Stars for Lydia

by P. L. Gaus

  “No,” Branden answered. “But we are looking for her.”

  “And Esther?”

  “We are looking for her, too.”

  “Our whole congregation has already been doing that,” Mose said pausing to look down. When he looked up, he asked, “When can we have Lydia’s body for burial?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Mose took a moment inside his thoughts. Then he said, “The Yost children need their mother to come home. Every family needs a mother. I don’t care what she’s been hearing, she still has to know that.”

  Branden drew a breath and wrinkled a stitch between his brows. He looked into Mose’s eyes. “We think Mary left a voice message on the sheriff’s phone. She didn’t say she wanted to come home, Mose. She said rather the opposite, really.”

  “She has to come home,” Mose pronounced like a judgement. “She belongs with her family. She is needed at home.”

  “What if John just got to be too much for her to handle, Mr. Schwartzentruber?” Branden asked.

  Still speaking only to the professor, Mose said, “God does not lay on us more than we can bear.”

  Branden studied his eyes. He noted his upright and challenging posture. “Mr. Schwartzentruber,” he began, “Mose. Are you going to accept the help of the county’s Social Services office?”

  “No.”

  Branden rose. “We’ll let you know if we find your daughter. And Esther, too.”

  Caroline stood, too. She turned to descend the steps, but changed her mind. Turning back to Schwartzentruber, she spoke gently and softly. “I’m sorry, Mr. Schwartzentruber. I was trying to explain some things to Ms. Shewmon. She really doesn’t understand yet. Sometimes, neither do I. Please try to understand how she feels about this. How I feel about this. Vaccines can really help you. You should listen to her.”

  Mose replied sternly. “It is for the bishop to decide.”

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  In the Miata driving home, Caroline said, “I had to say it to him, Michael. I had to give it a try. More and more I find that I agree with Alice Shewmon. It’s the children who suffer the most. It doesn’t seem fair to me anymore.”

  “You know Amish folk as well as anyone,” the professor commented.

  “Yes, but not so much the Schwartzentrubers. Their sect isn’t much like the others. They’re the most insular people we know. And Alice is right. You just can’t talk to the kids. They don’t respond. Except someone like Junior, who is curious about English life. He’s a smart kid. I think he’d be happy, getting out of the Amish church. But I don’t think Alice has much of a chance, here with Mose and Ida, convincing them to get vaccinations.”

  “She’s been working here only a year?” Branden asked. “In Holmes County?”

  “Maybe that, why?”

  “I don’t know, Caroline. I can’t fault her for her enthusiasm, but she’s clearly seeing how stand-offish they are. I don’t think she was prepared for that.”

  “No.”

  “So, she’s going to have to learn some things, Caroline.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the Schwartzentrubers don’t really want her kind of help at all.”

  Chapter 19

  Wednesday, August 30

  5:25 PM

  Rather woodenly, the professor taught his 3:00 class on American History, the sorrow of Lydia’s death hanging over him like a pall. He worked in his office during the weary afternoon, but the article he was preparing for the journal Civil War History failed to hold his interest. He had tried to scribble out notes for his history department’s staff meeting coming up on Thursday afternoon, but he was not able to concentrate. And several times during the afternoon, students and faculty stopped by to hear news about Lydia. How had she died? Was it really an accident? What can we do to honor her? When news spread that Branden was talking with students in his office about Lydia, people had begun to arrive.

  One student was especially sad, remembering that, “Everybody knew Lydia, Professor Branden. If you missed a class, it was Lydia’s notes that you wanted to copy. She always took the best class notes.”

  “I appreciate that,” Branden said, “but Monday in class, she was distracted. I don’t think she took any notes at all. Does anyone know what was troubling her?”

  Two students answered in the negative. Two more stood shaking their heads, looking down at their feet.

  “Was she active on campus?” Branden asked. “Was she popular?”

  A student who had arrived later than the others said, “She did everything, Professor. All the concerts, all the lectures, seminars, discussion groups. She was always busy. And if she wasn’t doing anything else, she was writing in one of her diaries. So, she was popular, but she was also too busy to hang with any one crowd.”

  An economics professor wandered into Branden’s office and asked, “Mike, are we going to have a memorial service?”

  “I don’t know at this point,” Branden answered.

  “Well, she was a good student, Mike. The best. We should do something to remember her.”

  The gathering of students and professors eventually filtered out of Branden’s office, and he was left alone to stare with a deep melancholy out through the windows of his office, down into the Oak Grove. Time passed without his noticing it, and when he eventually stirred from his thoughts, it was already early evening.

  Then walking home on the brick walkway through the oak grove for dinner, Branden was approached by a student in the white and green-striped uniform of the Millersburg College baseball team. He approached Branden with his head down, slapping his mitt fiercely against his thigh, his eyes shadowed by a pair of dark sunglasses.

  “Professor Branden?” he said. “Do you have a moment? Lydia was my friend. We were dating. Can you talk for a minute? I’ve got training, so it’ll just take a minute.”

  The professor stopped and turned back to the fellow.

  He was tall and wiry, fit and trim, handsome in his uniform. He pushed a finger up under his sunglasses and rubbed anxiously at his eye. His finger came away wet with tears, and he seemed distraught as he settled his glasses squarely back over his eyes. “We were dating,” he said again, this time in a broken whisper.

  “I do have time,” Branden said. “We should talk. Here on this bench?”

  “Oh, I couldn’t sit down, Professor. I can’t stop moving. I haven’t slept in two days. I can’t get a minute’s peace. I love her. I loved her. I feel like this is going to crush me. I find myself walking into her dorm room, and then I remember. She’s like a habit that I can’t break. I don’t know anything, anymore. It feels like it should have been me who died. I think I’d prefer that. I don’t know what to do. Professor, I’ve never felt so alone.”

  “Try to sit here a minute,” Branden said, and he got the fellow seated on the bench beside the walkway. They were shaded by one of the broad oaks. The grove was mostly deserted, with just one couple throwing a Frisbee on the far side of the lawn. Branden faced the boy and reached over to press his hand down on the ball glove, saying, “You shouldn’t keep bouncing that against your thigh.”

  “It’s nerves,” the ball player said. “I can’t seem to stop. I’ve got a bruise there, but it helps. Does that make any sense at all? Am I losing my mind?”

  “Tell me your name,” Branden said. “Tell me about Lydia.”

  “I don’t think I can.”

  “Then just your name.”

  “Audi Kanuff,” he said, removing his sunglasses. He pulled a bandana from his hip pocket and pressed it to his eyes. “I’m sorry, Professor. I was angry, yesterday. Now I’m just so sad. I don’t know what to do.”

  “It’s OK, Audi,” Branden said. He put a hand on Kanuff’s knee. “If you haven’t been sleeping, have you at least been eating?”

  “No,” Audi said, shaking his head. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Funny,” Audi continued after a pause, “I am James Audent Kanuff III, my parents are benefa
ctors of the college, I’ve got a place in the family business when I graduate, a fortune if I want it, and I’d trade it all right now for just another ten minutes with Lydia.”

  “Yes,” Branden said gently. “Time is the only asset of any significant value. Ten minutes with her now, and you’d gladly give all the rest of it away.”

  Audi broke with a strangled laugh, and tears appeared again, lacing his cheeks. He buried his face in his mitt, and his shoulders shuddered, as he drew a deep breath and released it as a ragged cry. He wrapped an arm across his gut as if he were afraid he would spill all of himself out onto the walkway and die. The professor took his shoulders and pulled him into his embrace. Another baseball player hurried over from one of the dorms, but Branden waved for him to stop and stand back to give Audi some privacy.

  The other baseball player stepped back and sat on the grass with his arms wrapping around his knees. He waited there, thirty yards away, while Audi spent himself in the professor’s arms. Then he came up to Audi when Branden waved for him, and he lifted Audi to his feet and walked him back to the dorm. Branden stood to watch them go, and he stayed there until they had entered the building.

  Then Branden resumed his walk home, drying his own eyes and making a call to Detective Ricky Niell.

  “Ricky,” he said when Niell answered, “How many diary notebooks did you and Pat find in Lydia Schwartz’s dorm room?”

  “Probably fifteen,” Niell said. “Why?”

  “I need to get started reading them, Ricky.”

  “I can bring some over after dinner. Then maybe tomorrow, you could make a little trip with me? The sheriff was going to have me ask you about it, anyway.”

  “I have an 8:00 seminar and a staff meeting at 4:00.”

  “If I picked you up at 10:30 Mike, we’d probably be home by 2:00. Would that work?”

  “OK, but where?”

  “Parma,” Ricky said. “The marriage counselors. Because the voicemail greeting for Mary on Lydia’s phone is too urgent to be just an ordinary greeting. So, I’m making this trip to Parma, tomorrow. These are the counselors Mary was supposed to see last Saturday. Can you drive up there with me?”

  “Yes. Sure. But I want to start reading Lydia’s diaries tonight.”

  “After dinner, Mike. I’ll bring them over.”

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  Lydia’s diaries were a revelation to the professor. He read them late into the night. She had written about everything. Her classes, her friends, her love affair with Audi Kanuff. She had written about her professors and her favorite subjects. Literature, history, economics, biology. She had embraced the liberal arts experience like the earnest students the professor remembered from his earliest years as a teacher. But most importantly, she had written about her family, and about her struggle to break away from the Schwartzentruber sect and find her way in the English world. There were entries about her parents and her brothers and sisters, plus all her dozens of nieces and nephews, cousins and aunts and uncles. Even entries about her preachers and the bishop. The church. The congregation. The life she had forsaken when they had all grown cold toward her, because she had left her family behind. Well maybe not all were cold to her. Mary her sister, it seemed, had stayed close.

  Mary had been Lydia’s tether to her old life. If the diary entries were trustworthy indications, Mary had been Lydia’s pipeline to news of family and friends who would no longer be pleased to have her visit. It had been a burden that almost broke Lydia, but not quite. Her relationship with Mary had preserved enough of a connection with her family that she could embrace the English world and the life at college, just as she needed to do. Just as she needed to do in order to be free. To be herself. To be the real and complete Lydia Schwartz. Or so it appeared in the diary entries that Branden read that night.

  Then also, there were the entries about Mary. These were the saddest. The most conflicted. These were the ones that most convinced Branden that the trip to see the Culps tomorrow in Parma would not be wasted. Mary, Lydia had written, was also struggling with her own life’s choices and options.

  On a Thursday last May, Lydia had written:

  Mary is so sad. She has it the hardest. She gets no relief from John. He’s never going to understand. I’m not sure the Schells are really helping. They’re telling her the right things, but they can’t really know what they are asking of her. So sad. I just have got to talk with Dithy. Have to talk with Donna, too. Maybe they’re pushing Mary too hard?

  In early June, she had written:

  Mary There’s so much she doesn’t know. She’s too isolated. Bishops can’t always be right. Family? Self? What is more important? Where is the freedom? Am I really free? I miss them all so very much. But I can’t go back. I wouldn’t want to anyway. Audi is right. I just can’t go back. It’s such a waste, to make them all live like that. If the bishop shows up here again, I’m going to tell him just that. I’m going to explain to him about the light. Knowledge brings light, and light brings freedom. But what about Mary? How can Amish life be right for her, under her circumstances? Is John really that bad? But no, Lydia, think. There are the children! This might be a mistake. Schells? What have they promised her? Will they really be there for her in the rough times ahead?

  In late July:

  The phone! Brilliant! She can call me. I can call her. It’s a lifeline for her. Call me, Mary. You can call every day now. Nothing yet. Gonna call tonight. No, can’t do that. John will hear the phone ring. So she has to call me. Maybe when she’s over at Dithy’s?

  Two days later, the entry was:

  I simply must call Mary. I have to risk it. John? It’s worse than ever. Is she really in danger there? Dithy says so. I need to call Donna. Oh really, Lydia? What are you thinking? Just go out there with Donna for the studies, to hear what they are telling her. Tell Donna/tell Mary/call me! Please, please, please just call me Mary!

  Later in August:

  It’s all foolishness. Of course she has to stay with her family. She really has no choice. The children are so very important. Mary can’t leave them. She just can’t leave them all behind like that. She can’t stay either. Impossible situation. I need some time with the babies. Up on the hill. Quiet, cemetery quiet. Talk to the babies. I just can’t think straight any more. Dithy and Donna? They don’t really understand. They talk, but they haven’t been through it. It’s too easy to give advice. Mary, what will you do? Impossible No answer will ever be good enough. Can you really be safe there? OK, Lydia, what about you? You made it out just fine. Really? Did I? Oh, so much do I miss the light of home lanterns.

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  Caroline found him on the sofa, with one of Lydia’s diaries laid across his chest. She nudged him softly. “Michael,” she whispered. “Michael, you’ve got a class.”

  “What?” he stirred slowly awake. “Mary?”

  “What about her, Michael?”

  “Mary wasn’t sure. Neither was Lydia. She wanted out, but she couldn’t figure a way. She couldn’t leave the children behind.”

  “I told you, Michael. This never made any sense to me. To leave her children behind? It never made any sense to me at all.”

  The professor pulled himself off the sofa and stood in his bare feet on the carpet. He displayed the last diary he had been reading and said, “Lydia writes about ‘Dithy’ a lot. That’s gotta be Meredith Silver. Meredith. Dithy. Also, Donna Schell. I don’t think Lydia thought they were giving Mary such good advice. But she wavered. She wasn’t certain about any of this, herself.”

  “Certain about any of what?” Caroline asked, leading him into the kitchen.

  “Certain about leaving. About Mary’s leaving the church. That’s what they were talking about. I think Donna and Meredith were having more than simple bible studies with Mary. And I think Lydia was really quite troubled by that.”

  “Michael, it’s not reasonable to leave your children behind.”

  “You’ve said that befor
e,” the professor complained.

  “You don’t have to be cross with me, Michael. I’m just telling you. It’s too extreme. There’d have to be something drastic to make her do that.”

  “Perhaps her life there with John was really horrible. Remember what Junior said.”

  “Or someone got her talked into it. Somebody got her talked into leaving.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I read one of those diaries myself, Michael. Lydia didn’t know what Donna was telling Mary. Also, I don’t think she was sure about ‘Dithy’ anymore. She was worried that maybe there was something more than just Bible study going on out there.”

  “Caroline, it was Donna who was so much help for Lydia when she was getting out herself. Right? When she was starting college. It was Donna Schell who helped her get through it.”

  “Yes, well maybe Donna has been helping Mary too much. It’s like I told you, Michael.”

  “I know. You don’t think she’d do it.”

  “I think it would be very hard for her. I think she’d doubt herself forever. I think she’d go back for the other children. That’s what gets me. The older children. If she really has left, she must have a plan to go back for the other children.”

  “Louise Herbeck said something like, ‘you have to save yourself first,’ as if they were advising her to get herself out, and then go back for the other kids.”

  “Then that’s the only way any of this makes any sense to me, Michael. It’s either that, or Mary is dead, too. Just like Lydia.”

  Chapter 20

  Thursday, August 31

  10:30 AM

  At the Culp’s counseling offices in Parma, in the south-central section of the Cleveland metropolis, after they had parked in front of the steel and glass building, Ricky displayed his detective’s badge for the receptionist.

  “Police?” she asked. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “Sheriff’s Office,” Ricky said. “From Holmes County.”