A Fireproof Home for the Bride (5 page)

“This new mayor over in Fargo,” Mr. Davidson said in a deeper, less polite tone than he’d used at the dinner table. “Is it true that he’s a Semite?”

Emmy stilled further, the tone of Mr. Davidson’s voice raising the flesh on her arms.

“It is,” said Mr. Brann. “We always said it would happen, but no one would listen.”

“Emmaline!” Karin said, grabbing Emmy’s arm hard and spinning her around. “You’re needed in the kitchen.”

Emmy’s hands shook as she quickly lifted the emptied plates and utensils and retreated to the overheated kitchen with a well-practiced resignation settling over the uneasiness that was simmering in her soul.

Two

The Bloom of Youth

“Pay attention, girls. Today we will be learning about the various cuts of beef.” Mrs. Hagen stood at the front of the home economics room, a roll-down map of dissected cow draped behind her. “This is the rump.” She tapped on the lower right portion of the drawing with a long wooden pointer, the snaking silver rivulets of her permanent wave clawing at the peaks of her pale pink horn-rimmed glasses. Her dress was nipped in at her nonexistent waist to a degree that made Emmy worry for the metal teeth of the zipper that strained to hold everything together. “You can cook this wonderful section many creative ways, most commonly in the densely flavored German sauerbraten, but the best, to my mind, is the classic Sunday roast.”

The words made Emmy slowly close her eyes, sleepy with the memory of how tediously the day before had stuttered to an end, punctuated with a chaste kiss on the forehead from Ambrose: an apologetic promise. Now that she was back in the routine of school, the idea of marriage paled.

“Wake up,” Bev Langer whispered under Mrs. Hagen’s lecture. “Don’t let old Brillo catch you napping.” The girls sat two to a table and worked on their projects in pairs. Bev was everything Svenja Sorenson was not: sophisticated, sharp, and attractive in a way that was almost handsome. Her jet green eyes were framed with a tight cap of tamed curls, a chestnut shade of brown that she combed as smoothly as mink on the crown. Sometimes it was hard for Emmy to look at Bev directly without a spike of unwelcome envy rising up and threatening their curious bond. Bev’s constant kindness had set her apart from the other city girls that Emmy had met, and it had taken her a good four months to trust its sincerity. Most town kids regarded anyone from outside the city limits as a hick or a hayseed, words that had kept Emmy from pursuing other friendships. Bev was different.

“Thanks,” Emmy whispered back, slipping into another near doze.

“Emmaline Nelson,” Mrs. Hagen snapped, rapping the stick against her desk. Emmy stretched her eyes against their droop and stood.

“Yes, Mrs. Hagen,” she said.

“Would you care to tell the class the difference between Swiss and Salisbury steaks?” The older woman balled her plump hands into fists and propped them on a tightly girdled roll of doughy midsection.

Emmy took a deep breath and tried to ignore the girls giggling behind her, or the sharp turn of Bev’s head as she glared at them.

“Salisbury steaks aren’t actually steak, but cheaper cuts ground up and filled with pork or bread to resemble a steak,” Emmy said. She heard a girl in the back whisper, “She should know,” but ignored the insult. No matter how much the home economics class taught them budgets and sewing, Emmy already knew her skirt was cut from noticeably coarser fabric. She pressed on. “Swiss style is made from the lesser cuts as well, but pounded and scored and then braised with peppers and onions until tender.”

Mrs. Hagen nodded approval without lowering her nose, and Emmy stopped listening to the lecture. Though they had been living in town for a few months, they were still scraping aspects of their pastoral life off their boots, and it didn’t surprise Emmy that Mrs. Hagen would single her out as an expert in the area of cheap steaks.

Emmy glanced at Bev, who mouthed the word
witch
while raising one eyebrow in a delicate arc. After graduation Bev was going to summer in New York with some distant cousins and then fly on to Paris, to live with an uncle for a year and study at a college called the Sorbonne. Bev was the first person Emmy had met who actually had dreams and the means to make them come true already purchased in the shape of a one-way ticket tucked away in her father’s desk. Cooking lessons were simply Bev’s way of marking time until the final day of high school.

Bev pretended to take a note, then scooted her tablet across the table for Emmy to read.

Come out with me tonite.

It’s Monday.
Emmy scribbled back.
What’s to do?

Be young, have fun.

Can’t.

Bring Birdie, your mom won’t mind.

She will mind.
Emmy wrote, longing to say yes. Though she wasn’t fond of her mother’s severe daily schedule, she didn’t have the nerve to challenge it.

Movie Saturday?

Maybe.
This she thought she could attempt. Maybe there was a way for her to escape the Saturday evening routine of listening to the radio after a long day of cleaning and mending, baking the bread for the coming week. She could always back out if she failed to convince her parents.

Pick you up at 5:30.

Okay.

Okay?

Let’s hope.

*   *   *

“Dad,” Emmy said the second her father walked through the door. It was Friday night, his most exhausted moment, but also the time at which he was the most agreeable. “I made Swiss steak for dinner. It’s still hot.” Christian Nelson gave his daughter a weak but warm smile. She’d raced home after school and pounded the scant pieces of round she could find into four small slabs of meat. The recipe called for green peppers, but onions and canned tomatoes were all Emmy had—that and the never-ending bounty of potatoes. The steaks had simmered for a full three hours and now were as tender as veal. She and Birdie had eaten egg-salad sandwiches, saving the meat for their father.

“I’ve had a long day,” he said, and went to the kitchen sink to wash his grime-weathered hands. His sloped posture indicated that she wouldn’t have to prattle about her school or his work. Not that they had lengthy conversations on a typical day, even when it was just the two of them. Emmy had set the small kitchen table with a pretty cloth and had buttered the last of the week’s bread for her father to sop up the gravy. Karin wouldn’t be home from prayer circle for another hour, and Birdie was listening to
Gunsmoke
on the radio in the other room. This was Emmy’s moment. As her head began to buzz, she sat down across from her father and noted how small his blue eyes were set above his graying stubble. He was getting old, she couldn’t deny it—at least forty, probably older. The girls’ birthdays were marked without fanfare, and Emmy had no idea when her father was born. Reaching out to touch his hand, she tried to summon her will to ask permission for the movie, but a lump took over her throat and she tapped his knuckles lightly instead. He turned his hand over and caught hers before she could slip it away.

“Why don’t you ever want anything?” he asked. Emmy stood and glanced through the open doorway at her sister, who seemingly hadn’t heard Christian’s question.

“I do,” Emmy said, bringing Christian’s warm plate of food to the table and sitting back down. She hadn’t known she was allowed to want something, and his simple query sent her thoughts flying through a list of stanched desires, rolling up to the edge of wanting one thing very badly: to go to that movie.

“You’re eighteen now, Emmy,” he replied without picking up his fork. “Your mother’s kept a tight rein on you, and I reckon that’s all right.” He paused and Emmy waited as he stared at her, hard. “You need to speak your mind.”

Emmy cleared her throat, but a small gurgle came out when she tried to speak. She cleared it again. “Well, my friend, Bev Langer, is going to a movie tomorrow night—
The Ten Commandments,
the one with Charlton Heston?” she began, then stalled. He nodded for her to continue, so she took a deeper breath. “I was wondering if maybe … I could go with?” She exhaled. Picked at a stain on the tablecloth, making a mental note to rub some baking soda into it before washing it in the morning.

Christian smiled slightly and continued eating. Emmy wondered what he might be thinking, if he was trying to come up with a way to square it with Karin, whether he’d wait the half hour until she came home to give an answer. Emmy forced herself to not look at either the clock or her Bulova, playing instead with the stretchy metal band as it pinched at the skin on her wrist. She focused all her energy on keeping her eyes on her father. She knew that if he looked up and met her gaze he would never say no.

“I’d be back right after the movie,” Emmy offered, not sure how to read her father’s silence. “I can get all the chores done, I’ll get up extra early, and I can teach Birdie to help bake the bread.”

“Movies cost money, Emmy,” Christian replied without looking up.

“Bev said it would be her treat, for my birthday. Oh, please, can I go, please?” She sprang up from the table and went to the icebox to get a bottle of milk. Her birthday had just passed and, as usual, they had done nothing to mark it. Mentioning it to her father made her feel ungrateful, and her hand shook a little as she carefully poured half a glass, keeping the rest for the morning’s porridge. The price of milk had recently dropped and they needed to sell most of the farm’s production to keep things going. There was a time when they’d had so much fresh milk that Emmy couldn’t stand the sight of it, particularly the thick layer of cream that would float on the top of the pitcher and would have to be either scooped off or pierced to release the milk below. Now that it was dear, she licked her lips at the thought of the small glassful that she set in front of Christian. She hovered over his right shoulder, swaying with the keen excitement of having asked for something, feeling as though she didn’t deserve it. She shifted from foot to foot. Her father had fallen into a steady rhythm eating his meal, and not until the last drop of gravy had been cleaned from the plate, the final boiled potato speared and chewed, the bottom sip of milk consumed did he look directly at her.

“I’ll want to meet this…”

“Oh, thank you thank you thank you, yes, of course, I’ll have Bev come in before we go. Oh, you’re the best!” She hugged him so hard he choked and laughed, clasping her around the waist, then pushing her gently away.

“Okay.”

“Okay I can?” she asked, picking up a dishrag.

“Okay I’ll ask your mother, but you’d better make sure the kitchen is clean. Don’t give her a reason to say no.”

*   *   *

Saturday broke with a distinct chill in the air. Emmy rose at five to get an early start on her chores. She hadn’t really slept at all with the potential excitement of an evening away from the small house and its Saturday night airing of the
Good News Broadcast
on the radio and the smell of frying doughnuts in the kitchen. Sure, she’d gone out before, but not once without her parents and never to a function that wasn’t church sponsored. She had taken quite a chance asking this small liberty, and as she crept down the stairs she couldn’t still her pulse from throbbing at her temples.

The kitchen light was on. Emmy slowed her step, clasped her hands together. She saw her mother standing at the sink, wrist deep in dark water.

“Once the sun rises we’ll hang these out,” Karin said, pulling a long black dress from the murk and feeding it through the wringer of the white enamel washtub. Emmy took over the task without comment and found the dye bath to be as cold as the kitchen. These were her grandmother’s winter dresses, threadbare, heavy, and widow-worn. Usually they redyed and mended them in the spring before packing them away until the fall, a chore that could take many hours. Emmy didn’t dare ask why they were doing this now, in the dead of January, and instead tried to predict how much time sodden wool would need to dry in cold weather. She handed her mother another heavy dress, then crossed to the cupboard, drawing out the flour tin and proofing bowls. The kitchen would need to be warmer than this to properly raise the dough, but Emmy didn’t start the gas on the range until her mother told her to do so. Her plans began to slip away.

The women worked in silence for more than an hour, dying, wringing, rinsing, wringing again, and then hanging the dresses on the clothesline behind their house, the thickly fleeced garments flapping and freezing in the cold wind. Emmy didn’t care what the neighbors might think about this solemn process, as their activities often were equally as odd. Old man Luders across the alley had filled his backyard so completely with junk he collected from garbage cans that he had created a maze only he could find his way through. Every day he would load a wheelbarrow full of items for sale, push it around the neighborhood and return not having sold anything but with a clearly increased pile of discards. No one ever saw Mrs. Luders, except for Karin when she would go over and pray with the old woman, who had grown so large that it was unthinkable for her to leave the house at all. There was also an assortment of farm animals to be found in the backyards around them, from laying hens to a couple of goats and even, she had heard but never seen, a milk cow. Having animals in proximity made Emmy miss the rhythm of the farm less, and she was happy to dispatch her chores to the merry crowing of a rooster a few yards away.

The kitchen eventually warmed a few degrees due to the heat of the two women bent to their work. Karin took the brown crock of cultured yeast from the icebox and handed it to her daughter. Sometimes when Emmy was kneading the Herman mixture into dough she could sense her mother watching her, swelling a bit with the knowledge that she had taught Emmy well. These were the rare times she actually felt that her mother loved her, yet if Emmy ever looked at Karin directly in those moments, the glimmer of warmth would always be doused like a hand-trapped lightning bug brought too quickly into a bright room.