Under the Same Blue Sky (2 page)

“You could try it,” my mother argued. “Don’t you like experiments?”

“Not with food.” For Sunday dinners with Uncle Willy and Tante Elise, we did have “normal” meals: sauerbraten, green beans, spaetzle, and rye bread. “Come more often, Willy,” my father pleaded, “and save me from
Good Housekeeping
.” As belts and tongues loosened and the men moved from beer to schnapps, talk turned to Europe’s troubles: Kaiser Wilhelm’s bluster and blunders, unrest in Serbia, and outrageous French demands for the return of Alsace-Lorraine, which was clearly German territory.

I eased from the table to the window seat and took out my colors. The Kaiser meant nothing to me; I had many Serbian friends and didn’t care about Alsace-Lorraine. Sometimes my parents felt as far away as
Europe, still locked in kingdom struggles. Better to tackle the persistent puzzle of my life: the splendid rooms I shouldn’t remember. Where did those memories come from? Was there another Hazel besides this one on East Ohio Street? And another mystery: Why did I always draw the
same
little blue house in the country, in the same avidly imagined detail, with two vague figures on the porch step? One might be me. And the other?

And why were my dreams so ungrateful, so bent to my own pleasure? If I went to medical school and became a doctor as my mother often suggested, I could buy my parents a house with a big kitchen, separate dining room, garden, and a workroom for my father’s tins and projects. I could take them back to Heidelberg. We could walk along the Neckar River, visit old relatives, see the church where they were married, and eat white asparagus that was nowhere finer than in the stalls along the Marktplatz. Didn’t they deserve these pleasures?

“Wouldn’t you like to be a doctor, Hazel?” my mother might let fall while shaping rolls or pressing out
butterplätzchen,
the butter cookies so beloved at our church dinners. “After all, you have the healing touch.” So many times I’d heard the story, the telling as solemn as any liturgy: “When you were just five years old, you cooled your hands in ice water, climbed on a stool, and rubbed your father’s headache away. You knew what to do! Wasn’t that a sign?”

“I’m not sure.”

“But you should be sure. You make my shoulder better in the morning just by rubbing it.”

“Dr. Edson says arthritis is always worse in the morning. Rubbing just feels good; it doesn’t heal anything.” No, she insisted, I’d be an extraordinary doctor. There were signs. Apparently, school prizes in drawing weren’t signs of an art career. An award for memorizing Bible verses was merely admirable. Having my own class in the German
Saturday school wasn’t a sign for a teaching career. First place in the girls’ fifty-yard dash wasn’t a sign of anything at all. “Why are only
her
signs real?” I asked Luisa as we sat in Katz’s, sharing a chocolate milkshake.

“I don’t know, but the only signs
my
mother sees are that I’ll be in trouble if I don’t hurry up and marry a sober, hardworking man with a good job. Your parents want more for you. You should be grateful.”

“You’re right,” I admitted. How many shoeshine and messenger boys would rather be in school? Girls my age ironed for hours in steaming laundries or scrubbed for rich people. Children of millworkers played with lumps of coal, their only toys. Nobody took them to Carnegie Library on their sixth birthday for their own borrowing card.

“Well then? Will you think about medicine?” Luisa demanded.

“Yes.” But not today. I persuaded Luisa to come with me to the Carnegie Institute to see great art: Grecian gods and goddesses, English landscapes, and French women wearing clouds of lace, swinging in sylvan glades. “Those ladies never cook,” Luisa said. “I have to go now and help my mother make tortellini.” I lingered, entranced by the skill of artists whose skill soared over mine.
They
were extraordinary.

On my way home, Mr. Schmidt the butcher stopped me. “Hazel, we’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

“What happened?” A fire in our flat? Sickness? A robbery in the store? Were my parents hit by a streetcar?

“You know how they always walk together to the newsstand for the
Volksblatt
?”

I nodded. Mr. Schmidt could not be hurried in carving meat or telling stories, but now I wanted to shake him. “What happened? Are they hurt?”

“Well, they were coming home, passing my store. Your father was reading the headlines to your mother, as he always does. They waved to me, and I waved back. I was trimming ribs.”

“Yes, and—”

“So he was reading the headlines. Then two hoodlum boys shoved them, ripped the
Volksblatt
from his hands and threw it in the gutter. They said real Americans read American newspapers.”

“But nobody was hurt.”

“I don’t think so.”

I thanked Mr. Schmidt and ran home. My father wouldn’t discuss the incident or speak to the boys’ parents, who were his customers. “Next time, I’ll buy a
Pittsburgh Post
and fold the
Volksblatt
inside it.”

“You shouldn’t have to.”

“But it’s better that way. Now look at the fine apple strudel your mother made.” As I walked down East Ohio Street in the next week, I studied every passing pair of boys. Were they the ones who insulted my parents? What had they heard at home that made them want to do such things?

“
Next
Sunday,” my mother announced, “we’re having a picnic at Raccoon Creek Park.” She’d already determined the streetcar routes that would take us there, the picnic menu, and that we would not say a single word about the Kaiser, Serbia, Alsace-Lorraine, or anything in the newspapers.

“Well, Hazel,” my father said, “I see signs that our Sunday is planned.” So we went. The air at Raccoon Creek was silky soft, as clean as fresh linen. Green lawns surrounded a placid lake under a tender blue sky. I helped spread our gingham tablecloth over springy grass and set out a plate of rye bread. My father lay down with a sigh. My mother opened her mending basket. I sketched willow trees bent over the lake. From the corner of my eye, I saw my father’s arm arching back and forth, pulling off chunks of bread he dropped in his mouth. “Don’t spoil your appetite,” my mother muttered, bent over a sock.

“Bread is life,” he answered dreamily.

Suddenly an unearthly gag ripped the quiet. My father was on all fours, shoulders heaving. Then he collapsed like a house of cards, his face a sickly gray.

My mother shrieked and for the first time used his Christian name in my presence: “Johannes!”

Not possible, not possible,
I thought wildly. Not on a green lawn by Raccoon Creek Park, under this blue sky. When I yanked him up to sitting, he was limp as a rag doll. Picnickers came running with suggestions.

“Hit him on the back!”

“Lift his arms!”

“Shake him!”

“He’s dead,” my mother sobbed.

“He’s not!” I don’t know why I thought of a child’s popgun. With a surge of strength, I squeezed hard under his ribs.
Pop the cork.
I squeezed again, even harder. A wad of bread flew out of his mouth, landing on my mother’s skirt. She shrieked again. He heaved, weakly breaking my grip as a red curtain rose up his face. Inside that gorgeous scarlet, blue eyes flew open, looking back at me. My chest heaved in exhaustion and relief.

“Johannes!” my mother cried, flinging her arms around him. She’d never done this in public before, ever.

He coughed and gasped: “What were you doing, Hazel, squeezing me to death?”

“No, pal, squeezing you to
life
,” said a spectator.

My mother seized the loaf and—another first—threw away perfectly good food. The loaf made a wide arc and plopped into the lake.

“Great pitch.”

“Throw that sucker!”

“You should play for the Pittsburgh Pirates, lady! What an arm!”

“Hazel, you saved him. He was
dead
and you brought him back,” one cried.

No, no, both things were impossible, first that
my
father could die and so absurdly, for a bit of bread. Second, that I, plain Hazel, could bring back the dead. “Now, now,” my father said reasonably. “Maybe I skipped some breaths, but let’s not be dramatic. I
am
thirsty, though. I’d like a beer, Mother.”

“Of course.” She fumbled for a bottle. “But Hazel, isn’t this a sign that you were meant to be a doctor? After all, you knew just what to do. You saved—”

My father wiped his mouth. “Enough. We’re grateful that Hazel was with us and thought quickly. Let’s just enjoy—”

“But she saved—” The blue glaze caught hers and she fell silent, brushing crumbs from the tablecloth. In the next days, her wondering, adoring eyes on me, her heaping my plate with the choicest sausage, and exquisite care in ironing my clothes, all repeated one certainty: I had miraculously saved her treasure on earth. “If you really don’t want to be a doctor,” she conceded, “you could at least be a nurse. I’m sure the picnic was a sign.”

“Mother, not
everything
is a sign.” Perhaps not, but signs filled her world. Chimney sweeps were good signs; seeing anyone walk between two old ladies was very bad, like a song before breakfast. A knife received as a present was a sign of coming misfortune. After an Italian friend announced that 17 was even more unlucky than 13, the 17th of many months brought her sick headaches. A husband nearly killed by rye bread and saved by his daughter, how could that
not
be a sign?

Was it?
The question rolled in my mind at night. My future swirled. Perhaps I was as wrong about my dreams of travel and drawing as I was about the scarlet jackets. Why
not
do good in this obvious way? I’d helped my father; I could help others.
Were
there really signs that I had
been called to a life of art and not of healing? Was I being arrogant—or simply wrong? If I went to museums, shouldn’t I at least see where doctors trained?

I took a streetcar to the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, mounted the broad steps, and wandered through hallways smelling of alcohol, formaldehyde, and oiled wood. Neatly labeled displays lined the halls. In an amphitheater, a professor questioned a one-armed millworker about phantom pain. Students in white jackets discussed a pneumonia case. “Atypical,” said one. “Fascinating,” said another. A young woman was among them, wearing a white coat like theirs, an equal. They might welcome me. But could I share their fascination, their dedication? Would I be a fraud, or worse, if I tended the sick by rote or duty? “Can I help you, miss?” one of the young men asked. “Are you looking for someone?”

“No, just—looking around.” He turned back to his colleagues. I hurried away. I
had
been looking for someone: Dr. Hazel Renner. But she wasn’t here.

I went to Dr. Edson’s office and waited until the last patient left. “So, Hazel,” he began as he always did, “what brings you here?”

I wasn’t sick, I explained, only curious: “When did you decide to be a doctor?”

“I didn’t decide. I always wanted this life.” He studied me, the mild eyes and soft questions drawing out every symptom of distress. I explained how I’d helped my father at the picnic, my good grades, my mother’s plans for my future, and my uncertainty. “I see. You think you
ought
to want to be a doctor because it’s an honorable profession, but you aren’t sure it’s the right path for you. Is that it?” I nodded. Dr. Edson studied his stethoscope, as he often did, so intently that when I was small I imagined it held all the world’s medical knowledge. “You know, Hazel, there are
many
honorable professions.” The old eyes
twinkled. “Plumbing, for instance. Running a hardware store, teaching, or art. You must find
your
honorable profession, the place where you can do good. If not, if you choose wrong, some damage might be done, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps.”

“Almost certainly.” He tucked the stethoscope into its wooden box for the night. “I hear good reports from your Saturday school class.”

“Some children have stopped coming.”

“They’ll be back. This unpleasant idea that true Americans must forget their father’s culture will surely pass.” He fumbled for his Homburg hat. I helped him with the tweed jacket he’d worn forever. “Thank you, my dear. Mrs. Edson is waiting for me, as your parents are waiting for you, I’m sure.” He opened the office door for me and led me to the street, where he bowed slightly and started home, stopping often to greet his many patients.

I passed the next days in a haze of anxiety until on a grimy morning like any other. I made my choice, or rather, seized the choice that had hovered over me for months like a gauzy dream. Not medicine and not travel yet. By next year I could be qualified for teaching in a one-room country school. In a green and quiet place outside the city, I’d draw and paint, capturing light in color. Children would drink knowledge like water. I’d live frugally, save money, and then begin my great adventures.

I laid out this plan to my parents, Uncle Willy, and Tante Elise at our next Sunday dinner, noting that the city’s finest normal school for teacher training was only a streetcar ride away. I could even get a scholarship. “It’s
much
cheaper than studying medicine,” I finished hopefully.

My mother set down our potato spoon. “Teaching in a
country
school,” she repeated. I knew what she was thinking, that there was no “extraordinary” in this plan.

“Teaching is a respectable profession,” Uncle Willy observed, spearing a potato.

“And honorable,” I said, but so softly that nobody heard me over the tapping of my father’s fork on the tablecloth like his hammer on tin.

“It might not be forever,” Tante Elise added. “You could stop, like Cousin Ludwig. He taught school for a while and then—” She trailed off, having once again offered a poor example. Ludwig embezzled school funds to pay off gambling debts, left town, and drifted south to New Orleans, where he died penniless.

Uncle Willy buttered a roll thoughtfully. “It
is
the American way for young people to decide their own futures.”