Vows (63 page)

 
Arm in arm, Emily and Tom led the exit, followed by Edwin and Fannie, who, while passing the first pew, collected a smiling Frankie and left the church holding his hands between them.

 
Outside, rice flew, and the brides ran across the bouncing wooden moat and boarded the ribbon-bedecked landau and drew their skirts aside while two happy husbands stepped up behind them. Frankie scrambled into the front seat and begged to take the reins, beaming like a full moon when Edwin said yes and handed him the supple buggy whip with the streamers trailing from its handle.

 
They rode through town with the brides crooked in their husband's arms, nestled in a bower of pussy willows and white roses, followed by the splash of shoes and kettles trailing through the swimming streets behind the Studebaker.

 
At Coffeen Hall they were feted with a wedding feast provided by their friends, customers, and fellow church members. The celebration lasted into the late afternoon and by the time it ended the chinooks had stolen the last of the snow and left behind a naked valley waiting for its spring raiments.

 
An hour before sunset, two brides and grooms boarded the landau once more. Frankie stayed behind, waving them goodbye in his bedraggled, food-stained wedding suit. He would spend the night at Earl's, and tomorrow, he promised his father, he and Earl would wash down the landau as a wedding gift of their own.

 
But now, it wheeled through the March mud as spattered and bedraggled as the two boys had looked, its streamers soiled and its rosettes crushed. No matter. Soiling it had been joyous and memorable.

 
The evening was mellow, the sound of the wheels a susurrus. Edwin drove while Fannie pressed her cheek against his sleeve. In the backseat Emily sat holding hands with Tom in the folds of her pearl-gray skirt. Her cheek lay not against his sleeve, however, but straight toward the wind, for it was warm with expectation while Tom squeezed her hand fiercely and their thumbs played games of pursuit and capture.

 
At Tom's house Edwin brought Jet to a halt. He turned, resting one arm along the top of his seat, looking back at his daughter and her new husband.

"Well…" His smile passed affectionately between both of them. "Happy wedding day," he said with soft sincerity. "I know it's been for us." On the seat he took Fannie's hand and momentarily shifted his smile to her.

 
"For us, too," Emily returned. "Thank you, Papa." Over the back of the seat she kissed him, then Fannie. "Thank you both. It was a wonderful day, and the landau was a grand surprise."

 
"We thought so," Fannie agreed. "And it was certainly fun picking those pussy willows, wasn't it, Edwin?"

 
They laughed, momentarily relieving the heart-tug that accompanied the moment of good-bye as a daughter left her father's abode forever. Tom alighted and helped Emily down, then stood beside the carriage looking up at the couple above him. He reached and took two hands—one of Edwin's, one of Fannie's, squeezing them earnestly. "Don't worry about her. I'll make sure she's as happy as the two of you are going to be, for the rest of her life."

 
Edwin nodded, uncertain of his voice, should he try to speak. Tom released his hand and leaned forward to kiss Fannie. "Be happy," she whispered, holding his cheeks. "Happiness is everything."

 
"We are," he replied, and stepped back.

 
"Fannie…" Emily, too, accepted a kiss while fresh emotions welled up.

 
As usual, Fannie knew how to end the delicate moment with the proper mixture of affection and finality. "We'll see you tomorrow. Congratulations, dearling."

 
"You, too, Fannie."

 
"Good-bye, Papa. See you tomorrow."

 
"Good-bye, honey."

 
The landau pulled away, trailing bedraggled streamers. A bride and groom watched it go, but even before it reached a corner they had turned their regard to one another.

 
He smiled.

 
She smiled.

 
He took her hand.

 
She gave hers gladly.

 
They walked to his house together. At the porch steps he said, "I'm sorry I can't carry you in, Mrs. Jeffcoat."

 
"You can do it on our silver wedding anniversary," she told him while they mounted the steps shoulder to shoulder. He opened the door and the two of them entered his kitchen, where all was silent and serene and bathed in sunwash. They locked palms, standing close, toe to toe, projecting ahead not twenty-five years, but a single night.

 
"It was a wonderful wedding day, wasn't it?" he said.

 
"Yes, it was. It is."

 
"Are you tired?"

 
"No, but my feet are wet."

 
"Your feet?"

 
"From crossing the yard."

 
"You're home now. You can take your shoes off anytime." His grin, unformed, remained a mere suggestion in his eyes.

 
"All right, I will, but will you kiss me first? It takes a long time to take shoes off."

 
He smiled wide, overjoyed at her lack of guile. "Oh, Emily … there's nobody like you. I'm going to love being your husband." They stood so close he had only to bend his arms to tip her against him. He kissed her obligingly, averting his face to meet her upraised one, gathering her into the curve of his shoulder while they stood almost stock-still against one another, twisted slightly at the waist. It was a sweet beginning, tasting each other with unhurried ease, letting their mouths form and fit and feast while remaining still everywhere else.

 
When their mouths parted—a hairsbreadth only—she seemed to have forgotten how to move.

 
"Your shoes," he whispered, his breath brushing her lips.

 
"Oh … my shoes," she said dreamily. "What shoes?"

 
He smiled and delicately kissed her upper lip … then her lower one … then the corner of her mouth where he probed inquisitively with the tip of his tongue before riding it, as if crossing a rainbow, to the opposite corner. "You were going to take your shoes off," he reminded her in a velvet voice.

 
"Oh, yes … where are they?"

 
"They're down there someplace."

 
"Down where?"

 
"Someplace on your damp feet."

 
"Mmmm…"

 
"Should I take them off for you?"

 
"Mmmm…"

 
He tipped his head farther and fit his mouth upon hers with incredible perfection. As their tongues dipped deep for second tastes his hand played idly over the small of her back. They took third tastes, and fourth, still resting against each other with only the faintest contact, his fingers drawing circular patterns along her waistline, where fasteners and ties and boning formed lumps within her silver dress. In time she freed her lips reluctantly and whispered against his chin, "Thomas?"

 
"Hm?"

 
"My shoes."

 
"Oh yes." He cleared his throat and drew her by the hand to one of his kitchen benches, where she sat gazing up at him, her cheeks colored by a becoming blush. He went down on one knee before her and searched beneath her skirts to find one delicate ankle, which he drew forth and studied silently. Her shoes were high and buttoned, made of pearl-gray leather and silk vesting, which encased her foot tightly well past the ankle.

 
"I see this won't be as easy as the time I pulled your boot off. Did you bring a buttonhook?"

 
"It's in the bedroom with my things."

 
He looked up and neither of them spoke while his thumb stroked her anklebone through the silk vesting, heating a spot that shimmied straight up her leg. At length he said quietly, "I guess I'll have to go get it. Would you like to come with me?"

 
Sitting in his gold-streaked kitchen with an hour yet to go before sunset, she nodded with virginal uncertainty.

 
He dropped her foot and rose. Her eyes lifted to him and he read that uncertainty, drew her up by the hand, and ended her misgivings by leading her through the long spears of light slicing across his kitchen floor, past the foot of his staircase and into the bedroom where now the windows were trimmed with curtains and shades and her own bureau stood against one plastered wall.

 
"Get it," he ordered quietly, with all traces of teasing gone, "and take them off."

 
He removed his top hat and put it in the closet, where her clothing now hung beside his. She found the buttonhook and sat on the edge of his bed, which was spread with Fannie's homemade quilt, the quilt she'd been standing behind the night he'd chosen her bare feet from among all the others. She bent forward, concentrating on her shoe buttons, while he removed his gloves from his pocket and lay them on her bureau, then shrugged from his jacket and hung it neatly in the closet. He went to the north window and pulled it up but left the shade at halfmast, letting the remnants of the chinooks drift into the room from the uninterrupted grassland beyond. He went to the east window—the one facing the street—opened it, too, but drew that shade to the sill.

 
She slipped off one shoe and began unhooking the buttons on the other while he took off his boots, standing first on one leg, then on the other, and set them in the closet.

 
When her second shoe was removed, Emily crossed her toes and looked up uncertainly. Tom stood watching her, drawing the tails of his shirt from his trousers while his suspenders trailed down beside his knees.

 
"You can put them in the closet beside mine," he invited.

 
She crossed before him, feeling doubtful and ignorant and taken unawares because it seemed that what she thought would not happen until well after sundown would happen well before. She bent to set her shoes beside her husband's and as she straightened his arms came around her from behind. His warm, soft lips kissed her neck.

 
"Are you scared, Emily?" His breath made dew upon her skin and fluttered the flossy hair upon her nape.

 
"A little."

 
"Don't be scared … don't be." He kissed her hair, her ear, the ruching of her high collar while she covered his arms with her own and tipped her head aside acquiescingly.

 
"Thomas?"

 
"Hm?"

 
"It's just that I don't know what to do."

 
"Just lean your head back and let me show you."

 
She dropped her head back onto his shoulder and his hands skimmed up her ribs … up, up. She closed her eyes and leaned against him, breathing with increasing difficulty as he taught her the myriad shapes of pleasure; moving his hands in synchronization over her firm breasts, lifting, molding, flattening; then lifting once again. He kneaded circles upon them with the flat of his hand before the pressure disappeared and only his fingertips explored the hardened cores, as if picking up stacked coins. She grew heavy and drugged by arousal, warm within her clothing, and confined by it. Her breath became hard-beating. His right hand slid down and covered the back of hers, his fingers closing tightly in her palm, which he lifted to his mouth and kissed hard before releasing her completely and stepping back to search through her hair for pins.

 
One by one he plucked them out and dropped them to the floor at their feet. They fell like ticks of a clock marking off the last minutes of waiting. When all were heedlessly strewn, he combed her hair with his calloused fingers, spilling it in a black waterfall down her back. He plunged his face into its waves and breathed deep. He kissed it, gripping her arms from behind, working them almost as he'd worked her breasts, in hard, compact circles. He made of her hair a sheaf, and drew it over her left shoulder, then stood away, touching her only with his fingertip while opening the long line of pearl buttons down her back, to her hips. He found, within, the string-ties at the base of her spine, and tugged them free, loosening them to her shoulder blades. He unbuttoned the petticoat at her waist, then skimmed it all down—dress, corset, garters, petticoat, and stockings—in one grand sweep, leaving her clothed in only two white brief undergarments. Caressing her arms, he dropped his head and kissed her shoulder, then her nape, then turned her—still standing in a billow of abandoned clothing—to face him.

 
"Could you do that to me?" he asked in a soft, throaty voice. "Mine is much simpler."

 
Feeling herself blushing, she dropped her eyes from his face to his throat, from his throat to his wrinkled shirt.

 
"If you want to," he added in a whisper.