Bittersweet Bliss

by Ruth Glover

  George whistled soundlessly but said cautiously, “Do you think you might be making a mountain out of a molehill? Aren’t they old friends?”

  “It isn’t just the ride, George. Nor the fact that they spent the day together, ate together, seemed absorbed by each other. It’s the... the look on her face! Oh!” she stopped, frustrated, “I can’t put it into words. Unless you knew Vonnie and Tom too, you’d never understand what I mean. I know them both so well, George, and I see...”

  Words failed. Marfa—what with weariness and worry—was near tears.

  But Marfa was right. Vonnie’s blue eyes, so prone to change—from sympathy to superciliousness and back again, from fun to freezing, from concern to disdain—had glowed and sparkled all day, speaking louder than words. Her slender form, curved in Tom’s direction, swaying toward him, and the numerous light touches to his arm, his shoulder, his hand, had said volumes to the watching Marfa. Oh, yes, Vonnie’s very artlessness spoke of cunning.

  “Hey, hold on!” George said, hurrying to his wife’s side, putting his arms around her no matter who was looking, hugging her close. “Whatever it is you see, or tink you see, it’s not worth gedding upset about.”

  “Ellie and Tom,” Marfa sniffed against George’s plaid shirt, “have been special to one another ever since he and his family came to Bliss. Now—now something’s not right. I know it! And why? Something must have happened—”

  “But, sweetheart,” George said kindly, the “sweet” coming out as “sveet” in his broken English but no less dear to Marfa for that, “is it any of our business?”

  “Everything that matters to Ellie is my business, George Polchek!” Marfa, indignant, was as roused and ruffled as a mother hen. “And I can’t risk anyone but me telling her about what’s been going on today! How can I just go on home and say nothing? She’ll hear it from somebody and wonder why I kept silent!”

  With a small grin at her intensity, George loosed his wife and helped her up into the buggy.

  “You vin,” he said, climbing in beside her, picking up the reins and clucking to the horse. “But we bedder not waste any time.”

  Ellie had been restless all day. Unable to persuade her father to lie down or even stay in the house, she had watched him walk slowly to his workshop, had checked on him occasionally all day, had served the pseudo picnic at noon—a strangely dissatisfying meal, with neither of them having much to say—and turned from one task to another the rest of the time. Strangely, it felt like Sunday. Knowing it was a holiday for everyone else, Ellie felt a reluctance to dig in and do the day’s usual chores. Consequently, she puttered.

  Puttered and thought. Trudging dinner’s leftovers to the well, putting them in a pail, and lowering it to the small shelf provided below, she thought of other things. Sweeping a clean floor, with little or nothing to show for her efforts, she pondered the situation. Shunning the ever-necessary weeding of the garden and settling down to the mending of socks, she thought some more.

  Thundering through her head, tearing at her heart—her surprising pronouncement to Tom.

  The morning’s confrontation had surprised her as much as it had Tom, erupting without forethought or plan. The walk to her special place had been spontaneous; the words that had come tumbling from her mouth were startling. Had they been hidden in some inner place, fretting and troubling, gathering momentum over the days and years, and threatening explosion?

  Whatever possessed me—to do such a thing, to say such things, to be so decisive! With a yank Ellie pulled the wool through a hole in the sock stretched over her mother’s darning egg. And thought some more.

  And yet—whatever the prompting, the decision had a feeling of rightness about it. Having prayed about the nagging situation where an urgent Tom was concerned and her own sad sense of inadequacy, wanting to do the right thing, could it have been a matter of “open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it” (Ps. 81:10b)?

  Still, she couldn’t blame the Lord for it! Why then the small but settled conviction that she had acted more rightly than she knew?

  When her thoughts began to whirl—condemning, confirming; hurting, healing; regretful, relieved—Ellie cried out, “Oh, Lord! If there’s peace for me in this confusion, please help me find it!”

  A portion of that peace was immediately forthcoming, perhaps in fulfillment of the invitation and promise “Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee” (Ps. 55:22a). And though panic at her own actions and the imagined result of them threatened to overwhelm her from time to time, she fled to the prayer and the promise, and endured.

  She endured when the memory of Tom—the puzzled question in his eyes turning to blazing realization—came to haunt her. She endured when a picture of the future—unknown and empty—rose to taunt her. She endured when Marfa and George stopped by on their way from the picnic.

  She met them at the buggy. Looking up, her eyes sought Marfa’s. “Is it the baby?” she asked. “Is it time?”

  “It’s not the baby,” Marfa said, and there was no use trying to pretend; Ellie knew her too well. “I want to... need to talk to you, Ellie.”

  Silently now Ellie helped her friend from the buggy.

  “Dad’s in the shop, if you want to spend a few minutes with him,” Ellie said to George. “Or come in, if you wish.”

  “I’ll go talk with Bran,” George said, suiting action to words, stepping down, securing the horse, and turning in the direction of the farm buildings.

  “I have to watch the time,” Marfa said. “George needs to get home.”

  Ellie nodded. Pointing to a padded rocking chair, she directed her waddling friend to a seat.

  “What is it?” Ellie asked, attempting lightness but prepared for seriousness. Marfa never would have stopped by this late in the day if it weren’t important.

  “Have you and Tom had some sort of... falling out?” Marfa asked her bosom friend directly.

  So that’s it. Something had happened to spread the news. Possibly Tom himself, wrestling with anger as he had been when he left her, had shared with his good friends Marfa and Vonnie. Soon everyone would know; no doubt it was for the best.

  There was no beating around the bush with her closest friend. “Tom stopped by this morning to pick me up,” Ellie began. “And it all came rising up inside and came rolling out, almost in spite of me.”

  “All—?”

  “All my hesitations. All my fears. The impossibilities. The nightmares—”

  “The nightmares, Ellie?”

  “I’ve never told you about the nightmares, Marfa, not really, except to treat them lightly. You see—ever since the fire, ever since Aunt Tilda died, I’ve blamed myself—”

  “Oh, Ellie!” Marfa made a convulsive move toward her friend, as if to rise and rush to her, though she was just a couple of feet away.

  Ellie shook her head and put up her hand, palm out, stopping her. “I’m all right. It’s nothing new to me; twelve years is a long time. The thing is, Marfa, I feel so guilty, so responsible, that it seems to have, well, warped me in some way. Much as I think of Tom—and I do; I truly do!—I can’t seem to feel the love for him that a woman needs to marry. I see you and George, and I know how Tom feels. But I’m like a person set aside, seeing, and not participating. There’s no use pretending anymore. Tom is in his mid-twenties; he’s waited for ten years or more. I can’t, I simply can’t let him go on hoping when I can see no end in sight, no change in me, no change in the situation.

  “I had to,” she explained, turning hurt-filled eyes on her friend, “let him go. I had to make him... mad, so that he’d believe me. I had to make it definite.”

  “Well,” Marfa said with a very deep sigh, almost collapsing against the back of the chair, “that would explain it.”

  “Explain it? Did Tom see it, tell it, differently?” Ellie asked.

  “Tom said nothing.” Marfa found it hard going. It was all unbelievable; it was heart-wrenching; it needed to be talked about. But Marfa found it hard
to do.

  “Well then?” Ellie prompted.

  “Tom spent the day with Vonnie.” There! It was out. Marfa looked pleadingly at her friend, as though to ask forgiveness for the words she’d said.

  “Tom and Vonnie are friends, Marfa, just as Tom and you are friends—”

  “Listen to me, Ellie. Tom and Vonnie were... were together today. All day.”

  Marfa’s simple words, along with the emphasis of her voice and the desperation of her eyes, told the story very clearly. Ellie drew a long breath.

  “I see,” she said. And she did. Tom, weary of waiting, hurt and now hopeless, had reacted, and acted.

  But that he had turned so quickly, so readily, to someone else—Ellie hadn’t been prepared for it. And to Vonnie! It seemed now, to Ellie, that Vonnie had ever and always been there on the outer edge of Ellie’s and Tom’s relationship, her narrow blue eyes speculative on Tom, patient on Tom.

  “I can’t blame him, Marfa,” Ellie said, and she firmed her voice to reflect the firming of her spirit. “After all, I can’t expect anything else. I’ve set him free; he’s got to go on and live his own life. And I’ll live with it; I’ll just have to live with it. It’s the closing of a door.”

  That night the nightmare came again. Creeping upon her like fog, silent, insidious, it spread its evil tentacles around her sleeping mind and through her somnolent soul, smothering her with its smoke before ever it flickered into flame. Engulfing her in a fury of fire before she could fight free.

  Gasping, fighting for her life, Ellie struggled into wakefulness. Fortunately, her father, still curiously “not himself,” had not been roused.

  This time, there wasn’t even the glimmer of a moon through the window. All, all was darkness, inside and out.

  It was all too much: the burden, the guilt; the meaningless life—behind and before; the loss of Tom, making her more truly alone than ever; the shattering report of his near-instant rapport with Vonnie.

  Ellie stuffed the pillow into her mouth, stilling her chattering teeth, while the tears ran—tears of fright, tears of hopelessness, tears of desperation.

  And once again—prayer, the lifeline that was a single fragile cobweb heavenward throughout the pointlessness of her days and the apprehensions of her nights:

  Oh, God—help me! Hold on to me; never let me go! Bring me out of this living nightmare and set me free!

  Numb with shock, Birdie stood at the door momentarily, the envelope in her hand. Behind her, Lydia was stiffly maneuvering her cumbersome way out of the wagon, and Herbert was helping.

  “Hold on,” he was saying, followed by “Let go,” while Lydia fussed and fiddled and made numerous abortive attempts to get herself down from the high wagon bed and do it in a ladylike way. Finally she did indeed “let go,” falling into the arms of her portly husband. Herbert, plucky to the end, staggered but kept upright.

  “Either we’ll have to be more agile,” he grunted, “or they’ll need to redesign these modes of conveyance. Maybe some sort of an automatic lift...”

  Lydia, righting herself, patted him fondly. “Not in our time, old dear. Maybe we should cart a ladder with us everywhere we go; ever think of that? Now if you’ll just reach for those boxes, I’ll help carry them inside.”

  With a start, Birdie snapped from her frozen stance at the door. Quickly she turned the knob, anxious now to get inside and destroy the envelope before Herbert and Lydia were there to observe the strange act of burning an unopened letter.

  For open it she would not. She had had enough of this foolishness. Hurrying across the linoleum to the kitchen range and preparing to thrust the envelope inside, Birdie realized the fire was out, and the envelope would not burn as she longed to see it do. No, it would only lie glaringly apparent on the grate when Herbert, any moment now, made a fire for the evening needs. Birdie intended to make no explanations.

  Hearing Lydia’s footsteps on the porch, Birdie turned toward the stairs and her room, the letter clutched against her body, away from Lydia’s vision should she be inclined to look her way.

  Closing the door to her room behind her, Birdie slowly lifted the envelope until she could see it clearly. Since it had been hand delivered, there was no stamp. Like the others it was addressed to Miss Bernadine Wharton. But this time the troublesome t was in its proper place in Saskatchewan. This was no surprise; of course it would be; she herself had drawn the misspelled word to the attention of that big, bungling boy Harold Buckley, perhaps the last thing she had taught him.

  But Buck, according to his mother, had been gone from Bliss for over a week. How then had he managed this? A terrible foreboding presented itself: Perhaps there was some sort of alliance of boys diabolically devoted to harassing her—but that was foolish speculation. She rejected the suspicious thought and, almost with loathing, threw the envelope from her. It would take some maneuvering, but she’d find a way and a time to burn it. Silently she vowed she would never give the writer the satisfaction of reading his wretched message.

  Turning to the washstand, Birdie poured water from the pitcher into the bowl, wrung out a cloth, and dabbed at her forehead, her flushed cheeks, her wrists.

  What a miserable end to a pleasant day! Well on the way to making a few associations that could spell the difference between just living in Bliss or becoming a part of Bliss... having taken a step in the direction of getting to know folks other than on a parent-teacher level...finding pleasure in small talk that had no connection whatsoever to school and children, this had happened.

  It had been interesting, at the picnic, to observe the families whose children she had taught. At times she could clearly see a connection, a similarity in behavior, seeds in the parent that might bring forth certain growth in the child. She felt she would better understand her pupils, recognizing why they behaved as they did, why they were what they were.

  The Nikolai children, for instance, so independent yet so clannish. They had little individual attention from their parents and must have learned early on to make their own decisions and to look after themselves. Yet at school they stood together as a unit, defending each other, the older ones looking after the younger ones.

  Ernie Battlesea, an only child and continually under his mother’s watchful eye and restrictive thumb. No wonder he relished his freedom at school until he could almost be said to be out of control. Now Birdie understood, and she knew she could have more patience with the explosive little boy next year.

  Victoria Dinwoody—whose prim little mouth would never soil itself by uttering a gee or a golly and who reproached those who did (what a little prig she was!)—walked and talked decorously when in her mother’s line of vision, only to pinch a bottom on the sly here and there, or “accidentally” trip a fellow competitor in a race.

  And then there was Nelman—Little Tiny. Over-large, to be sure, but filled with boyish enthusiasm and an energy not suspected. Perhaps that bunglesome body was not so much fat as bone and muscle; certainly it appeared so in his father, whom he strongly resembled. Birdie had watched Little Tiny with interest in a setting other than the schoolroom. Somehow she was not surprised to see him wait patiently for little Ernie Battlesea when the boys all took off for the lake and Ernie lagged, almost weeping, in the rear. She saw him receive a bowl of ice cream, only to hand it over to bent and aging Grandma Jurgensen, who was having trouble standing in line. She saw him, time and again, run to his father’s side, look up, smile, say something, and dash off again to play.

  And again, as previously, Birdie’s heart had panged for the sweetness and the sadness of certain memories.

  Big Tiny—Wilhelm Kruger—now there was a surprise if ever she had encountered one. Seeming such an oversized mass of manhood, he was remarkably fine-tuned. For such a mountain of incipient energy and force, he was amazingly controlled, like a powerful engine throttled to a mild and manageable hum. For one so massive, his movements were precise, bordering on delicacy—a pussycat of a man parading as a tiger. The man who had expressed
an interest in learning was certainly as given to mind as to muscle.

  Birdie’s evaluation of the day and its people ceased abruptly when her gaze fell again on the bed and the envelope, innocent enough in appearance but like a coiled rattlesnake ready to inject its venom.

  Prompted by anger and pain, Birdie snatched it up. About to rip it in half and tear it to shreds, she paused: The end of the story was not yet written; the last word had not been spoken. There would come a day when its pages would shout, “Wicked tormenter!”There would come a day when the letter itself would unveil and disclose the evil behind the deed. She was so sure of it that she almost wished she had kept the first two, with their evidence of the mean heart of the writer. Anonymous letters—as low as a human being could sink.

  Thoughtfully she turned once again to the chiffonier. Here, in one of its drawers, she laid the incriminating letter. Turning the key, she drew a deep breath, noting only then that she was trembling.

  That’s that! And just as certainly as she locked the chiffonier drawer, she put a lock on all thoughts of the envelope and its cruel intentions.

  Now for a good summer! Buck was gone; there’d be no more foolishness.

  Work. Housework, yard work, farm work. Hard as it was and unremitting, it could be a blessing as well as a burden, a panacea as well as an endless pressure. Perhaps it was even a godsend.

  Blessing, panacea, godsend—work, for Ellie that summer, was all of those.

  As with all homestead children, Ellie had taken her place in the family work pattern at an early age. Before school age, boys and girls alike had the task of filling the wood box, hunting up broody hens and getting them back into the hen house, going for the cows at milking time. They learned to identify weeds in the garden and to pull them carefully, already well aware of the necessity to preserve the food supply for the dreaded winter months. At six or seven they milked their first cow, carrying pails so large and full they flopped painfully against their shins; equally large pails of water were trudged into the house for the reservoir, and pails of slop were lugged out of the house to the pigs.