An Imperfection in the Kitchen Floor by Heather Greenleaf

Author:Heather Greenleaf [Heather Greenleaf]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
Published: 2018-11-05T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Tish, 1917

My courtship with Ellis continued, and we spent most of our time together. We talked about our future and where we would travel, but I was still only seventeen. So, for the summer, Ellis continued his work at the park and then found odd jobs when the season ended. He took a small room at the boarding house in Willow Grove, and we fell into a happy routine of life together. On his days off, I would leave the shop early and we would spend our time roaming the park or huddled as close as we dared in my parlor under the watchful eyes of Mama and Papa. He made me feel noticed and important and I loved how he listened intensely to my every word. Interruptions were frequent, though, as Oliver traipsed in and out, pretending to be a war plane or a chugging steam engine, with no shortage of little boy energy or chatter.

Outside of Willow Grove, frightening events continued to occur in Europe, brought to our doorstep daily in foreboding newspaper headlines. I read over Papa’s shoulder about the Germans conquering Romania, hoping that Mr. Wilson would indeed continue to keep us out of the conflict. By March, the headlines broiled with the tragic sinking of the Lusitania and United States merchant ships by German submarines.

By now, it was well-known around town that Papa was a German. Even if Mr. Howerth hadn’t been doing his nasty part to spread word, Papa’s accent and formality glinted like the reflection off a U-boat periscope. In the shop, he did all he could to ensure everyone would know he was now an American and a peaceful man, despite his warring ancestral countrymen. He stopped making sausages and stressed American isolationism to everyone in town who would listen.

At the dinner table, Papa and Ellis debated back and forth, Ellis insisting that the United States step in to stop German aggression and Papa repeating his economic ideas behind our neutrality. The war consumed Ellis, and these discussions frequently went on for hours. Often I waited, coat on, hat in hand, to be escorted out for the evening, while the two of them stayed deep in discussion. Leaning in toward each other, their arguments rose in vehemence while I sighed loudly in a vain attempt to remind Ellis of his reason for being at our house.

Mama would eventually come in, having been the only one to notice my aggravation, and gently shake the men out of their exchange. With her hand on Papa’s shoulder, she waited for a pause and then casually asked what time the movie began or when we were meant to be at dinner. Ellis would blink, look up, startled by his surroundings as if awakened on a train at a stop past his destination, and then see me standing and waiting. Reluctantly it seemed, Ellis left Papa at home. Ellis would fume all the way into town. And I knew Papa was surely continuing his diatribe at Mama’s back as she worked at the sink.

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