Chapter 13 Barn Swallow #2
have the viewer screaming, Don’t! Stop! I undid the locks and pulled the door open.
Drenched, Sam stood on the porch with a giant bouquet of yellow roses.
“What?” I said. “What is going on?”
“Reenie,” he said. “Will you marry me?”
“What?”
“Will you marry me? You got me in trouble and now you have to marry me.”
Nell came barreling down the stairs. “Jesus Christ! What’s happening? Who’s that? Why is he delivering flowers in the middle
of the night?”
“Nell, this is Sam. I, ah, mentioned him. He just asked me to marry him.”
Nell looked not one speck less annoyed. “I thought he broke up with you.”
“I did,” Sam said. “It was the worst mistake of my life.”
“You don’t deserve her,” said my loyal sister. She ruffled her hair. “Well, make a decision because I don’t have to get up
for three more hours!”
I said, “I guess it depends on two things. One, how sorry you really are. And two, if I like the ring you pick out.”
“I already have the ring. I’ve been carrying it around for weeks. It was my great-grandmother’s. You can have the stone reset
in any way you want.”
“I’ll never get back to sleep now,” Nell said. “Let me have a look at that ring.” It was a yellow diamond set about with pale
blue sapphires in the basket-weave style of a hundred years ago. “You might as well get down on one knee. You already dripped
all over the hardwood. Thanks a lot. I’m considering buying this house.” She turned to me. “So, Irene?”
“I’m waiting for the other part of this.”
“Reenie, I was afraid. I was afraid of the story you told me but mostly I guess, I was just afraid of the love I felt for
you. I’m thirty-three years old and this is the first time I ever considered marrying anyone.”
“This is the first time I ever considered getting married at all.”
“Please give me another chance. Please say you’ll forgive me.”
“I do,” I said. “And I will.”
Sam kissed me once and again. He hugged Nell, and the flowers scattered. One by one, her roommates joined us in the hall,
first annoyed, then applauding, except for Leslie, the beautiful and surly psychiatric social worker. She said, “I don’t let
strange people into the house. And I would appreciate it if you did not either. That’s how single women get killed.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m engaged now, to this stranger, for the past five minutes. Does that still count as being single?”
Leslie whirled and stomped back upstairs.
Nell then took a hard look at me and said, “That’s my dress.”
We drove up to see my parents, later that day.
On the way, I forced Sam to stop for taco chips. He gave me a quizzical look.
I told him about the dream I’d had, of the freezing shrimp-sized babies, and, as I had feared, he looked appalled. “You’re
not, are you? Pregnant? We’re a little too old for that, aren’t we?”
“You mean to have it be a mistake or at all?” I asked him. “Last I heard, I’m in prime time for the next fifteen years or
more.”
“To have it be a mistake,” he said. “I think your roomie the social worker would say that is a pretty loaded dream.”
“I agree with that, and pretty fear based. And no, I’m not pregnant.”
“If you were, we’d deal with it,” Sam said. “People always used to. People still do. It’s just not the best way to start things
off.” I couldn’t disagree, and my relief was mighty that he hadn’t said any of the repugnant, atavistic things single men
even older than he sometimes said, about how they didn’t even know how to take care of themselves, much less a kid . . . I
still wasn’t sure I wanted a child, but I was sure that I didn’t want to be with a man who didn’t want a child—and that didn’t
pass the scratch test for common sense even to me.
After I got the taco chips out of the way, I told him, “We don’t have to stay over, but they’ll want us to. We can leave at
the crack of dawn tomorrow. I can show you where Felicity lived, at Starbright Ministry.”
“I don’t want to bring Felicity into this, except I do have to call her and try to get a message to her.”
I couldn’t help myself: “Now of all times?” Perversely, I wanted this moment to be a closed circle of just two.
“Yes, now of all times. The last time I spoke to her she told me that you were the dearest and best person she ever knew and
I was a fool to let you go.”
I couldn’t speak. This was my life to come, to be lived on clean and unmarked land.
There was no room for shadows. On the other hand, Felicity was the only reason I met Sam.
Felicity was all alone. She would always be alone.
The girl who had everything had nothing.
No matter how hard I tried, she was part of me.
“‘I am half-sick of shadows,’” I said.
“Finally a poem I know,” Sam said. “We were forced to read it in eighth grade, the most depressing thing I ever read. She
kills herself and then floats down to Camelot.”
“I don’t think she really killed herself. She died of a broken heart.”
“Nobody really dies of a broken heart.”
“They do in country-western songs,” I told him. “And old poems. I’m named after that poem.”
“I thought you were named after that old song.”
I said, “Both. I’ll explain someday.”
Sam said, “We have plenty of time.”
We talked about things we’d never discussed. He asked if I would want to stay home with a baby. I said it depended on the
baby—that I hadn’t really thought past peeing on the stick and getting presents. I asked him if he would, and he said absolutely.
He told me his two youngest brothers were twins and that this ran in families. Then he pulled off at one of those rest stops
frequented by long-haul truckers, a low-lying building complex that advertised Diner Showers Hookups.
“Do you think they mean electrical hookups or the other kind?” I asked. “Probably both, judging by the looks of that joint.”
I waited while Sam made a phone call and left a message. “Guys, I am at a truck stop in Wisconsin. I just proposed. She said
yes.”
Miranda and Patrick were waiting on the porch swing. They came down to meet me.
Miranda said, “I was so surprised when you called. You haven’t been up here for a while. How long can you stay? Do you want something to drink? Come inside.”
We all turned toward the porch, not even noticing Sam struggling to manage his satchel and mine. Finally, he said, “Wait a
minute! I’m Sam Damiano, I’m a friend of Reenie’s . . .”
“Sam is Felicity’s defense lawyer,” I said. “You remember. Well, Mom, you remember. Dad, you weren’t there.”
My mother said, “Of course. Hello.”
Patrick put out his hand and they shook.
“That’s a beautiful ring, Reenie,” my mother said. “Is it new? Is it one of those new antiques they make?”
“It’s a real antique. It belonged to Sam’s grandmother. We . . . Well, Sam asked me to marry him, and I said yes.”
Patrick said, “Is marrying the press required? For a solid defense?”
“It’s required for me. I guess I didn’t do too well with the defense. I did my best.”
My father said, “I was kidding. In a clumsy way. I’m sure you did everything right, Sam.”
“And want to be a good husband to Reenie, and a good father to our children. I hope you want that too.”
Well done! I thought. They will acquit!
My mother said, “Reenie, are you . . . ?”
I said, “Nope.” Then I went on, “Doesn’t anyone want to say congratulations or when’s the wedding? The answers are, thanks
and we don’t know, we’ve only been engaged for eight hours.”
My mother hugged both of us, and then said, “I remember Angela from back when I was a reporter. She was a powerhouse. She
got some of the worst people off . . .”
Sam said, “That she did! My mom is one of a kind.”
Miranda said, “Wow.”
Just then, Nell arrived. She’d left an hour after us but apparently driven much faster. She said, “Can you believe that someone is marrying Reenie on purpose?”
Patrick said, “I’m just about to tell Sam here about her dowry, the farm, the silver mine, the chalet in Zurich . . .”
“You can keep those,” Sam said.
“Even the chalet?” Patrick asked. “I’m very partial to the chalet.”
“I’ll make dinner,” Miranda said. “I don’t know what I have around . . .”
“No, I will,” Sam suggested. “Later on. I want to impress you.” He said this not knowing anything about my mother’s heartfelt
but disastrous ways around a home-cooked meal. She eyed me a little skeptically, for we never scrupled to judge her cruelly
because she could merely win Pulitzer Prizes and earn a healthy six figures in PR but could not whip up triple-chocolate oatmeal
bars. I raised my hands palms out to protest my innocence.
Later that night, after we’d all eaten Pasticcio di Lasagna, which Sam made with a ridiculously velvety béchamel on top of
the vodka sauce and double the amount of cheese, Patrick, his eyes misty with pleasure, said, “Okay, you have my permission
to marry her. If she doesn’t want to, we will adopt you. That was the best meal I ever had in my life.” Patrick added, “I’ll
make coffee for us, if there are any takers . . .”
Nell said, “You have to agree to the coffee, otherwise you’re a sissy. But I hope you have lots of activities planned because
you won’t be sleeping tonight.”
My father said, “Irene told me she was going to show you the sights. That should take about fifteen minutes. I’m going to
watch my old-time shows. Did Irene tell you about the deprivation she was subjected to as a child? That they weren’t allowed
to watch? She usually shares that with new people.”
“Actually she didn’t,” Sam said. “When we were kids, my dad let us watch all the TV we wanted but we could only watch his shows. The effect was that we didn’t end up watching too much because they were all old Westerns.”
“Really?” said Patrick. He sensed a setup and glanced at me. “I like those myself. Did you know that Jodie Foster got her
start on Gunsmoke?”
Sam returned the serve. “Did you know Ed Asner and Richard Dreyfuss did too? And that Bette Davis was in an episode or two?”
Patrick beamed. Here was a man a person could talk to.