🎧 294: The fire at the Serenity Ballroom ...

Chapter 8

In Which Herb and Lorna Move to Babbington, New York

THE FIRE at the Serenity Ballroom was caused, an investigation disclosed, not by Herb and Lorna’s ardor but by a kitchen accident. According to May Castle, Lorna considered the burning of the ballroom the symbolic end of her girlhood, the end of her life as a child:

     Oh, yes, it was the burning point of her life. Oh! I didn’t mean that, not at all. I meant to say “turning point,” I honestly did. Stop. Rewind. Start again. That night was the turning point of her life, you see. And everything just happened all at once. Here she was engaged, and she’d just made love to this wonderful man — the man she was destined to live her life with — and, oh, I don’t know, she may have had her first orgasm. Well! Then, to top it off, there was this perfectly spectacular fire! It was quite a night. It doesn’t surprise me a bit that she decided right then that she and Chacallit were fini.

“CLOSE YOUR EYES, Herb,” said Lorna, “and I’ll tell you about our future.” She and Herb had driven to the top of Ackerman Hill, or as far as the road went, and they had stopped in the turnaround there. Herb had his arm around Lorna’s shoulders, and she reclined against him. He closed his eyes.
     “All right,” he said.
     “Now imagine this,” said Lorna. “Six months have passed. We’ve been married for four. Four months ago, my father gave you a job in the sales department, and there was some talk, which you and he and I ignored as well as we could. From your very first day on the job, though, you impressed everyone, and now even the people who resented you most when you arrived have to admit that you’re the best salesman they’ve ever seen.”
     Herb gave her a little squeeze.
     “They still talk about you behind your back, but now they usually say something like, ‘You know, I hate to admit it, but that Herb Piper is one heck of a salesman.’ My father is very proud of you. So am I. I’ve stopped working at the mill, because you don’t want my old friends to think that you can’t support me. My father approves, since he never wanted me to work at the mill in the first place. I spend all day at home. My mother won’t let me cook, since that’s her job. However, I am permitted to wash the dishes. Every day my mother asks me if my marriage is happy and whether there’s anything I need to ask her about.
     “You and I are still living on the third floor, and we have to whisper when we talk in bed at night. We eat dinner with my parents every evening, and after dinner we all sit together in the parlor, except on weekends, when you and I go out. Every time we go out, we run into Andy Proctor. You and Andy have become great pals. Every time he greets you he pounds you on the back, and every time he greets me he winks.
     “My mother and father celebrate our six-month anniversary by opening a bottle of champagne. My father announces that you’ve earned another promotion. We’re all delighted. Then he clears his throat and tells us how very happy he and my mother are about the way things have turned out. He makes a joke about the misunderstanding when they first met you. My mother laughs. We all laugh. He says something sentimental. We all shed some tears. We eat dinner. We sit in the parlor. The clock ticks. My father nods in his chair. You and I go upstairs. We slip into bed. We are very quiet. In the dark, I whisper in your ear, ‘Herb, let’s get out of here.’ ”
     She sat upright, took Herb’s face in her hands, and said, “Herb, why wait? Let’s get out of here now.”
     “Okay,” said Herb.

In Topical Guide 294, Mark Dorset considers Privacy; Secrecy; Fiction, Autobiographical: Its Secrets, Its Motives; and Family: Escaping from this episode.

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