"Management broke its heart and anyone who's been with the firm ten years or more gets a huge four weeks' vacation," he announced at dinner, his eyes sparkling.
The kids let out a concerted shriek of triumph. Roman broke into a wild war dance around the table, scaring Tasso out of several of his remaining lives, while Tonia's piercing treble rose to the coloratura octave. When Steve finally got them under control, there was a scramble for the touring maps, pencil and paper. As Mirelle listened to the scope of the intended trip, she irrationally realized that she would have no time whatever for the studio until August at the earliest. It would take her from now till they left in late June to prepare for the trip. The sane observer reminded her that she'd had all winter in which to work, undisturbed. It was neither Steve's fault nor the children's that she'd made no use of that time. She resolutely thrust aside her irritation and took an active part in the discussions.
She and Steve had designed and built the interior of their Volkswagen camping bus. Two years later in Canada they'd been offered double its cost by another camper, struggling with his more expensive, less efficient equipment. He'd suggested that Steve patent some of his innovations and sell the plans to one of the camping magazines but, to Mirelle's disappointment, Steve had never done anything about it. It had been very hard for her to refrain from calling his attention to the commercial imitations of some of their bus's unusual features when they were camping last year. Cleaning and stocking the bus were her responsibilities: the others organized the details of the trip. And this year's plans were well-laid, avoiding some of the fiascos of the previous year and inaugurating no new ones. They had a marvelous trip.
Halfway through the projected traverse of the country, they had blithely discarded the rest of the itinerary to settle in a wild Wyoming valley. A torrential summer storm had forced them to seek refuge in a valley ranch north of Caspar. By the time the roads were passable two days later, Jacob Overby, the rancher, had hinted broadly that there was no need for the Martins to take off in such an all-fired hurry. Plenty to see and appreciate right there in the valley. His two boys, providentially the same ages as Roman and Nick, clamored enthusiastic seconds to the invitation. Overwhelmed by the genuine welcome, Steve and Mirelle had accepted.
For two ecstatic weeks, Roman and Nick had their own horses, and Tonia a stubby-legged pony. When Mirelle wasn't lending Lena Overby a hand with cooking or cleaning, she sketched every aspect of the valley ranch and all its inhabitants, fowl, equine, bovine, canine and human. She had ridden, too, with a fleeting memory of Boots' insurrection and a determination to avoid a repetition. A toss on the mountain meadows or rough trails could spoil everyone's holiday. Mirelle, trained by an English riding master, found the relaxed western posture hard to imitate at first. Steve, disgustingly at ease on horseback, laughed her out of her self-consciousness until she was as comfortable sitting the jog trot of the quarter horses as everyone else.
But mostly, Mirelle sketched: especially Jacob Overby whose weather-beaten face fascinated her. The craggy nose, the brow-hidden eyes, the gaunt cheeks stained deep brown by wind and sun, the jutting jaw and the curiously mobile mouth were translated into endless studies. Perhaps this was the face for the unfinished head that languished, unfeatured, in her studio.
Steve, with Jacob, Roman and Roger Overby, had gone off on two pack trips, business for the Overbys, pleasure for Steve and Roman. Steve was beginning to realize that Roman was rapidly approaching manhood. Nick was left behind, disconsolate. Unfortunately Nick tended to irritate his father with his darting shifting ways. Mirelle had always seen the similarity between Roman and his father: a preference for method, a delight in physical prowess. Nick, on the other hand, wanted to do a thing immediately, too impatient to develop necessary skill. Nick was apt to be wild to finish a project in the morning and by mid-afternoon forgot that he had started something at all, a tendency which infuriated his father and weighed against his joining a camping trip which had certain hazards. Yet Mirelle recognized, even if Steve hadn't yet, that Nick was the more imaginative of the two boys, often providing the inspiration for many of the projects which Roman, in due course, finished. This summer was Roman's, not Nick's. He'd have to wait to find a basis on which he and his father could meet. And Roman needed his father's companionship now.
For Steve and Roman, the vacation was an unqualified success. Tonia was oblivious to everything once she was introduced to the grey pony, so Mirelle and Nick were odd-men out. If she managed to cajole Nick into a semblance of good nature, she failed to lighten her own inner discontent. She held herself sternly in check, trying not to dampen the others' pleasure, hoping that she didn't seem aloof. She had the most curious sense of disorientation, as if she were marking time. She was extremely careful to pretend indifference which only underscored his hopefulness. "We'll see what happens when the old boy retires."
Mirelle gave a deep sigh and Steve reached over to pat her hand reassuringly.
"We could stand a little settled family life, hon, couldn't we? The last weeks were just great. Improved the old man's temper no end, didn't it?" When she laughingly agreed, he threw an arm around her shoulders and drew her closer to him on the wide front seat. She snuggled into him willingly. "Take Jake Overby, now," he went on, "there's a man who knows what settling down is." Steve clicked his tongue in a wistful manner.
Carefree, relaxed, boyishly hopeful, Steve was recreated in the image which she cherished from their early months of marriage.
Fundamentally, he is just too good and honest, she thought, looking sideways at his clean-cut features in bold profile against the sulphur-blue hot sky. He should never have followed the lure of big business, big money and all its big headaches. The war had given Steve what peace would never have offered, a chance to go to college and a compulsion to produce on a higher level than his parents. But Steve worried too much, straining against management directives that shaped policies which were repellent to his basic integrity. Unable to reconcile inconsistent attitudes from his management and still represent his customers' needs to the Company, Steve took unnecessary blame on himself that other, more calloused or diffident salesmen ignored. Steve would have been happier running a small business just as he wanted to, or a ranch, like Jake Overby. Then he'd've been at peace with himself. But he kept insisting that he had to make something of the opportunities that he'd been given. Mirelle knew the source of that compulsion, and though she was powerless to counteract the basic fallacy, she tried her best to buffer its effects on Steve.
And here he was, having thoroughly enjoyed his vacation, optimistically returning to what would no doubt turn into another illusion-shattering disappointment, all in the name of Big Business. Mirelle ached for him, loath to try now to temper his hopeful approach with her cynicism. Grimly she began to steel herself to cushion his inevitable disenchantment. The sane observer reminded her that Steve was a very capable man, that same honesty appealing strongly to many of his customers. There was always the chance that his abilities would be recognized by management in the fall. There was that chance, she told herself, unreassured.
The prospect, however remote, of remaining in one town, even Wilmington, for longer than two years was unbearably tantalizing. To settle, to dig down roots, to develop continuity had assumed the proportions of discovering El Dorado to Mirelle. In their courtship, Steve's reminiscences of his childhood, comfortably spent in the Allentown, Pennsylvania house that his grandparents had built, had cast the rosy glow of happily-ever-after on her future as a wife. They'd join his parents in that huge rambling house, and she'd finally know what 'belonging' felt like. When her mother had sent Mirelle to live in America with her childhood friend, Mary Murphy, to escape the bombings in London, living and life had assumed a quality of all things good and wonderful to Mirelle the child. But Mary Murphy had lived in a succession of comfortable rented apartments. And Mirelle had never thought to discount a European-based generalization of the American smalltown life, nor the exigencies of an increasingly transient, technological business age, and the happily-ever-after-in-the-family-home was an exploded and explosive myth. When she had unexpectedly confronted the reality of a basically conservative, narrow-minded settled community outlook, Mirelle had bitterly discovered that transiency could be preferable to mental stagnation.