Best Submission, Short Story

Back in the truck, Nell sat burning with anger and freezing with cold at the same time. She considered her options. It was unthinkable for her to walk the block and a half to the cafe. A young lady simply did not stroll shoeless into a public restaurant. Besides, what would she do once she got there? She had no coins for the pay phone, and her father would have no way to come for her. She would have to “bum” a ride, and in her current state of undress, that wouldn’t do.

 

Her thoughts then turned to Norman, his treachery, and her desire for revenge. Suddenly she had a plan that would get her home and get even with Norman at the same time. She would walk right into the pool hall! It would be worth her own embarrassment to see the reaction of Norman and his buddies to the sight of Red’s little sister, shoeless and coatless, entering the forbidden territory.

 

She took a deep breath of the icy air and then made a run for the wood-encased glass door of the Yale Billard and Domino Parlor.  The bell on the door tinkled frantically as she dashed inside. There was a second of mingled voices raised in surprise, followed by a long moment of stunned silence as the dozen or so men and boys beheld the new arrival. Norman, who was bent over the pool table preparing to make a shot, looked up in annoyance as the bell interrupted his concentration. Seeing who it was, his mouth fell open, leaving a lit cigarette to dangle precariously from his lower lip.

 

“Take me home, NORMAN,” Nell said.

 

“Are you crazy coming in here like this?” Norman sputtered. “Mom will kill you when she finds out.”

 

“She’s not going to be too pleased with you either after I tell her how you left me in front of a pool hall, half dressed, to freeze to death!” Nell said confidently, thrusting her nose just slightly up into the air.

 

“I’m not taking you anywhere now.” Norman said defensively, “at least not until I finish this game.”

 

Before Nell could respond, someone spoke from out of the shadows along the wall to her left.

 

“Give me the keys Red,” said a calm, authoritative male voice. “I’ll take her home.”

 

Nell looked quickly to see who had offered to rescue her. Her heart lurched with shock and embarrassment when she saw it was Glenn Dawson. He was older than Norman, probably about twenty-two or twenty-three. He had not been raised in Yale, but, rather, had moved there after a stint in the service. He helped run the store that sold farm implements, equipment and parts. He drove a nice roadster and was frequently seen about town with various girls—all older than Nell, mostly single working girls. “Fast” is how Nell’s mother would describe them. Nell and her friends all had crushes on Glenn. Any new face in town, especially one with a job and a car, would be something special to these teenage girls of the Depression. Glenn’s face, however, would be handsome under any circumstances. He was big and blond and moved with an air of polite confidence. Norman and his buddies looked up to him. Nell had tried unsuccessfully in the past to engage Norman in a discussion of his friend Glenn. “Forget it kid,” Norman had scoffed, “he doesn’t date school girls.”

 

Without comment, Norman tossed his keys to Glenn. Norman seemed wary of what might lie ahead but was relieved to have the matter temporarily resolved. Nell flashed him a triumphant smile before running out to the truck. Glenn held the door open for her. Once seated in the familiar vehicle, however, Nell felt suddenly shy. Was this really Glenn Dawson sitting next to her in her dad’s grocery truck?

 

“Where’s your car?” was all she could think to say.

 

“Back at the boarding house,” Glenn said simply. “No need to waste gas driving a few blocks.”

 

“My stupid brother should be so sensible,” she blurted, then cursed herself inwardly for sounding like such a brat.

 

“You two really go after it, don’t you?” Glenn asked with obvious amusement.

 

 

The trip home was much too short. Nell kept her eyes out for any of her friends who could possibly be around to see her with Glenn Dawson. She had pretty much forgotten about Heloise and Helen and how they must be wondering why she had stood them up for their movie date. She couldn’t think of anything except for the big, beautiful man beside her.

 

When they pulled into her drive, Glenn did the most romantic thing any man or boy had ever done for her. After walking around and opening her door, he glanced down at her stockinged feet and then at the damp, frosted grass of the yard. Without comment or permission, he scooped her up into his arms and carried her across the lawn and up onto the covered porch. She was too astonished to speak. “Hurry inside,” Glenn said, “You’ll catch pneumonia out here.”

 

She started inside, but she paused in the open doorway long enough to stammer her thanks for the rescue.

 

 “My pleasure,” he said gallantly. Then he asked permission to call her sometime. She had never heard spoken more magical words. She ran straight to her room. She dove onto her bed, her hands gliding along the soft bumpy surface of the chenille until she came to rest—like a sledder on a flat surface. She reached out for her diary which lay on the night stand. She would deal with her parents, her friends, and her brother later.

 

 

The months that followed seemed enchanted to Nell. She awoke every day amazed that she was Glenn Dawson’s girlfriend. Her friends were all jealous and told her so regularly. Riding down the streets in his roadster and going out to movies and restaurants with him made her feel like a queen. Her parents, of course, disapproved of her dating an older man, and Norman was purely disgusted that one of his cohorts would stoop to dating his kid sister.

 

Having Glenn in her life distracted her from the last semester of her senior year. That was good, since the Depression took away much of what should have been—like a prom, senior rings, and senior pictures. Thinking about Glenn also kept her from thinking so much about college and how much she would like to go. Some of the boys in her class were going to A&M. She had often longed to be a boy so that her parents would offer to send her to college, as they had offered to send Norman (who declined). Glenn, however, made her glad to be a girl. Actually, he treated her like a woman, even though she was only seventeen. She had thought her heart would leap out of her chest the night he asked her to be his wife. She wrote “Mrs. Glenn Dawson” again and again in her diary.

 

She and Glenn knew better than to approach her parents with the news, so they decided on a secret engagement followed by an elopement the day after graduation. Nell had told only Heloise, who had been thrilled with the romantic notion and had helped plan the wedding day. The license had been purchased and all systems were on “go” as of this night before graduation. Even as Nell wrote in her diary of her resolve to carry out the plan, she prayed that the decision was the right one.

 

 

On the day after graduation, Nell dressed in dungarees and a halter top: typical picnic attire. She walked out of her bedroom and into the kitchen. She was carrying a picnic basket into which she had placed her wedding clothes.

 

“Where are you going with that?” her mother asked suspiciously.

 

“Glenn and I are going on a picnic with Heloise and Otto,” Nell said innocently (she hoped). “Heloise has the food at her house, but she needs to borrow this basket.”

 

Nell’s mother sniffed disapprovingly. She was a tall, big-boned woman of Scotch ancestry. He hair was red, and her one good eye was blue. The other was a cloudy white, the result of an accident with her mother’s sewing scissors when she was three. The eye wasn’t usually noticeable behind her glasses, but she was self conscious about it. She herself had “married down” to a handsome fellow from a “nere do well” family. She had never gotten over feeling superior to her husband, even though he had actually been modestly successful, while her own father had lost his money paying off her brother’s gambling debts. She kept an especially tight reign on her daughter, for whom she wanted “a better life” than she herself had. She had pretty much written off any hope of civilizing Norman, although she continued to cook and clean for him.

 

“Go on then.” Nell’s mother stated flatly. She was glad that Nell hadn’t asked her to provide the food for this foolish picnic. “Be back before supper,” she instructed. She liked Glenn even less after dark. When Glenn drove up in his roadster, Nell’s mother made herself scarce.

 

 

Nell climbed in the car beside Glenn but was too nervous to meet his gaze. He squeezed her hand, “We’re doing the right thing,” he assured her. They drove to Heloise’s house where she and Otto were waiting on the porch, already dressed in their wedding clothes. Nell looked longingly at Heloise’s pretty floral print. Otto wore a plaid sports coat. The two of them, more friends than sweethearts, were very excited to be included in such a clandestine and romantic adventure. As planned, the four drove first to the now-abandoned high school. Since three of the four had graduated only the previous day, all three knew exactly which door behind the gym would be left open. Nell and Heloise, carrying the basket, slipped into the girls’ locker room while the two men, carrying Glenn’s clothes in a duffel, went into the boy’s locker room. The co-conspirators hadn’t been able to think of a better place for Nell and Glenn to change. It was stuffy in the deserted girls’ locker room. Nell thought longingly of the Bridal Room of the First Baptist Church.

 

“Am I crazy to do this?” She asked Heloise.

 

“Oh no!” assured Heloise, whose own future looked bleak—at least as long as her invalid mother was alive. “Glenn is dreamy; everyone will be envious when they hear.”

 

Nell liked that thought. She dressed in the suit. In the discolored locker room mirror, she observed herself. “Not very bridal,” she admitted ruefully. Nell was solid and curvy. She had wavy auburn hair and very pale skin that tended to freckle. Her mouth was full, and she had very expressive grey eyes. In later years, she would be told that except for her coloring, she looked just like Patsy Cline. On her wedding day, however, she just felt dowdy.

 

When she and Heloise joined the men at the car, Glenn reached into the glove box and removed a florist’s box. In it was a large corsage of white chrysanthemums with trailing white ribbons.

 

“I thought it looked right for a bride,” Glenn said proudly.

 

Heloise thought a bouquet would have been better, but she kept that thought to herself. Nell was touched. She looked appreciatively at Glenn, who looked very handsome in his navy blue suit. He seemed very much a man of the world to Nell.

 

“Now I feel like a bride,” she whispered to Glenn as he pinned it to her lapel.

 

Otto, looking slightly uncomfortable, nudged Heloise and said, “Can you believe they’re doing this?”

 

Heloise sighed.

 

 

The four headed out of town into the next county. It had been necessary to get their marriage license in a county other than their own to keep Nell’s parents from knowing. Glenn had managed to find a Justice of the Peace in the county where they had gotten the license. He drove straight to the official’s house; the journey took about twenty minutes. The four young people spoke very little; they were all a bit awed by their mission. The small farmhouse had a low-hanging roof covering the porch. On a support post hung two signs: Justice of the Peace and Notary Public.

 

The small, balding man who answered the door was in his shirtsleeves, and he had crumbs around his mouth. They had obviously interrupted his lunch. Recognizing Glenn, the little man said, “I see you made it after all”—as if there had been some doubt. Nell looked around the clean but spartan living room. She tried not to think of stained glass windows or of Reverend Cox, the Baptist preacher. Otto and Heloise hung back slightly, not sure what to do. They could hear someone moving around in the kitchen. “Let’s get this show on the road,” said the official shrugging into a jacket and picking up a formal looking, leather-bound notebook. He stood with his back to the fireplace, in which stood an upright gas heating stove with darkened ceramic heating plates. In the winter it might have been a cozy setting. This, however, was late May.

 

Nell was conscious of the same effect that one gets when the lights come on suddenly in a darkened movie theater. As the shabby room is revealed, the magic on the screen is lost.

 

“Places everyone,” the official said cheerfully.

 

Nell and Glenn arranged themselves in front of the Justice of the Peace with Heloise and Otto on either side. Nell’s hands suddenly felt empty. She realized for the first time that she should have had a bouquet and not a corsage. She glanced anxiously at Glenn, who smiled apologetically and took her hand in his. The ceremony took only moments. Glenn spoke his vows lovingly. Nell tried to make her shaky voice sound confident. There were no rings; Glenn had said they would pick some out together later. When they were pronounced Man and Wife, Glenn kissed Nell and told her that he loved her. Heloise started to cry. The official shook Glenn’s hand, and Glenn discreetly handed him some folded cash.

 

As the wedding party made its way down the porch steps, Heloise remembered her camera. “Wait!” she exclaimed. She ran ahead to the car and retrieved her little Brownie box camera. “We have to take a wedding photo!” Heloise insisted. Nell and Glenn were instructed to stand in front of a spiraea bush that bloomed in the yard. The newly-married couple stood together, Glenn’s hand on Nell’s shoulder. They tried not to squint in the bright sun as Heloise snapped a single picture. It was, after all, the Depression.

 

“Oh Glenn,” Nell felt like crying, “this is all wrong.”

 

 

The foursome then climbed into the roadster and drove to a nearby road house for a late lunch to celebrate the nuptials. “I must look different,” thought Nell as they walked into the cafe. Nobody seemed to give them a second look, but Glenn announced to anyone who would listen that it was his wedding day. “My wife would like a cherry coke,” he said proudly to the waitress as they ordered their meals. “My wedding feast,” Nell thought numbly as she looked down at the chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes. She was too worried about telling her parents to have much of an appetite. Otto didn’t know that he was supposed to propose a toast, so mostly they all just ate in silence.

They left the road house and drove back to Yale. The drive seemed too short to Nell. Otto and Heloise were dropped at their respective homes. “Call me and tell me everything,” Heloise whispered to Nell as she gave her a quick hug for encouragement. Glenn, seeing the exchange, tried to reassure Nell. “In less than an hour, we will be making a clean getaway,” he tried to tease.

 

 

Their plan was to tell her parents as quickly as possible and then drive away from the fallout. Glenn had booked a cabin in a tourist court at a lake near the state line. They were to stay there for two nights and then return to Yale. Nell’s bag was packed and hidden under her bed. Glenn’s was in the trunk of the car.

 

“Let’s tell your father first,” suggested Glenn.

 

“Why him?” Nell asked, bewildered.

 

Glenn seemed startled by the question. “He’s the head of the household,” Glenn said, as if that should be obvious.

 

“That’s what you think,” thought Nell, but she put up no more resistance.

 

They drove to her father’s grocery store and hurried inside. “Yes sir, come right in sir; come right in,” greeted her father upon seeing Glenn. Nell’s father greeted all male customers that way. Spotting Nell, her father said “Well, Sis, what can I do for you?” Before Nell could speak, Glenn held out his hand and said, “You can congratulate me, sir; Nell and I just got married.”

 

Nell’s father stared stonily at Glenn, ignoring the outstretched hand. He was a dignified man with even features and very erect posture. His thick dark hair was combed straight back, and he had piercing blue eyes. These eyes betrayed nothing. He spoke to Nell, but continued to stare at Glenn.

 

“Does your mother know about this?” he asked Nell.

 

“No, daddy,” Nell said meekly.

 

“You best go tell her,” said her father.

 

As the couple walked out, the older man shook his head—very sadly.

 

Nell’s bottom lip quivered as the two made their way along the well-worn path between the store and the house.

 

“Be brave Honey,” warned Glenn. “After this is over, we can have our honeymoon.”

 

The thought of the tourist cabin both comforted and terrified Nell. She was a virgin; Glenn most surely was not. What knowledge Nell had, she had learned from her girlfriends. Her mother seemed to find such matters distasteful.

Pushing open the kitchen door seemed to take all of Nell’s strength. Her mother looked up from her ironing. Seeing only Nell at first, the mother’s greeting was friendly: “Back so soon?” she asked. Her pleased look vanished, however, when she saw Glenn. The mother quickly busied herself with sprinkling clothes with a water can. Nell, feeling somehow emboldened by her mother’s rebuff of Glenn, spoke up with just a slight tremor in her voice.

 

“Mother, Glenn and I have news: we got married this afternoon.” Before her mother could look up, Nell added, “It’s all legal and everything.”

 

The mother slammed the iron down on the dampened clothes. When she raised her head, she was a fearsome sight. Her one good eye blazed with anger, and the blind one looked menacing. Steam rose up from the ironing table and made her face even more flushed. “THAT’S WHAT YOU THINK, YOUNG LADY!” Nell’s mother exploded. Then, as if she had rehearsed her speech, she added venomously, “You may be a high school graduate, but you won’t be eighteen until August. You can’t marry without my consent.”

 

Glenn, who had been silent until then, said evenly, “We already did; we have the license and everything; it’s too late to stop us.”

 

“Any paper you may have was obtained fraudulently,” Nell’s mother said coldly, sounding very legal all of a sudden.

 

“I will see our attorney on Monday about an annulment,” Nell’s mother said smugly. A strong smell of scorched cotton rose up from the forgotten iron.

 

“Come on Nell,” Glenn raged. “Let’s get out of here. We will stay gone until August if we have to; she can’t touch us then.”

 

Nell slumped into a kitchen chair and cried like a tortured soul.

 

“Get Out!” Nell’s mother demanded of Glenn.

 

“Not without my wife!” Glenn thundered.

 

“She’s not going anywhere,” the mother stated confidently. “Leave now before I call the sheriff.”

 

 “Nell. . .” Glenn started.  But, the girl in the chair wouldn’t look up at him. Glenn looked wildly around the comfortable kitchen. He was an intruder—an outsider. Could a man be denied what was his? He reached for Nell, but she shook him away and ran toward her bedroom. He didn’t dare follow. He walked slowly toward the door, feeling the mother’s hostile eyes boring into the back of his head. From the doorway he glanced behind him, and for a second his eyes met those of Nell, who was also momentarily frozen in her flight. She would spend the rest of her life trying to forget his face—the hurt—the betrayal.

 

 

Two weeks later, Nell was at work at the switchboard in the phone company office. Heloise walked in, hesitated, and then handed Nell a photo. “I wasn’t sure what to do with this,” Heloise said timidly. Nell scarcely glanced at the photo before pushing it into her handbag. “Glenn is gone,” Nell stated flatly. Heloise seemed to want to comfort her, but she knew better.

 

That night, after writing in her diary, Nell removed the photo from her bag. Very carefully, using hair scissors, she cut as much of Glenn as possible from the photo. All that was left of him was a hand on her shoulder. “Glenn is gone.” She reminded herself. She looked one last time at Glenn’s image before tucking it into her diary. That way, she could burn them both at the same time. No, she couldn’t quite bring herself to burn the photo. Instead, she slid the flat box that contained all of her photos out from under her bed. She buried the partial photo under the others in the box and piled forty-seven years of silence on top of it.