by Chris Cander
John didn’t know whether it was her mysterious beauty or her apparent disregard for domestic captivity that urged him on. But, at her father’s surprising encouragement, John returned to Myrthen’s house the day after he’d met her and followed her home.
Clutching a fistful of wildflowers, he stood at her decaying doorstep as though at an altar, and waited in the late-summer heat for someone to answer his call.
February 3, 1930
Alta had known what was coming. Her brother Marek had been buzzing around her for a week, hinting at how things were about to change for the better. Cyryl and Kasper had been kinder than usual, saying thank you for their meals and clean work clothes, taking care to remove their soot- and snow-covered boots before coming into the house. Even her father seemed different, quieter and even more distant, as though he was mourning some unspoken sadness. Yet when he spoke to her, it was with new respect. So she almost expected it when Walter showed up for dinner on Friday and — as had become custom in recent months — the other men cleared out with vague excuses, leaving them entirely alone in the sitting room.
Walter balanced his weight on the outermost edge of the couch, his mass crushing the floral cushion. He wiped his square brow with the back of his hand and when he swallowed, she could see the lump in his throat rise up and down. “Alta,” he began.
Sitting in the chair across from him, she crossed her ankles and pressed her interlaced fingers so deeply into her thighs her wrists hurt. Outwardly, she held a polite smile. Inwardly, she winced at his obvious discomfort with this rite of passage he attempted to cross with solemnity and meaning. She wished he had just written her a note. Marry me? was all it needed to say. Yes, she would write back. Of course it would be yes. Theirs was a good match between decent people in indecent times. Nobody could afford to be alone. Nobody wanted to be. It was the natural course to find someone kind and honorable with whom to go forth and procreate. It was expected. It was correct. Yes was the only reasonable answer to such a question.
“I’ve been thinking …”
She took a deep breath and held it.
“You and me.”
The clock above his head ticked the seconds. Had his mother ever imagined her infant son’s head would someday be so large, so angular? He looked down at his hands.
“Yes?” she asked.
He looked up at her again, held his eyes level with hers, which he didn’t often do. What he said next came out fast, his words colliding into one another like train cars in a wreck. “I’ve been thinking — and your daddy is in accord — that you and I ought to get married, and I was wondering if you thought so, too.”
Say yes. She looked back at him, his brown eyes nearly pleading, his mouth wrenched into a forced smile. It had been only four months and twenty days since they first met. She felt for him, this large man sitting so awkwardly on her mother’s couch, reduced to such vulnerability. Say yes. He swallowed again, his gullet confessing his nerves. What would it be like to kiss those wide, narrow lips? What would it be like to serve him his dinner? Would their children all be as large and straight as he? What would she feel, fifty years hence, on the verge of their golden anniversary? Say yes.
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.”
February 19, 1930
From within her life of daily and incessant service to the men around her, Alta lived for the promise of Wednesday afternoons. She spent Saturdays, the days her father and brothers weren’t working underground, washing their combustible, bituminous clothes. Sundays were for rest, in theory, but that didn’t take into account the next meal to be cooked and the next household chore to be done, mending or darning or cleaning out the water tray in the icebox. Mondays, she did enough shopping and baking to carry them through midweek. She spent colorless Friday evenings in the quiet company of her fiancé of almost three weeks. But Wednesdays, once she’d filled the men’s dinner buckets and sent them off into the bowels of the earth to earn their living, then made their beds and put a big stew together to slow-cook until dinner, she would take whatever book she was reading by candlelight late each night after everyone else was asleep, and go down to the library.
The Schulenburg House Library was located in a paid-for company house just up New Creek, and had an impressive number of books on its shelves. The community facility was so named in honor of the widowed Schulenburg sisters, Sonja and Anita, who’d willed their home to Verra in 1924. Their husbands had been, respectively, an aspiring but not promising opera singer and an unaccomplished painter before they emigrated from Arnsberg, Germany, to West Virginia to become coal miners. What they may have lacked in talent, they made up for in passion — and a vast collection of books on the subjects that interested them most.
Over the years, other people had donated books to the library. At first it was mainly the surviving families of immigrants who gave away the few books their parents had brought from their homelands. Even if they could speak their parents’ mother tongues, they often couldn’t read them. As readership grew — whether because Prohibition forced people into other forms of entertainment or because of a collective yearning for something beyond poverty and coal — so did the number of books, and finally a subsidy from Blackstone allowed the little library to buy magazines and newspapers. To Alta, who tangled with an unrequited lust for life beyond her bounds, it felt like the whole world was contained in those three rooms.
She returned the book she’d been reading — or rather looking at, because she didn’t understand French — on Paul Cézanne. By candlelight, she had stared at the reproduction of his watercolor Still Life with Watermelon and Pomegranates, searching for the pencil lines upon which he created, trying to understand the overlapping washes of different hues. These days, there was no money for something as frivolous as paints, and certainly none for lessons. Someday, she told herself. Someday. In the meantime, she could read.
The librarian, Renata, was the patronizing wife of a check weighman named Grease, who weighed the coal brought out by the miners and made sure they were credited for the work they’d done. Renata felt equally important in her position, noting in her ledger each weekday who borrowed which book and when, correctly shelving returned items, politely demanding payment of late charges when a reader had been remiss. Long ago, after she had discovered literature, she decided that she was living among mostly simpletons who couldn’t appreciate the finer things. Renata showed her contempt by pressing her lips together, severely enough that the flesh around them pinched into dry accordion folds and the cords of her plump neck stood out like ropes. But she could never resist the flush of pride that came from a successful matchmaking between book and borrower, and the sense that she had singlehandedly elevated the reader to new intellectual heights.
“Hello, Mrs. Mansfield,” Alta said, handing over the Cézanne book. “This was wonderful, thank you for recommending it.”
Renata ran her tongue over her crooked teeth and made a moue of distaste so as to hide her delight in her accomplishment. She made an extravagance of accepting the book and crossing Alta’s name off the ledger. “I have something else you might enjoy,” she said. “Something fairly new.”
“Oh, thank you,” Alta said. Renata left to find it, allowing herself a tiny smile once her back was turned.
She handed Alta a magazine featuring a story on the artist Georgia O’Keeffe. “Have you heard of her?” Alta shook her head. “She paints flowers. Big ones, big petals and such.”
Alta took the magazine from her and flipped it open to the article. A small reproduction of one of O’Keeffe’s paintings was embedded in the text, art so exquisite it made her gasp. She didn’t take her eyes off it as she walked backward to the couch beneath the windows. Sitting down, inelegantly, she stared at Black Iris III. Even though it wasn’t in color, she saw in her mind the black-purple and deep maroon that graded into soft pinks and grays and whites. Something else about it lured her gaze, a fascination of unknown origin, which confused
and excited her at the same time. She blinked her eyes and forced herself to read part of the text, learning about the artist’s early life in a farmhouse in Wisconsin, her years at different art schools, the watercolors she painted while living in Texas. Skipping down, she read a line at random: “O’Keeffe is America’s own. It is refreshing to know that she has never been to Europe, and more refreshing still to know that she has no ambition whatsoever to go there.” Alta swooned at that, nestled as she was — trapped — in Verra. Perhaps someday she might visit another place, Wisconsin or Texas, but she couldn’t begin to imagine how she’d ever get to go anywhere farther away than that. She didn’t have Aunt Maggie’s charm or pluck, and Walter wasn’t the type to indulge such whimsy, even if he could afford it.
Her eyes drifted back to the iris on the page as a child drifts toward a kitchen filled with sweets, and she tried to understand what it was that pulled her. The petals were oversized, contoured and lush. Had she ever seen an iris before? She was certain that if she had, the flower never confronted her as this one did. It bloomed toward her like an open mouth, like a —
“Hello there,” came a voice. She glanced up — oh! — and slammed the magazine closed as if she were ashamed of it. She hadn’t heard his approach. But there he was, with his weight shifted onto one leg, the other at a jaunty angle. He wore a striped shirt, open at the collar, a swath of skin showing through, tan as though it were summer. Under one arm he held a book, and with the other, he raked his fingers through his dark hair. Then he smiled at her, looking directly, impossibly, into her eyes.
“Hello,” she said in a voice that sounded as though it had been stuck too long in her throat.
“You reading about Georgia O’Keeffe?” He tipped his chin, which showed the vaguest stubble, toward the magazine on her lap.
She looked down, as if she were surprised to see it lying there. “Oh,” she said, and cleared her throat. “Yes.”
“She’s one of my favorites, too,” he said. Then he stuck out his hand. “I’m John, by the way. John Esposito.” His smile turned his eyes into crescents.
She nodded, swallowed away the sentence I know who you are, and instead reached out to meet his hand and said, “I’m Alta. Alta Krol.”
“Yes,” he said, smiling. He gestured to the couch next to her. “You mind?”
Her heart took off when he sat down. Alta glanced up and caught the librarian’s eye. Renata pushed her glasses up higher on her nose, then went back to her ledger of accounts.
“This isn’t as interesting as that,” he said, indicating the book in his hand, The Style of Wright. She looked at it, but then noticed the high-pitched angle of his bent legs, the way his knees loomed so far off the floor. Hers were like that, but while she felt gangly and too long, he seemed comfortable in the length of space his body claimed. “Frank Lloyd Wright,” he said, tapping the cover. “Architecture.”
Alta nodded as though it meant something to her, and they sat there, side by side for a long moment. For want of something to do, she flipped open her magazine, but when the black iris appeared again she felt a new heat rush her face as though she’d just lifted her own skirt and shown John what was hidden beneath it. If he felt provoked, however, he didn’t show it. Instead he angled his neck so that he could better see the story in her lap. “Do you know the most interesting part about her, aside from her painting?” he said.
She scanned the article for some clue. “What’s that?” she finally said.
“She fell in love with the photographer who discovered her.”
Alta looked over at him, and waited for more, but John only smiled. She wrinkled her nose and said with equal measures of sincerity and trepidation, in case she was missing something a sophisticate might know, “Why is that the most interesting thing about her?”
John laughed out loud, and Renata looked up from her busywork, arched one eyebrow, and realigned her lips into their firm pleats. “You’re right. Maybe it’s not the most interesting thing.” Then he shrugged. “But I heard that story and I liked it, two artists … he even left his wife for her, he loved her so much. Not exactly noble I suppose, that part anyway, but somehow it sounded … nice.” He looked over her shoulder through the window, as though whatever he was thinking about was somewhere out there, just beyond his reach.
She could see, finally, that his eyes were every color at once: dark blue and moss green and flecked with something lighter, brown or maybe gold. She looked at the small mole under his left eye near his nose and noticed that it was very slightly raised. She pressed her hand against her thigh to keep herself from reaching out and touching it. Oh, how she wanted to hold his face in both her hands and kiss him on the mouth. It was a desire she’d never experienced in all her eighteen years. The image was so clear, as though it was a memory and not a longing. And right then, she decided something.
“Someday, I’m going to be a painter,” she said in a soft voice.
He slid his gaze back to hers until she felt herself trembling. He nodded almost imperceptibly. “I used to draw buildings. I was going to go to college, learn how to make skyscrapers.” He shrugged again. “But it didn’t work out. I still like to draw and paint sometimes.” A slow, easy smile spread across his face. “Maybe we’ll both be painters.”
A moment passed, and the light outside the window dimmed. John looked up and saw the clouds that had gathered. “Look,” he said. “Snow’s coming again.” Then he turned to her and said, “I have an idea.”
“What is it?”
“Would you go ice skating with me? On Miller’s Pond?”
Her head went light and her forehead tingled. Another image formed in her mind, so instantly detailed it seemed to have already happened: the two of them, tall and bundled, skates tied together and slung over their shoulders, walking hand-in-hand down the lane past Old Man Miller’s barn to the frozen pond behind it. She could already feel the way his fingers folded around hers, the way their bodies flowed into each other’s through the palms of their hands. She looked into his extraordinary eyes and felt the word “yes” forming in her smile, but then it snagged on a sharp hook of memory and yanked her back. She’d been wandering, someplace far beyond her borders, and her mouth and her heart collapsed when she remembered: Walter.
“I … I can’t,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I … I’m engaged to be married.”
“Oh.” John’s face fell, too, but then he forced another smile, a different one, that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Well, congratulations. That’s wonderful. Who’s the lucky fellow?”
“Walter Pulaski,” she said, and felt inexplicably embarrassed by saying his name out loud. She remembered him sitting on her family’s couch not even three weeks before, looking distressed and awkward, sweat beading on his broad forehead. She’d never even kissed him.
John nodded in a way that made her ache. “Well, he sure is one lucky fellow. You can tell him I said so.” Then he pushed himself off the couch and once again stood before her with his hand extended. “It was nice to meet you, Alta Krol. Maybe someday I’ll see your paintings in a magazine like that.” Then he turned, slowly, and before she could overcome the lump in her throat, he was already out the door.
She turned quickly toward the window, fighting the urge to run after him. The sky had darkened; the sun hid behind a thick embolus of clouds. There he was, walking with his head down against the dusk, his hands shoved into his trouser pockets. Come back, she willed him. Please come back, even though she could offer him no good reason for doing so. It was too late. Three weeks too late.
She watched as John’s figure grew smaller and smaller with each step, headed somewhere without her. And just when he was too far away to recognize, just another point on the landscape, it began to snow.
April 25, 1930
Two months later, on a cool April evening, Rachel Bergmann finished packing a basket of canned fruit, dried rabbit meat, and some fresh-baked Bauernbrot, then wrapped her head with a shawl. “I am going to si
t with Ava for the night, give her mama some rest,” she said to Myrthen, who was sitting on the couch reading Scripture.
Myrthen closed her Bible. “I’ll go with you,” she said.
“No, you stay. Ava is sick, she needs comforting. I don’t think you can help.”
Myrthen looked down, picked at the corner of the Bible. “I can sit quietly. I can keep you company.”
Rachel shook her head. “You stay. When your father comes home from working, tell him where I am.” She opened the door and a bitter wind rushed in and claimed a place in the drab, spare living room, and it stayed, even after Rachel closed the door behind her.
Ava was the fourteen-year-old daughter of one of Rachel’s good friends, and Myrthen could tell by the way Rachel fussed over her that she cared for Ava very much. But since she wasn’t usually invited when Rachel went calling, she couldn’t say exactly why. She wished that she knew, wished that whatever it was, she might emulate it in some way. Ava was sick with a high fever and aches that had gone on for two days. It sounded terrible, and yet Myrthen envied her.
Myrthen lit a lamp, and settled back down onto the couch with the quiet, the chill. But she wasn’t totally alone; once in prayer, she felt her merciful God bending over her. Even if my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will take me in. And of course, there was always Ruth.
