An Amish Gift (17 page)

The two set off early the next morning, Shep in the truck, Tim on his bicycle. When Jennie heard her son come back in the house less than two hours later, she sighed, knowing that his early return didn’t bode well. His expression told her she was right.

“He’s ridiculous!” Tim shouted, yanking open the refrigerator door and grabbing the container of milk. He slammed it down on the counter and grabbed a box of cookies from a cabinet. Then he took both to the kitchen table, where he shoved a cookie into his mouth and took a swig of milk directly from the plastic bottle.

“Don’t do that.” Jennie reached for a glass to bring him.

“He’s the most unreasonable …” Tim pounded his fist on the table.

“Calm down,” she admonished him. “What on earth happened?”

“He doesn’t want to bring that place into the twentieth century, forget the twenty-first century! I told him he needed to sell more stuff and get a website and a lot of other things that seemed super-obvious to me. He got all huffy and insulted, like I thought I knew better than he did. Which I do!”

“Oh, dear,” she murmured. “Were there any customers at all?”

“Yeah, plenty,” he said in annoyance as he chewed. “But he could have tons more.”

She was encouraged to hear about the customers and only wished Shep had wanted to tell her himself that the business had picked up. Then she remembered that he had tried to tell her the day he found out about her candy business. He had said something about developing regular customers, or something along those lines. She hadn’t paid attention because they’d been arguing.

Tim was still worked up over his father’s reluctance to listen. “You and Wilma are all over this stuff. Why is he so backward?”

“To be fair, I didn’t even think of the website myself. It was a suggestion.”

“But you took it, instead of being all pigheaded!”

“We’re trying to take it. All we have is ideas. I don’t have a clue how to implement them.”

“What do you mean?” He took another cookie, calming down.

“We’re coming up with a way we want it to look in a perfect
world. But we don’t know how to set it up, and I doubt I can afford to pay anyone to do it.”

He looked at her in surprise. “Mom, I can do it for you. Why didn’t you ask me?”

“You? I didn’t know you could do something like that.”

“It’s not hard. If I can’t do some pieces of it, I can get another kid at school to help me. There are lots of people who know how to set up websites.”

“You have people to ask?” She’d never heard him discussing other kids at school.

“Of course I do.” Annoyance flashed across his face. “You think I’m a total loser, don’t you?”

“No, no, but it seems like you spend most of your free time with Peter Fisher.”

“That’s not true. He’s a really different kind of kid, so I like him, but hey …” He got up, grabbing a handful of cookies to take with him. “Tell me when you’re ready, and I’ll do the website. Maybe
someone
here will appreciate what I can do.”

As she replaced the milk in the refrigerator, she felt both thrilled that Tim could handle the last piece of the website puzzle, as well as unhappy that their last fight had been about her business and that he wanted to help her because he was back to fighting with his father. It also saddened her that Shep hadn’t drawn on their son’s talents. Tim was growing up, had turned sixteen the previous month, and was old enough to be taken seriously. He had made some suggestions about selling more accessories for serious bikers, and his ideas seemed pretty straightforward, but Shep was refusing help from anyone in any
form. Willa also could have been of use to him, and he couldn’t have missed seeing that she had a flair for marketing things and enjoyed doing it. Her husband was truly, she thought, the most stubborn man in the world.

It took another three weeks, but the Got To Candy website was at last up and running. Jennie wanted to burst with pride over the work her children had done. Willa’s designs were in the same whimsical spirit as the candy labels, and Tim had done a terrific job translating them into bright pastel-colored screens that were charming and easily navigated. He asked a boy from school to take photographs of the candy, which had produced beautiful, appetizing portraits of everything in all different types of packaging. Jennie would have liked to show the site to Mattie but didn’t bother to suggest it, unsure if she would be putting her friend in a position where she could be breaking a rule by looking at a computer screen.

The whole situation seemed unreal. The moment when Jennie grasped that it was happening was when she opened the delivery of a thousand business cards, purple ink on white stock. There was Willa’s logo design in her spidery script: a hand holding a lollipop, the drawing leading into the company name. Jennie stared at the mailing address, a post office box she had started renting, and the link to their website. Would anybody order anything?

A routine emerged. Every day Jennie made fresh batches of candy that she delivered to the Fishers’. In the afternoons, Willa went over to work on packing the candy with Nan and Ellen. After two hours, she came home to do schoolwork and
eat dinner while the Fishers continued. Jennie worked from the house, processing online orders, ordering ingredients and shipping supplies, and trying to generate publicity for Got To Candy. When she was done for the day, Jennie would go over to the farm to hand over the new written orders, sometimes slipping them under the kitchen door if she got there too late to find anyone awake. In the mornings, Mattie took what had been prepared for the market, every package containing a business card so customers could order online. It was exhausting for Willa but even more so for Jennie, who found herself working or thinking about Got To Candy round the clock, every single day.

She could hardly complain. As if out of nowhere, the orders started appearing and never let up. Soon Sarah Fisher had joined her sister and cousin putting together boxes to be shipped. Jennie promised to pay Tim, who now had his driver’s license, to take the packages to the post office and ship them every other afternoon. She and Willa agreed that they were, respectively, president and vice president of the company and shouldn’t get paid yet. Any profit they made later, Willa told her mother, should be put into a savings account for college. Jennie hugged her daughter and told her that was the perfect plan. She decided her own profits would go into a college fund for Tim.

The day Jennie wrote the first paychecks, to the Fishers and to her son, was one of the happiest days she could remember. She took a special satisfaction when, two weeks later, she paid off the balance to the veterinary hospital for Scout’s old medical
bill. As she sealed the envelope, she gave it a quick kiss. After all, she thought, smiling at her own silliness, if it hadn’t been for that bill, none of this would have happened. She baked a chocolate cake, and that night she and the kids celebrated their freedom from the debt.

The only thing that kept it from being a pure joy was Shep’s absence. As usual, he didn’t say anything, but she could see the hurt in his eyes. She couldn’t help thinking he was unhappy about being left out of all the activity and excitement. Yet he expressed no interest. In fact, she noticed he was spending more of what little free time he had at the Fisher farm, helping Peter, Efraim, and Red. There was so much to do on a farm in the summer, they were always glad to have the extra hands.

It was on a Saturday afternoon that she happened to pass by the living room and see him in the process of taking down his awards. She’d thought he was at the farm, but he had come into the house without her hearing. Standing quietly, she watched him pulling the framed certificates off the walls, then prying out the hooks with a hammer. After piling them up, he took an empty carton and started packing his trophies into it. She couldn’t make out what his expression meant. Finally, he glanced up to spot her in the doorway. They stared at each other in silence. Then he went back to what he was doing.

She backed away from the doorway. Those awards had been out and visible since the day they got married. They meant everything to him. They were a part of his identity. Yet he was putting them away, out of sight. Perhaps he felt so bad about
himself that he couldn’t face them anymore. Tears formed in her eyes. She didn’t want him to lose himself because of her fledgling business success. But what she realized was that her little business was somehow becoming a part of
her
identity. And she wasn’t ready to put it away now that she had found it.

“The stitches are much smaller here, yes?” Ellen Fisher pointed to an area on the quilt and held it closer so Naomi, her seven-year-old daughter, could get a better look. She added something in Pennsylvania Dutch that Jennie didn’t understand.

Ellen was particularly good at quilting, a skill shared by many Amish women. Jennie had chanced to walk in one day when Ellen, Barbara, and Mattie were seated around the quilting frame, working on this very piece, white with a complicated motif of birds, flowers, and hearts. They explained to her that on some days, a number of women came over and they all worked on it together. It was a magnificent piece of art, in Jennie’s opinion. The skill of quilting was taught by mother to daughter, so as soon as Naomi was ready, she would join the others at the table. Jennie loved the continuity of traditions and rituals, the way they were passed down from one generation to the next. She wanted to laugh, thinking about how her
own daughter was teaching
her
about the rituals of technology, rituals being developed in the world outside this kitchen. She wasn’t sure how to think about what was being gained and what was being lost. Although she was thrilled by the success of their candy business, something in her wished she could stay forever in this kitchen, where the timeless traditions were practiced and respected.

She returned to what she was doing, picking up sealed packages ready to be shipped. Tim was outside putting a batch in the trunk. She realized how ridiculous it was that she hadn’t invested in a hand truck; there were too many orders to continue piling them into cartons and carrying those out one at a time. In fact, there would soon be too many to fit into her car. That might mean Tim’s dream would come true, and he would be driving his own car or, in this case, a van of some kind. Right now he was borrowing her car all the time, which wasn’t an ideal situation, to say the least. Perhaps it was time to investigate different ways of shipping, ones that didn’t involve making a trip to the post office. Jennie knew she was lagging behind her own company’s growth, but it was hard for her to believe it was so steadily expanding, orders coming in from different parts of the country. Maybe tourists tried her candy at Mattie’s booth and then went home and ordered more, or maybe her publicity efforts were paying off, but either way, she could see the day coming when she would need more people and a bigger space in which to cook.

Willa and Nan came into the kitchen, their faces reddened by the first day with an autumn chill in the air. Jennie noted
with pleasure that they looked comfortable with each other, the awkwardness of their early encounters gone. Both girls were eating apples from the Fishers’ small orchard, half a dozen trees that Mattie tended with great care.

“Um, so crunchy, Mom,” Willa greeted her, holding out the half-eaten fruit. “Want a bite?”

She shook her head. “You guys still working or done for the day?”

“We’re finished. Everybody’s in the barn with the horses. Dad just got here, too.”

“My mother and some of my cousins are going to wash the buggies next,” Nan said.

“Do you need a ride home?” Jennie asked her daughter.

“No, I’ll walk later.”

Jennie smiled, pleased that Willa wanted to stay with Nan. At last, she thought gratefully, they had developed a real friendship. Between Nan and the girl at school, Willa had the companionship she needed and, as she put it, all she had time for. Exiting with her arms full of boxes, Jennie deposited everything in the car, then went back toward the barn, spotting Tim talking to Peter over by the chicken coop. She found Mattie, ready with a brush and bucket of soapy water, as her eldest daughter wheeled one of the buggies outside with the assistance of some of her girl cousins. Shep was inside, kneeling down beside Red, the two of them examining one of the horses’ hooves. Seeing her, he gave a quick wave. He had brought Scout, who was alternating between barking playfully at the Fishers’ dog, the sedately seated Hunter, and sniffing madly around the barn.

“Can I help?” Jennie asked Mattie.

“No need, thank you.” All the girls had grabbed brushes and were at work scrubbing.

“Okay, I’ll be at my house if anybody’s looking for me.” She went to her car, calling for Tim, who took large, loping strides across the grass to join her.

“Peter and I are going to hang out tonight,” he said, buckling his seat belt. “So can I have the car?”

It was Saturday night, but it wasn’t as if she and Shep had any big plans. She couldn’t remember the last time they’d had any big plans. “Sure. Do you know what you’re going to do?”