Carla Kelly (44 page)

“Mari, do you know Dr. Isgreen?” she asked one Thursday, addressing her friend, but speaking loud enough for all to hear. “He takes me to dinner every Saturday night.”

“Oh, ho, we know what that means,” Eeva said. “Soon you'll be knitting booties and cooking for
him
.” She shook her birch bundle at Della. “Is he tall and handsome?”

“Tall, anyway,” Della said. “He kisses my cheek every Saturday.”

One of the women hooted. “
How
long have you been eating dinner with the doctor?”

“Since September.”

“So slow! Find a Finn,” she told her. She looked closer. “You're not smiling.”

“I have something serious to say to you, my friends,” Della said. “Dr. Isgreen wishes you would let him help you when you know you are with child.”

The sauna was silent. “Are you shy about a man who is not your husband, seeing you in those private places?” Della asked simply. “I would be too, but I would go anyway. If I loved my husband, I would want to do everything I could to have a healthy son or daughter.”

“I'm too embarrassed,” a woman said. The others nodded.

“Oh, now,” Della chided gently. “I had to get brave to take off my clothes, and here I am every week.”

More silence, but it was a thoughtful silence. “Think about it. That's all I could ever ask.” She looked at Eeva, who seemed to be the group's natural leader. “I'm not saying birth would always go well if Dr. Isgreen attended you, but who knows?”

“It is still in the Lord's hands,” Eeva said.

“It is, but the Lord expects us to help ourselves, doesn't He?”

“That's where I left it,” she told Emil that Saturday.

“I can't ask any more.” He gave her that frank, admiring look she had come to expect. “Della, you're amazing, do you know that? Few ladies would bare all for medicine.”

“I bared all out of curiosity,” she assured him. “
Your
interest was a by-product. I go there once a week because I get so clean and I am welcome. Still, I hope some good comes of it.”

“It has,” he told her. “Ordinarily, I never talk about my patients, but Mari and Heikki Luoma asked me to come to their house yesterday. They were scared silly and shy, but I do pride myself on my bedside manner.”

“Emil, I'm so pleased.”

“So am I. She's doing fine and I will check her every month. I've promised to deliver their baby in June in the sauna. Others will hopefully follow.” He took her hand. “Della, what new worlds will you conquer now?”

“I'm trying to work up my nerve to invite Miss Clayson to come to Salt Lake City with me for Christmas,” she said and made a face. “My uncle invited me and a friend, and Owen thinks I should go.”

“Can't be any scarier than stripping off in a sauna for the first time,” Emil said cheerfully.

Yes, it is
, Della thought, after Emil walked her home and kissed her cheek. She had showed the letter to Owen after Sunday School, when he and Angharad walked her back to Mabli's. “It's the first letter Uncle Karl has ever written me, but I'd rather stay here.”

“Let them see you as the confident lady you are,” he told her.

“Have I really changed?” she asked, wanting to know what he thought.

“You're a long way from the frightened girl in the high meadow.”

She thought about that as they walked home from church.
He thinks I'm confident
, she told herself.
Let's see
. “Owen, please cut off some more of that broom head. Billy Evans is getting closer.”

“You think so?” There was something shy and hopeful in his voice that touched her heart.

“I think so. I'm watching him pretty closely these days.”

“I trust you to know,” he said simply. “I mean … you're his teacher.”

“I would not for the world hurt Billy.”

“He knows that.” He hesitated and she waited, hoping no one would stop to talk with them and silence this man so ready to speak. She could have cried when he broke his own spell. “Maybe it's still too hard for him.”

Della gathered her courage and tried again. “Something holds him back,” she said, her voice soft. “I wish I knew what was troubling Billy.”

“He'll tell you sometime.”

School kept her too busy to worry about Owen, but not too busy to worry about Christmas with the Anderses. She wrote a letter to Uncle Karl, telling him she would arrive a few days before Christmas. In the Wasatch Store, she held the letter so long before giving it to Clarence Nix that he cleared his throat several times.

“Miss Anders? I, uh, need to put a stamp on that,” he said.

Embarrassed, she handed the letter to him and two cents for postage. “Are you going home for Christmas?” she asked.

“Too far to Texas,” he said, shaking his head.

She took her courage in hand the next morning before school and stopped in Miss Clayson's classroom.
I've helped some Finns and I've tried to help Owen
, she told herself.
It's your turn, Miss Clayson, whether you want help or not
.

The principal looked up, annoyed, when Della knocked on her open door. “Well?”

“Will you come with me to Salt Lake City for Christmas?” Della asked. The invitation sounded as forlorn to her as the last cricket still chirping and hiding somewhere in her classroom. “My uncle asked me to invite someone, and I want to invite you.”

All she can do is say no
, Della told herself.
No is just no. You've heard worse from Aunt Caroline
.

Miss Clayson folded her hands together on her tidy desk, oceans more organized than Della's desk. Della knew her principal was not a woman to betray any emotion in her eyes, but she saw something. Maybe it was a trick of the light. Maybe Della was dreaming.
Please, Father
, she prayed.
I can be her friend too
.

There was a look of triumph on Miss Clayson's face. “So. You've conquered the Finns, and I am your next target.”

Della's courage, last seen running for cover, stopped running and turned around, irritated. “You could say that, except something bothers me,” Della said. “I've been here since August, and I don't even know your first name. Shame on me.”

“Lavinia. Lavinia Augusta. My relatives weren't quite as ridiculous as your Olympia, but they came close. What can you do with Lavinia Augusta?”

“Vinnie? Gussie?” Della asked, amused now. “Sounds better than Oly. Lavinia, will you come to Salt Lake with me?”

Miss Clayson started to shake her head, then stopped. “I am planning to go to Boise and spend Christmas with my sister. I … I could spend a few days in Salt Lake. Why not?”

Della clapped her hands. Miss Clayson sighed. “Don't be so childish. Miss Anders, you're a professional!”

“A happy one now.”
Resist that
, Della thought. “I'll take you to Auerbach's to meet Salt Lake's most discriminating art collector. Maybe you'd like to visit Mrs. Aho and Pekka.”

“Maybe I would. I owe Mr. Auerbach a personal thank-you.” Miss Clayson looked at her clock. “Unless your noisy pupils have suddenly turned into angels, you might want to, uh, mosey to class.” She looked down at the papers on her desk.

“Well, well, Miss Clayson,” Della murmured as she hurried toward the front of the building. She even blew Israel a kiss, which made him stagger back in shock as she passed his door.

She stood in her own doorway for a satisfied moment. They were by no means angels, but she loved them. She walked down the center aisle, enjoying their resounding, “Good morning, Miss Anders!”

She turned around. “Good morning to you. This is it: If you score well enough on today's tests, we will spend the remainder of this week preparing for our Christmas party. Pencils? Paper?” She turned to the blackboard and raised the maps covering each grade's arithmetic test. “Remember our rule: Third graders do third grade work, and the rest of you can do your grade and all the rest. Ready? Go!”

Sitting at her desk that afternoon, grading a day's worth of tests, Della sat back in complete satisfaction. Everyone was working at or exceeding grade level now. Some of the first graders—Myfanwy and Angharad for certain—should probably be moved into third grade next fall. She would discuss the matter with their parents in May before school adjourned for the summer.

Funny thing about life: She had taken the one-year teaching certification course because she could afford nothing else. Her goal had always been to be a librarian, like the kind woman who nurtured her and healed her broken heart at Salt Lake Stake Academy. On a whim, she had come to a mining camp, where she found eager students, a library, a choir in need of a secretary, a sauna, and friends. She went to the window and looked toward the canyon mouth. And dinner with a doctor every Saturday night. She leaned her head against the widow frame, her breath blotting the view. And a kind man wanting to move on in his life but afraid to take the next step. Aunt Amanda was right: time was her ally.

The Christmas party was a roaring success, even if the snow falling all day had put the matter in some jeopardy. In his role as mine superintendent, Bishop Parmley had authorized the coal train and its one passenger car to make several trips back and forth to Scofield, giving everyone the opportunity to crowd into the Scofield school's larger gymnasium for a combined party.

His eyes full of terror at his huge audience, but grimly determined, Danny Padfield recited, “A Visit from Saint Nicholas.” When he finished, the roaring acclaim made him rush from the makeshift stage and bury his face in his mother's lap. Angharad, Myfanwy Jones, Bella Williams, and Nancy Fergusson followed—equally terrified, equally determined—with their rendition of “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day,” sung in two part harmony. This time there were sniffles in the audience.

“Softies,” Della heard Lavinia Clayson mutter under her breath, from their vantage point at the edge of the stage, herding performers on and off.

“Don't you ever cry at sentiment?” Della whispered.

Miss Clayson actually smiled. “Miss Smarty, I'll have you know that when I was your age, I wept bitter tears when the Little Match Girl was found frozen on Christmas morning!”

After the last, “We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year,” from the combined schools, the boardinghouse cooks outdid themselves with iced Christmas cookies. Mrs. Schmidt, a miner's widow who ran the company's newest boardinghouse, contributed two
stollen
from her native land. Mrs. Petrakis had created the Cypriot version of Greece's
baklava
, which meant everyone was sticky from all that honey. Two of the French miners from Mr. Edwards's boardinghouse had talked their way into Mabli's kitchen to produce
éclairs
.

“There is no more cosmopolitan dining in Utah than found here in Pleasant Valley,” Emil Isgreen declared. He leaned closer. “I'm only grateful no one could find a sheep's stomach, so we were spared Brother Hood's haggis!”

“Are you going home for Christmas?” she asked him.

“After Christmas. I convinced Miss Harroun, my Salt Lake nurse, to relieve me then. Uh-oh, trouble,” he said, eyeing a little boy coming toward him with a note. He read it, then kissed her cheek. “Babies never wait. Merry Christmas, Della. See you in 1900.”

She couldn't leave until the following Monday, since the choir was singing “Silent Night,” in sacrament meeting. Richard Evans followed with “O Holy Night,” so lovely that her heart nearly stopped beating. Since she sang lower alto, Richard had placed her next to the second tenors. “My goodness,” she whispered to Owen when the last note faded in the packed chapel. Richard bowed and returned to his place as choirmaster.

Owen just nodded and reached for her hand, holding it by his side where none of the other tenors and altos could see. She twined her fingers through his, which produced no noticeable effect beyond a slight color to his cheek.
Bill Evans, hurry up and decide to read
, she thought, then concentrated on the closing hymn, since Brother Evans was giving her the fish eye now.

That evening, Owen and Angharad brought by the three carved boxes for Amanda Knight. Mari had loaned her larger traveling case again, so there was room.

“Here. Give this to your uncle from us. Will it fit?” he said, handing her a carving of the name Anders, outlined with thistles like the ones she remembered from the high meadow.

“I'll make it fit,” she told him. “It's beautiful.”

He nudged his daughter forward. “Angharad made this for you. I only helped a little.”

Della knelt beside her student and took the package from the child. “May I open it now?”

Angharad nodded, too shy to speak.

It was an oblong carved box, smaller and just right for letters. “It's lovely,” Della said. “But what …” Her fingers traced a mountain and what looked like waves lapping on a shore made of oak.