Gretel (17 page)

Mrs. Klahr let Gretel’s words resonate, being in no position to confirm or deny the statement.

The two women sat without speaking for several moments before the sound of Mr. Klahr’s boots striding thunderously in from the orchard fractured the silence. He sensed the mood instantly, and Mrs. Klahr filled him in on the relevant facts. He nodded thoughtfully, his discomfort palpable. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I…I know how you feel about her.”

Gretel mouthed an inaudible ‘thank you’, and sat frowning with her elbows splayed on the kitchen table and her fists screwed into her cheeks.

Mr. Klahr shot his wife a glance. “Gretel, we need to talk to you about something else,” he said.

Gretel felt her stomach tighten and her eyes flicked up wide to meet Mr. Klahr’s. “Yes? What is it?” She guessed maybe it was to do more with her behavior toward Petr and braced for admonishment.

“As you know, the harvest is ending. By the end of next week, we’ll be done.” Mr. Klahr paused for a moment and stared at Gretel intensely. “When we took you on, it was temporary, with the understanding that when the season is over, your work would be done here.”

“I know,” Gretel said. Her voice wobbled, pitching upwards on the word ‘know.’

She sat up straight and closed her eyes, focusing whatever restraint remained inside her on not shedding tears. She’d done far too much of that lately. She felt a tear creeping over her bottom lashes and quickly caught it with her thumb. She squeezed her eyes tight and shivered once to clear any remaining sobs, then smiled weakly at Mr. Klahr, embarrassed at her fragility.

“Gretel, you don’t understand.” Mr. Klahr grabbed Gretel’s hands. “We want you to stay on with us.”

The words hung in the air, drifting around the kitchen like ghosts.

Gretel’s smile fell straight. “What?”

It was Mr. Klahr’s turn to smile now. “In case you hadn’t noticed Gretel, we’re old.”

“You’re the strongest people I know,” Gretel said absently, irrelevantly.

“We do fine, Gretel, and we don’t complain much. But we ache as much as the next people, and we aren’t beyond needing help.” He squeezed her hands tighter. “We’d have never made it through this harvest without you.”

Gretel sat staring, stupidly she imagined, and as the reality of the offer set in, she couldn’t restrain herself anymore, and the sobs came out in huge coughing waves. Her mother would have been mortified, but Gretel didn’t care.

Then, as if possessed, she launched herself toward Mr. Klahr and threw her arms around him, his eyes widening in reflexive fear. He caught her and briefly held her at a distance, before bringing her into a full embrace. “It’s true! You’ve been a godsend!”

Gretel pulled away and looked at Mr. Klahr quizzically, wiping her nose with her sleeve the way a five-year-old might. “But what will I do?” she said, almost panicking, “when the harvest is done?”

Amanda Klahr laughed. “Oh, my dear, there are plenty of things in your life to worry on, having enough work to do around here is not one of those things.”

Gretel laughed at this and then stopped abruptly, suddenly awestruck by the strong, plump woman that sat before her. Gretel walked around the table to Mrs. Klahr and gently wrapped her arms around the old woman’s neck, making a silent vow to take care of her for the rest of her life. “Thank you,” was all she could manage.

“You’re very welcome, love,” Mrs. Klahr said, “but you don’t seem to understand that this is not charity. We really do need you.”

“Thank you anyway, both of you.”

“And this also doesn’t solve the problem of your father.”

This fact sobered Gretel only slightly. “No, it doesn’t. But one thing at a time. Right now I’m too happy to care. Besides, I haven’t even started on breakfast and I hear the men mulling around outside already.”

“Oh please,” Mrs. Klahr said, “they’re glad to wait. It only means they get to start working later. They get the same wage either way. But I imagine you are right, we should get going.”

Mr. Klahr stood to leave. “Welcome to the family, Gretel. For good.” And with that he walked out.

The rest of that day Gretel worked with an energy she’d never felt before. She took no break at lunch, instead grabbing a roll on the fly and a slice of pie while she waited for the dishes to come in. At dinner, she playfully teased the pickers as she placed their food on the table, and after, when the final plate was cleared, she alone wiped down the huge table and swept the patio clean (a chore that usually waited until morning). And when Saturday evening arrived, and her week was down to its final hour, the fierceness of her work endured, as she scrubbed the cabinets to a shine.

“I want you to take next week off,” Amanda Klahr stated flatly, continuing to dry a bowl and not looking at Gretel.

Gretel giggled, wiping the pantry door down. “Yes ma’am, thank you. Perhaps I’ll fly off to the tropics and catch up on my sun.”

“I’m not joking, Gretel, I want you to rest. I’ve spoken with Mr. Klahr and he agrees.”

Mrs. Klahr caught Gretel’s stare, hardening her face to demonstrate the seriousness of her words.

“There’s not enough work in the field for all the pickers anyway, so I’ll put some of them to work in the house. Most of the meals have already been prepared so the cooking will be easy. It’s just a matter of heating the food.” She softened her tone. “Listen, if you’re going to work here, you’ll need to establish some balance in your life, and we’re both concerned that you aren’t focusing enough on being a young girl. I don’t think I’ve ever even heard you mention friends.”

This wasn’t what Gretel had in mind with her new duties, and was speechless. And scared at the prospect of a week without pay.

As if reading Gretel’s mind, Amanda Klahr said, “We’ll pay you of course. It’s our decision, not yours, so of course we’ll pay you.”

“I couldn’t…” Gretel said weakly, still dazed by the order.

“You can and you will. I don’t want to see you anywhere near this property until next Monday. We will give your regrets to the workers since most of them will be gone by then.”

“Most?”

“Petr will stay for a few weeks longer, as a favor to his father.”

Gretel tried to think of more reasons to protest her hiatus—some necessity the Klahrs hadn’t considered perhaps—but she came up with nothing, and as the reality of a vacation slowly took hold in her imagination, she quickly warmed to the idea. Not only for the much-needed rest, but school was coming to an end, and with her final tests looming at the end of the week, time off would be an invaluable gift.

But perhaps the best part was she could finally reconnect with Hansel—at least enough to find out if there were any major problems that needed tackling. From afar things seemed fine with the boy, but a closer look wouldn’t hurt.

And she could spend extra time rowing as well, perhaps take the canoe past the cannery one day and picnic in Rifle Field. Because of her schedule at the orchard, her leisure rowing was always done at night, in complete darkness or the gloam; and all her plans for Sunday jaunts to explore the lake always disintegrated into more sleep. Not this week. This week she’d row in the light of the sun every day.

Of course, time off from work also meant more chances to clutch horns with Odalinde. The two women had spoken very little since Gretel started working, and though to an outsider that might have appeared to strain them further, in Gretel’s mind this was a mutual benefit. The edges of their relationship had sharpened severely in the days just prior to Gretel starting at the orchard, and time apart was needed medicine.

But if storm clouds did start forming this week, Gretel figured she had enough outlets to keep away from the nurse.

She also made the promise that this was the week she’d get into her future stepmother’s cabinet beneath the sink.

As she did most Sundays, Gretel spent the bulk of her day in her room sleeping and reading. But by Monday afternoon, with the school day over and her body rested, she was eager to begin her vacation.

She was still struggling with the idea of so much free time, and all that was still to be done for the final week of harvest, but the order had been given to take the time, and she was determined not to waste it.

An appreciable relief had filled the room when Gretel relayed the news to her family—including Odalinde—regarding her newly-gained permanent employment, and she was proud to have provided that relief. Her father had wept at the news, as did Hansel (no doubt because his father had), and her soon-to-be stepmother gave a wide, quizzical smile that Gretel found unusual, almost as if she were reassessing Gretel, that she had perhaps underestimated her.

The other part of the deal—that Gretel would spend the upcoming week free from her duties (and would be paid for it)—Gretel decided to keep to herself, figuring it was no one’s business but hers and would only result in requests for her time. She had a lot to do this week and she couldn’t be bothered with other people’s concerns.

Gretel’s first order of business was figuring a way inside Odalinde’s cabinet beneath the sink. This was, she reasoned, her house, and now that she was providing for the house, including paying for the food that filled the cabinets, she had every right to know what else was inside them. Even that one.

And if it turned out not to be the repository of danger and mystery that Gretel suspected it was, the nagging curiosity of the whole thing would at least be settled.

Odalinde’s only routine outing each week occurred on Thursdays, when she left precisely at four in the afternoon and returned sometime around eight; this according to Hansel, who hadn’t a clue where she went. Gretel mentally added the uncovering of that mystery to the list of things she would attempt to tackle this week.

But that was a problem for later. Gretel’s concern now was to discover the contents of the cabinet, and how, if at all, they affected her family. If, in the end, it turned out Odalinde was only storing photos of her dead grandmother, or some ancient love letters from a teenage sweetheart, then so be it. But Gretel knew instinctively it was more than that.

The current lock on the cabinet was formidable, and, in fact, was a replacement for the one Gretel’s father had put in originally when Odalinde first arrived—Odalinde declaring
that
lock to be ‘perfectly unsuitable.’ She had made some reference to ‘Back Country burglars,’ but Gretel had never heard of such a thing and concluded ‘Back Country burglars’ was just code for ‘Hansel and Gretel.’

Gretel’s first idea to access the cabinet was to go in through the side of one of the adjoining cabinets, removing it, or even cutting a small hole that could be glued back once the contents were known. But the walls of the cupboard were solid wood, oak probably, and to go through them would have required more destruction than she’d be able to cause and repair in one short evening.

Her other idea was to go in from the top, through the sink above the cabinet; but, similar to the walls, the basin was heavy, and would have been far too difficult for her to remove, especially with all the attached plumbing. And she hadn’t the time to find someone with the skills to deal with all that. No, the only way in, she decided, was through the door. And that meant she needed the key.

This conclusion sat well with Gretel, and she was filled with hope. Getting the key would surely prove difficult, but not impossible, and she’d have to plan the thing carefully. But that it could be done, she was more than hopeful.

Gretel ruminated on the framework of a plan for a while before dropping the subject entirely and spending the remainder of Monday rowing on the lake, clearing her mind of any plans or plots or fantasies of the future. She’d only recently learned the sacredness of quiet, and the cleansing properties of it, and considered this new exercise in nothingness—she thought of it as having a ‘white mind’—to be no less valuable than engaging her brain in the throes of work. The natural marvel of trees and water and untarnished air that had surrounded Gretel since birth were suddenly awakened to her, and she now basked in their stillness whenever possible. There was a time for designing and scheming, obviously, and she took pride in her industrious and conspiratorial inclinations, but she also had no doubt that peril awaited the unrested mind. And, in fact, it was often in the times of total clarity and peace that the ideas she needed most came to her.

And here it had come again, just as she began to turn the small boat that had become her sanctuary back toward home: the keys to Odalinde’s cabinet were always kept in her bag, and her bag was never left unattended. If Gretel could pull her away from the bag, distract her for just a minute, she could grab them.

She had an idea, and she would need Hansel’s help. It was by no means an infallible plan, but it was something.

The next day Gretel decided to walk with Hansel from school, which was something she hadn’t done since she started working at the orchard. She needed to discuss the newly-devised plan with him, and this, she figured, would be the safest time. Other than her erratic shopping jaunts, and the Thursday night outing, Odalinde always seemed to be around, and had a knack for appearing from the shadows of a tree or the back of a dimly-lit room during a conversation, or entering a room just when the gist of a thought was being spoken. She was sneaky—it was always the first word that came to Gretel’s mind when she thought of her future stepmother—and she, Gretel, was taking no chances of being overheard.

But Gretel also regretted the pretense of ‘catching up’ with her brother as the reason she was walking with him today, and despite her eagerness to construct the plan, and the reasonable explanation that she was off work for the week, she aborted the discussion for the time being. She realized the time together
should
be used to catch up with him, to rediscover Hansel’s life; the plot against Odalinde could wait a few hours, even a day if necessary.

“Are you going to try for any teams next year? Soccer maybe? You like soccer, right?”

“I’m not good at soccer,” Hansel replied flatly, “I’m not fast enough.”