In Need of a Good Wife (28 page)

She sighed and nodded.

“Ah, me,” Tomas said again. “My wife die too, you know.”

“Yes, I heard about that. I’m so very sorry.”

“Only one year past. That is whole reason I come this place,” he said, moving his arm in an exasperated arc. “Why else anyone come here?”

“It’s awful, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said. “Hot, dry. Nothing to do.”

“Do you mind if I ask why you have stayed?” A bubble of mucus descended from her nostril and she sniffed, then wiped her face rudely on her sleeve. She felt strangely about herself at that moment, as if she were watching her body from the outside.

“Saving money. But soon I move on to a city. Somewhere they have opportunity.”

She smiled at him. “You’ll do well.”

Tomas shrugged. “You know, Rowena—forgive, Mrs. Gibson—”

“Rowena’s all right,” she said. “May I call you Tomas?”

This seemed to please him very much. “Yes. I want to ask you something.”

“All right.”

“You know what best thing for you could be?”

She shook her head.

“This letter,” he said, taking it carefully from her, holding it by the corner with his left hand. “If it burn up.” He moved the fingers of his right hand like flames at the bottom of the page, crinkling the paper. She gave him a fearful look and he handed the letter back to her. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I not going to do it. But you reading it all time and again … is like …” He searched for what he meant to say. “Is like you not be in love any more with the
man
, your husband from before he die. Is like you be in love with
losing
the man. You be in love with
sadness
. You see what is my meaning?”

Rowena swallowed. “Yes.” Destroying the letter seemed like severing the rope that moored her. Without it, she would be at risk of endless drift. And yet, the thought thrilled her too. To be free of it all, to let it all go. Because Richard never
was
going to come back, no matter what she imagined, and she knew it.

“If this letter burn up, then you have to stop,” he said, making a chopping motion with this hand. “Then you move ahead.”

She folded it up and stuck it back in the collar of her dress, not caring that Tomas watched her fingers reach into the gap between the fabric and the top of her breast, that for a split second before the paper slid inside, the fair skin of its curve was exposed. She wouldn’t burn the letter yet. But she would allow herself to imagine burning it, the way she had allowed herself, a little while earlier, to imagine Richard’s return. We couldn’t bridle the world and its tricks, but oh, how the imagined life in our minds’ interior could substitute. How real these visions seemed!

She looked up at Tomas, not with a demure tilt of her head, not with the manipulation of lashes swaying down, but simply
looked
at him. His eyes were the blue-green of patina on copper left out in the elements, the particular hue that resulted only from neglect.

“I’m thirsty,” she said. “Would you like to come inside for some tea?”

Ully came back every day for five days, at the same time in the afternoon. She must have waited to be sure Mr. Schreier was out in the field. Elsa never had to tell her again to wash; she stopped each time at the pump and came inside with water dripping from her chin.

At first Elsa gave the girl only the scraps they could spare from the lukewarm dinner, and she devoured every bite, eagerly. But in the hours after Ully went back home, Elsa began to daydream about the sweets and cakes of her childhood that she had loved:
Marzipan
and
Kreppel
and
Rumkugeln
. She prepared them one by one, disregarding the season. Mr. Schreier finally did go to the grocer, but she didn’t want to ask him for ingredients he might think were frivolous. Instead, she gave a coin to Ully and sent the girl to Mr. Baumann or Mr. Wessendorff’s in search of the nuts or chocolate or spice. She worried, the first time, that Ully would take off with the money, but she never did. The girl always returned with the ingredient wrapped in brown paper, the change in her moist palm.

“Good afternoon, Ully,” Elsa would say, and if the little girl only nodded or shuffled in reply, or said, “Hallo,” or “Hey, Elsa,” Elsa would ask her to go outside and come back in to reply, “Good afternoon, Elsa.” There were so many things the girl didn’t seem to know: how to use a napkin, how to cut her meat with a knife, how to chew without her lips hanging open for all the world to see her cud. Ully was in constant motion at the table, banging and scraping and humming and sighing over the food. She was missing that steadying line that ran between the shoulders of refined girls, kept them still and quiet and straight. Elsa felt at once sad and a little thrilled for her because of it.

“Ully,” she said Saturday afternoon as they each ate a slice of
Lebkuchen
as deep as brick. Christmas in June. Elsa worked the words in her mouth carefully before speaking. “What was your mother like?”

Elsa was glad to see the girl finish chewing, then wipe a dusting of sugar from her upper lip, before she replied. “Nice when I was little. But then she got sad, and then sick, and she was sick for a long time. And then she died. My pa said that she just couldn’t cheer up, that some people can’t.”

Elsa nodded, thinking for a moment about what she could possibly say to this. “Well, she isn’t sick anymore. Isn’t that so,
Spatzchen
?” Elsa bit her tongue; the pet name had slipped out before she could stop it.

Ully nodded cautiously.

“She is always with you now, looking down, and she isn’t sick or sad anymore.”

The girl shrugged, then peered suspiciously at Elsa. She had only ever been called names by her brothers, and they weren’t kind. “What’s a spots chin?”

Elsa laughed. “A sparrow. You remind me of a sparrow, small and full of energy, always moving. It means I am fond of you.”

Ully scraped her fork in a slow circle on the empty plate, then looked up at Elsa. She stuck out the tip of her tongue and made a rude sound with her mouth.

Elsa went to sleep that night with the taste of ginger on her tongue. It had been years and years and years since she had experienced these flavors. The fine cloud of powdered sugar, the almond crunch and sleek caramel. Elsa spent every cent of the money she had brought with her from New York on hazelnuts and stewed fruits. When that was gone she began to dip into the wages she had planned to save. It felt reckless, but Mr. Schreier only bought sorghum and she had to have real sugar.

Already the little girl’s skin looked brighter, her cheeks a little less hollow. Elsa knew she would soon have to stop. What if Mr. Gibson realized where his daughter was going in the afternoons and said something about it to Mr. Schreier in town? Besides, every day the weather got worse—drier, hotter. Keeping the fire hot enough to bake the desserts made it over ninety degrees in the kitchen. By the time Ully left and Mr. Schreier returned from the field, Elsa’s shift and the sides of her dress were soaked with sweat, not to mention growing tighter across her hips every day. She rinsed them out each night in the stifling attic, the air so hot that the clothes dried within an hour. It was insanity to continue.

And yet, as she slipped into the anteroom of sleep, aware of the pressure of the cotton sheet on her bare skin but unable to move her limbs, Elsa knew she would keep on. For she hadn’t yet made the
Dampfnudeln
, the sweet dumplings, which she loved most of all, and she just knew in her heart that Ully would love them too.

Elsa woke a few hours later with a rasping breath, her throat dry. She lit a candle and glanced at the clock next to the bed: it was not yet three. Even Mr. Schreier didn’t rise this early.

Her feet bare, the ribbons of her nightgown hanging untied at her collar, Elsa crept down the stairs to the kitchen for water. Even in the dark there was no relief from the heat. Everything felt warm to the touch, even the tin pitcher in which they kept the drinking water. Elsa drank the mug down, then set it next to the sink and crept back through the sitting room toward the stairs. Mr. Schreier’s bedroom door clicked open, throwing light from his lamp into the room.

“So we’re both up, then.”

Elsa started. “Oh,” she said. “Mr. Schreier.” She crossed her hands over her collarbone, her elbows pressing her breasts against her ribs.

“Good evening, or good morning,” he said, “since the chances of falling asleep again aren’t good.” Mr. Schreier limped into the sitting room and eased into his armchair. He looked exhausted. “Do you often have trouble sleeping?”

“Not too much. Sometimes.”

She stood awkwardly near the door to the stairs. Mr. Schreier glanced at her, then leaned forward and pulled the blanket from the back of the chair. He handed it to her.

“You know, I was married for an awfully long time.” He was trying to put her at ease, she saw. She had nothing he hadn’t seen before. But his calling attention to her body at all, her near nakedness, made her feel worse. She felt the blood in her cheeks.

“Sit down,” he barked. He shook his head. “I mean, if you’d like.”

She draped the blanket over her shoulders and instantly felt the skin on her flanks begin to dampen. She stepped over to the window and pushed it open. The stale air in the room shifted slightly. “I’ll fix us some tea,” she said.

In the kitchen she put the kettle on the stove. The heat was everywhere, oppressive. The soles of her feet felt hot, her eyeballs roved sweatily in their sockets. She took some lace cookies from the tin and lined them up on a plate. She brought the tray back into the sitting room and poured Mr. Schreier’s cup, then sat on the sofa.

“I’ve never seen so many cakes and sweets as you make,” he said irritably, taking a bite of the crisp brown cinnamon cookie. A smattering of crumbs fell in his lap and he brushed them away.

Elsa hesitated, wondering if he was testing her. She folded her hands in her lap. If he knew about Ully’s visits, why wouldn’t he just
say
so? “I hope you don’t mind all the baking, sir.”

He waved his hand. “I suppose you mean well.”

Guilt plucked at her again. Now was the time to tell him.

“This heat,” Mr. Schreier said. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his brow. “We’re going to be in for it if we don’t get some rain soon.”

“It
is
awfully dry,” Elsa said. “The kitchen garden is in very poor shape.”

“If I put my hand to the barley shoots, they turn to dust. It’s all supposed to go to Drake’s after the harvest.” He put his elbows on his knees and laced his fingers beneath his chin. “That brewery employs four men who’ll be out of a job if they can’t brew on schedule.”

Elsa looked down at her lap.

“Have you ever noticed that all the things that matter in this life, all the things that really matter to other people, I mean, to helping them get by—no man can do a damn thing about them? A man can’t make the rain come, can’t make the crops grow. Can’t make the sick well.”

“Is that why you read all those old newspapers? To try to understand these things?” The questions were out before she could stop the words. He grunted in response but seemed to wait for what else she might say. “Sir, I believe we must have faith in the Lord and his plan, that he will provide for us, protect us. That the trials of this life are temporary.”

He gave her a stern look. “I find that the folks who say things like that are just the ones who’ve never seen a trial in all their days.”

Elsa bit down on the tip of her tongue. She felt she was at such a disadvantage here in this town, in this house. She knew nothing at all about men, what they thought about, what drove them. In her whole life she had scarcely even been in a room with a man except for her father, and the last time she saw him she was still a girl. Once Mr. Channing had stopped her in the wide, blue-carpeted hallway above the stairs to the laundry to ask her whether she knew where his wife had hidden the bourbon. Elsa had only whispered,
No, sir
, because Mrs. Channing had threatened each laundress with termination if she helped him get his liquor back.

Why did they speak and do as they did? Mr. Schreier, for instance—why did he seem to be all the time so angry? Elsa couldn’t begin to think of an answer. And for another—why had he asked her to sit and talk with him if he so disliked her presence? There was no telling. Elsa was growing angry, she realized, for she could name a dozen trials she had known in her life, and Mr. Schreier was arrogant to assume she had known nothing but ease. These trials did not threaten her faith, but strengthened it. The darker things became, the more she knew mercy.

“There are a good many things,” Elsa said, steadying her voice as the words tumbled out, painted red with her anger, “that I’m sure you
don’t
know about me.”

Mr. Schreier looked at her in surprise. His expression changed slightly, as if he were coming to a slow realization about her. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “I’m certain that’s true, Elsa.”

She nodded and stood up, folding the blanket and placing it on the sofa. She was no longer self-conscious about him seeing her in the nightgown. “I believe I will try to sleep a little more before the morning,” she said. “Good night, sir.”

“Good night.” Mr. Schreier picked up the now-cool cup of tea and took a sip. She started up the stairs. “Elsa?”

She stepped back down and turned her face toward him.

“I suppose you have been wanting to go to church. I’m sorry I didn’t think of it before.”

“Yes, sir. I am anxious to go.”

“We’ll go together then, tomorrow.”

She nodded, then started back up the stairs.
After all that
harsh talk, a kindness!
Elsa wondered whether all men were so strange.

Since coming to Destination, Clara hadn’t once heard Reverend Crowley’s Sunday sermon, but she vowed to start today. She hadn’t wanted to subject herself to the harsh judgments of the people in town. Some, like the minister’s new wife, felt Clara had done them a great service by delivering them to their husbands. But Albright and Luft, not to mention Mr. Drake and Rowena Gibson, held her in contempt. All the problems in life they’d ever have were somehow Clara’s fault. But here Clara was at the church, subjecting herself to it after all, for she found that she needed the guidance of the Lord at this particular juncture—a sad state of affairs, since she was fairly certain he could do nothing for her.