by Amy Scheibe
“Emmaline,” her mother barked, snapping Emmy’s ponderous stupor. “You haven’t plated or passed.”
Emmy looked at the empty white circle in front of her and suddenly stood. All sound stopped, and she could finally hear in her head what she then said aloud. “Ambrose, I am sorry, but I can’t marry you.” She sat, resettled her napkin, and waited for the storm.
Everyone turned to Ambrose, except for Christian, who cleared his throat with a grunt, a noise that bolstered Emmy’s resolve.
“You can and you will,” Ambrose said. For once it was his face that purpled with embarrassed constriction.
“I can’t and I won’t,” Emmy said as slowly and gently as she would to an infant. “You understand.”
Mr. Brann stood over his son. “Do not just sit there,” he said, taking Ambrose by the collar and yanking him up by the neck like a limp puppy. “I’ve heard enough.” They moved in a huddled mess toward the door, followed swiftly by Birdie, who was just as immediately restrained by Karin, and turned to the staircase, where the girl broke free and ran upstairs in a clatter of tears. Karin stopped.
“You will make this right,” she said, addressing the floor before following after Birdie.
Perhaps, Emmy thought as she looked at the uneaten food around her—the usual assortment of vegetables that had hibernated in the basement all winter in either jars or burlap bags, the giant muscle of a once beloved animal, slicked with honey and spice. Perhaps not. The uplift of an unplanned action lent itself to a banquet of new possibility, and she picked up a fork, speared a pale green bean as though it were as important as what had just happened, folded it into her mouth, and chewed. Her left hand lay calmly in her lap as her father eased up out of his chair and helped Lida away from the table and into the parlor, her grandmother murmuring a dismissive “She’ll come around; they always do.” The rest of their conversation was lost to Emmy, and she felt strangely cleansed by the sound of frantic pacing and door slamming that was coming from the women upstairs. It made what had happened real in a way that eased her conscience for the first time in weeks, maybe even months. She glanced at the ceiling, wondering how long it would take Karin to regroup and come downstairs to level whatever judgment she was contemplating.
Emmy watched as Christian tuned the radio to Easter-appropriate music to soothe his mother, and then walked past Emmy before going to consult with his wife. He patted Emmy on the head, but she was unable to tell if it was out of pity or pride.
“That’s one way to do it,” he said, a small hint of approval in his voice. He sighed as he climbed the stairs.
Emmy took a bite of the ham, chewed it until the honey taste drifted away and only pulpy salt remained. Swallowed. Listened to the music swell in the other room, and above that the guttural sound of her grandmother snoring. Took a sip of water. Then they came, the footsteps that would either fall behind her or turn away. Christian walked into the room and handed Emmy her spring coat and small, straw hat.
“Saddle up, little sister,” he said, using a term of endearment she’d not heard in years—the one he’d given her when Birdie was born and Emmy was just a tiny little thing hanging off his flexed arm. He went out the front door, pulling his own coat solemnly over his shoulders. She took one long look around the room, touched the tablecloth, stood and walked over to her grandmother. As she leaned over to kiss Lida on the forehead, Emmy’s eyes remained as dry as the dirt on a drought-parched summer’s day. She put on her coat and slipped a hand-crocheted antimacassar from under Lida’s arm and into her pocket before walking out the door and into the welcome unknown.
Ten
A Wet Seed Wild
Small green shoots of fresh crops dotted the recently churned and planted black fields that sped past outside of Emmy’s window on the endless drive from the ruined Easter dinner back to Moorhead.
“She hasn’t decided yet what to do,” Christian said, his voice little different from how it ever was, which gave Emmy a deeper worry than if he’d been yelling. “But I suspect she will want you to quit the movie theater and your work with Reinhold. She seems to think you’ve become corrupted by one or both.”
“What do you think?” Emmy asked, a simmering disquiet gathering steam from his relay of Karin’s predictable thoughts.
“I think there’s always more to the story. Are you going to tell me?” he asked, his voice unchanging.
“No,” she said. “Would it matter if I did?”
“Most likely not,” he admitted. “Unless there’s a chance you might change your mind.”
“I’m not quitting my jobs,” Emmy said, ignoring his suggestion. He hadn’t turned on the heat during the drive and Emmy was numb above the cold ice of her blood, her body racked with shivering that showed no signs of stopping. When they finally pulled up in front of the small house, Christian rested one hand on the top of the steering wheel, letting the car idle.
“Go inside and take your time before you make any decisions. I might be able to bring her around, but it’s doubtful. She’s got a mouthful of hornets like I’ve never seen.”
“If bringing her around entails me changing my mind, then you certainly haven’t seen them,” Emmy said, the quaking hurting her jaw as she spoke.
Christian looked at Emmy, his eyes clouded by frustration, yet each time he blinked they were cleared for a moment by freshly unspent tears. “I’m afraid that unless you stop all of … this”—he gestured above the dashboard, an action Emmy took to mean breathing—“and fix things with Ambrose, then I don’t think she’ll bend and let you stay.”
“What does that even mean?” Emmy’s face burned as she bundled her fists deeper into her coat pockets. She felt a small rip beginning in the lining of the right one and eased up. “She won’t bend,” Emmy said, a strangled note. “It seems as though I’m the one who is expected to do all of the bending. Well, you can tell her if I’m made to choose between this, as you call it, and turning myself into a Brann, then I will gladly choose this.”
“I can’t argue,” Christian said, taking his wallet from his pocket and drawing out some bills. “You might need this before too long, and I don’t want her to know that I gave it to you. It’s my emergency money.”
Emmy counted. Fifty dollars. It was more than she could make in a month. “If there were any other way,” she said, looking at him and letting the tears slip over her lower lids. “But there isn’t. Please believe me.” The pain in her heart felt angular, unruly.
His own tears welled. “Okay, little sister,” he said. “I believe you.” Christian put a hand on Emmy’s shoulder and squeezed it like a board in a vise. “Still, I doubt that I can sway her. I wish I could.”
Emmy dried her cheeks and met her father’s gaze. “I wish you could, too,” she said. “But I honestly don’t care if you do.” She opened the car door and strode up the walk to the small house as she heard the car start behind her and drive off back to the farm.
Emmy unlocked the front door with her key and then slipped it onto its hook on a little wooden plaque her father had crafted out of oak that hung on the wall by the coat closet. She touched the key to stop it from swinging and slowly turned her head to the right in order to make sense of the slice of time that she had stepped into—on one side her childhood, on the other, everything else. The house slept on, tidy in its frayed collection of cast-off furnishings, its scant bits of homey touches or decorations. Jesus on the wall, standing in front of a door and raising His hand to knock. A calendar from the sugar beet plant hanging on a nail over the cold black telephone. Reaching for it, Emmy dropped her hand, raised it to the calendar, and put her left index finger on the date: April 6. She licked her finger and flipped up the page, counting and scanning the boxed increments of time before coming to the conclusion that graduation was six long weeks away. She flipped another page and saw the June wedding date noted in Karin’s compressed scrawl.
A sudden calm rushed over Emmy. I am free. The words drifted over and over through her head
as she paced slowly toward the kitchen, throwing her coat on the davenport as she passed through the living room and not stopping until she reached the sink. Turning on the cold tap, Emmy leaned over at the waist and drank directly from the icy stream of it, deep and long until her teeth hurt and she forgot that she was drinking water but instead felt as though air were entering her mouth in a new, refreshing way. She gripped the counter with both hands and righted her body before turning off the tap and pushing away from the kitchen, and went back through the living room and quickly up the stairs into her bedroom. She didn’t bother to change out of the dress that had given her so much pleasure to sew, and instead set about packing.
It didn’t take Emmy long to stack her possessions on her bed. Plenty of worn coverlet showed in a neat rectangle around the clothes and books like a picture frame around how small and uncomplicated her life had been up until this moment. Snapping her fingers, she remembered the small pearl-white suitcase her mother had bought for her with nine books of carefully saved Green Stamps. It was meant to be a wedding present. Emmy rushed into her parents’ bedroom and located the case inside of their closet, resting on the floor between Karin’s few pairs of shoes and Christian’s only other pair. Is it mine? Emmy wondered, puzzled by the rules of this game. She remembered the trip she’d taken with Karin to the Green Stamps store, walking down the aisles and letting her fingers dust the lovely objects that the coupons earned from many months of buying groceries and gasoline. In particular she had settled on a jewelry box that looked like a miniature dressing table, with red velvet compartments for rings, slatted shelves for clip-on earrings, and tiny hooks from which to drape necklaces. Emmy didn’t own any of these objects, but the whimsy of the tiny piece of furniture made her smile until Karin had said her name and told her to hurry along to the suitcase section. This was the one Karin had picked out as “dainty, good enough for a three-day trip,” as though that was the limit of time anyone needed to be anywhere else. Emmy hovered over the suitcase for a protracted moment, her head throbbing with the desire to be gone by the time her mother returned.
Emmy lightly slapped her own cheek, stood up, and grabbed the handle of the suitcase, walking briskly and evenly down the hall, where she set the thing on Birdie’s bed, unclasped the brass hardware, and flung open the top half, which landed against her sister’s coverlet with a dull thud. Quickly placing all of her possessions into its void, she realized that she had only acquired enough in her life so far to be away for three days anyway.
She scrawled a note that simply read I’ve gone to stay with my friend Bev Langer, and left it on her neatly tucked bed. After looking around her bedroom one last time, Emmy checked her watch and hurried down the stairs to the phone, calling Cindy at home and asking if she could cover at the theater until Emmy arrived, just in case she was waylaid. A manic energy began to bubble as she sped up the pace of departure, closing lights and doors behind her as though a vacuum were pulling her out the front door and off down the street, ten blocks south, five blocks west, two more blocks south until she stood quite still at the top of Bev’s walk, swaying a bit from the effort it had taken not to abide by Karin’s rules for one more second. A chill spring gust blew up her skirt and swept her hat into a budding apple tree. Emmy pinched the bridge of her nose. There would be no crying, she told herself. The sound of Bev’s door opening caused a brief moment of panic—what if they didn’t take her in? Foolishness. She snatched her hat off the branch, gripped it firmly to her brow, and walked toward the house.
“May I help you?” the woman at the door asked, a look of suspended merriment on her face. Her snowy white hair peaked at each temple and was pulled into a high bun, which matched the color of her simple silk blouse. It took Emmy by surprise to see that the woman was wearing wide-leg burgundy slacks on a Sunday. Even though her skin showed far fewer of the lines and spots of age than Lida’s, the woman was easily old enough to be Bev’s grandmother. Sounds of laughter and curiosity flowed from the dining area, where Emmy could just make out the end of a long table covered with food. The warmth of the room pulled her a step forward. It was then she remembered that it was still Easter Sunday, and that she had been invited to this very dinner. Her chest tightened as she took a closer look at the woman holding the door open.
“Are you Josephine Randall?” Emmy asked.
“I am.” The woman nodded. “And who might you be?”
“Emmaline Nelson,” Emmy said, holding out her hand.
“Well, I never.” Josephine gripped Emmy’s arms with hands that were as strong as they were gnarled, steadying Emmy for a closer look. “Is it really you?” Mirrored in Josephine’s face were Emmy’s own fine, high cheekbones, deep blue eyes, and full, curved lips.
“We look alike,” Emmy said, unaccustomed to finding familiarity in another’s face.
“Perhaps once,” Josephine said, gently pulling Emmy into the room and closing the front door behind her. “Are you hungry?”
“Oh, Emmy, you did come!” Bev emerged from the dining room and rushed to Emmy in a newly clumsy way, her joyful greeting subdued by the sight of Emmy’s suitcase. “What’s wrong?”
“I left,” Emmy said. “I broke the engagement off and left.” Once she had said it aloud, the cumulative import of her actions shocked through Emmy, draining her of the energy with which she had done it all.
“Bev?” A woman wearing a blue satin chemise that matched the color of the house came into the room, still holding a cream linen napkin. “Everything all right here?”
“Yes, Mother,” Bev said with a proud grin. The roundness of her stomach had taken on an oblong, pointed shape under her empire waist dress. “Better than all right.” She took Emmy’s empty hand and squeezed it. “Everything is just fine. This is Emmy.”
Mrs. Langer extended her arm and beckoned. “My dear, come join us at the table.” Emmy detected in the handsome woman’s expression a hint of pity, enough to indicate that Bev had told her mother the grimmest details of Emmy’s life.
“Thank you very much for the offer.” Emmy glanced at her watch, surprised to see that it was already time for her to be at the theater. “But I’m late for work, and I really just came to…” She looked at Bev, then Mrs. Langer, and finally Josephine. The shine on their expectant faces urged Emmy to let go of her doubt, and accept that they were all prepared to throw feathers under her head should she slip and fall. “I … I came to ask if I could stay for a little while.”
“Oh, Mother,” Bev said. “We must.”
Mrs. Langer hesitated. “It’s that serious?”
Emmy nodded. Her knees began to wobble, and she gripped the edge of a nearby armchair. Why had she thought this would be the easier way? The Langers had enough problems of their own, and Emmy knew she’d made a terrible blunder. “I’m sorry, I should have thought this through.”
“I’m sorry, dear, but my parents are in the guest room, and, well, you can see that Beverly’s nearly due.” Mrs. Langer looked at Josephine and raised her shoulders. Josephine snapped her lips like closing a purse, a look of contemplation building in her eyes.
“Listen,” she said to Emmy. “I’ll drive you home, and you can talk this over with your parents.”
“Thank you very much,” Emmy said, taking an unsteady step backward. She fought the burning sting of tears that threatened to cloud more of her judgment even as her brain started hurtling toward other possibilities. Perhaps she could ask Cindy at work for a night on her couch, or maybe Emmy could just wait until the movie theater cleared out and sleep there for the night. “But I’m late for work at the movie theater, and I can walk the six blocks just as easily.” Her armpits went damp, and there was nothing she wanted more than to undo the past fifteen minutes, maybe even the past fifteen hours.
“I’ll drive you,” Josephine said as she retrieved a camel hair cape from the coat closet. “We can talk on the way.”
“I’m truly sorry, dear,” Mrs. Langer said, opening the door. “The Langer house is alr
eady up to the rafters with its own nonsense. I doubt you’d find it comfortable here.”
Bev hugged Emmy. “It will be okay, I promise. Trust me when I say it could be worse.”
“Perhaps,” Emmy said, wishing she could afford her friend’s easy optimism.
Josephine linked her arm in Emmy’s and led her up the walk. “My car’s right over here. Let’s get out of this wind. I hate wind.”
“So do I,” Emmy said as they approached a well-kept emerald green–colored station wagon with wood-paneled sides. It was exactly the kind of car Emmy had imagined Josephine Randall owning.
“Wait.” Josephine turned her head just as the town siren began to wail. “Smoke. Let me take that.” Josephine pointed at the suitcase. It had been clutched so hard in Emmy’s right hand that it had begun to feel as though her fingers had grown into the leather handle. She released it, the burning smell intensifying as the siren rose into its fourth signal.
“It’s close,” Josephine said as the air seemed to fill with the smaller, jarring shrieks of fire trucks.
They hurried into the car and Josephine swung the tail out into the street, smoothly completing the turn and pulling onto Eighth Street behind a careening ambulance. Emmy looked at her watch. She was late enough that Cindy would have started the popcorn and set up the counter for the early show. As they neared the onlooker-choked intersection at Main Avenue, Emmy’s dread spiraled into panic as she saw the black plume of smoke rising down the street. Josephine stopped the car and Emmy leaped out, pushing through the crowd, her feet swiftly rising with the throttle of her heart. She came to a sudden stop as she saw the flames licking at the high point of the Moorhead Theatre sign.
“Good Lord,” Josephine said as she came up beside Emmy.
“I was supposed to be there,” Emmy said, moving forward more slowly, her pace slackened by the surreal spectacle of the neon lights still aglow inside of the flames. They made their way up the street, to where two police cars were parked at a slant, and a handful of men were directing traffic and people away. Three fire trucks arced in front of the theater, streams of water shooting uselessly into the rapidly disintegrating façade.