The shrug was too casual, the words too negligent, like saying Cheez Whiz and Hi Hos are fine when you're used to caviar. Her temper flared at her humiliation and at all the differences in their lives, suddenly magnified. “Fuck you,” she snapped.
“Hey,” he said, sitting up. “What was that for?”
“For your damn undying declaration of devotion. For your information, Carey Fersten, I don't want to marry you!”
“Only fuck me, is that it?” The hot anger in her voice sparked his own quick temper and distress. “In between visits from your wonderful fiancй. Someone has to keep your hot little body satisfied when he can't.”
“And it might as well be you, right?”
“Why not? I've got time on my hands,” he drawled, then swore under his breath and said, “Oh, hell, come here. I don't want to fight.”
She shook her head and moved off the bed, afraid that she would lose control, throw herself into his arms, and make him marry her even if he didn't want to. She had some pride. And he had his rich man's world-a world in which she didn't belong. “I'd better go,” she whispered.
“Look, we'll get married. It's okay, really.”
“It wouldn't work, Carey.”
“Why not?”
“I don't really know you. You don't know me. Not like we should.”
“Bull.”
“We don't have anything in common…”
“Jesus God, you can talk something to death.”
“That's what I mean. You don't understand me at all.”
“And Bart does?”
“We grew up together.”
“Sounds boring.”
“It's a good basis for a marriage.”
“If you're trying to convince me, you're wasting your time.”
“Anyway, it's too late. I don't have the nerve to stop it even if I wanted to.”
“You mean you don't want to,” he replied sullenly.
“I don't know…” And she didn't. She was confused, too young to single-handedly resist the full weight of parental opposition, bear the burden of Bart's disappointment, and defy the overwhelming momentum of a small-town wedding only two weeks away. “You don't really want to get married, anyway,” she declared flatly.
“It's not that.” Carey dropped back on the pillows. “It's just kind of sudden,” he explained. “Give me a day or two to get used to the idea.”
“Or a year or two.”
“Look, don't get your temper up. I'm just telling you how I feel.”
“Fear.”
“Not exactly.”
“Thanks a lot.” Damn, everything was wrong. She wanted ardent vows of love, and he stopped cold when the word “marriage” was mentioned. “It was nice this summer,” she said, moving to pick up her clothes. “Let's leave it at that.”
“I don't want to.”
She held her blouse in her hands, and it shown white against her shadowed body. “What do you want?”
“I want you.”
She knew that. There'd never been any question of his wanting her. The only question was how much, and, weighed against her marriage plans, it appeared he didn't want her enough. “I really have to go,” she said with a small sigh, slipping her arms into her blouse sleeves.
“Are you going to marry him?”
“I don't know.”
“What do you mean you don't know.”
“I mean,” she said with soft resignation, “I have to. I can't back out now.”
“I'm going to throw up.” His brows were drawn together in a scowl.
“Your life is different.”
“Damn right.”
Why didn't he say he couldn't live without her? He hadn't even said he loved her tonight. Maybe her mother was right; Carey's kind played around, but didn't marry.
Why did she persist in this martyrdom? he wondered. If you didn't look out for yourself, who did? He'd never known of a stable marriage, so the notion of a prescription for successful matrimony, all her talk of mutual background as the basis for stability in a marriage, seemed utterly alien. There weren't any stable marriages.
“It's under the chair,” he said to her, pointing out the shoe she couldn't see. Molly had one sandal in her hand and looked lost. Her blouse was unbuttoned, her long legs bare, the partial curve of her bottom visible beneath the hem of her shirttails. When she twisted toward him, the delicate swell of one breast was exposed, as was the supple slope of her hip where it gently flared out from her narrow waist. A waist he could almost circle his fingers around. They had shared so much pleasure and sweetness this summer. “You're going through with it?” His voice was gruff.
She nodded, and his jaw stiffened. He lay motionless and silent in the rumpled bed while she dressed, watching her with dark inscrutable eyes, the room heavy with the odor of warm bodies and sperm. He was distant, so unlike the wildly passionate man who had made love to her so recently. He made her feel like a stranger.
And when she'd started to stumble over a clumsy adieu, her bottom lip trembling with sadness, he'd broken in and said, “Lots of luck,” half-meaning it because he loved her, half-sarcastic with anger.
All she heard was the anger.
“You'll have to unlock the door to get out,” he added in a lazy drawl, as if he were finally through with her now and she could leave.
The next morning Molly tried to talk to her mother after breakfast. She hadn't slept much, torn with doubts, aching with her loss, and she only abstractly listened to her mother's discussion of their scheduled dinner with the Coopers that evening. “Bart will be in town now until the wedding. Won't that be nice, dear? I know it's been hard on you with him gone at school all summer, but if he graduates early and steps into that wonderful internship… Well, what could be better?”
“Mom,” Molly hesitantly began, the words rehearsed a hundred different ways during the sleepless night hours, “did you ever wonder if you were doing the right thing marrying Dad?”
Her mother looked up from the latest change to her seating arrangements for the dinner reception after the wedding, a seating chart she'd been juggling since May. “Would you believe Aunt Mae refuses to be within fifty feet of Gloria Dahlstrom? And George doesn't speak to Harold Mitchel since he ran against him for mayor. Well… they talk if you count a few short phrases and air so thick you could cut it with a knife.” She sighed distractedly and set a small square of cardboard three spaces down the diagram in front of her. Looking up, as if noticing Molly for the first time, she said, “Aren't you gone yet?” She glanced at the clock. “It's almost eleven. You're usually on your way to the beach by now.”
Molly and Carey had spent most of the summer at his private lake, but since Molly couldn't tell her mother that, she'd ostensibly been off to the municipal beach every day. “Not today, Mom. I think it might rain.” Like it's raining on my life, she thought miserably.
“Those days at the beach have given you a beautiful tan, perfect with your wedding dress.”
The tan she'd gotten with Carey. Her mother would die if she knew that.
“Now what were you saying, dear? I heard something about marrying Dad?”
She'd lost her nerve. “Nothing, Mom. Forget it.”
“Honey, if there's something you want to talk about, tell me,” her mother gently insisted, taking note of her unnaturally subdued daughter. “You and I have always been able to discuss things.” They had, but it was trivial stuff, like tears over fights with friends or what to wear to a dance or how Mrs. Hansen was a bear over piano technique. This wasn't the same. This was earth-shakingly different.
Working up her courage again, Molly began, “Did you ever wonder if Daddy was the right man for you?”
“Cold feet, sweetheart?”
Molly nodded. “Sort of.”
“Everyone has that feeling at one time or another, dear,” her mother reassured her. “It's perfectly normal with all this wedding commotion. Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn't have been easier to have you two kids run off to Hawaii or somewhere.” She smiled and reached over to pat Molly's hand. “You'll get over it, honey. Have you seen the silver service Aunt Edith sent yesterday? It's terribly florid but solid and useful I suppose, and, after all, we all know her-”