The Bride’s House

by Sandra Dallas

  For a time, Will watched the fireworks, but as those things went, it was not much of a display and he had seen better, so he turned to watch Nealie, who broke into cries of delight at each flash. Whenever she glanced at him, he was looking at her, and finally, she asked, “Don’t you like watching the fireworks?”

  “I like watching you better,” he said.

  Nealie felt her face get warm. It was hot under the blanket, and Will’s hands were hot as he touched her. She wished for a glass of lemonade or even water from Clear Creek, but she didn’t want to move away from Will. His touch pleasured her. The fireworks ended in a grand explosion of gunfire and light, and Nealie gave a great sigh of disappointment. “I won’t see them for another year,” she said. “Or maybe never.” She lay back on the ground and looked up at the sky, which was as dark as Egypt now. “There never was a thing so pretty.”

  “Except for you,” Will said. Nealie sucked in her breath at the words. Will began unfastening the brass buttons of her dress then, murmuring as he did so how soft she was and did she know she drove him to distraction and had ever since the first day he saw her? He said he couldn’t stop himself.

  Nealie knew she ought not to let him touch her like that, should kick him the way she had her pa the times he’d come into the barn and grabbed at her. But she didn’t want to. Will’s words and his hands made her feel good, and besides, she trusted him not to do anything wrong. He’d said she could trust him. But in the end, she couldn’t. He pushed up her skirt until it was bunched around her waist and gently moved her legs apart. Then he was on top of her, loving her the way married people loved each other, and she was wild with happiness.

  When the thing was done, Will held Nealie close. She touched his cheek and felt tears and knew there were tears on her own face. She wanted him to say he loved her. But he did not, and although she’d had little experience with men, she knew from the stories in the magazines that words about love came hard to them, and she decided it was enough that he had shown he loved her.

  They went to sleep then, lying together under the trees, and the girl slept a long time. When she awoke, she was confused at first, not sure where she was. She thought she heard the sound of water in the creek, but it was only the wind in the trees, and she remembered they had made love and then gone to sleep under the pines. Will lay with his back to her, and Nealie wanted to reach out and touch him, but she didn’t care to waken him. She couldn’t tell the time but thought it must be very late, because the town was quiet. She remembered that she had to make breakfast for the boarders and pack their lunches, and she slipped from under the blanket and straightened her dress.

  She walked quickly down Alpine Street, which was deserted except for a man asleep on the grass, snoring. Under the gaslights, the street looked tawdry, with bottles and broken glasses strewn about. Flags and bunting had been ripped down and lay in the street, crushed and torn by dirty boots, and the walks were littered with bits of food and paper. As she turned the corner onto Rose Street, a man sitting in a doorway called, “Let’s you and me have a drink, Katy.” He didn’t reach for her. In fact, the effort of speaking was too much for him, and he slumped against the door frame. But Nealie jumped off the boardwalk into the dust of the street, catching her dress with her heel and tearing out the hem. She lifted her skirts and fled down the dark street.

  Nealie had gone through the gate and come up onto the porch of the boardinghouse before she realized someone was sitting on the bench. A drunk, probably, a man who had celebrated too hard and hadn’t made it home, she thought, hoping she could slide past him. The house was not locked. They never locked it. So she wouldn’t have to fumble with a key, only slip inside and bolt the door, because she didn’t want the man stumbling in when morning came, asking for coffee or would she fix him breakfast?

  But the man was not a drunk, and he was not asleep. “Miss Nealie?” Charlie Dumas’s voice was tired and filled with sadness. Nealie had never heard a voice so sad.

  The girl wished for all the world, then, that she were alone, for she was caught up in the night before and wanted a little time yet to recall the words Will had said, the thing they’d done together. She wanted to be glad for it, and now there was Charlie Dumas, looking at her in a strange way. He had no right. Suddenly, she felt shame that he saw her like that, her dress torn and half buttoned, her hair down around her face. He made her happiness seem cheap, and she hated Charlie for making her feel that way. Would he know what she’d done? Nealie wondered, and the wondering made her angry. Charlie had no right to intrude, no right to sit on her porch all night, waiting for her, watching out for her the way he’d done. She’d never asked him to. She mustered her anger and said, “Mr. Dumas, you ought not to be here.”

  “And you ought not…” He couldn’t seem to say the rest and gave a great sigh and was silent.

  “You bemean me, waiting for me like this.”

  “You bemean yourself, Miss Nealie.”

  “I don’t know what you say. I’ve been celebrating Independence Day.”

  “It’s been a long time over.”

  “Then I best look to breakfast for the boarders.”

  “Miss Nealie…”

  But she would not have him talking. The girl wanted him to leave, wanted it in the worst way. She thought about ordering him away from the boardinghouse—and out of her life. She hadn’t asked him to come around courting her, hadn’t wanted it at all. Why, she’d tried to be easy with him when he’d asked her to marry him, not hurting his feelings. Instead, she should have said no, she’d never be his wife, no more than she’d marry the drunk who had called her Katy and asked her to take a drink. Nealie wanted Charlie to go before he spoiled the thing that had happened between Will and her. “Go home, Mr. Dumas,” she said.

  “Don’t be doing that, Miss Nealie.”

  She did not ask what. She was afraid he knew. Instead, she said, “What I do’s not your business. Go kill your own snakes, Mr. Dumas.”

  The big man slowly rose from the bench. “I was waiting for you. I brought you the prize.” He held out a medal in his hand, but Nealie didn’t take it, didn’t care to have it. He sighed deeply. “You won’t stop me saying it. I wanted to marry you, Miss Nealie, wanted it in the worst way there is. I’d have taken care of you, made you proud to be my wife. I guess you didn’t want that, and now I don’t want it, either. You’ve spoiled yourself for a husband. There it is.”

  “Git, you!” the girl said, stomping her foot. “I wouldn’t have you if you were strung with solid gold nuggets.”

  Charlie stepped heavily off the porch. “Don’t be doing that. He’ll treat you pretty rotten, and he won’t marry you.”

  Nealie turned her back on the man, rushing inside the house and slamming the door. Everything had been so magical at night, but now morning was coming on, and Nealie wondered if the thing would seem cheap and dirty in the light. She blamed Charlie Dumas.

  CHAPTER 5

  THE SUMMER PASSED ALONG. TO Nealie’s surprise, Charlie continued to take his meals at the boardinghouse. She’d thought that after what had happened between them, he would go elsewhere, and she had hoped he would, because seeing him every day was a raw spot in her happiness. Every time Nealie looked at him, she remembered his words and felt her cheeks grow hot with his reproach. But as Mrs. Travers had observed, Charlie was a sticker—a sticker for the boardinghouse, if not for Nealie. He wasn’t the same, however. Charlie no longer arrived early for supper, joking with Nealie and offering to help. Instead, he came into the dining room just as the men sat down at the table. He didn’t banter with the others the way he used to or hang around after the meal, hoping to catch Nealie alone. In fact, he ignored Nealie, not even asking could he have more gravy or another slice of bread. And he left as soon as dessert was finished. When she did catch Charlie’s eye, Nealie turned away quickly, because there was always the look of reproach on his face.

  The other boarders, who were there to eat, not to talk, didn’t pay much
attention at first, and when they did realize that Charlie no longer teased Nealie or watched her with glowing eyes, they did not remark on it. Most were not comfortable with women themselves, and they had marveled at the ease with which Charlie had courted the girl. Besides, Charlie was a favorite, and if the men perceived hurt, they did not want to add to it. Will, too, was quiet when Charlie was at the table. Another man might have gloated, asking Nealie in front of the others would she accompany him to the theater or had she had a good time the night before at the band concert, but Will did not, and Nealie loved him the more for his sensitivity.

  * * *

  Mrs. Travers had returned to the boardinghouse after several days of nursing, telling Nealie how the woman whose toes had been severed had died, cursing her husband for a brute. “Those two were so spiteful, they didn’t know what to do with theyself,” she said. She saw the way things stood between Nealie and Charlie. So as the two women washed dishes that evening, she asked the girl, “Did you fall out with Mr. Dumas?”

  “I said I meant not to marry him. I told him it was no use and to give it up, for I don’t care a button for him. It discomforts me to have him around.” Nealie would not look at the older woman and wiped a plate so long that it was a wonder she didn’t wipe off the glaze.

  “I worry you exaultify Mr. Spaulding,” Mrs. Travers said. “I hope you didn’t make a mistake.”

  Nealie rubbed the plate even harder, because she believed the woman was talking about the thing she’d done with Will—she never put a name to it but always thought of it as “the thing.” But then she realized that Mrs. Travers meant turning down Charlie, and the girl said she hadn’t made a mistake, that it was only right not to let the man carry on the way he had when she meant never to marry him.

  Nealie was even quieter around the boarders now, never looking at Will except to ask, “Would you have another chop?” or “Shall I hotten your coffee?” But when she and Will were together, just the two of them, she grew lively, chattering about the flowers that grew wild in the mountain sun and the birds, as muted as scraps in a faded quilt. Every new thing delighted her, because she had no reference beyond the farm in Missouri. Will explained to her about ore and how an ordinary rock might have streaks in it that meant it was rich in gold and silver, but that a rock that sparkled might be only fool’s gold. He told her how the miners blasted deep in the earth to extract the ore, drawing pictures in the dirt with a stick, and explained how the mills worked, crushing the ore and extracting the precious metal. Nealie said again she wished she could go underground, but Will told her no. He’d inquired about it, he said, and the men refused to allow a woman in the mine. If there were an accident later on, they would blame her. Nealie, taken with superstitions herself, never wondered if Will simply did not want her to go into the mine.

  They were seen together in Georgetown less often now. Will still took her to the theater and the Hotel de Paris dining room, but he said he preferred to be alone with her. So they hiked far from Georgetown, sometimes coming together hurriedly in the upper meadows near timberline. More often, they went to Will’s cottage, and he laid her on the bed in the dark room where there was no chance someone would come on them unexpectedly.

  Will was generous. He gave her the shawl, a bright rose one swirling with pattern like a Persian carpet. Another time, he presented her with a bottle of perfume, a tiny green crescent of a bottle with a stopper of blue enamel and silver. After Nealie doused herself with the rose scent, Will explained she should put only a tiny dab of perfume behind her ears and on her wrists, and Nealie never again made that mistake. He gave her chocolate drops, each one wrapped in a piece of paper, and combs for her hair, and a gold pin with a ruby in it. When fall came, he presented her with another shawl, this one of heavy wool to keep out the winter cold.

  Will taught her about manners, because he delighted in instructing her in new things, as if she herself were a piece of ore that needed refining, and she learned more than how to hold a knife and fork. She waited now for Will to open doors for her or help her with her shawl, and she took his arm and walked on the storefront side of the boardwalk so that the wagons wouldn’t splash mud on her. Will remarked once that she would look more fashionable in a dove-gray dress instead of the green. The gray would bring out the color in her hair. Ladies wore gray, he said, and Nealie bought the yard goods for a new outfit. She wanted to be a lady, although when the two of them were alone, Will did not care for her to act like one. Sometimes when they had been wild and the thing was over, he would hold her close and tell her he cared for her, calling her “dear” and “sweetheart.” Once he even said he loved her, and that was enough. He did not need to say it again, although Nealie wished he would.

  The summer was done, and the leaves on the aspen trees were turning scarlet and bright gold when Nealie knew she was pregnant. It came to her when she was pegging the wash on the line, standing in the backyard of the boardinghouse on the platform, built high with steps leading to the top, so that a woman would not have to stand in the snow in winter to hang the laundry. The girl felt a turning in her stomach, and she counted backward, scared a little at first, then foolish with happiness. There was no friend in whom she could confide except for Mrs. Travers, and Nealie did not want to tell the woman, not until things were settled between Will and her, so she remained shut-mouthed.

  Nealie did not tell Will, either, not at first. Instead, she teased him along, making sure he cared for her. “I wish this would go on forever,” she told him, as she lay beside him on his bed, the branches of a pine swaying in the wind and knocking against the house. She could see through the window into the yard, where a shower of dead leaves floated to the ground.

  “I’d like nothing better,” he replied.

  Another time, she said, “I wonder what we’ll be like when we’re old.”

  “I don’t believe you’ll grow old. You’ll always be as pretty as you are now. You’ll always be seventeen to me.”

  “But everybody grows old.” Nealie had loosed her hair, and she sat on a stump in a clearing at timberline braiding it. The cold had come on, and they could no longer lie on the long grass in the high mountains.

  “Then we’ll just have to wait and see.” The remark thrilled her, because it meant that Will intended to spend his life with her.

  Still, she waited another two weeks, just to be sure, although by then, the waistband of her skirt was tight, and sometimes in the morning, her stomach was upset. When the second of the two weeks had passed, it was time, she thought. She couldn’t wait longer.

  By then, it was October, and the warmth had gone out of the mountains. Nealie told him on an afternoon when the two had tramped through the trees and stopped at a place where early snow lay on the ground. Nealie had hoped to go higher, because the air hung in the valley, smoky and gray, and she wanted to go above it, to the sun. But Will had called a halt, saying the snow would be deeper higher up. So she sat on a log, forming the words she would say to Will, savoring the moment he would take her in his arms and tell her how happy he was.

  Before the girl could speak, Will walked a little away and looked out across the valley, which was in shadow. “I will always remember this, sweetheart. I have been happiest here,” he said. He turned and faced her. “My grandfather wants me to go back to school at the first of the year. I don’t want to, but I can’t tell him no.”

  Nealie stared at him. She had never considered that Will would leave Georgetown. She loved the place, the mountains and the bright sunlight. In her mind, the two of them would live there forever, in his little cottage or maybe even the bride’s house. But it came on her that it might be best if they moved away. They would marry quietly and go back to where Will had come from, and nobody would know the baby had been made before the ceremony.

  “There’s something to tell you,” she said. She was shy and looked down. Seeing a hole in her stocking, she picked at it with her fingernail.

  Will did not hear her. “I will never lik
e a place as well as this,” he said. “I told my grandfather I am learning more on the job than I would in a classroom, but he doesn’t agree. He’s stubborn and won’t allow that I might be right. He made plans for me when I was just a boy, and I think he’d cut me off if I didn’t follow through with them.”

  “Will,” she said.

  “You know I don’t want to go. You know it, don’t you?”

  “There’s something needs telling,” Nealie said, standing up and going to him, putting her arms around him and laying her head against his back. She opened her mouth, but she did not know how to tell him, and at first the words wouldn’t come. Then she said quickly, “I’m going to have a baby.”

  Will stiffened under her arms, then drew away and turned to look at the girl. “What?”

  “A baby.”

  His eyes were wide. “But you can’t.”

  “Well, I can. It will come in the spring.” Nealie waited for Will to hold her then, to tell her he was glad.

  “Oh my God,” Will said instead, turning his back on the girl. He smashed his right fist into the palm of his left hand. “Didn’t you know how to…? No, of course, you didn’t. What a mess I’ve made!” He shook his head back and forth. “Can you get rid of it?”

  “What?” Nealie asked, bewildered.

  “The baby, do you know how to get rid of it?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Maybe Mrs. Travers knows.”

  Nealie began to shake and grabbed the bony white trunk of an aspen tree to steady herself. This was not what she’d planned. Then the ghastly thought came to her that Will might think the baby was Charlie’s. “It’s our baby.”

  “Oh, I know that,” Will said softly. Then he grabbed her arms and shook her. “You can’t have a baby, Nealie.”

  When he let loose of her, Nealie put her hand on Will’s cheek. “It’s all right. I have it figured out. We can go to Denver and get married and say we were married in the summer but kept it a secret. You see, it will be fine. Nobody will know, even your grandfather. You can tell him the wedding was in July. Maybe he’ll let you stay on here. We could live in the bride’s house.” She held her breath, hoping Will wouldn’t think she was telling him how to spend his money. But he loved the house as much as she did.