“No…”
“Then please please please ask for some help. You know Mother loves you with all her heart and she’s the most understanding woman I know. Why didn’t you tell her about all of this when she was staying here?”
“I just couldn’t,” she answered, miserably. “And anyway, at that time with Ernie so newly born, the subject just hadn’t come up.”
“Well, now it’s time to deal with it.”
“And let’s start now. Come downstairs with me, watch what Karl’s doing for you and express your appreciation. Thank him. That wouldn’t be so hard, now, would it?”
“No… I suppose not.”
Thus we accomplished step one in my plan to make Aini’s marriage work.
Step two would be up to her.
When I left after a few days of being there, of trying to establish some kind of a routine for Aini to follow, and of spending time with little Ernie, who was an amazingly good baby, willing to smile and giggle at the slightest provocation, anxious to nurse and to fulfill that part of his responsibility as completely as possible, followed easily by an enormous burp. He was already sleeping through the night, napping both morning and afternoon, and looking around with interest when he was awake. He was a bright child, one Aini and Karl could have been very proud to have produced if they’d just let each other be… perhaps not all the other would have wished… but all the other could manage at that time.
Aini accompanied me on the ride home and sat down with Mother when we got there. I heard them talking quietly for a long time. When Aini came out, her eyes were red, but she looked somewhat relieved, gave me a hug and said, “You were right, my darling, adorable, horrible, awful sister!”
At the next Saturday night dance, Aini and Karl both came, Karl carrying little Ernie, who at just a few months was already coming into his own. They danced together as Ernie was passed around from lady to lady, each one exclaiming about his beautiful blue eyes and his alertness. I was so relieved that for a while I just sat without looking at or talking to either of them.
“Whew!” I thought to myself. “What a mess we often leave when we both struggle to succeed—or some such.” I couldn’t remember the exact line, but I remembered the message and how appropriate it was.
If only my own troubles were so deftly corrected, because I knew in my heart that I was waiting for a young man named Arvo Mattson to appear at a dance, and I had no idea at all about how I would greet him.
Reaching Alango Hall early one Saturday night, we heard a motorcar arriving in a flourish.
Everyone in the hall heard it coming from at least a mile away, its engine chug-chug-chugging along the dirt road. It seemed to be coming from the west, along the Gooddell Road, heading toward the hall from Highway 73, which led from Chisholm to the junction of Highway 53, leading to Orr.
Swinging into the open area near the hall, it spooked many of the horses so their owners had to hurry outside to calm them or there would have been a catastrophe.
The vehicle/motor car, was black, had an engine in front with two headlights, a black panel in the midst of which was the word “Ford,” and two wheels. The driver sat behind the engine in an enclosed area that had a top with a window in front so he could see, a door with a step so he could enter, a kind of hood that went from the top of the front window toward the back, where there was another window, and finally two more tires. It was really the strangest looking contraption I’d ever seen, and like all of the others, I craned my neck to see who was driving it.
“Want a ride?” a voice asked, a voice I recognized at once although I had only heard it a few times. Of course the driver had to be Arvo Mattson. Who else would come to a country dance in such a way?
Drawing off a long coat and gloves, he set them on the seat, and proceeded to tell a listening audience about what he called his Model T. “It’s being build on an assembly line—that means a line of people, all working on a different part of the whole—so he can turn out almost a hundred of them a day, Mr. Ford can,” he began. “You start it using a crank.” He produced one from behind the front seat. “Then you drive it by using three foot pedals and a lever” that he showed us was mounted on the road side of the driver’s seat. “A ‘throttle’—which makes the machine move—is located with a lever on the steering wheel. The left pedal is used to engage the gear. With the floor pedal in either the mid position or fully forward and the pedal pressed and held forward, the car is in low gear. When held in an intermediate position, the car is in neutral. If the driver takes his foot off the left pedal, the Model T enters high gear but only when the lever is fully forward. In any other position the pedal would only move up as far as the central neutral position. This allows the car to be held in neutral while the drive cranks the engine. The car thus cruises without the driver having to press any of the pedals. When the car is in neutral, the middle pedal is used to engage reverse gear, and the right pedal operates the transmission and brake. The floor level also controls the parking brake, activated by pulling the lever all the way back.”
The men had listened enthralled to that long explanation, but no one asked a single question. I don’t think any of them really understood a word of what he had said. All of the men just nodded as if they had understood. Moving as one, we all stepped back, leaving the contraption sitting where he had left it.
“Oh, my,” was the common reaction. “Can you beat that? What will they think of next? I wonder how much it costs.”
Arvo answered that one—“It cost about $240.00 brand new, but my brother-in-law bought it from a fellow from Hibbing, who was tired of having trouble with the drive bands and the tires, which seem to go flat very easily. He paid only $100.00 for it.”
One hundred dollars! That was a fortune to most of the people at the Hall—an amount only to be imagined, but never to be realized.
Arvo continued, “He owns a store and can use this vehicle to deliver goods much faster than his horse and buggy, so I guess he thinks it’ll pay for itself in the long run. He let me borrow it for the night. Anyone want a ride?”
He had a few takers, but the effort of cranking the engine hard enough for it to start wound up taking all of his energy, and so we all went back into the hall, with him joining us as if he were one of us, rather than someone special.
He was someone very special… to me at least. I had looked forward to seeing him, imagined talking to him, thought about what we would say to each other so often that now that he as actually there, I was mute.
“Do you want to dance?” he asked me, taking me by the arm as if he had sole possession of me for the night.
“Of course,” I said, as if this were any other dance and he any other guy.
And so we danced… and danced… and danced… We polkaed, schottished, and waltzed… oh, how we waltzed! I felt as if I were dancing on air all through that evening.
He had come, he had seen, he had conquered… me at any rate.
The dance was nothing compared to the ride home. When we left the hall, he had helped me into the passenger seat as if I belonged there, cranked the engine, and off we went. When we reached the top of Ticklebelly Hill, he put the car in neutral, turned to me, and kissed me. Oh, how he kissed me! I felt as if I were truly Guinevere holding her Lancelot in thrall, as if I were Elizabeth Bennet, having finally realized who and what Darcy was, as if I were Ruth in the Bible, willing to go anywhere with him.
Then I drew back, appalled at my behavior.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, clearly puzzled.
“I’m not one of Those Kinds of Girls,” I protested. “I don’t ‘kiss around’! I don’t… do… any of the things… you make me… want to do.”
“I know. And I love you for it.” That was his answer as he put the car into forward and drive again. “I need to go about this the right way. When and how can I meet your mother?”
“Not tonight. It’s too late.” I stammered.
“Soon, anyway. I want to marry you.”
He said it so matter-of-factly I was stunned. He hadn’t even asked me!
“I’m in love with you, you know.” I heard the words clearly over the chug, chug, chug of the engine. “I know I don’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of, but I love you. Will you take me as I am… penniless and poor… but filled with love for you?”
I didn’t know what to say. My feelings were all churned up inside—a mixture of that kiss and the remembrance of Elsie Hauala.
“Are you absolutely sure?” I asked, really waiting to be convinced.
“Absolutely positively sure,” he answered, taking his eyes off the road to look at me for a quick second. “I don’t have any doubt in the world.”
“Our house is coming up quickly,” I told him, hurriedly. “It’s dark, which means everyone’s asleep. This isn’t the time…”
“No, but I’ll find the time very soon.”
Then he turned into our driveway, put the car into neutral, took my hand to help me out, and leaned over to kiss me once more, setting my soul aflame.
Oh, my, I thought as I waved goodbye long after he could see me. OH, MY, OH, MY!
What had I gotten myself into?
Once I had finished Confirmation, I had gotten used to attending church regularly every Sunday and even helped with teaching Sunday School to the little ones though I knew very little of what to teach them other than the lessons from the Bible. Milma had drawn on the Bible freely, always citing those parts that offered the backbone of her belief in a God of faith, hope, and love, “and the greatest of these is love.” She had insisted it had been written by men many, many years ago—first in Hebrew, then in Greek, and finally in Latin. The translations she referred to she drew from the King James Bible, written in English, and from a fine version written in Finnish. We had been encouraged to memorize Bible verses, but she had been very careful to assign us ones that “did not contradict our own personal faith,” she always said.
That night I had to confront my “own personal faith” and I found myself almost completely at a loss. Oh, I remembered what I had memorized during Confirmation, and I had memorized First Corinthians—“and the greatest of these is love,” believing it with all my heart.
Now I was faced with the first test of my faith, and I felt completely at a loss. Kneeling down at the foot of the bed, I looked up—even though I knew that Unitarians didn’t believe in a God who sat up in a heaven—because it seemed to be the right thing to do, and prayed. “God,” I asked, “please help me to do the right thing. I know You are Love and Love is a sacred word, but is it sacred when it’s a man telling a woman he loves her? And what is she supposed to answer when she doesn’t know what to answer?”
Mother had heard me, of course. She never really fell asleep until all of us were home and in bed. Sitting up and pushing her pillow behind her, she patted the bed next to her and asked me to come and sit down.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
I knew I had to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But it was hard because I wasn’t quite sure what the truth was other than just to tell her what had happened.
“Arvo drove me home. His brother-in-law bought a Model T motorcar, and Arvo had borrowed it for the night. We… danced… together… all night, and it was wonderful,” I hurried on. “But then on the way home…”
Mother interrupted me, “You were riding with him?”
“Of course.” She must have heard us come into the yard. The darn car made so much noise it could wake the dead, I thought.
“And then…” she prompted.
“And then he stopped the car at Ticklebelly Hill and he kissed me and he told me he loved me and asked me to marry him, and I don’t know what to do!” The words spilled out like the milk going through the separator. I couldn’t tell the cream from the skim milk. What part of that was important? What wasn’t?
“Has he kissed you before?”
“Once,” I admitted. He walked me as far as Ticklebelly Hill, and we stopped to rest, and he reached over… and kissed me. But just then I realized I had left my dancing shoes at the Hall and he offered to go back to get them but when he got back I thought about Elsie Hauala and just said, “Good night” and hurried home.”
“So that one doesn’t count?” Mother asked.
“Not really,” I answered. “It was just a quick… touch… of… the… lips.” By comparing the two, I had already made it clear the second one meant much more.
“You were asking for help and for guidance just now, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” I answered miserably. “I should have just come to you.”
“Well, now you have.” She settled back, put her arm around me, and drew me onto her shoulder as if I were a child again. “It’s not a bad thing to do… to pray. I used to do a lot of that when your father was alive. But I found the answer was just to keep putting one foot in front of the other and keep on going, trusting that everything would turn out the way it was supposed to.”
“So that’s what I should do now?” I asked, not understanding at all.
“I think your case is a little bit different from mine. I was already married to your father. You need to decide whether to marry your young man or not. That is the question, am I right?” she asked.
“Yes,” I answered miserably.
“He says he loves you. Do you love him?”
“That’s the problem. I don’t know! How am I supposed to know when we’ve barely spent any time together at all? How can I be sure he won’t turn out to be like Father? He must have started out nice, didn’t he?” I sat up and looked into Mother’s eyes.
“Yes, he did” was her response. “And I’m not sure at what point he changed. Nor can I assure you your young man will always be… what he seems to be now.”
She paused, thinking. “I think one thing important is that you get to know him better. So you know what kind of a man he is… other than being a good dancer… and a good kisser!”
She giggled at that, and that set me off, too. It felt good to laugh.
“And now we have a plan,” she said. “We’ll invite him here to dinner so you can start to get to know him. And you can take your time… as much time as you need… to see whether he is…” she paused, looking for the right words, “worthy of your love.”
I hugged her hard and settled down on my side of the bed, punching the pillow instead of him. We had a plan. And with that in mind, I finally fell asleep.
18: Arvo Still
The next morning as soon as I awoke, I headed downstairs. Mother had already put the milk through the separator and cleaned it up. There were fresh pancakes, and the coffee was hot and strong.
We picked up our conversation from where we had left it the night before but with some differences.
“How did he manage to buy a car?” Mother asked.
I hurried to tell her, “It’s not his. It belongs to his brother-in-law—Ivan Williams, who owns a store in Linden Grove. Evidently he uses the vehicle to deliver goods during the week, but he allows his nephew to drive it on weekends—especially on Saturday nights.”
“What was it like to ride in?”
“Oh,” I hesitated before answering, “it seems as if it can go very fast. It took us barely five minutes to drive from the Hall to here.”
Then she got down to the nitty-gritty: “Tell me what you know about your young man.”
“He’s from Virginia,” I began, wishing I could answer all of her questions in a few words. “And he lives with the Wiliams’s in Linden Grove.”
“How do you know that he’s not married?”
“I asked the other guys from the CCC camp,” I said, fully aware of Mother�
��s next reaction.
“How do you know what they were telling you was true?”
“I don’t know… I guess I wanted to.”
“Oh, dear.”
All this time we had been standing in the kitchen. At this point, Mother, drew a chair out for me to sit in, and began serving coffee to both of us.
“He said he’s going to come over here today… or very soon… to see you… and to ask you… if he can marry me.” The last words again came out in a rush.
“Now we’re in kind of a pickle,” she said.
“I guess I am,” I said, dropping my face into my hands. The tears were very near the surface, but I held them back as best I could. Crying wouldn’t help.
“How do you feel about him?”
“I… I… I… think… I’m in love with him. If being in love means that a person wants to be with the other person… a lot… and that a person really wants the other person to… kiss her and…”
“And?” Mother’s question was brutal.
“And… hold me… and just be with me. When we were dancing, I felt as if I were on a cloud,” I hurried on. “It was as if there was no one else in the Hall except us, and we were dancing… among the stars.” I looked up at Mother, hoping against hope she would understand.
She did… and she didn’t. “How did you manage to find yourself in the car with him?”
“It just seemed natural.” I was trying hard to explain what seemed to be to be inexplicable. “One minute I was standing by it, and the next minute I was sitting in it, and he was driving us down Highway 25 toward home.”
“And,” she urged, although she was well aware of what had happened next.
“We stopped at the top of Ticklebelly Hill again, and he reached over and drew me toward him, and our lips met, and everything started dancing around. I can’t exactly find words for it!”
“You’re doing a good job,” she answered, wryly. “What else happened?”
“Nothing! Honestly!” I exclaimed. “One minute we were kissing and the next minute he was asking me to marry him and telling me he would be here tomorrow to ask you ‘for my hand.’ That’s the way he put it—‘for my hand.’”
Gifts of the Spirit Page 21