“I think it was my grandmother. It has hooks and eyes.” She sat up so that Joe could unfasten the dress, and then his hands were all over her, warm against her skin, touching her, making her radiate happiness. Peter had tried that with her, but she hadn’t let him. But Joe was different. She loved him.
Then suddenly, Joe pulled away. “This isn’t right.”
“Why?” Susan asked with a little cry. Her heart dropped. Had she done something wrong? She wanted to tell him, “Don’t stop.”
“I’m sorry. I never should have started this. It’s the champagne. I’m not used to it.” He stood up and picked up his tie. “I’ve been a real jerk. I’m sorry.”
“You’re not a jerk,” she cried.
He stared at Susan, her crushed dress shining like wrinkled silver paper in the candlelight. “I should have kept my mouth shut. I didn’t mean to say … you know,” he finished lamely. Then suddenly, he grabbed his coat and the hat, and without another word, he opened the front door and left.
“Joe,” Susan called. But he had shut the door, and she was alone.
She stayed there a long time, gray dawn seeping through the windows, the fire dying, the candles burning down and then going out. Just a few minutes before, she had been glowing with happiness, knowing that Joe loved her and was thinking of their future together. But then he left—walked out on her—leaving her miserable, thinking that she had experienced both the beginning and the end of a love affair in one night.
CHAPTER 16
JOE DIDN’T WRITE TO SUSAN after she returned to school. Nor did he phone. She thought how great it would have been if he really had proposed and she’d returned to school with an engagement ring, had announced it by blowing out the candle at dinner in the sorority house. But he hadn’t, and Susan was bewildered, at times angry and at others sad. She didn’t understand what had happened between them, but she knew that Joe’s silence meant he didn’t care. She picked up her life as it had been before the Christmas vacation, dating boys she met in classes or at fraternity exchanges, attending parties and basketball and hockey games with them.
And she continued to go out with Peter Fanshaw when he could get away from the base, because he was the most interesting man she’d met in Denver. She took him to sorority dances, but Peter was a poor dancer and had little in common with the girls in the sorority house. Once or twice, they went bowling with Peter’s friends, fellows with their hair in ducktails, packs of cigarettes in the rolled-up sleeves of their T-shirts, girls with poodle cuts and pierced ears. Susan was no more at ease with them than Peter was with her college friends, however, so usually the two of them spent their time alone.
Peter took her to the Crimson and Gold or the Stadium Inn, two bars near DU where they drank beer, Susan using a fake ID borrowed from a sorority sister. On occasion, they went to jazz clubs in Five Points, the Negro section of Denver, or on Colfax, where Peter sat in with the musicians, playing drums. Sometimes they just met in City Park and walked around the big lake, finding an isolated bench where they could neck. Peter was nice and funny and incredibly good-looking, and he liked to kiss her, to run his hands over her. He was more experienced than Joe, Susan thought, feeling a twinge of regret that Joe wasn’t the one kissing her. She felt a little guilty, too, because it was Joe she loved. But he had treated her shabbily. He’d said he loved her, and then he’d run off and never even written. Maybe he’d lied and didn’t care about her at all. He wasn’t part of her life now, so why shouldn’t she enjoy herself with Peter Fanshaw?
In February, Peter invited her to go skiing. He’d learned to ski with his Air Force buddies and promised Susan that she would love it. They drove up into the mountains with another couple, Alan and Cynthia, an Air Force man and his wife, went to Berthoud Pass, which wasn’t far from Georgetown. Alan strapped on skis and took off, while Cynthia stayed at the bottom of the hill, watching. “You couldn’t pay me to do that. They’re crazy,” she told Susan.
Peter rented skis for both of them and put on his own while Susan stared at the steep runs, thinking she could never maneuver them in the long skis, shivering when she remembered the avalanche at Christmas. She saw a woman fall on the slope, sliding into a tree. “I don’t know. Maybe I should just watch this time. That way, I can get the hang of it without breaking my leg,” she told Peter.
“Oh, come on. It’s not hard.”
Susan made a face. “I’m not very athletic.”
Peter stood and stabbed his pole into the snow. “I didn’t think you’d be afraid.”
Susan stared at him for a moment, thinking she would not have said no if Joe had asked her. She liked Peter and was unnerved by the disappointment in his eyes. He’d told her she was different from other college girls, more serious, less frivolous. “Oh, it’s not that,” Susan replied. She wanted to tell him about the avalanche, but then she’d have to mention Joe, and she didn’t want to do that. So she took a deep breath and said, “I guess I’ll try it since you paid for the ski rental.”
“Good girl,” Peter said, and helped her with her skis.
They grabbed onto the rope tow that pulled them up the mountain, then Peter showed Susan how to maneuver her skis, how to turn, and more important, how to stop. They started down slowly, Peter coaching Susan, and when after a long time, they reached the bottom, Susan hadn’t fallen once. She was not so lucky the second time. One ski crossed over the other, and she tumbled, then slid to the edge of the run. As Peter helped her up, he asked, “Are you hurt?”
“Only my pride,” Susan said, although for a moment, she had panicked, feeling that she was being carried along in a snowslide.
“You can spare a little of that.”
Susan made a snowball and threw it at Peter, hitting him in the chest. Peter grabbed a handful of snow and put it down Susan’s neck. “Don’t mess with me,” he said, and she knew he wasn’t joking.
They skied for nearly three hours, until Cynthia said she was bored and wanted to go home. So Alan and Peter and Susan returned their skis, and the three of them headed for a warming hut that sold hot dogs and candy bars. Susan lagged behind the others as she zipped her jacket, and at that moment an out-of-control skier careened down the slope, people jumping out of his way. But Susan didn’t see him, and he knocked her down.
Peter lifted her to her feet, and when she said she was only a little bruised, he turned to the man who had run into her. “You hurt the lady.”
The man ignored Peter as he looked around for a ski that had come off.
“Hey, I’m talking to you.” Peter grabbed the skier’s arm.
The man tried to shake it off. “Watch it. Who do you think you’re talking to?”
“I’m talking to you. You apologize to the lady.”
“It’s okay,” Susan told Peter.
“It’s not my fault if she’s too dumb to get out of the way.” The skier looked down at the hand on his arm.
Susan recognized the man then, a student at DU. She’d sat next to him once at a fraternity exchange. “I’m all right, Peter.” People had turned to stare, and she was embarrassed. She wished he’d brushed it off the way Joe had at New Year’s when the drunk had spilled his drink on her.
“It’s not okay. This punk owes you an apology, and I’m going to make sure you get it.”
“Easy now,” someone said, while Susan whispered that she wanted to leave.
“Who are you calling a punk?” the man asked. Suddenly he pulled away from Peter and swung at him, connecting with the side of Peter’s head. Peter was stunned for a moment. Then he made a fist and smashed it into the skier’s nose. The man dropped to his knees, both hands over his face. Susan wanted to tell Peter to stop, because he had scared her by the way he’d exploded.
“Get up,” Peter said. “Apologize to the lady.”
“You broke my damn nose, you son of a bitch. You’ll be sorry.”
“No he won’t. That’s the end of the fighting.” A man in a jacket with a ski-patrol badge yanked the s
kier to his feet.
“I’ll sue him. He broke my nose.”
“Forget it. You swung first. I saw it.” He turned to Peter. “You! Back off.”
“I will after he apologizes. Not to me, to the lady.”
People were staring, and Susan’s face was crimson. She touched Peter’s arm.
The ski patroller looked at Peter, then back at the man, who was standing up now. “Well?”
“It’s all right,” Susan interjected, but Peter held up his hand to stop her.
“Sorry,” the man said at last. He glared at Susan, and she hoped he didn’t recognize her.
“That’s not much of an apology,” Peter said, but Susan took his hand and said she was satisfied.
Later, as they walked to the car, Cynthia whispered, “That was so romantic. I’ve never had anybody fight over me.”
Susan reddened, thinking that maybe it was a little thrilling that Peter had defended her honor. Still, it had been embarrassing, and she told Peter, “Please don’t ever do that again.”
Peter looked at her, surprised. “Why not? I wouldn’t let anybody insult you. I wouldn’t think much of myself if I didn’t look after my girl.”
Susan smiled wanly, thinking she didn’t like him calling her “my girl.”
* * *
In the spring, Peter borrowed Alan’s car and drove Susan to Central City. Except for the time when Susan was in Georgetown during Christmas break, she and Peter had gone out once or twice a week for five months. Susan liked him more than the college boys she dated, although he frightened her a little. He was too serious, and sometimes when he kissed her, she had to push him away, especially when he’d been drinking. There were times she thought he went too far, and she had to be on her guard.
The tulips and flowering crabapple trees were blooming in the parks in Denver, but the mountains were still cold and wet, still gray with winter. They motored up along the Clear Creek, whose banks were brown with the detritus of long-ago mining operations, the creek itself polluted from mine tailings. Peter said he was disappointed. He’d thought that when the snow melted, the mountains would be pretty, like pictures he’d seen of the Alps, all green with snowcapped peaks beyond and wildflowers—not brown with patches of dirty snow, the hillsides covered with scraggly jackpines. “There is no springtime in the Rockies,” Susan told him, snuggling up against him, because the car’s heater didn’t work. Peter put his arm around her.
Alan’s car was a prewar Chevrolet, and just as they reached Central, its radiator began to boil over. So they parked the car and wandered around town, looking at the buildings, peering into shop windows. They prowled through a junk shop that was filled with ore specimens and carbide lamps, lampshades and broken figurines and books misshapen from being soaked by water. Susan picked up a leather-bound A History of Colorado and flipped through the biographical section until she came across a biography of Charles Dumas. “My grandfather,” she said, pointing to the steel engraving of Charlie.
Peter took the book from her and read the text. “My God, you’re an heiress.”
He had already figured out that Susan’s family had money, enough to send her away to college anyway, but he had no idea of the extent of the wealth, and she hadn’t cared to tell him. “Oh, my grandfather lost it all. My father had to support him.”
Peter smiled, as if he was relieved. “You want me to buy you that book?”
“Mother has three of them already.”
“Then I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.” They left the store and found a restaurant, sat down at a table by the window where they could look out at the crooked street, ordered cocoa instead of coffee because the coffee looked thick, black as ink. “That your blue star in the window?” Peter asked the waitress, a portly woman in a white uniform with a flowered handkerchief spilling out of the pocket and splayed across her chest.
“My youngest boy, Art. He’s over there in Korea.”
“Well, I hope he makes it back okay.”
“You, too, son.”
“He’s lucky to have somebody at home who cares about him.”
The remark saddened Susan, who said, “You’ll have someone, too.”
“You a flyboy, are you?” A man at the next table leaned over and looked at Peter.
“You’re a smart one. What do you think he’s doing in that uniform?” his companion asked him. Both were old men with a one or two days’ growth of beard, and between them, they had a mouthful of teeth.
“Yes, sir. I’m at Lowry Field,” Peter said.
“Well, good luck to you then, you and your missus.” He nodded at Susan who dipped her head at him.
When the two men went back to their conversation, Susan, embarrassed, whispered to Peter, “Some assumption.”
“I don’t mind.” Peter grinned at her.
The waitress brought their cocoa, two green glass cups in one hand and the coffeepot in the other. She turned to the men to warm their coffee, but at that moment, the door was flung open and a man as ancient as the two seated in the restaurant rushed in, a wild look on his face.
“Well, Billy…” the waitress said and stopped. “What is it?”
“It’s Luke Bascomb’s boy, he’s went and got hisself killed in Korea.”
“No!” the three said together.
Susan and Peter looked at each other, and she said softly, “I’m glad that’s not you.”
“He hasn’t been over there a month,” the waitress said, sitting down, the pot of coffee in her hand.
“He get shot?” Peter asked, putting his hand over Susan’s.
“I don’t know. I just heard the news. All’s I know is the boy’s dead.”
“You want coffee?” The waitress wiped her eyes on her sleeve as she lifted the coffeepot.
The man shook his head. “I got to go call on Luke and them.”
“Okay, then. We’ll go with you.” The two men stood, and one reached into his pocket for change, but the waitress waved them away. “You tell them I’m real sorry. I’ll be over later with a pie. I got a lemon meringue that hasn’t got but one piece cut out of it.”
She returned to the kitchen, while the men went out the door, one of them touching his cap to Susan and telling Peter, “You be careful if you get sent over, you hear, son? You come back to that pretty wife of yours.” Peter nodded and touched his forehead in a sort of salute, and the man closed the door. The restaurant was quiet, except for a radio in the kitchen that was playing “Shrimp Boats.”
Susan squeezed Peter’s hand. “You better keep safe,” she whispered.
Peter smiled, then fiddled with the air force cap that he’d set on the table, straightening it, brushing off a piece of lint.
“Are you afraid?” Susan asked, her eyes searching his.
“Sure I am. You hear something like that, and you know it could be you. Guys don’t get killed because somebody decided there’s a bullet with their name on it. They die because they’re in the wrong place, a foot to the left or an inch to the right of where they ought to be. It just happens.”
Susan shivered when she thought of Peter being hurt, maybe lying dead on some battlefield as barren as the banks of the Clear Creek they had just driven along. She liked him—liked him a lot—and wanted him safe.
“That boy getting killed kind of spoils things.”
It was an odd remark, and Susan didn’t understand it. “He’s dead,” she said a little indignantly. “That does more than spoil things for him.”
“I mean for us. I brought you up here to ask you to marry me. Now it doesn’t exactly seem like the right thing to do.” He let go of the cap and looked at Susan. “But maybe it is. Life’s uncertain, and I guess that means we ought to take what we can get of it before it’s too late.” He added, “That wasn’t what I was going to say. I had this nice little speech thought up, but it seems lame now. So I’ll just ask you. Will you marry me, Susan, now, before I go to Korea?”
Susan felt the blood drain from her face as she looked
at Peter, dumbfounded. She hadn’t expected this. She cared about him, of course, cared more than she’d thought she would, but she’d never considered him for a husband. They were just having a good time. Susan couldn’t believe he was serious about her. Maybe she should have seen the signs, but what signs? She tried to think of something Peter had said that she’d ignored, but there wasn’t anything.
She looked into her cup, at the bits of chocolate that clung to the sides, rubbing her fingers across the glass. Of course, he excited her. Peter was so handsome, and when they sat in the car and he kissed her and touched her, she felt a longing so great that she wanted to lose herself. She liked the way his eyes searched for her in a crowd and crinkled with pleasure when he saw her. He was different from Joe—demanding, sexual, and he certainly wouldn’t say no to her the way Joe had.
It would be exciting to be engaged. Sometimes, she thought that half the Pi Phis had engagement rings, some from men who expected to be drafted and sent to Korea. She and Peter could be married in the Bride’s House. Susan stopped. He’d never even seen the Bride’s House, and it wasn’t Peter Fanshaw she’d dreamed of marrying there. It was Joe. And that was the crux of it. She cared for Peter Fanshaw, but she loved Joe Bullock.
Susan realized Peter was watching her, waiting, but she didn’t know how to answer. She stirred the dregs of her cocoa with one of the mismatched spoons, the silver plate worn off at the edges, that the waitress had set down. “I don’t know what to say,” she told him at last, looking up.
“You could say yes.”
“I can’t Peter. I don’t even know you.”
“How long do you have to know somebody before you know she’s the right one?” He said softly, “I know you’re the right one for me.”
“But I’m not even nineteen.”
“You told me your grandmother died when she was seventeen.” He reached across the table and touched the silver snowflake pinned to her sweater.
Susan took in a deep breath, as she thought, Marriage, childbirth, and death, all in a year. That was hardly what she wanted. “I’ve got three more years of college.”
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