Free Abbeville by Jack Fuller

misjudged her, misjudged the reason she had ventured to Chicago, too, pathetically misjudged that.
    Cristina entered the room.
    â€œYou came,” she said.
    â€œI just heard,” he said.
    â€œI hoped that you would.”
    â€œSo you wouldn’t have to tell me yourself,” he said.
    â€œHoped that you would . . . come,” she said.
    She was dressed more stylishly than he had ever seen her. A woman like this could live in the world Karl was now exploring as gracefully as she had in the one they had both left. But it was not to be with him.
    â€œMy father wrote me,” he said.
    â€œYes,” she said. “I asked him to.”
    â€œBut he didn’t say anything about Harley Ansel.”
    Karl tried not to let the name sound bitter, but he could taste it.
    â€œYour father doesn’t know,” she said, sitting down in a big, over-stuffed chair. Karl seated himself across from her. “I told my parents that if they said a word before I was ready, I would never return home.”
    â€œReady?”
    â€œI needed,” she said, “this one last chance.”
    Karl sat back.
    â€œChance,” he said.
    She lowered her eyes to her lap.
    â€œDo you hate me for it?” she said.
    â€œI didn’t even know you liked Harley Ansel,” he said. Then he stopped himself. There was no point doing this to her.
    â€œI didn’t like him,” she said. “Don’t.”
    â€œWell, you sure enough found an odd way to express it,” Karl blurted out.
    This time she did not avoid his eyes. She stood right up to them.
    â€œI do not want to marry someone simply because my father thinks well of his prospects,” she said.
    Her hands lay crossed in her lap. Karl stood and went to the window, which was hung with brocade. His hand upon the curtain stirred a mote of dust.
    â€œI have felt the same,” he said, “not wanting the life I have waiting for me back in Abbeville.”
    â€œI came to Chicago because I needed to find out what my own prospects are,” she said.
    â€œYou want to be a seamstress?” Karl said.
    â€œWhat is it that you want, Karl?” she said.
    He stuffed his hands into his pockets, looked downward again, put his toe into the carpet as if it were loam.
    â€œWhat I can’t have,” he said.
    â€œMaybe you’re giving up too easily,” she said.
    â€œI’ve gotten a taste of certain things here,” he said.
    â€œWell, then, let’s stay.”
    He was sure she didn’t really mean to speak of them as an “us.”
    â€œBut at the same time I have felt the pull of home,” he said. “Frankly, Cristina, you have been a big part of that.”
    There, he had said it.
    â€œIf you do go back, you should bring with you the things from here that you have come to love,” she said.
    â€œAnd what about you?” he said.
    â€œYou could bring me, if you wanted,” she said.
    On the street outside the window an ice cart was clop-clopping up the stone. A dog poked his nose against the arm of a boy seated on astoop. A woman across the way was shaking a tablecloth out an upstairs window.
    â€œI would try,” he said, “if you weren’t spoken for.”
    â€œI came here to find out whether I had any chance of avoiding being pushed into a terrible mistake,” she said.
    â€œWhat do we do?” he said.
    â€œI guess we should take some time and find out,” she said.
    For the next several months Karl spent his days in the chaos of the pit just waiting for the moment he could leave and call on Cristina at her aunt’s. Sometimes they stepped out for dinner, and he could barely control the surge of feeling he had with her on his arm. On a number of occasions they visited the sprawling white World’s Columbian Exposition on the lakefront and witnessed all the marvels of the globe and the colonnaded promise of the future.
    It took weeks before they dared