The Dreeson Incident(202)

"I'm not like that. I dated a half dozen guys before I started dating Ron," Missy protested. "Kissed them, too, some of them. More than once."



"With what result?"



Missy looked at her Pop for a while. "They all stayed frogs," she finally admitted.



Willie Ray leaned back. Point made. No reason now to bring up how relieved he and Vera had been every month things stayed on schedule for quite some time before he'd left for Korea. It embarrassed Vera to remember that, even after they'd been married for fifty years.



The fact remained that Eleanor had pegged one thing right. Missy was more like the Hudson women. Which meant . . .



He didn't believe that he was the only person still alive in Grantville who had been surprised when Eleanor Newton actually settled down and made John Jenkins a good wife. She had been as wild as they came when she was a girl. And if she continued to make a nuisance of herself, he wouldn't hesitate to remind her. He'd appeal to her better nature first. But if that didn't work, he wouldn't hesitate at all to remind her that she would probably prefer not to have Missy asking a lot of questions. He couldn't be the only person who remembered the stories and Missy would find one of them who was willing to talk, eventually. She was bound to, as tenacious as she was.





"Was it true, Mom? What Gran said—well, implied—about Aunt Aura Lee? I've learned to take some of the things that she says with a grain of salt." Missy pulled her feet up onto the glider.



"The summer of '74?" Debbie asked. She tapped her fingernails on the porch railing a minute while she thought about her mother-in-law and the way she tended to put things. "That's thirty years ago. Your Gran was telling the truth if she simply told you that Aura Lee and Joe were already an item the summer she was sixteen going on seventeen. As Elaine Bolender said then, he was cradle robbing, a bit. But there wasn't anything anyone could have done about it. Not short of locking one of them up. Or, more likely, locking both of them up, with guards posted twenty-four hours a day."



"I took it from Pop that he and Nani didn't lock her up?"



"Joe hitchhiked over from Fairmont when he got back on leave that Saturday, dropped off at Stevenson's Groceries, went in, said 'Hi, Boyd, where's Aura Lee?' Boyd said, 'in back stocking canned goods.' Which is where they went public, so to speak. A fast hug, her head on his shoulder, him saying he was on his way to his ma's and what time was she off so he could pick her up, she saying that she was driving Pop's old Studebaker and he'd have to follow her out home so she could drop it off and get her weekday curfew extended an hour or two. With enough interested spectators to get the report circulating." Debbie grinned. "And enough nicely chosen words in it to make plain that there was nothing going on behind her family's back. She hadn't spent several years as a politician's daughter for nothing."



"I suppose," Missy said, "that it's at least some comfort to learn that the Hudson women weren't dumb. Which Gran managed to skip over. Whatever else they were."



Debbie leaned back against the porch banister. "If she implied . . . or tried to imply . . . that Aura Lee ever had any interest in anyone except Joe, you can forget it. Things went on from there. The next day, Sunday, your Pop and Nani left for Fairmont right after lunch. Political reception. Ray was out in the barn, banging on something mechanical. I stayed behind with a napping Anne, curled up in an easy chair in her bedroom looking through WVU orientation stuff. I heard Joe pull in—it was pretty impossible to miss the noise of his ma's car—and didn't hear anything more. I'm sure they didn't know I was home. Aura Lee had gone outside before we decided not to wake Anne up."



"How does that song go?" Missy asked. " 'The sound of silence?' "



"Close." Debbie smiled. Well, sort of smiled. "About an hour later, I looked out the back window. They were in the back yard, lying on a sleeping bag. Not, at that point, even touching. She was on her back with her arms up over her head; he was propped up on one elbow, lying on his side, looking at her. I couldn't see his face, his back was toward me, but I could see hers. The first thing that I thought was practically blasphemous. You know that hymn? 'Have thine own way, Lord, Have thine own way. Thou art the potter, I am the clay. Mold me and make me, After Thy will, While I am waiting, Yielded and still.' Okay, that's how she was looking at him. Even if they hadn't done anything irrevocable yet, it was clear that they would. It was a done deal. Sooner or later. She was just waiting for a cue from him.



"It didn't last that long. In a couple of minutes she said something that made Joe start laughing, they both sat up, and he grabbed her around the shoulders for a regular 'kiss and cuddle' session. They were clearly enjoying themselves, so I went back and finished reading my orientation materials."