He ran a scale. His eyes smiled at her, but he still didn’t say anything to her. She told him it sounded nice, and he played a tune that might have accompanied a round. Silence filled the room when he stopped.
I couldn’t stand that silence. It was like a bell that clanged ‘poor mothering,’ ringing to the village. “Is Martin here?” He shook his head again. “Can you talk with me?”
He took the mouthpiece out of his mouth, ran his hand through his blunt-cut hair. He was getting too old to have such a boy’s cut. “If you want to have me cut your hair sometime, I will,” I said. “Into a man’s cut. You’re a young man now. Both you and Christian.”
He lowered his head. “Martin cuts it. He said his mother used to cut his, so he does it pretty much the same way for us. Sometimes Martha Miller comes by, and she cuts it too. It’s all right.”
“Martha? Oh, well, that’s nice. But I can cut hair for all three of you. Would you like me to do yours now? I’ll go home and get my scissors.”
“Nope,” he said. He used the word the way Lorenz Ehlen did, popping the p. “But you can come back tonight. Martin will be here then, and so will Christian. I really need to practice now.”
“I’d like to sit and listen if that’s all right. Ida won’t be a bother. And look, Po is already asleep at your feet.”
“It makes me nervous for people to listen,” he said. He bent to pat the dog’s head.
“But when you perform, you let people watch you,” I said. “You’re quite talented, I can tell.”
“Goethe says that our talents are ‘formed in stillness; a character in the world’s torrent.’”
I brushed the hair from his eyes. He didn’t flinch away.
“I’ve had plenty of torrent,” he said. “Besides, I like my time alone. As you do, Mama.”
“Of course,” I told him. “We’ll give you what you’re used to, then.” I picked up offense, where perhaps none was intended, but I couldn’t stop it. I still had so much to learn. I took Ida’s hand, whistled to the dog, and left, carrying offense with me.
I wasn’t sure what had annoyed me so. Maybe the mention of Martha’s cutting his hair, but I didn’t know why it should. Maybe there’d always be this space between my son and me in the musical score of our lives. Maybe harmonious chords would never follow, no matter how I set myself to make it happen.
A Swept Porch
While I was outside checking on my chickens, Andy came out through the back door, breathing hard. “You need to come,” he said. “It’s Opa. Something’s wrong with him. Martin’s out helping someone else.” He caught his breath, and I grabbed my shawl. “I’ll let Kate know to stay and look after her sister.”
Andy and I fast-walked down the main street, passed by the hotel, and nearly ran down the grassy slope to the mill site where my parents lived. In the distance the sulfur steam rose off the hot springs on the property, giving the site an eerie look in the afternoon dusk. Andy said Jonathan had come for Martin, then ridden on, while Andy headed to my house. “He said to get you. He’d try to find Dr. Keil if he couldn’t locate Martin.”
“They’re still at the fair, building,” I said. “Have you seen your Opa yet?”
He shook his head that he hadn’t. “But Jonathan says he wanders in the room. He doesn’t talk. His eyes look like he sees far in the distance but can’t focus when you say his name.”
“Not at all like Opa, is it?” I said. He’s too young to be dying.
“Will he drink tea?” I asked my mother when we came through the door. I didn’t need but a cursory look at my father to know that something was very wrong. Jonathan had given a good description, though he’d left out that haunted look of confusion that framed my father’s face. His skin felt strange to the touch too, clammy but not feverish.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know.” She clasped her hands together. My mother had midwifed and helped mend any number of people and was always a calm presence. But things changed when the person needing mending was someone you loved.
I gave directions to my sisters to heat water for tea. To Andy I said, “See if there are sunflower seeds anywhere around. Grind them up and we’ll try to get him to take them.”
My father looked disgusted when I asked him questions and brushed his hands at me as though I intruded. William, my youngest brother, stood off to the side, chewing on his cuticle. “Go out to the hot spring,” I directed. “Bring in a bucket of the sulfur water.” He dashed out without questioning me, grateful, apparently, to have something to do.
“What’ll you do with that water?” Andy asked. “It smells terrible.”
“It will help purify the blood,” I said. “That’s what he needs. Mama, do you have potatoes here, raw?” She nodded, so I set her and Johanna to peeling several. William returned, and I told him to bring in the apple press. “Leave a good half inch of potato on the peels,” I said. “Get a carrot; do you have raw carrots?” With the peels in a pile, I told them to squeeze them in the apple press and then pour boiling water over them. “As soon as it’s cooled enough, we’ll try to get him to drink it.”
Raw potatoes could kill a goat, but their juice, I knew, could help clear the mind of a bewildered person. My mother had told me that once, long ago. She’d just forgotten it in her distress.
“You’d think I’d remember that,” she said as she watched.
“Our minds don’t always think too clearly when there’s a catastrophe looming. Not that this is,” I added quickly, to her widening eyes.
Andy coaxed my father into drinking both the sulfur water and then the potato juice. He resisted the sunflower seeds, but when Andy ground them with the pestle and put the paste onto his grandfather’s lip, he licked it.
“What’ll I do now?” my mother asked, as she patted his hand. My father had sat down at last. He looked from left to right, a wild animal fear in his eyes.
“Do what you’re doing, Mama,” I said. “Talk softly. About everyday things.”
“He picked up an armful of wood to bring in for the fire. We don’t even need a fire yet at night, though he’s always so cold. The fire nearly sweats us out of here in an evening, even when a cooling breeze shows up. I couldn’t talk him out of it. So he went out. William said he’d do it, but you know your father. He had to do it himself. You must get that independent streak from him, Emma,” my mother said.
I opened my mouth to speak but thought better of it.
“And then he dropped them on the floor, just let the kindling roll out there. I said to him, ‘Mr. Wagner, what are you doing?’ and he looked at me like I was some sort of idiot. That’s when I saw his face. But he wouldn’t settle down, he kept moving about, stumbling over the kindling until we got it picked up.”
Martin arrived with Jonathan then. The trained physician knelt in front of my father, and I saw in him the kind man who had once sent me healing herbs to help my ailing son, the compassionate man who had brought my sons to me before he took them as his own to raise. No, before he accepted them as his own to raise.
“The side of his face,” Martin said. “Did you notice?” I had. Andy nodded. “I think he’s had a kind of stroke,” he said, as much to Andy as to me. “The left side seems affected.”
“He drank some of the sulfur water, in the tea. And the potato and carrot juice,” I said. Martin nodded agreement. “Andy got him to take the sunflower-seed paste.”
“That was good, the potato juice. It will help the body take in the sulfur. And the mineral water’s a good idea too. What made you think of that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I smelled it as we made our way here, and I was saying, ‘Help him help him help him,’ and then I thought maybe the water would be a healing thing.”
“You’ll have to cut back on that rich food you feed him, Mrs. Wagner. And maybe we’ll hide his pipe too, so you can all get a good breath in,” Martin said. He told Jonathan to be in charge of hiding the pipe. “You might hide your own as well,” Martin
said. “You could be next, making your heart work that hard.”
“Why doesn’t he talk?” Louisa said. “It looks like he wants to. He moves his mouth like a fish.”
No words came out.
“We’ll hope his speech comes back. I see it happening at times. But he may not get the use of his arm back,” Martin said. “I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see. In a few days, we might try lifting that arm. We’ll need to keep it moving, so it doesn’t atrophy…shrink from lack of use,” he explained to Louisa’s frown.
He listened to my father’s heart, and then he told Andy that he’d mix up some powders and have him bring it back for my father. “I don’t think he’s in pain, so no laudanum. That’s really all we can do for now,” he said. “Except if you can get him to drink a little of the sulfur water every day, that might be good. Might help a few others around here too. It never occurred to me. Quite inventive, Emma. But then you always did see things in unique ways, though some of us failed to appreciate it.”
I stayed with my parents that evening and waited for Andy to return with the powders. Johanna left us long enough to tell my girls where I was and that I’d spend the night. Before she left she said she’d stay the night with them. I thanked her for letting me be here to tend this tail of my family. Christian, we learned, was staying at the Ehlens’.
The room felt warm with so many people in it, and I wondered why my father had even thought he should build a fire. Perhaps he’d been growing ill for a time, and tonight’s load of wood had been the kindling that had set his heart aflame.
I tucked my mother into their bed, assured her I’d stay awake to be with my father should he need anything in the night. He’d fallen asleep in his chair. The breaths of my brothers and sisters eased into the room as they drifted off to sleep. They slept peacefully, and I thought that it was something I could do, give rest to them by simply being there to sit beside the hearth.
Andy came back with the powders Martin sent, and he asked me if I thought my father would die.
“Some day,” I said. “But I’m not sure about now. He’s breathing easier; I can feel his pulse, and it’s steady though weak.”
Andy accepted what I said and then sat with his knees open, his hands clasped between them. He didn’t look up at me when he spoke. “I’m glad you were home. I guess I should have gone to find Dr. Keil, but I thought you would want to know about Opa.” I assured him that he’d done the right thing, especially since Jonathan was finding Martin and Keil was off in Salem.
“The sulfur,” he said. “What does it do?”
“I’m not sure. But that water is full of minerals. People soak in such hot waters back East. Even the Indians do, I’m told, so it has to be healing.”
“That was good, though, thinking of that.”
“Thank you,” I said. “One day you’ll be in school and learning about all kinds of new treatments for people. But you’ll bring things from your experiences too, and those can be just as helpful.”
“I do want to go to medical school, Mama,” he said.
“I know that. And you will. We’ll all make sure that can happen. You found the sunflower seeds and got him to eat them. So thank you for that.”
“We both did good, then,” he said.
I decided not to correct his grammar. I put my arm around him instead and breathed gratitude when he leaned into my chest.
In the days that followed, I let my mother know what I was planning. I knew they wouldn’t move in with me, but they’d need help now, and I could give it. Our father wasn’t going to be able to operate the mill, that was clear.
“Papa could sell the mill property,” Jonathan told me. “It would be enough for him to buy land somewhere else, with a house on it. Maybe down by the Willamette. He likes that place, though he’s never gotten the owner to agree to sell.”
“I looked at property across the Pudding River in Clackamas County,” I told him. “When Andy and I were out homestead hunting those years. They might sell. It has a larger house on it now. We could plant the fields. Everyone could work at that together.”
“You’d leave your house? Your two-door house?”
“I would. For them. I’d still work for the colony, but Papa’s going to need a different way to do things. Will you help me do this? Handle the land sale for him and make the purchase?”
“Ja. It’s a good idea, Emma.”
“If there’s not enough with the sale of Papa’s land, I have a string of pearls. Mama gave them to me. If we need them…”
“Let’s wait and see.”
It had happened quickly, as life does. John Giesy bought my father’s property. My brother David Jr. returned from Oregon City to help my parents move. He wore a long beard, grown since I’d last seen him months before. I worried some that making such a huge change might delay my father’s recovery, but I could tell almost at once that he liked the landscape.
“It’s not the river place Jonathan said you liked, Papa, but maybe later we can sell this one and go there. For now, the boys will keep busy planting fields, and Mama will have a good garden, and before long, I’ll bring the girls and we’ll move in with you. I’ll be home each night to see that you’re all well. When school starts, the girls will come with me to Aurora each day, so it’ll work out. It will.”
His vacant eyes brightened, I thought, but I couldn’t be sure.
Helena said that Christine did a fine job cooking for the workers at the fair, but she was constantly fending off young men. “That’s not anything you’d have to worry over, Emma,” Helena added. She chuckled and gave a snort to her laughter.
“Ja, we senior women know when we’ve passed our prime.”
Helena nodded and patted my arm, still too engaged with her joke to speak.
We were at my house. Baskets filled with fabric and the many things I planned to move sat like stepping stones around the walls.
“You were serious when you said you’d restore things at home. But what about us?” Christine said. “Will the colony let us continue to live here? This was your house, Emma. Everyone knew that.”
“I’ll talk with Jonathan,” I told her. Then in deference to Louisa’s being with us, I added, “He can confer with Brother Keil. I thought I’d covered all the pies, but I guess not.”
“But if we can’t stay here, where will we meet for our house church?” Kitty asked.
“We can go back to our house,” Louisa said. “Though there’s been something pleasant about getting out and about. Well, I’m getting older. Maybe staying at home would be just as easy.”
“You can come to my house,” Martha Miller said. “Mine and Martin’s.” She cleared her throat. “We’re getting married in September.”
When Christine and I were alone again, churning butter at the new hotel, I told her how the house had felt so empty with everyone gone at the fair. The girls found friends to be with, and I’d been the only one rattling around in the house until Andy’s fateful knock on the door telling me of our father’s illness.
“I thought maybe you’d use the time to paint while we were gone, not move away.”
“I walked the path. And visited my sons. And took the girls on a picnic. They were troubled I hadn’t gone along to help cook so they could go too.”
“The burdens of life fall unfairly,” Christine said, and she laughed.
I told her I’d sat out under the stars with the girls; we’d checked the hams hanging in the smokehouse. I’d showed them how to make a special knot on the sampler I’d drawn for them, and Kate made progress on hers, stitching in bright colors, “Not a house, but shelter.” “I’ll sign it ‘Catie Giesy,’” she said, a twinkle in her eyes. “That’s what Lorenz Ehlen calls me.”
I’d gone through my fabrics, hoping Christine would choose what she’d like for a quilt.
“Maybe a Friendship quilt,” she said. “But I don’t need one for a dowry to attract a future husband.”
“Apparently Martha didn’t either
.”
“Kitty might. She so wants to get married.”
“It may not happen for her. Sometimes it doesn’t, and it’s better than making a bad marriage, just to say you could,” I said.
“Are you…saddened by Martin’s marriage?”
“Why would I be sad? I’m still married,” I said.
“I know. But I guess I always thought that you and Martin, well, he’s been such a part of the boys’ lives.”
“And continues to be. It might actually be better for them, having a woman around all the time. Even if it isn’t me.”
“We share that in a way, don’t we? Giving up our children for their benefit.”
“I still need to have a conversation with Martin about it.” He was caught up in this web too, as I was. But we had our own parts in the stretching of it.
“I’ve decided to return to the Keils’ to live,” Christine said. “It’ll be easier staying there than coming in from so far out in Clackamas where you’ll be. I don’t like riding horses much, and you’ll need to from there. But Kitty told me she’ll move in with you all, if that’s agreeable.”
“Of course. Jonathan said he could convince Keil to let you both stay at the house, though.”
“It wouldn’t be the same without you. That house was what we needed for a time. But now we don’t. Someone else can move into it and be happy there. The way we were.”
“I guess that’s the way I felt about it too. I’ll miss it…but it was just a house.” I can’t believe I said that. “So tell me about Kitty, when you were building at the fair. Did she have a good time?”
Christine told me that our sister was witty and warm as she spoke to fairgoers. Despite not being invited to dance when the band practiced at night, she smiled, tapped time to the music, and chatted with young children who’d been brought along to listen.
“At least she has her choir to keep her occupied,” I said. “And she’s good with little ones, so it’s nice that they had someone to talk with while their parents danced.”