I sat quiet for a moment trying to sort through my feelings, but they were not laundry, easy to place in one pile or another, and soon they became tangled in my mind. “It cannot be all bad,” I said. “She keeps a lovely house and is a good cook; your clothes are always clean and neat. If you ever have children, I know she will make a wonderful mother—just look at how kind she is to my children.”
“Ah, yes.” He sighed again. “Perhaps a child truly is the answer,” he said. “I have heard that women can go mad without one. Their organs start to wander.”
“Just give it a little more time,” I said, at a loss as to what else to advise him. “She has not always had it easy, but she has a good heart underneath it all. As you said yourself, she can be both soft and kind—”
“As long as you don’t speak against her,” he interrupted, and gave another brittle laugh, brimming with both bitterness and bile.
“I don’t know what to tell you.” I honestly did not. “I don’t believe that she meant to misguide you, but perhaps your marriage wasn’t all that she had hoped for either.”
He touched his fingers to the bruise again. “That much is abundantly clear.”
“Perhaps she’ll be better in time,” I said again, to convince us both.
“Yes.” He sounded weary. “Maybe she will—or perhaps she’ll be the death of me. Who knows?”
* * *
—
I was in a dreadful state for the rest of the day; not only was my back hurting, but I could not help but think of what he had said. I went through the motions of doing the laundry and preparing a stew with my head in a very different place. I had been hoping so dearly that Bella would settle into marriage and find an ounce of satisfaction, but clearly that was not the case.
While washing potatoes and cutting carrots, I thought that perhaps I should have spoken to Mads sooner—before they even married—but what would I have said? That Bella sometimes got angry and did not like to be opposed, that our family’s way was to lash out? He would not even have believed me then, as all he had seen was her gentle side, and I had wanted to see her married, to a man with a house no less. No, there was nothing I could have done—but what was she thinking? Why would she ruin it for herself in this way? What foolishness had gotten into her head?
“Mama, is something wrong?” Rudolph sat by the table, reading his father’s newspapers. He had always been keen in that way, telling my mood with only a glance at my face.
“Nothing more than usual,” I told him, gesturing to my back. “See if you can find your sister in the yard; I’ll call you in when the stew is ready.” It was better if they were not there while I had such dark thoughts swarming in my mind. Hitting her own husband—what a disgrace! Then, quite unbidden, just as the stew came to a boil, I recalled Mother and Father, how their fighting sometimes came to blows, and my cheeks reddened just by thinking of it. Maybe Little Brynhild did not know any better—but how could she not? She was brighter than the rest of us combined . . .
John came home while the children were away, and the words came spilling out of me before he had even had time to sit down.
“He cannot be very kind to her,” I said with tears streaming down my face. “She would not act in such a way if he were.”
John sighed and regarded me calmly. “You know that isn’t true,” he said as he bent down to untie the laces of his shoes. “You know how she can be, not always guided by reason. Besides,” he added, “she is not one to suffer in silence. If Mads had been cruel to her, she would have said so.”
I could not argue with that, as I knew he was right, but I so dearly wanted it to be different. “Perhaps I should have seen her more often—helped her out. It cannot be easy to suddenly have a whole house to care for.”
John shook his head, looking about as weary as Mads had a few hours before. “You should talk to her,” he said. “No one else will, and her husband reached out to you for help.”
I slumped down in a chair, still holding the wooden spoon I used for stirring. “I just cannot see what good it would do. She was never one to listen to advice.”
But I knew that he was right.
* * *
—
It took me nearly three weeks to work up the courage to seek her out. Olga and I went while Rudolph was at school. My daughter held my hand as we made our way down streets lined with elms and lilacs. She skipped and danced beside me on the dirt road, having not a care in the world. Her neat braid bounced on her back.
“What is that, Mama?” She asked and pointed to some colorful flower or a strangely shaped pebble, as we passed between the white-painted houses with lace curtains draped across the windows.
Oh, what I would not give to have a house of my own someday—like Bella had, though she seemed to be doing her very best to ruin her good fortune.
We found my sister in the kitchen, where she was trimming the wicks of some twenty kerosene lamps set out on the table, filling them with fuel and cleaning the soot from the glass chimneys with a cloth. She seemed happy at first to see us, and had me seated by the table while she continued her work, and placed a lump of sugar in Olga’s hand, along with a kiss on top of her head.
“You look well,” I said, as she did. She wore a burgundy dress with small white dots embroidered onto the fabric, which clung to her in a way that spoke of a new and expensive corset. Her hair was piled high on her head and pinned with tiny pearls. Though she was working and wore an apron, a cameo of carnelian rode upon her collarbone. Though Mads had means, he was not wealthy, and I could see why he was concerned.
“How is your back?” she asked me while pouring coffee and offering me a slice of cake.
“Well enough.” Now that I was there, I felt pained—unable to figure out how to broach the subject, but I let her tell me about the things she had bought: satin gloves and a velvet frock, cuts of veal and lamb.
“Not that it makes any difference to Mads,” she sneered. “He doesn’t know a pig from an ox. I could serve him rats from the gutter without him knowing the difference.”
I leapt at this chance but found I could not look at her while I spoke, and stared down at my coffee instead, rich and black in the delicate china. “You’re so hard on him.” I sipped the coffee, even if it was scalding hot. “Not very kind at all.”
To my surprise, she did not try to convince me differently. “He is useless,” she huffed, still vigorously polishing glass with the cloth. “He won’t look for another job, although the one he has can’t keep us fed. He thinks I should settle for less.”
I took a deep breath before I continued; my hand shook a little when I guided the china back onto the table. “He looked terrible the last time I saw him—his chin was all black! He said you threw a bar of soap at him.”
“Only because he was cruel to me.” She did not even flinch.