The Stolen Marriage

by Diane Chamberlain

  They have a maid named Hattie. I guess that means I also have a maid now! That’s another adjustment, turning over my laundry to someone else to do. Not bothering to make my bed or dust the dresser because she’s expected to do it. She’s a wonderful cook, working magic with the little bit of rationed food we can get, and I like her. As a matter of fact, she is the kindest person in the house. She’s the only person around whom I don’t feel uncomfortable.

  And dear Gina, they want to turn me into a Baptist! Henry has informed me in no uncertain terms that I am no longer Catholic. I’ve never met a Baptist in my life till now, and I know nothing about the Baptist religion, but I guess I will find out this Sunday when we go to church. Maybe I won’t be able to go to mass any longer, but I will always be Catholic in my heart.

  I’m so sorry to go on and on this way. Don’t worry about me. This is all new and temporary—a period of adjustment. Henry is building a house for us nearby. I haven’t seen it yet, but I don’t care if it’s a shack—as long as it puts some distance between us and his mother and sister.

  Now tell me all about you. Any news from Mac? How is your mother? Treasure her before it’s too late! And please, please keep in touch. I miss you, Gina. I miss my dear mother. And I miss Vincent more than I can say—I try not to think about him or I won’t be able to function at all. If you should hear from him or learn anything about him, please don’t tell me. I need to put him out of my mind as best I can. I know I can trust you to never reveal my whereabouts—or my condition—to him.

  Oh, Gina, there is so much I’ve done that I wish I could undo!

  With love,

  Tess

  21

  The Krafts had their own pew in the Baptist church. Whether it was theirs in a formal sense or people simply knew to leave it vacant for the family, I didn’t know. Either way, the third pew on the left side was empty when we arrived, while most others were filled. Lucy went into the pew first, followed by Ruth, then Henry and myself. Henry had tried to usher me in to sit next to Ruth, but I’d held back long enough to let him know I’d prefer he sit next to his mother. Although she was treating me civilly, I couldn’t get those things she’d said about me out of my head.

  Sitting in the church, waiting for the service to begin, I was very aware of my “differentness.” My so-called foreign looks. The fact that I’d never before been to a religious service outside the Catholic church. The loneliness that came with knowing not a soul in the church other than the three people I was sitting with—and those three people were near strangers to me as well.

  There was quiet chatter around us as we waited. I kept my gaze straight ahead. I was certain people were looking at me. Certain that the whispering I heard was about me. The church felt all wrong. It was too brightly lit, to begin with. There was no altar, only a lectern standing empty in front of us. No communion rail or crucifix or tabernacle or candles. There were none of St. Leo’s extraordinary frescoes or stained glass or murals. No stations of the cross, no statues. No kneelers! I would have given anything at that moment to be back in my own church. I didn’t belong here and I had the feeling that everyone around me knew it.

  The man who appeared at the lectern wore a suit, like every other man in the church, and it took me a while to realize that he was the minister or preacher or whatever he would be called in a Baptist church. No vestments. Nothing to set him apart from anyone else. He welcomed everyone and then called for announcements. People stood up here and there throughout the church, asking for prayers for a sick aunt, announcing a birth, calling for donations for a youth mission trip. It was like being at a community meeting, not a church service, and I was extraordinarily relieved that the Kraft family refrained from announcing Henry’s brand-new marriage. It was nothing to be proud of, I supposed. I was glad to keep the focus off myself as much as possible.

  After the announcements, Henry handed me a hymnal and we sang a couple of hymns I’d never heard before but that everyone else seemed to know by heart. I stumbled through the words and melodies. Then the minister delivered a sermon about sin, which I tried hard to imagine had not been penned specifically for me. My mind began to drift as he spoke. Where was Vincent going to church this morning? Was he praying for me or had he given up on me altogether? How had he reacted to my letter? Was he angry or was he grieving? Most likely I’d left him utterly confused. He wouldn’t understand that I’d saved him from myself.

  When the service was over and we left the church and congregated outside on the sidewalk, people began to approach us. Henry rested his hand on my elbow in a manner that felt both protective and comforting and I was grateful.

  “So you’re the young lady who swept Hank off his feet,” one woman said, her smile overly curious.

  “What lovely hair you have!” said another. “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen hair quite that thick before.”

  I greeted everyone with a warm smile, trying to imagine them as part of my new church family, but their curiosity didn’t feel like friendliness to me.

  An older man and woman approached us and Hank let go of my elbow to shake the man’s hand. “This is my wife, Tess,” he introduced me. “Tess, this is Hickory’s mayor, Arthur Finley, and his wife, Marjorie.”

  “How do you do?” I smiled at them.

  “Welcome, dear,” Marjorie said. “We’re happy to have you with us.” It felt like the first sincere greeting of the morning.

  “Our Hank is full of surprises,” said the mayor. “How long have you two known each other?”

  “Quite a while,” Henry answered quickly, and I nodded.

  “Well, I hope you’ll be very happy in our beautiful city.” The mayor touched my shoulder and then he and his wife moved on to speak with someone else. I wished they had stayed with us. I wanted to hold on to their kindness.

  I kept a smile on my face, and as I continued to meet people and respond to their comments and questions, I became aware of a girl standing nearby. She was chatting with a group of young women, one of them Jeanetta Gill from the justice of the peace’s office, but her eyes kept darting in my direction and I knew in my bones who she was: Violet Dare. She was a stunner, her white-blond hair in a silky pageboy, her eyes so blue I could see the sky reflected in them from where I stood. Her legs were slender and long, and beneath her charcoal-gray princess coat, I could see that her figure was shapely, the coat nipped in at her tiny waist. I saw Henry nod to her, and watched her turn away from him with a haughty shake of her head.

  “That’s Violet, isn’t it,” I whispered to him.

  Before he could answer, the minister broke through the throng of people and came to stand in front of us. “Mr. and Mrs. Hank Kraft!” he boomed. “Congratulations!”

  Henry smiled at the man, reaching out to shake his hand. “Pastor Smith,” he said, “I’d like you to meet my wife, Tess.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Tess.” The man lightly touched my arm. “Your reputation precedes you.”

  “Thank you,” I said, feeling more awkward than ever. I doubted he’d meant that comment as a compliment.

  “You’re from Maryland, is that right?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Baltimore.”

  “Some wonderful Baptist churches up there. Which one did you attend?”

  “I … actually, I attended a Catholic church.” I glanced at Henry to see the muscles in his jaw contract.

  “Ah, I see,” the pastor said. Then he chuckled. “Well,” he said, “we should get you into a Bible-study class pronto! If you call my office, we can let you know the schedule.”

  “Thank you,” I said, knowing I would never call. From the corner of my eye, I noticed Lucy had walked over to Violet’s cluster of girlfriends. She embraced Violet, who shot me one more glance, then gave Lucy a mournful look. I turned away. I hated being the cause of another girl’s pain.

  I leaned close to Henry, my lips nearly touching his ear. “Can we go, please?” I asked, and he nodded.

  I stood still an
d alone on the sidewalk as he collected his mother and sister, and it seemed as though an invisible wall formed around me, letting the good people of Hickory keep their distance. I was the interloper. The stranger. No one dared get too close.

  22

  Monday morning hit me hard. I woke up from a dream about my mother, shaken, although I couldn’t remember much of what had happened. It had felt so real, though, and as Henry and I walked downstairs and into the dining room for breakfast, I couldn’t shake the feeling of having my mother with me, inside me somehow. Lucy had spent the night at a friend’s house—I was quite certain the friend was Violet—so it was only Ruth, Henry, and myself eating the eggs, ham, and grits Hattie had made for us. Ruth was dressed to the nines, ready to go to a Kraft Fine Furniture board meeting, and Henry was dressed for the office. The two of them talked factory business while I nibbled my breakfast and held the dreamlike memory of my mother close.

  When Henry and Ruth left, I went upstairs and sat in the parlor to read, but I was unable to get my mother out of my mind, and before I knew it, I was crying hard. It was as though the reality of her being gone was only now hitting me. I would never again be able to call her. Talk to her. Hug her. I buried my head in my hands and let out the grief I’d been holding in for the past couple of weeks.

  “Miss Tess?”

  I jerked up straight to see Hattie standing in the doorway of the parlor, a pile of folded sheets in her arms. Embarrassed, I brushed the tears from my face.

  “Excuse me, Hattie,” I said, even though she was the one interrupting me. I tried to smile. “I’m just having myself a good cry.”

  Hattie walked into the room and crossed over to one of the upholstered armchairs. With her tall, reedlike build and long legs, she had a way of covering a good distance in very few steps. There was nothing hesitant about Hattie. Not in the confident way she cooked our meals, or mopped the floor, or crossed a room.

  Now she sat down, the neatly folded sheets on her lap, and leaned toward me. “Mr. Hank told me your mama passed,” she said. “That’s what got you in the doldrums?”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “He say she fell out and smacked her head on somethin’.”

  I nodded. “She probably had a seizure from diabetes.” Would Hattie know what diabetes was?

  “She had the sugar,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said. “The sugar.”

  “And you missin’ her. Wish you could talk to her one more time?”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “I can help you,” she said, “but you got to promise you ain’t gonna tell Mr. Hank or Miss Ruth what I say. Right?”

  I stared at her. “Hattie,” I said, “I think this is one of those problems that’s beyond help.”

  “No, Miss Tess, you wrong. You got to talk to Reverend Sam.”

  “Who’s Reverend Sam?”

  Hattie looked toward the door as though someone might overhear us, even though no one else was home.

  “He talk to the spirits.”

  I had to laugh. “I’m afraid I don’t believe in that sort of thing,” I said.

  “That’s because you ain’t never talked to the likes of Reverend Sam,” she said, smoothing her hand over the pile of sheets. “I see him whenever I’m in the mood to have a visit with my brother Conway.”

  “Conway?”

  “He passed when I was ten year old. Reverend Sam found him for me some years back and we been visitin’ ever since. Sam don’t ask for money or nothin’. He just do it out of a kindly heart.”

  I kept my smile in check as I wondered how to respond. If she got some comfort from this Reverend Sam I didn’t want to take it away from her.

  “That’s wonderful,” I said. “But I don’t think it would work for me.”

  “Oh, honey, it works for everbody,” she said. “I can give you a wrote-down-on-paper guarantee. My man see him too, from time to time. He likes to have a chat with his daddy that passed.”

  “You have a man, Hattie?” I asked, surprised. How quickly I’d come to think of her as “ours,” with no life outside the Kraft house.

  “Yes, ma’am, I sure do. Oscar. He’s a fine man. Works over at that textile mill by Mr. Hank’s factory.” She grinned at me. “But that’s between me and you, now, hear?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I’m so pleased to hear you have someone.” I really was, and I was touched she would confide it in me when she’d known me such a short time.

  “And like I say, he thinks the world of Reverend Sam too.”

  “Well,” I said, thinking it was time to bring this “Reverend Sam” conversation to a close. At least she’d gotten me out of my “doldrums.” “Thank you for telling me about him.”

  We both turned at the sound of a door opening and closing downstairs, and Hattie immediately jumped to her feet, sheets in her arms. She didn’t want to be caught taking a break. Or perhaps she didn’t want to be caught talking to me. She walked toward the door, then turned back to look at me.

  “You gonna go see him?”

  “I don’t think—”

  “He lives in Ridgeview,” she said, glancing toward the hallway and the stairs. “You know where that’s at—Colored Town? Big blue house on Second Avenue. Diffent from all them other houses. Can’t miss it.”

  “Thank you,” I said again. “And I’m sorry you lost your brother, Hattie.”

  “Oh, he’s still around, Miss Tess,” she said from the doorway. “Jest like your mama.”

  23

  I kept to myself my first few weeks in the Kraft house. Around Ruth and Lucy, I feigned ignorance as though I had no idea they knew I was carrying a child. But I discovered that Henry rather liked talking with me about the baby. At night, we’d lie on our mismatched twin beds and have long conversations about names—he liked Andrew after his grandfather while I favored Philip after my father. If it was a girl, I wanted to name her after my mother—Maria—but Henry refused to even consider it. “Mary” was as close as he was willing to come. I was so certain my baby was a boy that I didn’t make an issue out of it. It was clear that Henry thought his claim on naming our male child was stronger than mine. It would be a Kraft, after all. We ultimately decided on Andrew Philip Kraft.

  “Not Andy,” Henry said. “Never Andy.”

  Secretly, though, I thought of the little charmer inside me as “Andy” all the time. I loved the cuteness of the name. I loved imagining what he would look like. My dark hair and Henry’s blue eyes? What a handsome combination that would be. And I loved Henry’s excitement. He was dreaming of the future with our child, just as I was. Finally we had something in common. It was thoughts about my baby that got me through those early days in the Kraft house. He—or she—kept me going.

  When Henry and I weren’t talking about the baby, though, our marriage felt empty and false. Henry touched me only in front of others, as though he wanted people to think we were a close and loving couple when we were anything but. In his bedroom, there wasn’t even the pretense of us being husband and wife. He was not unkind to me, but rather … businesslike. Our marriage had been a business arrangement right from the start, I realized. I shouldn’t have expected anything else. Might I someday fall in love with him? Would he someday fall in love with me? I prayed that would happen, yet how could I ever give my heart to a man when it still, deep down, belonged to another?

  When Ruth and Lucy were out and I felt free to poke around, I explored the house. I read some of the books in the well-stocked library, and I felt some warmth toward Ruth when I paged through the family scrapbook she kept on the small table by the library window. The scrapbook was filled with photographs and newspaper clippings that obviously had meaning to her. Her wedding announcement was in there. Henry’s and Lucy’s birth announcements. The whole history of the Kraft family told through newspaper articles, starting with the building of the factory in the late nineteenth century. I couldn’t believe I was now a part of that family, although I imagined there wouldn’t
be a mention of me in the book until baby Andrew—or Mary—was born.

  Outside the Kraft house, I felt conspicuous. Once I took a cab into town while Henry was at work, wanting to get to know Hickory better. I walked past the shops and restaurants, learning my way around, and I felt as though the gaze of everyone I encountered was on the middle of my body. Everyone suspected, yet no one said a word—to me, at least. My girdle had become unbearable and I knew that soon I would need to buy maternity clothes and people would then know what they’d already guessed. Although she never spoke to me about my condition, Ruth stared at my stomach every time I walked into the room, and she spoke to me with a politeness that I knew masked her disdain.

  Lucy, on the other hand, didn’t bother to hide her feelings. She was downright derisive of me. She criticized my hair, which I always struggled to tuck neatly into a bun and victory roll.

  “You need to cut it,” she told me over the breakfast table one morning when it was just the two of us. “And you should really have it thinned. It’s too much hair to do anything with. Plus, you need to tweeze those eyebrows.”

  I’d been tweezing my eyebrows since I was fifteen. I was confident they were well shaped, but even so they were thick and dark. They’d always been my curse. My dark looks had fit in perfectly in Little Italy, but here they set me apart, as though I needed anything else to make me feel like a stranger in Hickory.