All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred forty-two)

All Bedlam Courses Past

Chapter Six

Short Days

(part one hundred forty-two)

“Josh you to an early grave.” Mumbling to himself, Samuel by the collar, Lawrence stepped into Keffer’s drugstore…

To learn that everyone was modern these days. Keffer now had a foyer, created out of shelves painted white, right-angling a table dressed in more swag and pouf than a bride. A girl perched on a brass-legged stool. At her back were striped and ribboned soap boxes, gilt and flower-dotted powder boxes, baskets of tiny boxes, silver-plate trinket boxes, hair brush sets, hand mirrors, pin jars, fairy lamps. On her table were scented soaps unboxed on a silver tray, face creams and hair oils, pints of perfume, stoppered crystal bottles and atomizers for their distillation.

“I know you’re a married man, Mr. Everard.”

He froze at the cheek of it, shuffled back and forth at unconscious battle against surrender. He decided October was early for Christmas, and the excuse would do…a nod to her knowing him, when he did not know her.

“Not quite the season, ma’am.” He smacked his hat on his trouser leg, the ingrained habit of a man who hunts with dogs, and sidled to the drug counter.

He could not have told the girl on what day his wife’s birthday fell. He’d been married too long before his mind guessed that a husband might ought to know. Lidah, asked, said, “April.” And with a glance backwards: “It’s what I think, I don’t know.”

And in a low voice, barely heard: “Lord. Go ask her yourself.”

He could tell Mary his own birthday, and then she would come back with…

No.

He could bring her a token on some chosen date, feign best intentions, and then she’d correct…

No.

Those were the scope of his ideas. Before Mary, Lawrence had not known a courtable woman. He had not courted this one; he had picked her up on the way out. Gremot’s man Sperling had just sacked his father. Mary was close to being sacked by Robert.

Lawrence understood his born place was lowlier than hers…no one else believed it, but Mary did. For all that, he had a husband’s duties. He insulted his wife, got her wrong, came a magi from Cookesville bearing belittlement wrapped in tissue-paper. His mother could exult in the paper itself, and what use did she have for trinkets, living in that hovel of a shanty Daddy had dragged her to?

But, Mary. “Oh. You thought I’d like gardenia?”

And so they were fallen into it…

While Lawrence knew this trip to town would have to yield something.

153

Bedlam

All Bedlam Courses Past (part one hundred forty-three)

(2024, Stephanie Foster)