Spare Change (Wyattsville #1)(17)

“Seems a man who can afford a new tractor, ought to be able to take his family to New York City,” she commented sarcastically; then she went back to thinking about whether or not she should buy a pair of silver shoes to wear with her sequined audition dress.

Scooter Cobb, claiming that Susanna was one woman who deserved a nice vacation, slipped a fifty dollar bill into her brassiere the week before she planned to leave for New York. “Baby, you have yourself one helluva fling,” he said, “then get your butt back here, ‘cause I’m gonna be missing you something fierce!” In the past year Scooter had come to feel about Susanna as he did his arms and legs—he couldn’t do without a single one of them. When she smiled, his heart started doing jumping jacks and when she pressed her body up against his, he could no longer remember his wife’s name, or for that matter, the names of his children. If Susanna were willing, he would have walked off and left everything—his wife of thirty years, a house that no longer had a mortgage, even the diner. One nod from her and halfway through frying up an omelet he would have thrown down his apron and followed along, leaving the egg to turn black on the griddle.

“Oh, Sweetie,” Susanna sighed, “you know how crazy I am about you, but I’ve got Ethan Allen to think about. Maybe when we get back from this vacation…” Not once did she mention she’d be looking for a singing job in New York, or that she’d be staying there forever if things worked out.

The Friday before they planned to leave, Susanna drove into town to withdraw her trip money from the bank. So far, things were moving along without a hitch; Benjamin had grown so preoccupied with his new tractor, he’d stopped watching her every move and switched over to thoughts of planting some winter squash. He never once noticed the valise of travelling clothes pushed up under the bed, nor did he think to ask why Susanna had all of a sudden decided on having her hair permed. He paid no attention to the way she’d dance around the house belting out song after song; and when she drove off Monday morning to register Ethan Allen for the new school term, he wouldn’t think to question it. Susanna figured by the time he discovered they were gone, she and Ethan Allen would be halfway to New York, having their lunch served by a Pullman Porter in the dining car. She had only two more nights of working in the diner, then, she told herself, that’s the end of that! Of course, she’d miss Scooter; he was a man who truly appreciated the things she had to offer, but… Susanna parked in back of the Eastern Virginia Savings Bank and all but skipped in.

Bernice Wilson was the teller on duty. Bernice had been working at the bank for eighteen years and took pride in her ability to remember every customer and the details of their account. But, when Susanna said she wanted to withdraw eleven hundred dollars from her savings account, Bernice stood there with the blankest look imaginable plastered across her face. “Excuse me?” she finally said, and Susanna repeated the request. Without any change of expression, Bernice slid open her customer card file and one by one flipped through the cards. When she got to the end of the drawer, she scrunched her nose, and reversed direction. Going back to front she rechecked every card in the drawer. After a good fifteen minutes, she looked up and said, “You don’t have an account with us.”

Susanna laughed a nervous little twitter that sounded somewhat like a gasp, “Of course I do,” she said, “a joint account, with my husband Benjamin.”

“Oh, Benjamin Doyle’s account!”

Susanna breathed a sigh of relief.

“He closed that out, a week ago last Tuesday.”

“Impossible.”

“I waited on him myself. Mister Doyle withdrew the money and said he didn’t see any reason for holding onto an empty account, so I closed it,” she pushed a small card beneath the bars of the teller window. “See, right there, that’s his signature.” The face of the card was stamped with bold black letters that read—account closed.

“But…” Susanna’s eyes welled with tears.

“He took the money in cash,” Bernice called out as Susanna fled through the door.

For a long while Susanna sat in the car and cried. After all those nights of working, every cent of her tip money was gone. There would be no New York. No New York, no singing career. For the rest of her life there would be nothing but soy beans and the dry dust of summer. She could picture her heart being torn from its rightful place and shoved into a graveyard of dreams; a place where singers were impaled on the shards of broken records and the only sound to be heard was that of sobbing. It was one thing for Benjamin to grab hold of her breast and pinch until a purple spot in the shape of his thumb appeared, but it was quite another to rip away the flesh of her hopes, piece by painful piece. After almost two hours Susanna dried her eyes and drove to the diner.

As soon he caught sight of her face, Scooter said, “What’s wrong?”

By that time, her eyes had puffed to the shape and color of an overripe tomato. “Did you mean what you said?” she asked, “…about us running off together?” Without waiting to hear his answer, she hurled herself up against his body and stretched her arms around his waist for as far as they could reach.

“Course I did, Sugar,” Scooter answered. “There ain’t nothing I wouldn’t do for you, I done told you that.”

“What if I was to ask you to take me to New York City?” Susanna pushed her mouth into the folds of his neck and suckled them. “Would you do that?” she asked in a breathy whisper.