MEN OF LANCASTER COUNTY 01: The Amish Groom

by Mindy Starns Clark

  They said goodbye, the mother’s eyes still full of questions as they walked away, pulling their suitcases like wagons. I could tell she was worried for me. I smiled at her and then gave a confident wave to assure her I would be fine.

  That’s when I spotted my father. Our eyes met through the milling throng, and he came toward me, looking almost annoyed.

  “There you are!” He reached for my hand and pulled me toward him for a manly, one-armed embrace. “First thing we need to do is get you a cell phone, Tyler. That was crazy.”

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “So. Good flight, then?”

  “Sure. It was fine.”

  He sized me up and then smiled. “You look older.”

  I laughed lightly. “Time passes at the same rate in Pennsylvania, Dad. You look older too.”

  He laughed in return. Actually, he didn’t look older. But he did look different. He had always kept his hair at regulation length, which for the army was very nearly a buzz cut. His hair was now almost long enough to comb. He might have put on a few pounds since he got out of the military, but only a few. He was still fit and trim, a good weight for his six-foot-one-inch frame. He was also sporting a moustache for the first time that I could remember.

  “No, I mean it,” he continued. “You’re taller. And you’ve filled out since I last saw you. How long has it been? A year? Two?

  “Something like that.”

  “Making buggies must be a more physical job than I thought. Either that, or you’ve joined a gym.”

  “Ya, an Amish gym.” I cracked a smile.

  He laughed and clapped me on the back. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We began to walk, and as we made our way toward the exit for the parking lot, I was again aware how my broadcloth pants, white handmade cotton shirt, and suspenders were out of place. Even with my hat still tucked under my arm, I stood out like a stalk of corn in the middle of a hay field.

  My father had said the airport was about a fifteen-minute drive from his new house, so I didn’t think he would mind if I asked to take a detour on the way to a used clothing store so that I could pick up a few things to help me blend in better. The last thing I needed was to draw attention to myself. I didn’t want to come off as an Amish man trying to fit into the non-Amish world. I just wanted to be a man, Amish or not.

  “Say, Dad. Would you mind if we stopped somewhere so that I could get some jeans and a couple different shirts?”

  “Sure, we can swing by the mall.” He smiled at me. “Liz already bought you a few new things, just like she used to when you were a kid. But we can still stop.”

  “We don’t need to go to a mall. I’m fine with a used clothing—”

  “No, no. New is better. And actually, now that I look at you, I’m thinking you and I are about the same size. You can probably wear most of my stuff too. I’ll pull out some things for you when we get home.”

  We stepped outside the terminal and a brilliant sun greeted me. The icy Pennsylvania morning I had awakened to seemed ages ago under the seventy-two-degree sunshine here. Moments later we were in Dad’s car and pulling out into traffic.

  While he drove, he filled me in on his civilian job, his life as an army retiree, Liz’s trip to Honduras, and her regular work as an RN at a local hospital.

  I was interested in what he had to say but also intrigued with my surroundings, the sheer amount of cars on the roads, and how everyone drove with their windows closed even though the day was beautiful. When he began to talk about Brady, I forced myself to pay attention to everything he said. Brady was the reason I was here—or half the reason, at least.

  “He’s been playing Pop Warner all these years, so we knew he was a shoe-in to play JV as a freshman. But we never dreamed he’d make regular varsity in ninth grade. He knocked the coach’s socks off when he tried out. He’s an amazing kicker. He can send that ball flying dead center through the uprights, on the worst snap ever, on the poorest placement ever, from practically midfield. I’m telling you, Ty, he’s headed for the Pac Twelve.”

  “Pac Twelve?”

  Dad seemed surprised I didn’t know what he was talking about. “Oh. That’s the conference name for all the great universities here in the West, you know, the Pacific side of the country. It’s all the big ones, Ty. The ones that matter. UCLA, USC, OSU, U of O. He has the talent to be picked up by one of them. That’s what I’m saying.”

  He glanced at me as he drove to make sure I was getting all this.

  “That’s why it’s so important that he not blow it right now. He’s on the varsity team, Ty,” he continued. “As a freshman.”

  That part I got.

  “I know what you’re saying, Dad. I just hadn’t heard of the Pac Twelve before.”

  Dad seemed to need a moment to absorb this. Apparently, my lack of football expertise was something he hadn’t thought of when he called me with his desperate request. Now he was probably wondering if I realized how important this really was.

  I did, of course. I knew what it meant to feel that something important to you was at stake. “You don’t want him to do something now that he will regret later, maybe for the rest of his life,” I said.

  My father visibly relaxed as he returned his gaze to the road ahead. “Exactly. He has the talent. He could go all the way with it.”

  “All the way?”

  “The NFL, of course,” Dad laughed. Surely I knew that.

  I was beginning to understand why, as my dad had said when he first called me, Brady was feeling the pressure of being in such a highly visible, high-stakes place as a freshman. Dad was probably doubling whatever pressure Brady was reacting to. No wonder there was tension between the two of them.

  “But he’s fourteen. There are a lot of years between now and the NFL,” I said casually, as if it were something my dad could have said just as easily but feeling pretty sure he wouldn’t have.

  “That’s my point, Tyler. These are the years that will decide how far he will go.”

  “So how far does he want to go?”

  “He loves playing football. He’s loved it since he was little. It’s always been what he’s wanted to do.” Dad tossed these sentences back to me a bit defensively, as if he’d said them before to someone else. I wondered if maybe he and Liz—or maybe even he and Brady—didn’t see eye to eye on Brady’s future as a football player.

  I decided I would wait to see if my dad was right about that. Until I could talk to my brother, I wouldn’t know for sure, so for now I just said something I thought Dad would enjoy hearing but was still true.

  “I’m looking forward to seeing him play.”

  “He’s crazy good, Tyler. Phenomenal.”

  The pride in my dad’s voice was almost painful for me to hear. Almost.

  Our first stop was at an electronics store where Dad bought a pay-as-you-go cell phone. I was fine with him wanting me to have a phone while I was in California. It actually made sense. I knew Brady lived and breathed for his cell. When I’d called him from the shop on his last birthday, Brady told me how much he wished I had a cell phone so that he could talk to me whenever he wanted.

  “You Amish are totally wrong about technology putting distance between people,” he had said. “If you had a cell, I could talk to you all the time.”

  “Except you wouldn’t want to talk. You’d want to text.”

  “It’s the same thing,” he shot back. “If you had a cell it would be like you’re just on the other side of town instead of the other side of the country. And with as often as I see you, it may as well be the other side of the universe.”

  I had tried to explain that in Lancaster County, when you wanted to talk to someone, you went to them in person and talked to them. It kept the sense of community between you and your friends and neighbors and family strong and solid.

  “Yeah, but I don’t live in Lancaster County.”

  He had just made the case for why Amish families stay in their communities, but I didn’t point t
hat out. Instead, I told him to call the shop phone as often as he liked, but he hardly ever did. He wanted to be able to text me now and then, and the shop phone wasn’t set up for that.

  “Texting is how people my age communicate,” he had told me, more than once.

  As it was after four o’clock my time, Dad suggested we eat first and then shop. We went to a Cheesecake Factory, and in between bites of flatbread pizza, something I had never had before, I programmed into the new cell phone the few numbers I would need as Dad dictated them to me: my dad’s and Liz’s numbers, Brady’s, the physician they used, the high school, a couple of neighbors, and the closest pizza place to their house that delivered.

  Eight numbers.

  Dad shook his head when I was done.

  “Must be nice to just need eight telephone numbers to get by in life.”

  “Ten, actually,” I corrected, adding in the numbers for Rachel and Daadi’s shop as well.

  “Same difference.”

  “Why? How many numbers do you have in yours?”

  “Too many. I probably have more than a hundred in my contacts.”

  I slipped the phone in my pocket without comment. I had never considered that a hundred phone numbers was the norm for the average cell phone user. Because my goal was to figure out where I belonged, I realized I needed to start making a list of things that were distinctive of ordinary life in the outside world. I mentally began the list so that later I could transfer it to the notebook.

  People drive with their windows rolled up, no matter what the weather.

  Used clothes are undesirable.

  Young people text to communicate.

  The number of contacts in your cell phone is too numerous to keep in your memory.

  When we finished eating, we headed to Macy’s, where Dad bought me two pairs of jeans, a belt, and a package of colored T-shirts. I tried to use my own money, but he wouldn’t hear of it.

  Before we left the store, I went back into the dressing room and changed, folding my Amish clothes and stuffing them into the Macy’s bag. When I turned and regarded myself in the long mirror, I decided I looked pretty normal in the new clothes. The vibrant green in the shirt—a hue I hadn’t worn in years—brought out the same shade in my eyes.

  But then I looked at my chestnut brown hair and realized that there was still one big problem. My clothes may be Englisch now, but my hairstyle was definitely still Amish. I pushed my bangs away from my face as best I could, telling myself that at least I worked primarily indoors in the buggy shop rather than out in the fields, so I didn’t have the telltale white forehead of an Amish farmer who labored all day in the sun with his hat on. I thought about asking my dad if we could go for a quick haircut too, but something about that seemed almost traitorous—not so much getting the cut as telling him I wanted one. I decided to wait and go myself in a few days, once he was out of town.

  The clothes smelled new and their fabric was stiff on my skin, but I was relieved to be blending in better now. As Dad and I walked back to the car, people were no longer turning and staring at me—though one gaggle of teenage girls seemed to take an interest. I flashed them a friendly smile as we walked past, and the flirty looks they gave me in return nearly made me blush. A few of the Amish girls back home were known to be flirty too, but never to someone they didn’t already know and like. Add one more observation to the book.

  Young women flirt with complete strangers.

  We got back into the car for the final leg of my journey and headed down I-405 to Newport Beach. From the highway, it looked just like the city before it, and the one before that, a phenomenon Dad called “the urban sprawl of Orange County.” I expected to see the ocean as we got closer, but Dad said Newport Beach was the name of the city.

  “That’s the name of the beach too, of course, but it’s a city first. Our house is a few miles inland, where the real estate is newer and not so expensive. And where the beachgoers and surfers don’t park their cars. It’s crazy here in the summer.”

  We took an exit that ascended into a hilly area filled with row after row after row of large but lookalike houses.

  “The ocean is back that way,” Dad said, motioning with his head to what lay in the rearview mirror. “Brady can show you where if you care to see it while you’re here. The water’s too cold to swim in right now, even for an Easterner like you, but at least the crowds are gone, so it won’t take you hours on end just to get down there or to find a parking place.”

  After a few turns on residential streets, we pulled up to a cream-stucco, two-story house with white trim and a red tile roof. It looked really nice. Skinny palms in the front yard swayed on their impossibly slender trunks. Flowering shrubs and sand-colored boulders edged the manicured lawn. He turned into the driveway and pulled to a stop on the left, just outside the garage.

  I got out of the car and followed Dad on a tiled walkway that led from the driveway to a covered entrance and a heavy wooden door. I could hear the yips of an agitated little dog inside.

  “Well, here we are.” He put his key in the lock and swung open the door.

  TEN

  I expected Liz and Brady to be home to greet me and was actually relieved that we arrived to an empty house. I had forgotten for a moment that Liz was already away on her humanitarian trip and Brady was still at school. It was after three o’clock, but my brother had football practice every day.

  The sole welcome I received was from a wiry gray terrier. The little dog seemed happy enough that I was there. It was hard to tell. He ran around barking fiercely, but his little stub of a tail wiggled the entire time.

  “That’s Frisco,” Dad said. “I forgot to mention we have a dog now. He’s not too much trouble, though. He likes walks. And there’s a dog park not too far from here. Liz says he likes playing with the other dogs.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Brady can help take care of him too.”

  I bent down to pat the dog. Frisco licked my hands and then spun around me, barking and jumping. He was nothing like Timber, either in size or temperament. I had a hard time imagining myself walking the yapping little thing. I’d never walked a dog on a leash. Timber had free rein on our farm and never left it.

  “Okay, so let me show you the house,” Dad continued.

  “Looks like a really nice place.”

  “Thanks. We like it. And Liz has a way with decorating, especially now that our income has gone up a few notches.” He must have realized how prideful his words sounded, because he seemed to blush as he added, “Now that I’m in the private sector, I’m earning a good income on top of my military retirement pay, which is also quite generous.”

  “I see,” I told him, not knowing what else to say.

  We moved past the flagstone entry and into the main part of the house. The living room on our right boasted high ceilings, a white leather sectional couch positioned at an angle, a massive stone fireplace, glass-topped tables, and brown accent rugs on the tiled floor. It looked like a room no one spent much time in. We then turned left into an expansive kitchen lit by fist-sized, recessed lights in the ceiling. Forest-green granite counter tops and mahogany cabinetry with pewter hardware gleamed. The kitchen was twice the size of Mammi’s and sparkling clean, as though no one had ever cooked or eaten in there. Dad dropped his keys and cell phone on a counter-height table of sturdy wood and led me to the open formal dining room containing a long table and high-backed chairs. Add that one to the notebook.

  Homes with just three people can have a dining table large enough to seat more than ten.

  White-trimmed French doors revealed a patio and pool in the backyard. Off the dining room was a family room dominated by a wall unit and a TV screen the size of a picture window. A second fireplace, this one framed in wood, was accented by a huge portrait of my dad, Liz, and Brady. They were dressed in white shirts and denim, and they posed in the midst of a grove of oaks, the three of them looking relaxed and at ease with each other and the beautiful settin
g. Other photos of the three of them were placed among the shelves of the wall unit: Brady in his football uniform, Liz in her nursing clothes in a sea of ebony faces, my dad in his army uniform in front of one of his helicopter crews, and a few other family shots of them by the ocean, and on a sailboat, and one of the three of them with the dog.

  What I didn’t see was the picture of Brady and me that was my favorite, the one of us on the beach that I kept a copy of in my cigar box back home. It had been framed and on display in my dad’s last house, but for some reason he had opted not to put it out here.

  He continued with the tour, apparently unaware that I noticed that picture’s absence. “The cleaning people come Tuesdays and Fridays, so they were just here today.”

  “They?”

  “Liz found a service that sends out three maids at once. They can get in and out in less time. They have the key, and they know the alarm code and all that. So you don’t have to be here when they come. We never are.”

  It struck me that I might need a bigger notebook.

  Dad moved on to a hallway that branched off the kitchen. “Here’s the laundry room. Brady can show you how to use the washer and dryer. Garage is right through here. Oh, and look what I found since the last time I saw you.”

  We walked through the laundry room. Dad opened the door into the attached garage, which was big enough for three cars.

  “Here’s what I want you to see,” Dad said as he moved past a silver Honda and the red 1973 Dodge Challenger he’d had the last time I had visited, to the far side of the garage. There sat a midnight blue sedan with lots of chrome and a long front end.