A Fireproof Home for the Bride (32 page)

“I’ll be right back,” Dot said, slinging all her things into the backseat through the open window and returning to the house, where she disappeared for a few moments longer. Emmy kept the car quiet, tired of searching for even one report of the fire on the radio. Jim was right: Frank’s father was powerful enough to keep the whole thing quiet. She’d had a late night, managing to get Josephine tucked into bed and then cleaning the house before packing for the trip to the lake. Not wanting to disturb her aunt, Emmy had slipped out early and eaten breakfast at Wolf’s, reading the bland news of less disturbing events. The paper spent most of its local coverage on the end of the state fair, with a brief mention of Mayor Lashkowitz pressing once again for a solution to the teen delinquency problem—the closest wink Emmy could find to anything unpleasant. This time the city council planned to enact a cruising curfew that would clear Broadway of its weekend show of beautiful cars. By the time she’d finished her coffee, Emmy felt that the burning cross might actually have been a dream, which only made her feel worse: If it had been reported, she wouldn’t have to carry the burden of witnessing alone.

Dot emerged from the house, struggling under the weight of a large metal cooler with a red-padded top. On the side was a red-stenciled logo for Hamm’s beer. Emmy got out of the car and helped carry the heavy thing by one of its red handles.

“Let’s put that in the trunk,” she said as they swung it between them. “Gee, what’ve you got in here, your little sister?”

“I wish!” Dot laughed. “No, Mom asked me to bring the beer and the steaks so Dad wouldn’t have to bother tomorrow. We just need to stop out at the tavern and get some ice before we hit the road.” She slammed the trunk and a good deal of dust rose into the hot afternoon air. “Ready to get out of Dodge?” Dot asked, brushing the dirt from her hands.

Emmy looked down at the ground. “Yeah.”

“I heard on the radio that it’s suppose to hit one hundred here in the valley today,” Dot said as the girls got into the car. “This heat wipes me out.”

“You know, this is my first time to a lake,” Emmy said, trying to find a way to tell Dot about the fire, yet at the same time wishing away the last of the images. Sleep had never really come for her the night before, and now that she was in the hot car headed to the coolness of a summer lake, her eyelids felt like burned toast scraping against her smoke-tired eyes.

“No kidding!” Dot said, hitting her on the arm. “How is that humanly possible? Even the poorest kids down by the river go somewhere in the summer.”

Emmy ignored the implication. “There was always too much to do on the farm.”

“It’s rustic, but it’s heaven, away from all this heat and noise.” Dot stuck her arm out of the window to gain some air.

“This is noise?” Emmy smiled. “I can’t imagine it being much quieter.” She headed the car back up Eleventh Street, toward the estate, and within minutes pulled into the parking lot of the Trail Tavern. It was a long, low cabin built out of logs and reminiscent of pioneer times. Emmy wasn’t old enough to have stopped before, though she knew from Josephine that the building was once run by the family as a green market, until Uncle Raymond built the new one across from the estate and turned this place into a bar. Just north of the tavern loomed the sugar beet refinery, the sight of which caused Emmy a pang. She’d driven by the old house a number of times, but the lights were never on, nor was the car ever in the drive. A part of her needed to be just a little more settled, a tiny bit more successful in her new life before she spoke to her father again. The image of handing him a copy of
The Fargo Forum
with her name as a byline to an important article compelled her onward; she needed the evidence that she was doing everything she could to make her own way. This ground felt less than solid after her setback of the night before.

“Hey, come on in with me, I’ll need help with the ice,” Dot said as Emmy turned off the car.

“I’m not twenty-one,” Emmy replied.

“It’s okay. I’m not either,” Dot said as Emmy followed her through the parking lot, waves of heat shimmering a foot above the pavement. “Besides, we’re just running in and out. I do it all the time.”

As Emmy entered the cool, dark interior, it took her eyes a moment to adjust to the low light, but she could make out a row of booths to the right, small tables and chairs anchoring the middle of the room, and a bar to her left. Straight ahead a jukebox was playing a song she hadn’t heard since she was a young girl, and though she couldn’t recall the name of it, the words flowed in her head along with the music. Something about a girl named Mona Lisa, sung by a richly sweet and longing male voice that reminded Emmy of the band at the barn—this same tune had been playing when she and Bobby were out in the hay, arguing about stupid and solvable things.

Dot took Emmy by the hand and led her over to the bar, where Irv Randall polished a glass with a white linen cloth. His dark hair was slicked in combed rows away from thick eyebrows, his darkly tanned skin contrasting against his neatly pressed white shirt.

“Hey, Pops, we’re here for the ice,” Dot said, her voice filling the room.

“Hello, Cousin Emmy,” Irv said, putting down the cloth and taking her hand. His typically jovial disposition seemed held in check.

“Hello, Cousin Irv,” Emmy said, returning the formality.

“How much ice does your mom need?” Irv asked Dot.

“More than I can carry.”

“The ice is in the cellar,” Irv said to Emmy as he opened a small bottle of 7UP and set it on the bar with the clean glass. “We’ll be right back.”

“Thank you, I could use that,” she said, taking a long sip.

Irv hesitated. “There’s someone here who’d like to see you,” he said, nodding past her toward the open room beyond. “We’ll be right back.”

Emmy turned from the bar as Dot and Irv went down a flight of stairs. She took a long sip of her pop and looked more carefully around the room now that her eyesight had adjusted. The entire bar was very tidy, and smelled of stale beer and cigarettes, over which was a cleaner smell, of wood polish and floor wax. She walked over to the one occupied booth, which stood in the corner next to the jukebox.

“Hello,” she said politely as she approached a man seated in front of a glass of beer and a copy of
The Farmer’s Forum.
He looked up from the printed green paper slowly and Emmy took a quick step back. She barely recognized her own father in the delicate features and thinning hair of this slight man. He pulled a handkerchief out of his front pants pocket with a pale hand, and used it to first wipe his eyes and then his mouth. Emmy felt her legs weaken as she slipped into the hard bench across from him.

“Irv told me you’d be here this morning,” he said. Emmy’s eyes stung, but she resisted the urge to rub them.

“I’m glad he did,” she quietly replied, wanting to say all the right words. “Every time I pass the factory I think of you. Sometimes I even drive past the old house.” Her voice trailed off and silence settled over them until Emmy broke it. “I have to say I’m surprised to see you in a bar, drinking.”

He turned his glass. “Ginger ale.” She looked at his gray work shirt, the mechanic’s mix of dirt and oil under his fingernails, the ashen quality of everything about him. Had he ever been young? she thought, and then realized that he didn’t really look all that much older than he had when she’d left; she was just seeing him clearly for the first time.

“How’s Mother?” she asked.

He sat straighter, groaning with the effort and rubbing at the small of his back. “She’s moved out to the farm,” he said as Irv and Dot came out of the storeroom and looked over at them.

“Need anything, Christian?” Irv asked. Dot looked at Emmy and shrugged a small apology.

“We’re good,” Christian responded. Irv and Dot went out to the car with the ice, and Christian turned his eyes to Emmy. “Your mother left Moorhead when I wouldn’t go after you. I don’t expect her to come back.”

Emmy sat straighter, a trickle of sweat slinking down her spine. “I’m sorry,” she said, painfully aware of the ripples her actions were making around her.

“It’s not your fault,” he said. “Sometimes people need space.”

Emmy’s neck burned. She rubbed at her collarbone. “But if I hadn’t left,” she said, barely above a whisper.

“What’s done is done.” He folded the newspaper and laid it on the bench. “I think she mainly didn’t want to be there every night, waiting for you to come home. You’re both so darn stubborn.”

“Why don’t you move out to the farm?” Emmy asked, the pain of having caused her parents to live apart sharpening.

“I’ve always hated it,” he said, finally shifting his gaze to the round paper coaster under his glass. “Even when I was small. And the more I hate it, the more your mother hates living in town. You know how she loves to embrace futility.” He laughed, a small noise laced with a hint of anger. “Her and your grandma sure do see eye to eye on that.” He took a square white package of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and slid one from the tear at the top, tapped it three times against a thumbnail, and lit a match. Emmy looked at the red circle, the words
Lucky Strike.

“This is new,” Emmy said, lighting one of her own and examining the logo on the end.

Christian exhaled and coughed. “One of the habits of living alone, I guess.”

“You’re not lonely?”

He put one finger on the side of his nose and shook his head. “Maybe a little.”

“Enough to visit Josephine?” she asked. Christian’s face softened.

“I needed to know you were okay,” he said, his eyes tearing slightly.

“Oh, you could have called,” she said, trying not to cry from the happiness his concern gave her. “I would have liked that.”

He flicked the ashy end of the cigarette into a small gold foil tray between them.

“How about I come over on Friday night and cook you supper?” she asked. The glacial feeling inside of Emmy started to recede, leaving behind the rich scraped dirt of fresh possibility. “Would that be all right?”

He nodded, a slight smile of relief creasing the sides of his cheeks and making him appear suddenly younger, boyish.

“Good, then,” Emmy said, her sense of purpose restored. “How’s Grandmother Nelson?”

“Not well,” he replied. “She rarely leaves her bedroom, except to go to church on Sundays. Your mother lets Ambrose run the farm, or whatever’s not already Brann property.” The resignation in Christian’s tone surprised Emmy.

“Ambrose?” she echoed.

The door opened with a shot of blinding sunlight, and Irv came back into the tavern with a pair of customers who sat at the bar. Emmy waited for Christian’s response. He pursed his lips and pulled them back into a grimace, sucking air through the space between his front teeth as though trying to reverse a disgruntled spit.

“He’s marrying Birdie tomorrow.” Christian stubbed the butt of his cigarette into the tray. “I thought you should know.”

“Oh, I see,” Emmy said, but she didn’t see at all. Her sister was so young, and far more naïve than Emmy, or at least she had thought so.

“There’s more to it.” Christian tore the coaster in half, an internal struggle made manifest. “She’s in the family way.”

Emmy furrowed her brow over her sister’s graceless lack of restraint. “This seems a bit sudden,” she said, her dismay increased by an unexpected jolt of envy. Everything that was once laid out for Emmy as something special was now being boxed and embroidered for Birdie. “At least Mother will have only one initial to change on the monograms,” Emmy quipped, the words uncomfortable in her mouth. “E to B should be easy enough.”

“That’s not you,” Christian admonished, shaking his head. “But I get how you feel. He’s filled her head with nonsense—Karin’s, too. He’s running for a seat on the township board, seems to have developed political aspirations.” Christian said the last words as though they were coated in poison. “From the outside I suppose it looks a good match. They’re at the church now, setting up for the wedding.”

Emmy had never heard such deep opposition in her father’s voice. “And from the inside?” she asked.

“It’s been a long time since I knew anything.” Christian leaned forward. “I’m sure it smarts, but you’ll have your own wedding, by and by.”

Emmy searched her heart for a charitable upside. “At least she loves him.”

“Oh, she loves him,” Christian said. “The way a toddler loves a kitten. I’ll walk her down the aisle, but I won’t be happy about it.”

Emmy touched his hand. “And what if I need you to walk me down an aisle?”

“You have a boy?” Christian’s face softened. She eased her mind away from Birdie and Ambrose and focused on something new, something that she just as readily understood could cause her a fresh round of familial grief.

“He’s a Catholic,” she said.

Christian smiled and scratched his ear at the crease. “She won’t like that much, will she?”

“Add it to the list,” Emmy attempted to joke. “‘Things About Emmaline That Disappoint Her Mother.’”

The door opened again, and Dot poked her head and shoulders halfway into the room. “Hey, Em, I’m dying out here and the ice is melting.”

“Go on now,” Christian said, taking her hand as though to shake it. “Tell your boy to come and see me. I want to get a good look at this one.”

*   *   *

Emmy left the tavern and met a wall of heat that made her think of Hansel and Gretel being tossed into the witch’s oven. She got into the car with Dot and drove off east, toward the cooler promise of water.

“You could have warned me,” Emmy said, squinting from the glare all around them.

“I didn’t know until we got there,” Dot replied. “How’d it go?”

“Good,” Emmy said. She tilted her chin up slightly, considering whether to tell her cousin about Birdie. All the restraint that Emmy had shown in front of her father sparked on the simmering coal of betrayal. “My sister’s marrying Ambrose.” The plainness of the statement helped release some of the steam.

“Sheesh! The same Ambrose you were supposed to marry?” Dot exclaimed, rolling her eyes. “Did you have any clue?”

“I suppose so,” Emmy admitted, realizing if anyone were to blame, it was probably her. The car thrummed over the hot paved road as they left the city limits, and over each small rise, Emmy saw what looked like a puddle of water across the road ahead—a glistening mirage, she realized each time they reached the dust-dry spot where the wet patch should have been. “She’s expecting.”