The Other Shoe Page 7

  “This is a misunderstanding,” Karen said. “I told him. I told him and told him and told him, he’s got it wrong.”

  “Yeah,” said Henry. “But what? What’d he get wrong?”

  “I told the paper guy I might come up here to live. That’s all it was. And now I think, well, I know, he’s got some misunderstanding out of it. Dad. Dad. I told you. Come on. Please.”

  “The paper?” said Henry. “The newspaper?”

  “You could say it slipped out.”

  “What slipped? I think I gotta have a few more details.”

  “And where did she come by that idea, Brusett? The two of you up here? Don’t that make a cozy arrangement for you?”

  “I don’t recall that it was ever discussed.”

  “I explained that, too,” said Karen. “I told him it was my own idea. Just my idea. And I told him that. And it wasn’t even an idea, hardly. Just something I said at the moment.”

  “She could stay here if she wants,” said Henry. “But where?”

  “Right,” said Galahad. “Where? If she got the idea she should come here, then you must’ve put it there, and if she’s coming here, even if she’s just been here before with you, that calls for a ceremony in my mind. The ring, the ceremony, the blessing—you better get ready for the whole shitaree . . . I mean the sacrament or whatever it’s supposed to be. See how mad this has got me?”

  “What’re you gonna do, Mr. Dent? Shoot me?”

  “You’ll do the right thing, Brusett.”

  “How could you wish that on your own daughter? Damn. Look at me, would you? You want this for her? What the hell?”

  “What do you mean?” said Karen. “What do you mean, ‘Look at you’?”

  Henry drew his robe closed. “Let’s everybody settle down. First thing, why don’t you switch that safety on? Were you gonna shoot me, or what?”

  “I think you better say you’ll do the right thing.”

  “Put the gun down.”

  “All it was,” said Karen, “I told the newspaper I worked for you. Not even for you—I told ’em I worked for somebody. I told the paper I might come up here to live. But I wasn’t even thinking. I hadn’t thought it through, I just said it.”

  “Seems to me,” said Galahad, “that neither one of you has been thinking too much. But you better start now.”

  “Something got by me here,” Henry said. “I must be missing something.”

  “Yeah. A proposal of marriage. You want her livin’ here, that’s what it’ll take.”

  “He never asked me to live anywhere,” Karen repeated. “Or do anything, or . . . ”

  “So,” said Galahad, “he didn’t even have to ask. Does that make it any better?”

  “Hold up,” said Henry. “I think if you keep talkin’ like that, then maybe you will have to shoot somebody. ’Cause you’re pissin’ me off. How you can talk about your own girl this way—poor-mouth her? She’s a good girl, and you oughtta know that. What’s wrong with you? Fuck you. Shoot me.”

  “Think I wouldn’t?”

  “I think I don’t care. Shoot or put it up; don’t embarrass yourself. Ah, but it’s too late, Dent. Shoot. Go on and shoot me.”

  “Wait,” said Karen.

  Galahad sent a round into one of the tires under Henry’s trailer, which popped, and they all flinched and then stood there looking from one to the other. Galahad leveled the .243 at Henry’s chest, and Henry said once again, “Fuck you.”

  “He doesn’t even use that word around me,” Karen told her father. “Now, see what you’re doin’? Stop it. You’re crazy. You are crazy, and I don’t like you, and I wanted to live anywhere but where you are. Stop it. Henry doesn’t even talk that way.”

  “Shoot,” said Henry. “Don’t stand there shakin’, shoot me.”

  “Henry,” she said, “would you please shut up? Please?”

  “I don’t like what he said. This is a good girl, she’s your own daughter, and I don’t see how you missed it, or didn’t know. Why do I have to be the one to tell you she’s a good girl? That’s what’s wrong here—me havin’ to tell you.”

  “He’s crazy, Henry. He can’t see anything. He doesn’t know anything.” Her father’s forefinger, she saw, was snug on the trigger, and the rifle’s barrel ended just a foot from Henry Brusett’s heart. “Look,” she said, “if it makes you happy, I’ll marry him. Why not?”

  “You don’t have to do one damn thing,” said Henry.

  “What if I wanted to? How do you know I wouldn’t want to?”

  “Karen,” said Henry, “now, this is gettin’ out of hand.”

  Galahad’s lips were crusted white, his breathing shallow but loud.

  “I said I’d marry him.”

  “No,” said Henry.

  “I want to,” she said.

  A vein burst in Galahad’s nose and splattered his sandy mustache.

  “No, I really want to. Who else would I marry, anyway? Who’d suit me better than you would?”

  “About anybody,” said Henry. “Anybody, honey. Now, quit it, or you’ll get me cryin’.”

  “Honey?” said Galahad Dent.

  “He doesn’t call me that. And he doesn’t use bad language, either. Usually. Put down that gun. Come on. Please. Before anything can happen.”

  “I guess we could try and make a little sense here,” said Henry. “But Mr. Dent, you have got no business . . . You got a wonderful girl, and you talk like this? You even hear yourself?”

  Eyes twitching and raised to heaven, Galahad pleaded, “Master, let me know.” He knelt and they waited an odd amount of time until he had his answer or was bored with waiting for it, and then Galahad finally unslung the .243 and laid it on the ground before him. He remained on one knee, too tired or too contrite to rise. A crow called to another crow off in the trees, and a gray squirrel capered out over open ground. Henry toed the rifle to point it away from everyone.

  “The same thing still goes,” said Karen. “I’d like to marry you. For me, not for him or what he thinks. I’d like to. For me. This is modern times, and I’m the whattayacallit. The age of consent. Anyway, I can propose to somebody, I think, like, legally. Sorry it had to be this way, but that’s what I’m doin’. So, do you want to, Henry? Get married? To me, I mean?”

  It took her three days to convince him, as she had convinced herself in a moment, that he was her only sufferable option. She asked him to call her, though she knew it meant his coming down off the mountain each time; she asked that he call every night at six, because they really did need to talk, and when they talked she told him that all she wanted in all the world was to be with someone who she could expect to be nice to her. Was that too much to ask? She said she would not be a problem, that she could cook a little and would learn to do better. She could be his legs for him all day every day, and just think what they might accomplish. She said she’d take up very little room because she intended to leave almost everything she had behind with the Dents. She’d bring her clothes and her woods gear and her own shampoo and toothbrush and that was all. She said she needed to go somewhere, anywhere, and she needed to go right now, and she had nowhere else to go, no one else that she could think to ask for any help. All she wanted was food, and all she absolutely needed was shelter under some roof other than the Dents’. Henry said he thought maybe he could buy a second trailer for her, but Karen said that it wasn’t necessary, that she was talking about marriage. She was very surprised to find herself in agreement with her father on a point of such importance, but, truly, if they were going to live together, they might as well live together as man and wife; there were too many advantages in it to ignore. “Actually,” she said, “I think it’s a great idea. I mean, don’t you?”

  “Oh, I’d like it fine, and I wish that was the only thing we had to consider, whether I liked it or not. Problem is—it’s ridiculous. Because you could do, you should do a lot better for yourself. I just can’t tell you how flattered I am, but no.”

  �
�I don’t know that. I don’t know that at all. In fact, I doubt it very much. You’re as good as they come, Henry. Good as I’ve ever seen, anyway. And, as far as ridiculous goes—everything is ridiculous. Believe me, I’m ready right now.”

  One Friday in May, Karen rode with Henry over Thompson Pass, just the two of them, and though by then the road had been open several weeks already, there were still stretches of it where snow lay drifted and plowed into ten-foot berms on either side, and they traveled in those places through a crystal canyon, under a faultless sky. The twenty-fifth of May. At the top of the pass, somewhere along the state line, Henry mentioned a trailhead, buried now, but that trail, he promised, led to a lesser trail, and that trail, about three miles along, came to the biggest huckleberry patch he’d ever seen, a place rarely without a bear in it. He’d show her sometime. They descended into Idaho and drove over the Fourth of July Pass and on into Coeur d’Alene, and before eleven thirty that morning, Pacific Standard Time, they’d bought two plain white gold bands and been to the Kootenai County Courthouse for their license. At the Old Joinery, a pleasant receptionist told them that Justice Quinlevan had committed to unite three couples before them that day, and with that and with a lunch break for the staff, she wondered if they would be willing to come back at four forty-five?

  Henry took Karen to Sterner’s Family Restaurant for the endless pink lemonade it advertised and for its broasted chicken. They went to Sears to look at generators and to buy a wheel for his wheelbarrow. He tried to buy her a jacket that was on sale, marked 60 percent off. “For a wedding present?” he thought.

  “But it’s supposed to be other people who give us presents, isn’t it? Which I don’t want anyway. I got my wedding present soon as we loaded my stuff in your truck. Soon as we drove outta that yard.” Karen did not wish to seem ungrateful, but it was a girlish garment he was offering, its hood lined with a purple pelt, a thing otherwise white and puffy and not at all her taste. “Anyway,” she said, “I won’t hardly have any use for a jacket until it gets cold again. Next fall. I don’t wear ’em any more than I have to. You’ll be surprised by how little stuff I use.”

  Henry bought her instead five hundred rounds for her pistol and some neatsfoot oil for her holster.

  Karen wondered how some women stood a wait of months and even years to marry, for it seemed to her that once an agreement was reached, an understanding, then the rest was urgent work. Before sunset, her name would no longer be Dent. At the restaurant, Henry asked her if she was sure, and she said yes. In Sears, he asked her again, and again she said yes. From Sears they walked the mall until they came to a snow cone stand. Karen had a coconut-lime, Henry a raspberry, and, his lips scarlet, he told her, “I wouldn’t be a good catch even for a woman my own age. Even for an ugly one. As you say, I’d be nice to you and all, yeah, you could be sure of that. But you can back away from this any old time, and I’d sure understand it if you did. No hard feelings at all.” Karen dismissed this with a face she’d already learned to make at him. Poor dear. Slow learner. Every struggling word made him more completely hers, and if he was trying to get out of it now, he was going about it the wrong way. They went to the bookstore and bought collections of crossword puzzles, and pinochle decks, and some spy novels, and then it was time to go back.

  There were typed bulletins in the vestibule of the Old Joinery dating from February and June of 1967, and these had been preserved on onionskin, now a urine shade, on black velvet under glass:

  Our own Lake Couer d’Alene one of seven most beautiful lakes in the World

  No Solicitors

  No Warrants—this Court does not do business but marriages

  Marry in Haste Repent in Leisure

  Stay Out of the Dominican Republic

  There was a tally sheet of ceremonies performed by Justice Quinlevan each year since 1967, and no one of those years had seen fewer than eight hundred marriages. There were framed and signed portraits of Consuela Quinlevan, taken at intervals of decades, and in each of these she was deep at the same console, consumed in her Wurlitzer’s swooping keyboards and pedals and stops. It was Mrs. Quinlevan who came to lead them into the Matrimonial Chamber—she explained that they had to call it that for tax reasons—but they only recognized her as Mrs. Quinlevan when she took her place at the familiar organ, for she had withered very much since the most recent of her photographs. When at last they met him, Justice Quinlevan was scarcely sturdier than his wife. He wore his wife’s rouge. Another ancient couple was in attendance, seated along the wall under a placard that read WITNESSES—SUGGESTED GRATUITY—$10.00 PER SIGNEE. These were the birdlike Bernardos, she in crinoline, he in gabardine, and they spent their days waiting for moments like these when the betrothed arrived without bridesmaids or groomsmen. The Bernardos for their little fee would form the genuinely pleased and fully legal complement for a wedding party. They rose to do so. Mrs. Quinlevan’s hands instantly ceased to tremble as she set them to “The Wedding March,” which she played, verse and chorus, as if she’d only just perfected it, as if it were not a dirge, as if their progress to the altar was not a matter of a few stunted steps past ranks of empty folding chairs.

  Mrs. Bernardo pressed a bouquet of cloth baby’s breath into Karen’s hands. Justice Quinlevan asked her a question that she could not understand, for he spoke torturously, as through a mouthful of scalding oatmeal. So he asked more simply, “Rheadhy?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes, please.”

  The justice’s tongue, lips, and lungs were all at odds, and he was not only hard to understand but painful to hear and to see speaking. It seemed from the pace of his voice that he’d begun the ceremony, and that he was telling them a story, and Karen worried that when he got to her part, her time to recite, she would misunderstand him and fail to jump in. The justice said the word “obeedienth,” the phrase “heavnen nun nirth,” but finally, when it came to the matter of the rings, he made himself clear enough, and then he prompted them through some minimal vows, and then he invited Henry to “kidth the bohrdh.” It seemed to Karen that the justice and all his staff were addicted to the optimism of this moment; Mr. Bernardo whispered, “Kiss her, sir.” And Henry, regretfully if she was not mistaken, brushed her cheek with his lips. “Conlahnshuhns,” said Justice Quinlevan. “MidsuhnMihz Ehnday Butsuhdt.” Mrs. Quinlevan played them out the door with her powerful rendering of “Tiny Bubbles,” and they didn’t go arm in arm as Karen had expected, nor hand in hand; they walked out as they had walked in, side by side, and they could still hear the Wurlitzer skirling when Henry started the truck.

  The twenty-fifth of May, she thought. From now on this would be their anniversary.

  They went back the long way, the flat route home that leads to the bridge that crosses to Sandpoint, and along the shores of Lake Pend Oreille and through Hope and East Hope and then upriver and back into Montana, and they rode as if they’d driven this road many times before, as if they’d now said all they could say to each other, and they pretended that the new silence between them was comfortable. Still, this was so very much better than any trip she’d ever made as a Dent. Karen considered that if she had just seen one of the seven most beautiful lakes in the world, and if the scenery was at least equally good all the way home, then she must be a very lucky girl to live in such a lovely, large paradise. A lucky woman. She was entitled to think of herself as a woman now, and she thought that she might as well do that. Being a girl had certainly been no good.

  ▪ 5 ▪

  THE TRAILER ON Fitchet Creek had two bedrooms, one of them little more than a closet with no window and a sliding door for its entrance. This was the room Henry assigned himself when Karen moved in. When with crippling diffidence she tried to question the arrangement, he told her, “Women need more space.” He apologized for the fact that in the larger bedroom, her room now, tiers of bookshelves were everywhere, but Karen said that they made it seem homey; they reminded her of a quilt she’d seen hanging in some fussy old woman’s sitting r
oom, and, she said, she’d probably have time for quite a bit of reading. He’d been a long while alone here—the books were organized by labeled sections: SEA STORIES, SPY STORIES, WESTERNS, MANUALS, RELIGION & PHILOSOPHY & HEALTH. The walls were of a honey-colored veneer, and Henry had contrived to make it smell of vanilla in the room where she was to sleep. She was to lie on and under goose down in her new bed, and so from the very start, he’d already given her an abundance of everything she’d asked of him, but he seemed to want nothing more than her presence in exchange, and so, though life with Henry was a remarkable improvement over anything she’d known before, the old question had yet to be answered. The terms of her marriage left her asking still, “What have I done?”

  That she’d become Mrs. Brusett, she soon discovered, was a startling fact in many quarters. Principal Tanner agreed to print her diploma that way, but he did ask if she’d consider calling in sick or making just any excuse to skip the graduation ceremony. It was her decision, of course, and he couldn’t keep her away, but did she think that it would be fair to the other seniors to create all that stir when her new name was announced onstage? Wouldn’t that kind of take the wind out of it for the other kids? Mrs. Henry Brusett? Could she imagine him reading that out loud in front of people? Did she want to be such a big distraction or put her new husband through what would have to be a pretty embarrassing evening for him, too?

  Karen didn’t want any of these things, and so, a week early and with Mr. Tanner’s tepid congratulations and his promise that her diploma would be in the mail, she was allowed to be done at school; Mr. Tanner said of her last few days of class, “Why bother?”

  Henry had sent her to school that day in his old Triumph, which, as soon as he’d seen her in the driver’s seat, he’d pronounced her Triumph, “ . . . for what it’s worth. It’s the TR4, and they’re worse than temperamental, but it happens to be runnin’ strong right now, and you look good in it, so have a big time.” The car made an outsized rumbling, and it rattled from a history of use on roads for which it was never designed, but as Karen drove out of the school parking lot, summarily dismissed from the last of her old life, her life to date, and chafing a bit at the injustice and the anticlimax of it, it felt fine to shake her hair out and run through the gears, which she was already doing with precision. With the money that had been earmarked for her cap and gown, she stopped at Pearson’s Supply and bought three laying hens and a newly weaned kid, a goat with a puppy’s disposition, and she had these crated, and she stacked and strapped the crates into the passenger’s seat and set off with the top down and her new chickens flying in place beside her. She had in mind an endless summer.