They had to wait three days after they applied for the license. During that whole time it rained, breaking the heat wave and pulling the town from its stupor. Evie kept finding Drum on the back doorstep, under the eaves, huddled into David’s windbreaker to keep warm. She pulled him in whenever her father wasn’t around, but once they were sitting side by side they had almost nothing to say to each other. Drum discussed houses. He had heard of a cheap one for rent, twenty-four dollars a month. When he had finished with that, Evie went over and over the details of applying for the license, as if that were the one solid link that would hold them together till Thursday. “The clerk said, ‘Date of birth?’ I had it all worked out beforehand, but still I thought I would slip. Where I did slip was your name. ‘Drum Casey,’ I said. ‘No, Bertram.’ I must have sounded half-witted, not knowing the name of my, of the boy.”
“I reckon so,” said Drum.
They were quiet for a minute. He was beside her on the couch, one arm draped across her shoulders and his hand dangling free.
“They wanted to know your mother’s maiden name,” said Evie. “Did I tell you that? I made one up. What was your mother’s maiden name?”
“I don’t know. Parker.”
“I forget what I told them. Maybe Parker, after all. Wouldn’t that be funny? I had to think even for my mother’s maiden name, which shows you how flustered I was. Eve Abbott: my own first two names. It should have been on the tip of my tongue.”
When Clotelia was far enough away Drum would pull Evie closer, choosing the first pause in her speech. Evie had been waiting to be kissed for years. She had rehearsed it in her mind, first with someone faceless and then with Drum, who looked as if he would know all about it; but now she didn’t think it was what it had been built up to be. They stayed pressed together between kisses, looking out over each other’s shoulders like drivers meeting on opposite lanes of a highway. Drum smelled like tobacco and marigolds and the flattened porch cushions, which had turned mustier than ever now that the rain was here.
On Thursday, she got up early and put on a white eyelet dress that she had saved from junior-high graduation. The seams had grayed and it was a little tight, but she had set her heart on white. She filled her purse with absolute necessities, in case her father told her never to darken his door again: make-up, two diaries, all the letters received since fifth grade, a photograph of her parents taken before she was born, and a billfold containing twenty-eight dollars. Then she tiptoed out of the house. Her father was still dressing. Just as she reached the stairs she heard him slam a drawer and say, “Oh, drat.” It surprised her that she could do something so momentous without his sensing it.
She set out for a corner halfway between her house and Violet’s, where Drum and David were going to pick them up. (“If Violet’s coming, then so is David,” Drum said. “I ain’t going to be outnumbered”—as if this were some sort of contest, girls against boys.) The rain had stopped, but the streets still glistened and the lawns were a dark, shiny green. She edged puddles not yet dried by the sun and hopped across flowing gutters, feeling like a star in an old movie with her high heels clacking so importantly and her full skirt swirling around her calves. On the corner where they were to meet, Violet was already waiting. She wore a pink nylon cocktail dress. “I believe this is the most exciting day of my life,” she called out. Evie hushed her. She was certain someone would notice them and guess what was happening.
They waited five minutes. Evie stared very hard in a direction away from where the Jeep would be coming. When she heard it pull up behind her, she began smiling widely and couldn’t stop. “Hop in,” David said. Evie climbed into the back, where Violet was already settling herself. She looked steadily eastward so that the smile would be taken for a squint against the sunlight. Up front Drum sat lounging in the corner of her eye, one of his feet resting on the dashboard. He wore a white shirt with his jeans and his hair was slicked down too neatly. David was dressed the same as always — a sign of protest, it turned out. He was against the wedding. In all these days of planning Evie had never thought to ask how David felt, and it took her a minute to understand when he said, “All right, here we go. But it’s against my better judgment, I just want you to know.”
“You already said that,” Drum told him.
“He did?” Evie said. She sat forward and looked at the back of David’s neck. “Said what? He thinks we shouldn’t be getting married?”
“Damn right I do,” said David. “There is something too half-baked about this deal. And besides. Here I am. His manager. Aren’t I supposed to know what’s good for him? Careerwise, marriage is suicide. Look at the Beatles.”
“I still like the Beatles,” Violet said.
“But you don’t swoon away when you hear them, now, do you?”
“I never did,” Violet said.
That ended the conversation. For the rest of the ride everyone sat in his own corner, staring out at the scenery. Evie’s smile had faded. She watched tobacco barns zip by, each standing out bare and lonely along the fiat highway. Men in filling stations turned their blank faces slowly to follow the Jeep out of sight. Barefoot children strung across the pavement drew in while they passed and then fanned out again.
When they reached the outskirts of the city, the buildings tightened together. They pressed Evie’s heart out of rhythm; she kept clearing her throat and swallowing. All around them people were busy with humdrum things, waiting for buses or driving the groceries home, bearing loads of children and picnic baskets and diaper bags to some sunny playground. They sped by in small circles of cheerfulness, with Evie watching enviously until they were too tiny to see.
When they were nearly downtown, they stopped for a red light. A very short fat man with a child’s face stepped up to wipe their windshield, using a greasy cloth. He smeared the dirt around and stepped back to wait for a tip, but David only scowled at him. And still the light didn’t change. They were going to wait there forever, eye to eye with a watchful little man. “Oh, I tell you,” David said. “Everything has gone wrong today, everything. I can’t wait to see what’ll happen to me next.”
“Name one thing that has gone wrong,” Violet said. “Other than that man,” she added, for by then the light had changed and they were pulling away.
“Isn’t it enough that we are heading for Drum’s wedding? I’m driving my own hearse wagon, I don’t know why I do it. Inside of a month he’ll be a full-time pump attendant and I’ll be out of a job. And you,” he said, nodding to Evie in the rear-view mirror, “don’t look at me like that. It’s your own good I’m thinking of, partly.”