An Amish Gift

by Cynthia Keller

  “Mom, hey,” she said, “Ellen had a suggestion. Nan and she can package stuff for us.”

  Jennie smiled at her daughter. “That’s a great idea, honey, but you know we can’t pay anyone yet.” She looked at Ellen. “If only we could, I would jump at the offer.”

  “I understand,” Ellen said, “but Mattie told me you’re doing very well at the booth. She said you just need to get some help. We could start now, and you can pay us later, when you have enough.”

  Jennie stared at her in surprise. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Please just say yes.”

  “That’s a very kind offer, but you barely know me. You’re taking a big risk.”

  “You are Mattie’s friend. That is all I need to know. Also, you would be helping me, too. I have found some work cleaning at a hotel, but not enough. This will be a good situation.”

  “Okay, then. Fantastic,” Jennie said.

  Ellen nodded. “It’s settled. We can work out the details later.”

  Jennie stood there, marveling at her good fortune. It was all a result of having met the Fishers, she mused. If not for the example Mattie had set, Jennie never would have taken action to solve their financial problems. Then the Fishers’ generosity had provided a place to sell what she made. Now they were stepping in again, giving her another leg up with people to help whose payment she could postpone. Mattie had done all this while caring for her huge family alone, her husband snatched from her side. Jennie realized she could never again say it was too difficult to get something done, not after seeing what this woman was capable of.

  “Mom,” Tim said, coming up behind her, “Peter and some of his friends are going to take me fishing with them, okay?”

  She hesitated. “I guess so …”

  “Come on, this is almost over. I won’t be back late.”

  “Okay, but remember—”

  He was already out of earshot, hurrying off. She supposed she should be grateful he had stayed around this long. Plus, now that she thought about it, he and Shep hadn’t exchanged a cross word this afternoon, at least not in front of her or their company. That was something, wasn’t it? Not really, she corrected herself; refraining from getting into a squabble during an enjoyable barbecue was hardly a major accomplishment. Besides, she hadn’t done anything to fix the problems bubbling beneath the surface.

  At the sound of her name, she turned to find Mattie calling. She stood with her out-of-town guest, Barbara Fisher’s brother Zeke. Jennie went over, asking if they needed anything.

  “I wanted to say that I appreciate being included in your picnic today,” Zeke said. “It’s a good afternoon here.”

  Jennie was used to the Amish tendency toward understatement and delighted by the compliment. “Have you come from very far?” she asked him, wondering how he had managed to get away during what she knew was a busy part of the farming season.

  “Sixty miles.”

  “Do you farm?”

  He shook his head. “I’d like to, but I build furniture in a factory. Two of my brothers have farms, and I worked with them for a long time. There’s one that I’m thinking about buying on my own, and I’m almost ready to do it.”

  “Is Barbara your younger or older sister?”

  “Bossy Barbara? She’s older.” He laughed. Jennie was taken aback that he would make such a joke, but Mattie smiled. Apparently, Jennie had guessed right about Barbara’s personality, and it was no secret to anyone. It dawned on her that she had assumed the Amish were all as sweet and loving as Mattie all the time. They were just people, like everyone else. They had their good and bad points and their personal ups and downs.

  The three continued chatting for a bit, then Jennie walked over to Shep, who was scraping off the grill.

  “Awesome job, honey,” she told him. “My cheeseburger was great.”

  She saw with discomfort that he was genuinely startled to get a compliment from her. When had things gotten this bad between them?

  “Thanks. You did great yourself. And they’re still here, so I guess it’s a successful get-together,” he said.

  They stood there, looking into each other’s eyes. He nodded and smiled. It felt good, she thought, like being wrapped in a warm quilt.

  Willa appeared beside them. “I’m going to take Nan and Ellen inside to show them how we do our packages,” she told her mother, excitement evident in her voice.

  The reference to the candy business immediately severed the connection between Jennie and Shep. He turned away, directing his full attention back to the grill. She gave a small sigh.

  “Sure, Willa,” she said, suddenly exhausted. “Sure thing.”

  The next night, the two of them drove over to the farm with cartons of candy and packaging supplies. Ellen and Nan helped them unload the car, and they all sat down at the kitchen table to go over the steps. As usual, the house was dimly lit but cozy and filled with activity. At a folding table with a large bowl of popcorn in the middle, several children worked on a jigsaw puzzle together, and others were busy with an art project. Becky played with the dollhouse.

  Ellen’s husband, Red, came in to greet Jennie. He was giving a laughing toddler a ride on his shoulders, and Jennie reached up to tickle the little boy’s neck as Red thanked her again for the barbecue.

  “And now you and my wife will work together,” he said. “Very good.”

  “Let’s go to work,” Ellen said, joining Willa and Nan at the table, where they were already deep in conversation about the finer points of raffia.

  Jennie was on her way to take a seat when she happened to notice two of the children at the table using rubber stamps to create designs on a large piece of white paper. She paused. “Willa,” she said, “can you come here?”

  Her daughter moved to stand beside her. “What?”

  She gestured toward the artwork. “How would you feel about rubber-stamping some of the labels? It’s more personal than something printed by machine, because it’s imperfect, but you don’t have to draw it yourself, so it’s faster.”

  The girl’s face lit up. “Genius, Mom.”

  “Different color inks.”

  “Of course.”

  They looked at each other in delight.

  “Mom,” Willa announced, “you are rocking this candy thing in every way!”

  They hadn’t heard Mattie come into the room, but she was beside them.

  “How fast can you get a rubber stamp?” she teased. “Because my cousins told me they ran out of your candy again yesterday two hours before closing. The lollipops were gone by three o’clock.”

  “I don’t believe this.” Jennie was shocked. “Who would have expected …?”

  “It’s a good thing you’ve got your helpers here,” Mattie said, gesturing to Nan and Ellen, “because you should make twice as much brittle from now on and more of it in the tins. People like it and come back to buy in bigger quantities. I have had some people go away very unhappy when we had none left.”

  “Soon the booth itself won’t be big enough to sell it,” Ellen said in amusement, setting out the fortunes for the lollipops by color.

  Jennie wondered if that could be true, if there might come a day when she would have to find another outlet. She would sell the candy through the Fishers’ booth for as long as they would have her, but maybe she should also sell it in some other places.

  A sense of fear shot through her. She was reaching too far, too fast. She didn’t know what she was doing, she thought, when you got right down to it. Expanding might prove to be the last straw for Shep. It was all going to backfire somehow.

  Confused, she covered her eyes with one hand, listening to Willa explaining the details of boxing peanut brittle to her attentive audience. What surprised her was the quiet confidence in her daughter’s tone, a confidence Jennie had never heard. She looked over at Willa, realizing something wonderful had taken place, and it was all because of their collaboration on the candy. It occurred to her that this alone was reason e
nough to continue.

  Chapter 14

  Jennie answered the telephone to hear a delighted greeting from the person on the other end.

  “Michael?” she asked. “Is that you?”

  “Hey, it’s been too long,” he said. “How are you, J?”

  “Great, great.”

  She didn’t know if Shep and his brother had been in much contact over the seven months since their families’ disappointing Christmas dinner together. After that night, she had written him a note thanking him for the gift of money, but they hadn’t had an occasion to talk since.

  “How are Lydia and the kids?” she asked.

  “We’re all good. What I want to know is how you guys are making out.”

  He sounded genuinely interested. She wondered what had prompted this after so much seeming indifference.

  “Everybody’s finding their way,” she said, hoping that sounded positive.

  “What about you, you personally?”

  “Actually, I’m doing this little thing with Willa. We’re making and selling candy. Our own mini-empire.” She laughed.

  “That’s what Shep told me. Sounds like it’s going gangbusters. He’s super-proud of you.”

  She was speechless. Not only had her husband told his brother about her work, but he’d actually said he was proud of her? Impossible. He hadn’t said a single word to her about the business since their initial argument. As far as she could tell, he was pretending it wasn’t happening. Yet according to Michael, Shep was watching everything and feeling good about what she was doing.

  “So I have to taste some of what you’re selling,” her brother-in-law was saying. “Can I order it online?”

  “Online?” She laughed. “Honestly, Michael, we’re not really a big company. We sell at the market here.”

  “You don’t have to be big to sell online. In fact, that’s how you get big.”

  “Oh, come on. That’s a whole other thing.”

  “No, it isn’t. You set up a website. No big deal. Then you get your name out there.”

  “I hadn’t considered it, I guess.”

  “Go look at websites from other companies and see what kind you like. Then get a professional to design one for you. You want me to get you some names?”

  She smiled. He didn’t know about her secret weapon, Willa. Her daughter could come up with the ideas for it, and they would get someone to translate them into a site. “Maybe later, thanks, but I’m going to follow your advice. I really appreciate it.” She paused, lowering her voice in case anyone else in the house was nearby. “Just like I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me. That mon—”

  He jumped in. “Me? I haven’t done anything. So, is my brother around?”

  “I’ll get him.”

  She put down the phone, thinking how much she loved Michael, wishing he were back in their lives the way he used to be. Sticking her head into the living room, she found Shep sitting on the couch, reading a manual, and told him his brother was on the phone. As he got up, she looked at him with fresh eyes. He caught her staring and tilted his head.

  “What?”

  “Oh … nothing.”

  She wished she knew what to say. That she loved him and was sorry for the terrible words and silences that had passed between them. That he was a better man than she had been giving him credit for. The opportunity was lost as her husband walked by.

  She went upstairs to Willa’s room. Pausing outside the door, she heard her daughter’s voice, apparently in the middle of a one-sided conversation. She knocked, and there was a delay before an irritated command to come in. Jennie found her on the bed, shutting the cover of her laptop.

  “I thought you were on the phone,” she said to Willa.

  “I was talking to a kid in my class. On the computer,” she added in response to Jennie’s puzzled look. “Mom, you are so out of it. No one talks on the phone, ever.”

  “Oh, right. What was I thinking? A kid in your class …”

  “Yeah, a friend.”

  Jennie almost held her breath. Willa hadn’t said a word about making any friends at school, not once in all this time.

  “From last term? Will this person be starting high school with you next month?”

  “This person, as you so weirdly put it, is a girl, and yes, she’ll be in school with me. We kinda got friendly toward the end of the year, and we’ve been video-chatting.”

  Jennie decided to leave the subject alone, guessing that even one more question would be perceived as prying, and Willa would shut down. “I just got off the phone with Uncle Michael.”

  Sitting on the edge of the bed, she told Willa about his suggestion to sell their candy online. By the time she left the room, her daughter was back on her computer, looking at food websites.

  “I have to finish that logo design. Need that first …” she was muttering to herself as Jennie shut the door. “You realize we’re going to have to sell more types of candy!” she called out.

  A mini-mogul at thirteen, Jennie thought with a smile. About to turn fourteen, though, she reminded herself, in only a few weeks. As she went downstairs, Jennie considered what type of birthday cake to bake. Maybe they would invite this new friend over. The notion that her daughter might have found someone her own age to talk to made Jennie want to weep with joy.

  Shep and Tim quickly learned about the plans for a Got To Candy website. It would have been impossible for them not to, considering the time Jennie and Willa spent talking about it, and the sketches and printouts of design ideas lying around the house. Maybe it was seeing his mother and sister helping each other with such obvious enjoyment, but on Friday night, Tim offered to help his father out at the store the next day. His offer was greeted by a shocked silence from the other three members of his family, although Shep recovered quickly enough to accept, and in a casual tone, as if this weren’t the last thing he had ever anticipated hearing from his son.

  The two set off early the next morning, Shep in the truck, Tim on his bicycle. When Jennie heard her son come back in the house less than two hours later, she sighed, knowing that his early return didn’t bode well. His expression told her she was right.

  “He’s ridiculous!” Tim shouted, yanking open the refrigerator door and grabbing the container of milk. He slammed it down on the counter and grabbed a box of cookies from a cabinet. Then he took both to the kitchen table, where he shoved a cookie into his mouth and took a swig of milk directly from the plastic bottle.

  “Don’t do that.” Jennie reached for a glass to bring him.

  “He’s the most unreasonable …” Tim pounded his fist on the table.

  “Calm down,” she admonished him. “What on earth happened?”

  “He doesn’t want to bring that place into the twentieth century, forget the twenty-first century! I told him he needed to sell more stuff and get a website and a lot of other things that seemed super-obvious to me. He got all huffy and insulted, like I thought I knew better than he did. Which I do!”

  “Oh, dear,” she murmured. “Were there any customers at all?”

  “Yeah, plenty,” he said in annoyance as he chewed. “But he could have tons more.”

  She was encouraged to hear about the customers and only wished Shep had wanted to tell her himself that the business had picked up. Then she remembered that he had tried to tell her the day he found out about her candy business. He had said something about developing regular customers, or something along those lines. She hadn’t paid attention because they’d been arguing.

  Tim was still worked up over his father’s reluctance to listen. “You and Wilma are all over this stuff. Why is he so backward?”

  “To be fair, I didn’t even think of the website myself. It was a suggestion.”

  “But you took it, instead of being all pigheaded!”

  “We’re trying to take it. All we have is ideas. I don’t have a clue how to implement them.”

  “What do you mean?” He took another cookie, calming
down.

  “We’re coming up with a way we want it to look in a perfect world. But we don’t know how to set it up, and I doubt I can afford to pay anyone to do it.”

  He looked at her in surprise. “Mom, I can do it for you. Why didn’t you ask me?”

  “You? I didn’t know you could do something like that.”

  “It’s not hard. If I can’t do some pieces of it, I can get another kid at school to help me. There are lots of people who know how to set up websites.”

  “You have people to ask?” She’d never heard him discussing other kids at school.

  “Of course I do.” Annoyance flashed across his face. “You think I’m a total loser, don’t you?”

  “No, no, but it seems like you spend most of your free time with Peter Fisher.”

  “That’s not true. He’s a really different kind of kid, so I like him, but hey …” He got up, grabbing a handful of cookies to take with him. “Tell me when you’re ready, and I’ll do the website. Maybe someone here will appreciate what I can do.”

  As she replaced the milk in the refrigerator, she felt both thrilled that Tim could handle the last piece of the website puzzle, as well as unhappy that their last fight had been about her business and that he wanted to help her because he was back to fighting with his father. It also saddened her that Shep hadn’t drawn on their son’s talents. Tim was growing up, had turned sixteen the previous month, and was old enough to be taken seriously. He had made some suggestions about selling more accessories for serious bikers, and his ideas seemed pretty straightforward, but Shep was refusing help from anyone in any form. Willa also could have been of use to him, and he couldn’t have missed seeing that she had a flair for marketing things and enjoyed doing it. Her husband was truly, she thought, the most stubborn man in the world.