Return to Paradise

by Cameron, Barbara;

  “What are you doing here?” he bellowed, glaring at him.

  David rose. “I came to see you,” he said, lifting his chin. “Mamm said you were sick.”

  “So?”

  He studied his dat. He’d lost weight since David had left, and his beard and hair were threaded with more gray. But his voice was as loud and abrasive as ever.

  “We have nothing to say to each other,” Amos said bluntly.

  He walked to the sink, filled a glass with water and drank it down. Although he turned his back, David saw that his father’s hand shook.

  “Amos, kumm, sit,” Waneta said, her tone placating. “Lavina and Mary Elizabeth brought us supper. Beef stew. And the bread’s still warm from the oven.”

  He hesitated, turning to glare balefully at David. “Great timing, got here for supper. Always did show up at mealtime, didn’t you? Well, if you’re looking for a welcome like the prodigal son, you’ve come to the wrong place.”

  David felt the old anger rise to the surface. He eyed his jacket he’d hung on the peg by the kitchen door. Then he saw his mother follow the direction of his gaze, and she looked ready to cry.

  So he took a deep breath and silently counted to ten. “Neither of us ever missed a meal, did we?” he told him easily and he smiled at his mother. “Do you need any help?”

  “If you’ll get some bowls, I’ll slice the bread.”

  She lifted the casserole dish from the insulated carrier and set it on the table in front of David, then set the carrier aside on the counter. Getting a knife from a drawer, she placed the bread on a wooden carving board and sliced it.

  Amos sat in a chair and watched her. It was as if David wasn’t even in the room. When someone left the community the family often shunned them. He’d wondered if that was what his father would do if he came back . . . just sit at the table and ignore him.

  He ladled a bowl of stew and handed it to his mother who turned and set it before her mann. Then he filled another bowl for her. Finally he served himself.

  They bent their heads for prayer and then began eating.

  It was a start, he thought as he dug his spoon into the bowl of stew. It could have been worse. His dat could have told him to leave and he hadn’t. He said a silent prayer of thanks to his heavenly Dat and began eating.

  ***

  David’s head was pounding by the time he finished his bowl of stew.

  He asked himself why he hadn’t waited until after he’d eaten his supper to stop at his house and see his mudder.

  Then he reminded himself that he hadn’t intended to stop at all. He’d been driving up and down the road putting off stopping when he’d passed Lavina and Mary Elizabeth walking there and they’d seen him. Not wanting to appear the coward he really was, he’d felt he had to stop.

  Now, here he was, trapped at the supper table between a disgruntled old man and his mudder trying desperately to act as if they were one happy family gathered again around her kitchen table.

  David hadn’t expected for his dat to kill a fatted calf for him. He knew not to expect to be treated like the prodigal son of the Bible but . . . he was going to have a whopper of a headache and maybe a really gut case of indigestion.

  “Another bowl of stew?” his mudder asked him. “There’s plenty for both of you to have seconds.”

  “Not for me,” his dat said, pushing away his bowl half-eaten. “Don’t feel much like eating. I’m going back to lie down.”

  Without saying another word he got up and shuffled back upstairs.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have come,” David said.

  His mother got to her feet and poured them both a mug of coffee. She returned to the table and set them down, then opened a plastic container of cookies.

  “Lavina and Mary Elizabeth brought these,” she said, putting some of the cookies on a plate and setting it before David. “I haven’t had time to bake. I went with your dat to his chemotherapy session today.”

  He picked up a cookie and bit into it. “It’s gut.” He figured Lavina had made them. She liked to bake. She hadn’t known he’d be here. It was just a coincidence that she’d made peanut butter cookies, his favorite kind. Ya, and a coincidence that they had been walking to his house this evening when he was driving there.

  Coincidence.

  Suddenly something Lavina used to say came to him: “There’s no such thing as coincidence.” Everything was from God, she always maintained.

  He wondered if he would have stopped at the house tonight if he hadn’t seen Lavina and she’d seen him.

  Oh, well, what did it matter? He was here now and what did it change.

  Now he just had to decide what his next step was.

  He felt his mother’s hand on his. “Danki for coming.”

  “You thanked me already.”

  She sighed. “Your dat isn’t an easy man but he’s a gut one.”

  They heard a thump upstairs. Startled, she looked up and got to her feet. “I need to go check on him.”

  She started for the stairs, then turned and looked at him. “You’re staying, right? I haven’t changed it since you left.”

  “Daed hasn’t moved his favorite horse in there?”

  She chuckled. “Nee. I’ll be right back.”

  David helped himself to another cup of coffee and a couple more cookies and sat down. He hadn’t planned on staying the night. He hadn’t planned on anything. They needed to talk some more, he and his mudder.

  She came into the kitchen a few minutes later looking tired and worn. “He’ll be down for the night now.”

  When had they gotten so old? he wondered. They’d been old—well, older than the parents of his friends. God hadn’t sent them kinner until they were nearly forty and then, as if to make up for their faith in believing in Him, had sent David and his two bruders all within six years.

  He got up to pour her a cup of coffee. “We didn’t get to talk earlier with Lavina and her schweschder here. And Daed was in no mood to talk to me.”

  “I’m sorry, sohn. He’ll come around.”

  David reached for her hand and studied how fragile it looked with blue veins showing beneath the thin white skin. “He’s not going to change. I came to see if I can help you. I’ll do my best to stay, but if he insists I get out, you know I’ll have to leave.”

  She lifted her chin. “I have something to say about that. I won’t let him order you from the house.”

  He lifted his eyebrows.

  “But —”

  “I mean it,” she said firmly. “I should have said more to him. It wasn’t right for him to treat his sohns the way he did.”

  “Or his fraa.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t care about that. I care about losing my three sohns. I care about whether they’ll walk away from their Amish faith, their community. I care about whether they have kinner of their own, whether I’ll see them.” She stopped, struggling for composure.

  David didn’t like to upset her more, but he needed to know more about his dat.

  “Tell me about Daed. How bad is it?”

  “It’s bad. He has stage three colon cancer.”

  “How bad is that?”

  “There’s only one stage more. One worse, I mean. Then—” She couldn’t go on.

  “You said he’s going for chemotherapy?”

  She nodded. “He didn’t want to at first. The doctor talked to him. I talked to him. He finally agreed. He’s got a lot of treatments ahead of him.”

  “You’re worn out.”

  “It hasn’t been easy.” She rubbed at her temple tiredly. “They’re doing some tests next week to see how he’s doing.”

  “Go on up to bed. I’ll do the dishes.” When she stared at him, he grinned. “I know how to do dishes, remember?”

  “Ya, I remember you doing them two or three times.”

  “I did them more often than that.”

  She shook her head. “You broke too many.”

  “I think your memory’s getting fau
lty.”

  She smacked his arm, but she was smiling. She hadn’t smiled much that night.

  “I’ll be careful,” he promised.

  “Allrecht. I’m going to put the leftover stew in the refrigerator if you don’t want any more. You didn’t eat much at supper. That’s not like you.”

  “Well, I might have a little more now that Daed’s in bed.”

  She nodded. “Gut nacht. See you in the morning.”

  “Gut nacht.” David helped himself to another bowl of stew and another slice of buttered bread. It felt better than he’d thought to be back in the kitchen of the home he’d grown up in. The room was a simple room, dominated by the big wooden table his father had carved after he’d built the house for himself and his new fraa when they were married. There was a dawdi haus on the back, like there was on so many Amish houses, for the two of them to retire to when a sohn took over the farm.

  But Amos had argued that he wasn’t ready to retire yet, even though his health had begun failing before the diagnosis of cancer had been made. Sometimes the oldest sohn didn’t get the farm—sometimes a younger sohn did, and David honestly didn’t mind if one of his bruders got it —but Amos had flatly refused to retire and simply drove his sohns harder and talked to them even harsher than before.

  David finished the stew and bread, made quick work of the dishes and chose an apple from a bowl on the counter. He pulled on his jacket and walked out to the barn. When he slid the barn door open a chestnut mare stuck her head over her stall and neighed a welcome.

  “Nellie,” he crooned to her. “I’ve missed you, girl. Did you miss me?”

  She nuzzled his neck and pushed her nose at his arm, pulling his hand out of his pocket. “Yeah, I think you miss me bringing you an apple more than you miss me.”

  He gave her the apple and then found himself wrapping his arms around her. “Oh, Nellie I missed you so. I’m back, Nellie. I don’t know for how long, but I’m back.”

  She made a snuffling noise as if trying to comfort him. They stood like that for a long time until he finally went back into the house and climbed into the bed in his old room.

  Sleep came hours later.

  ***

  “Well, that was tense,” Lavina said as they walked back home.

  “David’s dat sure hasn’t changed. He’s always been such a grump.” She glanced over at Lavina. “I know, I shouldn’t talk like that. But he is.”

  “He’s not well.”

  “He’s always been that way.”

  Mary Elizabeth was right, but still, they shouldn’t talk about him like that. So she changed the subject as they walked and was grateful when they reached their house.

  Everyone was gathered around the table. Lavina and Mary Elizabeth quickly shed their jackets and bonnets and joined their family for their own supper.

  As she listened to Rose Anna chatter, glanced around the table and saw her parents and her siblings enjoying being with each other, Lavina couldn’t help wondering what was happening at the Stoltzfus house. She didn’t envy David sitting at their table with his dat. What if his dat had thrown him out of the house? What if David had left—after all, he’d done so voluntarily last time.

  “Gut stew,” her dat said. “Warms the belly on a cold day.” He tore a piece of bread in half and used it to dip into the gravy.

  “Lavina took a pot over to Waneta and Amos this afternoon,” her mamm told him. “I’ll take them my chicken and dumplings tomorrow.”

  “Take enough for three,” Lavina said as she buttered a slice of bread. “David may be back.”

  “David?”

  She nodded. “Waneta was hoping he’d come back since his dat is sick with the cancer. He was there for supper tonight.”

  “It would be so nice if that family could get together again. Especially now that Amos is sick. God wants us to care for each other.”

  She finished her stew and got up to get the apple crisp from the top of the stove where it had been cooling.

  “He gave us a ride in his truck,” Mary Elizabeth said as she got ice cream from the freezer.

  “Truck?”

  “He told his mudder he hasn’t become Englisch. He bought it to get to work.”

  “Are his bruders coming back, too?” Rose Anna asked, sounding hopeful.

  “I don’t know. We didn’t get to talk.” Lavina hugged to herself the secret that David had said they’d talk tomorrow.

  She accepted the bowl of apple crisp Mary Elizabeth passed her, breathing in the scent of the warm apples and cinnamon before she plunged her spoon into the dessert. Mary Elizabeth was telling them about how the two of them left when David’s dat had come downstairs. Lavina tuned out what her schweschder was saying.

  It was her turn to wash up, but Rose Anna helped while Mary Elizabeth took a cup of tea upstairs to drink while she read a book.

  “How did David look?” she asked as she took a dish from Lavina and dried it. “Was it hard seeing him again?”

  Trust Rose Anna to ask such a question. She had such a tender heart.

  “He looked gut,” she admitted. “Thinner,” she remembered.

  “Maybe he hasn’t been eating as well as he did when his mudder cooked for him.” She put a dish in the cabinet. “I’m glad he came back. It was the right thing to do. Now if John and Samuel will come back . . .”

  Lavina handed her a dish, but when Rose Anna tried to take it she held on to it. She knew that Rose Anna loved John and hurt when he left just as Lavina had.

  “Rose Anna, even if David and his bruders come back, it doesn’t mean things will go back to the way they used to be.”

  The corners of Rose Anna’s mouth turned down. “You don’t know that.”

  “Nee, I don’t,” She sighed. “But I don’t think we should get our hopes up. We don’t know that David’s come back for good.”

  She stared into the sudsy water as if she could see an answer there. “David’s dat didn’t seem all that happy to see him tonight. As a matter of fact, he was awful to David. I wouldn’t have wanted to sit down at the table with him.”

  She handed her a dripping dish. “For all I know, he left shortly after we did.”

  Rose Anna dried the dish and fell silent. They worked together and finished the dishes, wiped down the table and counter tops. She didn’t say another word.

  They turned off the gas lamp and climbed the stairs to their room. There they changed into nightgowns, brushed their teeth, then climbed into their twin beds. Lavina pulled her quilt up to her chin and stared at the pattern the moonlight filtering through the bare branches of the tree outside made on the ceiling.

  “Lavina?”

  “Ya?”

  “I hope things work out. With David, I mean. For you and for his family.”

  “Danki, Rose Anna. Gut nacht. Sweet dreams.”

  She was only twenty-three, but at that moment Lavina felt so old. Once she’d harbored simple dreams. A maedel’s dreams. She and David loved each other, and they were going to get married. But life was more complicated than that. Things changed. People changed. She’d grown up this past year, accepted that David hadn’t loved her or he’d have found a way to stay in the Amish community.

  At the very least he’d have contacted her sometime this past year . . .

  She’d thought David was the man God had set aside for her, but she’d been wrong. There must be someone else. He just hadn’t shown up yet.

  Sometimes God’s timing wasn’t what people wanted. She punched her pillow to make it more comfortable and closed her eyes, thinking how most of the time it wasn’t. Look how one of her mamm’s friends had prayed for a boppli for fifteen years and then had zwillingbopplin when others her age were becoming grossmudders. A woman in her church had been widowed for twenty years and never thought she’d marry again. Then a man from Ohio moved here and they fell in love and married.

  God hadn’t sent her another man when David left, and now David was back. She didn’t know what that meant for h
er . . . if anything.

  She closed her eyes. She’d wished Rose Anna sweet dreams. Now she hoped for some of her own.

  Snuggled deep in her quilt on a moon-washed, cold fall night, Lavina dreamed of the last day she had seen David. They’d taken a picnic lunch to eat in a nearby park.

  “Have another piece of chicken?” she invited, holding out the plastic container.

  David chose a leg. “Three’s my limit.”

  Lavina set the container down on the quilt they’d spread on the grass and replaced the top. She knew he’d try to resist another piece and wouldn’t be able to so she’d packed plenty. He loved her fried chicken. And like many hard-working Amish men, he could eat a lot and not gain weight.

  The day was warm but pleasantly so. The delicate white seed tops of dandelions seemed to dance on the gentle breeze that blew over the nearby pond. Lavina poured cups of lemonade and wished the day wouldn’t end.

  They’d stolen a few hours for themselves after church. Summer was so busy with the harvest in and all the canning and preserving. But Sunday was a day of rest and there would be no work aside from the necessary daily chores of caring for and feeding the animals.

  “More potato salad?”

  “Nee,” he said with a satisfied sigh. “I’m full.” He leaned back on his elbows and stretched out his long legs. “We’ll have to head back soon,” he said. “It’s going to rain.”

  She frowned. “Not fair. Why does it have to rain on the only day we have off?”

  “Sometimes things don’t seem fair.” Now it was his turn to frown.

  “Did you speak to your dat?”

  He shook his head. “He was in a bad mood yesterday and went to bed early. I’m hoping to talk to him after supper tonight.”

  His father was a difficult man, so demanding of David and his two bruders. They worked so hard and yet it never seemed to be enough for him. But it seemed to Lavina he was hardest on David, his eldest sohn.

  She touched his arm. “I wish the two of you got along better.”

  “I don’t think he gets along with anyone,” David muttered. He reached for his lemonade, gulped it down, and crushed the paper cup in his hand. “I don’t know how much more I can take.” He stared down at the cup in his hand as if he had forgotten it. Sitting up, he tossed it into the picnic basket.