The Slipper (56 page)

“I'd love to go,” she said.

“You would?”

“I've never been to a fair.”

They left at ten o'clock the next morning in Lund's battered station wagon and drove over a mountain and were in Maine and at the fairgrounds before eleven. Hundreds of people were already milling about, simple, unsophisticated people for whom the fair was an annual event, and, in her yellow sweater and brown-and-yellow checked skirt, Julie felt wonderfully carefree and at ease. No one recognized her. No one stared. Danny went into ecstasy when he saw the merry-go-round and the ferris wheel, and they rode on both, Julie enjoying herself almost as much as he did. Lund smiled at her as they went around on their painted horses, he on a dappled gray with Danny in front of him, Julie on a chestnut with orange ribbons. They had chiliburgers for lunch and then ice cream sandwiches, and, as they strolled leisurely among the booths, it seemed natural for Lund to curl his arm around her shoulders.

Julie bought a beautiful handmade patchwork quilt, she couldn't resist it, and she also bought homemade apricot preserves for Hannah and some lovely lace-edged handkerchiefs to send to Nora and Carol. Danny spotted a giant panda sitting on a shelf at the shooting gallery and fell in love with it and Julie told him it wasn't for sale, you had to win it. Lund grinned and paid his dollar to the man behind the counter and took the gun and began to fire at the pink ducks parading on a platform in back of the booth. He was wearing jeans and a loose soft brown suede jacket over a tan jersey, and with the sun burnishing his dark-blond hair he looked about twenty, Julie thought. Lund held the gun steady and squinted his eye and fired and a loud ping accompanied each shot. He hit every duck, handed the gun back to the man and, grinning, gave Danny the panda he had won. Danny was thrilled and felt they should all have some cotton candy to celebrate.

Julie was fascinated by the harness races. Lund encouraged her to select a horse and place a bet. She hesitated, studying the animals carefully, finally finding one she liked and betting ten dollars on him. She lost, but it didn't matter. The horses were beautiful, the races were exciting and it was nice to be sitting in the shady grandstand after walking all over the grounds. They spent almost two hours watching the races, and then Danny had to have a candied apple and ride the dodge-em cars. Julie begged off but stood watching as Danny and Lund tried their best to commit mayhem in the tiny cars, banging each other with demonic glee. She was smiling the whole while, and it suddenly dawned on her that she was having fun. She couldn't remember ever having enjoyed herself more, and the man in the flapping suede jacket was responsible for it. She and Doug had never done anything like this. She and Doug had never had fun. There had been no time for anything so frivolous.

It was after four when they abandoned the cars and joined her. Danny was exhausted and beginning to grow fretful, and Julie suggested they leave. Danny protested vehemently, but Lund swung him up onto his shoulders and let him ride piggyback to the parking lot. Lund unlocked the station wagon, having stored the panda and Julie's purchases in back earlier on. Danny curled up in Julie's lap as they drove away and was sound asleep by the time they started going back over the mountain.

“Would you like to go out to dinner tonight?” Lund asked.

“I—it's been a wonderful day, Lund, but I'm really too tired to dress up and—”

“How 'bout a home-cooked meal then? At my house.”

She was surprised. “You cook?”

“Not well,” he admitted, “but I do have a lot of groceries. I don't suppose
you
cook?”

“I'm a marvelous cook.”

“Really? I don't believe it.”

“I guess I'll just have to prove it to you,” Julie said.

They left a still-sleeping Danny at the inn with Hannah, and Lund drove to the grocery store to pick up a few extra items. Julie went in with him, helping him select ingredients for the salad, and then he stopped by a liquor store and bought a very expensive bottle of wine. The St. Moritz Bakery was the last stop. Lund paid a small fortune for a Black Forest cake and carried the white cardboard box out to the station wagon very carefully, as though he were afraid it might explode. Julie smiled. In many ways he was still like a little boy, and she found that very engaging.

The kitchen in the gracious old yellow-and-white Victorian house was large and old-fashioned, with a glazed red-brick floor and a huge butcher block table. Copper pots and pans hung on one beige wall, and Julie was relieved to see that the kitchen had all the modern conveniences, right down to an electric can opener. Everything was sparkling clean. Mrs. Henderson was responsible for that, Lund explained. She came in four times a week, kept the house in order and him in line. Julie let him chat while they put away the groceries and then shooed him out of the kitchen. She cleaned the lettuce and put it in the crisper and took two chickens out of the freezer. Was there cooking wine? Yes, she found a bottle in the cabinet. Herbs? A whole rack of them on the counter, next to the cookie jar.

For the next two hours she was in heaven. Lund changed into a pair of old khaki pants and a sweatshirt with
YALE
emblazoned across the chest. He lighted a fire in the living room and, while delicious smells wafted out of the kitchen, set the dining room table with the good silverware and the Spode china that had been his mother's most cherished possession. Julie stepped to the doorway in a wraparound apron and announced that everything was ready just as he was lighting candles in the porcelain candelabra. He helped her bring the food in, then helped her remove the apron, his hands lingering on her waist for a few seconds as she brushed a wisp of hair from her cheek. The meal was superb, the best he ever had, Lund declared. He suggested they take the rest of the wine into the living room. Julie cleared the table and put the food away, but Lund wouldn't let her do the dishes. Mrs. Henderson would take care of them in the morning, he informed her, leading her into the living room where the fire burned cozily, spreading flickering yellow-orange reflections over the polished hearth. Julie took her glass of wine and curled up in the comfortable wingback chair, and he perched on a footstool nearby.

“It's been a wonderful evening,” she said wistfully.

Lund nodded in agreement, gazing at her in the firelight. She was beautiful, he thought, fragile and vulnerable yet full of hidden strengths. He wanted to hold her, to protect her, to love her for the rest of his life. He said none of these things, of course.

“Even better than our first evening together,” she added.

“That was special, too,” he said.

“It—it was for me,” she told him. “I was afraid—I thought—when you didn't try to see me again, I thought you must think me a fool because I talked so much, told you so much about myself.”

“And I thought you must think me a rube because I live in a small town, because I'm not famous, because I run an inn instead of doing something glamorous and exciting like most of the men you must know.”

“I don't know all that many men,” Julie said quietly. “The one I'm with at the moment suits me fine.”

She looked up. Their eyes met.

“Something has happened,” he said.

“I know.”

“So—what are we going to do about it?”

Julie looked away from him, staring into the fire for a long moment before answering.

“I suppose we'll be sensible,” she said.

“I suppose we must be,” he agreed tersely.

“I'm sorry, Lund.”

“You're right, of course. We must be sensible. We're not moony adolescents. We're intelligent adults. You have a seven-year contract and a career. I have the inn and my life here.”

There was bitterness in his voice, sadness, too. He stood up and took the iron poker and jabbed at the fire and then he put it down and sighed and jammed his hands into the pockets of his khaki pants, the loose sweatshirt bunching up.

“I guess I'd better take you back to the inn,” he said.

Neither of them spoke during the short drive back to the inn. Lund parked in front and came around to open her door. He took her hand, helping her out, and Julie looked at him and wanted to feel his arms holding her, wanted to rest her cheek against his chest and feel his warmth and his strength and forget reality, if only for a few precious moments. She thanked him politely for a beautiful day and a lovely evening and asked him not to see her up to her room.

“Very well,” he said. “We'll be sensible, Julie, but—I want to see you again.”

“Of course,” she agreed.

“As often as possible. Until you leave.”

She nodded. “I—I'd like that.”

He took hold of her shoulders and looked into her eyes and started to kiss her and then controlled himself and let go of her and jammed his hands back into his pockets. He stepped back, his blue eyes full of anger, though she knew it wasn't directed at her. It was directed at life, at fate, at circumstances. She told him good-night in a very quiet voice and hurried into the inn. Neither of them slept much that night.

Lund took Julie and Danny for a picnic in the hills the next afternoon and it was relaxing and they were very careful to keep things light. The next day was Halloween and Julie and Lund went to a shop in town and bought Danny an oilcloth goblin costume and a mask and a large cardboard jack-o'-lantern with wire handle and that night they took him trick-or-treating, sauntering from house to house in Lund's neighborhood. Danny was beside himself with excitement, racing up to front doors, banging loudly, yelling “Boo!” and “Trick or treat, money or eats!” and beaming behind his mask as his jack-o'-lantern was filled with delicious goodies Hannah would be carefully doling out to him in days to come. As the three of them strolled along beside a low picket fence, Lund on one side of Danny, Julie on the other, it occurred to her that anyone not knowing them would undoubtedly take them to be a family. Julie put the thought out of her mind as quickly as possible, letting go of Danny's hand so that he could rush up to yet another old Victorian house with porch light burning.

Julie went back to work, and she was kept frantically busy. They shot the scene where she was walking around the side of the schoolhouse in her blue dotted swiss dress, books held to her bosom, when Steve Murdock intercepts her and asks if she'd like a ride home. They shot her climbing into the car beside him and Todd leaping in and slamming the door, trapping her between them. It took two days to get all the bits right. Julie did a complicated scene in front of the dress shop with Loni, the two of them arguing, Loni finally slapping her in the face. Loni slapped her quite hard, and she did it several times throughout the afternoon as take after take was spoiled for one reason or another. Julie rubbed cold cream on her cheek that evening and begged off when Lund arrived to take her out to dinner.

They saw each other three or four times a week, and Lund continued to take an active interest in Danny during the day, taking him fishing again and buying him treats. The leaves were beginning to fall fast now, and John Stevens drove them all even harder as they had several more scenes to complete. A large contingent of press people arrived to interview the stars and watch location filming for a couple of days, this all arranged by the studio and driving John into a frenzy. Julie had Thursday off, as they were shooting scenes with Phil Sherman and Carolyn Jones and wouldn't need her. Lund had planned an outing, but at the last moment she had to cancel and spend the day being interviewed by
Parade
magazine and posing for a cover photograph. Lund said he understood, but she could see the bitter disappointment in his eyes. The man from
Parade
asked her pointed questions about her early marriage and divorce, and Julie patiently repeated the sudsy, bittersweet story of thwarted young love Hedda had concocted when she “broke” the story. She refused to let them take pictures of Danny.

Loni chose that particular evening to have a very public knockdown, drag-out brawl with her young stud in South Medford's most exclusive restaurant. He socked her brutally in the eye. She stabbed him in the arm with a fork, and he seized her by the throat and choked her almost into insensibility before a waiter pulled him off her. A writer from
Newsweek
happened to be in the restaurant and learned that Loni's lover was actually a “paid companion” over twenty years her junior. The stud was shipped back to L.A. on the next available plane and a distraught Loni, in dark glasses, a colored scarf wound around her neck, told the press it was all a wretched misunderstanding. The ensuing scandal quickly assumed front-page proportions, and the studio was thrilled as it meant tons of free publicity for
Jerico's Castle
. For cast and crew it meant even more hard work as they had to double up and shoot around Loni until her hideously swollen black eye healed sufficiently to be concealed by makeup.

As the end of filming drew near, the tension increased. Julie was under a great deal of strain, but she forged ahead and managed to avoid another nervous crisis like the one she'd had filming the scene with Todd. Lund was largely responsible for that. After a frantic, exhausting day of filming, he would take her to some quiet, out-of-the-way diner and they would sit in a booth and talk, sharing a wonderful closeness, and that helped her come down and relax and shed the tensions of the day. Lund was very much in love with her, Julie knew that, but he was tactful and circumspect and careful never to step over the invisible line they had drawn. Yet that something unspoken was there between them at all times, and neither could deny it.

“You look low tonight,” he said one evening. “Anything wrong?”

Julie shook her head. “Just—strain. They shot Phil's suicide last week while I was being interviewed, and today we did the scene where I find his body in the woodshed. It—it wasn't easy.”