The Endearment

by LaVyrle Spencer

  Nedda bravely put her hand over the back of James' where it lay on the top rail of the fence. “I am happy we found her. I did not know before how terrible it would actually be to lose a sister or brother.”

  “I didn't either. Anna and me, we been together all our lives. I mean, she's just always been there takin' care of me. I never stopped to think how horrible it would be without her.”

  Nedda removed her hand from his, but watched his face. “Where's your mama and papa, James?”

  “Our ma is dead and our—” He swallowed, making the sudden manful decision to trust Nedda with the truth, no matter what she'd feel. He had seen his and Anna's lies hurt Karl enough. For himself now, he chose to be straightforward right off and avoid the long-reaching tentacles of lies. “We never knew our pa, Anna and me. And you might as well know the truth, Nedda. It's a pretty sure bet we each had a different pa. See, our ma really was never too glad to have either one of us. That's why Anna and me had to stick together so close, else we wouldn't have anybody.”

  Nedda was stricken by the idea of a mother who didn't want her children. “I guess Anna's awful special to you, huh?”

  “Ya, she sure is.” James didn't even realize that his answer sounded like Karl's might have. “I mean, golly, it's almost more special when somebody isn't your full blood and they still . . . they—” James couldn't finish. He was recalling all the times Anna had bundled him protectively off to St. Mark's, or promised she'd find them a better life. He remembered how she had refused to leave him behind to come here to Karl. He thought, too, of her recent misery, helpless to find any answer for it himself.

  “I guess what you say is Anna's not even your whole sister but she loves you like as if she was. Ya, James?”

  He scuffed at nothing with the toe of his boot, looked down with a strange uncomposed feeling upon him. He nodded his head. He thought for a moment, then asked plaintively, while looking up at the stars, “Nedda, what makes people who love each other not want each other to know it?”

  “You mean your ma?”

  “No, not her! I never cared a fig about her. It's Karl and Anna I'm talkin' about. There . . . there's something wrong between them and I'd give anything to fix it, but I don't know how. Heck, I don't even know what it is.”

  “Do they fight?”

  “That's just it. No!” James sounded frustrated. “If they did, maybe they'd straighten it out. Instead, they just treat each other—I don't know what to call it. Polite, I guess. You know how your ma and pa laugh and he pinches her and everything?”

  “Ya, but my papa is a big tease.”

  “Don't you see? That's how Karl and Anna used to be when we first came here. See, they've only been married since the beginning of summer. They seemed to get along so good and then I said something and—” He swallowed, thinking he would give anything if he could take back the truth he'd revealed when he thoughtlessly spewed out all he had to Karl. “I think I caused all this trouble between them because I told Karl something one day that he can't forget.”

  “About Anna?”

  “No. That's why I can't figure out the whole mess. It was about our ma. She was . . . She was a . . .”

  “A what, James?”

  “A prostitute,” he finally got out, waiting for Nedda to run in shocked disapproval back to her family.

  Instead, she remained steadfastly beside him. “I don't know what that is.”

  “But Nedda, you're a year older than me!”

  “I still don't know what it is. My English is not so good yet. Some words I haven't learned.”

  He searched for some way to say it.

  She sensed his struggle and said, “It doesn't matter, James.”

  “Well, it matters to Karl. And if he didn't know, I think everything would still be okay between him and Anna. At the same time, I just can't believe he would hold it against her if he didn't like our ma. He's a fair man. He just wouldn't do that.”

  “You really like Karl, don't you?”

  “Almost as much as Anna. He's . . .” But it was impossible to encapsulate all he felt for Karl. “He gave us the only home we ever had. I just wish whatever is between him and Anna would get straightened out so they'd be happy again.”

  “It will, James, I just know it will.”

  He turned to look at her face squarely. “Thanks for listening anyway, and for coming to help us find Anna.”

  “Don't be silly.”

  “I guess . . . I guess I did look pretty silly, how I acted when we found Anna, but, golly . . .” He felt sheepish to have had Nedda see him clinging to his sister's skirts like such a baby.

  But then Nedda said something quite wonderful that made him forget how he'd clung to Anna and cried.

  “You know something, James?”

  “What?”

  “I'm kind of glad all this happened.”

  “Glad?”

  “Ya. Because you rode all that way to our house in the dark by yourself.”

  “It's not that far,” James said in a hushed pride.

  “In the dark alone it is,” she insisted.

  “So, why are you glad?”

  “Because now that you did it once, you can do it any time—come over, I mean.”

  “I can?”

  “Sure. You don't have to wait for Karl and Anna to come. See you day after tomorrow, James.” Then she was gone to join her family, and Karl bade them goodbye at their wagon.

  When the Johansons left, Karl clapped a big hand on James' shoulder. “You did a man's job tonight,” he praised.

  “Yessir,” James replied, so much more in his heart he was unable to say.

  They stood a while in silence before Karl added, “She is a cute little thing, that Nedda.”

  “Yessir,” James said again, swallowing. Then he wisely offered, “I'd like to go out and see to Belle and Bill tonight if you don't mind, Karl.”

  “I do not mind. Just make sure you do not smoke any pipes out there like I do. Your sister would not like it.”

  “Don't worry. I just got some thinking to do.”

  “I will leave the latchstring out.”

  “Goodnight, Karl.”

  “Goodnight, boy.”

  Anna watched Karl as he entered. He walked to the fireplace and stood facing it. He cradled both of his cheeks in his hands, dug his fingertips into his eyes, then sighed heavily as he rubbed his hands downward and dropped them from his cheeks. His shoulders drooped.

  “Karl?”

  He whirled around. “Anna, you are awake,” he said, coming to the bedside.

  “I have been for some time now. All the while you and Kerstin were whispering in Swedish outside. What were you talking about, Karl?”

  “About you.”

  “What about me?”

  “She said you will need some saleratus for those bites.”

  But Anna didn't believe him. Tears sprang to her eyes. “I am nothing but trouble to you, Karl. I'm even trouble to the Johansons.”

  “They are good people. They do not mind.”

  “But I mind, Karl, I mind. I never should have come here.” She lay on her side, watching his knees as he stood beside the bed.

  He did not know what to reply. On one hand was a great engulfing sympathy for her. On the other, that great engulfing hurt she had caused him. Yes, it was still there. He longed to go back to the days before he had guessed the truth.

  “It is too late to think of that now,” he said. “Your face is still all streaked with ashes, Anna. You had better wash it before you fall asleep again. There is warm water for you.”

  She struggled to sit up, and he came to take her by an elbow and help her. To have him touch her thus—with polite consideration, even though he had not even argued when she'd said she should never have come here—took her apart at the fringes again. But she bit back the tears and went out to the washbench and cleaned her face, hands and neck in the dark.

  She came back inside and ducked behind the blanket to change into her
nightgown. The curtain hung now like a gonfalon, a constant reminder of the night Karl had pulled it down and taken it with them to the barn.

  He was waiting for her when she emerged. “I have made a paste of saleratus and water,” he said. “It will relieve the itching for tonight.”

  She raised her hands to her face self-consciously, touching it, testing it. Even without a mirror, she could tell it was puffed and swollen. “I'm really a mess.”

  “Here, this will help.”

  “Thank you, Karl.”

  She sat down on the edge of the bed and patted the paste onto her face.

  “Take care you do not get it into your eyes,” he warned.

  “I'll be careful.”

  Karl hovered listlessly, feeling awkward standing there waiting for her to be finished and get into bed so he, too, could lie down.

  She covered her face, neck and the backs of her hands. But the paste needed drying to be effective. Sitting there waiting for it, she started twitching. She tried to reach to the center of her back, but couldn't.

  “Karl, they got me all over. Scratch me back there,” she said, wriggling.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed behind her. While he scratched her back, she began scratching her ankle, then her arms and soon her chest.

  “Ya, they got you good, little one,” he agreed. When he realized what he'd said, his fingers stopped moving.

  Suddenly she too fell still, the bites forgotten momentarily, while she let the endearment wash over her.

  But the itching started again, so she asked, “Karl, could you put some paste on my back?”

  There followed a long pause while he looked at her shoulder blades, remembering times his palms had run over them while he was carried away by passion. At last he swallowed hard and said, “Hand me the cup.”

  When she had, she unbuttoned the front of her gown and lowered it, exposing her back to him, holding the front over her breasts. It was more skin than she had bared to him since their estrangement had begun. She pictured his eyes scanning her bareness, remembered his hands, gentle in the midst of love, caressing her in the way she now yearned for with daily-increasing fervor. She waited with hammering heart and tingling nerves for his first touch upon her, after all this lonely time. When it came, it was cold, and she flinched, then silently cursed herself, wanting to appear calm before him.

  There were welts as big as peas all over her back, white-centered, rimmed with red. When he touched the first one with the clammy paste, her shoulders twitched away.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, the sight of her bare back raising old, yearning memories within him. He forced himself calmly to continue his ministrations, keeping his eyes from dropping to the shadow of her spine where the gown sagged, swagged, far enough adroop that he knew there was an inviting shadow there. He dabbed all the bites he could see, then—his stomach went tight and his heart went crazy—he lifted the fringe of hair from her neck and found two more bites beneath it.

  She reached an arm back, lifting the hair aside so he could get at the rest hidden there. With racing heart she wondered if he would think her wanton posing so seductively. As if to repudiate his possible thought, she clutched the front of her nighty more tightly to her breasts that ached for the sensual way he had touched them so well, days past.

  The hair that grew in the hollow of her neck was fine and curly. He had never seen it before, for she always let her hair hang free.

  “You must let them dry,” he rasped.

  She sat there holding the hair up, feeling his thigh against her buttock on the edge of the bed, wondering if he was experiencing any of the same overwhelming feelings as she—sexual, pulsing, throbbing. But he sat as still as a statue, and finally the hair dropped. Anna reached blindly over her shoulder, saying, “There are a few more up here. Hand me the cup.”

  Wordlessly, he placed it into her hand, carefully avoiding her fingers. He saw her gown drop to her waist, saw her chin lower as she looked down at herself, watched her elbows moving as she touched the paste to her skin. He need not see the front of her to remember. He felt blood surge through his loins, and a tightening contract his chest. He tried to think of her as he had when he was writing letters to her, as his little whiskey-haired Anna. But even as want crept over him, he found himself wondering how many others had seen her brush the back of her hair away from her neck so seductively. No matter how many others there had been, he could not help placing his hand around her neck, squeezing her hair lightly against it.

  Anna's eyes drifted closed and she leaned back, lifting her chin, pushing more firmly into his spanning hand. It was warm, even through her hair, speaking of desperation and hope, making her want to turn quickly and be taken into his forgiving arms. But it had to be him beckoning her to return to them.

  “Anna,” he whispered in a choked voice, “there are things we must talk about.”

  “I can't go on like this much longer,” she managed, tears in her voice.

  “Neither can I.”

  “Then why do you?” She could feel her own breath, battling its way up her throat past the heart, which threatened to choke her with its clamor.

  “I cannot forget it, Anna,” he despaired.

  “You don't want to forget it. You want to keep remembering it and keep me remembering it, too, so I will always know I was once bad.” Her eyes still remained closed.

  “Is that what I am doing?”

  “I . . . I think so.”

  A very long, silent minute eased by, nothing more than crickets, fire and breath speaking.

  “Can you blame me?” he asked.

  The pain in his question became magnified within her own heart. She leaned yet against his hold, the hair now hot where he enclosed it about her neck. “No,” she whispered.

  “Did you think that if I guessed, I would let it pass?”

  “No.”

  “I have tried to put it from my mind. But it is there, Anna. Every minute I am awake it is waiting there and I cannot forget it.”

  “Do you think I can?”

  “I do not know. I do not know you well enough to know such things about you.”

  “Well, I can't, Karl. I can't forget it either. But I'd give anything if I could make it so it had never happened.”

  “But that cannot be.”

  “So will you hold it against me forever?”

  “You are my wife, Anna! My wife!” he said intensely, squeezing her neck. “I took you to me believing you were pure. Do you know what it means to a man to learn that others have gone before him?”

  Stung, shamed, she felt his words pierce her heart. So he had thought all this time that her scruples were that low. “Not others, Karl, only one.”

  Anger and hurt surged through him. “Only one? To me you say only one! You might as well say lightning is only fire after it has struck me down. Do you know that is how I felt that day?” His hand tightened painfully for a moment. “I felt like I was struck by lightning, only it was not kind enough to kill me. It only left me burned and blistered instead.” The hand dropped from her hair as if the sensation were upon him presently.

  “Karl, I never meant for you to find out,” she said, ineptly. “I thought—”

  “Don't you think I know that? There is no need for you to say it now. I know what a fool you must have thought me when I did not even guess that night in the barn. Green Karl! Green as the spring grass. I thought we were learning together that night.”

  Misery swept through Anna, coupled by her need to have him believe her. “We were.”

  “Do not lie to me any more. I forgave you all the other lies I discovered. But this one I have great trouble forgiving. I do not know if I ever can.”

  “Karl, you don't understand—”

  “No, I do not understand, Anna.” His voice quivered with intensity. “I am a person who does not understand the selling of what should only be won with love. I have thought to myself so many times, why did Anna do such a thing? How could she? Do you know
that I have even started to think that if you had done this with a man you loved I was wrong not to forgive you? But to do it for money, Anna . . .” His voice trailed away. When it came again, it was heavy with defeat. “He did pay you, Anna, didn't he?”

  She only nodded, then her chin dropped down to her chest.

  “A man old enough to be your father . . .” His words had the woeful tune of a lament.

  “Don't do this to yourself, Karl,” she whispered at last.

  “It is not Karl who does it to himself, it is you who have done it to me.” His agonized voice drove on, killing her, making her bleed with regret. “How I thought of you as my little whiskey-haired Anna. All those months, waiting for you, thinking of how it would be to have you here, to build the log house and have you here so I would not have to be alone ever again. Do you know how alone I feel now? It was much better—the kind of being alone I felt before you came. This now—some days I do not think I can bear it.”

  Dread surged through Anna, but she knew she must ask the question which followed. “Do you want me to leave, Karl?”

  He sighed. “I do not know what I want any more. I have spoken vows to love and honor you, and have sealed those vows with an act of love. I do not believe this vow can be sidestepped by turning you away. Yet I cannot honor you. I am torn in pieces, Anna.”

  As it had the first time she'd heard him pronounce it, her name falling from his lips with that beloved accent, endeared him to her as never before. “As soon as I met you, that very first day, I knew that this was how you'd feel if you ever learned the truth.”

  “Could you not tell by my letters that I am . . .”

  “That you are forgiving, Karl?”

  They both realized how utterly untrue that sounded right now.

  “Accepting, Anna. Accepting. Do you understand? If you had told me beforehand I would have accepted.”

  “No, you wouldn't have, Karl. Even you aren't that big. You think if I had written to you and told you I was a prostitute's daughter and I had a kid brother I felt responsible for, you'd have brought us here willingly?”

  Hearing it put that way, Karl, too, doubted what his reaction would have been.