by Gayle Roper
To Mary, living in a culture that ended its formal schooling at eighth grade, Jon Clarke’s years of education must indeed seem useless at best and vain at worst.
“Not everyone’s as smart as you, Mom,” Jake said with the faintest of smiles. “Some people need help figuring it all out.” It was obviously an old argument and aroused no one’s real ire.
“Because they’ve already made a mess of things by not following it in the first place,” Jon Clarke said. “My job is to help them untangle their messes.”
As the conversation swirled about me, I drank my root beer and munched my crunchy pretzel. In spite of my butterfly bandage, I couldn’t stop smiling. Here I was, sitting in the living room of a real Pennsylvania Dutch home, my hosts and landlords genuine Amish.
The only potential fly in the ointment of my delight was the little matter of telling my parents that I’d left my apartment with its modern conveniences and huge walk-in closet for two rooms on the second floor and a shared bathroom off the kitchen.
I could hear my horrified father. “An Amish farm, Kristina? No electricity? Bed at dusk and breakfast at dawn? Surely you jest.”
Or my appalled and bewildered mother. “You’ve done what? Kristina, I’ll never understand you.”
Or my sister, Patty the Perfect, who had passed her bar exam on the first try and was busy earning her legal stripes at the same law firm our parents were partners in. “Give me a break, Kristie! When are you going to grow up and get a real life?”
It was difficult living with the burden of being a blight on our family tree, a little ginkgo branch on a stately oak. Generations of Matthewses had been lawyers and judges, even legislators of both state and national consequence. Matthewses understood that life was to be seized with determination and a Juris Doctor after your name. Matthewses accepted responsibility with utter confidence, legal eagles flying high. They could and would fix the wrongs of humanity, at least the part they could get their hands on, and best of all, every moment they seized their appropriate place in the scheme of things was billable.
To deviate from this path was considered a sign of weakness and lack of ability. It meant nothing that I could paint a watercolor that delighted people and touched their emotions while Mom, Dad, and Patty couldn’t draw a straight line without a ruler. The only value to be found in the creation of art was that it might turn out to be a good investment if you picked your artist carefully. Although the idea that I might turn into one of those whose work appreciated as the years passed was yet to be determined, such a possibility never even crossed my family’s minds.
In short, though they all loved me in their own unintentionally condescending way, they didn’t understand me. Nor did they try. After all, in their opinion what I loved to do was of no consequence.
I was a late bloomer in my defiance of generations of Matthews’ tradition. All through high school I had been the dutiful daughter with impeccable grades and compliant behavior. I knew I’d go to college, then law school, then join Matthews, Matthews, Broderick, and Jordan. It was what Matthewses did. That I’d never outshine Patty was also understood by all of us. It was as though the family consigned me to life as a law clerk, never graduating to my own clients, my own partnership. Even though they didn’t understand what that assessment of me meant, I had come to understand it indicated they knew on some intuitive level that I wasn’t cut out for the law even as they ruthlessly steered me toward it.
That I was merely living didn’t even occur to me until I went to college and took an art elective just because it sounded like fun. Doing more than doodling in my notebooks or drawing in the privacy of my bedroom gave me a feeling of joy and freedom. It awoke a passion in me I didn’t know I could feel. It makes me sound stupid, even to myself, when I think of how I’d been sleepwalking through life without even realizing it.
I was hurrying to art class one day in October when I had my epiphany. I realized I was actually hurrying across campus to get to class early. Hurrying, not because I was late. Early because I couldn’t wait to get there. At that moment God reached down with a paintbrush and placed it in my hand. He also gave me an understanding of my purpose in life in my heart.
I was an artist.
This realization had nothing to do with talent, because I still didn’t know if I actually had any. It had to do with passion and desire. I felt like that long-ago Olympic champion, Eric Liddell, who said he felt God’s pleasure when he ran. I felt His pleasure when I painted.
It took me my whole second semester to whomp up the courage to tell my parents I had dropped a political science class for another art elective, and my ears still rang when I remembered my father’s explosion.
“Kristina, what is the meaning of this?” he demanded with an outrage most parents saved for drug abuse or alcoholic excess.
“I don’t want to be a lawyer,” I managed.
“Of course you do. You will make up this poly sci class over the summer.”
“No, Dad. I don’t want to. It would be a waste of your money and my time. I’m never going to be a lawyer.”
I tried to be polite but firm. Standing up to Dad was a new experience, and I wasn’t at all good at it. Not only were there the issues of parental authority and control of the exchequer on his side, he was a litigator with years of arguing before the bench, and he knew how to present his case. I, on the other hand, had let him and my mother lovingly push me around my whole life.
But I’d been praying like crazy all semester. We were Christians in my family, regulars at our church and conservative in our theology and our politics. For me, though, my faith became vibrant when I realized God had given me a gift that brought me joy.
“I don’t want to be a lawyer,” I repeated to my father. “I want to be an artist.”
Dad stared at me as if he’d never seen me. “Kristina, your career path has been set.”
“By you, Dad. Not by me.” I felt both scared and exultant as I tried to explain. “I love my art classes. I love drawing, making something where there were only paper and blobs of color. I love imagining a scene or an image and trying to make my work match my vision. I want to be a painter. I want to be a watercolorist. I want to have WSA after my name, not JD or Esq.”
Temporarily distracted, he asked, “What’s WSA?”
“Watercolor Society of America.”
“You want to starve to death? Everyone knows that anyone in the arts is a charity case.”
“I’ll teach school if I have to, but I will teach art.”
He sank into his desk chair and stared at the letter before him. It was notification of Patty’s unbelievably good scores on her LSATs. The sight of it seemed to brace him, and he looked at me with determination.
I looked back, equally determined. I might not have the Matthews’ legal DNA, but I’d gotten my share of the stubbornness gene.
“I have declared as an art major for next year.” I managed to keep my voice from shaking like my knees.
“What?” He was on his feet again. “Without consulting me? I’m the one paying your tuition, young lady.”
“I’ve consulted with the Lord.” I tried not to sound too self-righteous. “I’ve prayed and prayed, Dad, and I’m convinced this is His will for me.”
What’s a Christian parent to say in the face of this argument? Forget God’s will? I know better than He what’s best for you?
Dad narrowed his eyes, clearly suspecting manipulation.
Help him to hear my heart, Lord!
“Please, Dad. Let me be happy.”
He yielded because he saw my desperation, but he never understood. He wouldn’t understand my move to the farm, either. Nor would Mom or Patty. They would try not to be disappointed in their artsy child/sibling who had no common sense.
“She’s sweet as can be,” I overheard Patty say to one of the guys she brought home for dinner, a young lawyer in the firm. I heard her “but” long before she said it. “But she—” Hesitation as she sought a way to say
whatever it was delicately. “She’s different.”
The confusion in her voice made me shake my head. That day I walked into the living room to a sea of navy pinstripes and smart black shoes, sleek haircuts and bulging briefcases. Mom, Dad, Patty, and her guest all stared at me in my broomstick skirt of many colors, my red scoop-necked ballet top, and white full-sleeved artist’s big shirt. It was probably my gladiator sandals that gave them indigestion.
3
I was smiling contentedly when I handed Mary my empty root beer glass and excused myself. I climbed the stairs to my two rooms, my home for the next year at least. I stopped in the doorway and surveyed my quarters with pleasure.
My living room was very attractive, even though the two overstuffed chairs were obviously much used and the end table had led a full life prior to becoming mine. The truth was that the room could have been as stark and ugly as an army barracks and I still would have loved it. But that uncanny eye for color I’d noted downstairs showed itself again in the blues and green of the chairs and rug with cream decorator pillows resting against an arm of each chair.
Sitting along one wall was a huge, scarred desk of blond wood with a straight-backed chair behind it.
“John found this desk for you at an auction in Intercourse,” Mary told me earlier as she ran her hand across its scarred surface. “He said every teacher needs a desk to work on.”
What, I wondered, did John and Mary think of a teacher who taught only art, who helped children draw pictures, paint their imagination, and form their clay into shapes that were often totally nonutilitarian? Did Amish schools teach art? Or did they teach only the three R’s and Amish culture? I suspected that imagination wasn’t a prized commodity because it brought about individualism; community—not individualism—was all important among the People.
I looked at the battered desk and remembered kindergarten and the frightening Miss Stangl who had sat behind just such a piece of blond wood. I should have known art was my true future the day she actually smiled at me. I had drawn my tree with leaves of orange, yellow, and red all swirled together in wild overlaid circles until my fat new Crayola crayons were worn down to the paper wrap.
“My, my, Kristina, you do like color,” Miss Stangl said. “You are different from Patty, aren’t you?” And she smiled. She never smiled.
I blinked, understanding in an appalling flash that all this wild color I so loved was somehow not good, that if it made me different from Patty, my parents would be disappointed. Even then Patty was perfect. Thereafter all my trees were green leaved and bland, and my crayons were carefully used. The wild glory of sunset and autumn was for God to paint, not me.
I sighed and put a flourishing philodendron on the corner of the desk to make it look user-friendly. My laptop lay in the center and my portfolio leaned against its side. Canvas bags of art supplies sat along the wall, lumpy with the promise of joy. I set my African violets on the broad windowsill where they’d get just the right amount of sun.
My parakeet, Big Bird, sat in his cage in the middle of the room, where I’d left him before Hawk reordered my day.
“You, my loudmouth friend, can go here.” I put him beside the chair nearest the window. He squawked his approval.
In my bedroom a patchwork quilt of royal blue, navy, and crimson calico squares covered the great sleigh bed, and a small hand-braided rug in the same shades lay on the floor beside it. The nightstand held a small lamp, and on the dresser by the window sat a vase filled with great magenta and white dahlias Mary grew in the garden off to the side of the front yard. My clothes, at least some of them, hung neatly on the wall pegs to the right of the door.
“Where do I put these?” Todd had asked earlier as he stood in the doorway with an armful of my clothes still on their hangers. He scanned the room for a closet.
“Right here,” Mary said with surprise as she pointed to the very obvious pegs along the wall.
“Oh.” Todd began putting the hangers on the little wooden dowels. It soon became more than apparent that the pegs weren’t installed with the amount of clothes I owned in mind.
Oh, boy. The cultural chasm. Their austerity and my abundance.
“Himmel,” Mary said. “I’ll get Elam to put up some more pegs. Maybe he can do it after dinner.”
“Don’t rush him,” I said as I laid Todd’s second armload over the back of one of the chairs.
“No, no. He’ll do it as soon as he can. It’s important you be happy here.”
She had smiled and I had smiled, and I was still smiling, warmed by the care Mary had taken with my rooms. They were on the second floor of the grossdawdy haus, or granddaddy house. When John Zook’s father had given up the main responsibilities for the farm and passed it on to John, a wing had been added to the house with its own separate entrance and privacy for the senior Zooks. John and his family had taken over the main house.
Mr. and Mrs. Zook senior had lived in the addition for several years until they were killed two years ago in a buggy-automobile accident just off Route 340 near Smoketown. Their vacant wing had been the perfect place for Jake to come home to after his accident, though he only used the first floor.
The interior door that had been cut in the wall between the main house and the grossdawdy haus provided ready access to both Jake’s wing and my stairway to the second floor.
I looked at the suitcases and boxes of things to be unpacked. Their clutter was ruining the perfection of my cozy new home. I eyed the bureau against the wall and wondered if it was big enough to hold everything, or would I have to get a piece of my furniture out of storage?
Get to it, girl, I ordered. Finish cleaning up this chaotic mess. Then you can lie down.
Instead I wandered over to the window of my living room and stood looking out over the patchwork countryside. Mary’s garden was directly below my window, and on this August Saturday it was filled with cucumbers, celery, squash, tomatoes, peppers, onions, and beans of all kinds—string, lima, and wax. Along the garden’s edge grew a profusion of cyclamen petunias whose purpose was to discourage the rabbits by their smell. At one end bloomed an elegant collection of varied dahlias, some with blooms the size of saucers.
In the field beyond the house, two of the mighty farm horses pulled a flatbed wagon beside rows of ripening cattle corn. A man in a dark shirt and black trousers, a full dark beard, and a wide-brimmed straw hat stood balanced on the wagon as he directed his team. I knew it was John Zook, and I itched to grab my digital Nikon and freeze the scene for painting some day.
Later, girl. Right now you need to get to work!
I turned and surveyed the mess. I slid my hands into my pockets as I contemplated what to do first. My hand brushed the key.
As soon as I touched it, I saw the stricken face of the old man as clearly as if he were here with me. My breath caught and my heart lurched. I was flooded with guilt. How had I ever managed to forget him?
Dear God, I pray he’s okay. I pray he recovers. Please take good care of him. And please don’t let him die!
I carried his key into my bedroom and put it on my dresser. I stared at it, waiting for some brilliant and practical idea to tell me how to deal with it.
All I got was a headache.
I went back to the living room and slumped in my stuffed chair by the window, Big Bird at my side. He fluffed his feathers in his water dish, and I swallowed my nerves and flipped open my cell.
Time to make the phone call.
My mother picked up on the third ring.
“Hi, Mom. It’s—”
“Well, Kristina, it’s about time. We haven’t heard from you in weeks.”
Nice to talk with you too, Mom. “It’s only been two weeks.” And the phone works in both directions. Sorry, Lord. Bad attitude. Nerves.
“Hmm. It seems longer, but I guess you’re right. We’d just finished Brandon Industries vs. Allied Insurance when we spoke last.”
“Right. You’d just won.” I swallowed again and pushed on. “I
wanted to give you my new address.”
“You moved?” Her surprise flowed through the air and zapped me right in my tumbling abdomen. “Why, for heaven’s sake? Your apartment was very nice.”
Yes, it was. Mom and Dad had helped me pick it out when I first moved to Lancaster. They’d given me the first month’s rent and the two months’ rent required for escrow and helped me pick out—and pay for—my furniture, now neatly placed in a small storage facility just east of town. I’d appreciated their help because I had no money to speak of at the time, having just spent the summer teaching art at a Christian day camp back home.
They’d stepped back then, telling me that from now on my bills were my bills, and if I couldn’t afford something, then I’d better learn to do without. Unspoken was the thought that if I’d been going to law school, they’d still be paying for everything.
Since they’d been involved in getting me the apartment, my giving it up without a very good reason would irk them. I wondered vaguely if they’d want their two months’ rent back.
“I decided I wanted a change of scenery,” I said brightly. “I can look out my windows at the new place and see rolling farmland. And there’s an Amishman working in his field.” I didn’t say it was John and the field was “mine.”
Mom was quiet for a few minutes, and I could almost hear her thoughts as she reminded herself that I was twenty-seven, and if I wanted to move, it was my choice.
“I hope you were careful not to take a place that will strap you financially.”
“Not at all,” I hastened to tell her. “It’s less expensive.”
“Huh. Cheap usually means second rate,” she said, her voice crisp.
“But not in this case. Here, let me give you my new address.” I reeled off the Zooks’ house number and street before she could ask any more questions.
