TWENTY
That first night, as Cora had stared down at the strange young man weaving silently below her bedroom window, bathed in silver moonlight, a whole new world suddenly burst into view. Joseph’s display of devotion ignited a flame deep within her. The following morning she stood furtively by the kitchen window, waiting for a glimpse of Joseph as he left for work. She gazed at him as he yawned down the street toward the restaurant, and was unable to think about anything else.
They had never spoken a single word to each other.
Joseph would have probably gone on singing silently beneath her bedroom window for the rest of his life, but Cora was in no mood to wait. She watched him sing for one more night. The next evening she marched across the lawn.
Lomax had not told Joseph about his conversation with Cora, and so when my father opened the door and saw her standing there, he stared at her in mute amazement. Cora stared right back. In the moonlight Joseph’s features had been largely hidden by shadows. When she gazed into his astonished face, any lingering doubts that she may have had vanished. She took a step forward and held out her hand.
Joseph reached for her fingers. “You’re here,” he said.
“I’ve been watching you,” breathed Cora. “I’ve been hearing you sing.”
The time that followed was rich with the unsullied bliss of first love. Cora and Joseph spent every evening together, going for long walks through the woods or sitting on the back porch drinking iced tea. They talked forever, an endless river of conversation, meandering across whole worlds. When it was time for Cora to cross the lawn back to her house, they lingered endlessly, reluctant to give each other up to the solitude of the night.
Each day Joseph found himself mesmerized afresh, agog at the news that Cora was here, with him.
She begged him to sing the song he had performed beneath her window. He refused at first, sure that the music would never come, but he was helpless to resist her entreaties for long. One evening he reluctantly agreed to try. He stood up, cleared his throat, and looked into her eyes. A deep breath—and then the melody emerged, ringing with crystalline beauty. Cora gazed up at him in delight. When he had finished, she stood up without a word and kissed him softly on the cheek. After that he sang for her every day—the same songs that Frederick had performed twenty years earlier, as he had serenaded Jette on the streets of Hanover. Cora listened, enchantment illuminating her beautiful face.
After years of silence, love set all that music free.
W
hen Jette finally learned the details of Joseph’s unorthodox amorous campaign beneath Cora’s bedroom window, she could not help feeling proud of him, despite her misgivings. Lomax was a different matter, though. When she discovered that the nocturnal serenades had been his idea, and that it was he who had led Cora across the yard that Sunday afternoon, she confronted him.
“How are you going to feel when she breaks his heart?” she reproached him.
Lomax was unrepentant. “Who says she will?”
Jette shook her head. “This will end badly, you’ll see.”
“Have you seen how happy
he is, Miss Jette?”
Jette snorted. “That’s what worries me. He can’t think straight. And they don’t even know each other!”
“You didn’t know your husband when he sang through the hedge at you.”
“Well,” said Jette, “that was different.”
“Hmm. Funny how it’s always different.” Lomax scratched his head. “Look, Miss Jette, I love your boy,” he said. “I don’t want to see him hurt any more than you do. But I seen the look in his eye when he talks about that girl. He’s pinned his whole life on her. Right or wrong, that’s how it is. Smart or dumb, that’s how it is. Not for me to judge. So what was I supposed to do? Turn away and let his dreams go up in smoke?”
“You could have told me what was going on.”
Lomax shook his head. “It was already hard enough for Joseph to do what he did. If you had told him no, he never would have even tried.” He paused. “I won’t say I’m sorry for what I did. But I didn’t do it to hurt you. Matter of fact, I wasn’t thinking about you at all. I was thinking about
him
.”
“But what if this is all a terrible mistake?”
“Miss Jette,” said Lomax softly, “you got to let him
go
.”
Understanding hit Jette like a low punch to the gut: from now on her relationship with her son would be defined by her inability to save him from his own mistakes. She resolved to accept Joseph’s choice, bravely and without fuss. Her own mother’s refusal to welcome Frederick into their family had chased them halfway across the world. She promised herself that she would not make the same mistake.
And so, as the romance between Joseph and Cora shyly blossomed, Jette dived gamely into the fray, extending invitations left and right. Every week the two fractured families ate together at her dinner table, where she served up her most popular dishes from the restaurant.
Jette did her best to like Cora, but maternal instinct clouded her view. The prim little girl from next door still struck her as cool and aloof. But weeks passed, and then months, and her bleak predictions of her son’s heartbreak did not materialize. She had to admit that she had never seen Joseph so happy. When he announced one evening that he had asked Cora to marry him, and that she had accepted, Jette had the grace to admit (at least to herself) that she might have been mistaken.
Instead a new fear clouded the horizon. Jette was sure that Cora thought herself too grand for a small town like Beatrice. She became convinced that as soon as the young couple was married, Cora would announce her desire to return to Kansas City, or beyond.
Martin Leftkemeyer’s concerns were quite different. He was not worried about the prospect of imminent abandonment, nor was he unhappy with his daughter’s choice of mate. In fact he liked Joseph a great deal. It was the rest of his family that was the problem.
My grandfather had come to Beatrice in search of sanctuary. He needed to escape the memories of Cora’s mother that lingered in the large, sad house in Kansas City where they had lived. He had stayed by his wife’s bedside and watched as the influenza extinguished the light from her eyes. There was nothing he could have done to save her, and his powerlessness against the random brutality of fate flattened him almost as much as the loss of the woman he adored. Suddenly he was a frightened man. The busy streets outside his front door now hummed with invisible threat.
Our quiet little town had seemed a perfect antidote to the violent clamor of the big city. His desk at the bank was always immaculately tidy. He paid meticulous attention to detail. The never-changing paperwork offered comfort in its bland functionality, a dour buttress against unpredictability. Boxes ticked, blank spaces filled: this, at least, he could control.
Unsurprisingly, then, Jette’s capacity for benign chaos made Martin fretful. Her cheerful exuberance put his careful, well-ordered existence under threat. Those weekly festivals of starch at the Meisenheimer dinner table were a particular torment. He suffered quietly through Jette’s effusive hospitality, and would stagger home at the end of every visit, giddy with relief to have survived. Martin loved Cora more than anything in the world, and he wanted her to be happy. But her marriage to Joseph sounded the death knell for any lingering hopes he may have had for a tranquil life.
J
ette’s reservations about the union were mild in comparison to Rosa’s first flagrant hostility toward Cora. Nobody would ever be good enough for Rosa’s darling brother. My devoted aunt had spent her whole life trying to get Joseph to love her back, just a little, and she could not stand the thought of being eclipsed completely by the pretty girl from next door. And so she hated Cora, unable to forgive her for stealing Joseph away.
One day Cora and Joseph arrived at Jette’s house while Rosa and Lomax were immersed in one of their afternoon chess games. Cora watched them play. Rosa ignored her, frowning at the board in concentration. Lomax, though, grinned at her. “You ever play chess, Miss Cora?” he asked.
“I used to,” said Cora. “But a long time ago.”
“Perhaps the two of you should play.” Lomax sighed, gesturing at the pieces before him. “She’s beating up on me. Again.”
Rosa looked up for the first time. “Would you like to play?” she asked Cora.
Cora smiled at her. “Finish this game. You and I can play tomorrow.”
Rosa spent the next day imagining the look on Cora’s face as she inflicted a crushing defeat on the unwelcome interloper. Victory at the chessboard would never win Joseph back, but it would be sweet, all the same. When Cora sat down opposite her, looking uncertainly at the pieces, there was a merciless glint in my aunt’s eye.
Half an hour later, Rosa surveyed the board in disbelief. Her forces had been decimated. Cora had played with stunning, sustained aggression. Rosa had been unable to mount a single attack of her own. To her horror she felt the hot prickle of incipient tears behind her eyes. Cora hadn’t just outplayed Rosa, she had
destroyed
her. My aunt had been completely outclassed, and she knew it. Her tears were tears of envy and admiration.
Rosa would have preferred to go on loathing and ignoring Cora as before, but this complicated matters. There was little in the world that was more important to Rosa than chess. She looked down at the board, marveling at the elegance of Cora’s game, and knew that she would do anything to be able to play the same way. She cleared her throat, unsure if the words she wanted to say would emerge. She pointed at the board.
“Could you teach me?” she asked.
In the following months Rosa discovered new worlds. Cora taught her opening sequences and their variations, wily defenses, and other fiendish gambits. Rosa learned them all by heart. Chess pieces danced patterns in her head, an atlas of exotic names: the Italian, the Sicilian, the Catalan, the Indian. Cora was a generous and patient teacher. Even though Rosa would never be able to forgive her completely for stealing Joseph away from her, much of her antipathy dissipated in a quiet haze of gratitude over the chessboard.
O
nly one photograph was taken on my parents’ wedding day.
I have it in front of me as I write. The newlyweds stand in the center of the picture, side by side, holding hands. Cora looks calm, resolved, quietly satisfied. And radiantly pretty, of course. Joseph is grinning like an imbecile. It is ten months since Cora interrupted his silent recital beneath her bedroom window, and he still cannot quite believe that any of this is actually happening.
Similar expressions of disbelief, although not so beatific, appear on the faces of the wedding guests who flank the happy couple. Jette Meisenheimer and Martin Leftkemeyer share the same faraway look as they gaze vaguely toward the camera. Rosa hovers by her brother’s shoulder, clutching a small bouquet of flowers, her face an unreadable mask. Only Lomax, proud architect of the union, appears to be enjoying himself. He is on the far right of the picture, dressed in a suit purchased for the occasion. He is laughing as the photographer presses the button.
TWENTY-ONE
On his wedding night, Joseph packed his bags and made the short journey across the yard, where he joyfully installed himself in Cora’s bedroom.
Now it was Jette’s turn to spend hours peering wistfully across that narrow expanse of grass, just as her son had done. She gazed at the Leftkemeyers’ house, wondering when Joseph would leave her.
In fact, the idea of leaving Beatrice had never occurred to the newlyweds. Joseph would have followed Cora to the ends of the earth, of course, but she had no intention of abandoning her father.
Jette was astonished when, a week or so after the wedding, Joseph suggested that Cora should start work at Frederick’s. “This is a family business, and she’s family now.” He grinned. “Besides, she’s much prettier than me. She can take the orders and charm the customers, and I’ll stay in the kitchen with Lomax.”
“I could use the help.” Lomax nodded, looking pleased. “It gets kind of lonely back there, you know.”
Jette looked uncertainly at her new daughter-in-law. “If you’re sure,” she said. “It’s hard work.”
Cora smiled at her. “I’ll work as hard as anyone else, I promise you that.”
And she did.
C
ora quickly took control of the dining room. She mastered the restaurant’s peculiar, ever-changing menu. She glided back and forth from the kitchen laden down with plates and glasses, never dropping a thing. When the last customers had been served, she rolled up her sleeves and got to work with whatever needed to be done to get ready for the following day. She polished silverware, mopped floors, and chopped anything put in front of her—and all this tireless industry was performed with a wide smile on her lovely face.
My grandmother had the grace to acknowledge when she was wrong; Cora was not the prissy girl she had taken her for. Before long the two women worked the dining room in harmonious tandem.
Cora was not the restaurant’s only new recruit. It was around that time that Rosa also began to work on weekends, busing tables and cleaning dishes. Jette watched her daughter as she worked. Rosa was a pretty enough girl—perhaps not a real beauty like Cora, but she had an open face and big brown eyes that shone with sharp intelligence. Her hair was long and straight and as dark as mahogany. She was tall for a teenager, but did not possess her mother’s robust physical heft or confidence. Instead she moved with awkward caution, as if she couldn’t entirely trust her body to do her bidding. She did her best to smile at the customers, but Jette could tell that it was an effort. Rosa would have preferred to go about her business untroubled by the cheerful parade of diners who marveled at how she had grown and peppered her with well-meaning inquiries. Even back then my aunt’s distaste for the spotlight was apparent. She would always prefer to remain hidden from view. (One day I would discover just how hidden.)
In the kitchen, Lomax taught Joseph how to cook. At first my father tried to take notes, but soon gave up. Lomax’s idiosyncratic approach to culinary instruction meant that the recipes changed each time he cooked them.
“It’s not about exact measurements or ingredients,” shrugged Lomax, when Joseph complained. “Good food is about
feeling
. Cooking is an art, not a science. You got to have soul to feed people right.” He smiled. “That’s what this is. Soul food.”
Joseph frowned. “Yes, but how many—”
“Just go with your instincts,” advised Lomax. “Improvise a little.” He held an imaginary cornet up to his lips and blew. “No shame in making it up as you go along. You’ll get a feel for it, I promise you.”
And sure enough, Joseph did. Under Lomax’s loosey-goosey tutelage he developed an intuitive grasp of how food should be prepared. Not once in his culinary career did my father ever use a measuring cup or scales. He discovered a flair for creating fresh combinations of flavors. He began to concoct his own variations on Lomax’s recipes. Unshackled from the rigid prescriptions of cookbooks, Joseph became a poet in the kitchen.
With both Lomax and Joseph at the stove, Jette began to offer more choices each day. Business continued to grow. People began to visit from neighboring towns. Jette bought a safe for the restaurant’s takings—much to the chagrin of Martin Leftkemeyer, who couldn’t persuade her to open a bank account. She also took her grandfather’s military medal from its hiding place at the back of her chest of drawers and put it in there, too. She was pleased to have the medal finally out of the house. Her guilt at her theft retreated, just a little.
At Lomax’s suggestion, Cora began to use her vegetable patch behind the house to supply the restaurant with produce that couldn’t be found elsewhere. She grew several varieties of peppers and chilies that Lomax and Joseph used to add spice to their dishes. There was an inverse corollary between size and kick; the smaller and more withered the vegetable, the more caution was required. Cora grew Jalapeños, Jaloros, Anaheims, Habaneros, Costeño Amarillos, Cayennes, Apaches, and Cherry Bombs. Lomax’s favorites were Bangalore Torpedoes, long craggy things as viciously hooked as a witch’s finger and about as ferocious, if you put one in your mouth.
Cora and Lomax tended their unusual harvest together. Their horticultural double act was always accompanied by gales of laughter. Joseph liked to watch them as they worked, warmed by their obvious fondness for each other, and hoped that they weren’t laughing about him.
M
arried life brought about one other big change for Joseph. He began to go to church.
Neither Jette nor Frederick had ever had much time for religion. Much of Jette’s childhood had been spent shivering in the shadows of Hanover’s austerely grand cathedral, while her mother peered around to see who else of consequence was there. It had gradually dawned on Jette that her family’s faultless attendance record had nothing to do with faith. Church was a social occasion, not a spiritual one. She had taken to stomping around the Grosse Garten on Sunday afternoons as a means of shaking off the cobwebs of that morning’s dose of hypocritical piety. Frederick’s own Sunday mornings had usually been spent in bed with a pillow over his head, recovering from the excesses of the previous evening.
Joseph had inherited his father’s cheerful agnosticism rather than Jette’s visceral disdain for the whole business, and so when Cora asked him to attend the First Christian Church with her, he went along happily enough. Each week he donned a freshly starched shirt and walked proudly to church with his wife on his arm. He knelt and stood and sang along with everyone else, and listened to the sermons with polite interest. He saw the devout shine in Cora’s eyes, and wished that he shared her faith.
Every Sunday morning Joseph stood by Cora’s side and kept his eyes squeezed shut as he pretended to pray. It was the only lie he ever told her.