Quiet Dell: A Novel (4 page)

Why should all be denied him? He felt confident, hopeful; he would display that confidence and hope. Their faces shone before him. He’d left prayer behind, forcibly, forever, but his soul turned toward them.

He sat on the bed, the smell of his clean face and throat like flowers near him. Too early to go down, perhaps. He pulled the dog onto his lap. “There, there,” he said, “Duty, you silly creature. We shall see.”

“Annabel, darling, we simply can’t have candles burning in rows across the living room carpet. You may mark off the space with blocks or books, and the curtain will make a border for the stage.” Asta, checking Grethe’s table settings, moved a water goblet slightly higher, to the tip of the knife.

Annabel turned to regard her mother and said, in a conversational tone, “The rooms where Grandmother’s gone are very dark.”

Why did she say such things? Asta touched her palm to Annabel’s forehead: no fever. She stroked her daughter’s soft, tousled bangs, and kept her tone even. “Annabel, your grandmother is surely in heaven, and heaven, surely, is not dark. Don’t speak that way, and on Christmas, and before company.” Asta looked to Charles, sitting companionably near her, his chair pushed back from the long table.

“I’m not company,” Charles offered, “but you should listen to your mother.”

Annabel stood motionless, as though declaiming to them both. “The rooms lead one to another, down below. Outside there’s a meadow full of sounds and creatures. Crickets, whirring and buzzing. And birds, singing and clicking.”

“It must be summer there,” Charles said.

“Annabel, that’s enough.” Asta pretended to consternation with the punch bowl, which she was about to fill for the sideboard. “Go and help your sister plate the figs and chocolate.”

“She doesn’t like me to help with her settings.”

“Nonsense. Go on now, and Charles will be in shortly to help with your theater curtain.”

Annabel gave her mother a long look, then turned on her heel. Goodness, that child! Asta watched her leave the dining room, touching a hand along the high back of every chair, her lace curtain cloak drawn about her. Her short dark hair, grown now to the nape of her neck, glimmered like a silken cap.

Charles stood to help with the crystal bowl, holding it steady while Asta poured it full from pitchers of cream soda and seltzer. “I must say, I like the short haircut. Very stylish. Has our Annabel been reading about flappers and gin joints?”

“No, but it does suit her.” She didn’t mention Annabel’s dramatic gesture, two days after Lavinia’s funeral. She’d cut her braids off just at her ears, and taken them in her pockets to lay atop her
grandmother’s grave at St. Luke’s cemetery, three blocks away. Charles had left for the city, and Asta had not sent word, lest he rush back, when he’d already spent a week helping them. “I’m putting out six cups, Charles. Annabel will want one for Mrs. Pomeroy, who—just to prepare you—plays Lavinia in the pageant.”

“Our girl is fanciful,” Charles said, “and misses her grandmother.”

“Yes, she does.” There’d been nothing for it but to send Hart to retrieve the braids while Asta sat Annabel on a high stool in the kitchen and cut her hair, feathering it at the chopped bits with Lavinia’s sharpest sewing shears. Very short hair, troubadour style, was the fashion, she announced, aware that Annabel understood the term and would repeat it next day in school. She didn’t want her daughter teased. She’d spoken to Annabel’s teacher so frequently; she hadn’t the heart to discuss the haircut as well, but noticed, at a class concert the next weekend, that several other girls had cut their hair short, in imitation or adulation.

“Punch!” Charles announced, “but I won’t ice it yet.” He turned to Asta. “How are the children doing, really, do you think?”

“Grethe is helpful. Hart does very well at school, tries to be perfect. Annabel seems cheerful enough, but she brings her grandmother into everything. It worries me. I tried to get her to use Christmas colors in her pageant, but she insists everyone wear white, and has dragged out the contents of one of Lavinia’s chests. We shall be surprised at what manner of thing adorns the players. Tablecloths, curtains, sheets with monograms, doilies perhaps—time will tell!”

“Annabel does need time, Asta. All of you do. Her plays are a way to see things through. Better she chooses white than black. And let her have her candles. Just give me some paper lunch sacks. I’ll fill them with sand from the bucket on the porch, and arrange them as luminarias, placed just as she directs. Let her have her way and feel she’s made a success.”

“I suppose, but she’s nine years old, precocious, and so preoccupied with fairies and spirits and pronouncements. Hart says she
talks in her sleep, and I often hear her, perfectly alone in her room, whispering away.”

“The plays are her games. She’s her own society. And she
is
providing our only after-dinner entertainment. The more elaborate, I say, the better.” He reached to touch her hand. “Anna, Anna. I’d love to see you smile.”

Looking at him, so tall and handsome and beloved, she did smile. He wore a man’s oilcloth apron that Heinrich had worn in the workshop, years ago. Those aprons were indestructible, unlike so much else. But all that could change. She thought of the letters in her bureau drawer, tied with silk twine, one nearly every day for the past weeks. Still smiling, she felt a blush rise to her face, and her eyes moistened.

“That’s better,” Charles said. Noticing her warm glance at his attire, he untied the apron and thrust it into her arms.

She laughed, folding the thick thing in squares, smaller and smaller, just as she had years ago, walking through the grass from the workshop on summer evenings with Heinrich. They worked hard on weekends while Lavinia entertained the children, then stayed up late
en famille,
eating fine meals Betty kept in the warmer, hand-turning ice cream, playing croquet by lamplight, listening to gramophone records. Heinrich loved teaching them ballroom dancing and boxing postures. Annabel was his poppet, his Nell, and Hart followed him everywhere. There were good things to remember, things she must hold fast.

Charles had followed her into the kitchen. “Madam?” He put his gold cuff links in her hand and held up his wrists like a cooperative prisoner.

Anna fastened the French cuffs of his shirt and watched approvingly as he pulled on his suit coat. He was fine and dear and she would miss him. But surely he would forgive her someday, and visit them often. He seemed much valued at Dunnegan, and came and went as business dictated. He would stay for holidays, just as now. Cornelius’ Iowa holdings were not so far from Chicago, and she would write to Charles from the property in the South, explaining
all. Better to tell him by letter. All was so clear when one held a letter in one’s hand. One’s handwriting was intimate, a reflection of one’s deepest nature. Cornelius had spoken volumes; page after page of his flowing script had comforted and led and reassured her; he’d questioned with her, answered, deepened their bond to one of lasting strength.

“Anna.” Charles touched her hair, smoothing it back from her face. “Sit down with me. We’ve been working from the moment we lay eyes on one another this morning. The bird is in one oven and the vegetables in the other. Everything must cook. And I insist we have a glass of wine.”

“Yes, let’s do. Where shall we have it?”

“In the dining room, at our own Christmas table.”

His warm touch was on her shoulders. Dear Charles. He’d insisted on ordering in all the provisions, for he knew the local tradesmen, apologizing that he hadn’t time to actually bake the pies this year but thought the children would appreciate apple and cherry tarts, as well as a chocolate
bûche de Noël
and another treat he’d kept fastened in a cardboard cake box. A surprise, he’d said.

“I must speak with you now, Anna. You must give me leave.” He turned her to face him, and looked quite grave. There was a high color in his cheeks.

A chill gripped her heart. He might be ill. She knew this happened. Lavinia’s husband, Heinrich’s father, had died young, hidden away in a sanatorium, poisoned with the mercury antidote to his disease. Lavinia had known, never reproached him, and stayed with him to the end. “Of course, Charles,” Anna said. “What is it? You’re not ill?”

He smiled to reassure her, and put his mouth against her hair. They stood quite still for a moment. “No, of course I’m not ill,” he said.

Anna was too relieved to speak. Such a catastrophe would have canceled everything. She could not have left Charles, alone and facing terrible difficulty. She felt him take her hand and followed him to the dining room.

“Shall we?” He held the opened wine, and touched her fingers to his mouth.

She laughed. “Charles, you’re such a storybook character today.”

“My dear,” he said behind her, “we live storybook lives. Do open your eyes and observe.”

The dining room before them was transformed. Clearly, Charles had been under orders to distract her in the kitchen while Grethe and Annabel, who stood expectantly at the end of the table, finished preparing their tableau. The votive candles inside the cardboard houses and church of the Christmas village were lit, and the little houses glowed in a long row down the length of the table beyond the place settings. Grethe had arranged pine boughs and cotton snow, mirrors for skating ponds, the miniature flocked trees. Annabel had no doubt placed the little porcelain figures, ice skaters and shopkeepers, children with sleds, men in top hats, women carrying parcels. They were Lavinia’s fine hand-painted German Christmas sets, and they stood about in conversational groups, glided motionless atop their reflections, or bent to their work, all in concert.

“Girls, it’s so beautiful.” Anna felt Charles gently embrace her from behind and was glad, for she was almost faint. The chandelier’s teardrop crystals caught the dipping sparkle of the candles and the gold of the stenciled border on the cranberry walls. Such a warm color for a dining room, Lavinia had said, and stood on a ladder to paint the stenciled pattern, a filigree of barely present fleur-de-lis.

“Mother, I lit the candles for Grethe.” Annabel held out a stump of matchbook, beaming. Anna could see the soot on her fingertips, and a dark little smear on her cheek.

“I’m very glad I dressed appropriately,” Charles said into Anna’s hair. “This is the most beautiful Christmas table ever seen by man or angels.”

“Man or angels,” Annabel repeated, clearly impressed with the phrase.

“She did very well,” Grethe said, “but she wouldn’t use the kitchen matches. She wanted to use the old matchbooks from Grandmother’s collection.”

“Never mind,” Charles said. “That’s fine, Grethe. And now your mother and I will have a glass of wine, and enjoy your work while you guess what’s in those presents.”

The girls, under strict orders never to leave candles burning in a room, turned away to finish their preparations. Anna sat gratefully. Charles pulled his chair close beside hers, and offered his handkerchief. “There, you see? Everything is going to be all right, Anna.”

She took the wine he poured for her and felt its warmth in her mouth. “Annabel insists on keeping Lavinia’s old matchbooks. She found a cache of them and won’t let me throw them out. She likes to arrange them in rows on the kitchen table.”

“They’re interesting,” Charles said. “Little pictures of Copenhagen and London, names of exotic restaurants, but I’m surprised the matches still light. Look, our dramatist has written the place cards with great style.”

Annabel had written their names in script that approximated Lavinia’s, with swooping serifs on all the capital letters. Well, let her. Charles was right. She must express it all, somehow. Anna saw that Grethe had assigned Charles the seat at the head of the table, with Asta to his right, and Hart to his left, and the two girls opposite one another. They were all so happy to see him. She herself was so glad she’d not invited the Verbergs or the Breedloves, neighbors who would have kindly provided distraction, given Lavinia’s death a month ago. Anna wanted this last Christmas in their home to be just for the five of them.

“All right?” Charles asked.

She nodded. She’d told Charles of her plan to sell the house; she would tell the children in the spring, after Cornelius visited; she’d no wish to involve the neighbors and their gossiping. She and Cornelius would protect their privacy and minimize the upset to the children. She glanced out the casement windows to the right of the long room. “Such snow,” she told Charles. “So good that you arrived yesterday.”

He held his wineglass to hers. “
Salud,
Anna. To the storm. It’s lovely, because everyone we love is here.”

Not everyone, Anna knew. But soon, in April, she hoped, when spring allowed easy travel and she could see to real estate decisions. Snow whipped against the house, drifting in the yard. Grethe had lit the gas sconces and the room glowed like a refuge.

“Anna,” Charles was saying, “this is the perfect time and place to say what I have been wanting to say to you.”

“Of course, then,” Anna said. “What have you to say to me? Shall I drink my wine down first?”

He looked at her with shining eyes and seemed to contemplate the question. “Umm, yes, have a bit more wine. And don’t forget this drop.” He put a finger gently to the corner of her mouth and drew it across her lips.

She smiled into his face. He’d seemed to her a handsome younger brother when they first met. Now he was her counterpart and adviser, and so attentive and courtly today. She felt as though they were playing a scene together, a scene in which she was young and whole and knew nothing, and he was her well-intentioned suitor.

Holding her gaze, he took her hands. “Anna, there is no one I can or would love as I love you. You are right to think of change, but the change should be ours. Let us be together, Anna, always and completely.”

“Charles, what are you proposing?”

“I’m proposing marriage, Anna. Marry me and let me take care of you. You are my family and I am yours. If I can’t be a father to your children, I can be their friend and guardian and constant support, and love them as my own.”