Mine to Tell (27 page)

When I arrived at my home, it was late evening. Lamplight burned in the windows, and I could see Isaac and the boys at the table, eating so late. I watched them, still reeling with nausea, wishing for my bed but wondering if I’d be welcome.

I stepped inside. All eyes turned to me, the boys’ inquisitive, Isaac’s hateful. I looked at them. Levi stood, smiled, and laughed to see me until Isaac silenced him. I walked to our room, barely able to steady myself, my small bag feeling as if it weighed a hundred pounds.

I entered the room and dropped onto the bed in the dark. I lay there, knowing the ceiling would be swirling, if I could see it. The door opened, a panel of dim light entering the room, then disappearing. I waited. Isaac lit a lamp on his side of the bed and stood over me, staring down at me. I closed my eyes.

“You’ve brought shame on us,” he said. I covered my eyes with my hands to keep the room from spinning. “Look at me,” he commanded.

“I’m ill,” I said.

“God only knows what you’ve been doing to deserve it.” His voice was sharp. His own wounds not enough, he had to inflict some on me.

“I’m sorry.” I tried to calm him. “It’s not what you think. I’ll explain, but let me sleep first.”

He said nothing for a minute. I relished the silence but knew it wouldn’t last.

“You saw him, didn’t you?”

I bit back the rising bile and nodded. “It’s not what you imagine, though.”

“Whore!” he spit. “I can no longer tolerate you here with me. I won’t have it. A wife who’s unfaithful. How can that be?”

I wasn’t unfaithful to Isaac, except in my broken heart those first few years of our marriage, when I pined for another although I tried not to. In worse ways, I’d been unfaithful to John, my true husband, it turned out, while I’d been going through the motions with Isaac.

I said nothing to Isaac’s charges. I waited until his threats were done and he’d stormed from the room. Then I vomited. On the floor at my side of the bed, my side of the room, nothing touching his.

I stayed to my bed for days, unable to improve and growing weaker and more tired by the day. It was my mother who finally deduced that I was with child. I knew it was Isaac’s child, from the night he’d forced himself on me. When he learned what my mother diagnosed, he was quick to keep his word in spite of my illness. He turned the old shed into a house for me, put me in it, and said he’d have nothing to do with an adulterous wife or a bastard child. I said only once that it was his child, but he wouldn’t listen.

I took my place in the other house, knowing now that I would stay there without saying a word to Isaac about our marriage. Although a legal commitment tied me to John, a moral one bound me to Isaac’s child. This God that had forgiven me and understood me—the same God I didn’t think Isaac had ever met, for his religion was bigger than God—was a moral God, a God of heart not rod, and I would stay to love this child and Isaac’s sons, stay for the marriage everyone thought was there, and lastly for my parents. I would write John and let him know. I’d seen that look in his eyes when I’d left him at the train station. We both knew we’d keep these second vows, these moral obligations to others, because it was right. I would keep mine in this other house while carrying Isaac’s child.

~*~

“Trevor’s been here,” I said, for some unknown reason, when Kyle finished reading.

“We’re catching up to where we’ve deciphered her notes in the Bible,” he said. “One of us needs to do some more decoding.”

I felt myself redden. Trevor was hanging there, and neither one of us wanted to do anything with him. I was ashamed I’d said anything. There was no reason for it. I felt like an insecure high school girl.

“I’ll do it,” I said. “And I didn’t mean to mention Trevor. I don’t know why I said that.”

“Because he’s been your Isaac,” Kyle said, glancing up at me.

I couldn’t speak. He was right. The gap between Julianne and me shortened with just that one statement, the expanse became passable and the history explainable.

“So you have to decide who’s your John. Or if you even want one.”

“Well, I don’t want an Isaac, that’s for sure.”

We were quiet for a moment. He pulled out Julianne’s Bible and set it on the desk for me. Then he retrieved her stack of letters and walked to the sofa and stood in front of me. I looked up at him.

“The next one of these is appropriate,” he said gazing down at me, “for both of you.” I nodded and patted the sofa next to me. He dropped down beside me.

~*~

November 15, 1916

My Dearest Julianne,

I can hardly hold my hand steady as I write this. I’m so anxious for your health and so anxious to know how your discussion went with Isaac.

Have you recovered from your ailment? I’m certain the strain of seeing me and hearing what our lives together should have been was too much for you. I’m certain your affliction has passed by now. I’ve fervently prayed for your recovery.

I confess I want to be foolhardy, I can’t help myself. You’re my lawfully wedded wife and knowing that drives me to despair. But Ellen, the woman I thought I was married to, is wounded. Nearly mortally. I’ve confessed to her, told her everything, and she’s asked me to leave. I hurt, I miss my boys, I regret what she’s suffered, but I won’t pretend anymore. I suspect, my dear Julianne, your experience is the same and you and I have discovered a larger right. One that surpasses the letter of the law. I want to be with you, and could make a case to be with you. But I find the spirit of the law within much more binding than the one without. I think you know what I mean.

Write me soon and let me know.

Yours in heart,

John

Chapter 49

“If therefore you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your offering there before the altar, and go your way; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your offering.”

I watched my mother’s face as she finished reading the next series of articles about Julianne before I sent them to the newspaper. We sat at her kitchen table, coffee cups between us, midmorning sunlight giving Julianne’s sad tale some reprieve. It was a war on my mother’s face, her expression bounding from what everyone had felt comfortable believing all these years to the story Julianne herself was telling. I saw two commitments at play, the one to my father and his family and the one she’d denied for years, the one to who she was as a woman, a person.

At last she laid the papers on the table. She smoothed her hands over them, her gaze fixed on the top one. I waited, not for a compliment but for her to say how
she
felt, how Julianne’s life was hers too.

“You sure about all of this?” she asked, giving the old lies one last chance.

“It’s her own words, Mama. Hers and the people who wrote letters to her.”

“Of course we don’t know what happened next, do we? Not for sure, anyway.”

“We’re still going through her notes and her things, so no, we don’t. But we know Grandpa Samuel was at least carried in her house.”

She nodded, and continued to smooth the papers. “I feel bad,” she said, looking at the top sheet.

“That’s why she had to leave her story behind. Not overtly, like most of us would have done. She left it covertly. Only someone who really wanted to know the truth would look for it. Anyone else, well, they’d just stick to what they wanted to believe. It was easier, but it ignored the truth completely.”

“Your grandfather has walked around with humiliation all these years,” she moaned privately. “Simon sometimes called him the bas…well, you know, the B word. He’d call him the B child.” She glanced up at me, and I nodded. My heart broke for my grandfather, who’d been treated as the unwanted child, the different child, the one with no real last name. “And I’ve kept it up for him,” she continued. “I feel awful.” She looked up at me, her eyes begging for forgiveness or some sort of reprieve. I put my hand on top of hers.

“He never said anything? Never talked about this?”

Mama shook her head. “No, he’s never blamed anyone. He just lived as the best man he knew how to be.”

As my mama drew in a deep breath to say more, the door flew open and Paul Junior stepped through. I groaned inwardly, knowing his coarse mannerisms would drive Julianne’s essence from the room. He stopped in the doorway when he saw me.

“Hi, Paul Junior,” I forced myself to say. He gaped at me as if he didn’t know what to do or say. It was then I saw him. His head peering over Paul Junior’s shoulder at the sound of my voice. Now I gaped, my mouth frozen open and my cheeks beginning to burn.

“Hello, Annabelle,” Trevor said as he stepped around Paul Junior. “Mrs. Crouse,” he added, spotting my mother. His voice was contrite, his eyes clearer than they had been other times, but his expression was of a beggar, one who knew he was out of place, coming to ask for a spot here with nothing to offer in return.

I looked at my mother. “I’ll take these and go,” I said scooping the papers out of her hands and standing quickly. “Okay to send them?” I was making my way out of the room, toward another door. I didn’t need her permission, I knew they were all right, but it was a formality and a consideration I gave her, and with her newest nemesis standing in the doorway, I wanted her to know she still deserved some respect. She looked from me to Trevor, not paying any attention to my question.

“Trevor wants to talk to us,” Paul Junior broke into the tension. “He’s sorry. He wants to say so.” Those were words Paul Junior had never said in his life. His tongue and mouth wallowed around them, unfamiliar with regret or consideration.

“That’s right,” Trevor said. He looked at my mother and then at me. He was closer now, and I could see him better, see that he’d cleaned up, not an outside cleansing but an inner one. He was still gaunt, but the inner darkness was gone. His nervousness was for us, not him. “I’ve done a horrible thing to this family and there’s nothing I can do to fix it. I don’t insist that you forgive me. I just want you to know that I admit it was awful and I wish I could take it back.”

My mother stood, awkwardly, not smoothly. She fidgeted with the table top and tried to look at Trevor. I wanted to intervene, keep her from saying what we’d been taught to say—it’s okay, it doesn’t matter—because it wasn’t okay, and it did matter. She glanced at me, and I lifted my chin to give her courage.

“Trevor,” she said, “I understand there were conditions…things going on…that affected you. But what you did still hurt us.”

Paul Junior shuffled and looked down at the floor. That’s when I realized Paul Junior’s guilt in all of this. Trevor had sent the articles, but Paul Junior had fanned the fire that fueled Trevor. Paul Junior had put a knife to his own family’s throats by helping him hate me and blame me, turning Trevor into an innocent victim and painting me as the offending ogre…just like my great-grandmother. He glanced up and away, not ready to own his offense.

I looked at my mother and saw she was watching him, too. She stepped around the table and faced both of them. “There’s only one thing we can do,” she said. Trevor looked ashamed. “Forgive. You did wrong, and I hope you learned a lesson. But I forgive you. It’s up to you to talk to Paul Senior and Grandpa Samuel and…” Then she paused and looked at me. She didn’t have to say anything about me. Trevor did.

“I’ll walk you home,” he said quickly. Then he stepped forward and hugged my mother before he came my way. “I’m sorry,” I heard him whisper in her hair. She hugged him back and then let go. Forgiveness would have to do its work. There would be no pretending, no faking, but no hatred this time. I was so proud of her.

“Can I walk with you?” Trevor turned to me.

“What about the ball game?” Paul Junior asked, before I had a chance to respond. “Hank and Jim are coming by, and you should watch it with us. It starts in ten minutes.”

Knowing the ballgame would settle things for Trevor, just as it always had, I said goodbye to my mother and started for the other door, the one Paul Junior wasn’t blocking. I was surprised as I reached it that someone had beat me there. Trevor.

“Let me walk with you,” he said. It sounded more like a request than a command as he waited for my answer.

“But the ball game…” I said, knowing sports meant everything to him and wondering how he could ignore the game, with Paul Junior standing there tapping his watch and looking as edgy as if someone had told him he had ten minutes to live. I looked from Trevor to Paul Junior and back again.

“The game can wait,” Trevor said.

“No, it can’t,” Paul Junior wailed. Trevor had made his peace, but Paul Junior hadn’t. He was looking for an escape, a way to return to business as usual, stick his head in the sand.

“I can walk home. Go ahead. I appreciate what you did for my mom, and that’s good enough.” I started to walk out without him, but he blocked my way, his face near to mine, the anger I’d become used to completely gone, something much more humble left behind.

“I’d rather be with you,” he said, and I heard Paul Junior grunt in the background and my mother shush him. “We have to talk.”

I stared at Trevor, looking for flaws in his sincerity. My heart wasn’t pitter-pattering like he was probably hoping it was. It was reserving judgment on him, not really caring yet what the verdict might be.

“Paul Junior, would you make sure the calves have their hay?” my mother said in the background.

“What?” Paul Junior asked.

“Just go do it!” she snapped.

“Come on,” Trevor said, and he took me by the elbow and steered me away from their house.

“I…I really don’t think this is a good idea,” I said, pausing before we reached the road.

“Maybe not,” he said, looking me in the eye, “but it’s never going to be a good idea if we don’t make it one.”

I was too baffled to argue as I turned toward Julianne’s house.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he said, keeping pace at my side, “just listen. Everything I told your mother is true for you too. I treated all of you shamefully—your reputations, your writing, your work, everything. I was wrong, and I’m sorry.”