Vows (29 page)

 
"Tarsy, have you and Tom…" Emily couldn't think of a discreet way to ask the question. Terrified, she waited for an answer.

 
Tarsy followed a raindrop with one finger and said levelly, "No, not yet." She turned, fully composed, and returned to sit at Emily's side. "But I'm so tempted, Em. We've come so close."

 
The girls' eyes met, and in Tarsy's was honesty and culpability such as Emily had never expected to see there. To Emily's chagrin, her friend's eyes flooded with tears and she covered her face with her hands. "It's a sin. I know it's a sin. And it's dangerous, but what do you do when you love someone so much that it no longer seems wrong?"

 
"I don't know," Emily replied simply, abashed at the turn in the conversation.

 
"But you're engaged, Emily; you and Charles are together as much as Tom and I are. What do you do when you start feeling that way?"

 
Was it insight or naïveté that prompted Tarsy to believe love smote everyone in the same way, that it struck mindless passion into a woman simply because she had agreed to marry a man? To Emily's great and growing dismay, Charles had never incited those feelings in her. Indeed, she had come closer to them with Tom Jeffcoat than with her own fiancé.

 
Which only added to the irony of the situation.

 
"I don't know what to say, Tarsy."

 
"There's more. Something even worse," Tarsy admitted. "Sometimes I think about letting it happen and trapping him."

 
"Don't say that!" Emily exclaimed, horrified. "That's foolish!"

 
"But it's true. If I got pregnant with his baby he'd have to marry me and sometimes I almost believe the disgrace would be worth it."

 
"Oh, Tarsy, no." Emily gave in to her own aching heart and held Tarsy with an affection she'd never felt before. How many times had she called this girl a silly twit, and scoffed at her flightiness? Now it was gone and Emily wanted it back, wanted their girlhood back because womanhood was too hurtful and dismaying. "Promise me you'll never do that. Promise. It could ruin your lives forever, and it would be so unfair to him."

 
Tarsy hid her face against Emily's shoulder and cried. "Oh, Emily, what am I going to do? He loves somebody else."

 
Panic struck Emily. Panic and guilt. Her face turned red as she held Tarsy tightly, lest she lift her eyes and see.

 
But Tarsy went on. "It's that woman he was engaged to. He still loves her."

 
"Well, maybe he does. It's only been a few months since she broke their engagement. It takes time to get over a thing like that. He'll come to see that you're well, that you've grown up, that you're ready for marriage." In an effort to cheer her further, Emily added. "And you're just about the prettiest thing this dumpy little town has ever seen. Why, he'd be a real fool not to see that."

 
She lifted Tarsy's trembling chin. At first Tarsy resisted being cajoled, but finally gave a sheepish snuffle of laughter. "Oh,
I'm
the fool." She dashed tears from her face with the back of her hand. "I know I am. Just a … a silly fool, saying I'd do a thing like that. I never would, you know that, Em, don't you?"

 
"Of course, I do. Here." Emily found a handkerchief in her bureau drawer and handed it to Tarsy, waiting while she mopped her face and blew her nose. When she had, Tarsy absently wrapped the edge of the hanky over her thumbs and sat staring at it.

 
"But, Emily…" she said plaintively, lifting sad eyes, "I do love him."

 
Emily dropped to her knees before Tarsy and covered the girl's hands. "I know."

 
The new, adult Tarsy tried bravely to control the tears that were dangerously close to brimming over again. "Oh, Emily, why does it have to hurt so bad?"

 
Neither of them knew the answer, nor did they suspect that the hurt would intensify in the weeks that followed.

Chapter 10

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T
here were times when Fannie asked herself why she'd come. Watching someone die was not easy. In recent days the consolation of being near Edwin could not compensate for the pain of dealing with Joey. Poor, failing Joey. She could not lie, nor could she sit, for to recline meant to cough and to sit erect took strength she didn't possess. So she spent her days and nights angled against the pillows, hacking away what little strength she'd garnered from her fitful naps.

 
Caring for her took a staunchness Fannie had not anticipated. The bedroom stank now, for the coughing had grown so violent it brought on simultaneous incontinence, and no matter how often Fannie changed the sheets, the smell of stale urine persisted. Blood, too, Fannie discovered, had a sickening smell, not only when freshly spilled but when soaking in a tub of lye water.

 
Fannie's hands burned: every day was washday now, and though Emily helped often, the bulk of the chore fell to Fannie. She disregarded her own minor irritation, which seemed petty compared to the raw bedsores on Joey's elbows. Joey had become a living skeleton, shrunken to a mere ninety pounds, so gaunt there were times Fannie was forced to stifle a gasp when entering the room. Her cousin's hair was nearly too thin to braid, showing pink skull between the limp skeins. The skin over her cheekbones looked like dry corn husks and bruised at the lightest touch. Any physical contact caused her pain; she'd even had to remove her wedding ring from her knobby finger because it felt, she said, like an iron shackle. Wherever she was touched by helping hands, those hands left blue bruises.

 
She coughed again and Fannie slipped a hand behind the pillows, holding Josephine straight. The blood came—brilliant carmine against the clean white cotton rags they substituted for handkerchiefs, which were too small to be adequate anymore. They rode it out together, and when the spasm ended, Josephine sank back depleted. Fannie gently released her, touching her hair—the only thing touchable without causing more pain.

 
"There, Joey, rest now…" Trying to compose soothing words had become as great a drain upon Fannie as witnessing Josephine's pain.
Dear God, either take her or produce a miracle.

 
"I've got some things to hang on the line. Will you be all right?" Josephine lifted a finger, too weak to nod. "I won't be gone long," whispered Fannie.

 
She hung the last sheet and returned to the kitchen to hear the coughing resume overhead. Closing her eyes, she dropped her forehead against the cool, varnished doorsill.

 
That's how Emily found her.

 
"Fannie?"

 
Fannie straightened with a snap. "Oh, Emily." Under the guise of picking up the laundry basket she swiped away her telltale tears. "I didn't hear you come in."

 
"Mother is worse?"

 
"She's had a bad afternoon. A lot of coughing, and her bedsores are so terrible. Is there anything in your medicine bag that might help her? The poor thing is suffering so."

 
"I'll see what I can come up with. What about you? You don't look so perky yourself."

 
"Oh, bosh. Me?" Fannie manufactured an air of blitheness. "Why, you know me … I'm like a cat, always land right side up."

 
But Emily had seen the glint of tears and the dejection. She had seen, in recent days, how tired and care-worn Fannie looked. She crossed the room and took the laundry basket from Fannie's hands. "You need to get away from here for a couple of hours. Leave this, and whatever isn't finished. Comb your hair and put on your knickerbockers and take a ride on your bicycle. Don't come back until you smell supper cooking, and that's an order."

 
Fannie closed her eyes, composed her emotions, pressed a hand against her diaphragm, and blew out a steadying puff of air. "Thank you, dearling. I'll do exactly that, and gratefully."

 
She took fifteen minutes to strip off her dress and wash away the stench of sickness, which seemed to pervade her own skin and clothing lately. In a starched white shirtwaist, a trim nutmeg-colored jacket, and matching knickerbockers, with her peachy hair twisted like a cinnamon bun atop her head, she took her bicycle from the shed.

 
Sweet heavens, it was good to be outside! She lifted her face to the sky and sucked deep. October, and the heavens as blue as a trout's side, the air like tonic, and all around the cottonwoods turning to a king's ransom—gold against blue. Striking out, she reveled in her freedom and wiped concerns from her mind. In the distance the hills rose like the sides of a golden teacup, but along Little Goose Creek the grassy banks still wore Irish green ruddled by splashes of sumac, the earliest foliage to blush. How good to be strong, healthy, robust, out in the open, nosing the wind. Fannie balanced on her bicycle seat and pedaled harder, feeling the breeze catch her hair and drag it like thick, rough fingers. Up the hill south-west of town, down a long grade where rocks made her grip the handlebars tightly to keep from keeling over—pedaling, pedaling, pushing her limits, feeling her tensile muscles tauten and heat, and loving every minute of it, simply because she was firm and hale and able to exert herself to such limits. She stopped at a creek whose name she did not know, and watched it ripple, catch the sky, and toss it back in sequin flashes. She abandoned her bicycle and lay in the grass, pressing her shoulder blades to the earth and imbibing its permanence, letting the sun bake her face. She opened her bodice and let it bathe her chest. She listened to a red-winged blackbird churr in a clump of sedge across the water and knelt to answer, scaring it away. She drank from the stream, rebuttoned her shirtwaist, and returned to town.

 
Straight down Grinnell Street to Walcott's Livery Stable.

 
She rode right in, down the aisle dividing the building, and stopped beside a wheelbarrow full of fresh straw outside a stall Edwin was lining. He turned in surprise as she dropped the bicycle on its side.

 
"Edwin, don't ask any questions, please. I simply need this today." She walked into the stall and straight into his arms.

 
"Fannie?" Taken by surprise, he stood becalmed, a pitchfork dangling from one fist.

 
She clasped his trunk and turned her face against his chest. "Dear heavens, you smell good."

 
"Fannie, what is it?"

 
"Would you hold me, Edwin? Very hard, and very still for only two or three minutes? That should be enough."

 
The pitchfork handle thumped against the wooden divider and Edwin's arms tightened around her shoulders.

 
Edwin had had no time to fortify himself. One moment he'd been forking hay, the next she had stepped against him, fragrant and supple, smelling of crushed grass and fresh air and the herbs she packed among her woolens. From her skull lifted the faint scent of warmth, as if she'd ridden hard. He rested his nose against her sunrise-colored hair and breathed deeply, spread his hands across her back and memorized its contours.

 
"Mmmmm … yes," she murmured, nuzzling his shirt, catching the unadulterated scent of man, sweat, and horse, sweetened by the newly strewn hay that filled the stall.
"Edwin, I apologize.
I simply needed this."

 
"It's all right, Fannie … shhh."

 
They pressed close, rubbing each other's backs—healthy resilient flesh, thought Edwin, such as he had not held in years.

 
"You feel so good," she whispered.

 
"You do, too."

 
"Hard and strong and good."

 
Edwin's heartbeat seemed to fill his throat. Incredible—he was touching her at last, holding her—the thing he had imagined doing ever since she came, for years before she came. How typical of Fannie to surprise him this way when he least expected it, to walk against him and surround him as if this were her natural place.

 
"Why today?" he asked, disbelievingly.

 
"Because I wasn't sure I could go on without it."

 
"You too, Fannie?"

 
She nodded, bumping his chin. "You smell of life and vitality."

 
"I smell worse than that. I've been cleaning stalls."

 
"Don't! Don't pull away! I'm not through yet."

 
He closed his eyes and smiled against her hair, feeling it catch in his beard, steeping himself in her unexpected nearness, pulling in deep drafts of her herbal scent. He leaned back to watch her eyes while his hands skimmed her sides, caught her waist—like notches in a fiddle, that waist, dainty and curved. He girded her ribs, rode his thumbs in the depression just below them, wanting to touch her breasts but refraining, because these simply acknowledgments were heaven in themselves. How long had it been since he'd caressed a woman this way? He'd lost track of the years. It might have been as long ago as the last time he'd held Fannie. Josie had always resisted open petting. Whatever sexual—even affectionate—contact they'd shared had happened in the dark of night, discreetly, according to her code of morals. He drew Fannie close once again. Ah, how good, how natural it felt to lay hands on a woman in broad daylight, to drop his face to her hair and draw her hips flush to his. He spread his hands and ran them up till his thumbs touched her armpits, fingers splaying behind, as if she were a nut he might crack open and savor. She shuddered palpably and made an enraptured sound against his throat. When he pushed back to see her face a strand of her pale melon-colored hair caught on his shirt button, tethering them together. Their gazes met, filled with love so certain, so ingrained, it could no longer be denied.