, its fine tower outlined against the sky. “What would you say about going there as a bride?” Will asked her. Nealie was too shy to respond, but she kept that remark in a special place in her mind, and each night, she went to sleep with the memory of Will looking up at the sunlight streaming through the clouds, wondering what it would be like to be a bride in that house.

  As the summer came on and the ground dried, Nealie and Will went farther and farther from Georgetown. Will rented a hug-me-tight, a small buggy barely big enough for the two of them, and they drove to the towns downvalley, or they climbed the mountains to look at the mines. At times they were caught in storms that sent down chill rain, because rain in that high place came often in the afternoons and was never warm. “It’s like standing in ice melt,” Nealie observed once when they took shelter under a rocky outcrop to wait out a storm, Will holding his coat over Nealie’s head to keep her dry. On occasion, Nealie packed a dinner-on-the-ground, and they took a blanket along with the picnic basket and ate in some high meadow, staying there until the mountains turned blue. Sometimes, Will fixed a dinner of yellow cheese and bread and tins of food that Nealie had never before tasted. He brought wine, too, and she liked how the sweet-tasting stuff made her happy. She liked the way Will kissed her after she was warm with the wine, too, kissed her mouth and her neck and slid his hands over her.

  More and more, they ended their days together at Will’s cottage, sitting on the bed with their arms around each other, while Will muttered words that made her glow. At night, alone in her room at the boardinghouse, Nealie lay on her cot, her arms around herself, and whispered them in the dark.

  “You make me come alive. Things are so stuffy back home,” Will told her once, calling Nealie his mountain sprite. Then he mused so softly she’d barely heard him, “I wonder what’s to become of you.”

  She saw Will every day, of course, and Charlie, too, because both still boarded with Mrs. Travers. Although each knew she was seeing the other, the two men apparently had agreed to a truce of sorts, for they no longer glared across the supper table. But they rarely had a thing to say to the other, either. The rest of the boarders saw how it was and left off teasing the two men—and Nealie, who would blush furiously if anyone remarked he’d seen her at the opera house or asked what she’d done on her Sunday off.

  But at supper one evening, a boarder asked, “Who’s taking you out to Independence Day, Miss Nealie?”

  Nealie ducked her head, and for a moment, she didn’t answer. July Fourth was the most important day in a mining town, bigger than Christmas. The mines shut down for the day, and there were drilling contests, foot races, hook-and-ladder company races, a band concert, and a dance. Neither Will nor Charlie had yet asked Nealie to go, and the two men looked at her expectantly, waiting to see which one of them she’d name. Of course, she wanted to go with Will. She wished he’d spoken up and said so, but maybe he didn’t plan on taking her, and she wouldn’t embarrass herself by presuming.

  “Why, Nealie’s going with me,” Mrs. Travers said, coming in from the kitchen. “She promised to help me at the cake sale at the church. If any of you men know what’s good for you, you’ll bid on Nealie’s cake—a Gold and Silver Cake.”

  “I’ll bid on it right now—two dollars,” Charlie said.

  “Charlie’s got it bad,” one of the boarders said. “I bet President Garfield doesn’t pay two dollars for a cake.”

  “I’ll make it five dollars,” Will said.

  Nealie put her hand to her mouth. She’d never heard of anybody paying five dollars for a cake.

  Charlie frowned and was about to go higher, but Mrs. Travers interrupted, “You can’t bid here. You have to go to the Presbyterian church. It’s the rule.” She turned to Nealie and added, “That’s the best way I know to get a man in church.”

  The boarders laughed, and Nealie slipped into the kitchen, grateful that Mrs. Travers had rescued her.

  “It’s not right, Mrs. Travers not letting me bid on your cake,” Charlie said later. “Are you really going to Independence Day with her?”

  “I am,” Nealie replied.

  “I guess there’s no law says I can’t stand next to you.”

  “I guess not. I might even dance with you.” Nealie was annoyed then that Will hadn’t claimed her for the day and liked the idea of making him uneasy.

  “I don’t know how to dance.”

  Nealie looked at him in surprise. “Me, neither.”

  * * *

  As it turned out, Nealie went to the July Fourth festivities by herself, since that morning, Mrs. Travers was called down to Red Elephant to tend to a friend whose husband had cut off her toes with an axe. The foot was infected, and the doctor told Mrs. Travers he feared the woman would die. It was a certainty she would if her husband nursed her.

  “That’s the worst thing I ever heard. Even my pa wouldn’t do such a thing,” Nealie said, although she wasn’t sure about that. “Maybe it was an accident.”

  “Maybe gold jumps out of the ground into a wheelbarrow,” Mrs. Travers replied. “The boarders know we’re not serving supper tonight on Independence Day. But then there’s the next day or two. I’d hire a girl to work in the kitchen with you, but where would I find one on such short notice? Can you do the cooking and serving and the lunches until I get back?”

  “I can,” Nealie said, proud that Mrs. Travers trusted her.

  “Everything’s set out for tomorrow’s b
reakfast,” Mrs. Travers said. “You go on now, or you’ll miss the parade.”

  But Nealie insisted on waiting on the porch with the older woman until the doctor arrived in his buggy, since Mrs. Travers did not plan to walk to Red Elephant. The girl watched them as they passed the turn in the road and couldn’t be seen anymore. Then she went inside and put on the green dress and walked the two blocks to Alpine Street, where a crowd lined the sidewalk in front of stores that were decorated with red, white, and blue bunting. Pictures of President Garfield, who had been wounded in an assassination attempt just two days before, and President Lincoln hung in the shop windows, along with lithographs of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the burning of the President’s House in the War of 1812. The people were decorated, too. Men in white shirts tied red or blue bandanas around their necks, while women trimmed their hats with tiny flags. Nealie was the only one in green.

  She stood at the edge of the boardwalk, watching as the foot racers gathered at the starting line at the end of the street. They wore tights that looked like long underwear, and they hopped from foot to foot, slapping each other on the back and bragging about how fast they were. One of them turned and spotted the girl in the green dress and called, “Miss Nealie!” Charlie Dumas grinned and waved at her.

  Nealie was too embarrassed to wave back and stared at the dirt street, but that didn’t stop Charlie. “I’m going to win you the prize,” he yelled.

  Nealie slipped back through the thick crowd, until she leaned against the window of the Kaiser Mercantile, beside Mr. Kaiser, who had pinned a flag to his white apron. “That Charlie Dumas is fast,” he said. “You want me to get you a chair to stand on so’s you can see him?” Before Nealie could reply, there was a gunshot, and the racers took off. Men cheered, and children jumped up and down, but Nealie couldn’t watch the racers because all creation seemed to be in front of her. All she saw was a blur as they rushed past. In a minute there was a cheer, and she knew the race was over. Mr. Kaiser said above the noise, “It looks like Charlie Dumas won, after all.”

  “He may have won the race, but I’ve got the prize,” Will said, coming up beside Nealie and taking her arm.

  The remark made Nealie feel warm, and she knew this would be the best Fourth of July of her life, not that she had celebrated Independence Day so much before. Her pa had taken her to the celebration in Hannibal once when she was small, but only because he’d wanted to go into town to get drunk. She’d had a good time, although her father had passed out, and she’d had to walk all the way back to the farm by herself. She’d missed the fireworks because she hadn’t wanted to go home alone in the dark.

  Will propelled Nealie through the throng of people and led her to a stand where women sold food. “I bought your cake,” he whispered. “I saw Mrs. Travers take it to the church last night, so I paid them ten dollars to let me take it. I left it at my cottage.” He smiled at Nealie. “Would you have some lemonade?”

  “What’s that?” asked Nealie, who had never heard of such a thing.

  “It’s a drink made from lemon juice. Haven’t you ever tasted it?”

  Nealie made a wry face. “It sounds sour.”

  “No, there’s plenty of sugar in it.” Will handed a dime to the woman behind the stand, and she gave him two glasses. Nealie sipped the drink carefully, then grinned and drank it down. “It tastes as good as wine,” she said.

  Will took Nealie to see the hose-cart races and the water fights, while they ate sausages and popped corn and white divinity candy that looked as pure as fresh snow. In the afternoon, they sat on the grass in the park and listened to the brass band play in the bandstand above them. The air was hot, and Nealie used a paper fan with MACKENZIE FUNERAL PARLOR written on it to swish the air back and forth in front of her face. She wanted to pull her dress up to her knees, but mindful of what Charlie had said about such a display, she kept her skirt down. She was sure Will wouldn’t have minded much if she’d shown her legs, but she didn’t want him to think she was a slattern. In the evening, Will escorted her to the town hall where a band played dance music.

  “I can’t dance,” Nealie said.

  “You mean you don’t approve of dancing?” he asked. “What a pity, for you’re as light on your feet as dandelion fluff.”

  “Oh no. I’ve nothing against dancing. I just don’t know how to do it.”

  “Then it must be taught, and now. This one is a waltz. The secret is to count.” Will led her forward and backward, counting one-two-three, one-two-three, swirling her around, until Nealie understood the rhythm, and Will said, “There, you’ve got it.”

  “It’s like floating,” she said, thinking she could float like that all night.

  But the dance ended, and Charlie came up to her. Will bowed a little to him as he relinquished Nealie’s hand and retreated to the doorway.

  “I guess you didn’t have time for me before,” Charlie said.

  “I didn’t see you, Mr. Dumas,” she lied. Of course she’d seen him hovering around, the way he always did, but she’d pretended not to. “I looked for you, but I only saw you at the foot race. Mr. Kaiser said you won.”

  Charlie was gleeful at that. “I got the prize. I’m saving it for you.”

  “Are we going to dance?” Nealie asked, because she didn’t want to carry around whatever it was he’d won. In fact, she didn’t want it at all.

  “I told you I don’t know how, so I guess we’ll just sit down.”

  The two sat on a bench, Nealie looking around the room for Will, but he had disappeared. “Mr. Kaiser said you’re fast.”

  Charlie looked embarrassed. “I guess I do all right.” He swallowed, then he took Nealie’s hand in his big one. “Miss Nealie, this isn’t the right place—”

  But Nealie did not want to hear what he had to say, and she interrupted, just as the band stopped playing. “I guess the music’s done for.”

  At that moment, Will appeared beside them. “I will have the next dance with her,” he said.

  “Just one. Then it’s my turn,” Charlie replied, glaring at the man.

  When the music started, Will danced Nealie across the room, toward the door, whispering, “What do you say we run off? It’s too hot in here, and I won’t share you with that ox. If you dance with him, he’ll crush your feet.”

  Without a backward glance at Charlie, Nealie nodded and slipped out the door with Will into the darkening street. The happy, patriotic crowd of the day had been replaced by men drinking from bottles or carrying mugs of beer they’d purchased in the saloons. Women from Brownell Street, as drunk as the toughs, hung on to the men’s arms. Nealie had never seen a drunken woman before, except perhaps her mother, although she wasn’t sure about that. When she thought nobody saw her, her mother drank the silly-bug that Hog Davis made, but she didn’t laugh and carry on. She only cried and fell asleep. Nealie stared at one of the whores, wondering if she might have turned out herself if Mrs. Travers hadn’t offered her work. The woman, taken with meanness, snarled, “What you looking at, you and that green dress?”

  Nealie stepped back, bumping into a man who said, “Let’s you and me have a drink, Katy.” “Katy” was the name men gave to prostitutes.

  He grabbed her arm, but Nealie snatched it away, and Will came up then and said, “Sir, you are insulting a lady. I won’t have it.”

  “Oh,” the man said, sizing up Will. “Sorry, miss.” He tugged at his hat, which slid off his head into the dirt.

  “Maybe we ought to go back inside,” Nealie said.

  “No such a thing. We’ll get away from here. I have it on good authority that the fireworks will be shot off from that mountain.” He pointed at a dark hump in front of them. “I have a splendid view of it from my cottage. What do you say we eat your cake and watch the fireworks?”

  Nealie thought that a capital idea and followed Will as he pushed through the rough crowd onto a side street. The dusky dark was starting, and the sky, which had been split with streaks of red a
gainst the blue when they left the dance, had turned indigo, with a pink glow at the horizon. Will took Nealie’s hand as the two walked to his house. He asked if she wanted supper, but Nealie had already eaten enough and told him no. So Will cut slices of the cake and poured wine into tin cups. They took the food and drink outside and sat on a quilt that Will spread on the ground. Nealie shivered a little, so Will fetched a blanket and wrapped it around her. “I shall buy you a proper shawl for these mountain evenings,” he said.

  “A blanket works as well,” replied Nealie, who was mindful that he had already been generous with her, had brought her a handkerchief with an N embroidered on it and a pair of gloves, as well as the cameo. She touched her throat, but in her hurry to dress, she had forgotten to put on the necklace that day.

  The din from the revelry in town came to them as a dull roar. There was the sound of a brass band playing far away, and gunshots, because that was the way Independence Day was celebrated in a mining town. A glow radiated over Alpine Street, where the gas lamps were lit. But everything was dark under the dark trees at Will’s cottage. Nealie didn’t mind. She was glad for the velvet blackness, especially when Will began to kiss her, for she wouldn’t have wanted anyone to see them. “We could go inside,” he said.

  “We’d miss the fireworks.”

  “We’ll stay, then.” He slid under the blanket he had wrapped around Nealie and held her tight. “Now we’ll both be warm.”

  The two of them stayed close, their arms around each other, until the fireworks began, bright explosions that lit up the sky. Nealie, who had never seen a show so fine, watched with wonder. The fireworks broke into rings and showers and cascades of light that shone on her astonished face. “You’d think the stars had blown up,” she said.