Carla Kelly (14 page)

“Are you all right, my dear?” Mama asked.

“Just remembering one of my orphans,” she said quietly. “What else do we need here?”

Mama talked her into end tables and kerosene lamps for the brass bed Mr. Otto had already purchased—“Trust a man to think of the essentials and no farther,” Mama said drily—and similar tables and lamps for the parlor, as well as several bookcases with glass fronts, the better to keep Wyoming dust at bay. Julia stood for a long moment in front of cribs and bassinets, changing tables and highchairs, and decided not to go that far yet, especially since they were making her blush.

She did buy two beds, dressers, and chairs for two more of the still-imaginary bedrooms. “So you'll have a place to stay when you and Papa visit, and maybe James…” She stopped. “I wish, well, you know what I wish about James.”

The salesman, looking dazed from Julia's shopping spree, agreed to ship everything to the warehouse in Cheyenne that Paul had specified.

“He wrote me that President Gillespie has a key to the warehouse,” Julia said as they rode the streetcar home. “Now let's visit our favorite emporium for dishes and every utensil known to womankind.”

To her secret delight, a floorwalker materialized immediately when they walked into ZCMI.
I shall have to write Paul about this
, Julia thought as she smiled like the Queen of the House of Hapsburg and let him escort her and Mama to Housewares.
Maybe Mr. Otto's silent, commanding ways are rubbing off on me
.

After selecting china, everyday ranch ware, silver plate, glasses, bowls, cooking utensils, a clever toaster with four wired sides for the oven, pitchers, and bowls for the wash table and chamber pots for under the beds, even the Queen of the House of Hapsburg needed to rest her feet.

“Shopping is onerous,” she told Mama that night as they both sat in the kitchen, their bare feet in a solution of Epsom salts and water. “There's still money left.”

“Books for the bookcases,” Mama said decisively. “And rugs.”

“We'll send Papa on that errand,” Julia said. “My feet are going to hurt for a long time.”

By the end of the week, they had agreed on two cakes: Miss Farmer's Imperial Cake for the groom and Queen Cake for the bride. “I'll make three layers and put Ornamental Frosting on it, with spun sugar rosettes,” Julia announced.

Papa made her try it more than once. “Just to make sure.”

“I received an A-plus for this cake,” Julia protested.

“Just to be sure,” he said again.

“If you can't button your trousers at all after my wedding, Mama will make you walk around the block a number of times with her each night,” Julia warned. “And you know she'll walk you fast.”

Everything seemed to happen at once then: a bridal shower at her best friend's house, where everyone got the giggles about sweet, citified Julia marrying a rancher “with a past”; wedding presents of all shapes and sizes, which turned the postman more stoic every day; Iris's double wedding ring quilt, which took Julia's breath away; a doctor visit that could have been embarrassing but wasn't, because she had no qualms; a visit with her bishop and stake president that calmed her heart and left them smiling.

“Our little Julia, going back to cook for hard cases, even though she knows better this time,” President Wilkie teased. He held out his hand and ended up patting her hand. “You haven't chosen an easy life, Sister Darling, but you don't seem inclined to change your mind. Someday there might even be a branch in Cheyenne, but I wouldn't hold out much hope for Gun Barrel, Torrington, or Wheatland.”

Papa began to complain about the presents piling up in the dining room. “This is even more than Iris got,” he said, wading through the boxes and checking the name tags.

He frowned over an engraved silver tray from Zions Bank. “Nincompoops. When will you ever use a silver tray on the Double Tipi?”

“Maybe I'll let Paul coil his calving ropes on that instead of slinging them over the rafter,” Julia joked.

He wasn't through. “Grapefruit spoons? Cut glass knife rests? Bouillon cups? Jules, this idiotic stuff shows amazing largess from our family. Why on earth?”

“Simple. My old aunties are so astounded that I'm getting married that their reason has left them.”

Julia picked up a present wrapped in brown paper. “Papa, it's from the Double Tipi!” She peered close at the wrapping. “Look. It says to open this
before
the wedding and not tell Paul. Oh, dear, should I worry?”

She opened the package and pulled out a bright blue garter with white lace and little gold tassels. “Something blue,” she said, her eyes merry, and held it up for Papa, who put his hands in front of his eyes and peeked through his fingers. She looked at the attached note and laughed out loud. “‘Dear Julia, Keep him away from us for two weeks and sweeten him up. We can't stand him. Love from all of us, Doc.’ My goodness.”

The present was followed a day later by a letter from Paul, brief and to the point. “‘Dearest Darling, Look for me on next Saturday's morning train. One problem: I haven't a single idea for a good spot for our wedding night. I don't know your town. Will you find an appropriate venue (I'm up to the V's in Doc's dictionary), and make a reservation? Yrs, Paul. P.S. Whatever my sweethearts sent you, I probably won't approve.’ ”

“Yes, you will,” she murmured, “especially when I let you remove it.”

It was really too late to blush about the matter, but she did just that over one of her many farewell dinners of his favorite foods that Papa had requested. “Any ideas? The new Hotel Utah would be nice, but it's not open yet.” She pressed her hands to her flaming face. “I don't want to go to a hotel. Paul's tired of hotels, and I… I just want a quiet time with my husband. No bellhop with his hand out for a tip or maid wanting to clean the room. No food that I didn't cook. No sign saying we have to check out by 11 a.m. I want—we want—peace and quiet.”

“The Callahans,” Mama said. “What do you think, Jed?”

“Precisely,” Papa agreed. “How about you two spend the night next door?”

Thoughtful, Julia got up from the table and went to the window, looking at the dark house next door. Horatio and Desiree Callahan, the neighborhood's only Gentiles, wintered near San Diego at the Hotel del Coronado. For years, Papa had kept their furnace going from November to April to keep the pipes from freezing. In exchange, the Callahans always brought him a crate of grapefruit.
For all those grapefruit spoons Paul and I are getting
, Julia thought, amused.

“Yes. We'd like that.”

“Jed, go send a telegram.”

After another look at his roast duck and mashed sweet potatoes, Papa did just that, grabbing his overcoat and hat. Eyes wide, Julia looked at her mother. “The Callahans? Do you really think they would allow it?”

“Jules, the Callahans have loved you since you picked all their tulips that year you were three and then replanted them upside down when you felt guilty,” Mama said. “It's peaceful, it's quiet, and just the place for a rancher about this close to strangling his cowpunchers and a cook on her last nerve.”

“I am not on my last nerve!” she declared, indignant.

“Trust me, Jules, you are,” Mama replied, all complacency.

The Callahan's reply came the next day, and it was typical of Horatio Callahan, who owned one of Salt Lake's fifteen breweries. Mama handed it to her, along with a hairpin.

Julia opened the yellow envelope and laughed out loud. “‘Yes. Stop. The mattress in the blue bedroom doesn't squeak. Stop. Horatio,’ ” she read. “Perfect.”

When Papa got home that evening, he took them next door and unlocked the front door.

“It's a little dusty,” Mama said, looking around. “Nothing we can't remedy.”

They went upstairs, looking in the bedrooms until they found the one with the blue wallpaper. Mama prodded the mattress discreetly. “No squeak.”

Julia threw up her hands and went down the hall, looking for the lavatory. “Oh my,” she said, her voice low. “What a palatial affair! I guess beer pays.”

Papa peered into the tub, elegant with claw feet and gilt fixtures. “Big enough for a tall rancher and a short cook at the same time. Desiree
is
from France, after all. Paul will never know what hit him.”

“Listen to you two!” Mama scolded.

Papa shrugged. “Maude, you're the one who tested the mattress.”

“I can't take you two anywhere, can I?” Julia asked. She looked at them both, her heart overflowing with love for her parents. “And how can I part from you?”

“No parting, Jules,” her father said, his arm around her and Mama. “We're all in this for the long haul, if eternity is everything it's cracked up to be.” He smiled at her then. “Paul too. The blue bedroom in a brewer's house seems a good place to bed down with your sweetie. I'll probably still get a crate of grapefruit too.”

Two days before she was to meet Paul at the depot, Julia sat for a long time on her bed, looking into the mirror over her bureau. She fingered her curly hair, longer now. There was enough to put up into a small bun, so Mama's hairdresser had assured her.

No one had tousled her hair since Christmas, twining the little curls around his fingers. She longed for that feeling of Paul's hands in her hair. She could let it keep growing, or she could cut it shorter again. She knew she was no Gibson girl, with long legs, a swan neck, and luxuriant hair piled high into a pompadour. Slender yes, maybe too much since the fire, and she did have a deep bosom, but she was short and always would be. She thought of Matthew, where her scripture reading had taken her lately: “Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?”

“Not I,” she informed her reflection. She touched her hair again, thinking how Paul's eyes seemed to light up when he looked at her. She couldn't help but think of another Paul who called a woman's hair her crowning glory. She doubted that particular Paul would have been pleased with her mop of curls, but she wasn't about to marry that one.

“To the hairdresser tomorrow, and two inches less, maybe three,” Julia told herself. She then fingered her scars, familiar with them, hers to keep. Without any hesitation this time, she unbuttoned her camisole, let it fall from her shoulders, and took a hard look. “This is what you will see from now on, Paul,” she whispered. “Heavenly Father, I hope he really means it when he says he doesn't mind. I want to be the most beautiful woman in the world for Paul Otto.”

She smiled to herself as she pulled up her camisole again, thinking of the times she had asked Mama if she was pretty. Mama always said yes, of course. Young men from her own set had shyly told her the same thing at Salt Lake Stake Academy, and she had almost believed them. She thought about the prophet Samuel, taking a spiritual inventory of the sons of Jesse, rejecting this one and that one until he came to David.

“The Lord looketh on the heart,” Julia told the mirror. Maybe a future husband did too. Or wife; she knew Paul Otto's heart already. Even before she would kneel across the altar from him in the temple, she knew his heart. Good to know and not worry about, she decided, now that they were into last-minute details: wondering where to put one more out-of-town relative, or keeping an anxious eye out for the ice man, who promised a double delivery for the aspics and creams.

“Maybe we should have eloped to the temple,” she told her father that night as he sat at the dining table, making paper rosettes for the table where a little niece from St. George would sit with the guest book.

“What? And ruin all this fun?” Papa asked.

Julia sighed. She took the rosette from him and twined it around a thin wire. “Festivities take on a life of their own.” She put down the rosette. “Papa, what was your wedding like?”

He picked up another strip of paper. “Your mother and I were poor as church mice and I was in my last year at university. We rode in my father's wagon to the Endowment House, got married, and came home to meat loaf and hearty congratulations from your mother's parents. They figured anyone majoring in accounting would be a steady fellow.”

Julia laughed. “If I read Paul's last letter correctly, we'll be going home to the tack room.”

Papa covered her hands with his. “You know you couldn't be more delighted.”

Julia nodded. “I just wish Paul didn't feel so bad about it.” She hesitated. She ducked her head a little as she felt the tears behind her eyelids.

“Spill it, Jules,” Papa said, his voice kind.

“I don't think he understands how little I care about the house.” She swallowed and felt his hands tighten around hers. She took a deep breath. “He wasn't in that cut bank, trying to breathe and not burn. I look on every day since then as a gift. What on earth difference does a tack room make?”

He tipped her chin up with his finger and looked into her eyes. “It's useful knowledge, honey.” It was his turn to hesitate. “Since Iris died, I don't think about trivial things in the same way, either. Paul just wants things perfect for you because he loves you.”

“They already are perfect,” she said simply.

Thinking about her parents’ wagon ride to the temple in 1871, Julia took the streetcar to the train depot Saturday morning. Her face fell when the station manager told her the westbound train was stalled because of high water in the canyon.

“But I'm getting married on Friday!” she wailed.

The station master must have had daughters of his own. His expression was kind as he patted her hand. “My dear, the Union Pacific may not always run on time, but we always have a plan. The Ogden-Weber Stage Line is going up the canyon now, to bring'um down. We'll run a later train on the short line, and I promise you he'll be here in time for a wedding…,” he paused, staring long and hard at the calendar, “… six whole days from now.” He leaned across the counter toward her. “The Lord created the earth in six days, miss, so I think the Union Pacific can deliver one groom in six days. He'll be here, unless he gets cold feet.”

“Mr. Otto would never,” she said, trying to gather up her few remaining scraps of dignity.

“Go home, dearie,” he said. “We'll truss him into a tidy bundle and send him to your home, if he looks like he's planning to bolt.”