Until the End of Time (29 page)

“I want to say what I think your mother would have, and she and I didn’t always agree. She was much braver than I am, but this time I do agree.… Go, Lilli … follow your dreams … follow your heart. If this book is important to you, go to New York. See it through … don’t waste it. You’ll always regret it if you don’t go. And you could
become bitter about it. Your father will get over it. He has to. He needs you, and he loves you. I think you should go to New York.” Lilli stared at her in amazement. For the second time recently, Margarethe had said the exact opposite of what Lilli had expected and told her to choose the path of freedom, whatever the consequences. And Lilli knew in her heart that it was exactly what her mother would have wanted her to do, and then she would have helped her pick up the pieces later. This time Lilli would have to do that herself, but she was willing to.

“Thank you,” she said, throwing her arms around Margarethe’s neck. “Thank you.” She didn’t want to waste the opportunity either. If she did, it might never come again. She knew she had to seize it while she could. And she believed that the chance to publish her book had been a gift from her mother, in heaven.

She went back to the house and began quietly making preparations that night. And the next day, when her father was at her brother’s farm, with Willy, and the twins were in school, she took the buggy and went to the dairy to find a ride into town. After asking around, one of the farmhands took her. She bought a few simple things at a women’s store. She was going to wear her Amish clothes, but she wanted a few English-style things for New York, so she didn’t attract too much attention. She bought a black skirt, and some blouses, a dark blue dress, and a red one, and flat shoes that looked like ballerina slippers and felt like air on her feet. And she bought a pair of blue jeans. She was fascinated by the buttons and zippers, and she bought a small suitcase to put it all in. She would take her black Amish cape with her that she wore all winter, but she bought a dark blue coat too. It fit her perfectly and would keep her warm if
the weather was chilly. And she bought two pairs of sheer stockings, which she had never even seen before. Her legs looked naked when she had them on, instead of the heavy black cotton stockings she had worn all her life. She paid for all of it by check from her bank account.

And the woman who helped her was very kind, and gave her good advice when she said she was going to New York on business. She packed it all in the suitcase in the store and hid it under her bed when she got home. No one had seen her leave and return. She felt dishonest, but she was certain she was doing the right thing now. And she broke the news to her father on Thursday night. She waited until after dinner and told him she needed to speak to him. She sat quietly until the boys went upstairs, and her father was stone-faced, before he knew what she had to say. He thought she had given up the idea of the book, but he wasn’t sure. Sometimes she was as stubborn as he was.

At last, alone with him, she stood in front of him, trembling, but he couldn’t see it, as she held tightly to the edges of her apron. It was one of the ones her mother had made her. She had worn it on purpose to speak to him. It reminded her of her mother and gave her courage.

“Papa, I want to tell you two things. I am going to let them publish my book. I don’t think it’s wrong. And I think Mama would have approved. And I am going to New York to edit it with them, and make some corrections. I will be working with a woman Bob Bellagio has assigned to do it. She’s having twins soon, so she can’t come here. So I am going there to work on it with her. I’ll be back in a week or less, as soon as I finish. Nothing will have changed. And I will go on as before. But I have to do this, Papa. And I love you very
much.” She added the last for good measure. And she said it to him in the German they often spoke at home, so he would know that she wasn’t abandoning him or their traditions. And when she finished speaking, there was deafening silence in the room. His brows were knit, he said nothing, and he didn’t move. It was almost a full five minutes before he said a word. He stood up then and spoke to her in English, in a strong clear voice that rang out in the room.

“If you go to New York, do not come back here, Lillibet. I will speak to the elders, and you will be shunned. You cannot disobey me and live like the English and stay in our community. You have no home here anymore, if you leave.” They were powerful words that hit her like blows, but she did not believe him. In her mind, she loved him and their family too much for him to shun her. Her heart and mind would not allow her to accept that he could do it. The memory of her mother would not permit him to do it in the end. She was certain.

“I will be back, Papa. As soon as we finish. A week at most, maybe less,” she said calmly, refusing to be frightened by him. He said nothing to her in response. He stormed past her, walked up the stairs to his room with a heavy step, and slammed the door. Lillibet went to her own room after that, after she put out the lamps. She took out her suitcase and put the rest of her things in it. She had taken two of her Amish dresses and was going to wear another, in a plain black wool, with her winter bonnet, and cape, and tall black shoes. And she knew that whatever she wore, her old clothes or the new, she would always be an Amish girl, and chose to be, just as she had promised at her baptism, and she would come home again. But first, no matter how angry her father was, or how much he threatened her, she was going to New York. And she could hardly wait.

Chapter 19

On Friday morning, Lillibet got up even earlier than usual, and she went to wake Willy. She hated to make him do it and didn’t want to get him in trouble with their father, but she needed him to drive her to the dairy in the buggy. She had no other way to get there, and she had told Bob to have the car meet her there. It was too far for her to walk with her suitcase. She had discussed it with Willy the night before, and he said he was willing. He didn’t want his sister on the road alone. Things happened to people, especially to girls late at night, and it would still be dark when she left.

“Are you coming back?” he asked her, looking worried. His eyes were huge when he asked.

“Yes. I promise. I’ll only be gone a week.”

“Do you think Papa will have you shunned?” He looked frightened, but she didn’t.

“No, I don’t. He loves me. He’ll just be very angry, but I wrote a book, and now I want to get it published. I didn’t do anything bad.”

“Does the book talk about us?”

“No, it’s just about a girl.” It sounded dull to him and not worth making such a big fuss over, but their father had been furious at her for weeks. Willy hoped it would be over soon, and so did she.

She was dressed and downstairs long before sunup, and didn’t even dare make herself a cup of tea. She didn’t want to make any noise and wake her father or the twins. She and Willy were both carrying their shoes when they left and walked across the grass in the front yard, covered with morning dew. They walked to the stable, Willy hitched the horse to the buggy and put her suitcase in the back, and they took off as quietly as they could. Neither of them knew that their father was already awake and had been listening to them as they left. And when he heard the buggy take off down the road, with his only daughter in it, he sat on his bed and cried.

The car and driver were waiting for her at the dairy, as promised. And she hugged Willy fiercely when she said goodbye. Her little brothers were a nuisance, but she loved them, and she had never left them, or home, let alone for a week.

“I’ll miss you. Be good, and take care of Papa and the boys. Tell Mr. Lattimer if anything happens—he knows where to find me in an emergency.” But she didn’t expect there to be one, and hoped there wouldn’t. One tragedy had been enough in their lifetime. Lightning couldn’t strike again.

“Bring me back something from New York,” Willy said with a shy grin. He was caught between being a boy and a man. He was a gangly adolescent but expected to work on the farm among the men now, since he had finished school. Lillibet always wished, as their
mother had, that they could stay in school longer, but that was not the Amish way.

“Okay, I will. Now go back, before Papa gets up,” she urged him, and he took off a minute later, at a good trot on the way back. She knew he’d be home soon and hoped their father didn’t make too big a fuss about it when he discovered that she had left for New York, just as she said she would.

The driver opened the car door for her, and she got in the backseat and remembered to put the seat belt on, as Bob had shown her when she had ridden in his car with him. She settled back to watch the countryside go by, as the sun came up over the farms of Lancaster County. She gazed wide-eyed, trying to imagine what New York would be like. She had written about it, but this would be so different. She would be there herself, and it was real.

Bob lay in bed before his alarm went off that morning, thinking about Lilli, and hoping everything had gone smoothly, and her father hadn’t locked her in her room. He knew she wasn’t a prisoner, but she was an Amish daughter, and her father was a stern old man. He knew they had started early, and he expected her to reach the city before noon.

It was going to be a long morning waiting for her, and when he got up, he went to his small office in his apartment and noticed her apron neatly folded on his desk. It had been there since he first read her book, and he had read it several times since, in order to help make editorial comments, and sometimes just because he enjoyed “hearing” her. Her work had such a distinctive voice, and he got
fresh insights into her each time. He walked over and picked up the apron and realized again how small she was. It was comforting to him for some unknown reason just to touch something she had worn, as though a part of her spirit had infused it with some essence of her. He knew now that her mother had made the apron, and Lilli thought it had brought her luck. He wasn’t sure, but he was still convinced that their meeting had been fated. The strange way she had heard about his publishing house when she found the book on the bench at the dairy—none of it seemed like an accident to him. And each time he’d seen her, he had an inexplicable sense of déjà vu, although he had never seen her before. And his newfound fascination with the Amish had been richly satisfied in the past two months. He had always thought them intriguing when he heard about them. And now, through Lilli, he had learned more about them than he had ever wanted to know.

He took his time getting to the office and was relieved to see Mary Paxton lumber toward him. She was waiting for Lilli too and excited to meet the young Amish woman who had written the book.

“I’m glad to see you’re still here,” he said with relief.

“Me too.” She grinned at him. “I’ll try not to have these guys before we get our work done.” She had the manuscript on her desk, and her notes, and was ready to roll. They had had it typed and put on a disk. Bob was going to give Lillibet’s notebooks back to her as a keepsake. She had told him she had an idea for a second book but hadn’t had time to start it yet.

After that Bob sat in his office, looking out the window, sipping a mug of coffee, and thinking about her.

His brother Paul called that morning, just to say hello. “So how’s
your Amish girl? Anything new there?” Bob had told him that her father was upset about the book.

“She’s on her way to New York, as we speak, to do some editing with one of my best editors.”

“That should be interesting. Has she ever been off the farm?”

“Never,” Bob said with a slow smile. He was excited to show her New York and knew what it meant to her. It was a lifetime dream come true.

“Let’s hope she arrives wearing shoes,” his brother said. He always made demeaning comments about her, which annoyed Bob. But that was what Paul did, about everything and everyone. He thought he was clever, but he was just rude. Their mother did the same thing and had a razor-sharp tongue and equally bright mind. Their father was the gentler of the two, more like Bob, who always wondered why his mother’s caustic remarks never bothered their father. Maybe after forty years, he didn’t listen.

“She’ll be wearing laced-up boots, a bonnet, and her apron, if you want to meet her,” Bob suggested, and then regretted it immediately. He didn’t want Paul being unkind to Lillibet, or hurting her feelings, or his own.

“I think I’ll leave Heidi to you. Not my kind of woman.” And his wife wasn’t Bob’s. The two brothers had nothing in common. He and Bob had always been different. Each one taking after the other parent, like chalk and cheese, as the Brits said.

Bob was sitting quietly at his desk, thinking about her, as Lilli crossed the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan, and caught her breath as she saw the skyline glistening in the sunlight. She spotted the Empire State Building immediately and felt like Dorothy
entering Oz as they crossed the bridge. It was the most beautiful sight she’d ever seen, and she had no idea why, but she felt as though she’d come home.

As he’d been instructed to do, the driver called Bob on his cell phone as they entered the city and headed downtown. They were on the West Side Highway, heading south, when he handed the phone to Lillibet. She looked at it and had no idea what to do.

“How do I use it?” she said to the driver, and he glanced at her as though she had landed from Mars. She was traveling in her Amish clothes, with her bonnet and cape, a fresh apron, and her high shoes and heavy black stockings.

“Just talk,” he said to her.

“Where?” Bob could hear the exchange and knew there would be a lot of new discoveries in her life in the next week. The driver pointed then, and Lilli held the phone to her ear tentatively. “Hello,” she said, wondering if he could hear her.

“Welcome to New York, Lillibet,” he said warmly, and sounded clear as a bell, which amazed her.

“It’s so beautiful,” she said, glancing at the buildings to their left, and the Jersey shore and Hudson River on her right. “It’s better than I thought it would be.” And the splendid fall weather helped.