4

It was Sunny who noticed Page’s car first, parked in her family’s back yard. Nobody but Page would drive a crumbling runabout like that one.

“Page Pringle!” she exclaimed.

“Who’s that?” her father asked, pulling his car in beside Page’s heap.

“The grande passion of two years ago,” said his wife.

They found him in the kitchen. The thermostat in the refrigerator had gone haywire and, finding all the food frozen, Page had started out to fix it. Sunny’s little brother, Chuckie, gave him admiring help. Page had gotten sidetracked and carved six bloody half moons out of an icy tomato for Chuckie when Sunny and her parents caught him.

The motor in the refrigerator droned on in the background. He had forgotten to turn it off and it was working gamely to chill the whole kitchen. Page and Sunny looked at each other, afraid and relieved, intensely affected by the sight of each other.

“I was just fixing the ice box,” Page said clumsily. It was a declaration of love. He hated his shuffling embarrassment, but she caught his hands and saved him.

“Thanks,” she said.

“Cripes,” said Chuckie with the traditional disgust of the young for romance. “Show me about the tomato, Page.”

“Meet my family,” Sunny said, and introduced them. He turned willingly to shake hands, welcoming the chore he used to think of as the first step down the aisle.

Because this time he was sure; this time it was for keeps. He had been around the world now, and the world had only one Sunny. He was certain, with the confidence of his youth and their mutual passion, that she was still his. He had the pressure of her hands and the look in her eyes to prove it.

Lord, he thought, I want her right now. He stared overlong until Ben Rotheli, her father, cleared his throat and offered him a beer. They went into the living room with Chuckie trailing behind, his hands full of melting tomato chunks.

Page couldn’t keep still. “Sunny, you look wonderful. Just great,” he said impulsively and interrupted Ben’s description of a double play. Rotheli laughed and so did Sunny.

“I’m not very subtle, am I?” Page grinned, turning red.

“Everything in the refrigerator is ruined,” June Rotheli announced, coming in from the kitchen.

“Oh, my God, it’s all my fault.” Page got up.

They brushed it off good-naturedly but he insisted on taking them out to dinner. “Let me get back in your good graces,” he said eagerly, and they smiled at him and liked him. Page could hear echoes of Sunny’s laugh in her mother’s and it made him like June Rotheli immensely.

Chuckie got a good start on a case of hero-worship that night. Anybody who could saw a frozen tomato apart and spoil all the food in the refrigerator and take the whole family out to dinner in one day was a very superior man.

They went home to Hillsburg after dinner and sat on the front porch for a while. Page had been prepared to tolerate his future in-laws. Instead, he liked them.

He put his arm around Sunny, coasting on the porch swing, and fed her peanuts. Chuckie sat at his feet, infatuated as small boys often are. Page noticed how fond of his son Ben Rotheli seemed. Not that a man doesn’t take special pride in a son, but this was a relationship close and warm beyond the usual. Often, as he talked, Ben’s hand came in touch with his son’s shoulder as if to say: “This is my boy, my brains, my bones, my immortality.” It wasn’t the easiest attitude for a small son to bear, though Chuckie took it pretty well in stride.

When the phone rang Chuckie jumped up to get it. But it was for Sunny. He came back to the porch to call her and his face wore an impish grin. “It’s Ralph,” he said.

“Bed for you, mister,” Ben Rotheli told him as Sunny went in.

“I’ll be over tomorrow, Chuckie,” Page said.

“We’ll have to go somewhere else,” Chuckie said. “Ralph will be here. Maybe we could go fishing.”

“Maybe we could throw Ralph in the lake,” Page said.

Chuckie laughed and Ben and June shooed him in the house, following him in a tactful move that left the porch to Page.

When Sunny came back, they were alone with the fireflies and the sounds of a summer night. Alone with two years of love to catch up on.

“I like your family, honey. I didn’t think I would,” he said. “Your dad is awfully fond of Chuckie, isn’t he?”

“Yes.” Sunny plucked at a loose thread on her skirt and Page admired her passionately in silence, his hands moving carefully on her arms. “We’re a mixed-up family,” she added.

“Does it make you jealous? Girls are supposed to be jealous of their fathers.”

“No.” She laughed. “I understand why, you see. Dad and Mom lost a baby: their first. A son. He would have been quite a bit older than me. So when Chuckie came, years later, he seemed like a second chance.”

“Did the first one die at birth?” Page kissed her neck.

“He lived a little while, but they lost him at about three weeks.”

“How did he die?” Page didn’t care especially about it but he was afraid to blurt violently, “Darling, marry me!” the way he wanted to. It might scare her off.

“I never knew how it happened,” she said of her lost brother. “They never come out and say he died; it’s as if the words would hurt too much. So I’ve gotten the habit of saying they lost him.

“Mother can’t talk about it at all. She was sick before he came, and, afterwards she had a nervous breakdown. Cracked up completely. She couldn’t even leave the hospital for almost a year, and it was ten years before the doctor let her try again. She got me.”

“Must have been rough,” Page said. “Darling, you smell like roses.”

“It was. They named him Roger. It’s too bad they gave him a name—makes him seem too much like a real person.”

“Were they sorry you were a girl? What kind of perfume is that?”

“No. Mother came back to life and nearly spoiled me ... Chanel Number Five.”

“Why didn’t they name Chuckie ‘Roger’? Does Chanel smell like roses?”

“Because Mother was afraid of the name. No, you nut, it’s an aldehyde scent. Strictly chemical. Your smeller’s confused.”

“Honey, I don’t care what it is, you smell like roses.” He turned her head and kissed her forehead reverently, and then her cheeks and nose, and then his lips parted over hers and he touched her soul with his tongue. Her response was as hot and knowing and loving as he had remembered, and he held on to her urgently.

“Sunny, Sunny,” he murmured. “You’re my whole life. I knew it back in school but I wouldn’t admit it. Darling Sunny, thank God it’s not too late. You haven’t changed. I was so afraid—”

“You!” she cried suddenly, giving him a hard shove. “You worm!”

He leaned back, startled, unwilling to release her. “I know I’ve been gone a while—”

“Two whole years! And I was just getting over you, damn you!” she said, throwing her arms up across her breasts and glaring at him.

“Tell me what an ass I am if it’ll help,” he said.

“What an ass you are?” she said dismally. “I’m the ass. Sitting here like Heaven’s own fool and letting you—”

“Letting me what?”

She pushed his groping hands away again.

“Tell me; let me hold you. Oh God, Sunny ... Sunny....”

“I have a date with Ralph tomorrow,” she said curtly.

“I’ll drown him for you. Chuckie and I are going fishing. I’ll drown the bastard.”

It made her laugh and the laughter took her over the line to tears. Not too far from a mild hysteria, she held out her left hand to him. He caught it gratefully and kissed it and his lips met full on a cold hard stone. Surprised, he lifted his head and saw for the first time the grim flash of a diamond. He looked at her.

“Ralph’s?” he said.

Sunny nodded. “And he’s such a nice guy,” she said tearfully. “Such a good-natured, dependable, rich....” Her voice climbed.

“Okay, skip the torture treatment,” he said, still gripping her hand as if it were keeping him from a fall over a cliff. “Somehow I thought—”

“I’d sit around on that fine little duff of mine you admire so much and wait for you? Oh, Page, did you?”

“I guess so.” He grasped her other hand to crush with the left one. “Sunny, marry me. Marry me!” he said.

“Ask me, don’t tell me.”

He looked at her, hope dawning all over his face. She wasn’t shocked. She wasn’t even surprised. If she hadn’t loved him so deeply she would have laughed at him.

“Will you marry me?” he asked, softly and obediently.

“Not yet.”

It took Page several seconds to realize that she had said “Yes.” Qualified, but still “Yes.” When he did, he yanked frantically on the diamond ring, muttering, “Damn, damn, damn!”

“Are you trying to break my finger?” she said.

“No, just the ring. Sweetheart ...” he stopped long enough to ask ... “when? Next week?”

“No, Page—”

“But my mind’s made up. I can’t wait any more.”

She listened open-mouthed, too overcome by his brazen love to throw her two long years of lonely waiting at him. “I’m a fool to marry you at all,” she said.

“You said yes, didn’t you?” he asked.

She looked away and he saw her tears then, shiny trails on her faultless cheeks.

“Do you love me?” he asked.

“Would I say yes if I didn’t?” She spoke with shame. She had meant to punish him when he came back—if he came back. And here he was, providentially dumped at her feet; hers to tease and torture till he knew exactly what she had been through. And what was she doing? Falling into his greedy arms like a good-hearted little whore.

“I just want to hear you say it,” Page said.

“I love you. That’ll be two bits,” she said bitterly. And suddenly, in her words, he recognized what grief she had spent on him, what dragging hours of regret.

“I can’t make it up to you, can I?” he asked, pulling her head down on his shoulder to cry. “Darling, can you believe I’m as sorry about that damn trip as you are? It didn’t prove a thing—except that I can’t live without you, and maybe that makes it worth something. Please, baby, please—tell me you love me.”

“Haven’t you humiliated me enough for one night?”

“I’m not trying to humiliate you, you lovely, lovely girl. I’m trying to make you understand ... forgive me ... take me back.”

“The last time I saw you, you were driving away in that crazy car of yours, shouting, ‘Next weekend, honey. Look for me.’ Well, I looked, all right. That was a long weekend, Page. It lasted two years.”

“Do you hate me, Sunny?”

“Of course I hate you!... Darling ... darling....” She was crying still. “I hated you enough to think I could marry Ralph. I had to hate you. It was either that or keep on loving you, and hating didn’t hurt as much.” She sighed and blew her nose on a tissue. “Now my family wants me to marry Ralph. They like him; they know him. But who is Page Pringle? Just a guy who broke their daughter’s heart.”

“I thought they liked me. They were so nice to me tonight.”

“What else could they do?” she said and worried him.

“They’re wonderful people,” he said. “I want them on my side.”

“What about your parents?” Sunny asked. “How do they feel about this?”

“They don’t know about it yet.”

“And I don’t know about them,” she said. “I get the feeling you don’t want me to. I don’t think you even have a family. You just sprang full blown out of a beer bottle one day, with a full head of foam. Tell me about them.”

“When you tell me you love me.”

“I’ll tell you when I’m good and damn ready!” she flared, and he bent her firmly against him and kissed her.

“You’ll tell me now,” he said. “Say it! Please say it.”

When she heard the pleading in his voice her self-righteousness dissolved and she whispered, “I love you.”

“I love you, Page,” he told her.

“I love you, I—I—oh, God, Page, I do. Isn’t it awful?” She felt her tears rush up again and cried impatiently, “What’s your mother like? A fishwife with marcelled hair?”

He was kissing her, but she struggled free and clamped her arms over her breasts again, turning her back to him.

“Come on,” she said, trembling. “Make with the family history. If I have to return Ralph’s ring and take you instead, I want to know what I’m getting.”

“You mean heredity and all that? I’m not an epileptic,” he groaned. “Or a bleeder. Or a compulsive criminal.”

She was trying to zip her skirt shut while he talked and he was trying to stop her. He won. She felt too undignified wrestling with him and covered her bosom again instead. “Come on, darling. Job? Money?” she said.

Exasperated, he sighed, “I’m writing. For the Trib. I’ll be the best damn journalist in this country in a few years, and you’re going to be my wife. And you’ll be glad I made you marry me. And you have the most beautiful goddamn neck and you smell like roses and oh, honey, honey, I can’t talk, don’t make me talk, all I want is—”

“Page Pringle, if you touch me there again I’ll put on a chastity belt and give the key to Ralph!”

“Oh, that bloody bastard!”

“Page!” She turned to look at him with angry reproof, but burst out laughing instead. Her arms loosened and he caught her up with an almost bone-cracking strength that left her breathless for a moment.

She kept begging for information about his family, tormenting him by talking in and over and around his kisses, but he had said his stubborn last word on that or any other subject until one-thirty in the morning.

He was holding her then, protecting her from the cool air and treasuring the closeness of her; bothered only by one question: the sort that dogs a man in love.

“Sunny?” he said, too casually. “Did you ever—I mean—do this with anybody else? I mean—it’s okay, you were engaged to Ralph, after all.... Not that I expected you to be faithful to me all this time while I was roaming around.... But, well, I mean—did you?”

She let him work his way through this painful speech and then she kissed him gently and intimately and whispered, “You’ll never know, my own darling worm. Never. Suffer, Page.” It was a time-honored female tactic and it worked. He did suffer, and he never knew the truth.