Killer Smile (16 page)

Mary reintroduced herself. “Nice to meet you, and sorry to bother you so late. I was looking for Aaron Nyquist. I was told he lives here.”

“That would be my grandfather.”

“Great! I was hoping it wasn’t too late at night to see him.”

“I’m sorry, he passed away about six months ago,” the young man answered, without evident emotion, and Mary’s heart sank. She
was
too late.

“I’m sorry.”

“Thanks, but it was a blessing, for him. For my grandma, too. He’d been sick a long time. Why’d you want to see him?”

“I had some questions, about Fort Missoula. He was on the officers’ staff there, wasn’t he, during the war?”

“World War
II
?” Will flashed Mary a familiar ancient-history look. “I don’t know, he worked for the government during the war, I think. He didn’t like to talk about it a lot.” Will glanced toward the house. “Grandma would know. I’ll take you in, and you can ask her. She reads upstairs until late. Says she’s more comfy, readin’ in bed.”

Mary felt a guilty twinge. “But I don’t need to bother her. It was him, really, who would know.”

“She’d enjoy the company. She’s been so bummed since Gramps died.” Will took off his baseball cap, revealing a thick mess of brown hair and a severe case of hat head. He slapped the cap against his jeans and dust flew out. “I’ll take you in to meet her. It’ll make her night to have a guest. And she’s got some wicked pie, made fresh tonight.”

“Pie?” Mary asked, hiding her interest.

Mary had barely introduced herself when she was shown to a cushioned seat at a kitchen table of knotty pine. Mrs. Nyquist was about five four, still trim, and she wore a gray sweatsuit outfit and bifocals in no-nonsense plastic frames. Her pale blonde hair had been clipped into a practical, short cut, gone gray at the temples, and deep wrinkles creased the corners of her blue eyes and her mouth. Her nose was tiny and her smile sweet. She was probably in her early eighties, and her manner was warm, friendly, and fragile with fresh grief. Mary wanted to grab and cuddle her, but Mrs. Nyquist was fortunately oblivious to her secret love attack.

“You’ve
never
had huckleberry pie?” Mrs. Nyquist asked, incredulous. She set in front of Mary a large wedge of pie, its golden crust dusted with grainy sugar. Thick purple goop oozed from the side, encroaching on the plate like lava. If lava contained fructose.

“No, I’ve never even seen a huckleberry. What’s a huckleberry? I thought it was a book by Mark Twain.”

Mrs. Nyquist smiled, which made Mary happy. She was enjoying going around Montana, making old people happy. She was a roving ambassador of codependency.

Mrs. Nyquist said, “Huckleberry, especially wild huckleberry, tastes a lot like gooseberry.”

“I never tasted a gooseberry, either. I’ve tasted gnocchi, and that’s all that grows in Philadelphia.”

“That where you’re from? I was wondering with your accent, and you talk so fast.”

Accent?
“Yes.” Mary tried to talk slower.
Ye-es.

“Would you like some tea with your pie, dear?”

“Only if you’re making it already.”

“I am. We’re not much for coffee in this house. My husband can’t — couldn’t — tolerate it. His stomach.”

“Tea’s great, thanks. May I help you?”

“No, thanks. It’s good for me to move around. This is exercise, for me.”

“Thanks, then.” Mary couldn’t remember the last time she’d drunk tea, but she wasn’t about to put Mrs. Nyquist to further trouble. The older woman was placing a white teapot on a burner at the stove and she could have been Mary’s mother, except for her perfect command of English and nonviolent nature in general.

“My goodness, I sit all day nowadays, except when I’m cleaning.” Mrs. Nyquist bustled around the gleaming kitchen, an Early American type with red-and-white cushions tied to the backs of the wood chairs. The counters and appliances were a spotless white, and the air smelled vaguely of orange-scented Fantastik. On a side table next to some old photos stood a grouping of brownish figurines, which Mary thought might be Hummels, but wasn’t sure. In South Philly, statuary was restricted to a dashboard St. Christopher or a bobblehead Donovan McNabb.

Mrs. Nyquist was shaking her head. “I even cleaned the garage last week, it gave me something to do. Aaron was so disabled by his stroke in those last years, and taking care of him was a full-time job. Now I have all this free time.” She waved her hand in the air, as if shooing away a bumblebee. “Please, taste your pie.”

“Wow, this is great!” Mary said, scooping a forkful. It tasted like blueberry pie, only sweeter. She took another bite and hadn’t realized how hungry she was. “It’s so nice of you, to feed me so late.”

“It’s my pleasure.” Mrs. Nyquist bowed her head graciously. “Will’s right about one thing, I do like the company. He’s worried about me, thinks I’m getting blue. He even wants to set me up with a man from church, on a date!”

“You, too?” Mary laughed, and so did Mrs. Nyquist. “What is it with the blind dates? I’d rather watch TV.”

“Me, too.” Mrs. Nyquist returned to the table and set a steaming mug in front of Mary, with a fragrant triangle of a Lipton tea bag inside. “How do you take your tea?”

“How should I take my tea?”

“I take it plain.”

“Then so do I,” Mary said, making Mrs. Nyquist smile again as she went back to the stove and poured herself a mug of tea, then came back to the table with it and sat down. An oversize men’s Timex slipped down from her wrist, undoubtedly her husband’s, and she still wore her wedding band.
I’m a widow, too,
Mary thought, but for some reason, couldn’t say. She settled for, “You must miss your husband.”

“Every minute.” Mrs. Nyquist sighed. “You know, they say everything happens for a reason, but I’m not sure I believe that anymore.” Behind her glasses, the older woman’s blue-eyed gaze was direct and even, and it struck Mary that this was going to be a real conversation and not just small talk. It was hard to bullshit an old lady, which was only one of the things she liked about them.

“Honestly, I never thought that everything happened for a reason. I still don’t. It’s just something we say to each other to get us over it, whatever it is. The hard part.”

“Maybe. I used to believe that God has a plan for us, each of us. The longer I live, the less sure I am of that, too. What do you think?”

“I believe in God, but I think he’s a lousy planner.”

Mrs. Nyquist smiled over her steaming tea. “So is there a plan, at all?”

“Not unless you have one.”

“So what’s left then, if there’s no plan?” Mrs. Nyquist set down her mug. “What is it that your generation believes in?”

Mary smiled. “You’re asking the wrong girl. I can’t speak for my generation. I’m not even sure which generation I’m in, half the time.”

“So, then, what do
you
believe in, Mary?” Mrs. Nyquist waited expectantly, and all of a sudden, Mary knew the answer. She had just realized it, sitting in a dark farmhouse, with a very kind stranger, in the middle of Montana.

“I believe in justice. And in love. And in
not
getting over it, because that’s too much to ask of a human being.” Mary collected her thoughts. “Getting over it is the wrong thing to want, anyway. You should never expect to get over it, the best you can hope is to live past it. And you go on. Your past becomes a part of you, you just fold it into the gnocchi dough and keep rolling.” Mary was surprised to hear her voice break, so she scooped another forkful of pie, and Mrs. Nyquist seemed to let it register, still listening, until her unlipsticked mouth curved slowly into a smile.

“You know, you may be right, Mary.”

“It’s possible. I’m wrong so often, the odds are on my side.”

Mrs. Nyquist laughed. “No, I can’t believe that. You’re a very thoughtful young girl.”

“It’s the huckleberries. They have superpowers.”

Mrs. Nyquist laughed and sipped her tea with the tea bag still inside, and so did Mary, because she felt like they were friends now. “But you came to see my husband, and I’ve gone on and on. What was it you wanted to see him about?”

“I understand from Mr. Milton that your husband was at Fort Missoula, during the war.”

“He was,” Mrs. Nyquist answered, and her voice suddenly echoed the clipped tones of a military wife. “He couldn’t serve because of his heart, which bothered him so much. He always felt he could have served, he felt quite fit and healthy, and took some pride in it. In fact, the doctor said a less fit man would never have survived his first stroke. It was the second that killed him.”

“I’m sorry.” Mary had said it before, but this apology was sui generis. The ultimate apology. “I am doing some research and trying to identify an internee I found in some old photos.”

“Maybe I can help you. I worked at the camp for a time, as a secretary.”

“You did?” Mary asked, surprised. “The cashier at the museum didn’t mention that.”

“I doubt they know, at the museum. I was unofficial, you see. They were so short-handed during the war, Aaron had them hire me. For free.”

“You needed a lawyer.”

Mrs. Nyquist laughed.

“Well, if you wouldn’t mind looking at the photos, I brought them with me.” Mary went digging in her bag and pulled out the two photos.

But she had barely set them on the red-and-white placemat when Mrs. Nyquist emitted a gasp.

“My goodness!” Mrs. Nyquist said.

“What? Do you know them?”

“This does take me back. I’m sorry, it’s just so surprising to see these!” Mrs. Nyquist’s aged hand fluttered to her throat. “I do know that man.”

Yes!
“Which one? It’s win-win, to me. One is named Amadeo, and I don’t know the other, the man in the cap.” Mary pointed at the mystery man, and Mrs. Nyquist met her fingernail to fingernail.

“I know him, this man, the man in the cap. I recognize him. Everybody in our office knew him. He always wore that cap, just that way.”

“You’re kidding!” Mary edged forward on her slippery cushion. “Do you know his name? I think he may have been a friend of the other man, the shorter one, Amadeo Brandolini. Do you know the short one in front?”

“Let me see.” Mrs. Nyquist picked up the photo and looked at it through her bifocals. “No, I don’t know him.”

“You sure? Amadeo was a fisherman from Philly.” Mary was trying to jog Mrs. Nyquist’s memory. “He committed suicide. He and the man in the cap worked in the beet fields together.”

“Oh, wait, I had heard about that.” Mrs. Nyquist set the photo down on the placemat. “I didn’t know him, but I heard about that. That one of the internees killed himself, sometime after his wife died.” Mrs. Nyquist tapped on the photo. “But for sure I recognize the man in the cap, I
knew
the one in the cap. We all knew him, the girls in the office, that is. He was one of the youngest internees, very talkative. A
wolf
, we used to call his type.”

“Really?”

“My, my, my,” Mrs. Nyquist said, shaking her head at the photos. She almost seemed to forget about Mary’s presence. “His English was very good. We used to use him as a translator around the office. He wasn’t really an
Italian
Italian, like the others.”

It jibed with what Mary knew. Most of the internees at Fort Missoula spoke only Italian, and the inventory sheets she’d found in their files at the National Archives showed that almost all of them owned an English dictionary, apparently for teaching themselves the language. But she didn’t get one thing. “Why would an internee be hanging out in the office? I mean, they were in prison camp, right?”

“It depended. The Japanese, when they came, were always under light guard, and my husband had border guards on them often. We kept an eye on the Germans, too. I have to admit, I’m not proud of that. Those groups were treated different, and they kept more to themselves.” Mrs. Nyquist nodded. “But it was much looser for the Italians, and we all got to know each other. They helped us out in the office or delivered things. They were just a bunch of young sailors, most of ’em from the cruise ships, and they were all so happy-go-lucky.”

Mary smiled. She had never been happy-go-lucky. She was the only unhappy-go-lucky Italian on the planet.

“They helped out a lot at the camp, in town, and with the logging and the sugar beet fields, and the way the camp was set up, the barracks were close to the administrative offices and the officers’ homes. We were always running into them. My husband and I lived in a house at the camp, like the other officers. It was a white house, very pretty.”

Mary flashed on the black-and-white aerial views of the camp, then she thought of something. “If the Italians weren’t under guard, then how come guards monitored their visits?”

“They didn’t.”

“Yes, they did.”

“Did they? That surprises me.”

“I think so, at least sometimes. I found a memo that shows a guard monitored a visit Amadeo had with his lawyer, and they even sent a copy of that memo to the FBI.”

Mrs. Nyquist blinked behind her bifocals, then shook her head. “I have no idea why that was, but I wouldn’t know everything. And I was only there a while.”

Mary made a mental note. “Okay, back to the man in the cap. Tell me about him.”

“As I recall, he’d been educated, too, back where he was from. He could read and write. He’d had a year or two in an American high school.”

“Where was he from?”

“I don’t recall, offhand. Give me a minute.” Mrs. Nyquist lowered her hand, still holding the photo, and squeezed her eyes shut.

“Maybe your husband had some photos around, or papers that could jar your memory?”

“No, no, no.” Mrs. Nyquist shook her head, her eyes still closed. “Aaron wasn’t the sentimental sort. He didn’t save a thing from those days.”

“Not even some pictures?”

“No, none.” Mrs. Nyquist was rubbing her lined forehead, as if she were trying to scratch the answer from her brain. “The war wasn’t the happiest time for Aaron. He did feel so terrible, being left behind with all us women, when the others were fighting. He didn’t want to remember anything of those days. He never even talked about it.”