EIGHT
Susan Edmonds stood outside the French doors looking in at her mother, who sat before the large fieldstone fireplace, with its patriotic decorations on the mantel, doing her knitting for the night.
The Edmonds house was a three-story wooden structure with a captain’s walk and cupolas and spires that lent it a real grandness. The lawns sprawled a half mile in every direction and the livery was as big as many fine homes.
From upstairs came the sounds of Chopin on the summer night. Her eleven-year-old sister, Estelle, practicing for her recital the following week.
From the third-floor comer a light shone, which meant her father was working on books. He was obsessed with work. He had never forgotten his days as a poor farm boy. Her mother always said her father secretly dreaded that somebody would take from him all he’d earned.
Guiltily, she thought: At least when he’s up in his study, he can’t yell at us.
When her father was in one of his “moods,” he was the sort of tyrant who made you twitch from nerves and made you tear up and fly from the room. The joke in town was that Clinton Edmonds owned such big grounds because he didn’t want neighbors to hear him bellow. Susan spent her days walking around with her stomach in knots. Even when her father wasn’t ranting, her dread of his doing so produced the same effects. He had done the same things to her two older brothers, both of whom, after college, had gone as far away as possible.
And now Byron was becoming just one more of her father’s victims.
She closed her eyes, enjoying the Chopin and the faint glow of the fancy kerosene table lamps and the scent of mint from a nearby tree, and thought of her girlhood dreams of Byron.
He’d always been so handsome, yet never vain about it; he’d always been so manly (except when it came to sports, where he was so clumsy) and yet gentle, too. He’d gone East to school, to Dartmouth, and gotten the best grades possible in banking and finance, and then he’d returned here to work for her father. By then it was already assumed by Cedar Rapids society that Byron and she would be married. And indeed they were inseparable-going for canters on Sunday afternoon, attending concerts on Bandstand Hill in Bever Park, leading any other couples in tennis doubles, spending one or two nights a week at the Greene Opera House, where they both enjoyed the antics of such acts as Evans, Bryant & Hoey’s (invariably billed as “A Tidal Wave of Merriment!”) and a singer named Lillie Langtry who always brought her own company to perform a W. S. Gilbert comedy.
Yes, for the first three years following Byron’s return, everything seemed wonderful. And her father treated Byron with deference, too. Susan sometimes suspected this was true because her father was intimidated by Byron’s Dartmouth degree, her father scarcely having finished the eighth grade. But gradually this attitude changed and Byron slowly became just one more victim of her father’s wrath and bullying until now-
Well, that’s why Susan had sought solace with Les Graves.
Standing here now, opening her eyes and trying to give shape to the sprawl of stars that were the Big Dipper, she thought fondly of Les and wondered if she’d been selfish.
All she’d ever wanted from him was his friendship, but obviously, before she could do anything about it, Les made more of it than was there. One night, seeing the love in his eyes, she became frightened. She did not want to hurt him as she had been hurt all her life by her father and now by Byron, who was losing his integrity to her father…
She was thinking this when she was interrupted by a thunderous voice (she always thought of him as an Old Testament patriarch), one that automatically caused her to begin shaking and twitching…
Her father had stormed into the room and stood over
Susan Edmonds stood outside the French doors looking in at her mother, who sat before the large fieldstone fireplace, with its patriotic decorations on the mantel, doing her knitting for the night.
The Edmonds house was a three-story wooden structure with a captain’s walk and cupolas and spires that lent it a real grandness. The lawns sprawled a half mile in every direction and the livery was as big as many fine homes.
From upstairs came the sounds of Chopin on the summer night. Her eleven-year-old sister, Estelle, practicing for her recital the following week.
From the third-floor comer a light shone, which meant her father was working on books. He was obsessed with work. He had never forgotten his days as a poor farm boy. Her mother always said her father secretly dreaded that somebody would take from him all he’d earned.
Guiltily, she thought: At least when he’s up in his study, he can’t yell at us.
When her father was in one of his “moods,” he was the sort of tyrant who made you twitch from nerves and made you tear up and fly from the room. The joke in town was that Clinton Edmonds owned such big grounds because he didn’t want neighbors to hear him bellow. Susan spent her days walking around with her stomach in knots. Even when her father wasn’t ranting, her dread of his doing so produced the same effects. He had done the same things to her two older brothers, both of whom, after college, had gone as far away as possible.
And now Byron was becoming just one more of her father’s victims.
She closed her eyes, enjoying the Chopin and the faint glow of the fancy kerosene table lamps and the scent of mint from a nearby tree, and thought of her girlhood dreams of Byron.
He’d always been so handsome, yet never vain about it; he’d always been so manly (except when it came to sports, where he was so clumsy) and yet gentle, too. He’d gone East to school, to Dartmouth, and gotten the best grades possible in banking and finance, and then he’d returned here to work for her father. By then it was already assumed by Cedar Rapids society that Byron and she would be married. And indeed they were inseparable-going for canters on Sunday afternoon, attending concerts on Bandstand Hill in Bever Park, leading any other couples in tennis doubles, spending one or two nights a week at the Greene Opera House, where they both enjoyed the antics of such acts as Evans, Bryant & Hoey’s (invariably billed as “A Tidal Wave of Merriment!”) and a singer named Lillie Langtry who always brought her own company to perform a W. S. Gilbert comedy.
Yes, for the first three years following Byron’s return, everything seemed wonderful. And her father treated Byron with deference, too. Susan sometimes suspected this was true because her father was intimidated by Byron’s Dartmouth degree, her father scarcely having finished the eighth grade. But gradually this attitude changed and Byron slowly became just one more victim of her father’s wrath and bullying until now-
Well, that’s why Susan had sought solace with Les Graves.
Standing here now, opening her eyes and trying to give shape to the sprawl of stars that were the Big Dipper, she thought fondly of Les and wondered if she’d been selfish.
All she’d ever wanted from him was his friendship, but obviously, before she could do anything about it, Les made more of it than was there. One night, seeing the love in his eyes, she became frightened. She did not want to hurt him as she had been hurt all her life by her father and now by Byron, who was losing his integrity to her father…
She was thinking this when she was interrupted by a thunderous voice (she always thought of him as an Old Testament patriarch), one that automatically caused her to begin shaking and twitching…
Her father had stormed into the room and stood over
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