by Nancy Jensen
Hans always told people it pleased him to sing for the glory of God, but sometimes Bertie had the feeling it wasn’t just the Lord he was singing for. On Sundays, the women quieted down and gave him all their attention whenever he had a solo. They ought to be ashamed to stare at him like that, with her sitting right there in the back of the church. Finally she’d had enough and stopped going to the service, tending the nursery instead, listening to the choir over the intercom. She’d hoped Hans would get the idea—say something, ask her back—but he didn’t.
He stood up straighter around those women and cocked his smile, laughing and joking with them, telling funny stories. If they weren’t too young, twenty-five or more, they didn’t seem to mind about his bad leg. For years now, Bertie had had to force a smile when they would come up just to tell her how lucky she was to have such a wonderful husband. Dorothy Ansen, blond, slim, red-lipped, had raved about him. “He really could have been a professional singer, Mrs. Jorgensen,” she said, “if his voice had been trained.” It was a silly thing to say about a voice, Bertie thought, but she knew the woman was just throwing around her learning, trying to cover up that she fancied Hans. She made that clear enough by giving him a main part in the special music nearly every week.
Hans had never said so, but it was Bertie’s belief that Dorothy Ansen was behind his wanting to take up with that traveling singing group, the Gospel Wind, that had come for Revival last year. Everybody talked about how good they were, but she never heard them because she was too busy with the babies. The way Hans told it, three of the singers walked up to him after they heard his solo, asking him to replace their baritone, who was retiring and moving down to Florida. Hans was so proud when he came to tell her, his eyes glowing like she’d never seen them, even brighter than when the girls were born, but she’d had to put her foot down. She couldn’t manage with him traveling just about every weekend, she told him. The house and the yard would fall to pieces if he ran off and left her. He couldn’t expect her to do everything. He never said anything more about it after that, but he did once leave the church bulletin beside the radio, folded open to an announcement about how the Gospel Wind was going to make a record.
Hans was singing a different song now—“Good Christian Men, Rejoice,” it sounded like—somehow managing to keep time in spite of the uneven pounding of the hammer and the tapping of the light strings against the house as he pulled them up. Rainey was singing along with him. Her voice wasn’t nearly as good, and Bertie was sure Rainey knew it, but that child would do anything she thought would get her daddy’s attention. Shameful. She was too old to be making up to Hans the way she did, laughing at everything he said, smiling too much, twitching her skirts, changing her ways to whatever she thought would please him.
Just like Mabel used to do. “Yes, Daddy,” she’d say. “Thank you, Daddy.” Daddy.
More than once, Bertie had had to clench her fists and breathe deep to get hold of her anger at Rainey for causing her to think of Mabel. Sometimes she’d have to close herself in the bathroom until it passed. More than twenty-five years, and she was still torn up about it. There’d been a time or two when she’d almost told Hans about Mabel, but then she’d look at him close, knowing that though he would never say it to another soul, he thought she was hard, cold. What would he say, then, about all those letters that got forwarded—letters she never answered, never even opened? How would she explain about how the letters found her? She’d have to tell him about taking her mother’s name, and then he’d want to know what for and why she’d even left Juniper, and then in time he’d come around to wanting to know why she’d sent the Juniper postmaster her married name and address if she wasn’t going to answer any letters. No way to untangle all those mixed-up lies without telling him about Wallace, and that wouldn’t do.
She couldn’t remember now how long ago she’d given up hoping to hear from Wallace. He must be dead, long dead; otherwise, in time he would have seen his mistake and come looking for her. That pale green hair ribbon he’d given her—it was a Christmas present—still lay, almost like new, inside one of Mama’s silk gloves, tucked in a plain gray box, way back in the cupboard up above the hall closet, the one she had to get up on a chair to reach. Besides a few dresses and the family Bible with Mabel’s picture inside it, the ribbon and the glove were the only things she’d brought with her from Juniper, and the only things she’d really been afraid of losing when the flood came. She’d saved the Bible from the rising water because she thought Hans would expect it, but the picture had been lost years before. It didn’t matter. She didn’t know why she’d brought Mabel’s portrait from Juniper in the first place, shoving it into the Bible as an afterthought. But Wallace’s ribbon and Mama’s glove—on the day of the flood, she’d packed them before anything else, while Alma was getting her own things, then kept them safe all those months she’d had to stay with that Murchison woman in Greenwood, carried them back to the house on Clark Street and then to this one, all without anybody else ever knowing about them.
Bertie tucked her head down and wiped her cheek against her shoulder. That onion was making the tears run, but she kept on chopping because Alma liked a lot of onion in her dressing. She could hardly wait to get hold of her grandbaby. The first time she said that, right after Alma called to say she was expecting in June, Hans had looked at her funny, his mouth hanging open. Bertie couldn’t see a way to make him understand. She’d been so young when Alma came, not quite sixteen—another truth Hans didn’t know—and then with Rainey it had been all that upset with the flood, living with a snooty woman, trying to take care of the baby and Alma too, and then having to get the house back together without any money to do it with. Until she started working Sundays in the church nursery, she hadn’t known herself what a comfort a baby could be, all quiet and warm, snuggled up against her bosom, trusting her to take care of it. Loving her.
Alma would have an easier time of it. She was twenty-four, plenty old enough for a first baby. She had a doctor husband, enough money, and a nice little house, but even so she’d be scared being alone with the baby all day—all new mothers were—so Bertie had made up her mind that Hans would have to drive her up to Ohio as soon as the baby came, and she’d stay for two or three months, helping out until Alma got on her feet, longer if Alma wanted.
Bertie covered the dressing, shoving the bowl far back in the refrigerator so it wouldn’t get knocked around, then sat down at the table to pick out the walnuts Hans had cracked for her earlier. Black-walnut fudge. Another of Alma’s favorites. She hadn’t made it in years.
From outside, she could still hear Hans and Rainey’s muffled singing, but she didn’t listen closely enough to catch the tunes. When she finished with the walnuts and looked up, she was surprised to see it was getting dark. Soon, she’d need to get out what was left of the roast from last night’s supper and heat it up.
Alma and Gordon were probably at the Crisps by now. They were odd, the Crisps, having their Christmas on Christmas Eve, but it was just as well, since she’d never had to put up a fight with them over where the kids would spend Christmas Day. It meant they got in a little later than Bertie would have liked, going on to ten o’clock sometimes, but as long as they were there for Christmas breakfast, she could accept it. She’d picked up a box of Cream of Wheat special, because if Alma took after her, she wouldn’t be able to stomach the eggs in the morning.
Outside, the singing had stopped, but she could hear Rainey chirping and cheering, and a moment later the girl was clattering in the door and hollering, “Come see! Come see!” Rainey stopped short in the kitchen and stood breathless, impatient. “Mother.”
“Your daddy’s going to be hungry and so will you be,” Bertie said, “so just give me a minute.” She scooped up the walnuts, wiped her hands, then got the kettle with the roast out of the refrigerator and set it going on the stove.
Rainey had already gone back outside and was standing with her arm linked through her father’s when Bertie cam
e down the steps. “Come way out in the yard,” Rainey said, waving for Bertie to follow. When she was nearly to the maple tree, Bertie turned.
How ever could there have been so many lights in those boxes? Hans had lined the white lights, now glowing like tiny squashed moons, all along the lower edge of the roof, and then he’d run the red and green side by side up the sharp edges, right to the chimney. Her stomach lurched—Hans might have fallen—but the feeling faded instantly into a warm delight, as if the lights were inside her. Hans had saved the blue bulbs to trace the porch roof and posts, making a soft, sleepy, embracing glow. Bertie looked and looked. She wasn’t in her own yard; this wasn’t her house, but some strange, wonderful, glittering place where her big, aproned body burned away, and she, released, drifted into that gleaming color.
“Aren’t you glad Daddy bought so many?”
Bertie stared at Rainey for a moment, struggling to understand who she was and why she was speaking.
“Didn’t he do a good job?” Rainey said, leaving Bertie’s side to hug Hans.
Bertie looked again at the house.
Yes, it was pretty.
She rubbed her arms against the cold. When the light bill came, Hans wouldn’t be so pleased with himself. “Y’all come in for supper now,” she said, heading back toward the house. “I’ve got more to do after I clean everything up.”
* * *
After supper, Rainey and Hans worked on the tree, humming along with the radio. When Bertie finished the dishes, she cooked the fudge, beating it with slow, quiet strokes so she could hear Christmas with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, coming into their living room, all the way from Salt Lake City, Utah. She sent Rainey to bed at ten o’clock, and at eleven she turned off the radio and told Hans she would wait up for Alma and Gordon. She ignored the moan he gave when he got up from his chair. His hip ached him most nights, but he was sure to feel the pain of his hours on the roof for the rest of the winter.
Bertie turned on the lamp beside her chair and picked up Reader’s Digest, but her eyes were too heavy to follow the words. She would have liked to go on to bed—she had to be up early to put the turkey on—and she would be more comfortable if she changed into her nightgown and housecoat and got her hairnet on, but she’d be embarrassed for Gordon to see her in such a state.
It was selfish of the Crisps to keep the kids out so late, but they were the kind that had to have everything their way, and just so. She worried some that Alma might have a bad time of it, since Gordon was just like them, but Alma had made up her mind to marry into that family, so there wasn’t a thing Bertie could do about it except to go up and help with the baby and, here and there, urge Alma to take up for herself more.
The sound of the key tumbling the lock startled Bertie from a doze, and for a moment, she couldn’t think what was happening. Alma and Gordon were just coming through the door, whispering to each other as they set their suitcases on the floor.
“You ought not to have waited up, Mother,” Alma said.
Bertie stood up and smoothed her dress. “You must have got to Gordon’s parents’ late.”
“No, no,” said Gordon. “We made it by four.” He picked up the suitcases and pushed past Bertie. “Same room?’ He didn’t wait for an answer.
“So,” Bertie said, giving Alma a quick kiss on the cheek—hardly a cheek at all, so dry and taut. “Did you have a nice dinner?”
Alma plucked at the fingers of her gloves, nodding.
“What did you have?”
Alma laid her gloves—such fine leather, they might be silk—beside the radio and loosened her scarf. “Roast duckling with an orange glaze,” she said. “And a little salad.”
“That’s all?”
“It was plenty, Mother, really.”
“You’re not eating enough.” The girl was so thin, a little twist could snap her in two. “Let me get you something,” Bertie said. “Come into the kitchen.”
Alma slipped off her coat and laid it carefully across Hans’s chair. “I’ll drink a cup of tea,” she said, “but I can make it. Why don’t you go to bed?”
“I’ll get the tea,” Bertie said. She picked up Alma’s things to take to the hall closet. “Get your nightgown on and come in when you’re ready.”
The kitchen light blinded her when she flipped it on, and she knocked into a chair that Rainey hadn’t pushed back up to the table. She put the teakettle on the stove and then pressed a finger to the block of fudge. It had set up just right, so she cut along the lines she had marked and settled the pieces into a tin lined with waxed paper—all but four, which she arranged on a plate for Alma.
Alma slipped up behind her and reached into the cabinet for a cup and saucer. “Please, Mother,” she said. “I can do that. I know you’ll be up early.” She hadn’t changed into her nightclothes. Under the bright kitchen light, she looked even thinner. She’d always been too skinny, but since she’d taken up with Gordon, she’d gotten even scrawnier, and the last few times Alma had visited, Bertie noticed she mostly just pushed the food around on her plate.
Bertie blamed Gordon’s mother. That woman was nothing but a bundle of sticks. The time or two Bertie had met her, Mrs. Crisp complained, on the one hand, that she had to send every stitch of clothing she bought to the seamstress, since she could never find anything small enough, and, on the other, she chattered about what hard work it was to keep trim. Bertie had noticed too how Mrs. Crisp soaked up compliments on the fancy meals she fixed but never took a bite of anything. That must be where Alma had gotten it.
Well, she just wouldn’t wait until June to go up. She’d pack some things and go with Alma and Gordon day after tomorrow, when they drove back to Ohio. She could do the cooking and look after Alma. Hans and Rainey would just have to see to themselves.
Bertie followed Alma to the table and set the plate of fudge in front of her. “Did you bring a warm-enough nightgown? I can get you another blanket for the bed.”
“I’ll be fine, Mother.”
“You eat that fudge, now. It’s the kind you like.”
Alma picked up a piece and sucked on the end of it, then put it back on the plate.
“Doesn’t that taste good to you?”
“It’s delicious, Mother. Thank you. I’ve had enough.”
Bertie smacked her hands on the table. “This has got to stop! Now’s not the time to be worrying yourself about getting too fat or listening to any of that nonsense from you know who. The doctor will want you to put on thirty or forty pounds—you just ask him.”
Alma stared into her cup. “He said twenty or twenty-five.”
“Well, then,” Bertie said, nudging the plate of fudge toward Alma. “This will make a good start. And tomorrow, you be sure to fill up your plate and eat everything.”
Alma still didn’t touch the fudge.
“How about some crackers?” Bertie said. “Or a piece of toast?”
Alma took a sip of tea and then pushed the cup away. “Nothing, thank you.”
“Is it the cooking smells that upset your stomach?”
Alma stood up and took her tea to the sink and poured it out. She rinsed the cup and set it on the drainboard.
Bertie stayed at the table. “I’ll go back home with you on Saturday,” she said. “I’ll do the cooking until you feel like you can be in the kitchen without being sick.”
“It’s not necessary, Mother.”
“Alma, you have got to eat. If you won’t see to it, I will. You have to put on weight so the baby’s good and strong.”
Soft, glassy clinks stirred from where Alma was standing, her back to Bertie. She was putting away the supper dishes. When that was done, she wiped the counter and refolded all the kitchen towels on the bars. At last she came back to the table and stood behind the chair, gripping the back. “There is no baby, Mother.”
Bertie felt like all her insides squeezed up and drained right out her feet. For a few seconds, Alma, and even the kitchen itself, drained away, too. Bertie pressed at her th
roat to stop the words from sliding off with everything else. “When?”
Alma looked at the calendar tacked on the side of the refrigerator. “About three weeks.” Her voice was a little weak perhaps, but steady. How could she be so calm? Bertie wanted to get up, to put her arms around her daughter, but that cool voice froze her in her seat.
“You didn’t call,” Bertie began, and then her throat closed up. She could see herself sitting on Alma’s bed, holding her and rocking her like a child, telling her everything would be all right. She could see it all, even though it had never happened, not ever.
“There was nothing to be done,” Alma said. “Nothing you could do. Mrs. Weigel was very kind.” Mrs. Weigel was the wife of the foot doctor Gordon had gone to Ohio to work with. Not family. “She stayed with me the first afternoon I was back from the hospital, and then she and a couple of women from her church came over the next day to do the cleaning for me and to make dinner for Gordon.”
Bertie stared at Alma, trying to see something of herself, something of Hans, in this composed stranger who stood so straight and spoke so primly. Her head was pounding. Hans would blame her. He would never say it, but he would blame her somehow.
Alma went on as though she were telling a story about nothing worse than dropping a bag of groceries. “And then Mrs. Murchison—you remember Mrs. Murchison, Mother. She drove over from Greenwood and stayed until last Tuesday.” Bertie saw her daughter’s lips quiver. Alma pressed her fingers to her mouth and closed her eyes for a moment before she spoke again. “She and Gordon get on so well. He says he’s never seen the house so clean. And she left me with several recipes for things Gordon especially likes.”
Bertie’s head still throbbed, but her insides had settled back into their usual places. She could see Alma clearly now.