“What happened with her? You mean her death?”
I shook my head. “No. When she was younger. When she ran away from the Amish life. When I think about that, I just…” Again, words failed me.
But she wasn’t going to make this easy for me. She eased herself out of my embrace. Folding her arms across her chest, she just stood there and waited for me to continue.
“Nobody knows why she did that,” I said finally. “Not really. No one has ever been able to explain the thoughts and feelings that sent her away from here.”
Rachel frowned, her delicate brow furrowing. “But Tyler—”
“Don’t you get it?” Now it was my turn to take a step back. “How do I know what happened to her won’t happen to me? Something convinced her to walk away. Now that I’ve been feeling so unsettled lately, I have to wonder if that’s what happened to her too. Maybe this same feeling of restlessness just rose up in her, and it got worse and worse until it eventually took over. Maybe that’s what finally drove her away from the home and family and community she loved—for good.”
I could tell by the expression on Rachel’s face that she didn’t really understand what I was saying. How could she? Her own mother was an open book to her, a constant presence throughout her life. Mine had gone to the grave when I was only a child, leaving me with questions that could never, ever be answered by anyone else.
“Because your mother left,” Rachel said slowly, trying to understand, “you fear you will leave too?”
I took in a deep breath and looked into her eyes. “What I fear is that whatever drove my mother away will take root in me as well.”
“Maybe it already has.”
“Maybe it has,” I agreed. “But if so, I will not do as she did and slip away in the dead of night. If I leave, I will leave honorably.”
Fresh tears were now rimming Rachel’s eyes, which were wide with surprise and dread. She didn’t say what she had every right to, that there was nothing honorable about leading a girl on for years, implying marriage, only to desert her when it finally came time to take that next step.
I swallowed back the guilt that surged in my throat.
“So you are saying a life here with me, and our children, Lord willing, would not be enough for you?” Her voice was tender but trembling. “That I would not be enough?”
If I could have set a match to the warring thoughts in my head, I would have done it right then. But I couldn’t.
I saw in her eyes every meaningful time she and I had ever shared. Ten thousand conversations, ten thousand laughs, ten thousand common moments. I had never wanted any other woman besides her. I didn’t even know when it was I fell in love with her because I hadn’t fallen at all. She had been my constant, my one true love, from the very beginning.
“I want it to be enough,” I whispered. “I do.” Even as I spoke, I was reminded suddenly of that long-ago conversation with Sarah, when she told me that the Amish life had not been “enough” for my mother. Was that really why she had left?
Was that what would end up keeping me away as well?
Rachel studied my face, searching to reconnect with the boy she had grown up with, loved, and with whom she wanted to spend her life. Then she turned and walked to the cluster of large rocks and sat, her expression bereft, her big blue eyes filled with the hurt my actions were causing. My heart nearly crushing under the weight of my own remorse, I hesitated only a moment before I went to her, took a seat at her side, and wrapped my arm around her shoulders. We sat there together that way for a long time, both of us quiet, until the sky was a deep purple and the first evening star appeared above the shadows of the horizon.
“I want you to be sure,” she said finally, her voice soft but resolute. “I want you to regret nothing. Ever. Go to your father’s, Tyler. Do what you need to do. Follow God’s will, not mine.”
Nor mine, I prayed, drawing her into an embrace and holding on as tightly as I could.
Monday afternoon, I set my nearly packed duffel bag on the floor and then surveyed my bedroom, which suddenly seemed small and bland and devoid of the life—the lives—that had been lived here over the years. The Amish way, of course, was to keep possessions to a minimum, to avoid ornate decorations or mementoes or photographs. Usually, such simplicity gave me a feeling of peace. On this day, however, it brought only one word to mind: Empty. Like a flashing neon sign. Empty. As if my time here had never existed at all.
Needing to feel grounded somehow, I went to the bureau, slid open the bottom drawer, and reached under a sweater to pull out my old cigar box, the one I had used to hold my treasures when I was young. I carried it over to the bed and sat, placing it atop the covers in front of me. Though not exactly a secret, I had always kept this container and its contents to myself. I’d added a few things to it since coming here to live, but the box mostly held mementoes of my former life, the one that had been mine for only six years before it was taken away from me for good.
Opening the lid, I sat back against the pillows and looked inside, taking a quick inventory of all the box contained. Though Jake had nothing like this among his possessions—nor did anyone else I knew, for that matter—I felt sure that many an Englisch boy did. It seemed to be the Englisch way of things, to hang on to items for sentimental reasons, as if the things themselves had value.
Inside the box were the treasures of my youth: baseball cards, a tiger’s eye marble, a shark’s tooth, some foreign coins, a piece of petrified wood, a rock with a hole in it, a ticket stub from a ball game, a long-dead mini-flashlight, a small key, and two photographs.
I took out the pictures and studied them. The first was of Brady and me, taken when I was about the age he was now. My dad kept a copy of this same photo prominently displayed in his home, and I liked it so much that Liz had made a copy of it for me too. In the picture, my little brother and I were at the beach with the dancing surf behind us, sitting in the sand, our hair wet from having been in the water. I had my arm around him, and we were both smiling at the camera, brown from the sun.
Gazing at it now made me smile, as it always did.
Setting that one aside, I picked up the second photo and looked at it, something I’d done countless times in my life. When I was a child, in fact, I would often lie here at night, waiting for Jake’s soft, even breathing from across the room before I would pull out my little flashlight and this picture of my mother. Then I would stare at it, sometimes in a vague way, sometimes sucking in every last detail, trying to memorize her beautiful face before it was gone from my recollection entirely.
The snapshot had been taken when she was about sixteen years old. In it, she was wearing Amish clothing and sitting on the top rail of the wooden fence that still fronted the pasture of her parents’ farm. She was looking off to the side, not just smiling but laughing, her face filled with delight. She’d shown me the photo herself, a year or so before she died, when she was trying to explain about the Amish clothing she’d worn back on the farm. I had wanted to keep it—not because of the clothes, but because such moments of glee were so rare for her. To my mind, she had almost always been somber, sometimes smiling a little but hardly ever lighting up like this with such joy.
I realized now how lucky I’d been to have a picture of her at all. The Amish frowned on photos for several reasons, mostly because they were seen as a graven image, something the Bible warned against. The fact that she’d allowed herself to be photographed while she was still living at home said a lot about her propensity to defy Amish convention.
Feeling an odd sadness, I returned both photos to the box and then picked up the only other memento of my mother it held, one that evoked a distinct memory. I’d been just six years old, watching cartoons in the living room one day, when I decided I wanted a snack. I called out to my mother but she didn’t answer, so I went to the kitchen to get something for myself.
That’s when I found her there, lying on the floor near the sink, unconscious.
I tried everything I could to wake he
r, first shouting out her name, then shaking her by the shoulders, then throwing a cup of cold water on her face, just like on TV. When none of that worked, I climbed up on a kitchen stool, grabbed the phone, and called the only number I knew by heart, that of my best friend and next-door neighbor.
While I waited for his parents to come over and help, I returned to my mother’s side, curling up on the floor next to her and trying to pull her lifeless arms around me. When that didn’t work, I decided to hold her hand—and that’s when I discovered in her right fist a small key, perhaps an inch long, that I didn’t recognize. At the time I’d slipped it into my pocket and returned my attention to interlacing her limp fingers with my own until help arrived.
It wasn’t until hours later, that night when my father finally picked me up from next door, brought me home, and made me get ready for bed even though my mother wasn’t there to tuck me in, that I discovered that key in the pocket of my jeans and remembered where I’d found it. Fearing my dad might take it away from me if he knew about it, I kept the key to myself and slept with it under my pillow.
Stuck at home with a sitter most of the next day, I spent much of the time going around the house and trying the key on various doorknobs, hoping to figure out what it unlocked. I had no luck, so finally I tucked it away in the cigar box for safekeeping until I could make sense of it. But I never did.
And as it turned out, that was the night my dad came home and gave me the news that mommy had gone far away and wasn’t ever coming back.
Holding the key in my hand now, I realized afresh that I would never know what it unlocked or why she’d been holding it when she died. The thought overwhelmed me with such grief that finally I put the key back in the box and put the box back in the drawer, where it belonged. My little stroll down memory lane had only made me feel more agitated and confused.
I decided to call Jake, who always knew how to cheer me up. Using the phone in the shop, I dialed the number for the bunkhouse and waited as someone retrieved him for me. As we talked, he surprised me by being positive about the task ahead of me. He said he’d always known I would have to come to terms with who I was before I could take my membership vows, and that he’d had a feeling I could only do that by making a trip into the outside world.
After our call, I squeezed in a quick trip to my aunt Sarah’s house, feeling the need to reassure her that history wasn’t repeating itself. Over coffee in the kitchen with her and Jonah, I assured them that if I chose not to return to the Amish life, I would do so in the light of day, with the full knowledge of my loved ones.
“I would never just disappear without warning,” I told her, looking into the eyes of my sweet aunt and offering her the most encouraging smile I could give.
I had hoped my words would bring her comfort, but instead they just sent her to her room in tears, leaving me there in the kitchen alone with my uncle Jonah.
“She’ll get through it in time,” he told me in his deep, gravelly voice, “just as she got through the loss of her sister.”
I hadn’t known how to reply to that, as I was well aware that Sarah had never really gotten over the loss of her sister—neither her leaving, nor her death.
Later that night, I went over to Rachel’s to tell her goodbye. It was difficult enough as it was, but she made it even more so by insisting that we keep things short. She didn’t want to take a walk or go for a buggy ride or do anything with me that would allow us to have more than five minutes alone together. It pained me to think she was already starting to prepare herself for the worst.
Standing on her parents’ front porch, I told her I loved her and that I would write, and that she could call me anytime she wanted. She and her family shared a phone shanty with the farm next door. I gave her my dad’s home phone number and assured her I wanted to hear from her while I was away.
She allowed me to kiss her goodbye, but in that kiss I could already sense that she was pulling away, like a helium balloon tugging itself from the hand of the one holding it.
My flight was the next day, at eight thirty in the morning. Daadi had offered to hire a car to drive me all the way to the Philadelphia airport, but I hadn’t wanted him to go to that expense. The train was cheaper, so I’d arranged for the driver to just take me to the Lancaster train station instead.
In the predawn darkness, saying goodbye to my grandparents was even more difficult than I had expected it to be. Mammi hugged me longer than she ever had, and even Daadi seemed on the verge of tears. It scared me a little to think how tenuous they saw my hold on the Amish life in which they had raised me.
Even my farewell to Timber had been tough. He was a good dog, and though I knew Daadi would take excellent care of him in my stead, I sure would miss having him around.
I took just one small duffel bag, filled mostly with clothes, and a backpack that held my Bible, notepaper to write letters to Rachel and Jake, a wallet with a few hundred dollars in it, the watch my father had once given me for Christmas, and my Pennsylvania driver’s license. I hadn’t used the license in a couple of years, but I knew I would need it while taking care of my brother, not to mention for getting on the airplane.
When I was finally on the train, I settled in beside the window and watched as the rolling fields and farms of Lancaster County slowly gave way to the more densely packed houses and shops of suburban Philadelphia. I took Amtrak all the way to 30th Street Station in the heart of the city and then changed over to a SEPTA line for the twenty-minute ride from there to the airport.
It wasn’t until I stepped off the SEPTA train a few minutes after seven that the magnitude of what I was doing began to hit me. Thanks to a single phone call from my father and a gathering of my church elders, I was about to fly across the country in pursuit of some understanding, some truth, that I couldn’t even begin to comprehend.
I sure hope You really are in this, Lord, I prayed as I fell in with the crowd walking inside.
The airport was busy, far busier than I remember it being the last time I flew, when I was seventeen. I made my way through airport security, past the staring and pointing people—it wasn’t terribly common to see an Amish man in an airport—and then to my gate to wait for my plane to board. I took a seat near the door to the jetway and picked up a newspaper that someone had left to give myself something to do while I waited.
A mom with two young girls, maybe eight and ten, sat down next to me, and the children proceeded to whisper to their mother, and she back to them. I heard the word “Amish,” though I pretended I didn’t.
I heard the mother murmur, “Girls! It’s not polite to stare.”
I raised my head to smile at them and wordlessly assure the mother I wasn’t offended. Sometimes when I was out in the big world, people stared. I was used to it.
“I’m so sorry!” the mother said when our eyes met.
“It’s quite all right.”
“They’ve just never seen an Amish person before. Well, except for on TV.”
I smiled and nodded. I had no ready comeback for that comment.
“Actually, I haven’t either,” the mother added. “We live in Los Angeles, so…”
“I see.”
“I didn’t think you could fly.”
“He can fly?” the younger of the girls asked, wide eyed.
The mother laughed. So did I.
“Where’s your buggy?” the older one said, quite serious.
“Back at the farm.”
“How about your horse?” said the other.
I sat up straight and feigned looking around. “I’m not sure. Last I saw, he was having a little trouble getting through security.”
She hesitated and then giggled, not quite sure if I was kidding or not.
The older one rolled her eyes at the naïveté of her little sister. “Do you want to see my iPad?”
“Uh, sure.”
While we waited to board, she showed me photos of her family and friends, a word game, an interactive map of Hershey Park, and a
sketch pad where I could draw with my finger. The girl seemed intent on introducing me to every technologically wonderful thing the device could do, as if my spaceship had crash-landed here and she were welcoming me to her planet.
When we finally boarded, my row was way past that of the little girls, but they knelt on their seats, facing backward, to look at me and wave before it was time to buckle in.
Everyone on the plane seemed to be looking at me.
The man in the Amish clothes.
The Amish man.
NINE
The moment I stepped off the plane at John Wayne International, all that was home to me seemed far more distant than the thousands of miles that now lay between us. I was keenly aware of how I stood out in my Amish clothes, even after I took off my hat and carried it under my arm. At least the pace of the hundreds of people all around me was harried and hurried, which meant that most of them were too busy getting somewhere or staring at their cell phones to actually pay me much notice.
The last time I had been to California, my dad was stationed at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, on loan to the Marines as a helicopter maintenance instructor. He and Liz and Brady were living on base, which in a way seemed as secluded and protective an environment as the community back home. The only people who lived on base or had any business being there were other military members and their families. And because the base was located in a sprawling stretch of wilderness between San Diego and Los Angeles, it had been easy to forget I was smack-dab in the middle of the metropolitan universe of Southern California—though day trips to Disneyland and SeaWorld and crowded beaches quickly reminded me of where I was. My dad had since retired a full colonel after twenty-five years and now worked for a Los Angeles-based defense contractor. Dad and Liz had bought a house in Newport Beach—a beach community in the suburbs south of Los Angeles—two years ago and, from what I could gather from our infrequent phone calls, he had slowly adjusted to his new life as a civilian.
I hadn’t had to check a bag, but because I was to meet my father at baggage claim, I followed the signs there, searching for him in the sea of faces as I made my way. I stood near the carousel to wait, where I met up again with the woman and her daughters. I helped them retrieve their heavy luggage as it came around, and when the mother thanked me, she asked if I needed a ride somewhere. I thanked her in return but assured her my father lived in Orange County and was coming to meet me. That seemed to take her by surprise. She probably assumed that an Amish man like me surely had an Amish father, so how was it that he lived in Orange County?
MEN OF LANCASTER COUNTY 01: The Amish Groom Page 8