The Bride’s House

by Sandra Dallas

  “It was my wish.”

  “Mr. Dumas,” Frank started, but Charlie waved him away.

  “You did not get my permission,” he told Pearl.

  “No, Frank asked only me, as he should have done eighteen years ago.”

  “You are leaving, then?”

  “That’s up to you,” Pearl told him. Frank and Pearl exchanged a glance, and she continued, “We can live in Chicago where Frank’s business is located, or we can live here with you. But if we do, you must accept that I am married now and that my husband comes first. If I must choose between the two of you in any matter, I will choose my husband.”

  Charlie glanced down at the papers strewn across his desk, then looked around the room, his gaze stopping on the portrait of Nealie. He looked at her a long time. He did not speak, but at last he turned to Pearl and nodded.

  Pearl went into the kitchen then and returned carrying a tray with three of Nealie’s crystal goblets and a bottle of champagne that Frank had purchased in Denver. Frank opened the champagne, poured it into the glasses, then handed them around.

  “Mr. Dumas,” he said, waiting for Charlie to make a toast.

  Charlie raised his glass slowly. “To the Bride’s House.” The three of them sipped the champagne.

  Then Frank turned to Pearl and lifted his goblet. “To the bride.”

  “And the groom,” Pearl added.

  Charlie stared at Frank and then at Pearl. And then he drank.

  PART III

  Susan

  CHAPTER 13

  SUSAN LOVED THE MOUNTAINS BEST at their blue time, when twilight touched the valley that lay between the steep peaks, that soft gloom between daylight and the indigo black of a starlit night. In the dusk, the evening was comforting, like one of the Bride’s House’s worn quilts whose fibers had broken down from many washings, and it seemed to welcome her after all the months she had been away.

  Bert Joy turned off the highway onto the dirt street in his old Ford truck with the stick shift in the floor. Susan had had to ride all the way from Denver with her legs pushed over to the side to accommodate it, but she was too excited to be aware of the way her back ached from that unnatural position. They drove along the rutted street, Susan listening to the shouts of mothers calling their children home from play: “Jimmm-may! Come and get your supper or I’ll throw it out.” And “Betty ’n’ Billl-eee.” Then there was the shrill sound of a whistle, one mother’s signal for her children to hurry to the table. Mothers in Chicago didn’t summon their little ones that way, at least not in the Curry neighborhood of aging mansions, where Susan lived the rest of the year. A nursemaid collected the younger children for dinner in the nursery or the older ones to dress for dinner with the adults.

  The sounds of Georgetown came back to Susan, not just the mothers calling but the trucks gearing down as they climbed toward Silver Plume, the wind in the jackpines, and she thought she could even hear the crashing of Clear Creek. The sounds had been dormant for her since fall, and they, too, seemed to welcome her back. As a child, she had heard those noises as she arrived in Georgetown and knew they meant she had the whole summer ahead of her, a summer to run free, to stay out until dinnertime, exploring the mines and the creeks, the mountains, to collect ore samples and gather wild raspberries and currants, to roam the barn and the secret places of the Bride’s House. She could forget about dancing school and music lessons, about deportment and all the other things she must learn as a young heiress, and be just another Georgetown kid. She loved that more than anything in the world and hoped that although she was eighteen now, she could still run barefoot in the Georgetown streets, still climb to the high meadows and lie in the sun.

  “Jo-eee.” The sound came from behind, and without thinking, Susan turned to the truck’s back window, although she knew the woman was not calling that Joe. After all, Joe Bullock was twenty, too old for his mother to yell for him at suppertime. Still, Susan looked out the window, stretching her neck so that she could see across lots to Rose Street where Joe lived. Just hearing the name made her glad. Joe Bullock was another of the reasons she loved the summers in Georgetown, maybe the main one. She thought about Joe and squeezed her arms against her sides. It wouldn’t be long until she’d see him.

  Bert Joy geared down with a scraping noise and stopped his truck in front of the Bride’s House, honking the horn in a series of taps. Susan’s mother, Pearl, opened the passenger door and stepped out onto the running board, Susan behind her, squirming a little to get out the kinks from being crammed behind the gearshift. She stared at the big white house for a moment, at the two pine trees that rose nearly a hundred feet in front of it, and the lilacs. Even from the truck, she could smell the lilacs.

  Although she spent only her summers in Georgetown, Susan loved the house as fiercely as her mother did. When she was a girl, she had dreamed of living there, of being the first bride married in the parlor, of walking down the staircase in a white silk dress, holding on to her father’s arm, a veil covering her face, a white orchid bouquet in her hand. There would be candlelight and the smell of lilacs, a harp playing in the study. And Joe Bullock would be standing in front of the fireplace waiting for her. It had been a little girl’s silly fantasy, inspired no doubt because the place was called the Bride’s House, but now as she stood on the running board of the old truck, Susan thought of it again and knew she had never stopped dreaming of marrying Joe Bullock there.

  As she stepped onto the sidewalk, Susan glanced down at her wrinkled skirt, her scuffed saddle shoes, and nearly laughed to think she looked as much like a bride as Bert Joy did in his overalls and motoring cap. She was tall and thin like her mother, but she had failed to inherit her mother’s and grandmother’s red hair and pale blue eyes. Her eyes and hair were a nondescript brown, and she had as many curves as one of the porch posts. Still, although she was not aware of it, Susan had a certain vibrancy, a joy in living, a purpose that was reminiscent of her grandmother Nealie—although except for her grandfather Charlie Dumas, there were few in Georgetown who remembered the hired girl. Those qualities that Susan had inherited from her grandmother were not ones the girl appreciated, however. She would have preferred blond hair and curves. After all, this was 1950, and those were the attributes young women prized.

  The door of the house opened, and Charlie Dumas came out onto the porch, walked slowly, because he was very old now and needed a cane. “Papa,” Pearl called, and rushed to him, and the old man put his arms around her, patting her back.

  Susan waited, and in a moment, her grandfather gestured to her, and she went up onto the porch and let him hug her. He smelled of cigar smoke and wool, but like the lilacs, those were summer smells, too, and gave Susan a feeling of welcome. “Our miracle baby,” he called her, because it was rare that a woman Pearl’s age could have a child. The pregnancy had both stunned and delighted Pearl and Frank—Charlie, too. It had helped alleviate Charlie’s bitterness over his daughter’s marriage and her move to Chicago.

  “It’s about time the two of you got here.” His voice was still firm, and there was a trace of excitement in it. He called to Bert, “That worthless machine of yours break down, did it, Joy? My auto goes faster, even if it is up on blocks.”

  “The train was late,” Pearl explained. “You’re looking well, Papa.”

  “At my age, it’s a surprise I’m looking like anything at all.” He added, “I’m in my ninety-seventh year, Bert. Did you know that?”

  “Who doesn’t? If you hadn’t told everybody in town, we’d have thought you were a hundred, being so cranky like you are.”

  The two men laughed, and Charlie said, “How’s your day going?”

  “There is nothing wrong with it at all.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear it. I guess you could say it’s always a good day for me when my daughter and granddaughter come to see me.”

  “Okay, then,” Bert replied.

  Charlie escorted the two women into the house, into the parlor, which ha
d always been red, faded now to the soft shade of dying roses. The room contained Susan’s grandmother’s two love seats and her bric-a-brac, and of course, Nealie’s portrait still hung in a prominent spot. Susan’s mother had made only one change. The year before, she had thrown out the dead bird under glass that Nealie had purchased when the Bride’s House was new. Nearly all of its feathers were gone by then, and Joe had told Susan it looked like a baked Cornish hen. Charlie had noticed at once that the bird was gone and raised his voice in protest. After all, Nealie had bought it. “She bought a plucked bird?” Susan had asked her mother, who smiled but told her to hush.

  Like her grandfather, Susan did not want the rooms to change, and she looked at them with satisfaction, glad that he had not replaced the Victorian furniture or repapered the walls. When the house was hers—for of course, she expected it to pass down through her mother to her one day—she would reupholster the frayed furniture and store some of Nealie’s knickknacks, update the kitchen and bathrooms. But she would keep the feeling the house gave her, the sense of family, the warmth that the Chicago mansion with its formal rooms kept up by servants never seemed to convey. The Bride’s House was home to Susan, just as it had been to her mother and her grandmother. As a little girl, she had promised herself she would live there someday. For Susan, the Bride’s House represented not just the past, but the future—a future with Joe Bullock.

  “We expected you earlier, daughter. Mrs. Warren left supper on the table, where it’s cold, and she’s gone out. Now if it had been your aunt Lidie, she’d have had a hot supper waiting for you,” Charlie Dumas told his daughter, Pearl.

  After Pearl moved to Chicago, Charlie had had a succession of housekeepers, who lived in Aunt Lidie’s old room off the kitchen. Mrs. Warren was the latest. Pearl had thought to engage a nurse, but Charlie “bore easy maintenance,” as Mrs. Warren put it, saying she could meet the old man’s needs. “It doesn’t seem right, Aunt Lidie not being here,” Pearl said.

  “I’ll be the next to go,” Charlie told her. Then he turned to Susan. “I’m not the only one who expected you to be here earlier. You already had a caller—called twice, in fact.”

  “Joe Bullock?” Susan couldn’t help but blurt out. She hadn’t seen him since the fall, and she could hardly wait.

  “Not unless he wears a dress. It was Billy Purcell’s daughter. Billy, you remember him, Pearl. He never was no-account anyhow, and now he says he’s disabled to work. His money goes easy.”

  “I thought he’d found God.”

  “Oh, he confessed religion, all right. He sings and shouts on Sunday, but then he raises the devil with his neighbor on Monday. Nothing much good ever hatched out of that family. It’s a wonder young Peggy turned out as well as she did.”

  The two older people continued talking, unaware of Susan’s disappointment that Peggy Purcell and not Joe Bullock had inquired about her. Susan had hoped that Joe was as anxious to see her as she was him. She’d even allowed herself to dream he would be waiting on the porch, talking to her grandfather. He’d rush to Bert’s truck and tell her, “I’ve been counting the minutes.” And then sometime during the summer, he would tell her how much he cared about her, maybe even propose. After all, she was eighteen. Several of her friends were already engaged.

  Of course, that was only a dream, although it was one she’d had since she was eleven, when she’d decided she was going to marry Joe. He’d been in college for two years now, however, and maybe he’d forgotten about her. How awful to think she had cared about him what seemed like her whole life, and he never even knew it. What if he’d already found somebody else, and she’d never get a chance with him? Maybe it was Peggy Purcell—Peggy with her long blond hair and her smashing figure. She didn’t need a padded bra, hadn’t even when she was fourteen.

  Susan would find out about Joe soon enough, of course, because Peggy would come by the Bride’s House at breakfasttime the next day. Peggy had done that since she was a little girl, when she’d discovered that the housekeeper served hotcakes and bacon, waffles, eggs, cornbread, and cinnamon buns and she was welcome. “Peggy’s mother doesn’t make anything but mush. Those Purcells never have had plenty to eat,” Charlie had said after Susan complained once that Peggy was mooching. And Susan had been ashamed of herself.

  * * *

  Susan was right about Peggy showing up. As she started down the stairs the next morning, she heard the harsh sound of the bell, the rasping of metal on metal, and heard her mother open the door and say, “Why, Peggy, don’t you look pretty. Susan will be so happy to see you. Come in and have breakfast with her.” And Peggy, dressed in short shorts and a plaid blouse whose tails were tied at her waist, her blond hair held with barrettes and turned under in a pageboy that made a V down her back, flounced into the house, more grown-up than she had been in the fall. Perky, Susan thought, sexy, resigned that nobody would ever apply either of those words to her.

  The girls said hello, looking each other over, and Susan was reminded of the way dogs sniffed each other before committing themselves. Although she’d often borne the brunt of Peggy’s ill humor, Susan was fond of her friend, and said, “I was just about to have breakfast. Want some?”

  “All right, I guess.”

  The two went into the dining room where Charlie was getting up from the table. “Pearl, I could use your help with a few letters,” he said, and Susan exchanged glances with her mother. This happened every summer, her mother holed up in the study with her grandfather. Susan knew the letters were of no consequence, that her grandfather simply liked to keep her mother with him—and away from her own work. Pearl Dumas Curry wrote a newspaper column about patriotism and sacrifice, American drive and ingenuity, all values that were prized during the war and were still popular in 1950. Susan found the columns a little cloying, but out of loyalty, she read them. Besides, she never knew when her mother might mention someone from Georgetown.

  To everyone’s surprise, most of all her own, Pearl had become a newspaper columnist. She’d begun writing on a trip to Europe with Mrs. Travers and had never stopped. At a dinner party when Susan was still a child, her father, Frank, had bragged to the editor of a Chicago newspaper that his wife was “quite a writer. You ought to read her work.”

  “Indeed,” the editor replied, for he had heard that remark often enough and didn’t care to read another dilettante author.

  But Frank was persistent, and Susan in tow, he had showed up at the editor’s office with a sheaf of Pearl’s work. The man liked what he read and printed an essay about a Georgetown prospector who’d donated the two dollars he’d set aside for winter shoes to buy war bond stamps. The essay had resonated with readers, and Pearl was offered space in the paper for a weekly column. Within months, the column was syndicated, and now, a little more than five years after she was first published, Pearl had a book of her columns. Once Pearl had mentioned Joe, and Susan, thrilled to see his name in print, had mailed him half a dozen clippings. Susan’s friends were a little in awe of her having a famous mother, but to Susan, Pearl was simply her mother.

  The two girls chatted through breakfast, telling each other what they had done in the past months. Susan hoped Peggy would mention Joe Bullock, but she did not, and Susan would not bring up his name for fear Peggy would figure out she cared. Then Peggy would prod and tease and maybe even tell Joe, and that would be so embarrassing. After a time, Susan said, “Oh, I forgot. I brought you something.”

  “Not another doll,” Peggy said. When the two were small, Susan had brought her friend Storybook Dolls, tiny china dolls dressed to illustrate stories.

  “Of course not,” Susan replied, a little embarrassed that Peggy would think she would consider such a childish gift.

  They went to Susan’s room, which seemed almost as big as the Purcell house, and Peggy flopped down on the carved walnut bed, the one Susan’s grandmother had chosen when she had furnished the house. A spot of mud the size of a half dollar dropped from Peggy’s sandal onto the white l
ace spread, and Peggy flicked it off, spreading the dirt across the lace. “So what did you bring?” she asked.

  Susan had not yet unpacked, and went to her suitcase, taking out something wrapped in tissue, handing it to her friend. Peggy removed a wide piece of black elastic with fasteners on each end. “It’s called a cinch belt,” Susan explained.

  Peggy held it up. “Too small.”

  “You put it around your waist and pull it tight—cinch, get it?”

  Peggy stretched the belt until she could fasten it, then looked at herself in the big mirror over Susan’s marble-top dresser, preening a little. “Wow!” she said, admiring the way the elastic made her waist smaller, her bust and hips larger. Susan couldn’t help but be jealous. A cinch belt on her was like putting a sash on a yardstick, but the belt made Peggy even curvier. Joe would compare the two of them, and Susan would come out second best.

  Peggy studied herself in Susan’s mirror, then looked down at the tiny drawers on either side of the long mirror, where Susan kept gloves and scarves, jewelry. Peggy removed a charm bracelet, looking at the charms one by one. Susan had bought them on trips to California and New York, and even to Europe. “I have a charm bracelet,” Peggy said, holding Susan’s bracelet shoulder high, then dropping it onto the marble beside a Bible that had belonged to Nealie. She picked up a silver hand mirror that had been Nealie’s, too, and glanced at herself in it, then banged it on the top of the dressing table as she put it down. Susan was used to Peggy’s carelessness, knowing it was done from jealousy, but still, she resented the hostility. It wasn’t her fault that she was rich. She didn’t flaunt it. Peggy didn’t have to put her down for it.

  Peggy removed the stopper from a crystal bottle and smelled it, then returned it, but not before a drop had spilled on the dresser scarf. “Too sweet. It smells like Evening in Paris,” she said disdainfully, although the perfume was an expensive one.