Laura's Shadow, page 12
GG would not have known any of this as Laura Ingalls’s student. True, Laura may have done a poor job of hiding her unhappiness and distaste, but who hadn’t had a bad teacher in life? Trixie could think of a few who had stayed in the job too long after retirement age and others who had no business in the profession at all. Laura Ingalls was fifteen years old, younger than two of her students, certified by a single test that she barely passed, and miles away from home sharing a claim shanty with a homicidal woman who hated her. GG was a full-grown woman when she first read any of this—a woman on the verge of becoming a great-grandmother. A woman who knew the love of a good man and the joy of a beautiful son and the satisfaction of years of good health. So what if her teacher marked her tardy on a snowy day or didn’t fully appreciate her innate intelligence?
All these thoughts intertwined with the words on the page, Trixie’s subconscious roaming freely until—
Almanzo’s second-to-last trip to bring Laura home for the weekend had been particularly treacherous; so much so, he’d considered not going at all until his buddy Cap Garland pushed him by saying, “God hates a coward.”
“God hates a coward.”
If Trixie had heard GG Mariah say this once, she’d heard it a thousand times, and every time the phrase earned the ire of Trixie’s mother.
“Stop saying that,” she’d chastise. “God doesn’t hate anybody.”
But GG would counter with a sermon she’d heard once about how the phrase Fear not was the most repeated sentiment in the Bible, so being a coward was going completely against God’s command. What followed was a recurring, unresolved theological debate into which Grandma would insert herself, saying, “It’s just a holdover from the old days, Alma. What God really hates is rancor.”
“A holdover from the old days.”
But Trixie had never heard the phrase outside of this book and her great-grandmother’s mouth. Not in any of the nineteenth-century American literature she’d read in her high school and college courses. Not in any of the authentic pioneer journals and diaries she’d obsessively consumed of her own choice. This was not a common idiom. This was no religious cliché.
This was something particular to Cap Garland, the rapscallion of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s teenage crowd.
And so, it seemed, GG not only knew Laura Ingalls, but she must somehow have known Cap Garland too. To understand that connection, though, she’d have to ask, because in a few more pages, Martha would give Miss Ingalls a shiny red apple and disappear from the book forever.
Trixie closed the book and rested one hand on GG’s foot, feeling its bony thinness through the quilt. She imagined it cold, perhaps working its circulation by stamping the floor of the tiny schoolroom. These now ancient feet had walked thousands of miles through snow and mud and hard-packed dirt plains. The foot twitched, and Trixie lifted her hand, drawn by slight sounds of wakefulness coming from the pillow at the opposite end of the bed.
“You’re reading it, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” Trixie said. No reason for subterfuge anymore. “I read about your last day of school with her.”
“Let me tell you something.” By now, GG’s eyes were open, and she’d boosted herself up a bit. “I never gave that girl an apple. Where would I have found a shiny red apple?”
Trixie couldn’t help but laugh at GG’s precise remembering of the text. “So, you’re saying Wilder exercised some poetic license?”
Before GG could answer, Trixie heard the sound of a car in the drive, but given the affection of her ownership, knew immediately the car wasn’t hers. She went to the window, drew the curtain aside, and peered out to see a comfortable, reliable Ford. Something a doctor would drive, and indeed, there was Cam piling out. Along with her mother. And her grandmother. And Samantha. Leaving one question: If they were all spilling from his car, where was hers?
1 Laura Ingalls Wilder, These Happy Golden Years (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1943).
CHAPTER 8
MARIAH
The wedding of Charles Patterson and Katrina Rose gave the entire town a distraction from its usual August malaise. While Charles maintained that he would as soon stand up in her family’s parlor and sign his name, Katrina had been ardently wooing her father into footing the bill to put on an event that would make her wedding a showcase for the entire town. While the reception after the ceremony was largely open to all, the ceremony itself in our little white church was limited to invited guests. Charles and I often joked that if we weren’t crucial members of the bridal party, we probably wouldn’t have been invited. Food and drink arrived in ice- and straw-packed crates from as far away as New York City, along with glassware and china from her family in Chicago. Gifts poured in from friends and relatives from all over the country—her friends and relatives, of course. Charles and I were, ostensibly, the only of both to each other, and every day he came home befuddled by the newest parcel.
The latest was a glazed statuette of two dogs engaged in playful combat.
“Don’t much see the use for this,” Charles said, eyeing the thing with suspicion.
“It’s art,” I told him. “Art doesn’t need to be useful.”
Most of the gifts were kept on a long table in the Rose parlor, as was—I assume—tradition. But the more crowded it became, the more things were shuttled to our home: the dog statuette, a set of cut-glass candlesticks along with a box of beautiful white tapered candles, a tea set painted with a detailed bird pattern, a set of mouse-shaped nesting dolls, a side table with thin spindled legs carved in a design of intertwining vines. Day after day, Katrina skipped breathlessly through the door with some new treasure in her grip, saying, “We’ll have to find the perfect spot for this.”
But there was no perfect spot. Charles and I had never had a taste for frippery, and all the space in our home was filled with the practicality of life. His tools and my books were the only things on any kind of display, and with each new trinket, I imagined my books would soon be stuffed into boxes and hidden away. Given the opportunity, I supposed Katrina would like to see me hidden away as well, but I had no intention of ceding my place in the home I built with my brother.
Not that Katrina was, in any way, unkind to me. In fact, she invited me to stand up with her at the wedding, which meant getting a new dress—at her expense. And her taste. I’d never worn anything other than a serviceable calico, and that ready-made, as I had no talent with a needle and no means to sew a dress. My clothing came from the dry goods store when I had money for something new, and from charity barrels when I didn’t. But somehow, through Katrina’s design and her father’s money, I found myself standing on a stool in Mrs. Bradshaw’s dress shop one week before the wedding, wearing the kind of dress I’d never before let myself dream about. Pale green—an impractical color for a woman constantly exposed to grease in her brother’s repair shop, never mind all the splatters and stains that came with running a house. The sleeves were full, then narrowed at the elbow with a time-consuming row of buttons. The collar was high, the waist nipped, and for the wedding the skirt had a netting overlay stitched with tiny pink rosebuds that served no purpose at all. The first time I wore it, I dared not breathe for fear one of the thousands of pins would pierce me and my blood would create tiny drops of ruin. Later, through all the fittings, I found myself equally breathless, for fear my exhalation would break the spell. In it, I felt beautiful. No one had ever given me any cause to attach that adjective to myself. I couldn’t begin to imagine the loveliness that would be Katrina Rose. Even on the wedding day, I was not invited to her home to dress with the other attendants—a mutual decision between the bride and myself, as someone needed to be here to make Charles presentable. I did what I could, but Charles could rumple a suit of armor. Even clean and freshly pressed, his suit looked like he’d been wearing it for a week. I’d slicked his hair with water (it was too fine for pomade) and checked that he’d washed behind his ears. Grown man or not, he was absentminded with his hygiene. I gave him a final going-over and said, “Ma and Pa would be so proud,” but the sentiment didn’t earn a single tear. If we told each other the truth, neither of us could claim much thought of Ma and Pa over the past few years. Life had been too long and hard a fight after their deaths. They’d both managed to slip in with all the other memories.
Shortly after he left, somebody (a distant Rose family cousin) arrived at our kitchen door to ensure that I too was buttoned and fastened correctly.
Katrina had requested we all (myself, a cousin, and the daughter of a family friend) wear our hair in a braided crown, which I did, though my hair had always been too fine to hold any style. I held it in place with the ivory combs she’d given as a gift for this occasion.
My instructions were to be on the church lawn at three o’clock, to stand as an adornment—a preview of the bridal party for the arriving guests. I thought the notion silly, but the cousin and the friend (it was a while before I would learn which was which) took the job seriously and offered smiles and greetings to each person as they walked by. I stood under that blazing sun while neighbors passed, expressions alternating between scrutiny and surprise. I transferred my bouquet of silk flowers to one hand and temporarily blocked my vision as I brought my sleeve up to pat the sweat from my brow. When I lowered it, I was standing in front of Oscar Garland.
He arrived with a breeze that carried the smell of his soap. His suit was the color of a pale gray dove, his shirt bleached white.
“Good afternoon, Mariah.” To my astonishment, he took my hand, bowed, and kissed it. The cousin and the friend made a parenthesis of approving giggles. When Oscar stood upright, he offered each a nod of greeting.
I took my hand back and clutched my bouquet. “Hello, Oscar.”
“It’s a lovely day for a wedding, isn’t it?”
“It’s a bit warm,” I said, feeling sweat trickle down my back and pool at my cinched waist.
A voice piped up beside me. “Whoever heard of a wedding in August?” This must have been the cousin, because no friend would have spoken with such derision.
“It’s as good a day as any,” I said, fighting the sudden dryness in my mouth. “I don’t think any of the three of us standing out here on the lawn are in any position to judge.”
At this, Oscar’s moustache twitched in approval, and I offered a small smile back. I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “I’m so glad you’re here. Charles will be looking for a friendly face.”
He leaned even closer and spoke even lower. “Doesn’t the bride have a friendly face?”
I brought my bouquet up to cover my laugh but offered no response.
“Ladies,” he said as he backed away before turning to enter the church.
“Who was that?” This had to have been the friend, because only a friend would have such hunger in her voice on the day of being a bridesmaid.
“Oscar Garland,” I said with as much nonchalance as I could muster. “He and my brother and I have known each other for ages.”
“He’s very handsome,” said the cousin in a way that made it clear that she would bowl both of us over if she sensed the first opportunity to give him her hand.
“He is,” I replied, and would have expounded, but the sound of horses’ hooves and the soft jingle of bells called our attention.
Our church was set within a small grove a bit off the main road, the trees planted in hopes of protecting the stained glass windows from the relentless South Dakota weather. At that moment, Katrina Rose, driven by her father in a well-equipped, drop front phaeton rounded the corner. The single horse was a beautiful jet black, as if chosen to match the high gloss of the carriage.
She looked like a swirled mass of silk ribbon and lace. Like she had been plucked out of the summer sky and brought to earth to be a cloud of beauty floating among us. Her father, moving at some silent command, got down and placed a small set of stairs at the side of the carriage, then held his daughter’s hand as she descended. The volume of her skirt made it impossible to know if her feet touched the ground in the same way as those of the rest of us mortals as she glided across the lawn of clipped grass. A veil covered her face, but no amount of netting could obscure the pinkness of her lips or her brown-button eyes.
“You go first,” she said to me, bringing a sense of relief that, behind all of that beauty, the same bossiness survived. “Stand at the door and signal to the reverend that I’m here. It’s time.”
I obeyed, as did the cousin and the friend, lining up behind me.
The pews were full, squeaking as people shifted trying to find comfort in the heat. I caught the reverend’s eye and nodded. He, in turn, motioned for my brother to come stand before him, and that’s when the fullness of the ninety-degree day threatened to take my legs from beneath me. It hadn’t occurred to me (Why hadn’t it occurred to me?) and Charles had never mentioned (Why hadn’t he mentioned?) that he too would have attendants standing up with him at the top of the aisle. Katrina had three, but my brother only had one. At the first few notes of the bridal march, I took one step, and then another, and then another, flanked by a breeze created by women fanning themselves in a desperate search for relief. A new heat blazed under my hair, and I wanted to claw the collar of my dress away from my neck. I knew all eyes were turned to see the bride, all but those belonging to the man at the front of the church beside my brother.
The best man, Merrill Gowan.
Each step that brought me closer threatened a hitch of bile, and if Katrina could see the expression on my face, she would be furious. I would have turned, run out of the church, clambered over the friend and the cousin and the bride herself to escape if not for the fact that from his aisle seat in the third pew, Oscar Garland caught my eye and winked at me.
Nobody else, I’m sure, saw this bit of attention, and the nerve of it refreshed me. Buoyed me. As leader of the bridal procession, it was my duty to smile, so I did—first at Oscar and then to the room at large. I took my place standing across from Merrill and held Katrina’s bouquet as she took her vows and offered her hand for the wide gold band my brother had crafted for her. Blood rushed in my ears with such great, crashing waves that I heard none of the words. In time Charles lifted Katrina’s veil and placed a swift, soft kiss on her perfect pink lips, and soon after, Merrill and I were marching out side by side behind them. Neither of us spoke, and Oscar certainly didn’t wink.
Never in my life had the relentless prairie wind been so welcome.
Long tables had been set out on the lawn on the east side of the church, taking advantage of the stretch of afternoon shade and shadow. The table abutted to the church wall, reserved for the bridal party and Katrina’s parents, was laid with finery too beautiful to be spoiled by the slices of meat and colorful vegetables that would soon adorn it. The rest of the guests would enjoy something more akin to a church social, with various bits of potluck strewn about. Few were friends of Katrina’s, but many had brought work to Charles over the years, and what better way to pass a late-summer evening than with food and conversation? Plus, there would be music. And dancing. Never before had we thrown a party to celebrate the onset of harvest. This wedding proved the perfect excuse.
Given how I’d felt during the ceremony, I didn’t think I’d be able to swallow a single bite of food, but the delicacies placed before me transcended my discomfort. Chicken roasted with unfamiliar herbs, cabbage somehow both warm and crisp, soft bread made with flour as white as Katrina’s gown—I ate all of it without a trace of self-consciousness, wishing only I knew a protocol to ask for more. When given a glass of champagne to toast the newlyweds, I raised it with a shaking hand, hardly able to contain my excitement for the first taste.
And, oh. How it tasted. The glass was cool against my lips, the bubbles jumping like early raindrops against my nose. The first tiny sip was merely an introduction, but the second (and the third, and the fourth) went down my throat with the ease of a kind word. Fortunately, the protocol for getting more champagne was simply to set the empty glass down on the table. Again. And again. Four people—Katrina’s parents, Katrina and Charles—sat between Merrill and me, blocking my view of him completely. Charles sat to my right, the cousin to my left, and neither one seemed interested in talking to me at all, so I dug into my supper with relish and kept my champagne glass filled. After the third, I worked up the courage to look out and seek Oscar, finally finding him sharing a table with a half dozen rough-looking men.
I allowed that moment of public anonymity to gaze at him, his suit jacket abandoned, his shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, his hair mussed in the wind. The rushing in my head had become something more like a murmuring brook, and I imagined my blood flowing as such—loose and cheerful, smoothing away the earlier tension. Bits and pieces of conversation—all of it amusing—splashed at the edge of my hearing, and I smiled down into my glass. I must have giggled, because the cousin asked me what was so funny, and for the life of me I didn’t have an answer. Her annoyed expression was even more amusing, so I let out a bigger laugh, which I made no attempt to hide. Fortunately, everyone ignored me. Everyone but Oscar. His smile reached across the tables, across the lawn, across the empty plate in front of me. Even from this distance, I sensed a conspiratorial air to his smile, and then I saw the small silver flask that he tipped quickly to his lips.
The shadows stretched, the air cooled. A dozen or more lanterns were lit, and the tables were moved back to create a makeshift dance floor on the church lawn. Three men—our town banker, his son, and a man with an unruly beard and standing-straight shock of hair—took to a makeshift stage with a hand organ, snare drum, and violin, respectively. The man with the violin was vaguely familiar from our days in De Smet, but my mind was too bubbled to give him a name. They struck up a waltz, and by some unspoken cue, Katrina and Charles came up from their place at the table and began a turn that brought muted applause from all the guests.
