Prairie Widow by Harold Bakst Page A

read while she, his only child, cleared the kitchen table and washed the dishes. Afterward, she would join him in the parlor and listen to him gripe about something in the paper—in those days, the Southern secessionists—while she would sit in her mother’s rocker and read a book or do her needlepoint. Sometimes, her father would look up from his paper to comment on something he had just read, and she and he would discuss it though, really, Jennifer mostly listened.
    That’s the way it had been for so very long, and though she had fancied that she’d like to marry one day—and had spent a good deal of time imagining what the man would be like—Jennifer remained quite content to be the little housewife to her father, even as she turned nineteen, an age when a young lady ought to be married, as, indeed, all her childhood friends were.
    But Jennifer’s father was not so content. He complained to Jennifer often about her withdrawn ways, and every time he discovered an eligible bachelor—like the coalman or a fellow town clerk—he’d point him out to Jennifer and say, “Now, he would make a fine son-in-law!” But, to his never-ending frustration, either Jennifer proved to be too shy, or the young men had eyes for someone else, someone, perhaps, more fun.
    Eventually, Jennifer’s father grew so annoyed at his daughter’s complacency that he took matters into his own hands. One evening, he arrived home after work with a dinner guest: a big, ruddy-faced man with blonde hair and blue eyes—someone, as Jennifer judged it, about ten years her senior.
    â€œJenny, I would like you to meet Mr. Walter Vandermeer,” her father said, tottering at the doorway, for he almost always made a stop at O’Reilly’s Tavern on his way home. “…a fine, upstanding citizen, and a Dutchman to boot.”
    â€œMiss Schuyler, it is my great pleasure to meet with you,” said Walter, himself a mite unsteady on his feet, for it was at O’Reilly’s the two men had met. “Your father has told me so much about you.”
    Jennifer remembered that meeting very well, as if it were much more recent than thirteen years ago. A polite enough evening ensued, but it didn’t bode well for serious courting. The two men were clearly more entertained by each other’s bawdy company than by anything that Jennifer could contribute.
    â€œAnd what do you do for a living, Mr. Vandermeer?” she offered from her rocker.
    Walter suppressed his high spirits and tried to respond seriously. “Oh, a little of this, a little of that. I’m what you call a Jack-of-all-trades.”
    â€œThe man is going places!” declared her father, lest there be any doubt.
    But there was doubt. Jennifer’s first impression of Walter was that he was nothing more than a braggart, a tippler and, worst of all, a ne’er-do-well, something to which her father apparently had decided to turn a blind eye.
    Indeed, how angry he used to get with her when she showed no interest in her would-be gentleman friend. “You’d better not be so independent!” he had scolded her on a number of occasions. “Other women—prettier women—have their eyes on him! They know a good man when they see one.”
    As it happened, though, Jennifer was not quite as independent as her father thought. She had no other man in her life, aside from the grocer, whom, actually, she only spoke to when she went shopping. And she was going to be twenty soon. If the truth were known, she liked it when Walter came calling, as he generally did on Sunday afternoons, equipped with flowers for her and cigars for her father. The two men inevitably shared the cigars, along with some brandy, later in the evening.
    By and by, after enough of such Sundays, Jennifer even allowed herself to take a liking to this Mr. Vandermeer. He was, after all, a rather chivalrous sort, cheerful, and a brawny