Chapter IV

They had a church wedding. Amy wore a very elaborate wedding gown and veil, and six of her best friends were bridesmaids, in pale green. Amy showed her artistic training by designing huge fans for the girls to carry, instead of the usual flowers.

Amy and Kenton went to housekeeping in an apartment in Minota, Oklahoma, which they furnished with huge overstuffed chairs and mahogany furniture.

Amy did not like Minota. It was an oil town and the smell of the oil permeated everything. Minota was a little smaller than Belleville and definitely newer and flimsier. She knew several former Belleville people there, so, after a first loneliness, a feeling of not belonging to any place, she settled down comfortably enough. Soon she was one of the set of “younger matrons” and went to bridge games and parties quite as she had done at home.

She missed Belleville. After six months she went home on a visit. When she got there she was at once restless and dissatisfied and didn’t know what to do. After she had seen her parents and her friends and had walked down the familiar streets, she was quite willing to go back to Minota again.

She grew to like Kenton a great deal. Now that she could read while he was at home or ignore him altogether, he did not bore her. They had so many things in common—their home, their friends—that at times he seemed almost interesting.

A year after Amy married, Millard, junior, was born. Amy had read and thought that motherhood was a thing apart, almost an exalted state. She welcomed it, frightened but eager. It left her much the same, without the ecstasy she had anticipated.

Two years later Mary-Etta came. Amy was very fond of her children.

When Millard was four Arnold Thompson came to Minota. He was good-looking and had the reputation of being popular with women. Amy encouraged him to notice her. The Kentons were living in their own home, now, a white bungalow, and they had a coloured maid who took almost entire charge of the children.

Thompson telephoned and asked to call one afternoon.

Amy sent the maid out with the children and dressed in a great flutter of excitement. Thompson came about four. They talked, and Amy listened attentively, though to her surprise, Thompson’s conversation was just like the other men’s she knew and did not interest her. She played a little on the piano. Before she knew it, Thompson had put his arms around her, was kissing her. She lay passive in his arms for a moment, even kissed him in return. The thrill she had expected was not there. She felt cheapened instead. She pushed him away, not angrily, but rather with indifference, and told him “You’d better go.”

For weeks after that Amy suffered keenly from remorse. It was the deepest emotion she had had in a long time. Kenton was so good—and she had let another man kiss her. What must Thompson think of her? If Kenton should find out? She was ashamed of herself. She was greatly relieved when, a month later, she heard that Thompson had left Minota.

Life in Minota went on pleasantly enough, punctuated with visits to Belleville and even a visit to New York, after a successful business deal. Kenton was doing well in business. The children were growing nicely.

Sometimes Amy felt the old desires, the wanting to live. She would grow restless and walk in her room, up and down, and long for something to happen. Then would come a reaction, a hope that nothing would take place to change her comfortable state as a nice little married woman.

Things did not change until Amy was thirty-six. Then Kenton took cold and died of pneumonia after only four days’ illness. Amy grieved sincerely. She missed Kenton a great deal and told every one that theirs had been an ideal life.

She sold the house, and she and the children went back to Belleville to live with her parents.

In Belleville Amy took up, in a quiet way, the activities of the women of her age. Kenton had been insured. The hardware store with the red axes on the windows was still prosperous. Amy’s father was bald, now, and quite fat. Her mother was complacently busy about home and church matters. Clarence was married and had a home of his own. Life in the Martin home was comfortable, in a quiet, uneventful way.

Lulu Fredericks came through Belleville on her way to California and stopped for a visit with relatives. Amy was rather awed and resentful at Lulu’s clothes and her grand manner and Eastern accent. Lulu had travelled in Europe even. Lulu, who had been of so much less importance in Belleville, had had adventures. And she, Amy, hadn’t lived at all—nothing had happened.

Amy remembered the book she had read when she was a little girl, that had said that each person’s life contains a plot for a story. It made her angry to think of it. Her life hadn’t been a story. Nothing had happened to her. She was sorry she had read that book. If it hadn’t been for that she would never have felt the way she did about life. She might have enjoyed things more, one at a time. Now, though she couldn’t touch them definitely, she felt that she had missed pleasant things, or ignored them, because she had wanted bigger things, instead.

The author of that book had cheated her—life had cheated her. How could any one have written such nonsense? Amy knew there was no story in her life—in most lives. Yet she knew that there always would be people like Lulu to remind her of the fact that there were people whose lives were like stories, after all.

After the children were in bed, Amy sat at the window and looked out on the little lawn. The trees and the bushes looked badly taken care of, neglected. She must see that the yard was fixed up, right away. Her life—it was all she had—it did seem too bad that nothing had happened to her—school—parties—marriage—babies—widowhood—nothing—no story at all.

CITY FOLKS