Bittersweet

Sarah felt her pocket. She had shoved her diploma in it when she bolted from the schoolroom. She took it out and pressed it flat on her knee: a bright border of wildflowers and vines in watercolor, and the neat hand of Miss Grelznik in heavy black ink. Water had gotten to it, and the ink had run into the colors.

“Don’t go thinking on that speech or whatever it was supposed to be,” Sam said. “You made a fool of yourself, but it’s spilt milk now, and nobody thinks the worse of you for it.” Sarah let the ruined paper fall under the wagon’s wheels.

They drove on in silence. The rain stopped falling and rattled from leaf to leaf in the trees. Sam sat hunched, with his forearms resting across his thighs, staring between the horses’ ears. Sarah, beside him, was curled down in his coat. One of the horses stumbled, and Sam straightened and spat over the side. “How old’re you, Sarah?”

“Almost sixteen.” She looked up at him. His brow was contorted, his thick eyebrows pulled together above his flat-bridged nose. Sam held her eyes searchingly.

“You’re a young woman. Time you had a family.” Sarah pulled herself deeper into the folds of his coat, putting the collar between herself and his eyes. He watched her. “What do you think you’re goin’ to do with yourself? Your pa hasn’t much-David’s run off, and Gracie and Lizbeth are girls. Four females and only Walter to help out.”

Sarah squirmed uncomfortably. “I could teach,” she said at last, her voice small and uncertain. He snorted.

“I don’t have to look far to see where you got that idea.” He glanced at her, hunkered down in the oversized coat. “Teach!” He laughed.

Sarah looked at the smeared ink on her hands and the mud caked on her skirt from hiding in the dirt behind the school, and hid her face with her hair.

“You’re no schoolteacher,” Sam said.

Saran nodded, then shook her head. “No, sir,” she said into the rank wool.

“I got a farm to run. I been ru

The setting sun poured down through the ragged blue hole, and a rainbow materialized from one side of the sky to the other, tethered to the ground by dark hills. Sam turned the wagon into the Tolstonadges’ short drive. Sarah jumped to the ground and ran inside without a word. The porch door slammed behind her, catching the sleeve of her coat. He sat in the carryall, waiting. The door opened again and she came out. She walked timidly back and set the heavy coat on the seat beside him. “Thank you, Mr. Ebbitt.” He nodded approvingly and she ran to the shelter of the house, plummeting headlong into Walter and Emmanuel on their way out to do the evening chores.

“Watch out,” Walter said as she stumbled into him. He caught her upper arm and steadied her.

“What’s got into you?” her father asked. “You look rode hard and put away wet.” Sarah pulled away from them and ran into the bedroom she shared with her sisters. Closing the door behind her, she leaned against it, her breath coming in dry sobs.

The ceiling sloped away, the far wall only four feet high. Against it bumped the head of a wide bed, its foot thrust into the middle of the room; on either side of it were bright oval rag rugs that Mam had made to protect bare feet from the cold planks in winter. The sun had gone down and the room was full of twilight shadows. One of the shadows broke away from the wall and moved slowly toward her. Sarah heard footsteps and jerked her head up. Mam moved into the half-light from the window, and took her daughter in her arms, pressing the girl’s head to her breast. Sarah clung to her, trembling.

“I’ve been waiting for you. Your pa said Sam had talked to him.” Sarah held tight, her teeth begi

“I-d-don’t-know,” she stuttered.

Mrs. Tolstonadge stripped the wet clothes off her daughter and, bundling her into an old fla

“Mam?”

“Hmm?” The room had grown dark; the single lamp by the door burned unevenly, dancing the shadows.

“Am I going to marry Mr. Ebbitt?”

“Do you want to marry him?”

“What else can I do, Mam?”

“What else can any woman do?” Mam rocked her gently, humming. “Sam’s a good man; has a farm that’s paid for.”

“How old were you when you married Pa?”

“I was sixteen. Your pa was twenty-three. I remember how scared I was. I missed out on my sixteenth birthday because it was the day before the wedding and Ma was flustered. Just slipped her mind, I guess, and she never baked a cake up.”

“You like being married, don’t you, Mam?”

“Marriage isn’t to like or not like, hon. A woman’s got to get married if she can. That’s the way of things. I like it now. I can’t picture how I’d go on without you and David and the little kids.” Margaret smiled and nuzzled Sarah’s hair. “The babies make it all worth while. There’s nothing I’d trade my babies for. It’s why life isn’t just coming and going and cleaning up after folks in between. If a woman doesn’t have children of her own, she can be awful lonely.”

“If I get married, will I have babies?”

“I expect you will. I had David less than a year after I was married.”

“I’d have to go live at the Ebbitt place.”

Mam laughed and bounced her comfortably. “You sound so sad. The Ebbitt house is big enough to put this little place in and rattle it around.”

“It’s dark.”

“That’s ’cause Sam doesn’t have a woman to look after him. ’Course it’s dark. I don’t think those windows have seen a pail of washwater since Sam’s ma died.”

“Pa wants me to marry him, doesn’t he?” Sarah’s eyes were closed. She snuggled closer in her mother’s arms. Margaret took the cup from her hand and set it on the floor.

“Your pa’d like to have you married off safe, and he thinks a lot of Sam.”

“You want me to marry him, Mam?” Sarah’s voice was slow with sleep.

Her mother stroked her hair, singing softly. Sarah’s hand slipped from Margaret’s shoulder. She had fallen asleep. Mam lowered her carefully to the pillow, still humming. She pushed the hair back off her forehead and kissed her before stealing from the room.

8

EARLY IN JUNE, IMOGENE PACKED TWO VALISES AND LEFT FOR PHILADELPHIA. Her train arrived five hours late, but William Utterback was there to meet her, standing on the sun-drenched platform, his years pooled in arthritic knobs on his fingers, his back straight and proud. Imogene saw him as the train heaved into the station, a great cloud of steam engulfing him as he returned her wave. She pulled the small valise out from under the seat and took her place at the end of the queue of weary travelers waiting to detrain.

Mr. Utterback stepped through the crowd, unruffled by the heat and the noise. “Imogene, it is good to see thee.”

Imogene took his hand like a man, then kissed him on the cheek. “You look wonderful! I don’t know why I sound so surprised, it’s not been so long-not a year.” She looked around her, breathing the thick air appreciatively, her head cocked to the side. The street was alive with people and wagons, the traffic sounds punched over one another: bells and shouting, creaking harness and rumbling wheels. “It seems like a lifetime.”