Stranger in Paradise (Home Front - Book #2) (20 page)

“Don’t ask questions,” a newly blacklisted crony from the newspaper had advised him the other day. “Ask questions and they think you’ve got the answers.”

Nobody expected it to make sense. Nothing about what was going on made any sense. Jane and their baby were the only things that mattered, the only things between him and his uncertain future.

He had nothing to hide, but for some reason that singular fact didn’t matter to anyone but Mac. Speak up in your own defense and you look guilty as hell. The best thing he could do was look the other way and pretend none of this was happening. He had a wife, and a kid on the way; now wasn’t the time to suddenly turn into a crusader. He’d never been one to stick his neck out before. Mac Weaver knew how to avoid involvement with the best of them. No reason to ruin his reputation now.

The train shuddered to a stop and the doors creaked open. Jane waved to him from the opposite side of the parking lot. Her thick dark hair was pulled off her face in a long ponytail; in her red sweater and navy blue jumper she looked more American than any woman there.

“How was your day?” she asked when he reached the car. Her kiss was balm to his troubled soul.

It’s all falling apart, Janie, every last bit of it. The country you’re looking for has gone into hiding
. “Great,” he said with a smile. “How was yours?”

There’s trouble coming, Mac, I can feel it. Something awful is right around the corner
. “The bridge game went splendidly,” she said brightly. “You would have been proud of me. And everyone said I made a great cup of coffee.”

She didn’t tell him about Ginger Higgins and Uncle Nigel’s book. He didn’t tell her about McTiernan’s warning or the two colleagues who’d gotten the ax. They drove home to the house on Robin Hood Lane, and not once did either one acknowledge the storm clouds on the horizon.

* * *

Nancy loved Monday nights.

It seemed to her the absolute best television programs were on Mondays. She had a theory that it was God’s way of apologizing for putting an end to the weekend, but she doubted if Pope Pius XII would pass a papal doctrine to that effect. There were so many wonderful things to watch that she wished they had two television sets so she wouldn’t have to miss a thing, but the thought of two television sets in one household was too crazy a notion to even contemplate.

The kids loved to watch Captain Video at seven o’clock while Nancy thought wistfully of Walter Winchell on the other channel, telling “Mr. and Mrs. America and all the ships at sea” all the juicy gossip in the world of entertainment. Nancy had to admit that sometimes Winchell got a trifle carried away, talking about commies and book burning and all manner of odd topics. She didn’t want to be bothered with any of that. She wanted to know about Elizabeth Taylor and Michael Wilding, about Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds. She wanted the latest scoop on Marilyn Monroe, the newest blond bombshell to hit Hollywood, and just what was going on between sultry Ava Gardner and skinny Frank Sinatra.

Nancy found it hard to believe she had once spent her days shrieking over Frank Sinatra at the Paramount Theater. It seemed a thousand lifetimes ago. She still loved his singing voice, but she saw him for what he really was: a scrawny, funny-looking guy with a bad temper and an ego to match who happened to have been given a double helping of talent.
From Here to Eternity
had made him a star once again, to everyone’s surprise.

Gerry watched the news at seven thirty, and then Perry Como fifteen minutes later, as Nancy readied the girls for bed. More often than not, Gerry dozed off before too long, and Nancy could watch George Burns and Gracie Allen—“say good-night, Gracie...”—and
The Voice of Firestone
and, like everyone else in the country,
I Love Lucy
. And they all did, every single one of them—even Gerry who liked to pretend he thought slapstick was silly. Who wouldn’t laugh at Lucy and Ethel on the assembly line, stuffing chocolates into their mouths and down the fronts of their uniforms? And, of course, the birth of little Ricky back in January had been the most watched event of all time. You’d have to have a heart of stone not to wipe away a tear or two when Ricky said, “It’s a boy!”

Tonight, however, none of it was penetrating. Nancy sat curled up on the sofa, her mind faraway. “You watching this?” Gerry asked, motioning toward the television.

She shook her head. “Turn it off if you want to.”

The silence was almost a third presence in the room. From the corner of her eye, Nancy noticed the stack of books on Gerry’s lap had grown larger. There’d been a strain between them these past few months, a strain that seemed to grow stronger with each day that passed. They both wanted the same things—a happy family, security—but they sharply differed on how to achieve those goals. Gerry was itching to stretch his wings and fly. Nancy had made up her mind to walk well-charted roads. It was as simple, and as dangerous, as that.

“I think there’s a way I can make this work,” Gerry said, putting a new brochure on drive-in movies in her hand.

She refused to thumb through its glossy seductive pages. “Really?” she asked in her best bored matron’s voice. “Is Mr. Rockefeller going to adopt you?”

It wasn’t hard to see her sharp words had found their mark in the soft underbelly of Gerry’s male ego. She was sorry she’d said them—and in that tone, no less—but she knew they couldn’t be retracted. The words were out there; their resonance would remain even if she apologized.

Gerry, eyes blazing with an anger that was still under control, cleared his throat. “I think I can come up with a few backers.”

“Investors?’ ‘

“A limited partnership with me at the top.”

“Oh, sure,” she said with a frustrated shake of her head. “Work all day and then work all night. When do you intend to see your children?”
Don’t leave me behind, Gerry. All of these plans are scaring me to death
.

“I’d be working only one job, Nance.” He hefted the remaining books and brochures. “This one.”

She felt faint. “You’d quit Wilson?”

“That’s what this is all about.”

“Good Lord, Gerry! Have you lost your mind? What about the pension fund? What about the medical insurance? What about—”

The books and brochures crashed to the ground like bricks falling off a dump truck. She resisted the housewifely urge to bend down and neatly stack them in size order.

“What about me, Nance? Or doesn’t it matter?”

“Of course it does,” she said, her own panic leaping to life and grabbing her by the throat. “But it seems to me you have everything you could possibly want at Wilson.”
Liar! You know how he feels. You know how badly he needs to strike out on his own—you want it yourself
. “Why on earth would you risk rocking the boat with the girls so young and—”

He grabbed her by the shoulders, forcing her to meet his eyes. He didn’t try to hide the anger or the desperation in them. “Because the time is now, Nancy. Because the opportunity may never come again. The Island is growing every day.” He let her go as if her clothing were on fire and dragged a hand through his hair. “Geez, Nance, look around you. More houses. More people. More cars. Kids everywhere you look. Families who can’t afford sitters. Teenagers with no place to go. Land there for the asking. Do I have to spell it out for you?”

He’s right. You know he’s right. How on earth do I convince him he’s wrong?
“It’s risky,” she said, picking her way through the mine field of reasons it was anything but. “You could lose your shirt.”

“Then I’ll start all over.”

“It isn’t just you, Gerry. You have responsibilities.”

“And you don’t?”

She stared at him.

“You’re supposed to be on my side, Nance, not fighting me every step of the way.”

“I’m not fighting you. I’m trying to show you where you’re wrong.”

“What’s happened to you, Nance? You never used be afraid to be different.”

“That’s ridiculous,” she said, feeling the sting of truth. The old Nancy had thumbed her nose at convention and married a boy she knew only through his letters.

“Look at you,” he said, pointing to her stylish pedal pushers, her sleeveless top, the perfectly tousled pixie-cut hair. “Hell, look at this place. It’s like something out of a women’s magazine.”

Her backbone stiffened. “Thank you very much,” she said, her tone icy. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It isn’t.”

Tears burned behind her eyelids, but she’d rather face a firing squad than cry.

“Where are
you
, Nance?” he asked, dropping to his knee in front of her. “I know you’re in there someplace, but I swear to God I can’t find you anymore. You’re not the girl I fell in love with. The girl I married. You’re like everyone else in this neighborhood.”

“You still don’t understand what’s important, do you?” she countered, avoiding his statement.

He rose to his feet and for an instant she saw the boy who’d come home from war, that boy with a duffel bag filled with hopes and dreams for the future, but the image was gone before she could collect it and draw it into her heart.

“I’m going to bed,” he said, pausing in the doorway. “Lock the back door before you turn in.”

She nodded but didn’t speak, afraid that she’d run to him and tell him to go ahead and take a chance, see if that scheme of his would make him happy.
Make her happy in the bargain.
She struggled to banish that last thought from her mind. She
was
happy with her life, damn it. She didn’t want to change a thing. It wasn’t her fault that she and Gerry wanted different things, needed different things, saw the world through different eyes.

But do you, really? Aren’t his words bouncing around inside your head, forcing all of those old plans and schemes out from hibernation? Wouldn’t you, just once, love to do what no one on earth expects of you, the way you used to not that long ago?

The sound of his footsteps retreating down the hallway struck her as the loneliest sound in the world. She got up and turned on the television set to drown out the sound of regret. “And now,” said the announcer, “we’re proud to bring you
This Is Your Life
!”

“Right,” she said, gazing at her clothes, the room, everywhere but inside her own heart. The models on the pages of
McCall’s
taught her how a young mother should dress.
Woman’s Day
taught her how to cook for a family.
Ladies Home Journal
taught her how to clean house and still have time to look pretty when hubby came home from work. And of course
Better Homes and Gardens
was ready and waiting to help her plant her rosebushes and choose the perfect sofa for the living room.

Why, you didn’t have to have an original thought in your head. Life was as perfectly mapped out for a young American wife as if Rand McNally had charted the course from puberty to menopause and provided rest stops along the way. Madison Avenue decreed that redheads were passé? Nancy rushed out to the hairdresser and had her carrot-top made a darker auburn. Blond wood and sleek Scandinavian furniture was all the rage? Nancy’s cozy colonial sofa and chairs disappeared out the back door to the delight of the men from the Salvation Army.

And someone, somewhere, had decreed that the greatest joy in a man’s life was the day he received his gold watch for fifty years of meritorious service to the company. What company? It didn’t matter. The point was, the “company” mattered; the man himself did not.

Was it any wonder Gerry was tugging at the chains?

It hadn’t always been like this....

The sailor had stopped in front of the Bellamy house. That wonderful beloved face she knew from photographs lit up with a smile so joyous she would remember it for the rest of her life. He tossed the duffel bag to the ground, and Nancy ran down the steps to meet her future.

The sailor stared at her as she flew across the pavement, red hair streaming behind like a triumphant banner. Bobby pins clattered to the ground as she ran, but she didn’t once slackened her pace. He opened his arms to her. “Nance!”

Tears choked back her words as she catapulted herself into his embrace with all the grace of a football player. He stumbled back a step under the assault and her cheeks blazed with embarrassment. Now she’d done it! All those years of writing to each other, of sending pictures, and she galloped up to him like a runaway horse!

But he didn’t seem to mind. Her heart soared. He kissed her cheek, her forehead, her lips, murmuring words of love she never thought any man would ever say to her. Plain Nancy Wilson with the freckles and the big mouth, there in the arms of an adorable sailor with big green eyes and a smile wider than the Kansas plains where he’d grown up.

Everyone had said she was crazy, nuts, plain out of her mind to fall in love with a total stranger, a boy she knew only through his letters, but Nancy’s heart had told her otherwise. “You don’t know anything about him,” her mother had said, her brow furrowed in concern. “Why, honey, he could just be spinning a pretty tale for you in his letters.”

But weeks and months and years of pretty tales had wrapped themselves around her heart and brought her to this moment, this wonderful moment, the one she’d dreamed about from the start.

“Say something,” Gerry said, memorizing her face with his eyes. “All this time I’ve been wondering how you’d sound.”

“I love you!” The words sprung to life full-blown from the deepest part of her heart. “I love you so much, Gerry.” She’d said it! Really said it!

To her eternal surprise he didn’t laugh or snicker or tell her he’d made promises he couldn’t keep. What he did was kiss her words into silence, then replace the school ring on her hand with a tiny diamond, which meant more to her than anything on earth.

And so they promised to love and honor, to respect and cherish, to be there for each other in sickness and in health, but never once did anyone mention suburbia....

She hugged her knees and stared past the television, past the room, past the barriers they’d built around their lives. The future was out there somewhere. Dim. Indistinct. Shrouded in fear and uncertainty, but it was there and if she only had the courage she would open her arms wide and embrace it. She’d had that kind of courage once, years ago, when she’d moved away from her parents’ home to spread her wings—when she’d handed her life over to a boy she knew only through his letters.