Almost as if she had read Meg’s mind, Catherine said, “We respect the elders of the community very much. It is a good thing when you grow old here—no one is alone, we are all together.”
Ashamed of her uncharitable thoughts, Meg nodded.
“Mommy!” Sam came bounding into the room. “I thought you would never get home! I want to tell you about my day at school.”
“I can’t wait to hear.” Meg hugged him tightly. “Let’s sit down, and you’ll tell me everything.”
“It was great!” he announced as they settled themselves on the couch.
“Doesn’t Daddy want to hear this? We should get him,” Meg said.
“I already told him in the barn. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t wait anymore, and you just weren’t anywhere.”
She smiled. “Okay, go ahead.”
“It was soooo different from at home,” Sam gushed. “The teacher’s name is Sarah, and they call her that, her first name. There was a fire in this old-fashioned stove to warm up the room, and she put some of the lunch stuff on it so it would be hot later. Like my soup.”
“Clever,” Meg said.
“Yeah, one kid had a baked potato wrapped in foil stuff, and it cooked right there by lunch!”
Meg nodded. “I like that idea. Neat trick.”
“Sarah was super nice. So, all these kids are together, all different ages, up to the eighth grade.” Sam’s voice dropped to an awed whisper. “They’re really well behaved, you wouldn’t believe it. I mean, it was crazy. I know Mrs. Whitford wouldn’t believe it.”
Meg smiled. Mrs. Whitford had been Sam’s teacher in Charlotte.
“They said prayers and sang songs. Some of them were in German. I didn’t know any of them, so I just sat there next to Aaron, trying to look like I knew what was going on. As if!”
“I’m sure they didn’t expect you to,” Meg pointed out.
“They were so nice to me.” The words came rushing out. “Everybody did different things, ’cause of what age they were. Big kids helped littler kids. They did math and reading, all stuff like I do. We had recess and played games. I got to play darts. It was awesome.” Sam stood up. “I could see it—going to school just till eighth grade, working on the farm.” He looked thoughtful, then shrugged. “But I’m not Amish, and we don’t have a farm, so there you go,” he finished. “I gotta find Old Samuel. Y’know, he actually whittles. I’ve never seen anybody whittle in real life. He’s going to show me how. And I have to find Rufus.”
“See you later, then.”
“It was a super-cool day, Mom. Bye.” He ran off.
A super-cool day indeed, she thought.
Dinner was delayed that evening as they waited for Jonathan and James to get back. They had gone to check on the progress of the Mustang after David told them a message from the repair shop had been left on the answering machine for James. When they finally arrived and everyone sat down for the meal, James announced that he had been summoned to the repair shop only to okay the paint job. The car wouldn’t be ready for another week.
Meg watched the reactions on her children’s faces. Predictably, Sam looked delighted, while Will and Lizzie were horrified. Meg herself had mixed feelings. They should be getting back to their own lives, yet she knew how wrenching it would be to leave the Lutz family. She had to admit she did not feel as bad about the delay as perhaps she should.
Later on, when she and James found themselves alone in their bedroom, she questioned him further about the car.
“The guy wanted to make sure I was okay about his just repainting the damaged part of the car instead of painting the whole thing,” he said. “It looked great, but we’re still stuck. What would happen if we weren’t here with these people?”
“They’ve been amazing,” Meg said. “Feeding us, lending us everything we need.”
“I know, I know,” James retorted. “You don’t have to remind me that we have no money. That we’re charity cases because of me.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Meg said, stiffening. “Not everything is an indictment of you.”
“Well, that’s how it feels.”
“Maybe that’s because it should be,” she snapped. “You have yet to say or do anything to show that you even get it. That you have a clue about what you did.”
“I know what I did.”
“I mean what you did to us. Me and the kids. You don’t seem to get that at all.”
“What do you want me to do, Meg? I’m sorry, but I can’t replace the money.”
She glared at him. “It’s not about the money, I keep trying to tell you that. It’s that I can’t trust you. On any level. So where does that leave us?”
His reply was angry and abrupt. “Damned if I know.” He left the room, and she listened to his footsteps go down the stairs.
Meg didn’t want to sit alone in the bedroom, thinking about how angry she was. She decided to go downstairs and see if anyone might be around. What she found were six children she didn’t recognize playing with the younger Lutz children and her son Sam, all of them illuminated by the fire and the glow of kerosene lamps. They were spread out around the room snacking on bowls of popcorn.
Meg saw four Amish women she hadn’t encountered seated at the kitchen table with Catherine, Leah, and Amanda, most of them working on a quilt.
“Oh, excuse me,” Meg said, pausing in the doorway. “I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
Catherine gestured to a chair. “Come in, Meg.”
Meg sat at a little distance from the group so she wouldn’t be in their way. Introductions were made. It appeared they were fairly far along with the quilt, which had numerous pieces of fabric sewn into intricate patterns on a black background. She craned her neck to study it. “That is absolutely beautiful,” she exclaimed.
One of the women, who appeared to be in her seventies, looked up to peer at Meg. Her English was heavily accented, but Meg could make it out. “It is for the schoolteacher. A Christmas present from the families.”
“Sarah,” Meg recalled aloud.
The woman smiled. “Yes. You know of her?”
“My son spent today at the school. He enjoyed it very much.”
One of the other women looked up at her. “My daughter told me about the little English boy with Aaron.”
Meg nodded. “Yes, Sam is my son.”
The second woman said something to the others in their own language. They all smiled as they continued to work.
Catherine turned to Meg. “She is explaining how my father-in-law calls him Young Samuel.” She was sewing the hem of a white apron.
“No quilting for you?” Meg asked.
“Not tonight,” Catherine answered. “This is for Barbara to wear at her wedding. After this, I will finish work on her cape. She wears special white clothes. They look like our other clothes, but new ones, for this use only.”
“Almost only …” Leah put in, without taking her eyes off her work.
“True.” Catherine nodded. “After the wedding they are put away, and she will be buried in them.”
Meg hoped her face didn’t betray her surprise at this piece of information. She turned the idea over in her mind. She supposed it all fit, the tight linking of family traditions.
“Do you also make these quilts to sell, or only for yourselves?” Meg asked.
“Both.” The older woman answered again for all of them. “We maybe do some different patterns for the tourists, things they like. They are often on white backgrounds.”
Catherine went on, “We sew many different designs. Like Wedding Ring, which is circles that are locking together. We have many kinds.”
Another woman glanced up at Meg. “Can you sew?”
“No, not really.” Meg tried not to feel abashed by her ignorance of what was a most basic skill to these people. “I can knit a little,” she added with a laugh, “but just enough to make a scarf, I’m afraid.”
Leah, who was sitting next to Amanda, leaned over to her and whispere
d something into her granddaughter’s ear. Amanda nodded, excused herself, and left the room. She returned a few minutes later with a skein of dark-blue wool and two knitting needles.
“Maybe you would like to make scarves for your children,” Leah said. “I see they do not have.”
Meg didn’t know what made her feel more taken aback—the fact that Leah would do such a kind thing for her, or that she had bothered to notice Meg’s children weren’t dressed properly and cared enough to do something to rectify the situation.
“Thank you very, very much,” Meg said to her. “It’s a lot warmer in our home state, and the children don’t have the proper clothes here. This means a great deal to me.”
Leah gave a little nod. “I have more of this blue wool” was all she said.
Now, thought Meg, let’s hope I can remember how to do it.
Happily, her fingers seemed to begin casting on by themselves, and she became engrossed in knitting. The women worked mainly in silence, but occasionally they shared an observation. When the subject turned to Barbara’s wedding on Tuesday, they became more animated, discussing what had yet to be done.
“Soon it will be finished, a wonderful memory,” one of the women said to Catherine. “You will go back to visiting.”
Meg looked at her inquiringly.
“In the cold months,” Catherine explained, “we do much visiting with family and our friends. The wedding keeps us busy now, but after, we will go to people’s houses, and they will come to ours.”
“Especially Barbara and Moses,” Amanda added. “They go on so many visits after. That is when many people give them the wedding presents, and it’s time to see a lot of the people who came.”
Everyone resumed their tasks in silence. In the background, the children moved about, most of them in their socks, their conversation punctuated by loud bursts of laughter. Every so often a young child would approach the table and look at Meg before whispering a question. Sam, she saw, was fully absorbed in a game of Sorry with two boys she didn’t recognize.
“Do you do a lot of visiting with relatives?” the woman who had just spoken asked Meg.
She shook her head. “We don’t have many. My parents are the only ones, really.” She hesitated. “Unfortunately, we don’t get along well with them.”
Catherine raised her face, concern in her eyes. “This is true?”
“No, no, I shouldn’t have said that,” Meg answered. Why had she felt the need to air her personal problems?
Sensing her reluctance to discuss it further, the women changed the subject. The evening slipped by in what seemed like minutes. Meg had made substantial progress on her scarf when it dawned on her that she should really give these women time to themselves. I’ve been enjoying myself far too much, she thought, wrapping up her knitting. The women must have things they want to discuss that they can’t, or won’t, talk about in front of me.
“It has been lovely to meet all of you,” Meg said. “Please excuse me now. I must go to bed.”
They nodded, but no one stopped what they were doing.
“Sam,” she called out to her son, “finish up and come upstairs.”
“Okay, okay,” he called back. “In a minute.”
Meg headed to the staircase, holding her knitting. As she climbed the steps, she wondered if she was intentionally getting too involved in these people’s lives. She was allowing herself to be lulled into ignoring her situation, had even complained about her problems.
This was not her world, and it never would be. Sooner or later she would have to face the mess that was her real life.
Chapter 12
On Saturday morning Meg looked out her bedroom window to see the countryside completely covered with a soft, thick quilt of snow. Everything—houses, barns, trees—stood partially hidden beneath at least half a foot of snow, all sounds muffled by its weight. Tree branches sagged beneath the heavy snowfall. The temperature must have dropped further in the hours before dawn, and many of the trees were decorated by glistening ice that sparkled when the pale sunlight managed to break through the clouds. The magnificent serenity nearly took her breath away.
She tore herself from the view to wash her face and brush her hair. Getting dressed in the mornings was considerably faster here than it had been at home, primarily because the Amish didn’t keep mirrors in the house. The only time Meg looked at herself was when she picked up the tiny makeup mirror she had in her own purse. There was no way of fussing over how her clothing looked. After a day or two, she had abandoned the idea of putting on makeup altogether, not only because she couldn’t see well enough in her mirror to do it properly, but because it made her uncomfortable around all the other women with their fresh-scrubbed faces. By this point, the notion of wearing a face full of makeup struck her as faintly ridiculous, as if she were slathering dirt on herself.
She didn’t know how to do the hairstyle favored by the women here—what she thought of as a version of French braids tied back—but she had taken to gathering her hair into a neat ponytail. That kept it off her face while she was working and, more important, while she was cooking or baking.
Buttoning her sweater against the morning chill, she came down for breakfast to find the main room of the Lutz house a scene of controlled chaos. The great-grandchildren were there with their mothers, selecting from a long row of ice skates that had been set out this morning. Meg noted every type of skate, from beginners’ runners that attached directly to shoes to adult heavy black skates for hockey and racing, most of them well worn from years of being used and, no doubt, handed down. The younger Lutz children rushed in and out, balancing the completion of their chores with locating appropriately fitting skates for themselves. Meg noticed about a dozen hockey sticks stacked against the wall and a pile of thick black gloves on the bench.
James and the children were sitting off to one corner, also trying on skates.
“Hey, guys,” Meg said as she came over.
“They invited us to skate with them,” Sam said. “There’s a pond that’ll be ice! I’ve never done that before.”
Lizzie was lacing up a pair of old but serviceable white skates. “You want to come, Mom?”
Meg hesitated. “Is Catherine going? Or any of the other women?”
“No,” James answered. “They said they had too much to do. It’s just dads and kids, I guess. We may get to play some hockey with them, too.”
Meg already knew there would be a lot of work going on that day. Saturday was the regular cleaning day in the house, and the big event was on Tuesday. If the other women were staying behind, she would do the same.
“I’ll stay here this morning,” she said. “Maybe later I’ll have a chance to get out and mess around with everybody.”
James had moved to kneel in front of Sam and help tighten his laces. “Okay, these are good.” He gave a couple of solid pats to the black skates before turning to Will. “How is it going?”
Will shook his head as he yanked off a skate. “Kinda tight.” Clutching the skate in question, he got up to check out his other options. Seeing they didn’t need her, Meg went back toward the kitchen area. Barbara stood at the table, a group of kerosene lamps gathered from around the house spread out before her. She was carefully cleaning them with a rag. Meg greeted her and, reaching into a cabinet for a mug, asked if she could assist.
“No, thank you. But my mother is at the root cellar, getting some food to cook for today and tomorrow. Maybe she needs help. The front walk is shoveled, but I don’t know about the back …”
Meg, nodding, filled her cup with coffee. Practically hidden from view, she observed Jonathan and Eli hurry into the room, yanking on jackets and gloves before grabbing skates, hockey sticks, and hats. Several teenage boys in coats and black mufflers came to the front door, entering the house just long enough to pick out hockey sticks.
“Later,” Barbara said to Meg, “we can go for a sleigh ride or be outside with the children, if you like.”
Sam c
ame running up to Meg to say good-bye. “It’s so cool the way people come into each other’s houses, isn’t it? Everything’s just right there, all together.” He gave her a hug. “Bye. See you later.”
“Have fun,” she called out to her family.
James gave her a wave and a smile. Her older son and daughter also called out their good-byes, Lizzie applying the lip balm she always kept in her jacket pocket as she left.
A sliced loaf of banana bread had been set out on a plate on the counter, although most of it was already gone. Meg reached for a piece and took a bite. On a Saturday at home in Charlotte, she reflected, James would have been at the office or in his study working. If the kids had a free day, she would be the one taking them skating at an indoor rink, assuming she could have gotten them to agree to go in the first place, which was unlikely. Even so, she would have to drag Lizzie and Will practically by force. And it wouldn’t have been happening until well after noon, when they might be willing to get out of their pajamas and into clothes.
“Are David and Samuel going skating, too?” she asked Barbara.
“No, they’re cleaning out the barn now. Aaron already cleaned the chicken coop, so he left, but they have a lot of work. And tomorrow is a church Sunday. They want to finish things.”
Meg was confused. “Don’t you go to church every Sunday?”
Barbara shook her head. “No, every other Sunday.”
“Oh.” Surprised, Meg finished her coffee and rinsed out the cup. “Well, I’m going downstairs to see if I can help your mother. Then I’ll shovel in the back.”
Barbara nodded, her attention on a spot on one of the lamps that was giving her difficulty. She rubbed at it furiously.
Meg rotated her shoulders in small circles as she walked, wanting to loosen them up a bit as she went to help Catherine lift the enormous sacks in the cellar. Who needs free weights when you have beets and potatoes, she thought with a smile.
Everyone returned in time for lunch, the children ruddy-cheeked and in high spirits. James came over to kiss Meg hello on the cheek, cheerfully complaining that he had used muscles he didn’t remember he even had, and would pay for it the next day. While she wasn’t sure how friendly she wanted her response to him to be, she was genuinely pleased to see that the four of them had had a wonderful time together. James and Will discussed the fine points of their hockey game with the other participants during the entire first course of hot beef barley soup and bread. Lizzie, seated next to Meg, ate her entire bowl of soup without complaint as she told her mother how much she enjoyed the skating, even though so many kids had appeared throughout the course of the morning, she wouldn’t have been surprised if the ice had opened up and they’d all fallen into the pond.
An Amish Christmas: A Novel Page 14
