When I left to greet the water on Sunday, there was a box of hand-painted china with a delicate floral trim on the front step—presumably a gift from Karen Cooper’s artist mother. I set it inside the door and crossed Lake Street.
The sky was overcast, but the lake was smooth and surprisingly warm from a heavy humidity in the air. I swam from the end of our dock to a buoy that warned boats of an enormous underwater boulder. It was a rite of passage for local kids to swim to the rock and stand on it when they finally had the stamina and guts.
As I swam, I couldn’t wrap my head around what it all meant. I had been trying my entire life to live up to my name, to be the perfect Watry-Ridder girl that everyone told me I was—but if my mother hadn’t wanted this responsibility, why should I? Why didn’t Magda want Mary, when she was clearly becoming so skilled? Why did I feel like I was a cog in the machine of my family? I felt claustrophobic every time I thought about my future in Friedrich, John, the family business. I didn’t know what other life I might choose for myself, but I desperately craved the opportunity to find out.
Every question propelled me forward through the water. By the time I pushed myself up on the dock, muscles blissfully tired, I was resolved to find the answers for myself. It would have to wait until after church, though.
I shook the water from my hair like a dog and exhaled deeply. Thank you for bringing me back down to earth, I whispered to the lake. I slipped my feet into the abandoned buckskin moccasins that were my preferred summer footwear and crossed Lake Street wrapped in a towel.
Inside, my family were in various states of preparation for church. Mom was fully dressed in a navy cotton dress, long blonde hair pinned up neatly, reading the newspaper at the table with Sam’s white paws draped around her neck. Magda was beside her in her housecoat. Mary was parked on the davenport in front of the TV in a yellow dress and white stockings, her long, raven curls still a rat’s nest from sleep, Mickey at her side, tail twitching. I had almost forgotten about Grandpa and Grandma Ridder’s visit until I saw Mary’s stockinged legs, something we only ever did for Grandma Ridder. My father was nowhere to be seen, presumably dressed and ruining his clean shirt with some greasy chore around the yard.
I ran up the back stairs two at a time into the shower. As the water washed away the mineral scent of lake water, I was calm. Mom didn’t want it, so they’re stuck with me. I don’t have to be nice about it, I thought. If they need me so bad, they’ll have to deal. I smiled as I worked the last of the conditioner through the length of my hair. The hot water was a delicious contrast to the lingering chill in my muscles.
In my room, I combed the knots from my hair and dressed in a pink paisley dress with neat bric-a-brac trim. I strained to button the rows of tiny buttons up to my throat and finally wrestled them closed over my chest. I blatantly skipped the stockings and garter belt as I slipped my bare feet into the black Mary Janes I reserved for church and school functions.
I clomped down the front stairs, legs jellified after the long swim. Without a word, I sat down on the floor in front of Mary. She sent Mickey skittering away as she sat up and bookended my shoulders with her knees. Without lifting her gaze from the TV, where they replayed the footage from Bobby Kennedy’s funeral for the umpteenth time, Mary raked her fingers through my damp hair and began to braid the sides back away from my face. Her hands flew with a magic all their own, weaving my hair into two overlapping braids, the occasional sigh escaping her lips as she came across a knot.
This was one of the few rituals we shared. I had watched Mom braid Mary’s hair from a distance when we were young, and when Mary was old enough, she began to do mine without comment. Before that, Magda would begrudgingly do mine, giving me one thick plait down my back to match her own. Mary finished as she usually did, with a firm squeeze of her knees on my shoulders.
I stayed on the floor, lulled by Mary’s fingers, letting the morning news wash over me in silence. Mary braided her own crown to match mine. Magda’s voice called from the kitchen, “Girls, let’s go.”
Magda had swapped the housecoat for her good green dress, which she wore every other Sunday all summer, and Dad reappeared with a telltale smudge on one elbow and his blazer slung over his shoulder. We walked the nearly two miles to church in pairs, Magda leading the way in front, Mom on Dad’s arm. Dad spoke to Mom in a casual low tone about who knows what, and Mary and I brought up the rear. We walked slowly, Magda setting the pace as she waved to the folks emerging from their houses on Lake Street like she was the grand marshal of the Weekly Parade of Catholics. It was better than when we had to squeeze in the station wagon in the winter. In the summer, we walked through town and picked up Cousin Mildred and other neighbors on the way to the church built by our forebears on the hilltop west of the lake.
When Father Kevin bowed to the altar during the processional hymn, his back to the congregation, a thought suddenly popped into my head: I could give Father Kevin a tail right now. And there’d be nothing they could do about it. They need me.
I smiled to myself at the absurdity of it all. That would really give the newer families who sat in the back something to talk about.
“Don’t,” Mary whispered next to me. “Don’t do it.”
Quit reading me, I pulsed back at her.
I cast a shield right then and there to cloak myself from my nosy sister and grandmother. If they couldn’t give me a little privacy, I would have to take it for myself.
After mass, we gossiped outside in the shadow of the spire. The lake was tranquil, but the sky darkened by the minute. I stood with Mary and Annie, scrutinizing outfits and enjoying the breeze that blew in ahead of the coming storm.
Annie asked in a stage whisper, “Did you see Tillie Matthews’s dress today?” She widened her eyes in mock horror.
I raised an eyebrow toward the poor girl in question. She was going to college in the fall at Winona, a small school, but getting out of Friedrich nonetheless, which made Tillie a natural target of Annie’s jealousy. I was jealous too, but I’d never admit it. Mary rolled her eyes at us and relocated to lean against the kelly-green double doors of the church. Mary had never much been one for gossip unless it was about us. Then she was all in, listening in the ladies’ room at Sharp’s or among unsuspecting beachgoers. More often she read the energy of what wasn’t said when the conversation suddenly stopped the moment the Watry-Ridder girls walked in.
I watched her, curious, as Mary leaned her slender swimmer’s body back nonchalantly. She surveyed the churchyard from the top of the steps, one hip cocked above the other, and it was clear as day to me that she was looking for a boy. Anyone else might have seen Mary as a tired, moody teenager needing space. But I immediately saw Mary on a mission.
Annie dithered on in my ear without so much as taking a breath, one hand gripping my arm above the elbow—“Tell me what’s happening with John … I heard … Is it true? … It must be true …”—as I scanned the yard myself.
Quit it, Mary pulsed at me. Don’t read me.
But I didn’t have to read her to see what was happening. Mary tossed her head in that casual but practiced way I knew all too well. Her braided crown didn’t move an inch as she blinked and looked around deliberately to see who might be watching. As she opened her eyes, I saw who she was looking for. Did he see me? Is he watching? Mary telegraphed with every ounce of her.
Tim made his way across the yard, saying hello to one group of kids, then another. Lo and behold, he worked his way toward Mary. So that’s Mary’s plan for the summer, then, I thought before I was distracted as John caught up to Annie and me.
As the crowd began to thin, John hooked his arm through mine.
“Having a good summer, Johnny boy?” Annie asked him with a suggestive raise of her eyebrows.
“Yep, pretty good,” John answered Annie casually, but his eyes were on me.
“Having fun with our girl here?” Annie shot a pointed look at me and raised her eyebrows at John, who showed the slightest hint of a blush above the collar of his shirt.
John glanced at me sideways and couldn’t help himself: a close-lipped smile spread across his face. His eyes were soft. He looked at me like I was the best thing that had ever happened to him, and I suppressed a shudder. He’s stuck with me too.
“That good, huh?” Annie asked with a smirk.
“All right, goodbye then, Annie. That’s enough of that. We’re at church, for chrissakes,” I play-hissed at her, extracting my arm from hers and giving her a little shove.
She laughed, a throaty sound that could have been coming from a downtown lounge singer instead of my boy-crazed eighteen-year-old Annie Holbrooke.
“Bye, then,” she said with a fake pout.
“Goodbye, Annie,” I said too brightly, turning my head subtly to catch a glimpse of Mary and Tim.
John’s gaze followed Annie as she trailed her mother down the hill before he turned and crossed his eyes at me. His eyes ticked over my shoulder, and I followed John’s gaze to where Mom and Magda were talking to Father Kevin. Sometimes the most Mom said all week was in those chats with Father Kevin. That was her role in keeping up appearances around town. I turned to watch, standing comfortably shoulder to shoulder with John.
There was always publicity work to be done to avoid drawing the gaze of those who might take offense at our work. It was hard for anyone not to notice the steady flow in and out of our kitchen and the unseen hand of Magda Watry’s influence around town. But luckily there were charms to shoo anyone who would get in the way, and besides, who could question the work of such good, upstanding Catholic daughters as Magda Watry and Helene Watry-Ridder? It wasn’t lost on me that people like us—that old W-word—normally operated outside the letter of the Church. When we read The Crucible in tenth grade, Magda had made sure to point out that it was those haughty, careless biddies who missed Sunday communion who were hanged first.
Magda took a package from her handbag and passed it to Father Kevin. His weekly migraine remedy, treated with a heavy dose of memory charm, just enough to keep the family business running smoothly without any objections from the parish office. We and all our grandmothers before us sat in the front pew every week, and as far as Father Kevin could remember, our family business was botany. No witchcraft or funny business, nothing that could possibly offend the Lord.
Dad stood beside John and me suddenly, watching the exchange.
“John,” he said with a growl.
“Mr. Ridder,” John squeaked. He managed a manly nod.
My father couldn’t stand his ground in front of Magda Watry at the breakfast table, but he could certainly put the fear of God into my teenage boyfriend. Both embarrassed and honored by my father’s protectiveness, I wondered if Dad too had noted the time when John dropped me off the other night. I wondered what Dad thought about Mom’s lack of participation in the family business.
“Elisabeth, better get going,” Dad said as he continued his progress to gather Mary, Mom, and Magda behind him. It was time to prepare for Grandpa and Grandma Ridder.
I turned to graze John’s shoulder with the tip of my nose, the most intimate touch I could muster in front of our parents and all of God’s good people. I caught sight of John’s parents beaming at us, trying not to look but unable to stop watching their precious baby boy. Mrs. Weseloh wore the faintest hint of a smile on her face, which was normally so etched in worry for John’s brothers on the other side of the world. Mr. Weseloh tipped his head as my father passed, a silent acknowledgment between two of the last patriarchs of the families still making the Sunday rounds.
John’s parents, like mine, like the whole damn town, assumed we were getting married, that this was it for us. Never mind that young women were going off to college and becoming writers and scientists and what have you. Two years of going together was proof enough for them that John Weseloh would be the one to stand beside the elder Watry-Ridder girl. John would follow in my father’s footsteps, the man about town, the flimsy yet necessary front for our business, smiling and shaking hands and making plans for cards or fishing with the important men in town. Maybe John would take over at the Ridder Family Company. My uncles Ridder were both childless. The quiet, serious farm boy with the easy smile would seamlessly fall into that role, and I was overcome with shame and sadness that John had as little choice in the matter as I did.
John said, “I’ll call you tonight,” his lips practically brushing my ear.
I recoiled involuntarily for a split second before recovering myself, appeasing John with a roll of my eyes at our surroundings. But inside, John’s attention made it feel like the walls were closing in on me.
I fixed an appropriately pious smile in place and waved goodbye to John and his parents. As I turned to follow my family down the hill, visions ran through my head of a quiet, staid future with John at my side while Mary beside me hummed with possibilities.