Butterfly Garden (11 page)

He’d best face facts. He had a new wife he ... cared about ... in a different way than he’d cared for his first. With Sara, his ... fondness was almost of the spirit, if that were possible, and different from his need to protect his girls, though that was deep and fierce too.

He did not think he had ever cared for anyone in quite the same way he cared for Sara. Oh he had cared for Abby as a husband should. And he cared for his girls in a life-giving way—his sister Emma, too, when she was small. It was fitting, he supposed, that he should deny his body for Sara’s sake, in the way he turned from his girls for their sake, and in the way he had taken his father’s ‘punishment’ in Emma’s place. But Sara….

He would not put
her
through the danger of childbirth. He would never cause her harm. What had happened in the upper room had happened for the best. A warning. If they had come together for the first time tonight, he would not have had the sanity to consider the consequences.

Never had he expected Scrapper Sara to have such an effect on him, but he should have. How could he have forgotten … the baths?

Sara surprised him by touching his hand, to indicate a footed plate of swirled yellow glass, bearing a cake with icing daffodils. The cake had been baked by Roman’s mother; the cake dish was the Bylers’ wedding gift.

As if he occupied the body of someone else, Adam stood and accepted Mrs. Byler’s good wishes for a long and fruitful marriage. Roman was taking her home now; his father had not been well enough to come and she was concerned. Roman would be back to continue his duties as groom’s attendant. Lizbeth would remain, as bride’s attendant, Roman said, in case Adam or Sara needed anything.

Adam noticed then that the married couples were leaving, while the young, unmarried members of the congregation were going out to the barn for a frolic. Lizbeth looked wistful and Adam was not surprised when Sara sent her outside with her friends. Sara always saw people’s needs, even those unspoken.

As bride and groom, he and Sara would not be able to leave until midnight at least. What was it now … nine, maybe ten o’clock?  How many bridegrooms, he wondered, wanted to ambush a few energetic youngsters at about this time?

Just as well they had to stay. Tired was better than randy.

At nearly one in the morning, Adam and Sara, with Roman’s help—The
English
had long-since gone—gathered their girls from the beds upstairs and took them home.

“Most bridegrooms do not carry their sleeping children up to their beds on their wedding night,” Adam grumbled, for the sole purpose of lessening the constriction in his chest, and elsewhere, and of putting off the inevitable. But it was past time for honesty.

After the children were settled, Sara, his new wife, came back downstairs and stood in the middle of the kitchen, much as she had done on the night of his first wife’s death, an occasion he must remember now to remain strong. Sara even held the back of the same kitchen chair, though she had been less woman and more scrapper that night.

Wishing with all his heart that she were less of a woman now, Adam coughed and with a shaking hand, picked up the lantern in the middle of the big oak table. Here, use this to light your way upstairs. I don’t need to see to find my room.

He wished he hadn’t watched her so closely, because when she paled, something sharp stabbed him in the region of his missing heart.

“But I thought….”

“What?” he said, turning toward his room, showing her his back.

“Tonight, you said ... Today when ... when we….”

Adam turned. Much as he dreaded the prospect of looking into her soulful eyes, he owed her the courtesy of plain speaking. “I am sorry Sara. That was a mistake.”

“No, Adam. I thought it was ... that we were so—”

“Foolish. Foolish, we were ... I was. This is a marriage to satisfy the Elders. We married in name only to fulfill the ordnung. Do not make more of it than it is.”

Sara’s back stiffened and before his eyes the woman who’d melted in his arms turned into a scrapper again. And though he could see pain hovering just beyond her anger, she made a good show of strength. “You don’t need anyone, do you Adam Zuckerman?  Too strong for such nonsense, right?  Well, I’ll tell you what I think, big, mean, scary man. I think you’re afraid. Afraid of a woman. Of me. That’s what I think.”

She almost lost it then, Adam saw, and prayed she would not. Scrapper Sara damn near cried as she turned and made for the stairs.

If she only knew that big, bad, Mad Adam Zuckerman wanted to howl louder than she did.

Chapter 7

Too bossy to bed.

The litany ran through Sara’s head as she climbed the stairs. It continued as she slipped off her married apron and wedding dress to reveal the breasts her husband had awakened, aching even now for his touch.

Too bossy to bed. Those words, along with her memory of their time in the upper room, haunted her as she slipped into her cold bed. Alone. Lonely.

Spinster Sara Lapp, a spinster no more, yet Sara Zuckerman, wife, mother, virgin still, curled into a ball, hugged herself tight and let her tears fall. Too bossy to bed.

When the cock crowed, Sara snuggled deeper into her dream man’s arms, in the upper room, on the big bed where Adam had touched her in the way only a husband could.

She slipped back into unbuttoning his broadfalls, his union suit. Adam opened her dress, until they were both free of their clothes and ... and….

Katie tried to raise one of Sara’s eyelids with tiny probing fingers. Down the hall, Baby Hannah wailed, likely hungry and wet, and near her ear, Pris whined.

Sara caught Katie’s wayward finger and managed to open her eyes. “Does this mean it’s morning?”

“Ya,” Adam said from her doorway, sitting Sara straight up. “Short night, I know.” He pointed his chin at the children as he raised a suspender over his shoulder and shrugged. “They don’t seem to care. Come downstairs, Pris, Katie. Give Sara a chance to wake up. Lizzie, go get the baby and bring her down.

“After you’re ready,” he said to Sara. “I’ll go milk. While you dress, I’ll start the stove.”

“And this,” Sara said as she stepped on an icy floor a minute later, seeking her robe against the chill. “This must be wedded bliss.”

* * * * *

Married life turned out to be both better and worse than Sara expected.

She supposed she should deny her yearning, even to herself, but she wanted Adam’s arms around her again. Who would have thought it?  Certainly not her. She wanted his hands on her in more places than she’d known them—wicked, wicked thought.

Did a decent woman feel such things?

Not for the first time, Sara wished her mother had lived. She needed a woman’s advice more now than when her first suitor had turned from her, more even than with her second and last.

A surprising part of her new life was her relationship with Adam, which had altered to one almost of friendship. The small changes that brought this about had begun on the morning of their first full day of marriage. Adam had been there when she awakened, a surprise she wasn’t certain she liked then. But now….

Just this morning, two married weeks later, she realized as she awakened, before even opening her eyes, that she awoke now with a feeling of hope ... of anticipation.

As he had been that first morning, Adam was there, pulling up his suspenders and herding the children off her bed to give her a few minutes to compose herself and dress.

The first morning he’d been his sober self, but these days, especially mornings, there seemed almost a tilt to his mouth, though on one side only, which gave her heart a bit of a skip every time she saw it. And though his near-smile was a weak one, it was an improvement, nonetheless. A ‘good-morning’ to treasure.

Adam had begun to take on his own farm chores that last week before their hearing and wedding, not stopping for the noon meal, preferring to eat breakfast, skip dinner, and eat a large supper. That too had changed the first day of their marriage.

That noon he came in, sat at the table with them and said the prayer. He discussed all manner of topics, from the sheep he hated for a month after shearing to Roman’s gossipy ways.

If one of the children spoke, he listened politely, though he rarely responded. But there had been a change in that too. Sara knew instinctively that for perhaps the first time in his life, Adam Zuckerman saw his children, was aware they existed, though he was not always pleased about it, which annoyed Sara no end. To complicate matters between the two of them, he seemed now to see her, the wife he’d been forced to marry, as most times a nuisance, and at others, a wonder. His contradictory reactions, the unexpected shift from one to the other, was driving her daft.

If she wasn’t careful, he’d make her ‘mad’ as him.

A few days ago, when he’d been his old growling self at dinner, she’d dared ask why he married her. “Not to keep from being shunned,” she said. “I think I know you better than that already.” And not for love, she thought, wishing she weren’t so certain.

“For the children,” he replied simply. “We both saw they wanted you. Needed you. The same reason you married me,” he said. “For them.”

“For them,” she whispered now as she watched them screaming and chasing each other, having a wild, spring-lamb romp, despite the carpet of snow and the crisp in the air. They ran under flapping, dresses, the colors of spring meadows and blue spruce, morning-glories and cornflowers, asters and eggplants.

They wore the new frocks she’d made last week in a purplish wool leaning so near to red, Sara expected to be chastised by the Bishop any day. What a sight. Lines of blazing color against white snow. Three little girls running hither and yon, their black billowing capes flying behind them, dresses peeking out in bright defiance.

Sitting in her rocker by the window, Sara snuggled her face into Hannah’s belly. Her kapp got snatched by a pudgy hand, the baby’s gasping gurgle so much like a giggle, Sara laughed. Her happiness bubbled forth then, unexpected, wild, and stopping Adam in his tracks.

“It’s not dinner time yet,” Sara said, her heart thumping when she saw his look. Was he frowning because dinner wasn’t ready or because she had been laughing?  Or was her heart racing simply from the sight of the man she felt the need to watch at every turn?

Large as he was, Adam Zuckerman looked like a lad tying empty tins to a cat’s tail, caught. “Mild out there,” he said, turning her thoughts. “The girls like it.”

So, he’d noticed them playing.

“Have to go up to the Millersburg buggy factory. Only place I can get a wheel for the market wagon. “Want to come?” Adam reddened. “All of you?”

Excitement beat in Sara’s breast, but Adam stiffened his spine, as if bracing himself for a blow. Sara was troubled by the image, but anticipation filled her nevertheless. “I think that would be fun,” she said, easing the furrow in his brow.

“Fun,” he said, testing the word.

What did fun mean to a man like Adam Zuckerman?  Had he ever experienced it?  Could a woman teach a man ... a madman ... to have fun?  Perhaps it was time for a wife to try. “When do you want to leave?”

“When you’re ready,” he said. “Better get them in to ... you know.”

Sara laughed again. “Something had shifted in this house and it was big and burly and made lots of noise. Sara would wager all her worldly possessions that Adam had never, ever, paid attention to the potty habits of his daughters.

Ultimately, making the girls ... you know ... before they left, mattered not at all, because Katie was so excited by the outing, they had to stop to go to the bushes a dozen times before they reached Berlin, one town over, with thrice as far still to go.

Between stops, the sights they saw along the way had all three girls asking questions, Sara answering them all. They must never have left the farm before, except, perhaps, when she took them to her house.

At the buggy factory in Millersburg, they each got a licorice stick from the owner, which made their mouths black and comical. Sara trying to wash them off with snow caused Pris to screech and Katie to imitate her with an exaggerated, unholy howl. The factory workers, smoking their noon pipes outside, laughed at the show, and the more they did, the louder Katie got.

Lizzie was clearly mortified and tried to shush her sister.

Adam’s gaze shifted from the men, to his daughters and back, with a look akin to wonder on his face, until Sara began to get them into the buggy. There, she parceled out bread and cheese, but only she and Adam were hungry. They stopped at Escher’s Mercantile, a general store that sold everything imaginable. Sara was awed, but the girls….

From seeders and corn shellers to udder balm and lamp wicks, they picked up everything and asked what it was. And while Sara rocked baby Hannah in her arms and made sure they did not touch anything dangerous, Adam answered all their questions.

As he did, Sara was struck by two things. Adam displayed an incredible patience in explaining each item to the girls, though he never smiled nor did he touch them. He even bent on his haunches at one point so Pris could examine a sugaring spout. What also struck her was the length of time that passed between each question and Adam’s answer. At first, Sara was certain he would remain silent—he often ignored the girls’ questions—but today he answered, eventually, speaking with purpose and a complete knowledge of the subject, even keeping the age of his audience in mind.

Adam Zuckerman, she realized then, was not so much cold and aloof, he was ... contemplative. He, very simply, considered the subject, in order to give a proper and concise response. It was an enlightening and amazing discovery.

Sara could barely breathe, their outing was going so well, so easily, like any normal family trip to the store might … until Katie picked up a pair of white cotton bloomers, unfolding them and displaying them like a flag. “What’s this?”

Adam regarded Sara, turned the color of sugar beets, and turned away as fast. Then he looked to the heavens. Sara thought he might be praying for deliverance and her giggle rushed up and out before she could check it.