Daughters of Eve, Page 3

  She felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “Is something wrong, Tammy?” Irene Stark asked her worriedly. “Are you feeling sick?”

  Tammy lowered her hands from her face and blinked at the brightness. The other girls were all out of their seats now, gathered in a noisy, welcoming group around the new ones. The room was filled with laughter and happy chatter and hugs.

  “Are you sick?” Irene asked again, and Tammy nodded.

  “It’s so hot in here,” she said weakly. “I think I’d better go out—where it’s not so hot.” She got up from her seat, crossed the room and opened the door. The air from the hallway felt cool against her face.

  “Hey, Tammy, where are you going?” Kelly Johnson called out to her, but she didn’t answer. Halfway down the hall she broke into a run. She reached the door at the end and hurled herself against it, pushing it wide, and a moment later she was outside, running through the golden sweetness of the September afternoon.

  Chapter 3

  Ann Whitten recognized the sound of the pickup truck and smiled to herself in the darkness before it came around the bend. Half an hour late, as always, she thought without rancor, and used her foot to give a little shove to set the porch swing to rhythmic creaking. She focused her eyes on the curve of the road and waited for the lights to appear like two great cat eyes slashing through the black. When they did she was only mildly surprised to see that one of them had a drooping lid.

  Dave gets one thing working and something else goes wrong, she thought with a sigh as the truck came groaning into the driveway and pulled to a stop behind her father’s sedan. It gave a roar and a gasp and went sputtering into silence; the cat eyes blinked once and went out.

  The door of the cab opened and slammed closed, and a moment later Dave was coming across the lawn, the white splash of his shirt catching the light from the living-room windows. As he mounted the porch steps and turned to press the doorbell, Ann said, “Boo!”

  He gave a start, and she laughed with satisfaction. “Did I scare you?”

  “Gave me a heart attack, that’s all.” Dave crossed the porch and groped his way to the swing. “Got room there for a friend?”

  “I might. It depends who it is.”

  “Somebody with straw in his hair okay?”

  “Oh—him.” Ann pretended to be mulling the situation over. “I’ll have to give this some thought. Am I really that sort of girl?”

  Dave took the teasing good-naturedly. “Well, while you’re thinking, move over and let a tired man sit down.”

  The swing creaked as he settled himself beside her and then grew quiet as the motion stopped. Dave’s arm came around her shoulders and drew her against him, and with the ease of long familiarity Ann laid her head back against it and raised her face for his kiss.

  “Mmmmmm,” she said contentedly. “You smell like toothpaste and shampoo. You don’t have straw in your hair at all. You must have just washed it.”

  “That’s what took me so long,” Dave said. “I couldn’t come over here fresh from feeding the pigs, now, could I?”

  “I guess you could have,” Ann said, “but I’m glad you didn’t. Hey, did you know one of your headlights isn’t working right?”

  “Yeah, I realized it when I started out tonight, but it was either drive with it that way or stay home. I’ll do something about it tomorrow. That is, if I have time. Man, the days go by too fast! How was school?”

  “Okay,” Ann said. “I showed Irene—Ms. Stark—my sketches from this summer.”

  “What did she say about them?”

  “She liked them,” Ann said. “Especially the one of you on the tractor, and that last one I did with the fence in the foreground with all the crows lined up along it and the pasture behind it and then the house. She said that had good perspective. She wanted to know what kind of art training I’ve had.”

  “So you told her ‘none’?”

  “Well, none except the regular school classes. But I’ve done a lot of work on my own, you know. I told her I’ve got a closet full of sketchbooks that go back to elementary school, and that I’ve been working in watercolor for a couple of years now. I said I’d bring some of the paintings in to show her.”

  “That’s good. Maybe she’ll give you an A.”

  “She kept the sketches,” Ann said.

  She wanted to tell him more, to describe the way Irene had sat there studying the drawings, her dark brows drawn together and that strong, intense face taut with concentration. There had been other students in the room waiting to talk with her, but for that moment Ann had felt that only she existed in Irene’s world.

  “These are strong,” Irene had said. “Especially the one with the tractor. I like the lines of the man’s shoulders. I’m glad you didn’t try to fill in the face.”

  “The face doesn’t matter,” Ann said.

  “Of course it doesn’t. You caught the man’s spirit in the arch of the body. The features of the face would have detracted rather than added.”

  She’d understood it so quickly, and yet Dave’s reaction to the same drawing had been bewilderment. “When are you going to finish it?” he’d asked. To Dave, “a really good painting” was The Valley of the Good Shepherd, a brightly colored representation of Christ in flowing robes surrounded by a collection of adoring sheep, which his mother had removed from an outdated calendar and taped to her kitchen wall.

  “Ms. Stark kept my sketches,” Ann said again now, and left it at that.

  “So what else did you do today?” Dave asked her. The question was more than ritual. His unfeigned interest in the details of her days was to Ann one of his most endearing qualities. “You had a club meeting this afternoon, didn’t you? Were your minutes professional enough?”

  “Well, nobody booed.” Ann paused. “But something weird did happen after the initiation ceremony. Tammy ran out of the room.”

  “Why’d she do that?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see it happen. I was busy welcoming the new members, but Kelly saw her from across the room and tried to go after her. By the time she got out to the hall, Tammy was gone.”

  “Maybe she wasn’t feeling well,” Dave said reasonably.

  “It wasn’t that. We called her as soon as the meeting was over. She was home by then, and she sounded really freaked out. She said, ‘Something’s going to go wrong this semester, and I don’t want anything to do with it.’ She’s going to drop out of Daughters of Eve!”

  “I didn’t think she could,” Dave said. “I thought you told me nobody ever did that. Once you’re in, you’re in for life.”

  “Well, Tammy says she’s quitting, and once she makes her mind up about something, she usually goes through with it. I don’t understand it. We have so much fun in that group, and all our friends are there. She’ll miss out on everything! It’ll ruin her senior year.”

  “Do you know what she meant about something going ‘wrong’?” Dave asked, a note of worry in his voice. “People don’t just get ideas like that out of the sky.”

  “Tammy does,” Ann said with a nervous little laugh. “She gets these premonitions, and, weird as it sounds, sometimes they turn out to be right. I remember one time…” She let the sentence fall away, uncompleted.

  “One time what?”

  “We were sitting in a booth down at Foster’s,” Ann said slowly, “Tammy and Kelly and I, and this guy came in and ordered a Coke. We’d never seen him before, and Tammy told us something about him—and it turned out to be true.”

  “Maybe she was just remembering something she’d heard somewhere.”

  “No—that wasn’t it.”

  It had happened over a year ago. It was the end of the summer, and the man had been red-faced and sweating, with his blond hair plastered to his head. He was dressed in boots and overalls, and he was obviously a local farmer who’d come into town on an errand during lunch. He stood at the counter, swigging a Coke in great thirsty gulps, the muscles in his arms and shoulders standing out
in corded lumps beneath the damp material of his cotton shirt.

  “Why would anybody wear a long-sleeved shirt on a day like this?” Kelly wondered.

  “To keep from getting burned when he’s out in the fields, I guess.” Ann glanced across at Tammy. “Hey, what’s with you? You’re staring at that guy like you know him.”

  “I feel like I do,” Tammy told her. “He’s going to be—important—I think—to one of us.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding!” Kelly exclaimed, and Ann said, jokingly, “To you, Tam?”

  “No,” Tammy said. “To you.”

  They had all laughed then. The mere idea of fastidious, artistic Ann Whitten becoming involved with a farmer was ridiculous. Even Tammy hadn’t quite believed it. She’d told Ann later, “I get these feelings, but I can’t always trust them. That was one time when I thought I was freaking out.”

  Yet she’d been right. The impossible had happened; here Ann sat now with her head on the “farmer’s” shoulder, as contented as a cat who’d waited all day to settle on the comfort of a warm lap.

  One of the living-room lights went off, and a moment later the front door opened.

  “Annie,” Ann’s mother said through the screen, “did Dave ever get here?”

  “I’m here, Mrs. Whitten,” Dave said. “The chores ran late tonight. We’re just sitting here talking about our days. Want to come and join us?”

  “No, thanks,” Mrs. Whitten said. “Dad and I are going to turn in early. I just wanted to check that you’d gotten here and Ann wasn’t sitting out there by herself worrying over you. Remember, it’s a school night.”

  “I’ll remember,” Dave said. “I’ll be leaving in a few minutes. My day begins pretty early, too, you know.”

  “Night, Mom,” Ann said. “See you in the morning.”

  “All right, dear. Good night.”

  The door closed, and Ann felt Dave’s arm tighten around her.

  “Your parents are pretty cool about it,” he said softly. “About my being over here so much, I mean.”

  “They like you,” Ann said. “You know that. Dad really respects you, taking over the running of the farm after your father died. He says that with all you hear these days about the ‘irresponsibility of youth,’ it’s great to see someone your age who’s not afraid of hard work.”

  “You know, on the way over here I was remembering how we met. At first I didn’t think you’d go out with me,” Dave said. “When Holly introduced us at her brother’s wedding, you gave me a long, weird look that made me feel like my suit coat was buttoned wrong or there was corn stuck between my teeth or something. I thought, great, here goes nothing; this girl is used to cool guys who are going somewhere. At least, as cool as you can find in Modesta.”

  “It wasn’t that,” Ann said. “I just—thought I’d seen you somewhere before. Then you smiled, and I thought, nobody has eyes that blue—that absolute, clear, pure blue like pictures you see of the Mediterranean.”

  “I almost didn’t go to the wedding. I hadn’t seen Gary Underwood since high school.”

  “I almost didn’t go either. It was such a pretty day, I was going to go sketching down by Pointer’s Bridge. Then Holly called and asked if I’d help serve punch at the reception, and there I was, stuck.” Ann laughed. “Is that fate or what?”

  “Fate for you, maybe; luck for me. For one David Brewer, it was the luckiest day in his life.”

  He bent his head to kiss her, and it was a long kiss, not a light one as the other kiss had been. Dave’s arms locked around her and pulled her tight against his chest, and Ann could feel the pounding of his heart so clear and strong it might’ve been her own. Her mouth went soft beneath his, and her eyes closed, and she let herself be drawn into the kiss as she had, on that first day, been drawn into the blue of his eyes.

  When it was over, he didn’t release her, but kept holding her tightly against him. He was breathing hard, like a man who had come running a long way.

  “I love you,” he whispered. “You know that, Annie? I love you so much I could almost die.”

  “I know,” Ann whispered back. “I love you, too.”

  “Enough to marry me?”

  She was silent for a moment. Then she said quietly, “I think I do.”

  “You mean that?” He loosened his hold and drew away from her just enough to look down into her face. His own was lost in shadows, but she knew it so well that she could see it in the darkness.

  “Don’t tell me that unless you mean it, Ann. I couldn’t stand it if I thought you were saying yes, and then it turned out I was wrong.”

  “I love you,” Ann said. “I’m sure of that. It’s just—marriage… we’re so young. I need to get used to the idea.”

  “Well, so do I when it comes down to it. We’ve both got time for thinking. You won’t graduate until next May.”

  “A June wedding?” A series of pictures flashed before her. Modesta Community Church with its windows wide and the scent of lilacs pouring through them with the June sunshine. Tammy and Kelly in identical pink bridesmaid dresses. Holly Underwood at the organ. Herself in the white satin wedding gown that had hung for twenty years in a plastic bag in the back of her mother’s closet, waiting for a second use. Her father tall beside her, and at the aisle’s end, Dave, huge and handsome in a dark suit, his blue eyes shining with pride and happiness as he watched her come slowly toward him.

  June was a time for weddings, for new beginnings. In May the life she’d known for twelve long years would be over. No longer would her days be regulated by a schedule of classes, club meetings and school-centered social activities. Her friends who were fellow seniors would be zooming off in all directions. Tammy would be leaving to follow her sister Marnie to college, and Kelly to attend business school in Adrian, Michigan, while Erika would undoubtedly pick up a scholarship and be off and flying. Life would be opening wide for all of them, and for herself—what? A waitressing job at Brummell’s Café on Main Street? A position as a salesclerk at the Dollar Tree? A clothing store? There’d been a time when she’d dreamed of attending art school somewhere, but her father’s forced retirement because of a heart condition had made that financially impossible.

  June—a time of beginnings—and why not marriage? Wasn’t that what her mother had done the June she was eighteen? Her parents would be pleased. Her mother had always hoped that Ann would marry somebody from Modesta after high school and settle down close by, and Dave’s farm would provide a good life, a clean, solid life—and whom would she ever want to marry if not Dave?

  “It’s a really nice house,” he was saying now. “And there’s even that little side bedroom where you could set up your painting stuff.”

  “Have my own little studio?” She was touched by his thoughtfulness.

  “Why not? There’s plenty of room. And you’ll have my mom to talk to when I’m out in the fields, or you could pack us up a picnic and come down and meet me at lunchtime, and we could sit by the creek and eat, and you could do your sketching.”

  “Like we did this past summer.” It had been a beautiful summer of blue skies and sunshine, and even the heat hadn’t mattered, because the creek that ran along the edge of the fields at the south end of Dave’s land had been clear and cold and the grassy banks had been dappled with shade from the willows.

  “And at night we’d have dinner together,” Ann said dreamily. “In the winter we could eat by the fireplace and listen to the wind whistling around the corners of the house, and it wouldn’t matter because we’d be inside together, and when the evening was over neither of us would have to drive home.”

  “We’d be home,” Dave said. “So is it ‘yes,’ my gentle Annie?”

  It was his own pet name for her, based on an old folk song both of them loved, and the tenderness with which he used it touched her deeply.

  “It’s ‘yes,’ ” Ann said, and at that moment, in some far corner of her mind, she heard the voice of Tammy Carncross raised in warning.

&nbs
p; Something’s going to go wrong this semester!

  With Dave’s arms warm around her, Ann called back silently, For somebody else, maybe, Tammy, but not for me!

  Chapter 4

  It was Friday, the sixth day of October.

  “I hate to say no to you, Kristy, but I have to,” Mrs. Grange said firmly. “I know you’re disappointed and I’m sorry, but what you’re asking is impossible at this particular time in our lives.”

  “It’s not impossible! Other girls get to do what they want to after school!” Kristy glared across the table at her mom. “Why do I have to be different from everybody else?”

  Immediately she wished she hadn’t asked that. It was the question that her parents always waited for, and both of them had their mouths open with the answer before the last words had reached their ears. Miserably she glanced around the table for support, knowing as she did so that there would be none. Eric was shoveling food into his mouth as though he hadn’t eaten for weeks, and Peter was off somewhere in outer space. Only Niles was paying attention to the conversation, and he was leaning back in his chair, grinning. Niles loved arguments.

  “Because your family—” both her parents began simultaneously.

  “I’m sorry,” her mom said, and her dad continued, “Because your family isn’t like ‘everybody else’s.’ It’s a luxury to have four kids these days, and with the economy like it is, it takes two wage earners working overtime to keep it going.”

  And whose fault is it we have this “luxurious family”? Kristy wanted to yell at them. Nobody forced you to keep on having babies! You could’ve stopped after me—three kids are plenty! With an effort that almost choked her, she swallowed the accusation and struggled to bring her anger under control. From experience she knew that shouting would get her nowhere, and her only hope was to reach them with calm reason.