A Rose Revealed (7 page)

At the evening meal Jake made it a point to sit next to me. We both made believe we didn’t see Esther and Mary exchange a meaningful glance as they took their places, Mary next to John who sat at the head, Esther between Mary and Elam who sat at the foot. We all bowed our heads.

I waited for John or maybe Elam to say grace, but no one said anything. Head still bowed, I glanced around. I watched as one by one, heads came up, and the food was passed. I found out that sometimes the meal was almost as silent as the grace. John and Elam talked briefly about the harness repair work they were doing in their little smithy in the shed by the barn. Mary said that all the food was prepared for the big meal tomorrow after church at Old Nate Stoltzfus’s.

“That’s Becky’s grandfather?” I asked.

Everyone nodded.

“He pulled out of his lane just as I walked past earlier this afternoon,” I said. “I’d never seen him before. When I was there for home care, he was always out in the fields working.”

“Did he speak to you?” asked Elam, gray eyes sparkling.

“No.” I pictured the frosty old man with the white beard down his chest. “He ignored me.”

“He didn’t glare or snarl?” Elam grinned at his brother.

“Or shake his fist?” Jake said, grinning back.

“Elam. Chake.” John spoke quietly, and both young men immediately wiped their faces clear of emotion. Their eyes, however, continued to dance. I was taken with John’s “ch” sound when he said Jake. So Dutch! I had to stifle a grin of my own.

“Becky and the baby walked up this afternoon,” Esther said.

“Poor thing,” Mary said, and I didn’t know if she meant Becky or Trevor.

“Ah, yes, the baby,” Jake said, his voice suddenly sarcastic, though I couldn’t understand why. “Conceived in sin and born out of wedlock.”

“She repented before the congregation, Jake,” Mary said quickly.

Jake nodded, his face closed and dark. “But she’s still being punished, isn’t she?”

No one said anything for several minutes. Then Esther spoke rather hesitantly and to me. “Will Trevor be all right? He’s so small.”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’m worried about him too.”

“What’s wrong with him?” Again it was Esther, her face full of sorrow.

“He was born with a bad heart,” I said.

“Undoubtedly because of her sin,” Jake said.

I glared at him. He was baiting his family, and I thought it rude and unkind. He refused to look at me.

“She’s not from our district,” Mary said. “Her parents moved to Ohio shortly after they married.”

“So?” Jake held a forgotten piece of one of Mary’s potato rusks in his hand. “That means what? Our district is unsullied?”

“Chake,” John said again.

“I chust meant that she has no one here who is close to her,” Mary said quietly. She looked at me. “Her mother and father didn’t want her at home after this happened. She’s the oldest and they were afraid she’d lead the rest astray. So they sent her to her grandparents.”

“In the late summer before the baby was born, she often walked up here,” Esther said. “She would sit with me on the porch for a few minutes drinking root beer. Then she’d walk back to Old Nate’s.” As she talked, Esther tore a piece of Mary’s rusk to shreds. “The baby is so tiny and frail.”

No one spoke for the rest of the meal. When Esther cleared the fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and Mary’s canned green beans from the table and served her own apple pie, silence reigned. The only noises were the scraping of silver on plates and the thump of glasses and cups set on the table. Since I had passed enough meals like that with my mother, the silence didn’t bother me. When we were finished eating, everyone bowed his head again for another silent prayer. I wondered what Jake thought about during this time.

I helped Esther clear the table and wash the dishes. As I wiped down the oilcloth that covered the table in the center of the kitchen portion of the great room, Jake wheeled his chair to me.

“You doing all right?” he asked, his dark eyes intent.

I nodded. “Better than I thought I’d do.” I smiled. “You were right. Staying here has been good.”

He nodded, pleased. “How about going to a movie tonight? That’ll really take your mind off things.”

“A movie?” Talk about being astonished at an invitation. I could have been knocked over with the proverbial feather. “You and me? Tonight?”

He gave me a half-smile. “You may be sure that no one else in the room would stoop to an activity like a movie.”

I glanced at Mary and Esther in their long, caped dresses, their heavy black hose, and their
kapps
. I looked at Elam and John in their white shirts and black broadfall pants, relaxing in their living room chairs, their stockinged feet propped companionably on the same hassock. No, these folks certainly weren’t moviegoers.

“And can’t two friends go someplace together without it being a big deal?” He sounded embarrassed and slightly grumpy.

I swallowed a laugh at his discomfort. “I’d like to go,” I said, my voice as prim as a Victorian maiden accepting an invitation to stroll with her beau by the river on a Sunday afternoon. “Especially with someone as charmingly and unfailingly pleasant as you.”

He made his deep-in-the-throat noise. “There’s a show at 8:15. We’ve got an hour before we have to leave.”

“Then you can play a game with me,” Esther said, her eyes bright.

Jake groaned. “Come on, Esther. Give me a break.”

“You’re just upset because I won last time.” She went to a chest in the living room and took out a board game. As she set it on the kitchen table, I saw it was Parcheesi.

“I haven’t played this in years.” I took a seat on one side of the table.

“Are you sure you want to play?” Jake asked.

“Why not?” I looked at him, puzzled.

He grinned broadly. “You’ll find out.”

Esther and I began arranging the board for play.

“Elam!” Jake looked at his brother, oblivious as he read his newspaper. “If I have to suffer this travesty called playing a game with Esther, you have to suffer too.”

Elam showed no response.

“Come on, Elam,” I called. “It’s the least you can do after that delicious apple pie.”

“Yeah, Elam,” Jake said, dark eyes sparkling maliciously. “Be nice.”

Esther walked to Elam’s chair. “Come, Elam,” she said sweetly. “It would be fun with four.”

Elam knew when he was beaten. He folded his paper, padded across the room, and took the chair across from me. Esther was radiant over the fact that he had joined us.

“You have no idea what you’re in for,” he told me as he put his hands together and stretched them in front of him.

I couldn’t imagine why both Jake and Elam were making such a fuss over a game of Parcheesi. It was only a child’s game, for heaven’s sake.

“I’m red,” Esther announced as she gave a little bounce in her seat.

“She’s always red, no matter what the game,” Jake said. “It’s her lucky color.”

“I don’t believe in luck,” Esther said in gentle reproof.

“Then I’ll be red tonight,” Elam said, reaching for the red men.

“No!” Esther yelled, grabbing the four red men from the box before Elam could get them. She cleared her throat delicately. “I like red.”

We set our men in our squares and began throwing the dice to see who went first. When Esther won the right to go first, she bounced in her chair and shouted,
“Gut!”

Elam and Jake looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

On our first turns none of us rolled the requisite five to move onto the board. As she threw for the second time, Esther got a three and a two. She clapped and moved a man onto the board. “Just watch. Just watch,” she said, a taunting quality in her voice. “I’m going to beat you all!”

As the game moved on, I marveled as quiet, shy Esther disappeared. She was replaced by an intense, competitive young woman. She counted every move with every player. She mocked, she teased, she hooted, she trash-talked Amish-style.

“I’m sending you back to the beginning, Rose. And I don’t want that blue man of yours to get back on the board until Christmas. He’s an ugly color. Keep him out of my way!”

“Is she always like this?” I asked Jake and Elam.

“I think she’s got her good manners on for company,” Jake said.

“Ha, Elam! I’ve got you blockaded!” Esther couldn’t sit still. She walked around the table to Elam and pointed to her pair of men blocking Elam’s green man as if he couldn’t see for himself. “You aren’t going anywhere and I’m going Home. Look! I’m taking this little red man all the way Home.” And she marched her man up the last stretch and Home.

“I don’t know, Esther,” Elam said calmly, his eyes studying the board. “I don’t think he goes Home. I think you miscounted.”

“What?” Esther, bristling with tension, put her finger on the board and began to count again. “No, I did it right.”

“Only if you started at this place.” He pointed where her man had stood at the end of her last turn. “But you were here.” And he pointed back a space.

“I was not,” she said hotly. “I was here!” She pointed to the spot where her man had been. “Wasn’t I?” She looked at me.

I looked from her to Elam and saw the gleam in his eyes. “I think he’s teasing you, Esther.”

“What?” She spun to Elam, appalled. “You can’t tease about something like this.”

“No,” he said kindly. “
You
can’t tease about something like this. I can.”

She sat back in her chair, her expression distressed, her cheeks scarlet. She looked beautiful. “Oh, no! I’ve done it again, haven’t I? I’ve been praying so hard that God would take my winning spirit away.”

She looked so genuinely penitent that Elam smiled and said, “You were right in your counting. Your man is Home.”

Her eyes lit up and she opened her mouth to let out a huzzah of some kind when she caught herself. “That’s nice,” she said softly. “I’m pleased.”

She stayed gentle and sweet for two more turns. Then she landed on one of Jake’s men. “Hah! He goes back to the beginning, Jake. This is my space now! Back, back, back! Come on, get him out of here.”

“What does she do when she loses?” I asked Jake later as we drove to the movies. Esther had won and done a discreet victory dance around the table. Then she had gathered up the game pieces, put the box away, and become Esther again, sweet, docile, gentle, the cover girl for Amish life.

“She swallows real hard, puts the game away, and goes to her room for a while. When she comes out, she’s Esther again.”

Grinning, I said, “I love people. They are so full of contradictions and surprises. Never in my wildest imagination would I have expected Esther to be as driven as any professional athlete. She’s got the heart to make a great lineman if we could find shoulder pads small enough to fit.”

“How about me?” Jake asked. “Am I a man of contradictions?”

“Are you kidding?” I laughed, a short burst of air. “You’re kind and comforting one minute, grouchy the next, sunk in a black fog the next.”

Jake made a face, not exactly pleased with my analysis. “And you are sensitive and weepy, then sassy and independent. You’re Rose the Evangelist and Rose the Caregiver, Rose the Comedienne and Rose the Heartbreaker.”

“I’m all that?” I was amazed, especially at the heartbreaker part. To my knowledge I’d never broken anyone’s heart, at least not romantically.

“And more,” he said as we pulled into a parking spot.

As I climbed out of the van, I checked the pager on my belt, hoping I wouldn’t get a call. I could use the mindless suspension of disbelief that a good movie caused.

We bought our tickets for an adventure movie that was all the rage and entered the lobby.

“Popcorn?” Jake asked as he paused.

Knowing full well that the last thing I needed was more food but as always a sucker for popcorn, I said, “Sure.”

“Soda?”

“Why not?”

We joined the line by a counter where I told myself that I didn’t want that phony butter dripped all over my popcorn. It was bad for me, it would make me fat, and it would get my hands all messy. But it tasted so good!

I was dimly aware of others taking their places behind us, but it wasn’t until a young woman said, “Rose?” in a too-pleased-with-herself voice that I paid attention.

I turned and found myself facing Allie Priestly, a “friend” from high school whom I hadn’t seen in years and hadn’t missed. Standing beside her was Ben Abrams, my ex-fiancé.

“Look, Ben. It’s Rose. Isn’t this wonderful!”

Not a Kodak moment.

Chapter 4

A
s I stared with dreadful fascination at my old nemesis and my ex-fiancé, two mental pictures formed.

One was of Allie in tenth grade. She and I had both wanted to be cheerleaders. She was leggy, blonde, just out of braces, and unencumbered by conscience. I was slim, my euphemism for straight as a board, could never make my hair obey, and I wore glasses, my astigmatism making contacts impossible.

We both went to tryouts that long-ago day, she arriving on time, I arriving fifteen minutes late because of a makeup quiz I had to take. I slid into the bleachers beside her and asked, “Did the coach give any special directions?”

Allie shook her head. “She said we should just get out there and give it our best. Be bouncy.”

I nodded as I watched a couple of candidates. I felt certain I could do better than they. When my name was called, I ran onto the gym floor and gave it my all, trying to look so bouncy that I gave Tigger a run for his money.

Allie was called after I was, and she ran out onto the floor. Just before she began to cheer, she looked over at me and smirked. Then she looked down at the floor. For the first time I saw a circle inscribed with tape. Allie carefully stood in the center and began.

I thought back to the girls who had preceded me. I looked again at Allie. All had stood precisely in the center of the circle. I had not. I hadn’t even seen it in my excitement and nervousness.

With a sinking feeling, I leaned forward to the girl sitting in front of me. “What’s with the circle?” I asked.

“You have to stand in the center the whole time,” she whispered. “The coach said how important it is to her that you listen to instructions, and if you can’t remember that little bit, you’ll never remember other things.”