“Thank you, Emma. I know I’m a lucky man.” Without thinking whether or not he should, he takes her gloved hand and brings it up to press against his lips. He looks up to see a flush of pink in her cheeks, deeper than from the cold. She lets him hold her hand for another brief moment, then disappears into the house.
Charley stands on the porch for a minute, then hops down the stairs and dances a little jig out to the street. He’ll be heading out to the house just as soon as he changes clothes and grabs a bite, but at this moment his mind is elsewhere. He tips his hat back on his head as he strolls up the alley, hands shoved in his pockets, and whistles a wandering tune, a happy man.
cd
Though the space between January and July may seem expansive, there is much to do. Charley redoubles his efforts to move the project along, both inside and out, laying out the planting beds as early as February. As soon as the exterior walls are up, he basically moves into the shell, tying up his bedroll in the morning, coming back to the property after work, and falling back into his blankets well after dark. He keeps a minimal toilet set with him, going back to Mrs. G’s every couple days for a bath and proper shave, and changes of clothing. One evening after Charley leaves, having stayed only long enough to clean up and wolf down some dinner (“Delicious as always,” he says through a mouthful. “How can you possibly tell, eating like that?” “I just know,” he winks at her), Joe helps Mrs. G wash the supper dishes, since young Gretchen is still distributing the week’s clean linens and towels to the boarders. Joe works the hand pump and adds hot water from the kettle at her direction, and dries as she hands the dishes to him. Mrs. G gazes out into the darkness through the kitchen window. “It’s not going to be the same here when he’s gone for good and all.”
“Don’t I know it. I’m going to have to break in a roommate all over again!” He grins at her, but they each know the other is taking the loss equally hard. Joe consoles himself that he and Charley will still be a team at work, but he clearly sees that their days of sharing virtually everything in their lives is coming to an end. Who will he drink that after-work beer with now? And here’s Mrs. G, trying to smile at his lame joke. “Aww, Mrs. G, Charley said he’d come tend the garden for you still.”
“I know he did, Joe, and I know he means it. But he’ll be a married man. I think he’ll find very quickly that it will take every moment he has to get his own garden in order.”
Joe looks down at the dish he is drying, and says, “Well, he showed me a few things, Mrs. G. I’ll surely do my best with it.”
At the boyishness of it, Mrs. G’s breath catches in her throat and for a moment she fears she might weep. She flashes on an image of her own Heinrich—Henry in their daily lives—gone so long now, and wonders whether he would have turned out as fine as these two boys have. She hopes so. “Which will be perfectly wonderful, Joe, I’m certain of that,” she tells him as she puts a hand on his arm. He reddens but smiles at her. “Now get on with you, and go make up your bed!” She watches him leave the room, knowing that one day she’ll be watching him leave permanently, too.
cd
Initially, Emma plans to wear one of the dresses she already owns for the wedding; she has a navy one that’s nice, but it’s meant for fall and winter. Surprisingly, it is Mary who encourages her to splurge on a new outfit, and together they pick out a dove-gray cotton lawn for the wedding dress. They justify the expense by reasoning that she will wear it to church during the summers. Emma is not a seamstress, but her young cousin Lil does beautiful work, and quickly too. Lil brings the unfinished dress over to Washington Street one Saturday afternoon for the fitting, and helps Emma into it carefully, as much of it is still simply basted together. Lil stands behind and joins Emma in gazing at her reflection in the big mirror. “That’s a lovely color for you, Cousin Emma. I think it fits you well, don’t you?”
Emma continues to consider her mirror image. “I’ve never had as beautiful a dress as this in my life.”
Lil blushes at the compliment. “Are you excited? Are you nervous?”
“It’s all going to be so different. I don’t know that I’ve ever even been in a new house; I can’t imagine living in one.”
“I can’t wait to see it! I hear it’s wonderful.”
“Do you? Well, as it gets closer to being done, Charley wants me to see it less and less,” she laughs. “I think he wants to surprise me with it.”
“I think that’s sweet. What will Aunt Mary do now that you won’t be living here?’
“Oh, she’ll be moving in with us.”
“She will?”
“We planned for it when we laid out the house. It doesn’t make sense to pay rent here when we have so much space now. Plus we don’t want her living here by herself. So Charley will move her in the fall. That way, we’ll have some time to make the new house ready.”
Lil nods, appreciating the sense of it. “And time alone, too,” she suggests, then turns scarlet at having said it.
“But you should have seen Mother the first time we took her out to the property. To start with, it was the first time she’d been on the new electric car that goes out to Brightwood, and she wasn’t sure about that. Then, the longer we rode out, the wider her eyes got. By the time we were standing at the lot, she was sure we were insane.” Emma puts her hands on her hips in an imitation of Mary. “’Mr. Beck, I am a city girl! I never planned to take up farming, and I’m too old to start now!’ But you know Charley: he had her laughing over it in no time, and believing it was just this side of Paradise. I think she’s starting to get used to the idea.”
Lil laughs at Emma’s comical and accurate imitation of Mary expressing a strong opinion. She places the last two pins that temporarily hold the lace against the bodice and steps back. “Oh, Cousin Emma, you’re going to be a lovely bride.”
cd
As time draws closer, it’s obvious that there are sizeable jobs that won’t be finished by the wedding date: walls won’t be plastered in two of the four bedrooms, shutters won’t be hung, and paint will be missing from most of the outside of the house. None of that deters Charley. He presses both Mary and the busy seamstress Lil into procuring linens and making curtains; Mrs. G he doesn’t even have to ask. The women use their combined feminine touch to smooth the rough-hewn edges of the brand new house. In the last few weeks, they bring many of Emma’s things over so that they will be in place when she arrives as a new bride. Charley collects furniture from the house on Washington Street and from a storage barn his family still owns, far out in Bladensburg. The one thing he decides to purchase, his wedding gift to the two of them, is a new bed.
Finally, a bit less than a week before the ceremony, Charley and Emma ride out to the house. From the streetcar stop, they take the short walk to the intersection of Eighth and Flint Streets. Emma realizes that it has been almost two months since she’s been here, and she is stunned at the transformation. No wonder she’s seen so little of him lately. They stand outside the gate in front of the big house; as he promised, the gate is low enough to be welcoming, tall enough to definitively separate the yard from the street.
She can see that Charley is forcibly holding himself still, giving her a moment to take it all in: the wide front steps up to the porch, the offset front door that goes almost to the porch ceiling, the unadorned but still welcoming entrance. Finally she turns to him, which gives him permission to speak. “Do you want to see the inside or the outside first?”
“Let’s look at the outside.” She can feel her own excitement growing, and wants to savor the anticipation of the interior just a bit more.
Barely a breath interrupts Charley’s narration of the yard, which is more about the plans he has for it than about its current state. Most of the property is behind the house, and Charley has grand visions for it. There will be no