The Outcast (13 page)

Before Tobias falls asleep and Leah sneaks downstairs to begin her cathartic letter-writing, Leah asks if Rachel can join their journey to Pennsylvania.

“No. Absolutely not,” her husband answers, the question not having fully left Leah’s mouth. “There’s no way.”

“How is there no way? Gerald’s van’s not even full.”

“It will be full when it comes to the likes of Rachel.”

“The likes of Rachel?” Leah bolts upright in bed. “She’s still my flesh and blood, Tobias, and I would appreciate if you spoke about her with a little more respect.”

“I would speak about your sister with a little more respect if she had earned it.”

Swallowing the words that threaten to career off her tongue, Leah stares down at her husband’s back, and for the first time in her twenty years, understands her sister’s temper. “I know you do not agree that my sister should accompany us on our trip,” she says. “But there have been many things you have done that I have not agreed with, and still I have complied.”

“That is how it is supposed to be. You are my wife.”

“And
you
are my husband, who has made decisions that have devastated me. I think the least you owe me is this!”

My son’s breathing grows shallow.

“Tobias?” Leah asks. “Did you hear me?”

Nodding, my son clears his throat so his voice will not crack when he replies, “Yes. I heard you.”

“Then Rachel can go with us?”

“Jah.”
Tobias punches the pillow beneath his head. “She can go.”

Leah has a sudden impulse to reach out and embrace her husband, but they haven’t really touched since she returned from the hospital, and any caress would probably seem like manipulation to him now. So Leah simply turns toward her husband rather than the window and stays in bed for the first time since her nightly letter-writing began.

Tobias does not fall asleep until the sun begins to rise over the pines, for the sentence his wife had uttered about her sister’s banishment from Copper Creek held another meaning entirely for him.

Ida Mae says, “You sure ’bout this?”

Looping the car seat, heavy with Eli’s weight, over her arm, Rachel watches Tobias stow suitcases and pillows in the back of Gerald’s van. “No,” she says. “I’m not.”

“Welp, if you get into trouble, just give me a holler. I’ll come up there and fetch ya.”

“The whole way to Pennsylvania?”

Ida Mae nods. “I could get one of the gals over at the high school to run my store, so don’t you think twice about calling me.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Rachel says, blinking doubt from her eyes. “It’s only for a few days.”

Once Rachel closes the truck door, Ida Mae starts driving down Copper Creek Road, but she watches Rachel and Eli in her rearview mirror until they become nothing but blond specks decorating the horizon. It takes the whole drive back to Blackbrier for fear to stop clutching at Ida Mae’s throat and her fingers to loosen their death grip on the steering wheel. And in her dreams that night, the memories that have haunted Ida Mae for twenty years come to life again.

Not until they have crossed into Virginia does Tobias acknowledge that Rachel is along for the ride. Even then it is only because he happens to glance up in Gerald’s rearview mirror and catch her sitting on the bench seat, nursing Eli.

“Have you no modesty?” Tobias barks, averting his gaze.

Rachel’s cheeks burn from irritation more than embarrassment. “Obviously I do or I wouldn’t be wearing
this
.” She uses the hand not supporting Eli’s head to tug at the afghan.

Rachel is incensed by his rebuke and rightly so; Leah has nursed Jonathan three times over the past seven hours, and Tobias hasn’t said one word to her. Rachel tried to sate Eli’s
brutzing
for as long as possible, but when she realized
that Gerald Martin wasn’t going to stop at another gas station until his full tank emptied into the red, she covered herself up to the neck with the afghan she’d packed, took Eli from his car seat, and let him suckle.

Tobias huffs, “You could’ve at least gone to the back of the van.”

“And what if Gerald got pulled over, and I couldn’t get Eli back into his car seat in time? He could lose his license.”

“I’ve never gotten pulled over,” Gerald says. The first sentence he’s spoken since the trip began.

Minutes pass before Leah says, “If you’re not going to allow us to get out to stretch our legs and use the restroom, we have no choice but to nurse our children while we drive.”

Astonished, Rachel stares at her sister. Tobias is so shocked by his wife’s forthright tone that he turns in the seat, as if looking for proof that she and Rachel haven’t switched places. He then remembers that Rachel is still nursing and, cheekbones striped with red, faces the front again. Gerald Martin says nothing, just keeps his hands positioned at the ten and the two and pushes his white sneaker down on the gas pedal until his black van is cruising just under the speed limit—the fastest he has ever gone.

Once Eli and Jonathan are lulled to sleep by the rhythmic bumps of the van moving over the patched Pennsylvania roads, Rachel and Leah climb into the backseat and get Lebanon bologna and Swiss cheese sandwiches from the cooler. They pass four up to the men and then grab two for themselves and unwrap the wax paper.

After taking a bite, Leah wipes mayonnaise from her mouth and whispers, “You okay?”

“My back’s a little stiff.” Rachel yawns. “But I’m sure it’ll loosen up once we get out.”

“I don’t mean how you are feeling.” Leah looks toward the front of the van and then lowers her voice. “I was wondering if you’re okay after what my husband said.”

Rachel balls up the wax paper and sets it in her lap. “I’m getting pretty used to him by now.”

Leah sighs. “I still wish he wouldn’t treat you the way he does.”

Rachel chews a bite of sandwich rather than responding.

“I’m hoping you and I can get some alone time up here,” Leah continues. “I’m sure Tobias will be helping
Dawdy
. That should make things easier.”

“That would be nice,” Rachel agrees.

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful?” Leah smiles. “The two of us? Just like old times.”

Rachel sets the sandwich in her lap. She feels carsick, which she has never struggled with before. How can she tell Leah that no matter how hard they try, no matter how much alone time they have while sifting through the memories in that yellow house on Hilltop Road, they can never go back to the innocence of old times again? Leah would not understand Rachel even if she said this. All their lives, she was the one who believed in the good of people and the good in the world. If Leah only knew how the people
she loved most in the world had betrayed her, her naive life would be stripped of its innocent perspective.

Leaning over, Leah begins to massage the muscles of Rachel’s neck. “Are you worried about
Mamm
and
Dawdy
?”

Rachel turns toward the van window and nods, even though the situation involving Helen and Samuel is the last worry on her mind. Only when Leah has drifted off with her head on her sister’s lap does Rachel stare at her young, trusting face and allow the tears she has been holding back to flow down. Observing movement at the front of the van, she glances up to see Tobias watching Jonathan and Eli asleep in their matching car seats. He then looks up at her. For the first time since her pregnancy became apparent, in his gaze Rachel sees not anger, but sorrow. As if she is not the only one who has failed someone she so desperately loves.

Rachel

We arrive at my parents’ house on Hilltop Road at two in the morning Pennsylvania time. It has taken over thirteen hours for us to make the usual twelve-hour journey, and that is without the rest stops one is required to make with a group our size. The only reason I can give for Gerald Martin’s driving at the speed he does is that he is still becoming accustomed to his “liberal” black-bumper Mennonite ways after being in the Amish church for so long. Going fifty miles an
hour, even on the interstate with a speed limit of sixty-five, must feel like flying to him.

Pushing open the side door into the mudroom, I find that
Mamm
and
Dawdy
have not waited up. But downstairs clean sheets and blankets are stretched across the couch, and a rickety cot is set up in the reflexology office. Leah and Tobias will take the upstairs room my sister and I used to share, with its wood-paneled walls, iron bedstead, and flowered
debbich
my
mamm
, not the best of housekeepers, has probably allowed to become sheathed in dust as thick as the quilt backing itself.

I smile as Leah comes in carrying Jonathan. She tries to smile too, but the expression does not reach her eyes. I do not have to ask what she is feeling; I am feeling it as well. It is hard coming back to my childhood home for the first time since I left it, knowing this visit will also be my last. As children, we sat at this table—in these chairs with the fuchsia rosettes painted on the back by masculine Amish hands—making homemade play dough with flour, water, salt, and a splash of the food coloring not often used. Together, Leah and I would tug a stool over to the
kochoffe
and peer down into the pot churning with whichever
supp
my
mamm
was making. Sometimes in the winters, when the horse sales had slowed because of the buyers at New Holland not having funds left over from their summer crops,
Mamm
would start adding water to the
supp
. All we had for supper one night was tomato
supp
—so diluted it looked more pink than red—and runny rice pudding.

But my sister and I were almost into our teens before we realized just how poor our family was. Our dresses and shoes were often hand-me-downs from wealthier
freindschaft
, and at Christmas, our toys were ones
Mamm
had found at charity shops throughout the year. Because my
dawdy
often purchased horses and tack he could not pay for, our family was on the brink of bankruptcy numerous times. Still, my
mamm
never let us out the door with our hair strubbly or shoes unshined. Leah and I might return from the Mennonite school within walking distance of our
haus
and, regardless of the weather, be sent out to pick dandelions, walnuts, strawberries, or meadow tea to sell to local restaurants, but
Mamm
was adamant that we did not have to look as close to poverty as we were.