Mittman, Stephanie (21 page)

"Yes,
I was," she told Willa, finding a new listener for her old stories.
"And my labor was twice as long, but it was worth it. Nothing,
nothing," she repeated, looking pointedly at the stomachs of both Willa
and Risa, "is as special as having twins. People look at you differently,
speak to you differently; why, they act as if I'm an authority on bringing up
children."

"Isn't
it amazing how some people can act?" Risa said. "If someone needed an
authority on bringing up children, I can't think of anyone better suited than
Sissy. She knows everything about—"

"Are
we havin' dessert tonight?" Ethan said, poking his head through the door.
He looked around and saw four women and blushed to his blond roots. "This
a womanly thing? I didn't mean to interrupt nothin'. I just thought— heck,
Sissy, them pies smell so good. Couldn't we eat first and then you ladies could
compare waistlines?"

"Seems
you brought a few extra guests," Annie said, her eyes boring into her
brother's.

"Mrs.
Abernathy has to be the worst cook in all of Ohio. She burns the meat, salts
the greens till you can't hardly taste 'em, and she thinks dessert's a sin,
though you couldn't tell by the size of her corset. I just thought, you always
make so much extra—"

"Bring
out some extra plates," Annie told him. "You'll have to use the
wooden ones," she added, surprising Risa, who knew how much pride she took
in her good dishes.

"But
Sissy," she started, "this is a special occasion."

"I
ain't got enough," Annie said and bit her lower lip. "Not
anymore."

***

When
she came through the doorway, a pie in each hand, Noah wasn't the only man to
cheer. He suspected the others were cheering her baking, but he was delighted
to be able to express his joy and not be taken to task for it. Of course, the
sweet scent of melted sugar and butter, the spicy aroma of cinnamon, and the
autumn warmth of crisp fresh apples was nothing to ignore either.

"Apple,"
she announced, setting down the pie in her right hand. It was heaped way out of
the crust in the shape of a craggy mountain with a crumb topping that was just
the way he liked it, chunky so that when you bit on a piece it exploded in your
mouth. "And pear," she said, setting down the one in her left.

"Square
Dancers at the Grange Hall," Risa announced as she carried the big bowl of
custard with dough dancers swirling atop it. It was obvious to him that two
extra dancers had been added for his daughters.

"Rhubarb
pie," Willa said, holding the one pie with two hands as though she was
afraid of dropping it. Annie was so quick to take it from her, Noah guessed it
wouldn't have been the first thing she had dropped that day.

Della
came out, with Samuel holding one of her hands and James holding the other.
"Well, I've got the guests of honor," she said, holding up their
hands as if they had gone ten rounds and won. After the few encounters he'd had
with the boys, he thought the image surprisingly accurate despite their age.

"All
my guests are guests of honor," Annie said over the din created by the
pulling back of chairs and the settling of children. "But tonight's very
special guests of honor are both guests and hosts."

"Wait,"
Peter said. He ran toward the living room and returned with two bottles of
wine. He made a ceremony of opening the wine, smelling the cork and twirling a
bit of the dark red liquid in his glass.

"Peter,
I thought we understood each other with regard to alcohol in my house,"
Annie said, a frown marring the perfection of her face.

"Bart
doesn't mind," Peter said, as if the house and the rules in it were now
her brother's province. "He and Charlie are joining me. Anyone else?"
He lifted his bottle in invitation.

"'Look
not thou upon the wine,'" Winestock began, "'when it is red, when it
giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it
biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.' I shall pass, thank you,
Mr. Gibbs."

Remarkably,
having known first-hand the effects of too much drinking, Noah had to agree and
passed on the wine as well. Besides, if there were going to be points scored
with Annie, Noah wasn't about to let the scales tip in the minister's favor.

They
all waited while Annie's pompous brother-in-law finished pouring wine for those
who wanted it, and then she let him take over her announcement. "To Willa
and Bart," Peter said, raising his glass and gesturing for everyone else
to follow. "May they share great joy, and may they always have a clean
shirt, a clean conscience, and a dollar in their pockets."

"To
Willa and Bart," everyone agreed and raised their glasses, both empty and
full, in their honor.

"No!"
Annie yelled and started chasing one of the twins. "He's got the
cork!"

If
it hadn't been so serious, Noah thought it would have been comical, a line of
five or six adults all running after one small boy who whooshed under tables
and between chairs with the agility that only a three-year-old possesses.

But
Noah prided himself on being smarter than even the most precocious
three-year-old, which he didn't credit Samuel with being in the first place, and
being rather experienced with children in general, he knew that if he sat still
until the boy, intent only on the adults chasing after him, ran right past his
chair, Noah could simply whip out an arm and catch the boy by the scruff of his
neck. Sure enough, Samuel flew by his right side and Noah grabbed hold of his
jacket with one hand and, with the tips of the fingers of his injured hand,
plucked the cork from the boy's hand just as it was on its way to his mouth.

"Not
this time, Sammy my boy," he said, handing the cork over to Annie and the
boy to Peter. "Better luck next time."

"I
am done in," Della declared. "Could someone else serve the pie?"

"Oh,
Della," Risa cooed. "And for the first time ever you were actually
going to help?"

"First
the custard," Annie said, in an effort to defuse the situation.
"Samuel, I'm tempted not to let you have any. I want a promise from you
that only my good cooking is going into that mouth of yours tonight.
Understand?"

Samuel
made a face that Noah couldn't decide was agreement or not. Annie seemed to
feel it was not.

"No
custard. And I was going to let you dish it out, too." She looked very sad
and disappointed, her lower lip protruding so that Samuel would change his
mind. It had a very different effect on Noah, who remembered pulling on that
same soft lip with his teeth.

"I
will," Samuel said, reaching for the spoon, but Annie held it out of his
reach.

"You
will not until you promise me that nothing but my cookies and custard will
cross your lips." She wiped the edge of the custard bowl with her finger
and stuck it in her mouth. "Mmm," she said. "This might be the
best I ever made."

Lord,
he was undone! Right there at her dinner table he was going to embarrass
himself. He pulled a napkin onto his lap and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"Can
I sit on your lap?" Julia asked him. He reached for her and settled her on
his leg for the time being. This was, in its own way, rapidly becoming the
longest evening of his life.

"He
won't do it again," Della assured her sister. "Let him dish it
out."

Annie
clearly disapproved of Della's methods of disciplining, but she didn't seem to
feel it was her place to raise someone else's child.

"Remember,"
she told the boy as she handed him the spoon. "You get to dish out the
portion for you and your brother, but he gets to chose which one is his."

Noah
didn't quite understand her rules until he saw how carefully Samuel tried to
make the portions exactly equal, since James would get to choose his dish
first. How many times had he heard Hannah complain that Julia was given more
cake than she was? And how many times had Julia cried that Hannah's plate held
more?

The
woman should be canonized. Her methods of child rearing should be turned into
law and her name engraved in Washington, D.C., next to President Washington's: ANNIE
MORROW, THE MOTHER OF HER COUNTRY!

The
pie deserved another plaque, and the custard, which he finished for Julia after
she fell asleep in his arms, merited an award as well.

"So
what do you hear from Francie?" Peter asked. "The letters she writes
to Della are all about the latest fashions and the controversy over women's
underclothes. I can't believe that's all that interests her in New York
City."

"The
last letter we got," Charlie said, "was all about the department
stores on Fifth Avenue. She said that in some of them all the goods are spread
around on several different floors and the customers simply help themselves if
they want to, instead of the way we do it."

"It
sounds like such an exciting place," Ethan said. "She sent me a
clipping from the newspaper about a march that turned so ugly the police had to
use their billy clubs, and she said I ought to come to New York and become a
policeman if I really wanted adventure!"

"What
about you, Sissy?" Risa asked. "What does she write to you?"

Annie
looked at Noah accusingly. He wondered if perhaps Francie had told her about
Wylene. It was just as well if she knew. He didn't want any secrets between
them.

"She
writes that she misses home," Annie said. "I think with the slightest
encouragement she'd pack her bags and be back in Van Wert." She stared at
Noah until he felt he ought to duck. Her looks alone were lethal. "It
would be a shame if she gave up everything now, only to come home and marry up
and have babies and never do anything important with her life. Don't you
think?"

"I
don't know," Noah mused aloud. "I don't see marrying up and having
babies as not doing anything important. After all, if our parents had felt that
way, where would we all be?"

Annie
opened her mouth and then closed it. Her jaw was very, very tight.

On
Monday night Annie had tried to teach Willa how to prepare the sponge for the
bread they would bake on Tuesday. In the morning Annie's combination of yeast,
sugar, water, and flour had been ready to be formed into bread, while Willa's
lay flat in the bottom of the bowl. Assuring her that they would try again
toward the end of the week, she had helped Willa make some fairly successful
loaves of brown bread and turned out two pies for the party while Willa rested.
When she pulled the bread out of the oven she noticed the color of the crust
and compared it to her forearm. She was a good two shades lighter, but she knew
that Noah had been right. No doubt at the end of the summer her skin had been
the color of baked bread.

Wednesday
was taken up with the wash. Willa was surprisingly well taught in this area,
but because of her condition, she restricted her help to telling Annie what she
should do, as if Annie wasn't well aware that delicates and whites weren't to
be thrown in with woolens or calicos and ginghams. Willa timed the boiling of
the washtub while Annie did the manual work of scrubbing all the clothes in hot
soapy water, attacking them with the tin wash plunger as though they had
purposely gotten themselves dirty, and finally lifting the soaking garments and
depositing them in a second tub, where they were boiled with soap for half an
hour.

While
one load boiled, Annie scrubbed another, then drained the first load, rinsed
the clothes with clear water and bluing, and put them through the ringer. Willa
chatted away affably, assuring Annie how much more pleasant it was to do the
wash with another woman for company rather than all alone. Annie nodded in
agreement much of the time, afraid that if she let herself speak she'd tell
Willa that help would be appreciated a great deal more than company. She'd made
her sisters help when they were still at home, just as her mother had pressed
her into service when she was a little girl. They were usually more bother than
aid, but their laughter and their questions had made the job go faster.

By
Thursday Willa was only breaking half a dozen eggs at each gathering and had
given up going into the barn with Annie for milking, claiming that the smell
gave her the collywobbles. Annie thought that any work at all seemed to make
Willa sick, but the times when she milked Edwina and Harry while Willa went up
for her nap were rapidly becoming her favorites.

They
were far better than the hours spent with Mrs. Leeman when she came to visit
her daughter. Willa's mother, apparently unable or simply unwilling to believe
that her daughter would have allowed Bart any liberties before marriage, felt a
sudden need to warn her daughter that once she was with child she would have to
turn her husband from her bed or risk the loss of the baby. After Mrs. Leeman
left, Annie had to spend a good part of the day reassuring Willa that no harm
had been done and she was sure many couples did not abstain for all that time
no matter what her mother had said.

Though
Annie wouldn't have minded if Bart and Willa stopped banging the headboard for
a while. By the middle of the week she was sorry she hadn't told Willa that her
mother was probably right.