The Problem Child (Emerson Pass Historicals 4)

Viktor

During my lunch break from the bank, I crossed the street to have a meal with my parents. They closed the shop every day from noon to one. At least a few times a week, I dined with them. I took the back stairs up to their apartment above the shop. Before I reached the top of the stairs, the aroma of chicken soup filled my nose.

“Mother,” I called out as I entered through the unlocked door. “Father?”

“In here,” Mother said from the kitchen.

I walked through the front room, as spare and neat as it had been for the last two decades. We’d come here when I was only nine. Father had rented the building from Lord Barnes for what he said at the time was a very fair price. He’d seen in an advertisement in the Boston paper where we were living after coming over from Norway that a frontier town was in need of a tailor. Father, as requested in the advertisement, had written to Lord Barnes with his qualifications. What came in the return post was an offer to assist with moving costs and reasonable rent on one of the buildings in town where we could have a shop and an apartment. We’d come that summer before I’d started school with the others in the first class of Emerson Pass.

I kissed my mother’s cheek before joining Father at the kitchen table. Their apartment was small, only two bedrooms, a kitchen, and the sitting room. However, we’d always found it to be just the right size. What we lacked in imagination, the Olofsson family had made up for it with a natural gratefulness about our circumstances. From the very first day we arrived, my parents had made sure we knew how blessed we were to have been given the chance to come to such a beautiful place and open a business. And school? My mother valued education above all else. When I’d attended college, it was the only time my stoic parents had ever expressed pride. I knew it was there, always. However, it was seldom expressed verbally.

“Smells good, Mother,” I said.

“Nothing special.” She set a steaming bowl in front of my father. “But it will warm your bones on a chilly day.”

“Thank you, dear.” Father tucked his napkin into the collar of his shirt.

After placing a bowl in front of me, Mother fetched another for herself, along with a loaf of crusty bread. Other than the appreciative slurps and clanking of spoons against the ceramic bowl, we ate in silence. When I’d finished my soup along with two pieces of bread, I pushed the bowl away and leaned back in my chair.

“I talked to Mrs. Johnson this morning,” Mother said. “Have you heard about the competition?”

“Yes, I was over at the Barneses’ last night,” I said.

“Will you compete?” Father asked between bites. He ate as he did everything, slowly and methodically.

“No, I’m not fast enough. Skiers will be coming from all over the world.”

“How exciting,” Mother said. “Our little town will be famous.”

“You’d like that, Mother?”

“It would be nice for Lord Barnes.” Mother got up to clear the dishes, but I put a hand on her shoulder.

“Let me, Mother.” I gathered the dishes and took them to the sink for washing. We’d had running water for at least five years, but we never got tired of commenting about how much we enjoyed the convenience.

Mother put a pot of coffee on the stove before returning to her chair and pulling out her accounting book. She ran all of the shop’s finances, keeping a close watch on receipts and expenditures. I had loved helping her when I was a child. Now I worked at a bank, so it had come full circle. Nothing made me happier than a row of numbers adding up correctly. I’d known back then that I’d like to do something of the sort for work.

The coffee percolated and filled the room with its pleasant aroma. I finished washing up and drying, then poured us all a cup. Mother liked cream in hers, but Father and I drank ours black.

By the time I delivered his mug, Father had tucked his chin into his neck like a nesting bird and closed his eyes. The man woke every morning at dawn. By lunch he was tired.

“Your brother came by earlier,” Mother said. “He brought us some cookies. They’re in the cupboard if you’d like some.”

“No, thank you.” I patted my stomach. “I’ll save room for later. I’m taking Cymbeline to dinner at the club.”

“What about Emma?” Mother asked.

I looked at her, surprised. “Emma?”

“People tell us things when they come in for fittings or whatnot. There’s nothing the ladies in this town love more than gossip. They have you two married off already.”

“Emma and I are only friends,” I said. “She has a beau back east.”

Mother’s thin eyebrows raised. They had always been fair, but lately I’d noticed they’d turned white, as had her once-blond hair. Emerald eyes peered at me from over her coffee cup. “Back east? Well, how will that work?”

“He’s coming out here eventually,” I said.

Father untucked his chin from his neck. “You could do worse than Emma Hartman. She has a very small waist. Although her torso-to-leg ratio is strange. Very long legs. Like a stork.”

“Anders, she looks nothing like a stork. More like a graceful swan,” Mother said.

I laughed. “If we’re talking about waists, there’s nothing wrong with Cymbeline’s.” She didn’t look like a stork or a swan. Cym was more like a Thoroughbred horse like the ones Harley and Merry Depaul raised. “She’s the only woman for me. Always has been. I’m slowly wearing her down.”

“Ah, I see,” Mother said. “Emma is supposed to make Cymbeline jealous.”

“Would I do such a thing?” I asked.

“Clever,” Father said. “That Cymbeline loves to win.”

“I should’ve known,” Mother said with a hint of approval in her voice. She and my father loved the Barnes family.

“Speaking of winning,” I said, “she wants to participate in the ski jump at the competition. She believes she has a chance to win.”

“But no girls are to complete.” Mother frowned. “Mrs. Johnson said so this morning when reading to me from the newspaper.”

“Yes, well, I have an idea. She would dress as a boy,” I said, glancing at Father. “I thought perhaps you could sew her something to disguise her gender.”

Father’s bland expression did not change as he set aside his fork. “Legend has it that sometime in the mid-eighteen-hundreds, a young Norwegian woman jumped six meters.”

“The year was 1862,” Mother said. “Her name was Ingrid Olavsdottir Vestby. In Trysil.”

“Mother, how do you know that?” I gawked at her in surprise.