Christmas at Rose Hill Farm (18 page)

She writhed in bed for a long time. It had been an emotional day. Every part of her life felt like it was hanging on a precipice—just a slight push and things could go one way or the other.

Late in the afternoon, Amos and Maggie dropped by after ice skating, and again he hinted to Bess, in his gentle roundabout way, about setting a new wedding date. Again, she hedged—told him to wait until after the holidays, pretended everything was fine. But they both knew: there was no pretending. Billy was there between them every hour of the night and day.

She felt guilty, ashamed. She didn't want to hurt Amos or betray him with her constant thoughts of Billy.

Billy. Today she sensed a slight loosening of that stiff distance he maintained so carefully. They had a moment of closeness in the greenhouse when time melted away and it was just the two of them again, sharing a love of Mammi's roses, finding a way back to each other. And then Billy closed up, a clam in a shell. Another precipice.

Watching his face tighten into that calloused mask nearly broke her heart. What would it take for Billy to trust again?

She had nearly told him how much she had missed him, how not a day had passed when she didn't think of him and wonder about him, but she was afraid to say it, afraid of being rebuffed again. Her precipice.

Somewhere between thinking of a move to Florida for her father's back and remembering the summer she had come to live at Rose Hill Farm, she dropped off to a troubled sleep. She was tending roses with her grandmother in the greenhouse and saw Mammi fussing over a potted rose. Bess didn't recognize the rose, so she turned to her grandmother, while at the same time thinking,
Mammi has passed on
, and asked, “What's the name of that rose?”

“That rose?” Mammi said. “That's the Charming Nancy.
My most precious rose of all. My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother brought it over on the ship from Rotterdam. But I'm worried about it. The leaves are yellowing. That no-good Charlie Oakley nearly killed it when he dug it up. Billy says it needs more iron.”

Bess startled awake. Her eyes snapped open.
Charming Nancy!

T
he grandfather clock in the living room chimed softly. Bess stirred, blinked a few times, then sat bolt upright in bed. Pearl-gray morning light filled her bedroom—that shivery extra-early hour. What time could she reasonably expect Billy to be in the greenhouse at College Station? Seven o'clock? Eight o'clock? She had to tell him about the rose. About the Charming Nancy. She took a measured breath.

If this rose was Mammi's Charming Nancy rose, then Billy would be able to identify it. And he would leave. Then what?

She didn't know. She just didn't know.

A memory rekindled in her head, a forgotten scene, a wispy remembrance about Billy and a rose. Something cried out in her mind: This rose! It was this very rose.

———

July 1972
, a hot and humid summer morning. So hot, Mammi said, that chickens laid hard-boiled eggs. Her sleeves were rolled back on her big arms and she was in a state over a potted rose she had placed on newspaper on the kitchen table. “Breaks my heart,” Mammi muttered. “My Charming Nancy is ailing again.” Her jaw clenched in a familiar way. “Charlie
Oakley,” she said, like that explained it. “Nothing but a horse potato.”

“Patootie.” Bess had grown accustomed to her grandmother's peculiar mangling of the English language. “What's wrong?”

“It was finally coming back after Charlie Oakley dramatized it—”

“Traumatized.”

“—and nearly snuffed out its life by yanking it out of the ground like a bird digging for a worm. For three years I have babied it and nursed it back to life, and now it's suffering all over again.”

Bess joined her at the table to peer at the rose. “Why do you call it the Charming Nancy?”

Mammi clutched her chest. “Hasn't your father taught you anything about our people?” She shook her head. “It's a dire worry to me.”

Bess didn't think Mammi worried about much of anything. She wasn't a thinker. She was a doer.

“It's a story of how our people came over the ocean from the old country. They'd been tortured and beaten and burned alive and they had to escape Europe. So they set off in a little ship called the
Charming Nancy
and sailed to America. Hearty folk.”

“I think you mean hardy,” Bess said.

“That's what I said.”

“Sounds nice, the
Charming Nancy
.”

“It wasn't. It was a stinking floating bucket of filth.”

“And they brought roses over on the boat?”

“The ship. A boat fits on a ship.”

Of course. Mammi was suddenly an expert on the sea.

“And just one rose. My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother tried to bring more. There's a long story attached to it—I'll tell you one day. She loved roses.”

“Like you,” Bess said in a thoughtful voice.

“And you.” Mammi peered at her over her spectacles. “It's part of being a Riehl. You can't help it. Roses are in your blood.”

It was true. She was fifteen now and had grown to love roses.

Billy was crossing the yard to the barn with a sack of rose blooms slung over his shoulder. Mammi dried them in the barn and used them to make soaps and jam. Mammi shouted out the kitchen window at him. “Billy Lapp, why would a rose leaf turn yellow?”

Billy stopped and looked up at the house. “Could be a lot of reasons. Is the vein dark?”

“Yes,” Mammi barked.

Billy set the sack on the ground and shielded his eyes from the sun. “It might be your soil needs some amendments. When the veins stay dark green but the interveinal areas turn light green to yellow, that usually means it needs something. My guess is iron.”

“It's never happened before.”

“It's not unusual,” he intoned, folding his arms on his chest in what Bess came to recognize as his schoolmaster mode, “especially since soil around here—” he swept his arm in a half-circle—“doesn't have much clay in it. You see, iron aids chlorophyll formation, and forms sugar-burning enzymes that activate nitrogen fixation. Iron is required for healthy, vigorous plants with dark green leaves. An iron deficiency usually affects younger plant leaves first with a general lightening of the leaf color.”

Mammi's lips puckered in disgust. “Can't you speak plain English?”

Billy grinned. “It means you need to find a way to add iron into the soil.”

“How?”

“You buy soil amendments.”

Big mistake. Mammi didn't like to part with her money. She could squeeze the eagle on a quarter until it begged for mercy. “What else?” she shouted. She meant business.

“Well,” Billy said in a droll tone, “you could bury a cast-iron fireplace poker along with it and wait a few centuries.”

Mammi slammed the windowsill shut on that suggestion and turned to face her ailing rose. She patted her hair in a satisfied way, the faintest ghost of a smile flickering across her face.

———

Thinking back on that interaction, Bess laughed out loud. Could it really be
this
rose? It was followed by another thought that left her feeling sad and sorrowful. Mammi died before she had a chance to tell the story of the rose on the
Charming
Nancy
. It seemed as if the last few weeks had been filled with reminders of lost opportunities, past regrets. She sighed, then shook off her remorse. If nothing else, these reminders served as a lesson to not allow more moments to pass by without saying what needed to be said.

After leaving a message at the Penn State Extension office for Billy, Bess spent the rest of the morning helping Lainey and Christy make Christmas cookies and candy. She kept one eye on the road, waiting for the sight of Billy's long stride. It was past lunch when she spotted that familiar black hat bobbing up the driveway. She threw on her coat and mittens, told Lainey she'd be back soon, and practically flew down the driveway to meet him.

“I got your message to come right away,” Billy said. “Why? Has the bud opened?”

“Not yet.”

Billy frowned, so Bess quickly added, “I remember! I think
I remember what it was called. Or at least what Mammi called it and where it came from, originally.”

“So,” Billy said, growing impatient. “Tell me.”

She smiled. “Not here. Let's go to the rose.”

Together, they went to the greenhouse and Billy made a beeline to the rose, dragged it from its corner, and hoisted it up on the workbench.

“Mammi said that her great-great-something grandmother—I've lost count of how many greats—came over from Europe on the
Charming Nancy
, and smuggled a rose with her.”

“What?” Billy whispered, incredulous, turning his face to Bess. “On the
Charming Nancy
? The Amish
Mayflower
? Are you kidding me?” He drew in a breath and spoke with urgency. “Was it a rootball? A cane? A slip? A rosehip?”

“I don't know. Mammi was mostly annoyed that I'd never heard of the
Charming Nancy
.”

“So this rose might have come over on the
Charming Nancy
ship.” There was a hushed reverence in his voice. “I think the ship came over in 1737. This lone rose could be centuries old. Older than the Perle von Weissenstein. It could be the oldest known rose of German rootstock. An extinct rose.”

“You really think
this
is that rose? I mean, I hope it is, but how could you know for sure? It's just a story Mammi told me—and you know how she embroidered the truth.”

“Oh, we'll know all right. As soon as that rose opens up.” The sepals were off, the rosebud was swelling, partially opened. And the fragrance! Its perfume was starting to lift and float through the greenhouse, its scent strongest near the workbench. For now. He grinned, then smiled broadly. “Just another day or two.”

His smile, when he turned it on full force, was numbing. It turned her bones to butter and made her heart dance.

Maggie Zook was still spending her days studiously away from Beacon Hollow during her father's search for a new teacher. This morning, she stopped for coffee at Windmill Farm, said she was making her way, slowly, to Rose Hill Farm, and Amos jumped to offer to drive her there. He was eager for any excuse to see Bess, hoping more interaction might repair the strain between them. Last night, after he and Maggie dropped by Rose Hill Farm after ice skating, he felt even more uncomfortable and distant with Bess. He left her home wondering if it would ever be the same between them again. Whether Billy stayed in Stoney Ridge or not, he was never far from Bess's thoughts. Obviously, she still had feelings for him.

As the horse trotted down Stone Leaf Drive, Amos told Maggie that she couldn't keep up this facade of working at the Sweet Tooth Bakery much longer. “You're going to be found out. And what then?”

“I know, I know,” she said in a glum tone. Then her face brightened. “But I think today will be the last day. I heard Dad tell Jorie that he was going to ask Tillie about taking the teacher's job.”

“Tillie Miller?” Amos shuddered.

Maggie nodded vigorously.

The
poor scholars.
Tillie was peculiar even for a schoolteacher. She was a beady-eyed, sour spinster with a reedy, chirping voice like a rusty hinge and she made school a misery. Her only pleasure in life was to use large unnecessary words, as if she'd swallowed a dictionary. “Isn't she a little . . . old?”

“Gross is die Lehr.”
There is nothing like knowing how.

“Es is en langi Lehn as ken End hot.”
It's a long lane
that has no turning.
Long and dull.

Tillie Miller used to teach when he was a scholar. Once, in the prime of spring, Amos and Billy concocted a brilliant plan: they coughed and gagged like they were coming down
with tuberculosis. Teacher Tillie pinched up her face like a prune, sent them home to bed, and off they went, sneezing and gasping for air, until they reached the bend in the road and took off in a gallop toward Blue Lake Pond. They spent the entire week fishing and swimming and lying in the sun. Somehow, their parents were never the wiser for it. Until the report cards came out. Billy and Amos were given big red Fs in every subject, with a note that they would need to double back for seventh grade.

“Yes, Tillie Miller. And stop making a face like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you just bit down on a popcorn kernel and broke a tooth.” Maggie's spine went all stiff and starchy, reminding him of a schoolmarm. “Children learn best when they're given clear expectations. Tillie will bring order to the classroom. You have to give her that.”

“Order, sure. With a ruler, she'll bring order. Wham! Those poor little children will have bloody knuckles by the end of the first day.”

“Sore knuckles will cure a wandering mind.”

Amos found it interesting that Maggie was such an expert on what was required to educate children, considering she wanted nothing to do with teaching. “Tillie will scare them into submission.”

Maggie bit her lip. “She's the only choice left. Everyone else said no. Dad's asked six others. He's scraping the bottom of the barrel. Getting desperate.” She started chewing on her thumbnail, a cue to Amos that she was getting nervous.

He eyed Maggie a little longer, wondering if she might be weakening her position toward the notion of teaching, then settled back again, staring at the road ahead. From far away came a faint sound like the rusty hinges of a swinging gate. It amplified into the rusty squawk of Canada Geese heading
toward the Atlantic flyway. He and Maggie watched them grow from distant dots to a distinct flock. “Oh, pull over, Amos. Let's watch!”

She didn't even need to tell him. Amos was already turning the horse to the side of the road. Maggie leaned near him to peer out his window, so close he could smell the clean scent of starch from her prayer covering.

The wedge of geese came on, necks pointing the way south, wings moving with a grace that filled the buggy with silent reverence. They watched and listened, thrilling to a sight that stirred their blood.

Maggie suddenly looked up at Amos as if she knew his thoughts. Their eyes met briefly before returning to the sky. As if unaware of its action, her hand moved gently to fit in his. He looked down at her hand, so small and soft, then closed his hand around hers. The cacophony of geese became a clatter that filled the air over the fields, passed over them, then drifted off, dimmer, dimmer until the graceful birds disappeared and the only sound remaining was the rustle of the wind in the treetops.

Seconds later, when she took back her hand to clap with delight, his hand felt remarkably empty and cold. The touch of her small hand still lingered, as though it had left its memory.