It should have been the happiest night of their lives—because of
Page’s new job and the baby Sunny was expecting. But then the
long distance phone call had come....
Sunny sat in tense silence, holding herself together by sheer
force of will. Page stood motionless, his back to her, his head
bowed.
“Page?” she whispered. “What is it, darling? Did your step-father
tell you who you really are?”
“He told me,” Page said bitterly. He turned to his wife and saw
the fear on her face. “He told me you and I are through, Sunny.
It’s the same as if we’d never been married at all.”
THAT WAS WHEN THE TERROR BEGAN—THE NIGHT THE WORLD FELL APART AND
TURNED TWO LOVERS INTO FRIGHTENED STRANGERS.
Other Original Gold Medal Books by Ann Bannon
ODD GIRL OUT
I AM A WOMAN
WOMEN IN THE SHADOWS
JOURNEY TO A WOMAN
The Gold Medal seal on this book means it is not a reprint. To
select an original book, look for the Gold Medal seal.
The Marriage
An Original Gold Medal Novel
by ANN BANNON
GOLD MEDAL BOOKS
Fawcett Publications, Inc., Greenwich, Conn.
Copyright © 1960 by Fawcett Publications, Inc.
First Printing, December 1960
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book
or portions thereof.
All characters in this book are fictional and any resemblance to
persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
Printed in the United States of America
1
Jack Mann answered the phone with a yawn, as if he were expecting his
mother-in-law. But it was simply contented, end-of-the-day fatigue.
He picked up the receiver and smiled at his pretty young wife, Laura.
She was combing their daughter’s hair, getting her ready for bed. Betsy
was a lovely child, delicately blond and appealing, like her mother.
It was a still, soft evening, early summer in Chicago, and pleasant
weather.
“Hello?” Jack said into the phone, coming down from the yawn with a
comfortable sigh.
“Hello? May I speak to Jack Mann, please?”
“Speaking.”
It was a male voice and unfamiliar to Jack.
“Mr. Mann, my name is Winkler.” The voice was cultured, a little shy.
“Some friends of yours asked me to call....”
Oh God, Jack thought. He’s visiting town and wants a free sack. Or
worse, a free girl.
Laura Mann looked up to see her husband’s comical dismay. “Who is it?”
she whispered.
Jack shrugged. “What friends?” he asked.
“The Pringles. Sunny and Page,” Winkler said.
Jack Mann came to astonished attention. “Page Pringle?” he said, and
Laura’s face, too, became tense with interest. She forgot Betsy’s hair
and watched Jack.
“Is he all right?” Jack asked. “Where is he?”
“Yes, he’s fine,” said Winkler. “I talked with him just two days ago. He
says you were roommates at the University of Illinois for a year.”
“That’s right. He signed up for my math course, and when I passed him he
offered me a bunk. We ended up good friends. But ...” Jack’s face
wrinkled into a mass of worried lines. “I’m surprised to hear he
mentioned me to you, after the set-to we had last time we met. My wife
and I have been damn worried about him—and Sunny.”
“They’re out in California, in Barstow. On a honeymoon, they said,”
Winkler told him. “Should be back here in Chicago in a week.”
Jack, listening to the strange voice, felt himself getting careful and
suspicious. Who the hell was Winkler? Sunny and Page Pringle were Jack’s
friends, arguments or no, and there was a lot about their lives and
their marriage that a stranger would have been stunned speechless to
learn.
It was the most curious marriage in all Jack’s wide knowledge: shocking,
illegal, passionately faithful, even wildly wonderful at times. Some
miracle had held it together, but there was no way of telling for how
much longer. It seemed to Jack, whenever he saw Page and Sunny, that the
bonds of their love were about to snap and send them spinning apart for
the rest of their lives.
“Who are you, Mr. Winkler?” Jack asked frankly.
But Winkler, like Jack, became wary in his turn. “I live here in
Chicago,” he said. “I work here, and....”
“And?” Jack prompted.
“Mr. Mann, this is pretty forward of me, but I wonder if I could meet
you? If you’d care to have dinner with me?”
“Just a minute,” Jack said, covering the receiver. “Some guy who says he
knows the Pringles and they told him to look us up,” he whispered to
Laura.
“Well, ask him to dinner with us tomorrow,” she said. Husband and wife
gazed uncertainly at each other for a moment. Winkler could be a
blackmailer, a detective or a guy with a grudge, as well as a friend. At
last Laura made up her mind for both of them. “If it’s about Page and
Sunny Pringle, I want to hear it,” she said.
So Jack invited him.
* * * * *
Winkler’s cautious voice sounded almost relieved. “Thanks, Mr. Mann;
I’ll be there,” he said.
Jack hung up, giving Laura a wry grin. “Well, now we’ve done it,” he
said, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Who the hell could he be?” He
walked toward Laura, catching Betsy on the way and hoisting her into his
arms.
“Didn’t he give you a clue?” Laura’s lips were parted with curiosity.
“Just that he met the Pringles in Barstow, California.” He sat down and
released his daughter, who scampered out of the room.
“Damn it, honey, do you suppose those two kids worked it out?” Jack
said. “Went back together in spite of everything?”
“It doesn’t sound like Page,” Laura answered. “But still, the way he
loves that girl is something. It seems to be a case of head against
heart. Only I always thought Page was two-thirds head.”
“He thought so too, till he fell for Sunny,” Jack said, lighting a
cigarette. “I never saw a kid so much in love. And being married to her
only made it better. Gosh, life is goofy. You’d have thought that was
the world’s ideal marriage. Two handsome, intelligent people, madly in
love, charming, ambitious, happy. They couldn’t miss.”
“That just made it tougher for them when everything suddenly went to
hell,” Laura said.
“Yeah. They didn’t know about each other when they married. At least we
knew about us, honey. We knew the worst. Maybe we figured we couldn’t
last and when we did, it came as a wonderful surprise.” They smiled at
each other.
“Here we are, safe and comfortable and indecently happy,” Jack went on.
“If I could just teach you to squeeze the toothpaste from the bottom.”
She laughed.
“Couple of queers,” he said, speaking the word gently, without malice.
“And we made it. The Pringles barely had seven months before the sky
fell on them.”
Laura shook her head with pity. “I still think they could make it work,”
she said. “They have a tough thing to live with, but Sunny’s ready to
try. If Page could only—”
“Page is the problem child. He always was,” Jack said.
“Problem? Or child?”
“A little of both. And in a crisis, a lot of both,” he said.
“Maybe this thing will force him to grow up,” Laura said.
“Maybe. If he has the guts to go back and live with Sunny.”
“Lord, she’s beautiful,” Laura remembered. “I don’t see how he can keep
his hands off her.”
“Hang on, doll,” Jack laughed. “Just because _you_ can’t—”
“I never touched her!” she protested indignantly. But his doubtful grin
made her add, “Well, not like you think, darling. I never made a pass at
her. You know, the kind you make when you feel like bed.”
“You never felt like bed with Sunny Pringle?” Jack teased. “Come on,
honey, don’t put me on.”
Laura pulled her poise around her like a shawl. “Sunny’s a wonderful
girl,” she said. “She is also the prettiest girl I ever saw in my life.
And to make it all perfect, she’s in love with her husband.” She spoke
ruefully enough to make him chuckle again. He couldn’t help kidding this
wife he treasured, but he did it with obvious love and she never
resented it. Their relationship was odd, but satisfying to them.
“I just held her,” Laura admitted. “I comforted her when she hit the
dumps. I even kissed her hair. Like a sister. You show me a sister who
could be any more proper than I was!”
“I’ll show you a sister who’d have kissed more than her hair, that’s for
damn sure,” he said.
“Jack, you talk like a jealous husband.”
“Which I am,” he said softly.
She relented and went over to his chair, going behind to massage his
shoulders. He relaxed with a sigh.
“I know you are,” she said. “You’re never noisy about it, but it hurts
you to see me with a woman. Jack darling, sometimes I think you ought to
find somebody, too. Just for now and then, for a release. You wouldn’t
feel so possessive about me, then. It’d make you happier.”
“I’m as happy as I can stand to be,” he said, caressing her hands. “I
have you and Betsy. And I’m through horsing around with pretty boys
forever. When you hit forty you look too silly chasing the teen-agers.
All I want now is my family.”
She smiled down at the top of his brush cut.
“And if I have to be a little jealous ... well, what the hell. It’s a
small price.”
She gave his head a fond shove, dislodging his heavy tortoise-shell
glasses. “Okay, have it your way,” she said. “Just explain one thing to
me. How come two inverts like us can make a marriage work, and two
normal people like Page and Sunny can’t?”
“If I could explain that, I’d write a book.”
Laura was a lesbian. But like all lesbians, she couldn’t escape her
femininity. She loved Jack Mann in every way but one, and she would
never leave him. Her love had given her the courage to bear him their
child. She admired his mind, enjoyed his company, and needed him. No
other man would ever touch her.
Jack gave her her head with the women she wanted, but she never abused
his confidence, nor exposed him and Betsy to her occasional crushes.
That part of her life was completely separate from her home.
For Laura and Jack Mann, home, love, and marriage were inviolate. Their
life together hadn’t been easy to build, and they were proud of it. It
made the Pringles’ crack-up all the more sad and dramatic to them.
“If you and I had found out about ourselves what Page and Sunny found
out—so suddenly—_after_ they were married,” Jack mused. “Honey, I’m not
so sure I could have taken it any better than Page did. It was that
bad.” He ditched his cigarette in an ashtray by the chair.
“Did you ever know anybody named Winkler?” she asked him.
“I will tomorrow night,” he said.
“What does he want to tell us? That Page and Sunny are going to stick it
out?” Laura said.
“Think it over,” Jack said. “If he can tell us that, he knows the whole
damn crazy story.”
“He couldn’t!” she cried. “Almost nobody knows.”
“If he doesn’t, I’ll bet my last dollar he wants us to tell _him_,” Jack
said. “And that gives me an idea.”
“An idea who he is?” she said.
But he only winked at her.
2
Winkler, tall and reserved, inclined his silver head and listened,
absorbed, while Jack talked. He was kind and friendly, almost
ceremoniously polite.
The Manns had greeted him earlier in the evening with misgivings. But he
seemed more afraid of them than they of him, and it made them anxious to
reassure him. Jack was naturally gregarious, Winkler naturally shy, so
it was inevitable that Jack should take over the conversation. He spoke
of Page and Sunny Pringle, answering Winkler’s questions about the safe,
innocent side of their lives.
“Page was a good-looking boy,” Jack said. “Over six feet, blond,
clean-cut. It’s a lucky thing, too, considering how he met Sunny.”
Laura kicked him under the table, the way she did when he spoke too
warmly of other men, and poured Winkler some more coffee to distract
him.
“He seemed very intelligent,” Winkler told Jack. “It’s hard for a
stranger to judge, though, and I only talked with him for a little while
in the restaurant where we met. He seemed to need somebody to talk to
and I was there. Later he said he wanted you to know that the things you
told him during your argument were beginning to make sense now. He said
you’d know what he meant.”
Jack nodded. “Where did you meet?” he asked.
“It was a little hash house in Barstow. On Route 66. He was with the
loveliest girl I ever saw. His wife?”
“Sunny,” Laura said.
“I’m surprised he asked you to come here,” Jack said. “I didn’t think he
had much respect for me after that fight.” Laura gave him a warning
frown, and he got up to get the Cointreau and liqueur glasses. While he
poured, Winkler asked awkwardly, “Why was it a good thing Page was so
handsome when he met Sunny? Didn’t she like a plain face?”
“It wasn’t the face,” Jack said. “It was the rest of him. He was stark
naked.”
Winkler blanched a little. He had all the earmarks of a lawful upright
man; a good man, but one with ordinary tastes and ordinary morals.
“Could I hear the story?” he said. “I asked for it, and I won’t condemn
it.”
“It’s pretty rough, Mr. Winkler,” Jack said candidly. “And we don’t know
you. I wouldn’t want the Pringles hurt.”
“They never will be, not by me,” Winkler said with a strange intensity
that impressed Jack and Laura. Laura tried to shoot her spouse a strong
“no” look, but Winkler had already persuaded him. She saw it coming and
she was right. Jack would tell him, even though he was a stranger.
Or perhaps Jack, shrewd and intuitive with people, saw what Laura
missed: that Winkler had known Page and Sunny somewhere before and that
his feelings for them were warmer and deeper than he admitted.
* * * * *
The way Page met Sunny was simple and slightly shocking. She was a
fair-haired, spirited girl with a lovely face. She was a college
freshman and hadn’t learned to handle her emotions yet, but she had the
willow-limbed grace and softness that men admire, and enormous charm.
Her eyes were a double-take true green, and she had been “Sunny” ever
since the first pubescent boy had noticed that kindling smile of hers.
It was mid-October, an Indian summer afternoon, smoky and golden and
warm enough to work up a sweat. Sunny was playing baseball at Lake o’
the Woods with her sorority, fielding badly but enthusiastically.
Toward the end of the game she plunged through the underbrush at the
edge of the field, chasing the ball, and there was Page. He was standing
on the strip of beach bordering the lake, laughing and drying himself
roughly with his flannel shirt. He was bare as a winter tree and he saw
Sunny at the same moment she saw him. There was a startled silence and
then the friend with Page, who was Jack Mann, his roommate, said, “See
you later, children. You won’t be wanting a chaperone.”
Page threw his shirt on the ground and stared at Sunny. “Come on in,” he
said softly. “The water’s fine.”
Sunny threw him an enchanting smile. “I lost my ball,” she said,
embarrassed but fascinated.
Jack spotted it as he retreated from the scene and tossed it to Page.
Page held it out, daring her to come and get it. And Sunny, with her
heart beating hard and making her breathless, walked up to him and held
out a bold hand. He dropped the ball into it, while she looked him up
and down to show off her sophistication. But she discovered, with a
bright blush, that she hadn’t any.
He laughed and she turned and ran, clutching the ball. But at the bushes
she looked back. “You’re beautiful,” she cried. He kept laughing,
watching her until she disappeared through the bushes and back to her
game.
They met once again that day, when Page and Jack walked past her group
on the way to Page’s ramshackle runabout. Jack climbed in while Page
approached Sunny, who was cooking a wiener to death while she kept her
eyes on him.
“I’m Page Pringle,” he said.
“How do you do?” Sunny answered solemnly. “I’m Sunny Rotheli.”
They smiled at each other. “Your hot dog is burning up,” he remarked.
She snatched her stick out of the fire and flipped the dog over her head
into the leaves. “Oh!” she said.
He touched her fair face with his hand. “I’ll call you, Rotheli,” he
said.
“You do that, Pringle,” she said, half irked and half infatuated.
Page gave Jack a crazy ride back to town.
* * * * *
They got off to such a fine start that it seemed like a pre-destined
romance, if there are such things. They made a perfect couple, in a
wonderful old-fashioned way, complementing each other. They even looked
perfect: two blond heads, two pairs of green eyes, two quick smiles.
“You look like an old married couple,” Jack commented.
“What do you know about old married couples?” Page said.
But Jack, who was a good bit older than his undergraduate friend,
insisted it was true. Page and Sunny took to each other in a way that
seemed almost chemical, adopting each other’s gestures and expressions
with a sort of passionate admiration. For those first few months the
affair was fast and thrilling, even slightly delirious.
* * * * *
Their first date was a careful game of hints and titillations and sudden
sweet impressions. He liked her voice, the firm lines of her body, her
warmth. They would both have preferred to sit and look at each other
without speaking, but they felt the necessity to impress each other with
talk and were afraid to be quiet—until late in the evening when silence
unexplainably became possible ... and lovely, and intimate.
They were sitting in Page’s car—“Bucephalus,” he called it, the rumbling
warhorse. The cold autumn air touched them through a score of cracks in
the doors and windows and made them pull closer together for warmth.
Page put his arms around her and blessed the weather.
“You feel so sweet,” he told her.
“I’m not sweet,” she objected. “That’s for little girls.”
“How old are you, little girl?”
“Eighteen.”
“That’s pretty old.”
She sighed. “All right, seventeen, but only for six more weeks. And I
know my way around, which I would have thought you’d notice. How old are
you?”
“Twenty-eight. I’m a vet. Korea.” He kissed her neck, rubbing a hand in
her bright hair, and then pulled away slightly to see her face. She was
serious about “sweetness” being for children. But she had it, and in
spite of her best efforts it showed.
Page could just begin to glimpse it as he held her in his arms and felt
her pulsing against him in the dark. That was when the welcome silence
fell, and neither of them worried about it. It was good to sit there and
just hold each other, feeling each other’s breath or the tickle of a
moving eyelash. So good that Page felt a curious sense of foreboding
when Sunny’s closeness began to excite him. He almost wished it wouldn’t
happen; not this fast, anyway. He held her tenderly, trying to control
it, and wondered why in the name of reason he should feel a singing in
his head over this pretty girl, superficially like so many other pretty
girls he had known.
I want her to be perfect, he thought. I’m afraid she’ll disappoint me.
Or maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m afraid I’m not good enough for her, good
enough at love to satisfy her. And having challenged himself on a very
touchy point, he kissed her ardently.
She reacted with a moan of pleasure that told him she had been
restlessly waiting for it. It was almost too much. She went after his
mouth like a bounty-hunter on a hot trail and he said, “Hey! Slow down,
honey. Don’t rush it.”
Her face had a familiar determination and he asked, “Sunny, are you a
virgin?”
“Heavens, no!” She was insulted. But she stopped pulling on his collar
and trying to kiss him.
He let her discomfiture build a moment and then lifted her face and
said, “It’s all right. I don’t mind. It’s a nice change.”
“You think I’m lying!” she exclaimed. “Page, I’m _not_ a virgin. Oh, I’m
not trying to brag, I think that’s crude. But you have a right to know
the truth.”
“Then tell me the truth.” He said it gently, smiling, and offending her
again with his fatherly attitude.
But the feel of his big arms around her softened her up a little.
“Well,” she said reluctantly. “I’ve done everything else _but_.” She
could feel him laughing silently at her and with an angry jerk she
started to get out of the car. But he pulled her back.
“No, honey, don’t be mad. I didn’t mean to laugh.” But he was still
laughing.
She struggled for possession of her hands, to give him a good whack, but
he wouldn’t give them up. And suddenly, to her dismay, she felt a strong
erotic spasm in response to his superior strength. At once she
stiffened. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of exciting her, not
when he didn’t play fair. In a small voice she asked, “How did you know
I’m a virgin?”
“You laid it on too thick, Sunny.”
“Laid what on?”
“The sophistication bit.”
For a moment she thought she might cry with humiliation. And then
laughter spilled over in her and saved her. “I must look like an idiot,”
she said, embracing him again.
“There’s so much about you I don’t know,” Page said. “I want to know
everything.”
“I’m not at all exciting,” she said naïvely.
“The hell you aren’t.” She could tell from the way he was breathing that
she had said the wrong thing again.
“Well, my _life_ isn’t exciting,” she corrected herself.
“It is now,” he said and she felt his firm, cool hand slip under her
sweater. Beneath his strong fingers she felt a melting delight and
suddenly the famous riddle of life seemed dazzlingly clear.
She yielded to him just to see what it was all about. And the brief
surrender became permanent, a lifetime commitment.
He pushed her head back on the car seat, kissing her, catching her hands
again and making them do strange things in strange places. She gave up
trying to stop him then, from that night forward. The feel of his hard
male body moving against her brought her to life all over and made her
need him terribly; need things she had never even tried before.
It was Page who restrained her; Page who made her hands do what her body
was aching to do instead until she began to cry with frustration. It had
been an electric shock to her that she could feel like this about a man;
about _this_ man; and she couldn’t be content with going only halfway.
“Page, please,” she begged, but they had petted too ardently; it was too
late. He collapsed beside her, answering her with sleepy kisses. When he
came to himself somewhat, he wiped her wet cheeks with his fingers.
“Sunny?” he whispered, surprised. “Did I hurt you?”
“I wish you _had_,” she said.
“Darling, I couldn’t. Not like this. When it happens I want it to be
right: a beautiful thing in a beautiful place. You deserve that. I’m no
animal.”
“It should have been tonight,” she said, quivering.
“No.” He amazed himself. With any other girl he would have demanded it,
but he didn’t want it that way with Sunny.
“You think I’m a born whore, don’t you?” she said tearfully.
“A born angel is more like it,” he said, holding her tightly. They both
felt reckless and strange, loath to leave each other but faced with a
curfew. Almost strangers and almost lovers, they looked at each other by
the light of the street lamp outside, and said simultaneously, “I love
you.” The coincidence of it startled them.
Page buried his face in her shoulder. “And I don’t even know you,” he
marveled.
“You will,” she promised happily. “After we’re married.”
3
“I don’t know what made me say it,” Page said, crushing his cigarette in
an ashtray and walking nervously around his room. “We said it together.
‘I love you.’ It was the damnedest thing.” He clapped his hands against
his sides and let himself fall on the couch next to Jack Mann. “Help me
out, Jackson,” he said. “I don’t want a passionate romance with a
freshman virgin.”
“You have something against freshmen?” Jack said.
“Well, I’m not in love with her, for one thing. I just said I was. You
know, the moon and the rest of it. She smelled so nice.”
“I never saw you in such a hurry to back out of an affair before. No
matter _how_ she smelled.”
“I never worried about an affair before.”
“It’s obvious you’re nuts about the girl,” Jack said.
“The hell!” Page snapped. “She wants to get married.”
“Good for her.”
“You louse!”
“Hang on to her, boy,” Jack advised. “She’s a rare one.”
Page got up and paced around again. “Well, what do you do if you’re in
love with a girl but you don’t want to marry her?” he asked.
Jack shrugged. “Live with her?”
Page grimaced and gave up.
* * * * *
But if Page complained, he was also intrigued with the idea of letting
himself get hooked. He didn’t want to be married, it was true. But he
didn’t want to be in love either, and that was already a lost cause.
Jack was not fooled. He was a sharp student of humanity. He had to be:
it was part of his self-defense. Any man who feels for other men what
Jack Mann felt has to guard himself carefully. He watches his tongue,
which might slip; his hands, which might wander; his wisecracks and
lies, and guards his feelings with a tough sense of humor.
The virtue of Jack’s abnormality was that he understood people
instinctively. He knew Page, and nothing Page could say would hide from
Jack his love for Sunny.
* * * * *
By the following spring, Sunny Rotheli was no longer a virgin. But it
had all been accomplished in a beautiful place at a beautiful time: a
starry evening, a rich, perfumed hotel room, a dime-store diamond. Sunny
had felt a wistful nostalgia for the drafty auto and the cold October
moon, but it couldn’t be helped. She had enough sense to realize she was
special to him and that he would not take her there where he had made
love to so many other girls.
Their infatuation did not abate, although Page kept hoping the thing
would burn itself out from sheer overheating.
As for Sunny, all that mattered now was to get Page to propose. She
tried everything: teasing, threats, even subversion. She complained to
Jack and tried to promote sabotage from behind the lines.
But while Page would admit to any poetic excess of passion, he wouldn’t
propose marriage.
“Live with me, then,” Sunny said mournfully.
“I can’t ask you to do that,” he protested.
“You aren’t asking me, you worm!” she said. “I’m asking you.”
“Somebody has to protect you from yourself,” he said. But the truth was
he had promised himself a year or two of travel after college. He had
seen Korea in the Marines and it wasn’t his idea of a pleasure cruise.
Now he dreamed of Europe.
He had a little money and a lot of wanderlust saved up. He was sure he
could write, and he was going to prove it in a Paris garret, find a rich
older woman to keep him, become noticed and influential, and come home
to claim Sunny in triumph.
Actually, beyond the daydreams, he didn’t know what he wanted to do,
except give himself a champagne playtime before he settled down to the
beans-and-gravy of earning a living. He meant to earn the living with
his typewriter, with words. And he might even take Sunny at her word:
make her his mistress and dispense with the marriage bit.
But as Jack kept telling him, Sunny was the kind of girl you marry and
consider yourself damn lucky to have caught. She would make a poor and
moody mistress but a sensual and loving wife. She needed security with
one man. After that she’d be all loving and giving, like Sunday’s child.
“What do you know about women?” Page would blow off at Jack when they
discussed it.
“I like ’em,” Jack said with a cynical amusement he couldn’t share with
Page. Loneliness was the abiding condition of Jack’s life. It was the
reason a close friendship like the one with Page meant so much to him.
“I like them too. But that doesn’t mean I understand them!” Page said.
“Hell, you don’t like them. You just love them.”
“I like Sunny,” Page restored.
“Oh, Sunny. She’s the one you’re going to marry. That’s the one woman a
man has got to like as well as love,” Jack said.
“Thanks, Dorothy Dix. Why don’t you write a column on the subject? You’d
make a mint.”
“Damn right I would,” Jack said. “I’d have every old maid in the country
sending me sachets.”
“Including Sunny Rotheli,” Page said.
“She won’t be an old maid. If you turn her down like the ass you are,
somebody else will grab her fast.”
“I’ll be through school in June, and by God, I’m taking off,” Page said,
gazing out the window. “I’ve planned it for two years. Once you’re
married, you’re stuck with furniture and drooling babies and a jealous
wife. And eight hours of brown-nosing a day to support the whole ugly
mess. No thanks, man. Not for me.”
“Not even with Sunny?”
“Not for a while.”
* * * * *
“He meant it, too,” Jack told Winkler. “Came June that year and he
promised Sunny he’d be around all summer. She lived in one of the
Chicago suburbs, Hillsburg—west, on the Burlington line.”
Winkler was motionless listening to this story that had started out like
so many classic college romances and had turned slowly into something so
frighteningly different. He was fascinated and repelled at the same time
by the brilliant little man talking to him. Jack was too calmly frank
about himself; so frank he confounded Winkler, who found that he had
become the helpless audience of a sort of modern ancient mariner.
“So Page went back on his promise, and didn’t see Sunny?” Winkler asked
when Jack paused for a drink.
“He took off for Europe,” Jack said. “He was afraid if he saw her once
more he wouldn’t go. It was then or never. But the poor guy outfoxed
himself. He was even unhappier over there than Sunny was back here.”
“What did Sunny do?” Winkler said.
“What could she do? Went back to school for two more years. She didn’t
see him again until the summer before her last year in college. I had
gone to New York by that time, but they told me about it later. Page had
just started to work for the Chicago _Tribune_. Decided to use his
writing ability in journalism.”
“Was Sunny still in love with him?” Winkler asked.
“Yes. Oh, she got engaged to some hometown guy, and she might have
married him. It shook Page up to find that ring on her finger. He
proposed to her on the spot ... gave her such a rush she couldn’t turn
him down. But when she said yes, neither of them suspected their
marriage would end up the horrifying mistake it did.”
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.
5
Ralph was informed abruptly of his new status when he came for Sunny the
next day and found Page glaring at him over an afternoon beer like a
caveman.
Ben and June Rotheli were deeply concerned, but it was Sunny’s decision
and they stayed out of the fracas. Even so, had they guessed how fast
the wedding was coming up, they would have objected sooner.
They had to be grateful, at least, that Sunny had informed them of the
time and place. “I suppose that’s really something, these days,” Ben
said.
“And I’ve always dreamed of a white wedding for her,” June lamented.
Sunny tried to reassure them through several long nights of family
argument. “Dad’s been telling all my boyfriends for the last three years
he’d pay them a thousand bucks to elope with me,” she smiled. “So he
wouldn’t have to finance a big wedding.”
But not even Sunny wanted it done quite so fast. They were to be married
in Wheaton, the DuPage county seat, just as soon as the blood tests were
dry and the license legal. She was too much in love to resist, but she
was too sensible not to worry. It amazed her when her father, Ben,
unexpectedly announced to his wife, “What the hell, June. We got married
in a hurry, too. And it worked out.” Sunny threw her arms around him
gratefully while June raised martyred eyes to the ceiling.
Ben sounded confident, but he was wondering at himself. In the few short
days he had known Page he had begun to like him, respect him far more
than the run of Sunny’s beaux. Why? Because he loved Sunny so
whole-heartedly? Because he got along with Chuckie? Because he was
friendly and honest? Sure, all that. But something else, Ben thought.
Maybe he reminds me a little of myself at that age. Maybe that’s it.
There’s a bit of egotist in all of us. We can’t help liking the people
who like us, who are interested in the same things, who might even
resemble us.
June had to surrender. Everybody was on Sunny’s side, even Chuckie, and
the wedding came off as planned. Sunny wore a pale gold dress that
matched her hair, and Page found himself actually tremulous at the sight
of her.
“Why couldn’t your family come?” she asked him unhappily as they were
driving to Wheaton. “I wanted to meet them so badly. There won’t be
anyone there but us and my family.”
“I know. They sent you their love and all,” he said uncomfortably.
“And all,” she echoed with resentment.
“Mother is sick,” he told her.
“How sick?”
“Housebound. And Dad’s out of town. Couldn’t make it back.”
“For your wedding?” she said. “His only son?”
“Don’t make a fuss, honey. This is our wedding day,” he said. Moments
later, stopping for a red light, he bent to kiss her, but she wouldn’t
give him her lips.
“You’ll smudge me,” she said, prim and miffed.
But he was too happy to complain. “Sunny, sweetheart,” he said. “My
almost wife.” The line of cars began to honk behind them and he stepped
hard on the gas. The sudden acceleration made her laugh and dispelled
for a minute her secret doubts and fears.
* * * * *
The ceremony was quick and simple. June cried and Ben Rotheli, watching
from behind the couple, felt a strange aching loneliness for the son he
had lost so long ago: his first child, Roger. He couldn’t have explained
it, having known the child a mere three weeks. It had been hard for him
to shift his hopes to Chuckie; hard on Chuckie too, feeling so much
expected of him. Ben tried not to let it show.
Now, looking at the broad back and blond hair of his new son-in-law, Ben
felt a swell of affection. Perhaps, in a way, Page could take Roger’s
place. Roger would have been about this age, and Ben wanted to know Page
much better, wanted him to like him. And so he indulged in a pride and
fondness that were rather special.
* * * * *
Page was blissfully happy. He had been two years making up his mind to
this marriage and he had no misgivings. For Sunny, there were minutes of
quiet fear when she realized how little she actually knew of Page, how
much she was relying on their mutual love.
But they were short minutes, swallowed up in the sheer joy of being
married to the one man she had always loved and wanted above all others.
They took a small furnished apartment in Chicago. It was cramped and
plain, but they loved it. They went to the movies, bought modernistic
ashtrays, soaped each other and made love in the shower. It was all
wonderful, all so normal: pure sunshine and fun with no clouds of
calamity visible on the horizon.
The only thing that bothered Sunny was the mystery of Page’s parents.
“I guess they disapprove of me, hm?” she said once, needling him.
“How could they when they don’t even know you?” he said.
“Do they know _of_ me?”
“Certainly. They know I’m married.”
“You said they lived here in town. Can’t we drop in on them?”
“No,” he said quickly.
“Would they kick me out?” she asked.
“It isn’t that, honey. It’s just—”
“Just that they hate you? Or me, or us, or _something_.”
“They love me, they’re very proud of me. But my life with them is over,
now. I’m yours, not theirs. They’ve had me for the past thirty years.
The hell with them.”
Sunny was shocked at the way he spoke, but she was afraid to press him
further on the subject.
* * * * *
Page and Sunny spent only one month in Chicago, for Page was being
transferred to the _Tribune_’s New York office. They spent most of their
spare time packing and visiting the Rothelis. But finally, a few days
before their departure, Sunny demanded, “Let me meet your parents,
Page.” She felt it was then or never.
He looked up from the fried egg he had been tranquilly enjoying, his
breakfast obviously ruined. “No,” he said, and forked half a yolk into
his mouth.
“I’m their daughter-in-law, and I want to know them. They’re my family
now, too.”