AR01 - A Road Unknow

by Barbara Cameron

  “Well, of course it is,” he said, staring at her with a frown of confusion. Then after a moment, the frown cleared. “Oh, I see. Well, I’m sure you’ll spend it wisely.”

  Chuckling, she nodded. “Ya. On luxuries like my share of the rent and something called utilities. I can’t wait to tell Paula!” She pushed the bird toward him. “I’m buying this. I get an employee discount, right?”

  He smiled at her. “Of course. So you like sparrows, eh?”

  Elizabeth counted out the money and insisted on wrapping it in tissue herself and tucking it into a store bag. The little bird would sit on the desk in her room and be a reminder to her how God provided.

  She said good night to him and walked out of the store. She’d just gotten paid. And she had a day off tomorrow. Now she felt like skipping. A day off with nothing to do. Imagine. What did people do on a day off? She’d never had one. There were always chores to do on an Amish farm. Cooking to be done. Babies to be cared for. What would she do with herself tomorrow?

  Paula pulled up just as she walked outside. She could ask her about what to do on a day off although she didn’t think Paula did a lot of relaxing because she was attending school and doing something called a clinical at the hospital several days a week. Well, she’d figure it out.

  Saul watched Elizabeth get in Paula’s car and drive away. He looked around and saw Bruce walking toward a car. He must have waited outside for a last chance to talk to Elizabeth, Saul mused.

  The other man had the easy, confident walk of an Englischman—like he didn’t have a care in the world. He’d overheard Elizabeth telling Bruce she couldn’t go out with him that night. Evidently, the rejection hadn’t bothered Bruce.

  As he nodded at his driver and got into the van for the drive home, Saul wondered why Bruce was interested in Elizabeth. Not that he didn’t have good reason, of course. She was pretty and very sweet.

  But Saul hadn’t heard good things about why Englisch guys dated Amish girls. And he cared about her too much to see her hurt.

  He had some thinking to do.

  “You’re kind of quiet tonight,” his mother said as she served him a second bowl of stew. Then she passed him the plate of cornbread.

  “Everything okay at the store?” his father asked.

  Saul nodded and took a sip of water. “We had a really good day today. Maybe later we should talk about Christmas inventory.”

  “No work talk at the supper table!” Waneta admonished. “We run the store, the store doesn’t run us!”

  His parents made a great team, but his mamm got the last word at the supper table, insisting it was family time. And since she was the heart of the home, they listened.

  “I’m picking Elizabeth up for church this Sunday,” Saul said casually after there had been silence for a few minutes. “Just wanted to let you know so you won’t be surprised.”

  His parents exchanged a look.

  “I just thought she might like to attend,” Saul said. “It doesn’t seem to me she’s ready to give up being Amish. I thought inviting her might make her feel more comfortable.”

  “I wonder if her family is related to Matthew Bontrager? Samuel, didn’t one of Matthew’s great-uncles move to Goshen back in, oh, the ’40s?”

  Samuel nodded. “You’ll have to introduce them Sunday, Saul.”

  “Good idea.” He polished off his cornbread and cleared the dinner plates, so his mother could cut slices of her sour cream chocolate cake.

  He found himself thinking about Elizabeth’s remark earlier in the day about her check belonging to her. Many Amish children contributed a portion of their paychecks to the family when they continued to live at home. It sounded like Elizabeth had done it, too—maybe more—and was happy to have it for herself. She didn’t strike him as selfish. And if she lived with a roommate now, she certainly needed all of her check.

  Saul contributed a portion of his check to his parents for room and board. And considering how much he ate, he didn’t think they were making money on him.

  “Something funny?” Samuel asked, breaking into Saul’s thoughts.

  “Not really.”

  They heard a knock on the door. Saul went to the door and welcomed in their next-door neighbor.

  “I’ll come back and do the dishes,” he promised and Waneta nodded and began talking with the neighbor. They settled at the kitchen table and he and his father took their mugs of coffee into the den.

  “About those orders,” he said.

  His father cast a wistful look at his armchair and newspaper. “We have to do this tonight?”

  “You know we do. A wise man once told me to look ahead.”

  “And you listened too well,” his mother said, startling Saul as she entered the room. “You think too much about work lately. Go do something else.”

  “Like what?”

  She shook her head. “You’ve done nothing since you came back from visiting Lavina. Go take a walk or something. Visit a friend. Shoo!” she said, flapping her hands.

  Saul cast a look at his father, but the man was nodding.

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll go take a walk.”

  “Gut,” his father told him.

  “You’re only agreeing with her because you want to read your paper. I guess you’ll help her with the dishes, since I offered.”

  His mother brightened. “Right. Come on, Samuel. I’ll wash and you can dry.”

  Saul grinned as he headed for the door. It would serve to teach his father not to join forces with his mother against him.

  Grabbing his jacket, he stepped outside and felt how the temperature had cooled. He pulled his collar up around his neck and shoved his hands in his pockets. His mother was right. She usually was. He knew he’d been working too hard and not getting out much. When he thought about it, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d done anything with his best friend. He’d spent too much time courting Lavina and neglected him. It was time he fixed that.

  A buggy rolled past on the road and a neighbor who lived a few houses away waved at him. “Need a ride?” he called.

  Saul shook his head. “Enjoying a walk, thanks!”

  The buggy reminded Saul he should see if his needed cleaning before Sunday. A man should pick up a woman in a buggy that wasn’t dusty or needed attention whether she was a friend or a woman you hoped would become your fraa.

  The sun’s rays turned the low-lying clouds rosy pink and gold, signaling the night would turn cooler. Dusk fell and the gentle glow of gas lamps and battery-powered lights shone in windows. Families settled in for the night.

  And Saul suddenly felt the pang of loneliness in his heart. He looked away from the homes, turned back in the direction of his own and trudged home.

  Elizabeth woke at her usual time and started to bound out of bed as usual.

  Then she remembered: it was her day off.

  Her day off! She breathed in the wonder of it and savored the feeling of lying abed. She’d always secretly envied the princesses in the storybooks she read as a girl and always felt like Cinderella toiling while her stepsisters enjoyed a life of leisure. It wasn’t helped by the fact Mary, the second oldest, never seemed to want to help at home.

  This must be what it felt like.

  She drifted back to sleep for a few minutes, but years of rising early and being dutiful and hard-working—and Amish to the bone—had made her feel lazy lying in bed.

  So she compromised by getting up, pulling on her robe, and going to the kitchen to quietly make herself a pot of coffee.

  Paula staggered out, bleary eyed and yawning a half hour later.

  “I smelled something amazing,” she mumbled as she hauled herself into a bar stool. Elizabeth turned from the stove to hand her a mug of coffee. “Are you making blueberry pancakes?”

  Little bubbles formed at the edges of one of the pancakes. Elizabeth nudged at it with a spatula then expertly flipped it over.

  “I have a day off, remember? So I’m fixing pancakes for us.�
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  “Awesome.” She slid off the stool and got the maple syrup.

  Elizabeth flipped a pancake, then another, onto a plate and set it before Paula. She did the same with two for herself and joined her at the island.

  “Mmm,” Paula said, rolling her eyes as she put the first bite of pancake in her mouth. “So, what are your plans today, oh Lady of Leisure?”

  She laughed. “I don’t know. What does someone do with a day off?”

  Paula stopped chewing a bite of pancake. “You’re serious?”

  “Very much. I have no idea what I’ll do with it. Maybe clean the apartment and—”

  “Don’t you dare! You should have fun.” She tilted her head and considered Elizabeth. “Do you know how to have fun?” She clapped a hand to her mouth. “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that! It sounds so critical!”

  “It’s okay. I guess we do look pretty serious to outsiders,” Elizabeth told her. “But we do know how to have fun. We even know how to turn work into a work frolic and have fun.” She hoped she didn’t sound defensive; she knew Paula was teasing.

  “Promise me you’ll do something to have fun today. I’ll be home by four and if you haven’t got plans with Bruce we can go to dinner or a movie or something.”

  “That would be great. Or as the Amish here say, wunderbaar.”

  Paula started to pick up her empty plate, but Elizabeth shooed her off to get dressed. She found Paula’s travel mug and filled it with coffee, adding the milk and diet sweetener her roommate liked, and set it on the table by the front door next to the bowl for their keys.

  “Thank you!” Paula called, saluting Elizabeth with the mug as she opened the door. “Be thinking of what you want to do when I come home!”

  Then the apartment became quiet. Elizabeth hummed as she loaded the dishwasher. She poured the dishwasher soap into the dispenser but only a few grains of the stuff fell into it. Sighing, she threw the empty box into the kitchen trash can and wrote “dishwasher soap” on the grocery list on the refrigerator. Paula had a habit of putting almost-empty things like cartons of juice and soda bottles back in the refrigerator. She didn’t know why, but figured it was just one of Paula’s quirks.

  She looked around the kitchen and spied the bottle of dishwashing liquid sitting on the sink. It should work. She poured some into the place where you put the powder dishwashing stuff, snapped the lid on it and closed the dishwasher door. A push of a button and the dishes were soon getting washed without any work. She’d never minded washing dishes but this certainly made things easy.

  More time to enjoy a day off . . .

  She walked into the bathroom to brush her teeth and saw the bottle of bubble bath sitting on the edge of the tub. Paula loved relaxing in a bubble bath, but Elizabeth had never had time for one. Back home in Goshen, she was lucky if she got to take a quick shower with just the one bathroom and so many other people in the family.

  But there was time on a day off. She started the water running and wandered back to the kitchen. A cup of tea in the tub sounded like pure luxury.

  That’s when she saw the bubbles pouring from the dishwasher.

  Screeching in alarm, she ran into the room, slipped and slid into the counter. Rubbing her hip, she frantically punched the stop button and then turned to grab several dishtowels from a drawer. She threw them down and mopped up the excess water, wringing them out in the sink several times.

  Walking carefully so she wouldn’t slip again, she got the mop and quickly mopped the floor. Oh well, the job was done for another week.

  Then she heard running water. The bathtub! Clutching the mop, she ran for the bathroom and found the water slipping over the side. She sloshed through the water and turned off the spigot. Once again, she found herself mopping. When she finished she returned the mop to the storage closet in the kitchen and sagged against the door. The morning wasn’t over and she felt exhausted. Well, it had been a morning full of water. She might as well go sit in some of it.

  So, she fixed a cup of tea and went to soak in the tub, reveling in the vanilla-scented bubbles. Candles sat on the edge of the tub, but she decided not to light them after her misadventures.

  She reluctantly got out of the tub and toweled dry after her toes and fingertips turned pruny. No need to get dressed yet. She wrapped up in her robe and wandered back into the living room.

  What now? Paula had teased her calling her a lady of leisure. Television was a favorite leisure activity of the Englisch. Elizabeth had watched a few shows with Paula, but since Paula had to study so often the television usually got turned off early.

  She plopped down on the sofa and spent the next ten minutes figuring out the remote. Paula had shown her how, but there had been so much to learn about this way of life, she’d forgotten.

  After she learned how to start the television, she pressed the control and flipped through the channels. Oh, the things she saw. Commercials for sexy underwear she’d never known existed. Shows with couples arguing and someone seeming to urge them to do more . . . someone who called himself a counselor. And, oh my—couples taking off their clothes. She quickly changed the channel and found a show about puppies on Animal Planet.

  A little while later she realized she was hungry. She didn’t want to eat too much because she and Paula were planning to go out, so she found a can of soup, opened it, and put it in a pan on the stove. Paula had shown her how to use the microwave but she didn’t feel comfortable with the appliance and besides, she’d put the soup in a metal pan before she thought about it and it couldn’t go into the microwave.

  So many new things to learn. So much to remember. She found herself wondering what was happening back home and decided to go check the mail. Maybe her mother had gotten her letter and answered her. She went to check the mailbox, careful to lock the door behind her, and found a handful of bills—and a letter from Goshen!

  Thrilled, she carried the mail back to the apartment and sat happily on the sofa to read it. Her smile faded when she opened it.

  “I can’t believe your utter selfishness,” she read. “Your mother needed your help, and you didn’t care. You need to come back where you belong and do your duty to your family. God is frowning on your behavior. I’m praying for you.”

  Elizabeth knew the name of the letter writer before she glanced down at the signature. Her grossmudder—her mother’s mother had always been a very stern woman, never showing her or any of her brothers and sisters any affection.

  She blinked back tears rushing into her eyes, refusing to let them fall. Then she realized her eyes were burning. A shrill siren sound came from the kitchen. Jumping up, she ran into the room and found the pan of soup smoking. She grabbed at the handle, yelped when she burned herself, and turned off the burner underneath the pan.

  Panicked, her ears ringing from the alarm, she looked wildly around for something to turn off the noise. She flapped at the smoke with a kitchen towel, but the alarm kept shrieking. Throwing down the towel, she ran from the apartment and knocked on the first door she came to.

  An older lady opened it. “Yes?”

  “Please help me,” she said quickly. “I don’t know how to turn off the smoke alarm.”

  “Oh, no problem, dear.” The woman walked to the apartment with her, opened the kitchen closet, and pulled out a broom.

  Broom. Now Elizabeth felt dumb. She remembered Paula turning off the alarm with the end of the broom handle when smoke poured from the toaster.

  The woman turned to Elizabeth. “Are you sure you want me to do this?”

  Elizabeth felt unnerved by the racket. “Yes!”

  “If you say so.” She lifted the broom and used the wooden end to nudge the center button on the alarm. It immediately went silent. “I just think you might have enjoyed the cute firemen from the local station.”

  “Well, well, what’s going on?” Paula asked with a grin as she walked into the apartment. “Looks like you’ve been having some excitement here.”

  9

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sp; Elizabeth jumped when she heard a knock on the door.

  “He’s here!” Paula sang from her perch on the living room sofa. Then she frowned. “You don’t look very happy.”

  She bit her lip, then blurted, “I changed my mind. I don’t want to go.”

  “Why not?”

  “I won’t know anyone.”

  “The only way to know them is to meet them,” Paula said practically. “C’mon, you’ll enjoy it.”

  “Why don’t you join us?”

  Paula pulled another tissue from the box beside her and wiped her nose. “I don’t think I’d be welcome with this cold. You go and tell me all about it later.”

  “I should stay home and make you some soup.”

  “I have a can of chicken and stars in the cupboard.”

  Elizabeth wrinkled her nose. “I’m sure it’s not as good as my chicken soup.”

  “Then you can make me some when you come home. Now get the door,” she said as they heard another knock.

  Then, just as Elizabeth put her hand on the door, Paula hissed, “And smile!”

  Elizabeth summoned up a smile and opened the door. And then she blinked at the sight of Saul. He looked so handsome in his Sunday best white shirt, dark jacket, and pants.

  “Guder mariye,” he said, giving her a big smile. “How are you today?”

  They heard a big sneeze just as she shut the door. “Gut, unlike my roommate,” she told him. “I’m afraid she has a very bad cold.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it.” He began walking down the hallway with her. “The cold and flu season seems to be getting an early start this year.”

  Elizabeth didn’t expect the reaction she had when they walked outside and she saw Saul’s buggy. She stood there, hesitating for just a moment and then he was holding out his hand to help her inside, evidently taking her inaction for the need for help.

  She glanced around the interior as he walked to his side, noting how clean and well-kept it was.

  He noticed her looking around and lifted one eyebrow at her. “Everything okay?”

  “Of course.” She smoothed her hand over the skirt of her dress. “I just haven’t ridden in a buggy since I left Goshen.”