Sleeping Beauty

chapter 6

I went out to the kitchen. Cousin Gloria was drying dishes at the sink, her black hair tied up on each side with shoelaces. She gave me a quick bright glance over her shoulder. “You shouldn’t come out here. This place is a mess.”

“It looks all right to me. Everything’s clean.”

“I have been working on it,” she admitted. “I’m practicing up for getting married again.”

“Have you picked the lucky man?”

She turned to face me with a plate in one hand and the dishtowel in the other. “As a matter of fact, I have. He’s a beautiful person. I’m the one who’s lucky.”

She was polishing the plate as if it was a symbol of her future. There was something touching about her faith and energy.

“May I offer my congratulations?”

“Sure, and I accept. We’d be married now, but we want to do it right. That’s why I took this little job with Tom on top of my regular job. I’d do it for nothing, but Tom can afford to pay me.”

She was a lively, open girl, and in a mood to talk now that Laurel’s parents were out of hearing.

“Where do you work?” I asked her.

“In the kitchen at the Medical Center. I’m studying to be a dietitian. Harry’s in the food business, too, when he’s working. Right now he isn’t working. We have a dream that someday we’ll open our own little restaurant.”

“I hope you make it, Gloria.”

“We’ll make it. He’s a smart man, and he has a nice touch with people. Even Tom likes him.”

“What do you mean, ‘even’?”

“Tom doesn’t like too many people. He didn’t like Flaherty – that was my first – at all. You could count the people he really likes on the fingers of one hand.” She raised her left hand, with the fingers spread. “Losing his mother the way he did, when he was so terribly young, it made him kind of suspicious of other people. My mother often said that she’s surprised Tom turned out as well as he did, considering the poor start he had. I think old Mr. Russo deserves a good deal of credit. Old Mr. Russo has his limitations, but he’s a good father to Tom, and always has been.”

She heard herself talking perhaps a little too much, and turned back to her dishes. I was content with a little silence while I took in what she’d said. Tom had lost his mother young, and now he was in danger of losing his wife. The two losses together didn’t form a pattern but they suggested the possibility of one. It hung in the bright kitchen like a double shadow caused by a defect in the lighting.

“What happened to Tom’s mother?”

Gloria said after a pause, “Aunt Allie died. It happened so long ago I don’t remember it. I remember we lived here for a while, all of us together in this house.” She looked around the kitchen nostalgically, possessively. “But everything comes to an end. Mother got an offer of a job, and Mr. Russo thought she ought to take it.”

“Does Mr. Russo live here with Tom?”

“Not any more. Tom took over the house from him when Tom and Laurel got married. Mr. Russo moved into an old people’s home in Inglewood. It was kind of rough on him, but he always wanted Tom to have the house.”

“How did Tom and Laurel happen to meet?”

“She just walked into the drugstore one day, and he fell for her at first sight. When she said she’d marry him, he thought he was the luckiest man in the world.”

“Didn’t you think so?”

She shook her head, and her tied-up hair flopped like vestigial wings. “It’s nothing against Laurel, though God knows she has her problems. But I sometimes think Tom took on too much when he married into that family. They’re so rich, and we work for everything we get. All Tom really has is a job in somebody else’s drugstore. And this old house which he’s buying from his father.”

“And Laurel.”

“If he’s got her.”

“What was the trouble between them, do you know?”

“Tom never discussed it with me. He’s very close-mouthed.”

“But you know both of them. You’ve seen them together.”

“Sure.”

“How did they get along?”

“It’s hard to say. They didn’t talk much to each other. But each of them always knew the other one was there, if you know what I mean. I think they love each other. Harry thinks so, too.”

“Does Harry know them?”

“Sure he does.” Her face was open, ready to say more. Then she seemed to remember something, and fell silent for a while. She added, without apparent connection, “Tom is very jealous of Laurel. I think she’s the only girl he ever looked at.”

“How old is Tom?”

“Thirty-one. He’s four years older than I am.”

“And Laurel’s the only girl he ever had?”

“So far as I know. I was his girl for a while. Not really – we were more like brother and sister – but he used to take me places. I taught him to dance, stuff like that, but we both knew it didn’t amount to anything. He just wanted to find out how to conduct himself with a young lady.”

“How did he conduct himself?”

“All right. He was kind of stiff and stand-offish, though. He still is. I don’t think he ever kissed me once in his life.” Her dark eyes came up to mine, sober and confiding. “He was waiting for Laurel, if you know what I mean. She was his fate, the only one for him.”

“Then why did they break up?”

“They didn’t really break up. She goes back to her folks from time to time, or she goes and lives with friends.”

“Like Joyce Hampshire?”

“That’s right. They’re real old friends. I might do the same thing if I was married to Tom. He goes in for these long silences; he always has. And Laurel has troubles of her own – you don’t need me to tell you that. But they’ll be back together, I guarantee it.”

“I hope so.”

I thanked her, and left.