by Amy Sorrells
Mattie came alongside her and put an arm around Nel’s shoulders. “You never know. But either way, that’s why it’s good you brought him home. When I die, I don’t want to be hooked up to a bunch of tubes with doctors pounding on my chest, or alone in a cold room at a nursing home, no matter how nice the place is. I want to be home. And I’m pretty sure he does too.” Mattie kissed Nel’s cheek.
“Think we should skip the fancy table settings and eat out there? I could get the TV trays out so he doesn’t have to get up. He’s so comfortable there.”
“That’s a good idea,” replied Mattie, giving her another squeeze.
The four of them sat and ate in the living room, the sound of Wheel of Fortune on the television in the background.
“It’s good to have you home, Dad.”
Jakob didn’t respond as he struggled to get a piece of blueberry cobbler into his mouth. His hands shook much of the time now, something else that bothered Nel, who’d always been amazed at how steady her dad’s hands were as he created his gem and cabochon designs. He wiped a glob of blueberry off his chin and worked at getting another bite on his fork. Either he hadn’t heard her or he was too preoccupied with his cobbler to pay attention.
Mattie, sitting next to him, patted his knee. “Jakob.”
“Yeah?” He peered over the top rim of his glasses at her. It sounded like half the cobbler was stuck in his throat.
“Nel said she’s glad you’re home.”
“Nel?”
“She’s right there.” Mattie nodded toward Nel, who sat on the couch across from him.
“Well, well, well. So she is.” His face brightened as he looked at his daughter, as if realizing for the first time that she was there.
Nel supposed he might’ve been realizing it for the first time—at least the first time in the last five minutes. And yet, as many times as she’d been through repeating herself and listening to him repeat himself, as many times as Jakob had called her Catherine, hearing his lapse in short-term memory in his own home—her childhood home—was more than she could bear in that moment. She stood so fast she nearly knocked over her TV tray. “Is anybody else finished? I’ll start clearing plates.”
“I’ll help,” David said, following her to the kitchen.
She stood at the kitchen sink and watched three blue herons soar across the horizon without hardly moving their wings.
“Here.” David came behind her and wrapped his arms around her, handing her a clean dishtowel to wipe her tears. “It’ll be okay.”
“I know he can’t help it. It’s just so hard to see him like that. Especially here at home.”
“Give him a few days. The doctors said there’ll be an adjustment period, right?” He gently kissed the side of her face.
She leaned back into David’s chest and sighed. “They did … Did you see how his hands were shaking?”
“Yeah … I imagine moving took a lot out of him.”
“I suppose.”
David swept her hair away from the side of her neck and kissed her below her ear. “It’ll be okay.”
“Will it?”
CHAPTER 27
Jakob had sat in his recliner and drifted in and out of a nap as Nel and Mattie cleaned up the meal and unpacked Jakob’s belongings, throwing most of his clothes into the washer. A hospital bed had been delivered that morning, and they’d set it up in the den, which was closest to the bathroom. They made it up in new flannel sheets and several quilts and afghans Catherine had made so it would feel as much like a “normal” bed as possible.
“Whew,” Mattie said, untying the apron from around her waist. “Now that all that’s done, let’s get some fresh air.”
After putting on her own windbreaker, Mattie helped Jakob with his jacket. As he stepped outside, the breeze off the lake made Jakob’s eyes fill with tears, not from the chill, but rather from the crisp freshness of the outdoors he’d always loved. He tried to ignore the pain in his hip as he settled himself on a sturdy chair on the back deck.
The sun prepared to sink into the far edge of the lake, the yellow orb accenting the edges of the lawn, the trees, and the escarpments tumbling to the shore below. A black squirrel darted across the lawn as the two of them sat together in silence for a while, the way friends who know each other well can do without awkwardness.
Mattie pulled a chair up beside him and tucked a striped wool Pendleton blanket around them both to ward off the chill of the evening. Jakob welcomed the feel of her thinning, aging body pressed lightly against his for warmth.
“You really scared me this time.” Mattie sighed, then tilted her head back to find the first stars of the evening sky through a break in the pinking clouds. “Losing Catherine was hard enough. I don’t know how I’d stand losing both of you.”
Jakob fiddled with the cuff of his Brake-All jacket.
“Some nights when you were so sick in the hospital I didn’t know whether you were dead and I ought to be saying the Kaddish for you, or if I should be reciting a blessing that you’re here yet another day, so every night before I got in bed, I knelt down and said both.” Mattie pushed back a stubborn wisp of her curly, gray hair sticking out from beneath her red, boiled-wool hat.
“Why bother?”
“Why bother what?”
“Why bother saying either? I’m not sure prayer makes a lick of difference.” He thought about the first chapter of Ecclesiastes again. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises.1 Over and over again. No matter what anyone does. Meaningless!2
“You’re a stubborn, stubborn man.”
“Yes, well …”
“Never mind. I have enough prayers for the both of us.”
“I have no doubt.”
She turned to face him, gripping both of his thick, gnarled hands in hers, clad in soft black-leather driving gloves. “Jakob Stewart. God has returned you to the land of the living so many times. Do you really not believe? Do you not see how He has repaid you for the years the locust have eaten? That He restores and renews you even as you’ve wandered around in your pain and anger all these decades?”
“You have no idea what I lived through.” Jakob dropped his head. “Just let me live out these last days in peace. I am too old to be preached at about redemption.”
“I know something’s haunting you. That Catherine tried for years to get it out of you. That your nightmares are more than just scary dreams.” She sat back in the chair again and followed his gaze out onto the lake in time to see a shooting star sweep across the horizon. “You’re not the only one to have suffered pain, to have seen things—horrific things—in this life. Our family ran for our lives out of Germany, if you’ll recall. I raised those five children of mine alone after Jack left us. I didn’t want to follow God either, if that meant turning the other way while my husband had an affair.”
“And then you found Jesus.” Jakob hadn’t intended to sound condescending.
“No. Well, yes, but that’s not what I was going to say. Don’t sound so impudent. I’ve seen plenty of times your faith in Jesus guided you—or at least guided Catherine, who guided you.”
“So I’m having a faith crisis.”
“Look. No one’s trying to spoon-feed you the gospel. Gratefulness is a choice. One I have to make every day. One that wouldn’t hurt you to choose either.”
“That’ll do, Mattie.”
“Don’t tune me out yet. I did a lot of thinking while you were away. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to leave this world without heavy burdens?”
“Let me sink into death like an old slab of granite out there.” He waved his hand out at the great lake. “After that, no one will care. Dead. Done. Belly up like a floating muskie. Worm food. Kaput.”
“Nel will care … and I will care too.”
He turned toward her, eyebrows raised, pale cheeks pink from the
cold as much as from the conversation.
“Nel will find her way without me. She already has.”
“I don’t think so.” She paused. “Forgiving ourselves can be harder than forgiving our enemies. But holding on to the past, well … if your hands are full, you can’t accept anything else, even the good that life might have for you. Whatever you went through, let go of it. Tell Nel. She deserves to know. And if you can’t start by telling the bad, start by telling the good. There had to have been some good.”
The screen door creaked as Nel and David came outside. “We’re going for a walk on the beach.”
Jakob smiled at them and nodded.
“Don’t mind us. You go and have fun now. And don’t worry,” Mattie said to Nel, “I’ll stay until you get back.”
“Thanks, Mattie. Love you, Dad.”
The two of them tromped toward the stairs leading to the beach, and Jakob was glad to see David grab Nel’s hand. He’d succeeded in not leaving Catherine alone in the world. It would be a relief to know Nel wouldn’t be left alone when he died too.
Jakob and Mattie were silent then. The cardinals and mourning doves, finches and sparrows sang, joining the chorus of frogs and the lapping of waves on the shore below them. He looked at the flower beds Nel had been tending back into shape and recalled how beautiful they’d been when he and Catherine had been able to tend them as they should be tended, freshly mulched, weeded, and thinned. The peonies would burst open soon, Catherine’s favorites, their giant blooms like scoops of ice cream overflowing and cascading to the ground in delicious pastel heaps. They’d researched and taken great care over the years to plant perennials that didn’t have to struggle against the often-cruel Michigan springs, and to plant enough varieties so something would be blooming all season long.
“Sunflowers,” Jakob said so suddenly Mattie startled. “There were sunflowers in Chudniv.”
Jakob described them to Mattie, how the sunflowers grew, golden waves of them like an ocean stretching all the way to the edge of the world. He and his siblings ran as deep as they could into the fields and could never find the end. They had played hide-and-seek among them, giving up only when they reached the main road laden with honeysuckle. From there they’d trek to the creek, where they waded and caught frogs to hide at the feet of Peter’s and Zahava’s beds—their oldest two siblings “too big” to join them anymore.
One day, the summer before the pogrom, when Jakob and his siblings returned from playing in the sunflower fields, their arms overflowing with fresh-cut flowers for Mama, they caught a glimpse of how much their sister Zahava’s interests had shifted from child’s play. Though the rules of the matchmaker said she wasn’t allowed to choose a suitor for herself, everyone knew she had her eye on Taras, the son of the local milkman and bread maker. That day Taras had been making his usual delivery for Mama, and Zahava made sure to be outside sweeping the front path so she could talk to him without Jakob and the rest of the younger siblings hearing. She didn’t know that the three of them were crouched in the tall grass behind the fence bordering their property. Neither did she know that Papa had come in from the fields through the back of the house, and when he saw the two teenagers blushing and giggling together, he ran out front with a pitchfork and chased poor Taras, cow in tow, back toward the village. Zahava ran to her room sobbing, and Papa came back into the house grinning from ear to ear, sending the rest of the children into convulsions of laughter. Mama scolded Papa severely before heading to Zahava’s room to console her.
The days had been glorious, golden halos of sunflowers set against the azure blue of the summer skies; bumpy rides in the oxcart across wheat fields, where it seemed the entire village had come out together to rake and bundle the sheaves; and always the storks—with their white heads and chests, black tails, and the flash of their long, orange beaks—perched high on outbuildings, where the owners fastened wagon wheels for the birds to build their great nests. Legend said if a farm had a stork’s nest, the farm would have peace, prosperity, and good health. And Papa had told many stories of how storks helped people. But the storks migrated in the fall all the way to South Africa, long before they could have helped the Maevskis, or anyone for that matter, in the village of Chudniv in the winter of 1904.
“Thank you for telling me about your family,” Mattie said.
Jakob exhaled and hung his head so Mattie would not see the new moisture in his eyes.
Mattie rose and held his head between her hands and kissed him on the center of his forehead. Her lips reminded Jakob of the delicateness of the first peony petals of spring. He wished he’d had the energy to reach back toward her, but his age and memories of Catherine, still thick in his mind, kept him still. Instead, he patted the side of her soft face in a grandfatherly way more suited to his wasted frame.
“I love you, old man,” she said as she walked down the steps of the deck toward her backyard. “And I won’t give up on what we’ve talked about. I’ll pray for you tonight, as always.”
CHAPTER 28
Jakob lay on his side, his hip aching from the commotion of the day. He decided he didn’t mind having a bed in the den, surrounded by his beloved books. The moon reflected off the dogwood blossoms—the most vibrant show the tree had put on in years—outside the window. He and Catherine had planted the tree when Nel was born, after Catherine had read in Genesis about Abraham planting a tree shortly after Isaac was born. Jakob’s mind drifted to the old stories of Abraham and Isaac, his namesake Jacob, the wandering of the Israelites, and the things Mattie had said about hanging on to pain.
What if she was right?
She probably was right.
She was always right.
But that would mean he’d wasted his life, wouldn’t it?
He hadn’t though, not completely. After all, he’d provided for Catherine. He’d loved her deeply. He loved Nel. He loved his brother, the Stewarts, and his family.
And yet, he’d loved conveniently, and with boundaries—walls so tall and so reinforced with pain and fear that whatever he allowed himself to feel was more contentment than passion. More resignation than peace.
His eyelids grew heavy as the argument continued within him, and the shimmering moonbeams shifted, illuminating another landscape …
“My znaўdemo sposib.”*
Peter’s confidence did not convince little Jakob, who ached for Mama and Papa. He longed to sit at Papa’s feet, for the warmth of the fire, for the soft hammer of Papa’s voice as he spoke and bantered with Sasha the priest late into the night, and the way he whispered into Mama’s ear and made her giggle when he came in from the fields. Jakob’s heart throbbed, and the journey since they left the shtetl had become only more horrifying the farther west they raced toward Austria-Hungary.
Peter said evil men wanted them dead because they were Jewish—even though they had accepted Messiah Yeshua. Their conversion didn’t matter to the pogromshchik. Nothing mattered to those madmen. They made up stories about the Jews being set against the tsar, when all the people—any people—wanted was to live in peace in the beautiful countryside. The land of Ukraine was like a Siamese twin, pulled between its own independence and Great Mother Russia. Young men in their twenties caught on fire with zeal from propaganda leaflets thrown in the streets, telling them to put down anyone who resisted. What they resisted did not matter. And so they picked the Jews, whose differences were most obvious. None of it made sense to Jakob.
“Like the cloud and pillar of fire for the Israelites, God goes before us, and He comes behind, Jakob.”
The sky hung above the two boys as they traveled, a curse of clear-blue cold biting through their fur and sheepskin coats. Jakob thought Peter referred to the story of Moses leading the Israelites, that God had led them with the clouds and fire of which Peter spoke, one of many stories he recited to help distract them from the freezing air. Even Galya seemed to long for warmth and a p
lace to stay and rest. He had quit fighting the bit and reins. Around his muzzle, frozen breath formed a ring of snow, and frozen spittle dripped into icicles.
Tears froze on Jakob’s face even as they rolled out of his eyes, so fierce was the wind and so brutal was the cold. He could not have guessed how long Peter had been racing Galya across the flat and snowy fields, only that the moon rose higher and higher as they rode. The moon and stars shone on the snow and ice, which shimmered and glowed, making everything—trees, shrubs, abandoned oxcarts, and plows—along the horizon look like ghosts chasing them. If Jakob had to run from them, he knew he couldn’t; his legs were numb and nearly frozen stiff.
Crack!
Galya bucked at the sudden burst of sound, and Peter, who had jumped as well, pulled hard on the horse’s reins. “Shhh, shhh, now, Galya. There now. Hush.” Peter guided Galya toward a patch of naked birch trees. He reached forward and ran his hand along the gray horse’s neck, Galya’s frenzied eyes nearly popping out of his head.
More cracks of gunfire pierced the air. Jakob felt fear hastening his brother’s breathing, and for the thousandth time, he prayed Papa was right—that whoever held the guns would see they were just boys and in no way a threat to the tsar … that they might not assume they were Jews, but simply orphans, like so many others in the land, all running from something, starving flesh stretched tight over their ribs.
It was a wonder they survived that night—or any of the others—when Peter had done his best to carve a shelter out of the several feet of snow on the ground. They dared not light a fire. The sounds of gunfire mixed with memories of the guttural screams of his mother and sisters that would not leave Jakob’s ears, and as he crawled into the little cave in the snow, he was once again stuck in the cupboard, hiding and too afraid to help or cry out or even try to defend his family. Screams and cries and shotgun blasts. On and on and on it went.