Years (48 page)

“Kristian, they’re the warmest, most beautiful mittens I’ve ever seen. Did you make them?” He blushed and shifted his feet.

“They fit okay?”

“Perfectly. Seer?”

He thanked her for the rosewood brush and comb set, and
she thanked Nissa for the slippers, and the awkward moment was behind them. Nissa quipped wryly, “Thank you, too, missy, but what’s an old coot like me gonna do with that fancy lilac toilet water you give me? Ain’t no man within forty miles’d wanna get close enough to sniff it.” While they laughed and filled each other in on the last two weeks, Linnea set the table, Just before mealtime, John showed up, bundled in the new fine navy-blue wool scarf Linnea had given him for Christmas, though he wore it tied over his earlapper cap.

“John, I thought you were sick!”

“Was. Ain’t no more.”

Linnea gave him a quick hug then backed off to assess him critically. “You are too. Look at that red nose and those watery eyes. You shouldn’t have walked clear over here in the cold.”

Like Kristian, he self-consciously shuffled his feet and turned pink. “Didn’t wanna miss out on anything.”

Everyone laughed. Ah, how good it was to be back. This was what homecomings were supposed to feel like.

When they sat down to supper Linnea couldn’t resist studying Theodore as he prayed — his bent head, his hair slightly flattened from the wool cap, his lowered eyelids, the corners of his lips behind his folded hands.

“Lord, thank you for this food, and for all You provided for us today, but especially for bringing our little missy back home safe. Amen.”

He looked up and found her watching him, and they both knew perfectly well this was where she belonged, in this niche they had made for her in their lives.

Her gaze circled the table. Something sharp, very akin to pain, clutched her heart.

Why, she loved them. Not just Theodore, but all of them — Nissa with her gruff affection, Kristian with his quick blush of admiration, and John with his heart of gold and slow, plodding ways.

Theodore watched her eyes return to him. He quickly reached for the bowl of meatballs, though he’d been studying her ever since the prayer ended, thinking of how empty mealtimes had seemed without her. During her absence the family had reverted to their old accustomed silence, eating with the sole purpose of filling their bellies. But the minute she entered the house,
gaiety came along with her, and they all seemed to find their tongues again.

He thought of spring, of her leaving, and the succulent meatballs seemed to turn to sawdust in his mouth.

When supper ended, Linnea said, “I’m anxious to see what you’ve learned. Care to show me?”

Though he answered off-handedly, “If you’re not too tired,” he came as close to fidgeting as he ever had when Ma said, “Teddy’ll drive you home, John.” John tugged on his overshoes, buttoned his jacket, and buckled his earlappers like a snail with low blood pressure. Laboriously, he tied his new scarf over his head and patted his pockets, searching for mittens. Theodore stood with one hand on the doorknob, but didn’t say a word. There was an additional delay while Nissa tucked a fruit jar of vegetable soup under John’s arm and gave him orders to stay home in bed the next day.

By the time he got John home, returned, put the horses away, and entered the kitchen, Theodore was fairly jittering with excitement. Both Nissa and Kristian were sitting at the table with Linnea. The books and new slate were spread out in readiness, and Kristian had the speller opened to the last page they’d been working on, eager to demonstrate all he’d taught his father.

Theodore had worked insatiably on his reading while Linnea was gone. He had hounded Kristian to help him, and now, as Kristian proudly dictated a spelling test, he became totally immersed in writing the words. He formed each one carefully: Theodore, know, knee, blood, sausage, fence, Kristian, heart, Cub, Toots, since, sense, John, mother, stove, Linnea,
lutefisk.

“Lutefisk!
You taught him to spell
lutefisk?”

“He made me.”

Linnea laughed, but when Theodore began reading aloud to her, she realized what remarkable progress he’d made, partly due to his own determination and partly due to their unorthodox method of choosing words hither-thither.

“Why, Theodore, you’re already reading as well as my fifth graders!”

“He nearly drove me crazy, that’s why!” Kristian put in. “He barely left me enough time to check my traps.” Theodore’s face turned pink, but she could see how proud he was. “One day I even found him writing words in the snow with a stick.”

“In the snow?” She glanced at Theodore and his blush brightened. His eyes met hers and flickered away.

“Well, I didn’t have my slate and I couldn’t remember how to spell a word and it was easier if I saw it.”

The only other time she’d seen him so vivid and flustered was the night she’d discovered he didn’t know how to read. When he blushed and acted bashful he looked so young it made her heart thump.

The following night they were at the table again with Kristian and Nissa sitting by when Linnea decided to try to stump him. She wrote on the slate, “Did I tell you my father bought an automobile?” She turned it around to face him, watched as he read along smoothly, then frowned over the last word. His lips moved silently as he tried to puzzle it out. After several seconds she flipped the board around and put a slash through the word — auto/mobile — then turned it to him again.

He mouthed the word and his face split in a smile. But instead of answering aloud, he took the slate, erased it, and wrote, “No. Did you ride in it?”

She erased it and wrote, “Yes, it was delightful.”

He puzzled for a full minute and finally gave up. “I don’t know that one,” he said.

“Delightful.”

“Oh.” He suddenly grew pensive and forgot about the slate as he studied her.

An automobile, Theodore thought. She would be the kind to like an automobile. When spring came and she returned to her life in the city, with the family automobile and all the other conveniences, surely she would compare it to the life out here and find this backward. Why ever would she want to return next fall? And there was one other thing that he hadn’t been able to get off his mind but had felt foolish to ask.

He rubbed the chalky rag over his slate, then wrote, “Did you see Lorents?” He pondered the question for a long moment, trying to dredge up the nerve to show her. He cast an eye at Nissa and Kristian across the table. But his mother was mending a sock and his son was bent over a book. Theodore looked up to find Linnea with one fist bracing her jaw as she waited idly to see what he’d come up with. Slowly — very slowly — he angled the board so only she could read it.

She studied it, frowning, puzzling it out. Did you see...

Her eyes flashed up to his and her jaw came off her fist. Her heart did a quickstep and she threw a cautious glance at the two across the table, but they were paying no attention whatever.

She eased the board from his fingers, but left his question and wrote beneath it, “Lawrence?”

Theodore studied the name, properly spelled, feeling awkward and a little warm around the neck. He erased
Lorents,
rewrote it correctly, turned it to her, and nodded.

For interminable seconds their dark, intense gazes locked above the slate. Kristian turned a page. Nissa’s scissors snipped a thread. In the final moment before Linnea’s hand went back to her slate, Theodore thought he saw a flicker of amusement in her eyes.

No, she wrote.

When he read it, he quietly released a long breath and his shoulders relaxed against the back of the chair.

Though neither of them said a word about the message exchanged on the board, it was on both of their minds as they went to bed that night.

It won’t work, having her so close all the time. You either got to marry her or get her out of here.

It won’t work, living under the same roof with him. If he won’t marry you, you’ll have to find someplace else to teach next year.

The following day, when Linnea returned from school, an envelope was propped against the potted philodendron in the middle of the kitchen table. The return address said Adrian Mitchell.

She came up short at the sight of it and suddenly felt a pair of eyes censuring her. She looked across the room to find Theodore standing in the doorway to the front room, glaring at her as if she’d just announced she was a German spy. Between them Nissa worked at the stove, ignoring them. The silence was broken only by the sound of onion spattering into hot grease. Theodore spun and disappeared, and Linnea thought, Oh, you don’t want me for yourself, but nobody else can have me either, is that it?

She snatched the letter off the table and went bounding up the stairs.

Adrian was as good at writing letters as he was at handling
customers and parents. Some of his compliments made Linnea blush. And his plans for summer made her hide the envelope beneath her underclothes in a drawer where Nissa wouldn’t spot it when she came up to change the sheets.

That night as they sat over their lessons, the tension between Linnea and Theodore was palpable. He wished for once they could be alone and have words, but Nissa sat on her usual chair, knitting, and Kristian was mending a snowshoe and chewing jerky. When Theodore could stand it no longer, he wrote on his slate, “Who is Adrian?”

When he turned it to face Linnea, his eyes were hard, his lips set in a thin line.

“He works in my father’s store,” she wrote back.

Though no further personal messages were exchanged that night, Theodore was stiff and sulky. He did his writing exercises without once looking at her, and at the end of the evening, when she offered a good night, he refused to answer.

The following morning Linnea awakened to a thermometer reading of thirty-eight degrees below zero and a wind keening out of the northwest so forcefully it appeared the windmill was going to go flying off to Iowa.

They took turns washing in the kitchen: there was no question of doing it upstairs where the temperatures were nearly as cold as outdoors. The windows were so thick with ice it was impossible to see out. John didn’t even show up for breakfast.

When the meal was done, Theodore pushed his chair back, reached for his outerwear, and without bothering to glance Linnea’s way, ordered, “Get your things. I’ll be taking you to school.”

“Taking me?” She glanced up, surprised.

“That’s what I said. Now get your things.”

“But you said—”

“Don’t tell me what I said! You wouldn’t make it to the end of the driveway before your eyeballs froze.” He jerked on his wool jacket, buttoned it, turned up the collar, and jammed a battered felt Stetson low on his head. Yanking the door open, he repeated cantankerously, “Get your things.”

Obediently she hustled upstairs. Five minutes later, when she ran down the freshly shoveled path, she came up short at the sight of the strangest looking contraption she’d ever seen, hitched behind Cub and Toots. It appeared to be a small shed
on runners, with a chimney stack sticking out its roof spouting smoke and reins stretching inside through a crude peek hole. Beside a small rear door Theodore waited impatiently, a look of thunderous unapproachability upon his face.

“What is this thing?” Linnea asked, eyeing the warped roof.

“Get in!” He grabbed her arm and pushed her inside, then followed, closing the door. The interior was warm and dark. A fire gleamed through the minute cracks of the tiniest round iron stove she’d ever seen. It was no bigger than a cream can, but more than ample to heat the small space. A thin ray of daylight threaded in through the peek hole up front. She felt the floor rock as Theodore made his way past her, advising, “There’s no seats, so you’d best stand up here by me and hang on.”

Before she could follow orders, he slapped the reins and nearly set her on her backside. Rocking, she grappled forward and grabbed the edge of the peek hole, through which the horses’ rumps were visible.

“What about Kristian?”

“He’s doing the chores. I’ll bring him later.”

“But you always do the chores before breakfast.”

“Had to put this thing together before breakfast,” he stated in his grumpiest voice.

Immediately her temper sizzled. “You didn’t
have
to do anything, Theodore. I could have walked!”

Staring through the peek hole, he retorted, “Ha.”

“I didn’t ask to be treated like some... some hothouse pansy!”

“You got any idea what wind like that does to bare skin when the temperature’s thirty-eight below?”

“I could have covered my face with a scarf.”

In the dim square of light that fell on his face, she watched him roll his eyes her way. He gave a deprecating chuckle, then glanced away again.

“I’m
sorry
I put you out,” she said sarcastically. “Next time, before you build a wagon for me, you might ask me first if I need a ride.”

“I didn’t
build
a wagon for you,” he returned in a tone that matched her own. “It breaks down and stores in the lean-to. All I had to do was stand it on the bobsled runners and hook it together.”

She was getting angrier by the moment at his high-handedness
and the insulting tone of his voice.

“Theodore, I don’t know what in the world’s the matter with you lately, but you’re acting like some... some bear with a thorn in his paw!”

He threw her a withering glance but said nothing.

“Well, what did I do?” she demanded angrily, rocking with the motion of the vehicle, trying not to bump his arm.

His jaw bulged. He glared straight head. Finally he bit out, “Nothin’! You didn’t do nothin’!”

They pulled into the schoolyard and she leaped out into the slicing wind, anxious to be away from him. But, to her surprise, he followed, grasping her elbow so hard she winced as they trudged through thigh-deep drifts. The wind was so ferocious it threatened to pluck off her scarf. Theodore held his hat on with his free hand. The edges of their footprints began blurring even before they reached the steps, which were buried beneath a drift so deep they had to search for footholds as they climbed.