The Only Best Place (19 page)

“I have to get back to the farm,” Gloria said, glancing pointedly at her watch. “Sorry.”

Judy gave me a look of regret. “Maybe some other time?”

“For sure. I'll see if I can scare up an even scarier cookie recipe.” I dragged my gaze away from Judy and included Wilma
and Gloria in the invitation. “Come again,” I added weakly.

I took a bite of my toast, caught Nicholas before he climbed out of his high chair, poured Anneke a cup of milk, and picked
up a piece of gummed-over toast that Nicholas threw on the floor all without missing a beat. Extreme mothering, not for the
fainthearted.

“I don't want my egg.” Anneke wiped her mouth with her sweater cuff and pulled a nose at the boiled egg she had insisted on
minutes ago.

“You asked me for it, now you have to eat it,” I said, proud of the firm tone of my voice. The sound of a mother not to be
trifled with.

She gave me a suspicious look, as if wondering where the body of her other mother was. The one she could push around. I gave
Anneke a knowing smirk. I had been watching Kathy. Getting pointers. Anneke's life, as she knew it, was changing.

Dan sat hunched over some farm journal. Thanks to the rain of last night, the fields were too wet to work yet, so he was biding
his time over breakfast. I had to work one shift tonight, then the blessed peace of an entire weekend off lay ahead. I had
bought a fun game that I wanted to play with Anneke tomorrow. I needed to mend some of Nicholas's pants. Maybe we could do
something wild and crazy like take the long trip to Bozeman. Dan's birthday was coming up. I couldn't bake a cake. I couldn't
knit him slippers. But shopping for that hard-to-buy-for person on my list I could do with my credit card tied behind my back.

My mind flitted over the past week and caught on an errant thought that had been hanging around ever since Darlene's visit
with Rena Tebo.

“Dan?”

“Hmm?”

“What would someone mean when they say they know where only comfort in life and death is?”

“And you want to know this because…”

“A lady named Darlene mentioned it. Is that some kind of local saying?” I asked, glancing sidelong at Nicholas. He was straining
at the harness that clipped him to his high chair. “Down!” he demanded.

If he gained one more inch, gravity would fulfill that succinct demand.

Dan slowly scratched his chin, his fingers rasping lightly over his whiskers as he stared off into the middle distance. “No.
It's the first question and answer of the Heidelberg Catechism,” Dan said as I got up to stop Nicholas before he became emergency-department
material. There was nothing lamer than coming in to work when you didn't have to work.

“And what is that?” I grunted as I managed to get Nicholas back into his chair long enough to unclip him.

“The Catechism? It's, well, teachings. Of our church. Of course, other churches use it, as well,” Dan mused, leaning back
in his chair, folding his arms over his chest.

I lifted Nicholas out of his high chair and tried to wipe his face as he fought to pull away. I managed a few swipes before
giving up and setting him on the ground. Prisoner in Cell Block Nine was free. He scurried as fast as his pudgy hands and
dimpled knees could carry him toward his father.

Dan snapped his fingers as Anneke quickly wormed her way onto his lap and then taunted Nicholas. “I remember now. I think
it goes, ‘That I am not my own but belong body and something or other in life and death to my faithful savior Jesus Christ.’”
He stopped there, frowning. “Then something about blood. And that's all I remember,” he said seriously, a note of regret in
his voice as he looked from his children to me.

“And just when I think you can't surprise me anymore,” I said with forced humor. Right before my eyes, my husband had transformed
from Dan the mechanic-slash-farmer to Dan the theologian.

“Mr. DeWaal made us repeat that answer again and again until we knew it cold,” Dan said, resting his chin on Anneke's head,
a gentle smile playing over his lips. “Except I can't remember the rest of it. That question and answer is like a basic confession
of everything I believe.”

My heart hitched as I watched Dan hold his children and talk about what he believed, an unfamiliar note of yearning in his
voice.

He cut his gaze in my direction, then smiled my favorite crooked smile that signaled he had something funny to share. I was
ready for a lighter topic of conversation.

“I remember one girl I really liked. I was only twelve, I think. It was one of those innocent boy-girl things. Then one day
at supper, Gloria was teasing me and she asked me if this girl knew what her only comfort was. We laughed about it, and it
got to be a bit of a joke.”

“Gloria and teasing. Not a combination that flies off the top of your head,” I said before I had a chance to filter the words.

But to my surprise Dan didn't even catch it. He still had that thoughtful look on his face. “When I was dating you, Gloria
asked me the same question. I laughed it off then, too.”

“But you went out with me anyway.” I smiled to cover up the momentary hurt I felt.

This was his cue to get up and give me a hug and tell me he loved me exactly the way I was. The same thing he would do whenever
I made one of my “fat” comments.

He held Anneke and Nicholas, his expression serious as he looked away.

And a faint misgiving began edging around the periphery of my paranoid mind. The same misgivings that had taken hold the first
time he talked about coming back to Harland. To family that I knew didn't approve of me. Was it happening already?

Did Dan regret marrying me?

I stacked the bowls on top of each other, then the plates, retreating into the busyness of dishes and cleaning up.
Don't think that. It's this place. He's in the house he grew up in—of course, some of the traditions and ideas he grew up
with are going to come back. Haunt him.

“Leslie, would you consider coming to church with me?”

Dan's question slipped past the noise of cutlery on china. He shifted Nicholas on his lap and flashed me an uncertain look.
“I know you always said you don't do church. But I wonder if you would reconsider.”

“You didn't used to go, either,” I said, still not sure I wanted to make the commitment now that Sunday loomed. “I wouldn't
know what to do.”

“It isn't brain surgery, Leslie.”

“Brain surgery I've assisted on. I've never been to church.”

“Anneke likes going to church, don't you?”

Pulling offspring into battles to reinforce arguments was playing dirty.

Anneke nodded vigorously, her hair bouncing on her shoulders. “I sing songs in church. And have a story and a snack.”

“Would you do me a favor and think about it?” Dan asked as he lowered a wiggling Nicholas to the ground.

Nicholas padded past me. Thankful for the distraction, I bent over to pick him up and give him a motherly shnoozle, but he
thrust my hand aside. A gentle blow that was a direct hit in the Mommy zone. I hadn't been around the past few days, and this
was his punishment on the one day I was home.

I looked from a son who was growing more disconnected to me to a husband who was pushing me in unfamiliar directions. I had
thought I had things under control. I had a plan. Stay here. Work. Save money. Stay minimally involved so as to make reentry
into our real life easier.

However, the ground of my plans was shifting, disorienting me. I didn't know what was expected anymore. I looked at Dan, wondering
where our relationship was moving. Or drifting. The longer he stayed here, the more he sounded like the rest of his family.

“I'll think about it.” This was a change in strategy and I had to retreat to reformulate my battle plan. “Do you want me to
take the kids to Kathy's tonight or can you keep them?”

Dan considered. “I'll take care of them. What do you want me to feed them?”

I thought of the empty day he had ahead and tried not to resent the fact that meals were still my department. “There's a few
leftovers in the fridge.”

“Sure. I can do it.”

Dan gave Anneke a kiss before he left. My world was ordered for the next twenty-four hours. I had hoped to ask him to come
in this afternoon so I could grab a nap, but figured I was already pushing things with my supper request. I hoped it would
be a quiet night at work.

But as I washed kids and cleaned house, I couldn't get Dan's request off my mind. Nor his recitation of that catechism slipping
so easily off his tongue.

Coming to Montana had caused him to shed a disguise. Hard not to feel disoriented and unsure in the face of this “other Dan.”
The Dan, I was sure, his family preferred to see.

I can't go to church. It's not who I am.

What could it hurt? Maybe just my pride?

And what would my sister say? She was the one who thought Dan's church was some kind of cult.

Well, I hadn't been feeling strong lately. Dan and I had reached some sort of détente, but it was as if we had reverted to
the side-by-side living we had made for ourselves back in Seattle. If going to church could fix that, the price wasn't too
onerous.

I
s her dress okay?” I asked Dan as I leaned across the backseat of the truck and reclipped the barrette in Anneke's hair. “Not
too fussy?” Asking Dan was a waste of breath. He was no arbiter of fashion, but I was shooting in the dark here. No fashion
or parenting magazines had any hints on what the well-dressed toddler wears for worship, so I was winging it. Though he had
taken Anneke before, what she wore didn't concern me as much until this Sunday. I was along now and would see firsthand any
reaction to her outfit.

Dan gave Anneke a cursory glance in his rearview mirror. “She looks fine, Leslie.”

I smoothed a hand over Anneke's gleaming hair.

Anneke, check.

I noticed a piece of toast crumb hovering at the corner of Nicholas's mouth. A quick swipe with my finger got rid of it before
he could spin his head away. His dampened hair still held comb tracks and his apple cheeks shone with health and vitality.
His gray cord pants were still clean, his yellow shirt tucked in and crisp.

Nicholas, check.

I pulled down the visor and took a few extra seconds to check my lipstick, tuck a strand of hair back into place. Was the lipstick
too much? Did women even wear makeup to church?

Me, not so check.

“Is there something special going on today?” I asked as Dan maneuvered the truck between two minivans. “There seem to be a
lot of people here.”

“The parking lot is only half full yet. Last time Anneke and I came, we were late and there were even more vehicles.”

The nervous fluttering in my stomach grew. Though I was in Harland at least three times a week for work, my drive never took
me past the church. The only time I saw this many vehicles in one place at a time was at the mall.

I had thought churchgoing was out of fashion. At least that was the impression I got from the occasional magazine article
that bothered to deal with the churchgoing segment of the population. Obviously the families exiting the vehicles were misinformed.

Dan got out of the truck and swung Nicholas out of his car seat. As I helped Anneke, my eyes were drawn to the church building.
My stomach twisted and spun.

The church stood on the edge of town, the highest ground for many miles. Beyond the church and the houses tucked around it,
looking away from town, I saw open fields and all around mountains sharply angled against a blue sky. God's house nestled
in nature's cathedral.

The church was white, solid, with angled roofs and rows of stained-glass windows. From outside, it was hard to see the pattern. They
were meant to be viewed from the inside, to let the light shine through them into the church. I knew the building had been
put up in the heyday of the twenties, when prosperity was on everyone's lips and in everyone's bank account. It replaced an
older, smaller version that Dutch immigrants had put up at the turn of the century. It bespoke solidity, community, and the
unchanging nature of faith in Harland. Dan's family had been a part of it since the very beginning.

I reached out and blindly caught Dan's hand. He squeezed back, squared his shoulders, and we started walking toward our now-shared
destiny. I guessed from the faint film of dampness on Dan's hand that he was as nervous about bringing me as I was about coming.
I wanted to tell him that I wouldn't mess up, but we were already approaching the church and I could feel waves of reverence
lapping at our feet, drawing us in.

We went slowly up the steps into the main foyer of the church. I caught buzzing conversation, a few heads turned our way,
polite smiles, some frowns.

Don't look at your dress. It's fine.
I forced my lips into a smile and held on.

A bank of boxes filled the back wall, each box labeled with a name. When I saw how many VandeKeeres there were, I felt the
weight and history of Dan's family and community. Dan's father and grandfather had stood in this entrance waiting to go into
the sanctuary beyond the large oak doors. I was walking across the floor that had been trod by Dan's ancestors and now his
aunts, uncles, cousins, mother, sisters, friends, neighbors, classmates. A family… a community…, some now buried
in the cemetery down the road from the church, some still very much alive, all anchoring him to this place. The sheer volume
of his family, the community, the size of this building—I couldn't begin a tug of war with such an impressive arsenal.