“Zach,” Sol said, and Zach froze, mid-air. “Before you go fussing over that car of yours, why don’t you do Mattie a favor and clean up the breakfast dishes for her?” Sol gave him a cat-in-the-cream smile. “Consider it an early Christmas gift.”
The storm was finally losing its bluster. It had taken Zach two hours to clean up the kitchen, including many sighs and moans, but Sol wouldn’t let C.J. or anyone else help him. He insisted that Zach wanted to do this for Mattie and ushered everyone into the living room.
C.J. felt a little badly about that—he knew he was a messy cook. At home, he cooked and Jaime cleaned up. It worked for them, though others thought it was a little odd. Jaime’s mother had given him an apron for his birthday one year with the saying “I love a man with dishpan hands!”
As soon as Zach finished the last dish, he scowled at Sol and blew out the door to go rescue his car.
In the meantime, Danny peppered C.J. with questions—he wanted to know everything about Search and Rescue, about his Finds, about Tucker, until C.J. felt he had run clean out of stories. Taking pity on C.J., Sol suggested a game of checkers with his son. C.J. envied Mattie and Sol and Danny—not because of their Amish-ness but because of their family-ness: They were smug without meaning to be, smug about the simplest and yet most enduring things in life—their love for each other, their love for their child.
This was how he always sort of imagined it. His life. A cozy day by the hearth, his wife and his children (two sons and two daughters, as long as he was imagining), a big dog like Tucker curled up in front of the fire. Everyone content, just being together.
When they had finished breakfast this morning, Sol prayed aloud a prayer that was profound in its simplicity: “The days available to say a kind word to someone this year are rapidly drawing to a close. Lord God, teach us to be kind.”
That’s the word he would use to tell Eve what the Amish were like: kind. They have a culture of kindness. He and Eve played a game called One Word they invented during a rainy lunch in the teacher’s lounge. She had asked him to describe his work, his mother, his father, his dog, his wife—each one in a single word. Eve used words like philology and pedantic without batting an eye. So he had spent time finding just the right word to impress her. In the end, he said unpredictable (work), mother wit (mother), trustworthy (father), loyal (Tucker).
“And your wife?” Eve had asked. “How would you describe her?”
He took a long time with that one. Charming, he considered. Cute. Talented. Funny. Insecure. Enthralling. Independent. Which one word best described Jaime? Then, suddenly, he knew.
“Asymmetrical.”
C.J. looked across the room at his wife. Mattie was trying to teach Jaime how to sew a straight stitch. Their two heads were bowed over the frame. The sight made him smile. He doubted Jaime had ever threaded a needle in her life. She looked so relaxed, so at ease. She had showered after breakfast and her hair hung loose and curly, the way it naturally was before she started her Anti-Curl Program. Her hair was finally growing longer.
He had been horrified when she surprised him with that bizarre haircut—clipped short on one side, but jaw-length and jagged on the other. They had a terrible fight over it—their worst ever. She cried when she saw how disappointed he was in the haircut. Everyone in New York City was wearing their hair this way, she insisted. Why would that matter? he pointed out, when we live in Stoney Ridge? Then he asked, under his breath but a little too loudly, when was she ever going to stop reinventing herself?
“When I finally get it right!” she shouted and stomped away.
This morning, she wasn’t wearing any makeup. Her shirt wasn’t tucked in; it hung over her pants. She looked . . . the way she used to look before James MacComber entered the scene and took her to get an expensive makeover. Before she became Asymmetrical Haircut Jaime. That blasted haircut had become a metaphor for how she had changed this last year. Out of balance.
C.J. had always thought Jaime was a beauty—a natural outdoor beauty. No makeup, no hairspray. She smelled like a pinecone. But lately she looked like an exquisite china doll, delicate, fragile, but a little hard and stiff, just like the hairspray she lacquered on her hair to keep every strand in place. Jaime liked her new look, but he missed the old Jaime. Now she was constantly worried about money and clothes and a house and new cars and money again. He missed the Jaime who used to love his jeep, loved to hike in the woods, loved Tucker. The Jaime who loved him.
The woodstove kept the room warm and toasty, and for a moment, C.J. wished the storm would just continue raging. He glanced out the window and saw some blue behind some clouds, and he actually felt disappointed. Suddenly this Christmas weekend felt short and precious; he wanted it to last forever.
The thought of leaving this cozy room to go on a cruise with James MacComber made C.J. feel ill, as if he were being smothered. A cruise meant he would be trapped with nowhere to go but to listen to Jaime’s father pontificate about his latest sales deal. Her father was mysteriously wealthy. C.J. could never quite figure how or what he did for a living—he wheeled and dealed and dabbled in all kinds of things. He loved to name-drop too—famous people he had met (the truth of which C.J. had somehow always doubted), or designer this or that, or had C.J. seen this latest technology? and he would whip out some new gadget. He did not trust James MacComber. Never had.
The first time he met Jaime’s father was the day before their wedding, when he suddenly arrived and acted like he was footing the bill for the entire wedding. He told Jaime he wanted to walk her down the aisle—and Jaime let him! Then he didn’t think that a buffet meal for the reception was ritzy enough, so he canceled the buffet C.J. and Jaime had chosen and substituted a sit-down dinner menu, including lobster tails for everyone. Lobster tails. In Pennsylvania, in late December. Although he had made a big show of acting like a host at the reception, he never did end up paying for anything. Jaime’s mother didn’t have the money to pay for a sit-down dinner, so C.J. sold his motorcycle to pay off the restaurant bill. How he had loved that motorcycle! Thus ended his first experience with James MacComber’s style of fatherhood.
But C.J. had agreed to go on this cruise and he would go, for Jaime’s sake. By noon, the sky was empty of clouds, bright blue, and the winter sun reflected off the snow so brightly that it hurt to gaze outside the windows too long. C.J. saw something on the road and shaded his eyes to look as the object turned into Sol and Mattie’s drive. It was a horse-drawn sleigh, led by an enormous horse, carrying three Amish men.
Sol came up behind him. “Well, look at that. Our neighbors are here to help get that car out of the pond.” He reached for his hat and jacket off the wall peg.
C.J. grabbed his jacket too. “But how could they possibly have known? With a doozy of a storm like that, how could they have known?”
Sol grinned. “One farmer probably passed by and saw it, told another, then another. It’s called the Amish telegraph system.”
Jaime came into the kitchen. “Do you think they can get the car out of the pond without a tow truck?”
“Looks like we’re going to give it a try,” Sol said. “But we’re sure to need another horse. I’ll go get Dixie.”
Danny pulled on his boots and coat and mittens as Sol spoke to Jaime.
Mattie stood against the doorjamb between the kitchen and the living room. Her arms were folded against her chest. “Sol, that’s dangerous work. I don’t know that Danny should be down there.”
“Oh Mom!” Danny whined.
“Mattie,” Sol said in a sharp voice. “The boy needs to learn how to do things like this. You can’t keep him in the kitchen for the rest of his life.”
C.J. saw Mattie glance from Jaime to him, then turn her head away, embarrassed. She lifted her head and drew her shoulders up proud. It was her quiet way, C.J. thought, of making her stand. Stubborn but silent. He held back a smile. It relieved him to see that even a couple like Mattie and Sol had their tense moments.
“I
’ll keep a close watch on him,” Sol said in a softer tone. He touched Mattie’s arm and they exchanged a long look, connected for a moment in a way that excluded everyone else.
C.J. watched with a rush of longing. He and Jaime used to have those kinds of looks—filled with silent communication.
Maybe Mattie’s grandfather was right. Maybe things could get good again.
Mattie’s light spirits from the pleasant morning had fizzled away. She watched Sol lead Dixie, their buggy horse, out of the barn and down toward the pond. Danny followed close behind, holding a coil of rope. The English visitors trailed behind both of them, following in the path cleared by Dixie’s large hoofprints. That big dog, Tucker, didn’t need a path. He was jumping around for joy in the snowdrifts.
She felt a pull on her heart as she watched Danny trudge down the hill. She hoped Sol would truly pay close attention to him. Even though the pond was probably frozen solid from last night’s freezing temperatures, pulling the car out would break up the ice. Danny had just learned to swim last August and he wasn’t very good at it. She wondered if she should go down with them, but she knew Sol would know why she was there, that she didn’t trust him to watch over their son.
She wondered how long pulling the car out would take, and if the neighbors would be expecting lunch. Just the thought of making lunch for all of them made her feel tired. She was always so tired lately, worn down by worries and what-ifs. She knew it wasn’t right, but she couldn’t seem to keep her mind from racing. She rubbed her face.
What is happening to me? I’m turning into someone I never wanted to be. She thought of the dark feelings, foreign feelings, that filled her when she was at Carrie Miller’s last weekend. She held Carrie’s beautiful newborn daughter in her arms—oh, how she wished she were hers! She hugged the baby close to her, breathing in her baby smell. The baby was even named Mathilda after Mattie—and yet she felt something close to bitterness toward Carrie—a woman who is like a sister to me. Bitterness that felt like bile in her throat. It disgusted Mattie to admit those feelings to herself.
But why couldn’t it be she who had a baby? Why was it that her sisters-in-law and friends could do something that she couldn’t seem to do? Carrie and Abel had three children now; some of her friends had even more!
Mattie had grown up wanting thirteen children. A baker’s dozen, her mother had called it. She remembered the early years of her marriage, remembered lying in Sol’s arms and whispering dreams of all the babies they would make together. They even had names picked out. But the nights had passed into months, and the months into years. I’ve got to surrender this deep longing, but I just can’t seem to let it go. Dear God, when I am weak, you are strong. Tears blurred her eyes and filled her throat. She had to swallow twice to fight them back. She would not cry!
As she turned to go upstairs, she noticed Jaime’s camera on the table. She stopped and picked it up. It was a complicated piece of equipment, covered with precise dials and levers. She set it down again, fearful she would break it. Then she rolled her eyes. I’m even afraid of a silly thing like a camera.
Zach shifted his weight from foot to foot, trying to keep from freezing. The wind had a stiff bite to it, and even though the sky was blue and clear, there was talk that another storm was heading in. Standing next to him and Sol were three other men, discussing the best way to get the English visitors’ car out of the pond. He was sure that if these neighbors knew of the stuck car, his father did too. But, of course, his father was too righteous to help anyone with car trouble.
He didn’t know why this endeavor took so much discussion. Seemed to him all they needed to do was to get rope, horses, and start to pull. But the ice worried the older men. He wasn’t sure why they were so worried. He knew they would be sending him to wade into that pond to tie the rope to the bumper. At least he was wearing his fishing boots today.
He wasn’t terribly eager to have the car pulled out of the pond. That meant Jaime Fitzpatrick would be on her way, out of his life forever. It was wrong to have such thoughts about an English woman, a married English woman, but Jaime was different than any woman he had ever met. He looked over at her and saw how impatient she was to get her car out of the pond. She was stretching up and down on her toes, her arms folded tightly against her chest. He could practically see her biting her tongue to keep from telling the men to get going. Get that car—that sleek, stunning piece of machinery—out of the pond!
Who could blame her? What kind of a woman had a sports car like that, anyway? Owning such a vehicle was one more thing about Jaime that fascinated him. Sol elbowed him, and when Zach looked to see what he wanted, he saw the warning scowl on Sol’s face.
Zach felt his cheeks start to flush. Oh, surely, nothing good could come from such wicked thoughts.
If Sol weren’t standing next to the three most humorless men in his church, he would have picked up Zach by the scruff of his neck and thrown him in the pond to cool off his ardor. That ridiculous look of adoration on Zach’s face as he gawked at the English woman was the last straw. What thoughts ran through that boy’s head? None with any sense, that’s for sure.
When Zach first came to live with them, Sol saw him as the lovable screw-up of the family. He and Mattie would shake their heads at his antics in fond disbelief. But Zach’s self-absorbed behavior soon grew tiresome—late nights, careless work habits, his immature friends. The gall to hide a car on Sol’s farm. And now, he’d developed a schoolboy crush on a married English woman. Married! Enough! Sol had had it with that boy. It was time for Zach to move on.
Mattie would not like his decision. He could practically hear her objections: “Is that what you’re going to do with our own Danny when it’s time for him to try out his wings? Cut him off? Pretend he doesn’t exist? But you know as well as anybody, Solomon Riehl”—she only called him Solomon when she wanted to make a point—“God doesn’t write anybody off.”
He did know that. He was a church member today because Mattie didn’t write him off. She kept seeing the potential of manhood within him, even when he wasn’t sure it was there himself. But she also wasn’t aware of the pressure he was getting from church members, from Zach’s own father, to allow the boy to face up to his own consequences.
“He’ll never learn,” Eli Zook told him at church two weeks ago, pointing a long bony finger at Sol’s chest, “if you and Mattie keep sheltering him. You’re only hobbling the boy with kindness.”
It looked like the three men were finally coming to a consensus about how to get the car out of the pond. That meant the English visitors could be on their way. He felt a tiny twinge of sorrow about that. It surprised him to have such a thought cross his mind, but these visitors had been good for Mattie. He saw the sadness leave her face this morning during breakfast, a sadness that had covered her lately like a blanket. She even laughed a few times. She used to laugh so often. It pleased him to see her enjoying herself. Life could be funny like that, Sol thought. Here I thought we were helping those English guests out, when the truth was they were helping us.
Sol had encouraged Mattie to believe the doctor’s words, that there was plenty of time for more children, that God would bless them still. But Sol knew life wasn’t turning out the way they planned. Not having more children was a source of great grief to him and it was a hard thing to accept. He scolded Mattie for overprotecting Danny, but the truth was, he was just as guilty of it. Maybe not trying to keep him from every possible physical danger, the way Mattie did, but he was terrified of losing Danny to the world.
He glanced at Zach. That was the real reason he wanted to send Zach on his way—back to his parents or out to the world. This weekend, his worry about Zach’s sway over Danny spiked to a new level; he felt he had to do something . . . soon. Danny was far more observant of Zach than Sol had realized. He had ferreted out that car. And it was the first time Danny had kept something secret from his father.
Nip it now, Sol thought, as he followed the men down to the pond. Nip
it in the bud.
It was fascinating, C.J. thought, to see how the Amish improvised. They got things done quite efficiently without the benefit of a motor. The harnesses of two deluxe-sized horses, with legs thicker than tree trunks, were attached to a plow, which was attached by ropes to the bumper of Jaime’s car. Little by little, the horses eased the car out of the frozen pond, breaking up the ice. Jaime jumped up and down like a schoolgirl when the back wheels of the car rose out of the shards of ice and murky water. Sol kept the horses moving forward, pulling and straining, until they reached flat ground. C.J. thought he would never forget the sound of horses’ hooves sucking and plopping in the banks of the pond. It was a miracle! Without any modern intervention. He had figured it might be February before that car could be budged.
Not that he cared. He hated that car. Jaime’s father had given it to her for her birthday in October—it was waiting outside of their apartment with a gigantic ribbon on it and included one of those horrible vanity plates: My #1 Girl. Jaime burst into happy tears when she discovered it was from her father.
Then, one week later, came the real surprise. The first monthly leasing bill, forty-eight to follow, the contract said. He called James to ask him about it and James just laughed it off. “Oh, must be a billing mistake. I’ll take care of it.”
Then the bill for November came. Then December.
C.J. talked it over with Eve and she suggested returning the car to the dealer, but that would mean he would have to tell Jaime the slippery trick her father had done. He just couldn’t do it. She had been so pleased with the attention her father was showing her. He knew the toll her mother’s death had taken on her. Tolerating this car seemed like a small way to lessen that pain, so instead, he quietly paid the bills with money they didn’t have to spare.
A Lancaster County Christmas Page 10
