When Strawberries Bloom (19 page)

She wiped her perspiring face, and then with shaking hands she spread out the piece of paper as she sank onto the stool in the shanty. She definitely did not recognize the number. Oh, this was so terribly unnerving. She was afraid to dial and afraid not to pick up the phone.

Taking a deep breath, she dialed the number quickly, just sure she would have heart failure if it was Stephen. Or if it wasn’t.

It rang twice before a voice said, “Hello!”

Lizzie’s heart sank. Marvin! What did he want? Trying desperately to keep her voice from showing the disappointment she felt, she said, “Marvin! Why are you calling me?”

“Stephen wants to talk to you.”

Lizzie’s mouth flew open as if to protest, but there was nothing she could do as she heard him yell for Stephen.

Then, “Hello.”

“Hi … hi!” Lizzie breathed.

“What are you doing?”

“I was … was mowing grass, actually.”

“Oh.”

Typical Stephen. Just “oh.”

“Why … why are you calling me?”

There was silence for the space of a few heartbeats before Stephen told her that he was doing some concrete work with Marvin and that Marvin had told him about the new baby. Stephen paused.

“How are you feeling about our date, Lizzie?” he asked finally.

He laughed before she could respond.

“Marvin didn’t think I was very smart,” he said. “He thought I should have asked you out again.”

Lizzie bit her lip, squeezed her eyes shut, and then opened them wide as she tilted her head back to look at the ceiling. Good old Marvin, coming to her rescue like this.

“Well, I guess that’s up to you whether you want to see me again,” she replied.

“You know how I feel, Lizzie,” was all Stephen said.

“Does that mean you’re asking me out … or … or what?” Lizzie asked.

When she hung the phone on the hook, she definitely did have a date the following weekend. Dashing into the house, Lizzie let out a most unladylike yell of excitement, causing Emma to sit up from her nap on the couch, struggling to orient herself after all of Lizzie’s hollering.

Baby Mark snuffled in his bassinet as Lizzie shouted, “Stephen called. I have a date!”

Laughing wearily, Emma sank back against the cushions.

“Lizzie, you’re acting as if you’re the only person ever asked for a date,” she said, closing her eyes.

“I don’t care!” Lizzie said, flopping into a chair and gazing happily at the opposite wall. “I have another date with Stephen!”

S
UMMER DAYS TURNED STICKY
with August’s humidity, and the heat hovered like a warm, wet blanket. Even getting up in the morning was a chore, and brushing her teeth brought a small sheen of perspiration to Lizzie’s upper lip. The sun was already a hot, orange orb rising mercilessly across the east pasture when she headed outside with Mandy to do yard work after breakfast. It was going to be another uncomfortable day with the thermometer hovering between 90 and 100 degrees.

English people had air-conditioned homes, that was the thing. They could escape into their shaded, cool houses where that wonderful invention purred endearingly at the window, bringing waves of refrigerated air into a miserable house. They could lounge about in perfect comfort as long as they didn’t go outside, Lizzie thought.

But not Amish people. No electricity meant no air-conditioning. So summer was miserable, and you had to go about your day with a smile on your face and sweat dripping off your nose and down your back and into your eyes, especially when hoeing in the garden or mowing lawn.

The weekends weren’t as much fun in the summertime, either, once the heat became this uncomfortable. For one thing, they had to wear Sunday dresses and capes and aprons, which were not designed for August heat at all. Long sleeves, a lined cape, and a black apron pinned around the waist amounted to layers and layers of heavy fabric.

Lizzie brought this fact to Mam’s attention when she was getting ready one Sunday afternoon before Stephen picked her up. Her hands were moist with perspiration, and the pins would not go smoothly into the black belt of her apron. Her good humor had disappeared.

“Mam, help me pin on my apron,” she said.

Mam glanced up from the
Family Life
magazine she was reading.

“It’s too HOT to dress up!” Lizzie yelled as she accidentally pricked her finger with a pin.

“Now …” Mam began.

“I mean it, Mam. Think about it. We have facing on our dresses—that’s two layers of dress material—and till the cape is pinned on, that’s two more. Then, there are another two in the belt of our aprons. That’s six layers. Six!”

Lizzie was almost screeching in exasperation, and Mam roared, helplessly caught in waves of laughter.

“Ach, now Lizzie. It’s not that bad. I guess as long as the world has stood, it’s been summer and winter, and we just take it as it comes.”

Lizzie flounced off before Mam had a chance to help her pin her apron, deciding that if she was going to be in that kind of mood, she’d do it herself. As long as the world stood, thought Lizzie. What an ancient expression! The world didn’t stand, it hurled itself around the sun at unimaginable speeds, whirling so fast it made no sense that you didn’t feel one thing.

Stephen had continued to ask Lizzie for a date each weekend, and their relationship had quickly become more serious. They talked easily now, a more comfortable, effortless conversation, and it didn’t really matter whether they kept small talk flowing or not. Silence between the two of them was content and easy, too.

Dat kept his appointment at the large hospital in Maryland. The doctors put him through a battery of tests to determine why his eyesight was failing and what caused the numbness in his legs and feet. He was often very tired and discouraged after his appointments, worried because his feet and eyes no longer wanted to do what his brain told them to do.

A few weeks after his examination, Mam went to the phone shanty to find out what the tests revealed. Lizzie watched her walk out the lane with a sinking feeling in her heart. Soon Mam came striding back in the driveway, her thumbs curled under her four fingers as she did when something upset her. She took up the corner of her apron and wiped her eyes before reaching the porch. Lizzie steeled herself for the absolute worst, watching anxiously as Mam approached the steps.

Lizzie glanced nervously at Dat who sat at the kitchen table, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. As Mam came through the door he looked up anxiously, his eyes seeking reassurance.

Mam shook her head, making a soft, clucking noise. “Ach, the doctor wants to see you in his office in Maryland. I guess they don’t realize how much it costs for us to go that far with a driver, but he didn’t give us much choice.”

“How soon does he want to see me?” Dat asked.

“Tomorrow forenoon.”

Lizzie dreaded her return from school that day, knowing this was the actual day they would find out why Dat wasn’t well. As always, she predicted the worst, her thoughts swirling around in her mind until she was in quite a state. She wanted the day to end swiftly, and yet she did not want to go home at all.

But there was no avoiding the cold, hard truth when Mam’s words hit her with all the impact of a sledge hammer.

“He has MS,” Mam said, not softly or loudly, just in plain ordinary words without tears or any display of emotion at all. She just said the words, simply and matter-of-factly, like carefully laying Scrabble tiles in the proper blocks to complete a word.

Lizzie threw down her book bag, folding into a kitchen chair with a sigh.

“What does that mean, Mam?” she asked, her fingers plucking nervously at the rip in the plastic tablecloth.

Mam turned from the sink where she was peeling potatoes for the evening meal. Taking up the corner of her apron, she dried her hands on it before sitting down at the table.

Her eyes looked tired. The red veins running through the whites of her eyes were more noticeable when she took off her glasses and wiped them with the dry corner of her apron. Putting her glasses back on her face, she smiled at Lizzie, only to have one corner of her mouth drop immediately as her nostrils flared and tears came of their own accord, despite her best effort to hold them back.

“I don’t know, Lizzie, really, I don’t,” Mam said softly. “We have plenty of literature the doctor gave us to read, so I’m sure till the evening is over we’ll know more. The way I understand, it starts with a virus which somehow gets into the spinal fluid, and, in time, that messes up the brain signals, which is why Dat doesn’t have the full ability to walk like he used to. Same thing with his eyes.”

“But there has to be something doctors can do,” Lizzie said. “Isn’t there some type of medication they can give him to make it go away?”

“No. Not the way the doctor described the disease. There are many types, some much worse than others, or with some the muscles deteriorate faster, I suppose. Ach, Lizzie, I really don’t know too much about it yet. I just know that we have this to live with now and we have to make the best of it.”

Mam went back to peeling potatoes with a tired sigh, and Lizzie watched her, a feeling of overwhelming pity making it hard for her to speak normally. “Where is the literature the doctor gave you?” she asked.

“On Dat’s desk.”

So Lizzie curled up on the sofa, devouring every word she could about the disease that evidently was living in Dat’s spine. Multiple sclerosis. Whoever came up with those words? she thought. Her whole being rebelled against this horrible intruder that had so rudely interrupted their lives.

She opened one pamphlet and looked at a few drawings of spinal fluid and odd-looking bacteria.

“This slowly progressive disease involves various parts of the central nervous system and presents numerous symptoms which tend to come and go, only to return again in greater severity,” Lizzie read.

She found out that although a tremendous amount of research was being carried forward in the hope of discovering the basic cause, as yet there was no known cure.

Another pamphlet described in more detail exactly what was occurring in Dat’s body. The lesions of multiple sclerosis which interrupt the nerve pathways are characterized by a loss of the usual insulating material called myelin, which covers the nerve fibers. In other words, Lizzie thought, little tiny scabs are messing up the nerve fibers, making everything more difficult for him to do.

She flung the glossy little folders on the arm of the sofa and marched back out to the kitchen.

“Does this mean that we have to stay home on weekends and everyone is going to be all serious and sad and I can’t go camping this weekend?” she burst out, leaning against the countertop as she searched Mam’s face.

Mam smiled a very small smile. “No, of course not. Dat is still alive and well and will continue to be all right for quite some time. Actually, he shouldn’t be showing too many signs of the disease for up to a few years, other than his stumbling and blurry vision. So, no, Lizzie, you can go camping, of course. Our family life will just go on much the same as it always has.”

“What about the farm?”

“We’ll keep going as long as Dat is able. We’ll see. Now go change, and you can start getting the wash off the line.”

T
HAT SATURDAY AFTERNOON STEPHEN
drove up the lane and past the barn in a spring wagon. Two horses pulled the wagon which was covered with a tarp, forming a makeshift roof and sides so it looked almost like a modern-day covered wagon. Rebecca sat beside Stephen, smiling and waving her long, thin arms the minute she spied Lizzie.

Stephen’s eyes were shining with excitement as he jumped down to hold the horses while Lizzie loaded her sleeping bag, pillow, ice chest, box of food, and folding chairs into the back.

Dat came out of the barn and shook his head at Stephen.

“Looks like a lovely pair to me!” he said, pointing to the horses.

“They’ll be all right,” Stephen replied, laughing.

“You better not let them see the contraption they’re pulling,” Dat laughed.

“That’s just in case it rains.”

“Hopefully it won’t.”