The Insiders

She half-expected him to push her backward onto the bed, but instead he kissed her chastely on the forehead.

"Okay, enough soul-searching. Why don't we call your mother right now, before Jamison announces dinner.

Eve found herself agreeing meekly. Brant kept surprising her, damn him, often enough to make her curious. Perhaps that was what he had meant about wanting to dig deeper.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

BRANT SURPRISED EVE all over again when he seemed to genuinely like her mother. She had expected that after the initial shock her mother would like him—or at least like the idea that her daughter was finally getting married—and how many women could boast of having a millionaire son-in-law?

Her mother, as usual, fussed first and then hugged and kissed. The younger children stared from a safe distance to begin with and then slowly came closer, to tag at Brant's heels.

"Hey, are you really going to marry Eve? She told us she was never going to get married."

And shyly, from her little sister, Pat:

"Wow! You're gorgeous. Wish I'd seen you first!"

She hadn't quite remembered how enveloping, how smothering and personal her family could be, and she expected Brant to withdraw behind his polite smile. Instead, he seemed to become really human for the first time, kissing her mother back and telling her he could see where Eve had got her looks, promising her brother, Steve, that he'd play ball with him, even whispering to

Pat that he wished he'd seen her first, too.

It had been Brant's idea that they be married from her home—her real home—and helplessly, more than ever unable to fathom him, Eve let herself be taken over and swept forward by what was happening.

She didn't ask how, but Brant had arranged for their blood tests and their immediate results, and he had arranged for a special license. The wedding was to be held the next day, in church, and the neighbors and family friends had been told already, with explanations preferred as to the unexpected swiftness of the whole affair.

Eve listened to her mother make some of the last-minute telephone calls.

"Well, Minnie, you know how young people are these days; they keep saying they don't want fuss. They were going to elope, you see, but Eve's young man wanted a church wedding in the end. What did you say? Oh, but their reservations had already been made months ahead for their honeymoon, and there was no way they could cancel them and make new ones unless they wanted to wait another month, and of course they didn't want to do that"

White lies! Why did there always have to be explanations for other people? Eve was suddenly tired, tired—when she went up to bed that first night, her face ached from smiling. Still, once she was lying there, gazing up at the familiar low ceiling, she found she could not sleep immediately. She moved and twisted uneasily for what seemed like hours, listening to the voices that still floated up from the living room. Was she the only one in the house who wanted to sleep? Try closing your eyes and letting your body go limp, Eve. Try not thinking about David.

It was morning—Eve realized, surprised, that she had actually slept. She lay there, inert, hoping she'd go back to sleep, but the thoughts of last night still clung to the fringes of her mind. Strange droughts to be having on her wedding day. Wedding to a stranger. But at least with this particular stranger there would be no need for pretense between them. No love, but no lies, either.

Oh—David! The thought came unbidden and unwanted, a habit-thought from the days when the thinking of his name was like a litany she repeated in her mind constantly. David—David—David!

She saw her own face reflected in the mirror over her dresser. So pale without any makeup. Scared-looking.

It would never have worked out with David. He'd have drained her dry—of hate, of love, of initiative, of self-respect. She'd made a kind of vampire of him by putting herself so much in his power. By her own weakness and unadmitted masochism she'd almost forced him to more and worse acts of cruelty and indifference.

Eve lay back again, looking at the beamed ceiling of her childhood, thinking of all those nights when she was young and lay there thinking, I want—ohh, I want —yet not ever really being able to define in thoughts or words what she wanted. The ceiling became a mirror, and she saw her own writhing body—hers and yet not hers, as it had seemed that night with all the hands crawling over it, touching, hurting, holding her down while Brant's gold head with the hair curling behind his ears went down on her body, down between her spread thighs—No! Not today. She wouldn't, couldn't think of that, either.

Her eyes were restless, roaming—through the window now, and there were soft tracings of cloud, almost cloud-shadows, in the sky beyond the apple-tree branches. She'd wear white—her wedding dress had cost a small fortune—and her Uncle Joseph would give her away.

Give her away—to Brant. Into a stranger's keeping. No, she mustn't think that way. All people were strangers to each other. She and Brant—they had at least seen each other at their worst and best.

Eve closed her eyes. God, let it be all right! It popped into her mind, the silly litde ritual phrase from her childhood. Her favorite prayer-thought. When she hadn't wanted it to rain on her birthday; when she'd wanted the lead in the class play; and for Mom not to find out about the lipstick she'd filched from Andrea.

She was suddenly aware of voices outside the window —laughter. This was ridiculous! Some stupid, pointless, pagan custom that dictated she shouldn't see his face until this afternoon, when they were to be married. And there he was, playing ball, of all things, with the kids (with Pattie following him around adoringly, no doubt), while she was cloistered in her room.

Her thoughts of him grew softer, turned deeper. There was, she had to admit, a natural spontaneity about the way he'd made friends with the kids. He was more at ease, less remote with children, and she had noticed that right away.

No wonder he expects me to be a brood cow! But after all, that thought, too, was not as impossible, as unbearable as it had been ten years ago, say—or even less than that. Lisa had helped her rediscover her love for children, and she would miss Lisa, poor neglected baby. Lisa's love, at least, had been real and freely given, while David's attention had been conditional— on loan, at best.

Her mother, knocking diffidently at the door, brought her thoughts back to the present. Oh, God, surely Mom wouldn't give her the old, traditional facts-of-life talk? No, certainly not after their first private conversation yesterday.

Her mother came to sit on the bed beside her, carrying a cup of coffee—another ritual from her childhood, only then it had been chocolate. Eve sat up, sipping, postponing conversation.

"Eve darling—are you sureF' So her mother had, after all, sensed her uneasiness. It was strange that after so many years her mother could still see through her facade.