She headed inside for the kitchen. At the sound of the doorbell she kept going, praying it was Donnie and not company. A delivery truck was parked in the drive. Now what? Perri wondered as she opened the front door.
“Delivery, ma’am. Sign here, please,” the lanky, rawboned kid requested respectfully as he eyed her legs.
“Delivery?” Perri echoed in bewilderment as she studied the invoice. Pasting on a bright smile, she reached for the phone. What had the man done now? When Matt picked up, he barely gave her time to get out a greeting.
“Hey, hon. I was just thinking of you,” he said brightly. Overlooking the steel underneath her sputtering, Matt took the Oklahoma City exit for Remington Park Racetrack. “You should have come with me,” Matt said. “Maybe next week when I’m running some decent horses, I’ll bring you out here. I’d like to show you off.”
“More 800 stuff? This time from Maine?” Perri demanded as her eyes followed the deliverymen going about their work. “You called a furniture-maker in Maine?”
“What?” he asked, playing catch-up. “Yeah, that’s right. I needed a desk and they had some good-looking leather chairs, so I went ahead,” he replied, not realizing he was just digging himself in deeper. “It’ll go just fine with some of that stuff stored in the basement. Have you been down there?” he inquired conversationally. “I want to move that antique gun cabinet upstairs. Set my office next to—”
“You didn’t think to ask me.” It wasn’t a question. Perri watched Donnie’s car pull on back past the truck.
Matt took a considering breath. “I thought I’d surprise you,” he answered. He paused to see if she was buying it.
“Why don’t you bring stuff from your place, Matt? Why not just bring your things from home over here? It’s a whole lot closer than Maine,” she pointed out. “At least it’s on this side of the Mississippi.”
The silence on the other end of the phone threatened to stretch into next week. He was not ready to commit to their marriage for all his big talk. “Well,” Perri said quietly. “I guess that says it.” That the man couldn’t bring himself to move in items from his own home down the road spoke volumes in her direction.
She ignored the hurt and turned to Donnie as she climbed the steps. “Why aren’t you asleep?” she demanded.
“Can’t,” Donnie replied. “I’m too wired.”
“Tell me you have the rest of the day off,” Perri said tartly, the green in her eyes blazing.
“I do,” Donnie answered, as she hit the front porch. “I’m working the graveyard shift again tonight.” Donnie’s eyes asked the next, obvious question.
“Good,” Perri retorted. “Let’s go see how fast I can order new rugs. If you’re up for it, go get the tape measure out of the junk drawer, okay?” Matt’s answering protest went unheeded as Perri ignored the idiot on the phone.
Sizing up the situation, Donnie’s lips curved into a delighted smile. “Revenge shopping on Matt Ransom’s dime? I love that,” she replied simply.
“Perri,” Matt called, “I didn’t mean—”
Too late, bub, she thought. “No problem,” she said. “It was a surprise, right, Matt? Well, surprise.” Perri turned her attention to the workmen as they entered. “Oh no, that’s fine,” Perri sang out sweetly. “Just leave everything right here in the foyer. My husband can decide where he thinks this stuff is going to go. Oh, a lamp, too?” she cooed. “How lovely.” She turned her attention back to the man now sputtering along somewhere in Oklahoma City.
“You are not the only one who lives here, Matt,” she said in a snippy tone. “You are not the only one here with air rights, with rights to the space. You come striding through, arranging things to fit your needs, your preferences, without so much as a thought to sharing space or asking me how I feel about your decisions. And your decisions affect me personally,” she informed him. “It’s the same as not sharing yourself, Matt.” She ignored the workmen moving past her and kept talking.
“What if I don’t like the chair, or the new desk?” she demanded. “What about this lamp? Of course, the thing that really gets me,” Perri continued, “is you didn’t even think to ask for my opinion. Just as you didn’t even bother to ask me to move into your bed.”
The nearest workman’s eyes popped at that. She wouldn’t blush. She flat-out refused. “I’m beginning to feel as if there is no room for me here unless I’m willing to fit myself around you,” she said in lower tones. “And I’m getting steamed about it.” It was enough to make a woman want to quit. Give up. Withdraw.
Run away, she realized, taking a breath to slow down. Perri knew she was overreacting. She didn’t care about the damn chair. It was probably perfect for him. But why couldn’t be have included her? Why not share his plans?
“I don’t know how to ask!” he protested loudly. The workmen heard that too. “If you don’t like it, do something about it! If you hate the chair or the desk or the whole thing, send it all back. Your name is now on the plastic,” he reminded her. “Go make a home. Get whatever you want.”
Perri could hear the hurt through the line. “What I want is the shared experience of making a home with you, rather than your taking it so totally upon yourself to suit yourself,” she explained more softly. She moved out onto the porch with the phone. “Nor do I want you just delegating the whole thing to me.”
Smiling at the workmen. Donnie took over. They had had enough entertainment for the day. And besides. Perri was on a roll.
“This was an arranged marriage,” Perri reminded him as she turned off the last of the sprinklers. “You’re going to have to show some willingness, some consideration. for making it more than a series of independent decisions and deeds. If not, then forget about a future that’s not ‘covered in dust’ as you put it. You will have already buried the present. It’s going to start out stale and dry,” she warned.
She refrained from tying the garden hose into knots just to annoy him when he came out to water in the evening. That was childish and she’d probably pull a muscle in the process. She coiled it neatly away.
“I hesitate to even use the word, but I’m not working on this relationship by myself,” she declared. “I’m not going to be the only one to give, to give way.” Perri huffed out a breath and listened to the silence on the other end.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about how it might look through your eyes,” he said humbly. Matt’s smile was almost audible through the phone when he realized he’d rendered her speechless. “Perri?” Matt appealed softly. “Make a home for me. Please.”
Perri took the phone from her ear and stared at the blasted thing. Now how did a woman argue with that?
“You’re stewing. You know it,” Donnie observed as she walked with Perri out into the parking lot surrounding the shopping mall.
“Well, I’ve got a legitimate reason to worry about the most efficient way to go about this,” Perri added, a little defensively. “I have my very own, personal museum and it needs to be turned into a home. You know we should donate at least half of the furnishings.”
“Nothing’s easy,” Donnie muttered as they crossed the lot.
Perri shot her a look. “You’re not helping,” she stated. “This is really driving me nuts.”
“Look, I don’t know how much a woman should preserve and honor of something that will never come again,” Donnie replied, shifting her package from hand to hand. They had been going over this ground for the last hour. “Personally, I think it’s best when we make our own history. But I do agree that anybody who is living inside a museum has a problem on her hands. and not just with all the dust.”
“I know,” Perri sighed in disgust. “But why do stupid things, like a hundred-year-old hat pin, have to stop me? It aches me to take this on. It’s too much.”
“You know you’re asking the wrong person,” Donnie continued. “I never look back. I can’t. I don’t want to and I don’t know how. I don’t want a damn memory box where I’m remind
ed everyday of what is long gone. I know I’m not much help, but I’d rather look to the future,” she said lifting the package. “I’d rather focus on how cute this lamp is going to look in the nursery.
“And by the way,” Donnie added, as they crossed the broiling parking lot, “while we are on the subject of being driven nuts, tell Matt not to call me every five minutes. Tell him not to page me, and not to bother my dispatcher. I am not having my sleep intenupted so he can grill me on whether or not you’ve eaten property, today,” she declared. “Just tell him I tried to make you eat more and you declined.” She steered them toward the right row of cars. “I’m not having it. Now goodbye,” she said as she kissed Perri’s cheek. “Drive safely.”
“You know perfectly well I’ll drive just fine,” Perri retorted as she took the package from Donnie. They had arrived separately, so Donnie could get right home for a nap.
“Yeah,” Donnie agreed, “but now you can tell that maniacal husband of yours not to call me about your driving all by yourself.” She stopped in the act of unlocking her car and gave Perri a pitiful look. “We are going to have to break him of this. I’m just not up to it.” On that comment, she took off.
Perri sat in the parking lot, trying to focus for the drive home. The car was stuffy and blistering hot. The silence that enveloped her weighed heavily. And yet she was loath to move, loath even to turn on the air conditioner.
Motionless, she absorbed the scalding heat. It was so quiet. Sometimes the quiet in Oklahoma could prove deadly to the soul. Sometimes there was violence in such heat and stillness. She started the engine and the air conditioner before she grew too weak to drive.
Pregnancy was changing her, Perri realized. Normally she always preferred to make decisions alone, without assistance. This time she bad needed Donnie’s help. It had been a swift shopping expedition; with none of the careful deliberation of a young bride making her first home. Perri had gone for the well-made, the sturdy and the practical. Her eye had searched out the baby-proof and the boot-proof.
As Perri drove out of the parking lot, she went over in her mind what she needed to do. The nursery was obviously up there at the top of the list. The handmade, rockinghorse rug she had found was perfect It made her smile just to think of it. The soft, sunrise colors of pink and blue against the cream made the cutest nursery rug she had ever seen. She had been exhilarated to find something that perfect Donnie had insisted on purchasing a car ousel lamp that picked up the theme of horses. They had gotten a great deal accomplished in a short time.
Her present spirits lifted as she drove out of the city and back into the country. She could slow down. Perri bad recently begun to feel sensitive whenever she was behind the wheel With her pregnancy, even thirty miles per hour felt too fast to her sometimes.
The sight of the colts and calves suited her mood perfectly.
They never failed to soothe her and touch her with hope. She passed a section where Black Angus grazed in a pasture to the left, with a white Charolais herd on the tight.
The road home looked so clean, so fresh and so flat. According to the radio, the rain had moved west over the Washita, between Corn and Cloud Chief. The sun was out, haloed by scarflike clouds. It was going to remain a beautiful day.
Upon her teturn, Perri had quickly regained her natural and everyday interest in rainfall. She hadn’t paid any serious attention to it in years. But now, she found herself observing the sky automatically. The feel of weather, it never left you. Not here on the Plains, anyway. She boosted the air conditioner and turned her thoughts to Spirit Valley and Gannie’s project,
She knew they had to focus on fulfilling the terms of Gannie’s will for the Donated Land. But no amount of brainstorming had sparked a decent plan for action. Perri wasn’t in love with any of the suggestions so far. Nothing they had dreamed up felt right; nothing really fit Gannie’s style. Maybe she should consider hiring a consultant. Matt’s likely reaction to that idea made her grain.
Matt. The way he had looked on their wedding day was something she would never forget. The harsh, unforgiving angles of his face always kept him from looking cute or too handsome. The broad-shouldered power in the man, and the focus he was capable of at every moment couldn’t be tamed by a suit. He had looked compelling and so very much in command, his presence filling every corner of the tiny church.
That was what she should center on, Perri realized. Instead of letting herself be run ragged over the minute details of what to do with hat pins and old memories, she had a new life. She needed to keep sight of what was important now and give her heart to building, not preserving.
Is that what had happened to Gannie? Perri mused. Had she felt this reluctant pull? Had she been so disinclined to relegate the past to the past that her life’s choices had been stopped by it? Had it weighed as heavily on Gannie as it now weighed upon herself? Perri wondered what had happened.
Had Miss Olivia Gledhill been just as unable to properly dispose of that hat pin and move on? And was that why Gannie had never married? Because she had fallen into the role of caretaker for Spirit’s past? Perri knew where she got her love for Gledhill. But there had to come a point where you stopped mourning what was no longer and continued on.
And Perri ought to know. Clearly, at present, there was no room for her at Gledhill. And that, she realized, was pretty much her own doing. There was no portion of it that she had truly made her own. She’d made more of a dent into giving the photographs of the Pioneer Women and the tapes of the 89ers space than she’d made for herself. And what would they think? she wondered. Women who had helped fell the river of grass?
Crossing the river bridge brought an ache to her heart. So little water flowed, she could see huge sandbars right in the middle of the riverbed. What water was flowing freely was the color of red clay. The soil around the bank was so bright pink, Perri could see clearly where water had evaporated. That’s all I’ve seen in Oklahoma, she thought grimly, red water.
Or had she? Perri’s foot found the brake by its own volition. Suddenly the pink rim of soil linked in her mind’s eye with the sight of blue water. She pulled the car off the road and onto the shoulder just past the bridge. Quickly, she got out.
As always, the wind welcomed her back into its grasp. The worries and tasks ahead were almost blown away as strong wind, strong sun and the boundless Plains assaulted her senses. Nobody back in New York ever believed it when she described the sensation of land so flat, her gaze took in nothing but sky from her hipbones straight on out.
Gathering her wits, Perri looked more closely at the riverbed and frowned. Intuitively, she knew there was an answer here to at least one of the many questions she had plaguing her. Where was it?
What was it about that red water? No blue water had been visible from the airplane upon her return home. Certainly, none she could remember now. There was no blue water anywhere but Spirit Lake and that was the deep blue of a man-made lake. Had she seen clear blue water since returning home? And if so, where? From the car?
All at once, Perri recalled the sight of an egret by a little pond on Fort Remount the day of her wedding. She had been so struck by it, she’d had Donnie pull over. That pond had been as blue as the sky. And just as clear.
Donnie had mentioned a project out on the post. They were restoring the native grasses or something. Could that explain why the pond had been the only blue water Perri had seen since she’d come home? Was it part of the restoration? If so, they were to be commended. Questions bombarded her as swiftly as the wind.
Perri stared at the red sandbar and pictured blue water surrounded by the windbreaks listing to the south. Pink soil and blue sky, and a cloud white encompassed her. The colors pinned together in her mind like the colors of the rockinghorse rug. A rug destined one day to be an heirloom.
What had the river looked like a hundred years ago? she wondered. Hadn’t the water been blue then? Perri’s gaze swept over the river as she tried to picture it. She could probably find a descripti
on of it among Gannie’s tapes of the 89ers. In their stories.
She turned abruptly and stared across at the railroad bridge running parallel to where she stood. Breathing deeply, she felt the past link itself with the present. Her hair whipped past her face as she studied the tracks and drew comfort from the ever-present voice of the wind. It was in the voices, of course, in the stories of the 89ers.
Suddenly, Perri couldn’t stop the voices. Nor did she want to. On how many tapes had she heard them speak of loving this land; because their children were buried here, their wives and their husbands, their parents? Family remained here. The voices that she had listened to, the stories she’d read now came back on the wind.
Well, why not? Why not make room for the past out on the lake in a way that wasn’t just another dry, boring old museum? Why not give room to those voices? Why not give others access to them as well? Why hoard the tapes and transcripts of the past? Why not put them to use? she wondered.
Perri knew she needed to make room for herself and for her family at Gledhill And the 89ers needed a place, a home. Perri Stone Ransom turned, the sun beating down upon her and the wind by the river causing her to list a little to the south. She took in the sight of the slow, quiet trickle of a formerly powerful river. And allowed thoughts of restoration, of making a home, to flow through her.
Matt felt the sweat between his shoulder blades dry instantly in the breeze. That was the thing about summer in this part of Oklahoma. There was no humidity. It was a dry heat and hotter than the blazes, but the wind remained unbroken.
He stood in the backward and studied Gledhill’s old barn. The tin roof passed his inspection. Barely. At least it looked sound enough. He ducked inside. It was dark and somewhat cooler away from the burning sun. The barn was hardly what you would describe as well insulated, so heat wasn’t trapped inside. He looked around. Bright sunlight filtered through the chinks in the wood like sharp, ragged diamonds. The wind came through on a low whistle.
The Bridal Promise Page 13
