Hidden Life (9781455510863)

by Senft, Adina

  He obviously hadn’t seen Mary Lapp.

  “The truth is, Emma, I’ve often thought of you. I wonder, have you ever thought of me?”

  “I’ve thought that it must be difficult, losing Rose Ann to cancer with the girls so young,” she said carefully. “But you have the boys to help you on the farm, so that’s a blessing.”

  “The girls need female companionship. I’m sure they’d like to see you if you came over sometime.”

  I’m sure they’d rather see Maryann or Amelia’s boys or any number of the young couples with children who are already their playmates.

  “There I go again, beating around the bush when I said I’d speak plain. What I mean to say is, I’d like to see you. My girls and I could whip up a pretty fine supper if you’d come to share it with us.”

  “Calvin…I…”

  “You asked why you, why now, and those are fair questions. The truth is, you’re like those little flowers Rose Ann used to keep in her garden, the ones that lie close to the ground so you don’t see them blooming right away, next to the showier ones. But they last a good long time and they smell sweet.”

  Emma remembered Rose Ann’s rock garden and the carpets of flowers it used to have. Calvin hadn’t been able to keep it up, and the last time they’d been there for church, the flowers had died away and the thyme had begun to take over.

  “The primroses, you mean.”

  “Ja. You’re not a showy woman, but anyone with eyes in his head can see from the way you care for your mother that you’re a giving woman. An enduring one. Those are qualities a man can only admire.” She could feel the heat creeping up her neck, her cheeks, even her forehead. “Aw, now, I’ve embarrassed you and I didn’t mean to do that.”

  He tried to take her hand, but she gripped her handbag so hard there would be crescent-shaped marks in the leather later.

  “I guess what I’m leading up to is, if you’re free and you’re interested, would you mind if we saw each other now and again?”

  She had gone for a decade and a half wishing to be asked on a date even once, and now within the space of a month, she’d been keeping company with no less than four men. If it hadn’t been so awful she would have laughed.

  “Calvin, I…much as I like you and your family, it…​well, it would be difficult. To begin when there might not be any future in it. No matter what happens, I can’t leave Mamm.”

  He nodded, his big hands clasping and unclasping on the picnic table. “I know it. But you could get away for an evening once in awhile, couldn’t you?” He turned his head, looking up at her from under the brim of his hat. “My girls need a woman’s influence. Their grandmother has been wonderful, and their aunts and cousins, too, but it’s not the same, is it?”

  The same as what? Rose Ann? Oh, if only her heart hadn’t already made its crazy, futile choice! “It’s more than just Mamm. It’s me.” What was it the Englisch said? It’s not you, it’s me. Again, she choked down the urge to giggle. Or to cry. She was no longer sure.

  “You don’t think you could learn to care for me?” His voice was so low it roughened with emotion.

  “Oh, no.” Stricken, she put a hand on his arm. “You would not have any trouble finding a woman who would care for you the way you deserve.”

  “It doesn’t sound like it.”

  “It’s just that I—there’s someone who—”

  “You have feelings for already?” She let out a long breath and nodded. “But not Joshua Steiner.”

  A shake of the head, this time.

  “So I waited too long?”

  “It was too late ten years ago, I’m afraid,” she whispered. Why did it have to be Calvin King, of all people, who had winkled her deepest secret out of her?

  “You’ve been waiting for him to take notice for ten years?” When the color rose in her face again, he said, “Emma, I’m not going to say anything one way or another. But when I heard that Joshua Steiner might be courting you, I woke up and realized that maybe I hadn’t even seen the flowers closest to the ground, and only realized now that they might have the most to offer. But if you’ve been waiting for this man for ten years, maybe you should look around you, too.” He paused. “I don’t want to hurt you, but sometimes the crabapple that won’t let go of the branch isn’t the one you want to pick. Sometimes the windfalls can be good fruit. You just can’t wait too long to appreciate them.”

  “I know,” she said softly. “But Calvin?”

  “Ja?”

  “No matter what happens, I want to say thank you. For the ice cream. And your friendship. And for…for appreciating flowers wherever they grow.” Rose Ann had been a much luckier woman than the folks in the district realized, she saw now.

  When she dared to look at him again, she saw that he was smiling.

  And she finally had the courage to smile back.

  Chapter 11

  Maybe some might feel sorry for her for spending the best years of her youth caring for Lena, but Emma never saw it that way. With Pap, it had been different. Pap’s mind had begun giving way when Emma had been around twenty-two, and by the time she hit thirty, the only person he really recognized was Karen. He even thought Lena was Karen, and Emma figured that had hurt her mother much more than it did Emma.

  It wasn’t until God had called Victor Stolzfus home that Emma had realized that He took care of each of his children, and if His will was for her to live quietly with Lena, it also included a new kind of freedom.

  One of those freedoms was in conversation. Emma could say nearly anything to her mother; after working side by side for all these years, some things came naturally. But these days, some subjects—men, for instance—were buried so deeply that a comment might only glance off the surface, disappear, and not come up again, like a skipping stone.

  As she climbed the steps of the root cellar after emptying the bag of onions into their basket, the pressure under her breastbone increased to the point that Emma knew she must talk to someone about Calvin, or burst. Carrie would get the biggest charge out of it, but she was three miles away and might not even be home. Amelia was at the shop today signing papers with Melvin and the Steiner boys. But really, who better to talk with than Lena, who had seen nearly as much life as all three of them put together? She didn’t need to bring up specific names, but surely she could find some way to introduce Calvin into the conversation?

  In the end Lena did it herself. She put her teacup down in its saucer with a clink. “Emma, Liewi, what is going on with you? You just put the cream pitcher in the cupboard and the sugar bowl in the fridge.”

  Jolted out of her mental fog, Emma opened the refrigerator door. Sure enough, there sat the sugar bowl, getting nicely chilled. She pulled it out and swapped it with the cream, then sat at the table with a sigh and took another butter tart. “Good thing you said something,” she said around the caramel sweetness. “Nothing I hate more than cold sugar in my coffee in the morning.”

  “I’ve done it a time or two myself.” Lena took a sip of tea. “Usually when I’ve got something on my mind.”

  Her mother was so graceful. She would give you an opportunity, which you could take at face value and move on, or you could open it like a door and step in.

  “I do have something on my mind. I’ve turned it over and over and I still don’t know what to do.”

  Lena sat a little straighter. “Have you been to the doctor?”

  “For man trouble?”

  “Man trouble? Is that all?” Lena’s spine wilted again and Emma saw too late that she had really frightened her.

  “Mamm, I promise, that’s all it is. You didn’t think I was sick, did you?”

  “I’ve seen you moping around here with a long face since you got back from New York. You don’t hear when someone talks to you, you go for hours on end without saying a word…and I haven’t heard that typewriter of yours going at night since you came home. All this tells me you’re either in love, or you’re sick. Up until now, the second option is wha
t I would have thought.”

  “Up until now?”

  “Well, I’ve been hearing things about the first option, but I don’t usually make diagnoses on the basis of talk around the Kaffi cups. Though I have to say, your sister is having a better time with this than you seem to be.”

  “She would. She’s the one who started it.”

  “So it’s true, what I’m hearing, then? That you and that Steiner boy are courting?”

  “He’s not a boy anymore, Mamm.”

  “He is to me. In fact, he’ll always be that drowned rat who got dragged out of the river ten miles away, grinning his fool head off, and not caring one bit that my girl could have been swept away to wind up who knows where. Mississippi, maybe.”

  “I can swim. And I was just as guilty as he was. Maybe more.”

  “Be that as it may, I hope he’s improved. Karen seems to think he’s the catch of the county. I wonder what John thinks of that idea.”

  “If Joshua had a new strain of hardy wheat growing out of his ears, John might be interested. Other than that, I’m sure he’s used to Karen and her little dramas.”

  “Do you think he’s the catch of the county? Especially as you seem to have caught him?” Lena twinkled at her over the rim of her cup.

  “I haven’t caught him, Mamm. We’re just good friends, the way we have always been.”

  “And good friends who haven’t seen each other in twelve years take one another to train stations, of course.”

  “I had no idea he was in that car, much less that he’d decided he was going with me. But when he asked me to go to the Lehmans’ the other night, that was different. He asked if he could court me, but that is too much, too soon. I told him it would be better if we see each other as friends.”

  Lena was silent a moment. “And what did he say to that?”

  “What could he say? He knows he will have to prove himself to any woman’s family, given his reputation.”

  “Interesting he chose to start with you.”

  “We were good friends once. Maybe he feels safe with me.”

  “Safe? Do you feel safe with him, is the question.”

  “Safe enough for friendship. I don’t know about more.” Her voice trailed away, and Lena’s gaze sharpened.

  “Because…?”

  Emma took a breath and dove in. “What would you say it meant if a man stopped you outside the grocery store and asked you to go have an ice cream?”

  “A man like, say, Calvin King?”

  Emma practically dropped her cup. As it was, tea slopped as she put it down and she had to go and get a cloth to wipe it up. “Don’t tell me. Mary Lapp came for a visit this afternoon while I was running errands.”

  “She did indeed. And since it was as much a surprise to me as no doubt Calvin was to you, Mary found it very rewarding. And there sat Mandy beside her, prim as a prune, like she’d never done a thing in her life to make people talk.”

  “I don’t think she has. Who could, if you were the bishop’s daughter?”

  “I bet she’s done plenty and her parents just don’t know about it. So how was it? Calvin was always a nice boy. Rose Ann was a lucky woman.”

  Emma nodded. Then she told Lena all about it, including the parts about the low-growing flowers and the windfall apples.

  “The man is a bit of a poet,” Lena remarked when she was done. “Though I’m not sure I see him as a windfall. The gut Gott may have seen fit to take his wife, but others have suffered as much and not rotted on the ground. Grant Weaver, for instance. Though I wouldn’t say God took Lavina, exactly.”

  Emma gripped her cup to stop herself from leaping through that conversational door headfirst. But even that heroic self-control didn’t fool Lena for a moment.

  “Docher, don’t think that because I don’t speak of certain things I don’t know how it is with you.” Emma’s lips trembled at the softness in her mother’s tone. “I saw how you looked at him when he was here for the construction.”

  “He is married, and I was wrong to look,” Emma managed. Her throat felt as if it would close after every word. “And now here I am with a man on either hand, and neither of them is the one I really want.”

  “What we want and what God wants for us are two different things. You might spend some time in prayer trying to reconcile the two.”

  That would be the right thing to do. Some might even say that a spinster over thirty shouldn’t be so particular, that she should take that bird in the hand before it flew off and left her alone again.

  “I’m so verhuddelt, Mamm,” she said on a long sigh.

  Lena’s gaze was soft behind her spectacles. “If you were writing a story about it, what would you have the girl do?”

  “Well, she’d be Amish, so she couldn’t move away and start over somewhere else while she tries to forget the first man. I suppose I’d have the men try to get her attention somehow—you know, compete for her. Eventually the best man would rise to the top.”

  “Nothing wrong with a little competition,” Mamm said. “Is there any more tea?”

  Emma topped up her cup, then put the pot down slowly. “But this is real life, not a story. Who’s going to compete over me?”

  “Why shouldn’t they? You’re as godly and capable a woman as any in the district. More, probably, since you know how to work all this machinery.” Lena indicated the oxygen tank next to her chair.

  “Those aren’t the qualities that a man looks for.”

  “They should be, if he’s a good plain man.”

  Lavina got further in two weeks with her eyes and smile than I did in ten years with all my godliness and capability.

  “Besides,” Lena went on, “we’re not talking about twenty-year-olds. We’re talking about a man who has been married and is raising his family. A man who has seen a bit of the world. These men are looking for something different than they might have a decade ago. You can’t tell me that some giddy eighteen-year-old is going to offer more than you do, Emma.”

  I’m good enough for seconds, but I’m no one’s first choice.

  Nei. That was self-pity, and dissatisfaction with the path God had chosen for her, and if she voiced those words Lena would slap them down the way she swatted flies—with efficiency and deadly accuracy.

  “Ach, it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m not going to leave you.”

  “If a good man wants you for his own, what kind of mother would I be if I kept you here?” Lena shook her head, her hair silvery white under her Kapp. “If one of these men shows the sense God gave a goose, I will go and live with Katherine. We talked about it at Christmas when everyone was here.”

  “Mamm.” Emma gazed at her in shock. “You can’t leave the farm. You’ve lived here for sixty years.”

  “And been happy. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t miss it. I would. But Katherine’s only over in the next township, not the other side of the country. And there’s a Daadi Haus attached to their place already. I would only be a wall’s width away, and no time to be lonesome.”

  Emma had seen the Daadi Haus at Katherine’s. It was tiny—only a kitchen and a bedroom and a sitting room—but those were the only rooms Mamm used now, anyway. She’d had no idea Mamm and Katherine had been hatching up plots the way the hens tried to hide their eggs in the barn. Did Karen know? She needed to be the one in charge, so Emma had a feeling she didn’t. Karen felt Lena was her responsibility, even though they didn’t see her much and Emma was her caregiver in the eyes of the county hospital. She probably wouldn’t take too kindly to having her younger sister steal Lena away.

  But goodness, Karen had been the one to start all this, inviting Joshua to lunch all those weeks ago. It would serve her right if she lost her mother and her sister all at once.

  Lena wasn’t finished. “I love our little life here, Emma. But don’t you even think about telling one of those men no for my sake. If God has brought good men into your life, it’s not your place to turn them away because you think you need to take c
are of me.”

  “I’d be happier if God had made up His mind and only brought one.” Emma’s chin rested on her hand as she gazed into the milky depths of her tea.

  “It’s what’s called an embarrassment of riches. You’ve never been one for running around after the men. It’s about time the Lord saw to bringing them running after you.” Lena paused. “You mind what I say. A little competition is good for a man. And having lots of friends is good for a woman. Give them both a chance until God points you to His choice.”

  Emma lifted her head and sat back in the chair. “I’ll be giving folks a lot to talk about, with all this running around and eating ice cream and whatnot.”

  “You never mind them,” Lena said. “God’s opinion is the only one you should listen to.”

  Chapter 12

  Emma sat on the edge of the bed and gazed at her Smith-Corona, which waited patiently for her to roll some paper into it and put it back to work. Mamm was right. Despite the notes in her little book, she hadn’t typed up a thing since her return from New York City, not even that article on backsides for Family Life or an editorial for the Whinburg Weekly. In fact, she hadn’t looked at the Weekly in days, she who had read it cover to cover just in case something in there triggered an essay of her own.

  What was wrong with her?

  Was it true, what people had hinted in the past? You need a home and husband to keep you busy, then you wouldn’t have so much time to waste on writing. Had she buried herself in the worlds in her mind so that she wouldn’t have to face actually going out there and making a world of her own? Could it be that her spinsterhood was less about her looks than about her self-confidence?

  Had she brought spinsterhood on herself?

  Now, that was a terrifying thought.

  It was no good blaming the men when she’d been hiding in her room writing instead of going to the singings or to volleyball games. A whole decade had passed that way, and what did she have to show for it? A few articles, a few essays, and a book she couldn’t publish. If she hadn’t been so afraid, so crushed by rejection all those years ago, maybe she would have had a flesh-and-blood child of her own by now, instead of a lot of little paper substitutes.