Here to Stay (6 page)

Kennedy seemed to read the panic in Sissy’s eyes. “Yes. Go sit down, Mother. That’s your job right now.”

“Sissy, we’re all so happy for you.”

But Heloise Atherton didn’t sound happy. To Sissy’s ears, she sounded threatening. Two days earlier, Sissy had dared to tell her mother she was having second thoughts about Clark.

Her mother had told her firmly that such feelings were natural and Sissy should ignore them.

Now Kennedy told their mother, “Mom, please go sit down. The procession can’t begin while the mother of the bride is back here.”

Sissy relaxed slightly.
Kennedy knows I’m freaked.

With obvious reluctance and a phony embrace, her mother declared, “The next time I hug you, you’ll be Mrs. Clark Treffinger-Hart!” She then left the little room, failing to shut the door behind her.

Kennedy pushed it shut. “Are you all right?”

Sissy shook her head. “Kennedy, I can’t do this.” She wasn’t going to tell her sister that three nights earlier she had made love—well, had sexual intercourse—with Clark in his room in the house where he’d grown up, creeping back to her guest room afterward. Last night she had stayed with Gerry and Kennedy in their big brick Colonial-style house so that Clark would not see her the morning of the wedding. Sissy had hated being intimate with Clark, feeling frozen, realizing the whole time she didn’t want to be doing this.
I definitely don’t want to do this for the rest of my life with this man.

Kennedy gazed into Sissy’s eyes. “You mean that, don’t you?”

“Everyone’s going to hate me. I’m so sorry!”

“No,” Kennedy said. “You never will be.” She embraced Sissy, still careful not to smudge their makeup. “Honey, I love Gerry to pieces, but marriage is just too hard to do with someone you
don’t
love that much.”

“Mom’s going to die,” Sissy said.

“Oh, she might try to kill
you
,” Kennedy answered
with a smile, “but she definitely won’t die of this. If you ran off with Elijah Workman,
that
might kill her….”

Hairs rose all over Sissy’s body. Along with the vision of somehow getting out of this wedding, she
had
entertained ideas of running off with Elijah. Truthfully she wouldn’t give a damn if they were married. They could go raise Salukis in the Sahara desert for all she cared, but it would be exciting and fun, and she would feel free. Because nothing about Elijah belonged to the constraining world in which she now found herself a near-prisoner. “What makes you say that?” she asked Kennedy uneasily.
Let it be me.

Kennedy gave her a sudden, sharp look. “I didn’t mean anything. It’s just Mom was falling over herself at the party at Clark’s club to let Elijah know how completely taken you were, as though the fact it was an
engagement
party didn’t really get the message across.” Her eyes flashed away from possibilities she evidently decided were too disturbing to entertain.

“Look, honey. You wait right here. I’m going to find Jackie—” Clark’s sister “—and tell her what’s going on, then I’ll be back to get you out of here. You can stay with Gerry and me till Mom’s ready to be civil.”

Sissy swallowed, thinking she would throw up if she received any more pressure at all from her mother to marry Clark. Kennedy left the room, shutting the door. The minute Jackie went up to speak to Clark and the priest, Sissy’s mother would be out of her seat, hurrying back here. Kennedy would do everything she could to stop her, and Sissy pictured a pushing matching between her sister and mother in the cathedral’s vestibule.

No…I can’t stand this. I can’t take any more….

T
HE CONGREGATION WAS RESTLESS
. The wedding should have begun ten minutes earlier. Elijah, sitting on the bride’s side of the church among people who probably earned in a month what he made in a year, had begun to suspect what he doubted anyone around him was suspecting.

These people, of course, didn’t have the memory of Sissy standing feet from them at her own engagement party muttering things about Norfolk Terriers.

Elijah, who thought of terriers as ankle-biters, had, upon returning to his small rented house, consulted the AKC breed standards and been unsurprised to learn that while the temperament of the Norfolk Terrier merited one line (none of it actually offensive), the temperament of the truly unsurpassed German shepherd demanded half a page. He’d also read and bookmarked the entire section on Alaskan malamutes, ignoring anything in his new companion Whiteout that could be considered a physical fault because he didn’t believe in such things.

The next morning, Whiteout, as though to emphasize that it was past time for Elijah to stop replaying everything Sissy had said of dogs and of doubts, destroyed the AKC book, depositing much of it in a newly dug hole in Elijah’s tiny backyard.

Unaccountably, Elijah felt a spark of happiness and hope.

In all their years at school together, Sissy Atherton had never once been marked as tardy.

Now she was late for her wedding.

He watched the groom’s sister hurry up the aisle in a blue bridesmaid’s dress, and saw the groom’s face fall.

He wondered if Sissy was on the premises and began concocting interesting scenarios. He imagined her
running down the street in her wedding dress as he happened to be driving past—not in his third-hand Chevy Nomad but perhaps in a new Corvette. He wondered how rude it would be for him to squeeze out of his pew now, past the line of Sissy’s society friends and relatives.

He did stand and say, “Excuse me,” while the groom and his father conferred with the priest.

Sissy’s immediate family were far ahead of him in the cathedral, and he hoped they would not notice him leaving. They didn’t like him anyhow.

He genuflected, hurried back along a side aisle, past curious faces, dipped a hand in the holy water for a quick sign of the cross and passed into the vestibule. A bridesmaid and a groomsman stood in hushed conversation, glancing toward a closed door.

Well, he couldn’t return to his seat now, and he knew with certainty that there would be no reason to do so. Instead, he walked out into the jungle sauna air and hurried to the old Nomad. The previous owner of the car had suffered a fender bender. Elijah and a friend had repaired the damage in the friend’s body shop. It was a good car, excellent for transporting a malamute and going to the drive-in, but Whiteout was at home now, undoubtedly digging craters in the yard.

Clark Treffinger-Hart drove a Corvette.

Elijah rolled down the windows, started the car, turned it in the street and drove back toward the cathedral. He circled the block three times, slowing each time as he passed the front. What was happening inside?

Nobody came out.

Maybe he was wrong.

Later, Sissy would hear about his leaving and wonder why he had walked out on the wedding. His mother would be appalled by his behavior. Fortunately his mother would probably never hear of it.

He made another pass of the church, certain his gut was wrong.

But just as the rear fender nearly passed the foot of the steps, he caught a glimpse of white from the corner of his eye. He braked and turned his head as white, flowing white, spilled out of the church. Not on the arm of the groom.

She was unaccompanied by a bridesmaid, though one stood in the doorway, making entreating gestures.

Elijah backed the Nomad to the base of the steps, and the bride raised her gaze. She lifted up her train and rushed down the stairs, and Elijah, feeling more exposed than he ever had in his life, could
not
let her open her own door, could not even reach across the front seat to open hers from the inside—his upbringing was too strong. He got out and hurried around the front of the idling vehicle to let her in.

Neither spoke while he tucked her in, folding the satin around her, draping the train in her lap, and closed the door. Sissy gazed at her bare left hand. She’d left her engagement ring in the dressing room.

Only after they’d driven away, when Elijah was stopped at the first light past the cathedral, did he break the silence. “Where do you want to go?”

Sissy tried to speak lightly, but her voice was husky. “I thought that was obvious. I’m running away with you.”

The first step in teaching a dog not to fight is preventing fights. If your bitch likes a scrap, never have her off-lead in a situation in which a fight could occur.

—
Teach Yourself, Teach Your Dog
, Elijah Workman, 1973

June 19, 1969

T
HE NEXT HOUR FLEW BY
. Sissy had begged Elijah to take her to her sister’s house, where the maid had let her in. While Elijah waited, she collected her car and some clothing and wrote a brief note to her family telling them she would be in touch. Then she asked Elijah if she could follow him to his house.

Soon, attired in bell-bottom jeans and a peasant blouse, she sat at his kitchen table with Five on her lap, while Whiteout paced around the table and Elijah. Sissy seemed content and utterly relaxed.

Elijah was not relaxed.

He suspected Sissy’s fleeing her own wedding had been a good move, especially because of the things she’d told him, primarily, “Elijah, I’m just not in love
with him.” Nonetheless, he also felt a certain chaotic quality in her attraction to him. This must be what people meant by “on the rebound.”

He didn’t want to live with her without their being married. It would seem to justify her parents’ disapproval of him years before. Besides, it wasn’t what he wanted—not with Sissy. But of course, Sissy was just visiting, not sleeping with him—he’d made up the guest room.

He suspected, though, that it would take little more than a crook of his finger to get Sissy Atherton into bed with him. It was tempting, and he’d realized that when she’d entreated with him to let her stay at his house. They were past everything but caresses in a parked car. They were adults. He said, “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”

She counted Five’s toes—extra toes that Elijah believed went with extra brain power—and said, as though the discussion had never ended, “See what a good idea it is to have me here, Elijah? Your animals need me. Probably some days you’re gone all day, and they’ll have me to keep them company.”

“Sissy, we’re not
married
.”

“Oh, don’t be old-fashioned. Anyhow, you have a guest room. Not that I need to sleep there,” she added.

Elijah turned away.

“Not to put you on the spot or anything,” she said.

He leaned against his refrigerator, his head against his arm, and kept his back to her. He wasn’t shocked by what Sissy offered, but it jarred with some picture he carried of her—and of himself. “I don’t want to do that to you.”

At the table, stroking his cats, she looked at his broad-shouldered back uneasily. Did he believe her to be a virgin?

Sadly, she remembered her long disinclination to have sexual intercourse with Clark and her yielding at last to the impulse. And her professor before that…

Without turning, Elijah said, “You just ran out on your wedding. You can’t think you want to marry me. You can’t know.”

Her chest seemed to swell with emotion. What if she told Elijah how she felt? He certainly wasn’t the kind of man who would tell other people should he not return her feelings.

How can he return your feelings, Sissy? He hasn’t seen you for years.

Yet there was something so much the
same
about Elijah, and she was, too, in so many ways the same as she’d been when they’d dated. At her core, she still knew him; he still knew her. “Oh, I’d marry you,” she said. “You wouldn’t try to make me be someone I’m not.”

Elijah froze, his breath shallow.

She wants to marry me.

He wheeled around, sank into the chair next to hers and impulsively grabbed her hands. She was so intensely beautiful, her skin every cliché for white and flawless, her bones sharp and interesting, her mouth wide and inviting, her eyes such a deep blue they reminded him of violets. He gazed into those eyes and said, “Sissy, you’re acting crazy because you got out of that wedding. I’d marry you in a heartbeat, but you don’t know what you’re doing. Your family doesn’t want you to marry me. That might even be why you want to. They approved of Clark, and you don’t love him. They don’t approve of me, so…” He shrugged. “Do you hear what I’m saying?”

She nodded, and to his horror, he saw that she was crying.

“What is it?” he gasped. “What did I say? Sissy, I
like
you. I’m not saying I don’t.”

“And I like you—I always have. It was you who broke up with me, not the other way round.”

“If I made love with you now—” his voice was unsteady “—even were to marry you, I’d feel like I was taking advantage of your vulnerability.”

“Why does no one think I know my own mind?” she exclaimed, tears now running down her cheeks, washed free of makeup in his bathroom.

Impulsively Elijah reached for her, pulled her toward him and up into his lap. Her body felt so warm and taut and small, though she was a tall woman. He stroked her smooth straight hair, buried his face in it. She cried harder, shaking against him.

“You’ve had a bad time, haven’t you?” he said, holding her more tightly, feeling her rear pressed against his legs, wanting her.
I can’t stand this. I can’t stand it. What am I going to do?

She lifted her face, put her mouth near his.

Elijah yielded.

July 3, 1969
Echo Springs

T
HEY DROVE BACK
to Echo Springs as newlyweds in Sissy’s car, which was more reliable than Elijah’s. He left Five in the care of his coworker Barbara, who hadn’t stopped shaking her head since he’d requested her help
earlier that day, asking her to follow them to the courthouse and act as a witness.

Elijah wished he and Sissy could have married in the Catholic church and hoped they could get a priest to bless their marriage at some point. Though he believed elopement was cowardly, Sissy had said, “We’re not eloping. We’re both adults, and my parents have just paid for a big church wedding that I decided not to have. Let’s just find a judge.”

So they had. Unwilling to involve Kennedy, Sissy had accepted Barbara as witness, along with Elijah’s friend Paul.

When they emerged from the courthouse after the brief ceremony, a policeman stood ready to hand Elijah a ticket for Whiteout’s cratering of the flower bed beneath the window of the judge’s chambers. Learning Elijah and Sissy were just married, the policemen tore up the ticket and suggested Elijah be more careful where he tied his dog in the future.

Now they were headed for Echo Springs, already driving slowly down the Strip to cross the dam. Determined that they would have a real honeymoon, Elijah had rented a small cabin for them on the Lake of the Ozarks—a good ten miles by boat from Sissy’s parents’ place and far less accessible by car.

Elijah dreaded Sissy’s parents’ reaction to their marriage. But for him, once they had become lovers, there was no going back.

He couldn’t imagine what the rest of their life together would be like because he seemed to think about making love with Sissy twenty-four hours a day. She was the only woman he’d known so intimately, and he
found her to be the most amazing creature he’d ever encountered. He supposed that on some level he worshipped her. In any event, he made every effort to treat her as though he did, especially when they were in bed. He thought he’d kissed, venerated, every part of her body, and he felt satisfaction that she wasn’t so much his as part of him. They had truly become one person.

Despite his intense feelings for her, he wasn’t looking forward to her parents’ reaction. And he had other concerns. He didn’t make much money with the Humane Society. Sissy wanted to teach Obedience in Kansas City, and Elijah agreed she would probably find plenty of students in the city, more than she could in Echo Springs, for instance. But they would still be poor, and he didn’t think Sissy Atherton had ever been poor in her life.

Well, he would find additional work to earn more money. They’d be happy. And if he had to, he’d return to law enforcement.

Sissy’s parents knew they were coming because Sissy had called from a pay phone north of Osage Beach. He’d heard her say, “Elijah and I are coming by. We have something to tell you.” A pause, then, “Elijah Workman, of course. Who did you think I meant? The prophet?” Already getting snippy.

Elijah had tensed, not wanting Sissy to feud with her family, wanting them to be pleased by the marriage rather than offended by it.

Sissy seemed to have her mind on other things, though.

They were nearing the fudge shop and the dock, and she said, “Pull over!”

He did, into a conveniently vacated parking space. “You want chocolate this badly?”

“Not chocolate! We have to do this.” She jumped out of the car, pulling Whiteout after her by his leash. Elijah followed her across the street to the fudge shop.

Outside, she put Whiteout’s lead in his hand, then she pushed open the door. He saw her remonstrating with a teenager behind the counter.

A moment later, he saw her approach the jukebox.

Then he heard the opening strains from outside.

She rushed out, laughing, beautiful and giddy, kicking off her white high-heeled sandals and moving into his arms and singing with the words. He sang them back to her, sang of only and always and the greatest blessing of his life.

Sissy said, “We get to hear it three times.”

Elijah threw back his head, laughing, and Whiteout jumped up on them both, kissing Sissy’s face.

E
LIJAH PARKED
next to Sissy’s mother’s car outside the big white house with the kennels shaded by a canopy of trees. Sissy called, “Hi, Teddy! I missed you. Hi, China, sweetheart.” Tossing the end of Whiteout’s lead in Elijah’s lap, she leaped out of the convertible and hurried across the grass toward the dog runs. The dogs seemed divided between ecstasy at the sight of her and sheer rage at Whiteout’s presence.

Elijah cut the ignition, got out and glanced toward the front door as the screen opened.

Heloise Atherton stepped out, dressed in white slacks and a white sleeveless blouse, her hair up in French twist so rigid it seemed like a helmet. She said nothing, just glanced at Elijah and gazed under lowered eyebrows at her younger daughter.

Sissy looked up from petting one of the German shepherds to see her mother. She straightened and emerged from the kennel again, looking toward Elijah.

Elijah said, “Whiteout, stay. No chew.” He shut the driver’s door and joined his wife, and they walked up the steps together.

H
E COULD COUNT
on one hand the times he had been in the Athertons’ living room. On the occasions he’d visited Sissy’s house as her boyfriend, the room had rarely been used.

Mrs. Atherton said, “Would you like something to drink after your drive? I have lemonade.” Her eyes had already taken in the slim wedding bands, and when Elijah saw her gaze, he wished he’d insisted on getting Sissy an engagement ring at the time they’d bought the wedding bands. But Sissy had said, “I’ll always be taking it off, anyhow. We don’t need it.”

But he had bought her a heart-shaped iolite stone that hung on a gold chain because it was the same violet shade as her eyes, and Sissy loved it.

“I’m fine,” Elijah said.

“Me, too.” Sissy clung to his hand as she sank down on the couch. He sat beside her.

Her parents settled down, too, her mother on the very edge of a wingback chair, her father on a heavier chair opposite her.

“Elijah and I are married,” Sissy said. “We’re going to live in Kansas City. He works for the Humane Society, as you know, and I’m going to train dogs.”

“Are you all right for money?” Mr. Atherton asked, actually quite compassionately.

“Yes,” Elijah said quickly.

“When did all this happen?” Mrs. Atherton said in a determinedly uninvolved tone.

“This morning,” Sissy replied, with a serene smile.

Her mother lifted her eyebrows thoughtfully.

Sissy realized she was digging her nails into Elijah’s palm and stopped.

“Where have you been since June nineteenth?” her mother next asked in a slightly less neutral tone. “Living together?”

“Yes,” Sissy said. “And now we’re married.”

Her father’s jaw became quietly set. He simply nodded.

Heloise said, “Well, you’ve both got a long row to hoe.”

Elijah realized that all his imaginings of this moment with the Athertons had fallen short of the unpleasant reality. To start with, they doubted he’d be able to take care of their daughter.

But he would. The Athertons had a different living standard than he did, but he and Sissy
would
have enough money.

Mr. Atherton stood up abruptly. “Well, I’m erecting a new toolshed. Would you like to see it, Elijah?”

It seemed an awkward suggestion, and Elijah remembered, in that moment, that the Athertons planned things in advance. Was Mr. Atherton arranging for his wife to be alone with Sissy? Elijah could hardly refuse.

“Thank you. I’d like to see it.”

He squeezed Sissy’s hand and looked at her to make sure she would be all right. But she seemed undismayed by the turn of events, and was already glaring at her mother with fierce determination.

M
R. ATHERTON SAID
, “I think you should call me Alan.”

“Thank you,” Elijah answered.

Alan studied the newly erected toolshed, and Elijah stood beside him, also looking. Alan said, “Her mother’s going to take this hard.”

Elijah nodded. He didn’t apologize for the way he and Sissy had done things.

“If I told you my concern,” Sissy’s father continued, “I’m not sure you’d believe me.”

Elijah glanced up at his father-in-law’s profile.

“I remember when you planned to attend university. I remember your curiosity about things, Elijah. And now—well, I can see that the university education just won’t be possible. I don’t like the situation for you because I know you to be capable of much more than you’re doing.”

Blinking, Elijah glanced at his father-in-law, then reached out and touched the toolshed, pretending to admire it, but thinking instead. Listening.

When Alan didn’t continue, Elijah told him, “What I do for the Humane Society matters. I protect animals.”