Her Restless Heart

by Barbara Cameron

  "I'm not interested in Jacob," Mary Katherine told Naomi. "I was polite. Nothing more."

  "You were gone a long time." Anna glanced up and batted her eyelashes. "That must have been some walk."

  Mary Katherine walked over to the window and looked out. "We ran into Daniel—" she stopped and looked at Anna.

  "I haven't talked to Daniel," Anna said quickly.

  Nodding, Mary Katherine glanced out the window again. "Daniel and Jacob hadn't eaten, so I sat with them and had some tea."

  Frowning, she walked over to her loom, sat down, and placed her feet on the treadle. Picking up the shuttle, she ran her fingers over the smooth wood. She touched the fibers that were the color of the ocean and began weaving the shuttle in and out, back and forth, and felt peace settling over her as she sat in her favorite place in the world.

  "You were with two handsome men?"

  "Anna, enough teasing!" Leah said sternly.

  "Yes, Grossmudder."

  Mary Katherine felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up.

  "Are you allrecht, liebschen?" her grandmother asked, her blue eyes filled with concern.

  "I'm fine." She looked over her design for a moment.

  "Did Jacob say something to upset you?"

  She shook her head.

  "Daniel?"

  She shook her head again.

  "Then—?"

  "I'm sure they'll be very happy together," Mary Katherine muttered.

  Naomi's scissors clattered to the table. "Are you saying that Jacob and Daniel uh—um, don't like women?" she stammered, and her face went as scarlet as a rotrieb.

  Mary Katherine laughed, and then she sighed. "Nee. I doubt they think about women much. Farming holds too much of their hearts."

  The bell over the door jingled merrily as someone opened it. Mary Katherine glanced over and was surprised to see Daniel and Jacob entering the shop.

  Anna greeted Daniel with a smile and after speaking with him a moment, led him to a display of yarns. Mary Katherine remembered that he'd said he wanted to get a gift for his mother.

  Jacob stood by the front counter and looked over at Mary Katherine with that intense look of his.

  "He seems very interested in you," Leah murmured.

  "It doesn't matter," Mary Katherine said, pulling her gaze from him and returning to her weaving. "I told you. He's in love with farming."

  Leah stared at her, perplexed. "There's something wrong with farming? Your father is a farmer."

  Then she paused. "Oh, I see the problem," she said slowly.

  "Do you?" asked Mary Katherine. She stopped and stared at the multi-colored pattern on the loom before her, wishing she could find one for her own life. Lifting her gaze, she looked into her grandmother's eyes. "Do you?"

  3

  The shop door swung open and shut so quickly the bell over it gave a funny clanging noise as a man stepped inside the shop.

  Mary Katherine glanced up from her seat at her loom and her heart sank.

  "Your grossmudder in the back?" he asked in a brusque tone.

  She nodded and watched him walk toward the back of the store, then open the door and shut it firmly behind him. It took a couple of minutes before she could return to her work. Even then her hands shook, and she fumbled with the pattern and had to redo half an inch.

  The store was so quiet she could hear the tick-tock of the clock. Or was it the beat of her heart?

  The bell rang merrily again, and when Mary Katherine looked over, she saw Naomi and Anna stroll in, arm in arm, their faces lit with laughter.

  They stopped when they saw Mary Katherine and rushed over.

  "What is it? What's the matter?" Naomi asked, taking Mary Katherine's hand in hers.

  "Did we get robbed?"

  Naomi elbowed Anna. "Oh stop! You're such a drama queen!"

  With her free hand, she pulled up a chair and sat beside Mary Katherine. "If we'd been robbed she wouldn't be sitting here at her loom. She'd be chasing the crook down the sidewalk."

  "I wish I were as brave as you think I am," Mary Katherine said through stiff lips.

  "Your hand is cold as ice. What's upsetting you?" Anna wanted to know as she drew a chair up on the other side of her cousin.

  Before Mary Katherine could speak, the door leading to the rear of the store opened and the man strode out, giving them a stern glance as he walked to the door, and then, just as he was about to exit, he turned and looked back at Mary Katherine. He opened his mouth and then hesitated.

  Scowling, he wrenched open the door, letting in a blast of cold air, then left, shutting the door behind him with a bang. The bell jangled from the wind and the movement.

  Mary Katherine shivered and gathered her shawl closer around her shoulders.

  "Well, and hello to you, too," Anna muttered.

  "Don't be rude," Naomi told her.

  "Me? He's the one who's rude. He didn't even stop to say a word to us!" Anna exclaimed, indignant. "Why does he have to act so unfriendly?"

  Mary Katherine frowned. "How should I know? I think he's always been grumpy." She rubbed her cold hands and turned her attention to her loom.

  "Didn't he come to talk to you?"

  Swallowing at the lump in her throat, Mary Katherine shook her head.

  Leah walked into the room, carrying a box. "Oh, good, you're back," she said to Naomi and Anna.

  Then she glanced at Mary Katherine. "Did your dat leave already?"

  "Ya."

  "He didn't even say hello to us," Anna told her. She glanced at Mary Katherine, then at her grandmother. "I don't think he said a word to her."

  Setting the box down on the counter next to the cash register, Leah crossed the room. "Is that true?"

  Nodding, Mary Katherine kept her eyes on the steadily growing length of material in front of her. Focus on the waves, she told herself. Blue, blue, blue waves rolling out, rolling in. Peace. Serenity. Breathe in, breathe out.

  Naomi, always sensitive to the moods of others, touched her arm. "So he said nothing to you?"

  She shook her head. "He came to see Grossmudder." She couldn't look at her. If her grandmother wanted her to know why he'd come today—if her father had wanted her to know— one of them would have told her. So she stared at her weaving, determined not to let it hurt that he hadn't even acknowledged her.

  "But you're his daughter," Anna declared. She put her hands on her hips. "Since when does a father walk by his daughter and not say a word?"

  "He nodded," Mary Katherine said through stiff lips. She put down the shuttle and stood. "I'll be right back."

  Her grandmother reached out to touch her arm, but Mary Katherine rushed past, slipped into the restroom, and shut the door.

  She clutched at the cold porcelain sink and stared at her reflection in the mirror. "I am not going to cry. I am not going to cry." She didn't. But her lips quivered and she had to blink again and again.

  "Mary Katherine?" her grandmother called through the door. "Are you allrecht?"

  "I'm fine! I'll be right out!"

  She tore off a section of paper towel, wet it with cool water, and pressed it to her cheeks. When she felt composed, she threw the towel in the wastepaper basket and opened the door.

  Her grandmother stood there, her hands folded at her waist, and regarded her with sympathy. "I'm sorry that he hurt your heart."

  Mary Katherine held up a hand. "I'm fine. Really. I know he's never going to change." She started to walk past her grandmother.

  "And you?"

  She stopped and turned. "Me? Why do I need to change?" Leah tilted her head and studied her. "Just because he doesn't understand you doesn't mean you can't forgive him."

  "You want me to forgive him." Her voice was flat.

  "I want you to want to forgive him."

  Mary Katherine laughed but the sound held no humor. "He turned his back on me when I wanted to come here and work at the shop."

  "I know. But you can forgive someone who doesn't know better, c
an't you?"

  "I tried," Mary Katherine whispered. "I tried."

  "I know." Leah regarded her with kind eyes. "Sometimes it takes two people. Actually, most of the time it takes two."

  "He'll never change," Mary Katherine blurted out.

  "Never say never."

  With that, she left the room, going out into the shop, leaving Mary Katherine to stand there staring after her.

  Mary Katherine heard her name just as she started back into the shop from the back room.

  She knew eavesdroppers never heard good about themselves. But she couldn't help herself. She stopped at the door, peered around it, and listened.

  "Naomi?"

  "Ya?"

  "You don't think . . ."

  Naomi looked up from stitching on her latest quilt. "Think what?"

  "You don't think Onkel Isaac ever hurt Mary Katherine, do you?"

  Naomi pressed her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide with shock. "Oh, no, he wouldn't—"

  "No, he wouldn't," Mary Katherine said, coming into the room. "He never raised a hand to me."

  "No, he just uses his words. And his cold shoulders."

  "Anna, don't be so judgmental," Naomi chided.

  The bell jangled as the door opened.

  Mary Katherine smiled as a little girl who looked to be about six came to stand by her and stare at her loom.

  "Sally, don't bother the lady."

  "It's no bother," Mary Katherine told the child's mother. She continued sending her shuttle in and out of the warp she'd set up on the loom.

  The little girl watched, rapt. Mary Katherine smiled at her.

  "Would you like to try it?"

  Sally nodded. Mary Katherine lifted her to sit on her lap, gave her the shuttle, and helped guide it through the colored strands. She worked the treadle and enjoyed how excited the child became as she learned how to weave.

  "That's a beautiful piece you're making," the other woman said. "How long does it take to make?"

  They chatted until Sally complained that her hands were tired. Her mother lifted her from Mary Katherine's lap and set her on her feet.

  "I'm not through shopping yet," she warned her daughter.

  "I have just the thing," Mary Katherine said. She walked to a display, found the small wooden potholders one of her male cousins carved, and invited Sally to sit at a child-sized table so she could demonstrate how to use it.

  "Have you ever made a potholder?" she asked Sally.

  "I'm not sure she knows what one is," her mother confessed, looking embarrassed. "I don't cook much."

  Mary Katherine didn't know how anyone managed to get by without cooking—or why they would want to—but she pulled out the plastic bag of fabric loops and strung them on the loom.

  Sally looked at the box. "Aunt Betty has one of these things. She uses them to keep from getting burned when she gets something out of the oven."

  "That's right," Mary Katherine agreed, and she smiled. "They're good whether you use a regular oven or a microwave."

  Sally's forehead puckered. "You don't use microwaves, right? Because you don't have 'lectricity?"

  "That's right. Here, now you try weaving one of these loops through this way."

  Sally watched, and then she took a loop and performed the same action, biting her bottom lip as she concentrated on what she was doing.

  The woman smiled when she looked up. "You're so good with her." She glanced at Mary Katherine's left hand. "Do you have children?"

  "I'm not married."

  "I thought the Amish married young."

  Mary Katherine shook her head. "Many of us are getting married later. Just like I heard the Englisch are doing."

  "Englisch. Sounds so strange being called that." She nodded. "I was thirty before I got married. I think you know yourself better when you get married later."

  She looked around the shop. "I'd like to get some kind of craft to do but I'm not up to a quilt. I have a job outside the home, so I don't have much leisure time."

  "Every woman should have something she enjoys doing every day," Mary Katherine told her. "Even if all you can find is just fifteen minutes to yourself."

  The woman eyed a quilt that was displayed on a wall. "You can't do that in fifteen minutes a day."

  "You don't get it done in a week, but you can get it done. Are you interested in quilting?"

  "I'm not sure what I'd like to do. You have so much here it's almost overwhelming."

  "If you have a few minutes, we can help you."

  "That'd be great." She looked over at her daughter, who was absorbed in making a potholder, and once assured that she wasn't needed, she walked around the shop with Mary Katherine.

  "I'm Ellen," she introduced herself, and Mary Katherine did the same. "I have a quilt my grandmother made for me before she died. I've always wanted to try it."

  "Let me show you some of our kits for people who want to do that," Mary Katherine said with a smile.

  Quilting was so many things here in Paradise, Mary Katherine reflected. Women sewed them in the evenings to make something to warm their families or to sell to add to the family income. Groups of women of all ages gathered for quilting circles to chat and work together on quilts for auction. Local women came into the shop for their supplies, and some of them taught classes for Stitches in Time.

  And the Englisch loved to visit and buy locally while they played tourist. Naomi especially loved to hear the stories about how someone wanted to try to make a quilt; usually a customer said it was because their grandmother had made one for them. It gave her hope, she said, that the tradition would be passed down in the Englisch world. Too many of these women came in appearing so stressed, looking for something that would slow them down and give them something creative to do—rather than spend all their time away from their work and family responsibilities doing even more work.

  "Quilt in a Day?" Ellen said dubiously. "I could only do that if I actually had an entire day. At most, I have a spare half hour every evening while we watch television. And I'm such an over-doer as it is, I'm afraid I'd just stress and try to do it all in one session and end up making myself nuts."

  "I wouldn't take that one," Mary Katherine said, taking the kit from her and putting it back. "You know, most of the women I know who make quilts here don't try to do it all in one session, however long. After all, so many women here hold jobs, or, even if they're staying at home to take care of their kinner, they have a number of young ones and don't have the time, either. I think this would be a better choice," she said, putting a different kit in Ellen's hands.

  "This one has you doing a small section whenever you can. You just set the quilt blocks aside, and when you've done them all, you can put it together on a day when you have more time. And the material is all cut out for you."

  Ellen studied the kit. "Looks a lot more manageable. I think the toughest part will be picking out which kit to buy . . ."

  "Get this one, Mommy," Sally told her, holding out the kit that featured a picture of a pink-toned quilt. "You can make it for my bed."

  "It's decided," Ellen said with a grin. She handed the kit to Mary Katherine. "I'll take that one. Maybe if it turns out well, I'll try something harder next time."

  "Have fun with it," Mary Katherine urged. "Don't rush, don't try to be perfect."

  She hesitated for a moment and then, seeing how friendly the woman was, added, "I think of quilting like I do raising a child. You know how everyone says enjoy your children while they're little because they grow up so fast? Well, don't rush the making of your quilt. It's meant to be something to enjoy, to relax and be creative with."

  Ellen glanced over at Sally and looked thoughtful. "I never appreciated how true that is about kids. It seems like yesterday that she was born."

  She walked over and glanced out the window. "My husband decided he didn't want to come inside. Bet he's sorry now that he's had to sit on a bench outside and wait in the cold for us."

  Mary Katherine remembered how
years ago Hannah, a friend of hers who taught classes for the shop, had brought in Chris, a man she'd just met, and he'd clearly looked uncomfortable in the female-oriented atmosphere. Now Chris was her husband and he stopped by every so often to pick up supplies for Hannah when she couldn't come to town because she was busy taking care of their two kinner.

  "Look what I did!" Sally exclaimed, showing Mary Katherine how she'd woven the potholder.

  "Almost done," Mary Katherine said with a smile. She showed Sally how to finish off the edges of the potholder and watched as the child did it with great absorption.

  "I made it all by myself!" Sally exclaimed, then she looked at Mary Katherine. "Well, almost by myself. You helped."

  "It turned out so pretty," Mary Katherine told her.

  Sally looked up at her mother. "Can we buy it?"

  "You don't have to," Mary Katherine rushed to tell the mother. "She's welcome to take the potholder home, but it wasn't my intention to try to make you buy the loom."

  Sally's mother brushed aside Mary Katherine's concern as she took out her wallet. "I know that. But she's had such fun, and it's so nice to see that with all the high-tech things kids play with these days, she enjoyed herself."

  "One of my male cousins enjoys making them." She slid the loom inside the box and reached under the counter for another bag of fabric loops to include. Such looms could be found in metal but Mary Katherine liked the homey touch of the wooden ones.

  "It's so nice the way Amish families are so close," the woman told her as she handed over money for her purchases.

  Mary Katherine tried not to wince. If only the woman had seen how one Amish father had behaved toward his daughter just minutes earlier, she thought.

  She put the quilt kit in a brown paper shopping bag and tied a length of fabric on the handle, then bagged Sally's loom and did the same with a strip of fabric with a child's print.

  "Thank you, lady, I had fun," Sally told her.

  Her mother beamed at her daughter and nodded her approval. Then she turned to Mary Katherine. "We both had fun here. I'll be sure to tell my friends to look up your store when they visit. It's become a very popular vacation destination, you know. Visiting an Amish community."