Spare Change

by Bette Lee Crosby

  “Not a marrying woman?” Charlie repeated, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I’ve never been one to fit the mold. Cooking, cleaning, babies—it’s just too much dependency, it smoothers a woman and takes the fullness of life from her.”

  “Babies?” Charlie echoed, “Who said anything about babies?”

  Her answer was one she had stored away in her head, it hadn’t been called upon for years, it had grown old and dusty and obsolete, but she hauled it out nonetheless. “I realize that given your age, babies might not be a thing of foremost concern, but,” she sighed, “who knows what might happen in the future…”

  “I’m sixty-eight! Why, it would be impossible for me to father a baby! Besides, I wouldn’t want one—not even if it came in a solid gold wrapper!”

  “You’re certain?”

  “I only want you. I want us to sleep in the same bed and make love. If you don’t want to cook, we’ll eat in restaurants. If you don’t want to clean, we’ll sweep the dirt under the rug and get on with our life.”

  “No children?”

  “Children? Absolutely not! I’ve got one and he’s no bargain.”

  “You’ve got a little boy?”

  “He’s hardly a boy. Benjamin’s thirty-seven—old enough to know he ought to visit his dad now and then; but he doesn’t. I haven’t seen him for over fifteen years.”

  “Grandchildren?” she asked; her eyes lovingly locked onto his face.

  “Benjamin and Susanna have a son,” he answered wistfully. “The lad’s name is Ethan Allen; but I’ve never even met him.”

  The following Friday Charlie slipped a diamond ring on Olivia’s finger and much to everyone’s surprise, it stayed there. And, as if that weren’t enough of a shocker, Olivia then announced she was going to give up her job of thirty years and move to Wyattsville. “I’ve heard tell it’s a wonderful community,” she told her friends, “and, Charlie has an apartment on the seventh floor of a building that does not allow children.”

  The announcement generated an endless amount of gossip among Olivia’s friends and co-workers. The girls in the typing pool suggested he might be after her money, or worse yet, be planning to take out a sizeable insurance policy then do her in. “What do we know about him?” they’d ask each other, but the answer was generally nothing more than a furrowed brow and a shrug of the shoulders.

  Herbert Flannery, dumbfounded by the turn of events, went out and bought himself a powder blue convertible then took to coloring his hair shoe-polish black.

  Mabel Cunningham, a woman who had known Olivia since high school claimed she’d heard rumors of Charlie being a philanderer.

  “Not likely,” Francine Burnam said as she stuck a pacifier into her grandbaby’s mouth; her daughter had recently divorced a ne’er-do-well husband and returned home to mama with the infant and two toddlers. “Olivia’s too smart to be taken in by someone like that,” Francine sighed wistfully.

  Even the boy who bagged groceries at the A & P seemed to be boggled by the sight of her new diamond ring. “You’re engaged?” he said; then he stood there staring at her while a ripe cantaloupe rolled off the end of the counter and splattered on the floor.

  None of this bothered Olivia as she strolled around town shopping for a trousseau and looking every bit the prospective bride. She never noticed how shopkeepers would cover their mouth and giggle when she asked to see bridal veils and blue garters. She paid no attention when Alma suggested rethinking retirement and she laughed out loud when Mabel said she ought to have Charlie investigated by a private detective.

  On the third Saturday in October, Olivia Ann Westerly knew what sort of day it was long before she opened her eyes. She’d imagined the sound of wedding bells in a dream which ended far too soon; and she’d caught the fragrance of jasmine even though it was long past the season for such a flower to be blooming. It was a morning that dawned with a sun warm enough for anyone to believe it mid-August—a morning when crows had the sound of songbirds and flowerbeds overflowed with blooms, a morning, no doubt, that was an omen of good things to come.

  Olivia had always been a person given to superstition; and by the time she turned twelve she had learned to understand omens—both good and bad. She avoided stepping on sidewalk cracks, covered her eyes if she saw a black cat and never, ever, planned anything important on the eleventh day of the month. Experience had taught her that if anything bad was going to happen, it was going to happen on the eleventh; and, she’d kept that in mind when they selected a date for the wedding. Now, on this most glorious of all mornings, she had not a care in the world—the eleventh of October had already come and gone and it would be almost a full month before she’d have to face another one.

  While the coffee perked, she hummed Here Comes the Bride and painted her toenails pink. They’d be honeymooning in Miami Beach and as she frolicked barefoot in the sand, Charlie, she hoped, would take notice. Once they were back in their bedroom suite overlooking the ocean, she could imagine him kissing her toes one by one. “My bride,” he’d whisper, “angel of my dreams.” A shiver ran along her spine as Olivia thought back on how she’d foolishly wasted all those years avoiding marriage; in actuality it was something that made a person feel truly wonderful. Thank goodness I’ve come to my senses, she told herself.

  As Olivia sat before the mirror and applied her make-up, she could swear years had disappeared from her face. The wrinkles which had come to be all too familiar were strangely enough missing; likewise the droop of her cheeks and a few dark splotches. Her eyes were greener than she had ever known them to be, blazingly brilliant, the color of a blade of grass on the first day of spring. Quite obviously marriage was something which agreed with a woman of any age.

  When the knock she had been waiting for came, Olivia whooshed open the door with such enthusiasm that she toppled over the potted philodendron which had been standing in the very same spot for almost twenty years. “Hi,” she whispered breathlessly. She then slipped her hand into the crook of Charlie’s arm and strolled out the door, leaving the shattered pot and a pile of dirt strewn across the floor.

  At Christ the Lord Church, there were throngs of well-wishers filling the pews and spilling out into the vestibule. Francine Burnam, who had arrived late due to a babysitting problem, was standing outside the door dressed in a flowered hat and billowing voile dress. “Warm, isn’t it,” she commented as the man alongside of her mopped his brow. Inside the church, ladies were fanning themselves and men were discretely loosening their ties. The day had been forecasted to be in the mid-seventies, but before noon the temperature soared to eighty-six degrees. Olivia hardly noticed the heat, she felt the beads of perspiration settling on the back of her neck but attributed it to the anxiety of a first time bride; as other women blew tiny puffs of breath downward to cool their bosoms, she clasped a bouquet of scarlet roses and marched down the aisle alongside Charlie.

  The first clattering boom came just as Pastor Perkins asked if anyone knew of a reason why these two people should not be joined in holy matrimony. Oh dear, Olivia thought, I hope it’s not going to rain. Any other time she might have considered it an omen, but on this particular day, with nothing but thoughts of love floating through her head, such a notion was nonexistent. “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” Pastor Perkins said, and a second roll of thunder erupted; this one so loud it rattled the church windows and set the steeple bell to chiming. “You may now kiss the bride,” the Pastor told Charlie, but before the couple could lock themselves into an embrace a barrage of hail began pelting the building. As the scattering of people who’d been standing outside to escape the heat pushed into the vestibule, a ball of ice came barreling through the stained glass window and shattered a scene depicting the birth of Baby Jesus.

  “You don’t suppose…” a wide-eyed Olivia asked. Charlie smiled, shook his head then went right ahead and kissed her.

  “Hail’s caused by hot air rising up and colliding with cold air,” he whispere
d as they turned and walked back down the aisle. “It’s a natural phenomenon, nothing to worry about.” He gave a reassuring smile and tightened his hand around hers.

  Despite Charlie’s seemingly logical explanation, Olivia checked both their wristwatches to make certain the window hadn’t shattered during some lingering minute of the eleventh hour; luckily, it was twenty-five minutes past twelve. She breathed a sigh of relief and slipped back into the euphoric feeling of a woman in love.

  After a reception of champagne and wedding cake, they went back to Olivia’s apartment, loaded the last few cartons of her belongings into the back seat of the blue convertible and headed for Wyattsville.

  Olivia Ann Doyle

  When people start prattling on about how marrying a man with Charlie Doyle’s reputation is opening myself up to heartache, I feel like laughing in their face. Heartache? A lot they know! Heartache would be seeing him walk away. I don’t give a navy bean about the fact that he’s had dozens of other women—all that’s done with now.

  I’ve done my own share of dating; but let me tell you, there’s never been a man who makes me feel the way Charlie does. I can say flat out, I am crazy in love with him. Charlie heats up such a fire in me, I get red-cheeked just thinking how he stretches a line of kisses down the back of my neck.

  Still, such talk can make any woman wonder whether or not she’s doing the right thing—so, two weeks before the wedding I went and had my fortune told.

  m about to marry Mister Doyle, I said to the gypsy, and need to know if he’s a man who will love me forever. Keeping that question in mind, she had me pull a card from the deck; then laid a crisscross of other cards alongside of it. Right off, she said the cards showed I had a terrible dislike of anything having to do with the number eleven. Well, I was about to explain, it was with good reason, but before I got a word out, she pointed to the card with a picture of eleven cups and said one was tilted to the sky, which meant the number eleven would someday bring a blessing. Not likely, I thought, but still, there was something about the woman—the way her eyes looked right past me and focused in on things from another time. It’s said that only gypsies have the true gift of looking at a person and seeing their future, so I was happy as a red hen when she said a man named Doyle would be loving me for the whole of my life and then some.

  Could a woman ask for any more than that?

  A Dinner to Die For

  Charlie’s apartment had the look and feel of a bachelor’s place—Esquire Magazines stacked high on the end table, pipes scattered about a wooden rack meant to contain them, overstuffed chairs with the indentation of his behind still in them. Despite all of this, Olivia began to think of the place as home the minute she entered. She hung her dresses in the closet, set her perfume bottles on the bureau and placed her toothbrush in the bathroom holder alongside Charlie’s.

  “Don’t bother doing that stuff right now,” Charlie said. He circled his arms around her, playfully tugged her blouse loose from the waistband of her skirt and slid his hands across the bare skin of her back. “First things first,” he whispered and pressed her tight to his chest.

  Olivia felt the thumping of his heart; it was synchronized to precisely match the beat of hers. Love you, the hearts drummed—love you, love you, love you. Charlie eased open the row of buttons on her blouse and kissed her neck. He continued for a good long while, then led her off to the bedroom. Twining themselves together, they climbed into bed and he kissed her in every spot imaginable. Then, in the bright of day, with the sun shining in on them, they made love. While other husbands were watching the final innings of a baseball game and housewives were basting a roasted chicken, they fell deeper and deeper in love.

  This was a day more special than anything Olivia had ever dreamed; it was a day to be forever held in memory, a day that she would keep for all the years of her life. Trying to hold onto the moment, she took the bedside clock, turned it face down and buried it in the bottom of a drawer—but hiding time is not a thing that will slow it. Moment by moment the sun slid behind the horizon as a dusky twilight settled into the sky. When the sky was black as a raven’s eye and only minutes of their wedding day remained, Olivia suggested they jump into the blue convertible and start for Miami Beach that very night. But as fate would have it, Charlie’s friends had arranged a round of parties in their honor. “When they’ve gone to all this trouble,” he explained, “it would downright rude for us to not attend.” She agreed, although somewhat reluctantly.

  For the next five days Charlie squired a smiling Olivia from place to place, introducing her to the ladies of the Wyattsville Social Club. “It broke our hearts when an outsider stole our Charlie away,” Emily Carter whispered jokingly. Barbara MacIntyre made a similar comment. The widow Mulligan latched on to Olivia’s arm and started asking about the secret for capturing such an eligible bachelor.

  “Secret?” Olivia said, “There’s no secret. I simply fell in love with him.”

  “Love?” Widow Mulligan replied, “At your age?”

  Six days after the wedding, Charlie carted four suitcases downstairs and packed them into the trunk of his blue convertible. He tucked a road map into the glove compartment and slid behind the wheel then he and Olivia headed for Miami Beach, Florida. “We’ll take our time,” he told her, “drive seven hours or so, then stop for the night. By Monday we’ll be sunning ourselves on the beach.”

  Olivia, a bit nervous about travelling such a distance in a convertible, counted up the number of days they’d be on the road—three. Fine, she thought, figuring that would bring them to the ninth day of their marriage, by the eleventh day they would have arrived safely in Miami Beach. She smiled and snuggled closer to Charlie, contemplating the three overnight stays at quaint little roadside inns.

  The first night they stopped in Fayetteville, North Carolina. They’d driven the full length of the road looking for a place to stay—a Cozy Inn or Honeymoon Haven—but the only spot with a room available was Sleep Planet, a motel fashioned after a space ship. “It’s not what I’d imagined,” Olivia said, her lower lip quivering.

  Charlie took hold of her and kissed her in such a way that the lopsided bed seemed somehow to level itself and the worn spot on the carpet became nearly invisible. “Once we get to Miami Beach,” he whispered, “we’ll spend fourteen days at the Fontainebleau, now, there’s a place you’re gonna love.”

  Love? Olivia didn’t need another thing to love—she had Charlie, what more could a woman ask? He was a man who watched out for her, did things to please her, saw to her needs. Finding a man such as Charlie was the reason that she, a person who had never relied on a soul other than herself, had fallen head over heels in love. “A woman doesn’t need to love the place she sleeps,” she sighed seductively, as they climbed into bed, “when she’s so in love with the man sleeping alongside of her.”

  The second night they stopped in Georgia; but then the car began overheating and they had to make numerous stops. At the end of the third day they’d only gone as far as Jacksonville. Even though they’d crossed over into Florida, it was another three-hundred miles to reach their destination. Olivia, no longer fussy about where they bedded down, said, “If you’re weary of driving we can honeymoon right here.”

  “Nonsense,” he answered. “I promised you two weeks in Miami Beach, and that’s what you’re going to get.”

  “If you’re sure…” she noticed a bit of weariness around his eyes.

  When they finally arrived at the Fontainebleau on Tuesday, the tenth day of their marriage, the spasm knotting Olivia’s back relaxed a bit. “See,” Charlie said, “I told you, nothing to worry about.”

  Olivia knew better—tomorrow would be the eleventh day. Regardless of what the gypsy had said, anything could happen. One of them could drown in the swimming pool, or get a severe sunburn, possibly be mugged by some drunken sailor. “I don’t know about you,” she told Charlie, “but, I am thoroughly exhausted. Let’s just stay in bed all day tomorrow. We’ll order
room service, enjoy the view from our window.”

  “Yes, indeed,” he said with the slyest of winks, “that sounds good to me.”

  So on the eleventh day of their marriage, they did just that. In the morning they ordered up a tray of bacon and eggs; at noon they called down for sandwiches, and in the evening the tuxedoed waiter delivered a cart with chilled champagne and candles. After drinking such a sizeable amount of champagne, Olivia could barely open her eyes the next morning, but when she did the first thing that came to mind was that the eleventh day of their marriage had come and gone without disaster. She bounded out of bed, ready, she claimed, for a dip in the pool.

  Day after day, they swam in the pool, warmed their toes in the sand and walked along the beach; they dressed in their finest clothes and dined in restaurants with crystal candlesticks and starched tablecloths. Every evening they drank glasses of dark red burgundy and toasted their love. Here’s to us, they’d say, reminding themselves how fortuitous it was that they’d found each other.

  On their eleventh day in Miami, Olivia suggested they play it safe—avoid the swimming pool with its ten feet of water where a person could drown, skip the beach where sand crabs and jelly fish could attach themselves to a person’s skin, stay out of the sun which could quickly blister any spot not slathered with sunscreen. Charlie, who could almost swear there was a bucket of salt water sloshing around in his left ear, agreed; so they held hands, strolled Collins Avenue and shopped the boutiques. Olivia bought tee shirts in every imaginable color, sunglasses circled with rhinestone trim, three ceramic flamingos and a conch shell with a dolphin painted on the side of it. On the way back to the hotel, she spied another souvenir stand and claimed that she had to stop for some post cards to send to the girls at the Southern Atlantic Telephone Company.