Years (51 page)

But he closed his speller, set it atop the slate, and pushed his chair back. “Well, it’s late, I’d best be going.” He stretched to his feet and reached for his coat. “Can I come again tomorrow?”

“Why sure,” Trigg answered.

“Linnea?”

She couldn’t quite find the strength to say no. “If you’d like.”

He nodded solemnly and said good night.

He came the next night, but not in his Sunday best. He wore a gray plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbow and the throat open, revealing the sleeves and placket of the ever-present winter underwear. He looked utterly masculine. Linnea wore her hair caught up in a ribbon, flowing down her back. In her navy and white middy dress she looked utterly young.

She gave him a story to read and he settled down to do so, slunk low in his chair with his temple propped on two fingertips. She looked up once to find that over the top of the book he was studying her breasts, which rested over her crossed wrists on the edge of the table. Her face turned red, she sat back, and his eyes returned to the book.

The following night she told him to write a sentence using the word blue and he wrote, Linnea has beautifull blue eyes.

In a snap, Linnea’s beautiful blue eyes met Theodore’s beautiful brown ones. Her face became a blushing red rose and Teddy smiled. Flustered, she took refuge in grabbing the slate and correcting his spelling. Unperturbed, he erased the whole thing, applied the chalk again and wrote, You look pretty when you blush.

He came six nights and still she refused to return home. They sat at the table as usual, Clara and Trigg with them, and Theodore covertly studied Linnea. She corrected papers while he was supposed to be reading, but it was impossible. She had done something different with her hair tonight, gathered it up
in a loose puff with a tiny pug knot in the back, like an egg in a fat nest. At her temples tendrils trailed and she caught one around her finger, winding and rewinding it abstractedly. Suddenly she giggled at something on the paper. “You have to see this.” She angled it so they all could see. “It’s a spelling test I gave today. This word is supposed to be sheet.”

S-h-i-t, it said.

They all laughed and settled back. Theodore watched her giggles subside and her head bend over her work again. In time she finished and smacked the pile of papers straight, looked up, and caught him admiring her.

“Did you finish reading your assignment?”

He cleared his throat. “Ahh... no, not quite.”

“Theodore!” she scolded, “you can read faster than that.”

“Some nights.”

“Well, you can finish it at home. It’s time for a couple new words.” She pulled out the slate and they began working, elbows and heads close. She smelled like almonds again. It created havoc with his concentration. He remembered dancing with her, smelling that almond flavor up close. He remembered kissing her, and how she had made him feel. Young. Alive. Bursting. Just looking at her brought it all back again, made his blood surge and his heart knock. He reached for the slate as if he had no choice in the matter, and though he felt fearful and even a little timid, he had to ask. He just had to. It was pure hell without her.

Can I pick you up for the dance tomorow? he wrote.

This time she expressed no surprise. No blush lit her cheek. No excitement kindled her eyes. Only a sad resignation as their gazes met and she slowly shook her head.

He felt a brief flare of anger: what was she trying to do to him? But he knew, and he knew she was stubborn enough, strong enough to hold fast in her resolution to live the remainder of the year at Clara’s. And next fall she wouldn’t be back. He saw it all in her sad eyes as they confronted him, and suddenly his life stretched out before him like a bleak, eternal purgatory. He knew full well what he must do to turn that purgatory to heaven. He knew what she was waiting for.

He felt as if he were strangling. As if the walls of his chest would collapse at any moment. As if his heart would club its way out of his body — the hard ache beneath his ribs, the sweating palms and shaky hands. But he took the chalk anyway
and wrote what all the common sense of the universe could not keep him from writing.

Then will you merry me?

There wasn’t a sound in the room as he turned the slate her way and waited. The muscles in his belly jumped.

When she read it the shock passed over her face. Her lips dropped open and she took a sharp breath. Her eyes widened upon him and they stared at each other, breathing as if they’d just come up for the third time. Their faces were suffused with color and neither of them seemed capable of movement. At last she reached an unsteady hand for the chalk... and for once she didn’t correct his spelling.

Yes, she wrote. Then the blackboard was jerked from her hand and clapped upside down on the table. In one swift, impatient leap Theodore was on his feet, reaching for his jacket, carefully refraining from looking at her.

“There’s northern lights tonight. Linnea and I are going out and see ‘em.”

It seemed to take a year instead of a minute for them to button into their outerwear and close the door behind them. And the only lights they saw were those exploding behind their closed eyes as he swung her recklessly into his arms and crushed his mouth to hers. They kissed with a wild insatiability, until everything in the world seemed attainable, and life ran rampant in their veins. They freed their mouths, clutching each other till their muscles quivered, murmuring half-sentences in desperate haste.

“Nothing was good without... ”

“I’ve been miserable... ”

“Will you really... ”

“Yes... yes... ”

“I tried not to... ”

“I didn’t know how to get you to... ”

“Oh God, God, I love you... ”

“I love you so much I... ”

They kissed again, unable to climb into each other’s skins as they wanted to, striving nonetheless. They ran their hands over everything allowable and as close to the unallowable as they dared. They pulled back, giddy in the unaccustomed release brought by agreement. They kissed again, still astounded, then paused to find equilibrium.

She rested her forehead against his chin. “Remind me to teach you how to spell
marry.”

“Don’t I know how?”

She pivoted her forehead against his chin: “No.”

He chuckled. “Seems like it didn’t make any difference.”

She smiled and rubbed up and down his sides with both hands. “M-a-r-r-y spells will you marry me. M-e-r-r-y spells will you happy me.”

“Ah, little one.” He smiled and pulled her closer. “Don’t you know that when you’re my wife you’ll do both?”

She had not known a heart could smile.

They kissed again, less hurried now — the initial rush was sated; they could explore at leisure. She caught his neck, drew his head down, tasting his warm, wet mouth with her own, savoring every texture, experimenting with seduction. His head moved in lazy circles, his hands kneaded her ribs. Impatience became a thing to be reckoned with and he forced himself to back off. “I said I was bringing you out here to look at the northern lights. Maybe we should take a look anyway.”

“Bad idea,” she murmured, crowding, kissing his neck.

He chuckled low. She felt it against her lips. “Such an unappreciative girl. Nature putting on a show like that and she doesn’t even care.”

“Nature’s putting on another show right here and I’m trying to show you exactly how much I care.”

But Theodore was noble, not heroic. He swung her around in his arms and planted her back against his chest, circling her from behind.

“Look.”

She looked. And was awed.

The indigo sky to the north radiated an unearthly glow, shifting fingers of pinkish light that reached and receded in ever-changing patterns. The aurora borealis spread like the earth’s halo lit from below, reflecting from the white-mantled land. At times not only the sky, but the earth itself seemed to radiate, creating a night vista much as if the earth’s fiery core were glowing up through a vast opaque window. For as far as the eye could see the land lay sleeping, swaddled in snow. Flat, endless space, leading away to forever, like the rest of their lives together.

“Oh, Teddy,” she sighed and tilted her head back against
his shoulder. “We’re going to be so happy together.”

“I think we already are.” He rocked them gently while they watched the sky brighten and dim, by turns.

“And we’ll live to tell the story of this night to our grandchildren. I’m just sure of it.”

He kissed the crest of her cheek, envisioning it.

She covered his arms with hers. “Do you think our horses are out there somewhere?”

“Somewhere.”

“Do you think they’re warm and full?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Just like us.”

That’s what he loved’ about her: she never took joy for granted.

“Just like us.”

“Some of the best moments we’ve shared have been like mis, just looking at nothing... and everything. Oh, look!” The lights shifted, like fresh milk spilling upward. “They’re beautiful!”

“The only place they’re brighter is in Norway,” Theodore told her.

“Norway. Mmm... I’d like to go there sometime.”

“The land of the midnight sun, Ma calls it. When she and Pa first came here they thought they’d never get used to this prairie. No fjords, no trees, no water to speak of, no mountains. The only thing that was the same was ‘the lights.’ She said when they got to missing the old country so much they couldn’t stand it, they used to stand just like we are now, and it got them through.”

Somehow Theodore’s hand had come to rest on Linnea’s breast. It seemed right and good so she held his wrist to keep it there.

“I’ve missed Nissa this past week,” she said.

“Then come home with me. Tonight.”

They both realized where his hand was and he moved it. She turned to face him.

“Do you think that’s wise?”

“With her and Kristian right there all the time?” He pressed her collar up, leaving his hands circling her neck. “Please, Linnea. I want you back there, and we’ll be married as soon as Martin can heat up the church. A week. Two weeks at the most.”

She wanted very badly to give in. She’d enjoyed her stay with Clara, but it wasn’t home. And it was farther to school, and Trigg had put himself out to get her there these cold mornings. And she’d missed Theodore with an ache so fierce it was frightening. She raised up on tiptoe and hugged him, sudden and hard.

“Yes, I’ll come. But they’ll be the longest two weeks of our lives.”

He crushed her to his sturdy chest and lowered his face to her almond-scented neck and thought that if he had no more than two score years with her he’d be grateful.

He singled out Kristian at the dance the following night. “I need to talk to you, son. Think we could go outside a minute?”

Kristian seemed to measure his father a moment before replying, “Sure.”

They went out where the air was brittle and the moon no bigger than a fingernail paring. The surface of the snow crunched beneath their feet and they ambled with no apparent destination, until they found themselves near the clustered wagons. The horses stood asleep with hoarfrost trimming their coarse nose hairs. Unconsciously the two men gravitated toward their own Cub and Toots and stood before their great heads, silent for some time. Down in the barn the music stopped, and the only sound was that of the horses breathing like enormous bellows.

“No lights tonight,” Theodore observed at length.

“Nope.”

“Lots of ‘em last night.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, Linnea and me we... ” Theodore trailed off and started again. “Son, remember the day you and me we went to Zahl for coal?”

“I remember.” Kristian knew already; it wasn’t often Theodore called him son, and when he did it was something serious.

“Well, you told me that day how you felt about Linnea, and I want you to know I didn’t take it lightly.”

It was the second time he’d referred to her as Linnea when he’d never used her given name before.

“You’re gonna marry her, aren’t you?”

Theodore’s heavy hand fell to Kristian’s shoulder. “I am, but I got to know how you feel about it.”

There was disappointment, but nothing like Kristian had
expected. He’d had time to absorb the idea since Nissa’s startling deduction.

“When?”

“Week from today if we can arrange it, two weeks if we can’t.”

“Wow, that’s fast.”

“Son, it rankled, knowing how you felt about her. I didn’t set out to fall in love with her, you got to know that — I mean, after all, there’s sixteen years difference between us — but it didn’t seem to matter in how we felt. Guess we don’t have much choice about who we fall in love with. When it happens it happens, but when it did I had plenty of guilt pangs since you’d set your cap for her first.”

Kristian knew what he must say.

“Aw, she just thinks of me as a kid. I can see that now.”

“It might surprise you to know that’s not true. We’ve talked about you, and she—”

“You mean she knew how I felt about her?” Kristian’s head came up in consternation. “You told her?”

“I didn’t have to tell her. What you have to understand is that a woman can tell a thing like that without being told. She could see how you felt and she was scared it’d make for problems in the family.” Theodore put his palm beneath Toots’s nose, feeling the white puffs of breath push against his glove. “Will it?”

They wouldn’t have any problems from Kristian no matter how tough it was for him to get used to her being his father’s wife. “Naw. It was probably just puppy love anyway, like Ray says.” Kristian strove to lighten the mood. “But I won’t have to call her Mother, will I?”

Theodore laughed. “I hardly think so. She’ll still be your friend. Why don’t you call her Linnea?”

Kristian peered at his father. “Would you mind?”

Theodore was the one who’d come out here to ask that question. It struck him how lucky he was to have a son like Kristian, and he turned to do something he rarely did; he took Kristian in his arms and pressed him close for a minute.

“You’d do well, son, to try to get a boy like you someday. They don’t come much better.”