Mittman, Stephanie (13 page)

"I
wouldn't be throwin' too many stones, mister, if I was you. Were you thinkin'
about Willa when you gave in to your lust and planted your seed? Were you
worryin' about
her
future?"

He
ran his hands through his hair and looked around on the bed for something to
dry it with. He looked to Annie as if he expected, after all he'd said, for her
to provide him with a towel. He could freeze to death before she'd give him a
handkerchief.

He
shook the water off like a dog and sat on her bed as if pondering something of
great importance. Finally his face brightened a little.

"Maybe
it ain't as bad as all that. Maybe he's hopin' to marry you. After all, you
could raise up his girls for him. Lord knows you're good at that. And Ethan
says he don't know shit about farmin', so you could help him with that
too."

"So
now you got him wantin' to marry me? Did you forget how ugly I am?" Was
there a grain of truth in what Bart said? Did she look good to Noah as someone
to look after Hannah and Julia? Hadn't he said something about how he admired
the way she'd raised Francie and Ethan? And what about his interest in Francie?
Was one Morrow just as good as another when it came to raising his girls? And
who cared how Noah Eastman thought she looked anyway? She wasn't marrying him,
she was marrying Miller, who was surely above looking for beauty and certainly
wasn't in need of someone to watch his children.

"Now,
Sissy," Bart said, the wheels of his mind spinning so fast Annie thought
she could see them. "Nobody said you was ugly. In fact, you're kinda
pretty in a different sort of way. Sort of like a boy who ain't come into his
manhood yet."

"Oh,
thank you," Annie said, tears blurring her vision. "What a lovely
thing to say to the woman who has cooked for you and cleaned for you and taken
care of you for seventeen years. I always wanted to hear that I looked like a
boy!"

"I
didn't mean it like that," Bart said, assessing her openly. "You got
nice eyes and a pretty smile, and you ain't got an ounce of fat on you, without
you bein' scrawny either."

It
was sad to think these were probably the nicest things Bart had ever said about
her. She stood still, bearing his scrutiny in the hope that he'd come to the
conclusion she was not as awful as he had first imagined.

"The
truth is, with a little lace and ruffles you wouldn't be half bad. If you
dressed like Della or Willa, and curled your hair, and—"

Holding
her up to Della and finding her lacking was one thing, but she'd be damned if
he was going to put her up against Willa and find fault.

"Willa
has a horrible nose," Annie said. She hadn't actually meant for it to come
out, but she was never good at hiding her thoughts.

Instead
of being angry, Bart laughed. "Don't she though? But she's got other
charms—the way she laughs, the way she moves her head in that girly way, her
walk— you know what I mean. She's all woman, Sissy. I bet she ain't never had
dirt on her hands."

"Fine
lot of good she'll do ya on this farm, then," Annie said. The truth was
she had no idea what Bart meant.
Movin' her head in a girly way.
What
way was that? Did men move their heads different from women? And was she moving
hers like a man?

"I
wasn't lookin' for a helpmate, Sissy," Bart admitted. "I wasn't
really lookin' for a wife, if ya wanna know the truth. But now that I'm gonna
have one, and a baby too, I sure am glad it's Willa. I won't mind doin' all the
work myself, knowin' what's waitin' for me at the end of the day."

"Are
you telling me you love Willa?" Annie asked.
Need
was something she
could understand. Even lust, while she couldn't condone it, she could accept.
Contentment, what she felt with Miller and the prospect of spending her life serving
him, she could agree to. But love? Love was something, especially with regard
to Bart, she just couldn't fathom.

His
face broke out in a surprised smile. "Yes," he said. "Between me
and you, now, yes."

"Bart!
That's wonderful," she said, pretending to be glad for him, when all she
really felt was confused.

"What
about you? You love Miller?"

"Of
course," she said, smiling at him as brightly as she could. Surely she
loved Miller—as much as he loved her, anyway. Maybe some people weren't meant
to love. Maybe some relationships were based on other, higher things.

"Then
if I was you, I'd stay away from Noah Eastman. Just the way he looks at you
don't seem decent. I don't know what Miller might think if he saw Eastman
sniffin' your skirts." He looked her over, smiling at the overalls she
wore and pointing. "Or his own trousers coverin' your legs."

"Miller
has nothing to worry about," Annie assured him. "I'm not interested
in Noah Eastman. I spent my whole life on a dirt farm raisin' kids that weren't
mine. I'd have to be crazy to do it again, don't ya think?"

Bart
looked over his sister again, taking one of her hands and measuring it against
his. He folded the tops of his fingers over hers, making her feel small and
almost delicate. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe this life suits
you, after all. I don't know."

But
half an hour later, Annie knew, as she pulled the covers up under her chin and
tried to fall asleep. The air smelled wonderfully fresh and new from the rain.
A cool breeze ruffled her hair and tickled her nose. She knew for a certainty
that farm life didn't suit her at all. She was meant to rise above it. Inside
her was an elegant lady just bursting to come out and meet society.

But
each time she closed her eyes she saw herself dancing in the rain with Noah
Eastman, his smile squinting his very blue eyes and his laughter filling her
ears. And she felt the hug that Hannah had given her when it was time to leave,
and Julia's sweaty brow which she'd kissed goodbye as the child slept on the
sofa, unwilling to be sent to bed before the party was over.

Oh,
no, she thought, her train was finally coming in, and she wasn't about to let
it get derailed by some sweet-talking widower who needed someone to take care
of his girls and make him a decent meal. No matter how desirable he might make
her feel.

"Mrs.
Miller Winestock," she whispered aloud. "In a few months I will be
Mrs. Miller Winestock."

Cold
damp air washed over her and made her shiver. Nestling deeper into the covers,
she found it impossible to find any warmth.

By
Saturday Annie had moved all her things out of the bedroom that for the last
two years she had called her own. Her dresses hung once again in the closet she
had shared with Francie and Della. Her underthings lay folded in the drawers that
she had used as steps to get to the top of the dresser before she was tall
enough to reach there on her own. Her shoes, one pair of oil-grain buttons so
worn down at the heels they were only suitable for working in the garden or
helping Bart, and her dress boots, India kid with more polish than leather left
on them, sat by the foot of the bed.

Francie
had taken almost everything she owned to New York. Della, over the years since
her marriage to Peter, had stripped the room of every trace of herself as well.
Now, as Annie looked around, the room that had held her two beautiful sisters,
their clothes always strewn about, their laughter and their squabbles regularly
exploding through the walls, their lavender and rose water forever scenting the
air, seemed empty and lifeless.

Bart
was humming in the room he was to share with his bride. Annie heard him so
clearly she might as well have been in the room with him. For the hundredth
time she thought about what that would mean for her this evening, and all the evenings
to come, until she would take her own vows and join Miller in his bed at the
beautiful house on Summit Street.

She
concentrated on his bedroom as she remembered it. Elvira had been a great one
for gewgaws and lace, and every piece of furniture, each the choicest
quarter-sawn oak, was covered with a handmade lace doily. Because she had been
confined to her bed for much of the last year of her life, her sheets had been
ordered specially from a store in New York called Bloomingdale's, and they were
fine linen rather than the muslin Annie was used to. The headboard, against
which she had propped Elvira nearly every day for months on end, stood taller
than even Miller or Noah Eastman.

Noah
Eastman. Now what would make her think of him? Especially now when she was
imagining herself in the beautiful bedroom with the fancy French bevel plate
mirror and the rose carpet. She pushed the thought of Mr. Eastman aside with
more difficulty than she wanted to admit. It was hard enough thinking about
sharing a bedroom, and a bed, with Miller. Letting Noah Eastman into the same
imaginings was downright indecent.

Bart
had generously taken over her chores for the morning, milking Edwina and
Harry—named by Ethan when he was too young to be argued out of a man's name for
a cow—and feeding the chickens, which Annie had always refused to name on the
grounds that if they named them, how could they eat them? In return for doing
her chores, Bart expected her to remove the last vestiges of her belongings
from his soon-to-be bridal chamber.

Of
course, he was right. There shouldn't be any traces of another woman in the
room he shared with his wife, even if the other woman was only his sister.

Which
brought her mind right back to the bedroom on Summit Street and all Elvira's
belongings scattered about it: her hairpins resting on the small table beside
the bed, her robe thrown over the footboard, her dainty slippers tucked beneath
the bed in case she was feeling up to a trip to the water closet.

Ah,
the water closet. More than anything else Annie Morrow coveted in this life,
despite the sin of it, she coveted her neighbor's bathroom. In all her
twenty-six years she had never taken a bath anywhere but in the kitchen. Except
for the coldest days in winter she had trekked to the privy out beyond the
toolshed every day of her life. While she had a pump for water in the kitchen,
if she wanted to wash in the privacy of her own room it had always meant
hauling water up the eleven steps to the landing and carrying what hadn't
spilled the rest of the way to her room.

Two
families she knew had installed wind-wheel pumps, one with great success, the
other with enough problems to convince Bart they'd be better off without one.
When Orra Dow, who called the wind pump a blessing, showed her the water tank
in the small room off her kitchen and explained how she was able to heat the
water before it went into her tub, Annie thought she would just die from envy.
It might not have been very Christian, but Annie was surely looking forward to
inviting Orra over to the house on Summit Street and letting her use the fancy
water closet once she and Miller were married.

Married.
Once she and Miller were married.

If
Bart hadn't stopped humming and begun banging drawers and cursing, Annie
supposed she would have daydreamed the whole day away. Instead, she put away
the last of her underthings and went to see what had Bart so riled.

"Ain't
I got even one clean shirt?" he shouted when he saw her in the doorway.
"I can't get married in an Electric lacing shirt! Everyone'll think I'm in
a hurry to get undressed!" He held the navy-blue shirt with the button-on
lacing placket out in his extended arm as though he didn't want it to touch his
freshly washed body.

"No,
I suppose you can't," Annie admitted, trying hard not to laugh at the
sight of her freshly shaved brother, his face a mess of tiny rags that clung to
the nicks on his cheeks like sugar dots on her best cakes. She'd never seen him
so nervous and hadn't the heart to prolong his agony. "Top of the
closet," she said, gesturing with her eyebrows at the brown paper package
that rested there.

Yanking
it off the shelf and ripping the paper with a zeal she'd only seen him exhibit
at mealtimes, he looked over the fancy laundried shirt she'd bought him at
Hanson's Mercantile. Charlie had given her a hard time about allowing her to
pay, saying that Bart was, after all, his brother too. But Risa had understood
and they'd compromised by letting her pay the wholesale price. The pleated
bosom was all linen, the shirt double stitched with French placketed sleeves.
It had cost her nearly a dollar of her egg money.

The
look in Bart's eyes told her it had been worth every penny. With a single
finger he touched the fabric as though his clumsy hands might ruin it.

"There's
a new collar too," Annie told him. "I hope it fits you. I ain't
bought you a new one in a long time. You might have grown some."

He
found the collar beneath the shirt and wrapped it temporarily around his neck,
checking the fit. Bending his knees slightly so he could see himself in the
bureau mirror, he tilted his head this way and that, admiring himself. When he
turned to Annie he was so proud she was afraid he'd never get his swelled chest
into his new shirt. "What I said last night, Sissy," he said quietly,
"about your not bein' pretty? Well, you sure look beautiful to me right
now." He looked at his face again in the mirror and pulled gently at one
of the rags. "Thanks," he added. "Don't I look the dandy?"