For a dozen years! That was a stopper. But she wasn’t done. “And in the Sisterhood,” she said, “we learn self-control.” Her mouth twisted a bit. “Self-abnegation, really. It’s not always easy, even though we’re from selected stock. There’s a lot about a person that’s not genetic.”
It’s funny how much I remember of what she said, considering I didn’t understand half of it then. The biggest puzzles were who this we was she talked about. And Will’s jeans? I never knew him to own a pair of jeans. He’d always worn overalls, like most farmers.
Anyway, the upshot of it was, we’d tell Ma and Pa that we planned to get married and go somewhere else to live. And when we got there, we’d tell folks I was twenty-five and she was twenty. Then, in twelve, fifteen years we’d move again. Might be interesting to live different places.
We got married ten days later. The family didn’t announce it beforehand; Varia asked them not to. We just got the blood tests and license, and one evening after supper, my folks went with us to the parsonage. Took Reverend Fleming totally by surprise. I suppose he thought I’d got Varia pregnant. Anyway he took us next door to the church, turned on the lights, and married us in our coats, it being cold out and no fire in the furnace. When it was over, we all went home—Ma, Pa, Frank and Edith to their house, Max and Julie to theirs, and me and Varia to ours. Varia Macurdy. She didn’t even get a new name out of it, nor much in the way of wedding gifts. The ring was the one Will gave her.
I said something about it when we went inside. She said none of it mattered, that she’d got me, and that was what counted. Then we went upstairs to bed. We hadn’t been to bed together except that one night, but we made up for it before we went to sleep.
We’d already packed most everything she wanted to take with us—not a whole heck of a lot. The week before, I’d hammered together sort of a shed for the back of the Model A, with stakes for the stake pockets, that we could use to move. So by ten the next morning we were sitting in the cab together, headed south for the Ohio River, happy as two worms in an apple.
We didn’t have a notion of what we were getting into.
2: Idri
Evansville actually was where her gramma lived, except her gramma wasn’t her gramma. More like her cousin. And almost as good-looking as Varia. The big difference was their personalities; I could see that right away. Idri’s eyes were mean and hard, not laughing like Varia’s. As if she held grudges; I recall thinking that. She didn’t seem to be married—didn’t wear a ring, anyway—but I smelled and saw cigar butts in an ashtray. Maybe a brother, I thought. Not knowing Idri at the time.
After Varia introduced me as her new husband, Idri looked me up and down and scowled. The first thing she said was, “You’ll have to take him through! He’s needed there right now!” Not “It’s nice to know you,” or “Welcome to the family,” or “I suppose you’d like to meet your stepchildren.” Just giving orders: “You’ll have to take him through.” Whatever that meant.
Varia’s eyebrows shot up. “I have no intention of taking him through,” she said. “We’re moving to Illinois. I just came here to let you know, and draw five hundred dollars from the contingency account.”
Idri raised more than her eyebrows; she raised her voice. I don’t know what she said, because they started talking in some foreign language. But she sounded as mad as anyone I’d ever heard, ripping Varia up one side and down the other. Varia looked shocked at first, but after a minute she snapped something sharp and hard at Idri that stopped her in mid-snarl. Called her something, I suppose. Then she took my sleeve and dragged me out the door, and right on out to the truck. When we’d got in the cab, she started shaking, and I asked her what was wrong.