Authors: Lynn Austin
Patrick held his chin high, unashamed. “Yes, sir. It’s true.”
I saw Papa’s chest heave. “Then I’m going to ask you straight out—have you dishonored her? Whether or not you think Emma was willing, have you . . . have you had your way with her?”
“No, sir. Our relationship has been chaste. I will swear to that on a Bible, if you would like me to. I love Emma. I want to marry her.”
“You want to
marry
her? How is that possible? According to your religion, a marriage isn’t recognized in the sight of God unless it takes place in a Catholic church, before a Catholic priest—am I right?”
Patrick flushed. “Yes, Reverend, that’s right.”
Papa whirled to face me, catching me off guard. “Emma, can you honestly embrace all the theological differences that exist between our two faiths? Can
you pray to Catholic saints or to Mary, instead of to our Lord and Savior? Can you confess to a priest each week, knowing that only God can forgive our sins?”
I was afraid to answer. I felt as though I wasn’t arguing with Papa, but with God. And He was on Papa’s side. “The fact that I love Patrick doesn’t change what I believe.”
“No? Will you stand in a Catholic church then and lie, saying that you believe what they teach, just so they’ll let you get married there?” He turned to Patrick again. “Or maybe you’re willing to give up your religion rather than make Emma give up hers?”
“Papa, we worship the same God,” I said when Patrick didn’t answer. “We’ll find a way to make our two faiths work.”
“How? What makes you think you will succeed where thousands of mixed marriages before yours have failed? And what will happen when you have children? The Catholic church will not recognize your marriage, Emma, unless you sign a paper agreeing to raise your children as Catholics—isn’t that correct?” he asked Patrick.
He looked flustered, trapped. “Yes . . . that’s true, but—”
“Will you agree to that, Emma? Will you let my grandchildren be raised as Roman Catholics?” He made it sound as though I’d be raising them to be pagans.
“We haven’t talked about that yet . . .” I began, but Papa continued his tirade, relentlessly piling up the obstacles as if measuring them on a scale, showing us that they outweighed our love.
“The Bible says that in a marriage, two people become one flesh. You want to begin a marriage with a breach already existing between you? A breach that will only get wider when you have children? Unless one of you sacrifices his faith, how will you bridge that gap? Patrick, are you willing to walk away from your family and your faith for Emma? Or what about you, Emma? You know that our faith is our family’s most precious possession. Your mother and I gave up our work, our families, and our homeland because of our beliefs. Can you throw all that away so carelessly?”
“I’m not throwing it away, Papa. I still believe. . . .”
“Do you believe the Bible is God’s Word? Do you believe we should live our lives and base our decisions by that Word?”
“Yes, sir. We both do,” Patrick said.
Papa shrewdly added the final weight to tip the balance in his favor. “The Bible says, ‘Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon
the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.’Will you explain to me, please, how you can honor your parents and please God if you get married?”
Patrick and I were both speechless. Papa looked from one of us to the other, then said to Patrick, “I must ask you to stop seeing my daughter.”
“I can’t do that, sir. I love her. We want to be married.”
“The only way I will ever bestow my blessing on your marriage is if you convert to Emma’s faith. Do not come near my daughter again unless you are willing to do that.”
I loved Patrick, but I also loved Papa. The thought of choosing between the two of them made me physically ill. Days passed, as summer changed to fall, when I could barely haul myself out of bed. Papa wouldn’t allow me out of his sight when I wasn’t working. I didn’t see or hear from Patrick.
What was he thinking? Had Papa convinced him to forget me? Or was he saying good-bye to his family so he could convert to my faith and marry me? As September turned into October, I realized that Patrick’s birthday on the ninth would provide the answer. That was the day we had planned to be married. If I hadn’t heard from him by then, I would probably never hear from him again.
Either way, I had known for a long time now that I could never marry Markus Bauer. I answered Markus’s next letter with a short note, telling him not to write to me anymore, telling him that I had fallen in love with someone else.
The day before Patrick’s birthday, the cold, dismal weather matched my mood. I walked home from work in a downpour, the road muddy beneath my feet. Sodden brown leaves drooped from the tree branches, dripping more rain. When I passed the Metzgers’ farm and saw their boat tossing on the waves, I paused for a moment to gaze out at Squaw Island. If I’d had any tears left, I would have wept.
I started down the road again and saw a small boy walking toward me. He didn’t belong to any of the families that lived on this side of the river. He halted in the middle of the road and waited until I reached him.
“Is your name Emma?” he asked.
My heart leaped. “Yes.”
“This is for you.” He handed me a piece of paper, then turned and took off at a trot, going back the way he had come. The note was from Patrick. He wanted me to meet him inside the movie theater that night.
I knocked on the door of Papa’s study after dinner, then sat in the chair facing him when he asked me inside. “I’ve obeyed you all these months, Papa. I haven’t seen Patrick. Could you find it in your heart to lift my punishment a bit? I’d like to go into town tonight. I’d like to visit with Sophie and her new baby.”
The grim look on his face as he studied me brought tears to my eyes. Papa no longer trusted me. And with good reason. Even now I was trying to deceive him. “I will permit you to go under two conditions,” he said. I waited, hoping that one of them wasn’t that he would drive me there. “The first is that Eva must go with you. And the second is that you stay away from any public places until this Spanish influenza epidemic runs its course.”
“Yes, Papa.”
We visited my sister Sophie for about an hour, then I dragged Eva to the movies with me against her will. I left her watching the main feature, saying that I was going to buy popcorn. Patrick was waiting for me in the lobby. He was tense, like a clock that had been wound too tightly. I wanted to hold him in my arms and feel his arms around me, but we didn’t dare embrace in such a public place. Patrick led me into a dim hallway outside the restrooms and kissed me for all the weeks we had been apart.
“I haven’t changed my mind, Emma,” he breathed. “I love you more than ever, and I still want to marry you. Have you changed yours?”
“No,” I whispered. “Never!”
“When we’re apart I feel like I’m dying. I don’t know how I’ll ever leave you in the morning to go to work after we’re married.”
“I know! I love you so much!”
“Then let’s be married by a justice of the peace. Maybe if both of our families see that we’re willing to sacrifice for each other, they will accept us in time. That’s my hope. But even if they don’t, I want to be with you. Do you agree?”
I hesitated for a moment as I faced the terrifying thought of being disowned by my parents. Papa had talked about the breach between our two faiths, but Patrick was willing to step into that abyss for me. I knew how much his faith meant to him, how very much he would be sacrificing when he married outside his church. I drew a deep breath and stepped over the edge with him.
“Yes, I agree. When?”
Joy and relief paralyzed him. It was a moment before he could speak. “I’ll leave for the city tomorrow. I’ll find a job and a place for us to live and come back for you next Friday. Will that give you enough time to get ready?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll walk out to your farm a week from tonight. I’ll be waiting in the backyard for you. I love you, Emma.”
“I love you too,” I whispered.
Three days later, Eva fell critically ill with the influenza virus. She had caught it at the movie theater. I begged God to punish me, not Eva. I was the one who had disobeyed my parents. I was the one who deserved to die. I pleaded with God, promising to obey Papa, to give up Patrick, even vowing to marry Markus Bauer. I would do anything, if only Eva lived.
But Eva died.
Then I learned that Markus had also died. After Mama and Papa left with Uncle Gus to grieve with the Bauers, I sat alone on the front porch in the dark, numb with despair and guilt. Like a fatal crack in the dam, one lie had led to this devastating flood of sorrow. My life, my parents’ lives, would never be the same.
As I gazed out at the swath of darkness that was the Squaw River, I saw a man walking up the road toward our house. I recognized him by the slant of his shoulders and by his determined stride as he headed into the wind.
Patrick.
I rose from the porch and walked across the yard to meet him like a woman in a dream. He took one look at my face and said, “Emma, what’s wrong?”
“I can’t go with you. I can’t leave Mama and Papa. Eva is dead.”
“What? How-”
“It was my fault. I made her go to the movie so I could meet you, and she caught the flu and died. We buried her today.”
“No . . . Emma, no!” He tried to draw me into his arms, but I pulled away.
“There’s more. I wrote to Markus Bauer and told him I was in love with you, and now he’s dead, too, over in France. We just heard the news a little while ago.” Patrick sagged as if I’d punched him in the stomach. I spoke the words that I knew we were both thinking. “It’s God’s punishment on us, Patrick.”
“No!” It was a cry of horror, not denial.
“It’s true, you know it is. God knew that it would take something as drastic as Eva’s death to prevent us from going away together, and now she’s dead.”
“Please . . . no . . .”
“Remember Papa’s words about honoring our parents? We’ve hurt too many people already. Both of our families. I can’t hurt my parents anymore. I can’t . . . I can’t go away with you.”
“Emma, I love you!”
“And I love you. But how can we start a new life together under such a weight of guilt? Eva is dead because of us.”
Patrick groaned and covered his eyes. “Ah, God . . . why? Why?”
“He won’t answer, Patrick. He didn’t answer any of my prayers for Eva. This pain we feel is His punishment. I only wish those two graves were ours. We’re the ones who sinned.”
“Let me hold you, Emma . . . please. Once more . . .”
We clung to each other in the darkness alongside the road while the wind swirled dead leaves around our feet. I don’t remember any moon that night, or any stars. I think the leaden sky must have wept along with us. I longed to find comfort in his embrace, but I didn’t.
Our lips met for the last time, a final kiss that would have to sustain me for the rest of my life. Then we turned from each other to walk separate paths.
Leaving Patrick was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I loved him. The longing never went away. I’ve heard of limbs that have been amputated that still ache with pain years later. That’s the way it was when God ripped Patrick from me. Such terrible pain . . . I feel it still.
The day after Patrick left me, I met the little Irish boy along the road as I walked home from work. Patrick had sent him to me with a book of our favorite poetry. Tucked inside, in Patrick’s handwriting, was a final poem:
To my beloved Emma
,
When you are old and gray and full of sleep
,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book
,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace
,
And loved your beauty with love false or true
,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you
,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down beside the glowing bars
,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars
.
1980
Emma’s story brought tears to Suzanne’s eyes. The mysterious Patrick had sprung to life for a little while, and when the story was finished, she felt Emma’s loss. Suzanne busied herself with refilling their empty coffee cups in an attempt to disguise her tears, wondering which was the greater tragedy—a love that had never had a chance to flower, or a love that had blossomed for a while in a glorious burst of color, then died.
Patrick was the key to the entire mystery, she suddenly realized. If Karl Bauer wasn’t Grace’s real father, and if Emma had never loved any man except Patrick, then Patrick must be Grace’s real father. If she could find him, she would find the man who had loved Grace “more than life itself.” But how could she go about finding him?
“You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?” Grace said, interrupting Suzanne’s thoughts.
“Me? No, I’m sorry, Mom. I was a million miles away. What was your question?”
“I said that I didn’t want any more coffee unless it’s decaffeinated, but you went ahead and refilled my cup anyway.”
“It’s decaf,” Sue said. “I was just thinking about something else.”
Why
was
she so obsessed with the past? Was she using it as a diversion, the way women use soap operas to distract themselves from their own problems? No, she simply couldn’t escape the conviction that if she solved the mysteries of the past, it would help her unscramble the mess that she and Jeff had created. Like the wooden nesting dolls Emma had once mentioned, if Suzanne could make sense of the lives of the women before her, her own life might fit into its proper place.
“Mom,” she said suddenly, “I’d like to go along with you tomorrow afternoon when you take Grandma to her friend’s funeral, all right?”
Grace’s carefully groomed eyebrows lifted in surprise. “Sure. But why on earth would you want to do that?”