Balm of Gilead

by Adina Senft

  “Handmade on an Amish farm by potter—honestly, how many times do I have to tell them I’m not Amish?—Glaze recipe handed down through the generations—all one of them. Available only as shown, by special order. At least that part is true.”

  “Skip to the bottom,” Ginny suggested.

  “Set of four…two sizes…a hundred and forty dollars a plate?” Henry felt as though someone had given him a good hard shove in the solar plexus.

  “Look what they’re asking for the batter bowl.”

  “Four hundred dollars. For one bowl.” Henry sat back. “No one is going to buy these. Or if they do, they won’t use them. Who is going to bang a spoon on the side of a four-hundred-dollar batter bowl?”

  “I would,” Ginny said. “And do. I like the batter bowl you made me.”

  “That was entirely worth the price of a kiss.” He covered the hand that lay on his shoulder with his, and craned to look up at her. “But not four hundred dollars.”

  “Didn’t you talk about the price the pieces would retail for with Dave Petersen?”

  “They hadn’t set them yet when he told me what they needed for the layout. They wanted to build the demand—and now I see why.”

  “Well, all I can say is I hope you’re getting a nice chunk of it.”

  “Maybe I should ask for more.”

  But Ginny only smiled, squeezed his shoulder, and went back to her chair, where she pulled out a pad of lined yellow paper. He did his best to drag his attention off the catalog and concentrate, but it wasn’t easy. How could a man live up to that kind of price tag? What if people thought his pieces weren’t worth it? What if they went online and said the kinds of things that the newspaper art critics had said back in Denver, years ago?

  He was really putting himself out there, allowing himself to be blandished by the praise of Dave Petersen and the marketing team. He shouldn’t have listened. He should have stayed small, stayed humble, given people the value they paid for and no more.

  Just like an Amish man.

  “Henry? Did you hear me?”

  “Sorry, honey. What?”

  “I know you’ve got sticker shock, but I need you with me, here. How many should we expect on your side of the family?”

  “I’ll invite all of them, but they won’t come.”

  “It’s the right time of year—wedding season. And train fare from Ohio isn’t so bad in the winter.”

  “They won’t come, Ginny.”

  “Because you’re marrying a black, divorced refugee from the Mennonite church?”

  “If she were still alive, my mother would love you, refugee or not. But my brothers and sisters won’t come all that way for a worldly wedding.”

  “If you were marrying an Amish woman, would they?”

  “Oh, yes. But they can’t be seen to support what they view as sin, you see.”

  “I can’t say I do. This is the first time I’ve ever heard of marriage being a sin. Usually it’s the lack of it that’s the problem.”

  He had to admit that from that point of view, she was right. But then there was his family’s point of view, which, like his father, was bound strictly to the letter of the law.

  “What about our Amish friends here? Do you think they’ll see it that way?”

  “Paul and Barbara will come, don’t worry. It’s just the ones back home that won’t.”

  “And Sarah and Caleb? And Priscilla’s family, and Katie Schrock’s?”

  The thought of Sarah Yoder attending his wedding…watching him with those gray eyes that saw more than he wanted them to…judging him and finding him wanting…oh no. With any luck, there would be so many weddings among the Gmee that week that she’d have to send her regrets. An Amish bride invited the entire church, as well as relatives from out of town. In some communities, there were multiple weddings every Tuesday and Thursday from November until February, and people had to run from one to another in order to attend the ones they’d been invited to on the same day.

  “You’re going to Katie’s wedding, so I’m sure her family will be happy to come to yours,” Henry said. “You’ve been good to Priscilla, too.”

  In the leftmost column on her pad, Ginny began a rapid list of names, and in less than five minutes, had reached the bottom line and flipped the paper over. “Is everyone going to fit in the Inn?” Henry inquired. These people would be his future family, and her friends would be his friends. But there sure were a lot of them—and this was only the first cut. “Maybe I should get on the phone and start booking rooms in town.”

  “We’ll need to,” Ginny said absently, her pen busily marching down the second page. “Mama and Daddy can stay here, and Sienna and her family, since they’re coming from California, and Grammy, because she’s eighty-six, but everyone else will need to be put up at the motels.” She looked up. “And did I tell you I’m going to Philadelphia to look for a dress?”

  “Not until now.”

  “You don’t mind, do you?” She looked honestly concerned that he might.

  “Of course not. I don’t think you’d find anything suitable in Willow Creek…or Whinburg…or even Lancaster.”

  “There isn’t even a dress shop in either of the first two. I could make it, I suppose, but it’s much more fun to make a weekend of it with Mama and my sisters. We never got a chance to before.” Her gaze held his. “I don’t suppose you got a chance to, either. Before.”

  It was just like Ginny to bring it up as if it were perfectly normal—that subject that he’d never confided to anyone. Well, except Sarah, and that didn’t count.

  “Allison and I were only engaged for a couple of weeks before the accident,” he said. “We hadn’t even set a date yet, never mind thought about guest lists and dresses and where people were going to stay.” He braced himself, waiting for that debilitating stab of pain in his heart that always accompanied any thought of Allison—the accident—the drunk driver that had killed a happy future as surely as he’d killed a vibrant, bright twenty-eight-year-old, who by now might have been a partner in the law firm where she’d been hired right after passing the bar.

  But the pain had softened into memory, it seemed. He could still see the sparkle in her eyes, but he could also remember the joke that had prompted it. He could focus on the loss and the injustice of it, or, as Ginny had told him not so long ago, he could focus on the happiness Allison had left in her wake like the scent of perfume.

  Ginny believed in happiness. And now he would, too.

  Henry got up, came around the table, and tilted her face up to his for a kiss that meant business.

  “What was that for?” she said a little breathlessly, straightening her bandanna and looking as though she was trying to remember what she’d been doing.

  “I can never appreciate you too much,” he told her. “You amaze me.”

  “You just hold that thought, Henry Byler. When we’ve been married for twenty years, I’ll remind you of this moment.”

  He kissed her again, just because he could. “When we’ve been married for twenty years, you still won’t need to.”

  Chapter 3

  Priscilla Mast had often been struck by the differences between men and women. Oh, not the obvious ones—men working out in fields and factories, women working in home and garden. Men growing beards when they were married, women changing the color of the Kapp. Men driving, women riding alongside. Men speaking in church, women keeping silence. Those were the obvious things. But there were subtler things that became more obvious the older she got.

  For instance, if she had been planning to travel a long distance to return to people who cared about her, she would have found out train schedules and bus schedules, decided on them, bought a ticket, and been able to write and tell her family that she would be arriving on this day at this time in this place. Her family could count down the days, hours, and finally minutes until they could see her again. They would know the train or bus to meet. They would actually be able to look forward to it.

>   But boys? Could they really be as oblivious as this to the simple pleasure of looking forward to something?

  Dear Pris,

  Well, the folks here have given us notice that the snow will be flying soon, and they’ll be closing the ranch to visitors. There will be some more at Christmas—visitors, not snow, but there will probably be lots of that, too—but other than a couple to pull some kids around the ranch in a sleigh, they won’t be needing many horses. So, they’re not going to need me and Simon after Sunday.

  So I guess that means we’re coming home. I hope that’s good news. It is to me. I’ll see you soon, I hope.

  Best,

  Joe

  Boys, honestly.

  Pris folded up the letter and tucked it into the pocket in the side seam of her dress, under her black bib apron. Then she tapped into order the rest of the mail she’d pulled out of the mailbox at the end of the drive, and walked down to the house. It didn’t hold anything else very interesting, except for a new issue of Die Botschaft, and a letter for Mamm from each of Priscilla’s aunts, who lived in Lititz and New Hope and who corresponded with her faithfully every week.

  She would just have to look forward to Joe and Simon’s return in a general sense. At least this way, when they finally did turn up, it would be like walking into the kitchen and having everyone yell “Surprise!” on her birthday. Not that anyone had ever done that, because it was impossible to keep a secret of any kind in their family, but she imagined it would be something similar.

  She handed the mail to Mamm and leaned against the door of the oven, which felt delightfully warm against her legs after the crisp air outside. It smelled heavenly in the kitchen. “I think roasted pork with apples and onions and potatoes and noodles is my favorite meal in the world.”

  Mamm glanced up from her letters and smiled. “Mine, too, except for the chicken roast at weddings. And if I could make a meal out of pecan pie, I probably would.”

  “Is the applesauce done yet?” Priscilla checked the big pot simmering on the stove, and the scent of hot cinnamon wafted into the room. “Mm. If I could bottle this scent and sell it in February, I could make a fortune.”

  “You’re not doing too badly as it is,” Mamm said absently, half her attention on whatever mishap her next oldest sister, who was notoriously clumsy and absentminded, had written to tell her about. It always sounded hilarious when she wrote about it, but Pris was pretty sure things like falling off the kitchen ladder or slipping in a cow pie weren’t all that funny when they actually happened to you.

  Pris left her to her letter and climbed the stairs to her room, where, since Dat had brought home a nice pneumatic sewing machine for Mamm, the old treadle sewing machine had been set up just for her use. Her room over the porch was tiny to begin with, but Dat had built shelves for her fabric, and when the bureau had been moved into Katie and Saranne’s room, he had made boxes with drawers that slid under the bed, leaving just enough room for the sewing machine.

  She was a real businesswoman now.

  And since Pris was working two jobs, Mamm had divided the bulk of her chores between Katie and Saranne, with some of the easier ones going to the twins, who were almost seven. This had the double benefit of more responsibility for the younger ones and a little free time for Pris. As soon as they helped clean up after breakfast and Saranne and the twins left for school, Mamm and Katie would hang out the clothes on the line, or bake, or sew, depending on what day it was. Monday was usually wash day in their district, and Mamm baked on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Tuesdays were sewing, Thursdays were her quilting circle, and Friday was the day she went to town if she needed bulk goods or a pair of shoes.

  Pris worked as a Maud at the Rose Arbor Inn on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and even though she could have quit and focused solely on her second business, she didn’t. For one thing, tourists only came during the summer, and what would she do with herself in the cold months? And for another, she liked it at the Inn, and Ginny had to be the easiest and most fun person to work for in all of Whinburg Township. And now that she was getting married to Henry, she seemed to be the happiest, as well.

  Katie must have heard her go upstairs, because she left off cleaning the bathroom and followed her up the steps and into her room. “Are you sewing?”

  “Ja. Evie Troyer says she’s down to half a dozen pot holders, so I have to get busy.”

  “Want some help?”

  “The piecing goes fast. I’m not worried about that. But if you and Saranne help me with the quilting and binding tonight, I’ll pay you a quarter for every one you finish.”

  “A dollar for four? Do you know how much work is in those things?”

  All too well. “All right, then, a dollar per pair.”

  “Done.”

  Grinning at clinching a deal so easily, Katie leaned companionably on the door frame while Pris organized today’s pieces. Since Evie, the bishop’s wife, had first broached the idea of selling Pris’s pot holders at her stall in the Amish Market, Pris had honed her process to optimum efficiency. Her special pot holders, which were seven-inch pieced squares whose strips and triangles formed the shape of a chicken, had become a favorite among the tourists. Back in June, when she’d had her bright idea, Evie had predicted they’d go for ten dollars apiece, and Pris had laughed.

  Well, she wasn’t laughing now—or if she was, it was for a good reason. While the money she made as a Maud had to go to Dat to help with the household expenses, he had told her that anything she made with her pot holders was her own to keep. For the first time in her life, she had money to spend, and she didn’t have to do anything slightly on the shady side to get it.

  As if she had been thinking the same thing, Katie said, “I’m sure glad you never went to work at the Hex Barn like you wanted to.”

  “So am I.” The Hex Barn was madly popular among the tourists, but it stocked things like Amish-Made Whoopie Pies! that came in a big box from an Englisch bakery in Lancaster, and pot holders and table runners that said right on them they were made in Indonesia. “Dat was right, though it took me a long time to admit it. Imagine if I’d gone to work there, out front where the tourists could see me.”

  “It would be like saying you approved of the nonsense they sell.”

  “How could anyone say with a straight face that those quilts are sewn by local Amish women when I know for a fact they’re quilted by Filipino ladies thousands of miles away?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Simon told me once. He worked on the receiving dock, remember? Boxes of those quilts would come in, all wrapped in plastic.”

  “But the Mennonite ladies do piece them.”

  “They shouldn’t say Amish on them, then. It’s the principle.”

  Katie was silent for a moment, then looked at Pris from under her lashes. “I haven’t heard you mention Simon’s name all summer, except to read it out loud in one of Joe’s letters.”

  “I have no reason to.” And she didn’t. That was all over now—a young girl’s crush—over before it had even begun. “He’s Joe’s friend—our friend. That’s all.”

  “I’ll be glad when they’re home again,” Katie mused. “Jake Byler has gotten really wild. I never realized what a good influence Joe was on him until Joe went to Colorado. Did you hear that he got caught driving someone’s car without a license?”

  “Jake did?” Even for him, that was pretty wild. “What happened? Why would he do such a crazy thing?”

  “Trying to impress some Englisch girl. I guess the sheriff took him down to the station and the girl drove away in the car. I hope she gave it back to whoever it belonged to.”

  “Maybe it was hers.”

  Katie shrugged. “If it had been mine, I wouldn’t be dating Jake anymore.”

  “Me, either. I thought he would have learned some sense after that field caught fire in the spring.”

  “That wasn’t his fault—he helped put it out, didn’t he?”

  Pris nodded, her f
oot working with a steady rhythm as the fabric fed itself under the needle. First strips, then triangles, then put it all together and on to the next one.

  “I wonder if they’ve changed,” Katie said.

  What? “Who?”

  “Joe and Simon, silly. Living among rough men on a dude ranch? Only getting to church three times all summer?”

  “Church was a hundred miles away by bus, Katie.” Pris clipped the threads and lined up the triangles that formed the chicken’s comb. “I don’t think we can blame them for that. Besides, doesn’t the Bible say that where two or three are gathered together in His name, der Herr will be there, too?”

  “Ja, but…on a dude ranch?”

  “Even there. God made those mountains and the land the ranch sits on, didn’t He? And anyway, Joe says the owners are nice people. I don’t think the boys will have changed—but they’ll have some interesting stories to tell.”

  Katie didn’t look convinced as she went away to finish the bathroom and then deal with the kitchen floor, which had to be washed every other day, what with Dat and the boys tramping in from barn and fields. Even though they took their boots off in the mudroom, dirt still came sneaking in.

  Priscilla tried to focus on keeping her seams a perfect quarter-inch wide, but her mind wandered. She’d never given any thought to whether the boys would have changed during their time away. But really, how could they help it? Seeing half the country, seeing the mountains, meeting new people, and living a completely different life…well, it would be odd if they hadn’t changed.

  Maybe Simon will appreciate you more now. Maybe absence has made the heart grow fonder.

  Ach, neh. She would not go there. The very thought made her disloyal to Joe, and she was Joe’s girl. If she’d had a buggy whip for her brain, she’d have used it to bring her unruly thoughts back into line. But since she didn’t, she assembled strips and triangles like a person possessed.