Five Brides (57 page)

“My mother said you probably wouldn’t want to meet them and then sit down to a meal—you know, eating in front of them.
I’m to take you to dinner and then to my sister Nancy’s where you’ll stay for the weekend.”

Following a leisurely dinner, Robert drove to Nancy’s modest but lovely home.

“So, this is Joan,” she said after opening the front door wide and throwing out her arms in welcome. She stood in the middle of a small foyer, the overhead lamp shining on light-brown hair and porcelain skin, giving her an angelic appearance.

Robert clasped her elbow with one hand and her suitcase with the other and escorted her inside. “Joan,” he said, keeping his voice low, “this is the sister who wrote you all those nice notes while we were in Germany.”

Joan looked up and crossed her eyes. “Well, yes, Robert, I remember . . .”

Nancy, who stood nearly as tall as her brother, laughed. “Goodness, Robert, what do you think? She has a pea-sized brain? Of course she remembers.” Nancy slid her arm around Joan’s shoulder, drawing her close. “Come on in. The kids are already in bed, but my husband is waiting for us in the den. Put that suitcase in Margaret’s room, will ya, little brother?”

With that, Robert disappeared down a dark hallway.

Joan and Nancy entered a family room where a console TV showing
Our Miss Brooks
stood angled in a corner. A scholarly looking man stood bent over the coffee table, where he had apparently just placed a tray filled with a pot of hot coffee and four cups stacked two by two.

He straightened, revealing yet another tall Southerner. “Hallo,” Joan said, all the while wondering if she’d somehow managed to find her way to the pages of
Gulliver’s Travels
.

In reverse.

“Robert Procter,” he said, shaking Joan’s hand. “Welcome.”

“Another Robert?” Joan asked. “How will I keep you straight?”

“I’m the better-looking one.” Behind her, Robert placed his hands on her shoulders. “Let me take your coat,” he said.

She shirked out of it.

“You can call me Bob.” Robert’s brother-in-law smiled. “Goodness, you really do have a British accent, just like Robert said.”

“Yes, of course I do,” she said.

“We have some coffee here and . . .” He appeared to notice Nancy had disappeared. “I’m sure my wife has gone to get the cake she made earlier today.”

Within seconds, Nancy returned, balancing a delicious-looking chocolate cake on a plate and four dessert dishes. “Joan, I hope you saved room.”

“Joan isn’t a big eater,” Robert offered, “but I told her to save some space.”

“I can see that you’re not a big eater,” Nancy said. “You are the tiniest thing.” She laughed. “Oh, Bobby, turn that TV off, will you? Miss Brooks we know. Let’s take time to get to know
our Miss Joan
.”

The next morning, Nancy drove Joan to her childhood home.

“Tell me,” Joan said along the way. “What is Frances like?”

“We’re quite different,” she said.

“In what way?”

“Well—” Nancy glanced at Joan, displaying round cheeks and a bright smile—“I’m more talkative, like our mother. Frances is more like Daddy.” Her eyes widened. “Now listen. Daddy can be a little rough around the edges, but don’t let him scare you any.”

Joan chuckled. “I’ve never been scared by anyone.” Besides, it
wasn’t like she was meeting the Queen of England or the Duke of Edinburgh.

“Deep down, Daddy is nothing but a teddy bear. He’s set in his ways and if he says jump, you’d best ask how high. But if he’s in your corner, you’ll never need anyone else.”

Joan liked the sound of that, but she didn’t respond. Instead, she looked out the window to the sidewalk-lined houses standing stately and proud. The lawns, sloping toward the road, were changing from winter brown to the deepest shade of spring green. Leaves shimmered on skinny trees, and colors burst from flowers that seemed more than ready to pop.

“So,
this
is spring in the South,” Joan said, smiling. “So lovely.”

Nancy returned the smile. “I declare, I could listen to you talk all day. The way you put things. And you’re right. Greensboro is a lovely town,” she said. “I think you’ll like it here.”

Joan’s very core flexed.
What does that mean?
Had Robert talked to his family about the possibility of marriage? Of her moving here?

Nancy swung her car into the driveway of a house Joan knew well, if only by photograph. “So Robert really does live here,” she said.

Nancy shoved the gearshift into Park. “I’m sorry?”

“I told Robert once that I’d heard horror stories about British girls who married American GIs, believing they lived in nice homes, only to end up in some shack somewhere awful.”

“That
would
be terrible.” She glanced at the house. “But no. This is where we grew up.”

Robert descended the front-porch steps. “Good morning,” he said, opening the car door.

Joan placed her hand into his extended one and swung her legs out.

“You look wonderful,” he added while Nancy gathered her children from the backseat.

“Do I?” she asked. She’d worn a pleated, worsted-flannel chocolate-brown skirt and matching long-sleeved jacket lined with white satin. She pressed her hand against the flat of her stomach.

Robert guided her toward the wide front porch. Nancy and her children had already made it halfway through the opened door, little Margaret squealing in delight at seeing her grandparents.

Within a moment, Joan and Robert stepped into the entryway, grand and open and filled with people.

“Joan.” An exceptionally tall, white-haired, and perfectly put-together woman took her hand. “I’m Robert’s mother.”

Joan squeezed her hand. “So nice to meet you, Mrs. Zimmerman.”

Next, a mostly bald, square-jawed man took her hand. “And I’m his father.”

Joan shook his hand as well. “Mr. Zimmerman.”

Robert inched Joan along the lineup of family members, stopping in front of a dark-haired beauty who, even in the early days of spring, appeared sun-kissed. “My sister,” he said.

She smelled of a mixture of sweet tobacco and perfume. “Frances,” she said, her voice deep. Two dark-haired children—a lanky boy of about eight who mirrored his mother’s image, and a younger girl—circled Robert’s sister. “My children, Rodney and Vicki.”

Joan bent slightly and extended a hand. “Hallo . . .”

Rodney looked up at his mother and whispered, “She talks funny,” which forced laughter from everyone.

“And this,” Robert said, waving his arm toward a dark-skinned woman in uniform who stood with both hands clasped over a starched white apron, “is our housekeeper, Marie.”

Joan extended her hand, and when Marie didn’t take it, Joan grabbed hers anyway. “I’m so happy to meet you,” Joan said exuberantly.

“Miss Hunt.” Robert’s father cleared his throat in an authoritative manner. “We do
not
shake the hands of the colored.”

Joan turned slowly, stunned by the words. So, it was true . . . all that she had read.

Her eyes scanned every shocked face in the room, including Nancy’s. “Well, Mr. Zimmerman,” Joan said finally. “I’m sorry, sir.
But I do.
”

May 1956

For the second time in two months, Joan sat in a plane as it touched down at the tiny airport in Greensboro. Remarkably, she’d been invited back to town. Back to the Zimmermans’ household. She may not have made it into the fold exactly, but she remained steady in the race.

Robert met her inside the lobby, and after a sweet kiss, rushed her outside where the air hung heavier than it had the month before. Joan had hardly gotten settled in the passenger side of the front car seat when Robert shot out into the street.

“How’s work going?” he asked, his voice pitched high.

“Robert, are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Why?”

“Your voice sounds strange.” A thought crossed her mind. “Are you
sure
your parents want me to come back to Greensboro?”

His head jerked, then his eyes returned to the narrow road stretching toward town. “Of course they want you to come back. Mother insisted. In fact, we’re having a nice cookout tomorrow night in your honor.”

“In
my
honor? Why? What have
I
done that’s so special?”

Robert slowed the car and eased it to the side of the road, the tires sliding smoothly near the curb. He put the car in park before turning toward her.

“Joan,” he said, and he leaned toward the glove compartment. “There’s something I want you to be wearing when we get back to the house.”

“Something you want me to wear?”

She looked at her lap, to the practical skirt and sweater she’d chosen to travel in. Then to Robert’s tanned hand as he popped open the hidden compartment’s rectangular door. He retrieved a small black velvet box, then used the heel of his hand to click the door shut.

He slid closer and opened the box, revealing a simple solitaire diamond. It shimmered in the late-afternoon sun streaming brilliantly between the roadside trees.

“Robert,” Joan whispered.

“Look at me,” he said, and she did. “Last call. Will you marry me?”

Tears stung her eyes, pooling along the edges. She nodded, speechless—maybe for once in her life—and extended her left hand, slightly raising the ring finger.

“It’s not the biggest rock,” he said, sliding the ring on, “but I thought it was as pretty as you.”

Joan shook her head and tightened her hand into a fist. “It’s the most beautiful ring I’ve—” She started to laugh, then pressed her fingers against her lips.

“What?”

“I’ve never
owned
a ring before,” she said, brushing away the tears. “So of course it’s the most beautiful ring I’ve ever owned. But even if I had—Even if my jewelry box rivaled Queen Elizabeth’s,
this
would be the loveliest.” She placed her hands on
the sides of his face and kissed him tenderly. “Thank you,” she whispered.

His thumb pads caught the escaping tears. “Do you think you can do this, Joan? Come down here to live?”

“I guess any notion of you moving to Chicago is out?”

Robert grimaced. “I’m afraid so. I’ll go there from time to time, but the business is
here
.”

Yes, the business,
she thought. But more important,
Robert
was in North Carolina. “Then, I suppose I’ll have to.”

“You’ll at least have to try,” he said with a smile; then his expression sobered. “Look, I know it’s different here than anywhere else you’ve ever lived. And I know you and my father didn’t exactly get along at first, and I know that . . .” His voice trailed off.

“What?”

He shook his head as he slid back behind the steering wheel. “Nothing.”

She touched the sleeve of his jacket. “No. Don’t do that. What is it you were going to say?”

Robert pulled the gearshift to Drive and eased back onto the road. “Do you remember my friend Jack Coleman? You met him last time you were here.”

She remembered him. The old school chum of Robert’s had given her a sideward glance, not that she hadn’t done the same to him. “Yes.”

Robert chuckled. “He said I needed to watch out for you. You know, your being
foreign
, as he puts it.”

Joan crossed, then uncrossed her arms, keeping her left hand palm down against her thigh so she could watch the light that skipped into the car catch and play with the diamond. “You are just as foreign to me as I am to you, you know.”

Robert’s index finger shot up. “Good point.”

“And touché.”

“And touché,” he concurred.

Robert pulled into his parents’ driveway, where a number of cars had already lined up like train cars heading down a track.

“Who’s here?” Joan asked.

Robert opened his car door. “Mother and Dad, of course. My sisters and their husbands and the kids.”

“Anyone else?”

Robert got out of the car and closed the door, walked between Nancy’s Cadillac and his own, then opened the passenger door. “If you’re asking if Marie is here, she is.”

Joan stood to her full five feet, three inches, jutted her jaw, and straightened her simple pink felt hat. “Then, I’m ready.”