Hidden Life (9781455510863)

by Senft, Adina

  “No.” John’s voice was as slow and deliberate as the gait of one of his own plow horses. “It’s not your Mamm. It’s you. Your…Emma, I’m speaking as the head of the family, and I want to caution you about your conduct. People are talking.”

  Emma slumped, her chest caving in sheer relief. “Is that all? Let me assure you, Tyler West will be gone tomorrow or the next day, and it will all blow over.”

  Karen’s face had colored with the effort to be silent and let her husband speak, but with this she lost control of her tongue. “It isn’t just Tyler West, though I have to say he’s the worst of it. Emma, do you know how it looks to watch you running from one man to the next like the very worst kind of flirt? First Joshua, then Calvin, now this Englisch man. I don’t understand how you can live for ten years in modesty, and then break out in wild behavior as if you were an irresponsible sixteen-year-old on Rumspringe.”

  Emma’s mouth fell open while a dozen different replies zinged through her brain—and not one of them came out.

  “I’ve actually had people ask me if your trip to New York City turned your head—if you learned rebellion there and were going to leave your family and your church. Do you know how that made me feel?”

  “They would have got a better answer if they’d asked me,” she said, which didn’t improve Karen’s expression any.

  “I’m asking you. We’re asking you. What is wrong with you, and when are you going to come to your senses?”

  Maybe it was the early hour. Maybe it was the fact that she hadn’t had any coffee yet. But the skin of her sense of discretion seemed to be very thin this morning, and Karen’s exasperated tone, low and discreet as it was so Mamm wouldn’t hear and the baby wouldn’t be upset, seemed to scratch it raw.

  “You started it.” She got up. Surely the coffee must be done by now. “You invited Joshua Steiner and—” Karen had not mentioned Grant’s name, and Emma must not bring it up. “—and me to lunch and practically pushed me into his arms. Just because someone else sat up and took notice doesn’t make me fast and fancy.”

  “It does when you come to a potluck with one man and are out having ice cream with another, both in the same week!”

  Emma got down three coffee mugs and tried to rein in her temper before it bolted and hurt someone.

  “We understand that you want a home of your own, Emma,” John said. “But you must go about it in a more circumspect way. No man in the community is going to want a woman who flits from one man to another and can’t make up her mind. How could he trust that she’s really settled when he marries her?”

  The unfairness of this would have made her laugh if it weren’t so maddening. She poured and served the coffee in silence while she grappled with the angry words that wanted to fly out and attack, then set out the creamer and sugar bowl in front of her visitors and sat in her usual place. They did not know she had made up her mind ten years ago and never wavered in her faithfulness to that choice, foolish and sinful as such behavior might have been. And she was certainly not about to tell them now.

  “I can’t believe you blame me for this,” Karen hissed, trying to keep her voice down. “I thought better of you, Emma.”

  Emma took as big a sip of coffee as the heat of it would allow. “Do you begrudge me the opportunity to spend time with someone? To be courted?” Ah, now her brain was beginning to clear. She drank some more while Karen left her cup untouched and bristled like an angry dog.

  “Of course not! I am not the one being spoken to here. All we’re saying is you need to be more discreet. You’re inviting too much talk.”

  “This running around with all these men—and I won’t even go into what this Englischer is doing here, because I don’t want to know—must stop,” John said. “This isn’t our way. Our women wait for God to show them His choice of man, go with that one, save their kisses for that one, and then marry him.” His face darkened with embarrassment at having to have this talk with a spinster on the far side of thirty.

  Hmph. It would be good practice for him. Maryann would need it in another eight or nine years.

  “If it makes you feel any better, Calvin King spoke to me of marriage.” Oh, she should not have said that. The relief that filled Karen’s face only made her feel guilty at having to say what must come next. “But I refused him.”

  “Why?” John asked, bewildered.

  “Emma, have you taken leave of your senses? He is a good, kind man and you may not get another chance.”

  “I realize that—on all counts. But he wouldn’t let me write, and that’s one thing I won’t give up when I marry. If I ever do.”

  John was already shaking his head. “Foolish. I never heard of anything so foolish. All this could have been brought to an end and you could have had a home of your own…and you threw it all away because of your articles in the paper?”

  Put like that, it did sound foolish. Reckless and selfish and senseless. And then she remembered Tyler’s face in the fading light, and how outraged he had been on her behalf. Some people saw the value in the gift God had given her. And some just did not.

  But that didn’t change the fact that it had come from God, and with it the responsibility to cultivate and water it wisely, even if it did grow in a desert, all by itself.

  “What’s done is done,” she said, “and there’s no undoing it now. I am not going to marry Joshua Steiner, either, so you can set your minds at rest about that.”

  “And this Englischer?” John said. “Are you going to marry him?”

  She bit back a shriek of laughter just in time. The last thing she wanted was to wake the baby—or offend her brother-in-law. “He is a friend and nothing more. As he told you, we’re going over to Amelia’s to join the work party again today, and then I imagine tomorrow he will go back to New York.” She couldn’t imagine Tyler wanting to stay for Sunday, not with the hours of driving he would have ahead of him. “And then everything will be back to the way it was.”

  And you’ll have put yourselves through this little talk for nothing.

  Ach, well. They loved her and wanted what was best for her. It was like the tincture Ruth Lehman had once brewed up for her when she was covered in measles. It had done more to make her mother feel better than it had to actually cure the condition.

  Karen followed John out the door without much more protest, and Emma emptied her sister’s cold coffee into the sink. A sound in the hall made her turn, and there stood Lena, her oxygen tank next to her foot. “Mamm, you’re up early.”

  “No more than usual.”

  “We didn’t want to wake you.”

  “Not much hope of that. I wake at five whether I want to or not. I heard every word.” Lena crossed the kitchen slowly and took Emma in her arms. It was like being held by a bird, her bones were so fragile, her skin papery and soft.

  “Don’t you let it harm your spirit,” she whispered with all the authority with which she had once run a big household. “If people talk, it’s because they haven’t got anything interesting happening in their own lives. My girl has every right to wait for the one God has chosen for her, and no one has the right to criticize.”

  Emma’s eyes filled with tears as she rested her chin on her mother’s shoulder, and before she knew it, she was weeping in earnest. God’s blessings came at odd moments, when you least expected them.

  Which, she supposed as she fished in her sleeve for her hankie, was why they were called gifts.

  Chapter 17

  Much to Emma’s astonishment, Tyler West did not go home on Sunday morning. Instead, he asked very humbly if he might come with her and Lena to church. “I’d like to give you a ride there, if you think it would be more comfortable for your mother.”

  Emma turned toward Lena. “Mamm?”

  “There’s no reason for me to arrive at Isaac Lehman’s in a fancy car, as if I were some Englisch lady and not his neighbor of sixty years. You can take yourself to church in that thing if you like, but Emma and I will drive the buggy an
d not get above ourselves.”

  Which meant, of course, that Tyler folded himself onto the back bench where the children usually rode, and consequently made people’s eyes bug out when he unfolded himself again in the Lehmans’ yard.

  All Amelia’s family was here already, and most of Eli’s, so the crowd was bigger than usual. Tyler still stood out; in his khakis and blue button-down and tie he looked like a bluebird on a fence filled with crows. Not that it bothered him. He sat through the three-hour service on the backless bench next to Grant Weaver with only a few twitches and the odd twist of his spine. And while the main sermon on bringing in the hay was in Deitch, the preachers gave the readings and their testimony in English, out of courtesy to their guest. When everyone visited before lunch, Grant took him under his wing, introducing him to some of the men and talking about whatever men talked about while they waited for lunch.

  When Emma went to get her horse later in the afternoon, Amelia hurried after her and they crossed the lawn to the pasture together. “It’s nice to see Mark and his family again,” Emma said. “And Emily’s new husband seems a nice boy.”

  “He is. They’re going to stay for a month for die Flitterwoch.”

  “And when do you get to make your honeymoon visits?” Emma teased.

  Amelia blushed. “We’ll take the boys up to Lebanon County when school is out. In the meantime, we’ll do our honeymooning right here.”

  “I promise Carrie and I won’t interrupt.”

  “You’ll do no such thing.” Amelia caught the horse’s halter and led him over to Emma. “I expect to see you next Tuesday as usual. Nothing will change.”

  “Oh, I think everything has changed.” Emma gazed at her fondly over the horse’s back. “In a good way.”

  Together they led the horse over to Emma’s buggy, where they found Tyler gazing at the slats in bemusement. “I’m going to watch you do this and see if I can learn something.” She and Amelia backed the horse between them and got to work. “But mostly I’ll probably just learn how inept I am and how useless my skillset is here.”

  “I don’t know,” Emma said. “I hear you’re a pretty good painter.” Even if he didn’t know a thing about men and women and how things should be between them.

  “And Grant is a pretty good teacher. I thought I knew a lot more than I do.”

  “How are you going to get back to New York, Tyler?” Amelia asked. “If you plan to work tomorrow, you’ll be mighty tired when you get in.”

  “About that…” His gaze moved from the harness to Emma’s busy hands to her face. “I wondered if I could stick around another day? Grant mentioned I might tag along on his work crew if I wanted. They didn’t get finished in the barn yesterday.”

  “Really?” That was awfully good of him, in Emma’s mind. Of course, any good thing Grant did wouldn’t surprise her. What did surprise her was this urbane young man’s unexpected taste for manual labor. Evidently the novelty of it hadn’t worn off. And if the entire crew was there, maybe there wouldn’t be so many opportunities for man-to-man talks about people who didn’t need talking about.

  “I guess one of his boys went to something called a band hop over on the other side of Bird-in-Hand and shows no signs of coming back. So he’s short a man.”

  Amelia glanced at Emma, then at Tyler. “Eli and I would be very pleased if you could come to our wedding, then, Tyler, if you’re going to be in town and you’re doing all this work for us. The service will start at eight o’clock in the morning.”

  The dawn breaking over the hills couldn’t have been brighter than the elation in Tyler’s face. “Serious?”

  “Serious.” Amelia laughed and slid the passenger door back for him. “It would make us very happy.”

  “I’m—I’m honored, Amelia. I know you don’t—that is, not a lot of Englisch folks get to—”

  “You’ve been very kind to my best friend, and I’m only returning the kindness. Of course, if you join the cleanup crew, you won’t think I’m very kind.”

  “It can’t be worse than the hurricane cleanup in South Carolina,” he said. “My grandparents’ house will never be the same. Denki, Amelia. I would like to come, very much.”

  Smiling at his gallant attempt at pronunciation, Emma walked the horse and buggy over to where Lena waited on the porch. She had no idea why he was staying on—not that she didn’t enjoy his company—but she would have a little talk about what topics of conversation were off-limits. Hopefully before the rumors about him courting her gained so much momentum she wouldn’t be able to stop them.

  By the time the work party finished on Monday, all Emma could think about was falling into bed. While the men had mowed lawns, trimmed gardens, got the barn cleaned out, and the bench wagon arrived with the benches from the Lehmans’ place, the women made the preparations for the wedding feast. For the two hundred people Amelia expected, this would include forty pans of the chicken and stuffing dish called roast; mashed potatoes and gravy; forty quarts of applesauce; mountains of coleslaw; bowls of garden vegetables; and of course, jars of celery. Since the wedding was in the summer instead of the fall, Ruth Lehman had gone around to all the supermarkets and cleaned them out of celery because a wedding just wouldn’t be right without it. Emma’s hands were so clean from washing stalks that they squeaked.

  When she went to get the horse to hitch him up, she found Grant out in the pasture doing the same. When he saw her, he caught Ajax’s halter and brought him over. “This is your animal, ja?”

  She patted the horse’s neck. “Ja, this is Ajax. Have you got all your painting done?”

  “Painting and sweeping and carrying and more painting. If Amelia finds a speck of dirt in her barn tomorrow, I’ll build Eli’s workshop for nothing.”

  Emma laughed, and was rewarded when Grant’s brown eyes twinkled in return. Another gift from God’s hand—the ability to bring joy to each other, even for something so silly. The things Tyler had said zoomed through her memory like a hummingbird aiming at the sweetness of a flower, but she shook them away. “And when do you get started on it?”

  “Soon, I think. Within a couple of weeks. It will be nice to be working every day on this side of the settlement.” He gazed over the pasture to Moses Yoder’s gate. “You’re just on the other side of the hill.”

  Had he connected those two observations on purpose? “Ja,” she said. “It’s not very far—maybe five minutes. I only brought the buggy today because of all the cleaning supplies.”

  “You make a fine cup of coffee. It would be a great temptation to stop in of a morning, before work.”

  You’re so determined that he shouldn’t like you, Tyler’s voice whispered in her memory, you’re totally going to miss it when he shows you he does. If you haven’t already.

  But it was difficult to miss this. What should she say? “Denki,” she managed at last.

  No, that wasn’t enough. He would give up and walk away. She would miss her chance.

  Emma, speak up!

  “You—you would be very welcome,” she blurted, as if the words had come out under pressure, like steam from under the lid of a boiling pot. “If you think it would be…proper.”

  He gazed at her over the back of the horse. “Proper? You mean, because of Lavina.” When she blushed at her own forwardness, he went on. “The Kinner and I, we did our mourning when we lost her, two years ago. To show ourselves to be mourning now, well, I don’t think it would be healthy. My girls have learned to smile again, and I would not take that away from them, even after they stood at the graveside. It did not seem like their Mamm, then. It was more a farewell to someone they knew once, who would never come again.”

  Her heart twisted for them—and for him. “And you?” she whispered.

  “I want to smile again, Emma,” he said. “I never thought I would say this, but it hurts to look back.”

  “You must have some good memories,” she protested softly.

  “I do, but they’re like memories of childhood, gol
den and far away. I have been an adult in body for all my married life, but I have not been an adult in mind until just recently. I need to learn how to live again, now. Live differently.” He paused, then stepped back and patted the horse’s shoulder. “Learn how to appreciate God’s little gifts again, like a good cup of coffee and a woman’s laughter.”

  And with a smile, he walked across the pasture to his own horse.

  Ajax moved and she went with him to the gate and through it to her buggy. Otherwise, she might have stood in the pasture for the rest of the day, wondering. Had he meant to be personal? Because these were things he could say to anyone.

  When Tyler joined her in the buggy, he looked as droopy as her body felt. “We’ll go to bed early,” she told him as they drove home, “because we’ll be expected back by six in the morning.”

  Tyler groaned and dropped out of the buggy like a sack of onions to open the barn door for her. Emma drove Ajax in and unhitched him, brushing him down and making sure he had his feed. Then she hung the harness from its pegs next to the sets that John used for the family buggies and the plow horses.

  Thank goodness she’d made enough chicken and dumplings yesterday that she could just warm up the leftovers for supper. A few cut vegetables and some potatoes, and that would be that.

  Tyler must have worked up quite the appetite, because he took another helping and cleaned up the potatoes, too. But all during supper he seemed distracted, as though he had something on his mind as well. Finally, after Lena had gone to bed, Emma pulled on her shawl to walk him over to Karen’s house.

  She had no intention of going in. Not after yesterday’s early-morning visit. She had no idea how Tyler had broken it to them that he was staying over for the wedding…wait a minute. Maybe that was what was disturbing him.

  As they went down the front steps, the scent of Karen’s flowering jasmine blew toward them on the evening breeze. She breathed in deeply. “I love that smell.”