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Gavery was putting out fresh loaves of bread under cheesecloth in front of the bakery. From a passing
car Jan and Dean were singing that in Surf City there were two girls for every boy.
“Will I like it, Jake? In your place?”
“I hope so, hon.”
“Is it very different?”
I smiled. “People pay more for gasoline and have more buttons to push. Otherwise, it’s about the
same.”
6
That hot August was as close to a honeymoon as we ever managed, and it was sweet. Any pretense that
I was rooming with Deke Simmons pretty well went out the window, although I still kept my car in
his driveway at night.
Sadie recovered quickly from the latest insult to her flesh, and although her eye sagged and her
cheek was still scarred and deeply hollowed where Clayton had cut through to the inside of her mouth,
there was visible improvement. Ellerton and his crew had done a good job with what they had.
We read books sitting side by side on her couch, with her fan blowing back our hair—The Group
for her, Jude the Obscure for me. We had backyard picnics in the shade of her prized Chinese Pistache
tree and drank gallons of iced coffee. Sadie began to cut back on the smokes again. We watched
Rawhide and Ben Casey and Route 66. One night she tuned in The New Adventures of Ellery Queen, but I
asked her to change the channel. I didn’t like mysteries, I said.
Before bed, I carefully smoothed ointment on her wounded face, and once we were in bed . . . it was
good. Leave it at that.
One day outside the grocery store, I ran into that upstanding schoolboard member Jessica Caltrop.
She said she would like to speak to me for a moment on what she called “a delicate subject.”
“What might that be, Miz Caltrop?” I asked. “Because I’ve got ice cream in here, and I’d like to get
home with it before it melts.”
She gave me a chilly smile that could have kept my French vanilla firm for hours. “Would home be
on Bee Tree Lane, Mr. Amberson? With the unfortunate Miss Dunhill?”
“And that would be your business how?”
The smile froze a little more deeply. “As a member of the schoolboard, I have to make sure that the
morality of our faculty is spotless. If you and Miss Dunhill are living together, that is a matter of
grave concern to me. Teenagers are impressionable. They imitate what they see in their elders.”
“You think? After fifteen years or so in the classroom, I would have said they observe adult
behavior and then run the other way as fast as they can.”
“I’m sure we could have an illuminating discussion on how you view teenage psychology, Mr.
Amberson, but that’s not why I asked to speak to you, uncomfortable as I find it.” She didn’t look a
bit uncomfortable. “If you are living in sin with Miss Dunhill—”
“Sin,” I said. “Now there’s an interesting word. Jesus said that he without it was free to cast the
first stone. Or she, I suppose. Are you without it, Miz Caltrop?”
“This discussion is not about me.”
“But we could make it about you. I could make it about you. I could, for instance, start asking
around about the woods colt you dropped once upon a time.”
She recoiled as if slapped and took two steps back toward the brick wall of the market. I took two
steps forward, my grocery bags curled in my arms.