After All This Time Read online

Clarence takes her hand in both of his. “Thank you for sharing her time with me.”

  Mama blushes. She even smiles a little. It’s the happiest I’ve ever seen her, apart from the times when Papa sings at the church piano. I could kiss Clarence.

  I even try, in the foyer, pressing my lips to his cheek. His skin is rough with stubble near his jaw. He leans in a bit, a second too long, and then sighs, like the world is pressing in on his shoulders. “Thank you for a wonderful night,” he says. His eyes shine with longing, but his fingers tremble as they grip my hands.

  “Might we announce our courtship now?” I ask, struggling to hold myself upright with my injured leg.

  His eyes water. He shakes his head, leaving like the Devil’s upon him.

  6

  The next week goes by in silence—no invitations, no letter. The second goes by in the same manner, as does the third. At last, the silence is too much. I tell Emma about him over tea, and I tell her everything. The words come out, fast and desperate. I need someone to ache with me.

  “He’s not been bad, or unfaithful,” she says, as if able to read my mind. The announcement startles me so much, I almost believe she can. And then I realize the worry must be written on my face. She takes my hand, and gives it a mighty squeeze. “He’s hardworking. And nervous. I think the lack of Doctor Ronald is taking a toll on him. He receives a great amount of mail from Boston, as well.”

  “He has family there,” I say.

  She smiles a bit, not bouncing like before, but not completely pacified by age, either. “Maybe he misses it. Are you sure no one’s waiting for him?”

  I shake my head, but the thought chills me. “He’s never mentioned anyone.”

  She pats my hand. “Then I wouldn’t worry. He’s not indecent. He wouldn’t do something like that to you.”

  I look down, and I see the sparkle before I realize what I’m looking at. The sight of the ring on her finger makes me happy. As the visit winds down, we celebrate with tiny cups of wine that we drink slowly, still girlish in our distaste for alcohol. But even with the happiness, I can’t suppress my nerves. I still have no idea where Clarence and I stand in our own courtship.

  On the fourth week, he returns to remove my cast. The house is taciturn. I consider inviting Emma to stay with me, hold my hand in shame of having loved him when the feelings seemed to struggle to announce themselves on his part. But at the sight of me, tears come to his eyes. He holds them back while he works, and then turns around when I demand he break his silence.

  “I have to leave town,” he says at the end of our visit. “Doctor Ronald needs help.”

  “What of us?” I ask, braver than I feel. The announcement takes the breath from me, and I wonder if I’ll ever get it back again, or if I’ll spend my whole life gasping.

  He turns around, eyes shining with sadness. “I will correspond with you as best I can, but it may prove difficult.” He kisses my cheek, and his lips are wet with tears.

  Before he leaves, I blurt out, “I love you.”

  His smile shakes. “And I you,” he says, closing the door behind him.

  That night, Mama holds me while I sob. Papa makes me tea. I pray it would ease my heart breaking, but the thought of it feels too big, too impossible, to truly happen.

  7

  After a month, Clarence does write, but only a little. We send letters back and forth about our lives, and things seem to smooth out again. They feel hopeful, even though he writes of the sudden death in his family—his mother taking ill, and requiring him back in Boston in time for her to pass.

  But then, the letters stop. And every time Emma arrives, she says, “find another love. If he’s really gone, it may be that he’s going to stay that way for a long time, especially given the work he’s meant to do.” Mama and Papa both echo these sentiments, if reluctantly. They’ve fallen for Clarence, too. The house is filled with palpable disappointment.

  At the end of that year, Emma gets married. It’s a lovely affair, but filled with people I don’t know. One man, about our age, stumbles out of the crowd and helps me navigate the party. He tells me he’s a banker, and the name of his profession almost makes me cry—for a moment, I mistake him for saying he’s a Baker, and I almost jump to ask if he knows Clarence, and how the doctor is doing. I have to gasp for breath, but I don’t explain it to him. If he believes the town gossip, he doesn’t say anything.

  Instead, he invites me to a Christmas celebration. We plan to carol around town together. Just before we do, I get a card from Clarence wishing us well. I keep it in the book with my pressed flowers, and leave the treasures in my parents’ home. None of it holds a sure enough promise to linger on.

  The banker is nice enough man. Bland. He’s old enough by a few years, having already lost a wife and child in labor. But his eyes are kind, and true. He glows every time he sees me. He desperately wants to be a father. I’m not opposed, but I’m not in love.

  We court for a few months, and then he proposes. I see Emma’s hand in the engagement—wildflowers and pastel colors. She and the banker are cousins, after all. She keeps saying I deserve love, so I accept his hand, determined to feel for him as he does for me. She has to hold her enormous belly up to say this, though. She’s due any minute now.

  Mama and Papa welcome us, but not with nearly the gusto they had for Clarence. I can sense their sense of my disappointment. It’s to be an Easter wedding.

  When I tell Clarence this—about the engagement, about Emma, and about my best friend’s child—he writes the shortest letter yet. It’s congratulatory, it’s kind-hearted, and it’s exactly Clarence…except it stings. It wishes me well, tells me I’ll make the most fantastic wife to anyone whom I deem worthy, and even includes the offer of using his name to receive the ceremonial flowers for free, if we visit this certain shop.

  It makes me sick to my stomach. I wonder why he isn’t fighting for me, the way I imagined he might in my daydreams of him. The respectable part of me knows he can’t. The rest of me doesn’t want to listen. I consider not writing to him anymore, but within days, I’m penning another letter about the craziness of the celebration. I realize I can’t help sharing my life with him. He’s too much a part of it.

  The day of the wedding, Mama helps me prepare. She apologizes for the doctor’s absence, wishes it wasn’t so. “He seems to have a good heart,” she says, fixing the veil over my hair. “He seemed to care for you.”

  I take her hand, kissing her fingers. Papa cries when he hands me off, and I don’t know what for: the fact that he’s marrying off his only daughter, or that he’s not marrying me to Clarence. I smile at the banker, praying to God I can be a good wife to him. Praying I don’t let Clarence take over my whole life.

  I kiss the banker with more gusto than I feel. When we dance, I concentrate on that. I make myself present. I try.

  It’s a damn good try, I think. Maybe we can be happy together.

  8

  Six months go by without a word from Clarence. I tell him about how hard it is to become pregnant, and then wonder if I should be saying anything at all. I count backwards, trying to remember what I said the last time we spoke. Was it something about pregnancies? The wedding?

  I wonder if I’ve disheartened him in some way. I wonder if he’s tired of me, and watching me build a family that isn’t his.

  I wonder if he’s found someone new.

  The next letter he sends me comes almost a year after his congratulations, and is a heartbreaking story about how difficult the last year of his practice has been. Children have died in his arms, parents have breathed their last breaths, and his own family is urging him to return home. Everyone believes his father is ill, and he’s expected to oversee the man while his health diminishes.

  The paper crinkles, and I wonder if he’s cried over it during the writing.

  In a flurry of romantic thought, and forgetfulness of my current position, I ask if he would like me to accompany him. “I’ve not been able to become pregnant,�
� I say, as if that’s a valid excuse to abandon my husband for a childhood sweetheart. “Who knows when I will? As of now, I can still travel.”

  But he says no. He reminds me of my duties to my new husband, reminds me that the man must love me very much if we’re wed, and that my family might find it improper of me to do something so bold as travel alone with a man she isn’t related to. I can’t argue with that, though I long to tell him my love for my husband is like that of a business man for his work: I’m here because I want this position, because it benefits us both, and satisfies demands we each find ourselves pushed against in our lives.

  But I still don’t love the banker as I love Clarence. My husband is kind, but not attentive. He is reliable, but not adventurous. And I cannot tell him any of this.

  9

  By the end of the following year, Clarence’s father is dead. I send money for flowers, the little I have, and many, many letters of condolence. He doesn’t write until six months after the fact, wishing I could be there with him, and that he could hold me as he longs to. He writes that there are no other women he can bring himself to look at. When he does, he says he sees me, and wishes that were true—that I was each woman he sees, so that he would never be without me again.

  I hide these letters in my parent’s home at Christmas. I cannot bear for my husband to see them. I cannot bear him to know that I wish he was Clarence every time I looked at him.

  10

  After two years of trying, we’re pregnant by midyear of the third. I sob, thanking God, when all I want is to give up hope. Even Clarence writes me, extending his congratulations. He believes I’ll be a great mother. I hope he’s right.

  The banker thinks so, too. He’s overjoyed, but nervous. He takes great pains to keep me comfy. At first, I don’t understand why.

  “We had trouble before, too,” he says, mopping my brow at the end of the day. “My first wife and I.” The fear in his eyes burn me.

  It turns out he’s right: it’s not an easy pregnancy, and Emma is often at my side when Mama isn’t. The banker worries hard, day and night. I worry, too. We hold hands as we pray, asking each physician we visit if this is natural, if this is how it goes.

  “It should be fine,” they say. “All pregnancies have difficulties.”

  Emma won’t answer my questions. I’m not sure she has the answers, either. I pray, eat everything they throw at me, and watch my stomach grow bigger. But for all my worries about this marriage, for all my doubts about having children, I hope we’re doing enough. I want this all to work, if not for the person inside me, then for me and my husband, and all the work we’ve done to get here.

  In a fit of what feels like desperation, I write to Clarence.

  At first, I feel guilty for doing this—for telling him all the things between my husband and me, for relaying fears I won’t even admit to my husband. But it occurs to me that Clarence has become my greatest confidant. I can’t help telling him.

  “I’ll come back for you, if you think that would be best,” he writes in his reply letter. “Would that help you, having me there?”

  I don’t know how to say yes without possibly incurring the wrath of those around me who wish for me to turn to my husband in these dire times. But not a single part of me wants to say no. I don’t answer because I don’t know what to say.

  The baby arrives, though, by some miracle and God’s blessing. My husband is overjoyed at the birth. But I can see it for what it is: sickly. Frightened. It doesn’t last long.

  I cry, but the banker cries harder. Emma, Mama, and Papa surround us, shaking and desperate to give us some relief, but it does nothing to ease the pain. If anything, I think seeing Emma’s blossoming child makes it harder. We had a boy, just like she does. But we weren’t allowed to have him long.

  The grief eats away at him, and I feel us growing farther apart, separated by something both monumental, and not at all. I’ve only lost one child, a child I barely knew. The banker shows me a picture of his son when I comfort him the first night of endless sobs: a five-year-old stares back at me from the photograph. It makes me realize that I can’t begin to imagine that kind of grief.

  I whisper apologies, and offers to try again, though the thought of doing so is draining. Before we go to bed, he kisses me hard, and says, “thank you. Don’t ever doubt that I love you. I do. But I don’t think I’m capable of doing this again.” On the edge of sleep, he whispers, “Maybe I should join the clergy. Perhaps then I’ll be closer to the sons I’ve lost.”

  “I wouldn’t be unhappy if you did. If that’s the right decision for you,” I say.

  He holds my hand as we both nod, but in the morning, he never wakes up.

  Mama, Papa, and Emma help me bury him. They tell me Clarence has written again, but I can’t bring myself to think of him. The banker’s parents are distraught. I’m too overwhelmed to feel anything but sad and confused. I can’t even pack his stuff.

  11

  I spend that year in mourning, shuffling myself between Mama’s house and Emma’s. Clarence writes me on a weekly basis, extending apologies for pages, until a month is gone, and then we hear nothing. It makes me feel even worse. I help with anything, everything, from cooking to watching children. I need to keep myself busy. I can feel the anniversary of both deaths coming, and I don’t want to cry about it.

  When I finally do, it’s in Emma’s parlor. I sob hard into her chest, soaking the pair of us with my tears as she rubs my back and hums lullabies to me. I realize part of my crying is that I’ve had happiness of different kinds, at two different times, and lost both. It makes my chest hurt. It gets hard to breathe.

  I leave her house feeling as if I’ve been in tatters for a long while. At home, Mama makes tea. I tell her I can’t live in that house anymore, the one the banker and I kept. We write his parents, offer it to them. They accept it without prodding.

  12

  At home the following summer, Mama brings me warm news: the doctor has arrived in town again. She wants me to see him. So does Emma. My friend even gives me the stationary to do so.

  “He’s been good to you,” Mama says. “That’s what we’ve wanted all along for our daughter.”

  So I write, but hear nothing. For once, it doesn’t faze me. Instead, I just climb the oak tree in my parents’ yard. The wildness of it, compared to all the other things in my life, calls me. Finally, I can do something where I have true control. I hoist myself into the branches while Emma’s children shout at me, amazed and jumping with scandalous excitement. A grown-up, climbing trees. Next thing, a cow might begin talking in a language they could understand.

  I don’t get far, but I don’t mean to. Just high enough to tease the children. This time, though, it’s Mama’s shouts that send me tumbling. I’m not hurt, just a bump and a scratch, but she calls for the doctor anyway.

  It’s Clarence who appears. At the sight of me, rolled in blankets in the sitting room, with my lumpy leg propped up on cushions, he starts laughing. I look just the way I did when he left me. He’s gotten lines around his eyes, tanned skin, but it’s the same man who went off. The same man who still takes my breath away. I even gasp at the sight of him.

  “It’s good to see you,” he says, taking a seat beside me.

  I’m too stunned to say a word. He examines my head, the callouses on my hands, and then looks me in the eyes. “I owe you an apology.”

  “For what?” I can barely ask.

  His lips tremble. “For not being here when you most needed me. I got called away from you time, and time again. Each time, you’ve been kind enough to write, to let me know that you’re still here, still caring about me.”

  “You did the same—”

  He bites his lip. He shakes his head. “I knew you would’ve come to me if you could’ve. I knew the demands of your life prevented you from doing so. But the demands of mine did not, and yet, I resisted. I promised myself I would take the buggy back, that I would see you, that I would come when you needed me. Your
letters and sadness called to my heart, but I let my fear keep me back.”

  I sit up, taking his hand tighter in mine. My heart goes a mile a minute. “Fear of what?” I ask, barely louder than before.

  He purses his lips, and it’s the most heartbreaking look I’ve ever seen. “Fear that I’ve lost you. That I would come back, only to find you happily married and solely in need of a companion with whom you can converse. That I would come here, only to realize you—” He purses his lips again, turning away.

  I grab his hand before he can leave again. He catches my eye, and the shame I find in his face brings only more questions to my mind. “What?” I whisper.

  His hand trembles in mine as he says, “That I would come here, only to realize you don’t love me anymore.”

  It takes a great deal of effort to me not to laugh. The idea is so preposterous that I’m struck dumb for a moment, until the growing fear in his eyes, and the ceaseless tremble of his fingers, reminds me that he can’t see what’s inside my head. “I don’t ever want you to think that,” I say, as fiercely as I can manage. A tear slides down his cheek, but whether it’s out of relief, or an outpouring of his broken-hearted emotions, I can’t tell. “For all the love I bore my husband, for all I tried to be a good wife to him, that love pales in comparison to what I feel for you. If anything, my love for you has only grown throughout our correspondence.”

  His lips shake with an uneasy smile. Then, he gets down on one knee. “I’ve been meaning to ask for years. Maybe now I’ll have the chance to. Helen, after all this time, and all you’ve been through, you may think me a fool to ask. I may be a fool to try. But I have to know—will you marry me?”

  I can’t say yes right away. I’m too busy kissing him. Talking doesn’t seem important right now. And besides, who cares what people could say if they see us so intimately tangled like this?

  I never did.