MEN OF LANCASTER COUNTY 01: The Amish Groom Read online

  Young women ask for rides from near strangers.

  “I still live at home, unfortunately,” she added as we moved toward it. “It’s too expensive out here to get an apartment unless I work full time, even if I went in on a place with friends. And I’m trying to save up for a new camera too. So, there you go. At least their house isn’t far from my school, and there’s a stop for the city bus just a block away.”

  When we arrived at the car, I opened the passenger side door so that she could get in.

  “See? You are the most decent man in all of Orange County. I can’t remember the last time a guy opened my car door for me.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  I pondered that as she climbed inside and then said, “Maybe you’re just not hanging around with the right kind of guy.”

  The words slipped out of my mouth before I could stop them, and though I was afraid I may have insulted her, she just laughed.

  “Maybe not.”

  I closed the door, went around to the driver’s side, and got in. As I put the key into the ignition, she placed a hand on my arm.

  “I wasn’t kidding when I said I will tutor you myself. When would you want to meet?”

  I wasn’t so sure she was the right tutor for me, but I couldn’t exactly say that to her. I decided to go with it for now, hoping that once we spent a little time together, she would calm down and stop making me feel so flustered.

  “My schedule is pretty open,” I said, starting up the car and putting it into gear. “You name a time and I can probably make it work.”

  “Tomorrow at two?”

  “Sure. Tomorrow at two sounds good.”

  I maneuvered us out of the parking lot but had no idea where to go. “Which way? I assume you don’t live too far from here?”

  “You want to go get something to eat first? I’m starving. Want some sushi?”

  I had heard of sushi but I wasn’t entirely sure what it was. “I’ve never had that before.”

  “Whoa! You have to try some!”

  I hesitated, looking her way. “Doesn’t sushi have something to do with…raw fish?”

  She shrugged. “Technically, sashimi is raw fish. Sushi just means ‘vinegared rice.’ But most people mean raw fish when they say sushi. Pull over.”

  “What?”

  “Pull over here and let me drive.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you drive like my grandma. No offense. It’s just easier this way.”

  I didn’t know how Dad would feel about me letting someone else behind the wheel of Liz’s car, but Lark didn’t give me time to consider it.

  “C’mon. Seriously. Pull over. You’re going to get us into an accident.”

  “I am not.”

  “Yes, you are. You’re too slow. And I’m totally starving. Pull over.”

  Her impatience was making me nervous. I indicated and obeyed. A minute later we had switched seats and Lark was zooming off down the street as if we were late for the last meal on earth.

  SIXTEEN

  I’d been in a number of cars as a passenger before, but I’d never been in the kind of traffic Lark was zipping in and out of with not a care in the world. For her, the crowded Friday night streets of Newport Beach were apparently nothing short of ordinary, and the speed with which she took them even less remarkable.

  As we drove to the sushi bar, she chattered away, volunteering that she was a junior in college, would turn twenty-one in February, was the oldest in her family, and that she had just broken up with her boyfriend, Matt, after she found out he’d been going out with other girls behind her back. I thought of my list.

  People volunteer all sorts of personal information without provocation or invitation.

  “He could have just told me he wanted to see other people,” she said. “That he lied about it was the worst. I asked him point-blank if he was cheating on me and he said no. I hate dishonesty in people. I really do. Don’t you?”

  I had my hand on the door handle for no reason that made sense to me because a quick evacuation would have been disastrous. “Yes,” I said, my knuckles turning white.

  “I mean, what’s the point in being with someone if they aren’t going to be truthful with you? I just think that’s a waste of time.”

  “Ya,” I said, pressing my foot to the floor of the car to hit a brake that wasn’t there.

  She turned to me. “What’d you say?”

  “What?”

  “You said, ‘Ya.’ ”

  “Ya. Sorry, that’s yes. In Pennsylvania Dutch.”

  Lark had her eyes fully off the road as she grinned my way. “What else?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Say something else.”

  “Less mich’s Rawd nemme.”

  “That’s great! What does it mean?”

  “It means, ‘Let me take the wheel.’ ”

  Lark seemed not to have heard me. Returning her eyes to the road, she yelped and then crossed two lanes in a mad dash to get into a left turn lane while the light was still green.

  “You’re lucky you’re bilingual, Tyler. Most Americans can only speak English. We’re useless when we travel abroad. I went to Paris in between my freshman and sophomore year in college, and it was pathetic. And even though I had two years of Spanish in high school, when I went to Mexico City a couple of years ago, I could barely ask for directions, and when I did, I couldn’t understand the answer I was given.”

  The mere mention of her travels intrigued me enough to distract me from her driving. “You’ve been to France and Mexico?”

  “Yep. I absolutely love to travel. Love it. I am going to Thailand next summer on an internship. I can’t wait. It’s going to be so cool. I am going to take a million pictures.”

  We pulled into a conglomeration of buildings that included the sushi bar, a coffee shop, clothing stores, and other specialty shops.

  Lark parked by the sushi bar, which appeared to be quite busy. When we stepped inside, she instructed me to “snag a table” while she ordered for us at the bar, adding that it would be her treat.

  “That’s not necessary.”

  “Hush. You can get the next one. Hurry up and grab that empty table before someone else takes it, would you?”

  She shooed me in the direction of a table for two in the corner. I sat down and took in my surroundings. The place was filled with people of every age and ethnicity. Though I was at the back of the restaurant, I could see the chefs up front in their white hats and stern faces, working behind a bar with speed and precision. The energy in the room was accented by dozens of conversations, some in languages I had never heard before.

  Lark returned to our table with a little bowl of pudgy peas in their pods, tiny plates of pink shavings and a greenish paste, some smaller dishes, and two sets of chopsticks.

  She set the dishes down and I took a closer look, recognizing the beans as edamame but otherwise clueless as to the various foods she was expecting me to eat.

  “Okay,” she said, as though I had asked her a question. “We’ll start with this as our appetizer, and then for your meal, I ordered you a California roll because you’re new at this and it’s pretty tame. You’ll like it. You can be more daring next time.”

  “A roll?” I was picturing one of Mammi’s yeast rolls, slathered with butter and her plum preserves, yet I saw no one in the restaurant with anything resembling bread at all.

  “They make sushi in rolls. Long and skinny. And then they cut them into pieces so that you can pick them up with your chopsticks.”

  She withdrew wooden chopsticks from a paper sleeve and broke them apart. I took the second set and followed suit. Next, she pulled one of the doll-sized dishes toward her and used her chopstick to put some of the green paste in it. Then she took a container of soy sauce sitting on our table like a ketchup bottle back home and spilled some drops into the paste. She mixed the two together.

  “The green stuff is wasabi and it’s super hot. You�
�re not going to want to lick it off your chopstick. The pink stuff is ginger. It cleanses your palate in between bites. Here. Watch me.”

  Lark opened the edamame pod and emptied the beans onto a tiny plate. She picked up a single bean with her chopsticks, dipped it into the sauce she had made, and placed it in her mouth. “Mmm. Delish. Now you try.”

  I tried to mimic her seemingly simple actions, but it took me several minutes to get the sticks to obey me. I was able to make the sauce with the wasabi and soy, but three beans skittered off to who knows where when I tried to pick them up. On the fourth try I managed to douse the bean into the sauce and then place it in my mouth. The taste was pleasant, even for all the work.

  “Do you like it?” Lark asked

  I nodded. “Pretty good.”

  “Pretty good? C’mon. What do you have back on the farm that’s as good as this?”

  I smiled, and when she smiled in return, I realized she was actually quite pretty under the strange hair and nose ring and tattoo. “Mammi’s succotash is tasty.”

  “Succowhat?”

  “Succotash. Lima beans and corn mixed together. With butter, salt, and pepper.”

  Lark made a face. “Ick. I hate lima beans. They’re disgusting.”

  I pointed a chopstick at her. “This said by a woman who enjoys raw fish.”

  She smiled.

  “Nothing my mammi makes is disgusting,” I added.

  “Your mommy?”

  “Mammi. She’s my grandmother. I call her Mammi the way you might call your grandmother Granny.”

  Lark popped a bean in her mouth as she regarded me, chewing thoughtfully. “So where’s the beard and the Amish clothes? Can’t you get shunned for dressing like this, even on vacation?”

  I hesitated, wondering how to sum things up for her in the easiest possible way. “First of all, I’m not on vacation. I’m here to stay with Brady while Dad and Liz are out of town.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “Second, I can dress like this when I’m away from home because I haven’t yet officially joined the church. Once I do, the jeans and things will have to be put away for good.”

  “I see.”

  “Third, no Amish man starts growing a beard until the day he gets married.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes. Then he doesn’t shave it off, ever.”

  Her eyes widened. “Get out of town.” She seemed delighted by that notion, though I wasn’t sure why until she continued. “If only a wedding ring were so hard to ditch! I mean, it’s not like a philandering Amish man can slip off his beard for a night out on the town and then put it back on before he goes home to his wife.”

  We both laughed. “I guess not.”

  “So I assume your mom is Amish?” she asked, popping another bean into her mouth.

  “She was raised Amish, yes. She passed away when I was six.”

  Lark froze for a moment, looking shocked. Mortified, even.

  “My father was just about to ship off to Turkey when she died,” I explained, “so he sent me to live with my mother’s parents. My grandparents. I’ve been there ever since.”

  Lark sat back in her chair, shaking her head thoughtfully. “I’m really sorry, Tyler. I shouldn’t have been so nosy.”

  Her eyes were so genuinely repentant that for a moment she reminded me of Rachel.

  Rachel. My girlfriend. The woman I hoped to marry.

  Clearing my throat, I sat back as well, my face flushing with heat. What would Rachel think if she could get a look at me right now? Truly, I didn’t want to know.

  To my relief, our number was called then and Lark left the table to get our food. I had managed to recover by the time she returned, bearing our plates and two iced teas. As she set the food down in front of me, I saw that my “roll” was six round slices of rice-wrapped clumps of pale pink, yellow green, and verdant emerald.

  “So what is this exactly?” I said, poking one of the pieces with a chopstick.

  “Crab, avocado, cucumber, and nori wrapped in rice and sesame seed.”

  “What is a nori?” I plied the sticks to attempt to lift a piece to my mouth with no success.

  “Nori is seaweed. And no yucky faces. It’s good for you. Lots of vitamins.”

  I spun one of the slices around on my plate for a couple more seconds before I set the sticks down, picked up the piece of sushi in my fingers, and popped it into my mouth.

  “Fingers? Really?” Lark exclaimed.

  The piece was bigger than a normal bite, and I couldn’t immediately respond to her friendly indignation. I chewed and found the taste to be agreeable but not amazing.

  “Well?” Her eyes sparkled with anticipation.

  I swallowed and reached for the iced tea. “Pretty good.”

  “Pretty good. That’s it?”

  I took a drink and swished away the strange, lingering flavor of seaweed. “It’s a nice snack. I can’t see making a whole meal of it.”

  She shook her head. “There’s more to life than meat and potatoes, Amish boy. Here. Try one of mine.” Lark wrangled a piece from her plate, where something brownish gray peeked out of her sushi roll.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Eat it and then I’ll tell you.”

  I used my fingers to pick it up from where she’d placed it on my plate. I smelled a distinctly fishy fragrance. I took a small bite. It was rubbery, earthy, and mushroomy, as if I had eaten some of the reeds in my mother’s pond back home. A very strange taste.

  “Like it?”

  “What is it?”

  “Raw eel.”

  I reached for my drink again. “And you think lima beans are disgusting.”

  Lark laughed in mock exasperation. “Fine! You can pick the next place.”

  I didn’t know how to move on from that remark. Would there be a next time? Again, our impromptu stop for food suddenly felt a little too much like a date. Lark was just someone who knew something about photography and was willing to share it with me. We weren’t on a date. There would be no next time.

  “So, what made you want to major in photography?” I said, as much to remind her as myself why we had met.

  “I’ve always loved it. Always been drawn to it. You must like it too or you wouldn’t want to spend the month you’re here with your brother learning about it.”

  I took another bite of my own roll. “Not exactly. I just found out a few days ago that my mother was into photography when I was younger. I want to learn so I can see what she saw in it, what she liked about it.”

  “That’s sweet. What kind of photography did she do? Portraits? Landscapes? Architecture?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. My dad has a box of her pictures in a storage unit, but I won’t be able to see them until he gets back from his trip and he can go over there and get them for me.” As an afterthought, I added, “My memories of her with a camera are fleeting, but if I had to guess, I’d say landscapes. She was always drawn to the countryside.”

  “How about you? What kind of photography interests you?”

  “I don’t know that, either.”

  Lark cocked her head in amusement. “You must have some general idea.”

  “No, I really don’t. I have been reading up on the history of the subject, which is quite interesting. But I haven’t gotten to the part yet where it talks about different kinds of photography. How many are there?”

  “Besides the ones I already said?” She held out a hand and began counting off on her fingers. “Gosh, there’s aerial, wildlife, sports, fashion, weddings—”

  “Okay, well I think we can definitely rule out those last two.”

  She stopped short, with a grin.

  “Bottom line,” I told her, smiling in return, “I have no experience whatsoever with taking pictures. But I’d like to learn.”

  She gazed at me for a long moment and then her eyes widened.

  “Wait a minute. You people don’t believe in taking pictures,” she said, seeming
to remember a peculiarity about the Amish faith she had perhaps heard once and forgotten about. “You think it will steal your soul or something…” Her voice drifted away, as if she knew that wasn’t the real reason, but what else was she to assume?

  “That’s not it,” I said, shaking my head. “My soul belongs to God.”

  “Well, why not, then?”

  “A few reasons.” I recited the verse in Exodus 20 about not making graven images and then added, “Besides, posing for pictures doesn’t help us live lives of humility. Quite the opposite. We would think too much about ourselves. We’d rather be concerned with living in obedience than with worrying about our outward appearance.”

  She grinned. “I bet they pay you to say that.”

  I laughed and took another bite of my sushi.

  “Are you going to get in trouble for taking photography lessons?”

  “I told you, I’m not a member of the church yet. That’s why I want to do it before I go back.”

  If I go back…

  “How about your mom? Did she get in trouble when she took up photography?”

  I shook my head. “She left home at eighteen, without ever joining the church. They weren’t happy about her leaving, but there wasn’t much they could do about it. Except pray.”

  “Did she ever go back before she…”

  I shook my head. “To visit—once—but not to stay.”

  Lark tugged on the straw in her drink. “I’d go plum crazy living without cars and electricity and, heaven forbid, my camera. But that’s me. Do you think it’s possible your mom ever wished she had remained Amish instead of leaving?”

  I was surprised by the question. More times than I could count, I had wondered why she left in the first place. But never once had it occurred to me to consider whether she’d ever regretted that decision and wanted to go back home again. Of course, if she had, the family and community would have taken her in with open arms, her sins forgiven and forgotten. But once she was married to my dad, returning to the Amish life and joining the church at last wouldn’t have been an option for her. Not unless he was willing to become Amish as well.

  Which was about as likely as Timber walking on two legs and speaking Pennsylvania Dutch.

  “That’s…I don’t know,” I said, meeting Lark’s eyes. “I never thought about it before. Up till now, my biggest questions have been about why she left.”