A Fireproof Home for the Bride (35 page)

And yet, here was where the hitch always happened—something in her gut told her that once she and Bobby were engaged, her work would fade away, and he would eventually insist that she give it up. All the more reason to work harder, prove herself so good at it that he could never question the way being in that newsroom made her brain buzz like no place else.

Deeper into a sun-snooze Emmy went, applying her logic first to the Arthur fire and then the one before it, which led her to see Pete’s face shimmering in the heat of both—there to put them out even as he had started a fire of a different kind in her. A fly landed on her nose; she brushed it off lazily, annoyed at the disturbance it caused her train of thought. Where was she? Pete. At the car, telling her that Bobby didn’t love her, couldn’t. Why? Deeper still into the lull of the waves, the tinkling of ice in a brightly colored aluminum glass that felt cooler to the touch on her lip than the liquid felt on her tongue. A car door slamming, the sound reminiscent of Mr. Davidson’s car on the high prairie road, Ambrose’s profession of love, making her heart heavy in her chest. A hand on her shoulder, squeezing, gently shaking.

“Emmy, wake up,” Helen’s warm voice spoke from far off. Emmy sat up in her chair, wincing against the way the rays of the sun at this hour scattered across the top of the water. It hit her sleep-weakened vision with a million shards of dazzling light. She couldn’t remember a thing she had been thinking, only that she was incredibly thirsty.

“Emmy?” It was Helen again, but more firm this time. “Irv just got here. Your grandmother is back in the hospital. You need to go.”

Fifteen

My Peace Is Lost

The sun had set directly in Emmy’s vision as she drove through Dilworth, her skin feeling hot, tight, and increasingly painful to the touch. At one point she had pressed a finger to her forearm and was shocked to see how white the impression was compared to the surrounding bright pink skin. As she pushed the gas pedal nearly to the floor, glancing in the rearview every few seconds to check for flashing lights, all she could hope for was to arrive in time to say good-bye to Lida. No matter how Emmy felt about her family situation, she still deeply loved the grandmother who had stepped in and nurtured her when Karin couldn’t. In this way Lida and Josephine were clearly of the same blood—women who welcomed strays and reared foundlings as though they were their own children. Emmy felt lucky to have been cared for by both of them. The city limits finally closed in on the Crestliner, and Emmy made the turns toward the hospital as though pulled there instead of driven.

She walked into Saint Ansgar’s just as visiting hours were ending. Even so, when she asked the sister seated at the front desk about Lida Nelson, she was directed immediately to the third floor. Emmy’s pulse rose with the slow elevator, which rattled convulsively in a way that made her close her eyes. She’d never been in this hospital before, and suddenly wondered why her parents would bring Lida to a place run by Catholics. The large steel box shuddered to a stop and the doors made a scraping sound as they opened, over which Emmy could hear her mother’s loud voice from around the corner of the antiseptic-smelling hall.

“How dare you come here like this!” Karin was yelling at someone, and the words cut through Emmy as though they had been said to her own face. Emmy got out of the elevator, and though she could not hear the murmured reply, the tone was Josephine’s. “It’s not
decent,
” Karin continued with some restraint in her loud voice. “It’s bad enough she wanted to be brought here, without you showing up
drunk.
”

Emmy dug her fingernails into the flesh of her palms, focusing only on the sharp crescents of pain. She would have to take sides, as if it weren’t already clear to this scattering of blood ties exactly where she stood. As she turned the corner, a grim tableau appeared, framed by the overlit white of wall, ceiling, and floor: Christian seated on a hard wooden bench, hat dangling from one hand, face propped in the other; off to his right Birdie stood, wearing what could only be described as a traveling costume—a loose-fitting powder blue serge suit with matching navy hat and shoes, no doubt part of her trousseau—leaning against a somber Ambrose; two nuns dressed in white from toe to wimple, hovering and shushing outside Lida’s door.

“I showed up to make sure you did what she asked.” Josephine’s voice rose in volume to match that of Karin’s. “This has gone on for long enough. Let her die in peace.”

“I will not have it…” Karin yelled as she emerged from the room. She stopped short when her eyes met Emmy’s and the fire that was smoldering there burst into squinted blue flame. “And now
you.
” Karin looked up to the ceiling. “Please, Lord, give me the strength for all of this day.” She turned away from Emmy and walked off toward the elevator, followed by one of the nuns. The other approached Emmy and took her hand.

“We haven’t yet met, but I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said, her voice as cool as her skin. “I’m Bobby’s Aunt Clare.” Emmy startled, taking in the sweet eyes, the smattering of freckles, all framed by the white wimple that fit tightly around Sister Clare’s face, and so smoothly across the top of her head that it made Emmy wonder whether she had any hair underneath it at all.

“Oh, hello,” Emmy said, managing a weak smile. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“I called him when I realized Mrs. Nelson is your grandmother, and he called your aunt,” Sister Clare said, stroking Emmy’s palm in a way that made her sleepy.

“How bad is it?” Emmy asked, letting her eyelids drop as she waited for the worst.

“Father Munsch is on his way for the last rites,” Sister Clare said as softly as a drop of dew sliding down a blade of morning grass. “Are you ready to go in, dear? She’s been asking for you.”

“All right, then,” Emmy said, and followed the sister into the room, which was even whiter than the hallway had been, apart from the cold steel bars of the bed itself, and the curtain rod from which hung a white cotton drape. Behind this lay Emmy’s severely shrunken grandmother, whose skin seemed stretched tautly across her skeleton, as though it might take only a week for her to decompose. Sister Clare left the room with the door still open onto the murmuring hallway.

Josephine stood, wet-eyed, on the far side of the bed, gripping Lida’s tiny hand in her own much stronger one; both were rippled with wormy veins. It seemed to Emmy that far more than five years separated the sisters, Josephine’s loosely braided hair drawing back from her face in the same youthful way it had in the photo. I must remember to show it to Josephine, Emmy thought, but what did it really matter now, who the stranger was? Whatever had happened that long time ago was no weightier than the vapor of memory about to rise out of the room on the back of Lida’s soul. History was nothing more substantial at this mortal threshold than something either long forgotten or not worth remembering in the first place. In any case, they would all be dust soon enough.

Lida lay motionless, her eyes closed except for a slight part where Emmy could see her grandmother’s rheumy gaze, her chest barely rising and falling beneath a small black Bible. Are we already at the visitation? Emmy thought, unable to look away, unable to focus on what lay before her. Death in all of its acuity. The end of Lida. When her grandfather had died, the body was swept away, returned in a closed casket without so much as a final look, and lowered into the ground later the same day.

Emmy looked at her aunt, and Josephine met her gaze. There was a sweet smell in the air right over the bed. Funny Emmy hadn’t noticed it before, but as she leaned in close to kiss her grandmother, the smell intensified, like a lilac or an Easter lily—cloying, inescapable, nauseating, pure. As her dry lips brushed Lida’s cheek, Emmy felt the old woman turn her head toward the kiss. Emmy turned her head at the same time, aligning ear to mouth.

“Bitter,” Lida rasped. Emmy waited, a dull pain in her lower back from falling asleep in the beach chair, sitting two hours in the car, hovering over the specter of death. Lida inhaled sharply, using the scant bit of air to say, “My rue is him.” It was barely a whisper and Emmy turned her head quickly to use her better listening ear. She waited as her grandmother’s chest rose, and on the thin exhale Emmy heard “My hurts unfair.” No more words came, and after a few moments of wheezy silence, Josephine walked around the bed, steadying her wobbly shuffle by dragging one arm across the thin cotton blanket, and eased Emmy up to standing. The inflammation of her skin where her aunt’s hand pinched as she led her toward the door shot sparks of light into Emmy’s vision. A different sort of spoiled fruit smell emanated from Josephine, as though she’d been working hard at pickling a patch of overripe watermelon.

“Your mother can be such a witch,” Josephine said, easing her grip and leading Emmy to the door. “Acting as though she owns my sister.” The participants in the hallway had shuffled about in their dour assemblage. Ambrose took a step toward Emmy but just as quickly retreated. She looked at her small, rounded sister, whose hand was attached to the crook of Ambrose’s elbow.

“Congratulations,” Emmy said without inflection, accepting that there were many things beyond the reach of her concern. Christian rose from a bench set slightly down the hall and embraced Josephine.

“I’m sorry,” he said, helping her to the bench and seating her there. Emmy followed as Sister Clare bustled past in her starched long skirts with a cup of water and a small blue book into Lida’s room.

Emmy sat next to Josephine, wanting both to run from this painful place and to stay as long as it took. She looked up at Christian. “Why are we in a Catholic hospital?” Emmy could hear the mumble of Sister Clare quietly saying a prayer to the rhythm of small clicks. “I don’t understand.”

“Your grandmother asked to be taken here,” he replied. “I’m not sure why.”

Sister Clare leaned into the hallway and beckoned at Christian. He went.

Josephine put a hand on Emmy’s leg. She flinched. “Sunburn?” her aunt asked, a slight slur on the
s.

“I guess so.” Emmy lifted her skirt just high enough to reveal the deep red skin and touched it, amazed by how it ached. She suddenly felt feverishly cold.

“We should get you home and take care of that,” Josephine said without moving, gazing at the wall with her head tilted at an odd angle. She sighed. “You know, dear, they say that when you are ready to face God, you tend to revert to the simplest prayers. Maybe we become children in that moment. I guess that makes sense, though I can’t imagine ever saying a Hail Mary again.” She drew her mouth into a terse smile and tipped her head against Emmy’s.

“No, I can’t imagine that, either,” Emmy said, a slinking helplessness clouding her spirit. She had tried to follow along with the Latin Mass in the Doyles’ pew, and had finally become accustomed to the constant up and down, kneel and stand of the intricate Catholic ceremony. Still, it felt as though it would always be too foreign to embrace fully. Emmy held the hot palm of her hand to her even hotter forehead. She’d seen a few people in coffins, but she’d never seen anyone this close to the other side of one. What if those had been her grandmother’s final words? It was Emmy’s burden now to understand them and comport their meaning into the world, to learn from her grandmother’s life before utterly ruining her own. Emmy looked at Josephine.

“Did you hear her?” Emmy whispered, bereft.

“Yes,” Josephine said.

“What did she say?”

“She said
‘Beten, meine Ruh ist hin, mein Herz ist schwer,’
” Josephine said in flawless, dramatic German. “It’s from
Faust
: ‘My peace is lost, my heart is heavy.’ Father used to read it to us. As if growing up on the prairie weren’t grim enough.”

“Oh,” Emmy said, feeling the heaviness of lost peace in her own heart as well. “But why is she beaten?”

“
Beten,
Emmy,” Josephine replied as she fanned away a fly from her nose. “It’s German for pray. Though if you ask me, it’s too late for all of that—not that it ever seemed to do her any good in the first place.”

Emmy snapped open her purse, hesitated, and then withdrew the small sepia square nestled into a side pocket, thinking it might give her aunt some relief. She held it out in front of Josephine. “You were both so beautiful.”

Josephine slowly turned her head from the photo to Emmy, her sad expression curdling into something more deeply primal. “Where did you get this?” she hissed, snatching the paper so quickly out of Emmy’s hand that it left a small cut on her forefinger, which she instantly held to her tongue.

“At the cabin,” Emmy said around the wound. “Helen gave it to me.”

Josephine ripped the photo in half before shredding it into tiny pieces that lay in an ashy pile in her lap. Once it was destroyed, she stood, letting the miniature blizzard dust the floor as she walked down the hall to a watercooler and stayed there, not drinking or moving.

Emmy quickly collected what she could and threw the pieces into her purse, abashed for not having thought through her actions. She stood and moved back to Lida’s room and saw Christian standing next to Lida’s bed. The doorway framed her father in his stooped sadness, a vision of a young boy buried inside of an old man. It was clear to Emmy that not only did he love his mother very deeply, but also that he had been loved by her in return. The empty spot inside Emmy widened, and she returned to the bench, feeling insufficiently prepared for the rapid approach of death. The elevator groaned open and Emmy’s stomach lurched toward the sound, all of her muscles tensing against a fresh encounter with Karin. Instead, there stood Bobby, smiling at her with his soft lips.

“Go on, Emmy,” Josephine said as she turned toward the sound, an acrid hiccup in her drawl. “Leave death to the dying. You’ve said your good-bye.”

*   *   *

Emmy parked the Crestliner in the yard and Bobby drove in right behind it, stopping his truck at a neat angle. Hunger began to fill the void made by Josephine’s dismissal, and Emmy began to regret not stopping for a bite as Bobby had suggested. The ache all over her skin settled into a deeper, rougher pain even as the murmurs of the lake licked at her ears in the upholstered silence of the car, caressing Emmy’s weary body with the promise of its cooling undercurrents. She closed her eyes and leaned into the heat all around her, inhaling deeply the smell of fish on the dock and wild mint in her iced tea. There was a tap at the window and Emmy turned her head toward the sound. She expected to see Bobby, but instead there was a dark brown muzzle and deep chocolate eyes peering out of an even darker, velvety coat. Emmy reached for the door handle, wincing at the tingle of scathed skin.