Authors: Lynn Austin
“I left it behind,” I said, shivering. “Please . . . let me stay with you tonight, Sophie.”
“But what’s wrong? What are you doing here?”
“Karl and I had a fight.”
“Shall I send Otto over to talk to him?”
“No! Please . . . just let me stay the night.”
“Won’t Karl be worried about you?”
“A night apart might do him some good. Give him a chance to cool off, think things through.”
“But surely—”
“If you love me, Sophie,
please
don’t send for Karl . . . please let me stay!” My teeth rattled from cold and fear.
In the end, Sophie agreed. It was clear that she had misgivings, and that her husband, Otto, had even more of them, but since they didn’t own a car, he was reluctant to go out on such a terrible night. My plan was to get up
early in the morning, before anyone else awoke, and hitch a ride out of town.
I spent a restless night on their sofa, filled with nightmares of evil people who were trying to kill my baby. When I awoke the next morning to find Karl standing over me, I thought it was part of the same dream. Then I saw Otto in the doorway and knew he had gone to fetch him.
“Let’s forgive and forget, shall we, Emma?” Karl smoothed his mustache and beard like a cat licking its whiskers. “As the Good Book says we must do?”
Otto and Sophie hovered anxiously, watching. Karl would deny everything that had happened. No one would believe me. A good wife obeyed her husband.
In the end there was nothing I could do but go home with him, playing the part of the dutiful wife. Neither of us mentioned the baby.
“All is forgotten?” he said as he pushed his chair back from the breakfast table. I nodded mutely, unable to look at him. “Good. I must go and open the pharmacy. We will talk tonight.”
But the moment Karl left, I packed my bags and bought a one-way train ticket for as far out of town as my hoarded grocery money would take me.
SEVENTEEN
1980
Hours later, Emma’s tiny apartment in the retirement home looked nearly settled. Grace felt exhausted, but it was more from the emotional strain of listening to Emma’s story than from the work of unpacking. For the first time, Grace realized the full depth of her mother’s love. What Emma was afraid to risk for her own sake—leaving an abusive husband—she’d done without hesitation for her daughter’s sake.
“That’s the most you’ve ever spoken about my father in my entire life,” Grace said.
“Don’t be silly,” Emma said, waving airily. “You must have forgotten, that’s all.”
“No, if you had told me he’d beaten you, I’m sure I would have remembered.”
Suzanne flattened another cardboard box and stacked it by the door with the others. “You said he wasn’t the villain, Grandma, but he certainly sounds like one to me.”
“Does he? I’m sorry if I’ve portrayed him that way. I don’t see him as a villain. He was a victim of his own tragic childhood. It left him deeply scarred. A more contented woman could have helped him overcome his past, but I wasn’t the wife he needed—or expected.”
Emma pulled off the pink scarf and ran her fingers through her silver hair. As Grace studied her mother, she saw that even at eighty years of age, Emma was still an attractive woman. Fifty-five years was a long time to have remained single. The wounds Karl Bauer left on her soul must have been very deep as well.
Grace wanted to ask her mother a question, but she waited until Suzanne took a load of empty cartons to the dumpster and they were alone. “Do you have any plans for tomorrow, Mother?”
“I don’t think so, dear, but I can check. The weekly schedule is around here someplace. Why do you ask?”
“Well, tomorrow is Sunday. Now that you live nearby, I was hoping you’d come to church with Stephen and me once in a while.”
“Ah, Gracie, don’t start with that again,” she said wearily. “I’m too old to change. If going to church helps you, then I’m happy for you. But we’re very different.”
“You’ve been turning me down all my life, and I’ve never understood why. Won’t you at least explain to me why you won’t go?”
Emma smiled mischievously. “You just want my reasons for ammunition—so you can argue with me and show me the error of my ways. Papa used to do the same thing with his reluctant parishioners.”
“Look, I don’t care if you attend services or not, but I care very much that you’re estranged from God. You never want me to talk about Him, you don’t read the Bible, you never go to church unless there’s a wedding or a baptism . . . I’ve never seen you take Communion in my entire life. What I don’t understand is, why? Why won’t you have anything to do with God?”
“You don’t know for certain what goes on between me and God.”
“That’s the point. I need that certainty. I need to know where you’ll be for eternity. Can’t you please give me some assurance?”
Emma walked to the window, silent for a moment as she looked out at the beautifully landscaped lawns. “Papa baptized me as a baby, you know, and I used to go to church with my parents when I lived at home. Then Karl and I went to Papa’s church after we were married. I know what the Bible says, but . . .” Emma didn’t finish. It was as if she’d reached a locked door that she refused to open.
“Something must have happened. Why won’t you tell me? Does it have anything to do with my father? Or with your sister Eva’s death?”
Emma finally turned to face her again. “I can’t go to church with you Grace, I’m sorry. But if you give me time . . . maybe I can find a way to answer some of your questions, okay?”
“All right.” It would have to be. There had always been doors her mother refused to open, and no amount of coaxing would change her mind. But what of Suzanne’s suggestion that they play detective? After all these years, was it possible to find the keys and unlock the secret doors herself?
She pondered the idea as she unpacked a box of kitchen utensils, stuffing them into an already jammed drawer. Then she wandered into her mother’s bedroom to set a picture of Amy and Melissa on her mother’s nightstand. The stand had a small drawer, and Grace opened it to see if it was as crammed as all the others. It was empty, except for an aged sheet of gray writing paper
with the now-familiar handwriting, printed with the same blue fountain pen.
To my beloved Emma
,
I am haunted by numberless islands, and many a Danaan shore, Where Time would surely forget us, and Sorrow come near us no more; Soon far from the rose and the lily, and fret of the flames would we be, Were we only white birds, my beloved, buoyed out on the foam of the sea!
Grace’s hand trembled as she put the poem inside the drawer and closed it again. She thought she had known her mother well, but she really didn’t know her at all. How many hidden drawers and closed doors were there in her life? What other secrets was she hiding?
Back in the living room, Grace studied her mother as she would a stranger. Emma hummed to herself as she searched in vain for a place to store the same stack of dish towels she had tried to put away earlier. Finally, she opened the lid of the garbage can and dropped them squarely into the trash.
“Mother!”
“Oh, who needs them. I never dry my dishes anyway.”
“But you can’t just throw away a perfectly good set of dish towels!”
“I’m eighty years old, dear. I’ve earned the right to be eccentric.”
“Maybe Suzanne can use them.” As Grace fished them out of the garbage she spotted an unopened carton, forgotten beside the broom closet. “Oh no. What’s in this one?” She opened the flaps and unwrapped a pink sugar bowl—it was the box of depression glass. “I thought you were going to sell these to the antique dealer.”
“Please don’t be angry, dear, but I just couldn’t bear to part with them.” Emma took the sugar bowl from Grace’s hand and held it like a priceless heirloom. “Remember how you and I used to have tea parties with these dishes? We called them our ‘good china,’ and we’d make butter and sugar sandwiches, and pretend we were eating caviar.”
Tears sprang to Grace’s eyes before she could stop them. “I used to think our tea parties were more wonderful than any held by the queen of England.”
Emma wrapped her arms around her and held her tightly. “Oh, but they were, Gracie! They were!” When she released her again, Grace carefully wiped her eyes.
“Would you mind if I changed my mind, Mother? I think I’ll take the dishes home after all.”
“Any idea where I can put these?” Grace asked with a sigh. She stood with Suzanne in the middle of her chic, contemporary dining room, trying to find a place to display the depression glass. Spread out on the marble tabletop, the gaudy pink and green dishes looked like painted prostitutes among her home’s carefully coordinated neutral tones. Stephen would never allow her to display the thick pressed glass in the china cabinet beside her Royal Doulton china and Waterford crystal.
“Put them anywhere you want, Mom. And don’t you dare let Daddy talk you out of them.”
Grace smiled ruefully. “I don’t suppose you’d care to stick around and watch the fireworks when he sees them?”
“No thanks. I get all the fireworks I want at my own house.”
“What on earth was I thinking when I took these silly things?” she said, sighing again. “I guess finding that second love poem turned my brain to sentimental mush.”
“You found another poem?”
“Didn’t I tell you? It was in Grandma’s nightstand, written on the same gray paper, in the same handwriting as the first one.”
“Let’s see it!”
“I left it in the drawer where I found it.”
“Oh, thanks a lot! Was it signed or anything?” Grace shook her head. “Well, from the way Grandma described him, we know Karl Bauer didn’t write them.”
“Mother did say she had a lot of suitors before she was married, remember? It must be from one of them.”
“I had dozens of boyfriends too, but I wouldn’t keep their old love poems for fifty years. You know, Grandma’s story raised more questions than it answered. Did she ever explain exactly why Karl didn’t want any children?”
“He probably never gave her a reason. I gather he was a man of few words and strong opinions.”
“And I still don’t understand why she ran away from her own family as well as her husband.”
“I guess because she knew they would take Karl’s side. That old-world, nineteenth-century concept of a wife being her husband’s property died a slow, hard death.”
Suzanne gestured to the depression glass. “I’m not so sure it’s dead.”
“I’ll ignore that last comment.” Grace scooped up the empty carton and carried it out to the kitchen. Suzanne followed her a moment later, looking at her watch.
“I think I’ll head home. Jeff hasn’t spent this much time with the girls in their entire lives. He’s probably fed up with fatherhood by now and is letting them watch horror movies on cable TV.”
“Here, don’t forget these dish towels. You know, I just don’t understand my mother at all. She throws out a dozen brand-new towels and keeps fifty-year-old love poems . . . not to mention these silly things.” Grace brandished the cigar box containing the miniature vestments. “Can you imagine? I made these when I was four years old!”
“It makes perfect sense, Mom. You wanted the depression glass because the pieces have very special memories for you. Obviously, the poems and the vestments must mean something special to Grandma. The question is, what?”
“Well, unless she decides to tell us, we’ll never know.”
“Not necessarily. I’ve been thinking . . . you and I will both be on our own the last weekend of this month, with Jeff leaving for Chicago and Daddy going to his medical convention. Why don’t we drive to Bremenville and play detective?”
“Have you given any thought at all to going with Jeff and at least
trying
to look for a job?”
“No, so let’s not get into it.” Suzanne’s lips clamped tightly shut, as if that was the end of the discussion. Then, unable to keep her anger inside, it spewed out a moment later like soda pop from a shaken bottle. “He brought home job listings from all the Chicago newspapers the last time he went there, with
possibilities
for me circled in red ink! Can you imagine the nerve? I didn’t speak to him for days!”
“He’s trying to salvage your marriage, Sue.”
“Why should I give up
my
career at a magazine I love,
my
seniority,
my
retirement benefits—just because I’m the woman and he’s the man? That’s so Victorian it’s obscene!”
Grace thought of her two little granddaughters, growing up as she had without a father, and her eyes filled with tears. If only she could find a way to make Suzanne change her mind. Grace knew she was partly to blame; she had sacrificed too much of herself for Stephen’s sake and now Suzanne was determined not to make the same mistake. Her mother was right—they were like wooden nesting dolls, each woman shaped by the choices her mother had
made. The only way to break that pattern, Emma had said, was to study the past and learn from it.
“Suppose I agreed to go on this fact-finding mission of yours up in Bremenville?” Grace finally said. “How would we go about it?”
“Are you serious? You’d really go?”
“I would love to find Mother’s sisters, if they’re still alive, and help her make peace with her family. Do you suppose we could locate them after all this time?”
“Sure. There are books that tell you how to go about tracing your roots. We could look up our Bauer relatives too, along with the Schroders. We’ll have to leave on a Friday, though, so the government offices will be open. Then we can stay overnight and snoop around some more on Saturday.”
“Fridays are out. That’s when I get my hair done.” The scorching look Suzanne gave her said more to Grace than a twenty-minute lecture on priorities. “All right, all right, I
could
change my appointment. But will you be able to get Friday off?”
“I’ll turn it into a writing assignment. Genealogy is a hot topic at the moment, and it would make a great feature article—minus our family secrets, of course.”
“What about the girls? Would we take them with us?”
“Jeff’s mother would love to get her hands on them for the weekend. He has her convinced that we’re all moving to Chicago as soon as school is out and she’ll never see them again. So are we going or not?”