♦ ♦ ♦
Marlin tripped as he entered the dark room. Glory turned over in the bed.
“Sorry,” he whispered.
She said nothing.
“Are you awake?” he said.
She rolled over again, and Marlin knew she was. He felt his way to the foot of the bed.
“Are you warm enough?” he asked.
“Yes.” Finally she spoke.
“I am sorry if I woke you.”
“You did not wake me.”
“You said you were tired.”
Silence.
“Glory?”
Sniffles. “Where were you, Marlin?”
“In the barn. I told you.”
“You said you would not be gone long.”
“I…discovered some work I needed to do.”
More silence. Marlin’s heart clenched. He did not want to quarrel.
“I was embarrassed,” Gloria said. “I felt silly acting as if I was waiting for you to come in while everyone went to bed, but you never came.”
“I am sorry. I did not think.”
Silence.
Marlin undressed and slid under the quilts. “Let’s not go to sleep angry,” he said. “We promised that to each other.”
Glory rolled toward him and gave him her hand, but to Marlin it felt limp.
Chapter 9
The waking day heralded Christmas Eve. Marlin still held Glory’s hand when she woke. She squeezed it and got out of bed. He did the same. But they spoke little as they dressed and prepared to join the family for breakfast.
“May I have another biscuit?”
“Please pass the salt.”
“The kaffi is especially good today.”
Marlin’s contribution to breakfast conversation was slight. Glory spoke only if someone addressed a question to her.
When David spoke the Aemen of the family devotions, Marlin and Glory looked at each other. In this daily pause between devotions and labor, they had become accustomed to walking to the back door together, Marlin full of plans for the day and Glory foundering aloud for where she should offer to help. Today Glory followed him to the door and formed a smile, but Marlin said only that he would see her at the midday meal. By this time, Magdalena and her daughters swarmed the kitchen.
Marlin stepped outside.
“The benches,” his mother called after him.
Marlin gave no wave of the hand or turn of the head to indicate he had heard Magdalena.
“What is wrong with Marlin?” Lyddie asked.
“He has many things on his mind,” Magdalena said. “He did not hear me.”
Glory began pumping water in the sink. She could do the washing up and put things away. Her stay at the Grabill house had been long enough that she knew her way around the kitchen.
Stay. Were they staying with or living with Marlin’s family?
Glory startled with a new thought. Marlin knew she was unhappy, and perhaps he was unhappy as well and regretted their marriage. Glory’s hand traced across her flat belly. She thought they had made up after last night’s spat. Perhaps Marlin did not see it the same way. She should never have chastised him.
“Thank you, Glory,” Magdalena said, “for jumping in with the washing. Marianne and Lyddie, you know where the serving dishes are in the hutch. We are going to want all of the platters, and bring the large spoons as well.”
Glory scrubbed, rinsed, and dried the breakfast dishes. Lyddie was lining the counter with dishes for the meal after church the next day.
“Here comes Sarah,” Lyddie said, looking out a window.
Glory looked up. Sarah was several years younger—Marianne’s age—and sang with gusto at the Singings.
Lyddie opened the back door.
Sarah pulled a scarf off her head. “I am here to help. I know getting ready to host church can be a lot of work.”
Magdalena smiled. “We can always use an extra hand.”
Marianne leaned toward Glory to whisper. “Sarah is sweet on John. She is waiting for him to notice.”
Sarah hung her cloak on a hook, as if she had done it dozens of times, and said, “I see we have cakes to frost.”
We.
Glory wished that word came to her lips more often.
“You know what to do,” Magdalena said.
Marianne pushed up her sleeves, grabbed a mixing bowl, and followed Sarah to the sugar bin. Their heads bent toward each other as they measured and mixed.
If John did notice that Sarah was sweet on him, and if they did wed, Sarah would not wonder how to fit into the Grabill household.
Glory put the last of the breakfast plates on the shelf. She was—probably—having a baby. Her own parents had moved away indefinitely. If there was ever a time to feel the we of being a Grabill, it had come.
♦ ♦ ♦
Marlin shoved a bench through the front door. John should have grabbed the other end by now, but Marlin leaned into the weight of the bench to push in on his own. Winter air blasted in behind him. Once he had the bench—and himself—inside, he latched the door. A wagon full of benches awaited transference into the house, and he had enough sense to minimize the outside air that entered with them.
“John?”
No response?
“Daed?”
No answer.
His father and brother had entered ahead of him, leaving Marlin to wrestle the first bench from the porch into the house. It was not that he was unable to manage on his own, but it would take twice as long and he would be twice as tired. He opened the door, hurtled through, and yanked it closed behind him. If he discovered that John had snuck out the back door to work on his putz, leaving Marlin with the benches, John would suffer rebuke once Marlin tracked him down. And if John laughed while he told the story later to Leroy and Josef, he would suffer rebuke again. In two years it might be amusing, but today it was not.
At the base of the steps off the front porch, Marlin hefted himself into the open wagon and slid another bench to the edge. Then he dropped to the ground and prepared to grip its weight. If all he did was get a few benches to the ground, he would not have wasted his time waiting for his dawdling brother.
When the front door opened, Marlin looked up the steps, prepared with a glare only a brother would comprehend.
Glory stood on the porch with both hands clutching a shawl around her shoulders.
“Marlin?” she said.
“Not now, Gloria.” He set a bench as close to the bottom step as he could manage.
“I—”
He jumped back into the wagon. “I cannot talk right now. And please do not stand there with the door open.”
She had left only a crack of space, but that was enough to send a draft shivering up the stairwell.
Glory withdrew.
Regret washed over Marlin. He had not even listened to what she wanted.
“I may not be married,” John said from behind Marlin, “but I know that is not the way to speak to a wife.”
“Where have you been?” Marlin snapped.
“Mamm asked Daed and me to carry potatoes from the cellar. It only took a minute.”
Marlin exhaled. “You are right, and I am sorry.”
“Do not apologize to me,” John said, crouching to pick up one end of a bench. “It is Glory’s head you just snapped off.”
Marlin picked up his end of the bench and clomped backward up the steps. He would not blame Glory if she disappeared for the rest of the day. All he wanted was for his new wife to love the family’s traditions as much as he did. Somehow it had all gone wrong.
♦ ♦ ♦
Glory returned to the kitchen.
“Is everything all right?” Magdalena asked as she dropped a knife against the butcher block and split a potato.
Glory blanched. What had her mother-in-law heard? “I thought I might like a moment of fresh air, but it is too cold.”
The icy wind from her husband’s spirit had frozen Glory’s resolution to speak to
him. There was never any sign of trouble between them while they were courting. And now this. And she might be with child. The time for regrets was past.
“You look pale,” Magdalena said. “Are you well?”
“Not entirely.” Glory picked up a tray of glazed pastries, Marianne’s specialty.
Lyddie came in from the back porch and stamped snow off her boots. “I am pleased to announce that the cow is as ornery as ever.”
Magdalena laughed. “In other words, she is fine.”
A bench thudded to the floor in the front room, and Marlin’s voice rose in chastisement.
“Maybe Sadie should give Marlin an aloin capsule,” Lyddie said.
“Hush,” Magdalena said.
Marlin’s voice rose another notch.
The tray clattered out of Glory’s hands, spilling the pastries meant for a special treat for the family after supper.
“Est dutt mir leed.” Glory knelt to scoop the mess back onto the tray before the mess worsened. “Sorry. I am sorry.”
“Lyddie,” Magdalena said. “Get the mop before anyone tracks through.”
“I cannot believe I did that,” Glory said. “How will I make it up to Marianne?”
“You need to rest, Gloria,” Magdalena said. “Clean your hands, and then go up the back stairs.”
Glory nodded for lack of a better response.
“I will have a word with Marlin. He is expecting too much of himself and everyone else.”
Lyddie handed Glory a damp towel and then went for the mop.
Is that all it was? Marlin was expecting too much? Glory wiped glaze off her fingers, certain that she was chief among his disappointments.
Chapter 10
Benches filled the front room, which was ready now to welcome the church tomorrow. Marlin stopped snapping at people he loved and found a moment to kneel in the barn and confess his failure to love God with all his heart and to love his neighbor as himself. But he had not wanted to wake his napping wife, and now the hour had come when a moment alone with Glory would be difficult to manage.
Darkness had descended. Marlin arranged two lanterns on stools on one side of the house so that their gleam would light his Angels carving. It was not an exquisite piece of work—nothing like what his grandfather used to do. But he was a young man with many years ahead to master the craft. For now, the simplicity of his Angels would remind those who saw it of the humble birth of the Savior. Around the carving, Marlin rolled and shaped leaves of tin foil and stood them upright in mounds of snow to catch the lantern light as a multitude of heavenly hosts.
With only the span of the wide front porch to divide them, Marlin heard John fussing over his Nativity, which would be the pinnacle of the family’s pilgrimage to see each putz display. Marianne and Lyddie’s harmonious voices suggested adjustments. Even Daed’s murmur rose in admiration of John’s fresh arrangement of traditional family pieces. Leroy and Josef had their wives and children, Marvin supposed, bundled against the cold night and having one last look at their creations.
Marlin stood alone.
This was not what he wanted. Glory should have been helping to roll tin foil angels. Glory should be bundled against the night with him. Glory should be standing beside him on their first Christmas Eve. He took a few steps back and lifted his eyes from the angels to his bedroom window.
“She is awake,” Lyddie said.
Marlin found her form in the shadows of the front porch.
“All she wanted to tell you was how tired she was,” Lyddie said. “Mamm told her three times she should have a rest so she would not miss Christmas Eve.”
Marlin cleared the lump from his throat. “It must be almost time to go.”
“It is. Mamm says we should all squeeze into one buggy. It will help keep us warm.”
“Good idea.”
“Glory can sit between Marianne and me, and we will make sure she does not catch a chill.”
“Thank you.” Marlin could keep his ailing wife warm, but he could not blame her if she preferred to be with his sisters.
“Come,” Lyddie said. “The Angel Gabriel is waiting.”
♦ ♦ ♦
“Josef,” Marianne said. “Josef will have done the most.”
“More than Marlin?” Lyddie was skeptical.
Wedged between her sisters-in-law, with a heavy buggy quilt spread across their laps and hanging over their knees, Glory let their speculations fade from her hearing. Her mind was on her husband, seated beside his father on the driver’s bench. All Glory could see was the back of Marlin’s head, with his hat pulled down as far as possible for warmth and his coat collar turned up to cover his neck. Despite his layers of clothing, the slope of his shoulders told her his mood.
He was quiet, on this night when they would see the putz he had been talking about all week. Thinking—or perhaps praying. He cast no teasing tones over his shoulders at the bait his sisters dangled. And he had said nothing to Glory other than to offer assistance into the buggy.
Marlin was out of her reach on this holy night.
The buggy turned onto Leroy’s farm. In the summer they could have walked the three-and-a-half miles. The buggy ride took only a few minutes, barely enough time to feel cold even if she were not wrapped in Grabills.
I am a Grabill.
“There are Josef and Joannah,” Lyddie said. “I hoped we would get here first.”
The buggy emptied. The only thing Glory could think to do was walk beside Marlin, bringing up the end of the straggling line tramping through the snow toward the Annunciation and forming a semicircle to view. Leroy had not carved, as Marlin had. Although Glory had not yet seen her husband’s workmanship, she had noticed the care he took with the few knives he owned and supposed he had been putting them to use.
“It is papier-mâché” Glory said in surprise.
Leroy laughed. “Those school projects we used to have to do for history lessons have finally proved useful.”
In school they had all made miniature papier-mâché scenes that fit within small crates they brought from home. Leroy’s figures were the size of children and painted in bright colors. The Virgin Mary kneeled, her arms upstretched toward a white-robed angel. Between Mary and the angel, a brightly lit lantern bathed them both in holy light.
Beneath her heavy cloak, Glory’s hand went to her belly. What wonder Mary must have felt at the angel’s words, a thousand times greater than what Glory felt when she imagined herself as a mother.
Marlin stepped closer. “You have outdone yourself, Leroy. I am not sure I have ever seen such a beautiful putz, yet you give all the glory to God.”
Glory watched her husband’s face. Gone was the teasing twinkle that had been in his eye all week when he spoke of the putz. Gone was the playful competition. Instead, marvel glowed. For the first time, Glory glimpsed why he was so eager for this night. She took another step forward as well and leaned against his arm to slide her gloved hand into his.
♦ ♦ ♦
“‘And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured,’” Leroy said. “‘The Lord is with thee: blessed are thou among women.’”
“‘Fear not.’” Josef picked up the story from Luke 1. “‘For thou hast found favour with God.’”
“‘And, behold,’” Marlin said, “‘thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.’”
The familiar verses echoed around him as family members passed the good news from one voice to another.
The angel’s news. Mary’s wonder. The angel’s explanation. Mary’s response.
Marlin picked up the final thread. “‘And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word.’”
They stood in silence, all the Grabills gathered in one moment of awe. This was what Marlin loved about the putz. Hearing the ancient story flowing from the mouths of those who knew him best.
“We should go on to find the Shepherds,” Lyddie said f
inally, and they crunched back to the waiting buggies, where horses’ breath broke the night. As he helped Glory into the buggy, he squeezed her hand and did not turn away from the tears that gleamed in her eyes. His words of apology would wait for a private moment.
Josef had used his lanterns to cast heavenly glitter across a hillside of flat shepherd and sheep figures cut from packing boxes, painted, and propped up with braces in the back. Startled shepherd faces were turned upward to the night sky, and Marlin could not resist looking up into infinite darkness expecting to discover what they might have seen that night outside of Bethlehem.
“While by our sheep we watched at night,” Lyddie began to sing.
In the same manner in which the church congregation joined a hymn begun by one member, the family took up Lyddie’s melody.
“Glad tidings brought an angel bright. How great our joy! Great our joy! Joy, joy joy! Praise we the Lord in heav’n on high!”
“We must go see Marlin’s Angels,” Leroy said, “now that we have already begun to sing of them.”
Marlin kept close to Glory on the way back to the buggy and would have sat beside her if it had not meant that another member of the family would have to bear the cold in the front seat.
He had set his Angels to be visible as soon as the buggies turned into the lane. The closer they got to the house, the more the angels took shape and the tin multitude glimmered. When the gasps behind him began, he could pick out Glory’s drawn breath.
He jumped down before his father had set the buggy brake.
“Marlin!” Glory said as she pushed to be next to put her feet on the ground and quicken her pace for a closer view.
Marlin had restrained his own breath from fullness for hours, and now he released it. Side by side, they stood before his carved angels.
Behind them, Lyddie began another carol. “Angels we have heard on high, sweetly singing o’er the plain. And the mountains in reply echo back their joyous strain.”
“Gloria in excelsis Deo,” the family sang.
“It is so beautiful,” Glory whispered in his ear. “All of it. I did not know.”
“Gloria in excelsis Deo!” The family trekked to the other side of the house to see John’s Nativity.
A Plain and Sweet Christmas Romance Collection Page 37
