LaVyrle Spencer - Spring Fancy

Suddenly she experienced a jagged flash of irritation. Unconsciously her back stiffened, and she coiled the telephone cord six times around her finger until it cut off the circulation.

"I'll make you a deal, Paul," she announced with a hard edge to her voice. "I'll come and look at your chess set if you'll agree that for every hour we spend playing it, we'll spend equal time playing racket ball."

A long silence followed, then his chuckle, more patronizing than humored. "Now, Winnifred, you know I'm all feet on the racket-ball court. I've never been a jock and never pretended to be. I'll leave the physical workouts to you."

She yanked the phone cord off her finger and rammed a kitchen chair with her foot till it slammed under the table with a resounding clatter. "Fine! Great! Then what do you say if one or two nights a week we each find somebody else to play our games with? You can find someone with an analytical mind to pore over your chess table with you, and I'll find somebody who likes to rap a ball around a racket-ball court." Naturally the picture of Joseph popped up, dressed in white shorts with his bare belly showing below a whacked-off T-shirt. "Paul, are you there, Paul? What do you say?" she hissed. "Maybe old Rita will oblige you, huh?"

"Winnifred, you're being unreasonable."

"Oh, am I? And what are you being?"

If there was one thing Paul Hildebrandt prided himself upon it was his ability to reason. The electric silence told Winn her words stung.

"It was just an idea, that's all. Naturally, if you're opposed to the chess table, we don't have to go look at it."

Suddenly the back of Winn's nostrils burned. She felt like dropping to her knees and bawling. He thought the issue here was a chess table! Judas priest! For a brilliant man he could be utterly dense.

"Well, what about going out to choose the lamps and other small items?" he was asking.

She opened her mouth wide, drew an enormous calming breath, ran four agitated fingers through her hair and said to the floor, "I don't care. I'd like to do it… whenever you want." But once the words were out, she realized one of the two statements had to be untrue. Which was true? Either she wanted to do it, or she didn't care.

"Day after tomorrow, then? I'll come and pick you up around seven."

"Fine," she answered despondently. "Seven."

"Good night, love. Get some good rest now. You seem a little high-strung lately, and it's probably all the last-minute details piling up."

It was not the details and Winn knew it. The details were being handled with parliamentary punctiliousness by Fern Gardner, who only checked with her daughter as a matter of principle, not because Winn's approval was either sought or necessary. No, Winn's problem had nothing to do with details. It had to do with a curly-haired Irishman whose sexy eyes she could not forget, who played a wicked game of racket ball, drove rusty pickups and kissed like Prince Charming.

Within a half hour of Winn's hanging up after her conversation with Paul, Sandy called.

"Hi, kiddo, how're the wedding plans coming?" Winn had to force herself not to vent her wrath upon her unsuspecting friend-after all, Sandy had no idea of the turmoil within Winn lately. "Pretty well, considering mother's handling all the last-minute glitches with her usual steel-trap deadlines."

"Oh-oh! Something's up."

Winn sank onto the chair she'd earlier kicked so hard. "No, nothing's up. It's just that I have other things on my mind besides wedding, wedding, wedding. But neither mother nor Paul seems concerned."

"The little girl at the hospital?"

"Yes, among other things. She's dying and I-" Winn drew a deep breath and battled the almost irresistible urge to tell Sandy everything, including her feelings for Jo-Jo Duggan, to be honest and open and ask her friend's opinion about the whole matter. But before she could broach the subjects, Sandy went on.

"Well, I have just the thing to take your mind off your troubles and put you in a happy frame of mind. I guess you know what it is. We've talked about it long enough."

Winn covered her eyes and braced an elbow on the table. Oh, no, not the shower.

"It's the shower. I've just been waiting to hear from you until I put the date on the invitations. And it's getting awfully close. I think we'd better have it maybe week after next, or the week following that. Do you have your calendar handy?"

It was staring at Winn from a nail on the wall beside the telephone, and as she looked up at it, it suddenly became blurred by tears. Sandy was waiting for an answer, and here she sat, recalling how Paul had once walked up to that nail and said, "I hope you don't plan to drive nails into the walls of our new house this way." If she wanted to drive a four-inch railroad spike into her wall, by God she'd drive it! On the ugly stucco walls of Jo-Jo Duggan's kitchen there hung a calendar with a picture of a tin lizzie, and a header advertising Duggan's Body Shop. Next time she was there, Winn promised herself to check and see what he'd hung it up with.

Apparently Winn took longer to mull over the shower than she'd realized, for Sandy's voice came across the wire once again. "Winn, have you sent out your wedding invitations yet?"

"No, I've been working on them."

"Well, the shower invitations shouldn't really go out until after people get the ones for the wedding. Don't you think you should get going?"

Fern had called four days in a row to issue the same reprimand. Winn felt pressured and antagonized. "Yes, I'll make sure I have them out by the weekend if I have to stay home from work one day to finish addressing them." But at work Merry needed her, and she'd no more have deserted the child for a single precious day of her remaining life than Winn would have jumped at the chance to own a chess table of inlaid wood.

They chose two weeks from Saturday for the shower and agreed that Sandy would delay sending her invitations until midway through the following week, giving Winn enough time to get her own out first.

When Winn hung up the phone, she resolutely dragged out the box of pink envelopes and notes, the lists of addresses, her own phone book and a pen. She had addressed five when the phone rang again.

"Hello, Winn, this is mother."

What would it be this time? Had the apricot-rose crop failed in Florida? Winn bit back the sharp response and answered, "Hello, mother."

"Have you got the invitations in the mail yet?"

"No, but they're almost done," she lied.

"Winn, have you taken a look at the calendar lately? Those invitations should have been in the mail no later than last Saturday."

"I know, mother, I know."

"And now something else has come up. Perry Smith has just received word that he's being transferred to Los Angeles."

For a moment Winn was disoriented. She couldn't figure out what Perry Smith's transfer had to do with anything concerning her. Evidently her mother expected some moan of dismay that was not forthcoming, for her voice crackled with indignation. "Well, for heaven's sake, I should think there'd be some reaction from you. After all, there's not much time to find someone else to do the singing."

Oh, yes-Ramona Smith, Perry's wife, had agreed to do the music at the wedding and had already discussed the choice of songs with Winn.

"It's not the end of the world, mother. I'd be happy with just the organ, anyway. Mrs. Collingswood might be twittery, but she's wonderful when she touches a keyboard."

"Oh, Winnifred, don't be ridiculous. Whoever heard of a church wedding without vocal music? The songs are all chosen, and they've been planned into the entire service. Don't tell me you have no intention of asking someone else."

"I don't know any other singers, mother. I didn't even know this one. You found her."