by Celia Hayes
“Yes, Vati, the pear tree is blooming,” she answered, humoring him. That answer seemed to satisfy him, and he drifted back into that light sleep. She moved to softly get up and leave the room, but he still had her hand.
“S-s-s-i-m,” he said with the same heartbreaking difficulty, “l-t-t-t-r . . .r-r-r-e-d.”
“Read Uncle Simon’s letters?” she asked, tentatively; and he nodded, barely moving his head on the pillow. It was not as if he had much in the way of treasured material possessions, aside from books and his watchmaking tools. The fat bundle of old letters sat in two stacks on the bedside stand, as if someone else had already begun reading them. She picked up one on top of the taller stack that was already open and read of it, puzzling out Uncle Simon’s neat, regular pen-scratches until Vati’s eyes closed again.
The door opened softly at the end of the room, and Liesel whispered, “He shall sleep for a little bit, then I shall sit with him.” She looked critically at Magda and added, “And you should rest yourself, Magda—you must be tired, after coming such a long way.”
Magda shrugged, but she was grateful for the relief. Suddenly she was aware of how very tired she was indeed—exhausted down to her very bones. “We have so much to tell you all, but it doesn’t seem very important now.”
“I have already heard most of it,” Liesel said, giving her a little push, “from Anna and the girls. And I suppose Hansi shall tell me once more, with embellishments about his cleverness and perspicuity.”
“And justly so, for he is very good at this merchandising matter,” Magda observed, “and the freight business as well. Good old farmer Hansi—who would have thought it of him?”
“I would have.” As always, Liesel rose up in stout defense of her husband. “Even back in Albeck, I thought he could do anything he set his mind at!”
“He would never have had a chance, if we had not come here,” Magda pointed out. “And did Anna tell you of the bolt of fine lawn we purchased at Rouff’s? We thought of making new baby-linen for Rosalie’s child, for all we have to give to her is stained and nearly worn out.”
“Well, at least all of mine got good use of the old baby things.” Liesel’s face brightened. “Rosalie’s shall have new and fair. I am so glad you are back, now!” She embraced her sister impulsively, as if she were Hannah’s age. “Between the shop and the household and nursing Vati, if it weren’t for Mrs. Schmidt, I don’t know how we would have managed!”
In the days following their return from the coast, life settled into a queer, suspended rhythm, orbiting around the quiet sickroom upstairs. The next day Fredi, Peter, and Dolph arrived on lathered horses. They had traveled light and fast, abandoning work on the house. As Dolph observed philosophically, they had put a pause on their labors to trail cattle to Indianola, and another week or so would hardly matter.
“And Opa might yet recover,” Dolph added hopefully.
Magda sighed. “Doctor Keidel advises guarding against such hope. Vati might live for quite some time, but as an invalid needing tender care. He says that your grandfather will never be able to move from his bed without assistance, so severe is the paralysis afflicting him.”
“At least we know that he will not wander away and fall into the creek,” Dolph pointed out, with the air of someone finding a silver lining to the blackest storm cloud.
“Very true.” Magda found herself able to smile at that observation.
Dolph and her other children were of great comfort and assistance to her during those days after their return, those strange days which continued to feel to her as if they were all suspended above a precipice. Anna, Liesel and the children were tireless in their attendance on Vati, taking turns reading to him or sitting at his bedside telling him of their lessons. Unasked, Sam slept at night in Vati’s room, on a pallet laid on the floor at the foot of his bed, that he might be close at hand during the night. He and Dolph and their cousin Elias were of most welcome assistance when it came to the indignities associated with cleanliness and bodily wastes. Dolph, with his nearly-grown strength, proved to be a most deft and tender nurse, gently lifting his grandfather so Liesel and Rosalie could change the sheets.
When Magda made mention of it, her son answered mildly, “We often had to do such service in Colonel Ford’s company, Mama. Who else would tend our sick and wounded, then, if not for each other? I looked after Colonel Ford for months when he fell ill after he got word about General Lee surrendering.”
Rosalie went with Lottie and Grete to gather flowers from the meadows beyond Baron’s Creek. She had comforted them in their sore distress at seeing Vati in his condition the one time they were allowed into the sickroom. Lottie remained grave and silent, but Grete whimpered and pressed tight against Rosalie’s skirts when she tried to urge them closer to Vati’s bed.
Even Willi turned obstinate. Finally Rosalie said, “Poor lambs, it is hard for them to understand what has happened, and that it is still Vati.”
Magda and Lottie shared her little bedroom with Rosalie, so they might be close to the sickroom at night.
Rosalie gratefully yielded governance of the store and its accounts back to Magda. Sitting up in bed that evening with Lottie in her arms, she said, “Oh, my—you and Anna are welcome to it! How you ever can keep all that straight, I cannot fathom.”
“It is a great task, sometimes,” Magda sighed. She sat at the foot of the bed with her knees drawn up under her nightgown and pulled her treasured Mexican-silver hairbrush through the long spill of her hair. Curiously, it called to mind those times she had shared sleeping quarters with her sister and with the younger Anna. “But after managing business affairs for my husband’s house, I have found it only a matter of degree. Margaret told me once that she found it all quite invigorating, to have a great work of your own. I did not understand, quite, at the time. My children were all young and hers nearly grown and more.”
“Mine has grown, enormously!” Rosalie giggled. “Look!” Setting the almost-asleep Lottie aside, Rosalie slid from under the coverlet and stood up. She gathered the folds of her nightgown in either hand, pulling the fabric close against her body. “You can almost see that I am truly with child!” And to be sure, revealed by the tight-drawn fabric, there was the slightest of bulges above the jut of her hipbones.
“So it has, little Rose.” Magda set aside her hairbrush. Rosalie giggled and let go her nightgown. She climbed into bed again and sat with the covers drawn over her knees.
“Robert will be so pleased,” she added, as she curved her arm around the sleeping Lottie and tenderly wound a lock of the child’s hair around her finger. “Do you not despair of her hair being as straight as a stick? I so hope our child will have curly hair, but I vow I do not care about that all that much, really. Boy or girl, curls or straight—it will be so fair to have a child of our own! I can hardly wait!”
Magda blew out the candle and climbed into her own side of the bed. “Nor could I, little Rose.” They lay in almost-darkness for a little while, for there was a tiny oil lamp burning on the table in the hall by the door to Vati’s room. “Will your Robert—will he be a good father? Will he see the child as proof of his being a proper man? Or will he look on it as being trusted with the care of some wonderful and unknown plant that will bloom and thrive in accordance with the care he lavishes upon it? Will he think of this child as being a wholly unique being, a precious thing only entrusted into our care for a little while? Children sometimes do not thrive in this world!” Suddenly, Magda’s voice caught in her throat. Ah, God, her eyes overflowed unbidden, thinking of her first daughter and the babe she had lost at six months, and of Joachim—Liesel and Hansi’s firstborn son, who died of ship-fever in his mother’s arms and was buried at sea all those years ago. Children died and their parents mourned; parents died and their children put on mourning colors. It was the expected thing that children stand at their parent’s graves and throw in that last sad handful of earth. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes . . .
In the dark, her
sister reached out for her hand and said in tones of wonder and awe, “Just now, I felt the tiniest flutter. It was not a pang of digestion from Mrs. Schmidt’s wonderful dinner. It was something moving in myself, which was not of myself! It was the baby, was it not, Magda? Oh, there it goes again! I do not think it likes stewed beef and cabbage!”
“Well, that is Auntie Schmidt’s cooking.” In the darkness, Magda reached under the covers and patted Rosalie’s stomach, “Sleep, baby, sleep, your father is watching the sheep . . . .”
“. . . Your mother is shaking the little tree, sweet dreams fall down for you and me, sleep baby sleep,” Rosalie completed the verse, all the while fighting off a yawn. “I remember you singing that to me, and Liesel singing it to Jacob and Georg. And now I shall sing it to my baby.” She turned, rustling the bedclothes in the darkness. “What a wonderful thought. Will Robert be pleased to hear that I felt the baby moving? Or is it one of those things that men don’t care to hear much about?”
Magda had come to think well of her American brother-in-law; of his considerable qualities, the most important of them being that he made Rosalie so very happy. With wry affection she answered, “He may not boast of it to his friends, little Rose, but still, it would please him very much, I think. I never saw my own husband’s face look as happy as he did on that day that he felt Dolph kick and move within me.”
She heard Rosalie sigh, a happy sigh of perfectly delicious contentment. “Magda,” she asked after a moment, “you know, he will be here on Saturday, and we had planned that I would be going home with him, the Sunday after you returned. But should I now remain here, since Vati is so ill? I am so torn, Magda. I long for Robert and our little house, but with Vati so declined . . .”
“No,” Magda reached out for her sister, and stroked back those strawberry curls from her forehead, “No, little Rose. Your place is with your husband. I do not think Vati has declined much since our return and I do believe he is a little better. I think he can talk a little more clearly—or perhaps I am just better accustomed to understanding him. You should go home on Sunday. If need be, we can send one of the boys with a message. In any case,” she added with a small sigh of her own, “it is a given, everyone has always thought that I should be the one to care for Vati eventually. Perhaps it is best to gracefully accept that responsibility.”
In the dark, Rosalie intercepted her hand, and clasped it in hers. She responded in tones which mingled both concern and relief. “You are sure that you and Liesel will not need me to remain?”
“Go home to your husband, Little Rose,” Magda answered with affectionate understanding. “Go home to your house and your husband—while you have such and they need you. Sleep on thoughts of that homecoming, then. I shall see to Vati and the shop, as it was always intended.”
Hansi and his sons arrived midday on Friday, having been in receipt of an urgent message sent by Charley to Neu Braunfels. They had not dared to travel at night, for there had been reports of Comanche raiding parties roaming at will in the Pedernales river country, but they rose well before sun-up and drove their teams hard. At her table in the workroom Magda heard the shop doorbell chime, but before she could move, Hansi charged in like a bull and fairly lifted Magda from her chair.
“Vati—he lives, still? We are not too late?” He looked around, and seemed to come to himself. “Of course not. You would have not opened the shop, otherwise. I had the boys leave me in the street, while they took the wagons around back.”
“He has lived for almost a fortnight in this condition,” Magda answered, “and against Doctor Keidel’s advice, we almost begin to hope. I think he is a little improved, or at any rate, not worsened.”
“We hurried at such speed, fearing the worst when we received Charley’s message.” Hansi shook his head, and almost laughed in boyish relief. “I fear that the horses will not soon forgive us, for the pace we made them set! Where is Lise? Upstairs? Good, I’ll have them unpack her tea-set first. Good news then, eh?” He embraced her, hurriedly, and departed in the same manner and at the same exuberant pace, galloping up the staircase and calling for Liesel, although Rosalie emerged from the kitchen and Anna from the garden, both of them pleading for quiet.
Hansi’s exuberance over the bargains they had been able to strike in Indianola, the promised cartage contracts from various merchants, and his pride in showing it all off to Liesel, revived all of their spirits. Vati’s condition even seemed a little improved—at any rate, he was not any worse. On Saturday, Robert Hunter arrived and Rosalie flew to his arms as a bird returning to its favored nest. He brought word that one of their neighbors was going to complete a whole new barn and had planned a grand party to which all of those living nearby were invited.
Of course there was no question but that Rosalie should go home with him. Liesel agreed on that as well; Vati seemed to be better, he was not on his deathbed after all. And then Rosalie was struck with one of her brilliant Rosalie-notions and begged for the younger children to accompany her for a week-long visit.
“They shall be company for me and a preparation for when I care for my own!” she pleaded. “Please—it would only be for the week and they would have so much fun at the Fischers’ barn-raising.” She held hands with Lottie and Grete, who looked at their mothers with identical longing expressions. They both adored Rosalie, who petted and spoiled them with affectionate attention. “And you are so much taken up with the care of Vati and everything,” Rosalie added. “Having them with me would lessen some of the burden on you. Please, just consider it.”
“Please, Mama? May I?” Willi echoed. “Onkel Robert will let me ride his horse!”
Magda knelt on the parlor floor, where she and Liesel were unpacking the tea-set, unearthing each delicate piece like a treasure and placing them carefully in the ornate set of shelves that Hansi had produced from the first of wagonloads of goods.
“Oh, no, never,” Liesel replied. “I could not countenance my children being so far from me at this time.”
“But Vati himself sent me to live with you during the cholera, and Fredi and Johann to live with Magda and Brother Carl,” Rosalie pleaded. “And when the children were sick with diphtheria, Anna took the babies to the Sunday house. Surely you trust me as well as you trust Anna?”
“Of course we trust you, little Rose,” Magda temporized.
Lottie whispered, “Please, Mama?”
Magda regarded her daughter, the youngest of her children and the one from whom she least wanted to be separated; Lottie, nearly four years old and yet so fair and sweet-tempered. She and her cousin Grete were constant playmates and shared everything, including a cot together in the bedroom they lived in with Anna, Marie, and Hannah. They were both very proud of having taken that indefinable step from being infants.
Magda allowed carefully, “I think that we should consider this.”
Hansi came in from the back with his arms full of more boxes; boxes full of fine goods from Indianola, which he set down just inside the door. “Consider what?” he asked, as he kissed Rosalie on the cheek, ruffled the little girls’ hair and neatly pinched Liesel’s bottom.
“Hansi, she wants to take the girls and Willi for a visit!” Liesel sounded anguished.
“Only for a week, Lise, and I promise that I shall care for them as carefully as . . .as you cared for me, when Vati asked that I should live with you until the cholera passed by!” Rosalie pleaded again. As Hansi looked from his children and Rosalie with their bright and eager faces, to Liesel’s anguished countenance, Magda realized that the choice had fallen to him, and only in hindsight would she come to know how fateful that small decision would turn out to be.
“Oh, let them go, Lise,” he said. “They should have a little holiday. After all, you would not let them go to the coast. You wept tempests of tears at the thought of even allowing them to accompany us without you. Let them go to Robert’s. You cannot object on that account! Our little Rose will care for them as tenderly as she has cared for them every
day that you have been busy in the sickroom and Magda with the shop. Vati is not as ill as all that, but you and Magda still have a full plate, eh? Let them have their holiday, Lise.”
“Oh, thank you, Papa!” said Willi happily. At last Liesel acquiesced, but her face was the very aspect of woe and unhappiness as she sat on the parlor floor with her lap full of fragile shell-pink teacups and saucers.
But on that very Sunday morning, Lottie complained of a pain in her throat. During church services she leaned on Magda’s lap, sleepy and fretful, her face flushed with fever. Magda carried her home and put her to bed, deciding with an odd mixture of reluctance and relief, that she could not countenance Lottie venturing the carriage ride to Robert Hunter’s farm while sick. No, not knowing how easily, how swiftly, small children could sicken and die. Lottie was the last and—although she would not admit this to another living soul—the most precious of her children by Carl Becker. There would be no more children of her body, she would not marry again as her mother had, coming to love another after that first and transient dear love. She would risk no threat to that child. All of her children were loved, but Lottie had that most particularly secure place in her heart. So, she tucked Lottie back into bed and came downstairs to tell Rosalie and Robert that she would not risk a worsening of Lottie’s condition or any danger of illness to Rosalie herself.
Rosalie leaned down from the front seat of Robert’s trap and kissed Magda with her usual exuberant affection. “Poor little lamb,” she said. “Never mind, then, perhaps next week after church I shall take Lottie for a picnic in the meadows, and we will pick the most splendid flowers, just the two of us! It will be her very special treat!”
Robert snapped the whip over the back of the single horse which drew the little spring-trap that he used for trips into town. Some impulse led Magda to watch after them for a moment, as the trap bowled down Market Square and turned the corner. The last sight she had was Willi waving happily from the back, with Rosalie clutching the back of Grete’s dress as the little girl stood up on the seat between her and Robert, also waving her little hands.