Marriage Is Murder

by Nancy Pickard

  “Lord, my hair!”

  I grabbed for the phone book, then noticed the clock on the table; it was only six-fifteen, an unlikely time to get a hair stylist on the phone. Why hadn’t I made this appointment weeks ago? Because I was too cool, that’s why, too sophisticated and blasé to worry about little things like lanky hair. I was only getting married, after all, just an ordinary little event that happened to me every day. And flowers! It was also too early to call a florist. Or the restaurant. Or to go shopping for shoes.

  Geof stepped out of the bathroom, already dressed.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “I’m getting married this Saturday, and my hair’s a mess!”

  He tilted his head to one side. “I think you look fine.”

  “Men! Wouldn’t you know I’d marry one?”

  The bridegroom got himself safely out of the house and out of my way. I threw on my business clothes, skipped breakfast, and flew to the office so that 1 might, with a clear conscience, take an early and long lunch break.

  “Morning, Jenny,” Faye chirped upon her arrival.

  “Don’t talk to me!” I snapped, not even raising my head from the papers on which I was laboring. “I can’t talk this week! I’m going to be a bride!”

  “I don’t think it’s a vow of silence, Jenny.”

  “Work,” I commanded. “work, work.”

  At ten-thirty, I slid the wills I’d been reading back in their folders and picked up the telephone.

  “Oui,” the man who answered the phone at the restaurant assured me, “your reservations for twenty people at eight-thirty on thees coming Saturday evening are confirmed under ze name of Meester James D. Cain.”

  “Thanks, Fred,” I said once I recognized the voice of the maître d’. He had graduated from Port Frederick High School a year behind me.

  “Oh, is that you, Jenny?” he said in his real accent. “I thought it might have been your dad’s wife or something. Hey, pretty soon we’ll be calling you Mrs. Bushfield, won’t we?”

  “Over your dead soufflé. He’s Bushfield, I’m Cain.”

  “Oh, good.” Fred laughed. “I’ve always wanted to see you get married and raise a little Cain.”

  “One step at a time, Fred. Au revoir.”

  “Hasta pasta,” he replied, and hung up.

  Next, I called Margaret, the seamstress who was making my dress, my beautiful dress, my gorgeous creamy silk-and-satin dress of which I daydreamed, the fabulous dress that would cause everyone to comment about how I bore a striking resemblance to Princess Grace.

  “Oh, Jenny,” she answered, in slow and doleful tones.

  “Oh, no,” I pictured water spots on the silk. “What, what, Margaret?”

  “I’ve been sick, Jenny, all weekend, and I was going to call you first thing this morning, but I was throwing up, and couldn’t even talk, and I still really feel awful.”

  It was going to be worse than water spots.

  “And I don’t think I can get it done, Jenny, oh, I’m so sorry, I just feel so terrible about doing this to you. I kept thinking I was getting better, but I just kept getting sicker. Oh, it’s your wedding dress, you’ll never forgive me, I’ll never forgive me. Oh, I feel awful.”

  My beautiful, once-in-a-lifetime dress, undone.

  “Could somebody else finish it, Margaret?”

  “Not all the handwork, nobody in this town, oh, Jenny, I just feel so guilty, I—”

  “Don’t feel guilty, feel well.”

  “Oh, now you’re going to cry,” she said mournfully.

  “I’m not going to cry,” I protested, blinking back tears.

  “Oh, Jenny, I’m just so sick about this.”

  “Go to bed, Margaret! Forget the silly dress! Goodbye!”

  I grabbed a handful of Kleenex on my way out the door, then raced to my car and drove, sniffling all the way, to Lars Brand Labels women’s clothing store.

  LBL was a big barn of a discount clothing store where they ripped off the labels and knocked down the prices of designer clothing. They did not carry wedding dresses, but then I wasn’t looking for trail and veil, I merely desired a uniquely beautiful, reasonably priced, one-of-a-kind original design in a street-length white dress that would make me look like Cybill Shepherd. And white dresses are, of course, so easy to find in New England in November.

  I threw myself on my brother-in-law’s mercy.

  “Help me, Lars,” I begged in his office, nearly genuflecting.

  After hearing my description of the dress I wanted, he looked worried, an expression I wasn’t happy to see on his face. I’d hoped he would light up like the used-car salesman who’s got just the red Plymouth station wagon you want right here on his very lot this very day.

  “That’s a tough order, Jenny,” he said, frowning.

  “I’m not opposed to beige,” I countered.

  “We’re long on cruise wear,” he said, “short on fancy dresses.”

  “And I don’t really mind suits,” I said desperately. “It doesn’t matter that I’ve worn them five days a week for the last ten years. Do you have anything in a nice white wool suit, Lars?”

  “I doubt it, but let me get a saleswoman.to help you.” At those words, he finally did brighten, and I thought he’d just remembered where some exquisite white dress was hanging. “And I know just the lady.”

  After a brief wait, Marsha McEachen walked into his office.

  “Ms. Cain!” She brightened, too. At Lars Brand Labels, it seemed to me they were all happy for the wrong reasons. “Look, I got the job! Gosh, thank you so much for your help!”

  “I’m grateful, too,” her boss said kindly.

  I asked her to return the favor by finding me a wedding dress.

  There were three white dresses in the whole store, and they seemed curiously out of date to me. Usually, Lars could be relied on to provide the women of Port Frederick with styles that weren’t more than a season or two old, but each of these looked like something Jackie Kennedy might have worn with a pillbox hat.

  “I don’t think so, Marsha,” I said regretfully.

  “Gee, I wish I could help you.” She looked truly unhappy. “You’ve helped me so much. I really love this job, even if Ernie does say it’s nothing as good as what he could earn. But we really need the money while he’s still out of work.”

  “Is he trying very hard?”

  “Sure.” She flushed, and I felt as rude as I’d been. It was difficult not to lecture this pale, soft pudding of a girl. “I mean, he reads the want ads like you told him to, and he says he calls companies during the mornings while I’m gone, but he can’t go out on interviews while he’s watching the kids for me, of course. And then by afternoon, he’s pretty tired.”

  She was the one who suddenly looked pretty tired. I had been continuing to look for good chid care she could afford, but had failed so far. I determined to try harder.

  “Well,” I said, grasping for the thin silver thread that lined the clouds of her life, “at least you’ve got a good steady job here

  “Yeah, it’ll be great for a while.”

  “A while . . . ?” I thought my brother-in-law had hired her for a permanent part-time sales position. Something about the way she smiled and ducked her head caused me to jump to the worst possible conclusion. “You’re not pregnant again ... I mean, are you expecting a baby, Marsha?”

  She nodded enthusiastically. “It’s due in June!”

  I felt a frisson of dismay snake down my spine: She already had two children under the age of five, a violent husband who was unemployed and jealous of her job, and now another baby on the way. It didn’t take a meeting of our task force to tell me the young McEachens were bringing to a boil an indigestible stew that contained enough volatile ingredients to blow the lid off the pressure cooker mat was their marriage.

  “Does Ernie know?”

  Doubt crept into her pale blue eyes, and she seemed suddenly to be having trouble holding up the edges of her
smile. “Well, I just found out myself, and I thought maybe I’d tell him this week.”

  I fished a business card out of my purse and gave it to her. There was no masking my message, but I tried to say it lightly. “Listen, if you ever need a friend in an emergency, you call me at work or at home, okay?” I took back the card, scribbled my home phone number on it and handed it back to her. “If there’s one good thing about workaholics, it’s that you can usually find us when you want us “

  The pale, pudgy hand that accepted my card was shaking a little, but she managed a sweet smile of gratitude. “But what about your wedding dress, Ms. Cain?”

  “Please call me Jenny.” I thought a moment. “Let me talk to Lars, Marsha, and we’ll see if he can special-order something for me by Saturday.”

  But he surprised me by saying no.

  “Shut the door, will you, Jenny?” he said then, and I did, leaving us alone in his office, which was stacked nearly to the ceiling with clothing and fabric samples. “The truth is that I can’t order anything right now, Jenny, because my suppliers have all got me on hold until I pay a few back bills. I wouldn’t want Sherry to know this, because it’s all going to work out fine in a few months, but things are a little tough right now. As you can undoubtedly tell from what’s out there on the racks, we’re living off present inventory until business picks up.”

  “I don’t get it, Lars.”

  He sighed. “Please don’t think I’m blaming Sherry for this, because I’m not. But your sister’s an expensive woman to keep around, Jenny, God love her. I’ve been paying myself a huge salary—much larger than this store can support—in order to keep her in houses built by the disciples of Frank Lloyd Wright and in designer clothes that still have their labels on them.” He smiled ruefully. “But it’s been my decision, and I’m to blame, I take full responsibility.”

  I was incensed, but not solely at him. “Our party! She must have spent a small fortune on food and drink and extra help for that party. How could you let her do that?”

  “How could I say no?” He looked harried, unhappy, helpless. “I didn’t want to say no. You’re her only sibling, you’re getting married for the first time, I like you, I like Geof, we wanted to do something nice for you.” Now he gazed at me reproachfully. “How could I tell her that we couldn’t have a party for her only sister’s wedding?”

  “Oh, Lars.” I couldn’t very well tell him that we hadn’t even wanted a party in the first place. “You’re a businessman, you’ve heard of budgets? At least, she didn’t have to spend so much! For heaven’s sake, why don’t you ask Sherry to take on some of the responsibility, Lars? Dad spoiled her, you spoil her, she doesn’t know what it is to deny herself anything she wants! Don’t you think it’s about time to ask her to cooperate in living within the available means?”

  “Well, I think I can pull it off without worrying her.”

  “What about the income from her trust fund, Lars?”

  “Well, she spends it.”

  “All of it?”

  He nodded but had the grace to blush.

  “I see. What’s hers is hers, and what’s yours is hers.” I stood up. “Well, that’s great. That’s just fine. Don’t ask her to make any sacrifices, Lars. Don’t ask her for any help. Just go ahead and die of a heart attack before you’re fifty. She’ll be the best-dressed widow in town, until the creditors grab the estate. You make me angry, Lars!”

  “You won’t tell her?”

  “I don’t have time.” I walked to the door and opened it. “If I don’t find a wedding dress soon, I may have to get married in an old white slip.”

  It was a measure of his problems that my brother-in-law couldn’t cap that with a rotten joke. I left him staring disconsolately down at his desk, tapping the tip of a pencil on an empty order form. But then I thought of something and turned back to lean into his open doorway.

  “How’s she feeling, Lars?”

  “You mean her ribs?” His smile held a touch of chagrin, as a parent’s does when he’s discussing a loved but clumsy child. “Okay, except that yesterday she was walking so stiff and careful coming down the stairs that she tripped and turned an ankle.”

  “I don’t believe it.” I rolled my eyes ceilingward.

  “I know she’d appreciate it if you’d call her,” he said.

  It was another in the series of unlikely things he’d said to me that day. Nevertheless, I played to his fantasy of happy sisters. “All right, Lars.”

  It was the least I could do for him. Not only had he and his saleswoman put my own woes in their proper perspective—which was way down on the relative scale of human troubles—but he’d also given me an idea. I would have been grateful if he’d also given me a good deal on a dress, but what the hey, you can’t have everything.

  17

  MY SANGUINE MOOD LASTED ALMOST THROUGH LUNCH. Or for as long as it took me to pick up two lobster sandwiches at The Buoy, give one to Smithy Leigh as a peace offering, and start to eat with her at the dining room table in Sunrise House.

  “Smithy,” I said through a mouthful of mayonnaise and lettuce, “I’ve been thinking how so many of your clients are pressured by financial problems.”

  Her own mouth was full of pink meat, thus limiting her verbal skills, a point I had considered in my purchase. She nodded sharply and mumbled, “Right.”

  “They probably need advice on budgeting.”

  Still chewing, she nodded.

  “Do you furnish it?”

  Unable to speak, she lifted her right hand and made wobbling motions in the air with it, like a small boat on rough seas. I got the message: not much.

  “Counting me,” I said, “there are two M.B.A.’s and one C.P.A. in my office alone, not to mention the other business types I know around town. I was thinking, I’ll bet I can wrangle some volunteer advisory time.”

  Still chewing, Smithy made a circle out of her right thumb and forefinger; she might have been rating my idea a zero, but I chose to interpret it as “Okay.”

  “We could start with the McEachens.”

  She took another bite, nodded.

  “She got a job, you know.”

  Another nod, and her eyes looked happy.

  “Do you know she’s pregnant again?”

  Smithy stopped chewing and stared at me out of eyes that had gone round with dismay. Her throat convulsed, as if she were swallowing tacks. “Oh, God, no.” She said it in a dulled, defeated voice, but when she wiped a napkin across her mouth, it was a hard, angry motion, as if she were hitting herself. “No! And just when they might have gotten back on their feet again. That’s bad news, Cain, the worst. If you could see the statistics on how often pregnant women get beaten up by their men-kicked in the stomach, pushed down stairs, hit in their breasts-you’d be sick.”

  I pushed my plate away, already feeling a little ill.

  “It’s hard to imagine,” I said, trying hard not to imagine it.

  “Psychologists claim it’s the extra stress, as if there’s an excuse for anything like that,” Smithy said in a bitter voice. “And they say sometimes it’s jealousy, you know, the woman’s focused on herself and her baby, instead of on him. But I say it’s meanness, pure born meanness.”

  “So they need all the help they can get.”

  “Marsha?” Smithy poked viciously at the tabletop with her forefinger and grimaced. “You better believe it, Cain.”

  It was a shame to waste good lobster, but we didn’t either of us seem to feel like finishing lunch. We carried our dirty plates into the kitchen. I left her standing by the sink, in her brown trousers and brown shirt, to do the washing up. I decided not to ask her where she shopped for better dresses.

  On the way back to the office, I raced into and out of two other clothing stores, to no avail, then flew in and out of the travel agency to pick up our airline tickets to Puerto Rico. Like a hummingbird frantically flapping its wings to stay in place, I hovered by the agent’s desk only long enough to ask, “If we h
ave to cancel at the last minute, what’s the penalty, Virginia?”

  “Your firstborn child.” She smiled, shrugged sympathetically. “It’s pretty steep, Jenny: forty percent of the ticket price on this excursion rate. I think you’d better go, come hell or high water.”

  Or homicide? Her exaggeration, meant to be wryly funny, depressed me. If Geof tried to postpone our wedding because of his job, I just might decide I didn’t want to live that way anymore. And so the penalty for cancellation might well be our marriage. And thus, any children. No little Bushfields, no little Cain to raise.

  I slowed my flight to a trudge and returned to my car.

  It was one-thirty, and I needed to get back to the Foundation.

  As I turned the key in the ignition, I felt a surge of energy go through me as well as through the car. I wanted to get back to the office. I was sick to death of worrying about death and of fretting about a wedding that might not come off.

  “Home, James,” I said to the car.

  It was true: Work was home to me. I was glad to be returning that afternoon to a job that was always there when I needed it, unlike some cops I might name.

  He was on the phone when I walked into the office.

  “Geof on line two,” my secretary announced, smiling.

  “Thanks, Faye.” I didn’t hurry to pick up the phone, but took my time removing my overcoat, putting down my purse, getting settled in the chair behind my desk. I was thumbing through the other pink telephone message slip as I said hello.

  “Don’t ever say I don’t do you any favors.”

  “What have you done for me lately?”

  “I did what you asked and got Ernie McEachen an interview at the downtown store, and damned if he didn’t bullshit his way into a job on the loading dock.”

  “Oh, Geof!” I put down the messages. “Thank you.”

  “They called him in for the interview this afternoon, hired him, and put him to work on the spot. I suppose the family business will survive one lazy punk.”

  “Probably. I picked up our tickets.”