The Painted Table


By Suzanne Field

Thomas Nelson

Copyright © 2013 Suzanne Field
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4016-8970-4


Contents

The Beginning..............................................................1
Prologue...................................................................3
1. The Draft Notice........................................................17
2. War.....................................................................27
3. San Francisco...........................................................30
4. Shore Leave.............................................................35
5. The Baby Sister.........................................................40
6. The Homecoming..........................................................48
7. St. Paul................................................................50
8. The Highway Man.........................................................57
9. Discontent..............................................................60
10. The Table..............................................................66
11. Remodeled..............................................................71
12. The First Coat.........................................................76
13. Psychology.............................................................80
14. Up and Down............................................................84
15. The Sewing Club........................................................88
16. Tree of Life, Tree of Evil.............................................93
17. Nancy Drew.............................................................97
18. Palm Sunday............................................................101
19. April..................................................................106
20. Mr. Mason..............................................................111
21. Voices on the Stairs...................................................114
22. Rags to Riches.........................................................119
23. Gone with the Wind.....................................................124
24. Cottonwood Point.......................................................129
25. Respectfully Yours.....................................................136
26. Speaking Truth.........................................................140
27. The Catapult...........................................................145
28. What's in a Name?......................................................151
29. Sapphira...............................................................156
30. Thanksgiving...........................................................162
31. Rotten Apples..........................................................169
32. Taste and See..........................................................173
33. Jack...................................................................182
34. The Valentine..........................................................189
35. The Cocoon.............................................................193
36. Loyalty................................................................196
37. Floating Free..........................................................201
38. The Wedding............................................................212
39. Legacy.................................................................218
40. Weeds..................................................................228
41. Softball Religion......................................................231
42. Girl Talk..............................................................236
43. The Wooden Box.........................................................242
44. Newly Wed..............................................................247
45. Tendril Tangle.........................................................252
46. Joann's Notebooks......................................................256
47. Stuffed Ribs...........................................................260
48. Rainbow Heart..........................................................266
49. The Wedding Gift.......................................................271
50. The Stroke.............................................................275
51. Christmas..............................................................278
52. Waiting................................................................289
53. Kite Lessons...........................................................294
54. Redeemed...............................................................299
Reading Group Guide........................................................309


CHAPTER 1

The Draft Notice


1943

Joann looks down two stories from behind her gauze-curtained window. She watches absently as a twenty-ton behemoth snorts, grinds gears, and backs onto the sidewalk below. She often stands here, hoping to catch a cool breeze and eager for the first glimpse of her husband returning from the dairy. Even when it's too early, just seeing the street that will carry his ten-year-old Chevrolet comforts her.

Two sooty figures hasten to guide a shiny chute toward an open basement window. The beast revs, squeals, and tips its midsection high into the air. Black lumps of coal rumble, plummet, then crash through the chute. Only when lusty screams come from the nearby bedroom does Joann return to the moment and realize that the scene below is odd. A coal delivery in June? This war! Nothing is normal anymore.

She rushes into the bedroom to shut the window beyond the crib. The frightened face of her almost-two-year-old pushes against the slats. Her mother snatches her up, holds her awkwardly.

"Don't be afraid, Saffee. It's just coal to keep Daddy's little girl warm when winter comes." She speaks without mother-to-baby nuance. The screaming does not abate. Joann places her on the double bed, sits down nearby, and bounces. "Sa-ffee, Sa-ffee, Sa-ffee." The baby is not quieted.

She stops the bouncing and tries reasoning. "Maybe the coal men have to come now. They might be off to war by winter, just like ... just like ... your daddy."

The next afternoon when the child awakes, she screams again. Sweat-soaked, she buries her head in her mother's shoulder, hiding her eyes from the window, even though now the shade is pulled and the limp curtains drawn shut.

Why is her baby crying? "Sapphire! Stop!"

Joann hadn't desired a baby. She had never been fond of babies. But she had wanted Nels—and having a baby came along with having him. Neither gave a thought to the fact that he would be a father who had been essentially fatherless, and likewise, she a mother who had been essentially motherless.

The nurse had pestered her to declare a name for the birth certificate. From her recovery bed, Joann thought about it for three days, until the evening she peered out at a deepening blue summer sky, its first stars twinkling.

Sapphire, that's it. Like the sky. Or even better, Sapphira.

"What could be more romantic than being named for the wild beauty of a night sky?" she had gushed to Nels. He arched one eyebrow and scratched his head.

"Oh, Nels, you just don't have a flair for the dramatic like I do."

She was right. He was used to down-home names like those of his sisters, Bertha, Ida, and Cora. No highfalutin names, those. Still, he gazed at her with tenderness and pride, his wife-become-mother.

"You name 'er whatever you want, honey," he said. "Just so you like it, that's the important thing."

The nurse wrinkled her nose. "Sapphira? Isn't that someone in the Bible?"

"Oh yes! I think so. Probably a beautiful queen!" Joann chortled.

"No, Mrs. Kvaale, I sort of remember maybe she was a bad person."

The hospital chaplain confirmed that the nurse was correct.

Later, when Joann noticed her baby's eyes were indeed blue, and not knowing they would soon turn to hazel, she settled on Sapphire Eve. "It was meant to be," she said. "When I saw that blue evening sky, I just knew."

The ink was hardly dry when she regretted the choice, but couldn't say exactly why. Perhaps it was the "fire" sound of it. Later, as she leaned over the bathtub, scrubbing stubborn stains from diapers and flinching at hungry cries from the crib, she decided that Sapphire was too fine a name for this baby. The beauty of an evening sky, indeed. She began to call her Saffee.

Every morning Nels leaves their small apartment before dawn to deliver glass bottles of milk door-to-door, returning in the late afternoon. The dairy job alone would be enough to cover their expenses, but the apartment building's aging owner had inquired if Nels might assist with caretaking in exchange for rent. "It'll just mean keepin' the furnace stoked in winter an' the front grass cut in summer, an' a few other things. Nothin' much," Mr. Resslar said. Nels agreed, even before asking about the "few other things," which turned out to be shoveling snow, burning trash, and trimming the front hedges.

Stoking the furnace only sounded easy. Every cold morning, which in Minnesota is almost every morning of fall, winter, and spring, Nels hurries into coveralls at 4:00 a.m. and heads for the basement. He shovels out yesterday's clinkers from the gaping boiler belly and shovels in new coal until it again belches heat. The task takes almost an hour. He barely has time to clean up, slip into his whites, eat breakfast, and get to the dairy by 5:45 a.m.

As each day wears on, Joann keeps an eye on the clock and goes to the front windows a dozen or so times. She misses him when he's gone, worries about him, craves his affection.

It's almost four o'clock. Joann tucks the ironing board into its alcove in the kitchen and lowers the burner under a simmering chicken. Cooking is a skill Joann is teaching herself. When her family moved to northern Minnesota, her older sisters cooked for the resort guests; Joann and the younger girls cleaned cottages. Knute maintained this arrangement until each girl was eighteen. Only then could they begin high school.

Those resort years, like the prairie years before, took a toll on everyone in Joann's family. And they took Knute's life—he drowned in a boating accident a month after Joann left home.

Humming along with a Sousa march, compliments of WCCO, Joann carries Nels's freshly pressed white uniform toward the bedroom.

"It's almost time for Daddy to come home!" she calls to Saffee, who is sprawled on the living room carpet, chewing and drooling on a rubber teething ring.

"Da-ddy!" the toddler says brightly through a flow of saliva.

Joann hangs the uniform in the closet and pauses at the bureau mirror to run a brush through her dark curls. She turns her face this way and that, at once vain and highly self-critical, then returns to her post at the living room window. From it she can watch mothers push babies in buggies, and men with hats and business suits hurry to what must be very important appointments. She's noted that some pass by about the same time each day. If they would look up, they might see her.

Someone is coming in the main entrance. She moves nearer the door, head tilted to one side. It's the two old gossips from the first floor. Who are they chewing up and spitting out today? Their voices fade.

With Nels due any minute, military music is not the mood Joann desires. She sits down at the desk and turns the radio dial.

"... moments in the moonlight, moments of love ... lost in the thrill ..."

Ahh, much better—the velvety voice of that new crooner, Frank somebody.

She draws their wedding photograph toward her across the desktop, leaning forward to give it close inspection. How many times has she wished she could readjust the veil of her white satin hat? Why hadn't the photographer told her it fell crookedly across her forehead? The gardenia corsage against the navy blue suit looks lovely. She still recalls its fragrance.

She studies the groom's solemn face and, as always, sighs. If she would have only known why her usually jovial Nels had been so out of character that day, she could have set matters straight. His mood remained alarmingly dark for two weeks after the wedding. Only a few days earlier he had been ecstatic, flushed with anticipation. But when he showed up at the church, he was irritable, said he was sick. After the ceremony he didn't want their picture taken. But the photographer was waiting.

Looking at the photo, Joann lets her mind range over the disappointing first days of marriage when she wondered why he spoke to her so harshly, wondered what had happened to his ardor ...

"Hold me, Nels. Hold me. I thought you loved me."

Her quandary continued until the day he came home from work and found her napping on the couch. She propped herself up on an elbow, brushed away damp stray locks of hair from her face, and said apologetically, "I'm always more tired during ... well"—she wasn't sure how to say it—"during ... my time of the month."

Nels's jaw dropped. He fell to his knees beside her, pulled her to him, embracing her so tightly she thought he might hurt her. "I thought ... I thought maybe ... I'm so sorry! I've treated you so bad." A sob escaped him. He reddened and quickly wiped his eyes on his sleeve.

Joann, stunned by the disclosure, freed herself from his arms and sat upright. He took her face in his hands. "Joann, tell me you're mine, all mine, and never ... never been with another man."

"Nels! Of course I haven't! Why did you even think it?"

He told her that when they had moved up the wedding date from September to May, the boys at the dairy called him a "rube" and, in so many words, said she was in "a family way." They teased that her father might show up at the wedding with a shotgun. At first Nels was mad, then he began to believe them. He recalled how popular she was at the dances. There was a flirty way about her. He had seen the guys looking at her, whistling when she passed by.

Now, almost three years later, Joann is oddly conflicted. Although the memory is embarrassing, she can't resist a grin. She has to admit she enjoyed all the attention she got at the Friendship Club dances. She'd never had anyone's notice until she left home and came to St. Paul. Her bent "chicken legs" had filled out. They are not shapely, but they love to dance. When she realized her curves brought attention, she naively became a flirt, making sure it was all flash and no fire. She had never wanted to cause Nels any hurt.

Nels couldn't dance well if his life depended on it, and his grammar is atrocious. She can understand the reason for his grammar, he having been raised in a Norwegian-speaking home, but she cannot excuse it. Joann, like all of Clara's daughters, speaks good English, without the accent Knute passed on to his boys.

When Joann was obligated to exchange school for the dirty linens of fishermen, a sympathetic teacher occasionally brought her books of poetry. From then on, Joann steeped herself in rhyme. So it is not unusual that as she looks at the wedding photo she says, "Oh, Nels, 'How do I love you? Let me count the ways.'"

She's loved Nels from the beginning for his unreserved devotion to her, his sunny disposition, and his talk of getting ahead in life in spite of humble beginnings and lack of education. He was a good man, so there seemed no reason to delay marriage. She insisted on moving up the wedding date, unable to bear the thought that he might slip away. If only she had known ... Thank goodness, since those first regrettable days Nels has continuously showered her with the affection she had hoped for, and twelve months into the marriage, their baby was born.

Saffee whimpers and looks for something else to gum. Spying the cotton teddy bear Joann made for her, she toddles across the room.

At the desk, another romantic melody scatters its stardust while Joann studies a second photograph. It is a portrait of Nels, displaying his engaging smile and prominent teeth. She had insisted he have the picture taken last summer to capture what he really looks like. With a sigh, she puts the wedding photo into a drawer. She's tired of seeing that veil askew.

She hears Nels on the stairway. Smoothing her carefully curled hair, she hurries to the door, eager for him to embrace her tightly, as he always does. She is surprised when his hug is perfunctory. He tosses his white cap and sinks into the secondhand sofa, ignoring his daughter's uplifted arms.

"It came," he says simply, waving an envelope in her direction.

"Oh, Nels." She switches off the radio and rushes to sit beside him.

"It says report for duty at Fort Snelling. Monday."

"Monday! So soon?"

Joann opens the letter addressed to Nelson Kvaale. She reads one word: "Greetings," and looks at him pleadingly.

"I was hoping ... I was hoping you'd be deferred awhile longer ... because ... because of the baby ... I don't want you to go, Nels."

"You know I hafta go, Joann ... it's the right thing to do. But I've decided something."

He tells her that the draft board at Fort Snelling is only taking men for the army now. He's decided he wants navy and he will tell that to the board. Too many American boys are dying in foxholes over in Europe, he says. He'll take his chances in the Pacific.

The baby plops onto the floor at his feet and tugs at his shoelaces. He reaches down. "Come up here, Sapphire, up to Daddy." He lifts her onto his lap and she snuggles against him, wiping a wet chin on his shirt. Nels puts his lean, sinewy arms around his little family and holds them close. Joann begins to weep.

"Now, Muzzy." For some reason he'd given her this nickname after Saffee was born.

"Don't cry. It won't do no good." She is numb.

Saffee squirms, wiggles off Nels's lap, and slides down to the floor. Noticing her, and seeking diversion from news she cannot yet absorb, Joann bemoans her recent frustrations with the fussy baby, especially when the coal delivery frightened her.

Nels interrupts. "The coal came?" Not expecting it this early, he had pushed the bin away from the chute when he swept the basement. The floor must be covered with coal. Tomorrow he'll need to rise early and shovel it up before the building owner discovers it. He sighs.

"It's a few minutes to news time," he says. She gets up and switches on the radio again. Ever since the war started he's never missed the five o'clock broadcast.

"That's Glenn Miller," she says, trying to steady her voice. "Makes me think of the night we met." She sits down at his side, puts her head on his shoulder as they listen and remember.

"New Year's Eve, the Friendship Club," he says, stroking her arm. "As soon as I saw you, you were mine. Even if those other fellas were thick as flies 'round you. You sure had a way of attractin' 'em. But I knew you'd end up with me."

Holding his hand, Joann feels a rush of gratitude that he completely forgave her for causing suspicion in those early days. Now she is sorry she brought up the past at all. He continues the reminiscence, telling her she had looked pretty good in "that there" red sweater.

"Pretty good?"

"Well, no. Gorgeous." He turns serious again. "Yeah," he says, "and when I'm gone, promise to keep yourself, well, covered up with somethin' when you're out, okay?"

Flattered, because she knows she attracts male attention, she says, "What should I wear, a tent?"

The brief levity passes. Drafted. He'll be leaving. Joann puts her face into her hands and sobs.

At their feet, Saffee whimpers and raises chubby arms. "Up, Daddy, up!"


* * *

About nine they ready for bed, speaking low so as not to wake the little one in her crib. Nels sets the alarm clock for three thirty.

At 12:50 a.m., Joann still tosses in their bed. With whiffling snores, Nels embraces sleep with the same enthusiasm he gives his waking hours. How can he sleep tonight, knowing he's going off to war? She's already lost both mother and father. By her own choice she's essentially lost her siblings. And now Nels? She presses her hands against her face, sensing her irregular breathing. Across the room, the baby sighs in slumber.

From the start, Joann hated the idea of Nels shoveling coal into a hot furnace.

"But, Joann," he countered, "it's not dangerous. In fact, it's a wunnerful thing! Who else gets free rent nowadays?"

She relented, but regularly cautions him to be careful around the flames.

As she listens to his breathing, she worries that Mr. Resslar will ask her and the baby to move out when his stoker leaves for war. How will she live without Nels? She's even lonely when he's at work.

Tomorrow he'll get up ... so early ... She finally drifts into troubled sleep ...


(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Painted Table by Suzanne Field. Copyright © 2013 Suzanne Field. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
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