Laura's Shadow, page 22
Her large gray eyes filled with tears. “I can’t imagine feeling sadder than I do right now.”
And she was off, a voice to herald the passing of her uncle. Maybe it made her feel better, saying the words out loud. Maybe each speaking of the event took a bit of the horror and exhaled it, to where the child would eventually be left whole, her spirit knitting itself together within the gap. Her youth and innocence gave her the privilege to speak her grief. As I watched her flit from one person to another, it became clear that I was the only one to admonish her announcement. Everyone else adopted a sympathetic frown and patted her sweet head, saying, “I know. I know, dearie. But your uncle is in heaven now, and that must be our comfort.”
Mrs. Garland didn’t seem to be particularly comforted by the idea of her son being blown to heaven, though. She’d wept throughout the service, and occasionally the November wind brought the sound of her wailing all the way down to myself and my fellow stragglers who walked behind those more deserving of grief. Witnesses reported that she had been brought out to the field where her son lay dead, his body broken and twisted, his exposed skin the color of fiery pain. There she had fallen to her knees, begging God to heal him there beneath the late harvest sky.
Now, those who knew him and loved him envisioned their beloved Cap Garland dancing with the angels, playing baseball on true Elysian fields. His shattered body was healed and whole, his face wearing a perpetual smile.
“I’ll wager he’s even singing,” one woman said with a wistful giggle. “Goodness knows he could never hold a note in singing school.”
I had a faint acquaintance with the woman. Her name was Mary, and Oscar had brought her around often enough in the days after we moved in. I’d seen her tucked in beside him as they ran their sleighs up and down the snow-covered streets on Sunday afternoon. I’d also spied her in spring, climbing down from his buggy with her hair unpinned by a breezy afternoon ride. I assumed they would marry—that they were courting, at least. Perhaps Mary assumed so too. She must have guessed that Oscar’s heart belonged to another. In any case, it didn’t belong to her, for she had a husband walking behind her, allowing her to reminisce with the childhood friends who’d known Oscar as a companion.
I was not among them. Not in spirit and not in place, even as my steps matched theirs. In the days between his death and this procession, I’d been torn by the conflict of whether I should come to the funeral at all. Katrina argued that I should, of course, stay home. Not only did I not have an appropriate black dress, but I had no good, ready answer for those who would ask, How did you know our Oscar?
“His mother would remember me,” I’d said. “Charles and I lived with her for over a year. She was quite kind and fond of us both.”
“All the more reason not to bring up sad memories,” Katrina replied. “Plus, the little one is bumping out a bit. You don’t want to start rumors.”
She was right about the little one. I woke up the day after learning of Oscar’s death to find a small, hard mound spanning my otherwise flat stomach. “Surely no one will notice once I’m dressed and wearing a cloak.”
“You don’t have a place there, sweetie,” she’d said with a little pat to my hand. “Not like Charles, who was his friend and who was … there. And I have to go to support Charles. It’s hit him hard.”
This too was true. For it was Charles who had inspected the thresher days before, leaving a warning with Augusterson that he mustn’t use the ground water to fuel it. Too alkaline, he’d said, the admonition he gave to every farmer within a hundred miles who came to him for advice and repair. He’d been ignored, and three days later, two men were dead, more injured.
“Heard he was thrown thirty feet,” someone behind me said. There were, in fact, few people behind me, so I surmised this to be a man attending more for the meal than for mourning. “Straight up in the air, like he was shot from a cannon.”
“Them boilers is tricky,” a commiserative voice said.
I was glad Charles wasn’t beside me to hear this conversation, as he would have been infuriated enough to turn around and set them straight. Boilers ain’t tricky, I imagined him saying. They can only do what they’re meant to do, and they can only do that if they’re maintained and treated right. With the exceptions of Katrina and me, Charles only ever had a heart for the machines he encountered in life. I half-expected he would want to dig a grave for the ruined thresher with a hole blown three feet wide in its boiler.
It was Charles who insisted I come, telling me that I had as much reason to grieve Oscar’s death as anyone else. Maybe more even.
“I should have told him sooner,” I’d said. “If I’d realized. If I knew.”
“And how would that have changed things, Sister?” Charles asked. “Do you think he would have skipped out on a day’s work, knowing he had a child to provide for?”
In the end, Charles used the money Augusterson paid for his inspection of the machine to buy me a black blouse to wear with my black skirt, thereby cutting in half Katrina’s argument that I should stay home. The two of them walked ahead of me, their heads bent together in the sort of whispering posture I’d grown accustomed to.
We assembled beside a gaping grave, fresh earth piled high beside it. The preacher stood alone at the top end, holding his Bible to his breast. He said all the things I’ve since learned are the custom to say at a funeral. That we should seek comfort knowing Oscar’s eternal peace. That we are not to question God’s will in such things. That there is a time for everything: to rejoice and to mourn, to sow and to reap. That we have a heavenly Father whose house has many rooms, and that each of us has a room waiting, giving us a place to live for our eternity. And, finally, that Oscar remains with us. His spirit lives on in our memories. His heart in the love we have for one another. His voice as we recall words he said.
God help me and forgive me, but at that moment those words rang truer than any others the preacher said. The chill that I felt in the afternoon breeze abated as I remembered what it felt like to be in Oscar’s arms, his breath mingled with mine, our bodies entwined. I heard echoes of his promise that he didn’t love me, and I cast it aside the way I did that night. I could taste his whiskey-tinged breath and feel the softness of the morning beard upon his cheek.
Eight men were chosen for the task of lowering the casket into the ground—most I recognized from playing on the De Smet baseball team, but the final two were more familiar: my brother, Charles, and Merrill Gowan. I’d seen him at the church, sitting in a center spot of a crowded pew in front of me. He’d walked in front of me too after allowing the smallest tip of his hat in greeting. He held the leather strap and walked with measured steps from the hearse to the grave, softly counting aloud to keep the other casket bearers in stride. He did the same as they lowered the casket into the grave, keeping the silk-finished box even in its descent. I know all of this not because I watched but because I listened, staring only at the scuffed toes of my boots peeking out from under my skirt, hearing only the rush of the wind and Merrill Gowan’s soft-spoken cadence.
Then the time came for those so honored to throw a handful of earth atop the casket. The wind snapped our cloaks and skirts, even lifting Mrs. Garland’s veil to reveal her grief-stricken face. Somehow all the seconds of time converged, and her eyes met mine where I stood on the opposite side, on the opposite end.
Part of him lives, I wanted to say and might have if I’d been close enough to whisper. Not in our memories, not in our hearts. But here. Flesh and blood, alive. I thought of the tiny beating heart, the body not yet knit together, the spirit waiting for its first breath.
The preacher led us in a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, but my mind was filled with Katrina’s ominous warning—“So much can happen in those first weeks and months …” At the graveside of the child’s father, I prayed fiercely, whispered aloud, “Holy Father, let it live.” My prayer meshed in with those asking forgiveness for their trespasses, and in my heart I knew the living child would be a piece of God’s mercy I could hold in my hands. I felt his love in a way I would never feel Oscar’s. I swallowed his forgiveness along with my unshed tears. While the preacher prayed a final blessing over Oscar’s family—his mother, his sisters, their husbands, their child—I took a physical step back and away from the crowd, knowing that I would never, ever share this new life with them. It was to be my comfort, a single drop of belonging in a world where everyone I loved seemed destined to leave me.
It was announced that we were all invited to the Garland home for a light supper provided by the church family in honor of Oscar, but I begged at Charles’s arm not to go. I couldn’t face the idea of walking into that house again, offering my condolences to his mother as she sat in the wing-backed chair by the window where I’d been allowed to sit and read on chilly afternoons. However, I kept this reason to myself and only claimed a near collapsing fatigue (which was real) and the logic that if we drove straight home from here we could be in our own cozy kitchen before dark. To my relief, Katrina agreed and offered to represent us in reassuring our prayers to the family—one of the sisters, perhaps—before heading home.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Merrill Gowan making a purposeful approach, meeting up with Charles and asking if he might accompany us home. “Times like this,” he said, “it’s good to have someone to talk to.”
“Of course,” Charles said, “if you don’t mind riding in the back of the wagon.” Our wagon seat could comfortably sit three abreast, and we’d ridden together with Katrina sitting stoically in the center.
Before Merrill could answer, I piped in saying I would ride in the back. I knew there was a layer of hay left in for those times when Charles needed it to cushion bits of machinery he hauled back and forth for repair as well as a stack of blankets for extra packing. “Let you men catch up and talk about whatever men need to talk about.”
Charles gave me a long look. “Are you sure?”
I nodded, as eager for solitude as Merrill Gowan was for company. By the time Katrina was back from her social duty, I was settled in, warm and more comfortable than I’d been in half the beds of my life. Katrina sat between the two men, so I imagined her equally warm, and felt begrudgingly happy for her.
The day had been one tinged with the orange light of autumn, but I was chilly from the shadow cast by the wagon’s wall. The wool blanket was itchy but tolerably so, and I pulled it up to my chin, taking in the familiar scent of iron and oil that made up my brother’s livelihood. The deep, intermittent conversation between Charles and Merrill lulled me in and out of a shallow sleep, with Katrina’s high-pitched bursts bringing me awake. They—Charles and Katrina—spoke of their future, the factory job awaiting Charles and the home they hoped to find in the outlying neighborhoods. Nothing fancy, of course, to start. Only manageable, so they could put money aside for something bigger. All of this talk came from Katrina, while Charles spoke of the machinery, the intricacies of the working parts, the ideas he had for further streamlining. This, I knew, bored Katrina to tears, and I thought I heard a few of her distinctive, frustrated harrumphs when the men talked over her attempts to change the subject. But I imagined her silence being folded up in my brother’s words, and I could not picture a safer place to be.
I opened my eyes to a violet sky, the color that comes when there’s not a trace of sunlight left but darkness hasn’t yet settled its blanket. I heard Charles declaring he would return the wagon and team to the livery down the street and offered to take Merrill’s horse too if he wanted to spend the night in the extra room upstairs.
“Thank you, no,” Merrill said. “I’ve chores to get back to.”
“Then stay for a bite to eat,” Katrina said. “Mother said she’d bring over some supper for us to come home to.”
I sat up, then stood, keeping a steadying hand while Merrill folded down the tailgate, where he made no effort to help me as I sat on its edge and dropped safely to the ground before Charles drove away. “Would you mind,” he asked as I brushed stray bits of straw from my skirt, “Miss Mariah, if I stayed for supper?”
“You are most welcome to stay,” I said, fully realizing it was not my place to say who was welcome and who wasn’t. “I know I am famished.”
“Then come in and help,” Katrina said over her shoulder. Charles had brought the wagon around the back of the building by the kitchen door. I took one step to follow her when Merrill’s hand caught mine. Neither of us said anything, and I made no attempt to take my hand away. The evening grew darker with every breath, but soon enough Katrina lit a lamp in the kitchen and we found ourselves standing in the window’s amber square of light.
“I know I said I’d never ask you again,” Merrill said, “but this will be the first and last promise I ever break.”
I looked up into his broad face, made leaner—as was the rest of his body—after months of harvest labor. His features were just as soft, cheeks just as round, hair just as thin, though longer and left messy by the wind. His eyes held nothing but kindness and hope. “I’m asking you again to be my wife. To let me give you and the child a home. I’ll take care of you all of your life, Mariah. And I’ll give the child my name. Boy or girl, it will inherit all I have. I promise to love it as my own and to love you as much as you will allow.”
This last declaration made summoned my first smile in recent memory, and I offered a closed, guarded sniff of a laugh. “I don’t have any promises to offer in return.”
“I only ask that you accept mine.”
“I cannot promise to love you.”
“I know.”
“Or to obey you.”
“I won’t ask.”
Having said all of that, there seemed nothing left. But then I thought about Merrill’s big blue house with its fledgling copse of trees sitting at the edge of a field so fertile he had to hire out help to harvest it. I remembered the preacher speaking the promise of Oscar’s home—a big house with many rooms—and wondered why Oscar’s child should have to wait to live a life and die before knowing such a thing. With Merrill as its father, this child would never suffer the hunger and cold as I had. There were two hearts beating within me, but I answered only for one.
“I will honor you,” I said. “And never speak to you or another soul about this child’s father.”
He smiled, kissed my hand, then—with my face raised in permission—placed a soft kiss on my lips. “How soon, do you think?”
I glanced through the window and saw that Charles had returned, having come through the shop. He glanced out the window and raised a hand in salute before walking out of frame, presumably to help Katrina with the supper.
“Tomorrow,” I said without hesitation.
“Are you worried you will change your mind?”
“Maybe. But there’s no reason to wait. We aren’t promised a tomorrow, are we? The congregation will be gathered. We can ask the reverend to perform a quick ceremony after the sermon.”
“And you aren’t worried that people will suspect?”
I shrugged. “They’ll suspect what they suspect when we have a child in seven months’ time. Then they’ll remember that you came to dinner every week all summer and they’ll come to their conclusions.”
“Tomorrow, then,” he said, his voice tinged with a hint of disbelief. “Tomorrow my home will be your home.”
“I want to bring my books. And my table. And chairs. They are mine.”
“I will build you shelves in the front parlor.”
He kissed me again, holding me a bit longer but releasing me before I could pull away. After having spoken all the vows that would bind us, I took his hand and led him into the warm, bright kitchen where my brother’s blessing waited.
CHAPTER 15
TRIXIE
Trixie made the introductions all around, ignoring the bemused quality of her mother’s and grandmother’s reception.
“GG is upstairs, resting,” she explained. “Maybe we’ll bring her downstairs later to meet you.”
“That would be nice,” Ron said, but with a slight lift in his voice, as if questioning.
She tried to imagine what the Gowan house looked like through his eyes—bookshelves crammed with modern paperbacks and antique editions, all set at different angles, some page-facing, others with covers torn straight down the spine. Spindly Victorian end tables cozied up against overstuffed recliners. Knickknacks strewn across every horizontal surface—dog figurines, cut-glass ashtrays, milk-glass bowls filled with antique candy. A few Christmas cards remained clipped to a string draped across the doorway to the dining room, and Trixie’s graduation portrait hung above the fireplace as if the skinny girl in the track uniform and letterman jacket was the presiding lady who laid the cornerstone.
“Cute,” Ron said, looking at the picture. Then, at her, where he waggled his eyebrows in obvious appreciation.
“Well, I’m a mess right now,” she said, aware of every sticky, sweaty inch of herself not because of Ron’s scrutiny but her mother’s.
“Why don’t you go upstairs and get cleaned up,” Alma said, her hands clasped loosely in front of her as if delivering a proper directive, “and Mother can take your young man on a tour of the property. The petunias in the garden are blooming like crazy.”
Ron rocked back on his heels. “I love petunias.”
Eugenie leaned into him. “That’s code for let’s not have a gentleman in the house when one of us is in the shower.” She inclined to Trixie. “At least I hope you’re planning a shower.”
Trixie should have blushed or demurred in some other ladylike way, but she’d long been used to her grandmother’s boldness. In response, she lifted her arms and gave a sniff under each. “Maybe a quick one. I have petunias to compete with.”
She bounded up the stairs, the word quick setting her pace. A peek into GG’s room showed the woman sitting in her rocking chair, looking out the window.
“GG?”
She turned. “Oh Trixie. That car! Did you see it?”
