Authors: Lynn Austin
“Eva is crying for no reason, and I can’t get her to stop, Mama,” Sophie said with a sigh.
I scooped Eva up in my arms. “Ja, little one. I know just what you need to make your tears go away.” I dug Oma’s cup out of the drawer in the sideboard where I’d hidden it four years ago.
“What is that, Mama?” Sophie asked, trailing behind me.
“It’s my grandmother’s very special crying cup. Whenever you drink from it, all of your tears will magically disappear.” I filled it with milk and held it to Eva’s lips. “I used to drink from this cup when I was a little girl in Germany. You’re named after Oma, Sophie. She loved you very much, and she wanted you and your sisters to have her magic cup so that you would always be reminded of her.”
As I watched Eva gulp the milk I wished I could talk to Oma one last time and tell her all that I’d learned in America. I would tell her that I’d finally learned not to smother my feelings to avoid being hurt but to embrace life and love, giving and forgiving. I’d learned that having faith doesn’t mean giving up my life, but putting it into God’s hands, allowing Him to mysteriously weld two together into one. I’d learned that true power doesn’t lie in making the outward choices, but in making the inward ones—choosing to love and to nurture, choosing to trust God. I’d tell Oma that she was right when she gave me the crying cup—the power to find joy isn’t in the cup, but within my own heart. But maybe Oma knew all of these things, after all.
Eva finished drinking her milk and pointed to the little girl painted on the cup. “Baby!” she said with a grin. A creamy band of milk spread across her lip.
Sophie stared in surprise. “It worked, Mama! She stopped crying!”
“Of course, sweetheart. Oma’s crying cup always works.”
Outside the kitchen window I heard the creak of a rope against a tree branch as Emma played on the swing that hung from one of the apple trees. She was singing a hymn in her sweet, clear voice—the hymn I’d come to think of as my own:
I do not know how long ’twill be, nor what the future holds for me, but this I know, if Jesus leads me, I shall get home someday
. . .
TWELVE
1980
Suzanne closed the flaps of the box she had just packed and stacked it against the living room wall with the others. “That was a great story, Grandma, but what does it have to do with me?”
“Honestly, Suzanne!” Grace was trying to dry her tears without smearing her makeup, while Emma searched in vain for the box of tissues.
Suzanne ducked into the bathroom and retrieved a roll of toilet paper. “Here, use this. I don’t want to start another fight, Mom, but if you think about it rationally, you’ll see that there are several important differences between Great-grandma’s situation and mine.”
Grace blew her nose. “Maybe, but the point is the same.”
“Right. And what is the point? Great-grandma adjusted to her new life and so will I? Humbug! Great-grandpa and Jeff both had to make a tough decision? Double humbug! Great-grandpa was following his conscience, but Jeff’s decision was just plain selfish! Maybe husbands didn’t have to consult their wives in the nineteenth century, but this is the twentieth century, and they should know enough to consult us today! We’re not just another possession anymore! And you’re forgetting another big difference too—Great-grandma’s identity was defined by ‘children, cooking, and church.’ I’m the assistant editor
of New Woman
magazine. I love my job! I have an identity apart from my husband and children, and no one has a right to make me give that up!”
“Suzy, Suzy . . . why are you shouting at us?” Emma said. She caressed Suzanne’s back to soothe her. Suzanne stopped, surprised by her own outburst. Why was she so angry? Had Louise’s story affected her more than she cared to admit?
“Let’s face it,” Suzanne finally said, “times change, roles change, expectations change. What’s right for one generation isn’t necessarily right for the next one.”
“But there are some things that shouldn’t change,” Emma said quietly. “You told me you didn’t want to be like your mother. She chose to give up
her career for her husband’s sake, and so you’ve decided not to make the same mistake. But don’t you see? You’re still reacting to the choices she made. That’s what I did. My marriage to Karl was a mistake because I was reacting to my mother’s choices. We’re supposed to learn from our mother’s mistakes, not react to them. That’s the pattern you have to change.”
“I gave up my career because my marriage was more important,” Grace added. “Isn’t yours important? Marriage involves sacrifice. Your great-grandmother’s story should have told you that, if nothing else.”
Suzanne rolled her eyes. “Well, in my case, all the sacrifices are one-sided.”
“But that’s the definition of a sacrifice,” Grace said. “Think of Christ’s sacrifice—”
“Oh, please don’t drag theology into this conversation,” Suzanne said, groaning. “It’s getting maudlin enough as it is.”
“She’s right, Gracie,” Emma said. “We don’t need a sermon. But, Suzanne, just suppose for a moment that my mother had the same choices you do. Suppose she’d had a career back in Germany and had decided to divorce Friedrich and stay there. What then?”
Suzanne gave a flippant laugh and raked her dark hair from her eyes with one hand. “Then none of us would even be here arguing about this.”
“Yes, exactly.” Emma smiled knowingly and Suzanne saw she had been trapped. “If you don’t heal this rift—if you let Jeff walk out of your life—you might lose something very, very precious that you can never retrieve again.”
For a moment the room was silent. Suzanne was aware of the many sounds of life outside her grandmother’s apartment—doors slamming, children squealing, the hiss of air brakes at the bus stop, the steady mumble of traffic and airplanes like a distant river. Unable to bear the scrutiny of her mother and grandmother, she glanced at her watch.
“You know what? We need to leave. I promised to pick up the girls before supper, and the expressways are going to be jammed if we don’t get going.”
She practically fled to the car, using the excuse that she wanted to load the items that Emma had given to her and Grace—then she decided to wait on the sidewalk for her mother to tie up all the loose ends in the apartment.
The warm spring day had turned chilly by late afternoon, and Suzanne shivered as the sun disappeared behind the apartment building. Signs of the season were harder to find here in the densely populated city, but as she waited she spotted dandelions on a small triangle of grass across the street and budding green leaves on a scraggly tree near the corner. She thought of
the changes her great-grandmother had endured coming to America and wondered if God had devised the seasons as a reminder that nothing in life remains the same.
She looked up at the square brick building and found Emma’s living room window on the third floor. Would moving to the suburbs be difficult for her grandmother after so much time? Then she thought of the changes that lay ahead in her own life after the death of her ten-year-old marriage, and she shivered again.
A few minutes later her mother and grandmother emerged through the doors of the apartment building. How different they were—from head to toe! Grace’s curly hair was beautifully styled; Emma wore her straight, silver hair short and casual. Grace’s feet were shod in expensive Italian leather pumps; Emma’s feet sported cheap canvas deck shoes. How different their personalities were too! Grace was so much more cautious and conservative than her uninhibited, fun-loving mother. But then, Suzanne and her mother were very different women as well. Suzanne never would have worked her way to the top at
New Woman
magazine if she had been as passive as Grace.
Emma gave Suzanne a hug and kissed her good-bye. “Thanks for all your help, dear. And please don’t fight with your mother on the way home, all right?” She said it with a smile, and Suzanne couldn’t help smiling in return.
“That’s one of the things I’ve always loved about you, Grandma—you don’t give long lectures.”
Grace was unusually quiet on the drive home, deeply withdrawn into her own thoughts. Suzanne wondered what those thoughts were and if she was upset about something, but she decided not to ask. She really didn’t feel much like talking either. Almost against her will, she found herself thinking about her great-grandmother’s story again.
There was another important difference between her and Louise, one she hadn’t wanted to mention. While Louise had barely known her husband when they’d married and had later learned to love him, her story was the opposite—she and Jeffrey had started out deeply, passionately in love. They had begun their marriage as “one flesh,” but those bonds had long since died, along with the sparks and the flames.
Jeffrey had made his choice, she had made hers. And although she would never admit it to her mother, she was already seeing the consequences of those decisions in her daughters’ lives. Amy had been unusually disobedient and rebellious lately, Melissa overly emotional and clingy. They were both reacting to all the tension at home. Maybe things would improve once Jeff left for good.
Suzanne glanced at her mother and saw her surreptitiously wiping a tear. She was probably still crying over the happy ending to Louise’s story. Grace always cried at happy endings. Sue remembered her own reaction to the story and wondered why she hadn’t allowed herself to cry. Was she smothering her emotions as Louise had?
She sighed and merged the car into the racing freeway traffic. There was no room in her life for mawkish sentimentality. Like Louise wading out into the flood, she would have to be very strong in order to survive her new life alone.
A week after her mother gave her the photograph album, Grace sat alone in her kitchen leafing through it, brooding about the mysteries of her past. The black-and-white photos, faded and brittle with age, offered no hints to help her unravel Emma’s riddles, and the unanswered questions revolved endlessly in Grace’s mind like a carousel. She would grab hold of one and ride it for a while until the journey to nowhere made her dizzy, then let it go to ride the next one.
She turned each page of the album slowly, careful not to loosen the glue on the old-fashioned corner-mounts. Emma’s elaborate script, scrawled in white ink on the black pages, was nearly illegible, so she studied the mute faces instead. Some, like her father’s and her grandparents’, were known to Grace only by these photographs. What other expressions had animated their features besides this one, frozen forever by the camera?
Grace sat by the bay window in her breakfast nook, the only cozy spot in her sleek, echoing kitchen. Earlier that day her entire house had been polished to perfection by her weekly maid service, and she hated to disturb the vast, gleaming rooms. She could think of plenty of other things to do besides wasting her time with this scrapbook, but the paralyzing lethargy she felt seemed soul-deep.
When the kitchen doorbell suddenly rang, she was tempted to ignore it until she peered through the window and saw that it was Suzanne. She was dressed in a business suit, and Grace realized with a start how late in the afternoon it was. Suzanne was on her way home from work already. How had the empty day flown by so swiftly? Grace planted both palms on the table and wearily pushed herself to her feet.
“Why do you always ring the bell?” she asked as she opened the door. “Didn’t I give you a key?”
“I didn’t feel like sorting through all these to find it.” Suzanne held up an enormous key ring jammed with at least two dozen keys.
“Are all those really necessary? What on earth are they all for?”
“I have two locks on each door of my house,” she recited. “I need an ignition key and a trunk key for both of our cars, one key is for your house, one’s for my mother-in-law’s house, one’s for my post office box—and the other dozen are all from work.”
“I’m glad my life isn’t that complicated.”
“And I’m glad I don’t have to sit around in an empty house all day.” The mumbled words were loud enough for her to hear, but Grace chose to ignore them.
Suzanne handed her a manila file folder. “These are the design samples for the crisis pregnancy center logo. I’ve been reminding Jeff that he promised to do them for you weeks ago, and he finally scribbled them off last night—in between his endless calls to Chicago. If you don’t like any of them, don’t feel you have to use them. You won’t hurt Jeff’s feelings because he doesn’t have any feelings. There’s a new art director at my magazine who does great work—I can commission her to design a few.”
Jeffrey had sketched six designs in a variety of styles from modern to ornate, all beautifully and professionally rendered. Grace couldn’t help admiring her son-in-law’s creative talent. “Tell Jeffrey these are wonderful, thank you. The board will have a tough time choosing.”
Suzanne took a mug from the cupboard and poured herself a cup of coffee. “Speaking of choices, has the board had any luck finding a director yet?” There was a nasty edge to her voice that made Grace sink into her chair in the breakfast nook and rub her eyes.
“Don’t start on me, Suzanne. It’s been a trying week, moving your grandmother.”
Suzanne’s voice softened as she refilled Grace’s cup, then took a seat across from her. “I’m sorry. I just wish you’d listen to your heart and not to Daddy.” Grace didn’t answer. She felt so inexplicably close to tears, she didn’t dare. “You look a little down, Mom. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know . . . exhaustion from the move . . . these photographs . . . I never imagined that moving my mother would stir up such a cloud of memories. Every time I look at these I feel pressured to sort through the memories and deal with them too, whether I want to or not.” She turned one page in the book, then another, without seeing any of the photos. “I can’t stop thinking about what my mother said the other day when we were packing.
‘Your
father loved you more than life itself.’
Do you remember that, Sue? Didn’t it strike you as odd?”
“Grandma explained what she meant, didn’t she?”
“She attributed it to old age, but you and I both know she isn’t senile. I had the distinct feeling she was hiding something.”