Sing for Me (6 page)

“She’s too young,” Dad says.

He paces the drafty living room, stirring the air. Still chilled from bathing Sophy, I huddle on the love seat. I tug an afghan over my damp dress, tuck my bare feet beneath the cushions as Dad stalks past. Someone is whooping it up on the street below. Dad strides to the window. Even this upset, he’s graceful. He’s vain about his grace, Mother says. He’s vain about his lean good looks, too, and the wavy chestnut hair he’s so angry to lose, and his once carefully purchased, now carefully patched clothes. He looks dapper even in his coveralls, which are blindingly white now, at the start of the day, and will be blindingly white tonight, when he returns after long hours of apartment painting and repairs. He is that particular about cleanliness. He snaps the cuffs of his shirt into place and glowers down on whatever is going on outside. This window is his post when he’s home. He served as a sentinel in the Great War; now he guards his family. Sucking his teeth in disdain—whoever is below isn’t a threat, apparently, just
common
—he draws the heavy velvet curtains closed, shutting out the light and the outside world as best he can.

Mother and Dad took these curtains from our previous house and hung them here, though the curtains are twice as wide and long as these windows. They took the lamps, sconces, chandeliers, rugs, and furniture as well. One by one, we sell or pawn these things when the pantry is bare. As for those things that are left—well, there are still plenty. We’re constantly scraping our shins on chairs, impaling ourselves on table corners, or stubbing our toes against unpacked boxes. There is no room to push Sophy’s adult-sized wheelchair around the apartment, so we leave it in the foyer and carry her, or ease her into her nowcramped child-sized chair if we’re feeling too tired. There is no formal dining room, so the largest chandelier hangs above Mother and Dad’s bed, and there is no entryway, either—just a door that opens onto a corridor—so the smaller chandelier graces the alcove in the kitchen. It’s apartment living, train car style, with the few rooms strung one after another down the hallway.

In one of these—the bedroom Sophy and I share—Sophy lies sleeping now. There’s a hot-water bottle nestled between her hips, and, beneath her lingering bedsore, a sheepskin pad. My mother and I wrapped old towels around her to staunch her flow.

“Sophy’s fourteen, Jacob.” Mother lowers herself onto an ottoman.

Dad flings himself into the chair behind Mother, jostling the needlepoint pillow there. He grabs the pillow and balls up his fist. But instead of hitting the thing, he hugs it tight.

“My little girl.” His voice goes wistful, the kind of voice he’d call weak in a man.

“Who will grow bigger still,” Mother says.

Dad glares. “What are you getting at?”

Mother doesn’t answer.

“Sophy belongs with us!” Dad flings the pillow aside. “You saw Donald. Where they put him.”

Mother saw, and Dad saw, and I saw, too. This past fall, the three of us visited the place where the Larsens put their son—their Donald, who is only a little older than Sophy and similarly impaired, and who lives now in a redbrick building that rises out of nowhere smack-dab in the middle of cornfields. “Sophy could live there, too,” Mrs. Larsen had said enthusiastically to Mother after church one day. “She and Donald could keep each other company.” It was a two-hour ride to the institution, the last hour down dirt roads. Bare cornstalks rattled all around us in the wind. The place looked as pretty as a castle until we went inside. After our visit, it was hard to know what to say to the Larsens. How could we reveal what we really thought about the patients lining the halls, propped in wheelchairs or lying on dollies? The smell? Dad still refuses to speak to them, though Mother says they’re hiding their suffering, the pain they feel about Donald’s absence from their home. We must show the Larsens compassion, Mother says. So she and I do our best to do just that—though Sophy will never be Donald’s companion in that place. Not if we can help it.

“My back hurts, that’s all, Jacob,” Mother says now. “These stairs—I’m not sure how much longer I can carry her up them.”

Dad glares at me as if I’m at fault for this.

“Rose helps all she can.” Mother’s voice is soft but firm. “You know, Jacob, how much she cares for Sophy, on top of all her other work. Rose works as hard as we do.”

I could sing. I could make money doing that.
This flashes through my mind unbidden.

Mother takes a deep breath, emboldening herself. “I know you don’t like to trouble the Nygaards, Jacob, but perhaps we could ask them to let us move to a ground-floor apartment. It would be such a help.”

“Speaking of hard workers, did I mention that I ran into Nils Hoirus on the street yesterday?” Dad is looking at me, pointedly ignoring Mother, making it clear that asking isn’t just a bother, it’s a humiliation. “Nils is still a clerk at the National Tea, but he said he’s in line for the assistant manager position. That fellow has promise, Rose. Works hard, saves his pennies. He said he’s going to change his name from Nils to Neil first chance he has. ‘I don’t want a name that makes people think of nil, of nothing,’ he said. ‘Not when I’m going to make something of myself!’ ” Dad claps his hands—a single, sharp crack of approval. “Whatever he calls himself, he’ll provide well for his wife, and care for her family, too. He’s the best of the old country, right here in the new.”

I shift on the love seat, not just cold now but uneasy, too. I’ve known Nils since we moved to Illinois and started attending the Danish Baptist Church. He’s like a brother to me. No, easier than a brother—easier than my brother, at least. When we were kids, Nils and I teased each other mercilessly, made each other laugh, played hard. I still consider Nils one of my oldest friends. But his feelings for me seemed to have changed in the last couple of years. And it’s not just me who’s noticed. It’s Mother and Dad, too.

“Nils is hoping to get together with you, Rose,” Dad says. “He spoke of a Saturday night—not tonight, but sometime in the near future. Do you have plans you can think of coming up?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so.” Dad stands and goes to the bayonet he brought home from the Great War, his cherished souvenir from when he was young and heroic, a trusted soldier. He pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and begins to dust the bayonet, as he often does when he’s anxious. And he’s often anxious, so he often does. It always seems to reassure him. It seems to reassure him now. “I knew as much. I told Nils so.”

In these last months particularly, Nils has started looking at me almost like I’m bedazzling, bright and shining, glorious with possibility. Sometimes I find it flattering. But other times, when I’m feeling contrary, I feel burdened by his new attention. On those days I’d like to shine a little less brightly. My glow, I fear, eclipses the person I really am.

But who am I, really? After last night, I wonder.

“This reminds me, Rose,” Mother says with forced cheeriness. “I was hoping you and Sophy would make a trip to the National Tea later today. We need a few things—flour, oatmeal, and the like. I’ve made a list. The fresh air will do Sophy good, and you know how she likes that store.”

Like the rest of us, Sophy doesn’t simply
like
the National Tea; she’s loyal to it. Sophy, Andreas, and I were raised on tales of the store’s founders, the Rasmussen brothers, Danish immigrants who established their business in Chicago at the turn of the century. Within twenty years they were raking in the millions. Even now, with the economy what it is, the National Tea Company is one of the country’s largest grocery operations, with stores all over these forty-eight states. Nils is lucky to be a rising star there. And with his Danish heritage, his star will shine all the more brightly.

“If you see Nils, say hello,” Dad says.

Nils has a way of slipping me sweets now. On my twenty-first birthday, he gave me six white roses, freshly shipped to the National Tea. Those roses were just about the most beautiful gift I’ve ever received—and the one and only gift I’ve received from a man other than a man in my family. Even now, remembering their petals, soft and cool against my cheek, I breathe in deeply. If only the scent lingered on the close air of this room. A man like Nils might very well shower his wife with roses. And the stems of those roses surely would be stripped of thorns.

I promise Dad I’ll say hello to Nils. I promise Mom that I’ll make sure Sophy has a chance to say hello to him, too. I leave them both as satisfied as they can be now, with the velvet curtains still drawn.

FOUR

B
undled against the bright, cold day, Sophy and I make our way toward the National Tea. It’s tricky, pushing Sophy’s rickety wheelchair up icy curbs and down them, over frost heaves in the sidewalk, around potholes in the streets. Far trickier than navigating the well-shoveled walkways and plowed roads that framed the blocks around our Oak Park house—though, of course, there were curbs to manage there, and everywhere people stare, or look right through us. Being ogled or being invisible—Sophy and I can never decide which is worse.

She is quiet now as we pass through Garfield Park’s wrought-iron gates; so quiet, I wonder if she’s nodded off in her warm cocoon of blankets. I’ve chosen this route because it provides a shortcut to the store. But for Sophy, Garfield Park is more than a shortcut. With its famous botanical conservatory and lagoon, the park is her favorite place in this neighborhood. I’d hate for her to miss a visit.

I glance over her shoulder, checking, but she proves to be
awake and watching. She’s thoughtful, that’s all. With all that’s happened to her today, I can see why.

Perhaps the sights and activity will distract her. Sunlight glints on the curved glass roof of the Conservatory, and even with the steam coating the windows, the shapes and colors of the flowers and tropical plants inside create a kind of kaleidoscope for our eyes. This late in the morning, skaters skim and twirl, their blades making brilliant patterns across the frozen lagoon. Children hurtle on sleds down the little hills all around. If they are too poor to have sleds, which most of them are, they ride battered baking sheets and old tires. Some of the boys wear the fur-lined jackets and leather bomber hats that are so popular. The girls, in their simple wool coats and knit stocking caps, look vulnerable to the cold by comparison. There’s a snowball fight on the softball field, and couples stroll, huddled close, around flower beds accented only by rose cones, barren shrubs, and small, strategically placed conifers. From this distance everyone looks like they’re exactly where they want to be, coming and going as they please. Everyone looks so happy.

I grit my teeth and push hard against Sophy’s chair. It’s proving harder to conquer the park’s snow- and ice-crusted path than it was the sidewalk and street. The chair jounces and tips this way and that.

Sophy cries out as we pass close to a team of Holsteins at work, pulling a man on a snowplow. The horses are working nearly as hard as I am. I toss my head like I’ve got a mane to ripple in the wind, stomp my feet like they’re hooves, let out a high whinny, and wrest a laugh from Sophy. Then I hear someone calling my name.

“Rose! Wait!”

My cousin Julia and her fiancé, Paul Schmidt, are scrambling on their skates up the side of the lagoon. She calls my name again, and waves. They make a handsome pair, those two, skittering on the jagged toes of their blades toward us. Julia, the youngest of three girls, carries herself with the lively confidence of the favored child—even when she’s stumbling and clinging to Paul’s arm, as she is now. Her auburn curls tumble from a cap the color of cranberries—a color that brings out the flush in her heart-shaped face. She is joyful. She is with the man she loves, the man she will marry in August on another picture-perfect day, I’m sure. And now: icing on the cake! Here come her favorite cousins!

“I was just thinking about you. I evoked you!” Julia calls.

She only wants to share her joy with us. She only wants us to be joyful, too. That’s Julia. Plain and simple, easy-peasy. She met Paul at the Fannie Mae Candy Factory, where they both work. Paul waltzed over to her at the end of her first shift and invited her out to dinner. Nine months later, they were engaged. “You’ll meet your match, too,” Julia keeps telling me. “You just need to get out more!”