Peter Jensen: Kidnapped bride

"I'm sorry honey, but there's nothing I can do about it."

Susan Jameson sat at the small telephone table in the front hallway of the attractive suburban Chicago home she shared with Tim, her young husband, and listened anxiously, the phone pressed against her ear, while Tim informed her he wouldn't be coming home that Friday night because of an unexpected airline strike.

"It all happened at the last minute," he was saying, "the ground crews just walked off the job, and the pilots are supporting them. So until it's settled, nothing flies out of Boston. Believe me, if there were any way I could get back tonight., I'd do it."

"What about the trains?" his young wife inquired nervously.

"Trains are impossible, you know that, honey. It'd take at least two days. No, I'm just going to have to sit it out in Boston until it's settled. They're negotiating now apparently, so it could be settled any time, but the grapevine says probably not before Sunday night. To tell you the truth, I can use the time to make contacts with some of the guys here. Some of the top insurance people on the East Coast are hanging around the hotel, and if I can make a good impression, I may be able to pull off a promotion when I get back."

"Oh, Tim, I was really looking forward to seeing you this weekend. You've been working so hard lately, we've scarcely had any time together. And I wanted to… to make up for what happened before you left."

There was a short silence over the phone, and Susan waited anxiously for her husband to reply. They had had a violent quarrel just before he'd left for the convention on Monday, culminating in a brutal sexual encounter. It was a scene that had left a bad strain on their three-month marriage, and the pretty young housewife was desperate to smooth things over with her young spouse.

"It's… it's okay," he said finally. "I was drunk and feeling low… I never should have said those things… or done those things to you. I'm sorry, honey."

"Oh, Tim," Susan said, biting nervously at her lip and struggling to keep the tears from erupting from her eyes. "I'm sorry too… I haven't been a good wife to you, I know that. But I'm trying. Please be patient with me, darling… I get so… so frightened."

"There's nothing to be frightened of, honey. Look, you just relax tonight, and I'll call you tomorrow afternoon and let you know how things are going here. With any luck they'll settle this thing soon. Meanwhile, you just take it easy, okay?"

"Okay… I'll do my best."

"Oh, and if you get a chance, call that kid from down the street — you know, the Carson boy — and, have him mow the law and rake up a little. I was going to do it this weekend, but since this strike's come up I won't have a chance."

"I don't think the Carsons are home… they went on vacation this month."

"Oh damn. Well, hell, just leave the yard as it is and I'll get to it sometime. Look, I'd better hang up now and see what's happening. You just take things easy, all right? We'll straighten everything out when I get home."

"All right… all right darling. I love you."

"I love you too, Susan. And I'll call you tomorrow afternoon. Take care of yourself."

"I will. You too…"

"Okay… good-bye."

"Good-bye."

The young wife listened numbly as her husband hung up the phone in his Boston hotel room. She had wanted badly for him to be with her that weekend, so that they could patch up the terrible rift that was growing between them. Now he might not be home until Sunday night and she would have to spend that time alone with her anxieties and fears. With a deep sigh she rose from the chair and walked into the living room to find her cigarettes.

As the troubled bride passed the hallway mirror, she stopped momentarily to look at herself. At nineteen, she was an exceptionally attractive young woman with light brown hair that flowed softly around her shoulders in a page-boy style and framed the delicately molded features of her face. She had hazel eyes that sparkled like diamonds, a pert nose that turned up slightly and full, sensual lips tinged a bright pink. Her facial complexion was as clear as white Carrara marble, and her cheeks glowed with a natural rosy bloom.

She was dressed that day in a light summer frock of bright yellow that clung snugly to her full upthrust breasts, tapered down to her tiny narrow waist, then flared out in a wide circle around the slender shapeliness of her legs. Although the garment was of modest design, it in no way concealed the fact that she was a very well proportioned young female, with a petite but spectacularly curvaceous figure that never failed to win attentive male glances when she walked down the street. Yet, strangely, she eyed herself with contempt as she gazed at her reflection in the mirror. The young wife didn't like getting so much attention from men. It made her uncomfortable and tense when they whistled at her, as if she were some kind of freak. Her ample breasts seemed to jut forward in almost obscene swells, no matter how demurely she dressed herself. And yet the troubled young girl knew that she should be proud of her figure, pleased at the admiring glances it elicited, but she was possessed by a terrible paradox, a paradox born of her childhood training.

"The Lakeside Orphanage for Young Girls," she murmured aloud as she stood before the mirror. Her mind flashed suddenly back to the childhood days when she had been sent to the huge institution outside Chicago after her parents were killed in an automobile crash. She was only five years old then, and she had hated the cold gray building from the moment she had first seen it. An icy chill rippled through her body as scene after scene of life in the orphanage where she had spent her entire girlhood invaded her mind with vivid clarity. Being forced to get up early on freezing winter mornings, standing in line in the drab cafeteria with a metal tray waiting for a bowl of thick tasteless oatmeal, boring classes, endless chores… and worst of all, she remembered, the pinch-faced bitter old maiden-ladies who ran the place. Particularly Miss Whitfield — Miss Whitfield who took such pains to lecture the girls on sexuality as they approached adolescence, warning them of the dangers and heartache that came from love with a man.

"If you marry, girls," she would say, "you must be very careful. Men can be beasts, filthy beasts with nothing but carnal lust on their minds, and a lady, a real lady, never submits to such things. It is your duty, of course, to procreate. That is the burden that God has given to women. But you must never let yourself be touched by animal sensuality or let the man know you enjoy it in any way, or you will burn in the fires of hell as surely as I'm standing before you. I have never married, and I am proud of that fact. I hope you girls will follow my example and take up meaningful social work instead of flinging yourselves into the arms of drooling filthy men."

Although the young wife knew in the back of her mind that Miss Whitfield and the other women were overly frustrated and that their attitude toward sex and men was wrong, those early lectures had had a tremendous effect on her. Night after night in her narrow boarding school bed she had had terrible nightmares about men… men who were intent on raping her, grinning lewdly, leering like degenerate madmen, ripping her clothes from her body! She woke up crying and screaming from such horrible dreams more times than she cared to remember and, as a result, her fears were cemented deep in her unconscious now, so deep that she found, after three months of marriage to Tim, that she might never be able to break through them.

Tearing herself away from the mirror, she moved into the living room to the coffee table where an opened pack of cigarettes lay amid the neatly stacked magazines. Sitting on the couch, she lit one and leaned back, inhaling deeply, trying to relax and ignore the tormenting thoughts that ran through her brain. There was a photograph on the coffee table of her and Tim on their wedding day, and the pretty young wife gazed adoringly at the image of the attractive slender young man she had married.