A Fireproof Home for the Bride (26 page)

“What about my grandmother?” Emmy asked, eager to shift to the living.

“Oh, Adelaide,” Josephine murmured, and closed her eyes as though picturing the end of a tragic play. “That was the hardest blow. You recover from the dead.”

She told Emmy of how Lida brought her up after their mother died until 1915, when Lida ran off to marry Ben Nelson. It was clearly hard for Josephine, the way Lida erased her family in order to stitch up her own scars, blaming herself for not being able to save their father. “Though God knows he was hell bent,” Josephine said through a gargle of wine. She gestured around the room. “All of this was eventually left to Raymond, and it wasn’t much at the time. I’ve built most of it with my own money.”

“I see,” Emmy said, knowing her understanding was insufficient solace.

“Ghosts,” Josephine barked in reply. “All of them now. They haunt me, Emmy. When I close my eyes at night they are there, waiting to ask me for a way home. It’s why I built the Jeep house after the second war, so I could find a place to sleep and work without their voices beseeching me to call them up.” She drank down the contents of her glass. “It makes for great novels, but not a very good life.”

Emmy trembled at the thought of whispering ancestors. “It doesn’t seem so terrible.” She had been trying to mollify her aunt out of her wretched mood. Instead Josephine’s brow drew tighter and her lids dropped low enough that she tipped her nose to look down along it.

“It wouldn’t look bad to you, all this
cushion,
but it hasn’t broken my fall.” Josephine tapped a thick nail against the crystal. “Eighteen is such an
important
age. Everything is felt so
deeply
and
poignantly
. I know you think what happened to you with that boy is unique, but it’s not.”

Emmy’s cheeks heated up. She hadn’t realized that Bev would tell Josephine about Ambrose. “It wasn’t what it should have been.” She tipped the contents of the glass through her lips. “He attacked me, forced me…”

“You honestly think there isn’t some girl out there in a car tonight losing her virtue to the wrong man in the wrong way?” Josephine turned her eyes to the ceiling and then brought them back to Emmy with all the power of a door slamming. “It’s not original.”

“Well, it was to me,” Emmy said, this new aunt’s harsh words stinging. “It happened to
me.
” Her spirits, lifted so high by the excitement of her new job, sank under the same old weights. “And now I don’t know how to step over it, but I am trying, I really, truly am.”

“Then you’re where you should be,” Josephine said. “Choosing not to be a victim is brave. I may not like my sister’s choice of leaving her family, but I have to admire her courage for sticking with it, no matter how stupid it seemed from the outside. I’m the one who has to live amongst my mistakes.”

Emmy licked the bitter residue of wine from her teeth, wishing to end the fraught conversation before she learned too much all at once. “It must have been quite a loss.”

“You’ve only begun to learn about loss,” Josephine said, the hardness of her expression honing to an edge that was just as quickly softened by a passing cloud of melancholy. “Wait until you have something really worth losing.”

Emmy stood, wary of what confession Josephine might make next. “I have homework,” Emmy said. “I hope it will be all right to stay one more night. I will find a place tomorrow, I promise.”

“You can stay here,” Josephine said without indicating if she meant for one night or many. Her leveled gaze pinned Emmy with its intensity. “You’re strong enough to make your own way, if the world stops being so damn soft on you.”

It was Emmy’s turn to laugh. “I suppose you’re right about that,” she said, feeling strangely lighter than she had since the conversation had begun.

“Help me to bed,” Josephine asked. “I think I’m just drunk enough to brave that room now. I normally wouldn’t risk it, but I’m in need of new material.” A sly smile worked at the corners of her mouth. “You will forgive me anything I’ve said poorly.”

Emmy helped her aunt to her feet and slung a supporting arm around her tiny waist. “I will,” Emmy soothed. “I will.”

Twelve

The Beauty of Patience

Emmy heard the screen door groan open and then snap shut, followed by the sound of her aunt rustling around in the kitchen. It was finally lunchtime, and Emmy hoped that Josephine would be pleased to see the table properly set, with bread baked that morning and wild-flower honey collected from the beehive behind the old machine shed. Emmy had also picked some fresh green peas from the garden, blanched them, mixed in some sour cream and dill, and then placed them in the icebox to chill.

As the morning summer sunlight pooled in a patch on the day porch’s floor, Emmy looked around the funny little house and marveled at how quickly she had taken to the place. Something about the ancestral objects—portraits of immigrant grandparents, a small handmade chair with a thatched seat, a ceramic washbasin and pitcher full of water on her dresser, which she filled every night and used every morning while imagining having to break the ice on a cold winter’s past—felt right to Emmy. She had slipped easily into this place and began to understand more about herself and her desires as she learned more about her family—the family that existed beyond the place she had grown up in, which had simply become the “small house” in her new lexicon. That seemed like another existence entirely, being a small person in the small house. Now she felt somehow taller, more fleshed out, as though someone had been drawing her and finally decided to set down the pencil and pick up the paint. Even her clothes had color now, the old gray skirts and coats given away. She looked down at her lap and admired the pretty red gingham peasant skirt she’d made for herself. It felt wonderful to have the layers of silk and crinoline fluffing the ruffled layers as the fabric circled her where she sat. Emmy had always liked sewing, but after a few weeks of playing with all the wonderful fabrics that Josephine had collected, Emmy had developed a passion for the skill and tirelessly put together an entirely new and grown-up wardrobe. She’d made Josephine some items by way of thanks: slacks and skirts, a sash for her hair, even a new gardening coat festooned with bright blue roses against a white background. Mostly though, Josephine would ramble around the farm in a pair of jodhpurs and a long-sleeved white shirt, and whether she had just gotten off a tractor or emerged from an outbuilding, she looked as though she’d been riding her horse, Kid, nonstop her entire life.

Emmy set down the copy of “The Yellow Wallpaper” that Josephine had suggested she read, pressed herself up from the wicker rocker, and went to help her aunt. Moving through the ancient house, Emmy took in the portraits of immigrant grandparents and tried to imagine what it must have been like for Lida to be a girl in this space, until one day the dolls of childhood lay forgotten, slumped in the corner where they still lay.

“I’ll get those cooked,” Emmy said, taking the egg basket from her aunt. After the night of the Victrola, they’d never talked again of Emmy staying or not, but fallen instead into a companionable pattern welcome to them both. At times, when Emmy came home after work to find Josephine at the kitchen table, there was a sense that her aunt was happy to see her in a way that felt like relief that Emmy had, in fact, returned.

“Put these in that vase,” Josephine instructed, handing Emmy an armful of gladioli and pointing to a ceramic urn. “I need to wash up.”

Pouring the freshly beaten eggs into the hot pan, Emmy waited for the bottom to set before pushing them around with a wooden spoon. She gazed out the window over the adjacent sink, trying to imagine how she would feel when Bobby drove into the yard in half an hour. She wondered whether he had changed much since she last saw him the night of the canteen. She certainly had changed. The separation had been good for her, though, as she had begun to reconcile the cocoon in which she’d been wrapped with the enormous width of her new, damp wings. A too-familiar spell of uncertainty overcame her, a cold wariness that had filled in the space between her disappointment with Ambrose and her hopes for Bobby. She’d known Ambrose so well for so long, and had been so wrong. How could she possibly be right about Bobby, and if she were, how could she ever know for sure?

“Emmy?” Josephine said, emerging from the washroom and startling Emmy, the spoon in midair over the scrambling eggs.

“Oh.” Emmy smiled, shaking her head. “They’re done.” She divided the eggs between two plates and spooned the cool sauced peas over the top of each, adding a sprig of parsley before placing the food in front of her aunt and sitting down. The steam of the hot eggs drove the earthy scent of the herbs into the air, where it mingled with the fragrance from a twine of pale honeysuckle that Josephine had wound into the long stems of scarlet gladioli.

“I don’t think I can eat,” Emmy suddenly said as her stomach drew into a knot. She looked down at her lap and tried to picture Bobby’s face. The memory was hazy at best, causing her doubts to escalate.

“Exhale, Emmy,” Josephine said, an uncommon look of concern on her face. “He’s just a boy. Not the first, and possibly not your last.” Josephine got up from the table and collected her cigarettes and lighter from the counter, a green glass ashtray from the windowsill. She sat back down, lit two smokes, and handed one to Emmy. Josephine drew deeply on her cigarette, exhaled a long ribbon of smoke from her mouth, and then stubbed out the remaining tobacco. “Now eat your food,” she said, unfolding her napkin.

Emmy put the cigarette in the ashtray and let her hand fall back to her lap.

“Perhaps it was too soon for Charlotte’s book,” Josephine said, her eyes carefully trained on Emmy’s face. “I see you’ve sought some solace in domestication.”

Emmy looked around the immaculate kitchen. “I thought you’d be pleased,” she said, confused.

“I’m always happy to have a meal cooked for me,” Josephine said. “I just don’t want you to feel compelled.”

“I don’t,” Emmy said, still sensing she’d done something wrong. “I only meant it as a gesture.”

“Gesture accepted.” Josephine picked up her fork. “I love peas.”

“So do I.” Emmy took a bite, chewed carefully, and swallowed, only slightly less overwhelmed by the flavors. She looked at her empty fork, considering how rare it was to enjoy the simple pleasure of eating. Emmy slowly let the air out of her lungs, put out the cigarette untouched, and took another bite. She had never tasted a fresher egg or sweeter cream or a saltier piece of … salt. It was all too much to consume, especially in light of the countless tasteless and unadorned tables she had sat through in her life. Why couldn’t her first eighteen years have been likewise filled with the casual beauty of God’s world? “We never ate like this at home.”

Josephine narrowed her eyes. “With forks?”

Emmy laughed, her cautious mood tempered by the joke. “No, of course we used forks. It’s just that Mother always seemed so suspicious of ripe vegetables, always pickling and canning everything only to hide it all away until it turned gray enough to eat in the middle of the winter.”

“We always had such wonderful meals when my mother was alive,” Josephine replied, resting her chin on her hand, her long fingers rubbing a temple. “Her father was a baker, and she could make such delicate pastries, even out here in the middle of nowhere, in a wood-burning stove. I think she would have started her own bakery if she’d lived long enough to be finished with rearing the four of us. Five if you count little Charlie, but then he died right alongside of her.”

“You’ve never mentioned him,” Emmy said, fascinated by the incessant revelation of unknown relatives. Her great-grandparents had homesteaded the land, building the house out of trees they’d cut down, milled, and eventually covered with clapboard, adding rooms as the family grew to twelve children and countless descendants.

“He was practically born with the fever,” Josephine said. “She had him, and neither of them got up from that bed.”

“In the back room?” This was a place Emmy still hadn’t ventured, especially after her aunt’s ghost stories.

Josephine nodded. “That summer Adelaide found her true religion. There was a Chautauqua a month later out in Detroit Lakes, and Father took Lida and me, thinking it might cheer us up. His brother Johan had a little fishing cabin out on Big Twin Lake, so we stayed with them for the week, going to town to hear the talks.”

Emmy held back her questions, waiting for the story to add its own dots.

“Oh, it was marvelous.” Josephine’s voice raised in pitch to that of a girl’s. “Tent after tent of lectures, sermons, and little theatricals, set up in large brown pavilions down at the end of Summit Avenue on the edge of Detroit Lake. It was like a slow-moving parade, with women in long summer-white dresses and lacy parasols strolling arm in arm on the lawns along the shore. At first we stayed in our little group, but by the afternoon, Father had met up with some drinking companions and let us wander on our own. Raymond was there. I hadn’t seen him in a few years and he’d become so handsome! Truly, Emmy, there never was anyone else for me, no matter what I tried.”

With a jolt, Emmy remembered her plans for the afternoon. She glanced at the kitchen clock—fifteen minutes. “I wish I’d met him.”

“He would have liked you,” Josephine said with a sorrowful smile. “I left Lida, and Raymond snuck me into a tent through a flap along the side—and there sat a woman on a high stool, a book in her hand. She did nothing extravagant, had no props or a costume other than the fashionable dress of the time, and yet the tent was filled to the poles with captivated men, women, and children. Her name was Margaret Stahl, and she read something called ‘The Dawn of a Tomorrow.’” Josephine cleared her throat and held a steady hand out toward Emmy. “‘There … is … no … death.’ Remarkable. I saw her do the same reading five more times in my life, and even when she was sick with cancer and barely able to hold the book, at least one girl in the audience fainted, every time. I’m pretty certain that was when I fell in love with the written word.”