Magnet & Steele

by Trisha Fuentes

  Philip wanted to strike her, but held back his contact. “You’re outta line!”

  “I’m running away,” Nancy quickly determined, “I’ll leave daddy, I will.” She then made a mad dash for the front door, but her father reacted quicker and yanked her body away from the entrance. With his two huge hands still gripping at her shoulders, he shook her body again, trying to shake the foolishness out of her.

  “Where you going girl?”

  “Leave me alone,” she cried, “I don’t care about your stupid plan! You can’t make me marry him, you can’t make me! I love Angelo! Don’t you even realize that? I LOVE ANGELO!”

  He wobbled her body again, “Stupid girl!” He reacted, slapping her across her face this time. “He’s disgraced you Nancy! Disgraced your name! You allowed him to ruin you! You’re not even married yet.” Disgusted with her now he walked away from her just as Nancy crumpled to her knees. He turned around to eye his daughter on the ground and stated, “Why would you want to marry a man who doesn’t respect you?” He asked, just before he left her completely. “Have you forgotten your morals girl? What your mother and I have taught you?”

  Nancy let the life out of her fight and began to fully sob. “I don’t care daddy, I just don’t care…I love him, I just wanna be with him…I love him.”

  The Next Morning

  She doesn’t know how she got to sleep that night—even if she slept at all—but Nancy finally awoke on her front porch and watched the sun rise. Focusing on legs running down the street, she found Kelly traipsing across her front lawn clutching something in her hands. Waiving the object at Nancy, she was all smiles as she approached.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” She exhaled, out of breath, “And I’m your best friend! This is so exciting; this has got to be the news of the century!”

  Nancy looked up from her gloom. “What are you talking about?”

  “This,” Kelly said excitedly, shoving the newspaper into her face. “It’s all over the paper.”

  Nancy grabbed the paper out Kelly’s hands. The front headlines made her heart sink: DAFFODIL QUEEN STEELE’S THE HEART OF ARTHUR’S YOUNGEST SON STEPHEN

  “Nancy, you’re so lucky. You’re gonna be a Steele! Oh my gosh, my best friend is gonna marry a Steele!”

  Nancy doesn’t feel lucky, she felt nauseated. She finally stood up and ran down her front porch steps leaving Kelly dumb-founded with the newspaper still in her hands.

  Moments later, Nancy found Angelo sitting by the water of the creek. She knew he’d be there. He was tossing pebbles into the gorge when he turned around and eyed her coming near.

  “Angelo?”

  Angelo slowly stood up from his crotched position and wiped his hands down the front creases of his pants. “What’s happening to us Nancy? When were you going to tell me?”

  Nancy’s heart sunk even lower, “I’m sorry Angelo. I didn’t want you to find out this way.”

  Angelo bent down and grabbed a rock and hurled it across the creek in a rage. “Find out what way…This way…Or any way at all?”

  Nancy tried to plead with him. “Can’t you see that this is hurting me too? I love you Angelo. I will never love anyone else.”

  Angelo stepped into her. “What about us being together per sempre…forever? You said you would marry me! And all this time you’ve been engaged to someone else?”

  Nancy’s heart began to break as Angelo began to walk way. “It’s not like that.”

  He turned around. “Then what then—why are you marrying him?”

  Nancy shook her head, “I’m not marrying him. I’m marrying you.”

  Angelo guffawed, “That’s what I thought as well, but not when my fiancée is already engaged!”

  “I don’t want to, can’t you see that? Can’t you tell? It’s my father—”

  Angelo stepped in closer to her again. “What about your father?”

  “He says I’ve disgraced him…that I…disgraced my family.”

  Angelo now grabbed her by the shoulders. Circling his eyes around her face, he softly voiced, “Nancy, you gave yourself to me because you knew in your heart that we’d be married someday. Per sempre.”

  “But my father will never let me marry you,” she declared whimpering.

  Angelo released her body, “What? Why? He doesn’t even know me. We have to meet—“

  Nancy twirled her body around to watch Angelo sprinting across the grass on the verge of introducing himself to her father. “No! Stop! He won’t talk to you…it’s the war.”

  Angelo came to a complete stop and then looked in the opposite direction. Closing his eyes he said, “I’m Italian, that’s why,” he realized. “The war, si, certo, la guerra stupida…the stupid war.”

  “Yes.”

  Broken up in pain, Angelo looked across at Nancy now. “But we love each other,” he yelled at her and then up at the sky. “WE LOVE EACH OTHER!”

  Nancy was broken up in pain as well and continued to cry when Angelo ran towards her and snatched her body into his, holding her close enough for her to nearly melt into his.

  “Oh Angelo,” Nancy continued to cry into his chest, “What do we do?”

  He wrapped his arms around her backside and then up to cradle the back of her head. “Only one thing to do.”

  Nancy looked away from his chest and up at him, “What?”

  “We elope then.”

  At the Hartford train station, Angelo and Nancy sat on a bench with no suitcases, no extra clothes and no money in their pockets. No doubts at all with just the tickets in their hands.

  The whistle blew signifying the train emerging.

  Angelo grabbed at Nancy’s hand, “No regrets?”

  Nancy signified her decision by placing her head on his chest and wrapped her arms around his body pulling him in. “None, whatsoever,” she uttered, closing her eyes and dreaming of every morning she would have that allowed her to wake up next to the man she now loved. She would have a wonderful life, whatever it took. Angelo could find a job in a restaurant, waiting on tables in the west coast and she could find a job, an apartment, maybe even children someday. She then looked up unconsciously and fathomed Arthur Steele and two large goons rapidly approaching. “Oh my God,” she said under her breath.

  Angelo looked down at her and then followed her stare, “What?”

  “Stay still. We don’t want to make a scene,” Nancy said in a worried voice raising her head away from his chest.

  Angelo subsequently realized what was happening as the three men approached them. They all stood in unison. “What’s going on here?” Angelo demanded, instinctively stepping in front of Nancy to shield her from any harm.

  “I thought something like this would happen,” Arthur said, appalled.

  “Mr. Steele?” Nancy asked from around Angelo’s protective body.

  “Take him,” Arthur instructed, “Take him where she can’t find him.”

  Within hearing the command, the two men came from behind Arthur and grabbed Angelo by his arms and locked them behind his back.

  Nancy reached out for Angelo but Arthur yanked her away and whirled her body into his. “What’s happening? What’re you doing? Mr. Steele, what’re you doing?”

  At the base of her ear, Arthur stated softly, “Your father told me what happened and we thought it best to notify all exits out of state. The conductor is a friend of mine and contacted me as soon as you purchased your tickets.” He then lifted up his jaw and instructed the two men, “Take him away…”

  Nancy tried to jerk her body away too, but Arthur was excessively strong. She couldn’t believe what was happening! She watched in sheer horror as Angelo tried to fight his way out of the four burly arms; the two men practically dragged Angelo away by his heels. One of the men had enough of his jiggling and punched Angelo square in the gut to subdue his struggling.

  “No!” Nancy screamed, “No! Angelo! No!”

  Arthur rotated Nancy’s distressed body around within his imprisoning clench and
yelled down at her, “This is best for all of us Nancy.”

  “You don’t know what’s best for me!” She yelled back at him. “You don’t even know me!”

  “But I know your father and you’re killing him with this!”

  Nancy turned her head away from his harshness to watch Angelo being towed further and farther away from her field of vision. “I don’t care,” she blubbered, “I just wanna be with Angelo. Angelo!”

  Arthur crowded over her and stole away her view. “You should know dear, that your father and I had this arrangement far before you were even born. He owes me. I saved his life once and kept food on his table all these years and he owes me. He would raise a beauty queen and I would match it. You were supposed to marry Brian, but with his—his,” he broke off swallowing down his pain, “Dying in the war, then Stephen would have to do. You were always meant for me, but now you’re scarred; tainted. I don’t even know if I want you now. But your father is persistent, and no one walks away from an agreement with me, no one.”

  Nancy’s body went limp within Arthur’s clutch. Arthur turned his head to determine the space between himself and his men when Nancy was finally allowed liberty and pushed away from his grapple to catch her final view of Angelo in the far-flung distance.

  Alongside the smoking train, the men continued to suppress a combating Angelo, as Nancy could hear his roars ricocheting off the steel train and straight into her ears.

  “I love you Nancy!” Angelo growled in between punches, “I will always love you!...We’ll find each other someday…we’ll see each other again!”

  New Canaan, 1967

  A long winding staircase displayed a group of family portraits hanging on a wall leading up the spiral: Grandpa Coursen, Grandpa Steele, wedding photos, birthdays, the family pet, a painting of Jesus. Smiles with missing teeth, elementary school, a holiday queen, a football uniform and a cheerleading pose: mom, dad, two sisters and a brother.

  A normal household but with deep dark secrets; a sad sort of new Steele family, five of them altogether, were gathering simultaneously one by one, a lump of curious, mellow red heads.

  Dressed in a light grey suit, Stephen Steele, now in his early forties, ran his hands through his thinning hair and motioned for the kids to have a seat.

  “Everyone sit down. Sit down, Paul, Suzy, sit down. Where’s Fran? Fran! Come in here now and sit down!” He then turned to his wife, “Nance, get everyone to sit down, please.”

  Enter, Nancy Steele, once a beautiful strawberry blonde, her hair was now streaked with grey. It was a strange mixture of peach and mist and she was dowdier now more than attractive with a faraway look across her face. “Stephen, do you have to raise your voice like that?”

  “Dammit Nancy! Your goddamn children don’t listen! Look at them; no one is paying any attention!”

  Francine Steele had just turned eighteen and the baby of the family and entered the room at that very moment. Tomboy cute, she was a little on the thin side and considered the loud-mouth of the clan. Taking mostly after her father physically, she was the only sibling that viewed life through brown eyes.

  “Fran honey, sit down, your father has something to tell us,” Nancy instructed, pin-pointing her other daughter about to scamper away. “Suzy dear, please sit down, it’s important.”

  Suzette “Suzy” Steele was the middle child and at nineteen, was a carbon copy of her mother in her heyday; a stunning strawberry blonde with milky-white skin and green eyes. “Why?” Suzy asked, rolling her gorgeous verdant eyes.

  “What’s with all the seriousness?” Fran suddenly blurted out, chomping on her fingernails. “Who the heck died?”

  “Nance! Deal with this child, will you?” Stephen demanded, walking over to the fully stocked liquor cabinet and pouring himself a drink.

  “Fran honey, come sit down. Your father’s had a rough day. Paul, please have a seat,” Nancy cajoled, watching her children solely sit down.

  Paul Steele, the eldest of the children and the only boy was tall and outspoken and was just like his father in demeanor—and maybe a little worse—a soldier on R&R from active duty. “Is this gonna take long? I’ve gotta meet the guys at the club.”

  After a few long seconds of tormented silence, everyone was finally calm and collected. Gazing around at his family all looking up or straight at him now, Stephen placed down his glass of J&B before saying, “I was promoted again…Hartford Insurance is branching out to Los Angeles and is opening up a regional office there. We’re leaving for the west coast in a few months.”

  Francine’s heart sunk, “You mean for good?”

  Suzy closed her eyes, “Oh my God,” she said under her breath and hiding her face behind her hand.

  “Yes Francine, for good,” Stephen stated, stressed out beyond belief and maybe be more so now from the disapproval on all their faces.

  “In a few months?” Francine suddenly cried, on the verge of a panic, “In my last year of high school? Are you crazy?”

  Suzy started to cry now, small sobs quickly turned into a wail.

  Paul stepped into his sister. “What’s wrong with you?” He asked smiling and patting her gingerly on her shoulder. “So you have to move, what’s the big deal?”

  Suzy swatted his hand away, “It is…it is a big deal. You wouldn’t understand.”

  Francine went to console her sister as well, Suzy was crying uncontrollably now. “Don’t cry Suzy, I don’t want to move either.”

  Suzy abruptly walked over to a mirror and carefully removed one of her fake eyelashes. Mascara began running into her eyes and making them red. “Oh Fran, you wouldn’t understand either,” she said to her sister and then to the whole family. “You all wouldn’t understand.”

  Paul rolled his eyes, “Here we go again.”

  Suzy suddenly stiffened up. “Now I have something to say…something that I’ve wanted to tell all of you for a month now.”

  “What makes me think that I need to sit down for this?” Stephen callously stated.

  “Oh here we go again,” Paul let go unsympathetic. “Miss Connecticut…Miss Melodramatic.”

  “Shut up Paul! You don’t know everything!” Suzy cried, walking away from everyone. “You always think you’re so above it all!”

  Paul just laughed and adjusted his green military belt. “Well, usually I am.”

  “Just go back to your soldier buddies, no one’s gonna miss you—that’s for sure. I hope you step on a land mine and get blown up into a million pieces!”

  Nancy now stepped in, “Children! Now stop it.”

  Suzy wrapped her arms around her waist and stepped further away from her father. Nervous and afraid of him, she turned to look only at her mother. “Ray and I were going to elope this weekend,” she said, feeling her father’s dagger stare at the back of her neck. “I’m…three months pregnant.”

  Nancy put her hand over her mouth in disbelief. Paul started to snigger while Francine just stood there in shock, wide eyes also in doubt and then focused on Suzy’s slim midriff.

  Stephen was just plain mad. “God dammit! This is just what I needed to hear!”