Iam so sorry to bother you, Nellie. I was just—do you have a moment to spare?” Mads Sorensen stood outside my door. His shirt was pristine and his tie neat; his brown coat had gleaming buttons of brass. His face, though, was pale, and his eyes looked pained. A dark blue bruise traveled from the crook of his left eye and nearly to his jaw. I could not help but gasp when I saw it, as I had never thought Mads the sort of man to get into a brawl.
“Come in, please.” I stepped aside and he strode past me, into the messy room where I had been sorting through the laundry when he rapped on the door. Olga was sitting among the heaps of filthy garments, toying with empty thread spools, building herself a castle. Her face lit up when she saw Mads come inside. She had stayed with her aunt and uncle for a few weeks the summer before, after another one of my pregnancies had come to an abrupt and painful end, and had become very fond of them both. The sentiment was in every way mutual, and Mads did not even sit down at the table before he pulled a small doll from the pocket of his coat, made from soft rags and yarn, and offered it to the girl.
“A woman sold them on the street,” he said as Olga’s small hands closed around the treasure, followed by a bright smile. “I simply could not resist.”
My little girl thanked her uncle politely, and clutched the doll to her chest, old spools all forgotten. “You should not spoil her so,” I scolded lightly, though in truth I was pleased that he had such heart for my children. They rarely had new toys to play with.
“It looks a little like her, don’t you think? It has the same light hair and the blue eyes.” He fumbled in his pocket again, and this time his hand held a small orange when it reappeared. “This is for Rudolph.” He placed it on the table, next to the empty dishpan. “I am sorry I could not find something of equal value to the doll. I’ll keep an eye out for something.”
“You shouldn’t,” I said again but took the fruit and placed it on the shelf next to my tea box to give it to my son after dinner. Then I brought out a cup and poured some coffee for my brother-in-law. It was a bad day and I moved slowly, shuffling rather than walking across the floor. I was ashamed of the state of the apartment too, as I had not been able to clean it as I would have liked. In addition to the laundry, the bucket of slop smelled bad in the corner and tiny fingerprints marred the glass in my window. Not that I worried that Mads would wrinkle his nose at me; I had always known him to be generous.
“So, what happened to your face?” I asked when we had settled at the table. I was thinking something might have befallen him at his work as night guard; perhaps a thief had come upon him in the dark.
His face twisted up with pain before he spoke, though it did not seem to be of the bodily kind. He touched the marking gingerly with his fingertips, then drew his hand across his mustache. He gave a deep sigh. “I don’t know what to do.”
“No? What is it that’s so hard?” I knew it even as I said those words—why else would he come to me with his plight?
“She is completely out of bounds—out of bounds,” he muttered, not looking at me but at a spot on the papered wall where faded vines entwined with dusty roses. “She threw a bar of soap at me—can you believe it?” His gaze shifted to my face; there was no trace of the happiness from just a few moments ago. “She will not stop spending, and when I complain, she uses foul language and she hits me.” He said it as if he could not believe it, even with the bruise to prove it.
“Oh no.” I had a plummeting feeling inside, as if all my hopes for my sister came tumbling down all at once. “I had been hoping she would be content.” It was all I could say; I found no other words. Disappointment and shame mingled in me. How could she do this—harm her own husband—who had been nothing but kind, to my knowledge? “Go play outside for a while, Olga,” I said to my daughter, who was back on the floor with the doll. For once, she did not tarry but obeyed me. She never much liked a tense atmosphere. “Don’t go far,” I called out as the door closed behind her.
Mads sighed and wiped a sheen of sweat from his brow with a handkerchief, then his gaze settled back on me. “I will not fight, but I cannot overlook all her spending—she will bring us into ruin, Nellie, though she will not see it. What am I to do? Just sit there and let her have it all?” He sighed again and his lips tightened as he shook his head with an expression of anguish. “She seemed so sweet when we first married; such a soft and caring Christian woman. I cannot see that in her anymore . . .”
“Oh Mads.” I reached out and covered his hand on the table with my own. “I wish I could tell you to be patient, that all will work out in the end, but I don’t know that it will.” It cost me to say those words, to give her up in such a manner, but the bruised and battered man at my table surely deserved some honesty. “She was always such an angry child, but I had hope that maturity and a home of her own would settle all that. I am sad to learn that it didn’t.”
“She keeps talking of a child”—Mads swallowed hard—“thinking that it would somehow save us both, but we have been married for a while now, and God has not blessed us like that. I cannot help but think that perhaps it is for the best. That the Lord in his wisdom withholds that from us because it would not be safe in our home.”
“No, Mads.” I shook my head and withdrew my hand. “Not that. Bella has always loved children—she likes them better than other adults, I believe. She would never hurt a child.”
“Then why does her womb remain barren?”
“It can be complicated for a woman.” The thought of my own struggles sent a shudder through my body. “We never had it easy in our family.”
His brown gaze met mine across the table as his lips twisted in a sneer. “She lied to me when we first met. She said your father was a farmer with several acres. I used to think it was sweet how she was ashamed to tell me the truth, but now I can only think of how easily she lied. I should have known it then that she would make a poor wife.”
Against my will, I bristled inside. I knew he was in pain and spoke without thinking, but whatever did he know about growing up in squalor? “She was merely ashamed—as was I when I first met John. I didn’t lie, but I can see why she did it. We all want to seem a little better than we are in times of courtship. Perhaps she wanted to forget it all; ours was not a happy home.”
“Many immigrants come from poverty,” he scoffed.
“She was always very proud,” I said. “I would not hold it against her. If anything, it means that she cares about your opinion.”
He gave a short, bitter laugh on the other side of the table. His coffee was still untouched. “She certainly doesn’t seem to care. Whenever I speak against her she goes into a rage—and I have never lifted a hand against her, I will tell you that as well. I am not a violent man. Maybe I should be, though. Maybe a fist is the only cure for her folly.”