News from Heaven (3 page)

She didn't look back.

T
he apartment was silent at that hour. Her key clicked loudly in the lock. Annie slipped out of her coat and tiptoed down the hallway. At that moment Daniel emerged from his bedroom. He removed his spectacles and rubbed wearily at his eyes.

He seemed startled to see her. They stood there a moment, not speaking. Then a voice came from the Nudelmans' bedroom:

“Daniel? You are still awake?”

“Go back to sleep, Mother,” Daniel said.

His eyes met Annie's; he raised a hand in greeting. Annie waved back, thinking of her rumpled skirt, her smeared lipstick. Her cheeks burned with shame.

A
sh Wednesday came, the beginning of Lent. A day of false spring weather: the crusty snow melting, the storm grates loud with runoff. Annie crossed the park quickly, her head down, a black smudge on her forehead where the priest's thumb had traced a cross on her skin. Mrs. Nudelman had given her the morning off, and she took the long way back from church, the route she had memorized. Alone, she didn't dare attempt a shortcut. Earlier that week Frances had been sent back to Passaic, her belly swollen. Annie's only friend.

Back at the apartment Mrs. Nudelman called from the parlor. Three large suitcases sat open on the floor. Her nephew was getting married on Sunday, she explained in Polish. The family would travel to Newark for the weekend. Just this once, Annie would work on Thursday, help with the laundry and the packing. In return, she would have the weekend free. She could do as she pleased until Monday morning, when the family returned.

In English Mrs. Nudelman repeated this incredible fact: for an entire weekend, Annie would stay in the apartment alone.

That night she slept badly, plagued by nightmares. She was lost in the city streets. A yellow taxi seemed to be following her, its horn honking angrily. When Annie turned to see the driver, the yellow car was gone.

F
riday morning, as usual, Annie went to the market. The sky was low and heavy. The spring weather had vanished like last night's dream. When she returned, Mr. Nudelman was sitting in the kitchen.

“Daniel is ill,” he said. “Only a cold, but it would be unwise for him to travel.” The doctor had already come and gone.

Annie nodded, not surprised. The night before, when she'd taken his tea and cake, she'd found the room dark. In a whisper she'd apologized for waking him. Quietly she'd closed the door.

“My wife is upset. She doesn't like to leave him.” Mr. Nudelman shrugged. “I told her you'd look after him.”

Annie laid the table for lunch, but Mrs. Nudelman would not come out of her room. Her husband drank coffee and stared at his newspapers, English and Yiddish. Annie bought them each morning at the corner store.

“The world,” he said, “is a dangerous place.”

He sat smoking as Annie cleared the table. At the front door she helped Mrs. Nudelman into her coat.

“Take Daniel some soup later.” Mrs. Nudelman spoke in a whisper, her face flushed, her eyes red.

Her husband gave Annie a slip of paper. “This is the telephone number in Newark. If you need anything, please call.”

From the window she watched them get into a cab. A wet snow was falling. The taxi was yellow, as in her dreams: the car the Ukrainian had driven. If he were the driver, would he speak to the Nudelmans?
I know a girl who works in this building.
What would he say about her?

In the kitchen Annie switched on the radio. The announcer joked in Yiddish or English. The audience roared with laughter.

A
t dinnertime she heated the soup and carried it to Daniel on a tray. His room was dim inside, the curtains drawn.

“How are you feeling?” Annie asked.

He sat up partway in bed. His eyelids were heavy, his hair wild, his face coated with a sickly sheen. Annie put down the tray and sat at his bedside. Without thinking, she laid a hand on his forehead. She did this automatically, as with her younger brothers and sisters. He seemed startled by her touch.

“You have a fever.”

He smiled weakly. “How do you know? You don't have a thermometer.”

She had nursed a brother through pneumonia, the little twins through whooping cough. “I know,” she said.

The doctor had given him aspirin; there was more in the medicine chest. In the bathroom she found the bottle behind the mirror. She filled a glass with water and wet a towel at the sink.

“Cold,” Daniel said when she laid the towel across his forehead. “Feels good. My mother left me in good hands.” He shifted in the bed. “She's not happy about it, I can tell you that. But every once in a while my father puts his foot down.”

“She wants you to eat.”

“Always.” Daniel lay back and closed his eyes. “Later. I promise.”

“I can call your parents. On the telephone.”

“Don't.” Daniel sat up abruptly. “Please. They'll come back, and that will only make me feel worse. I'll be better in the morning. You'll see.”

“All right,” Annie said.

Outside, the snow was flying. A stiff wind rattled the windowpanes.

O
n Saturday morning the city was quiet, the streets snow-covered. Daniel was sleeping deeply, wearing his spectacles. A book lay open on his chest. In that moment Annie felt her freedom. She had nothing to clean and no one to feed.

She put on her coat and wound a scarf around her neck. The elevator was empty, the street quiet. Her breath steamed in the cold. In the avenue, the traffic lights were blinking. There were no cars in sight.

Why not? she thought, and walked down the middle of the street.

Blanketed in snow, the park seemed larger, a vast plain of whiteness. I could stay here forever, she thought. A few strangers crossed the lawn, hands in their pockets. On this still morning everyone was smiling, as though the storm had been staged for their amusement. Annie found herself smiling back. For the first time she felt included in the joke.

When she returned to the apartment, it was nearly noontime. The indoor air burned her cheeks. In Daniel's bedroom the radiator was steaming. He had tossed aside the blanket. His pajama shirt was dark with sweat.

She sat on the bed and laid a hand on his forehead. His eyes snapped open. His lips were parched. A fast pulse beat in his throat.

In the hallway she took the slip of paper from her pocket. As she had seen Mrs. Nudelman do, she took the receiver from its hook and listened for a voice.

“I tried to phone your mother,” she told Daniel. “It didn't work. I think I did something wrong.”

Daniel closed his eyes.

“I can call the doctor,” she said.

“It's Saturday. No one will answer the phone.”

He was thirsty but couldn't drink. Water tasted like metal and turned his stomach. Annie brought milk and held the glass as he drank. Heat rose off him like steam from the stove.

I
n the evening she fixed herself a cheese sandwich, ate it standing over the milchig sink. Even alone, she followed the rules. In this kitchen there seemed no other way to eat.

For several hours Daniel slept deeply, his skin cooler. Then, at midnight, the fever returned.

In the kitchen Annie put on the kettle. She opened the pantry cupboard and scanned the shelves. The Nudelmans had no garden, no dry, aromatic plants hanging in bunches in the cellar. There was only ground pepper and cinnamon and coarse salt; a bottle, labeled Onion Powder, whose use she couldn't fathom; and a familiar yellow can. At home her mother kept mustard leaves for this purpose. In the city, Colman's Dry Mustard would have to do.

The kettle whistled. Carefully she mixed the paste. She spread it into a clean dish towel and brought it to Daniel on a tray.

“What's that?”

“A plaster.” Annie sat on the bed beside him. “Take off your shirt.”

His skin was moist and pale, matted with dark hair. He winced as she laid the hot towel on his chest.

“Leave it there until it cools,” she said. “I'll come back in a little while.”

“No.” He reached for her hand. “Please. Sit with me.”

For a long time she stared out the window, listening to the night noises: Daniel breathing fast and shallow, snowflakes scratching the windowpanes. Outside, the sidewalks glowed beneath the streetlamps; even at this hour, the city was bright. Annie was a sound sleeper; she had never imagined the night was so long. The city was full of restless people, a thousand Daniels lying awake, the horizon burning with their collective heat.

I
t was daylight when Annie woke. She stirred, her back and legs aching, and found herself kneeling at Daniel's bedside. Her blouse was wrinkled, her face creased. Her arms and shoulders rested on the quilt as if she'd fallen asleep in prayer.

She raised her head. In the distance, bells were ringing. Sunday morning, the Mass starting without her. Daniel was fast asleep, his bare shoulders visible above the blanket. His chest rose and fell silently. His hand was tangled in her hair.

She disengaged his hand. He stirred but didn't wake. She saw then that the bedroom door was open. Somewhere in the apartment a radio was playing, water running. Somebody was drawing a bath.

The Nudelmans had come home.

Annie stood, her heart pounding, and went into the kitchen. A breakfast had been cooked and eaten. In the milchig sink were two greasy plates.

A
t home in Pennsylvania she thinks often of that night: her vigil at Daniel Nudelman's bedside, the bright silent city closed in around them. There are words for what she'd felt as she watched him sleep, many words in many languages, but the one she knows is
longing.
Her mind wanders as she punches down the bread dough. She covers it with a towel and leaves it to rise near the stove.

Her mother speaks to her only in Polish and asks no questions. For several months she's kept an eye on Annie's waistline. Spring ended, then summer. Still Annie is thin as a deer. Now the mornings are cooler; the garden offers up its last tomatoes. Her brothers and sisters go back to school. Helen Lubicki walks across town to Bakerton High, the first in the family to do so. She is an excellent student. Now that Annie has returned, there is no need for Helen to leave school.

“I'll be studying for the rest of my life,” Daniel had told her. Was such a thing even possible? Like everything she heard and saw in the city, it now seems fantastic, as though she made it all up.

His hand in her hair.

In the days after the snowstorm, Mrs. Nudelman had ignored her completely. It was her husband who told Annie the news. “I'm sorry, Miss Lubicki, but we will no longer need your help in the kitchen.” His Polish was awkward; she stared at him, mystified, not sure she'd understood.

Instantly she thought of the dishes. “Oh, no. Have I made a mistake?”

“Not at all. Your work has been very good.” He hesitated a moment, then spoke carefully. “But my nephew is coming from Poland. God willing. So we will no longer have an extra room.”

Years later she will understand the reason. Her brother Peter will die in the war. Her brother John will see the camps, and Annie—married then, with sons of her own—will remember the Nudelmans and the Grossmans, the nephew from Poland who was given her bedroom. She will think of Daniel. Is he married, too? A husband and father and still studying? Daniel in his separate world.

Now she sets out coffee, a heavy clay pitcher in the middle of the table, milk and sugar already mixed in. Each morning for breakfast she bakes a dozen apples. Then the young ones leave for school, Helen and John and Peter and the rest, and Annie piles the dishes in the sink.

Something Sweet

T
he farm children were waiting in the corridor each morning when Miss Peale arrived at school: Henry Eickmeier, Chauncey Hoeffer, Peggy Schultheis, and Richard Dickey, who'd ridden into town at dawn on his father's milk truck. In the cloakroom they stowed coats and galoshes, hats and gloves. Miss Peale settled in at her desk and looked over her lesson plans. The farm children did not speak to one another; familiar as cousins, they didn't see the point. They sat quietly at their desks, waiting for the town children to arrive.

First came the hoodlums, in a noisy pack: Jerry Bernardi, Joseph Poblocki, and John Quinn. At the back of the room they sprawled heavily in their chairs, scraping the linoleum. At the end of the day Miss Peale would have a pupil reorder the desks, or simply do it herself.

Gradually the others filed in, the studious boys who spoke up in class, the shy girls—Dorothy Novak, Helen Lubicki—who never said a word. At the front of the room sat the pretty girls: Nellie Stiffler, Theresa Bellavia in her tight sweater, Angela Scalia, the homecoming queen. Evelyn Lipnic seemed out of place in that crowd, a redhead with a lovely complexion, sweet and mannerly and, in Miss Peale's estimation, not as fast. At the center of the hive, as always, was Alan Spangler, smiling and dapper in a plaid sport coat. Their arrival caused a reaction among the hoodlums, a kind of heightened alertness. From her vantage point, Miss Peale saw it like a ripple in the water. The pretty girls seemed not to notice. According to Edna O'Shane, who taught art and music, they had fiancés overseas, young men in danger. Boys their own age could not compete.

They were the class of 1943, that year's models. In other years there had been other quiet Schultheis girls, other lovely Scalias; a long series of incorrigible Bernardis, Poblockis, and Quinns. Most were coal miners' children, the sons and daughters of pinners and cutters—raised in company houses built by Baker Brothers, their chores and meals dictated by Baker shifts. There were a few exceptions: the Bellavias owned a bakery in Little Italy, the Spanglers a hat shop on Main Street. Bernardi's Funeral Home catered to the new foreign families, Italians, Irish, and Slavish—a business that, given the general fecundity of Catholics, seemed destined to thrive. Viola Peale was, herself, a lifelong member of St. John's Episcopal, built by her father's cousins Chester and Elias Baker—the original Baker brothers for whom the mines, and the town, were named.

The homeroom period was for administrative purposes. Miss Peale took attendance and read announcements. On Saturday morning the Key Club would sponsor a collection drive, old tires and scrap metal for the war effort. Students' families were encouraged to donate. Report cards would be issued on Thursday, the last day before Christmas vacation. Thursday evening the glee club would perform its annual Christmas concert.

“Starring Alan Spangler!” Nellie shrieked, squeezing his shoulder.

Miss Peale gave her a reproving look.

At the bell the students rose. The pretty girls collected their pocketbooks. Alan Spangler lingered at Miss Peale's desk.

“You have to try these, Miss Peale.” His voice was warm and resonant, Edna O'Shane's best tenor. He reached into his jacket and produced a tin of lemon drops. “My dad buys them in Pittsburgh. My mom can't get enough of them.”

“That's kind of you, Alan,” she said, flushing. “Though it's a bit early in the day for candy.” She was uncomfortably aware of the boys at the back of the room, Poblocki's gruff laughter, Quinn cracking a joke in a low voice.

Alan Spangler seemed not to notice. He grinned, showing his dimple. “Take one for after lunch. It's nice to have something sweet.”

A
few snowflakes scattered as Viola drove across town. She had stayed late to grade papers, and already dusk was falling. She groped for, and eventually found, the switch that turned on the headlamps. She was not a confident driver. The car, her father's ancient Ford, never traveled beyond the town line.

At home Clara was chopping vegetables for soup. “The basket came,” she said.

Viola glanced into the parlor. A giant package sat in the center of the table, wrapped in clear cellophane. Her sister had shown unusual restraint. Each year at Christmas, their cousin Chessie sent a massive fruit basket—not the usual apples and oranges but bright, sweet clementines, tiny champagne grapes, a whole pineapple with the leafy crown attached. (Where one found such produce in Bakerton, Viola couldn't imagine. In winter the selection was slim indeed.) The basket arrived with a generic note, on company letterhead:

COMPLIMENTS OF BAKER BROTHERS,

MINERS AND SHIPPERS OF COAL

Delivered, always, by one of the Baker maids, as if to remind the sisters that their cousin was an important man, busy running ten coal mines, the welfare of an entire town heavy on his shoulders. The slight was lost on Clara, who would, if Viola didn't stop her, attack the basket like a hungry orangutan and devour its contents in a single day.

Her sister was sweet-tempered and didn't mind the scolding. At school she'd been called slow. As labels went, it was not inaccurate. Clara moved through life at a deliberate pace, as though the smallest decisions—shoes or boots, rice or potatoes—called for long consideration. And yet she was an excellent cook, a careful housekeeper, skills Viola had never bothered to acquire. Since their parents' death, the sisters had looked after each other. Neither had ever lived alone.

After supper, Viola took a walk uptown. The stores were open late for holiday shopping, the sidewalks busy, the windows bright. Even the Jewish merchants had decorated; Friedman's Furniture glowed with twinkling red lights. A speaker piped carols into the chilly air, Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas.” The atmosphere was festive, and yet there were sober reminders—two blue stars in Izzy Friedman's window, his sons Neil and Morris serving overseas—of the boys who might not return.

She wandered down Main Street, studying the shop windows. Each year she bought a few modest gifts—scented soap for Edna O'Shane, a scarf or sweater for Clara, who would have preferred some useless trinket. She had always been indifferent to clothing. Without Viola's prodding, she would go to church in her slip.

She paused in front of Spangler's Hat Shop, known all over Saxon County for its window displays. In defiance of the season, someone had created a kind of Caribbean fantasy: against a painted backdrop of sand and ocean, mannequins sat in lawn chairs, dressed in colorful swimsuits and drinking summer cocktails. Absurdly, each wore a beautiful hat. The hats were strawberry-pink and lemon-yellow, nothing a woman would buy this time of year. And yet the tableau was irresistible. It was impossible to walk past the window, impossible not to step inside.

As she stood gawking, a hand snaked through a seam in the backdrop and placed paper umbrellas in the mannequins' glasses. Then Alan Spangler appeared in the window. He knelt to clip a bracelet around a mannequin's wrist. When he spotted Viola, he smiled and waved her inside. “Miss Peale! It's nice to see you.” He had removed his sport jacket; his shirtsleeves were rolled to his elbows. “How do you like my display?”

“It's enchanting,” she said. “This is your creation?”

He grinned. “I accept full blame. My dad thinks I've lost my mind.” He lowered his voice. “It's working, though. We've never had a busier Christmas.”

“Well, congratulations.” Her eyes darted around the shop, the dozens of hats on wire stands. For her sister, it would be a wasteful gift: the hall closet was full of unworn hats. Each Sunday Clara donned an old green cloche of their mother's, stylish twenty years ago.

“We just got a whole truckload of new merchandise. I haven't put them out yet. You can have first pick.” He crossed to the front door and turned the sign from
OPEN
to
CLOSED
. “We close at eight, but you're a special customer.”

“I don't want to be a bother,” she protested.

He disappeared into a back room, calling over his shoulder: “Don't move. I'll be right back.”

Viola waited. Somewhere a radio was playing. On the counter was a pile of fashion magazines,
Vogue
and
Harper's Bazaar
. She hadn't bought a new hat in years. She and Clara lived within their means, her weekly paycheck plus the small inheritance from their father.

Alan reappeared with a stack of hatboxes piled to his chin. “I picked these especially for you.” He opened a box and took out a maroon beret. “Try this.”

Viola took the hat and placed it carefully on her head. He pointed toward a mirror. “It's lovely,” she said.

“Don't make up your mind yet. Not until you see this.” From a larger box, he took a simple woolen sailor. “Don't look yet.” He placed the hat on her head, frowned, adjusted it minutely. To her astonishment, his fingers brushed at her forehead, loosening a lock of hair. “You have beautiful hair. We don't want to cover it completely.”

It was a remarkable thing for a boy to say to his teacher, but Alan said it simply, without self-consciousness. He was a natural salesman, born, if the Creator actually thought of such things, to sell ladies' hats. Growing up around the shop, he'd developed a way with the female customers, a warm and practiced ease. It explained his popularity with the girls at school. Bakerton men were not known for social graces. Next to other local males—the girls' gruff fathers and crude brothers—Alan Spangler was a prince.

He stood behind her and studied her reflection in the mirror. “I had a hunch it would suit your complexion. Bring out the blue in your eyes.”

Viola blinked. He was right: her eyes, gray in most lights, looked distinctly blue. “It's marvelous,” she said softly—forgetting for the moment that he was her pupil, forgetting everything but this new vision of herself, no longer a dowdy schoolmarm but a striking blue-eyed woman with beautiful hair. Such was the power of an elegant hat.

She turned to face him, hesitating. It seemed indelicate to ask. “What is the price, exactly?”

“Nineteen dollars.”

“Oh, my.” She had never spent so much on a hat in her life. “It's very tempting. But Christmas is just around the corner. I should be buying gifts for others, not myself.” She took a final look at her reflection, the vivid blue eyes she'd never seen in a mirror. Reluctantly she removed the hat.

“I'll put it aside for you, in case you change your mind.” Alan's eyes twinkled. “This hat is made for you. There isn't a woman in Bakerton who could wear it so well.”

“Thank you, Alan,” she said, flushing. “You're quite a salesman. Your father must be very proud.”

She buttoned her coat and headed out into the cold. A stiff wind had kicked up. Walking home, she felt warmed from the inside, hot with pleasure and embarrassment. Bakerton was a small town. Mindful of appearances, she had always kept a certain distance from her pupils. Any passing pedestrian might have seen her through the glass door, alone in the shop with Alan Spangler, giggling like schoolgirls as he placed the hat on her head. And yet in the moment, she'd felt no discomfort. She hadn't felt such freedom, such warm and easy happiness in another's company, since she was a girl.

That night, naturally, she dreamed of Edgar. She often did, but that night it was certain to happen. There was no doubt.

T
hey had called themselves cousins, though in fact their fathers were. Viola's, an accountant, had been brought over from England by his cousins Chester and Elias Baker. When the first Baker mine prospered, Herman Peale had been hired to keep the books. Edgar was Chester Baker's son—born, like Viola, at an extraordinary moment, the dawn of the new century. They had in common a feeling of destiny, a fascination with the future: the modern wonders not yet invented, the unimaginable miracles to come.

From birth they'd been closer than siblings. Viola's sister, Clara, was too slow for their games; Edgar's brother, Chester Jr.—known as Chessie—too serious, too old. As children they'd chased each other through the Baker house, a rambling mansion on Indian Hill. At Jefferson Elementary they were inseparable. Another boy would have been teased for playing with a girl, but Edgar was a Baker. At eight or nine or ten, the miners' children were old enough to know the difference.

Looking back on those years, Viola could summon few memories of her parents or Clara and none whatsoever of her schoolmates. Her long happy childhood had been spent in Edgar's orbit.

Then, when they were both fourteen, Edgar was taken away—enrolled, like his brother, Chessie, at the Wollaston School in Connecticut, impossibly far away. At Bakerton High, Viola was sick with loneliness. From the miners' children she felt hopelessly separate, and yet she was no Baker. The schoolmates she'd always ignored returned the favor, leaving her friendless in the small class. In those days, few pupils finished high school; they left for the mines or the dress factory, the family farm. In 1917, Viola's year, Bakerton High would graduate a class of twelve.

She lived for the summers, when Edgar returned for three glorious months of riding and long walks and picnics and tennis, a game he'd become obsessed with at school. On rainy days they spent hours at the piano. Viola played competently, Edgar beautifully. Every summer they mastered several duets. Each May their reunion was awkward. Edgar seemed at first a different person, a handsome and beguiling stranger with a shockingly deep voice. In a day or two the effect would dissipate, and Viola would recognize her own Edgar, dearer to her than anybody; as familiar as her own self.

They had three such summers, sun-filled, precious. Then, in the fourth summer—they didn't know it would be the last—everything, everything changed.

Edgar came home in time to attend her graduation. Viola, the class valedictorian, saw him sitting in the audience next to a boy she didn't recognize. Later she was introduced to Bronson Baker—Edgar's first cousin and her second. The boy's mother, finding Bakerton uninhabitable, had divorced Elias Baker when Bronson was a baby and taken him back to England to live. When England went to war, Bronson had been sent to military school in South Carolina. Now he'd come to spend a summer with the father he barely remembered.