The American Lady (6 page)

Was he even living his own life anymore?

Or was he just an extension of his father’s will?

6

Marie felt she had been caught up in a whirlwind and no longer knew which way was up. Over the last few days, she and Ruth had been constantly on the go, barely ever stopping for a rest.

“You didn’t come here to sit around our parlor. If I know you, you want to go back to Lauscha with a whole suitcase full of sketches and ideas to use in your glassblowing. And then next year, with any luck, we’ll be able to look forward to the New York Collection!”

Marie had almost forgotten what it felt like to hold a gas tap in her hand. All the same she nodded, embarrassed.

“Let’s hope you’re right,” she said halfheartedly. So far nothing had inspired her.

She only rarely saw her niece.

Once Wanda had wanted to go shopping with them, but Ruth had refused to take her daughter unless she hid her short hair under a hat, while Wanda had refused just as firmly to “spoil” her new hairstyle, so nothing came of it. Marie didn’t know whether she really felt sorry about that.

A few days later, however, the three of them did go shopping. Ruth seemed to have made peace with the idea of Wanda walking around without a hat. But the truce proved short-lived as soon as the time came to decide which shops to visit; whatever Ruth thought was chic, Wanda declared as hopelessly old-fashioned. Once inside, the squabbling continued, since there was hardly an article of clothing that mother and daughter could agree on. Marie kept out of these arguments entirely—not that she was asked for her opinion. When she said that she wanted to go into the menswear department—she couldn’t wear the same old pair of Father’s pants forever—they looked at her in horror.

Though Wanda was reserved toward her aunt and cheeky to her mother, she was charming and gracious with strangers. The salesgirls fought for the privilege of serving her, bringing dozens of garments, box after box of shoes, and all sorts of other wares for her approval. It seemed to Marie that Wanda wanted to prove something to Ruth and her:
Just look how nice I can be when it suits me
. She had the feeling that there was more to Wanda’s stubbornness than the younger generation’s typical love of making things difficult for their elders. But Ruth had packed their days so full that Marie had not yet found an opportunity to get Wanda alone and find out why her niece thought she always had to strike the first blow.

When they were not out shopping—which Marie found very hard work—Ruth showed Marie the town. She learned soon enough that in New York, the two activities went hand in hand: there were hundreds of shops all along Fifth Avenue; the theaters on Times Square stood one next to the other, each with their brightly lit billboards; and just a little to the south was the world’s largest department store, Macy’s. A couple of miles north was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They had gone past the impressive building a few times, and Ruth assured Marie that there would be plenty of time to visit it later.

While her sister always marched into the shops at top speed, Marie could have spent the whole day standing outside and gazing up at the skyscrapers that soared above.

“You know,” she confessed to Ruth one day, “I actually thought it was rather odd how you kept going on about the skyscrapers in the first few letters you wrote to us. I wondered what could be so special about a building, no matter how tall. But I understand now! These things are really incredible.” She waved her hand at the whole street. “Just imagine: there haven’t been buildings like this since the great age of the Gothic cathedral eight hundred years ago!”

As Marie gazed up into the heights, her eyes gleaming, Ruth told her that each skyscraper hid a whole town behind its soaring façade, with its own post office, lawyers, shops, shoemakers, and everything else one might need in life.

Of course they went into a Woolworth’s store as well—after all, the chain had been the first customer to bring Marie’s baubles to America. Marie wouldn’t rest until she had sat down at one of the famous lunch counters and eaten an ice-cream sundae while shoppers thronged all around her. Ruth, however, turned up her nose at this sort of entertainment—it was all much too low-class for her. Marie teasingly reminded her that she had only met her husband Steven through Woolworth himself, so there was nothing low-class about the man. Ruth agreed, laughing.

“Who knows—perhaps we’ll find another Steven here, for you!” she said, her eyes twinkling. Marie just waved the idea away. She had come all this way partly to be free of Magnus for a few weeks—she wasn’t going to let her sister start choosing men for her!

Ruth told her that at Christmas there were tables full of Lauscha glass all around the ground floor of the shop. Globes, angels, and Santa Claus figures were all set out neatly on red velvet, just waiting for customers to pick them up and take them home.

“Just imagine: they tell me that last year fistfights almost broke out at the tables over your silver angels! There were even reports in the newspapers. With photographs!” Ruth said, laughing at the memory. “They just didn’t have enough angels for everyone. Johanna had even made a point of telling Mr. Woolworth he needed to order more. Well, sometimes even a business genius like him can get his numbers wrong.”

Despite Ruth’s detailed descriptions, Marie had trouble imagining her Christmas baubles here; she couldn’t draw the connection between her daily work at the bench back home and the hustle and bustle around her.

Sometimes they met Steven for lunch in restaurants with melodious names—Delmonico’s and Mamma Leone’s. Marie had to get used to the idea of going out to eat in a restaurant even though they were just a few steps from home. And she had to get used to the food as well: crabs, lobster, poached chicken breast, and all sorts of strange fare that didn’t fill her up. She would much rather have stayed home and eaten a few eggs or a plate of potatoes with Ruth at the kitchen table—simple home cooking, the kind of thing that Lou-Ann made for herself and the two maids. They could have talked about old times as they ate. And about the new times too. But they only ever got to do that in the evenings when they returned to the apartment with all their packages and bags. Even then they didn’t sit down in the kitchen, where Ruth rarely went, but in the drawing room just as they had the first evening, drinking tea and nibbling at biscuits.

Most of the time Ruth asked questions and Marie answered at length. Ruth was mostly interested in Johanna and Peter and the twins, of course.

“Anna looks terribly solemn in all the photographs Johanna sends me—is she really like that?” Ruth wanted to know.

“Solemn? I don’t kno
w . . .
” Marie shrugged. “I don’t think I would call her solemn. Obstinate perhaps. In fact Anna’s even more obstinate than I was as a girl—if that’s possible. Sometimes I’ll come into the workshop in the morning and find her sitting there after she’s worked all night on one of her designs!”

Ruth looked rather taken aback; she had never really understood anyone who poured herself into her work like that. Then she asked after Magnus. Did he still follow Marie around like a faithful dog? Ruth had never had a very high opinion of the man in Marie’s life. She also wanted to know who did which jobs in the workshop, how they all approached their work, whether the new warehouse in Sonneberg was really such a great step forward, and so on and so forth. “Do you remember our first commission for Woolworth? The whole house was full of boxes stacked up to the ceiling! We could hardly move.” She laughed.

Marie answered all the questions as well as she could, but she sometimes had to admit that she simply didn’t know—whether the question was about actual business matters or just village gossip.

“You’re still my little sister Marie. Nothing in your head but glassblowing,” Ruth said, smiling sadly at her sister. Then she reached out and stroked Marie’s hair in a gesture of rare tenderness. “Which makes me even happier that you’ve come to visit. I had expected that Johanna might come someday. But yo
u . . .
”

“I haven’t been feeling myself lately,” Marie murmured. “I needed a change of scenery, as they say.”

She could see the question in Ruth’s eyes but said nothing more about it. What could she have said? That she felt dried up, like a fruit that had withered on the vine? That she was scared even to think of her workbench back home? Her sister was one of her greatest admirers, but they had never been able to talk about glassblowing and artistic matters.

Instead she said, “By the way, your ex-father-in-law isn’t doing too well. They say he’s on his deathbed.”

Ruth’s face clouded over for a moment.

“Are you even a little bit interested in how Thomas and his family are?” Marie asked after a while, when the silence had stretched out too long.

“If you really must know, no I’m not,” Ruth said, standing up suddenly. “To tell you the truth I would rather that you never mention them again. As far as I’m concerned the whole pack of them could up and die tomorrow—I couldn’t care less!”

Marie looked up in confusion. “But Ruth—they’re a part of your life as well! And Thomas is Wanda’s father.”

Ruth grabbed her wrist hard. “Even if that’s true a thousand times over, you will never say that again, do you hear me? Especially not when Wanda is anywhere near. Steven is the only father Wanda has.”

“All right, all righ
t . . .
” Marie waved a hand. “I’ll make sure I never mention the past again,” she said, stung.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Ruth pleaded. “It’s only the Heimers I don’t want to hear about. It may have been a long time ago, but I can’t forget the pain they caused me. You do understand that, don’t you?”

Marie didn’t want to make it too easy for her sister. “Well, all right—but I have to say I find it odd that you never told Wanda who her father really is. She has a right to know where she comes from, doesn’t she? It’s not as though she would love Steven any less because of it.”

If
she
were in Wanda’s shoes, she would want to know that she was the daughter of one of the best glassblowers in all of Lauscha!

“Or are you still ashamed of the divorce? Getting divorced is really not that uncommon these days. Even the Baroness of Thuringi
a . . .
”

Ruth shook her head vehemently. “It’s not about that. If Wanda knew that Steven wasn’t her biological father that would just make everything more complicated than it already is, believe me. Never you mind having a right to know—that would all be grist to Wanda’s mill!” She heaved a deep sigh. “Sometimes I just don’t know what to do with her. My daughter insists fiercely on what she sees as her rights, but woe betide me if I ever ask her to recognize that she has duties as well! She won’t even hear of it! She’s a great deal like her father in that respect, if nothing else.”

“Aha—now you’re the one mentioning Thomas!” Marie said triumphantly.

“And I’d rather cut my tongue out than ever mention him again!” Ruth replied, grinning. “As for Wanda, perhaps she’ll become a little easier to deal with once she and Harold are married.” She bit her lip. “If only they already wer
e . . .
I’m sure the two of them have hardly done more than kiss—not that I want Wanda to do more than that, don’t misunderstand me—but I am a little surprised that they are so much like brother and sister. When I remember how I felt back then wit
h . . .
Thoma
s . . .
I could hardly wait to lie in his arms. And then once Wanda was on the way we couldn’t get married fast enoug
h . . .
” She smiled at the thought.

“Perhaps Harold just isn’t the man of her dreams,” Marie said, thinking of Magnus. She had never been swept away by emotion when he took her in his arms, and when they made love it was more for his sake than for her pleasure. “Perhaps some women simply don’t have as great an erotic appetite as others.”

Ruth looked at Marie skeptically. “Be that as it may, I hope Harold proposes to Wanda soon. Steven says that he has to get ahead in his career first. But the way I see it, she couldn’t hope to find a better man.”

“Ruth!” Marie said, outraged. “You sound as though you can hardly wait to get rid of your daughter. Wanda is only eighteen—isn’t that rather young to marry?”

“What should she be waiting for?” Ruth replied. “To meet the wrong man and then make the same mistake I did? Or to find some job that takes up all her time and energy, and then become a bitter old maid? Just imagine, in the spring she even came up with the idea of becoming a nurse! I thought my ears were deceiving me. My Wanda, in a bloodsmeared surgical gown? Thank heavens a friend of mine found her a job in a gallery not long after that.” She shook her head, appalled. “A nurse—as though any man would ever be interested in marrying her after she’d seen such things and worked herself half to death!”

“But if she wants to help people, shouldn’t you be happy about that? Once she’s spent some time emptying bedpans and changing soiled bandages, I daresay the work would lose a little of its charm. The way you keep forbidding Wanda from pursuing her dreams just makes her all the more determined.”

“What nonsense! Nobody wants to stop her from helping the needy. I go to the hospital once a week myself and read to the patients. I’ve asked her often enough whether she wants to come with me. But that hardly means that she should make a career of it.”

“If your daughter has even the slightest trace of your own stubbornness, you’ll have a hard time making her into the compliant little miss you seem to want,” Marie said. She gave Ruth a gentle dig in the ribs. “And now it’s time for you to test me on yesterday’s vocabulary. I want to have a go at the next chapter in my English textbook later this evening.”

Ruth groaned. “Not again! Can’t we skip class just for once? You already speak wonderful English.”

“But I want to understand as well. I still have trouble with that,” Marie answered stoically as she opened her phrase book.