by Beverly Bird
Joe was at the woodstove, and didn’t hear her come in. She heard him swear mildly and was startled. Another contradiction, she thought.
“I can help,” she heard herself offer.
He turned toward her. His face was such a study in torment that it took her breath away.
“Do you know,” he said slowly, “that I never once touched this contraption until the day after Sarah died.”
Kim couldn’t think of anything to do except nod. She eyed the “contraption” and tried to gauge what he was attempting to make on it.
“I’m not much of a cook, but I can scramble eggs,” she volunteered. “Although I’m not sure I can do it on that thing.”
He shook his head and threw the whole frying pan into the sink. When he turned on the faucet steam hissed up angrily. “I’m going to give up the challenge and throw some cereal into a bowl,” he decided.
“Where are all those women who were here yesterday? Can’t they help?”
His dark eyes flicked to her. “They’re gone, thank heaven. Most of them were Sarah’s sisters. They won’t speak to me for a while now after I chased them away. And Katya seems to be suffering a spell of morning sickness. She came down earlier to feed the children, then she went back to her room.”
“Morning sickness?”
“She hasn’t said as much, but I can’t think what else it might be.”
Kim put a hand to the back of one of the chairs to steady herself. The Wallace clan was certainly blooming. She had never believed any of them would ever allow themselves the chance to procreate—just in case Edward’s genes lingered and kept sprouting like a bad seed. Susannah, of course, had been an accident, though she was a beloved one. And Suze seemed to have gotten a good dose of Bobby Guenther’s genes, instead, thank God.
“Are you German?” she asked bluntly, then she flushed. “I mean, not you particularly.” She waved a lame hand. “Your people in general.”
He watched her levelly. “Yes.”
“So where does the Dutch come from? You know, Pennsylvania Dutch?”
“Ah. Well, it’s kinder than some of the things they call us. It’s not Dutch, actually. It’s Deutsch. It’s German, our dialect.”
“But you speak English.”
“Not always.”
Her heart started pounding hard. They were German. “That’s wonderful,” she murmured.
“Is it?” He raised a brow at her curiously.
Kim decided not to pursue the subject. Not yet, not now. She looked around the kitchen. “Where are Jake and Adam?”
“Adam has a small woodworking shop in the village. He’s gone over there for the morning.”
“A what?” she asked, startled.
“He carves things, little gewgaws in Amish motifs.”
“Adam does?”
“Turns out he has quite a flair for it.” Joe went to a cupboard and brought out a box of cereal that looked somehow incongruous in this kitchen—a piece of mainstream America caught in a nineteenth-century environment. He poured two bowls without asking if she wanted any.
“I’ll tell you, I was worried for him when he first decided to settle here with us, with Mariah,” he continued. “I just couldn’t see him farming like the rest of us.”
“No more than I can see him carving little wooden gewgaws,” she blurted.
Joe’s half smile came back. “Chasing cows,” he said, “trying to squeeze milk out of their udders. Can you picture it?”
Kim laughed, heard herself, and was shaken all over again. When was the last time she had laughed? Then she had another disturbing thought. She had probably done it around the last time he had.
“It didn’t seem Adam’s style,” Joe agreed. “Unfortunately, there are limited things we may do here to earn a living, according to the ordnung.”
“That damned thing again.”
Both his brows went up this time. “Yes.”
“I thought Adam was rich.” She remembered Mrs. Madigan talking of glorious houses all over Texas.
“Not so much anymore.”
“So he’s carving gewgaws.”
“He’s opened the shop in the village. He sells them there, as well as quilting and samplers that our women make. It satisfies him most, I think, because he’s putting a little independent money in the women’s pockets. There won’t be another Katya if he can help it. He’s joined us, but he’s done it on his terms.”
Kim nodded. “He’s a Wallace.” Then she frowned. “What do you mean, another Katya? How can he prevent that?”
“If it wasn’t for her courage, she would have been trapped here forever, depending upon others. She had to leave her husband. He was a drunkard and he abused her. But we don’t recognize divorce, so there’s never been any reason for a grown woman to have to support herself here before. She was trapped between two worlds, between the ugly intrusion of yours and the rigidity of our own. So she was living with Mariah and Adam, living off their charity.” He was pouring milk into the bowls now.
Where was Susannah? Kim worried. Had Katya fed her, too? She opened her mouth to ask, and found that she trusted Susannah was just fine with these people. It wasn’t as though she was off negotiating L.A.’s streets on her own. Had she been sick, Kim knew someone would have told her.
“I think Adam just wants to make very sure that if a situation like Katya’s ever arises here again, then the woman in question will have some small income and independence to fall back on,” Joe was saying.
“And the ordnung allows this?”
He hesitated only a moment. “Yes. In this gemeide, anyway. We decided that since quilting and embroidery are acceptable pastimes, there’s no harm in selling items to you folks and taking your money. We’d rather have the anner Satt Leits pawing through our handiwork in the village than driving our back roads in their ferocious automobiles, crashing into our buggies and horses.”
Kim’s eyes widened. “Has that ever happened?”
“At times.”
She didn’t have to be told that the result had been ugly. She felt a surprising spurt of indignation on behalf of these people and their world. She sat, scooping up a spoonful of the cereal. Cereal, for God’s sake. She never ate cereal. It seemed so...wholesome. “So whatever happened to Katya’s first husband?” she asked at length.
“Ah,” Joe said as he sat across from her. “Well, Frank came to our new gemeide and repented for a brief while in the hope of getting her back. If she hadn’t left the settlement, she would have been forced to return to him once we were forced to lift his meidung.”
“You can say you’re sorry and have that whole thing removed?” she asked, surprised.
“Yes. We’re not unforgiving, Kimberley, because God is not.”
“I don’t know Him well enough to say,” she admitted.
He watched her for a long time, then he nodded without answering.
“So,” she prompted, needing to change the subject. “Katya’s first husband?”
“When he realized he’d lost her anyway, that she had run and wasn’t going to return, he saw no sense in staying off the liquor, I suppose. We all knew his being sober wouldn’t last anyway. If he had gotten her back, no doubt he would have immediately returned to his old ways. As it was, he went back to drinking whiskey behind his bam. He missed a couple of Church Sundays, came to one intoxicated, and we threw the meidung on him all over again. Most of us were relieved to do so.”
“But isn’t he a threat to her now that she’s come back here?”
“Not as long as Jacob lives and breathes.”
She considered that a moment and nodded. Yes, she decided, Jake would fiercely protect what was his. She thought again of their discussion last night, of the sense of responsibility he seemed to feel for their childhood.
His undeserved guilt killed her appetite. She pushed her cereal away.
“Please don’t tell me Jake’s off on a street corner playing the banjo and selling flowers,” she muttered. “There’s only
so much shock my system can stand.”
Joe laughed again. Then his eyes became appraising. “No. At least, I hope not.” He paused. “I like your sense of humor.”
Kim felt something odd scoot through her. It was pleasure and panic. It was warmth and cold. “I’m surprised it’s still there at all,” she answered finally.
“It’s what saves us, I think.”
“Has it saved you?”
His face went hard and pained again. “No. But I haven’t truly given it a chance.” He changed the subject abruptly. “Jake took your car into Lancaster to get the tailpipe and the muffler replaced.”
“What?”
Kim was on her feet again in an instant. She ran into the hall and looked around wildly, as though expecting to find her brother there, with that lopsided grin she remembered from her childhood, the one that said it was just a joke. But he wasn’t there and her anger bloomed. She raced to the front door and stormed out onto the porch.
Her car was gone.
She stomped her foot. “Damn it, he can’t do this! What’s he doing?”
“Unless I badly miss my guess, he’s making those amends he spoke of last night.”
She whirled around to find that Joe had followed her. He was standing at the inner door. She gave him an indignant look. Joe shrugged.
“You were both shouting loud enough I’m sure people heard you in the next county,” he explained. “I wasn’t eavesdropping.”
Kim’s jaw hardened. “It’s my car, my responsibility. I don’t need him to take care of me! I won’t allow it.”
“I doubt there’s much you can do about it. And would you, if you could? It makes him happy.”
Her eyes narrowed. He thought, right before they did, that they threw sparks. He felt something thump in the area of his chest, but he made himself keep watching her, even as he needed badly to run from the way she was beginning to fascinate him.
“Stop it,” she said. Her angry voice soon scattered his musings. “Stop trying to make me out to be some wonderful and kind and generous person. I’m not. I don’t care about Jake. I don’t want to care about his happiness. I want to fix Susannah and go home.”
Joe nodded thoughtfully. She didn’t want to open up, to care, to leave herself vulnerable to hurt again. But, he knew, there wasn’t always a whole lot one could do to prevent it.
“Then tell him so,” he said finally, nodding in the direction of the street, crossing his arms over his chest.
Kim snapped around again. Her poor blue Mazda was chugging up the street. But it wasn’t burping and sputtering, and the engine didn’t sound like that of a 727.
“Oh, damn it,” she whispered. “Damn, damn, damn.”
Jake parked and got out of the car. And he was wearing that lopsided grin. But not because any of this was a joke. He was thoroughly and disgustingly pleased with what he had done for her, she realized. Tell me what you need, what brought you here. Let me give it to you. I need to give it to you. I need to make amends. Unfortunately, accepting help and charity had never been her strong suit. She’d learned there was always a price to be paid.
Susannah was with him. She popped out of the car right behind him, and she was glowing. “Mom! Guess what Uncle Jake did.”
“What?” she croaked, expecting to hear a recitation of the car’s repairs.
“He punched a horse right in the nose!”
Kim’s jaw dropped. “I beg your pardon?”
“Goliath,” Jake explained, coming up on the porch. “I had to stop by Adam’s place to find out the name of a good garage. His horse got out of line. Ate my cowboy hat. Snatched it right off my head.” His expression was aggrieved, betrayed. “And here I thought we’d had a meeting of the minds last winter.”
“That’s a darned fine horse,” Joe noted.
“With a swollen nose and a mouth full of good suede,” Jake answered. He leaned one shoulder against the jamb of the porch door. “So are we all ready to head into Philly? I told Adam we’d pick him up ten minutes ago, and I want to see if I can buy a new hat while we’re there.”
Kim looked at him. She looked at her car and at Susannah’s grin. She sighed. In the end, she said nothing.
Chapter 7
They all went to Philadelphia. The Mazda held four—tightly. Adam and Jake had taken the two front bucket seats. Katya and Susannah shared the left rear one—they were both small enough to squeeze in side by side. Joe took up the right rear one in its entirety. Kim had been the last one to get to the car, and there’d been no other logical place for her to sit—nor had she felt comfortable making a big deal out of it—so she perched gingerly on his lap.
The doorknob pressed into her back. She squirmed uncomfortably. “You didn’t have to come with us,” she said through gritted teeth.
“Nothing else to do,” Joe answered, his jaw equally set.
“You can’t expect me to believe that. You have that whole damned farm.”
“‘That whole damned farm,’ as you so eloquently put it, essentially lies fallow after the harvest.”
Kim angled her neck to look at him.
“And harvest,” he continued tightly, “was last month.”
“This isn’t your problem,” she countered.
“So you keep saying. To anyone who will listen.”
She crossed her arms over her chest awkwardly and accidentally thumped him in his chest with her elbow. He gave a small grunt. She tried to move forward a little so she could at least breathe without gouging him. Something happened to Joe’s face. His expression twisted, then his eyes widened. And then she felt it, felt him hardening beneath her. Something happened to her breath. And her heart rate. One fell short; the other went wild. For one too long moment their eyes met candidly. Everything in them was naked, without complication. There was just wanting for the sake of pleasure, hunger for the sake of need.
When her gaze finally left him—that almost violet-blue gaze—Joe finally let himself breathe. When she’d first started wriggling, he’d known panic. When she’d kept it up, he’d felt disbelief. Now he was only horrified by how easily and readily and willingly his body responded to her, with absolutely no complicity from his mind.
He had to believe there was no complicity from his mind.
“I thought cars were against your ordnung,” Kim muttered at last.
Joe latched on to the distraction of conversation, perhaps as grateful as he had ever been in his life. His heart was still thudding. The heat lingered. “To own one, yes,” he said, his voice strained. “To ride in one, no.”
“Now that makes a lot of sense.”
“It does. If we owned them, the next thing we’d know the Eitners would be trying to have a fancier one than the Fishers.”
“So what? That’s America.” Her temper flared as she fought against the instinct to move again. She knew that would probably only make things... worse.
“It’s the part of America we don’t care for,” Joe answered shortly. “The ordnung states that no one of us should call attention to ourselves, to appear better or more attractive or wealthier than any other. Pride is a sin. We live together, equal parts of the same community. And not once has any of us had the overriding urge to lift a weapon against another.”
She felt oddly chastened, which did not improve her mood at all.
“Here we are,” Jake announced with jarring cheerfulness.
Kim couldn’t remember the last time she had wanted anything so badly as she wanted to get out of that car and off Joe’s lap. She scrambled out as soon as Jake braked. Susannah caught up with her as they approached the immense conglomeration that was the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia was attached to the south end of it. Kim deliberately put several feet between herself and Joe as they crossed the parking lot. She hung close to Katya and Jake. Suddenly, their company seemed the better part of the bargain.
“Mom?”
“What, baby?” She looked down at her daughter, he
r voice automatically softening.
“How come you’re not happy? This is what we wanted. This is what we came all this way for.”
A million answers came to her tongue: We’ll test their blood, but that doesn’t mean they can help. And I hate having to take anything from them, but for your sake, I would beg. Because marrow is one thing and two hundred ten dollars of car repair is something else again. Because that man over there with the dark beard and the depthless eyes has a way of making me acutely aware of things about myself that I don’t like and I’ve always been comfortable enough with myself before.
Because he makes me want.
Kim let out her breath. “I guess I’m just nervous, that’s all,” she lied. And then Adam reached over and squeezed her shoulder. She jumped; then, preposterously, her eyes filled.
They went inside and traveled an endless maze of blindingly white corridors until they came to the oncology unit. There they were introduced to a Dr. Reginald Coyle, a man Jake assured her was one of the top leukemia and immune deficiency experts in the country. The man had helped him in his search for the little boy and the appointment was a personal favor. They spent an hour in his office. He had Susannah’s medical records faxed in from California. He took Adam’s blood. He took Jake’s. And he told them what Dr. Parra had already told them.
“This is a long shot,” he said, folding his hands on his desk as they awaited the results.
“Why?” Jake demanded. “We’re her uncles.”
Kim thought of how she had protested, only a couple of weeks ago, that she was Susannah’s mother. “Siblings are best,” she explained, her voice strangled.
Dr. Coyle gave her an appraising look. “Yes. That’s correct. Having two identical twins is ideal.”
“So this is second best,” Adam snapped.
“No. Parents are second best,” the doctor countered. “Unfortunately, that wouldn’t appear to be true in this case. As for more distant relations, an uncle has approximately a twenty percent chance of matching.”
Suddenly, Kim was angered by his clinical tone. She searched her daughter’s pale face. Why does he have to talk like this in front of her? She answered herself in the next heartbeat. Because he’s one of the best in the country and he can do anything he likes. I’m not buying his bedside manner. I’m buying his expertise. She shot to her feet to pace the room, too crowded now with too many people.