How the Light Gets In

by Jolina Petersheim

  Elam and Mabel talked about everything but death as the driver escorted them back to Tomah. Elam told her about the harvest and the acreage they’d purchased since she left.

  She asked, “You still living at your dad’s old place?”

  The man of few words nodded. “I have more room than Laurie does,” he said. “If you don’t mind living with a crusty old bachelor.”

  Mabel laughed, the first time in weeks. “If you’re old, what does that make me?”

  “Well preserved,” he said, and smiled.

  The memory also made Mabel smile as she opened the oven to check on her Dutch babies. They were golden-brown, buttery, and puffing up around the muffin pan, like they were supposed to. She went into the pantry and retrieved a glass pint of maple syrup, which Elam and Tim had harvested in early spring from the ancient maple trees shading the farm.

  Mabel had just finished setting the table when the pitter-patter of little feet descended the stairs. Her son’s children—a continuation of him, as much as if both girls shared his flesh and blood—were a tangible promise, a visible depiction that, despite death, all was not lost.

  The girls toddled into the kitchen in their matching footie pajamas. Even Sofie had that soft, rosy-cheeked glow of children who have awoken from blissful dreams to a life that is nearly as idyllic. It soothed Mabel to see her looking like every child should.

  “Come here, my lambs,” she said, and knelt in her sensible shoes and sturdy apron.

  Her granddaughters ran across the hardwood, squealing. In the doorway, Ruth stood, wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. The waders, which Laurie had lent, draped the staircase rail. Ruth leaned one hip against the doorjamb and watched Sofie and Vi being wrapped in such love, like gifts. Mabel’s grateful, teary eyes met hers, and the two grief-stricken widows smiled as though acknowledging the two of them were joined by far more than law.

  CHAPTER 4

  DECEMBER 10, 2012

  Dear Mom and Dad,

  I am writing to let you know that Chandler and I married last week. This may seem fast, but Chandler and I have rarely been apart during the past three months I have been at Children’s Haven. The marriage took place so quickly because rumors began circulating that one of the other orphanage employees (who didn’t seem entirely stable) was also considering adopting Sofie, the little girl I mentioned adopting a while back.

  In light of this, Chandler and I agreed a lengthy engagement was a luxury we could not afford. Janice, the director of Children’s Haven, was kind enough to decorate the chapel and have Chef José bake us a cake. All things considered, it was a lovely ceremony, and I would have written sooner, but Chandler and I were determined to go through with our plans and feared that if we contacted family, you might compel us to stop.

  I want you to know that Chandler and I do love each other. I believe the two of us would’ve made the same decision, even though it might not have taken place so quickly. I apologize for any shock this may cause you, but do rest assured I am enjoying my duties as a mother and wife. Sofie (nine months old now) is a precious little thing. You will adore your first grandchild.

  With love,

  Ruth

  The morning sun bounced off the water and reflected into Ruth’s eyes, forcing her to shield them with one hand as she watched Elam guide his Clydesdales down the bank. Twin streams of breath poured from the horses’ damp black nostrils, mimicking the steam rising from the gleaming surface of the bog. Elam’s straw hat and suspenders, combined with the horse-drawn equipment, made him seem like a relic from another time. Ruth, more observer than participant, wondered if the community’s otherworldliness was what made it easier to breathe.

  Here, she didn’t check her phone compulsively to see if there were any more developments regarding the bombing. Here, she didn’t have to respond to her friends’ well-intentioned but intrusive Facebook messages, declaring that they were so sorry for her loss and that if she needed anything—anything at all! —that they were here for her.

  Which was convenient since most were thousands of miles away.

  Yes, a certain freedom was found in being unreachable. After the phone call with her mother, followed by the phone call with Chandler’s life insurance rep, Ruth decided to just let her phone go dead. She’d returned the rental car yesterday, so she had nowhere to charge it. Besides, if somebody wanted to get ahold of her badly enough, they could call Elam’s business phone, in the barn. Ruth knew the odds of anyone getting through were slim.

  This pleased her.

  Elam turned in the wagon seat and waved Ruth down into the water. She only now noticed that the other men had already entered with their waders and were using their rakes to corral whatever cranberries had risen to the surface from the harvester.

  Ruth stood there a moment, watching the men work, and thought of what a picture the scene would make: the steam; the horses’ muscles straining beneath their saturated coats; the workers’ matching straw hats and pale collared shirts. The contrast between the water and the berries made Elam’s harvester appear to be a textile machine unspooling skeins of dyed red silk.

  Ruth yearned to capture this moment through any medium she could—through words or through a paintbrush. It had been so long since she had noticed or imagined or stood still long enough to desire to create. But now was not the time. Picking up her rake, Ruth entered the bog. The water’s frigid temperature penetrated through the waders’ thick material. She sucked air through her teeth as she watched the harvester’s rusted yellow tines churning the water, pulling up the cranberry bushes and shaking the berries loose.

  Two of the four men used their rakes to guide the floating cranberries into the corner of the bed. The two other men unwound a large yellow boom, which floated on the water’s surface like a snake and would keep the floating cranberries from escaping. And then there was Ruth. Nobody offered instructions. Nobody even looked her way. She wasn’t sure if this was because she was Englisch or because she was wearing pants. What was clear was she had no purpose. Her face grew hot as she understood Elam had agreed to let her help because of charity and not because of need. Well, Elam didn’t know her mother, who’d taught her that to succeed in a man’s revolving-door world, you had to be tougher than a man.

  The first bed took four hours, and there were nine beds to go. Ruth’s legs were numb, her hands blistered from gripping the rake, but she continued walking behind the harvester, determined not to show any weakness, even though her head throbbed with fatigue.

  Finally, Ruth heard the triangle bell ringing at the farmhouse. She lifted her head, peeled a piece of wet hair clinging to her cheek, and looked at Elam. He turned on the seat of the harvester and called something to the workers. Ruth couldn’t hear, so she sloughed closer.

  “You all go ahead and eat,” he said. “I just have a few more tracts to do, and then we can move to the next bed after lunch.”

  The other men, even Tim, were already heading out of the bog or climbing the embankment. They tossed their wet rakes down on the grass and pulled off their waders. Ruth watched the men go, their strides stiff as they made their way toward the house.

  “Aren’t you going to go?” Elam smiled beneath his straw hat, and Ruth watched the lines deepen like quotation marks around his full mouth. “They might not leave much for you.”

  “It’s all right,” Ruth said. “I’ll stay. I don’t like leaving when there’s work to be done.”

  Elam stared at her. As seconds passed, Ruth was no longer sure if pride alone drove her to remain in the bog, for there was something about Elam that made it impossible to leave.

  He cleared his throat. “I guess that’s . . . okay. I just don’t want you . . . going without.”

  “I’m not,” she said.

  Their gazes held as the sun skipped across water, the afternoon light now reflecting in his eyes. He turned away and clicked his tongue at the horses. They pulled forward, and Ruth moved behind the wagon, using the rake to guide the berries toward the cor
ner of the bog.

  DECEMBER 7, 2013

  Dear Husband,

  I have dropped the ball. I have no gift to offer. I’m not even sure what kind of gift I am supposed to give for this, our first anniversary. Is it paper, wood, or wool? I hope it’s paper because all I have is this piece of notebook paper folded in half and cut into a heart, like I’m not a twenty-six-year-old wife and mother, but a kindergartner proud of the project I made at school. But I am proud, you see. I am proud of us for surviving. The one memory that seems to sum this year up the most is when Sofie cried for hours and hours. You remember that night, don’t you? We tried rocking, jiggling, swaddling, gripe water, warm baths . . . and nothing helped. You told me I should just put her down, that she would have to cry it out. And—delirious with exhaustion—I screamed that you were an unfit parent, as if you were telling me to abandon her for good. So you took your pillow and a blanket and went downstairs. I watched you go through burning eyes and remained on the edge of our bed, holding that red-faced, clench-fisted cherub with her legs pulled up tight. I stayed up there for another hour before I knew that I, too, had to leave. I sobbed as I kissed her and laid her down in her bassinet, for I believed that she would feel abandoned twice in her life: first by her birth parents, and now by me. But I left her and went downstairs. I saw you stretched out on the couch—a blue glow in the room from the silent TV. You looked like you were asleep, but when I curled up on the other end of the couch, you passed me your pillow and blanket.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I don’t need it.”

  “Yes,” you insisted, “you do.”

  My eyes stung. “Don’t be nice to me after what I said. It’s not fair.”

  I heard you smile in that blue dark. “Sweetheart, we left fair at the altar.”

  So I took your pillow and blanket. Upstairs, we could hear our baby crying, and I knew the Corrigans must be hearing her too. But then Sofie stopped. She stopped crying so abruptly, I convinced myself she must have stopped breathing. I moved to get up, and you put a hand on my socked foot. “I’ll go check.” But I knew I could not sleep unless I saw her too, so we walked up those cement steps together. We walked into our bedroom, and we leaned over the bassinet.

  Sofie was sound asleep, her tiny arms—with those little pink mitts I had put on before I left her, so she wouldn’t scratch her face as she flailed—stretched up as if in surrender, and we looked at each other and smiled.

  The funny thing is that this horrible night is now one of my fondest memories. Still, a part of me longs to just curl up on the couch with you when you get home from work, order pizza, and watch a pointless movie (A movie! How did we ever have so much time?!), but I am grateful we have given up that mythical newlywed bliss in exchange for this fierce, colicky, beautiful little girl. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that I would choose you—and this ever-changing, grand adventure (all-night cry sessions, Sofie’s and mine, and all)—again and again.

  But most of all, thank you for choosing me.

  Your wifey,

  Ruth

  After Mabel finished drying the lunch dishes, she took three tin pails down from the pantry shelf and led her granddaughters down the lane—the three holding hands, the grandma in the middle, their uneven shadows stretched across the gravel like a paper-doll chain—and into one of the fields Elam and his crew would dry-pick for local markets, which would then sell the berries as fresh fruit. The girls, at first, had no idea what to do. Their other grandma hadn’t wanted help in the garden, but had stood out there for long spells each night, standing still as a statue, amid the weeds. But this grandma, Grandma Mabel, beckoned them forth.

  “There. Right there, my lambs,” she said. “God’s candy.”

  Any mention of candy enthralled the children until Vi crouched beside a leaf, plucked a promising red berry, and popped it into her mouth. Her entire face clenched. Her too-long blonde bangs became pinned between her nose and eyes. Vi declared, “God’s no good at making canty.”

  Back at the farmhouse, Sofie sat in the front yard—coltish legs crisscross-applesauce—and tossed cranberries to Zeus. One of the workers had tied him to a tree because he kept barking at the harvester and spooking the horses. Though this bothered Sofie, she was glad to see he didn’t seem to mind. Inside, the soapstone sink brimmed with fruit. Mabel carried a sleepy, sweaty Vi upstairs and settled herself in the same rocking chair her sister, Marta, had used.

  Mabel watched the dandelion-fine curtain puff in and out with the unseasonably warm breeze and could still picture her sister here, tucking summer-bleached laundry into the dresser and then coming over to the crib to lift Elam out, his chubby arm stretched toward the window, his gray eyes wide with delight. Marta would be proud of the man her little boy had become. And yet, Mabel also knew she would’ve wanted him to have his own babies in that ancient crib and a wife by his side. What’s the point of all this? Mabel wondered, pressing a kiss to Vi’s straggled bangs. A nephew who’d never found love; a son who could never return to the love he’d found. Mabel looked down at the toddler, going limp in her arms—a dirty thumb hooked in a cranberry-stained mouth—and thought of the toddler’s widowed mother, currently working with Elam in the field, and wondered if God had a plan for their severed family after all.

  When Elam and Ruth came inside the farmhouse after working all day in the bog, they discovered that the downstairs had been transformed. Cranberry branches garlanded the wooden banister. Candlelight softened the dining room’s slightly worn appearance, and a fire crackled in the living room hearth. Zeus—no longer tied in the front yard—snored happily in front of the fire with one of the domesticated barn cats curled up tight against his furred white belly.

  Elam left his boots in the foyer and walked into the kitchen. Where was Aunt Mabel? Where were the girls? Curious, he stepped closer to the table. It was set with his mother’s wedding china. It was set for two. Elam entered the kitchen like he was entering a crime scene. He glanced at the sink and then over at the stove. The butcher-block countertop was crowded with six loaves of cranberry bread and two pans of cranberry crisp, the glass 9×13s still warm.

  Finally, under the sourdough crock, Elam found the note: Laurie invited me and the girls for supper. A casserole’s in the oven. Applesauce in the fridge. Love, Aunt Mabel

  Elam pulled open the oven and saw the bubbling chicken potpie, the crust edged with marks and the top punctured with vent holes from the fork Mabel had used. Elam’s face burned, and he was tongue-tied more than normal, though he had no one to talk to and nothing to say.

  For nine hours, he and Ruth had worked in effortless, albeit silent, comradery, which would no doubt vanish because of his aunt’s thinly disguised attempt to . . . what?

  Mabel would never be so tactless as to set her widowed daughter-in-law up with someone less than two months after her own son’s death. And yet Elam knew her. The only thing Mabel’s soft heart loved more than love itself was to help two other people find it.

  Ruth walked in behind him. Elam stood and slammed the oven door, as if he had something to hide. “Where is everyone?” she asked.

  Elam passed her the note.

  After a moment, Ruth said, “How kind of Mabel to make us supper.” But an ominous current pulled at the timbre of her voice. Ruth continued staring at the note and half-turned to look at the table: two plates, two sets of utensils, two glasses of water, two cloth napkins pulled through two wooden rings. She slapped the note on the counter. “I’m going to clean up.”

  Elam watched her go, her usual elegant gait rendered awkward from soreness. Elam had no idea if “cleaning up” meant she wanted him to wait for her so they could eat together, or if he should just go ahead. Laurie, the only person he could ask, was the same person who had probably conspired with Mabel. He balled his aunt’s note up and threw it in the trash. He paced the kitchen for a while, until the dog got up and started following his every step.

  Anxious, Elam went outside and gasped the cool autumn
air.

  Complications fell away beneath this twilit sky, plain navy except for an embellishment of stars. To his right, in the distance, he could just make out the barn and his younger sister’s house. Elam could picture them all sitting down to supper. He could picture, too, the surreptitious glances being exchanged between Mabel and Laurie.

  Were all women this way, or only the women in his life?

  Elam absently rubbed Zeus’s ears, who leaned against him in gratitude, like a horse. There was only one bathroom in the house, occupied by Ruth, and so—just in case she did want to eat together—he couldn’t possibly show up at dinner looking completely unkempt.

  It’d been fifteen minutes, at least, since Ruth left to take a shower. How much longer did Elam have before she came back? He didn’t know, because he’d never had to share his modern bathroom with a woman until Aunt Mabel came to stay, and he had never paid attention to how long her showers took. The aforesaid “modern bathroom” came about because Young Bishop Gish, now forty, had pushed for kerosene-powered appliances and water heaters in the community’s homes soon after he pulled his name from the Ausbund. The change went through, but afterward, the seasoned deacons and regional bishops had added “Young” to Bishop Gish, as though the moniker would forever remind him youthful enthusiasm could compensate for neither experience nor age. No major changes had been made to the community in the past ten years.

  To be safe, Elam ran inside, down the hall to his room, retrieved a fresh button-down shirt, and ran back out to the well pump. Unbuttoning his shirt, he stripped to the waist—his suspenders dangling—and doused his head and splashed water over his armpits and chest. The water was so cold, the cold was almost all he could think about. But Elam hadn’t been using his cognitive abilities before the cold water because he’d forgotten to fetch a towel. He glanced behind him, at the clothesline, but Mabel’s new zest for life included a zest for household chores. There were no clothes on the line.