Mine to Tell Page 10

  “Trevor’s a nice young man,” she said, her voice strained. “He would provide well for you. You could make him happy. You need to get all these silly notions about your great-grandmother and that house out of your head and behave properly. Are you ready to do that? If you are, then you can call him.”

  “Never mind,” I said. “I don’t need the phone.” I did need it, or at least I thought I did. Just not this way. Not under compulsion, not as a Crouse woman. I turned to go and heard her seat the phone back in its handset with too much force.

  “Well you’d better need it soon,” she warned. “And you’d better talk to him right.”

  I closed their door behind me.

  Chapter 18

  “I am weary with my sighing; every night I make

  my bed swim, I dissolve my couch with my tears.”

  He came. My John came for me, but they did not let me go with him. He stood by my side. He was noble, he was strong, he was sensible as he spoke with them, but I saw it. I saw the despair in his eyes, I saw the heart that was being rent in two. I held his hand and swore I’d never let go as I watched him. It was as if something reached inside the two of us and latched onto our souls and ripped them out, leaving us worse than empty, leaving us like those who scream from the blackness of their sealed tombs.

  He offered to cover their debt for my hand, but it shamed them. They had enough humiliation being bound to Isaac. To be bound to the son of their old friends was too much. They couldn’t. Not even for me.

  My mother cried. My father looked as if he would rather tear out his own heart than mine, but he didn’t. Maybe it was Isaac’s presence, his nearness we could not rid ourselves of, that kept my father in chains. Isaac came, not as a tyrant, but stern as a man of God, a man who knew what was his right and he stood on it. He was not brutish when he spoke, but neither was he warm. My mother said he was an older man with a family, a man looking for a wife, a man who preached, a man who seemed to be of great hard faith. Her tremors told me what I knew was more true. He was a man who had bought my parents. I avoided him, escaped his glances, shunned his attempts at conversation.

  John told me Isaac would be cruel to me. I clung to his arm when he whispered such things. Isaac watched us, his face serious, his eyes searching and ever mindful of those of us around him. I looked away from him. Even if he was a man of God, I only wanted to see John.

  Father finally insisted John go. He told him nothing would change, I had been promised to Isaac before God, and our silly promises to each other and our little pretend ceremony bore no weight, meant nothing, just two people playing a game that was over. John stood against my father, he claimed me as his own and said the love he had for me was not silly, not a game, and not the result of gross mismanagement of finances or lives. My father hated what John said, it flashed ashen and red across his face as he ordered the son of his old friend out. “Julianne comes with me,” my darling had said. He took my arm and drew me toward the door. I stumbled out behind John, my mother’s tears loud behind us.

  “I’ll have them,” that staid voice said as we passed. I stopped, nearly yanking John over. “And so will God if your mother and father break their word to me.” Isaac stood outside my parents’ front door. He didn’t move and his face was without expression, like a worn statue that held its place by the power of its weight. He must have known John was at his breaking point or that my father was telling him to leave. I looked into Isaac’s eyes for the first time, tiny channels of black bored through watery green irises that wouldn’t cry. My heart stopped, my mother’s sobs tearing it in two. How could he do this to them? I wanted to scream my question, pound it into his hollow breast, but his eyes stopped me, eyes that held onto their God-given right and demanded of me how I could do this to them.

  I looked at John, desperate. I whispered his name, tears turning my voice to water. He looked back at me, and I saw his heart the moment mine was reflected in his eyes. He loved me and he would break his own before he destroyed mine further. I watched his face twist as he drove the dagger that hurt him so into his own breast.

  “I won’t do this to you,” he whispered. He moved near, his chest brushing mine, his fingers around my face. “I won’t tear you in half. I won’t take you away in pieces. I want all of you, and that’s how we’ll have it.”

  He stepped from me, backing away. “No,” I whispered. He raised a finger to his lips, his eyes red and watery. I saw he wasn’t leaving me, yet he was. “No,” I said louder as he moved farther away. My mother stepped to my side. I felt her trembling, and I could hear her muffled sobs. John held my eyes as he nodded toward my mother.

  “You need to go,” my father said to him from behind me.

  John stopped then, as the battle to salvage me waned. I saw it in his face, the desperation to run back and snatch me from here and make me his own. My mother’s sobs crushed me; my father’s strained hoarseness broke my heart. With one last look at me, John turned. He hurried away, taking my heart with him.

  “No!” I screamed. I broke from my mother’s arms only to be stopped by stronger ones, my father’s and Isaac’s. One set quivering, the other thin and grasping. John paused, but when my mother cried louder he moved on, tall and straight, too straight, trying too hard to make his legs move forward. I watched his strength drain as he moved farther away. By the time he was out of sight, he was small, weak, and a part of the horizon.

  “John!” I fell to the ground, my father’s arms letting me slip, the others holding on. I shrugged them off and tumbled forward into the dirt. My tears made mud beneath my face while my body convulsed with pain. I was not ashamed. I was wounded. John would come back or I would go to him. Surely this would be settled. It was in his eyes. He wanted to take me with him, but not this way, not with me grieved over my mother’s and father’s plight. This would soon be settled. But still I sobbed, incoherent utterances of pain spewing into the dirt. The feet near me slipped away. “Farther,” I whispered to them. “Go farther away.”

  Chapter 19

  “For it is not an enemy who reproaches me…

  it is you…my companion and my familiar friend,

  we who had sweet fellowship together.”

  I walked to my parents’ house at their bidding to eat with them, something we did fairly often, but something I knew I should do especially now that I’d been eating so little on my own recently. My mother had served us well all these years, feeding us wholesomely and tastily, and my stomach growled for the first time since Trevor had called off the wedding. As I neared their home I realized what a beautiful evening it was. Crickets and other small creatures serenaded me from the ditches and pastures, promising me that all was well and my world would be as it should someday. A whip-o-will cried invisibly from the nearby woods, heralding in the evening with its melodic call. I paused and listened, wishing for a moment that I was a poet instead of a journalist, someone who could find the words to do justice to the picture of a wounded heart framed by this beautiful farmland.

  My articles so far to my newspaper had been received with relish, my editor writing often, begging for more. As fragments of the truth I was uncovering eked out, my story of Julianne had evolved into a love tale, something on the order of Romeo and Juliet, and the readers back in Cincinnati were devouring it. To Cincinnati, Julianne was an unknown woman who had loved and suffered with passion. To my parents, she was just an unknown, safely tucked away in their history. I let them believe that, protecting her and them behind the lie that nothing had been published yet except the chronology of a young woman’s progress restoring an old house.

  I walked up the steps to their kitchen door and let myself in, taking in the heavy aroma of freshly baked bread and roasted chicken. “Oh, Mama, that smells so good.” I swept into the middle of the room with my head tilted back and drew in all of the wonderful odors of home. Mama said nothing. No one did. I righted my head and looked around.

  My mother shoved a tray of our best silver into my hands. “H
ere, go set the table,” she commanded. Confused by her abruptness, I turned toward the dining room and stopped short as I looked into the glaring eyes of Paul Junior.

  “Excuse me,” I said, starting to brush around him. It was then I saw Trevor, silent and stoic, frozen in place. I whirled to my mother who looked quickly away, bending over to draw her bread from the oven. I turned back to Trevor, the tray of silver biting into my ribs as I gripped it against me.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not here to see you,” he said quietly. Quietly, but still it resounded throughout the room like a sharp slap.

  Then why are you here? I wanted to ask him. Why is he here? I wanted to ask my mother, but I didn’t. I moved past him and Paul Junior and carried the tray to the table, barely able to breathe. The clink of the silver was sporadic as I dropped the pieces by each plate, large gaps between each ringing tone, enough space for me to hear the stilted conversation between my mother and Trevor and Paul Junior, who’d moved to the kitchen. She was trying to remain neutral. Or at least it sounded like she was. Humoring them, acting as if it was okay this had been sprung on me, and hoping everything would be all right in the end.

  She and my father carried in the food, Trevor coming behind with his share of the load, just as he’d always done. It hurt that I wasn’t with them. I was alone, a spectator who was sitting out this part of the game.

  “Everyone take a seat,” my mother commanded as she wrung the corner of her apron. We all broke from our awkward stances and began what felt like a rocky game of musical chairs. We fumbled around the table like children too young to understand the rules. I’d always sat next to Trevor, the two of us on one long side of the table, Paul Junior filling the opposite, my parents at the ends. Trevor and I danced, touching the backs of chairs, moving away to others, making gruff apologies as we got in each other’s way.

  “Sit over there.” Paul Junior directed me by pointing to the lone chair along one side. Trevor joined him on the opposite, and I took my place at the large open space alone.

  We sat, we prayed for the crops and the weather and the meal we were about to eat, and then we passed warm and cold dishes around the table and ate. Ate in silence, while I wondered if we shouldn’t have also prayed about this night of prolonged indigestion, the one each one of us looked as if we wished would end.

  “We’re going out,” Paul Junior said, gravy on his chin.

  “Wipe your chin,” Mama said, handing him her napkin.

  He waved his own at her and swiped it across his face. “Might find us some lady friends.” Paul Junior gave me a haughty look, and I wasn’t quick enough to keep the hurt from mine.

  “Paul Junior!” my mother snapped. I glanced at Trevor, hoping his face would be red, ready to tell Paul Junior how silly he was being. But his face wasn’t red at all, it wasn’t even pink. He sat like a stone—cold, empty, and unfeeling.

  “It’s okay, Mama.” My voice sounded choked. “It’s okay.” I stood. I couldn’t be here anymore. “Well, I’d better head back to my house. It’s dark and…”

  “I’ll give you a ride.”

  My heart fluttered. I’d had no idea how much I wanted to hear those words until they were out in the open. I smiled and wheeled around, realizing too late it was my father who’d said them. Not Trevor.

  “Not until you all have some dessert,” my mother interjected. She rose from the table, snatching plates from around her. “Give me a hand,” she told me. I drifted around the table, mechanically lifting plates, caught in a lapse of time, trying not to get too near anyone. I was afraid Trevor could hear my heart pounding as I stretched to reach for his dishes. I held my breath, willing my heart to settle down. He leaned away from me as I stretched, as did Paul Junior.

  I carried the plates to the kitchen, one foot carefully placed in front of the other. It hurt to have a near-mate turn on me. It was like turning on myself. But what else could be done? The thing my parents were doing? Hang somewhere in the middle no matter who it hurt? What little I’d eaten lay in a sour ball in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t pretend to be what they and Trevor wanted me to be. I couldn’t do anything without my heart and with just my body, as Kyle had so astutely understood. This was their moment, and Trevor’s moment, not mine. It was their choice to be encouraging or not, understanding or not…or in his case, go out to find another lady or not.

  I set the plates on the kitchen counter and stepped to my mother, who was busy whacking into a pie. I put a hand on hers and felt cool skin, not certain if it was hers or mine. Jittery tension passed between us, the touch we shared unsteady.

  “This is ridiculous,” she said, her voice sharp as she slammed down the slicer and eyed me. “This whole ‘Julianne’s house’ thing you’re doing. If you’d even gotten a phone down there, this could have been avoided. You wouldn’t have been caught by surprise doing things you shouldn’t be doing.”

  It was the slap I didn’t need, and I wanted to slap back. I hadn’t been doing things I shouldn’t be doing and neither had Kyle. Fury darkened Mama’s face, fury egged on by the fear that I was doing the thing they’d always known I’d someday do. Hurt boiled up inside me. If I deserved this judgment, if my great-grandmother deserved it, then so be it for both of us. But neither one of us did, so far as I could tell. I put my hand on the countertop and kept my eyes on it as I spoke. “I’m going to pass on dessert. Thank you for the meal.”

  Without looking up, I left. I didn’t want to see her face. I was sure it had the “you’re doing a Julianne” look, and that was something I didn’t want to see.

  Chapter 20

  “Gladness and joy are taken away from the fruitful field; in the vineyards also there will be

  no cries of joy or jubilant shouting.”

  “Come in,” I said to Kyle. He stood at my door, that old uncertain look on his face, my recently trampled soul understanding. “It’s okay. No one’s here.” He stepped past me and handed me a book as he did.

  “What’s this?” I asked, turning it over as I closed the door behind him. “Lost Love Letters, Tales of Unrequited Love” was embossed on the front cover. I looked at him.

  “Thought you might find them interesting,” he said, without explaining if it was my plight or Julianne’s that made him think I should read it. I flipped the book open and perused the names and titles of men and women from long ago until now, their sad soliloquies bunched into tight words below each one.

  “Thank you,” I said, trying to sound like I meant it.

  “I saw your fiancé last night,” he said.

  “Ex-fiancé,” I corrected him.

  “Only in word and deed,” he modified my correction. I frowned. “He agrees in word that he’s an ex, and he wasn’t behaving like anyone’s fiancé, but his heart is still bound to you.”

  I suddenly felt very cold. The book turned to ice in my hands. Tearing two souls apart was like being disemboweled. I didn’t want to know what Trevor had done to violate our past bond, and even less I wanted to know that he still cared while he did it. I couldn’t bear to imagine anguish on his face while he flirted with another. That wasn’t the happy man I’d dated and loved. That was some monster who’d taken his place after I hurt him.

  My pain was visible. I could feel it, naked in front of Kyle, so I turned away from him to the table and stared dumbly at my typewritten notes. My chest felt tight, too tight to breathe, and for a moment it was too much effort to try. Trevor still cared. But Trevor was moving on. My hands trembled as I lifted the notes. Without looking at him, I gave them to Kyle and sat down by myself to let him read of John’s visit to Julianne’s and the agony it brought the two of them. He settled in and began to read. I glanced up as he bent over the pages. Kyle’s face was like a mirror as he perused Julianne’s tragedy. Even if I hadn’t already read it myself, I would have known what happened just by seeing it reflected in his expression.

  “Kyle, have you ever loved someone?” I asked, surprising myself.

  He finished readin
g before he looked up, not even flinching at the abruptness of my question. “Not yet,” he said, “not like I want to, anyway.” His eyes unashamedly held mine. I’d never said something so personal to him before, never ventured beyond his reticent exterior.

  “Have you?” he asked, surprising me even more than I’d surprised myself.

  I sputtered. “Why of course! I was engaged, I loved…” My voice crescendoed until his gaze stopped me cold, that mirror of a face no longer reflecting Julianne’s pain. As he stared at me I saw my heartache in his expression, my yearning, my unrequited desires. I stared dumbfounded as my unfulfilled passions resounded back to me like an echo.

  “Not yet,” I said in the emptiness. “Not really loved. Or been loved.”

  He nodded. “You behave like someone’s fiancée, but your heart isn’t fully bound. It hasn’t found its home yet.”

  I bit my lower lip until it hurt, but said nothing. Faking love was worse than breaking love. I hadn’t meant to fake love. I hadn’t wanted to, or else I wouldn’t be here. I hadn’t understood that before, but I did now. If I’d married Trevor I would have ruined him, ruined the marriage, or ruined myself. Probably all three.

  “There are some letters that come after this,” Kyle said, waving my pages back at me.

  Numbly I stood and walked to the stack of Julianne’s envelopes and brought them to the sofa. I dropped down on my end while Kyle sat on the other. “You read them,” I said, my energy gone.

  He took them, picked up the top letter, and opened it to read.

  Chapter 21

  “Draw me after you and let us run together.”

  October 25, 1907

  My dearest Julianne,

  My brother’s heart is broken—No, it’s crushed. He refuses to eat, he won’t talk, he only works, and even that is done forcibly. What happened when he was there? It must be awful. Can’t something be done? Can’t you come to Chicago? I beg you to. Break from whatever holds you and fly here, save yourself and save him. I will pay for your fare, just tell me you’ll come.