Until We Reach Home (32 page)

No letters had arrived from Tor.
Whack!
Not a single one.
Whack!
Kirsten was growing desperate. Enough time had passed for her first letter to reach Sweden and for his reply to arrive by return mail, providing he had written to her right away. She had pleaded with him to help her. Why didn’t he reply? Surely he had received at least one of the many letters she’d written to him since finding out about the baby.

Whenever Kirsten and her sisters had an afternoon or evening off from work, they would walk to Aunt Hilma’s boardinghouse to check for mail. Sofia still expected her German friend to come looking for her any day, but so far she had been disappointed. Kirsten had tried to warn Sofia about the dangers of falling in love. Now she would have her heart broken, too.

Kirsten gave the carpet another whack, squinting her eyes to keep out the dust. She longed to close her eyes against the reality that a child was growing inside her, as if by not thinking about it, it would go away. She still looked the same as usual. She felt the same. And she did manage to forget, at times—until a foul smell touched off her nausea.

She felt a sprinkle of raindrops on her arms and looked up at the threatening sky. She had better beat faster before the sprinkle became a downpour. She carried on an imaginary conversation with Tor as she worked, wishing she could send a message across the ocean from her mind to his:
Please, Tor. We have to do something! Your baby is going to be born without a name. It will be an outcast. This child is your fault as much as it is mine, so please don’t make me take all of the punishment. It isn’t fair! Besides, your child—who is innocent of any wrongdoing—will be the one who suffers the most. You have to help me!

“Do you want help with that?”

The voice behind her made her jump. She turned and saw the gardener hurrying toward her, pulling his cap down to keep the rain off his face.

“It’s going to start pouring any minute,” he said, “so we’d better take that rug inside. I’m on my way home for the day. Can’t work in the rain, you know. . . . Are you all right, miss?”

Kirsten pulled the kerchief down to uncover her mouth. “Yes. I’m fine.” But the gardener must have been able to tell that her face was wet from tears, not rain. “You’re just in time, Mr. Lund. I could use your help.”

He carried the carpet inside to the salon, where Elin and Sofia were hard at work. Elin was on her hands and knees, putting the final coat of wax on the parquet floor. Sofia was polishing the grand piano that took up one corner of the enormous room. Mr. Lund helped Kirsten roll out the rug and move the furniture back into place on top of it. They were nearly finished cleaning this room.

Bettina Anderson had sent them a note reminding them that she was bringing a potential buyer to look at the house at two o’clock today. Kirsten and her sisters had all risen early this morning to finish working on the salon. It looked sparkling clean, even on a dreary day such as this. But they had done no work at all on the rest of the house, aside from keeping the foyer looking nice and tidying the morning room and Mrs. Anderson’s bedroom. Scrubbing laundry had taken an entire day, and they’d had the living room draperies to wash and press besides their usual work.

“Is that rain I hear?” Sofia asked.

Kirsten went to the window. The clouds had burst open and the wind was blowing the rain against the front of the house, lashing the windowpanes. “It’s pouring!” she said. “We got this rug inside just in time. Maybe these mysterious buyers will change their minds and stay away on a day like today.”

Elin leaned against the sofa as she pulled herself to her feet. “No, it’s more likely that they’ll come and track mud all over our nice clean floors.”

Every day, Kirsten and her sisters discussed how they should balance their labor. They wanted to work hard enough to earn their pay, yet make sure they didn’t finish too soon and lose their jobs. Kirsten worried that she would be forced to move to Wisconsin if they couldn’t pay back the money they owed. If they were no longer employed here, there didn’t seem to be anyone else who wanted them or anyplace else they could go besides Wisconsin.

She heard the thump of Mrs. Anderson’s cane in the hallway and went to see what she wanted. Their employer always seemed to choose Kirsten to wait on her, for some reason. “Did you need something, ma’am?” she asked.

“What is that disgusting thing around your neck?”

Kirsten quickly untied the kerchief and hid it behind her back. “Sorry, ma’am. I was beating the carpet, so I tied this cloth over my mouth.”

“I am going up to my room,” Mrs. Anderson said. “Kindly inform that woman my son married that I do not wish to be disturbed. Nor do I appreciate strangers in my bedroom. I wish Bettina would get it through her wooden head that she is not welcome here.” She turned and limped away, muttering to herself.

Kirsten watched her ascend the stairs, concerned that she might fall. Mrs. Anderson seemed so brittle and frail that Kirsten had to resist the urge to carry her up to her room in her arms.

Sofia had come out into the hallway and stood watching with her. “I can understand why her family is worried about her,” Sofia whispered. “If she fell down those stairs it would kill her.”

“I know. But she doesn’t want to move out of her house.” A few moments later, Kirsten heard a waltz playing faintly in the distance. “There’s that music again. Where do you suppose it’s coming from?”

She and Sofia tiptoed upstairs, stopping in front of Mrs. Anderson’s bedroom door to listen. “It’s coming from in there,” Sofia whispered.

“I know. But how can she be making music in her bedroom?” Kirsten asked. “It sounds like an entire orchestra.” Sofia held her finger to her lips and tiptoed back downstairs.

“We have to do something to discourage people from buying her house,” Kirsten told her on the way down.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if the buyers thought the house was falling apart, for instance, then they might be afraid to buy it and . . . Wait! I have an idea. Come and help me, Sofia.”

Kirsten hurried into the salon and gathered up all of the towels and cleaning rags she could find. “Take these out to the kitchen, Sofia, and get them soaking wet. Don’t wring them out. I’m going to lay them on all of the windowsills in the front of the house and pretend the windows are leaking.”

Sofia looked shocked. “Isn’t that deceptive?”

“Yes, of course it is—but so what? Look, if you don’t want to help me, I’ll do it myself.”

“I’ll help you,” Elin said.

While they were stuffing the windowsills with wet rags, Kirsten had another idea. “I need to ask Mrs. Olafson for some old pots and pans. Elin, get our scrub bucket and fill it with water. Sofia, I’m going to need a couple of brooms.”

Sofia stared at her. “Now what are you going to do?”

“I told you, I’m trying to keep these people from buying the house. Bring everything up to the first two bedrooms at the top of the stairs.”

Tiny Mrs. Olafson seemed very worried about the fate of her cooking pots, but Kirsten gathered a towering armful of them—as many as she could carry—and scattered them around the bedroom floors.

“Put a little water in each one,” she told Elin when she arrived with the pail of water. “We’re going to pretend that the roof leaks.” Kirsten soaked a rag with water and threw it up at the ceiling so it would leave a dripping wet spot, then positioned one of the pots beneath the place where it fell.

“You have a devious mind, Kirsten,” Elin said. But she smiled as she said it.

“What are the brooms for?” Sofia asked.

“We’re going to use them to scare away the rats. Like this . . .” Kirsten took one of the brooms and demonstrated, chasing an imaginary rodent around the room.

“There aren’t any rats in this house.”

“I know there aren’t, Sofia. But the people who are coming don’t know it.”

“I can’t lie.”

“You don’t have to. Just run around the room beating the floor with your broom. If they ask what you’re doing just say something like, ‘I hate rats.’ That’s not a lie, is it?” Sofia looked doubtful. “Please, Sofia. You don’t want to move out of this house, do you? How will your German friend ever find you again?”

Sofia finally agreed, and as two o’clock approached, Kirsten sent her into the second bedroom to wait. Kirsten waited outside the first bedroom door, watching and listening from the upstairs balcony while Elin let in the visitors. Bettina charged through the door, brushing Elin aside as she led her guests, who were also Swedes, on a tour of the downstairs rooms.

“I’m certain you’ll agree that this is a magnificent foyer,” Bettina said in a phony, fawning voice. “Of course it could use some work, but you’ll see what the servants already have accomplished in the dining room.”

She pointed the way and they disappeared beneath the arch. Kirsten couldn’t hear their conversation until they came out of the dining room and followed Bettina across the hall to the living room.

“This is a lovely home beneath the surface,” Bettina said. “Unfortunately, the girls are slow and very inexperienced. I don’t know why Mother even hired them. If they had a little more time and a little more gumption, you would see the potential in this home more clearly.”

Kirsten watched from the balcony as Bettina toured the rooms at the front of the house. As the visitors emerged from the morning room Kirsten heard the man say, “It appears as though the windows will all need to be replaced.”

Bettina looked worried. “That’s odd. They seemed fine the last time I visited.”

“It’s pouring rain, Bettina,” the woman said. “And they are obviously leaking like sieves.”

As soon as they approached the staircase, Kirsten ran into the bedroom, leaving the door open. She waited until she heard voices outside in the hallway, then began chasing imaginary rats around the room, beating the floor with her broom.

“What in the world are you doing?” Bettina asked. Kirsten looked up. The three intruders stood in the doorway.

“Oh! I’m so sorry,” Kirsten said. “I didn’t know you would be coming upstairs so soon. I-I meant to get these pots moved before . . . but here you are and . . .” Kirsten gave a little curtsy. “Good afternoon, ma’am.” She let her gaze stray to the corner behind the bed as if worried about something.

“Does the roof leak?” the man asked, surveying the ceiling and the scattered pots.

“Oh! Did you want us to leave all these pans of water, ma’am?” Kirsten asked, “or just let the floors get soaked? I didn’t think you would want the wood or the carpets to get ruined, so—”

“I wasn’t told there was a problem with leakage,” Bettina said, smiling fiercely. “I’ll have Gustav look into it. But you didn’t answer my question. What are you doing with that broom?”

“Don’t worry, I think we’ve found most of their nests—and that’s the most important thing. If you get rid of the rats’ nests and all of their young, the problem is mostly licked.”

“Did she say
rats
?” the woman asked, clearly appalled.

“With a house this old it’s hard to keep them out,” Kirsten said.

“Don’t listen to her,” Bettina said. “I’m certain this is a joke. Come in and I’ll show you the lovely sitting room and dressing room. Each bedroom has one of each.” Bettina tried to usher them inside, but the woman wouldn’t budge from the doorway.

Kirsten glanced into the corner behind the bed again, then gave the floor another whack with her broom. “Sorry. I’ll try to keep them out of your way. . . .”

When she looked up again, the buyers and Bettina had fled. Kirsten heard thumps in the next room a moment later as Sofia did her part with the broom.

“Don’t tell me there is a problem in this bedroom, too?” Bettina said. Sofia gave a few more impressive thumps.

“I believe this house needs more work than we care to take on,” the man said. From the sound of his voice, he was heading down the stairs. Kirsten covered her mouth to stifle her laughter. In no time at all, the front door banged closed behind the three visitors.

Elin raced up the stairs. “They’re gone!”

Kirsten was laughing out loud by the time Sofia joined them. “Good job, Sofia. Very convincing.”

They all hurried to the bedroom window, watching as the carriage pulled away. Suddenly Kirsten felt something brush against her leg and she gasped in surprise. The fat gray cat sat at her feet. Kirsten whirled around. Its owner, Silvia Anderson, stood in the doorway.

“What in the world is going on in here?” She looked down at the pans of water, then up at the wet splotches on the ceiling, then at the three of them. “Would you be kind enough to tell me how in the world the roof could be leaking on the second floor when there is an entire third floor above it?”

“It can’t be leaking, ma’am,” Kirsten replied. “But those people never made it upstairs to the third floor, so I don’t suppose they realized the impossibility.”

“And why are you talking about rats? My home does
not
have rats.”

“No, ma’am, it certainly doesn’t. But as your daughter-in-law said, I’m just an ignorant farm girl.”

Mrs. Anderson pinned Kirsten with her stern eyes, making her wait. Kirsten’s heart raced as she wondered what would happen.

“Why did you do this?” Mrs. Anderson finally asked, motioning to the pots.

“Because I don’t want you to sell your house, ma’am. My sisters and I want to stay here. We need a home.”

Mrs. Anderson didn’t reply. She seemed to be studying the three of them as her cat inspected the pans of water, sniffing each one, a look of disapproval on its pushed-in face.

“We have to keep working here until our passage is paid for,” Kirsten continued. “We each owe about forty dollars. After that, we will need a little extra money to live on until we can find another job and someplace to live.”

“Why did you leave Sweden in the first place if you had such poor prospects here in America?”

“Our parents both died,” Elin said.

“Have you no relatives?”

“Our relatives in Sweden were trying to push us out of our home,” Kirsten said. “They made our brother, Nils, leave and they took over our farm. Uncle Lars and Aunt Hilma are our only relatives here in America, and they don’t have any room for us.”