Laura's Shadow, page 19
“I’ve no intention of following you,” I said. “I have a home here and have been taking care of myself longer than you’ve been alive. I suppose I’m capable of taking care of a child.”
Katrina gave a snort and tossed a biscuit onto the pan. “So you’re not going to tell me who the father is? If it’s Mr. Gowan, there was no need to sully yourself this way. He was keen to marry you all summer. No need to trick him into it.”
I suppose I should have corrected her, to save Merrill’s reputation as mine was already ruined, but I had so little that was truly mine, I wasn’t prepared to share. “I’m not tricking anybody.”
“It’s a woman’s gamble, my mother always says. Doesn’t take much to get a man to play along, but there’s no guarantee he’ll pay up when the time comes.”
I thought about Oscar, gone in the morning before dawn even stretched light across the room and how he hadn’t shown his face since. Silently, grudgingly, I envied her having a mother to dispense such advice.
“I’m going to lie down,” I said, ready to take advantage of having another woman in the house. “I’m tired.”
In that moment, a change came over Katrina, as if she realized the expected sisterhood that came from being not only a sister of sorts, but a general ally by the circumstance of our sex. She’d cut the last biscuit and was scattering the scraps of dough on the pan to bake into irregularly shaped snacks when they came out of the oven.
She heaved a sigh that bordered on sympathy. “Can I bring you a cup of tea?”
I pondered before answering. A cup of tea sounded restorative, but I’d managed to keep the wall of tears dammed up for the last twenty minutes of walking, and I could feel it threatening to burst. I welcomed her comfort but not her pity. I don’t suppose any woman has ever dithered so long over the decision of whether or not to have a cup of tea, because she finally said for me to go in and lie down and she’d bring it in directly. Relieved, I followed her command and went into my little room behind the kitchen. It was warm, so I opened the window before sitting on the edge of my bed. I took off my shoes, my stockings, and finally my dress; I unpinned my hair and lay back upon my pillow, thinking how my life had changed a hundredfold since last I touched it.
The next I knew, it was dark, and I woke with the disorientation of having slept a day away into the evening. The room had turned cold, but I was covered by a warm, unfamiliar quilt. I sat up, drawing it to my chin, and willed my eyes to adjust to the shadows of the room while my mind dropped the moments of the day into place. As the darkness faded to shades of gray, I noticed the cup on the table by my bed and reached for it. Tea, long cold, but sweetened with sugar—I drank it down in three thirsty gulps and would have given anything for more. The smell of supper wafted in along with the voices of Katrina and Charles, too low for me to make out exactly what they were saying. Despite an overwhelming desire to never, ever leave this room, I wrapped my robe over my underclothes and left my hair undone as I stepped barefoot into the warm kitchen. Katrina was at the stove stirring, and Charles waited at the table with his empty, expectant plate. I had the distinct feeling that their conversation came to a stop midword at my arrival.
“Well, look who’s awake,” Katrina said, her voice as sweet as her tea, no doubt because of my brother’s presence. “Let me set a place for you.”
“I’ll get it.” Charles rose and took a bowl from the shelf.
I sat, tucking my hair behind my ears, and waited for Katrina to bring the pot to the table. It was a soup of white beans and ham, which I suspected came from her mother’s kitchen, as there’d been no beans set to soak overnight and cook during the day. I’d keep her secret, though, because once I took a spoonful after Charles said the blessing, I found it a perfect, welcoming taste of salt. We all ate in silence, save for the muttered compliments of the dish. The biscuits, wholly Katrina’s, benefited from a swipe around the empty bowl and a soak of the broth at the bottom.
I felt full and warm, but neither uncomfortably so. For the first time in weeks, my stomach showed no signs of rejecting its food. The kettle hissed on the stove, and Katrina prepared a fresh pot of tea, producing with it a platter of gingerbread (also, I suspected, from her mother’s kitchen). I nibbled a square, embracing the spices, and took a comforting sip of tea. All was fine—quiet and soothing—until Charles cleared his throat.
“I’ve started asking around to see if I could find out where Garland’s working.”
I dropped my gingerbread to the table and glared at him, summoning daggers for my eyes.
“He told me,” Katrina said, as if the softness of her voice would give me comfort.
My gaze didn’t waver. “You had no right.”
“And you have no choice,” Charles said, his authority blocking any retort. “I was forced into a bit of a fib, asking around to all the fellows working today on his behalf, saying I thought he might be looking for work, but nobody could give me a good answer. Tomorrow—”
He was interrupted not by words but by the tiniest shift of Katrina in her seat—a movement so small, it might have gone unnoticed if it hadn’t commanded Charles’s full attention.
“Trina,” he warned.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea, bringing him into this.”
“I think he brought himself into this when he took advantage of my sister.”
“He did not take advantage of me,” I said, not knowing if my hackles rose in defense of Oscar or myself.
“All I’m saying,” Katrina inserted, “is that there’s no need to hurry.”
Charles gaped at her. “No need to hurry? People are going to notice—”
“A lot of time passes between now and when she’ll be big enough for people to notice anything. And a lot can happen during that time, to where people wouldn’t ever have to know at all.”
Candlelight turned us all into a gathering of shadows and gave an exaggerated sinister cast to her face.
“Are you suggesting …” I couldn’t bring myself to give words to my suspicion.
She held her hand to her breast, offended. “Good heavens, no. Why, that you could even think I would suggest—I mean, and God forbid it should happen—but not every scare turns into a baby. Sometimes late is … late. And some children aren’t meant to be more than wishes and angels. If you’d grown up around women, you’d know—that’s why most wives don’t even tell their husbands until they are three or four months along.”
“It’s almost like you wish—”
“I wish nothing. Life is precious, and you know how I long for my own. But suppose he does the noble thing and marries you. Outright. You know he doesn’t love you. And then something happens to that baby and you’re stuck with a man who doesn’t want—”
“Trina,” Charles said, trying to bring some softness to the table, but his wife hammered on.
“Has he ever come courting?” She turned to Charles. “Has he ever asked you to give his best to your sister? Be honest. Has he?”
Charles was honest in his silence.
“Has he ever acknowledged her existence when polite company didn’t insist?”
I felt a little more demoralized with each question but summoned the strength to answer this last one. “Maybe not, but that was—before. This is his child. He has a right to know of its existence.”
“He doesn’t have a right to anything,” Katrina said in what seemed to be an approach to sorority. “But he does have a responsibility. Tell him too soon, and he’ll bolt.”
“He wouldn’t,” I said, hackles raised. “He’s a good man.”
“He’s not a good man. Good men don’t do this to women. At least not to good women.”
Whatever hint of sisterhood she offered disappeared with that comment. I sat, stunned. Silent. She would have called me a good woman when I sat at this very table for breakfast, wouldn’t she? Yes, there’d been a revelation of my past and a thorny path to my future, but I was the same woman in the middle of both.
“Just wait until after the harvest,” Charles said with an air of authority that came from a month of marriage. His wife nodded in affirmation.
“After the harvest,” I repeated. “That could be another six weeks.”
“Making it all the more compelling for him to do the right thing,” Katrina said, “before the entire town sees you in disgrace.”
Charles shot her a look. “Please don’t say such about my sister. There’s nobody at this table with a right to throw stones.”
I almost giggled at the shock on Katrina’s face, but there are some fires you don’t need to stoke.
When Benjamin Franklin said that three could keep a secret only if two are dead, he did not have our family in mind. Whatever I’d thought of Katrina’s hoity-toity ways, she proved herself to be a friend in my time of trouble, always at the ready with a cup of tea or a perfect salty broth. I kept to one of the rooms upstairs when smell of the morning breakfast beckoned my nausea, and she was ever at my side with a pillow for my feet or a new skein of yarn for the afghan I’d set myself to crochet. It was a safe bet too that Charles kept our secret, as he could barely bring himself to look at me during those weeks in October that seemed like nothing more than a month-long vigil, though each of us kept watch for our own private reasons.
There was no change to my body other than my breasts, which swelled to something unrecognizable and so tender that even brushing my own arm against them in the daily machinations of life sent unwelcome jolts of pain. What I lacked in stamina I more than made up for in overwrought emotion, finding tears at the back of my throat at the least provocation. One day I would speak with fear-fueled determination to stare down anybody who might judge my character; the next I would spend in a tearful huddle, knowing I was doomed to a lifetime of shunning and gossip. No matter the tock of the pendulum, Katrina was at the ready with words of encouragement or succor, though I expected her hands experienced their fair share of wringing at my expense.
Poor Charles, though, bore the brunt of my mercurial disposition. When I wasn’t at the window, forehead against the cool pane, muttering my regret at having allowed Oscar Garland to treat me so dishonorably, I was at my brother’s elbow, nagging him to tell me what he knew and what he’d heard about Oscar’s whereabouts. He worked the harvest like a traveling salesman peddling his labor here and there all over the county and even for a few days across the state line. Charles gleaned all of this from casual conversations at his work counter and at various barns and toolsheds. “Any idea where Garland’s working?” he’d ask with practiced nonchalance. And always he’d just been at this place or just left another.
“Slippery, that one,” Katrina said one afternoon at Sunday dinner. Often we would share this meal with her family, in their fancy dining room, eating a fine roast that had been left on the stovetop all morning. On this day, though, our invitation had been hastily rescinded. “Slippery like a rat.”
“Man’s got a right to earn a living,” Charles said.
“Besides,” I said, “he doesn’t know he has anything to slip away from, does he?”
“Not yet,” Charles said, “but if I keep asking and you start”—he gestured with his fork in my general direction, moving it in a wide, round arc—”I figure people will put it all together.”
“My mother knows,” Katrina said, throwing the comment out as quickly and calmly as if declaring the beef on our plates was overcooked, which it was, having been unmercifully seared in a skillet upon our arrival home. My knife clattered to the table and Charles looked far too calm to be hearing this revelation for the first time. Katrina immediately defended herself. “She guessed.”
I glared at her across the table. “She guessed?”
“A while back, when I was so worried about you, so sick and fatigued. Today she asked if you were feeling better, and I said no, not really. And then after church she pulled me aside and … guessed.”
“Nothing solves a mystery better than gossip,” I said, “but I suppose that counts as keeping it in the family.” Still, I couldn’t stay another minute at the table. The sound of my chair scooting away was so loud I almost missed my brother’s words that followed. “What did you say?”
He looked up at me. “Merrill too.”
“You told Merrill Gowan that I am pregnant with Oscar Garland’s child?”
“N–not like that. Not all of it. Not about Garland. But that you are in—trouble, I guess. He was worried about you because you looked so distraught when you came out to his place to talk to me. And at church. He said—”
“Probably what Mother said,” Katrina interrupted, “that you look pale and tired.”
“Distraught,” Charles repeated.
“And Mother noticed your …” She pointed to her own ample bosom. “That you seemed … enhanced.”
“Merrill didn’t say anything about that,” Charles was quick to explain.
“That’s because men don’t notice women’s figures,” Katrina said dismissively.
“Oh, I assure you we do.”
“Not the same way women do.”
“Stop!” I was standing behind my chair, gripping it like a shield. “So you told him? Am I to have no privacy at all?”
“Come January you sure won’t,” Katrina said. “This is nothing but a big mass of trouble that I’m glad to have no part in. We’ll be long gone to the city before it’s here.”
She began to clear the table, a chore I would normally join in beside her, but instead I stood and watched, feeling completely invisible in the room, already abandoned.
“If it helps at all,” Charles said, his voice calm in the aftermath of our dustup, “I know where he’s working.”
“Right now?” I felt my knees close to buckling.
“Fellow named Augusterson. Met him when I was over to De Smet last Thursday. He was in getting some tools and said he was looking to hire about ten men next week. Someone mentioned Garland’s name, best harvester engineer in the county they said, and told him where to find him.”
“Why are you just now telling me this?”
“Because I wanted a peaceful Sunday. And to make sure there was time for Augusterson to hire him on. He’ll be there a week at least, Sister. I’ll find him and talk to him before he leaves again.”
Katrina made a humph sound that drew Charles’s displeasure, sending her back to the sink.
“A few more days,” he said in the same voice he had always used when we were on the brink of being without food or heat or a home.
I almost acquiesced. Almost agreed. Almost ready to bow my head to him and take my place far and away from the most important moment in my life. But what had I always done on those cold, lean, hungry days when Charles was ready to hope for things to get better? I’d gone out to find work. I’d scraped enough flour and lard together to create food. I’d rummaged for paper and sticks to burn in our tiny stove.
So, no, I would not wait until after the harvest to speak to Oscar. I would not live with a secret already revealed to people who had no business knowing it. Over the course of a Sunday morning, the chances of Oscar learning from someone other than myself had grown exponentially. No doubt every woman in church would have a fortuitous run-in with Mrs. Rose, who never had a single good thing to say about myself or my brother. Merrill might have told his entire work crew over their stew and corn bread supper. I walked around the table, leaned down, and spoke beneath the sound of the clattering dishes.
“I want to find and tell him tomorrow. Will you go with me?”
“I don’t think—”
“I’m not asking what you think. I’m asking if you’ll help.”
He’d been twisting his napkin in his hand and finally tossed it on the table. “What kind of a brother would I be if I didn’t?”
In the morning, I learned he was the kind of brother who would do anything to spare his sister, because when I awoke in the predawn darkness, he was already gone.
“We talked about it last night after you went to bed,” Katrina said, eyes bleary with sleep. It was cold enough in the house to warrant two pairs of socks, which she wore with a pretty pink quilted dressing gown, her golden hair loose around her shoulders as she put on a pot of coffee. “We decided that it would be best for him to talk to Oscar first in case his initial reaction isn’t … favorable.”
“Nobody thought to ask me what was best?” My words were argumentative, but deep down, I could not deny a sense of relief.
“We didn’t want another scene. Charles left so early, he’ll probably get to Augusterson’s farm before the crew gets assembled.”
Katrina and I settled on a truce for the day, stepping wide circles around each other in the silence of the house. We took turns minding the workbench, taking in small repair jobs over the counter and sending the larger ones away with the promise of Charles’s return the next day. Katrina did some fine needlework, and I settled myself in for an afternoon of reading Silas Marner.
I suppose my reading choice came as a bit of self-loathing. Punishment, maybe, thinking about the conversation Charles may have already had with Oscar concerning the child we created out of such reckless behavior. In the novel’s opening scene, a desperate, opium-addicted mother struggles through the snow, her illegitimate daughter abandoned to the storm. She—the mother—dies within pages, and I supposed I’d always held her in harsh judgment until now. But wasn’t she merely trying to do the best for her child? Wasn’t she merely trying to assure her daughter a life better than her own?
I couldn’t begin to plan beyond this day, let alone months from now. By crude calculations and limited knowledge, I figured the baby would be born in the spring. April, maybe, and where would I be then? The answer to that question hinged on what Charles would say to Oscar today. I thought about my conversation with Katrina earlier: We talked about it last night … We decided … We didn’t want … She and Charles so joined together that they spoke in a single voice. They would make wonderful parents—Katrina such a pretty mother, Charles so capable.
A new thought dawned. Did Katrina argue so vehemently against the idea of Oscar coming into my life because she wanted to take this baby for herself? After all, what did I have to offer? I didn’t know how to be a mother; I’d never even had a doll. Yet here I was, too stunned to be afraid, willing to face the consequences of my actions but not willing to face them alone. I cannot honestly say that in those early, pre-fluttering months, I felt love for the child. What I did feel was pure protection. Throughout the day, I caught Katrina looking at me with a kind of hunger that made me want to keep this tiny life shielded. I splayed my open book across my stomach and turned my body from her gaze.
