The House on Malcolm Street (12 page)

“Are you finished with your squash, honey?” I asked her.

She nodded, looking up at me with her bright eyes full of question. “Did Mr. Walsh know the people that got hurt?”

Again, my breath stuck in my throat. Somehow she had failed to realize there’d been no survivors left in the wreckage. “No,” I said softly. “Most likely not. But it’s difficult to come upon such a scene nonetheless.”

“Daddy told me about a wreck once.”

My heart thundered. I had no idea what she could be referring to. I could not remember John ever discussing such things with me.

“He was a little sad because a girl my size got her leg broked up. He hugged me and said it made him think of me when she was crying and he hoped I never got hurt like that.”

“I hope not too.” It was all I could say. I could feel the threat of tears and did my best to push them away. Eliza did not need to see me crying. We were here for a new beginning, for hope. Not to let the tragedy of strangers drag us down.

“Your father loved you very much,” I told her. “He was a wonderful man.” Quickly, I gathered the dishes and hurried them to the sink. Putting my hands to work in the dishwater was like a safety, keeping me from dwelling more than necessary on the pain that had presented itself so abruptly.

Marigold worked beside me, lifting her voice in a tender hymn. And though I could not quite bring myself to sing along, it seemed a most appropriate way to draw what had become a difficult evening to its close.

9
Josiah

Leah Breckenridge would think me weak. And Aunt Mari in her worry would surely explain to her all about my loss and my struggle. I should have pretended nothing at all had happened. I should have told them I’d fallen in a puddle and let them laugh at my foolish ineptitude. It would have been far easier to take.

I don’t want my pain rubbed raw in the view of others, Lord God!
I directed bitter thoughts toward the ceiling.

I don’t want the things inside of me to be shared! Maybe I don’t want to die anymore, but I still think you were unfair not to take me along with my family. You know I didn’t want to come here. I didn’t want to do anything after Rosemary’s death but fade away to dust. Don’t open me up before a stranger. Don’t hang my weaknesses in view like so much tattered laundry.

My filthy trousers lay in a heap inside the door, and I kicked them across the room to join the spoiled shirt. Maybe in the morning I would pick them up and dispose of them. Or maybe I would let Mari talk me into allowing them to be washed and used again for thrift’s sake. It didn’t really matter. What I needed now more than anything was sleep.

I plopped onto the bed, glad I’d already taken off my work boots so I wouldn’t have to loosen the laces now. The pounding at the back of my head was worse than usual tonight. But maybe the rest I needed would come easily.

Lord, I know you work all things for good and according to your will, but why does life have to be so hard?

I didn’t want to pray anymore tonight because thinking would go along with it and I didn’t want to think. Better to be dead to the world and every struggle that’s a part of it. I lay down for a moment, shutting my eyes and wishing for instant sleep. But thoughts of Rosemary intruded on my efforts, and eventually I heard footsteps again on the front stairs. Leah and Eliza coming up to bed.

Why did Aunt Mari have to give them the master room? Right next to mine? Sure, it was the biggest, so it would suit a woman and her child. But I could already hear the little girl’s humming, just like last night. I could hear the whisper of voices, even without being able to discern a single word.

Leah had more than I did. She had a piece of her John beside her, to cherish and hold. I had nothing but this empty room. The voices of a woman and child just one thin wall away were like mockery.

Why didn’t she just tell her daughter to be still and go to sleep? Even after their talking was done, the humming continued, incessant, overwhelming, as if the sound were something alive, reaching on and on into the night for something impossible to grasp.

Maybe there was peace in it for that little girl. But to me it shouted only of her lack. Rosemary had been prone to humming. But her hum had been the sound of contentment, of quiet pleasure that needed no words. Eliza’s was different, which was obvious to me even at a distance. It was noise to fill up the silence, to cover over an empty spot that would never go away.

I tried to push it all out of my mind, but then Rosemary’s image returned to me, sitting in the cherrywood rocker in front of the fire, her knitting in her lap and a soft melody teasing forth from her closed lips.

In a fit of grief and rage, I’d smashed that rocker into a hundred pieces. And then I’d burned every sliver, so I wouldn’t have to look at its emptiness and remember the dreams I’d lost. But memories aren’t disposed of that easily.

I rolled slowly from the lumpy mattress and knelt by the side of the bed, knowing that the way my mind was plagued, sleep would not come unless I prayed. But tonight it might be difficult to form the words. Perhaps I could pray in my thoughts alone for Aunt Marigold. That would be easy enough. She’d been a blessing to me and it was not hard to ask a blessing for her in return, as well as help in her continuing struggle with the rheumatism that tried to cripple her.

It was also not as hard as I’d thought to pray for the relatives of the man and woman who had died together today. But that was as far as I got. Leah Breckenridge and her daughter surely needed prayer too. But I couldn’t bring myself into their pain right now without being slammed down again by more of my own.

Aunt Marigold will pray for them, and that will be enough
, I managed.
You know, Lord. You know their need.

I rose and climbed between the covers of the bed. The humming continued for what seemed like an hour before finally tapering off. Silence. At last. But sleep proved evasive nonetheless.

This bed, any bed, was just too big. I grabbed at the extra pillow and scrunched it against my chest. Same as always, the pillowcase smelled like Aunt Mari’s lavender-scented detergent. Too delicate. Too feminine. I hurled the pillow across the room, rolled onto my stomach, and jerked the bedsheet over my head.

10
Leah

The next day, Mr. Walsh seemed to be trying to make up for the somber mood of the previous night by a hefty dose of levity as he hauled the finest looking of yesterday’s apples and pears into the basement for storage. Even after Marigold called him for breakfast he persisted at singing some sort of “jazzy” music I’d never heard before.

Last night, he’d seemed touched by the tragedy, and I’d been deeply surprised and moved at the depth of the feeling I thought I’d seen. But maybe he was just tired, like Marigold had said. This morning, he’d put it all behind him and seemed to have nary a thought that somewhere in this town or a town nearby there was at least one family in mourning, and preparations of the most solemn kind being made. Almost I wished to ask if he had any idea where the memorial services would be held and whether or not the railroad company would send any representative. But I did not dare to voice the words, uncertain of his reaction.

He ate heartily of Marigold’s oatmeal, avoiding looking at either Eliza or me as he relayed to his aunt the Kurcher family’s thanks for the biscuits and eggs she’d sent yesterday. “Dodie Elmira is getting married,” he said. “Only sixteen, I think. Her beau is the son of a neighboring farmer. They’ll be building a Sears Roebuck house practically a stone’s throw from both in-laws.”

“Well, that’ll be keeping the family together,” Marigold made conversation in return. “Is he farming like his father?”

“Helping, I think. But she said he wants to inquire about a railroad job too.”

Eliza picked at her oatmeal, and I gave her a sprinkle of sugar across the top as enticement to finish what she could. She smiled.

“The whole family’s well?” Marigold asked on about the Kurchers.

“Well enough, I guess. Dodie didn’t say anything different.”

“I would love to visit them again. Dearly I would.”

Josiah let his aunt’s words go, and I was very glad. The thought of her hopping a train with him to ride off to an unknown town was quite unsettling.

I was hoping he would leave after breakfast with the jazzy music still on his lips and no more thought of the Scripture he’d left off in the middle of reading yesterday. But Marigold reminded him, scurrying dishes out of the way when he was finished with them to make room for her big, leather-bound book.

He read all the rest of that chapter and the next, and I tried not to listen as I washed up the dishes yet again. But one verse stuck with me, and I couldn’t quite get it out of my mind.

“How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them!”

Did that mean that God’s thoughts about me were precious, or that I was supposed to consider his thoughts precious, whatever they might be? I couldn’t quite decide, and either way it seemed unfair and unjust. How could I be expected to think his thoughts precious if they allowed for agony and pain? Or could he truly be thinking good things for me? If so, why was I now being forced to live as a widow and provide without means for a fatherless child?

Josiah Walsh shut the book when he finished the chapters and rose to his feet. “Got to be going, Aunt Mari. I’ll see you a little earlier tonight, Lord willing.”

The words seemed harsh, like a slap at last night’s pain. He turned away and would have gone, but Marigold stopped him to give him the last pie she and Eliza had made yesterday.

“Lunch,” she told him. “Eat it all if you want to. There’s plenty more where that came from.”

With a brief nod to her and not a word in my direction, he was out the door and gone. And just like yesterday, it was a relief.

Now we could get to the business of the day. More canning, of course. We’d barely gotten started with that. And there were the carrots to dig. And the laundry and such things to be done about the house. But Marigold had other things in mind, at least at first.

She pulled a picture album from a cupboard and took us to the sitting room where we could join her on the settee. Eliza was excited, I could easily tell. But I trembled inside at the very idea of viewing pictures of John’s family and talking about them.

“Thought you might appreciate the chance to see these,” she said. “No sense in slaving away the whole time you’re here.”

She showed us John’s parents, her own parents, and an immense assortment of siblings, cousins, nieces, and nephews.

“Some of them don’t live too awfully far away,” she said. “Maybe we could have a little get-together.”

I hoped not. I’d met many of them, but John had not made keeping in touch with them a priority, so I didn’t feel I had any real relationship with these people. And even if I had, to be put on display in front of them now would be awkward at best.

I wondered if Marigold would say anything about Josiah or his parents. She didn’t mention them, but she spoke more about her sisters, and John’s mother in particular, than anyone else. I would have liked to know their relationship, to know if John had been close to Josiah as a boy, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to ask.

On one of the last few pages, Eliza found a tiny photograph of an infant draped with a lacy coverlet and staring intently at a wooden pony someone held overhead.

“Pretty baby,” she remarked.

“That, dear one, is your father,” Marigold stated warmly.

“Really?” Eliza exclaimed with a deep intake of breath, as though she’d found a sublime treasure. She moved her fingers to the very edge of the picture but didn’t touch the face of it. “It looks a little bit like my baby brother.”

My eyes filled with tears, and through them the photograph looked far more like Johnny James than I could ever have expected. I could almost see his tiny, frail fingers clutching for the pony, his plaintive wail letting me know that all was not right with his world.

Aunt Marigold suddenly took my hand in hers and squeezed it, then she closed the book and set it aside on the lamp table.

“I’m glad baby Johnny and Daddy are together,” Eliza said. “If only one was in heaven alone, they might be lonely. It’s better that I gots Mommy and Johnny gots Daddy so nobody gots to be alone.”

I couldn’t answer, but Marigold gave Ellie a little hug and nodded her head. “That’s a very good way to look at it, and I’m sure that they’re glad to be together just like you said. But nobody is ever alone in heaven or here on earth, because the good Lord is always with us.”

There was nothing I could say, and I didn’t want to sit and listen to any more. “The sun’s shining,” I said, standing to my feet. “Looks like perfect weather for digging those carrots. Are there digging tools in the shed?”

Marigold looked up at me for a moment. “You know it’s all right to slow down enough sometimes to remember and reflect.”

“Maybe so,” I agreed. “But it doesn’t seem as practical as bringing in a harvest that’s in the ground and waiting.”

She smiled. “You’re quite the go-getter. But we all cope in our own ways.”

I found her reference to my grief irritating. I didn’t want it mentioned. I wanted only to move on into the work that needed to be done where I could maintain my composure and feel like I was accomplishing something. I was about to go on outside when she mentioned something I’d already thought of but felt too uncertain to mention on my own.

“You seem to take natural to the garden and such, but I was hoping you wouldn’t mind helping me with another chore first.” She took Eliza’s hand in her own and continued. “I hate to ask you to help with the washing, but it’s become awfully difficult for me anymore and we’ve got such aplenty waiting. I meant to ask Josiah to bring down anything that might be in his room yet, but I forgot. If you could check for me and then help me get everything started, I can wash and you can rinse and put on the line.”

“That would be fine,” I told her. “Would it be all right if I add a few things of ours?”

“Of course.”