Laura Benedict - The Erstwhile Groom

“I’m living proof that dreams do come true,” says Laura Benedict. “I wrote fiction for almost 20 years before selling my novel Isabella Moon (releasing in September) to Ballantine Books.” The book is not, however, the author’s first major fiction sale. She debuted in our Department of First Stories in ‘01 under the byline Laura Philpot Benedict.

Burt follows his wife, Livia, through the kitchen, which is dim even at mid-day because of the heavy awning shading the room’s sin-gle window. She pushes open the basement door, presses the light switch, and stands aside so he can carry the bags of canned goods downstairs.

“Yams,” he says. “Twenty-nine cents a can. You can’t beat that.”

“Lunch is on the table,” she says. “We’re out of pickle loaf.”

He knows how much Livia likes pickle loaf, but it won’t be on special again, he thinks, until the next week.

“Monday,” he says from the basement. “Can it wait until Monday?”

Livia doesn’t answer. He hears her footsteps clip across the linoleum. Always she wears shoes that he believes other women would wear for dancing, smooth leather shoes with high, chunky heels and deep vamps that hint at the cleavage between her toes. The shoes make her legs look long and elegant. He’s never liked how Livia shows off her legs; though she’s almost fifty, other men still stare at her.

Kurt sets the grocery bags on the floor and tugs gently at the window shade that acts as a dust cover for the storage shelves on the wall. The shade is crisp and cracked in a few places now, and does not roll as smoothly as it used to. He feels along the top shelf for the grease pencil he uses to date canned goods. He will date them and arrange them on the shelves, oldest in front and newest to the back, knowing full well that Livia doesn’t appreciate his efforts. She will quickly raise the shade, reach in, and take whatever can she cares to, regardless of the date. It’s no wonder, he thinks, that she’s never noticed that there’s something not quite right about the shelves, that they aren’t as deep as they might be.

It’s been over twenty years since Kurt last entered the windowless room hidden behind the shelves, with its rough stone walls and hard-packed dirt floor. The room had been his childhood hideaway, its floor the dusty terrain of his elaborate war games. It was a place to hide from his mother and her incessant piano playing, a place to run to when his father came home red-faced and frustrated with work.

When they moved in, their house was one of the larger ones on the street, with a backyard that sloped gently toward the alley behind it. Inside, its many rooms were small, but rather grand, with high, decorated ceilings. But it had languished in disrepair. They might never have found the false wall if his father hadn’t had to install a new boiler in the basement. The door hidden behind the wall was so small that Kurt, still just a boy, had to lower his head to get through it.

* * * *

Kurt stood close beside his father, who held a lantern that cast flickering shadows on the walls. His chest felt tight, as though the musty room were sucking the breath from his lungs. The floor was swept clean except for an old ticking mattress in the corner; cobwebs dangled from the ceiling’s wooden beams. It looked to Kurt like a dungeon prison from an old book. When his father held the lantern close to a wall, they could see that many of the deep scratches covering it were words, the confusing lines rude maps.

“Sklaven,” said his father. Slaves. “The neighbors will all want to come and see,” he said, with some irritation. He told Kurt and his mother to keep the room a secret.

* * * *

Livia’s lunch is frugal: a piece of rye bread smeared with cream cheese and a few olives. She never complains to Kurt, though, about the lunches he asks her to make for him: the sandwiches of Braunschweiger and boiled egg or of gelatinous head cheese accompanied by fresh potato salad made with celery and sweet pickles. He likes to eat a big meal at lunch and a smaller supper that will not weigh heavily on his stomach and cause him to lose sleep.

Kurt’s sleep is precious. Many nights he lies for hours beside Livia in the room that used to be his mother’s, listening to her gentle, even breaths. There in the dark, his hands aching with arthritis, he tells himself that the door behind the basement shelves is more than secure, that the corpse of Danny Kelley will rest on the other side of it always, undisturbed.

Before Kurt is able to pick up his sandwich, the kitchen door slams and his daughter, Mitzy, runs through the kitchen and into the dining room. Her nose is running and her face is splotched with red, but she doesn’t stop even to tell them why she has been crying.

“Mitzy, what is it?” Livia gets up and follows her down the hall and upstairs.

Kurt stares at his plate. This young man, this Brent, to whom Mitzy is engaged, has brought them nothing but grief. Twice, already, Mitzy has called off the wedding, and Kurt is hoping in his heart that this time will be the end of it.

Mitzy is sweetly feminine, all smiles and grace. She has Livia’s lush dark hair and thin frame. Her fair skin is prone to delicate round beauty marks. Mitzy’s tender heart disturbs Kurt. Over the years, he has turned away many boys from their door, boys who were sure that Mitzy would want to see them, talk to them, because she’d let herself become too friendly and confiding. She lacks her mother’s dignity, her iron core.

* * * *

Livia was the one who helped him pick out a flower for his lapel every morning in her aunt’s florist shop, where he would stop on his way in to work. With her slightly almond-shaped eyes, trim waist, and fashionable clothes, Livia was an exotic for Kurt, so different from the zaftig German girls in the neighborhood — various Karins and Heidis and Gretchens, the ones his mother was always trying to get him to date. What did it matter to him that he was already thirty and unmarried and living with his widowed mother? What did it matter to him that the one time he asked Livia to dinner, she blushed and stammered, finally making an excuse he knew to be a lie?

Kurt was in no hurry. He knew that, eventually, he would have Livia for his own.

On Sundays, he began to go to the late Mass so he could sit a few rows behind Livia and her aunt. And was it wrong that he observed her every step as she walked, alone, to the high school for the Wednesday evening meetings of the Sweet Songbirds club? Once, and only once, he’d hidden himself in the doorway of McSorley’s pub until she passed by, stepping out to greet her, pretending that their meeting was an accident. From the amused sparkle in her eyes, he could tell she’d been surprised — did he dare even think, pleased?

Friday nights were for bingo at the church hall, where Kurt would sit with his mother until the last cards were played. If he chanced to meet Livia’s eye from where she sat with her girlfriends — he was very careful, usually, not to draw attention to himself — she would give him a friendly, if diffident, wave. After bingo, he would dally outside the church, watching her walk away until his mother agitated to be taken home. Who was to know that he went out again after his mother was safely tucked in bed? The alley beside the florist shop was soaked in darkness, except for the light in a second-floor window that he believed to be Livia’s. When it went out, he could go home and sleep a little better knowing she was safe inside.

* * * *

Kurt sees the lights of a car swing into the driveway just before nine. He knows immediately that it is the boyfriend, or fiancé, as Livia would have him called.