The Only Best Place

by Carolyne Aarsen

  Then I looked out the window.

  We had been in the house two days and I had treated these multipaned pieces of glass the same way I had at home. Their sole function was letting light in. But this time I really looked.

  First thing I noticed was that they needed washing. Then I saw the bare apple tree in the yard and the empty flower garden beyond the window, and then, as if for the first time, I saw the slowly rolling hills and the rugged mountains, snow stabbing into crevices and crowning their peaks. And I felt awed and amazed that this calendar-worthy view was ours for the looking any time of any day.

  It took me about twenty minutes, but I moved that heavy couch so I could look out those windows whenever I had the chance to sit down.

  “I always liked the view out this window,” Wilma said quietly as I put out coffee and cookies.

  I saw her dreamy expression, the faint smile threatening to crack the bright red polish of her lips.

  And for the first time since I met her, I felt an affinity to her.

  She let the smile come to fruition, then blinked and the moment vanished. As I offered her my lopsided cookies that had originally been for Judy's eyes only, I saw by her forced smile that the old Wilma had returned.

  I wanted the other woman to make an appearance again. I could learn to like that Wilma.

  “You've been baking. Good for you,” Gloria said with approval as Anneke wiggled her way onto my chair. Anneke blew kisses at Nicholas, who had switched allegiances to Judy and now sat on her lap, toying with the buttons on her faded and worn cardigan.

  “Yes. I thought I would give it a try,” I said apologetically. For a moment I felt like a traitor for baking Kathy's cookie recipe instead of Gloria's. “They didn't turn out that great, though. They look more like dog doo than cookies.”

  Wilma's faint gasp and Gloria's suddenly pinched eyebrows signaled my mistake. Not only had I used mild emergency-department words in the house, I had performed the nefarious deed in front of the combined decorum of Gloria and Wilma.

  Judy laughed. “As long as they don't taste like dog doo we should be okay.”

  “Judy, let's leave outside language, outside,” Wilma's reprimand, safely delivered to her daughter, ricocheted off her and toward me. Which was probably their initial intended target.

  “Oh, c'mon, Mom. We're on a farm, for goodness sake,” Judy said with a shake of her head. She took one of the offending cookies, bit it, and winked at me. “Like I said, they taste great.”

  “Thanks a lot,” I said in a small voice, hoping that by keeping a low vocal profile I'd escape causing further offense.

  “Hey, did you hear about Belinda Ivor? I heard she broke her wrist,” Judy leaned back in the chair with her cup balanced precariously on her lap.

  Wilma perched on the edge of the couch and took a careful sip of her coffee, leaving only a hint of lipstick behind. “She and Connor have four children, don't they?”

  “I think the oldest is in the same grade as my Paul,” Judy said, laughing. “He's a pill. He ran away from home once because Belinda made him eat cauliflower. Didn't come home until he heard the coyotes howling and got scared.”

  “Remember at the Christmas program? How he hopped around at the back like a rabbit?” Gloria laughed. “Aunt Gerda had the hardest time not laughing.”

  I wanted to say something about Aunt Gerda and the chickens she brought us to try to make some connection to the discussion, but lost the momentum as they moved on to names that I knew nothing of, so I sipped my coffee, smiled appropriately, and kept my mouth shut. Gloria and Wilma passed over a few more names and stories while Judy ate another cookie and entertained Nicholas.

  I sat and smiled, and let Anneke have small sips of my coffee, feeling like a stranger in my own home as I wondered how listening to Gloria and Wilma chitchat about complete strangers would help me get to know Dan's family. I was going to have words with my dear friend Kathy over her stellar suggestion.

  “Hey, we didn't come here to bore Leslie to death,” Judy said finally, pulling herself out of the chair and swinging Nicholas up into her arms. “I don't want those plants to sit in the van much longer, so I figure we should get at it.”

  “Plants? Get at it?” I asked.

  Judy smiled at my confusion. “We came to help you plant the garden.”

  “But I don't—”

  “Don't worry, city girl,” Judy said, gathering up the empty mugs and plate. “We'll help you through this step by step.”

  I didn't want a garden. I had no intention of adding extra responsibility to my life. Plants needed watering, talking, caring. I had a hard enough time keeping up with Dan and the kids, let alone some plants that would only wither and die under my watch.

  “You don't have to worry about the seeds and stuff,” Judy threw over her shoulder as she set the dishes in the kitchen sink. “We brought everything you need.”

  “I'm not much of a gardener,” I said. Actually, I'm not anything of a gardener.

  “It's not a difficult thing to learn,” Wilma said, rising from the couch. “You might even enjoy it.”

  So I followed them outside. Gloria took charge of Nicholas, and Anneke pranced alongside Judy, prattling away to everyone about the chickens and Sasha and how Mommy was afraid to get the eggs.

  Harland, Montana. Where secrets go to die.

  As I watched Gloria and Wilma laugh at Anneke then exchange some more chitchat, I felt a twinge of envy at their relationship. In spite of their feelings toward me, I wished, for a moment, that I could have a bit of what they shared. Bonding with my mother, when she was around, had meant letting us finish the beer in her bottles or sit quietly with her while she watched Wheel of Fortune.

  “Mom, you can put out the bedding plants in the raised bed,” Judy called as she set a tray full of green, lush plants on the edge of a long box, framed with wooden timber and filled with dirt. The last time I saw that box weeds had taken it over. Dan must have been busy here. “Leslie, you can work with Gloria and me in the garden, putting in seeds.”

  “Sure.” How hard could putting in seeds be?

  Actually, very hard.

  Carrots went in only one eighth of an inch deep and had to be carefully tapped into a furrow from the package so that only a few seeds came out at a time. Nicholas grabbed my arm and I dumped half a package in one spot.

  Beans were spaced an inch apart and covered with dirt—but not too much or they wouldn't get the proper moisture and not too little or they would dry out.

  Peas, corn, beets, and potatoes also had specific rules. I gave up trying to remember the regulations and instead dumbly did whatever Judy and Gloria told me to do. I was getting real good at that.

  “Last row,” Judy said as we moved a long string, the heat of the sun now beating on my unprotected head. “This is great, isn't it? Being outside and working in the garden. I just love it.”

  I wiped a trickle of sweat from my forehead and glanced at the dirt lining my fingernails. My back was sore, and my thighs ached from crouching down. “Yeah. Great fun,” I responded with forced enthusiasm. This was an entirely new project for me and, thankfully, not one I would have to repeat.

  “Just think, in a couple of months you'll be eating your own vegetables,” Judy said, looking over the rows we had already put in.

  I had been so busy bending, dropping, covering, tamping, and trying to keep Nicholas from sticking bean seeds up his nose, that I hadn't had a chance to see what we had done.

  Stakes holding the empty packages marked the rows of tamped-down dirt. As I looked over the large space of ground still empty and bare, I tried to imagine plants coming up.

  “That's a lot of garden,” I said hesitantly, wondering if I would know what to do with the plants once they made an appearance.

  “Well, thankfully Mom kept the garden area pretty weed-free. As long as Dan didn't throw a huge load of manure on it, you shouldn't have to battle too many weeds,” Gloria said, catching up to me and Judy. “It w
ill be fun to can and freeze your own homegrown vegetables. I have a great pickle recipe you can use.”

  Can? Freeze? Weeds? Pickle?

  I thought of the long rows of vegetables laid in artful arrangements in the coolers of the grocery stores. Seemed to me that putting in an extra hour at work, then buying what I needed for the month, was a better use of my time. But I smiled and nodded, like bringing in the bounty of a garden was a longing that occupied all my waking hours.

  “There. All the bedding plants are in,” Wilma said, brushing the dirt off her hands. “Anneke helped me so nicely.”

  Anneke squirmed with pride. “I want to do this again tomorrow.”

  “We only need to do it once, sweetheart,” Wilma said, brushing Anneke's damp hair back from her face.

  “What did you plant,Wilma?” I asked weakly.

  “Cabbages, tomatoes, cauliflower, and some peppers for fun,” Wilma said.

  Fun? She had some crazy sense of humor, my mother-in-law did.

  “I like the garden,” Anneke said with satisfaction.

  “Soon the plants will be coming up, and you can help Mommy and Daddy weed them,” Gloria said with the same enthusiasm other mothers use telling their kids about a water park.

  “Can I help, Mommy?” Anneke asked, swinging Wilma's hand.

  “Of course you can. Maybe you can help Mommy figure out which is a weed and which is an important plant,” I said, trying to turn the joke onto myself.

  “I have a foolproof method,” Judy said, surveying the garden with pride. “You give the plant a tug. If it's hard to pull out, it's a weed. If it comes out easy, then it's an important plant.”

  “Well, in spite of everything, that went well.” Gloria brushed the dirt off her pants, and, big surprise, it all sifted off. She caught Nicholas, whose mouth was a huge smear of brown.

  “He's been eating dirt,” I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice. Dirt and who knows what else.

  “He'll be fine,” Judy said, pulling out a Kleenex from her pocket and wiping his mouth. “It's good for him.”

  The last time I checked the Good Health Eating Guide, dirt wasn't on the food pyramid.

  “The ground has extra moisture,” Judy said. “Something we haven't seen in a while.”

  “It will be a good year.” Wilma smiled down at Anneke as she spoke, and in the expression on her face and the soft tone of her voice, I caught an echo of the emotion I had seen a few hours ago.

  In those unguarded moments I caught a glimpse of the Wilma that I knew Dan loved. And I wished she would show that self more often to me so that I could learn, as well.

  “So, Leslie, I hope you can keep the garden weed-free. You need to work at it regularly, you know.” Wilma's comment dampened the faint spark of warmth I had felt.

  “I guess all I can say is that I'll try.”

  “Do, or do not. There is no try,” Judy said in a female imitation of Yoda as she dropped an arm around my shoulders, waggling her eyebrows at me. “So, cookies have you left? Hungry are we.”

  “I have to get back to the farm,” Gloria said, glancing pointedly at her watch. “Sorry.”

  Judy gave me a look of regret. “Maybe some other time?”

  “For sure. I'll see if I can scare up an even scarier cookie recipe.” I dragged my gaze away from Judy and included Wilma and Gloria in the invitation. “Come again,” I added weakly.

  I took a bite of my toast, caught Nicholas before he climbed out of his high chair, poured Anneke a cup of milk, and picked up a piece of gummed-over toast that Nicholas threw on the floor all without missing a beat. Extreme mothering, not for the fainthearted.

  “I don't want my egg.” Anneke wiped her mouth with her sweater cuff and pulled a nose at the boiled egg she had insisted on minutes ago.

  “You asked me for it, now you have to eat it,” I said, proud of the firm tone of my voice. The sound of a mother not to be trifled with.

  She gave me a suspicious look, as if wondering where the body of her other mother was. The one she could push around. I gave Anneke a knowing smirk. I had been watching Kathy. Getting pointers. Anneke's life, as she knew it, was changing.

  Dan sat hunched over some farm journal. Thanks to the rain of last night, the fields were too wet to work yet, so he was biding his time over breakfast. I had to work one shift tonight, then the blessed peace of an entire weekend off lay ahead. I had bought a fun game that I wanted to play with Anneke tomorrow. I needed to mend some of Nicholas's pants. Maybe we could do something wild and crazy like take the long trip to Bozeman. Dan's birthday was coming up. I couldn't bake a cake. I couldn't knit him slippers. But shopping for that hard-to-buy-for person on my list I could do with my credit card tied behind my back.

  My mind flitted over the past week and caught on an errant thought that had been hanging around ever since Darlene's visit with Rena Tebo.

  “Dan?”

  “Hmm?”

  “What would someone mean when they say they know where only comfort in life and death is?”

  “And you want to know this because…”

  “A lady named Darlene mentioned it. Is that some kind of local saying?” I asked, glancing sidelong at Nicholas. He was straining at the harness that clipped him to his high chair. “Down!” he demanded.

  If he gained one more inch, gravity would fulfill that succinct demand.

  Dan slowly scratched his chin, his fingers rasping lightly over his whiskers as he stared off into the middle distance. “No. It's the first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism,” Dan said as I got up to stop Nicholas before he became emergency-department material. There was nothing lamer than coming in to work when you didn't have to work.

  “And what is that?” I grunted as I managed to get Nicholas back into his chair long enough to unclip him.

  “The Catechism? It's, well, teachings. Of our church. Of course, other churches use it, as well,” Dan mused, leaning back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest.

  I lifted Nicholas out of his high chair and tried to wipe his face as he fought to pull away. I managed a few swipes before giving up and setting him on the ground. Prisoner in Cell Block Nine was free. He scurried as fast as his pudgy hands and dimpled knees could carry him toward his father.

  Dan snapped his fingers as Anneke quickly wormed her way onto his lap and then taunted Nicholas. “I remember now. I think it goes, ‘That I am not my own but belong body and something or other in life and death to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.’” He stopped there, frowning. “Then something about blood. And that's all I remember,” he said seriously, a note of regret in his voice as he looked from his children to me.

  “And just when I think you can't surprise me anymore,” I said with forced humor. Right before my eyes, my husband had transformed from Dan the mechanic-slash-farmer to Dan the theologian.

  “Mr. DeWaal made us repeat that answer again and again until we knew it cold,” Dan said, resting his chin on Anneke's head, a gentle smile playing over his lips. “Except I can't remember the rest of it. That question and answer is like a basic confession of everything I believe.”

  My heart hitched as I watched Dan hold his children and talk about what he believed, an unfamiliar note of yearning in his voice.

  He cut his gaze in my direction, then smiled my favorite crooked smile that signaled he had something funny to share. I was ready for a lighter topic of conversation.

  “I remember one girl I really liked. I was only twelve, I think. It was one of those innocent boy-girl things. Then one day at supper, Gloria was teasing me and she asked me if this girl knew what her only comfort was. We laughed about it, and it got to be a bit of a joke.”

  “Gloria and teasing. Not a combination that flies off the top of your head,” I said before I had a chance to filter the words.

  But to my surprise Dan didn't even catch it. He still had that thoughtful look on his face. “When I was dating you, Gloria asked me the same question. I laughed it off then
, too.”

  “But you went out with me anyway.” I smiled to cover up the momentary hurt I felt.

  This was his cue to get up and give me a hug and tell me he loved me exactly the way I was. The same thing he would do whenever I made one of my “fat” comments.

  He held Anneke and Nicholas, his expression serious as he looked away.

  And a faint misgiving began edging around the periphery of my paranoid mind. The same misgivings that had taken hold the first time he talked about coming back to Harland. To family that I knew didn't approve of me. Was it happening already?

  Did Dan regret marrying me?

  I stacked the bowls on top of each other, then the plates, retreating into the busyness of dishes and cleaning up. Don't think that. It's this place. He's in the house he grew up in—of course, some of the traditions and ideas he grew up with are going to come back. Haunt him.

  “Leslie, would you consider coming to church with me?”

  Dan's question slipped past the noise of cutlery on china. He shifted Nicholas on his lap and flashed me an uncertain look. “I know you always said you don't do church. But I wonder if you would reconsider.”

  “You didn't used to go, either,” I said, still not sure I wanted to make the commitment now that Sunday loomed. “I wouldn't know what to do.”

  “It isn't brain surgery, Leslie.”

  “Brain surgery I've assisted on. I've never been to church.”

  “Anneke likes going to church, don't you?”

  Pulling offspring into battles to reinforce arguments was playing dirty.

  Anneke nodded vigorously, her hair bouncing on her shoulders. “I sing songs in church. And have a story and a snack.”

  “Would you do me a favor and think about it?” Dan asked as he lowered a wiggling Nicholas to the ground.

  Nicholas padded past me. Thankful for the distraction, I bent over to pick him up and give him a motherly shnoozle, but he thrust my hand aside. A gentle blow that was a direct hit in the Mommy zone. I hadn't been around the past few days, and this was his punishment on the one day I was home.