An Amish Christmas: A Novel Page 9

  There was little conversation at the table. Meg observed the line of men across from her, all with the same haircut. The older ones had beards and no mustaches. Their clothing was virtually identical. The women kept their hair tucked under bonnets, and all had on the same simple dresses, some with black coverings like full aprons, the top half of which resembled an upside-down triangle. The dresses differed only in color: muted, dark tones of blue or purple or gray. Meg wondered at the fact that even by this point in the day their clothes remained perfectly pressed. She noted that the garments were held closed with straight pins rather than buttons or zippers. There was not a single piece of jewelry or a hint of makeup on any of them.

  The men reported to one another on the progress of whatever they had been working on that morning. David had missed much of his morning work by taking James to see about the car, but he managed to get to the barn, where they were shoveling out manure, bringing it to an area where they stored it to be used as fertilizer. One of the men updated the others on repairs he was making on their horses’ harnesses. James asked if he might help with that job, saying he didn’t think he could manage a shovel just yet, but he could try to make himself useful until he could put his back into something. David nodded.

  Lunch was over quickly. The men left, and the women cleaned up before dispersing. The smaller children were left behind, giving Meg an idea for something to occupy her own children’s time. Catherine said it wasn’t necessary for anyone to watch her grandchildren, that they would be fine playing near her, but Meg insisted that her children babysit. All three of them shot daggers at her with their eyes, but Meg was delighted to see that it wasn’t long before they actually seemed to be enjoying interacting with the toddlers.

  Amanda said a smiling good-bye to all of them and ran out to where her brother Jonathan waited in a buggy.

  “She’s off to deliver to the store, and I’m going to prepare for supper,” Catherine explained, setting out a large knife and chopping board. “I have to get back out to hang up the rest of the laundry.”

  She hadn’t even sat down after serving lunch, Meg observed, and now she was on to the next meal and more chores. Did she ever rest?

  “Do you mind if I ask you what store you mean?” As she spoke, Meg saw an opportunity to repeat her earlier job of drying dishes and reached for the dish towel.

  Catherine had begun cutting up potatoes to put into a large pot of water. “It is a store in town. King’s is the name. We make them things to sell. Bread, cakes, jams. Different things, depending on the season. That’s why my daughter Annie and my daughter-in-law Sue weren’t at lunch. Today was their day to do the baking. They brought fresh bread and rolls in the morning, and now Amanda will take over the pies with Jonathan.”

  “You make everything here?”

  Catherine nodded. “Oh, yes.”

  “Jams?”

  “Jams, jelly, all kinds of preserves. We pickle things. Make vinegars, too.”

  Meg was fascinated. “I’d love to see how you do that.”

  Catherine heaved the large pot onto the stove and covered it. “We make a lot of it in the warmer months. I will take you downstairs, and you can see it. After I finish cutting up some vegetables, I’ll show you.”

  “Thank you.” Meg’s admiration for this busy woman was growing. “I’ve always loved the idea of making jams and preserves, but I never had time to learn.” She regretted the words the second they had left her mouth. To say she didn’t have enough time to someone who worked as hard as Catherine was ludicrous. “I guess,” she amended, “I didn’t make the time.”

  Catherine was immersed in cutting up carrots and celery and didn’t reply. When she finished, she set down her knife. “I will take you downstairs.”

  Meg followed her to a door that led to the basement steps. As she reached the bottom of the staircase, she caught her breath at the sight before her. Although the room was primarily below ground level, windows had been installed high up enough to let outside daylight in. Like everything else in the house, the basement was spotless. What surprised Meg were the rows upon rows of open wooden shelving, set up like library stacks. The shelves sagged under the weight of hundreds of glass bottles and jars containing a vast array of different foods. Nearby, Meg saw a table with what appeared to be a setup for the final packaging, with squares of fabrics, rubber bands, labels, colored markers, and scissors.

  “You do all this yourself?” she asked in disbelief.

  “Oh, no. All the women in the family do it. The women and the girls. We have much more in my daughter’s and son’s houses.”

  Catherine waited patiently while Meg walked up and down a few of the rows. She marveled at the intricacy of this business, at the fact that it was tucked into such a tiny space. The shelves had handwritten labels identifying the containers’ contents. Onion Relish, Apple Jam, Apricot Chutney, Chowchow, Strawberry Preserves, Chili Oil, Sweet Pickled Peppers, Bread-and-Butter Pickles, Corn Relish, Rosemary Vinegar. Meg was struck by the beauty of all the bottle shapes and the colors and textures of the foods within them. “Amazing. Such variety, too. What a job all this must be,” she exclaimed.

  “It’s not hard once you learn how,” Catherine replied. “Now I must get back to cooking.”

  Turning to go, Meg caught sight of a large area at the far side of the basement devoted to storing what she saw were root vegetables. She could identify onions, carrots, parsnips, potatoes, and something she guessed was horseradish in large crocks lined up in neat rows.

  When they rejoined the children in the living room, they found that Samuel Lutz had returned, this time with a puppy in his arms. The elderly man was seated on the couch, talking to his great-grandchildren as he stroked the puppy’s head. They must have been used to the dog, Meg thought, because they weren’t exclaiming over it the way children typically did at such a sight. Now that she thought about it, she realized she had passed a number of dog bowls set out near the back entrance to the house. Some of the barking she had heard coming from outside must have come from dogs belonging to the Lutzes.

  Will didn’t seem interested in the scene before him. He sat at one of the folding tables, flipping through the pages of a book. Lizzie, however, was scratching the puppy under its chin, making cooing sounds, and Sam was sitting next to the older man, staring at the light brown ball of fur.

  Samuel Lutz must have noticed the boy’s interest. He held the puppy out to him. “Young Samuel?”

  Sam’s face lit up as he reached for the dog and nestled him in his lap. He looked happier than Meg had seen him in weeks. She watched him rub his cheek against the dog’s soft head, the widest smile on his face. Of course, Meg thought. I can’t believe I didn’t I think of it before. Sam should have a dog. It was a simple and wonderful idea.

  Her heart sank as she remembered that they were heading to her parents’, who had never wanted anything to do with a pet in their house. As a child, Meg had begged them to let her have a dog or a cat, anything at all, but they always said no. Pets were messy. There were cages and bowls to clean and expensive food to buy. Meg felt pretty certain they were unlikely to have softened on the topic as they had gotten older.

  She sighed, watching the puppy lick Sam’s face, her son giggling with pleasure. Samuel Lutz leaned over and spoke quietly to him about the dog, lifting a paw and showing him the pads underneath, gently opening the dog’s mouth to explain about the teeth.

  Meg went over to a window and looked out. She wished she were in a position to do something so good for Sam. She looked at the clothesline where Catherine had hung out the wet clothes. The different-colored dresses and the men’s shirts, black pants, and jackets were attached with clothespins in neat lines, each type of garment grouped, each garment attached at the same points. It looked to her like a line of people—flat people, to be sure, but a big family, ordered and serene.

  With a start, she realized she had been so preoccupied, she hadn’t yet gone outside to look around. “I’m going to t
ake a walk unless anyone needs me,” she announced to the room in general.

  “Can I come?” Will asked, reaching for his jacket, which he had thrown on a chair.

  Meg was surprised. “Of course, honey. Let me grab my coat.” She hurried upstairs, feeling the soreness in her back. As she passed the room Will and Sam were occupying, she paused long enough to notice that, while their beds could technically be considered made, it would have been easy to think otherwise. She hurried to get her jacket, anxious to get out.

  With her son beside her, Meg stepped out into the cold daylight to see that the house was set amid enormous open fields. The ground sloped beneath the gray sky, providing a panoramic view of other farms, their neat houses and barns nestled close to tall pairs of silos and pens. Straight paved roads crisscrossed the landscape. The bare tree branches and frozen ground gave the scene a stark silence. Off in the distance, she saw a horse and buggy on the road, the horse trotting at a brisk clip.

  “Like a painting,” Meg murmured.

  “This place is so weird” was Will’s response.

  She turned to him. “You know, you guys are being pretty horrible to the kids here.”

  “Oh, please.” He gave a little snort of disgust. “These kids are the biggest bunch of losers I’ve ever seen.”

  “Why? Because they’re different from you?”

  “Because they’re different from humans. The stuff they wear! And the way they talk. It’s like we’re in some bad museum exhibit or something.”

  Meg shook her head. “I guess I’m surprised at you. I would have expected you to be a little more curious about something so different from what you’ve always known. Not so judgmental.”

  “Don’t try to guilt me with that ‘I’m disappointed in you’ stuff,” Will said. “This is just plain wacko.”

  Meg frowned. She tried to remember if she and James had ever actively tried to instill any curiosity in Will about the way other people lived. Over the years, the family had vacationed at Disney World and the Grand Canyon, in the Caribbean and the Outer Banks. Fun places, and beautiful, but hardly educational when it came to learning about the rest of the world. Their dinner-table conversation had focused on the kids’ daily activities and who needed to get what or go where.

  She shoved her hands in her coat pockets. “Let’s walk.”

  Meg saw now that the Lutzes’ house was quite large, with a fresh-looking coat of white paint and dark-green shades at all the first-floor windows. Two rocking chairs and small outdoor tables sat to one side of the front porch. On a side porch, she noted used children’s toys, a dented tricycle, and an assortment of mismatched chairs, one of which held a sleeping gray cat. Empty terra-cotta and hanging pots suggested the display of numerous plants and flowers in the warmer weather. Meg noticed several birdhouses filled with birdseed. She was surprised to discover that what she assumed was a portion of the house was a second, attached house, slightly smaller but similar in design. That, she realized, must be where Samuel and Leah Lutz lived, and the doorway through which he had emerged when they first met must be the connection.

  Meg came upon a patch of land that was clearly a garden, now put to bed for the winter. With her son behind her, she walked along its borders.

  “Mom? What’s going to happen to us?”

  She stopped, startled by her son’s unexpected question, by the fear in his tone. She had been wondering when the children would start to ask more pointed questions about their situation. Apparently the moment was now. She decided to see how far into it Will really wished to go.

  “What’ll happen is we’ll get the car repaired, and we’ll head up to Grandma and Grandpa’s.”

  She waited to see if that explanation would hold him. No such luck.

  “That’s not what I mean, and you know it. Stop treating me like a little kid,” he said.

  She turned to face him. “Okay, Will. Here’s the truth: We’re kinda starting over. We’ll be okay. But for now we’re pretty much broke, and that’s for real. I’m not sure if you guys really get that, but if you don’t, you will soon.”

  “Yeah, in a way, I still don’t believe it.”

  “I know,” Meg said. “Sometimes I don’t, either. But we have to stay with your grandparents because we need to find work and save money. Then we’ll take it from there.”

  He closed his eyes and made a pained face. “It’s gonna be so awful to live with them. They don’t even like us.”

  Meg wanted to agree with him but knew she shouldn’t. “It’ll be okay, Will. We’ll work it out.”

  “How do you work out people not wanting you around?”

  “You don’t know they feel that way—”

  “Mom.” Will gave her a look that told her to stop placating him.

  Meg reached out to straighten the collar of his fleece jacket, automatically registering that he needed a haircut. “Here’s the story. I’m going to work as hard and as fast as I can to figure out something that will allow us to be independent again. That I promise.”

  “What about you and Dad? You guys seem really angry at each other. Like, more angry than I’ve ever seen you. Are you getting divorced?”

  She gazed into Will’s eyes and saw he was not going to let her get away with anything less than the truth. He might be her little boy, but he was growing up fast. She took a breath. “I don’t know,” she said. “I just don’t know.”

  He looked away.

  “I’m sorry, honey,” she said.

  He nodded, then walked off without another word. She watched him go. The wind picked up, whipping his sandy hair in every direction.

  She pulled her collar more tightly around her neck and was still staring after him when she heard James come up behind her. “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “As okay as possible, I suppose,” she replied without turning around.

  He rested his hands on her shoulders. Startled, she slipped out of his grasp. “What are you doing?”

  He shrugged. “Just trying to be nice. I mean, here we are, so we might as well make the best of things. No point in being angry, is there?”

  “There is a point, yes, there is. Being here doesn’t mean you get a free pass. Nothing has changed.”

  “Come on, Meg,” he said, annoyed. “You can’t keep rehashing the past. We have to move forward.”

  “We haven’t exactly ‘rehashed the past.’ We haven’t even talked about it. Besides, you may not be happy with what happens when we move forward. Let me put it this way: I don’t know if there is a forward for us.”

  “You’re not still thinking of breaking up the family, are you? That would be crazy.”

  “Wow.” Meg shook her head in disbelief. “You actually think that letting a little time go by should be enough to wipe the slate clean. I should just forgive and forget. That would be the most convenient thing for everybody.”

  “What’s wrong with forgiving?”

  “Can you even forgive a person who’s not sorry?”

  “I am sorry. Don’t you think I feel—”

  David Lutz came around the corner of the house, wearing muddied black rubber boots and holding a bucket in one hand. At the sight of him, James stopped talking.

  “I’m going to the barn. Want to come?” David asked.

  Relieved to have this argument interrupted, Meg nodded and strode toward him, James right behind her. The barn was a huge building set away from the main house. The smell of horses grew stronger as they approached. Inside, they saw shovels, pitchforks, rakes, an ax, and other tools hanging from hooks on the walls. The roof extended up two stories, with ladders and steps leading to haylofts and other perches. The wooden floor was swept completely clean.

  “Horses are this way,” David said, going down a passageway to the left. He pointed to a large cobweb in a corner. “My website.”

  Startled by the unexpected joke, Meg and James both laughed. Meg knew that their hosts were people like everyone else, but David’s comment made her realize that she h
adn’t quite believed it until now. They weren’t saints or judges. They knew what was going on in the world, they could joke about it, they had a sense of humor. And they weren’t going to be offended by questions or mistakes. For the first time since they had arrived, Meg felt herself relax.

  Coming around a corner, she saw two large stalls with five horses, several of them munching on hay. David walked up to the nearest horse and stroked his neck. “Most are for farming, but we keep two just for pulling the buggies.”

  James put out an open palm under another horse’s muzzle. “Beautiful animals.”

  “They’re like family to us, you know.” David moved past the horses. “Over here, you can see where we keep the buggies.”

  They followed him into a partitioned area housing two buggies, with space for a third. They were identical from the back, gray with gray coverings and high, narrow wheels, plus a variety of red triangles and lights on the back to render them more visible at night. Meg looked into the front seat of one, surprised to see the woodwork on what was the equivalent of a dashboard. The rich dark wood was intricately carved and polished until it gleamed. It had been too dark the night before to notice.

  David indicated the empty space. “The one that goes there belongs to my son Jonathan. He got his own when he turned sixteen.”

  “No heating, I guess. Cold in the winter, riding in these,” James observed.

  David smiled. “We use armstrong heaters. You know those?”

  James shook his head. “No, I don’t.”

  David threw an arm around James’s shoulders and pulled him tight. “This is an armstrong heater.”

  James grinned. “Oh. Got it.”

  Laughing, David led them outside. He pointed to the fields stretching out before them. “We grow lots of crops. Tomatoes and peas, which we sell. Hay for feeding. Catherine has a garden with herbs and about, oh, twenty vegetables. We pickle and can them, some for us and some to sell.”