Sister's Choice (24 page)

Now she kept a bowl of polished apples in a yellowware bowl on the counter, and the metal canisters that Anna had hidden on shelves were painted and their contents labeled in colorful script. Cookie cutters hung from a wire strung across the window.

Ben had not been as pleased as she at the transformation. He had questioned her use of time when there was still canning to do. He had faulted her for preferring appearance to substance. At first Grace had been furious that her attempts to bring life and beauty to the house had been met with resistance. But later, as she fumed, she had realized that Ben saw everything she accomplished as a criticism of Anna. That had lessened her fury a notch.

Whether Ben liked the new look or not, Grace was happier working in the kitchen now, and today that translated into working harder on dinner. She sliced generous pieces of salt-cured ham, rinsed them well, then set them to sizzling in the frying pan. When they were browned the way she liked them, she added handfuls of sliced apples, put the top on the pan and set it on a back burner. She simmered purple hull peas she had been soaking since early morning, then opened a jar of collard greens and cooked them with a piece of fatback, and some onion, dried hot pepper and chopped garlic. The morning’s biscuits had been quickly made, but there were enough that she didn’t need to make more. Instead, she mixed up some corn bread and put it in the oven to go with them.

Then, as a treat, she counted out eggs and decided to make a sponge cake to eat with peaches canned from Ben’s own trees and cream from their milk cow. She set Charlie up on a stool as a helper, and once the ingredients were combined, she gave him a wooden spoon. With enthusiasm, she crowed over the strength of his tiny arm and his attention to every little speck on the side of the bowl. Once he tired, she took over and briskly finished the beating.

By the time the dinner was done and the cake was cooling on the counter, the kitchen was fragrant and inviting, and her mouth began to water.

At one—exactly—Ben came back to the house and went to wash up. By the time he arrived to take his seat, she had dinner on the table. She poured hot coffee, got milk for Adam and Charlie, then untied her apron and took her place across from him.

Ben said grace, with Charlie bowing his head in imitation and Adam walloping his highchair tray with a spoon.

“We’ve got our own Gene Krupa,” she said when Ben had finished, inclining her head toward Adam.

He paused in the midst of reaching for the platter of ham and apples. She realized what she had said and how it had sounded.
Our own.
As if Adam belonged to them both. She met his eyes and waited.

“Better watch for visitors. Benny Goodman may come calling.” He lifted the platter off the table and offered it to her first.

Relieved, she took a slice, then helped the boys to their dinner from the platters and bowls closest to her. By the time they were all eating, the knots in her stomach were smoothing out. This had been a good idea after all.

She expected Charlie to babble through the meal, asking a thousand questions of the father he too rarely saw. But Charlie, despite his obvious excitement, was mute, even though, when she ate alone with the boys, he talked the entire time.

Finally she set her fork on her plate. “Charlie, why don’t you tell your daddy about the fox we saw on our walk yesterday?”

Charlie’s eyes shone, then clouded, and he looked down at his plate, only peeking once at his father’s face.

“I guess I’ll have to tell him,” she teased. “You’ll lose your chance if you don’t speak up fast.”

“Not s’posed to,” he said so softly she nearly couldn’t hear him.

She frowned at Ben, who looked away.

“You’re not supposed to do what, honey?” She touched Charlie’s elbow. “Be outside?”

He shook his head, then sneaked a quick glance at his father before he shook it again.

“I think Charlie’s trying to tell you he’s not supposed to talk at the dinner table,” Ben said.

She tried to imagine why. Did Charlie talk with his mouth so full that he choked? If he talked too much, did he forget to eat, so he didn’t clean his plate? Did he habitually interrupt, so Ben was trying to teach him manners?

Her puzzled expression was all Ben needed. He set his fork down, too. “His mother had rules.”

Now she understood. Although in her childhood home the Fedley children had always been allowed to talk at the dinner table, there had rarely been conversation. Grace remembered being chastised by her sister so often for her choice of subject, her tone of voice, her slang, that she had more or less given up trying. Apparently Anna had taken things a step further with her own family.

“I see.” She didn’t know what to say that could be said in front of the children.

Ben began to eat again.

Grace picked up her fork, an idea having occurred to her. “Well, rules are meant to be changed,” she said sweetly. “You and my sister probably had so much to say to each other that there was no time for Charlie to talk to either of you. But that’s changed now. Charlie, please tell your daddy about the fox.” She narrowed her eyes when Ben started to interrupt. “Food goes down better with conversation, and in this family, Charlie is our very best chance to prevent indigestion.”

Ben glared at her; then, as she continued to stare at him, the glare eased and just the hint of a smile took its place. “Go ahead, son,” he said, without looking at Charlie. “I think the rule has changed, and besides, listening to you is a heap better than listening to your aunt Grace.”

Grace looked away, afraid that she might smile, too.

Half an hour later, Adam was happily playing in his pen, and Charlie was upstairs looking for the checkers, which he had been using to build a fort for his tin soldiers yesterday. Ben lingered at the kitchen table with another cup of coffee, while Grace cleared and scraped plates.

“Anna didn’t much like noise,” he said, as if the conversation at the table had never ended.

“Yes, I remember that.”

“You seem not to mind it.”

“I like children who sound like children. Charlie’s a wonderful little boy, but he’s a little boy. Shouldn’t he sound and act like one?”

“We took over your life. You had a lot of plans that didn’t include the snuffling and snorting of kids.”

Once again she was so surprised for a moment that she couldn’t speak. Surprise was becoming habitual. She managed to recover this time.

“Yes, well, that’s the way things happen, huh?”

“What were you going to do, Grace? You had something planned. You had savings.” He gestured to the kitchen, as if to say she had not found the money for the changes she had made here or elsewhere in the small household allowance he gave her.

He was right. She had taken the money for paint and fabric from her own private store. She had also splurged on a new radio from the
Lafayette Radio Catalog,
a six-tube AC-DC Super, to replace the broken one in the living room, then installed it in the kitchen, where she spent most of her time. Her savings were now sadly depleted, much like her life.

“I was going to travel.” She stacked dishes in a tin pan filled with soapy water. She had been pleased to discover that, some years ago, Ben had installed a kerosene hot-water heater to make this chore simpler.

“Where? When?”

“Oh, soon. And everywhere. I saved enough money to set myself up somewhere else. As soon as Mama and Papa headed to Delaware, I was going to head west, work as I went, see the world. I’ve never been anywhere. There are oceans, mountains that make ours look tiny, people of all colors and kinds.” She glanced over at him. “I wanted to see it all.”

“We ruined that, the boys and me.”

Just the fact he would recognize and address this warmed her heart. From his tone, she wasn’t sure he was sorry. Even if he was, she didn’t think he would say so. But the recognition was something.

“Mama told me once that all she ever really wanted was to open a little café in town, cook up breakfasts and lunches and talk to people when they came in every day. Instead, she cooked for us and nobody talked. That’s probably where Anna got used to silence.”

“You talk.”

She laughed. “I guess I do. When there’s somebody to talk to.”

“You talk to the boys all the time. Charlie picks up new words every day. From you, from that radio of yours. He’s a regular chatterbox now.”

“Good for him, don’t you think? A man with words is a man who can talk his way out of trouble.”

“Not if he grows apples.”

She was aware that she and Ben were having their first real conversation. She imagined wives all over the country pouring coffee for their men as they sat at the table and watched them clear away the remains of Sunday dinner. Rich men, men like Ben who had land but little cash to show for it, poor men who had nothing but the coffee they sipped. They were part of a chain that stretched from one ocean she hadn’t seen to the other. The thought warmed her.

“I guess growing apples can be difficult,” she said. “Hard to talk your way out of spots and bruises.”

“I wish that’s all it was. But the apple industry’s been on a steady decline for years now. Every year is harder than the last.”

“Why? What’s changing?”

“Just a lot of hooey.”

She glanced at him. “What kind of hooey?”

He seemed surprised she wanted to know. “After the war, my dad got as much as eighteen dollars for a barrel, shipping them over to England. Those were the days. Labor didn’t cost much, fewer diseases, fewer government restrictions. A man could grow apples and ship them away, fill the bank with money, and that was that. Or nearly.”

“It’s changed now?”

“All for the worse. Now it costs so much and takes so much time to bring a tree into production that the only orchards still managing are like this one, lots of land, lots of trees, lots of headaches.”

“That’s why you work all the time.”

“I wish there were ten more of me.”

She straightened and smiled. “Well, I’m glad there’s not. Having one pretend husband is bad enough.”

For a moment he looked as if he wasn’t sure how to take that; then he smiled at her. “You do know exactly how to say the wrong thing the right way, don’t you?”

She laughed. “I’m sorry. But you asked for it.”

“I guess I did.”

“So what do you get for a barrel of apples now?”

“Better than we did ten years ago. It dropped as low as two dollars a barrel during the worst of the Depression. It’s up from that now, but labor costs a lot more, too, and so does spray. And we use a lot more of both.”

“If we go to war, that will change, won’t it?”

He sobered. “Everything will change. There’ll be a good market for apples, but no one will be around to grow them. We’ll all be off fighting.”

“Surely not
you,
Ben? The country will need its farmers. And you have two small boys. So far the draft’s left you alone.”

“You been listening to the news on that radio of yours? We’ve got a peacetime draft now, which is why the fathers get a break, but if we fight, it’s going to take all of us to win it, and even then, it won’t be a sure thing.”

She sobered, too. She had never liked the news, people killing other people, bombs and torture and hatred. But avoiding it these days was hard. She’d heard Walter Winchell exhorting his country to go to war, Edward R. Murrow doing on-the-scene commentary from Europe. Even the farm-and-home shows devoted more and more time to news coverage. Then, just a little more than a month ago, the U.S. destroyer
Reuben James
had been sunk by a German submarine. Even an ostrich with his head buried in the sand probably knew things were changing too fast and in the wrong direction.

“A year ago, Anna said we’d be at war by now,” she reminded him.

“Anna wasn’t always right, but she wasn’t far wrong on that. It’s coming.”

Charlie appeared, lugging the latched leather case filled with checkers. Ben finished the last sips of his coffee; then he hoisted the little boy up on his lap, and together they began to set up the board. Charlie was so excited that his little fingers would hardly work in tandem.

Grace tried to find the warm feeling she’d had earlier, the one that had connected her to families across the country. When Adam began to fuss, she took him out of the playpen and brought him in to sit on the floor with Charlie’s blocks. Then she turned on the radio to fill the kitchen with music.

Sammy Kaye’s “Sunday Serenade” was just ending, and the announcer was saying that next up was a University of Chicago Round Table discussion of the Canadian role in the war in Europe. Grace wiped her hands on her apron and reached to turn the dial, hoping she could find something more promising to listen to. So far from a city center, reception here was dependent on the whim of the winds, but she was optimistic.

She was stopped by a new voice over the airwaves.

“From the NBC newsroom in New York. President Roosevelt said in a statement today that the Japanese…”

She turned up the volume and listened to the rest of the short announcement, eyes widening. She turned to the table and saw that Ben had heard it, too.

“Pearl Harbor?” she asked.

“That’s where our Pacific fleet is based.”

“What does this mean?”

Ben didn’t look at her. Instead, he looked down at his son, who was setting up the red and black checkers on the same side of the board. He kissed Charlie’s head before he spoke.

“It means war, Grace. It means the war is finally at our front door.”

1941

C
harlie had his family afternoon, even though his father’s attention focused on the radio every time a new bulletin about the attack on Pearl Harbor was broadcast. The kitchen, still deliciously scented from the afternoon dinner and warm from the stove, became their haven. They were still there when it was time for supper, and Grace heated what remained of the earlier meal, and served the cake and peaches with it.

Ben volunteered to put the boys to bed while she washed dishes, and she accepted gratefully. Only when Charlie lifted his little arms to say good-night before he was taken upstairs did the peace in Virginia shatter, too.

“’Night, Mommy,” he said sleepily.

“’Night, Charlie boy.” She hugged him and kissed his cheek. “You sleep tight. Don’t let the bedbugs bite.” She set him on the floor and happened to glance at Ben. A moment passed before she realized why he looked so angry.

“She is not your mother,” Ben said. “She is your aunt Grace.”

Charlie, tired from the unusual day, stuck out his lower lip. “No, she is my mommy!”

Grace tousled his hair. “We have a tired boy here, Ben. Please let this go.”

Ben stuck out his hand. “Charlie, you come with me right now.”

Charlie shrank away from his father’s touch. “No, I want Mommy.”

Grace edged in front of him, so she was standing between the little boy and his father. “I’ll bring him up in a minute. Why don’t you start with Adam?” She lowered her voice, hoping Charlie wouldn’t hear. “You look furious. He’s afraid of you.”

His expression changed instantly. He looked as if she had struck him. “He has no call to be.”

When Grace had first taken over the children’s care, Charlie had been so subdued, so careful not to offend, she had wondered what might be wrong with him. Was he simply sad about his mother’s death? Or was physical punishment the standard at home, so Charlie was simply afraid to make a mistake?

Since then, she had seen Ben turn Charlie over his knee for a quick swat on the fanny, but only after a serious infraction. She hadn’t objected, having been raised that way herself. But until tonight, Ben had never looked so angry with his son.

Now she felt embarrassed because she had interfered. She had no real evidence that Ben might hurt the little boy tonight or any night, and she shouldn’t let Charlie think so, either.

“I’m sorry.” She stepped out of Ben’s way so that he could continue to corral his son. In a moment a mutinous Charlie placed his small hand in Ben’s, and they started out of the room.

“She
is
my mommy,” Charlie said, as he left the kitchen. “Is!”

She supposed courage was a good trait for a little boy in a land preparing to go to war.

By the time Ben returned, she had finished the dishes and prepared herself for the argument to come.

“Just so you know,” she said, when she heard his footsteps, “I’ve tried to tell Charlie I’m not his mother. He knows it, but a little boy needs a mother, and since I’m right here taking care of him, I’m first choice. I hope you’re not going to blame me for that, too.”

“Too?”

“I’ve made a lot of changes around here, and I know you don’t like them. I can’t be Anna, and I know you wish I were.”

“You’re different, that’s for sure.”

She sighed and turned to face him. “Have you had enough coffee, or are you going straight to bed?”

“If there’s more, I’ll have some.”

“I don’t know how you drink it this late, Ben. I’d be doing the java jive every night.”

“That would be interesting to see.”

She tried to read his expression. Unfortunately, he was a magnificent example of that primary American male virtue: self-restraint.

“Sit,” she said. “I’ll make a fresh pot. This has been around too long.”

He reached for the pot himself. “Don’t bother. I’ll eat the grounds if I have to.”

“I was afraid you were going to slap him for defying you. He’s such a wonderful little boy. He doesn’t need slapping.”

“You don’t think I know that?”

“Honestly? I wasn’t sure. I’m glad you do.” She wondered if she should say more, but before she could, he went on.

“You’ve never lifted your hand to him?”

“Not on your life. That’s no way to raise a child.”

“Your sister thought different.”

She had wondered if Anna was the reason for Charlie’s initial shyness, his fear of doing something wrong. She phrased her answer carefully, reminding herself that anger at a dead woman was unproductive.

“I’m trying to do my best here, but I won’t stoop to violence to subdue a normal, inquisitive little boy. I hope you don’t expect it.”

“Violence is overstating it. Anna just believed that sparing the rod spoiled the child.”

“If letting a child have opinions and thoughts of his own and showing him how much you love him, spoils him, then I guess I’m all for it.”

“So tell me how this love and spoiling is going to affect him when you walk out of here,
Mommy?
”

Instinctively, she could feel that the conversation had turned in a completely new direction. They were no longer discussing Charlie and child rearing. They were discussing something else entirely—her relationship to this family.

“You know, if there’s enough coffee, pour me a cup, too,” she said. “We’re still picking up stations. Maybe we ought to listen a while longer.”

“I can’t sit at this table another minute. I’ll take the coffee in the living room. We can move the radio in there.”

She finished up the last of the kitchen chores, then followed him to the next room. On the few evenings they had shared here, she had always taken the overstuffed chair wedged into the farthest corner, and Ben had sat all the way across the room. Unfortunately, as part of her plan to make the house more comfortable and cheerful, she had rearranged the furniture. Now she saw her mistake. There was nowhere to sit where she wouldn’t be within reach for a conversation.

With that a fact, she chose the most central spot on the sofa, while Ben set up the radio and tried to find a station, daring him to sit beside her. When he was finished, he accepted the dare, stretching his long legs in front of himself but keeping a safe distance between them.

Music was playing on the radio, the reception crackly and uneven, but audible. Outside, one of the German shepherds was barking at shadows. Something pattered against the porch roof, most likely sleet or even snow, and she didn’t envy Ben, who would have to rise early tomorrow morning and see to the outdoor chores.

Grace lifted her cup. “I think a lot of people must have died today. One minute they were living their lives, going about their business, and the next…” She shook her head.

“We should have been in this war a long time ago. Roosevelt knew it was coming right to our door, too. That’s why he started up the draft last year. Preparation.”

“You really think you’ll be called?”

“I have to go.”

From his tone, she knew that even if he wasn’t drafted, Ben felt he had to fight. He believed the time had come.

“When, do you think?” she asked.

“We won’t have much time to plan.”

She had kept herself so busy, worked so hard, spent most of her waking hours with the children. Planning hadn’t been part of that. She had been too busy just moving from one hour to the next.

Now the possibilities seemed endless, her future a flood of maybes.

Maybe there would be plenty of jobs, good ones, for women now, jobs men had done in the past. And since many women would be in her situation, maybe child care would be available while she worked. She would have to move to a town or city, find accommodations, of course, but she had family spread around Virginia and as far north as Delaware now. It was possible they might help her find a job and a place to live. They might even help with the boys.

For the brief period they were at war, she would have some freedom again, an income of her own, interesting people around her, a life of sorts.

One thing was for certain. She wouldn’t have Ben to contend with. He would be far away, fighting for his country, and his wishes wouldn’t matter. By the time he came home again, the boys would be a little older and less dependent on her. If he wanted to, Ben would be able to handle their care with some hired help. Or perhaps by then he would feel so estranged from his children that he would allow her to continue to raise them with a little help from her family.

If
Ben came home.

At that thought and the shudder that came with it, she put down her cup and turned to him. “What did you mean when you said we have to plan?”

“If I can find somebody to pay even a portion of what it’s worth, I may have to sell the orchard.” He suddenly looked very tired. “It’s possible there’ll be no other way. I don’t expect you to stay here with the boys and look after things. It’s enough you gave up your dreams when your sister demanded it. I’d be a fool to expect you to work even harder.”

“This land’s been in your family for generations.”

“It’s the boys who trouble me most.” He rose and began to pace. “What’s going to happen to them?”

She wasn’t sure what he was asking. “They’ll be distraught, of course. Both of them think you’re the snake’s toenails. They’ll miss you, that’s for sure.”

“I mean who’s going to take care of them?”

She frowned. “Can you possibly think I’m going to abandon them the minute you put on a uniform?”

“This was temporary, you said so yourself. But this war won’t be temporary, Grace. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. It could be years.”

“Of course you won’t be gone that long. We’ll win fast. It’ll be over before it begins. Months at most. You won’t need to sell so much as a tree.”

“That’s not the way it’ll happen. We’ll declare war on Japan, then on Germany. Probably in the next few days. Winning both? Years. And I might not come back at all.”

There it was again, the obvious. Ben was strong. Ben was quick. But no man could outrun a bullet or bomb with his name on it. That freedom she had yearned for could be closer than she’d imagined.

That thought gave her no pleasure.

“You’ll just have to be careful, then.” She got up and stood in his path to stop his pacing. “You’ll have two boys in Virginia expecting you to return. You’ll just have to make sure you do.”

He gave a humorless laugh. “Have you considered how much easier your life might be if I don’t?”

“As a matter of fact, I just did. And you know what? I didn’t like it. So I would appreciate it if you would try not to kick the bucket somewhere in Europe or the Pacific. Charlie and Adam lost one parent. Let’s do our level best to make sure they don’t lose the second one, okay?”

“We have to make plans for them.”

“No, we don’t. Wherever I go, they’ll come with me. You might not approve when Charlie calls me Mommy, but that’s how he thinks of me. Adam doesn’t know a thing different. I’m not going to abandon them to strangers or distant relatives.”

“There’ll be jobs for women all over the country. You could go almost anywhere, do almost anything.”

For a moment she imagined those distant peaks in Colorado, the amber cliffs of New Mexico, the sinuous rivers of wheat in the Midwest. And California? That was a dream too precious to pull out and savor now.

Then she looked into Ben’s eyes, saw that his dream of the orchard he loved, the heritage he had treasured and the sons he had wanted to raise on this land was being stolen from him, as well.

“Not with the boys in tow,” she said. “I won’t go far afield. No matter what happens here, with the orchard, we’ll stay near our family.” She smiled a little. “Such as it is.”

“You won’t change your mind? I’ll be too far away to consult.”

“You think maybe I’ll drop them off by the side of the road somewhere because I’m tired of them?”

He ran his hand through his hair, combing it distractedly off his forehead. “This was temporary. We made a bargain.”

“Oh, I see.” There it was again. Ben was hammering home his message. He had not intended their lives to stay meshed. And the longer they were, the harder it would be to untangle them.

She tried to turn away, but he put a hand on her shoulder to stop her.

“Those were
your
words, Grace. The day you married me. You made sure I knew. I haven’t forgotten.”

“Anna said them first. Remember? The night she died, she told me I only had to stay until you and the boys didn’t need me anymore.”

“Things have a way of changing.” He turned her to face him, gripping both shoulders now. “I just have to know for sure you’re willing to let them.”

Surely he was talking about his sons, about caring for them while he was overseas, perhaps about continuing to care for them until adulthood, if he died in some foreign field. She waited and wondered, and when he didn’t go on, she sighed. In relief?

She wasn’t sure.

None of that could be put into words. But some things could. “I also told you the day we married that I’m not the woman Anna led you to believe I was. You want me to say this out loud? Then I will. I love those little boys. There. Like a mother, I’m afraid. And I’m not so selfish that I’d thrust them aside just to get on with my life. If you still think I would, then you haven’t learned much about me.”

“I’ve only learned what I can from a distance.”

“And who made sure it was at a distance? You’ve looked down your nose at everything I’ve done here. You’ve worked until dark so you wouldn’t have to be in the same house with me. You’ve told me in a hundred small ways that I don’t measure up to my sister.”

“I’ve said you’re different, not that you don’t measure up.”

“And isn’t that the same thing?”

For a moment he looked as if he wanted to answer; then he shook his head, and his hands dropped to his sides.

Immediately she missed their warmth, the wide, strong fingers holding her gently in place.

“I’ll tell you what I see,” he said. “A woman I as much as kidnapped for my own convenience.”

She was astonished. “No. No, it’s just not true. Sure, I feel that way sometimes. Like I’m some kind of slave taking care of your house and your sons. But I had choices, Ben. I chose the one Anna demanded of me, but to be honest, not out of pity or love for her. Because when it came right down to it, there was no other way. If you kidnapped me, then I was a willing enough victim.”