by Sara Dahmen
“Marie,” Anette plants herself in my line of vision. “You’ll be all right? Do you need someone to stay with you tonight? A body isn’t meant to do such mourning alone.”
“I have no other choice!” The words sting.
Though she flinches, Anette still smiles. “That is true. But you can remedy it, if you wish.” Her eyes flick at Danny. My ire rises further at her matchmaking today, of all days.
“I think any request put to me today would be met with a sour answer,” I reply, and with that, the anger flees, and I want to weep.
Her arm reaches out and she hugs me with one side, as the other still holds a youngster. I smell the milk on her, and the cloying heaviness of cooking oil and dirt and sun. It is thoroughly comforting, and I sag into her, letting her shoulder take the weight of my sadness for one short moment.
“Thank you,” I whisper into her coiled braid, and when she pulls away she’s smiling widely and with affection.
“If you need anything, you know where to find me,” she says, and stands fully, straightening the child she holds. Jacob comes to shake hands, speaking quietly and mildly with Danny and Thaddeus.
“The food is nearly gone anyway,” Mrs. Andersen says, looking up from her grandchildren. “We might as well clean up. We can take care of everything in your little kitchen, Marie. It’ll go quick if you heat the water in the copper boiler.”
I do her bidding, glad to have someone thinking and giving orders. She washes and I dry, and though she chatters, I’m utterly silent. There seem to be only idle things to say. Why say them?
“… and then I saw Mary Brown’s daughter. She’s looking well after that nasty bout with croup—early in the season for such a thing too. Lucky it wasn’t the diphtheria. That’s the worst. And did you see how Sadie’s dress was? It was so fine! The detail on the wrist and sleeves—so much fabric for a dress! How are such big-shouldered sleeves practical? Though I suppose if there is money, one can have such fashions. And Sadie has no children yet … and with Tom’s salary …”
She does it to comfort me, and it works in a fashion. It’s late afternoon by the time we hang up the wash pan, and Mrs. Andersen sighs and puts her hands on her hips.
“I’m thinking the men will be over at the Salomons’. Do you suppose they’ll want supper after such a big dinner?”
“I … perhaps?”
What do I know of men’s stomachs now? The only ones I’ve ever fed are gone. My lungs feel crushed again. “If you’d like to go and check? And take a moment to sit, Mrs. Andersen. You’ve done more than enough. I’ll take off Sadie’s nice frock before I head over.”
Mrs. Andersen’s face collapses into fine wrinkles as she smiles, though her forehead creases with concern.
“You’re going to be fine, Marie.”
“Of course I am,” I agree, but I cannot match her soft smile.
She leaves in a bustle, the length and height of her still out of sorts with the amount of energy she exudes, even after a long day. I hope Walter gives her a small beer and a chance to sit down. I know he will.
Removing Sadie’s finery, I press it carefully onto the bed and look it over. It is a lovely dress. She brought it from the East after she wedded Tom Fawcett. Her mother told her a black dress was important for a married woman. If I lived in Chicago yet and we had our family money again, I’d wish for something as fine.
Outside, the light has gone gold and ochre, with a deep pink cutting the sky at the edge of the horizon. It is a beautiful evening now, all crisp and breezy. When the sun hits just so, myriad specks of seed and dust and tiny bugs shift through the air.
I think of Father’s grave on the edge of the property. St. Aloysius has a small graveyard, but I wanted Father near. I need to make a marker. Likely I’ll do a copper cross in the way of our Catholicism. Perhaps something with flowers.
I’m drawn outside, walking toward the grave. Drawn to it. It is as if I cannot allow myself to believe it. As if seeing it once more will press upon me the finality of my situation.
No one is around anymore. It is a weekday after all, and everyone is home and preparing for the next day’s activities, or eating again, or recouping tasks left undone because of my father’s funeral.
“Ojciec …” I whisper the word as I approach. I do what I wished to do earlier, and sink to my knees in the soft churned earth. “Why are you gone? Co zrobiles? What have you done?”
The accusation breaks me. My lack of strength should appall me. But the hole of my heart peels open, and consumes my eyes and my mouth and my breathing. Catching up my hands, I hold them tightly to my throat, willing the sorrow to wash through and empty out, so I do not need to revisit such pain ever again.
Let it be gone.
Let me be free of it.
Let me live.
The gloaming settles, and the shadows go long. My knees ache and my body shakes. I let myself go with the pouring tears: an avalanche of acceptance and resistance. I do not think. I do not worry or fret or consider. There is only this, the tearing of family cloth, and of familial ties.
There is only loss.
When Thaddeus takes a knee next to me, at first I do not see him. But his hand is heavy, and the smell of fire surrounds him, and then me.
“Marie. Mrs. Andersen is worried you haven’t eaten anything all day, and she’s sent Father to get a fish out of the smokehouse. Danny is fetching something stronger to drink from the cooper’s. Did you want supper?”
I shake my head. Does he think I will have words? Why would I try to eat? What good is there in putting food in my mouth? I won’t see it, or taste it, or feel it stack in my belly.
“I’ll go get Danny. He must be on his way back soon enough,” he says nervously into my silence, rising to his feet ponderously. Without truly having a reason, I grasp at his hand, keeping it at my shoulder. The slits and bumps and ridges of my fingers collide with the burns and callouses of his.
“… wait.” My voice, hoarse and broken, rasps into the evening. He does, without hurry or impatience, and for some reason his steadfastness brings me to new tears. I cannot stop them, nor slow them, and the silent, wrenching cries tear the breath from me.
“Marya, please.”
I’m not sure if he wishes me to release him, or to let him find Danny. Or perhaps he cannot abide the sight of a woman crying. I let him go. He rearranges himself to crouch next to me, and stares at the grave, now almost black in the falling dusk. His face is inscrutable, the beard hiding half of it. I look at him squarely, then back at my father’s resting spot. The sight of it blinds me again, as the tears build high and I gag on the weeping, the sobs tangling in my lungs.
“Death is part of things. You know this,” he says. “It is more a way of it here than back East. You will find peace.”
“How do I wash away the anger?”
My question seems to surprise him, and he shifts to look at me fully. I dive in, now able to put the emotion out into the air.
“I am furious. Furious at my brothers for dying. They were stupid, and crazy, and selfish! They should have known they might not live! To go, with no money returning … And Father too, collapsing. And then dying! Leaving me alone! All because Mother—my glittering, perfect, beautiful mother—asked my Father to keep a ridiculous promise. And he keeps it! In the name of their love! What is the point of it all?”
He is stoic against my tirade, only blinking as I hurriedly whisper the blackness of my spirit to him, forcing the words out as if to cleanse myself by the releasing of them.
My breast heaves after I finish, and I clutch at my shoulders with my arms crossed, feeling the emptiness of my life in that simple gesture. I am breaking inside, and the loss of my brothers and my father mix with the desperate memory of my mother.
“I know you have lost your mother too, and that death is part of it all. But truly, Tadeusz. What comes next? What do I do with all of my anger … and my fear? Now do you think I am wrong to worry so much?”
This last
is a taunt, reminding him of our early friendship, and at that he finally comes to life.
“You are a thoughtful, fretful woman, Marya, I’ll give you that. And it is not without reason. The anger. Well, that may come and go for years.”
“Years?” I exclaim, throwing up my hands, and then smashing them into my skirts. “I can see how one becomes bitter.”
“That is up to you,” he tells me honestly. “When my own mother passed, Father was nearly inconsolable for a bit. Like your father. But time does pass, and while I miss her, and I am sometimes angry … I know he has healed. And that is enough to wash away the anger. And there are other angers. At yourself, for instance. The regret that you did not do enough while they lived, that you did not tell them how much you appreciate them. That eats at you too, if you let it.”
“Did you let it?” I ask, feeling tears curl from my eyes once more. It seems they will come no matter what I do or say. He has touched on my guilt, my appalling stoniness in the months of Father’s illness. Is this why Thaddeus is always so irritable? He carries his pain as anger?
“No. Not about my mother. I found ways to feel settled.”
“My shop,” I say suddenly, glancing at the silent, dark walls of the old barn. “That settles me. I could fall into the work.”
“If that’s what you choose to do with your life,” he shrugs. “Or perhaps you will marry and move on, like so many others do.”
But the idea of marriage somehow sends a shiver and a sob through me, and I bend over Father’s grave to swallow it. Thaddeus’s hand fits on the line between my shoulder blades, gently moving up and down as though I am a child he is comforting. I let him placate me for a long moment, closing my wet eyes against the slide of his iron fingers on the bumps of my spine. I miss the casualness of touch: my Father’s hand on my hair, my brothers’ bumps and pokes.
“I should go get Danny,” he says finally, sighing and grunting a little as he gets out of the crouch.
“I should go in too, regardless.” I stand with him, smudging the remaining wetness from my jaw, where it beads and drips.
Looking down at the grave at our feet, I take in a great, shuddering sigh, and feel the anger collapse into a small, tight ball within my gut. It will spring up on me, this I can understand, but for now it is subdued.
Perhaps it will never surface so violently again, losing force and effect each time it arises from my belly. Or it will rear up and overtake me, and God knows what I’ll contemplate if that happens.
We walk back to the Salomon house side by side. The yellow lamplight spills and pools against the blackening shadows of night. Mrs. Andersen is tinkering with pottery and tin, and the scent of venison oozes through the door where it sits ajar.
It’s like returning to the living after looking down into emptiness. Tears pump against my eyes yet again, and I am certain I look puffy and red. Danny will know at once that I have been weeping fiercely. Still, I do not know if I could have dissembled so easily to him.
I’m very glad for Thaddeus’s friendship, and in the last few paces of the yard, I reach across and link one of my fingers with his. He makes no indication of the action other than to let go as he allows me to proceed into the kitchen first. As we enter, Danny comes in from the other door, his brow tight and worried, relaxing only when he meets my face before concern races across his eyes.
The sincerity of his gaze jolts me. I realize, quite suddenly, that if I do want to end my future loneliness, I have to only ask.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
1 August 1867
Thaddeus and Lieutenant Balsam step into the tinshop, and my heart patters and pops before thudding heavily. I cannot read the lieutenant’s face, and I can only imagine what he has said to Thaddeus about the ruined and delayed sword. I wonder how irate Captain Bush will be as well. Failure crumbles into me once more.
“How are you today, sir?” I ask formally, and Lieutenant Balsam frowns.
“I’ve heard about the sword. As I mentioned to Salomon, I’m to see what’s left of it, and report back to the Captain.”
“Yes. The delay is my fault. I am so deeply sorry,” I tell him. He stares around the shop, taking in the high rafters and the makeshift walls, and the layer of dust I always battle along the shining tops of the machines.
“Eh. Well. I’m told you’ve had a spot of bad luck recently. Some loss,” he says grudgingly, with obvious reluctance. “Though I’d hoped to fetch the sword by now instead of finding it ruined.”
“I know.”
Thaddeus steps in. “Marie would like to use an engraving, and then pound in a softer metal. It would be finer.”
“More expensive,” Lieutenant Balsam snorts, but he doesn’t refuse immediately, and instead takes to fingering the prettier work along some of the new nutmeg graters I’ve put out what with the harvest coming soon. “The Captain will want to know how much.”
“There’d be no acid,” I add. “And unless my hands stop working, I can carve the same design, but inlay it with a metal instead. Gold, perhaps, or silver or tin.”
“You think we’ve got gold just sitting in a pouch somewhere, waiting to be melted down and used in a sword?” Lieutenant Balsam’s fat black eyebrows rise incredulously. “Army men, even those with rank, aren’t paid so handsomely.”
“Don’t I know it!”
“Just what is that supposed to mean, woman?” the lieutenant’s eyebrows sink back down as he scowls.
“What Marie is saying is that she is aware of a soldier’s wages, or lack of them,” Thaddeus says quickly. “As her brothers were enlisted.”
Lieutenant Balsam glances around once more before his eyes settle on me. “Your brothers serve? Not at Fort Randall.”
“No. They were posted west.”
“Were?”
“Gone. Without hardly a cent for any of them!” The frustration spills out, the old annoyance with customers replaced by a barely repressed irritation.
The lieutenant’s mouth goes thin, and finally he breaks his stare and looks down at the sword. “So you want to put a soft metal into the design?”
“Tin,” I offer, battling my resentment and my worry, hoping to seal the deal to make him leave. “And it won’t cost you more. I’ll supply it.”
He surveys me tightly, his narrow eyes more squinted than ever. “I suppose it is the least you can do.” Lieutenant Balsam sets down a grater and sighs. “The Captain’s not happy about the extended wait, but as you’re the nearest smiths around, he’ll have to, eh? Mind you have it ready before the holidays. Come, Salomon, we’ll settle the price.”
He gives a curt, irritable nod and stalks out, the blacksmith trailing him. As soon as they leave, I drop onto the counter with my forearms.
The weight of the ledger bumps into my knee under the planks. I’m no expert at numbers, but even I know I cannot afford to keep on Mrs. Andersen and pay the new rent for another year. At some point, Percy Davies will get tired of giving me such a heavy loan, or the railroad plans will be settled and Percy won’t have a need to keep me on Oddvar’s land paying a ridiculous amount for our little plot, in which case I’ll owe him all the money back. No interest of course, but it’s piled high. And this sword will offer some cash, but not nearly enough.
Damn the boys, who promised to help by leaving! And damn the Army for not following through! And damn …
“Marie, honning dear! Thaddeus is done sweet-talking that Army man. Won’t you come in for the midday meal?” Mrs. Andersen is at the doorway, her head in disarray and her face grinning. She is wound tightly, expectantly.
I want to ask her what her excitement means as we walk to the Salomons’ back door, but the walk is too short. In the wide kitchen, Thaddeus stares into the small fire in the hearth and doesn’t look up as we enter. Walter is looking at him, his face oddly sensitive even under the greying beard.
“Ready to eat then?” Mrs. Andersen asks, immediately going to the sideboard. The men don’t answer her, continuing their silent
battle. I look between the two, wondering what the quarrel is about now. Has Captain Bush’s sword caused another issue? Reminded Thaddeus that he had once wanted to join the skirmishes that seem to never end out west? I had thought that old argument was long buried.
But when Thaddeus comes to the table, I’m surprised with his calmness. His features are clear, and not the usual thunderous frown. Still, the conversation is stilted and muted, and I glance around, aware that I’m likely the only person at the table who is out of the news. I’m no hand at social graces, but even I can tell something is amiss.
“What is it? What’s going on?” I ask when it’s quiet.
Mrs. Andersen and Walter exchange a sly, quicksilver glance. Thaddeus sighs and straightens up from his plate.
“My father and Mrs. Andersen have decided to get married.”
I stare at him. Surely he must be teasing me as my brothers used to do. Twisting my body to look at Mrs. Andersen, she nods and grins, her blue eyes glinting with happiness.
I had no notion they were so sweet on one another, and the announcement surprises me. I’m unprepared for the pangs and washes of emotion sputtering in my heart, sending shivers to bang and slither from my chest out to my arms.
I will lose her, too, and it is not even for my inability to pay my part of her wages. The thought is almost unbearable, and I shove it away, determined to pretend I am glad.
“I’m so—so happy for you,” I tell Mrs. Andersen, including Walter in my statement, and reach the few inches to wrap my nearest arm around her. She is glowing, the way a new bride does. I am fascinated.
“Yes, thank you, Marie,” she says joyfully. “It’s not something an old widow woman looks for late in life, but there’s no reason not to marry. I do all the wifely things around here anyway.”
“That’s not the only reason I asked you,” Walter interrupts gruffly, but his face is tender as he looks at her across the table.
Their little romance is electric, young, and merry. I wish to catch some of the happiness for myself, if only to chase away a day of dull overwhelming sorrow and worry. My heart aches. I want to put my head down on the worn table and press my hot forehead into the grain.
