In Need of a Good Wife (25 page)

Mr. Schreier stared at her with wide eyes, chewing with his mouth partway open. He swallowed. “I don’t like a lot of talk at meals.”

To Elsa’s horror, she felt her eyes welling with tears. She turned quickly back to the sink and took a shaky breath. Mr. Schreier’s fork continued to clank against his plate. “Yes, sir,” she whispered. She wiped her hands on her apron and passed quietly out the kitchen door, the dry grass along the edge of the barley field rustling beneath her feet. The sun was low behind her and its glow tinted the sky the color of custard. Inside the barn she pulled the milking stool down off its hook and sat beside Honey, pressing her palm gently against the cow’s flank.

What a silly thing to be upset over
, Elsa chastised herself.
It
is Mr. Schreier’s house to run as he pleases.
It was only that she had been nursing a small hope, because of the way he had talked a little bit about himself in his letters, that they might be some sort of …
friends
after she arrived. That they might talk in German to each other, share stories about their families, how they had come to America. She put her hand on her chest. “Be still,” she said to her beat-up old heart.

Her eyes had adjusted to the dim light and she glanced around the interior of the barn. In the stall next to Honey, the horses nosed their oats, languid tails swishing. Their saddles hung beside them. Every object in the barn had its place, every tool, every bucket. And someone had taken the time to put them where they belonged. Elsa felt envious of them all. On the far side of the barn, the skittish ewe peered at her, then backed into the shadows.

Elsa stood abruptly to shake off the maudlin thoughts. She had been alone since she was sixteen years old. There wasn’t a reason under the sun why that should change, and not a thing wrong with it besides.
Earthly things will pass away.
They will
pass away and what will be left is my Savior.
The sadness receded she and walked back to the house. In the front room, Mr. Schreier sat in his armchair, the newspaper open in front of him. It was a Chicago paper with a headline that read “
Carnage at Antietam
.”
Again with
the war
, she thought.
Again he
reads about these terrible things, now years in the past.

Elsa walked by him without a word and into the kitchen. She carried his empty plate to the sink and poured hot water from the kettle into it, then swished in some soap flakes. When the dishes were dry she passed back through the sitting room. The paper lay across Mr. Schreier’s chest, his head slung to the side in sleep.

The next day Elsa moved gently and tried to be grateful for the silence while she worked. She had never minded that women were supposed to keep silent in the church, for there was more than one way to speak; why should a house on the prairie be any different? By midmorning, after the breakfast dishes were washed and put away, Elsa straightened up the sitting room. She found that Mr. Schreier was endearingly untidy and left a trail of his activities wherever he went; Elsa knew everything he had done the night before by walking in his footsteps through the house. After tidying, she cooked an
Eintopf
of chicken and noodles for dinner and served it to the men when they came in from the field at midday. She ate her own small portion after they went back out, then washed the dishes yet again and chopped the leftover meat for supper. She slid a plate on top of the bowl to keep the flies out.

Elsa realized that in her silly huff the night before she had forgotten to pull the laundry down from the line. She went out through the kitchen door with a basket on her hip. At the edge of the field, Mr. Schreier walked the rows of sprouting barley, his motion slow and deliberate, his face in shadow. She knew he was worried about the lack of rain. Elsa shook her head, wondering yet again just exactly how old Mr. Schreier was. Fifty? Sixty? How long he planned on working this hard was anyone’s guess. She tried not to think about what would happen to her if he died in the field.

Mr. Schreier owned six pairs of thick wool stockings knitted for him by his late wife, and Elsa was careful to wash them last, after the water had gone lukewarm, to keep the wool from felting. Mrs. Schreier had been a good knitter, Elsa could see. There was an invisible join in the toe, a complicated maneuver, but the best sort of seam. It joined the top and bottom of the sock firmly and did not leave a rough selvage on the inside of the toe to rub a blister on the skin. Looking at that seam, Elsa thought she probably would have liked Mrs. Schreier.

She unpinned the kitchen towels, humming a hymn as she rested the stiff linen against her bosom to fold it. She could hear the melody ring through her mind, the way it had sounded in the village church in Deggendorf when she was eight years old, standing beside her mother. Elsa’s father had stopped attending meeting, a decision that plagued his wife. Elsa knew her mother prayed every Sunday that he would come back to worship. The austere building allowed only one indulgence in beauty, and that was the organ that sat behind the altar. Its body was carved from walnut and painted with a gold-leaf cross. Elsa’s mother loved that instrument. When it came time for the congregation to sing, Elsa’s mother would clutch her daughter’s hand and smile down at her.

The chorus came back to Elsa through the distance of all those years, and because she knew she was alone, she sang it out loud in a slow, clear voice.
Mein Herz will ich dir schenken.
To thee, my heart I offer. It was a Christmas hymn that marveled at the Lord’s decision to give flesh to his son and send him to earth, not as a man but as a
child
; marveled at how, on the day of his birth, this son was
already
full of love for every man. Even though he had straw sticking him in the back and was out in the cold of a barn.

Elsa reached for the bed sheet. When it fell away from the line, she screamed.

“Don’t stop,” a tiny voice squeaked. It came from a girl sitting on the ground with a large book open on her lap. She stood and brushed the dirt off the back of her legs. “I like that song.”

Elsa felt her heart right itself after the somersault. “Child, you startled me. It’s not nice to do that to people—hiding and jumping out that way.”

The girl chewed her lip. “Sorry,” she said, sullen. She was all elbows and knees, this one. Like a sketch of a child without any shading. And someone had
cut
her hair. What a thing to do to a little girl!

“It’s all right. Where did you come from?”

The girl chucked her thumb over her shoulder toward town. “Gibsons’.”

“Your father is the butcher.”

“Yes, ma’am.” She kept her eyes on Elsa’s shoes.

Elsa nodded. She had heard Mr. Gibson had a handful of sons but hadn’t heard a thing about a daughter.
Imagine a
butcher’s daughter being as skinny as this child!
“What is your name, Miss Gibson?”

“Ully,” the girl said.

“Well, Ully, I’m pleased to meet you. My name is Elsa.”

Ully tipped her head up finally to look at Elsa, squinting at her through one eye. Her gaze fell down along Elsa’s midsection, the girth of her hips. She starred in that transparent way children had, unashamed, the machination of their thoughts laid bare. “You all must have a lot of good things to eat over here.”

Elsa laughed in surprise. “Well, that is thanks to Mr. Schreier.” She pointed at him out in the distance, a silhouette against the sky. “He works very hard, and the Lord has blessed him with bounty.”

“What’s
bounty
?”

“Plenty,” Elsa said. “Good food, to give us strength, so that our bodies may do our work.”

Ully worked her tongue inside her cheek. “I wonder … may I have some bounty?”

“Are you hungry?”

Ully nodded. Elsa hesitated for a moment, thinking about what Mr. Schreier would say if he came in at the end of his work day to find this little urchin at his table, eating his food. For all his grumbling, Mr. Schreier
was
a Christian man. And this Ully probably ate like a bird.

“Well, come along, then,” Elsa said, turning toward the kitchen door. Ully hurried along behind her. Elsa put her hand on the doorknob, then stopped. She looked down at the greasy part in the girl’s hair, the sooty fingernails. “But you’re not coming inside,” she said, pointing at the water pump, “until you wash up.”

Ully scowled, but she went. She gave Elsa her book to hold and took Mr. Schreier’s towel off the pump handle, swiping it over her face and neck. “Your hands too,” Elsa called to her as she slipped the book in her apron pocket and folded the rest of the laundry. As hot as it was outside, Ully shivered as she rubbed her palms together under the spurt of cold water.

Inside, Elsa pointed to a chair at the end of the table. Ully slipped into it. Her shoulders barely crested the tabletop. “Here,” Elsa said. She pulled down a small wooden crate and put it on the seat of the chair for the child to sit on top of. “There,” Elsa said. “That’s better.”

She turned back to the hearth, heating up a bit of pork fat in a pan. Out of the supper bowl, she scooped some of the cold meat, then cut two thick slices of bread. She put everything in the pan and topped it with the lid to warm. She spooned stewed gooseberries into a bowl, then poured cream on top from the tin jug, aware all the while that Ully was watching her every move. When Elsa set the bowl down in front of her, Ully’s eyes grew big.

“This looks ex-qui-zette,” she said, stretching out the word.

Elsa bit down on the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. “That’s a fancy word. Do you like to read?”

Ully nodded as she leaned her face low over the bowl and shoveled the berries into her mouth. Cream ran down her chin. She swallowed. “I learned that one from Mrs. Gibson. She’s our new mother. But she won’t let us call her that.”

“Well,” Elsa said. It was a strange situation, indeed, for the children. “Some people just need a little more time to get used to things.” The fat crackled inside the pan and Elsa pulled it off the stove, scraping the food onto a plate. When she turned to carry it over to the table she saw Ully leaning against the back of the chair, tipping the bowl in front of her face with both hands. She slurped the cream.

“My goodness,” Elsa said. She held the plate up high, near her shoulder.

“What?” Ully asked, slowly setting the empty bowl down.

She hesitated. It wasn’t her place to teach another woman’s child—even a woman who wouldn’t acknowledge her new responsibility—manners. “It’s just that you seem so hungry.”

Ully shrugged. “I got four big brothers. Any time I try to beat them to the table, I get squashed. Or somebody pulls my hair.” Ully grinned at this and Elsa saw that she had only one large front tooth, growing in at an angle that was keeping the other one cowering up in her gum. “That’s why I cut it off.”

“Well, you can have as much as you want here, so there’s no need to rush. All right?”

Ully nodded, straining to see what was on the plate. Elsa set it down and something about Ully’s overjoyed expression wrenched the muscle at the back of Elsa’s throat.
So much hunger.
Ully reached for the fork.

“Let’s say grace first,” Elsa said, holding up her finger.

Ully gave her a solemn nod and closed her eyes.

Elsa put her hand on Ully’s shoulder. “Lord, we pray that you will impart thy peace and love to each of us through this bread. Amen.”

“Amen,” Ully said, then went at the food like a wild beast.

I n the pale light of early morning, Clara would not open her eyes. She heard George rise from the mattress and step into his clothes, the snap of his suspenders on his shoulders. He sat back down on the bed and put his hand on her shoulder, waiting to see if she would wake. She was careful to keep her breathing steady so that he would believe she was still asleep. After another moment he sighed, then leaned down and kissed her on the temple where her hair was damp from the heat in the close room. She kept very still until she heard the swish of the door opening and closing.

Gerhard Gade, the farmer on the parcel southeast of town, had asked Mrs. Healy the day before whether she knew of a man looking for work. George would go out there today and help the farmhand build a new barn to replace the one those drunks had burned down. He would come home with a little more money for the fund they kept in a chipped teacup on the high shelf above the stove. Mr. LeBlanc had insisted she remove his name from her list of debts. She still intended to give him something, but at least now she knew he wouldn’t join Jeremiah’s Drake’s crusade against her. With George’s help, it would take all summer and then some, but she would pay those men back what they had lost. She could hardly believe that George would follow through, but he was here and he was working.

Clara rolled toward the wall and pulled the pillow over her face, her eyes squeezed so tightly shut she could feel the ache in her jaw. If she allowed them to open, it seemed, if she allowed even a flash of light to penetrate her lids, the day would begin: June 11. The baby’s birthday.

The worst thing about the baby’s death—and that was saying something, for there were so many terrible things to choose from—was that Clara herself had been so ill through his five days of life that she had very few memories of him. She had missed the chance to notice everything
specific
about him, everything that made him a Wilson-Bixby in particular and not just one of the millions of babies who had come into the world. She could remember two times emerging from her fever like a person coming up from under the water, to raise herself up on her elbows and glance across the room. Both times the baby was asleep in his cradle; she could see the top of his downy head, the way his pulse fluttered beneath the still-unfused bones of his skull as he breathed.

The longing to hold him was stronger than any urge she had ever felt in her life. In her demented feverish state she came to believe that he was not an independent being but a part of her body she had never noticed before, a little wing of ingeniously compact design that had for years been folded neatly against the skin over her ribs. Suddenly, with his birth the wing had opened, its dense feathers white and gray and sleek blue-black. Clara saw the breeze move through them. And then the breeze became a powerful gust, a gale that severed the wing from her body with a painful crack.