Dust Eva Everson (story reading txt) 📖

couldn’t hold back the passion and want I felt for Westley. “No. We’re—we’re fine.” I caught another tear, this time with my pinky, determined not to tell my sister the truth, still unsure of her loyalty to me. What if she told Mama? Or worse, Grand?

“Hold on,” Julie said, already rising from the sofa and turning toward the bedrooms. “I want to show you something.” She returned a moment later extending a book toward me, one I’d heard about on television but hadn’t seen in person. The white cover was slick, the single red rose arched over the elaborate lettering of the title: The Total Woman.

“You’re reading this?”

She nodded as she sat, this time keeping her feet on the floor. “And you should, too.”

“Does Mama know?”

“Does she know? Mama’s the one who insisted I read it. She said that if I were a better wife, Dean might get a job.” Julie’s laughter came like tiny wind chimes on a breeze. “I swear, Allison, she thinks her advice on my reading this book is what led to Dean getting a job and me getting pregnant. She has no clue it was the other way around.”

I thumbed through the pages. “Does she really talk about showing up at the door dressed only in Saran Wrap? The author …” I looked at the cover. “Marabel Morgan, I mean. Not Mama.”

“Oh, gosh.” Julie feigned disgust. “I haven’t even thought about Mama and the whole meet-him-at-the-door-in-Saran-Wrap notion.”

Our eyes met and we both pretended to have the willies, which—if nothing else—gave me a moment of reprieve from my angst.

“Honestly, Julie,” I said with a sigh. “Sometimes I feel like you and I are a part of a generation caught in between.”

She cocked her head in curiosity while the merriment from a moment before lingered in her eyes. “Meaning?”

“Meaning there are times I don’t know whether I’m supposed to act like Donna Stone and Samantha Stevens or Ann Marie and Mary Richards.”

Julie laughed again. “Seriously, I do know what you mean. Do we tie a kitchen apron around our waists or burn our bras.”

But then, as the gaiety subsided, Julie spoke softly and said, “You don’t have to tell me what’s going on, Allison. All young brides have to get through something or another. I know I did. But, read this for kicks, okay?” She pointed to the book. “And if you can take anything away from it … great.”

I stood. “I’ll go put it in my—our—room,” I said, not wanting Westley to walk in and see me holding it. Not wanting him to think he’d have even a hope that I would ever greet him at the door wearing nothing but a smile and clear plastic.

Days after my sister and her husband and Westley and I had celebrated the arrival of 1978 in festive style—Westley and I drove in silence toward an attorney’s office—the same one who had drafted the legal document ordering his child support payments. Money I hadn’t realized had been coming out of his—now our—bank account.

Westley wanted custody of Michelle. I kept saying the words over and over in my mind, hoping they would stick. Because he’d not asked how I felt about it. Not questioned whether I thought I was ready for such a thing as being a mother to a one-year-old. Not taken into consideration that I was barely nineteen. Or that a month ago I was happily planning my wedding and working for the Fosters who fluttered around me like second parents, hoping I wasn’t jumping into a fire. Which, in the end, I suppose I had. No … I thought we’d wait a while. Give us time to allow us to grow up a little as a couple. Two years, at least, I figured. Wasn’t that about the norm?

And Michelle wasn’t even my child. It wasn’t like I’d gotten pregnant on my wedding night—I’d heard such stories. Instead, this was another woman’s baby. Yes, Westley’s too, but mostly the mother’s. What would Marabel Morgan say about this? Or my own mother? Although I wouldn’t have to wonder long when it came to Mama. She had made it clear before I left for my honeymoon that I was to let Westley call the shots. Whatever he wanted. And from what I could tell from Mrs. Morgan’s book, she would tell me the same. His child has now become your child, she’d say. She is a part of your husband therefore she is a part of you.

Westley parked the car and I followed, stepping past him after he opened the front door of the office—a converted small house right off Main Street. We stepped into a room that, with the exception of a woman sitting behind a desk at the far corner, looked as if it could be someone’s grandmother’s parlor. The walls were wallpapered in muted-yellow grasscloth, the framed artwork large and expensive-looking, and the accenting pieces old and rich. Westley’s hand touched the small of my back as he guided me forward to the woman with the Mary Tyler Moore hairdo. “Can I help you?”

“We’re the Housers,” Westley said. “Here to see Mr. Donaldson.”

“Have a seat. I’ll let him know you’re here.”

We sat close on a footed love seat’s thin cushion that lay like waves lapping a shoreline. Westley’s hand found mine, our fingers intertwining. He squeezed, a silent signal to look at him, and I did. “Thank you,” he mouthed.

I nodded, my eyes blinking, fear threatening to overtake me.

“I love you,” he whispered.

Again, I nodded. I loved him, too. I did. But I wasn’t sure I was ready for what he had asked of me. Not this soon. Not so young.

“This is going to be fine. I promise.” He reiterated words spoken countless times since the week before, leaving me unsure as to whom he hoped they’d convince.

And, again, I nodded.

“Mr. and Mrs. Houser,” the receptionist said, startling me, having not quite gotten used to hearing our names spoken in such a way. “I can take