Chapter Seven Silver
I wake up with Sam dressing in front of his closet, tucking in his shirt.
So handsome. And so scarred.
My poor Sam! I hadn’t seen his back in the dark last night, but in the morning light, I can see the mass of ragged flesh that had healed in flat red and pale white lines.
I don’t know how I didn’t feel it, but I know enough not to mention a man’s war wounds and make him self-conscious.
Instead, I slip the sheet around my shoulders and hurry to hug him.
I’ve heard some girls say a man’ll put you off afterward.
He’ll have what he wants, he’ll have made pretty promises, and then, you’re done.
Sam turns before I’m halfway there, sweeps me up and kisses me. “Good morning, beautiful. I’ve got the coffee going.”
“What time is it?”
“It’s barely five.”
“We only slept a few hours.”
“I know, but I’ve been thinking. I love you, Susan Spade.
And I can’t marry you or even propose to you properly unless I’ve got the madman who almost caused a wreck last night taken care of.
And your reputation, which I know you’d gladly tarnish for me, isn’t going to look too rosy if you sneak into your rooms at six in the morning. People will talk.”
“I don’t care. We had a case. We were in the city.
I’m sure lots of girls go to conferences as private secretaries.
We’ll say I had to help you with something.
” I’m also sure those types of girls get chased around the desk by their bosses, and maybe the world would think it unseemly.
Mother would. Father might load his shotgun.
“What I’d rather ask is if you have everything you need in your handbag to go to Yonkers for a few weeks while I’m in Windsor? The business can wait, Susie,” he says before I can protest. “You have some of your clothes and things at your parents’ place, don’t you?”
“My room is like a shrine. Mother will eventually give in and make it the sewing room she’s always wanted, but for now, it’s there, waiting for me on weekends.”
“Well, tell them I’ve been called away on business, and I gave you paid time off.
Drop the hints, honey, that this is serious between us.
Talk up a white wedding, if you think they’ll approve.
I’ll write to you every day, and I can have you at the bus stop in the next town over by six-thirty to catch the morning bus towards Yonkers. ”
“Are you... Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“No. I’m trying to keep you safe, so you’ll be with me forever.”
Sam punctuates that breath-stealing, heart-stopping promise with a kiss that melts my knees and makes me sag against him. The sheet falls, and Sam runs his hands down my naked body like he owns me.
“You’re so beautiful. I want you to be mine. Be my bride. To trust me, even when I can’t tell you everything, Sue...” he pants against my neck, kissing me harder.
I stop him before he can leave a love bite I’ll have to explain. “All right, I’ll go to Yonkers and stay with my folks for a few days—but then I’ll come back and run the office. I’ll need a key to get in.”
“I have a spare in the kitchen, and the coffee ought to be ready by now. You get dressed, run a comb through those lovely locks, and I’ll get you on the bus in no time.”
“Okay, honey.” I kiss him swiftly and hurry to wash and dress.
As we’re drinking coffee, Sam carries his cup around the kitchen with him, frowning.
“Where... I know I had a spare... Oh, I think it’s the glove box.
Let me go look, and if not there, it might be in my old footlocker in the spare room.
” Sam kisses my cheek in passing and heads out in the soft pink light to his car.
I rise, unable to keep still, anxiousness coating my stomach. Not about Sam and me. About the man who might try to hurt him. About the man who could be waiting for him in the office, or behind the next Burma Shave sign.
To keep my hands and mind busy, I start looking for the key, and also looking for the sugar. I open the pantry door—only to discover it’s the basement.
When the light hits the stairs, they glow in patterns. Strange patterns. And at the bottom of the steps, silvery chains line the floor.
Mack’s words spring to mind. “He’s a little nutsy.”
Secrets. “To trust me, even when I can’t tell you everything.”
I slam the door shut too hard, too fast, panting, and several things clatter out of the little wooden rack near the door.
I stoop and hurry to gather them up.
Sleeping tablets. Three bottles of them.
Jars of crushed green and brown leaves. Spices?
“Found it! It was in the glove compartment, but looks like I really did a number on the undercarriage of the car last night.” Sam comes in, all smiles, holding a key. His eyes meet mine, see the jars and bottle I’m holding, and notice how close I am to the stairs. “Susie?”
“Do you have trouble sleeping?”
“Only a few nights a month. Herbal teas. Supposed to help, they say.” He takes the jars and bottles carefully from me. “Did you open the door?”
I could lie. But I don’t. “Yes. And I saw the writing on the stairs.”
“Ah.” Sam puts the bottle back on the rack, face closed over. “I bet you think I’m a loon, huh?”
“I couldn’t think that.” I swallow. “Is it something to do with the man you’ve been chasing? Something to do with Washington and the secret operations you can’t tell me about?”
“Yes. And something that happened to me back in France, during the war.”
“I saw your back,” I whisper before I can stop myself.
“Sorry you had to see that. Let’s just say that after you’ve lived through something horrific, you take precautions to stop it from happening to others.”
“Are you chaining up spies down there? And those words on the steps? They’re formulas? Codes?”
“What? No. No! Silver... The Silvermans have always been big believers in the protective powers of silver. That’s...
That’s where I go when I’m afraid to be with other people.
When I need to sleep like the dead. You don’t have to understand it.
You just have to know I’m different from other men.
Something... something happened to me during the war, and I’ll never be the same again.
God, if I could undo it, I would, especially now that I’ve met you, but I can’t.
That place is the safest place for me—but I don’t ever want you to go down there when I’m there.
You’ll see a horrible, ugly side of me. It’s bad enough I have to tell you I have it, but you don’t have to be subjected to it. ”
Pieces are falling into place. Shellshock. The scars. The secret things he knows.
Sam was captured. Tortured as a spy or secret agent, wounded and injured until something inside him shattered, made his mind a ripped-up mess like that spot on his back.
He’s living with wounds in his head, and coping beautifully, if you ask me.
So many men are still in sanitariums, barely speaking, like withered old men in young bodies.
“I think you’re brave. Whatever they did to you, whatever you endured—it doesn’t matter to me.
I still love you. And if you need a place to feel safe, somewhere the demons in your head, or your dreams, or your memories can’t get you?
Then I’ll stand guard at the door, and make you all the herbal teas you could ever want. ”
Sam’s face goes from blank to stunned, to beatific.
Blessed, like some warrior angel. “Susan Spade. Will you marry me one day?” he whispers, gently taking my hand and kissing it.
“You don’t fully know what I’m living with, but if you’re willing to let me have my silver talismans and my strange writings, my pills and potions, then you’re the one for me.
I knew you were. Most women just want a man who’s strong and healthy, carrying it all inside.
My inside comes to the outside once a month,” he whispers, cupping my face, his forehead to mine.
“I’d never hurt you, but I don’t seem the same when ...
I just don’t seem the same. I’d sleep at the office those nights, if you want. ”
“Nonsense. And you never even gave me a chance to answer you, you big lug,” I whisper, kissing his lips as they hover near mine. “Of course, I will. One day. One day soon.”
“Susan Ann Marie Spade. What do you mean he’s your boss and your beau? Is that what you wore on the bus?”
Mother’s apron flaps in agitation, and she puts both floury hands to her tightly rolled dark brown curls that are streaked with gray. “You barely know this man.”
“I know him enough to know that I think he’s wonderful, Mother. Here, let me help you with luncheon.”
“Not until you change out of the city strumpet outfit! Is that what you’ve been spending your hard-earned money on? You know part of the reason we let you go off on this galavanting course to the city was to put aside some of the money for Eddie’s college.”
Eddie is at this moment trying to tie a corn cob to the leg of a chicken so that the other chickens will chase after her.
He’s seven, and the baby of the family. “I think I might have time to put a little aside by the time he’s ready for Harvard,” I smile.
“Mr. Silverman may go into banking. Did I tell you he worked in Washington? Very important in the War Department.” I trot off to change out of the pretty (and rather daring) frock I wore to the theater last night.
The dress Sam took me out of before he spread my legs around his head.
Used his mouth and hands to make me scream and come on his face.
Part of me thinks the women in my circle, those good girls with knees pressed together learning to can, pickle, and preserve, have never known pleasure like I have.
At least, I’d like to believe that I’m the special one.
That’s it. Sam makes me feel special, after a lifetime of imagining what it’d be like to be someone else. No, to be the woman I want to be.
Sam loves who I am—and I love him.
I feel like I’m carrying a delicious, decadent secret, as though I’ve found a safe person to share my every fantasy with.
“Washington? Bankers! Well, then, my girl, you’d better watch yourself.
A man like that isn’t going to marry a farmer’s daughter, a typist who reads trashy books!
And don’t let the minister’s wife hear you talking about your boss courting you!
Land sake’s, you’d think I raised a fool.
Thank heavens Henry and Paul have their heads on straight. ”
I sigh. Henry is seventeen, and Paul is sixteen, and both of them want to go to agricultural college one day, but for now, they’re content to help at the feedstore and on the farm.
“Arghhh! Maa! Ma, this ol’ chicken pecked me in the eye!”
“If it’s not one thing it’s two,” Mother cries, and I hear the screen door on the kitchen slam.
“And Eddie is content to make trouble for himself and all of God’s creatures,” I sigh. I change into a pale blue dress and pin back my hair. Mother may think I’m foolish, but I know Sam.
Well, as well I can so quickly.
I sit at the vanity in my room, clear away the few toiletries I left behind, and open the drawer where I keep my good stationery. I’ve never had a beau to write to before. I could spritz the pages with the rose perfume my grandmother gave me for my twenty-first birthday.
As I dig out the pale pink box tied in a satin ribbon, I see my old stack of books—hidden where Mother would never find them, and all of them purchased at the drugstore across town when I used to make my monthly pilgrimage to visit my spinster great aunts.
It’s funny the way my eyes latch onto the first cover I see.
Surely after living a racy adventure rife with romance and danger, I shouldn’t be eager to read vague descriptions and trite, recycled plot lines.
“Stowaways and the Silver Bullet.”
Looks pretty standard.
Scantily dressed women.
Torn dresses. Heaving bosoms, heaving seas. This one is set on some kind of boat.
And... werewolves. That’s a little bit of a twist. Maybe that’s why I don’t remember it. I’m usually not one for the spooky stuff, since I know it’s not going to happen. I prefer tales of adventure and glamor that I know could happen to me, no matter how outlandish.
There are half-men, half-wolf creatures on the cover, howling and clawing to get out onto the open decks and presumably mutilate the damsels. Damsel A loads a revolver. Damsels B-E cower and faint.
“Susan! Come cut up these sandwiches. You know it’s my bridge luncheon today.
I didn’t expect you until Friday night! Wednesday afternoon is always my bridge day, and I’ll not have you monopolizing the bathroom and all the good towels when we have guests.
I know what you’re doing! You’re going to set your hair in some outlandish style! ”
“Mother, you think anything but ponytails, braids, or ringlet curls is outlandish. I’m finding a nice dress,” I shout back.
“Well, I’ve got to put ice on your brother’s eye, so don’t you dally too long!”
“I won’t,” I call back, flipping through the pages.
Jeb gathered the women close, the old sailor’s breath fading fast. “Listen, lasses. Only silver can harm the beast, or keep him at bay.”
Another flip.
“Stop, you can’t kill Antony! He’s a man by day!”
“The night of the full moon changes that, Penelope. He’s got to be held accountable for his crime done by moonlight. If we don’t kill Antony and his entire crew with the silver bullets from Captain Jeb’s stash, we’ll soon be bound to the devil as well.
Another flip.
The girls cried as they stood by poor, foolish Maria’s mutilated corpse. “Will she rise again, now that she’s been marked by the wolf?” Penelope asked.
“Maaa! She’s already got her dress on. She’s sittin’ an’ readin’ those old books of hers!”
I throw my book down and whirl to catch my brother running away from my door. “Edward! You get back here, you little devil!” I gasp, chasing him down.
There’s something in the text that reminds me of Sam. Probably just the references to silver.
I think.
“Susan!”
“I’m coming, Mother!” Honestly. Between the annoyance of home and the heart-in-my-mouth narrow escapes with Sam, I think I’d still choose Sam, every time.