"We have had terrible words," he admitted.
"I thought as much. And, forgive me again, Karl. I do not mean to sound as if I think so much of myself. It is not that. But as soon as I met Anna, I knew this fight was coming. I felt a kind of jealousy from her. Between women this is something that can be felt almost immediately. I thought right away it might bring about disagreements between you and her. Tonight when you rode in, I thought to myself, it has happened. Anna has said something to Karl at last. Am I right, Karl?"
"Ya," he said, looking down again at the geese.
"And you have stomped off like a stubborn Swede and come here to pout?"
It was all right for Kerstin to call him a stubborn Swede, because she was one, too. She was proving it right now by not letting up on him. He found enough goodwill in him to laugh lightly at her badgering. Then he sighed and said, "I am a little mixed up about Anna right now. I needed to get away to think."
"It is all right to think, as long as you think things that are true. What I believe you were thinking inside our house at the supper table, that was not true, Karl."
"I did not know that what I was thinking showed so much, and I am sorry, Kerstin. It was wrong of me. It was Anna who put those things in my head." But suddenly he stopped, contrite, a little embarrassed. "Oh, it is not like it sounds ... not that I do not admire you, Kerstin, but-“
"I know what it is you are saying, Karl. I understand. Go on about Anna."
"What Anna and I fought about ..." But Karl's words trailed away.
"You do not need to tell me, I think some of the things that bother Anna, I have already guessed. I guessed them when you came here with her the first time. But, Karl, you must look at us with her eyes. I could tell how she felt that day, coming in here and all of us so excited we were talking in Swedish, and she not understanding a word of it. All that talk about the homeland, and things we all loved back there. When we talk in English, this is what she hears. And then, when we came to your place I learned even more things about your Anna. She feels like she does not please you because things around her house come hard for her. I could tell when Mama and I worked in her kitchen she wished to feel comfortable in it, like we did. Something tells me Anna has not had much experience at the things I have been taught since I was a little girl."
"She has had a much different bringing up than us."
"I guessed that. The way she dresses tells that and more."
"She grew up in
Boston
and did not have a mother that was like yours and mine." Even the word
Boston
was hard for him to say now.
"
Boston
is far from here. How did you meet her?"
"This is part of our trouble. Anna and I did not meet before we got married. I ... we agreed to get married through letters we wrote to each other. Here in
America
they would call Anna my mail-order bride."
"I have heard of such things, but I did not know this
about you two."
"We were only married at the beginning of this summer."
"Why, Karl, you are newlyweds!"
Karl thought that over a moment. "I guess this is true," he said, though it seemed like the strain between Anna and himself was years old.
"And you are having some troubles like all newlyweds have, getting used to each other, is all."
"There seems to be much that neither of us will ever get used to in each other."
"Oh, Karl, I think you are looking on the dark side. So you have had your first fight. You are being too hard on both Anna and yourself. Things take time, Karl. You and Anna have not had much of that yet."
"Why would she say such a thing about ... about ... well, about you and me?"
Kerstin was a girl who met things head-on. "What was it she said, Karl? I do not know."
"That I-“ He leaned on the fence rail, too, rubbing one big hand in the palm of the other. "That I would rather be here with you and your blueberry cobbler and your braids than with her."
Kerstin laughed, surprising Karl. "Oh, Karl, it is so plain! You are just a little bit foolish, I think. She sees you coming here to everything that is familiar, and I can do all the things and be all the things you have left behind in
Sweden
. Naturally, Anna is going to think you want those things when she sees how happy and gay you are here with us. She does not see that it is all of us who make you happy instead of just me. Do you know what she asked me to do when we were at your house?"
"No, but I hope it was to teach her how to make decent bread, though."
"There, Karl! You see! She tries very much to please you, but things like that come hard for her. No, it was not that which she asked me. It was to teach her how to put her hair up in braids."
Karl turned to Kerstin genuinely startled. "Braids?" he repeated. "On my Anna?"
"Yes, braids, Karl. Now why do you think a woman with such lovely curling hair as Anna would want to put it up in these awful braids?"
He remained silent.
"Karl, why do you think she went out picking blueberries for you?"
But he was busy trying to imagine Anna in braids, which would certainly not suit her at all.
"Do not be a fool," Kerstin went on. "Anna loves you very much. An Irish girl who tries so hard to be a Swede because she thinks it is what her man wants ... Why, Karl, don't you see?"
"But I never told her she needed to pick blueberries or wear her hair in braids to please me. Once, a long time ago, I even told her braids were not important."
"A long time ago, Karl? How long ago? Before I came here?"
"Why, sure, but what does that matter?"
"What matters is that she sees you happier at our place than at your own. Even I see that. It should be the other way around."
"There are things you do not know, Kerstin."
"There always are, Karl. There always are. But I know a woman in love when I see one, and I know she tries very hard to please you. But I also know you hold yourself back from being pleased by her for some reason. This is why Anna accused you of liking me more than you do."
Karl lowered his face and covered it with callused hands, his elbows braced upon the fence rail.
"Anna should know better," he admitted raggedly.
"Why? When you have left her in anger? It is she who is maybe suffering more than you right now, wondering where you are and when you will come back. You need to go back and make things right with her, Karl."
He knew she was right. Knowing this, he admitted the rest of his day's transgressions. "I shouted at the boy today, too. I fixed it real good with both of them, I think."
"So, what is wrong with saying you are sorry when you get back, Karl? James needs to learn that people make mistakes. People do not always use good sense in everything they do. Surely the boy ... and Anna, too ... will see that and forgive you."
"She said she could not get far enough away from me and said I would not care if she was killed by a bear."
"Sure, I'll bet she did. But that is only part of the story. The part you left out is what went before. I do not even need to hear all of it to know you both said things you did not mean. But, Karl, you must remember Anna is human, too. She makes mistakes. She is probably sorry right now she made that one."
Yes, she is sorry for that one and the other one she cannot live with until I forgive her. Karl leaned his face in his hands, remembering Anna the night they had found her treed by the wolves. He remembered her sobbing in his arms, saying over and over again, "I'm sorry, Karl, I'm sorry."
He had known then it was not the getting lost, not that alone, for which she was sorry. She was telling him how sorry she was for everything, all the lies, all the things she saw as failures in herself, but mostly, for the thing he could not--no, now Karl knew the fact was that he would not--forgive.
And he, stubborn Swede that he was, had deliberately rejected her apology and held himself higher than her by doing so. How well he'd been taught by his mama that self-praise stinks. By refusing to accept Anna's honest efforts to please him, he had made himself better than her. And he'd clung to his stubbornness because of something she had done in desperation long before he had even met her.
"You know, Karl," Kerstin was saying, "I have reconsidered, and I think you could not go to buy windows at a better time. I think that a couple days away from Anna is going to do you both a world of good."
Chapter Eighteen
James could build a beautiful fire by now. He could curl shavings off a piece of wood and make them as thin as paper, just like Karl. He could get a spark off his flint with the very first stroke. He could lay on the kindling without smothering the first flame, and add split logs until there was a hearty blaze. And through all this, not so much as a wisp of smoke backed up into the sod house.
But he caught himself squatting on his haunches, gazing into his freshly built fire as he'd so often seen Karl do, and immediately he arose and turned his back on it.
"Why'd he do it, Anna?" he asked defeatedly at last.
"Oh, James, it had nothing to do with you," she said in a soft, sorry voice. "It's something between Karl and me. Something we need to get straightened out, is all."
"But he was so mad at me, Anna." The hurt was intense, tangible in his voice.
"No, he wasn't. He was mad at me."
Anna gazed ruminatively into the fire, seeing Karl's angry back as he drove out of the clearing, wishing she could call him back and apologize for her words which had hurt him cruelly when he deserved her love and respect instead.
"For what?"
"I can't tell you everything about it. Come and eat your supper."
Brother and sister sat in dismal companionship unable to eat, each of them at once angry at yet longing for the presence of the man who made this ... who undeniably made this ... home.
"It's got something to do with Barbara being what she was, doesn't it?"
"In a way, yes."
"I never would've guessed it about Karl. I mean ..." James paused, confused, then went on. "Well, he's just about ... he's just about the most perfect person I ever knew. He just doesn't seem like he'd blame us for what she was."
Anna reached to touch his hand. "Oh, James, he doesn't. Honest, he doesn't. It's not because of that, really. It's mostly me. I can't - well, I can't do much of anything around this place. I can't cook right or dress right or wear my hair right or any of the stuff that a wife oughta be able to do. Barbara didn't teach me much of that and every time I try to do something for him, it turns out bad." She stared into the fire and tears glimmered on her lids as she remembered all the disasters resulting from her attempts to please Karl.
"Like the blueberries." She raised her palms in a gesture of futility, then dropped them back between her knees. "I mean, I wanted to pick him those blueberries so bad, James. I just wanted to do that for him. So what do I end up doing but getting lost, and he's got to come searching for me and carry me all the way home and put stuff on my mosquito bites like I was some baby."
"But that wasn't your fault, Anna," James put in loyally. "He wasn't mad about that."
She shrugged and sighed. "It's not that he is really mad at me, James. It's more that he's disappointed with me. He thought he could get over all the disappointments he found in me when he learned about all the lies from those letters. But he can't. I'm nothing like he really needs a wife to be."
"But we had lots of fun in the beginning and he didn't seem to mind if it took you time to learn to do things around here."
"That was before the Johansons moved in up the road. Ever since Kerstin came he'd rather be up at her place than at home."
"That ain't true, Anna. I don't think that's true."
"Well, Kerstin can do everything. She can cook blueberry cobbler and she's not skinny and she's got braids and blonde hair and talks Swedish."
"Is that what's got you all hot under the collar, Anna?" James said, wide-eyed. "Why, shoot, that day we were up at their place without you, Karl hardly paid her any attention at all. They asked us to stay for supper and he said no, he thought he'd better get back here for supper."
"He did?" She brightened a little.
"Well, of course he did."
But then her face fell again. "See? I didn't have anything ready for him the very first time he goes away and comes home expecting a hot meal. Instead, he finds me sitting up in some godforsaken maple tree with a pack of wolves at my heels." It made her want to cry again at the thought of her failure. "He never even got any supper that night," she chastised herself.
"Supper was the last thing on his mind. I know that for sure. When we came home and you weren't here, why, I never saw Karl so upset. He pretended he wasn't, but I could tell. He ran all over, out to the log house and into the barn and everywhere, looking for you. When you didn't turn up and it was getting dark, I thought for a while Karl was gonna cry again."