by Sara Donati
It was the little people revolving around Martha like a carousel during the wedding supper that reminded her what was ahead, and how unprepared she was to walk into a classroom.
Elizabeth’s advice made sense to Martha and no doubt it would have been the key to success, but for the unanticipated distraction of a new student who had come to the village and brought so much excitement with him. If Martha’s attention was drawn to the boy again and again, despite her earnest intention to treat him just as she did the others, then who could expect any more of the children?
The son of a farmer or a cobbler would have been a matter of great interest—any new child in the village was a momentous event for these children—and still they would have waited until recess to satisfy their curiosity. But Nicholas Wilde was Jemima’s son, and even the littlest of Paradise’s young had heard stories of Jemima. Sooner or later Nicholas would find himself at the center of a crowd of children bent on interrogation. He would be overwhelmed by questions he had no way to answer, and rumors that would make no sense to him.
Some children stood up to such treatment and maintained their dignity by stalwart silence; a few tried to fight their way to the respect of their classmates. In any case, Martha could not raise the subject without intensifying the effect. She would keep an eye on him during recess, but children could be both sly and cruel, and it would be impossible to defend him against all comers. Martha had grown up in Paradise as Jemima’s daughter, and those memories were very close to the surface as she went about her business. While she bent over water-buckled primers, passed out slates and chalk, she watched Nicholas from the corner of her eye and wondered how he would cope. Each time this thought crossed her mind, she reminded herself that because some of her own classmates had been cruel and mean-spirited, that didn’t mean that Nicholas would necessarily receive the same treatment.
When she had set all the other schoolchildren work and it could no longer be avoided, Martha called Nicholas to her desk.
He stood before her, a likely young boy with a head of wavy brown hair and mild eyes the color of caramel. His smile was shy and trusting both.
She said, “Nicholas, how far along are you in your primer?”
He seemed confused by the question, and so she tried again. “Did you learn from a primer like this one with your last teacher?”
“Oh,” he said. “No, ma’am.”
“You may call me Miss Martha. Then what books did you learn from?”
He seemed pleased to have an answer to this question at least. “The newspaper.”
“You learned your letters from the newspaper?”
“Yes, ma’am. Every morning Mr. Focht reads the newspaper and then he passes it along to me.”
“And who taught you to read?”
A set of lines appeared on his brow, as though she had spoken to him in Japanese. “Nobody,” he said finally. “Ma showed me but mostly I learned on my own.”
With a dread sense, Martha thumbed through the primer until she found a list of vocabulary words.
absent abhor apron author
Babel became beguile boldly
capon cellar constant cupboard
daily depend divers duty
“Do you recognize any of these?”
His gaze ran dutifully across each line, and then he shook his head. “Guess I haven’t got to those ones yet.”
She tried again. “And these?”
Age
Beef
Cake
Dead
Eat
Neat
Gate
Again the solemn consideration, and then a bright smile. He pointed.
“There,” he said. “My name starts with N, and there it is, N.”
“And so it is,” Martha said. “Can you read the word that starts with N?”
“Well, I don’t know,” he said, his brow furled. “I’m not sure I can.”
Over the course of the next few minutes Martha discovered that young Nicholas Wilde was a biddable, pleasant child, apparently devoid of all artifice. She learned too that he had only the most rudimentary arithmetic skills, and that he could, when coaxed very patiently, recite the alphabet up to and including the letter K.
At recess Martha sent the children off and then watched from the window as they ran, full of mischief, leaping and skipping, into the warm midmorning sun. Nicholas ran with them, as frolicsome as a colt, full of movement and joy.
From behind her Daniel said, “How did it go?”
He came up and put a hand on her shoulder and she leaned into him. “It went well,” she said. “But I have a new student.”
She could almost hear him frown. His gaze shifted to the children at play and his posture straightened.
“Is that—”
“Yes,” Martha said. “That is my half brother Nicholas.”
Daniel drew in a sharp breath. “She is sly,” he said finally. “Using the boy to get places she herself can’t go.”
Martha couldn’t see his face, but she could feel a fine thrumming tension running through him.
“What do you think she means to accomplish?” Martha said finally.
“Hard to say.”
“There’s something else. He’s slow-witted.”
Daniel started and she looked over her shoulder at him.
“How do you mean?”
She said, “Do you remember Dora Cunningham’s youngest daughter? She looked perfectly healthy and normal, but there was something wrong. She always seemed far younger than she was. I remember asking Hannah about it.”
“And she said?”
“That sometimes if a birth is very difficult and prolonged, the full extent of the damage won’t be known for a year or more. The strain of the birth can injure the brain so that it doesn’t fully develop. She used more medical terms, but that’s what it was, in essence.”
“Does that seem to be the case here?”
Martha lifted a shoulder. “I really don’t know. It’s unlikely Jemima will allow Hannah to examine the boy, and possibly nothing would come of it anyway.”
They watched the younger boys who stood in a circle, heads bent together to study something one of them held in his hands. Nicholas was one of the group.
“I thought he’d have a far harder time fitting in,” Martha said. “But they’ve accepted him without a moment’s hesitation.”
“He is no challenge to them,” Daniel said. “And now what are you going to do?”
“I suppose I’ll see if I can teach him anything. He’s very eager to please.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
She let out a deep sigh. “I know what you meant. What can I do? It would be wrong to simply turn the boy away.”
“Jemima is using him like a Trojan horse.”
“She means to,” Martha agreed.
“What of Callie?”
Martha said, “I sent Henry with a note. It seemed the right thing to do.”
“You realize that they may be watching for her, in the hope of getting you together in one place.”
“I don’t know,” Martha said slowly. “My sense is that they won’t try to approach Callie or me directly. They’re hoping the boy will do that work for them. But I suppose we’ll find out.”
Daniel stepped to the side, out of view of the window, and pulled her with him. There in the shadows he turned her around and held her against him. She put her cheek on his shoulder.
“This is playing with fire.”
She smelled of lavender water and chalk dust and soap, and who would have thought that such things would render a man incapable of speech? When she lifted her face to look at him, he kissed her. A slow, deep kiss that was meant to prove her point. Then he let her go.
“A good slow burn,” he said. “That’s what I was aiming for. It has its rewards down the road.”
It wasn’t until a few minutes before the end of the school day that Callie appeared at the classroom door.
The transformation
that had so taken Martha by surprise on the Johnstown road was still in evidence. Callie was wearing a simple gown of dove gray linen, and instead of the usual head scarf, a small bonnet. Ethan stood just behind her, and Martha was especially glad to see him.
She went into the hall to greet them. “I didn’t know if you’d come,” she said. “I don’t even know if it’s a good idea.”
“Does he look like my father?” Callie craned her head to see into the classroom.
“I’m not sure,” Martha said. “You must decide for yourself.”
She gestured for them to go ahead, and then she followed them.
The children went very still. They darted looks at one another and then dropped their gazes only to raise them again. It occurred to Martha that most of them might not even know that Callie and Ethan had married, but there was no time to worry about that, or how to remedy it.
As it turned out Ethan was ready to handle what might have been a very awkward situation. His whole demeanor changed when he stepped in front of the class; with the suddenness of a finger snap he was the teacher she had known.
Ethan was good with young children. He spoke in an easy tone that engaged their interest, asking questions of each of them and answering questions in turn.
Finally he said to Martha, “I see you have a new student.”
“Yes,” she said. “Nicholas Wilde joined our class this morning.”
The boy looked back and forth between them, a little uncertain.
“Nicholas,” Ethan said. “You are visiting Paradise with your parents?”
The boy stood up. “No, sir.”
“No?”
The boy said, “A visitor comes and goes away again. I don’t think we are going away.”
Martha turned because she couldn’t govern her expression. She could only hope that the boy was mistaken; the idea of Jemima settling permanently in Paradise was more than she could face, just now. She reminded herself that to do so, Jemima would have to purchase land, which required more than money.
Unless, of course, she was assuming she had the right to make a home for herself at the orchards.
All Callie’s attention and concentration were on the boy. For one moment Martha imagined Callie striking out; she would use her fist like a hammer. The image was so strong that she shifted, but only Ethan turned to look at her.
Callie’s eyes were fever bright. She was saying, “Do you know who I am? Does the name Callie mean anything to you?”
That angelic smile spread across his face. “My sister?”
“That’s right,” Callie said. Her voice wavered and caught. “That is exactly right.”
45
Birdie stood in the open doorway of the classroom and hoped no one would send her away. This was far too important and interesting a meeting and the details needed to be recorded. Grown-ups always got things wrong when it fell to them to tell such stories, and so it was up to her. Strangely enough, it seemed as though Callie took one look at Jemima’s son and knew right off who he was. All the worry and doubt of the last few days, people wondering out loud what kind of trick Jemima was trying to play, and then this simple end because Callie looked at Nicholas and saw her father.
Birdie had asked both her ma and da if there was a resemblance, and neither of them had been sure enough to say. Curiosity had been a little clearer. She raised a shoulder and let it fall.
“Could be,” she said. “Might not be.”
And so Birdie had gone to Lily, who had the best memory for faces of all of them.
Lily said, “I have more than one drawing of Nicholas Wilde in a box somewhere.”
“Could you draw him again, without the old pictures?”
She looked surprised. “You want me to draw him now?”
“I thought you’d have his face by heart.”
That made Lily smile. She caught up her little sister’s hand and pulled her down so she could kiss her cheek. “There is only room for so many faces on a person’s heart.”
“But Hannah says you were sweet on Nicholas when you were my age. You wanted to marry him. Why are you laughing?”
Lily bit her lip and then tried to govern her expression. “I’m sorry, Birdie. I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing to hear that Hannah still recalls that conversation. She was so irritated with me for going on about Nicholas Wilde.”
“But didn’t you love him?”
“In a small way, I suppose I did. But it was a love without foundation and so it couldn’t grow.”
“And then he married Jemima.”
“Yes,” Lily said. “I was very insulted at the time, but not for any good reason. Tell me again why you are so interested in my drawings of Nicholas. Does it have to do with Jemima’s son?”
Birdie plopped down on the stool beside the divan and let out a deep breath. “I thought maybe we could see if the boy looks like Nicholas. If he does, maybe the gossip and talking will stop.”
“You feel bad for the boy?”
“Yes,” Birdie said. “Hardly anybody has even spoke a word to him and they’re taking him apart already like a Christmas turkey.”
“You do realize,” Lily said slowly, “that even if there is a strong resemblance, people might not admit to seeing it.”
“But we’ll never know one way or the other without the drawing.”
“And I suppose the drawings I gave to Callie were lost in the flood.”
“With everything else.”
Lily said, “I tell you what, let me talk to some other people and see what they think. If everyone agrees the drawings would be some help, I’ll give you leave to sort through all my boxes to find them. What will you do if it turns out the boy looks nothing like Nicholas Wilde?”
Birdie said, “I don’t know.”
“Exactly,” said her sister. “Exactly that is the problem.”
Birdie had thought about that for a long time. She tried to imagine what Callie would see when she looked at the boy who was supposed to be her half brother. If she was capable of seeing him at all. Martha was less of a worry to her. Martha would take her time making up her mind, because that was her way.
And then at recess she had come out to play with her head full of algebra, and there he was, playing with the other boys as if he had grown up right here in Paradise. They had worked Hopper into such a frenzy that the pup had finally collapsed, and now he slept tucked into Nicholas Wilde’s shirt.
Birdie said, “You’ve got a way with animals, Nicholas.”
He stopped just where he was and smiled at her. “Do I? I like them. Would you like to play?” And without waiting for an answer he threw her the ball. This was a good sign; the boys tended to be possessive about such things and reluctant to include girls.
She caught it with one hand—she was a Bonner, after all—and for the last five minutes of recess they talked while they threw the ball back and forth. By the time the bell rang Birdie hadn’t discovered anything that might help understand what Jemima wanted or why she had sent the boy to school, but she did know something important about the boy himself. He was what Curiosity called a gentle soul, someone who lived in the world but was not really part of it. Someone without the ability to see danger coming, and even lacking the most basic instincts to protect himself.
“Like an egg come out with no shell,” Curiosity had said. “A body got no way to give that egg what God saw fit to hold back. His ways are mysterious to behold.”
“Ma says weak shells come from not feeding the chickens right.”
Curiosity had put her head back and laughed. “That too.”
So now there was Callie, crouched down next to Nicholas, and he was smiling at her. For her part, Birdie didn’t like it when strangers came so close. You could smell what they had been eating on their skin, and sometimes worse. Clearly Nicholas wasn’t as fussy as she was, because his smile just got bigger.
From the corner of her eye Birdie saw the little people waiting on the porch, trying to gather the courage t
o come in and stand beside her so they could hear what was going on. It had to do with them too, now that Ethan and Callie were married.
Mariah slipped her hand into Birdie’s and leaned against her.
“Why does that boy have Daniel’s new puppy? Is it because he’s our cousin?” she whispered.
“No,” Birdie said. “He just likes dogs, and they like him.”
“Everybody likes him. Callie too, because he’s her brother.”
“It looks that way,” Birdie agreed.
“So she got a husband and a brother all at once. But does it mean that she’ll have to let Jemima be her ma again?”
A flush of gooseflesh ran up Birdie’s spine. “I don’t want to talk about Jemima,” she said. “And it’s time we went home.”
They trooped home up the hill together, and there was nothing Birdie could think to do to distract the boys from the one topic that interested them.
“You knew Callie’s father,” Adam said to her. “Does Nicholas take after him?”
“Nicholas Wilde went away before I was born. And anyway, not all children resemble their parents.”
“I sure don’t,” Adam said. Adam with his skin the color of burnt sugar and his dark eyes.
“You look like one of us,” Henry said. “You look like a Savard.”
“Well, why not?” Nathan said. “We’re cousins.”
The truth was, Adam had been raised to be as much a Bonner as any of them. She doubted he ever thought about the family he had been born into. It occurred to Birdie now that Adam knew exactly who he was and where he belonged, but someday he might be curious about what might have been. If he asked, no doubt Jennet would tell him, and how would he feel about that?
“Bonner is as Bonner does.” That was the way Curiosity always answered questions about Adam.
Birdie broke into a slow trot, and the others followed her lead.
