Amish Brides

by Jennifer Beckstrand

  The bell above the door tinkled as Suvie and Aaron entered the shop. Moses and Lia’s little boy, Crist, played on the floor with some marbles while Lia sat on a stool studying a notebook and twirling a pencil in her fingers. She looked up and bloomed into a smile. “Ach, du lieva, Aaron. How wunderbarr to see you. You haven’t set foot in this shop for three years. Are you allergic to cheese?”

  “I see you at family gatherings,” Aaron protested.

  Lia curled one side of her mouth. “You’ve missed the last three. Besides, when a hundred or so of us get together, I hardly see my own shadow.”

  Aaron gave her a reluctant smile and massaged the back of his neck. “I haven’t felt much like getting out.”

  Lia smiled at him as if she were in on a secret. “Well, I’m glad you’re getting out now, and with Suvie, no less. How are you, Suvie? I’m wonderful glad you let Aaron tag along with you. Gideon says he saw you buying ice cream together yesterday.”

  Suvie winced. “I hope he didn’t see me. I looked quite a sight. Aaron accidentally dumped me into a puddle.”

  Lia’s eyes twinkled. “He didn’t say what you looked like, just that you and Aaron were together. I was happy to hear it. Aaron needs to get out of his house more often.”

  Suvie gave Lia’s hand a squeeze. “How are you feeling with the new baby on the way?”

  Aaron turned his head and tried to look interested in the assortment of cheese curds in the small cooler next to the counter. Talk of pregnancy and babies always made him upset. Mary would never get to be a mother.

  Lia placed her hands over her growing abdomen. “Ach, I can’t seem to get enough to eat, but other than that, I’m fine. Aaron’s mater is going to deliver my baby.”

  Aaron swallowed the lump in his throat. His mother was a midwife, but all the doctors and midwives and prayer in the world hadn’t been able to save Mary. No wonder he stayed away from family gatherings. There was always too much talk of babies and such.

  He picked up a restaurant supply catalog that sat on the counter and started leafing through it while Suvie and Lia talked about babies. He wanted no part in the conversation.

  “I want to buy Aaron some cheese and some of your delicious rolls,” Suvie said. “I’m trying to fatten him up.”

  Aaron looked up when Suvie said his name.

  “If anybody can do it, you can,” Lia said.

  Suvie grinned. “Everybody knows how bossy I am.”

  Aaron didn’t like the smug way Lia was looking at him, as if she knew more about his life than he did. His whole family was eager for him to remarry, even though they knew how devoted he was to Mary’s memory. It was almost as if none of them understood the strength of love.

  He clenched his teeth. He and Suvie were just friends. He never planned on marrying again, and Suvie was three years older than him. If they were dating, as Lia seemed to hope they were, they’d only be allowed to see each other once every two weeks. They’d already seen each other two days in a row. They weren’t dating.

  Aaron was pretending to be fascinated with eight different kinds of salt shaker when Suvie nudged him quite forcefully from behind. He glanced up from the catalog. She was holding five bags of cheese curds and three substantial blocks of cheddar. “A cheese store is no place for a frown. Are you gloomy because I’m so bossy or are you annoyed that I want to fatten you up?”

  Neither. And he didn’t know what to tell her. “That’s a lot of cheddar.”

  She pressed her lips together in a wrinkly pucker. “Too much? You’re right. Probably too much.”

  “We have some jalapeño cheese curds,” Lia said. “A new recipe.”

  Suvie’s face lit up. “To go with Anna’s jalapeño banana bread.” She slid open the glass door on the refrigerated case, put back all the cheddar and four bags of curds, and grabbed a bag of the jalapeño stuff. “What kind of cheese was Mary’s favorite?”

  The unexpected question made Aaron catch his breath. His family was trying to convince him to forget Mary, but Suvie seemed intent on reminding him. Warmth spread through his chest and down his spine. Suvie cared. Suvie understood. Mary’s memory was what really mattered.

  He could have hugged her.

  Well. Nae.

  Not hugged her. It wouldn’t be appropriate to hug her. But he was more than grateful that she wasn’t like everyone else.

  When he didn’t answer, she interrupted her search through the refrigerator case to turn and look at him. “Don’t remember?”

  Nae. He remembered everything. “She loved Swiss.”

  Suvie nodded. “We’ll buy some Swiss in honor of Mary. But you’ll have to eat it yourself. I hate Swiss.”

  Suvie cared about Mary. She cared that he was grieving, and she didn’t seem inclined to talk him out of it. The thought made him feel lighter. He grunted in Suvie’s direction. “Don’t like Swiss cheese? What’s wrong with you? You haven’t lived until you’ve eaten fried Swiss cheese.”

  Suvie pulled a small block of Swiss cheese from the refrigerator and a bigger one of cheddar. “And you need to try cheddar on a stick. We’ll take both. Do you have rolls, Lia?”

  “One package left.” Lia stepped around Crist and pulled a plastic bag of golden-brown dinner rolls from one of the shelves. “I’ve got to teach Moses how to make rolls, because I won’t have much time to stock his shelves after the baby comes.”

  Suvie placed her armload of cheese on the counter. “Aaron’s mammi has been giving me some pointers on cooking.”

  Aaron pressed his lips together and made a mental note never to try any of Suvie’s cooking.

  The look of alarm on Lia’s face almost made him laugh. “Ach, Anna is a dear, dear woman, but she’s getting on in years and doesn’t have the energy she used to. Come here, and I will show you how to make rolls.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Suvie said.

  Lia gave her a weak smile. “Anything to ease Anna’s burden.”

  “One more thing,” Suvie said. “Do you have any extra petunias? We’re asking everybody.”

  Lia thought about it for a minute and shook her head. “I’ve got raspberry starts and some volunteer tomato plants, but no petunias.”

  “That’s okay. We’ve still got a few places to look.”

  Lia rang up two blocks of cheese, the jalapeño cheese curds, and the rolls. Suvie took Aaron by surprise when she pulled some money out of the small coin purse she kept in her canvas bag.

  “I can pay,” Aaron said, stepping up to the counter and reaching for his pocket.

  Suvie nudged him to the side. “My treat. You’ll eat more if you feel guilty about all the money I spent.”

  He chuckled. “You’re wonderful eager to fatten me up. Are you ashamed to be seen with someone so scrawny?”

  A smile crept onto her lips and her cheeks turned a soft shade of pink. “You’re anything but scrawny.” He expected her to say something bossy like, You have to eat all this cheese, or Don’t think being scrawny will get you out of planting petunias, but she looked down and seemed to concentrate very hard on the money in her hand.

  Lia counted out her change. “I hope the cheese works out for you,” she said, giving Suvie an encouraging smile.

  Suvie glanced at Aaron and then back at Lia. “Denki. I hope so too. If the cheese doesn’t, for sure and certain the rolls will, though I’m going to buy some chocolate just in case.” Suvie sighed as if she’d been holding it in for a long time and gave Aaron a grin that almost knocked him over. How did her smiles always seem to catch him so unprepared? “I paid, so you have to carry the bag.” There was her bossy side. He kind of liked it. At least he didn’t have to guess what she was thinking.

  He drove the buggy to a small park by the side of the road, which was basically a picnic table sitting next to a flower box full of weeds. They sat at the table, and Suvie pulled everything out of the bag. “I hope you have a pocketknife.”

  He did. She directed him to cut open both the Swiss and cheddar while
she untied the wire from around the rolls and the cheese curds. “Cut ten slices of each,” she said.

  “You’re planning on eating twenty slices of cheese?”

  “Nae, you’re eating twenty slices of cheese, Skinny Boy.”

  He obediently sliced cheese onto a napkin while she laid two napkins on the table and placed a roll on top of each.

  “Mary made wonderful-gute rolls,” Suvie said. “Her crescents were always rolled perfectly.”

  “Mary made her rolls with about a pound of butter.” He put a slice of Swiss cheese inside his roll and took a bite. “Lia’s rolls are delicious too, especially with Swiss cheese.”

  “Her baby is coming soon. It will be busy with two little ones and the store to mind.” Suvie glanced in his direction and broke off a piece of her roll. “Does it make you anxious when you see someone like Lia?”

  “Someone who is about to have a baby?”

  She took a bite of her roll and nodded as if it were the most normal question in the world. Did Suvie ever tiptoe around anything? He studied her face. She hadn’t been afraid to talk about Mary, and she hadn’t once lectured him about getting over her. Maybe she truly just wanted to know how he felt.

  He balled his fist under the table. “I usually don’t know a woman is going to have a baby until she’s far along enough to show. By then the danger of an ectopic pregnancy is over, and there’s no need to worry.”

  “I’m sorry that you lost her. She was a wonderful-gute woman.”

  He fingered the edge of his napkin. “She was everything to me. My family doesn’t understand that I can never be happy again because Mary will never be happy again. She’ll never eat fried Swiss cheese or crescent rolls or see the petunias bloom in our garden.”

  “You might never see that either.”

  One side of his mouth curled upward. “I suppose not.” He crumpled the napkin in his hand. “I feel guilty even enjoying this cheese because Mary can’t.”

  She drew her brows together as if she were pondering his every word. “So you have to be miserable because you think Mary’s miserable?”

  A question like that would usually have irritated him, but Suvie didn’t seem to be accusing him or implying that he should change his mind. She was just asking. How long had it been since someone really cared how he was feeling? “Jah. She’s dead. You can’t get any more miserable than that.”

  Suvie scrunched her lips to one side of her face as if he’d just said something dumb. “Are you sure? I mean, you could be right. I don’t know what it’s like to be dead, but heaven sounds like a pretty wunderbarr place, at least in the Bible. I imagine you can eat anything you want and never get fat. I would eat four cheesecakes every day and whole-wheat pancakes with butter and maple syrup and ten ears of corn on the cob. And this cheese curd. It’s delicious.”

  Aaron chuckled. “Good thing you can’t get fat in heaven.”

  “And maybe a pound of bacon. Or maybe I should save that for special occasions. Would it be possible to get tired of bacon?” She took another roll from the bag. “Or these rolls?”

  “I thought you bought those rolls for me.”

  “I did.”

  Aaron pointed to the one in her hand. “You’ve eaten three already.”

  “You’ve got to learn to eat faster, Aaron Beachy. I have four older brothers and if I didn’t eat fast at the dinner table, I got nothing. I started taking my second helpings first just in case.” She stuffed her fourth roll into her mouth.

  Mary ate like a bird. Suvie had a hearty appetite. Aaron didn’t mind. It made him smile to see her enjoy her food.

  Suvie ate four cheddar slices and none of the Swiss, four rolls, and half the cheese curds. “Cum,” she said. “We’ve got four more places to get to yet.”

  “Four? Where are we going?”

  “To fatten you up,” she said, smiling at him like it was a great secret. It was gute he’d finished all his chores this morning.

  She took him to Sarah Nelson’s bakery, where they bought an apple pie right out of the oven and ate the whole thing out of the tin with two forks.

  “Three more places,” she said.

  “I’m going to burst,” he protested, even though he didn’t really want to stop.

  They went to Lark Country Store, where she bought firewood—who bought firewood?—graham crackers, and marshmallows, but was very bossy about the fact that they didn’t need chocolate.

  Aaron couldn’t ignore the looks he and Suvie got from people shopping at the store. Mattie and Ruth Petersheim whispered behind their hands in the candy aisle and Elmer Lee Kanagy beamed at him as if he’d invented indoor plumbing. “Glad to see you out,” he’d said, as if Aaron had been hibernating for the winter.

  He wanted to climb on the check-out counter and announce that he and Suvie were just friends, but it wouldn’t have done any good. The Amish loved to gossip almost as much as they loved breathing. They would say whatever they wanted to about Aaron and Suvie, no matter how much Aaron protested. He tried not to let it bother him. No one else knew how deeply loyal he was to Mary, and he couldn’t make them understand even if he talked until he was blue in the face.

  They left Lark Country Store and, as usual, Suvie directed him where to drive the buggy. It made him smile to see how happy it made her to boss him around, and he could tell she loved being sneaky about it.

  Suvie directed Aaron to drive the buggy down a dead-end road. “We’re going to Yutzy’s candy shop?” he said.

  “You really have to try their chocolate drops. They have seven different flavors.”

  Aaron groaned. “I know you want to fatten me up, but I didn’t think you were going to try to do it all in one day. After that pie, I don’t think I could eat another bite of anything.”

  Her eyes sparkled with a tease. “There’s always room for chocolate. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that?”

  “You’re making that up to get me fat. If I eat any more, you’re going to have to roll me out the door.”

  She smiled sympathetically. “Don’t you worry. I lift bags of dirt for a living. I don’t mind rolling you all around town.”

  Aaron chuckled as he tied the reins and jumped from the buggy. Suvie didn’t seem like the type to take no for an answer, and he didn’t really want her to. It was sort of fun having apple pie and chocolate drops for dinner. Mary would have raised an eyebrow at such an unhealthy diet, but it was better than bran flakes or even ramen soup. Or Mammi Anna’s Spam and asparagus casserole.

  The sign on a hook by the door read, OPEN. IF NO ONE IS HERE, KNOCK ON THE FRONT DOOR.

  Suvie strolled into the shop. There was a small, open window in the wall between the shop and a kitchen where, like as not, they made the candy. Suvie stuck her head through the window and yelled. “Clara? Carolyn? You have some customers.”

  The walls of the candy shop were lined with shelves filled with all sorts of candy and cookies and bread. A butcher-block table sat in the middle of the room piled high with plastic tubs of chocolate drops, peanut clusters, and chocolate-covered raisins. The apple pie became a distant memory.

  Maybe he had a little room left for some coconut-chocolate crunchies.

  Suvie pointed to the tubs of chocolate on the table. “We have to get at least three flavors of chocolate drops and some turtles. They taste like they’re straight from heaven.”

  “I want the coconut ones,” he said, not even trying to hide his enthusiasm.

  She smiled at him, and his heart skipped around his chest like a trotting pony. “I like coconut too. A lot.”

  One of the Yutzy sisters appeared in the kitchen and opened the door that led from the kitchen to the shop. The Yutzy sisters were twins, and Aaron hadn’t ever been able to tell them apart, even in school, when Clara had sat next to him for a whole year.

  “Suvie!” Clara—or Carolyn—said. She gave Suvie a quick hug before turning her eyes to Aaron. “Aaron Beachy, it’s gute to see you. I don’t think you’ve ever set foot in ou
r shop before.”

  Suvie nodded so vigorously, she fanned up a breeze. “Can you believe it, Clara?”

  Clara.

  “Aaron has never tasted your peanut butter chocolate drops,” Suvie said. “Or your turtles. Or your macaroons. I’ve scolded him sharply for it. Think of all the happiness your candy could have brought him.”

  Clara gave Suvie another quick hug. “Ach, denki. You’ve always been one of our best customers.”

  Suvie laughed. “It wonders me that I don’t weigh three hundred pounds yet.”

  Aaron glanced at Suvie out of the corner of his eye. She wasn’t fat, but she wasn’t petite like Mary. She looked like someone who did a lot of hard work and never complained about it—wiry and tall, strong and pretty. She wasn’t dainty or fragile like Mary, but she radiated quiet strength. Ach, vell, maybe not so quiet—but he didn’t mind that Suvie liked to talk. He’d been swimming in silence for three long years.

  He pried his eyes from the table of goodies. Clara stared at him as if she were trying to see down to his bones. “I hope you’ll be coming around a lot more.” She raised her eyebrows and gave him a small nod. “With Suvie.”

  “I hope so too,” Suvie said. “It would be a pity to miss out on all these appeditlich treats.”

  Aaron clenched his teeth. He didn’t like the way Clara eyed him, as if she suspected something. “Suvie and I are just friends,” he blurted out—emphasizing the just. It was about the most deerich thing he’d ever said, because no one had even asked.

  Clara pressed her lips together. “Okay.”

  Suvie smiled at him as if they were standing in his kitchen sharing a silly joke. “We are friends, and that’s why I’m making him try the peanut butter chocolate drops and the mint ones. And he wants coconut too.”

  If Aaron had been uneasy about Suvie’s expectations, her reaction put all those worries to rest. It was plain from the unconcerned look on her face that she didn’t expect anything more than friendship from him. He didn’t want to have to hurt Suvie’s feelings when he told her that he would never stop loving Mary and that he would spend the rest of his life mourning for her.