Authors: Belva Plain
And sensing that he wanted to make love, she put the book away and turned to him in the bed, saying gently, “If it happens—”
She would be careful, though, if she could, not to let it happen.…
T
HEN
suddenly the war was over. Then suddenly the world resumed its ways. New cars came rolling into the dealers’ lots. Trousers and sleeves had cuffs again. Dior brought the “New Look”; after the skimpy years, skirts were full and feminine. New houses were planned to go up along the lakefront. And with accounts of the Nuremberg Trials, newspapers printed the ugly faces of Streicher, Kaltenbrunner, von Ribbentrop, and many more, condemned to death by hanging for their crimes against humanity.
Caroline and Lore spread the paper out on the kitchen table. Neither spoke until Caroline wondered aloud why there had been no word from the Schmidts.
“I suppose they stopped writing because there was nothing more to report,” Lore said.
“Look at these pictures. Is it possible to explain such evil?”
“I don’t think it is, especially for people like me who work at saving lives.” Lore paused, and then almost as if she were afraid to do so, asked gently, “Tell me, do you still ever find yourself thinking of—him?”
“How shall I answer?” The question stung. “Yes, all the time. Whenever I look at Eve, I must, mustn’t I? And she is the joy of my life.”
“A pity. A tragedy,” murmured Lore. “And Father and Mama. You’ve had too much. Still, maybe there is some hope for them.”
“There isn’t any. You know that, Lore.”
And of course, there was none. It was Joel who eventually found, through the Red Cross, where and how they had died. Caroline was at the desk in the back of the Orangerie, going over the bills, when he came in.
He spoke softly. “I have something to tell you.”
When she looked at his face, she knew what it was.
“I want to hear everything,” she said. “Where and when?”
So he told her. There was not very much to tell, just bare facts, a date and a place—two places, for they had been separated in death.
“Not even allowed to die together,” she said.
“No. Not even that.”
“It’s strange. You know what they say about drowning? How your whole life flashes before you? When you came into the room and I saw what you
were going to tell me, I saw Father in his new car, my mother’s piano, the ship coming into New York harbor—everything. All a jumble. Everything.”
“You need to cry,” Joel said, looking into her eyes.
“No. I’ve been expecting it so long.”
“But you need to cry,” he repeated.
And taking her arm, he led her outside. They walked together as far as the lakefront, where he sat down with her on a rock and held her close. When she had wept enough, they got up and turned toward home.
J
oel liked to take the Sunday newspaper outdoors into the shade. There, in his comfortable chair, he read, sometimes drowsed in the heat, and woke to see Eve doing her science or history homework at the picnic table. There was something about her, at twelve still a child biting her pencil, and yet so soon to be a woman, that was painful to watch. She was so vulnerable, so ignorant of anything beyond this place where she was cherished and protected! Yet, should it be otherwise? Could it be otherwise? He was reminded of a poem, one of the few he had ever read, and only because it had been required at school. Caroline had read it aloud again in German only the other day. How did it go?
You are like a flower, so lovely, pure and clean; when I look at you, it hurts—
Yes, she was lovely with those cheekbones and
marvelous eyes, almost a replica of Caroline. Always he wished that she were his own, and wished he could drive a certain arithmetic out of his brain: Add nine months to the few years of her age, and you knew how long it was since Caroline had lain with that other man, that “other,” who would probably never cease disturbing his soul.
So she had indeed loved him! The rape, hideous as it was, would have produced less conflict in Joel’s mind—indeed, no conflict at all.
The man had been handsome, graceful, very tall and fair, a blue-eyed aristocrat, full of charm and laughter. He had been a university scholar who could talk to Caroline about art and music. Also, he was a scoundrel, a criminal, a Nazi.… But she had not known that when they made this child together. And he tried not to imagine the scene—the act.
But then she had accepted him, Joel, into her bed. Should he not be thankful and satisfied? More than satisfied? Yet, knowing as he knew that she did not feel for him the passion he still felt for her, he had to wonder how different she might have been with that other. He wished now that Lore had not told him so much, in such detail. It was, of course, his own fault for asking the questions; he should not have asked them. But he had needed, really needed to know. And he would certainly never want to ask Caroline. It would be, yes, it would be obscene.
I know very little about you, Caroline, he thought, except that you are honorable and that ever since
Eve came you have been calm and good to live with. At night you come into my arms when I ask you to, although you are never the one who asks me. And still, it sometimes seems to me that I can tell what you are feeling. Maybe it’s because of the remarks you make now and then, or your voice when you read to Eve, or the way you listen to the summer-night sounds of crickets and cicadas with such pleasure on your face.
I’m a simple man. I didn’t grow up with poetry, you know that. And the music that you and Lore love so much, I never heard. Oh, never in my life could I have expected to meet a woman like you!
Lore sees it all. She understands. A remarkable woman, Lore is. When we moved here and she offered to get a little place of her own, to “give us our privacy” as she explained, I wouldn’t hear of it. At home my parents always had room for another old maid cousin or aunt. It doesn’t flatter a woman to be called an “old maid,” but Lore is forty-two, after all, and looks older. There’s no hope for a woman at that age, anyway. But at least she has us. She has a family.
There they are in the kitchen now, Lore and Caroline, fussing over tonight’s company dinner. It’s pleasant to hear their bustle, calling back and forth from kitchen to dining room, where Caroline is no doubt fixing flowers for the table. Now I hear Vicky’s voice. She must have come in with a message from the restaurant. It’s a good thing she’s smart and
competent enough to take charge when it’s necessary. Business school really made a change in her, that and getting away from sour Gertrude. Still, maybe there was a little to be said for Gertrude. Vicky was some handful as a teenager, with her tough swagger and her tight, Lana Turner sweaters. She still swaggers some, and the sweaters could be less revealing, but she attracts people and we’re lucky to have her, especially now that we have two places.
There’s another thing. Two busy cafés grown out of Ricci’s little bakery! Who could have dreamed that Caroline had such ambitions, or the ability to carry them out? She had never had the smallest connection with any kind of business at all. That day she came to me with the news that we could buy the Main Street property—
“Yes,” she says, “here it is on paper. The asking price, the mortgage offer—” And I interrupt, “Where are we going to get the down payment?” And she tells me, “From the ruby. I sold it yesterday to some cousins of the Schulmans who live in New York. Six thousand dollars. It’s a fair price. I had it appraised. It’s more than fair.”
I feel a shock when I look at her finger and see that this treasured remnant of beauty, prosperity, and peace is gone. I feel regret, almost as though it had belonged, not to her mother, but to mine. “You wanted to save it for Eve,” I protest.
“No. This business will be worth many rubies someday.”
Of course, that’s what the ambition is all about. I’ve always known that. It’s for Eve’s sake, which is natural. When you’ve gone through hell you can never feel secure enough. I should know.…
Eve was still biting the pencil. “You’ll ruin your teeth,” Joel said.
“This is the worst history assignment. We’re studying immigration and we’re supposed to tell about our families.”
“That shouldn’t be hard. You know how we got here, how Mom and I met in Brooklyn. The Sandlers, the people who are coming tonight, are the ones who took in Mom and Lore. You remember how they had to promise to support them? No welfare in those days. You remember how Dr. and Mrs. Schulman helped us get started here, how we went to work—”
“I know that. The teacher wants history, Daddy. Something about the countries people came from, what it was like there and why they left.”
Joel laid the paper aside and sat up, saying soberly, “We’ve told you about that, too, about the concentration camps and the death camps.”
“Yes, but it’s very hard to describe it all, to explain it.”
“Very hard. In fact, it’s unexplainable.”
Across the yard, two butterflies danced in a fantastic orange swirl of chase and avoidance. When they had gone out of sight around the corner of the house, Eve said softly, “I remember something that a
child over there wrote about never seeing another butterfly. I suppose they killed the child.”
“They did.”
“And we take Peter to the animal hospital when he has only hurt his paw a little.”
Peter, hearing his name, came out from under the table, where he had been asleep. “He’s as old as you are, which is fairly old in dog years,” Joel said, wanting to change the direction that Eve was pursuing.
She was not to be diverted. “How could they have treated people like that?”
“Well, that’s your history project, isn’t it? That’s what you must try to find out if you can. Have you taken any books from the library?”
“I have two upstairs, but they’re awfully hard to understand. It would be easier if I were an Indian, a Mohawk, or an Algonquin. There wouldn’t be so much political stuff to learn.”
At the childish wish, Joel smiled. Yes, it would be a great deal easier. The complexities of European politics, he supposed, were difficult enough for even an educated adult to understand.
“When is this paper due?” he asked.
“Not for two weeks.”
“All right. Tomorrow evening we’ll start to help you.”
“I think sometimes I’m so lucky that I got born here, to you and Mom, Daddy.”
“You certainly are.”
“Maybe I don’t need so much history, dates and
that stuff. Maybe it’ll be more interesting if you and Mom just give me more details of what it was like when Hitler came and how you escaped.”
“That makes sense.”
“You know what I’m thinking? If they had killed you, then I wouldn’t be alive.”
He was filled with tenderness. She was so earnest, with her forehead creased into a frown of dismay and her eyes wide with indignation.
“You know what, Daddy? If I ever meet any of those Nazis, I will kill them.”
“The war is over. They’re all gone.”
“Well, even so. If I ever meet anybody who’s been one, I’ll kill him.”
“Then you’ll be acting like a Nazi yourself,” Joel said gravely.
“I don’t care. I will.”
“Didn’t Mom say you should change your dress for dinner? These are special guests whom we haven’t seen since we came to America. Mr. and Mrs. Sandler have retired. They’re moving to California, and they’re making a long detour just to visit us.”
“W
e had no idea,” Jake Sandler said, “that Ivy was this big. I guess we expected to see cows on the streets.”
“You should have seen it twelve years ago. There were cows not two miles away when we came here. Now you’d have to go six miles or more to find farmers. The change came on account of the war,” explained Joel. “New factories, stores, houses, and the highway, most of all. It used to be a two-lane blacktop road.”
Jake nodded wisely. “Same thing in the twenties after the first war. Let’s hope all the prosperity doesn’t end in a crash this time.”
“There’s no sign of it yet.”
Joel, tipped backward in his chair, was feeling a pleasant satisfaction in the occasion. The house, while hardly a mansion, must still be impressive to
the Sandlers. The table was set with red-and-white china and real crystal goblets, with a bowl of red zinnias from their own garden; “the girls”—he often thought of Caroline and Eve that way—were lovely as always; Lore, ready for her shift at the hospital, was her usual dignified presence in starched white. The whole scene spoke of prosperity and peace.
There was a great deal of gratitude and a little pride in his satisfaction. Well, maybe there was more than a little pride, he thought, and thinking so, could not resist a piece of news.
“We’re expanding again. This will be our number three Orangerie, much larger than the two you’ve seen. It’ll be mostly daytime business near two office buildings that are going up along the highway. But there may be nighttime business, too. You never know. Anyway, it’s a great location. Location is everything.”
Joel was being expansive, Caroline saw. It was surely not his usual way, but it, was understandable. These people had only known him at his lowest point. And she, sitting at the opposite curve of the round table, could only imagine their surprise at the sight of this confident man who had once been a pudgy, emotional, stammering boy.
It was, however, time to change the subject. “Tell us about yourselves, Annie,” she said.
“There’s not much to tell. We’re out of Brooklyn for the first time in our lives. We sold everything we owned except your silver bowl. I couldn’t part with
that. It’s the most beautiful thing we ever had. So now we’re on our way, a little older, a little fatter, but otherwise the same.”
And both of them really were the same, Jake still blunt and positive, Annie unable to sit still and stop talking, but forever the two kindest people in the world.
Annie got up now and went to the window. “Oh, my, all those pink geraniums. Remember my red ones? Look, Jake, they have corn and lettuce, all kinds of stuff. This place is a regular farm.”
“It’s only an acre,” Joel protested.
“Well, it’s gorgeous, really gorgeous. What a beautiful home!”