Hidden Life (9781455510863)

by Senft, Adina

  “I’m not defending anyone. I’m setting the facts straight about a brother with full membership in the church.”

  “If all these things are true, then why is he deceiving the Gmee by pretending to court you? And if you do not intend to marry him, why do you permit it?”

  What was he, the voice of her conscience? “He has been my friend for many years and I enjoy his company,” she said lamely. “There is nothing wrong with that. No one is being deceitful.”

  “I feel deceived.”

  Between the rasping of her conscience and his relentless worrying of the subject, the ends of her temper were beginning to fray. “Why should you? You are doing exactly the same things with me as he is—coming to the house, being seen together in public. What makes you different from him?”

  “Because he is using you as a shield, and I am trying to court you.” His voice sounded patient, but under it all she heard the beginnings of exasperation.

  “Why me, Calvin? Why now, and not years ago, when we were all running around together?” If you’re going to make me face the truth, then I’ll make you do the same.

  “Because…when I met…why would you ask me such a thing?”

  “I want to know why I’m good enough to be mother to your girls now, but I wasn’t back then. I’m the same woman. I’ve lived in the same place, and seen you in the same church meetings all my life. Why would you not choose me then?”

  He stared at her, his mouth opening and closing. “Ich—Ich wisse nichts. Perhaps I did not know you so well then. And you were younger than me. I met Rose Ann before you were of age to marry.” His voice got stronger as the current of his thought swelled into a stream. “I’ve seen you with your family, and especially caring for your Mamm and Daed. As I said before, I’ve seen your tenderness of heart and your uncomplaining service to your parents. Those are qualities I want in a wife—qualities my girls would do well to have in front of them.”

  “Uncomplaining service?” Was that what he wanted? Whatever happened to being partners in this life, helping one another and lifting one another up? “I serve my mother out of love.”

  “And hopefully you would do the same for me and my Kinner.” He smiled, but Emma ducked her head and focused on getting off the rock and onto the path, heading back to the buggy.

  “How do you feel about a woman who writes, Calvin?”

  “Writes?” He quickened his steps to keep up with her. “Most women write their letters back and forth. Rose Ann always did, and the girls write to their cousins and aunts all the time.”

  “I don’t just mean letters. I mean articles. Essays. Letters to the editor.”

  “Editor? As in the newspaper? Writing for that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Emma, my dear friend, women don’t write to the papers.”

  “My articles and letters to the editor are printed in Family Life, the Budget, and the Whinburg Weekly.”

  He stopped, but when she didn’t, he hustled to catch up with her. “Emma, this is not right. Our women have no public voice. Their voices are to be heard in the home.”

  “This one is heard in both places.”

  “Does our bishop know of this?”

  “I think so. Mary Lapp has my recipe for pickled beans in her recipe box, and she cut it out of Family Life. I recognized the print.”

  Either he was out of breath, or he was huffing with indignation. “Emma, you must stop this. You are setting yourself up for exposure. Putting yourself out in public, where people can ridicule you and bring the wrong kind of attention on you—and therefore on God’s people.”

  “For pickled beans?” She couldn’t help herself. If she gave him enough rope, he would hang himself with it, figuratively speaking, and then she would know for certain what to do.

  “You know that’s not what I mean. You are setting yourself apart. Bringing attention to yourself, not just by our people, but by the Englisch readers as well. It’s not right.”

  “What it brings is a little money, which we can certainly use.”

  “Even worse, then, to be paid for setting the wrong kind of example.”

  Now, wait just a minute. “Back there you said I would be the right kind of example to your girls.”

  “Back there I did not know of this writing. Promise me that if we keep seeing each other, you’ll stop.”

  “I can’t promise that.” She’d better keep quiet about Alvin Esch and the correspondence courses, that was for sure. “I’ve been writing for most of my life. Except lately. Mamm says she hasn’t heard my typewriter going late at night so much, and I suppose she’s right.”

  “Your mother knows of this and permits it?”

  “Calvin, settle down. It’s not like I’m fomenting unrest in the streets of Whinburg. I write essays about spring, about caring for hens, about—about the dingle-dangles the boys hang in the storm fronts of their buggies. Nothing harmful. Nothing very interesting, really, except to people who like pickled beans and spring flowers.”

  “It’s not the content, it’s the fact that you do it at all, Emma. That is what bothers me. Please say you’ll give it up.”

  “I already told you. I won’t. I can’t. Even if I were never published again, I would still write.” And then there was the book. All the more reason to be glad she had never told anyone except Mamm, Amelia, and Carrie the reason she had gone to New York.

  “I could not have this in my home.” He sounded so distressed that her heart melted a little.

  She climbed the bank up to the parking lot, now deserted except for the horse, who whickered at them. “Then I cannot be in your home, I guess,” she told him gently, standing by the horse’s head and patting its nose as Calvin untied the reins.

  “You would give up a chance at marriage and a home of your own for this—this foolishness? I cannot believe this of you, Emma.”

  “I don’t see it as foolishness.”

  “Then I’m very sorry. More sorry than I can say. Because I do enjoy your company, and I thought you enjoyed mine.”

  “I do, Calvin. But if you want me, then you must take all of me, typewriter included.”

  He helped her into the buggy and did not answer.

  The river sounded very loud in the silence on the way home.

  Chapter 14

  Emma and Carrie knew what had happened the moment they walked into Amelia’s house. Carrie grabbed Emma’s hand, swinging the door shut behind her with the other. “Emma, look at her face. She’s glowing. Amelia, are you—did he—?”

  Amelia came forward to take their away bonnets and somehow they all wound up holding each other’s hands. “Yes—I am—Eli proposed Sunday night, before he went away.”

  With a squeal of delight, Carrie pulled them both into a hug, and Emma let her own cares go on a flood of happiness. Amelia’s eyes sparkled as she said, “Such excitement. Were you like Mamm, and beginning to think he would never speak?”

  “I knew he would speak.” Emma rescued her bonnet and hung it by its ribbons on the peg by the door. “Any man who looks at a woman the way Eli looks at you is going to ask. It was only a matter of time. I’m so happy for you, Liewi.”

  “And it’s not as if he hid his intentions, what with all this coming and going and getting ready to build your new shop,” Carrie pointed out. Amelia led them into the front room, where the quilt was laid out on the floor, ready to be marked. “Are you going to have it announced in church on Sunday?”

  Amelia nodded. “And Eli will have it published in Lebanon. It will seem strange, hearing such a thing at this time of year.”

  “But…the shop is going to be built this summer, isn’t it?” Emma took off her shawl and draped it over a chair, then dug in her bag for her collection of plastic marking templates. “Aren’t you going to wait until November to be married?”

  “I would rather not. When Eli comes back on Friday, we’re going to visit Bishop Daniel to see if he’s available before the end of June. Since it’s the second marriage for bo
th of us, there is no need for a big wedding. Most of the men won’t be able to come, anyway, since the fields won’t wait for me to be married. It will probably be here, with family and close friends only.”

  “Does that include us?” Emma tried to keep her face straight and serious.

  “If it doesn’t, I’m not going,” Amelia shot back, and laughter rang through the house. If anyone had been passing on the road, they probably would have heard it all the way out there. “I hope you will both stand up with me and be my Newesitzern.”

  Of course they would. “I was wondering if there would be more than one wedding late this spring,” Carrie said slyly. “I hear someone was riding in a buggy and going very slowly on the river road the other night.”

  “Who on earth would you hear that from?” Emma demanded.

  “Oh, a little bird.”

  “Little birds would do better to pay attention to their own nests and not chatter about other people. Gossip is a sin.”

  “Goodness,” Amelia put in mildly. “This must be serious to get you so worked up, Emma.”

  “I think it must be.” Carrie brought her marking pencils to the edge of the quilt. “Amelia, if we’re going to plan two late-season weddings, you’d better—”

  “Carrie,” Emma choked out. “Schtobbe Dich.” She blinked, but it did no good. Her eyes flooded with unexpected, ridiculous tears, and she dashed them away with her sleeve.

  Carrie’s mouth hung open on her unfinished sentence, and then her eyes filled, too. “Emma. Oh, Emma, Schatzi, I didn’t mean to—you know I would never hurt you for the world.” She stepped over the corner of the quilt and took her in a fierce hug—so fierce that Emma could feel the bones of her arms. “Please, please forgive me.”

  “Of course,” she whispered brokenly, the organdy of Carrie’s covering soft against her cheek. She pulled her hankie out of her sleeve and mopped her eyes and nose. “I don’t know what is wrong with me. We’re supposed to be celebrating with Amelia, not getting water spots on this quilt.”

  “Celebrations include laughter and tears,” Amelia said quietly. “Why don’t you tell us what’s going on?”

  So she did. All of it—the disastrous walk along the river, Calvin’s ultimatum about her writing, even his poor opinion of Joshua Steiner. At this last, Carrie bristled, but Emma couldn’t tell if it was indignation on her behalf, or Joshua’s.

  “But Emma, I don’t understand,” Amelia said when Emma’s voice finally trailed away into the silence of relief—the way the body relaxes after a boil is lanced. “How did it get this far with Calvin? Do you mean to say that he actually proposed?”

  “Ja…I mean, nei, he didn’t actually say the words, ‘Will you marry me?’ It’s more like he was—he was plowing the ground, getting it ready for seed. Except that he ran into a couple of great big rocks, and that was the end of that.”

  Now it was Amelia’s turn to try for a straight face, until her dancing eyes gave her away. “Poor Calvin. I bet his plow will never be the same.”

  “Emma put a good bend in it, that’s for sure,” Carrie agreed, and they broke into giggles.

  “You girls, try to be serious for two minutes,” Emma begged, digging for her handkerchief again. Her stomach hurt from laughing, and her eyes stung from tears. How upside down was that? “Poor Calvin doesn’t deserve this.”

  “He doesn’t deserve you for a wife, either,” Amelia said. “I don’t know why he’s trying to court you, when it seems he wants to change nearly everything about you. He should try someone who’s already perfect.”

  “I think Eli beat him to it.” Carrie bumped her with one shoulder.

  “I’m a long way from perfect, and don’t you say anything different.” Amelia bent and fanned out her plastic templates, dropping some of the smaller ones in the middle of the quilt’s plain blocks. “The good Gott made Emma just the way she is, and it makes me tired that a man can’t see that without giving in to the temptation to chip off the bits he doesn’t like.”

  “I don’t doubt that there are bits that should be chipped off,” Emma said.

  “Then that’s God’s work, over the course of your life,” Carrie said. “Not some man’s. And what is Calvin doing talking about marriage with you, anyway? I thought you cared for Grant Weaver.”

  “I do,” Emma moaned. “God is punishing me for coveting somebody else’s husband.”

  “He is no one’s husband now,” Amelia told her. “Come now, and let’s decide on patterns.”

  Carrie knelt at the end of the quilt and laid patterns on it, switching them back and forth, trying different combinations. But Emma couldn’t let it go. She had to get this off her chest once and for all. “He may be widowed, but he is still Lavina’s husband. He’s still in love with her.”

  Carrie gazed thoughtfully at a stylized flower pattern, and centered it in a plain block. “How do you know?”

  “From his actions. He kept in touch with her those two years she was gone. He filed that missing persons report. He went all the way to Missouri to fetch her ashes. Not even her family would do those things.”

  “But he and the children had dinner with us on Sunday, and he seemed just the way he always is,” Amelia said. “Quiet. Kind. You have to remember, some men do things just because they are the right thing to do.”

  “Maybe you have a chance now,” Carrie said.

  “I don’t have a chance with anyone,” Emma confessed. She could not let her heart turn in that direction, like a shivering child to a warm stove. She had burned herself quite enough already. “I’m not sure I can even have a friendship with Calvin now. He thinks I’m the worst sort of sinner.”

  “Imagine. A woman who speaks in public. I bet he went home and started reading the papers, looking for things signed E.S.,” Carrie said.

  “And I hope he enjoyed every one,” Amelia said stoutly. “There is nothing wrong with the things you write—or with the fact that you write them. He’s only being very—”

  “Stodgy?” Carrie supplied helpfully.

  “—plain. Maybe it’s just as well. I wouldn’t want to live with someone whose standards are so high he can’t see over them.”

  “Me either,” Carrie agreed. “I like this rose in the unpieced blocks, don’t you? Are there roses in our green fields?”

  “Only if we want them.” Relief was trickling into Emma’s heart with every word her friends said. Maybe she wasn’t such a bad person, despite what Calvin thought. Maybe God wasn’t pointing her to Calvin after all, and that giant block of resistance in her chest that had made her blurt out the fact that she wrote had been put there by a greater hand than she knew.

  “Listen to your gut,” Pap used to say to her brothers when they had to make some big decision. “Use your head, but listen to your gut.”

  But that didn’t mean she could look in the direction of that warm stove.

  Carrie’s quick hands sifted out all the floral motifs in their collection. “I think we have enough for a different flower in every row. What do you think?”

  “We could,” Amelia allowed. “Then your butterflies could dance among the flowers in our green fields.” She slid a glance to Emma. “What’s your opinion, Emma?”

  She dragged her thoughts away from her own sorry situation and tried to focus on their quilt for her friends’ sakes. With all the time they were putting into this, the least she could do was offer an opinion when it was asked for.

  “I like the rose,” she said. “But if it were me, I would use just that one pattern in the unpieced blocks. Otherwise it will look too busy. We want it to speak a clear message, don’t we, not babble.”

  Amelia smiled at her. “That’s so like you. All right, then, if Carrie agrees?” Amelia’s tone carried an odd emphasis, and Carrie nodded quickly. “Do you still like the idea of the feathers on the borders twining around a central pillar?”

  Emma could just imagine it. “I’d like to see that most of all. It will be the most beautiful thing—especially as
I don’t think one has been done that way in our district. I’ve only seen them up Bird-in-Hand way, in that big quilt store.”

  “Done.” Amelia sounded so satisfied you’d have thought she was getting the quilt.

  Wait a moment. Oh, my, yes, what a good idea. How could she not have thought of this before? This quilt should not go to the auction. It should go to Amelia and Eli for a wedding gift. As soon as she and Carrie were back in the buggy and heading home, she would suggest it and see what Carrie thought.

  Carrie knelt and smoothed a hand over the piecing. “We could do simple diamonds on the pieced blocks, and stitch in the ditch. That would make the rose medallions stand out even more.”

  Amelia and Emma nodded, and they got to work with the marking pencils. The twining feathers were sure to be a challenge, so they left that until later. Meanwhile, the rose medallions went into each plain block—and there were a lot of them. It took every minute of their two hours, and on the way home, Carrie chattered almost without stopping about men and chickens and where Melvin was this week, flushing customers out of the bushes for the pallet shop.

  Emma couldn’t get a word in edgewise about making their quilt a wedding gift.

  Which was all right, she supposed. Because she’d had just about enough talk of courtship and weddings for one day.

  Amelia and Eli must have made good use of their time, because on Sunday, after the preaching on the subject of Pentecost but before the final hymn, Bishop Daniel made public the news that they planned to marry on the first Tuesday in July.

  Amid the handshakes and congratulations out in Carrie and Melvin’s yard afterward, only one sour note was struck. Instead of coming over and greeting her as he had done the last couple of church Sundays, Calvin King made sure there was always a crowd between himself and Emma, and when she finally did manage to catch his eye and smile, he looked down and away, as if whatever his brother Martin had been saying just then was vitally important.

  Maybe it was. Much more important than the death of a friendship. How little it took to make someone feel invisible once again. Emma sighed and went into the kitchen to give Carrie a hand with the lunch.