I didn’t move.
“Come on in.”
I shook my head. “I’ll wait here,” I said, not even sure who we were waiting for. She seemed to understand, because she reached out to give my hand a squeeze and then slipped inside without another word.
Standing there on the stoop, I thought of the other deaths in my life.
Phyllis, my favorite patient.
Freddy, Zed’s father.
My grandfather, when I was just a kid.
His loving wife, my grandmother Nettie, six months after him.
I remembered again the morning Mammi Nettie passed. Mamm had seemed a little relieved, much the way Susie did now. Unlike Verna, my grandmother had suffered and my mamm had spent months and months caring for her in every possible way.
Maybe that’s what Susie had been dreading. She was newly married, expecting a baby, and running her own shop. It would have been a hardship for her to care for Verna if she were too ill, and obviously I wouldn’t have been much help if things had become really bad.
I shivered, even though the fall day had grown warmer.
A minute later Susie joined me on the porch, a bowl in her hands. “Why don’t you eat some soup,” she said, thrusting it toward me.
I shook my head, my stomach roiling. “Ach, I’m sorry. I forgot all about it. Did it burn?”
“No, I smelled it cooking and turned off the fire in time.” Again, she pushed it toward me, but my hands remained at my sides.
“You eat it. But thanks anyway.”
She brought the bowl closer to her chest and then took a bite, chewed, and swallowed. “I made this soup from one of Verna’s recipes.”
I shivered again.
Susie kept talking between bites. “She was always so good to me. When I was a girl, sometimes I’d go stay with her for weeks at a time in the summer.”
I nodded, feeling a little envious that the history they had shared was so much more extensive than Verna’s and my own.
“She taught me so much, more than my own mamm did. All about gardening and canning. Cooking. Sewing and crocheting and knitting. She’s the one who taught me to really enjoy handwork, to see it as a time to be quiet and contemplative.” Susie swallowed hard, adding, “She was really something.”
She set the spoon in the bowl, her face full of grief.
“I don’t understand how she could be perfectly fine one day and then be dead the next,” I said. Or how she could be on the couch in the same room with me and just die like that. I shivered again.
“It’s part of life, Izzy. You know that.”
I did. Maybe not as clearly as Susie did—maybe because she’d been through death more times before than I had—but all Amish children grew up knowing that death, of both people and animals, was to be expected. Still I shivered again.
“Are you cold?” Susie asked. “We should go back inside.”
I shook my head. “I really don’t want to.”
“You can go on home. Carl said he would call the mortuary and then head here himself. They’ll probably both arrive soon.”
“I’ll wait.” I couldn’t leave Susie all alone.
“Do you want me to call your daed?”
I shook my head again. “I’m fine. I promise. Once they get here, I can drive myself home.”
“If you say so.” Bowl in hand, Susie opened the screen door and stepped back inside. Here she was in a family way, the one who had taken Verna in, and she was doing fine. Why was I a basket case once again?
I leaned against the porch wall by the door, feeling the cool bricks against my back.
Susie returned a minute later. “She looks so peaceful.”
“Do you think she’s in heaven?” I whispered. We weren’t supposed to assume that’s where everyone would go. That was up to God.
“She lived a more godly life than anyone I’ve ever known. Although maybe that’s easier when one doesn’t have a husband or kids.” She chuckled as if she’d made a joke and then patted her stomach. We stood in silence for a moment until a black hearse turned down the alley. The people from the mortuary had made it here first.
A wave of nausea overtook me. I knew I wasn’t cut out to be a caretaker. Why had I given it another try? I needed to concentrate on sewing and handwork, which I had no choice but to do exclusively now that this job was at an end.
Susie hurried down the steps as two men, both dressed in suits, climbed from the hearse. She spoke to them, and then they unloaded a gurney from the back. I stepped to the side of the porch as they passed by. They nodded at me, in unison, both solemnly.
I meant to follow them into the house, but I couldn’t. I stayed frozen in place until they came back out. It wasn’t until they were at the back of the hearse that my feet began to move, but by the time I reached the bottom step they had already slid Verna’s body inside.
“Danke,” I whispered to her, knowing she wasn’t there to hear. “For the companionship, even though it wasn’t nearly long enough.”
Susie talked with the older of the two men while I hurried back into the house and collected my things, including the history books of Zed’s I’d intended to read to Verna.
When I came back out, Susie was still talking, so I went to hitch up the buggy. A few minutes later, I stepped around to the front of the house as the second man climbed into the hearse and they drove away.
“Can I help you with anything?” I called out to Susie.
She shook her head. “I’ll make a few phone calls. The community will take it from here.”
I hesitated, wishing her husband would hurry up and get home.
“You can go, Izzy,” she urged. “I’m okay. Really.”
I started to refuse but was saved by the clomping of a horse’s hooves. Turning, I felt a rush of relief at the sight of Carl. Susie wouldn’t be alone.
A few minutes later, as I turned my own buggy onto the highway, I thought of the boxes of papers that still waited to be searched over at Rod’s farm. Somehow, the search seemed so much less important now that Verna wasn’t a part of it. I began to cry again, great big tears that rolled off my chin.
Why hadn’t God left me out of this one? There was no reason for me to get to know Verna so much better at the end of her life. I’d had my heart broken again, for nothing.
I planned to go home to my little room, open my Bible and journal, and never leave again.
NINE
It was God’s will.” Mamm stood under the clothesline with one of Stephen’s shirts in her hand. Her face was dry, her expression matter-of-fact. I, however, had tears streaming down my cheeks as I clutched Zed’s books, my handwork bag slung over my shoulder and my cape unfastened in the warm breeze of that mid-October day.
“But why did He have to involve me? Why didn’t He have her die two weeks ago? Before she and I had a chance to get so close?”
Mamm gave me one of her looks as she pinned the shirt to the line. “Don’t question God.”
I hugged Zed’s books even tighter.
“Honestly, Izzy,” Mamm took another shirt from the basket. “Verna was my mother’s sister. You’ve known her your whole life. What difference would two weeks have made?”
I couldn’t explain to her how much closer Verna and I had grown during the time we’d shared together. I had never realized until then that she was interested in the same things I was—like handwork and history. I felt as though I’d lost so much more than just her. I’d lost all of her stories and everything that happened to her. She’d told me many tales as we went through the papers together, and it felt as if I had lived through it all with her. Her childhood on the farm. The Great Depression. The home front during World War II.
She had also been a fellow sleuth in the search for my connection to the past. Now I didn’t know if I could bear to continue on with that search without her.
“Izzy?” Mamm actually had a look of sympathy on her face. “Remember that this too will pass.”
I knew that. It didn�
��t help to hear it.
The visitation and funeral were held two days later at the Westler farm, the home where Verna had lived until she moved in with Susie. I wasn’t planning to go, but my parents insisted, using that tone of voice that left no thought of doing otherwise.
Somehow I managed to get through everything without completely falling apart, but only by forcing myself to go numb. The hardest moment for me was at the cemetery, when we first got there and I caught sight of the waiting hole in the ground. In that moment it struck me how final death was. Verna was now gone forever. Phyllis, forever. My grandmother Nettie had left me forever.
After the graveside service was complete, my family insisted we return to the farm for the post-funeral meal. I just wanted to go home and be alone, but Mamm wouldn’t hear of it. She said that in this time of mourning it was important to be with family and community.
I swallowed back any further objections, deciding that though she might be able to make me go with them to the Westlers’ place, she couldn’t force me to interact much once we were there. When we arrived, I got out of the buggy and broke off from my family in search of Susie. I hated to be tacky, but I wanted to make sure she knew Verna intended for all the family papers to pass down to me.
Fortunately, I didn’t even have to ask. She saw me coming and said the same thing herself—and that Rod knew as well. I promised that either my daed or I would take the boxes at her house off her hands within the next few weeks.
Once we finished talking, I glanced around to make sure no one was watching me, and then I slipped back out and walked over to where our buggy had been parked. I climbed inside.
Not one person seemed to notice. There in the scruffy velvet- and leather-lined quiet of the buggy’s interior, I settled in all alone, pulled out my bag, and tried to start in on some embroidery. But then my tears began to fall, so I set my handwork aside and let them come. I cried hard, not just for Verna but for all of my losses—not just the deaths but Zed too, though he was a loss of a different sort. I must have cried for half an hour before finally winding down. Then, feeling utterly spent, I dug out some tissues, dried my face, and tried to return my focus to the needle and fabric in my lap.
Time passed, and eventually I was lost in the sewing rhythm that soothed me. I looked around occasionally, and as it turned out, my little hideaway was a pretty good vantage point for all of the goings-on. The meal had been served inside, but the October day had grown very warm, and soon people began to filter back out one by one. Children ran off to play in the big front yard. Teens clustered in giggling groups nearby. I saw some of the men move toward the barns and other adults just standing around and talking.
Several members of Zed’s family were there, including his cousin Ada and her brood, and his grandmother Frannie, a tough old bird who had survived a stroke several years before. Frannie was walking with the help of a cane, her daughter Marta close at her side, and as the two of them made their way toward the line of parked cars up ahead, I couldn’t help thinking that the old woman looked even less healthy than Verna had on the morning of the day she died. That thought again plunged me into sadness. I adored Frannie Lantz and couldn’t bear the thought of her passing too.
Frannie and I had first come to know each other four years before, when I worked as a mother’s helper for her granddaughter Ada. Ada had married Will Gundy, a widower with three young children, and in the beginning, as Ada got used to caring for a new husband, a thirteen-year-old daughter, and a pair of four-year-old twins, Will had insisted on bringing in a helper for her.
I had enjoyed that job, hectic as it was, but my favorite days at the Gundy household were when Frannie was added into the mix. She lived in the daadi haus at her daughter Klara’s, but no one wanted her to be home alone, so whenever Klara had somewhere to go, she or her husband would bring Frannie over to stay with us at Ada’s for the day.
Of course, I had been drawn to Frannie right away, as I always was to older folks. She wasn’t much of a storyteller—it felt as though she held back, as if many of her memories were too painful to share—but she was always very kind to me and answered my questions as best she could. Most of all, it was just fun to watch her with her new step-great-grandchildren. She had a way with Christy and with the twins, Mel and Mat, that simply melted my heart.
Now I watched as she and Marta reached Marta’s car, and my attention was so focused on them that I didn’t see my own father approaching the buggy until he was at the window, a startled expression on his face.
“Izzy? What are you doing in there?”
I felt my face flush with heat, embarrassed that he’d caught me in hiding.
“I just needed some peace and quiet,” I muttered, and I was relieved when he didn’t press the matter any further.
He hitched up the horse, pulled us out from the line of buggies, and headed up the drive, coming to a stop where my mother and siblings were waiting to board. As they climbed in, my mother glanced at me in surprise but didn’t say a word. I had a feeling she was putting two and two together and figuring out I had skipped the meal, but she was too embarrassed to fuss at me about it because she didn’t want to admit she hadn’t even noticed until that moment that I hadn’t been there.
Soon we were on our way home, the rhythmic clomping of the horse easing everyone into quiet contemplation and soothing my own frayed nerves. It took a while to get there, but once our driveway was in sight, I felt myself exhaling deeply.
I knew I’d need to venture out to Susie’s soon to deliver some finished goods, but otherwise my hope was not to leave home again for a very long time. I had no desire to find another job, at least not as a caregiver. I’d struck out twice in two months, both times dramatically. Why push my luck for a third?
A week later, I was sitting in my room doing my handwork when Mamm appeared in the doorway, her hands on her hips. “Anyone who isolates herself the way you have would be depressed,” she said.
“I’m not depressed.”
“Then why are you crying all the time?”
“I’m just feeling things rather strongly right now. That’s all.”
“Plan some outings or I’ll plan some for you,” Mamm said. “By tomorrow. But enough of this moping around. We buried Verna a week ago.”
I didn’t answer and she left. The rain had returned and beat against the small-paned windows. The cold had arrived too. I’d tried to ward it off with the quilt I’d wrapped up in, but my fingers were icy as I tried to manipulate my needle.
Plan some outings? I couldn’t imagine anything I wanted to do less, even though I knew it was time to make a delivery to Susie’s. I’d had some items ready to go for several days, in fact, but I had been putting that particular errand off in the hopes that my daed might take pity and run it for me. I knew Susie had to be getting impatient, as her Christmas rush would start before Thanksgiving, which was just a month away.
Putting a visit to her out of my mind for now, I continued to work, my thoughts looping, just like woven fabric, from Verna to Zed to Verna and back to Zed, until just before lunchtime when my father interrupted me. “Come see my shop. It’s completely finished.”
“How about after lunch?” I kept my head down.
“No, come now. You need the fresh air, girl.”
He wasn’t usually so direct, but I knew he was right. I put my things down and shed the quilt, following him to the mudroom, where I put on my cape and headed outside. Thomas had been playing on the front porch, and when he heard the back door slam, he hurried around, taking my hand.
When we neared the barn, Thomas let go of me and ran ahead of us to open up the side door to the shop as rain began to fall. When we stepped inside, I realized that not only was the shop finished, it was already in use. The scent of sawdust filled the air, and Daed had three tables halfway completed. In my contemplative state I’d missed that he’d finished getting the new place up and running, much less that he’d acquired orders. I was so glad. I knew the family fin
ances weighed on both my parents.
He opened the door to the other half and stepped aside so I could go first. Another table, nearly finished, sat in the middle. He’d been staining it.
“Impressive,” I said.
He said, humbly, “God’s provided some work. That’s good.”
I met his eyes, embarrassed at my recent self-absorption. “I’m sorry I didn’t get out here before now, Daed. I should’ve asked to see it instead of waiting for you to make me come out to take a look.”
He started to say something in response, but then he held his tongue and simply smiled. “You’re here now.”
Outside a car turned into the driveway.
“I’ll go see who it is,” Thomas said, running out the door to the other room. A second later the outside door opened and slammed.
As we stepped into the workroom, Thomas returned. “It’s Zed’s mamm,” he said, hovering in the doorway.
I frowned, not wanting to see anyone right now, especially Marta, who would only remind me of Zed and how much I missed him. But it was our way to be hospitable, so I squared my shoulders and followed my father and little brother out into the rain. Holding my hood out over my face, the icy water pelting my hand, Thomas and I waved her over as Daed called out, “Come into the house!”
Thomas ran ahead again, holding his straw hat atop his head with one hand, splashing through the puddles in his black rubber boots, the mud splattering up his pants and onto the back of his jacket.
Marta stepped to my side and we hurried along in silence with Daed walking behind us. My stomach began to churn as I speculated what would bring her here. Had something happened to Zed?
Once we were inside, my mamm beamed at Marta, her warm and welcoming expression reminding me that the two women shared a bond of a very unique sort. Marta was a midwife, and she had delivered all of my mother’s children except for Thomas and Sadie. Some other midwife I didn’t know had delivered my oldest sister, and Marta’s niece, a nurse-midwife named Lexie, had been the one to deliver Thomas. I had been at school that day, much to my disappointment, but Sadie and Becky had both been home.
The Amish Seamstress Page 11
