Laura's Shadow, page 16
Charles muttered a multisyllabic response that sent Katrina into a giggling fit of admiration. “Do you hear that? How smart he is? All of those men standing and staring and not one of them with a clue how to fix that”—she gestured deferentially to Charles—”thingamajig. But my Charlie? He steps right up and says, ‘Why don’t you give this a try?’ And wham-a-bam, next thing everything’s cranking again.” She patted his hand. “You’re a genius, sweetie. And you’re wasting away here.”
“I am not wasting away.”
“You know what I mean,” she said and turned to me. “They offered him a job. Right there. On the spot.”
“Mechanic,” Charles said with a hint of pride I’d never heard before, not even when he announced his upcoming marriage.
Katrina beamed. “And there’s the most adorable little neighborhood close by where a lot of the workers live. We took a streetcar over and strolled around. Modest homes, not more than two or three bedrooms. But perfect for a little family. A small family, I mean.”
I knew exactly what she meant.
“But I didn’t take it,” Charles said. “Not right off. Said I had to think about it. Harvesttime, you know. I’m always busy. Everybody’s got their equipment for me to see to.”
“And the foreman said, ‘No problem. Come back the first of the year.’” Katrina said this with the impersonation of a rotund man whose lips clamped down an enormous cigar.
“So, you’re leaving,” I said, though Charles wouldn’t face me. I felt the night’s supper roiling in my stomach. “When were you going to tell me, Brother? In a note underneath the Christmas tree?”
“Don’t be so hateful,” Katrina admonished. “I can’t believe you would want to keep him from such an opportunity. Why, he’d be getting a salary, not scraping a few coins over the counter.”
“Those coins have kept us well,” Charles said, equally admonishing.
“Maybe when it was just the two of you, content to be poor as church mice. But you have a wife now, Charlie. And soon, I hope, children. You have to think of the future.”
The cooing tone of the last sentence provoked a nauseous response within me, and I clenched my teeth against the bile. Charles must have mistaken my reaction as an attempt to hold back tears, because he reached across the table and came very close to touching my hand in comfort before I snatched it away.
“Don’t worry, Sister,” he said, “maybe we can find someone to rent out the shop. That would be a good bit of income for you.”
“Of course, dear,” Katrina said, suddenly sweet again. “Why, we’d let you keep over half.”
“You’ll keep it all,” Charles said. “And you’re welcome to live here as long as you like.”
My tongue, though thick, loosened. “Oh, may I? May I please continue to live in my home?”
“I believe the deed is in both of your names.” She turned to Charles. “Isn’t it, sweetie?”
That’s when I knew they’d played out this conversation before. This scenario. All the low whispers and secretive looks I’d been attributing to the mystical ways of marriage had been nothing more than treachery and escape. I didn’t begrudge my brother the opportunity. I would have gladly packed his bags and sent him—and his wife, I suppose—off to pursue such an honor. But to have it withheld from me … To think of all the weeks since their return (for it was now nearly the end of September) without a word. How I would have loved to have heard the story in my brother’s voice, each word undergirded with his special brand of bashful pride. It was Katrina’s place to beam beside him in silence, not to grab his thunder and throw it on the table. Did the two of them think my love so inferior to hers that I could not share in the joy? But then, the news being unfolded in such a manner, trailing its dreadful secrecy, I could not.
“The two of you,” I said, teeth clenched, “you make me sick.”
I removed myself from the table and went out into the yard behind the kitchen. Normally the cool night air of early autumn would bring welcome refreshment, but when I opened my mouth to take a gulp of it, the roiling in my stomach overwhelmed me and I bent over, vomiting my supper into the grass. I prayed that the two of them didn’t have their noses pressed against the window watching. I heaved long after my stomach was empty and finally wiped my eyes, then nose, then mouth with the dinner napkin I’d had the presence of mind to bring. I don’t know how long I stood outside, but eventually their movement caught my attention as they got up from the table and began to clear it. I’d taken a few steps away from where I’d been sick and waited, caught between wanting to be left alone and wishing one or the other would care enough to open the door and call to me.
Neither did.
I could not bear to walk back into that kitchen, so I made my way to the front of the building and let myself through the shop door, praying—now—that the conspirators in the kitchen would ignore the bell.
They did.
I wanted nothing more than to steal up to my room, but then I remembered. I had no room upstairs. I’d relegated myself to the oversized closet behind the kitchen, where Charles and Katrina were murmuring between the clinking of dishes and scrubbing of pots. I remained, trapped by circumstance in the shadows of Charles’s shop. I thought about the hours he stood behind that counter fixing clocks and oiling anything with a gear. Repairing everything from toy trains to rabbit traps. How he worked by lamplight long into the dark in order to keep a promise. His tenacity and talent brought both of us favor when the owner took us in and left us everything. And now what could it be? A bookshop, maybe. Or library, if I could secure the funds. It would take work and time to rid the place of its distinctive smell of grease and metal shavings, though now they brought more comfort than the lingering smell of supper coming from the kitchen.
I assessed my body. Breathing? Normal. Skin? Cool to the touch. Tears? Dry and gone, with no hint of a return. I longed, however, for a drink of water to chase the sourness from my mouth, and there was only one place where I could go for that. As of now and always, this building belonged to me, and I had no reason to cower in the darkness any longer. Instead of stealing to my room, I strode into the kitchen. Katrina, drying the last dish, looked over her shoulder at my entrance.
“Mariah, dear. Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said, walking straight for the shelf where I kept the empty jars that once held Merrill Gowan’s cousin’s preserves. I filled it with water from the crock, knowing it would be cool to my burning throat, and walked past my brother who stood, looking dejected, with a dish towel draped over his shoulder. Mindful of my breath, I placed a soft, swift kiss on his cheek and whispered, “I’m so proud of you, Brother.”
We tiptoed around each other for the next few days, barely conversing at the meals that brought us to the table together. I’d all but lost my appetite, running my spoon around the edges of my porridge bowl in the morning and nibbling bread and butter while pushing food around on my plate in the evening. For as many times as Charles said, “We need to talk about this, Sister,” I had a retort ready to push the conversation off to another time. My head ached, my stomach was in a constant state of turmoil, and I found I barely had the energy to complete a simple chore before becoming overwhelmed with a depressing fatigue that took me to my little room, where I would lay, arm flung across my eyes, and give over to sleep. Charles made avoidance all the easier as he was gone most days, either working on farm equipment he’d been hired to repair or hiring himself out to work a day’s harvest.
“Every little bit helps,” Katrina said as she handed him a burlap sack of dinner and a kiss on his cheek. “We’ve a whole house to set up in Chicago.” In these moments, I tried to make myself invisible, and I might as well have been for all the mind they paid me.
One day when Charles was out working for none other than Merrill Gowan, I came upon Katrina softly crying in the kitchen. The sound is what drew me, as I initially thought there might have been a nest of kittens born in the warmth of the cabinet by the oven. But, no, it was she, standing at the stove, stirring something with a wooden dowel. The part of my spirit that was mean wanted to turn on my heel and leave her to whatever invented drama she was experiencing, but the part of me that saw her as a sister—both literally and in spirit—wouldn’t allow my escape. I remained in the safety of the doorway and merely said her name as a question. “Katrina?”
She looked up, sniffed, gave a wry smile, and lifted the dowel from the pot, showing the rag draped over it.
I found myself smiling too. On this detestable chore, at least, we stood on common ground. “I know it’s not the most convenient, but it’s never made me so upset. Or is the soap too strong? The steam burning your eyes?”
She shook her head, the ribbons in her hair oddly incongruous with her face. “I suppose this chore will always make me a little sad for a while.”
“Sad?”
“It means I’m not with child. I was so hoping to become pregnant right away. But maybe it’s best, considering the move.” She resumed stirring. “I suppose I should have asked you how you wash and where you dry your”—she inclined her head to the pot. “My mother and I got our time practically on the same day every month. I shouldn’t wonder that you and I will do the same. At least for as long as I’m here.”
“Yes,” I said, filling a bucket with cool water so the freshly washed rags could be cooled, rinsed, and wrung out.
“You must have perfected the art of hiding this bit of womanhood from your brother. I haven’t noticed at all that you’ve had your time since I got here.”
“Charles never was one to observe such details,” I said, but my mind was far, far away from this conversation as I calculated. I hadn’t had my monthly since Katrina arrived. And not while they were on their honeymoon, either, though I vaguely remembered expecting it during their time away.
“Mariah? Darling?” Katrina’s voice seemed to come from a great distance as the room spun me away from her.
Perhaps if I’d grown up with a mother or a sister or any other woman who cared two bits about my health and well-being, I might have been quicker to give a name to my symptoms. I might have known to be more cautious before feeding that monstrous desire for Oscar on the night of my brother’s wedding. I clutched at the edge of the table and fell into a chair, weighted with shame. I wasn’t a child, for heaven’s sake. I was a grown woman—however inexperienced in the ways of courtship and love. What happened with Oscar was neither, yet here I was, carrying the consequences.
Pregnant.
I could barely allow my mind to form the word. I dared not whisper it to myself, let alone give it as an answer to Katrina’s constant repetition of questions.
“What is wrong? Mariah? Are you ill?”
“I’m fine. Just a bit dizzy all of a sudden.”
“It’s because you haven’t been eating.”
“Right. Yes, it must be that.”
“I know you’re upset about Charles and me leaving, but can’t you be even a little bit happy for him? You’re making him miserable, you know. He feels guilty. And now, if he thinks you’ll be struck down sick, I’m worried he won’t go at all.”
She talked. Oh, how she talked, but her words created a wall for me to hide behind while my mind raced. She set a glass of water in front of me without taking so much as a breath in her diatribe against my existence. I thanked her, listening to her chatter on about their future children and needing to make their own family. And I thought—of course. Oscar. I had to tell him. He was a good man, an honorable man for all his flirtatiousness. He had to have known the risk—more so than I, for he’d clearly come to my bed with the experience of others. I hadn’t seen him since that night and had no idea where to find him, but Charles would know. That would mean telling Charles, and the thought of that caused a fist-sized knot in my stomach. No, not my stomach. That was where a tiny baby might be growing. The fist was in my heart, protecting it from the way every person I knew and loved would think of me from this moment on.
Katrina was midsentence when I stood. Maybe even asking me a question. I don’t know, didn’t care.
“I’m going for a walk,” I said, taking an apple from a basket on the sideboard and the heel of the day’s bread.
It was more than an hour’s walk to Merrill Gowan’s place, but the day couldn’t have been better crafted for the journey. The air was crisp, and I truly felt the descriptor, almost as if I could feel it framing my face. The sunlight held a golden tone that tinted everything in sight. Biting into the apple felt like tasting the day, and I thought—everything in its season. A few weeks ago, this apple would have been green, bitter, small, and hard. So had I—mere weeks ago—been lonely and utterly without a future. At least, not a future to be shared. But now …
Each step, each breath proved restorative.
I was carrying new life.
Merrill’s crop grew right up to the edge of the road, tall and golden-proud. I ran my hand along it, dislodging some of the grain. This too was life. My father had never known success as a farmer; our claim had been his last-ditch effort to support our family off the fruit of the land. How he would have marveled at the expanse of red winter wheat stretched out as far as my eyes could see. And then, beyond its horizon, I saw the house. The top of it, anyway. Two solid stories, finished windows that looked over the bounty—and all of it painted a shade of blue that made it a peacock among the dull, wind-worn shade of white that adorned any other dwelling.
This is what he had offered. This—all of this—could have been mine. I gave the notion exactly three heartbeats to take hold, but even these riches paled in comparison to the tiny treasure within me. Strange how I’d woken up that very morning ignorant of my condition, and now it drove me—though exactly where, I wasn’t sure. It was a temporary secret, something hidden away from the entire world, but for how long? Katrina’s shrewdness would discover it soon enough.
I’d apparently arrived at the workers’ dinner hour, for I heard no sound of machinery. Looking out to the place where the wheat lay flat on the ground, I saw the giant harvester at a standstill, a dozen or so men gathered around it. Merrill spotted me first. He stood to his feet and began striding toward me, a look of purposeful concern on his face. He shouted something over his shoulder, and Charles popped up to follow close behind at first, then overtaking Merrill at a run. He stopped breathless before me.
“What is it? Is it Katrina? Is anything wrong?”
His peppering questions took me off guard. I hadn’t taken the time to think how it must look, my coming out to visit in the middle of the day. Outside of church obligations with sick congregants, I’d never embarked on an afternoon visit of any kind in my entire life. Yet here I was, and within seconds, Merrill was there too at Charles’s elbow, echoing his concerns.
I laughed and held up my hands in surrender. “Everything is fine, Brother. Mr. Gowan. I’m sorry for the unwelcome surprise.”
“Not unwelcome,” Charles said, not sounding a bit relieved, “but, yes, a surprise.”
“I need to talk to you,” I said in a way that left no margin to include Merrill in the conversation.
“Right now?”
“Would I have walked the hour if it didn’t need to be right now?”
“I’ll just be a bit,” Charles said to Merrill before taking my arm (more aggressively than the occasion called for) and steering me to a fledgling copse of trees that looked like a gathering of gangly boys in a field. “Now, what is it?” he said once we were safely under their lacy shade.
“I need you to find Oscar Garland.”
“Find him?”
“Find him and talk to him on my behalf.” I knew I sounded like a character from one of my frivolous novels, and the expression of incredulity on my brother’s face confirmed it.
“Talk to him on your behalf?”
“Stop repeating everything I say, please.”
“Then say something that makes some sense.”
I took a deep breath and focused my thoughts. “It is very important, Charles, that you find Oscar Garland and talk to him.”
He took a matching deep breath. “About what?”
“About me. You need to tell him—” And suddenly my bravado came to an end. Tears I’d been too proud to shed pooled in my eyes, and I could not speak for the quivering of my chin. Thinking it was my dear brother’s earnest face in front of me, I looked away, into the sparse treetops behind him, their brave leaves fluttering valiantly in the wind.
“Sister.” He drew me to him, and I buried my face in his shoulder. The rough fabric of his shirt abraded my skin, but it carried the scent of soap and starch, despite his morning’s labor. That was Katrina’s doing, no doubt, making sure his clothes were clean and pressed; I never attended to his laundry with such detail. He drew back. “Did Oscar—did he … hurt you?”
The full weight of his question was not lost to me. I wiped my nose on my sleeve, saying, “No. No. He—no. Not in the way you mean. He didn’t hurt me. He didn’t … he didn’t force me.”
“My God,” he said, not in vain but in prayer. Charles had never been a religious man nor one to use the name of God in any casual sense. “What did he do?”
“Nothing I didn’t invite.” I would not make him a villain.
Charles took a full step back and stood utterly still. “Why do I need to talk to him, Mariah?”
“Because—” I pondered and swallowed every phrasing and decided to speak it plain. “I am pregnant.”
He closed his eyes, shutting me away. “Are you sure?”
“As sure as a woman who knows nothing about these things can be.” If his eyes had been open, he’d have seen my smile, my little attempt to lighten the moment. But it was gone by the time he opened them.
“What do you want me to do?” His question took me by surprise. Somehow, I’d expected him to be more gallant. “Don’t you know what kind of man he is? Everybody within ten miles says he’s a … a … well, I don’t know the word.”
