Just Pru

by Anne Pfeffer

  “How come you changed your minds about coming?”

  Lloyd ignored my question. “Pru, come home with us now. It’s for the best, as you know.” In honor of our audience, my father made it sound like a friendly suggestion, not the bald order that it really was.

  “I am home. And I’m working now, so it’s not a good time to talk.” I clung to Blake and Ellen, trying to pretend that fear wasn’t flooding through me, making my legs feel like overcooked spaghetti.

  My dad took a step backward. I could tell he was trying to assess how to obtain the behavior he wanted from me— not if he could get it, but how to get it—and not how to convince me, but rather how to make me do it. My legs wobbled, seeing the expression on his face.

  “I need to speak with you privately,” he said.

  “I’m sorry, but I have to work right now.” I couldn’t stop my voice from trembling. “I’m not available until Monday. I told you not to come!”

  Locked in by my death grip on their arms, Blake and Ellen were giving me puzzled looks, but neither tried to move from my side.

  Lloyd’s eyes swept the three of us, his mind obviously calculating his next move. He gave us a pleasant smile. “We’ll talk later.” His eyes shot daggers of ice in my direction. In that moment, I knew he’d tricked me on the phone yesterday. He and Phyllis had never gone back to Clayton, never intended to.

  I quivered.

  “Lloyd….” My mom looked questioningly at him, then clamped her mouth into a thin, hard line. Without another word, they left.

  “Fuck.” Blake unwound himself from my grip and scratched his head. “That was weird.”

  Ellen still looked puzzled. “You weren’t very welcoming to them. Aren’t you afraid you hurt their feelings?”

  I was afraid, all right, but not about that. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “They’ll be back.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  From Pru’s Journal:

  My mother told me once that my dad had wanted to name me Obedience, but she had intervened. She later claimed she had been joking, but I’d always half-believed the story and amused myself by making up even worse names he could have chosen.

  Subservience. Diligence. Timidity.

  Each one, a bullet dodged.

  ##

  Ellen helped me with the mascara wand and brushed a little blush on my cheeks. I could tell her mind was a million miles away, on lighting and costumes and everything else that had to be ready for Opening Night two days from now. “You look great!” she said, barely glancing at me.

  I didn’t feel so great. Adam and I were leaving in fifteen minutes, at three o’clock, and I was jumping at every sound, convinced that Lloyd and Phyllis were hiding behind a door or monitoring me on listening devices implanted in the walls. I hadn’t seen or heard from them since they left the theater yesterday.

  Krista would arrive in a moment with a strapless bra and shoes for me to borrow. I had my sleeping bag, pillow, and toothbrush ready to go, along with a tee-shirt and shorts to sleep in.

  Maybe they’d left town. Maybe they planned to leave me alone. I could only hope.

  Ellen fastened a thin chain with a sparkly yellow stone around my throat. “This’ll look great with the neckline of that dress.”

  The door opened and Krista burst in. She handed me a pink scrap of lace which I deduced was meant to contain my breasts. Then some straps in shiny gold leather that I realized I was supposed to attach to my feet and walk around in.

  “Oh, and I met your folks, by the way.” Krista threw the remark at me over her shoulder.

  “What?” My heart began a thunderous pounding in my chest. "Where? Are they here?”

  “I ran into them by the mailboxes downstairs. They said they didn’t want to bother you, because you were busy. I told them you weren’t hurt in the fire, but you’d moved in with Ellen.” Krista faltered as she took in my pale, horrified face. “Is… is that okay?”

  “Omigosh. What else did they say?”

  “I told them they should come up, before you left for your date.” Krista looked baffled. “Don’t you ever talk to them?”

  I wheeled around. “Ellen, I’m not here! I’m gone and I won’t be back until tomorrow!” I grabbed the dress hanger, bra, and sandals in one hand, scooped up the sleeping bag with the other, and shot across the hall to Adam’s door, one ear craning for sounds of the elevator. Sure enough, it was groaning its way up to me, carrying the end to all my future happiness.

  “Adam!” I hissed, banging on his door. I heard the elevator doors open. A chill of panic shot through me. I pounded again.

  Footsteps in the hallway receded away from me, then started coming back in my direction. “Adam!” As his door opened, I plunged forward, tripping on the dress I was holding and falling to my hands and knees on his carpet.

  “Woah!” Adam helped me up, one hand on mine, the other under my elbow at first, then sliding around my waist as I came up next to him. It was just what had happened with Blake yesterday, yet it felt completely different. My face brushed his crisp, white shirtfront.

  A voice whispered in my ear. Look at me. I looked up, and our eyes met and locked, and his other arm went around me and tightened.

  “Shut the door,” I said.

  Wordlessly, he kicked it closed. For a few seconds, our lips were only an inch apart.

  “My parents are out there. They’re after me.”

  Adam whipped his hands off me. “What do you mean, they’re after you?”

  “They want to take me back to Oregon with them, but I don’t want to go.”

  Adam’s eyebrows creased. “So don’t go.”

  “They and I have a complicated relationship.”

  “Sounds like it.” He leaned down to pick up a pile of pink lace on the floor, then, realizing what it was, hastily handed it to me. “Why don’t you get ready in the bathroom?”

  Krista’s bra was not only strapless and too small, but specifically designed to push my boobs up and together. Worn with my own waist-high white cotton granny panties, it created the effect that two totally different girls were sharing the same body.

  The green dress went on, along with the gold, heeled sandals. It curved in at the middle, making my waist look small, and ended a few inches above my knee, showing off my calves and ankles. The neckline showed a fetching inch of cleavage—enough to be alluring but not sleazy, I thought, although my dad would have said, “A woman in that dress is just asking for it.” I hoped I was at least presentable and wouldn’t embarrass Adam in front of his clients.

  Clutching my hands together, I stepped out of the bathroom and found Adam in his bedroom, his back to me, doing his tie in the mirror. White shirt neatly tucked into perfect gray slacks, a thin black belt. I caught my breath and waited for him to turn around.

  He did, settling his collar. He wore a red tie with a small pattern on it, something subtle and classy. Sexy.

  “Hey!” He drew the word out, softly, openly admiring me. “You look phenomenal, Pru!”

  From outside came the sound of a distant knocking.

  “Shh!” I ran in a tiptoe to Adam’s door and listened. Another knock. On Ellen’s door. The murmur of voices. I could only hear snatches of words, but the low rumble of my dad’s voice was unmistakable, playing the sane cop to my mom’s deranged cop. “Hope you don’t mind our intrusion…”

  From the hallway, the piercing tones of my mother’s voice: “Prudence is exceptionally fragile. We should never have listened to her yesterday!”

  Poor Ellen. I heard her voice now and then, when it wasn’t being drowned out by my parents. I searched my memory for anything, any show or story or character that would give me some idea of what to do. But no writer had ever created the likes of Lloyd and Phyllis Anderson. They did not exist in the creative world. They existed only in the reality of my own blighted life.

  I couldn’t even look at Adam. Would he or Ellen ever speak to me again? They wouldn’t be the first potential friends that my folk
s had driven away.

  He had one eye at the peephole. “They’re gone,” he reported. “But go in the bedroom, just in case. I’ll get Ellen.”

  They were back in a minute. Ellen’s face held a combination of sympathy and horror. “I tried to talk to them.”

  “They’re a little over-protective. I’m so sorry, Ellen.”

  “It’s okay, but you’ve gotta get out of here. They went down to their car, but I’m afraid they might come back. I sent Krista to keep an eye out for them.”

  “Where are they parked?” Adam asked.

  “They said on the street in front of the building.”

  “We’ll go down the stairs to the parking garage. Ready, Pru?”

  We grabbed up our sleeping bags and rushed down the hall toward the stairway, which unfortunately required us to walk past the elevator. Hurrying along, we heard the groan and heave of the machinery, signaling the elevator car was arriving.

  As I came even with it, my foot pulled out of my sandal. Doomed! I bent down to snatch off the shoe just as the elevator doors opened in front of me.

  “Pru!”

  My life was over. Stricken, I looked up.

  It was Krista. She rushed out. “What are you doing here? They’re downstairs. They’re on their way up.”

  I pulled off the second shoe and took off. Adam and I hustled down the stairs to the parking level entrance, where I put my shoes back on and we caught our breath.

  “Ready?” Adam said again. His eyes sparkled with excitement. Could he possibly be having fun? I was about to have a coronary.

  We entered the parking garage, feeling safe at last, when I heard that piercing voice. “For pity’s sake, Lloyd, she locked it!”

  My parents were trying to get into my car. Although they’d never seen it, they had made me give them the make, model year, and license plate, so they could alert the authorities if I ever got carjacked or drove over a cliff.

  “Now she obeys us,” my dad complained.

  Adam put a finger to his lips. Hunched over, we moved silently behind a row of cars until we reached the exit ramp. “Wait here,” Adam whispered. “I’ll come for you.”

  He straightened up and walked to his car. I heard his footsteps, the thunk of the car door, the low rumble of the engine, and finally the sound of the car approaching. I started to breathe again.

  Then the voice of Phyllis Anderson. “Excuse me, sir!”

  Adam’s voice. “May I help you?”

  “Have you seen…”a couple of passing motorcycles on the street drowned out some of her words… “a big girl, kind of chunky, very quiet”…. “history of erratic behavior”…. “we’re extremely worried.”

  “No. I’ve seen nobody meeting that description. Good luck.” Adam moved on.

  The problem was, my parents were standing in the exit lane, watching Adam go. They had a clear view of his stopping next to a parked car for a brief second to let a passenger in. I leaped across the short space between the two cars, my face turned away from Mom and Dad, pulling the door shut behind me and ducking my head below the dashboard. Adam gunned it out of the building.

  “Do you think they recognized me?” I asked a minute later, finally sitting up.

  “I don’t know. Let’s get outta here.”

  With a bend of Adam’s wrist, his car swooped down the steep California Incline and onto Pacific Coast Highway. The ocean air touched my face like a velvet hand. The water shimmered, the palm trees swayed, and the blue sky stretched above us, seemingly forever.

  I had done it. I would have my turn as Cinderella. I settled back in the leather seat, letting the wind run riot through my hair.

  Adam turned to me, raising an eyebrow. “Do you like to go fast?”

  No one in the Anderson family ever went fast. Everyone knew most fatalities in car accidents came about when the driver was speeding.

  “I love it!”

  Adam pressed down on the accelerator, and our magic carriage shot forward.

  Chapter Twenty

  From Pru’s Journal:

  As you might expect, my parents never had “The Talk” with me. And I never had anyone around to tell me there was even supposed to be a talk or what questions to ask, until Count Blackstone and Fredericka came along. Thank heavens for cable TV! When they started lying naked together in bed—well, I knew there was something to all that. So I asked Dr. Abbot and he gave me an instructional manual, which I read until its pages fell out.

  ##

  It wasn’t fair. I was supposed to be in a state of bliss. Here I was at the ball with Prince Charming in what seemed like a real fairytale castle to me—a house on a bluff with a view of the coastline in both directions, two tennis courts, movie theater, and eight bedrooms, if I’d counted right. If that awful Lynelle in Marrying for Money hadn’t lived in a place just like it, I would never have believed it was actually someone’s home.

  My problem was that Lloyd and Phyllis were only a few miles away and on the hunt. What were they doing right now? Dusting my building for fingerprints? As Adam and I passed the pool with its floating candles and garlands of orchids, I wondered if they would keep insisting I go home with them to Clayton. How could I say no, with my money and housing on the verge of running out?

  Don’t think about it. You still have tonight.

  The wedding was over, and we were waiting to sit down for dinner. The scent of white roses had teamed up with the rich appetizers and tones of flute and violin to create a severe case of sensory overload.

  “How do you know these people?” I stood next to a fountain that gushed margaritas, trying to act like I did this every day and wishing I could relax and have fun.

  “I don’t know anyone except the bride’s parents. They’re my clients and neighbors,” Adam said. “My house isn’t like this one, though,” he warned me.

  “In Clayton, all of our houses are like this. Except we have bigger pools.” I began filling a goblet the size of my head with margaritas from the fountain. “Maybe I shouldn’t drink this whole thing.”

  “We’ll share it.” Adam put his hand on the small of my back to guide me to our table, where we found our names on place cards. Gallantly, he lint-rolled the seat of my chair before I sat down. “I’m glad you came with me,” he said in my ear.

  “Me too.”

  He wiped off an empty water glass with a napkin, then poured part of the margarita from my glass into his. We sat sipping our drinks. Having talked earlier with his client, the father of the bride, Adam had done his duty for the evening. Around us, people in swanky suits and cocktail dresses called out greetings, gossiped, and joked, but, not knowing any of them, we focused on each other.

  I liked the way he looked at me, as if I were pretty and desirable. As if I were the only person in the room. And I liked looking at him too: the dark brown of his eyes, the just-right shape of his lips, and the cute way he became increasingly rumpled as the evening went on, his tie loosening, his hair curling down onto his shirt collar. Sitting with him in our own quiet bubble, I was starting to feel a whole lot better.

  He put his hand over mine, on the stem of the goblet. “Pru? Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “What’s the deal with your parents? Why’d you run away from them like that?”

  Why did an antelope run from a lion? “Because they want to take me home and force me to live with them until death do us part.” I moved the giant goblet so a waiter could put down my dinner plate.

  He looked puzzled. “Why not just say no? They can’t make you do anything.”

  “Adam, I have less than four hundred dollars to my name, no job, no real work experience, and nowhere to live.”

  “So? That was me right out of college. You just start slow.”

  “But I’m not good at anything. I can’t do anything.”

  “Who told you that?”

  Who indeed? “You’re not eating your swordfish,” I said.

  “I’m wishing I’d chosen th
e prime rib.”

  “I’ll share mine with you.” I cut him a big piece of my untouched dinner.

  A band began to play. Two older couples at our table who had arrived together now stood up simultaneously, the two women in the group already starting to swing their hips back and forth. “Ready to rumba?” one of them said.

  We watched them leave. “Dance with me,” Adam said.

  I had no idea how to dance and didn’t care. The band played a slow, pretty song. Adam drew me close to him, one hand holding mine, the other arm around my body.

  I had to clear something up. I put my head back so I could look into his face. “What about Ellen? Do you still like her?”

  He brushed a strand of curls behind my ear. “Ellen’s great, but, no. I think my interest in her has passed.”

  “I never could see the two of you together anyway.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Why not?”

  “You’re too much alike. You’re both nurturers. You need to take care of others.” It was obvious, and it was also the only way I could explain why these two wonderful people both liked me, the ultimate bird with a broken wing.

  A whole series of emotions flashed across his face, but all he said was, “Interesting.” He drew me close.

  So many new sensations and experiences. My cheek, pressed against the cotton shirt that stretched across his chest. The in and out of his breathing. Our legs brushing together as we moved on the dance floor. All had aphrodisiac qualities that no TV show could ever offer.

  The music transitioned into something fast. Adam and I stopped moving, but stayed together, unwilling to let each other go. He looked down at me. “You wanna go home?”

  “Yes.” I did.

  ##

  “The place is basically done, and it’s been cleaned,” Adam told me. “But it’s empty.” He stepped into the house and flipped on a light. Pale hardwood floors stretched away from us down a hallway and into a dark room on the left. “Close your eyes,” he said.

  This gave me an excuse to hold on to him as tightly as possible as he navigated me forward and through what seemed to be a sliding glass door, his arm around my waist. When we stopped, we could have let go of each other, but neither of us did.