Isaac's Decision

by Ruth Ann Nordin

  With a glance at Emily who looked relieved, he made one up. “Actually, I do. I wasn’t sure about this equation.” He showed her the problem he started.

  As he hoped, Eva forgot all about Emily and dime novels while she explained how to solve the equation in more detail than he thought necessary, but he suspected she did that so she could linger by his side a little bit longer.

  From the front of the room, his little brother Jacob snickered, and Isaac suppressed the urge to groan. He could only pray Jacob wouldn’t tell their father about this.

  When Eva returned to her desk up front, Isaac exhaled and picked up where he left off in his work. At one point his gaze went to Emily. She hadn’t touched her dime novel. It remained closed on her desk. Her head was bowed, and she seemed to be concentrating on her fingernails. A tear trickled down her cheek, but she quickly brushed it aside.

  He reluctantly turned back to his paper, but he didn’t feel like finishing his assignment. Even if their teacher thought dime novels were a waste of paper, did she have to come out and say it? Emily wasn’t the only one who read them. His aunts Jenny and April enjoyed them. Even he enjoyed them. They were a nice way to escape. He thought to tell Emily this, to reassure her that there was nothing wrong with reading them. But he couldn’t. And so he didn’t.

  ***

  That evening, Emily waited until she helped her mother and Elizabeth clean up after supper before she asked, “Ma, what’s your favorite book?”

  Sarah set the used cloth on the worktable. “It’s been awhile since I read anything. I’d have to think about it.”

  Emily pushed the last chair up to the table. “What’s to think about? It’s your favorite book, right?”

  “If only it were that easy,” her mother mused. “Usually, whatever book I read and enjoy at the time is my favorite. What brings this on, Emily? I thought you didn’t like the books I read.”

  “Miss Connealy is making Emily do a book report,” Elizabeth said with a chuckle in her voice. “And she won’t let Emily do it on one of her dime novels.”

  Emily’s face warmed. “Have you been sneaking into my trunk?”

  “Of course not,” Elizabeth said a little too quickly.

  “You have been,” Emily replied. “Why are you always going through my things? Can’t I have any privacy in this house?”

  “Elizabeth,” their mother began, “you know you shouldn’t look in your sister’s trunk.”

  Elizabeth crossed her arms. “Who’s looking? I happened to be in the room when she put the dime novels in the trunk.”

  “That’s not true,” Emily said. “I would never be so careless. You waited until I was gone and went snooping around where you didn’t belong.”

  “No, I didn’t! I was lying on the bed that day because I was tired, and you snuck into the room to take them out of your coat and put them into the trunk.”

  “Why you little sneak! You had your eyes closed. I thought you were sleeping that day.”

  “I was asleep until you woke me up.”

  “I don’t believe you! I have a mind to see what’s in your trunk!”

  “Girls, girls!” Their mother stood between them and held her hands up. “Enough! Elizabeth, you must let Emily know you’re awake next time she’s in the room. Emily, you won’t go into her trunk. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

  Emily gritted her teeth so she wouldn’t say that life was a lot easier when she was an only child. Little brothers weren’t so bad, but little sisters could be downright annoying!

  After a moment of silence, their mother turned to Emily. “You need a book to read for school?”

  “Yes. It has to be something I can gain moral insight from. Eva is very concerned about that sort of thing,” Emily replied.

  “Why don’t you call her Miss Connealy?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Because she’s a year younger than me,” Emily said.

  “But she’s the teacher, so she knows more than you do. You have to respect her.”

  Emily glared at her. “Don’t you have something else you could be doing instead of bothering me?”

  “Emily’s right,” their mother intervened. “Elizabeth, do your homework.”

  “I don’t have any homework,” Elizabeth replied.

  Their mother rubbed her temples and sighed. “Then do some work for tomorrow.”

  “Alright.” Elizabeth turned to the staircase and trudged up the steps.

  Once she shut the bedroom door, their mother’s attention went to Emily. “So you need a book you can do a report on?”

  “Yes. Something boring but not too long should do the trick.”

  She shot Emily a wry grin. “Boring?”

  “Sorry. It’s just that I haven’t been able to finish one of the books Eva approves of in a long time. Do you have anything short? I need to come up with a thousand to two-thousand words. I can stretch the report out if I use a lot of adverbs and adjectives to describe scenes that are supposed to be meaningful to me.”

  Laughing, her mother motioned for her to join her in the parlor. “That strategy is quite clever. No one will ever accuse you of being stupid.”

  Emily rolled her eyes as she recalled Eva’s snide comment regarding dime novels but didn’t say anything.

  Once they were in the parlor, her mother lifted the seat on the piano bench and sorted through her books. “What about Frankenstein? It shows how people can turn a person into a monster by the way they treat him. Frankenstein’s creation was never a monster to begin with, you see, but Frankenstein and others refused to befriend him and this made him a monster.”

  Emily examined the book. “Is this the one where the scientist created a man out of corpses?”

  “Yes. Did you already read it?”

  “No.” Not exactly. She started reading it last year but ended up skimming it until she had enough and asked Alice for enough information so she could find out why their teacher said the book warned of the dangers of man playing God. “I remember Alice talking about this book. It doesn’t sound like something I’d enjoy.”

  She took the book and looked for another. “Oh! I bet your teacher would love it if you did a report on Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. It’s about the struggle of good and evil we all face.”

  “Is there anything that’s more romantic?”

  “Well, let me see.” Her mother rummaged through a few books before she retrieved Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. “It’s about two sisters who find husbands. I suppose you could report on this from the angle of how we should balance logic with emotion.”

  That didn’t sound so bad, but it was a thick book. “I don’t know. Can’t you just tell me what happens in it?”

  Laughing, she shook her head. “You need to read the book yourself, Emily. It’s your report, and if you don’t do the reading, then you’re cheating yourself.”

  That would be true if Emily still needed to go to school. She was old enough where she ought to be married, and she’d do better to find her own husband instead of reading about sisters finding theirs.

  “Are you sure you must read a romance?” her mother asked. “The only other book that comes close to it is Emma by Jane Austen. Emma goes around playing matchmaker.”

  “Is it a long book?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “What is the shortest book you have?”

  She sorted through the books and picked up Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift. “It’s about a man who goes on a journey and comes across tiny people, giants, horses that are superior to people-”

  “No. I don’t think so.” Emily released a resigned sigh and asked, “Which is shorter? Sense and Sensibility or Emma?”

  “Emma is by a few pages.”

  “I’ll read Emma.”

  Emily took the book from her mother and flipped through it, thinking that it was going to take forever to read it. Goodness, it was about 400 pages. What was wrong with people who wrote books that long?

 
The front door opened and Emily’s father and younger brothers came in from doing their evening chores. There was no way she could get any reading done with the noise her brothers would make. “Thank you, Ma.” Taking the heavy book, she trudged up the stairs to get started on her assignment, praying it would be good enough to keep her attention.

  Chapter Five

  “I want you to dress up in your church clothes on Saturday,” Isaac’s pa told him that evening as he milked one of the cows.

  Still squeezing the teats, Isaac looked up at his father. “Is someone getting married?”

  His pa leaned against the stall and grinned. “No, but I invited Eva out here for supper.”

  Isaac’s jaw dropped and Jacob and Adam giggled from where they were chucking hay into the troughs. “Miss Connealy?”

  Looking proud, his father laughed. “I’m sure you can call her Eva on Saturday.”

  “Why is she coming here?” As soon as Isaac asked the question, he wished he hadn’t. He already knew the answer. Now that his father was going to tell him what he intended, Isaac couldn’t feign ignorance of the whole thing.

  “I thought you might like to get to know Eva outside of the schoolhouse,” his father said. “So, you’ll pick her up around four, she’ll eat here, and then you’ll take her home.”

  Isaac turned his attention back to the cow so his father wouldn’t see him wince. That was a long time to spend with his teacher. “Pa, I don’t think she’s going to be my wife.” He might as well just come out and say it. There was no sense in getting his father’s hopes up.

  “Don’t be so quick to dismiss her. I know she seems unassuming at first glance, but you’d do well to look beneath the surface. It’s what’s inside a woman that counts.”

  “I know that, Pa.”

  “Good. Then think about it on Saturday.”

  Isaac sighed as his father went to the horses. He couldn’t think of anything worse than having his father try to pair him up with Eva Connealy. It was awkward enough going to school with her smiling at him in a way that indicated she hoped he would ask to court her. Now his father was encouraging her by having her over for supper!

  He glanced at his brothers who were quietly laughing and making kissing noises. At ten and eight, they understood how uncomfortable this was going to make things for him at school. If they could understand it, then why couldn’t their father? Groaning, Isaac turned his attention back to the cow so he could finish milking her.

  When he was done, he carried the pail into the kitchen and set it on the table. From upstairs, he heard the soothing tone of his mother’s voice as she sang the three-year-old twins, Harriett and Rose, to sleep. As Rachel came into the kitchen from the parlor, he asked, “Is Rose feeling any better?”

  “Yes.” Rachel took out the box of recipe cards. “I’ll stay here tomorrow to help Ma out.”

  “I’d be happy to take your place.”

  Glancing up from the cards, she laughed. “I heard about Miss Connealy coming over this Saturday. Pa is sure he’s found you a wife.”

  He grimaced. “It’s not funny.”

  “Sure it is, especially since you can’t stand her.”

  “That’s not true. I can stand her. I just don’t want to be anything but her student.”

  The sound of footsteps from upstairs alerted him that his mother was on her way to the staircase. Good. Maybe his mother could talk his father out of his attempt at matchmaking.

  Rachel pulled out a recipe card and set it on the worktable before she went to the pail. “I’ll take care of the milk.”

  He nodded and headed for the bottom of the staircase to wait for his mother. Halfway down the steps, she paused. “Is there something you need, Isaac?”

  Rubbing his fingers along the smooth banister, he said, “I’d like to talk to you in private, if that’s alright?”

  “Of course, it is.” She descended the rest of the steps. “Is anyone in the parlor?”

  “No.” With any luck, his brothers and pa wouldn’t be done for a while. He led the way down the hall and to the parlor. Once there, he sat down and waited until she sat next to him before he spoke. “Can you talk Pa out of having Miss Connealy over here on Saturday?”

  Giving him an understanding smile, she said, “You’re going to have to tell him no at some point.”

  “I already told him that I’m not going to marry her.”

  “It’s going to take more than that for your father to understand you’re a man.”

  “What’s to understand? He’s planning on getting me my own home.”

  “Isaac, being a man is more than owning your own place. It means you make your own decisions and take responsibility for them. When it comes to your father, you have a hard time telling him no, so he’s been making the decisions for you. If you want something, you have to be firm and stand your ground. That’s the only way your father is going to stop treating you like a child.”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “I make decisions and stick by them. He didn’t want me to go to school this year, but I told him I was going. I bought a stallion even though he wanted me to get a gelding. There’s more, but I can’t think of them all off the top of my head.”

  She put her hand on top of his and squeezed it. “Those aren’t big decisions. Children can make the small decisions. Men make tough decisions, decisions that require you to take a real risk.”

  “Well, there’s one risk I don’t mind taking and that’s not marrying Eva Connealy.”

  “Then you’ll have to make that clear to your father.”

  Isaac sighed. “I should only have to say it once.”

  “Sometimes people need to hear things more than once before they really hear you.” Giggling, she let go of his hand and shook her head. “I’m surprised your father is playing matchmaker.”

  He grimaced.

  “I can see that it bothers you, but I find it endearing. He only wants you to be happy, and he thinks Eva will make you happy. While he’s doing what he feels is in your best interest, it’s up to you to make it clear that it isn’t.” She stood up and patted his shoulder. “It’ll be alright, Isaac. Just stand your ground. He’ll get the point.”

  Before she could leave, he decided to ask the one question that had been on his mind for years. “Ma, why doesn’t Pa like the Craftsmans?”

  After a moment, she sat back down. “What I’m about to tell you is for your ears only. Agreed?”

  Surprised at her serious tone, he nodded.

  “It’s a long story, so I’ll try to be brief. When I left Maine, I was a mail-order bride, and I was supposed to marry Neil Craftsman. But Neil decided I wasn’t to his liking, so I ended up marrying your father instead. Shortly before you were born, Neil…” She shrugged. “For lack of a better term, he kidnapped me.”

  His jaw dropped. Of all the things Emily’s father might have done, Isaac didn’t expect this.

  “But while we were on the train, he changed his mind,” his mother quickly added. “He realized he was wrong, and he’s paid his dues. He’s not the same person he was back then.”

  “So why doesn’t Pa want us to talk to the Craftsmans if Emily’s father turned his life around?”

  “I don’t know,” she softly replied. “I’ve asked him, but he doesn’t want to talk about it. When Neil changed his mind and we got off the train, we waited for your pa to come and get me. Your pa came and to this day, I haven’t seen him as angry as he was when he talked to Neil. I don’t know what he told Neil, and I’ve decided I’m better off not knowing. There are some things you’re better off leaving in the past.”

  “You’ve done things for Emily. I remember you used to make clothes for her before Neil married again. Pa let you do that.”

  “That’s because Emily’s mother didn’t want to have anything to do with her.”

  “She didn’t?”

  “Emily’s been through a lot, Isaac. She was young when her mother left. Sure, she had her grandmother, but she longed for
her mother to love her and her mother never did. I couldn’t help but take her under my wing until Neil married Sarah, and fortunately, Sarah’s been wonderful to her.”

  “Do you and Sarah ever talk?”

  “When we see each other in town, we do.” After a moment of silence, she asked, “Would you like to know anything else?”

  There was so much he learned that he needed time to process it all. “No. Thanks, Ma.”