Rebecca's Choice (28 page)

R
ebecca got up from the bed, the letter clutched between numb fingers, walked over to her window, and let the shade up. Outside the stars twinkled, little flames of light in a dark sky. The tail end of the Milky Way’s great wash dropped almost to the horizon. Behind her the kerosene lamp flickered, its light dimmed by the display of glory in the sky.

“I’m not Emma,” Rebecca whispered. The letter slipped from her fingers and slid to the floor. The pages landed without a sound.

What am I going to do?
she wondered.
What if someone finds out how Emma felt?
She could imagine the talk, the questions, and it would make things between her and John all the worse—almost impossible.

She realized the letter was no longer in her hand. Panic filled her, the night exaggerated the fears, and wild thoughts filled her mind. Was the letter already lost, swept away from the eyes of the world?

On the floor she saw the white pages and bent to pick them up. The letters would have to be hidden or destroyed just as the ring had been hidden. As the thought registered in her mind, she recoiled. That action had lead only to distress and finally revelation, which played its part in her present trouble. The letters would have to go.

Rebecca walked back to where the package lay on the bed. Several of the papers had slid to the floor, and she gathered them up carefully. A search confirmed that she had found all of them. Tomorrow they would be sent back. The conclusion came quickly. She would tell her mother, and Mattie would understand.

They were letters from Emma, she would say, which Emma wanted her to read. They contained private things, and Rebecca wanted them returned to the Mennonite man, since they really belonged to him. More than that, she wouldn’t tell. She wouldn’t need to tell.

Released of her urgent concern, she lay on the bed and let Emma’s emotions sweep over her. Tears for the agony expressed stung her cheeks. Then she froze in shock, wondering if she truly was like Emma. Had she rejected Atlee for reasons her heart would regret?

The question took her breath away. The voice behind the question was Emma’s, and she would have given it no credence, but the years of admiration, of respect, of submission demanded an answer.
Was Emma right?

She clutched the edge of the blanket, fear gripping her heart.
Am I deceiving myself as Emma apparently had? Does devotion to my faith drive my decisions? Does it cloud my judgment, blind me to the happiness I could have? Will I grow old, only to regret this choice, this direction of my heart?

Visions of Atlee returned, as if from the faint and distant past. She remembered his eyes, his face, the tone of his voice, the ring he handed her, the sound of water under the bridge. She wondered at the memory, whether she had extinguished the flame by force of will, by dedication to a higher cause.

She saw the answer, but her trust of Emma caused her to hesitate before reaching to open the door to her future. Then she trembled and crossed over the threshold. In honesty, she found the courage to step forward. In her sorrow, she left behind her youth, her faith in the absolute, which was Emma. She chose Rebecca. She wept because she was alone, fearful to sever the past. But then it was done, and she cried for joy, which sprang unbidden, unasked for, guilt its shadow, as if she had transgressed against the holy.

She felt a great love for John. It washed her being, burned like fire in her soul, and brought her upright in bed. She wondered in amazement. Was it the starlight, the twinkle of their bewitchment, the drape of the night, which so moved her? Perhaps Emma had stirred her passions and affected her emotions.

“If she did then so much the better,” she whispered into the darkness.
She let me see. She opened my eyes even more to the love of a man, what it can do, what it feels like, and what it means to life itself.

She didn’t quite intend for me to take it that way,
she thought and slowly reclined. Sleep seemed out of place at the moment, but she felt the weariness of her body. The hands of the clock showed two o’clock.
What is to happen now? I suppose Emma did offer a way out.
She smiled at the thought.
It would have been a way to solve the money problem. Now the problem is still there.

Others would have to resolve the issue, she decided. It was beyond her. She would stand where she had to stand, and that was all she could do. Tomorrow she would return the letters and her answer to the Mennonite man. She wished there was more time but dared not keep the letters longer. The danger of their discovery was simply too great. Atlee might think her hasty and conclude she was like Emma, but it couldn’t be helped.

Sleep came then, and the dreams followed. She was with John. The buggy door was open, and the night outside sped past, but then it was Atlee, his hands clutching the lines. He laughed when she asked him how he knew how to drive a buggy. He said he always had, had never forgotten, had been Amish once. He said he was coming back for her and knew how to stop her marriage to John, which wasn’t to be.

He told her he would know how to talk to the bishop, what things would need to be said to convince him. He would tell them, he said, how she used to love him. He would tell the deacon things that would make his hair stand on end, how she cared for the ring he gave her, how she kept it. Hadn’t she? He laughed again, a great swell of sound that echoed out into the night.

She begged him to stop, to be let off. It’s the middle of nowhere, he told her, and drove faster. The horse had lathers of sweat on its harness, and the specks flew backward and covered the storm front. When she told him to stop before they had an accident, he said that was what he wanted.

Perhaps if he had one, he told her, she would love him, love him like she used to, when they were children and followed their hearts. There were car lights that passed them, from the front and the back. Then he turned out the lights of the buggy, and she knew the next one would hit them.

She reached to grab the reins, to pull into the ditch, but he held on. Her hand found the light switch and turned on the buggy’s running lights and the dome light. Her eyes filled with terror, sought Atlee’s face, but it was John’s face she saw, hurt in his eyes. He asked why she wanted to drive, didn’t she trust him, wasn’t he good enough for her.

She woke upright in bed, her fingernails dug into the palms of her hand. Sweat soaked, she listened for sounds in the house, hoped she hadn’t screamed and given notice to her family of her distress.

“It’s just a dream,” she whispered in the silence but found no comfort in the words. The world seemed to be out of control, wild, and careening faster than an
Englisha’s
car around a curve on their blacktop road. Its end seemed almost as certain, a crash in the ditch, a decision by the deacon and Bishop Martin that she couldn’t marry John.

She had seen the mangled results of an
Englisha’s
car when it went astray and imagined her own life in the same condition. It could easily happen. Of this she had no doubt. Already the road seemed open, the conclusions almost foreknown. Because if she couldn’t go along with communion until this problem was solved and because it couldn’t be solved, she wouldn’t be going. John would stand with her, of this she had no doubt. They would both be in the ditch and not married.

Rebecca got out of bed and sought comfort at the window. Now, though, the sight of the open heavens only jarred her further. They seemed so perfect, so in order, each twinkling spot in place, so unlike her life. Could heaven really help this chaos?

Was she to be cut adrift, separated from her people, not by choice but by necessity, because she stood by John, because she loved him? The irony didn’t escape her.

The thought of an escape presented itself, and she considered it for a moment. Should she wait a while to mail back the letters and cut ties with Atlee? With her life ruined, why drag John down with her? Perhaps she should do what was best for him. Perhaps she should reconsider Atlee. Surely there would be worse things in life than being married to a Mennonite.

She rejected the idea and noticed the anger that rose inside of her. If she couldn’t have John, if they took him from her, then she wouldn’t settle for a lesser love, even if it meant a single life.

A life like Emma’s,
the thought came quick and poignant.
I am like her—stubborn and willful. If I can’t get what I want, I take nothing.

In her mind Rebecca heard the words from Emma’s letter as they replayed.
He said he thought it was
Da Hah’s villa.
Said he felt we were led together. Said his heart had been heavy, burdened. That today was the first day any girl had brought hope to his mind. I saw our children in his eyes, Manny. A dozen of them. Yet it was as if he already knew what would be. That I would say “no.” His eyes were so sad. He said he understood, that he didn’t have much to offer. I told him that was not the reason, but he didn’t believe me.

Rebecca placed both her hands on her face, shut out the window, the stars, the night, and the thoughts. “I’m not Emma,” she groaned and was surprised at the silence that came. In the distance the faint howl of a dog rose, muffled through the closed window. She went back to bed and wept till sleep brought silence again.

Matthew’s footsteps woke her at chore time, the clock she forgot to set the alarm on showed five thirty. Her head swam when her feet landed on the floor, but she forced herself to get dressed. The chill of the early morning air was not broken by any warmth from the floor register. Mattie rarely started a fire in the kitchen stove once late spring was past.

Out in the barn, she was thankful Matthew seemed lost in his own thoughts. Back in the kitchen her mother didn’t operate under similar conditions.

“My,” Mattie said, “you are a wreck.”

“I had a hard night.” A tear ran unbidden down her face.

Mattie paused, a plate of eggs in her hands. “What was in that package? If it was something awful, then I won’t have Mennonite men coming around here again. Won’t tolerate it.”

“Letters from Emma. It’s not his fault,” Rebecca assured her mother.

“Oh… Emma.” Mattie seemed satisfied. “It can’t be too bad then.”

The question still hung in the air, so Rebecca answered it. “I’m afraid Bishop Martin will stop the wedding.”

“And you’ll end up like Emma?”

“Without John,” she said, another tear on her cheek.

“My, this is a mess. And your father wants to talk with you tonight.”

“I had forgotten. Is it something bad?”

“I think he’d better talk with you and John together,” Mattie said, as if she had suddenly decided.

“It’s something awful.” Rebecca gave up on all pretences, and the sobs came in great waves.

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY

R
euben had to make a trip into town. He said so at the breakfast table, and Rachel watched him drive out the lane. The weather couldn’t have been better for her plans, and now the coast was clear. Not since the time she planted the ferns had there been a chance for a return visit.

She considered the project to be her hope for the future. Rachel was aware it was a project of death but death for a reason, for a purpose. The thought lightened her days, comforted her nights, gave her an expectation of a brighter future when they would live in plenty.

That Reuben supplied a little extra money already with his goat project, well above what they were used to, seemed a thing to reduce to nothing because it held her back from the vision she was determined to attain. Her father had left an inheritance, which was hers by right of birth, and no goats would impede its return.

In failure Reuben would regain his senses, stop refusing the money, and acquire sanity again. Of this she was certain. That sanity was what she once hated in Reuben gave her no pause. His lack of motivation, his desire for the mundane, and his satisfaction with little now seemed a blessing to be sought out.

By destroying his goat herd, she would find the answer. With the last rattle of Reuben’s buggy wheels, she went to the bedroom and removed the carefully hidden papers. She knew what they said but wanted to read them again to make sure but even more to enjoy the words.

Her child moved within her, as she settled on the bed. Even with Reuben gone, she felt safer here. She read the papers in the shelter of her bedroom walls, hidden from imaginary eyes. She had hid them under her black funeral and communion dress.

How right,
she thought. The two went together. The death of Reuben’s goats and the death of her fellow man. She felt a kinship with both.

The child moved again, and she felt anger at its presence, at the intrusion of its life inside her. She comforted herself with the thought the inheritance would dull the pain, soothe the inconvenience to come, and give this child’s life the worth it deserved.