by Anna Schmidt
Liddy bowed her head as she recalled the evening’s events.
“And Pleasant?” John coaxed.
“She was silent for some time, opening her lips as if about to speak and then closing them again.”
“And when she finally did speak?”
A shudder ran through Lydia’s shoulders. “She said that she was afraid for me, for us. She said that only time would tell what the future might bring. She spoke of her marriage to Merle Obermeier, how unhappy they had made each other.”
“You told me that Pleasant and Merle did not love each other,” John reminded her. “That he married her for the sake of his children and she married him because...”
“She thought it would be her only opportunity. Her fear for me is that I am making this decision for that same reason.”
“I have no children in need of a mother, Liddy,” John said as he took her hands in his. “Not yet, anyway,” he added with a hesitant grin.
“Oh, John, we will make a good life, won’t we?” she asked, tightening her grip on his fingers. “I mean Pleasant is right that we cannot know what the future may bring, but I so firmly believe that our being together is God’s will.”
John let his smile broaden into a grin. “And everyone knows, when you have made up your mind as to God’s purpose in your life, nothing and no one can change it.”
Liddy met his smile with one of her own. “That’s almost exactly what Pleasant said. So when Levi asked if she had intentions of disputing the union, she said that she did not. But John, she is wary.”
“With good cause given her history—and ours. Time will put her fears to rest, Liddy. You will see. By this time next year she will understand that we have made the right decision.”
He saw in her eyes that she wanted to believe him and he prayed that it would not take an entire year for him to prove to Pleasant that everything he had ever done, good decision or bad, had been for one reason: his love for Lydia Goodloe.
* * *
Pleasant made no further comment on the proposed marriage, but over the next several days Lydia was well aware that her half sister could not put aside her doubts and concerns. So on Saturday she was thinking of going to the bakery to speak with Pleasant and to try to persuade her to be happy for them. She was pacing the kitchen floor putting together the points she thought most likely to sway Pleasant when she saw Hannah Harnischer coming up the back porch steps.
“Lydia?” she called as she shaded her eyes and peered in through the screened door.
“This is a surprise, Hannah,” Lydia said as she welcomed the woman inside. Hannah had been married to Pleasant’s brother—Lydia and Greta’s half brother—and years after he died she had met and married Levi. The story of their romance had been quite the talk of the town at one time, as no doubt John and Lydia were the objects of much speculation these days. In spite of the fact that she and Hannah were not especially close, Lydia felt a kinship to this woman.
“I have some sweet tea, freshly made,” Lydia offered.
“Just a glass of cold water.”
Lydia got two glasses from the shelf and pumped water into the dry sink to fill them while Hannah took a seat at the kitchen table. She accepted the water and nodded toward the door where Lydia’s shopping basket sat. “Were you on your way out?”
“I was going to the bakery, but that can wait. I am glad you have come, Hannah.”
Hannah’s smile was kind but concerned. “Pleasant tells me that she has concerns about your proposed union with John Amman.”
Over the years Hannah and Pleasant had become close friends, as were their husbands. The two couples and their children spent lots of time together. Lately Greta and her family often joined that circle of friends and family. They always invited Lydia to partake in the meal or outing they had planned, but she felt like the person she was—the spinster aunt tagging along.
“She has said that she will not protest the union,” Lydia said quietly. “Has she changed her mind?”
Hannah set down her glass and held up her hands. “Oh, no, Lydia. She simply wants you to be happy and she knows the future is in God’s hands.”
“Then why...”
“Why have I come?” Hannah smiled. “I have come because we brides of Celery Fields must stand together. I have come because I think you have doubts of your own, as each of us did in those days before we married. I have come, Lydia, to do whatever I can to assist you in making your wedding a happy time that has been far too long coming in your life.”
Lydia’s eyes welled with tears and she reached across the table and clasped Hannah’s hand. “You are too kind,” she whispered.
To her surprise Hannah laughed. “Not at all. Levi says that I am an incurable romantic who simply cannot stand it if two people I care deeply about are not completely ‘over the moon’—that’s what he calls it. An expression that lingers from his days as a circus man.”
Lydia giggled and felt much of the worry and anxiety she’d carried since meeting with her sisters and Levi melt away. “Oh, Hannah, will it be like this always? This feeling that you could actually fly because your heart is so light and at the same time so full?”
“Heavens no. There will surely be days when you will wonder if you haven’t made the biggest mistake of your life,” Hannah assured her. “Unfortunately, men do not seem to lose any of their headstrong ways simply because they have married. It will take time and patience, but you have both in abundance so there is no reason to believe that things will not go well for you and John. That’s what I told Pleasant.”
“And did she believe you?”
This time Hannah’s reassuring smile was slower to come. “She’ll come around, Lydia.” She stood and took her glass to the sink. “Now then, have you made your dress yet?”
“I am not much of a seamstress,” Lydia admitted.
“Well, fortunately, Pleasant is. Now let’s go shopping for the fabric she’ll need and...”
“I cannot ask Pleasant to make a dress for my wedding.”
Hannah handed Lydia the bonnet hanging on a peg by the back door. “Of course you can.”
They stopped first at the bakery where Bettina was helping out now that the school was closed. “Bettina can manage,” Hannah said, overriding Pleasant’s protest that she could not be expected to simply close up shop for the day. “And it’s not like you to exaggerate. Half an hour for choosing some fabric—no more. Now come along.”
Lydia was fascinated to see Pleasant remove her apron and take down her bonnet without further protest. “I suppose you have decided on a color already,” she grumbled as the three of them walked to Yoder’s Dry Goods.
“I hadn’t really given it much thought,” Lydia admitted.
“Well, as this is the second time you have decided on marrying John Amman, what color had you planned on wearing before?”
“Blue,” Lydia replied with a smile as she remembered how John had once compared the color of her eyes to a summer sky.
“Blue will do,” Pleasant declared. “I had feared you might be inclined toward something...less proper.”
Hannah smothered a giggle.
“What?” Pleasant snapped as they entered the shop.
“Forgive me, Pleasant, but I was just imagining our Lydia here all dressed in pink or bright purple for the occasion.”
Pleasant frowned and then looked away and Lydia feared she was about to lose her temper with the two of them. But then she heard Pleasant’s well-known laugh. It was a laugh that bubbled up from somewhere deep inside her on the rare occasions when something struck her as funny. And once it began, Lydia and most everyone else in town knew that it would take time for Pleasant to regain control. There was nothing to do but join in.
So as the three of them approached Hilda Yoder at the counter they were hard-pre
ssed to get out the words they needed to tell the shopkeeper what they wanted. “Fabric,” Pleasant finally managed. “Blue...”
“Or did we decide on the purple?” Hannah whispered mischievously, and the three of them broke into fresh gales of giggles like three schoolgirls out on a lark.
Hilda frowned and took down three bolts of fabric in shades of blue. “This just came in,” she said, tapping the thickest of the bolts.
Pleasant pushed it aside in favor of the bolt with the least amount of yardage left. “This one if there is enough,” she said, and began unfurling the fabric and measuring the yardage by extending it length by length from her nose to her outstretched fingertips. “That should so it,” she announced. “And we will need fabric for a prayer kapp, as well.”
“I already have...” Lydia began fingering one of the white ties of the covering she wore beneath her bonnet. But under Pleasant’s gaze she abandoned any protest. “Yes, a kapp and an apron,” she added, winning Pleasant’s approving glance for the first time in days.
It was tradition that the clothing a woman wore for her wedding was the clothing she would be buried in at the end of her life. It was not different in the sense of being made of special fabric or with lace trim. At her wedding Lydia would look little different from every other woman there. But she would always know that this dress and apron were unique and she would always know that she had chosen the fabric for the outfit in the company of her beloved half sister, a woman who had been more of a mother to her than any other.
Hilda prepared to wrap their selections in brown paper and tie the package with string. “Is there anything else? Thread? Needles?”
“That will do,” Pleasant replied. “I will send Jeremiah in to pay.”
“Oh, no,” Lydia began, but Pleasant’s look told her that this was as close as her half sister was going to come to openly giving her blessing to the marriage. She would buy the material for Lydia’s dress as their father would surely have done had he been still living. “Dienki.”
“I’ll come by after I close up for the day to take your measure,” Pleasant said, studying Lydia’s tall thin frame as if truly seeing her for the first time. “You’ve lost weight.”
It was Hannah who laughed. “Well, I shouldn’t wonder. The poor woman has been through a great deal these last several weeks with the closing of the school and...everything else.”
Pleasant’s eyes softened as she studied Lydia for a long moment. “Yah, there has been too much of that. Hannah, why don’t you come tonight, as well, and I will ask Greta. We have a wedding to plan and a dress to make.” And with that she turned from them and went back to the bakery.
“So we do,” Hannah said softly as she squeezed Lydia’s hand and winked at her.
* * *
On the Monday morning after Bishop Troyer had announced the plan for John and Lydia to marry, John woke well before dawn. Today was the day he would begin renovations on the former schoolhouse. His plan was to spend at least three hours there in the mornings before going to work at the hardware and then return in the evenings to work for several more hours before retiring for the night. If he could keep to this schedule he was fairly certain he would be able to have his business ready to open the day after the wedding, which would take place in just ten days.
He dressed in the predawn darkness, drank a cup of black coffee and packed up some cold biscuits and sausage he’d prepared the night before. The air was already heavy with humidity as he made his way to the schoolhouse. He wondered if he would ever stop thinking of the building as a school. Liddy had suggested that he call his business something like The Old Schoolhouse Clock Shop. It had a nice ring to it and he did plan to make clocks his primary ware in these early days. He was still thinking about the name and envisioning the sign he would eventually mount above the double front doors when he reached the school and found the double doors standing wide-open. He heard the buzz of male voices inside the building.
“Hello?” he called out.
Luke Starns, Jeremiah Troyer and Levi Harnischer all turned to greet him. Then he saw Liddy pouring mugs of coffee and passing one to each man. “You’re late, John Amman,” she called out in the voice he was sure had struck fear into the hearts of her students.
But then she turned to him and her smile was as radiant as the morning sun just beginning to make its way through the tall thin windows. “Surprise.”
“What’s all this?” he asked as he moved into the room and took the coffee she handed him.
“This is what neighbors do for neighbors,” Luke said. “I know you’ve spent some time out there in the world, John, but surely you have not forgotten all our ways.”
From outside John heard others arriving and soon the building was filled with men talking and drinking their coffee as they studied the chalkboard and John’s plans for converting the schoolhouse to his business. “Let’s get started,” his uncle announced. “If you three men will come with me we can start bringing over the lumber and supplies I’ve been storing at the hardware.”
Roger Hadwell paused next to John. “It’s a good plan you have, John. I think we can have you up and in business by the end of the week.” John understood that this was his uncle’s way of giving his blessing.
As the others went about their assigned tasks, John saw Liddy watching him from across the room. “You knew?” he asked as he moved next to her.
“I suspected,” she corrected. “Greta’s boys let something slip when I was there the other day.” She picked up the tray of used coffee mugs. “I’ll just wash these and bring them back with a fresh pot of coffee. Cover those cinnamon rolls that Pleasant sent over so the flies don’t get to them,” she instructed, nodding toward a tea towel draped over a sawhorse.
“Liddy?”
She turned and smiled and he knew that for the rest of his life he would ask for nothing more than the blessing of awaking every day to this face, these lovely eyes bathing him with their trust and their devotion. “I love you.”
Her hands shook slightly, rattling the cups on the tray, but she met his gaze without hesitation. “I know,” she assured him. “I think I have always known. That’s why I waited.”
Epilogue
Five years later...
“Liddy!”
Lydia wiped her hands on a towel and walked out to the back porch. She had noticed early in their marriage that whenever John called out for her to come to him there was an urgency in his voice. Early on she had gone running to him every time, especially after the children started coming. Her heart would pound within her chest as she imagined all sorts of mishaps. Their son, Joshua, perhaps bleeding from some cut. Their daughter, Rose, almost certainly nursing some bruises from a fall. But then she would see them and John would look at her, smiling as he pointed to the blossom of an orchid that he and the children had planted for her in a tree, or at a butterfly that had come to rest on Rose’s finger.
Now she rested one hand on the mound of her pregnancy as she shaded her eyes against the bright noonday sun with the other. In the yard outside their barn she saw Joshua sitting astride their horse, his short, chubby legs dangling to either side as his laughter rang out across the yard. John was holding the reins as he led the animal in a large circle.
“My turn,” Rose shouted. “My turn now,” she demanded sounding very much like her aunt Greta had at that age.
“Be careful,” Lydia shouted as she watched John lift Rose onto the huge animal so that she was sitting in front of her brother.
Joshua wrapped his arms around Rose as she shrieked her delight. “Faster, Daadi.”
Her cries brought John’s aunt and uncle out onto the loading dock of the hardware store and Lydia saw Gert press her fist to her mouth in alarm. “John Amman, those children are far too young...” she shouted.
“Never too young, Tante Gert,” John
called back, but Lydia saw him glance her way and knew that if she told him to stop, he would.
“Come wash up,” she said instead as she turned to go back inside. But suddenly she was seized by a familiar pain in her back and she reached for the door to steady herself until it passed.
“Liddy!” John’s voice seemed to come from far way but this time there could be no doubt of the edge of panic.
Don’t leave the children astride that horse, she mentally instructed even as she gritted her teeth and willed the pain to subside. “I’m all right,” she managed to call out to him.
“You are not all right,” he fumed, reaching her side and leading her to one of the rocking chairs he’d built for them. “I’m going for the doctor.”
“You will do no such thing, John Amman. Now, get those children down off that horse and...”
“Luke is tending to them. Said something about taking them for ice cream.”
“It’s too close to suppertime and...” She looked up at him with surprise as she felt her water break.
Please, no, she prayed. She was not due for weeks.
Dr. Benson had warned them that having another baby would be dangerous. Both Joshua and Rose had been difficult births for Lydia. “You are thirty-five years old, Lydia Amman,” Dr. Benson had warned.
“Many women in our community have children late in life,” she had replied. “If it be God’s will that John and I should be blessed with more...”
Dr. Benson had sighed heavily. “Just take time to heal, all right?”
Lydia had not wanted to explain to him that whether she would have another child or not—and when—was in God’s hands. But it did seem as if God had heeded the doctor’s warning, because it had been three years before Lydia had become pregnant again. By that time she had almost given up and John had assured her that two healthy children were blessing enough. Still, she had not missed the look of pure joy he had given her when she had announced that he might want to get started on a set of bunk beds for either Joshua or Rose’s small bedrooms.
