From the Relief Society Magazine, March 1949 –

The House of Leaves

By Blanche Sutherland

Mark Ballard turned the steering wheel with a lean hand and the car jolted up onto the highway and stopped. Anne Henderson shifted a trifle in her seat and he smiled down into her clear, gray eyes.

“Remind me to put in a driveway without that bump,” he said, and Anne laughed.

Mark eyed her small face, the wistful mouth, and there was hunger in his eyes. Annie, Annie, he thought, will it really come true this time — our marriage – or…

As if sensing his thought, Anne held up her lips and he bent his dark head to kiss her. She moved against his shoulder. “Oh, Mark, I can’t wait. Our very own house. If only it would be finished and we could move in right after we’re married.”

Mark grinned. “One month? That would take some doing.”

Both turned as with one accord and looked back. “Can’t you almost see the wide window and how it will bring that whole view right into the living room?” Mark gestured toward a line of blue hills against whose background maples and red oaks flamed in autumn colors. “Or,” he eyed her in mock anxiety, “are you going to be the kind of wife who hangs drapes all over windows?”

Anne shook her head, smiling. “Not that window at any rate.” She gave a little sigh and relaxed in the seat beside him. “It’s almost real, isn’t it?” she asked, pointing to where careful lines of brown and red leaves had been raked to form the outlines of a house plan.

She laughed suddenly and tossed the hair from her eyes, pulling her green coat around her. “Mother and Dad would think us a little goofy if they’d seen us building a house out of leaves as children do.”

Mark held himself in check, straightening the slight stoop that had lately come to his shoulders. By long practice he had been able to achieve a satisfactory demeanor when Anne’s parents were mentioned. But how could he think of them as anything but enemies to their marriage?

“We’ll build our house of wood, mortar, and bricks, my sweet, like the wise little pig,” he said, “and no big, bad wolf can huff and puff it down, as children say. But seriously, Anne, I’m telling Anderson tomorrow that we’ll take this lot. And then I’ll get Barnhoff at the plans.”

He flicked on the switch and stepped on the starter.

Anne turned to look back again. “It will be just like the leaf-house, won’t it?” she asked anxiously. “You remember how it’s to be?”

“Every last detail, from the big window and the view to the service porch and the clothes reel,” he laughed. He took his hat from the seat back, tilting it confidently over his short, black hair. “Now let’s go back.”

They rode in the silence of long friendship, back through the streets of Hanford where they’d both been reared. A haze of blue, born of many bonfires, hung over the streets. He breathed deeply of the spicy fragrance, remembering so many autumns.

Five years, he thought, and silently cursed himself that they had not married before, regardless. He turned and looked at Anne, seeing as if for the first time the wide, gray eyes almost too large for her small face, the auburn hair curled around her ears but smoothed into a pageboy at the back of her neck, the tiny mole on her chin.

Anne, sweet, he thought, remembering how he’d wanted her every hour of the five years. Maybe this time, there’d be not one thing to stand in the way. Not her father and mother, not Josie.

“Did you ever wonder, Anne, what it would have been like if we’d married when we first planned?” he asked suddenly.

Anne shook her head. “Who knows? anyway, we couldn’t have. Mother and Dad wouldn’t hear of it. I was only nineteen.”

“And now you’re twenty-four and I’m twenty-seven. We’d have had all these years of being married, Anne.”

Anne turned a distressed face toward him. “I know, Mark.”

“Of course, the first two years, I had to get the drugstore on a paying basis again after Dad died,” he said. “It would have made hard sledding if we’d been married then, I realize.”

“Then dad broke his leg,” Anne said, “and it wouldn’t heal. And Mother got sick worrying about it. That was the third year.”

“Yes,” Mark agreed slowly, and his mouth went dry remembering how pinched and white Anne had looked before her mother was up and about again. “Then, after that, Anne, Josie got married and your folks thought they couldn’t lose both of you at once …”

“But we did begin to plan then, Mark,” she interrupted hurriedly. “We were going to live in the flat over the store. We would have, too, if the folks hadn’t decided to take that trip West.”

“Yes, I know,” Mark said. He wanted to add, “And you had to go as chauffeur on account of your father’s lame foot. And that was the fourth year.” But he didn’t say it. It would sound bitter, he decided. It was all past, anyway, unless something new arose. For Anne had promised.

He straightened suddenly and stopped for the red light, turning his eyes to follow a sudden gesture from Anne.

“Look, Mark. In that car. It’s Ellen Carson – er – Barclay, I mean,” she corrected. “I can’t get used to Ellen and John being married.”

Mark shrugged. “Neither can Ellen and John, I’ll wager. How many years do you suppose it was that they were going steady?”

Anne shook her head. “Years and years.”

“I was just a kid, I know,” Mark said thoughtfully. He started the car at the green light. “I remember we used to play jokes on them, tacking ‘Just Married’ signs on John’s old Model T. Once we gave them a charivari. I don’t like to remember John’s face even to this day.”

Anne frowned. “Boys can be so mean.”

“And girls,” Mark added. “Ellen was such a pretty girl, and some of the others didn’t spare her feelings much.” He swerved the car to avoid an oncoming one. “And John – we called him Jack then – was the best pitcher Hanford ever had. That must have been twenty years ago, at the least.”

“You have a good memory.”

“No. Jack had all of us kids organized into competing teams. I was seven or eight years old and he taught me that slow curve of his. The one that made him famous.” Mark smiled reminiscently. “We had some great teams, I tell you, for just kids.”

He turned the car into Maple Street. “You know how boys will idolize a young fellow like that. I remember I decided I was going to be just like Jack when I grew up.” He broke off. “Funny what life does to people, huh?”

“No, not funny,” she answered soberly, brushing at bits of leaves on her skirt. She turned quickly toward him. “We will be married this time, Mark. We will be.”

Mark’s smile moved over her face lovingly. “Next month, sweet. And we’ll tell your Dad and Mother for sure, as soon as we get you home?”

Anne’s gray eyes flinched from his for a second, then she put her face against his shoulder. “The very minute,” she said, with a show of courage in her voice and face.

When Mark pulled his car to a stop under the huge maples that guarded the big old house where the Hendersons lived, Josie’s car was the first thing that met their eyes.

“Oh,” Anne said faintly. “Oh!”

Mark frowned at her worriedly. “You’re not going to let your sister scare you out of telling, are you?”

Anne straightened decisively. “No, I’m not.” She climbed out of the car and went up the walk, her green coat making a splash of color against the maples. She smiled back at him reassuringly, but her lips held a tremble in their softness.

Before they reached the porch, they could hear Josie’s high, light voice, her laughter. “Feature that!” she was saying as Mark and Anne came in. “Two of them, a boy and a girl! Can you imagine?”

Josie, a small, determined, blonde woman of about thirty, was sitting on the arm of the old-fashioned settee. She turned laughingly toward them. “I suppose you’ve heard the news. I was just telling Dad and Mother.”

Anne motioned Mark to a chair, then went to hang up her coat. She stopped beside her mother’s rocking chair to pat her shoulder, smiling down at the spare, helpless-looking woman. She picked up her father’s cane and replaced it in reach of his hand, then turned to Josie. “What news?” she asked.

Josie’s face registered exasperation. “I declare, Anne, sometimes I think you’re only half alive. Ellen and John Barclay have adopted two children! Two, mind you. A three-year-old boy and a two-months-old baby girl. Can you tie that?”

“Well, that’s fine,” Anne replied. “I’m glad. Ellen loves children.”

Mark spoke up. “Good old Jack. Now he’ll have a boy of his own to teach that famous slow curve.”

Mrs. Henderson shook her head. Adopting is a terrible responsibility,” she said hopelessly. “When they’re your own, you have to do the best you can by them. But someone else’s! I don’t see how they dared.”

She shook her head again and took up a roll of knitting from her lap and inspected it. “Annie, I’ve dropped a stitch.” She held it out. “It’s a sweater for the baby. Josie wants me to finish it.”

Anne gathered it up, pulled back the needle until she could pick up the stitch, then slipped the others back on. “Here you are, Mother,” she said. Where did they get the children from, Josie?”

“The Home.” Josie rolled her eyes. They must have gone and applied right away after they were married. It usually takes months and months. And I hear they almost got a refusal at that they’re so old.”

Dad Henderson spoke up. “Hope they use more sense in raising them than the young folks do nowadays. Running loose like wildcats at all hours, and with no respect for their elders, either.”

“Ellen was a good girl and a good daughter,” Mother Henderson said, knitting away. “She’ll do right by them just like she did with her parents. John Barclay was dead set on him and Ellen getting married. He’d even promised they could move in with her father and mother, but Ellen knew it wouldn’t do. Not with that pair.” She shook her head wisely. “Two families in one house, you know. And if they’re young ones! Tsk-tsk!”

Mark looked at Anne. She was sitting quietly in a chair by the window. The late afternoon sunshine through the small panes of glass highlighted her hair to burnished copper. They couldn’t have found a worse time to tell of their wedding,hethoughtmorosely.Theatmospherewasthesameasever,sappingAnne’sresolution. He sat rigid, watching her wordlessly.

She must have felt his eyes upon her for she spoke up suddenly.”mar and I were looking at a building site this afternoon. We’re to be married next month, the twentieth.”

The effect of her announcement was comparable to the sudden stillness that follows a clap of thunder. No one spoke. Then, out of the bottomless silence, Josie’s words came like a whiplash of lightning.

“You intend to move out and leave Dad and Mother alone?” she asked. “You, all they have left?”

“We would be quite near,” Anne said through white lips. “In that new subdivision over by Oak Grove. And until the house is built, we’ve rented an apartment only a block away – the Davis Flats.’

Josie’s face was scarlet with anger. “You know it’s always been understood that you were to stay with Dad and Mother. You know that,” she expostulated. “You and I are all that are left here. I have my family. I can’t take care of them.”

Mother Henderson dropped her knitting and began fumbling for a handkerchief. Dad’s face was taking on that look of resigned patience that Mark knew was the hardest of all for Anne to bear.

“Couldn’t expect her to stay with us, Mother,” he said. “We babied her too long, I guess. A town wouldn’t have two like Ellen, staying on till she got the old folks buried. No, that’d be unreasonable, I suppose.”

Anne’s eyes, sick, forlorn, and bewildered, flew to Mark’s. Mark had to remind himself that neither Dad nor Mother Henderson was aged or bedridden, that they were financially able to pay for the work they had come to think of as Anne’s duty. If they should get sick, he and Anne would be close by – as also would be Josie, he thought savagely.

Coldly, he told himself, it was now or never. If they beat Anne down this time, she would never again have the courage to try while Dad and Mother lived. He could go on adding ten, fifteen, perhaps even twenty years to the five already gone by. Years of going back to lonely nights at Mrs. Nelson’s where he’d roomed since his parents’ death, of restaurant food ordered from a card and eaten alone; bleak, uneventful years, waiting, waiting and never arriving. He smiled wryly. Jacob served seven years for Rachel, then seven more. But not he.

He got up, put his chair carefully back into place, addressing himself to Anne.

“Let me know, Anne, what you decide. Anderson has another buyer for that lot. He’s holding it for me until tomorrow morning.”

Then, he turned to the others. “This whole town has been brought up on the Ellen and John tradition. Ever since I can remember, I’ve heard what a fine daughter she has proved herself, how loyal to her parents she has been, refusing to leave them and all that. And John! He’s been an example of patience and steadfast love toward the girl of his choice. Well, mine is a different idea. Ellen didn’t love John enough. If she had, she wouldn’t have been willing to sacrifice him to her parents as she did.” Mark’s lips felt dry. He moistened them with the tip of his tongue before continuing. “I think she was just a plain coward,” he said.

The silence in the room was almost audible. Josie’s face was an angry red, her parents’ both held shocked bewilderment. He dare not look at Anne. All the coldness of a surgeon’s knife was in his voice as he went on. “Now, I’m asking what kind of parents would expect or accept such a sacrifice? The animals, the birds, do better. They prepare their young for life, then turn them loose.”

Josie laughed, an unpleasant sound. She stood up, and smoothed down her skirt decisively. “He’s insulted you, Anne. Are you letting him insult Dad and Mother, too?”

Mark turned his head to look at Anne, then. The sunlight had gone from the window. Her face looked drawn and dull against the fading light, her eyes were turned away. Probably, he’d gone too far, probably she’d never forgive him, he thought. But he had to finish. It was important that he finish.

“John Barclay was my boyhood hero. I wanted to be just like him. But that was then, not now. Now, I want to have a wife and home while we’re young enough for us to enjoy each other. I want us to have our own children, not wait until we’re so old we have to adopt other people’s.”

He buttoned his coat and reached for his hat, smoothing down his short, black hair. “You’ve had your chance at life,” he said pleadingly, “all three of you. Let Anne and me have ours.”

He opened the door and turned back to look at Anne. She seemed not to have stirred. “Let me know, Anne,” he said, and went out, off the porch and down the walk, hearing Josie’s laugh, loud and confident.

Well, he’d done what he could, he’d said what he had to. And now–? He stood for a moment looking about him in a dazed fashion. Josie’s high, light voice was going on intermittently, but he could distinguish no words.

He kicked aimlessly at the fallen leaves and laughed wryly, remembering the house of leaves that he and Anne had built. And who, he asked himself, had been the big, bad wolf who’d puffed and huffed, and huffed and puffed, until the house was down before ever it was built. He’d insulted Anne, called her a coward who’d rather sacrifice him than stand up against her family. Worse, he’d insulted her parents. And that would be harder for Anne to forgive than the other.

He moved to the curb, fingering the key in his pocket absently. Was it only an hour ago that he and Anne were planning so confidently? Already, the picture of what it meant was fading into the oblivion of lost things – Anne, marriage, children – but at first, only the two of them alone. A gust of wind struck him. He shivered. Cold for October, he thought. Summer was ended, as all bright things end.

He looked back toward the house, at the cold, final stare of the windows, the closed door; gave a furious kick at his front tire and climbed into the car.

He ground on the starter, waiting for the hum of the motor. His hand was on the brake when he heard her voice, “Mark, Mark,” followed by a commanding, “Anne, come back here.”

Josie was on the porch and Anne was flying down the walk, her auburn hair tumbling in the wind. “Wait, Mark, wait!”

He opened the door and she slipped quickly in beside him. “Drive on,” she said, “back to our leaf house, Mark, won’t you?”

They parked the car and walked through the dusk to where the leaf house lay, its trim lines somewhat wind blown, but still intact.

“It isn’t really blown away. See?” he gestured. “I was afraid.”

Anne shook her head, her lips trembling. Mark reached penitent arms toward her. “Can you forgive me, Anne?”

She drew away from him, self-accusingly. “But you were right. I am a coward, I’ve always been one. Afraid of Josie, afraid of not measuring up to Ellen Carson, afraid of hurting Mother and Dad … But not afraid of hurting you, Mark. Oh, no, you were patient, you’d stand for it.”

She pulled away sharply. “I should think you’d hate me.”

He looked down at the small face with its wide, gray eyes, and tenderly pushed back a lock of bright hair from her forehead. “Hate you, sweet?” he asked wonderingly. “How could I?”

Suddenly, she was in his arms again, and he was speaking words in her ear. He had said them many times in the five years, but tonight there was a new assurance in them, a new conviction. This time, he exulted, this time it will be, knowing, at last, beyond all certainty that there were things – blessed things which might be even better for the waiting.