Evan Connell - Mrs. Bridge

“What?” he demanded. “Nonsense/’ he said absently, and he struck the paper into submission and continued reading.

The following day being Thursday, Harriet’s day off, Mrs. Bridge prepared supper for herself and her husband. Douglas had telephoned a few minutes after school let out to say he was at a fraternity meeting and that as soon as it was over he and a couple of friends were going to get a hamburger somewhere and then were going downtown to a track meet in the municipal auditorium.

“What about your homework?” she asked.

“Homework/’ he replied, giving a very final opinion of it.

“Well, I don’t think you should stay out late,” she answered. “After all, it’s a week night/’

He said he would be home early, but early could mean any hour.

”All right now, don’t forget/’ she said. “Your grades haven’t been worth boasting about.”

“I’ll get by,” said Douglas. “Holy Cow!”

“Yes, well you just might Holy Cow yourself right out of graduating.”

With that the conversation ended and she went into the kitchen to start preparing a casserole, as she had done many, many times before. She moved around the kitchen slowly. She had plenty of time. The house was so quiet that she began to think of how noisy it had been when all the children were there, how very much different everything had been, and presently, remembering the days when she used to cook the meals, she went to the cupboard where the old recipe books were stored. Harriet occasionally referred to them, but otherwise they had lain untouched for years. Mrs. Bridge began looking through them, seeing pencil notations in her own handwriting, scarcely legible any more. Her husband liked more pepper in this, no bay leaves in that-whatever he wanted and whatever he did not like was expertly registered in the margins, and as she turned through these recipes she thought how strangely intimate the faded penciled notes remained; they brought back many scenes, many sweet and private memories; they brought back youth.

Mrs. Bridge grew thoughtfully excited. A glance at the electric clock on the stove panel told her there might be time enough to alter her plans for supper. She was thinking of fixing spaghetti for him, with the special sauce he had so often said was the best in the world. She had not fixed it for years. Harriet could not sense just how long to let it simmer, and without that particular flavor to the sauce there was not much point in eating spaghetti. A quick search of the refrigerator and of the cupboards disclosed there were not the right ingredients. She found some canned sauce and thought about improvising from it, but it would not be the same. He would taste the difference. And so, regretfully, she admitted it was going to be the casserole again. Next week they would have spaghetti. A little sadly she turned on through the cookbooks, and once more she had an idea. She had come across the recipe for pineapple bread and there was time for that and she was certain they had the ingredients not only the pineapple but the chipped pecans, the raisins yes, yes, she could do it.

She carried the bread to the table wrapped in a towel because it was still hot from the oven, and Mr. Bridge, who, as he unfolded his napkin, had been looking at the casserole with resignation, now glanced with puzzled interest at what she was bringing him. His expression began to brighten. He smiled.

“Oh-ho!” said Mr. Bridge, rubbing his hands together, “What have we here?”

She placed it before him, too thrilled to speak, and hurried back to the kitchen for the bread knife.

“Well, welir said he, accepting the knife, and he smacked his lips and shut his eyes for a moment to inhale the fragrance of the small plump loaf.

“Go ahead and cut it,” she said to him intensely, and waited beside his chair.

The first slice fell down like a corpse and they saw bubbles of dank white dough around the pecans. After a moment of silence Mrs. Bridge covered it with the towel and carried it to the kitchen. Having disposed of the bread she untied her little ruffled apron and waited quietly until she regained control of herself.

A few minutes later she re-entered the dining room with a loaf of grocery-store bread on a silver tray. She smiled and said, “It’s been a long time, I’m afraid.”

“Never mind/ 1 said Mr. Bridge as he removed the lid o the casserole, and the next day he brought her a dozen roses.

Time was passing more rapidly than she thought; she was al-most overcome when Carolyn appeared in the middle of the week with an engagement ring she had gotten the night before from a thin, shaggy boy with protruding teeth whose name was Gil Davis. He was a junior at the university. He was studying business management and working part-time in the dean’s office.

Mrs. Bridge, seeking a moment to recover from the shock, looked at Carolyn’s ring and said, “It’s an opal, isn’t it?”

“Gil doesn’t have much money/’ Carolyn explained. “He told me he thought diamonds were absurd. And you know, Mother, he’s worked for everything he owns!”

She was fascinated by this. She had never known a boy who was poor. In high school she had known boys who worked during summers and some who worked after school in order to have spending money, but none of them had been forced to work in order to eat and buy clothing. “Well, I think it’s lovely!*’ said Mrs. Bridge, squeezing her hand, “Does your father know?”

“No,” said Carolyn.

“Well, I’m afraid you’d better tell him, don’t you think so?”

“Why don’t you call him?” Carolyn suggested.

“This isn’t my engagement,” replied Mrs. Bridge.

Mr. Bridge, being informed of his daughter’s engagement, was outraged. He had never heard of any Gil Davis, and who did Gil Davis think he was? And as for Carolyn, there was to be no more of this ridiculous nonsense. She was to return that ring to that upstart boy, whatever his name was, and that was to be the end of the matter. Carolyn immediately burst into tears and threw her ring on the carpet. Her father had never talked to her like that before. When she returned to the university the ring was in her pocket. She had promised to give it back.

Gil Davis, being informed that his suit had been rejected, was also outraged. He was twenty years old and never before in his life had he been the cause of any trouble. He looked at the ring, he looked at Carolyn, and then he ran out of the dean’s office and ran all the way to the bus station, where he bought a ticket to Kansas City. He pushed his way past the secretary who wanted to know what his business was and he walked into Mr. Bridge’s private office without bothering to knock. He emerged at eight o’clock that night in company with his intended father-in-law; they ate sausage and buckwheat cakes together in a lunch wagon, both of them exhausted, and they had agreed he was going to marry Carolyn. So, for the second time, Gil Davis placed his opal ring on her finger and she wore the ring with a truculent expression.

“I know you two are going to be very happy,” Mrs. Bridge said, hugging her. “I’m so relieved everything worked out all right.”

Carolyn said, “You do like him, Mother, don’t you?”

“Why, of course, dear! He’s awfully nice. It’s just that he’s so different from the kind of boys you’ve been used to.”

Gil Davis was aware of this fact; he quit the university because he saw he would need steady money and quite a lot of it as soon as he married Carolyn. He returned to his home town, which was located near the Oklahoma border in southern Kansas, and there he went to work for his uncle, who owned a dry-goods emporium. Carolyn wanted him to work in an air-craft factory where he could get overtime wages, but saw the sense of his decision when he told her his uncle was considering retirement.