A Stranger's Wish (10 page)

Mary was at the sink, looking out the window toward the barn. She moved aside as I filled my bottle.

“You’re going to paint?” she asked.

“The barn. And Hawk and the hens.”

She looked out the window again, and I realized she wasn’t looking at the barn but at my easel. I thought of the color sense I’d been aware of throughout the house.

“You’re an artist at heart, aren’t you, Mary? I see it in your rugs and quilts. Have you ever done watercolor?”

She got a faraway look in her eye. “Once, when I was about twelve, I found a little tin of watercolors by the road, the kind kids have. It must have fallen out of a car. I opened it, and there were all the primary colors and a paint brush. They had only been used a bit. I took the tin home and hid it.”

“Why did you hide it?”

“I didn’t think my father would let me keep it.”

“Painting is bad?” I knew photographs were frowned on, especially photos of people.

“Hochmut.”

I shook my head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know that word.”

“Pride. Vanity.”

“Painting makes you vain?” What an odd thought. Painting brought me joy and satisfaction. Maybe if you became famous and made the big bucks, you could get puffed up with your own importance. Still, if you saw your talent as a gift from the Lord, couldn’t vanity be kept in check?

It struck me that the only thing hanging on the walls in this house was a calendar with beautiful nature scenes and Bible verses. “You can’t hang pictures?”

Mary began to wipe the oilcloth table cover, already spanking clean. “As a young teen, I painted when my parents were too busy to notice, always in my room when my older sisters were away or working. I painted little things like flowers. Once I painted a meadow with cows grazing and daisies blowing. I took it to school and showed it to my teacher.”

“What did she say?” I knew how important a teacher’s comments were to a student.

“She thought it was so pretty she told my parents, ‘You have an artist here.’” Mary gave a small smile, and I could tell that this compliment was still important to her.

“But you don’t paint anymore?”

“Hochmut.
My father took the paints and forbade me to paint ever again. He said ‘We are a community, Mary, a church. We are not individuals to compete, to set ourselves apart as special. Not
hochmut
.
Demut.
Humility.’” She shrugged. “That’s life, or at least my life.”

But she yearned to paint. I could see it in her face.

I went out to my easel thinking about the similarities and differences between Mary’s experience and mine. Both of us faced opposition from our families as far as our desire to paint went. But I had been taught individuality my whole life, sort of my family’s version of the army ad slogan “Be all you can be,” and Mary had been taught community and
demut
. I was taught to stand up for myself, which enabled me to finally stand up to my father. Mary was taught to sublimate herself and yield to her father and her church as her authority. The fact that she had been thirteen or fourteen and I nineteen certainly came into play, but Mary was now an adult and had been for many years. She still hadn’t stood up for the right to use her God-given talent.

Because she wasn’t looking for rights. That good old American concept, so dear to us fancy folk, was foreign to her.

I eyed the barn and checked it against the penciled-in shapes I’d previously drawn, all vague and lacking in detail but setting the composition of the picture. With clear water I wet my paper. Then I applied a wash of cobalt blue, dark to light at what would be the horizon, with a one-inch round brush. Next, I twisted some facial tissues and laid the twist on the paper where I wanted clouds to be. The tissues absorbed the wet paint and the white of the paper showed. I softened the edges of the clouds with more clear water. A touch of gray wash on the undersides of the clouds gave them dimension.

The cornfields with their green stalks and golden tassels came next as I worked background to foreground. I sprinkled sea salt on the still wet fields to create a mottled effect with areas of strong color where the paint diffused under the salt.

I studied the barn carefully, noting where the sun hit and where the shadows slept. So much of painting was about the play of light and shadow. Taking a two-inch wash brush, I lay down a light gray wash that I let dry. Then, using the same ultramarine blue with a touch of burnt sienna, I went over the shadowed areas for a deeper hue. I dropped in some sap green for the roof, letting the roofline blur. I mixed Prussian blue and burnt sienna for the gaping doorway.

Lastly, I took a rigger brush and added details. As always when I painted, I was totally absorbed and completely contented. I lost all track of time.

Finally, I leaned back to survey my work. I was especially pleased with the way the white of the paper was visible in a fine corona around the red hens, making them stand out against the deep gray of the doorway.

“Nice,” a voice behind me said.

I started and spun around. On the walk watching me was Jake in his wheelchair.

“Do you always sneak up on people?” I asked, and it came out more brusquely than I intended.

“Sorry,” he said. “I thought you were finished.”

I looked at my painting again and nodded. “For the time being.” I’d need to brush off the salt when everything was completely dry.

I rose and walked across the lawn, carrying my stool. I sat down by Jake, hoping I’d think of something intelligent to say. I still hadn’t grown used to the chair, and it made me nervous. I’d never been around someone with such a raw, recent disability before. My own good health made his situation seem even more stark, and though I knew it was foolish, I felt guilty because of my functioning, albeit skinny, legs.

I glanced at the kitchen window, wondering if Mary was looking out, watching over her son. Or over my painting. What caught my eye was the porch with its four steps.

“You must have a ramp someplace,” I blurted. He certainly hadn’t come down the stairs.

He nodded. “My entrance has one. Father and Elam built it for me.”

I relaxed a little. My spoken-before-I-thought comment hadn’t bothered him. “Then you can get around pretty well by yourself.”

“Sure. From here to the house and back.” His voice dripped bitterness.

“Oh, I didn’t mean—” I started, flushing. What didn’t I mean? I didn’t mean to upset him? I didn’t mean to hurt him? Well, I didn’t. Still, I was mad at myself for making such a stupid comment and mad at him for making me feel so dumb. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t very tactful of me.”

Jake sighed, holding up a hand apologetically. “It was no worse than my answer. I’m sorry too.”

We smiled ruefully at each other.

I took a deep breath. “Isn’t it a beautiful day?” When in doubt, fall back on the weather.

Jake looked without enthusiasm at the sky and then at me. “Beautiful,” he said in a flat voice.

“It or me?” I teased.

“What?” He missed the joke entirely. And the idea of trying to explain my cleverness was more than I could handle. No matter what I said, it was bound to sound as if I were looking for a compliment. And so we sat, silent.

I wanted to pick up my stool and go back to my painting, but I didn’t see how I could without being even more offensive. I searched my mind for something else to say, something safe, something that would get a nice, general, unemotional conversation started but also keep it going.

“What do you do to pass the time, Jake?” Before I could continue and ask if he watched TV or worked at something with his hands or read mystery novels, he answered. Or rather he reacted.

“What do I do?” He scowled and snorted. “What do you
think
I do? Nothing.”

I was doing about as well here as I had back in junior high when boys scared me to death and anything that came out of my mouth when they were around sounded inane. Obviously, talking to Jake was a minefield, and so far I’d detonated more than my share of emotional explosions.

I decided to brazen it out rather than apologize again. I saw that I could easily spend my whole time on the farm saying I was sorry for some accidental comment or inadvertent hurt. Besides, truth to tell, maybe it wasn’t my thick tongue but his thin skin that was the real problem.

“How did your accident happen?” I made my voice as matter of fact as I could.

He studied me for a moment, and I thought,
Oh, boy, I’ve done it again.

“You sure you want to know?” he finally asked.

“If you want to tell.”

He seemed to consider, and I waited.

Apparently he decided to take the risk. “Over on Route 10 south of Honey Brook, there are two steep hills.” His hands sketched a deep V.

“I know where you mean,” I said, drawing the V too.

“Yeah?” He seemed to like that. “Well, I was speeding down the first hill on my motorcycle last fall. October twentieth, to be exact. It was raining hard, but I was so busy picking up speed for the second hill that I never gave the wet leaves any thought.”

I could picture him, crouched forward over the bike, hurtling down the steep incline, preparing for the long pull just ahead.

“As I neared the intersection at the bottom of the hill, a car ran the stop sign right in front of me. I braked and lost control on the leaves. I skidded and flew off and finally came to a stop against a telephone pole. I thought I was going to die. My helmet protected my head and my leathers prevented brushburns and scrapes, but my back was broken when the bike landed on top of me.”

His eyes lost focus as he looked into some private middle distance of memories and anguish.

I sat quietly, not daring to breathe, unable to imagine what it must have been like to have your life changed in one irrevocable moment and because of someone else’s mistake. Life didn’t give do-overs.

Finally, he looked at me. “It took less than a minute, a lot less, to change my life as I knew it. And the car never even slowed up.”

“I’m sorry,” I said inadequately. “I’m so sorry.”

Jake smiled tightly and studied his clenched fists. “Don’t let it worry you. If I could stand all those months in the hospital and in rehab, I can survive anything.” He turned to glare at me. “Except pity.”

I nodded, and we sat quietly again, Jake lost in his memories, I trying to grasp the enormity of his injury and wondering how one showed sorrow without communicating pity. Now there was no awkwardness between us.

He finally broke the silence. “You’ve been here almost a week. Do you regret it yet?”

I stared at him in surprise. He sounded just like Todd. “Why would I regret it? I love it here.”

“Even with Hawk?”

My hand went to my cheek. The wound was healing nicely. “Hawk was just being a dog.”

“You’re not going to give in to the English habit of suing, are you?”

I laughed. “Of course not! It’s not as though the dog did this with malice aforethought. And besides, I’d never do anything to hurt your parents. They’re too nice. After all, I want to stay here, and I think that it will work better if I don’t take the family to court.”

I looked over at the sleeping dog. “I think Hawk is wonderful.” I threw my arms wide. “I think the farm is wonderful.”

His eyes traced the barn and the fields visible behind it. “I complain a lot, but I love the farm too. Not farming, you understand, but the farm. The country. The quiet.”

I nodded my agreement.

“Though sometimes,” he said, sounding lost and small, “it’s just too quiet.”

Dear God, how do I respond to that?

Since I hadn’t any idea and He didn’t send a shaft of insight, I changed the subject completely. “My biggest problem on the farm is that my English inner clock just doesn’t mesh with your family’s German one. I simply can’t go to bed at nine or nine thirty and expect to go to sleep. Nor can I wake up at five and expect to think clearly.”

“I know what you mean. I finally convinced Mom that I didn’t want to get up that early either. It makes the day too long.” This time there was no bitterness in his voice. He was merely stating a fact.

“I’m trying to persuade your mother not to stop her work to make me breakfast when I can very well do it myself,” I said. “That way I’ll be able to sleep as late as I want—at least for the next few days until school starts—and not feel too guilty and lazy.”

“Good luck,” Jake said.

“Well, I’m a guest, right? And how do you argue with your guests, even—or maybe especially—paying ones?”

“You don’t know my mother well, do you?” He waved at my painting, still sitting on the easel under the tree. “Is that kind of thing the reason you wanted to live here?”

I nodded. “I know it probably sounds pure corn to you, but I’ve fallen in love with Lancaster County. It’s beautiful and green and culturally unique.”

“It’s kind of funny when you think about it,” he said, “but I’ve spent the last ten years, since I was fifteen, trying to escape from this culture thing you want to take on.”

Shades of me and my parents. And me and Todd. “But I don’t want to take anything on,” I said. “I have too many problems with Amish beliefs. I just want to observe and enjoy and paint.”

He shrugged, not quite with me. “Well, I guess you’ll be all right as long as you keep painting barns.”

“But not people?”

Jake shook his head. “Old Order Amish like my parents don’t believe in photographs. Or portraits. They see them as graven images. You know, ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing.’”

“I knew the Amish didn’t like having their pictures taken, but I didn’t realize there was a religious reason other than the fact that cameras are relatively modern. And, of course, just about anyone would resent the invasion of their privacy by tourists who poke digital cameras in their faces. Since I personally prefer painting landscapes, I shouldn’t have any problem. Still, I’d love to do your father’s hands.”

“His hands?”

“They’re marvelous, Jake. Gnarled and strong, a farmer’s hands. Do you think he’d let me photograph them sometime so I could paint them at my leisure? Do hands constitute graven images?”