The Julius House

I was going to marry Martin. I started my car and pulled back into the modest stream of traffic that was Lawrence-ton's lunch-hour rush. Because really, trickled on a tiny cold relentless voice in the very back of my mind, really, if you asked him and he told you, you might learn something that would force you to cancel the wedding.

The prospect of being without him was so appalling, I just couldn't risk it. At the second stoplight, I swept this all neatly under my mental carpet as prewedding jitters and took a right turn to Total House. There I made a few salesmen very, very happy.

I met Martin at the Episcopal church, St. James, that night for our fourth premarital counseling session with Father Aubrey Scott. The two men were standing out in the churchyard talking when I arrived—Martin shorter, more muscular than Aubrey, more intense. It felt odd walking over to them under their scrutiny; Aubrey had been my escort for several months and we had been rather fond (though never more than that) of each other. If they were asked to describe me, I suddenly thought, they would describe totally different people. I stowed that thought away to chew at later.

Martin had met me when I was dating Aubrey, and consequently always felt extra possessive when Aubrey was around, I'd noticed. Now, he slid his arm around me as I joined them, while keeping their desultory conversation going. "—the Julius house?" Aubrey was saying in some surprise. I looked up, way up, at his mildly handsome face with its carefully groomed dark mustache.

"Her wedding present," Martin said simply.

"Quite a gift," Aubrey said. "But, Roe, won't it bother you?"

"What?" I asked, deliberately obtuse.

"The missing family. I've been in Lawrenceton long enough to hear the story, several times. Though I'm sure it's gotten embroidered over the years. Can there really have been hot food still on the table when the mother came over from the garage apartment?"

"I don't know, I hadn't heard that particular twist," I said.

"And it won't make you nervous?" Aubrey persisted.

"It's a wonderful house," I said. "It makes me happy just to walk in the door."

"Emily would be too nervous to stay an hour."

Aubrey always had to drag Emily Kaye into the conversation. I figured the sexual dynamics went something like this: Aubrey and I had parted when Martin and Emily appeared on our horizons. Emily had the child Aubrey wanted and couldn't have (he was sterile) and Martin had so much electricity for me I felt the air crackled when we were together. But Aubrey had dated me first, and perhaps a little resented my recovering from his gentle "good-bye" speech so thoroughly and quickly. So Emily Kaye, his all-but-in-name fiancée, was sure to be mentioned whenever I saw him.

It's stuff like that that made me so glad to be almost married. After so many years of dating and not-dating, I was heartily sick of all these little undercurrents and maneuverings. I was ready to be devastatingly straightforward. There is no telling what my reputation for eccentricity would have become if Martin hadn't chanced to want to see a house my mother, the real estate queen of Lawrenceton, was too busy to show him. She'd sent me in her stead and we had met for the first time on the front steps.

The phone rang in Aubrey's office, and he excused himself to answer it. I seized the opportunity to turn Martin's face toward mine and give him a very thorough kiss. That was certainly one of the biggest differences in my relationship with Martin; the sex was frequent, uninhibited, and absolutely wonderful. My sexual experience was not extensive, though I'd had what I thought was good sex before, but I had found a whole new dimension to the subject with Martin Bartell. He said, "If it's the suit, I'll wear it every day."

"I was just thinking about the first time I saw you."

"Can we go back and stand on the steps of that house again?"

"No, Mother sold it last week."

"Well—" Martin bent to resume where we'd left off, but Aubrey came out of his office then. The churchyard was getting dark, and he called to us to come in. We went in hand and hand, and while we talked in his office, the darkness outside became complete.

"I had supper tonight with Shelby Youngblood," Martin said. He was leaning against his car, I against mine, side by side in the church parking lot. The security lights overhead made his face colorless and cast deep shadows under his eyes.

Martin was going to spend the night at his apartment since he was leaving early in the morning to catch a plane to the Pan-Am Agra plant in Arkansas. "I should meet him," I murmured.

"That's what I wanted to set up. Can he come out to the new house tomorrow morning? That's where you'll be?"

I nodded. "Martin, what's this man like?"

"Shelby? He's ....rustworthy."

That wasn't exactly what I'd expected to hear. A strange capsule biography. "I guess I wanted a little more than that," I said. "Does he drink, smoke, gamble? Where does he come from? What did he do before he came here?" "He doesn't talk much about himself," Martin said after a pause. "I guess you'll have to find out what he's like from his actions." I'd made Martin angry. Perhaps he felt I was questioning his judgment.

"You know what I call the way you look now?" I asked.

Martin raised his eyebrows in polite query. He really was angry.

"Your ‘Intruder Alert' face."

He looked surprised, then irritated, and finally he began laughing.

"Am I that bad?" he asked. "I know I have a problem talking about some things.

No one ever called me on it before."

I waited a little while.

"I don't talk about Vietnam easily, because it was dirty and scary," he said finally. "And there are some people I don't talk about, because they're co

Martin turned to look at the floodlit church, the lights shining full on his face for a minute, making him look—old.

"I got a letter from him about a year ago, and we resumed the co

Martin stopped abruptly and I realized I had gotten all I was going to get.

It was a start.

I was at the Julius house by seven the next morning. I looked at each room, slowly and carefully, revising my room-by-room list of the changes that needed to be made. At 8:15 the carpenters came, followed me around, took notes, and left. At 9:00 the paint, wallpaper, and carpet people came, measured, and left. At 9:45 the plumber showed up, trailing a miserable-looking assistant with a cigarette stuck in his mouth.

"Please don't smoke in here," I said as pleasantly as possible. The lanky red-haired boy, who couldn't have been more than eighteen, threw me a sullen look and retreated to the front yard, where I was willing to bet he'd leave his cigarette butt in the grass. After years at the library, I could fairly accurately predict which teenagers were going to behave and which were going to be problems. This one was a problem. I looked at my plumber. "I know, I know," John Henry said. "I don't think he'll last long. It's a pain riding in the truck with him. But his mama is my wife's best friend." We sighed simultaneously.

John Henry and I discussed the bathrooms, worked out a schedule (as soon as possible), and then he crawled under the house to check out the plumbing. "I'm a little scared to explore too much here," he confessed with a broad grin. "Who knows but what they're all under the house?"