“Same to you, missy,” he returned with gruff emotion.
She turned diffidently to face Theodore. “Merry Christmas, Theodore,” she said shakily, extending one gloved hand. “Thank you for the g... gift, too, it’s p... packed in... ” But as his hand came out slowly to clasp hers, she could continue no longer. His deep brown eyes, filled with unspoken misery, locked with hers. He squeezed her hand so hard, so long, it took an effort not to flinch. The tears splashed over her lashes and ran in silver streaks down her cheeks. He wanted to brush them away, but resisted. Her heart felt swollen and bruised, and it beat so heavily it seemed she felt the reverberations at the bottom of her boots.
Down the track to the west the train wailed into view beneath its bonnet of white steam.
Theodore swallowed.
Linnea gulped.
Suddenly he grabbed her wrist and yanked her after him so abruptly that she dropped her suitcase and her hat tipped sideways.
“Theodore, whatever—”
Across the platform and down the steps he strode, in footsteps so long it took two of Linnea’s to make up one of his. His face was set and thunderous as he towed her along the tracks and around the end of the building. She had no choice but to stumble after him, breathless, holding her hat on with one hand. He hauled her between a baggage dray and the dun-colored depot wall, then swung her around without warning and scooped her into his arms, kissing her with a might and majesty rivaling that of the locomotive that came steaming past them at just that moment, drowning them in noise. His tongue swept into her mouth and his arms crushed her so tightly her back snapped. Desperately, wildly, he slanted his mouth over hers, clutching the back of her head and pressing her against the wall. The tears gushed down her cheeks, wetting his, too.
He lifted his head at last, his breath falling fast and hard on her face, his expression agonized.
His mouth moved.
“I love you,” it said, but the train whistle blasted, covering the precious words she’d waited so long to hear.
“What?” she shouted.
“I love you!” he bawled in a hoarse, miserable voice. “I wanted to tell you last night.”
“Why didn’t you?”
They had to shout to be heard above the couplings clanging against each other as the train came to a stop. “I was scared, so I trumped up that nonsense about John and Rusty and Lawrence. Are you going to see him in Fargo?”
“No... no!” She wanted to cry and laugh at the same time.
“I’m sorry I made you cry.”
“Oh, I’m just foolish... I... oh, Theodore—”
“Boooooard!” the conductor called from around the corner.
Theodore’s mouth swooped down again, open and hungry, and this time she clutched him as desperately as he clutched her. Her hat was smashed under his left boot. A piece of siding on the depot wall creased the back of her head and the clip of her watch was stamping its shape into her left breast. But Theodore had said it at last!
As abruptly as he’d lunged, he pulled back, holding her face, searching her eyes with a harrowed look.
“Tell me.”
“I love you, too, Teddy.”
“I know. I’ve known for quite a while, but I don’t know what we’re going to do about it. I only know I’ve been miserable.”
“Oh, Teddy, don’t waste precious time. Kiss me again, please!”
This time it was sweet and yearning and filled with goodbyes that were really hellos. Their hearts thrust mightily. Their bodies knew want. They tore their mouths apart long enough for her to cry, “I don’t want to go.”
“I don’t want you to either,” he returned, then impaled her mouth with his warm, wet tongue a last time.
John came barreling around the corner, yelling, “Are you crazy, you two? The train’s leaving!”
Theodore twisted from her, pulling her practically off her feet as he headed for the moving train.
“My hat!”
“Leave it!”
They raced for the doorway of the silver car that was sliding away in a billow of steam, and at the last possible moment, Linnea caught the handrail and was lifted from behind and swung safely aboard.
She leaned out and waved, then threw two kisses to the receding figures with hands raised over their heads.
“Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!”
It would be the happiest of her life. As she found her seat and fell back with her eyes closed, she wondered how she’d live through it.
17
LINNEA’S FATHER WAS waiting to greet her at the train station, smiling and robust. His hair was parted in the center and paralleled the sweeping line of his thick blond moustache. Wrapped in his strong arms, with her face pressed against his storm coat, she smelled the familiar bay rum on his jaw and felt tears spring to her eyes.
“Oh, Daddy.”
“Dumpling.”
She had worked so long and hard at acting grown up that it was an unexpected relief to be his child again.
“What’s this? A tear?”
“I’m just so glad to see you.” She kissed his jaw and held his elbow tightly as they went outside.
He had bought a brand-new Model T Ford touring car that nobody had told her about.
“What’s this?” She stared at it, awestruck.
“A little surprise. Business has been booming.”
“Y... you mean it’s yours?”
“You betcha. Get in.”
They drove down the streets of Fargo, startling horses, laughing, peering through the horizontal split in the windshield. It was thrilling, but at the same time the new automobile made Linnea feel she had been away for years instead of months. It created an odd, sad feeling she tried her best to hide. She wanted to come home and find everything as she’d left it.
“Do you want to stop by the store on our way?” he asked.
The store, where she’d been her father’s clerk ever since she was old enough to make change. The store, with its intermingled smells of coffee and sweeping compound and oranges. The store would be the same.
“Let’s,” she answered excitedly.
But there were changes at the store, too. From the front window James Montgomery Flagg’s frowning Uncle Sam pointed a bony finger at Fargo’s men, admonishing, “I want you for the U.S. Army.” A scratchy radio — a new addition — sat on a shelf, transmitting the new George M. Cohan song, “Over There.” Beside the counter sat a collection barrel for empty tin cans. On the counter stood a “Blot it out with Liberty Bonds” poster. And behind the counter stood a total stranger.
“Here she is, Adrian, home from Alamo. Linnea, I’d like you to meet Adrian Mitchell, the fellow who took your place as my right hand. Adrian, my daughter Linnea.”
Resentment prickled even as Linnea shook hands across the counter. Mother had written that they’d hired a new “boy,” and here he was, measuring six feet tall and wearing a natty plaid bow tie.
“Pleasure, Miss Brandonberg.”
“Mr. Mitchell,” she said politely.
“Adrian is a sophomore at the university this year. Putting himself through,” announced her father with a discernible note of pride.
Adrian smiled at Linnea. “And I understand this is your first year out of normal school. How do you like teaching so far?”
While they chatted she noticed he had an innate sense of cordiality, the most perfect teeth she’d ever seen, and a face almost unfairly handsome. It only made her resent him further for usurping her place.
The stop at the store was brief. Before long they were in the Ford again, heading home.
“I thought you said you hired a new boy,” Linnea commented dryly.
Her father only chuckled.
“Well, where did you find him?”
“Walked in one day and said he needed a job to put himself through college, and he promised to increase my business by five percent within the first six months or he’d refund half his salary, and damned if he hasn’t done it
in three!”
To Linnea’s resentment was added a tinge of jealousy. More than ever, she wanted to get home where things would be just as when she’d left.
Her mother was preparing her old favorite, fricasseed chicken, and Linnea’s heart swelled with gratitude. Upstairs, Carrie and Pudge had their bedroom all spic-and-span, but when Linnea came back down to the kitchen and asked where they were, her mother answered, “Oh, I’m afraid they’re gone, but they’ll be here in time for dinner.”
“Gone?” repeated Linnea, disappointed. She’d expected them to rush her with a thousand questions displaying the same girlish awe they’d shown upon learning that their big sister was going out into the world.
“Their Girl Scout troop is cutting and stitching comfort bags for departing soldiers.”
Comfort bags? Her baby sisters?
“So did you stop at the store?” her mother inquired.
“Yes, for a minute.”
“Then you met Adrian.”
“Yes.”
“What did you think of him?”
Linnea threw a suspicious glance at her mother, but Judith was busily shaping dumplings, dropping them into the kettle,
“I was only there five minutes.” Don’t even think it, Mother. He’s not my type.
Carrie and Pudge arrived in time for dinner, overjoyed to see their big sister, but breathless and gushing about their own activities, scarcely asking about Linnea’s. During the meal Linnea learned that their scout troop had spent weeks collecting peach stones to be burned into charcoal for gas-mask filters and was now engaged in a campaign to solicit soap, needles, thread, and other necessities for filling the comfort bags. Carrie was all excited about the fact that each individual who filled a bag was allowed to include a name card. She was hoping to hear from the soldiers who received hers. They bubbled on about the white elephants they were collecting for a rummage sale their school was planning to earn the $125 they’d pledged to the War Fund Drive.
Linnea was quite disconcerted. When she’d left home, the girls were climbing trees and skinning knees. Carrie had been clumsy. Now she wore a new willowy silhouette. Her honey-colored hair touched her shoulders and her blue eyes would soon start capturing the boys’ attention. Pudge, too, had changed. Her nickname scarcely fit anymore. She was thinning out and her pigtails were gone, replaced by a fall of caramel-colored curls held by a ribbon. When she talked about their Girl Scout work her hazel eyes lit with excitement that gave Linnea a glimpse of the pretty young lady she would soon become. How could they have changed so much in four months?
Her mother’s interests had changed, too. She was no longer sitting home darning socks in her spare time. She was in charge of the women’s committee for the Belgian and Armenian Relief Fund at church, working with the Supplementary Military Aid committee to meet trains and provide meals for enlisted men passing through the city on their way to army camps. She was taking a Red Cross class to learn how to make surgical dressings and spent two evenings each week at the public library picking oakum.
“What’s oakum?” Linnea asked, and they all looked at her as if she’d spoken a profanity.
But that wasn’t all. Her father had spent a day recently with a group of citizens who’d laughingly dubbed themselves “The Amalgamated Order of Wood Sawyers.” A river-bottom wood lot had been donated to the Red Cross by the Fargo Tile Company, and the men had spent the day felling the trees and sawing them into cord wood. It was auctioned off and $2,264 was raised for the war effort.
Her father, sawing wood?
Christmas would be less lavish this year, he said, because they were giving instead to the soldiers who needed so much so badly.
It wasn’t that Linnea needed a lavish Christmas. She simply wanted things as they were. She had rather expected her return to be the axis upon which her family revolved while she was at home. Instead, their axis seemed to be the war effort.
That night, when she went to bed, she lay in the dark pondering her disappointment. Four months — not even four months, and it seemed she’d left no more vacancy in their lives than a cup of water drawn from a full barrel. Her emotions were in turmoil. She wanted nothing so badly as constancy from her family. But they were all so busy. So involved! She wanted to cry, but tears didn’t come as easily as they had last summer, before she’d started her plunge into maturity.
At least the house hadn’t changed. The bedroom she and her sisters shared was as bright and cheerful as ever with its flowery wallpaper and long double windows. When she got up in the mornings the floor wasn’t icy beneath her feet, and she didn’t have to walk down a snowy path to an outhouse, or bathe in a wash basin, or trudge a mile to school, or shovel coal, or build a fire or pump water.
But she missed it all terribly.
On Christmas Eve day her father asked her to come and help him at the store, as she used to. “So many of my customers ask about you; I know they’d love to see you. And I’d really appreciate the help today. It’s going to be a race right up till closing.”
“But you have the new boy.”
“Adrian will be there, but there’ll be enough business to keep us all busy. What do you say, dumpling?”
She couldn’t resist her father when he called her the old pet name, and no matter how things had changed, she loved it at the store.
When they arrived Adrian was already there, dressed in natty collegiate clothes, sweeping snow off the front sidewalk.
“Good morning, Mr. Brandonberg!” he greeted, doffing a tweed golf-style cap, smiling at Linnea at the same time. “And Miss Brandonberg.”
“Good morning, Adrian. I talked her into coming down and giving us a hand today.”
“And we can certainly use it. Are you enjoying your vacation?”
Standing with his hands crossed on the broom handle, Adrian Mitchell chatted as amiably as if they were old friends. He had a wonderful smile, which he wore nearly all the time, and the kind of natural courtesy Linnea tried so hard to instill in her boys at school. He doffed his hat to passersby and bid each a pleasant good morning. When Linnea and her father moved toward the front door, he opened it for them before returning to his sweeping.
When he followed them inside minutes later, she watched him move around the store. He hung his stylish coat and suit jacket on a coat tree in the back, then donned a starched white apron, whistling softly between his teeth as he doubled the ties around the front and secured them in back. He moved with a briskness and confidence that made him appear as much the proprietor of the store as the proprietor himself. He sprinkled sweeping compound on the floor and swept the whole place without so much as a word from her father. When the job was done and the pleasant oily smell clung to the air, he marched to the double front doors, pulled up the green shades to the tall windows, and turned over the OPEN sign.
The first customer was a little boy Linnea didn’t recognize who had been sent by his mother to pick up a last-minute pound of lard. Before the boy left, Adrian dropped something into his bag and said, “Now you give that to your mother, Lonnie, okay?”
“What’s he giving him?” Linnea whispered to her father.
“An egg separator. It was Adrian’s idea, to give out some small kitchen item as a gesture of good will during the holiday season. Shows the customers we appreciate their business.”
She studied her father’s profile as he beamed at Adrian. Obviously the new employee was his golden boy.
The twinge of jealousy returned, but as the day progressed she came to see why her father valued Adrian so immensely. The customers loved him. He knew them all by name and inquired after their families and asked if they knew Miss Brandonberg was here today, back from school and in just to say hello to all of them. As each customer left, he called, “Merry Christmas.”
He had a way about him, all right. There were times when Linnea studied him covertly and wondered if it was phony. But long before the end of the day she’d decided he was strictly genuine, a natural-born businessman wh
o loved people and wasn’t afraid to let it show.
When the store closed at four that afternoon, Linnea’s father gave Adrian a ham as a Christmas gift. Adrian had something hidden in the back room — a long, tall box — which he gave to his boss before the two exchanged a fond handshake. Then he turned to Linnea with his radiantly handsome smile.
“Miss Brandonberg, I hope we’ll meet again while you’re home. As a matter of fact, if it’s all right with your father, I’d like to stop by the house some evening and pay a call.”
He turned to seek Selmer Brandonberg’s approval, and before Linnea could object, her father answered, “Anytime, Adrian. You just let Mrs. Brandonberg know and she’ll set an extra place at dinner.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ll do that.” Turning to Linnea, he added, “One evening next week then, after the Christmas rush slows down.”
She was quite flabbergasted. He was so straightforward and confident that he hadn’t really given her a chance to decline before he bid them a last holiday wish and left. Linnea stood gaping at the swinging shade pulls on the windows.
“So what do you think of him?” her father asked.
Hands on hips, she affected a scolding pout. “And you told me you’d hired a new boy. Why, he’s no more boy than you are.
Selmer slipped on his coat, cocked one eyebrow, and grinned. “I know.” Buttoning his coat, he repeated, “I asked what you thought of him.”
Linnea threw him an arch, amused glance. “He isn’t running for Congress yet, is he?”
Selmer laughed. “No, but give him time. I’m sure he’ll get around to it.”
“My point exactly.”
They eyed each other a few seconds, then burst out laughing. But as they were leaving the store, Linnea pressed a gloved hand to her father’s lapel.
“He’s handsome and dynamic and a real up-and-comer, and though at first I was frightfully jealous of him, I can see what an asset he is to you. But I’m not looking for a boy friend, Daddy.”
He patted her hand and steered her out the door. “Nonsense, dumpling. You said it first — Adrian’s no boy.”