by L. Langdon
She thought again about Sven’s question. How long did her commitment last? Maybe that was a way out of this… “I’ll write her and tell her that I made a mistake—that I can’t keep that promise.”
Sven’s eyebrows rose and a smile creased his face. “Wonderful! Until then…” He said what he knew that he must. “Until then, I guess the promise will still be in force.”
She smiled ruefully. “I suppose it must be.”
He grinned. “We’ll survive it.” He felt like doing cartwheels even with the residual soreness from yesterday. Then he saw the loophole. “When do you propose to write this letter?”
Gerri considered that. Her impulse was to say ‘today.’ But she thought again. This would be a hard letter to write—and a hard letter for her mother to read. She scrunched up her face. “After Christmas. I don’t want to spoil her holiday.”
To her infinite relief, Sven nodded his approval. “OK.” Then he stood and reached out his arms. “Can friends get hugs?”
His embrace practically took her breath away, but she didn’t want it to end. She could feel his groan of satisfaction vibrating through her torso. But even as she basked in the comfort of Sven’s arms, she couldn’t stop thinking about her mother and her fears. Olivia was a wise woman, not given to frivolous concerns. And Gerri had to admit that those fears had some basis.
As much as she wanted to stop thinking and enjoy Sven’s touch, she wanted even more to avoid leading him on.
“Sven?” She leaned her head back and gave him an imploring look. “One more thing: No talk about marriage—I’m not ready for that.” South Carolina’s not ready for that and I don’t want to be an exile!
Chapter 39
Mindy looked up from the book she was reading and smiled as Gerri came through the door. “Well, well, look who’s finally back. Is everything OK?”
“He’s OK. He was pretty exhausted and pretty chilled. But he’s OK.”
“You stayed all night. Does that mean—as I believe the male chauvinist pigs say—that you got lucky?” Mindy wiggled her eyebrows.
Gerri had to laugh at the expression on Mindy’s face. “No, not like that. But he’s safe and that’ll do for now.” She summarized the events of the last twelve hours, omitting only her discussion with Sven about their relationship.
Mindy’s eyes were wide by the time Gerri finished. “That’s so scary. I can’t imagine being out in a boat in this weather.” She shook herself as if she felt a cold wind.
“So tell me about your morning. I’ve been dying to hear about it.”
“It was wonderful.” Seeing Gerri’s eyebrows rise, Mindy grinned. “And no, I didn’t get lucky either, in case you have a dirty mind.”
“Nobody gave you a hard time?”
“Hardly anybody even saw us until we were almost done. One guy that I knew in high school came as we were leaving and he waved, but that was it.”
“And the lessons went well?”
“They were great. Every time John lost his balance, he had to hold on to me.” She paused with a smug look. “He lost his balance a lot. Even better, I think he was faking it—at least some of the time.”
Gerri just rolled her eyes.
“I’ve got an idea for our next activity—and it involves you.”
Gerri eyed her warily. “Involves me doing what?”
Mindy opened her mouth, and then seemed to reconsider. “Let me tell you later. I want to build up to it.” Then, she switched subjects completely. “Not to be nosy, but what is your relationship with Sven? Friend? Loyal employee?” Her expression turned sly. “Or lover?”
It had been too much to hope for that Gerri could avoid this subject. It had been abstractly embarrassing to talk to Mindy about a skeleton in black peoples’ closets—color consciousness. But this was worse because it was personal. She would be admitting her own foolishness in making the promise. But Mindy had been good to her, and Gerri owed her honesty.
She reluctantly recounted that story, from the misunderstanding in South Carolina to her ill-conceived promise to her mother. When she finished, she waited for a scornful comment.
But all she saw was a sympathetic smile. “Your mother sounds like a forceful person.”
Gerri rolled her eyes. “She can be.”
“And you try to be the good girl and please her.”
Gerri looked at her ruefully. “Am I so transparent?”
“Don’t feel bad. My mother wrote the book on forceful, domineering, or whatever you want to call it. I’ve made more than one promise to my mother that I later regretted. I tried to be the good girl, too. Laura didn’t have to, of course—she was the glamorous one.”
“Tell that to John, ‘Grace Kelly,’ and see if he believes you.” Gerri was happy to see Mindy brighten up immediately.
Just the same, from this and other comments, Gerri had begun to believe that Mindy’s childhood was less than ideal. She asked cautiously, “Do your parents still live in Juneau?”
“Yes, and we’re on good terms.” Mindy paused briefly. “But I don’t see them that often. When I do, there are certain topics that are tacitly agreed to be off limits. And I’ve learned not to make promises anymore.”
Gerri nodded. She really didn’t want to go further on that subject.
“Well,” Mindy returned to the subject. “What are you going to do about Sven?”
“Nothing, for right now.”
The disapproval that she had expected earlier was now plain on Mindy’s face. “Is that what Sven wants?”
“Actually, yes. He doesn’t want me to break my promise casually. We agreed that I will write a letter after Christmas cancelling the promise and apologizing. He said that I’ll feel better if I do it that way.” She watched Mindy’s face carefully as she added, “I guess he remembers—and regrets—some mistakes he made with Laura and with his parents.”
A wistful expression appeared on Mindy’s face. “Who knows? And I guess Laura made mistakes as well. She could be pretty disagreeable when she didn’t get her way.” She trailed into silence.
Gerri could guess at her unhappy thoughts and tried to figure out a graceful way to move the conversation off this topic. That proved unnecessary as Mindy spoke up again. “So you two are just friends?”
“For now.”
Mindy smiled as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. “Just like John and me. Or worse. We’re a messed up pair, aren’t we?”
Gerri smiled wryly and shrugged. Not for long, I hope…
Mindy leaned forward in her seat and grinned. “Here’s my plan for our next activity. And it’ll help you, too. Both couples want to be together in innocent situations. So…” She slapped her hands on her knees. She was, Gerri noted, in full salesmanship mode. “The hospital is putting on an amateur hour Christmas show for the patients. What do you say the four of us sing some carols in the show?”
“Including Sven?”
“Yes, all four… Oh.” She acknowledged Gerri’s subtext with a nod. “I’ve been working on that. The more I open my mind, the more I remember what was decent about him. Neither he nor Laura was ready for the situation they found themselves in… I guess he wasn’t really a villain—though you’ll never get my mother to think that.” She laughed nervously. “But I don’t want to talk about that now. What do you think about my idea? It gives us an excuse to get together. Not only for the performance, but for the practices. Of course,” she made a face, “I’ve heard your voice. You’ll make the rest of us look bad, but who cares?”
___
The next day, Gerri broached the subject while Sven was washing the dishes in his kitchen after a Gerri-cooked meal. She had offered to cook for him occasionally because she couldn’t bear to think of his eating his own cooking. More importantly, it was a means for them to innocently spend time together. She leaned against the kitchen counter as she spoke, watching his face carefully to gauge his reaction.
Sven was skeptical at first. “Why would Mindy be interested in
singing Christmas carols? I never heard of her doing that before.”
Gerri could see his distrust. Much as she regretted it, rapprochement was going to be a gradual process for both him and Mindy. Crossing her fingers and hoping that Mindy didn’t feel betrayed, she decided to share Mindy’s real reason. If Sven was upset by Mindy and John’s pairing, well, Gerri would be hurt—but at least she would have learned something important about Sven. If Mindy was upset that Gerri had told Sven, well, it was for a good cause.
“Mindy and John are interested in each other. They want excuses to be seen together in innocent contexts. They don’t want to flaunt their romance.”
She waited anxiously for Sven’s reaction—any reaction—but he just continued washing with a distant look in his eye. Finally he spoke. “Wow.”
Her heart plummeted. “Do you think it will cause a scandal?”
His eyes snapped back to hers. “Huh? I don’t think so. I hope not.”
“Then, why did you say ‘wow?’”
Now he hesitated briefly and then smiled. “Mindy is, let’s say, feisty. You’ve figured that out by now and, heaven knows, I’ve been on the sharp end of her temper for years.
“I’ve only met Dr. Wheeler a few times, but I get the impression that he has that doctor thing going: once he makes a decision it’s ‘I know best. Just do it my way and you’ll see.’”
“Well… They seem to have chemistry when they’re together.”
He chuckled. “I don’t doubt it. I only hope that it’s not the kind that blows up the chem lab.” Then he looked at Gerri thoughtfully. “Anyway, I wish them the best. I think that they might be being too cautious, but…”
Gerri found his insouciance a bit grating. “Cautiousness is reasonable. A black man chasing a white woman is one of the biggest fears for the bigots, after all. People have gotten killed because of the barest suspicion.”
“Emmett Till.”
“You heard about that even up here?”
Sven smiled ironically. “We have newspapers, even here.” While Gerri was trying to decide whether she should apologize—she didn’t want to—he added, “But you’re right. I didn’t hear about it at the time. That was before I started reading newspapers. I was pretty young.” Sven was loathe to admit it, but he had actually not heard of Emmett Till until recently, when he had undertaken his reading project in black history after Gerri had left at the end of the summer. Maybe someday, when he had learned enough about black history so that he needn’t be embarrassed, he would tell her—but not yet.
Gerri’s anger evaporated; now she was just curious. “You didn’t hear it when the TV news was on?”
He chuckled. “We didn’t even have TV until 1957.”
She could empathize. “My family didn’t get a TV until just a few years ago either.”
He looked amused and shook his head. “No, I mean that Juneau didn’t get TV until 1957. The whole town. I remember when they were building and testing the TV station. People would even watch the test pattern.”
Gerri was momentarily speechless. She couldn’t remember a time when there wasn’t TV in her town—at least for those who could afford a set.
Sven brought her back to the present. “Do you think that we need to be similarly careful?”
Gerri considered this for a few seconds. “I think we should be, umm, discrete. A teacher is a role model, after all. But I don’t think that we would be a lightning rod to the extent that they might. They’re such a stereotype—the beautiful blond and the black man.”
Sven turned and looked at her thoughtfully. Gerri tried to read his expression but couldn’t. “You do think she’s beautiful, don’t you?” Abruptly, she realized her mistake. John’s words came back to her. Laura was ‘Jayne Mansfield’ and ‘a lot of people like her.’ Will I ever be out of Laura’s shadow? She blurted, “I forgot. Laura is your standard of beauty, isn’t she?”
Sven looked annoyed. He wiped his hands on a towel as he spoke. “Yes, I agree that Mindy is a pretty girl. And no, Laura is not my standard of beauty. In high school, I guess you could say that she was my standard of a lust object. And that of many of the other high school boys. But now…”
He dropped the towel on the counter and rested his hands on either side of her, pinning her. “Now, you’re my standard of beauty. If you don’t know that, I’ll just have to keep telling you. Or find some other way to convince you.” He leaned forward, looking at her mouth.
Gerri’s heart was racing. She wanted this more than anything. But she had achieved a certain comfort with the notion that she would honor her promise until she was able to disavow it. “Sven,” she squeaked—she wouldn’t let herself look at his lips, “You said that we should wait until I wrote my mother.”
“I lied,” he said huskily.
“No, you didn’t.” She found the strength to put her hands on his chest, pushing gently. “And I think you were correct. We’ll both feel better for it.”
He took a deep, shuddering breath and straightened up. “You’re right, of course. I said we could do it—but I never said it would be easy.”
Before he could change his mind, he turned back to the sink. “Of course, I’ll sing with you,” he said briskly. “I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t expect me to have a talented voice.”
There was the problem of practice. They just couldn’t go in cold. Finding a place to practice was a problem—both Mindy and John had apartments and the noise of their practices, however well-intentioned, would be a problem. Gerri hit upon the obvious solution, but had to convince Sven. She broached the idea during her next visit.
“How about practicing at your place? You don’t have any close neighbors.”
She could tell that he was none too pleased. She glanced around his living room. He couldn’t possibly think that it was not presentable. For a house that he had largely built himself, it was very attractive and very welcoming. And he kept it neat—she supposed that was his nautical influence. One of the first things he had told her on the Glacier Gal was that everything must be secured.
She ran through the house in her mind. She had gotten the tour that she had missed that first night when she cooked him his first dinner there. When she got to his studio, she knew she had found the problem. “You can keep the door of your studio closed. They don’t have to find out about your painting.”
Sven made a face and looked around. Gerri followed his eyes to one of his paintings hanging in the living room itself. “We can move that when they come if you want. But it wouldn’t be that surprising that you might buy a Hush painting.”
Once he had agreed, the practices became a regular event. Gerri played the hostess in addition to her role in the group. She liked that. It made her wish that the world were simpler and that she could play that role for real.
___
The day of their performance, Gerri was surprised to realize that she had butterflies in her stomach. The audience was smaller than at her college choir performances and the setting was informal. But somehow, there was more at stake here. She needn’t have worried. Their part in the amateur hour show was well-received. It made her realize how much she had missed singing.
After their performance, they returned to Sven’s house to celebrate. Gerri watched with a smile as Mindy tumbled out of the car and hurried up to the front door. They were all in high spirits.
Every bit as satisfying to her was seeing Sven and Mindy become more and more comfortable with each other. The anecdotes that Mindy was increasingly willing to share suggested that they had once been fast friends.
“Come on, everybody,” Mindy shouted from the porch.
“The door’s unlocked. Go on in.” Gerri turned back to Sven.
Sven gazed at her, transfixed. Gerri wore an expectant smile and her hair was dusted lightly with snow. She looked adorable. And he couldn’t get her voice out of his mind—he would never get tired of listening to her sing.
When she saw him staring at her intently, with a g
host of a smile, her heart accelerated. She had an incredible urge to jump on top of him, throwing him to the snow—just to be in his arms. Probably not a good idea—they would have an audience in a few seconds, if they didn’t already. She tried to distract herself. “Sven, you sounded very nice tonight.”
He laughed. “I’m glad to hear you say that.”
“You were worried?”
“Nah, I know my limitations. I’m glad that you’re blinded enough by my charms to think that, though.” With that, he grinned and closed the gap between them. Then he tilted up her chin and, slowly and thoroughly kissed her. Gerri didn’t even pretend that this was just a friendly kiss. She threw her arms around him and held on. It was Sven who regained his willpower first. “We’d better get inside or we’ll be out here for a long time.”
After the four of them were settled in and had toasted their success—sparkling cider in deference to the non-drinkers, Sven and Gerri—they sat and rehashed their performance.
“I got several compliments on my singing,” Mindy said. “You must have gotten more than that, Gerri.”
Gerri shrugged. “A few. What I especially liked though were the compliments on how well we sang together.”
“They were right. We did sing well together. Of course, you two girls…uh, ladies…were carrying us guys.” John smiled fondly at Mindy as he spoke.
“Sven, what were those children saying to you at the end?” Gerri had been curious at the time, but she had been too far away to eavesdrop.
“They liked ‘Deck Us All with Boston Charlie’ and they wanted to know if there were more verses. I promised to give them copies of the lyrics.” He grinned at Gerri. “I had to tell them that I didn’t write it. But I also explained that you arranged it. They were impressed.”
“Then they were easily impressed,” Gerri said, shaking her head. That had been an inspired idea on Sven’s part. These were children who had been in the hospital for a while, and who would likely spend Christmas there. Sven had suggested that a steady stream of sentimental songs could sadden them by reminding them of what they were missing.
