I wouldn’t see Thayne again until the Deerfield-Hill wedding, and even then it was only across the crowded church. The last two weeks had been miserable for me and, though dressed fine for a wedding, I’m sure I looked just horrid. I’d hardly come out of my room, barely eaten, and said no more than necessary to my family. Except Mitch. Mitch and I played a game every afternoon on the plush rug in my upstairs bedroom. I was happy for the time-consuming Monopoly and the childishness of checkers.
The wedding was as beautiful as the bride. At the reception Mama did everything she could to make sure I danced with first one boy and then another. She oh-so-casually mentioned that David Snow was now the chief mortgage officer at the bank and doing quite well. Then she waved David over and asked if he remembered her daughter, Mariette, and “Wouldn’t the two of you like to dance?”
David wasn’t fooled, but he did ask me if I’d like to have dinner sometime, to which I replied, “Why don’t you call me?” all the while hoping he wouldn’t.
Thayne wasn’t at the reception. I didn’t know why at the time. Later he told me he was invited but just didn’t think he could handle seeing me there, being so close and not being able to speak to me. “Or touch you,” he added.
The days dragged by. David Snow called on Wednesday and asked me if I had plans for Saturday, and I told him I did. I’d gotten so good at lying I amazed myself. He said, “Maybe next Saturday then?” He sounded so hopeful and I felt like a heel.
“Call me next week,” I told him. “I should know something by then.”
On Friday Mama cornered me in my room and told me she’d run into David at the bank and he told her he’d asked, and I’d declined because of a previous engagement, but he was hoping to see me the following week. Mama had assured him my previous Saturday night plans had been cancelled and I would be ready for his arrival at seven o’clock. “This is silly, Mariette.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, something I’d never done in my whole life. “What is?”
“This insistence you have for a young boy you went out with exactly one time.”
I turned from her, walked to the window, and looked out across the front lawn and then down the street. “Mama,” I said. “How did you know you loved Daddy?”
Mama went to the bed and sat under the canopy. She patted the cover and said, “Come here, Mariette.”
I did. I was honestly too weak to argue.
“Your father courted me properly, just as I know David Snow will do to you.” She reached for my hand and held it long enough for a quick squeeze. “You know this story, but I’ll tell it to you again if it will make you feel better. My parents sent me to camp every summer, and every summer the girls from the girls camp would have dances with the boys from the boys camp. Your father was a camp counselor, four years my senior.” I watched as Mama smiled faintly then pinked. “Oh, he was a magnificent specimen of a man.” Then she giggled and, heaven help me, so did I. “We danced.” She pointed to me. “Properly. But I was totally infatuated from the first moment he held me in his arms.”
“Properly.”
Mama arched a brow.
“Don’t you see?” I asked her. “That’s exactly how I feel about Thayne. I don’t know why, Mama, but the minute he shook my hand in the stairwell at the factory, I felt like I knew why God had placed me on this earth.”
Mama raised her chin. “The difference, Mariette, is that your father and I were on equal footing socially.” She sighed. “There are things I know about Thayne Scott that you don’t know and you don’t need to know.” She patted my hand. “Now, I’m sure he’ll grow to be a fine man and he’ll marry someone of his”—she paused—“own social standing. He’ll be a fine addition to our community or wherever he happens to settle. He’ll be a good father and then a grandfather and on and on it goes.” Then she squeezed my face between her hands. “And you, my darling, will do the same. Only you’ll be a mother and a grandmother, and you’ll forget all this ever happened.”
She stood then, as if that were that, and left the room.
David Snow took me to dinner at an Italian restaurant where candles dripped in the center of small tables and a large, dark-haired woman served red wine and oval plates of pasta I only picked at. David droned on and on about himself while I nodded and pretended to listen. I stayed awake by making internal comments on his looks. He was handsome, that much was for sure. Tall, lanky, with dark blond hair and piercing green eyes. His facial features were angular. Sharp. He was a catch. He was even swell. But he wasn’t Thayne.
After our dinner was whisked away and coffee served, I began to perk up a bit. Soon the date would be over and I could go home, crawl under the covers, and—hopefully—sleep the memory of the night away. David asked if I’d like to go somewhere for a nightcap—no doubt thrilled that I’d actually said more than two words during dessert—but I said no. “I’m tired,” I said. “But this has been fun.”
He looked disappointed as he said, “I’ll take you home then.”
But instead of driving me home, David drove to some out-of-the-way place, reminding me vaguely of Thayne’s “church” in the woods. I realized too late where we’d been heading since leaving the restaurant. Before I could demand to be taken home, David reached across the front seat for me, pulling me to him in one swift and almost violent move. His lips found mine, which were open in protest. He kissed me as if he were starving and I were a full-course meal. His lips groped mine, bruising them, just as his hands were working their way under my summer sweater.
“Stop!” I screamed, pushing at him with the pads of my hands.
“You stop,” he said back. “You’ve been giving me this look all night. You know you want what I’ve got to give.”
I was against the passenger door; the handle dug into the flesh of my hip. “What are you talking about? I’ve done no such thing.”
He slid closer, reached for me again, pulled my neck to his mouth, and began nibbling, biting, and sucking in a way I’d never experienced. This was unlike when Thayne touched me, when Thayne’s lips had brushed against the tender flesh there. This wasn’t electric butterflies fluttering through me. This was disgusting, like a wet vacuum.
Then David wrapped my face in his hands, the fingertips digging into my skull. “The way you looked at me. Like you could eat me for dinner.”
I tried to shake my head. “No,” I whispered.
His breath was a mixture of garlic and red wine. Sickening. “So what’s it going to be, Mariette? You a woman or a little girl?”
The question was rhetorical and didn’t deserve an answer. “Take me home,” I said. “I mean it, David. Take me home and I’ll forget any of this happened.”
He slid back to the driver’s seat. “A little girl. I should have known.” He jerked the gear shift then looked back at me. “Your mother thinks she is so smart. ‘Mariette is a fine young woman, Mr. Snow,’” he mocked. “‘You could look the whole world over and not find a girl like her.’ Like I don’t know what that meant. She wants a husband for her little girl. Well, not me, little missy. Women are good for one thing only, and marriage isn’t it.”
“You repulse me,” I said. I jerked the door open and rushed out of the car.
“What are you doing?” he yelled as I marched toward the road.
“I’m walking home!” I heard the engine rev.
The car slid up next to me, but I didn’t look toward it. “You’re an idiot.”
I stopped then. I placed my hands on my hips and said, “Maybe. But I’m not a cad. You, David Snow, are a cad.” I started walking again.
“A cad? Who uses words like that anymore?”
“If the shoe fits.”
“You are such a baby.”
“Well, maybe so. But this baby has kept her virtues.”
“That’s not what I hear.”
I stopped again. “What does that mean?”
“You and Thayne Scott? Oh yeah. Wiped that self-righteous look right off your face, didn’t I?”
“You don’t know what you are talking about.” I continued walking.
“Get in the car, Mariette.”
“No.”
“Get in the car. Don’t be silly.”
He drove alongside me for what seemed like hours. My feet hurt and I was growing weak, having only picked at my food in the past weeks. I knew I had no choice. “Do you promise not to lay a hand on me?”
He held a hand up. “My word as a gentleman.”
I gave him my best “oh, really?” look.
“I swear.”
I reluctantly got in the car, but I sat as far from him as possible. The ride to my house was silent with only the rise and fall of cicadas singing outside the windows until we got into the city limits, where they hushed their song. But it resumed again as we drove between the houses of my neighborhood, a friendly reminder that I was safe at home. When the car glided to a stop in front of the house, my hand jerked the door handle and I exited as quickly as I could. “Thank you for the ride,” I said.
I heard him opening his door. “At least let me walk you to the door.”
“Have you lost your mind?” I spoke as loud as I dared, staring at him with my arms folded.
He nodded his head toward the house. “What about them? What are you going to do, let Mama and Daddy know you were compromised tonight?”
I marched up to him then and said, “I most assuredly was not compromised.”
His eyes bore into mine. “Take a good look at your neck, Mariette, when you get inside.” He grabbed for my purse, jerked it away from my arm, and then opened it. Before I could protest, he pulled the poodle scarf out, shook it, then wrapped it around my neck, tying it gently at the right side. “There you go.”
He returned my purse to me while I wondered how he’d even known the scarf was there.
“Now,” he said calmly. “Walk with me to the front door. I’ll kiss your cheek good night in case Mama Bear is looking from the living room window, you’ll smile appreciatively, and then you and I will part, never again to meet, God willing.”
I nodded, but I didn’t say anything. True to his word, David did exactly as he said he would. Inside, I found my parents were already in bed, hopefully asleep. At my bedroom’s vanity mirror, I surveyed the damage to my neck. It looked as if I’d be wearing a scarf for a month.
I didn’t bother to wash my face or brush my teeth. I just went to bed and cried myself to sleep.
The following morning I told Mama I wasn’t feeling well, that my monthly had started, and that I’d prefer to stay home buried beneath the covers. She thought nothing of it. But as soon as I heard the family car drive down the street, I jumped out of bed, bathed and dressed, then slipped down the stairs and out to the driveway. I checked the security of the scarf around my neck in the rearview mirror of my De Soto, then backed out of the driveway. Minutes later, I was bouncing down a narrow dirt road, heading to Thayne’s “church.”
My heart leapt when I saw a car parked where mine had been just weeks earlier. It had to be Aunt Harriett’s car. It just had to be.
I turned off the car, then scurried out, running in the direction of where I hoped I’d find the love of my life. “Thayne!” I cried. “Thayne!”
I leapt over the vines and brambles, the broken and rotting branches, and the clusters of pine cones. “Thayne!” I screamed again.
I ignored the dark and silence of the world around me. I just kept running, hoping I could remember where he’d taken me before. “Thayne!”
“Mariette?” I heard my name echo between the trees.
I stopped running, breathing in and out as though living out the last of my days.
“Mariette!”
Then I saw him. He was running toward me, one arm waving, eyes looking wild and afraid. I ran toward him, crying like a lost child who’d found her father. When we reached each other, arms flailing, we kissed. We cried. We fell to the spongy earth and held on to each other as though dying.
But then he jerked up, looked at me, brow furrowed.
“What?”
He tugged at the scarf. “What is this?”
I shook my head. “Thayne, don’t. It was—”
“Who did this to you?” He was on his knees now, pulling me to him. He unknotted the scarf, then slipped it away and dropped it to the ground.
I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Thayne, don’t! Don’t ask me about it. It was horrible.”
He pushed me back. “Did someone . . .”
“No! No, Thayne. No.”
“Who did this?” he asked again.
“Some man my mother thought perfect for me. That’s all. I’m okay and I’m here in your arms now and that’s all that matters.” I threw myself against him again.
But Thayne was having nothing to do with my passion. He sat me down, then followed, cross-legged, hands on my knees. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “God knows that’s all I’ve done since you called me. I certainly can’t sleep. Can’t eat. Can’t study. I barely get by at work, and your old man is just itching for a reason to fire me.”
“I know.”
“Listen, Mariette. I don’t care anymore. I’ve been a bit of a rebel my whole life.” He shook his head a bit. “I’ve not had a chance to tell you everything . . .”
“Then there is more?”
“More? Of course there’s more. I could spend a lifetime telling you what a mess my life has been up till now.”
“And I could spend a lifetime listening to you tell me.”
He stared at me then, long and hard. “Mariette, I’m only going to ask this once.”
I furrowed my brow. “Ask what?”
“Do you love me?”
I threw myself against him again. “Yes! Oh, Thayne! Yes! I do. I know I do. I don’t know much about love, but if this isn’t it, I can’t imagine anything more. I’d die if it were any better than this.” I kissed his neck then, butterfly kisses up and down and then front to back.
He pushed me away gently. “Mariette, listen to me. If you don’t, you’ll kill me.”
“I’m listening.”
“I love you.”
I burst into tears then.
“I love you, which makes no sense, and I know it. But it’s what I feel and . . . and I want to marry you. Right now. Leave with me right now. I know a place we can go. No parental consent necessary. All they want is two people sane enough to sign the papers and two witnesses, which we can find off the streets if we have to.”
I stalled. I didn’t mean to but I did. Thayne gave me a hard look. “You don’t love me.”
“It’s not that. It’s just . . .”
“You don’t love me enough.”
“Oh no, Thayne. I love you more than I have words to say. I just wasn’t prepared for this.”
He shifted his body until one knee was raised and an elbow rested against it. “Well, I tell you what, Mariette. You’ve got about one second to decide because, quite honestly, I can’t live like this anymore. I’d rather quit my job and leave this town than continue on, knowing you are no more than a few miles from me and yet I can’t see you, talk to you, or touch you. That wedding? That wedding nearly killed me.” His eyes grew wide. “Ohhhhh, I get it. You want a wedding. Like Missy Deerfield.”
“No.” I shook my head. “Really, I don’t.”
“Then, what’s it going to be? Stay here and be Daddy’s little girl and Mama’s pawn or, this time tomorrow, my wife?”
His wife. The words were heady. But I didn’t like the references to Daddy and Mama, no matter how put out with them I’d been.
Thayne leapt to his feet. “Good-bye, Mariette,” he said.
I scrambled up. Before I could steady myself he was paces ahead of me, a light disappearing in the dark of the forest. “Thayne, no!” I ran after him, grabbed his right arm, and swung him around, pushing myself into him. “I want to be your wife,” I said. I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and buried my face into his neck. “I want to be your wife.” And then I cried again.
“And I want to be your husband.”
“Daddy will kill both of us, you know,” I said, drawing back to look at him.
“As long as he buries us side by side, I don’t care.” And then he kissed me, kissed me with more passion and abandon than three weeks earlier. As if that were even possible.
The following morning, I awoke on a lumpy mattress with musky sheets in a ramshackle motel room located at the edge of a strange town. When my eyes fluttered open, crusty with deep sleep, the most adorable face I’d ever seen so early in the day was peering down at me. And then, from between sweet lips, came the words to a song by Miss Dinah Shore. “On a dilly-dilly day you’ll be wed in a dilly-dilly dress of lavender blue.”
“Good morning, Mr. Scott,” I said, stretching.
“Good morning, Mrs. Scott,” he answered, then gathered me to his arms one more time.