Breath of Scandal

He drew Jade against his chest and propped his chin on the top of her head. “We can’t gamble away our chance to make a better life.”

“Making love now doesn’t necessarily mean that our futures are doomed to misery.”

“It scares me to tempt fate, though. The only time I really feel good is when I’m with you, Jade. The rest of the time I feel so alone. That sounds crazy, doesn’t it? How could I feel alone with six younger brothers and sisters in the house? But it’s true.

“Sometimes I think I must have been a foundling, that I don’t really belong to my parents. My daddy is resigned to fields that flood and crops that rot and selling his produce in a feudalistic town like Palmetto. He hates being poor and ignorant but doesn’t do anything to help himself. He takes whatever shit Ivan Patchett shovels him and is glad to get it.

“Well, I’m poor, but I’m not ignorant. I’m sure as hell not cowed by the Patchetts. I’m not going to be like my daddy, accepting things as they are just because that’s the way they’ve always been. I’m going to make something of myself.

“I know I can, Jade, if I’ve got you pulling for me.” He took her hand and pressed her palm to his lips, leaving it there while he spoke. “But in the meantime, I’m so afraid of letting you down.”

“You could never let me down.”

“One of these days, you might decide it’s not worth the struggle. You might decide that you want a guy who hasn’t got so far to go, who hasn’t got anything to prove. A guy like Neal.”

She pulled her hand away from his and blinked her eyes angrily. “Don’t ever say anything like that to me again. It sounds like something my mother would say, and you know how angry it makes me when she starts planning my life for me.”

“Maybe some of the things she says are right, Jade. A girl who looks like you deserves somebody with money and social status, somebody who could lay the world at your feet. That’s what I want to do. What if you lose patience with me before I’m able to?”

“Listen to me, Gary Parker. I don’t give a flip about social status. I don’t pine after a life of luxury. I have ambitions of my own, which would be in place whether or not I loved you. Getting a scholarship is only the first step of many. Just like you, I’ve got my own family disgrace to live down. The only world I want at my feet is the one that I create for myself.” She softened her tone and looped her arms around his neck. “The one that we create together.”

“You’re something, you know that?” He squeezed his eyes shut and whispered fervently, “God, I’m glad you chose me.”

* * *

The house Jade shared with her mother had been built shortly after World War II to accommodate the influx of military personnel based around the shipping channels. In the thirty years since, the neighborhood of white frame tract houses had declined. Their pastel trims no longer looked cheerful and chic but tacky and cheap.

Unlike the others on the street, the Sperry house was kept neat. The house was small, having only two bedrooms and one bath. The living room was rectangular, with narrow windows that were heavily draped. It was the only room in the house that was carpeted. The furniture was inexpensive, but everything was kept spotlessly clean because Velta Sperry passionately hated any form of dirt. She wouldn’t even allow plants in her house because they grew in open pots of soil. The only amenity in the living room was a color television set, which Velta had bought on credit from Sears.

She was sitting in an easy chair watching TV when Jade came in. Velta eyed her daughter critically, looking for telltale signs that she’d been misbehaving with that Parker boy. She couldn’t detect anything amiss, but then, Jade was clever enough to cover the evidence.

By way of greeting, she said, “You barely made it by your curfew.”

“But I did. It’s just now ten.”

“Church has been out for hours.”

“We went to the Dairy Barn. Everybody was there.”

“He probably speeded here to get you home in time.” Velta disliked Jade’s steady boyfriend and never referred to him by name if she could avoid it.

“He didn’t speed. Gary’s a very careful driver. You know that, Mama.”

“Stop arguing with me,” Velta said, raising her voice.

“Then stop criticizing Gary.”

Velta resented Gary because, she claimed, Jade spent too much time with him—time that she and Jade could spend together. Actually, her dislike was based on Gary’s origins. He was a soybean farmer’s son. The Parkers had too many children already and continued, disgustingly, to turn out another baby every ten months or so.

Otis Parker was always in hock to the company credit union. Velta knew this because she worked in the credit office as a typist and file clerk. Velta didn’t have much regard for anybody who didn’t have money.

It would be just like that Parker boy to get Jade pregnant. She hoped Jade was too smart to let that happen, but, unfortunately, like her stunning good looks, the girl had inherited a romantic, passionate streak from her father.

Velta’s eyes moved to the framed photograph on the end table. Ronald Sperry’s laughing blue eyes—so like Jade’s—stared back at her. The soldier’s cap sat at a jaunty angle atop his dark curls. His Congressional Medal of Honor was suspended around his neck. Other medals were pinned to the breast pocket of his military uniform, attesting to his valor and courage during the Korean conflict.

Velta was sixteen when Palmetto’s dashing war hero had returned home. The low-country town had never had such a grand distinction. The entire population had turned out to welcome his train as it chugged into the depot. The red carpet had been rolled out for the town’s favorite son, who was coming straight from Washington, D.C., where he had been wined and dined. He’d even shaken hands with the president.

Velta was introduced to him at a citywide dance held in his honor at the VFW hall. That very night, while they danced to tunes by Patti Page and Frank Sinatra, she made up her mind to marry Ronald Sperry.