“What is wrong with you, ’Ring!” Carrie snapped. “Can’t you say anything but that awful poetry?”
’Ring gave an exaggerated look of self-pity. “ ‘She speaks poniards, and every word stabs: if her breath were as terrible as her terminations, there were no living near her; she would infect to the north star.’ ”
“Stop it!” Carrie said and banged her fist on the table. “What in the world is wrong with you?”
’Ring shook his head a bit, as though to clear it. “I don’t know. Ever since I stepped off the stage, every Shakespearian phrase I’ve ever heard has been running through my head. In the bath I was trying to do all of Hamlet.”
“You can do them at home,” she said fiercely. “Right now I’d like to spend time with you and my husband and not with some two-bit stage player.”
’Ring opened his mouth, looked as though he were going to quote something again, but closed it. Then, with a serious look, he said, “You were telling me about your husband. About the worms, I believe.”
“And the weeds,” Josh added.
Carrie sat across the table and looked at both of them. She had no idea what was going on, but she felt like getting up and leaving them there alone. They both wore the same smug, self-satisfied look that only men can put on, as though they were superior merely because they had been born men.
Reaching across the table, ’Ring squeezed his sister’s hand. “I apologize. I think I have my poetry under control now. Tell me about yourself and what you’ve been doing.”
“I was telling you about Josh. About his farm.” For all that she’d said that ’Ring wouldn’t care about Josh’s farm, the truth was she was a bit worried that ’Ring would find the place a little bit ragged. “And about Josh.” Her face lit up. “Josh can read a story aloud as well as Maddie can sing.”
’Ring looked at Josh with new respect. “Can you now? That’s saying a great deal.”
“Who is Maddie?” Josh asked.
“She’s ’Ring’s wife and to the world she’s known as LaReina.”
It was Josh’s turn to look at ’Ring with respect, for LaReina was one of the world’s greatest opera singers. “My congratulations on your choice and on the honor of having such a woman for a wife. I’ve heard her sing many times. In Paris and Vienna and Rome. I’ve gone to hear her whenever possible.”
“I didn’t know you’d been to all of those places,” Carrie said, but Josh ignored her.
“Thank you,” ’Ring said. “She’s a wonderful woman and—” He broke off as his eyes widened. “You can read aloud…You’re—”
With one very swift gesture, Josh flung his arm out and knocked ’Ring’s wine glass over, effectively stopping ’Ring from saying what he’d started to. As Carrie was looking at the mess on the table, she missed seeing the way her husband looked at ’Ring with eyes that begged him to say no more.
After Carrie finished trying to mop up the spilled wine, she didn’t know what had happened, but she knew that something had. It was as though both men had joined some secret club that excluded her. It was as though, in the space of a few seconds, they had become the best of friends. For the rest of the long dinner, they talked to each other, only now and then acknowledging Carrie’s presence. They talked of all the cities they had seen, plays they had attended, and ’Ring’s wife’s singing. They talked of people they both knew, of hotels and food and wine.
Carrie sat silent through the meal, ignored and smoldering at the way they treated her: as though she were much too young and untraveled to be of interest to them.
At long last the two men decided it was time to retire. “I shall see both of you tomorrow,” ’Ring said. “Shall we say at your farm at noon? The wedding is set for five o’clock. That will give me time to meet these children of yours. Tell me,” he said to Josh, “are they anything like you?”
Carrie felt that her brother was asking Josh a question that had a different meaning from what she was hearing.
“They are like me with one exception: They have more talent.”
That seemed to amuse ’Ring a great deal.
By the time she and Josh said goodnight to ’Ring, Carrie wasn’t speaking to either man.
As Josh took her arm, he was musing over something to himself and didn’t seem to realize that Carrie was angry at him. Nor did he seem to notice that she wasn’t speaking to him.
“I brought Hiram’s wagon,” he said. “It’s at the stables. I assume you are going home with me.”
Carrie’s first thought was to tell him that she was staying at her shop in town, but she wanted to see the children again, and she wanted to tell them that she was staying in Eternity after all. She might never speak to their father again, but she was going to marry him tomorrow—if his wife gave him a divorce, that is.
Josh went to the stables, got the wagon, helped her onto the seat, then talked to her all the way home. He told her what a fine fellow her brother was, how educated, how wise, how cultured.
“I guess that’s because he knows all the people you know, has been to all the places you have been. Places that I didn’t even know you’d seen.” Carrie’s voice rang with sarcasm.
Josh didn’t seem to hear her derision, but kept on talking about ’Ring and what a great guy he was. A man’s man. “A man like him can handle a horse, a gun, a line of Shakespeare, and a woman all at once.”