A Husband for Margaret (11 page)

“
Doug, how do I get this
tray in?” she asked.

She struggled to make the thing fit,
even as Ben squirmed out of his seat. She grunted and set him back
down just in time for Doug to reach her and latch the tray into
place. She took a deep breath to settle her nerves. Alright. She’d
get Charles out of the bath and dressed. Then she’d tackle the
sugar.

“
Uh...Ma?” Bob placed
Charles’ new clothes on the kitchen table.

“
What?” She spun around in
time to see Bob pointing to Charles who was dumping cupfuls of
water out of the tub. “Charles! Stop!”

She avoided the sugar-coated floor and
hastened to the happy boy.

“
Here’s the towel, Ma.” Doug
shoved it in her face as she took the cup from Charles.

She stared at the towel and tried to
decide what to do first. Did she take care of Charles or the large
puddle on the floor? Everything was happening so fast. If
everything would just stop for one moment, she could figure out how
to best do what and in what order.

“
Get more towels for Ma,”
Doug told Bob.

Bob bounded out of the room, and before
she could warn him to avoid the sugar, he jumped over the spot. She
breathed a sigh of relief. At least one thing was going right! The
last thing she needed was to track sugar through the house. She
took the towel and mopped up the floor as best as she could. Then
when Bob returned, once again jumping over the sugar, she got
Charles out of the tub and dried him off.

Someone knocked on the front door and
she groaned. Of all times, why did someone have to stop by
now?

“
I’ll get it, Ma!” Doug
bounded out of the kitchen.

She wiped the sweat from her face with
the towel and threw it down so she could put a clean diaper on
Charles. Granted, the kitchen table probably wasn’t the best place
to do this, but the floor was still damp.

Bob shook his head. “You pinned it in
wrong. It should go the other way.”

Sighing, she removed the safety pin and
turned it over so she could insert it through the cloth. Sure
enough, the hold was more secure. She picked up the other safety
pin and got ready to put it into the other piece of the cloth at
Charles’ hip when a man and woman entered the kitchen.

“
They said they have some
pots you will want to buy,” Doug said, following them.

“
What?” Margaret pricked her
finger, rubbed it against her thumb, and tried to get the pin
through the fabric again. She glanced at the couple. “May I help
you?”

The woman raised her eyebrows. “Is that
child still in diapers?”

Margaret immediately felt like shoving
the couple out of the house. Really, wasn’t she having enough to
deal with without putting up with the woman’s shocked tone? She
finished fastening the pin and gave the woman a look she was sure
expressed her annoyance at the question. “Did you come here to ask
what I do with my children?”

“
No,” Doug piped up. “They
want to sell you pots.”

The man smiled. “We apologize, ma’am.
The boy is right. We represent the Anderson Kitchen Supply Company,
and we thought you might be interested in new cookware.”

Charles sat up, so she quickly grabbed
a shirt and put his arms through the sleeves.

“
I have enough pots,” she
replied, wishing they would leave.

“
We offer more than that,”
the man continued. “We also sell baking pans and
kettles.”

The woman nodded. “We also offer pot
hooks. I notice you don’t have any in this kitchen. If you had some
hooks, it would clear up some of that shelf space. I have a couple
I use in my own kitchen, and I don’t know what I’d do without
them.”

“
It does save up a lot of
room,” the man agreed.

Margaret buttoned the boy’s shirt, glad
that her focus was on the task at hand because, otherwise, she
might not be able to hold her temper in check. She hated
salespeople. If she wanted to buy kitchenware, she’d go to the
mercantile.

Doug and Bob stared at the couple while
Ben made raspberry noises.

“
I am fine with what I
have,” she finally said, realizing she had to say something. She
stood Charles on his feet and got the pants ready for him to put
on. He held onto her shoulders as she instructed him to place his
foot into the pants. “I don’t need the extra room.”

“
May I check your cookware?”
the woman asked, already stepping to the side of the table and
toward the shelves.

“
No!” Margaret took Charles
into her arms, even as his pants dangled on him, so she could dart
in front of the irritating woman. “I’m sorry, but in case you
haven’t noticed, I’m busy. I have a houseful of children to take
care of, and the last thing I need is for you to go through here
and tell me what’s wrong with my pots and pans.”

The woman’s eyes grew wide and she let
out a light gasp. “I certainly didn’t imply to overstep my bounds.
I thought as a woman who does a lot of cooking, I might offer some
advice on a better set of cookware.”

Charles kicked his legs until the pants
flew off of him and onto the sugar that was still on a part of the
floor.

“
Oh my,” the woman said,
just noticing the mess. “You certainly do have your hands full. Are
you sure you can handle all of this? I do know a nanny who might be
a big help.”

That’s it.
Margaret couldn’t take it anymore. “I would be
able to do this if I didn’t have unwanted company trying to sell me
something I don’t need or want.”

The woman blanched. “There’s no need to
be rude.”

“
Rude? You come in here and
insult the way I take care of my children while you try to make a
sale, and you call me rude?”

The woman stared at her as if she
couldn’t believe her ears.

The man cleared his throat. “We’ll
leave you to your work, ma’am.” He took something out of his
briefcase. “You might like to check our catalogue. At your
convenience of course.” He set it on the kitchen table. “Come
along, Mildred. We’ll try the house next door.”

Mildred gave one last look around the
room and muttered, “My children were out of diapers when they were
two,” before she left the house with the man.

“
I’ll get one of Ben’s
pants, Ma. Charles can still fit ‘em.” Bob ran off down the
hall.

“
I can wash up the pants,”
Doug said. “I helped Pa with this. I know what to do.”

Overwhelmed, she glanced around the
kitchen. Never in her entire life had she ever felt that everything
was out of control.

Bob returned with the pants. “I’ll
watch him, Ma. Go ahead and clean up the sugar.”

She stared at Bob as he told his
younger brother to hold onto him so he could help him into the
small pants. Then she turned her gaze to Doug who started scrubbing
the pants along the washboard. Ben banged on his highchair but
laughed when Charles fell down while Bob tried to get the pants
around his waist. Finally, she went to the drawer and pulled out a
clean cloth. As she pumped the water to wet it down, her tears
started to fall.

***

When Joseph came home, he noticed that
everything seemed to be in order. Doug and Bob were quietly playing
on the porch with some jacks. The house was quiet.

“
Is everything alright?” he
asked his sons.

“
Sure, Pa,” Bob said. “We
helped Ma, just like you said.”

For some reason, something seemed to be
off. “Where is she?”

Doug shrugged. “She said she needed a
moment alone. We promised to play nicely out here, so she let us
out.”

“
Where are Charles and Ben?”
he asked.

“
Sleeping. They just settled
down.”

“
You boys be good out
here.”

“
Of course, we will, Pa.
Ma’s gone through enough.”

That’s what he was afraid of. Joseph
entered the house and hung his hat on the hook by the door. He
shouldn’t have gone to work until Margaret had time to adjust to
being a mother. At the time he agreed to start right away, his sole
thought was getting a steady paycheck as soon as
possible.

“
Margaret?” he called out as
he walked through the house. Everything was in order. The parlor
and kitchen were clean. He glanced in the children’s room and saw
that Charles and Ben were fast asleep. He wasn’t surprised since
they had a busy day with the wedding and stayed up later than usual
last night. He turned his attention to his bedroom.
“Margaret?”

She quickly turned over on the bed so
he couldn’t see her face.

He wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard
a sniffle. Sighing, he went over to the bed and walked to her side,
but she turned the other way, blocking his view of her face. He sat
down behind her and touched her shoulder. “Margaret, what is
it?”

She shook her head and buried her face
into her pillow.

“
Margaret?” he softly
asked.

“
I’m a failure,” came a
muffled sob.

“
No, you’re not.”

“
You weren’t
here.”

She started rambling, but he couldn’t
make out what she was saying into her pillow so he gently rolled
her over. “What happened?”

She brought a well-used handkerchief to
her eyes and dabbed them. “Who is Debra Potter?”

The question surprised him. “Did she
come over here?”

“
She found me and the boys
at the park and gave me a hard time. Why does she want to marry you
so badly?”

He groaned. “I hoped she would leave
town since we married.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. When it
came to Debra, it seemed that a headache was inevitable. “I don’t
know why she wants to marry me. Hannah never liked her. We all grew
up together, but Hannah made it a point to avoid her. I didn’t even
know she was interested in me until I started courting
Hannah.”

“
Did you ever tell her that
you don’t want her?”

“
Well, I proposed to Hannah
instead of her, and I married you yesterday. I don’t know how much
more obvious I can be in how I feel about her.”

Though he dreaded it, it looked like he
was going to have to find her and tell her to go back to Ohio. Just
the thought of seeing her made him queasy. What did he ever do to
deserve being followed by a woman who couldn’t take no for an
answer?

He rubbed Margaret’s arms. “I’ll see
what I can do about getting rid of her. Did she mention where she’s
staying?”

“
No. And I don’t
care.”

He offered her a sympathetic smile.
“Did anything else go wrong today?”

She shrugged and sniffled again. “There
were a couple of other women who came by the park, and—” Her lower
lip quivered as tears filled her eyes. “I’m not a good
mother.”

He dug into his breast pocket and
pulled out a clean handkerchief to give her. “Why do you say
that?”

“
Well...” She took the
handkerchief and wept into it. “So much happened so fast. I thought
I had control over everything. But then Charles had an accident,
Ben got into the canister of sugar, and Bob and Doug tried to help
but things just got worse. Then people came by to sell cookware,
and the woman suggested I needed a nanny. I can’t do anything
right.”

“
Everyone’s settled down
now,” he softly said, lightly brushing some stray strands of hair
from her face. “You succeeded, sweetheart.”

“
Oh sure. Just in time for
you to come home.”

He laughed. “Hannah used to say the
boys had a way of knowing when I was going to be here because
things fell into place right before I walked through the front
door.”

“
She’s right. They do know,
and what’s scary is that I didn’t even have to tell
them.”

Sighing in sympathy, he helped her sit
up. He gathered her into his arms and let her lean against him.
“I’ve been there. I know what it’s like. You did better than I did
the first time I had to be alone with them.”

She glanced up at him.
“Really?”

“
Yes. You have the house
looking nice and everyone is clean. When it was me and the boys, I
didn’t get around to feeding them supper until nine at night. I
spent so many hours running after them. I don’t know how you women
do it.”

She wiped her nose with the
handkerchief. “You’re not just saying this to make me feel
better?”

“
No, I’m not. It’s not easy
to take care of four children. The kids are happy and the house is
in order. You did well today.”

She relaxed and smiled. “They are good
boys. Even with the way everything was around here, they were
trying to help me, especially Doug and Bob.”

“
Well, they want to make
their ma happy.” He kissed her cheek and stroked her back. “It’ll
get better as you get used to it.”

“
You think so?”

“
It did for me. And I had no
idea what I was doing.” He cupped her face in his hands. “You did
great, Margaret. Try not to be so hard on yourself,
alright?”