A Fireproof Home for the Bride (12 page)

“Good sleep?” Lida asked.

“Well, yes, more or less,” Emmy said, feeling a dull ache at the base of her back, where it had strained against her unnatural position. “How are you feeling?”

“Better. God is good to me.”

“Are you hungry? Do you need me to help you finish your meal?”

“I’ve eaten. How was the calf?”

“Wild,” Emmy said, moving the tray over to a table and settling lightly on the edge of the bed. She took Lida’s hand in hers, and was pleasantly surprised to find it warm but not too warm. It had been cold since the stroke. On impulse Emmy felt her grandmother’s forehead, but it was papery and cool. The old woman smiled sleepily.

“You are so much like Josie was at your age,” Lida said, stroking Emmy’s cheek. “You have her hair, and her eyes.”

“Tell me, who’s Josie?” Emmy said, putting her own hand over the one on her cheek. It was still warm, but she felt a strange chill.

“Shame,” Lida said. “We were once so close.” And with that small teasing statement, she fell into a shallow sleep. Emmy was amazed anew at her grandmother’s ability to do this neat trick: start a fire and then throw sand on it in the same breath, even though Emmy understood well that there were certain things in life that adults knew, and others that were shared with children. It wasn’t unusual to discover a piece of information that had seemed not to exist in the moment before it was issued. A decade before, she’d gone with her mother on a long train journey to a grassy graveyard outside of a small town north of Minneapolis. She had stood next to Karin beside a freshly mounded grave, the rich black soil showing slick pink worms that had made Emmy’s feet twitch inside her tightly laced shoes. She was desperate to be back at the creek fishing with Grandfather Nelson. There had been no marker on the grave to offer Emmy a clue, and she hadn’t asked Karin where they were going or why they were there, because by that age Emmy knew that the answer would likely be “You’ll know when I tell you.” She had heard these words enough times to think them already etched on her own tombstone. Emmy had watched her mother’s tightly closed eyes and folded hands, her lips moving in a wordless prayer, at the end of which Emmy had heard Karin whisper, “Good-bye, Father,” as she turned and walked away with her head still bowed. They’d gone back to the train station, waited quietly for the return train to come, unwrapping cold roast beef sandwiches from their damp papers and chewing in silence. In Emmy’s experience, this was how information was shared—sparely, and without the luxury of further commentary.

Lida’s bedroom door opened a bit and Karin poked her head through the gap and motioned for Emmy to come with her. Once in the hallway, Karin looked up at Emmy, holding her by the arms and smiling.

“You’ve grown so much,” she said. “I’m pleased with you, Emmy, I really am. You don’t know what it means to us that you are marrying Ambrose. He’ll take good care of us.”

Emmy shrugged her mother’s hands from her. “Who’s Josie?” she asked, testing her right to ask questions now that she was considered an adult. Karin’s face closed like a screen door in a high wind on a hot day—snapping to, yet still revealing the cool interior unchanged by the weather.

“What did she say?” Karin asked with a nod at the door.

“Not much, just something about love, and that I looked like Josie, whoever she is.”

“Your grandmother once had a sister,” Karin said plainly. “Don’t trouble yourself or her about it. Come.”

Emmy hesitated, wanting to ask more questions, yet knowing that the answers wouldn’t unlock her mother’s firm hold on their family’s history. Karin didn’t believe in the past, only the future. It had served her well through more than one tragedy, and Emmy had no choice but to respect her mother’s desire to find distance from what she called painful, pointless nostalgia. Besides, dead siblings were not uncommon—Emmy had one herself, after all—and it was easy for her to imagine one day saying something about Daniel to her own granddaughter, folding the information into a tossed-off story of
There once was a boy I never knew.

Karin led Emmy down the hall to Lida’s sewing room and opened the door. The lights were blazing in the narrow room where the old foot-pedal Singer sat in front of a bay window that looked out on a wide field during the day. Next to the cutting table stood a dress form, and on that form were the makings of a formal white gown. Emmy raised a hand to cover her mouth. Karin gave her a small push forward and Emmy saw her mother’s reflection in the darkened window: tight-lipped smile slightly turned up in a way that made small pockets of flesh push downward at her jawline, hair grayer than Emmy had taken time to note. Karin was willowing away at a rate that made her seem much older than her forty-some years. Emmy walked to the dress. It was a ghost of the garment it would become, with an under slip of silk covered in a veil of homespun lace across the high-necked sweetheart bodice. The skirt was pinned to the mannequin, the yards of supple rayon peau de soie gathered and hemmed at tea length. It would accommodate a very large crinoline, or perhaps even a hoop. Her mother must not have slept much of the previous week, by the looks of the amount of work already finished. Emmy had never imagined Karin had this much lightness in her.

“It’s stunning, Mother, really,” Emmy said, but couldn’t bring herself either to touch the garment or turn away from it. The white of the fabric was like the snow outside—cold, harsh, and beckoning with its icy perfection.

“I’m glad you like it.” Karin bowed her head. “I’m not much of a seamstress, but I want it to be as perfect as God will let me. Tell me if there’s anything about it you don’t like so far, and I’ll change it.” Emmy knew that her mother hadn’t worn a wedding dress. Women during the Depression were lucky if they had a new suit, and Karin hadn’t been particularly lucky, not for many years.

“Oh, no.” Emmy turned to her mother. “Don’t change anything. Do exactly what you think will look best. It’s already perfect.” She went to Karin and held her by the arms, as the older woman had done to her moments before. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me, thank God,” Karin said, evading the embrace and going over to the dress as she slipped a small threaded needle from the front of her house apron and clicked a thimble-covered thumb against her front teeth thoughtfully. “You’re going to make a beautiful bride.”

Emmy looked around the room and noticed a wooden chest that had been painted a soft blue with swirls of delicate flowers, stems, and leaves interwoven in harmonizing dark blue, red, and cream colors. The top leaned open on its hinges, revealing a good deal of folded linens stacked inside. Embroidered with red thread onto the dusky blue cotton fabric lining the lid were the letters
E
B
N
.

“Mother,” she said, approaching the trousseau as though it were a casket. “Why is this already so full?”

“Isn’t it lovely?”

Karin turned her attention to the box, lifting a lace-edged sheet and smoothing an undetectable wrinkle with the edge of her hand. “The Branns had it made in Norway years ago. We were thinking that since your grandmother is ill, it would be best to have the ceremony as soon as school ends.”

“Were you planning to tell me?” Emmy asked, a snap in her voice. It stung not to be consulted.

Karen stood straight. “I just did. Now go downstairs and help Birdie with supper. That girl burns everything she touches.” Emmy backed out of the room slowly, trying to undo the time that had just run past her and tied down her future more neatly than the stack of lace doilies she tipped over as she bumped into a small table. She turned and left them scattered for her mother to collect, no longer able to deny that this path forward promised only more of the same disregard for what she wanted.

*   *   *

At supper, Ambrose was clean-shaven and had slicked back his hair from a side part. He smelled somewhat soapy and was wearing one of his good Sunday shirts. Emmy found his pale features to be more delicately arranged than she had taken the time to notice in the many years they had changed and grown beside each other. His nose was narrow and sharp at the end, dividing the planes of his cheekbones and the misaligned eyebrows with the slightly askew placement of a hastily set table. The betrothal had caused Emmy to see him through a new glass, one that had always been at her disposal but never needed when viewing someone who was merely a friend. She fought away a sense of urgency, a slowly rising desire to measure the banks of his character. Contemplating the scant five months between turning eighteen and the finality of her upcoming marital vows compressed her lungs to the point of dizziness. Flashes of Bev’s tart laughter, Howie’s jet hair, the Kratz sisters jockeying, the Halsey boy’s flashing eyes … Bobby’s toothy grin … only made her vertigo worsen. All of them had so much unexplored life ahead of them, while Emmy knew hers would soon be tempered by the expectations of the handful of grimly determined people at the table in front of her.

Dressed in a similar fashion to his son, Delmar Brann raised a glass of milk in celebration of Lida’s improved health and his son’s betrothal. Next to these immensely self-assured men, Emmy’s father seemed shrunken and a bit grizzled. Christian hadn’t shaved and he was still wearing his weekend attire of bib overalls over a red cotton long john, topped with a flannel check shirt. It was a typical country outfit—more colorful than his usual gray work pants and shirts—but somehow the calamitous ensemble only made him seem pale and insubstantial. At the same time he carried an air of detachment as he sat quietly spooning sautéed liver and onions onto his plate.

Karin was in full bloom, having donned a dress that must have been Lida’s in a distant decade—a sapphire blue serge that draped over the rise of Karin’s bosom before pleating in at the waist and swirling below the knee. Mr. Brann was seated at the head of the table, Birdie to his left, and Emmy on the right—the chair closest to the kitchen, her grandmother’s usual place—and Ambrose next to her. Karin had scooted them in these seats without comment, placing herself at the foot, and Christian completing the circle next to Birdie. The quiet of the table was marked by the beginnings of serving—utensils against china, bowls of roasted turnips and boiled potatoes passed and settling on the linen-clothed wood with gentle thumps and spoon scrapes. No words were spoken until the last plate was filled. They had set out quite a meal for the guests, and Emmy’s hunger peaked as she held her hands tightly in her lap.

“Delmar, would you be so kind?” Karin asked, bowing her head.

Mr. Brann closed his eyes and tilted his face toward the ceiling. “Our Dear Lord, Your blessing be upon us as we gather Your bounty before us, and give our sister Adelaide the strength to return to Your table so that we may once again enjoy her company as we bathe in the spirit You have given us through the sacrifice of Your only Son, Jesus Christ our Savior. In His name we pray. Amen.”

Emmy looked up to see her mother’s glowing approval alight on Mr. Brann. Something about the exchange sparked, and Mr. Brann held the gaze as he began his usual dominance over the topics of conversation—a habit of his to which Emmy was so accustomed that she typically found other things to think about while his voice hummed on in her ear. Tonight, however, she was seated between the Brann men and knew that her mother was watching her closely. As Emmy lifted her fork, she turned her head attentively in Mr. Brann’s direction.

“When we put our faith in Eisenhower, he promised that the immigrant stream would be stanched,” he said with grave disappointment. A white string of spit danced between his lips as he talked, and Emmy had to look away as he continued. “But it shows no signs of it. Our community cannot afford one more impoverished foreigner washing up from Italy or Ireland or Spain. Before you know it, they will let all the Mexicans in, and our community will be overrun with this threat to our God-given sovereignty. At least our
betabeleros
know their place in our society, unlike those people out in California.”

“They’re decent folks,” Christian said, barely loud enough for Emmy to hear over the sounds of eating. “Trying to feed their children, no more or less than you or me.”

“Yes, brother Christian, the ones that have grown up amongst us are decent,” Mr. Brann rejoined. “In fact, I couldn’t run my farm without Maria and Pedro. But look at all those criminals they rounded up in Operation Wetback. Some say as many as ten thousand had fled to California from Mexican prisons!”

“Some say,” Christian said in a way that could have been mistaken as agreement. “I just know that there’s never been a problem with the contract workers.”

“What about that one up in Hillsboro, who robbed and—excuse me ladies—accosted a teacher in Moorhead? Or the murder in the Andersens’ cornfield last year?” Mr. Brann shook his head in outrage. “Don’t tell me there’s never been a problem.”

“None of those men were sugar beet workers.” Christian wiped his mouth with his napkin and fell silent.

“Exactly my point,” Mr. Brann said, thrusting his knife in the air. “They were all foreign nationals, all working without documents in the onion fields. Where there’s no regulation on these immigrants, there will be crime. These people don’t even bother to learn English.”

“I’m a bit confused,” Emmy said, delicately interrupting. “Weren’t our ancestors immigrants?” She looked around, attempting to find a sympathetic connection to how Mr. Brann’s vitriol had made her feel. “And didn’t they speak Norwegian?” Mr. Brann dropped his knife on his plate, and all heads but Christian’s turned to Emmy. Her father was smiling at something in the middle of his plate. A hot blush itched her cheeks as she tried to think of how to better explain what she meant. But as she opened her mouth, Karin kicked her under the table.

“Emmy,” her mother said, cutting a slice of meat and holding it in midair. “This roast is perfectly cooked. Isn’t it, Ambrose?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, before turning to Christian. “Looks like we’re in for some real snow this evening, Mr. Nelson. I don’t think the dam will calve tonight, though I’m happy to come by and check on her.”