A Fireproof Home for the Bride (34 page)

“Do you play pinochle?” she asked, opening the deck, splitting it in two, and then effortlessly forcing the cards back together in a small arc.

“Mom,” Dot said, shaking her head a little.

“Oh, right. Of course you don’t,” she said, putting the cards quickly back into their package. “Why don’t we have some coffee by the fire instead?”

“Please let me light the fire?” Virginia asked. In the diminished light and with her ebony hair tightly braided, she looked a good deal younger than her eleven years. “You promised.”

“Go ahead, firebug, it’s not like we could stop you,” Dot said, and Virginia stuck out her tongue as she ran into the other room.

“I would like to learn to play cards, though,” Emmy said, wanting the cozy evening to stretch on forever. The good company and conversation had gone a far way toward keeping her mind from circling around the approaching hour of the wedding. Still, the tangle of emotions roped its way into her thoughts and fairly strangled any lightheartedness she might otherwise have felt in the happy collection of Randall women.

“Okay, then,” Helen said, stretching the length of her tall frame away from the table and setting a coffeepot on the stove. “Maybe after Virginia goes to sleep.”

“Oh, Mom!” Virginia complained from the other room. “I can hear you in here, you know.”

“Then you can hear that you’ve got ten minutes to brush your teeth and get to bed,” Helen said. She set an old tray with mismatched coffee cups, a bowl of sugar, and a small jug of milk, and handed it off to Emmy, who then carried it all into the living room.

“I’ll take that,” Dot said, emerging from the bedroom dressed in pink pinstriped pajamas. “Why don’t you go change while the urchin is cleaning itself?”

The bedroom windows were open to the night and Emmy could hear syncopated crickets with their slowing chirps echoing around the cabin. She clicked open her small pearl-colored Samsonite case and took her nightgown and robe from the left side. She changed quickly, drawn to the murmuring voices on the other side of the door, thinking about how by this time tomorrow her sister would be married to Ambrose. When she tried to imagine the two of them in the front of the church it was like viewing the scene through a stereopticon—a great distance in front of her nose, split in two, slightly different and yet exactly the same. As she sat on the bed to pull on a pair of granny socks, it struck her that she should do something to stop the wedding, to save her sister from an unknown future. Imagining the scene that would ensue convinced Emmy otherwise. No, unless she was willing to turn back the pages of the calendar to Easter, ruining countless lives in the process, nothing about the situation could be set straight by her actions. Besides, who was she to say what the future would be? Just as Emmy finished dressing, Virginia burst through the door.

“Hey, that’s my bed,” she said, and yanked down the white chenille cover. Emmy swept her suitcase closed and onto the floor.

“Sorry, Virginia,” she said.

“Call me Gini, please?” she whispered, lying down and settling the covers under her chin. “I hate my name.”

“You know, my full name is Emmaline, and I hate it, too.” She kissed her cousin on the nose and went out to the living room, where the lanterns were all lit and the fire was ablaze. Helen and Dot sat next to each other on the couch, sifting through a box of photographs, the women’s heads bowed together until they almost touched. Emmy’s throat felt dry and hoarse, and she coughed a little to cover her swell of regret that she didn’t have a mother who would ever sit so closely. They looked up at the same time and smiled—Helen with her crooked grin and Dot with her sweet, pressed-lip smirk. They looked nothing alike, but no one would ever doubt they were mother and daughter. Emmy observed them with the fragile desire of a child on the outside of a candy store window, pockets empty.

“Come sit.” Helen motioned to the other side of the couch, and Emmy sat next to her. “Closer, so you can see. Dot thought it might be nice for you to see some old pictures.”

“I love these,” Dot said, lifting a small stack of black-and-white squares edged in white and carefully flipped through them, looking at the backsides, where names and dates were scrawled in a meticulous script. “Hey, here’s a baby picture of Pops in a dress. Look at his hair!” She showed Emmy a picture of a small boy in a white shirt that went to the floor. Irv had short, straight bangs that framed his tiny face.

Helen laughed and pushed a pair of glasses up her nose. “That one always reminds me of one of the Stooges, what’s his name?”

“Moe,” Dot said, and filed the image. They sat quietly as Dot continued to sort through the moments of captured rural time, ranging from men gathered in front of a threshing machine, to ladies in flowing dresses crossing a croquet lawn, to formally posed stiff portraits of high-buttoned men and women. When she neared the bottom of the box, Dot stopped, holding up a very worn and yellowed photo. “Look at this one,” she said. There were four young people dressed in brilliant white summer clothing complete with parasols and walking sticks, as though they were headed to church or even a wedding. The women were quite young, and one in particular had Emmy’s high fair looks. “That one could be you, Em,” Dot said.

Helen clucked her tongue. “That’s Jo,” she said, tapping the photo with her index finger. “So that must be your grandmother, and there’s Uncle Raymond.” The finger rested on her lower lip for a moment, scratching at memory. “I don’t recall this fellow, but then, it’s well before I was born. It’s not Irv’s father.” She flipped the photo over and read the inscription: “Detroit Lakes Chautauqua, 1919.”

Emmy took the paper from Helen, careful to keep her fingertips on the white scalloped edge. She held it closer, astonished to see her grandmother looking like a girl, when she’d always seemed to Emmy as though she’d been born old—even more surprising was her own resemblance to Josephine: the high sculpture of her cheeks, the clear eyes, the pale hair braided down to her collarbones. The face of the slight man with his hand upon Lida’s small shoulder was half shaded by the brim of his straw boater, which was practically glowing from the reflection of the sun. “It’s not Grandfather; he was much taller. I could ask Aunt Josephine if you’d like.”

Helen shrugged. “It’s probably hers anyway.” She grazed through the remaining photos at the bottom of the box. “Well, would you look at that? It’s Daniel.”

“My brother?” Emmy asked, looking at the image of a boy in a sailor suit pushing a tiny wheelbarrow. There were no photos of any sort in the Nelson home, not of children, parents, grandparents—of no one. It only struck Emmy as odd now, sitting here holding the ghostly image of her dead older brother, along with the pancaked images of her family’s tree.

“I remember when your father gave this to Irv,” Helen said, resting her hand on Emmy’s knee. “Said Karin was throwing everything away, but he couldn’t bear to let her burn this one.”

“My father?” Emmy said, her voice breaking a little.

“He’s always been in touch with us. I think it’s been his way of defying his family. He’s a good man to stick it out. You have to admire that, even if it seems crazy from the outside.”

Dot got up and went into the kitchen. Emmy could hear her cleaning the final dishes and presetting the table for breakfast.

“Tell me,” Emmy said, searching Helen’s eyes. “Do you think I’ve done the right thing? Leaving home, I mean. It feels right most of the time, but I’m worried about my father.”

“I think it’s the best thing that’s happened to Christian in a very long time,” Helen said, turning to the box and re-ordering its contents. “You’ve done him quite a favor.”

“I have?” Emmy asked.

“Your mother’s not an easy woman, from all accounts.”

Emmy looked again at Daniel. “Maybe if he hadn’t died…” Emmy let the photo fall back into the box, among the still living and the long dead. “Maybe then she could have loved us all a little better.”

Helen put the top on snugly and rose to place it on the shelf beside the fireplace. “Your mother loves you,” Helen said with her back to Emmy. She turned and smiled. “In her way. Get some sleep.”

*   *   *

Around the time the crickets finally stopped their lazy chirps and the frogs found something better to do than plague Emmy’s ears with their croaking, she awoke from her fitful tossing to the sound of her name being whispered from someplace outside of the cabin. Pulling on her robe, she slipped onto the screen porch and attempted to still the pounding in her ears enough to listen more closely for the voice. A blue calm had infused the backyard, which was laden with long squat shadows and the occasional speck of light caused by some tiny insect. Taking a gray-hued throw from the glider, Emmy wrapped her shoulders and pushed the screen door silently open with her bare night-whitened foot.

“Hello?” she whispered, emboldened by the vibrant cast of full moonlight showing the emptiness of the yard around her. It must have been a dream, she thought as she wandered through the mulchy grass toward the shore, drawn by the melody of the ripples lapping up against the tiny makeshift boat dock. There, at the end of a length of floating slatted wood, the slight figure of a much younger Ambrose sat throwing pebbles into the distance, puncturing the still surface of the inky water, his shoulders sloped forward as though a great sadness was anchored around his neck. She knew him instantly as the lanky boy who had taught her how to shoot and dress a deer, a boy who had loved her more deeply and for such a long time that Emmy’s heart sickened at her own callousness.

“Ambrose?” she whispered, her voice hollowed out by the salty thirst of midnight. The boy didn’t respond, nor did he stop the perfect rhythm of the arcing rocks as he plucked each from his palm and sent them sailing against the dappled slash of moonlight stretching toward his feet. His blood-dark coat pooled behind him as Emmy set one foot on the dock and nearly fell into the water when it shifted and moved in front of her.

She started awake to find the cabin room around her, her cousins asleep in their beds, her aunt’s quiet snore echoing up into the open rafters overhead. Very slowly, Emmy pushed into a sitting position and looked out of the lakeside’s picture window. Though she could see that the dock remained bare, above the sleepy din of nocturnal solemnity, she could hear a noise that sounded like the quiet plinking of stones.

*   *   *

After breakfast the girls changed into swimsuits and went down to the dock, where Emmy was pleased to find a tiny patch of rough beach. Her dream slowly dissipated with the warming of the day, and she did her best to slip into the enjoyment of a Sunday spent at the lake. Bobby would be at church by now, her usual space next to his crowded by another Doyle. The wedding in Glyndon would be easier to forget if only he were with her, Emmy thought as she slipped off her sandals and looped the ankle straps over a finger. The silty dirt at the water’s edge felt cool under her tender feet as she dug her toes into its moistness. Looking around tentatively, she was somewhat relieved to see that the dock she had dreamed of in the night was farther away than she had imagined it. Exhaling into the damp air, she threw her towel down on a low-slung metal-framed chair with turquoise straps of woven material interlaced on the seat and backrest. She removed her slight linen cover-up to reveal an emerald green one-piece costume, cut low on the legs and high around the back, a halter tie around her neck. Into the warm, murky water she inched self-consciously, hesitating slightly at the pull of the sluggy lake bottom spiked with ankle-scratching reeds. The deeper she moved, the more real the world once again became and the tension she’d felt over the past days of calamity eased out of her joints and into the soupy foam swirling at her knees. Dot ran past her in a red two-piece suit with small Swiss dots and cute bows at each thigh and where the top met in the center of her ample bosom. She strapped a white cap with a large white flower onto her head and winked over her shoulder as she splashed into the lake. Gini hurried behind in a darling yellow maillot with tiny appliqued daisies along the trim. The sisters swam toward a raft that was anchored some yards away from shore. Emmy looked over her shoulder to see Helen in her pink chenille bathrobe already settled into a chair, a large-brimmed straw hat perched on her head and a magazine spread out on her lap. The day was a stunner—no clouds, no humidity, just dazzling sunshine and a slight breeze. Emmy shivered and waded deeper. She couldn’t swim. In fact, the green one-piece was the first bathing suit she had ever owned or worn, and it was no small thing to have put it on and walked brazenly out here to the edge of her modesty. The girls reached the raft and Dot hoisted herself out of the water, in turn helping Gini before yelling back to Emmy.

“C’mon in!” Dot called from the raft, hands on either side of her mouth.

“I can’t swim,” Emmy said.

Dot laughed, lifted a hand to shade her eyes, and pointed with the other to the dock. “Use the canoe, and don’t fall in!”

They passed the day sunning on the shore, paddling around on the lake, fishing from the dock, and wading to cool off. Late in the afternoon, Emmy picked up one of Helen’s magazines and turned a few pages before settling into a kind of day-trance, letting the cares slide away from her tightly held grasp. She drifted around a bit through her thoughts, tried to focus in on Bobby, smiled with her eyes closed and her head tilted to one side. She wondered where he was right now this minute, and figured he was finished with Sunday dinner and back out on the road. The crew was working at full tilt, including Sunday afternoons, and Bobby’s current role was to sweat it out alongside the guys who mixed and poured the cement. She pictured Bobby with his tanned back bared to the sun, using a long-handled hoe to move the wet mixture of rocks and cement evenly around the boxed form lined with thin iron reinforcement bars. He’d described the process in great detail, explaining to her how important the four-lane road would be, how it would open up the state of North Dakota to the rest of the world. His enthusiasm was intoxicating when she was with him, but here, far away on another shore, she turned her mind away from his ambition and pressed upon the thin ice of her own. She could see beneath her own mundane responsibilities a growing desire to take up a pen, to explore subjects, and perhaps unravel details that could be spun up into the kind of stories people would want to read. Surely Jim meant it when he said her instincts being wrong was just a rookie mistake, even though Emmy still felt stupid. There had been kindness in his voice, after all, and a kindred spirit in the way he shared the Halsey boy’s situation. It didn’t seem likely Jim would trust her unless he saw
some
potential in her. If she just kept trying, working hard and paying attention, she’d learn how not to make those kinds of mistakes and before long she’d have the assignment she craved.