Page 18

While the farmers were curious about Henry’s machinery, their wives were just as curious about Emily. Some eyed her warily as she went about her chores in town. Others were more welcoming.

“How you folks goin’ up there?” Mrs.Miller asked as Emily paid for a yard of fabric to make curtains. “Finding your feet?”

Laurie Miller, the town’s schoolmistress and wife of the general store’s owner, Hank, was well-known in Liberal and well-liked. With her children raised and years of farming experience behind her, she was also well-respected. Emily was eager to make a good impression.

“We are starting to find our feet, thank you. There’s a lot to learn, but we’re a good team.”

“Well, that’s more important than anything else. A decent bit of rain and some good summer sun and you’ll be well on your way.” Mrs.Miller wrapped the fabric and added a measure of ribbon trim, for good luck. “Say, why don’t you join us ladies Thursday night, for our supper and singing club.”

“That’s very kind, but I’m not much of a singer.”

“None of us are, dear, but it gets us away from the men and their damned baseball.” Mrs.Miller thought for a moment. “Do you play the piano?”

“No, but I do play the fiddle.”

“Even better! We’ll see you both at seven.”

“Both? Me and Henry?”

“Lord no! We don’t want men passing their opinions when they’re not wanted. It’s the one time of the week we get rid of them! Just you and your fiddle. Nobody else.”

Emily thanked her again. “We’ll see you at seven.”

She was grateful for the invitation. The Millers were held in high regard in the town.

To have Mrs.Miller’s support and friendship was worth ten times that of folk like Ike West casting aspersions and suspicions, and his spinster nieces who looked down their noses at everyone.

Emily knew the assumptions they’d made about her—a pretty young thing blown in from the city, hands like porcelain that had never seen a hard day’s work, come to play farm with her husband.

Henry had told her about the suitcase farmers, trying to hit a crop, and how the real farmers hated the way they breezed in from the city, rented a tractor and a plot of ground, plowed it up, and planted winter wheat before heading back to their comfortable city lives, returning only at harvest time to reap their rewards.

Emily was desperate to show those awful West sisters and others in the community that she and Henry were serious.

She wanted to be accepted here. She wanted, more than anything, to belong.

—

That Thursday evening, while the men debated Babe Ruth’s latest performance in the World Series and the merits, or otherwise, of internal combustion machinery, the wives gathered for their weekly supper and singing club, where everyone shared food and complained about their men, and singing was very much an afterthought.

The women were a friendly group, but while Emily appreciated the invitation, she felt like an outsider, conscious that she didn’t have much to contribute when it came to trusted family recipes or knowledge passed down from generations of prairie folk. Nor when it came to complaining about Henry.

“Newlyweds never complain,” Laurie said. “Give it time, honey! You’ll soon be fending him off when he comes at you looking for an early-morning ride!”

The other women howled with laughter.

“Not much to be done about it when they’re full of corn whiskey, mind,” May Lucas added. “Fallin’ on you like a lead weight, huffin’ and puffin’. It’s the only time I’m glad to hear him snoring. Means it’s all over.”

The women laughed again.

Emily felt the flush of color in her cheeks. This wasn’t the conversation she’d expected.

“Don’t mind us, Emily,” Laurie said as she placed a reassuring hand on Emily’s arm. “We’re only having a bit of fun. Lord knows, if we didn’t laugh, we’d cry. You enjoy your Henry while you can. He’s a fine thing. He’ll have you in the family way soon enough, no doubt.”

“Oh, we’re not in any rush.”

“Nobody ever is, dear.”

Emily politely nodded and smiled as the others shared stories of the latest clever or silly thing their children had done, but she found the conversation a little tiring.

What she really wanted to talk about was her vegetable garden, the best time to sow and harvest beets and onions and cabbages, how to pluck a chicken, how to cook a rabbit.

She had so many questions, but she would have to bide her time, gain their trust.

Glad of a break in the conversation while pies were sliced and iced tea was poured, Emily drifted toward a younger woman around her age.

Ingrid Anderssen and her husband Eric were Dutch immigrants who’d settled on their claim a year ago: “lungers” who’d traveled west in search of clean air for their young son, Pieter.

“Pieter was born with a hole in his heart,” Ingrid explained. “He struggled beneath the choking fumes in Manhattan. The doctor advised us to leave, for his health.”

Emily watched the child as he chased after Mrs.Miller’s dog. “It seems to have worked. I’m exhausted just watching him!”

Ingrid called Pieter over and introduced him to Emily. He clung to his mother’s skirts, as if he could sense Emily’s awkwardness. She never knew what to say to children, and they never seemed to warm to her in return.

“You’re a long way from Ireland,” Ingrid remarked as Pieter clambered onto her lap. “Do you miss it?”

“I was very small when we left. I feel it more than I remember it, if that makes sense. My parents always encouraged us to speak the language and learn the stories and songs. I miss those moments and memories. Before she died, my mother asked me to promise to keep Ireland alive in my heart.”

“Your mother was wise,” Ingrid said. “We must never forget our first home. Even when we leave to go in search of another, we must never forget the places that have shaped us.” She helped Pieter eat his slice of pie.

“I hope Pieter will learn about our home in the Netherlands. That he will learn our stories and sing our songs.”

Emily detected a trace of sadness in Ingrid’s eyes. She recognized that faraway look: the shared experience of every immigrant, half of their heart in the place they now called home, half in the place they had left behind.

“I’m sure he will,” Emily said. “And he’ll be very proud of his heritage.”

As the evening progressed, Emily began to feel more at ease among the women, relaxing into their friendship and conversation.

She’d forgotten how much she missed female company—the shopgirls at Field’s department store, and Annie and Nell.

She was surprised at how open the farm women were around her, that her addition to their group didn’t seem to inhibit their conversation at all.

They gossiped and reminisced as if Emily had always shared their confidences.

“You heard Mary Myers finally got found out,” May said as the jug of iced tea was passed around.

“Turns out her sister cracked and told her own husband about Mary’s secret lover.

And what did her husband do? Only spilled it to Myers’s face when they got into an argument at Walker’s pig sale.

Myers nearly killed the man when he found him.

Never tell a man anything, I say. No good ever comes of a secret shared.

I barely even told my Zeb I was expectin’ until I was pushin’ those babies out. ”

The others laughed, but May’s words settled on Emily like a cautionary tale.

As the evening drew to a close, Laurie encouraged Emily to give them a burst of something on the fiddle. “We’d like to hear you play, wouldn’t we, ladies?”

The instrument was a familiar companion, nestled against Emily’s shoulder.

It still carried the scent of her father: turf smoke and tobacco, the oil he rubbed into the wood to keep it supple, the pine scent of the tablet of glassy orange rosin he used to treat the strings and bow.

She recalled his gentle encouragement when she’d first learned how to play.

“Don’t drag the bow across the strings. Dance it across.

It should be a caress, Emmie. Like a feather brushing against your skin. ”

She played an old favorite of her father’s, a jig that soon had everyone tapping their feet.

She was a little shy to play for the women, but she closed her eyes and let memory and instinct take over, the rhythm and notes of her past easily returning to her, and with it, her mother and father returned too, and Annie and Nell, and a wide-eyed little girl called Emily Kelly who’d sat at her father’s knee, spellbound as the bow had danced across the strings while her mother sang.

“Who taught you to play?” Laurie asked, as Emily finished to a warm round of applause and encouragement to play another.

“My father. We moved around a lot when we first arrived in America. It was always the first thing he unpacked when we reached somewhere new. Said it was his last piece of Ireland. That wherever he was, he felt at home with the fiddle in his hands.”

“Will you play another tune?” Ingrid asked as Laurie poured everyone a last glass of corn whiskey, for the road. “Pieter seems to be enjoying it.”

Emily picked up the fiddle and placed it to her chin.

Almost as if the bow chose the melody for her, she found herself playing a lament, a mournful tune her mam used to sing whenever she was missing Ireland.

“They say there’s bread and work for all and the sun shines always there / But I’ll not forget old Ireland, were it twenty times as fair,” and as the melody filled the air, she knew that she could never betray Annie.

Whatever secrets she carried she would keep to herself.

There was no need to tell Henry anything.

“Best left alone,” May had said. “All marriages have their secrets. It’s when folk start poking and prying at them that the trouble begins. ”

—

The evening was still warm when Emily and Henry returned home, the sun low in the sky as they sat together on the porch swing seat.

Emily stretched her legs over Henry’s as he rubbed the aches from her feet.

They were happy, busy, enchanted with each other and the life they were creating.

She couldn’t understand why the other wives grumbled about their marital duties.

She loved being with Henry that way. Besides, marriage wasn’t just about physical intimacy.

Henry’s unexpected little habits touched her heart: the wildflower he left on the windowsill for her every day, the wooden press he’d made so that she could keep the flowers to cheer her in the winter months.

Marriage was a waltz, a rise and fall, and they were enjoying the harmony of the song they were dancing to.

Later, when Henry had turned in for the night, Emily picked up the journal Annie had given to her as a parting gift.

She’d written in it most days. Sometimes a few quick lines.

Sometimes whole pages poured out of her.

The journal was quickly becoming part memoir and part confessional, a place to acknowledge her triumphs and joys, her failings and disappointments and fears.

But there were some things she kept even from the pages of her journal, afraid to add permanency to them with ink and paper.

She turned to the front page and read the inscription Annie had written inside.

To my dear Emily,

Mammy used to say there is no place like your own home. I hope you will always be happy in yours.

She wondered how Annie was adjusting to life as a new mother, and how little Dorothy was doing. She wondered how Nell was managing with another child to add to her brood. Emily was aunt to six nieces and nephews now, but there was something special about Dorothy.

She wondered how long it would be until she saw her again, and if the child would remember her, or feel the connection she’d sensed as they’d looked at each other in the quiet morning light before Emily crept away.

Most of all, she wondered if Dorothy would carry the wonder of the circus in her heart. Would she feel drawn to the magic and mystery that had once enchanted her mother and led her to the man who had forever stolen her heart?