An Amish Gift

by Cynthia Keller

  Pushing the feelings away, she turned to her daughter. “Hey, what do you say we go over to the market on Saturday and spy on our candy? You know, see what makes people choose it, if they eat it right there or save it, that kind of stuff.”

  “Totally, yes, let’s do it.”

  Jennie couldn’t remember the last time she had seen Willa so excited about anything. When Saturday morning arrived, they brought a new basket filled with fresh candy to the booth, then told Mattie they would hang around to see what happened. Amused, she supplied them each with a doughnut and wished them luck. They moved around as if shopping at the surrounding booths, drifting closer whenever a customer approached Mattie. At first no one seemed interested in the peanut brittle, but suddenly, people started to pick up the little bags at a brisk clip. Jennie and Willa were thrilled every time. Around noon, a man and a woman stopped to buy some pies, and the woman grabbed a bag to add to their order. As her husband was paying, they could see her reading the label, and a smile flickered across her face. She untied the bag and popped a piece into her mouth. As her husband picked up their bread and walked away, she called out after him, “Hon, you’ve got to try this. It’s delicious.”

  Jennie and Willa stared at each other, then burst out laughing. “She actually said it!” Willa said. “ ‘You’ve got to try this!’ ”

  “Do you think she knew we were watching? Was she trying to be funny because she read the label?”

  “Whatever it was, it worked.”

  They approached Mattie to tell her they had seen enough and were leaving.

  “We are going to sell them all before the end of the day,” Mattie said. “Can you bring back another hundred bags? Half cashew, half peanut—I don’t know yet what people will want more.”

  Jennie was thrilled, but at the same time, she knew she would have to come up with some way to produce brittle more quickly. Unfortunately, that meant hiring someone to help, and she hadn’t made anywhere near enough money to afford that—she wasn’t even covering the cost of ingredients yet. Well, she thought, in the meantime, she would have to turn to the least likely source of help: her son. Like it or not, he was about to be recruited into the new family candy business.

  It was later that afternoon when she next saw Tim. She was vacuuming in the living room while waiting for new batches of brittle to cool, and she happened to glance out the window to see him slowly riding his bicycle up the street, with Peter Fisher beside him on Rollerblades. Both boys looked serious, and when they reached the edge of the driveway, they stopped to continue their discussion. It seemed to Jennie that Peter was upset about something, and Tim was offering advice or perhaps words of comfort. Peter had good reason to be upset, considering he had lost his father. He was also in an odd position, she realized, being the de facto head of the household, yet under the authority of the uncle who had moved into the house for an undetermined amount of time. She couldn’t guess what all this was like for the boy or where it was heading. He was only sixteen. Could he wait and take over the farm later? Farming was so important to the Amish, even though many of them could no longer afford to own farms in this area, where land had become so expensive. It was hard to believe the Fishers would want to let go of theirs. It must be a complicated situation for them, she thought, although they never spoke of it.

  Peter skated off at high speed, and Tim came inside. She turned off the vacuum cleaner. “Hi. I see Peter was with you. Surprising he has any time off on a Saturday.”

  “He had to go buy something, if you really want to know. In fact, he said Dad was over there working with his uncle.”

  “Everything okay with Peter?”

  “Sure.” He eyed his mother suspiciously. “Why?”

  “No reason.” She paused. “I’m a little confused about why he spends so much time with you. I mean, I know you’re wonderful, but doesn’t he have Amish friends?”

  “Of course he does,” Tim snapped. “He’s usually with his own group. Sometimes he just likes to spend time with someone different.”

  “Does he date anyone?”

  He looked exasperated at having to explain himself. “There’s a girl he’s been hanging out with.”

  “ ‘Hanging out’ is a strange expression for Amish teenagers.”

  “They go to these things on Sunday nights, I think they’re called sings. The boys and girls sing and spend time together. Now that they’re older, there’s more stuff they can do on the weekends.”

  “Is he interested in your world?”

  “What’s with the interrogation?” He was getting visibly annoyed. “It’s not my world. It’s the world. He can see it for himself!”

  “Sorry.” She held up her hands in supplication. “But his dad died, and he’s at that age where he might be trying out stuff that isn’t really the way the Amish live. I wonder if he isn’t looking to you—”

  “Why do you have to stick your nose in other people’s business all the time?” he interrupted.

  She stood up straighter. “Don’t speak to me like that.”

  “You’re always asking us about stupid things, trying to get to the way we feel about stuff.”

  “Sorry for caring.” The sarcastic words slipped out before she could stop them.

  “I’m not so sure if you really do care.” His voice was rising in anger. “You chatter away all the time, trying to distract everyone with nonsense when they’re actually trying to show what they feel. But you don’t ever do anything. Nobody ever deals with anything around here. Everybody just walks around mad.”

  Stung, she stared at him. “You’re not sure I care? How could you say that to me?”

  “It’s easy! If you did care, why did you start this business thing when you know it makes Dad crazy? You’re the parent, the one who’s supposed to fix things. But you’re making them worse!”

  “We need more money, Tim. What would you have me do, just sit around?” She didn’t want to drag him into their financial problems, but she wasn’t going to allow him to criticize her without understanding the situation.

  “I don’t know!” His words exploded, and she could see the shine of tears in his eyes. “I just want you to fix things!”

  “Oh, sweetheart …” He was too young to handle this. Even though he was always so mad at Shep, he was trying to protect his father. It hurt him to see his parents so unhappy, and he wanted the pain to go away. That was all he understood.

  “We’re all doing our best. I’m trying to work things out the best way I know how.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not good enough!”

  As he stormed off, her heart broke for him, but she reminded herself that he would feel a lot worse if they got any deeper into financial trouble. The damage of her attempt to earn money on her own had been done. What remained was the earning of the money. She would have to force herself to focus on that before anything else. The one thing she did understand was that she wouldn’t be able to ask Tim for assistance anytime soon.

  As she assembled more bags of candy, she went over the question of how to turn the brittle sales into money more quickly. She made a good profit on what she sold, but it was a tiny amount that went right back into the costs. The solution was to increase the volume they sold. But the only way they could do that was to hire more help.

  Unless she branched out. Found something else to sell that was less expensive to produce and could be made in bigger batches. She went back to her candy recipe books and started flipping through. Peanut brittle had seemed like the easiest thing to make. She hoped one day she could make sophisticated chocolate creations that justified a higher price, but they weren’t an option right now.

  Scout came to sit by her, and she leaned over to stroke his back as she read.

  “Where is it?” she asked him. “Where is my brainstorm?”

  Then she saw it. Lollipops. She had to buy some plastic molds and the sticks. Once she melted a few ingredients and poured the mixture into a mold, that was it. Pop them out, wrap them up.
The trick would be to make them special somehow.

  “I need my consultant,” she told Scout. She went to the bottom of the stairs. “Willa, could you please come down here for a business meeting.”

  Her daughter appeared, holding a purple pen and a sketchpad, on which she was designing her twenty master sketches for labels. “What’s up?”

  “New idea. Tell me what you think of this.” Jennie explained what she had in mind.

  “The key is in the package, like before,” Willa said.

  Her mother nodded. “One lollipop is like another, really, so it needs to be a fun purchase. They can be generous-sized, but still …”

  They tossed out different ideas, eventually deciding that each color lollipop would have a matching color cellophane bag tied over it with the same color raffia and label. This time the label would be a miniature colored translucent envelope with the company name on the outside. Inside each envelope would be one message in Willa’s spidery script, reading I am your lollipop and I love you for buying me above the ingredient listing, and a second with a fortune or a saying.

  “It’ll take us a while, but once we get enough fortunes printed, we can just rotate them through batches for several months. We’ll see how that goes later,” Jennie said. “But I like this. It’s friendly. The fortunes should be fun or offbeat.” She thought about it. “ ‘You’re sweet, like me,’ or ‘You could do something to make someone happy—if you want to.’ Or some such thing.”

  “We can’t just keep writing the Got To name,” Willa reflected. “You need a logo. So people recognize that it’s your candy right away.”

  Jennie stared at her. “You continue to amaze me. I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “Leave it to me.”

  Over the next few weeks, Jennie and Willa found themselves up late every night producing fresh baskets of brittle and lollipops. They developed a routine: Willa did her schoolwork while Jennie prepared dinner. Then they devoted the rest of the afternoon and evening to Got To Candy. When Tim got home, the three of them ate together, Jennie fruitlessly trying to engage him in some discussion of his day. Eventually, she would give up, and he would eat hurriedly as she and Willa discussed their business. The two of them invariably didn’t finish the next day’s order until late at night, when they would fall into bed, exhausted. Shep neither interfered nor asked anything about what was going on. If she’d had the energy, Jennie would have tried to discuss the situation with him, but she knew her fatigue would quickly result in an argument.

  In the meantime, sales continued to grow. The warmer months brought the tourists in full force, and the baskets were quickly emptied of their contents, replaced several times a day. Willa had also packaged brittle in larger tins of bright Easter-egg colors, with the hand-torn label glued onto the sides and three flat bows attached to the top. Jennie came up with boxes of two dozen lollipops in assorted colors. They scoured the Internet to find cheap sources for materials. As the summer progressed, profits started to edge out expenses.

  “Our only problem,” Willa told her mother as they sat wrapping lollipops one evening, “is that we’re going to keel over from being so tired. Not that I’m complaining, but, like, we have no life anymore, for real.”

  And, like, I have no marriage anymore, Jennie thought. For real. And, like, I have no relationship with my son anymore, either.

  Tim had wanted her to fix things. She had strengthened her relationship with her daughter, but that had never really been a problem to begin with. She hadn’t helped anybody else get along, and she had allowed the distance between Shep and her to widen until they might as well be standing on different continents. She wondered if she was using their need for money as a distraction from other troubles. But what was more urgent? Did she have to choose one over the other? All she knew for sure was that no matter what choice she made, it would be the wrong one.

  Chapter 13

  The breezy July Sunday was perfect for a picnic, the sky a dazzling blue. Out in the backyard, Jennie set a tray laden with condiments on the wooden picnic table. Shep had built the table last summer, she recalled, which, incredibly, meant an entire year had passed since they had moved here.

  This was the first time she had invited the entire Fisher family over to their house, and they would be bringing Abraham’s brother and his relatives as well. Jennie estimated the number of guests to be around twenty-three. The Amish went to church only every other Sunday, and this was one of the days when they wouldn’t be attending worship, so they could take time off to visit. Shep was in charge of barbecuing hamburgers and hot dogs, and she had prepared three enormous bowls of potato salad and another three of fruit salad. Going back into the kitchen, she went over a mental list of everything else she would be serving. She tried not to worry about how the Fishers might judge her house—if it was too small, too messy, too something not right—and reprimanded herself for worrying, knowing how loath the Amish were to judge other people.

  Enlisting her children to set out all the chairs and blankets, she realized it was nearly time for everyone to arrive. She went outside through the front door to make sure Willa had swept the entranceway, as asked, and was greeted by the sight of her guests turning the corner to walk up the road. She stopped, mesmerized by the picture they created. The women and girls were in dresses of maroon, dark green, blue, and gray beneath black aprons, the thin strings of their white kapps trailing down past their shoulders. The men all wore black pants and suspenders across short-sleeve shirts in the same shades as their wives’ dresses, and most had on straw hats with narrow black bands. She had seen Efraim but never had the chance to speak to him. From this distance, his resemblance to his late brother was especially jarring; if she hadn’t known better, Jennie would swear it was Abraham himself. If only, she couldn’t help thinking as a pang of sorrow shot through her. She pushed away the feeling; her intention was to bring a little joy to Mattie’s day, not point out sad reminders. Efraim had brought his grown son who had come with his wife and children. She counted three men in the group and wasn’t clear on who was who.

  Many of the small children were holding hands. Two of the older girls held babies in their arms, while several others carried coolers and baskets of food. The uniformity of their neat and unadorned clothing made them look pristine as they chatted with one another, calmly making their way.

  She called for Shep and the children. Everyone met up at the front door, and introductions were made among the children. Shep already knew Abraham’s brother, having spent time with him helping out at the farm. Efraim accepted Jennie’s words of condolence with a simple nod. His wife, Barbara, was a heavyset woman with dark hair and a stern expression. Jennie had met her several times before, and she was always polite but not much more. Perhaps, Jennie thought, she didn’t approve of the family fraternizing with the English. It was understandable. Jennie resolved to do her best to get the woman to overcome her misgivings. On occasion at the Fisher house, Jennie had heard Barbara direct the people around her in no uncertain terms, so she didn’t expect to revise her own mental image of the woman as a bit scary. But hey, she thought, if Barbara wanted to organize everyone today to get things accomplished, she was welcome to do so.

  The mystery guest turned out to be Barbara’s brother Zeke, a widower who lived some sixty miles away and had come to meet his sister to go over some legal papers about family property elsewhere. Jennie didn’t follow the story entirely, but she took an instant liking to the man, whose friendliness provided a notable contrast to his sister’s reserve.

  Efraim and Barbara’s son Red was married to a woman named Ellen, whose innate sweetness was instantly apparent. Jennie guessed that she was only twenty-five or so, but they already had six young children. They had taken the time to help Mattie before continuing on their journey to a new home in Ohio. At last the introductions were completed, and everyone was accounted for. The men took most of the children around back, while Jennie marveled at the food the Fisher women were briskly a
dding to the already full table: chowchow, macaroni salad, pickles, four large thermoses of lemonade and root beer, a huge basket full of homemade breads and muffins, and an enormous platter of chicken.

  “There was no need for you to bring all this,” Jennie said to Mattie.

  “We wanted to,” she replied. “We are so many people to feed.”

  “You were just worried you wouldn’t get enough to eat,” Jennie teased.

  The other woman laughed.

  “At least I can promise no peanut brittle today. You must be sick of the sight of it.”

  “If peanut brittle is helping your family, I am happy to look at it as often as you like.”

  Jennie regarded her friend with affection as they joined the others. Once everyone had loaded up their plates with food, the entire group said a silent grace.

  The barbecue grew lively. Children jumped up to play games or explore the unfamiliar setting. Jennie watched them become intrigued or amused by flowers, bugs, rocks, and whatever else they found at hand. Scout was thrilled by the attention he got, as the children petted him and threw a tennis ball for him to retrieve; with so many children, he was able to play his favorite game until he grew exhausted, an opportunity he rarely got when Jennie was tossing the ball. The girls played clapping games. There were excited voices and laughter, but no arguments or childish squabbling. No need for video games or cell phones here, she thought. Although Tim and Peter immediately gravitated toward each other, they participated in various activities with the smaller children. Jennie was delighted to see her son smiling as he tossed a ball with the young Fisher cousins. Such a rare occurrence these days, she reflected.

  She was also pleased to note Shep talking easily to Efraim while he flipped burgers at the grill. Most satisfying to her was the sight of Willa sitting with Nan. At long last, her daughter was making an effort. They were joined by Ellen Fisher. The three began an animated conversation, Willa doing most of the talking. Jennie could only guess that her daughter was explaining their candymaking. Sure enough, when she passed by, Willa waved her over to listen in.