Between You and Me

by Susan Wiggs

  He stood with automatic courtesy. “Is it something about Jonah?”

  “No,” she said quickly. “He’s sleeping. His nurse said I might find you in the garden. There’s someone I’d like you to meet.” She indicated the man beside her. He was dressed like a hospital worker, but his scrubs were greenish, not blue, like the ones Caleb had borrowed.

  The guy stuck out his hand. “I’m Leroy Hershberger.” Beneath a trim mustache, his mouth curved into a smile. “I work as a physical therapist here at Mercy Heights. Reese told me what happened to your nephew. I’m real sorry.”

  “Yah . . . ah, thanks.” Caleb had no idea what he was thanking this man for. His concern, he supposed. He felt a nudge of familiarity when he looked at Leroy and heard a certain cadence in his voice. Leroy Hershberger had what Caleb considered an easy face. Everything was out there, for all the world to see. It was a face that held no secrets. An honest face.

  “Leroy’s my neighbor,” Reese explained. “We live in the same building, six and a half blocks down the street.”

  “You’re going to need a place to stay while your nephew is in the hospital,” Leroy said. “Reese tells me you’re from Amish country, so I thought a home stay might work better than a hotel. I’ve got a spare room at my place.”

  “I couldn’t impose,” Caleb said, though he was touched by the man’s kindness.

  “It’s not an imposition,” Leroy said.

  “But if Jonah needs me—”

  “We’ll get you a cell phone so you can always be in touch.”

  The offer was tempting, but Caleb shook his head. “I need to be close to Jonah.”

  “You have to stay somewhere,” Reese insisted, “and like I said before, you won’t do him much good if you don’t take care of yourself. But it’s up to you, of course. You do realize the hospital isn’t going to let you live here.”

  Caleb did understand that he couldn’t very well keep sleeping in his clothes and washing up in the men’s room with thin pink soap and paper towels. “Obliged to you,” he said.

  “I’m happy to help.” Leroy really seemed to mean it.

  Caleb looked from one to the other. “Somehow I have the feeling not everyone gets this treatment.”

  “You’re right about that,” Leroy said. “There are hotels nearby for patients’ families. But Reese here—she said you were special.”

  Caleb glanced at her and was amazed to see that her cheeks had turned bright red with a blush.

  “And by special,” Leroy said easily in Deitsch, the German dialect, “I mean she might be sweet on you, but don’t let on I told you that.”

  A short laugh burst from Caleb. “I knew there was something about you, Leroy Hershberger.”

  Reese looked from one to the other. “It’s like you’re in some secret club.”

  “Like a cult?” asked Leroy.

  Caleb laughed again. It felt good to laugh, ever so briefly, in the midst of everything. And it felt entirely strange to hear Leroy say the beauteous and exotic Reese Powell was sweet on him. Like a hoax. And a stupid one at that.

  “We’ll be heading home in about an hour,” she said. “Why don’t you check on Jonah and let him know the plan.”

  When Caleb got back upstairs, Jonah was awake and reading a book in the cranked-up bed. “There’s a guy who’s invited me to stay with him while you’re laid up,” Caleb told him. “He’s ex-Amish.”

  “Okay,” Jonah said, barely looking up from the pages of the book.

  “It’s real close by the hospital, so if you need me, I can be here in just a couple of minutes.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Or I can stay here if you don’t want me to go,” Caleb said.

  At last Jonah looked up from the book, and in the boy’s eyes, Caleb saw his brother. “You can’t sleep in a chair all night,” he said.

  Their gazes held for a few seconds. Then Caleb gave his nephew the card with the phone number. “If you need anything at all, even if you just need to tell me something, you get the nurse to help you call me.”

  “All right,” Jonah said. “I’ll see you when you come back around.”

  As Caleb and Reese and Leroy walked away from Mercy Heights, he felt inundated by the action all around them. Four lanes of traffic surged along a divided road by the river. There were big delivery trucks belching diesel smoke, masses of cars honking their horns. The gnashing brakes of buses and the occasional yip of a siren added to the noise. Kids slouching along the sidewalk and shoving one another seemed oblivious to people trying to get somewhere in a hurry. Boats and barges surged up and down the Schuylkill River, and overhead, jets flashed and drew contrails in the deepening evening sky.

  Reese turned to Caleb as he glanced around, not quite knowing what to focus on. In Middle Grove, a traffic jam most often consisted of a gaggle of girls on roller skates or a couple of buggies that stopped in the middle of the road so the drivers could have a chat.

  “This must seem pretty chaotic to you,” she said, reading his thoughts.

  “We’re so used to all the noise that we don’t even notice it anymore,” Leroy said.

  “It’s a lot to take in,” Caleb admitted. “I feel like Mike Smith.”

  She frowned. “Pardon?”

  “Who’s Mike Smith?” asked Leroy.

  “Valentine Michael Smith.”

  Reese’s frown deepened, but the expression made her look focused rather than angry. “Wait. Don’t tell me.” Then she snapped her fingers. “Stranger in a Strange Land.”

  “You got it.”

  “Cool that you’ve read it.”

  “I haven’t read it,” Leroy said.

  “It’s a classic,” said Reese. “Do you read a lot, Caleb?”

  “Sure,” he said. “How about you?”

  “Not as much as I wish I could,” she admitted. “So you’re . . . Nobody restricts what you read, then?”

  “Och, there are rules. Some folks think the only thing worth reading is Scripture.”

  “But not you.”

  He didn’t reply.

  She looked at him, and then at Leroy. “I wonder who the ‘some folks’ are, and if their opinions about what a person chooses to read matter.”

  In German, Leroy said, “We could fill her ears, huh? I once got a caning for hiding a comic book under my mattress.”

  Caleb nodded. “My dat would’ve done the same, but not with a cane.” Asa was more liable to use a steel cable or a belt.

  “Hey,” said Reese. “I’m feeling a little left out here. Tell me a little more about Middle Grove. I don’t get out of the city much.”

  “It’s a farming community,” he replied in English. “Plenty of Amish and Mennonite families thereabouts.”

  “And you live on a farm. What’s that like?”

  Caleb exchanged a glance with Leroy, who spread his hands, palms up.

  “She’s a hothouse flower, my friend.”

  Reese elbowed him, pretending to be mad.

  “Our place is about forty acres,” Caleb said. “Most folks farm eighty or more. A lot of the families around Middle Grove are big ones, but it’s just me, Jonah, Hannah, and my father. During the busy season, I rely on neighbors and hired laborers to work the place.”

  “Is it going to be a problem for you to be away?” asked Leroy.

  “It is, but I don’t have a choice. I need to be here for Jonah. I reckon I’ll have to hire a labor crew to help with the harvest.”

  “Crews are expensive,” Leroy said.

  “Yah. I take an English job now and then,” Caleb said, “to make ends meet.”

  “By English, you mean non-Amish?” asked Reese.

  “That’s our term for it.”

  “So what sort of job do you have?”

  “I have a team of draft horses for hire, and I work part-time at Grantham Farm, up by New Hope. Each spring, I prepare taxes for folks.”

  “Amazing. So it’s not against your religion to fill out government forms?
”

  He felt the slightest ghost of a smile haunting his mouth, just for a second. “You’ve got some funny ideas about the Amish,” he said.

  She flushed. “Sorry. I really am ignorant. Tax preparation seems so modern. Do you use a computer, or at least a calculator?”

  “I figure everything by hand.” He almost smiled again at her incredulous expression.

  Leroy looked at Reese, then back at Caleb. “You two are going to get along just fine.”

  Reese felt inexplicably nervous inviting Caleb Stoltz to her place. He was still getting settled at Leroy’s apartment, which was across the hall from hers. But since Leroy had to go back to the hospital for a shift, she would be Caleb’s host this evening.

  She had offered to fix Caleb dinner and was already regretting the impulse. When had she ever made dinner for anyone, other than the Red Bull and cheese doodles she served when it was her turn to host study group?

  Glancing at the clock, she launched into a frenzy of activity, rushing around her apartment in an attempt to swiftly straighten up. Her mother kept offering—or threatening—to send Viola over to do a weekly cleaning, but Reese always refused the help. She’d grown up far more privileged than her peers, and having maid service just felt wrong until she could actually earn the money to pay for it herself.

  She switched on NPR to catch up on the news, then flung her scrubs into the hamper and jumped into the shower for a quick rinse. After her shower, the news was over and music drifted from the speakers, something soft and alternative. What kind of music did Amish people listen to? Probably not Yo La Tengo. As she was toweling dry, she wondered what exactly one should wear to have dinner with an Amish guy. She settled for a fairly plain but summery lavender dress and strappy sandals. Her hair was short enough to dry with a towel, her chief reason for having short hair. Makeup was a quick swipe of lipstick. She was confident the Amish didn’t use makeup, anyway. Not that she was trying to be Amish, for Chrissake. She just didn’t want to make him feel more uncomfortable than he already was.

  A knock at the door sent her speeding to answer, another sign of nervousness. Why was she nervous? She wanted the evening to go well, but there were so many things that could go wrong.

  She opened the door, and there stood Caleb, freshly showered, wearing a pair of broken-in jeans and a black V-neck T-shirt just tight enough to define his chest and shoulder muscles into a ridiculous female fantasy. As she stared at him, she could feel her brain cells dying one by one.

  “Oh, hey,” she said and couldn’t think of anything to say to make the moment less awkward. Seeing him in regular clothes forced her to realize physical attraction was based on more than the fact that he was so completely different from anyone she’d ever known.

  Leroy joined him as they stepped inside. “I got him some English clothes.”

  “Not bad, right?” asked Caleb.

  Given that the last guy she’d dated had worn a sweater vest and kept his cell phone in a belt holster, the bar for male fashion was set low. “You look so different. Where did you find these clothes?”

  “The Lab.”

  “What?”

  “You know, the thrift shop in the hospital basement.”

  “There’s a thrift shop in the hospital basement?”

  Leroy rolled his eyes. “Not everyone shops at Saks. It’s a shop called the Lab, run by volunteers. The proceeds benefit the hospital.”

  The pointed reference to her privileged upbringing made her blush.

  “See you around, princess,” Leroy added, then turned to Caleb. “You have the entry code for the door, right? Make yourself at home.”

  “I will. And thank you again, Leroy.” They shook hands, and Leroy took off.

  “So do you,” Caleb said, turning to her with a brief half smile. “Look different, I mean.”

  “Yes, under the scrubs and lab coat, there’s a real person. After a long shift, I sometimes forget that.” She stepped aside and held open the door. “Please, come in.” She bit her lip to keep from making excuses—Sorry my place is such a mess, sorry I have fake plants instead of real, sorry there’s nothing but water in the fish tank because the fish died last year and I never bothered to replace them . . .

  She had no reason to impress this man.

  “Would you like something to drink?” she offered. The least she could do was be civil.

  “Water’s fine.” He tilted his head to one side, and his expression softened a little. “That’s nice.”

  Oh. The music. “It’s Yo La Tengo, I think. I like it too.” She rinsed out a water glass and filled it with ice from the refrigerator door dispenser. He studied her every move, and she realized that almost all of this must be completely strange to him.

  “I looked up Amish customs on the web,” she said. “Not like, in a stalkerish way. I was curious.” God, she was babbling. Stop talking, Reese. “I read that Amish households don’t have electricity, refrigeration, running water, or clothing that fastens with zippers.”

  “That’s true of some communities,” he said. “There’s a range. The conservative ones—like Middle Grove—are like that for sure.”

  She handed him a glass of ice water and poured herself a glass of wine. “So that’s my big confession,” she said. “I looked up information online.” She gestured at her laptop. The screensaver showed a tropical beach with white sand and turquoise water. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Nope,” he said. “Course, you could just ask me.”

  “I might do that. Some days, I spend more time staring at a screen than I do with people. That’s bad, right?”

  He took a long drink of water. She stared in fascination at the ripple of his sun-browned throat, and for a moment, she forgot the world. Snap out of it, she told herself.

  “Guess that would depend on the person,” he said.

  “I want to be the kind of doctor who works with people, not data,” she said. “The article I read mentioned a teenage rite of passage called rumspringa—am I saying that right?”

  “Rumspringa,” he said. “You’re close enough.”

  “Rumspringa,” she repeated.

  “Sometimes known as Jerry Springa,” he said.

  She laughed. “Does that mean the rumors are true? That kids go wild, exploring the non-Amish world?”

  “Some do. Kids are kids. They’re going to rebel. Strictly speaking, they’re supposed to use the time for courting—the goal being to find a mate. But plenty of kids dress English and drive cars, try drugs, and party with the English.”

  “Did you go wild?” she asked, then realized he was studying her with deep absorption. Maybe she’d crossed a line with all the questions. “What?”

  “Just noticing what your eyes do when something interests you.”

  “What do my eyes do?”

  “They kind of show what you’re thinking.”

  She wasn’t sure what to make of that, so she repeated the question. “Did you go wild?”

  “Depends on what you mean by wild,” he said. “And I don’t know you well enough to give you more detail than that.”

  “Obviously you watched TV. Jerry Springer.”

  “I didn’t much care for it.”

  “No one does. Well. I won’t pry anymore. I’m starving. If you want, I can make my favorite thing for dinner.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A reservation. You know, at a restaurant.” As she scrolled through the options on her phone, she could see him shifting from foot to foot as he stared out the window, looking like a caged lion.

  She sensed it might be painfully awkward, bringing him into a restaurant where food emerged from an unseen kitchen and was served by strangers. “I have a better idea. There’s a great spot along the riverwalk with food trucks. I go there all the time. We can grab a bite and have a picnic.”

  “Sounds good. Not sure what food trucks are, though.”

  “One of the great innovations of the modern age.” It was strangely exciting, int
roducing this man to a world that was so foreign to him. She led the way downstairs to the crosswalk at the corner. The six-lane boulevard was jammed with traffic surging in both directions, in and out of the city. The sidewalks were crowded with rushing pedestrians. A street performer cadged for tips between blasts of his harmonica and acoustic guitar. Luigi, the greengrocer from whom she got most of her food, stood on the sidewalk in his apron, rocking back on his heels and watching the world go by. She smiled as they walked past, then noticed Caleb perusing the display of produce in crates—local stone fruit and berries from truck farms outside the city, and a few exotic selections from the Asian market. She saw him checking out the star fruit and dragon fruit.

  “Crazy-looking stuff,” she said.

  “It is. How’s it taste?”

  “Let’s find out.” She bought a couple of samples and handed him the bag. “Something for later. Let me know what you think.”

  They reached the corner and she gestured toward the river. The promenade area was more mellow than the sidewalk. A large swath of green bordered the river, and the walkways were busy with joggers, strollers, people on skateboards and rollerblades, and tourists. “The riverwalk will take us almost all the way to the hospital. Let’s grab something to eat, and then go check on Jonah, make sure he’s tucked in for the night.”

  Caleb stepped off the curb, almost into the path of a trolley. She grabbed his arm and yanked him back. “Whoa there,” she said. “Jesus, watch out. You nearly got creamed.” She kept hold of his arm. His muscles felt like carved stone.

  “Sorry. Guess I’d better get used to being in the city.”

  “You gave me a scare,” she said, her heart still racing. “Remember to watch the signal lights. When the red man standing changes to a green man walking, then we can go.”

  “Got it.”

  She slowly eased her grip on him. Glancing around, she realized he was attracting attention. Not because he was Amish; you couldn’t tell, thanks to the borrowed clothes. No, he garnered attention because he was so big and imposing. If Michelangelo’s David came alive, he might look something like Caleb—larger than life, mythically handsome, perfectly proportioned, and somehow removed from the world. He seemed to have no notion of his effect on total strangers.