Ursula Hegi The Burgdorf Cycle Boxed Set: Floating in My Mother's Palm, Stones from the River, The Vision of Emma Blau. Children and Fire (129 page)

Dazed, he shook his head. Stepped toward the window. And was calmed by the silent and eternal language of the stars. But then Tobias yelled something—“Give me that,” he yelled and grabbed a scarf from Robert—and as Stefan turned toward the voice, it was clear to him that this was Sara’s son, and from there he knew of course—
how could I have forgotten even for one instant?
—that Greta had issued from Elizabeth, and Robert from Helene. Seized by a deep regret that his work had kept him from knowing his children better, he promised himself to start teaching them about the stars. Tomorrow, he thought. Or Sunday. Yet it would not be his children, but his granddaughter, Emma, who would listen to his stories about the stars and about his mother who had taught him about the millions of galaxies and billions of stars, the distances between them so vast that Emma would feel lost, overwhelmed. If earth was small compared to the stars—then how could she matter? It was as though she didn’t exist. But when she would cry and tell Stefan, he would take her by the shoulders, his palms curving to hold her in, to keep her from flying off into a million bright specks. “For me you exist,” he would say, and she’d be safe.

His children hadn’t seen him yet.
Butter. I need to order butter. Inventory the spices
. Already he saw himself, wooden spoon to his lips, rolling his eyes upward as if in prayer as he tasted his brandy sauce. Prohibition was making it difficult to get the liquor he needed for his restaurant, but not impossible. He could buy home brew from one of the French Canadians in town or from Mr. Heflin who, officially, had added a very young wife and a post office to his general store while, unofficially, he operated a still in the storage area beneath his store.
Capers. Get capers and cloves. Cream
.

When Tobias noticed his father, he got all quiet and shy. Then Robert.

“You look … good, all of you,” Stefan said, bothered that the only one glad to see him was Greta.
They don’t know me. They don’t know me at all
. “Keep doing what you’ve been doing.”

But his sons only stood stiffly.

All at once he felt angry at them. “I need to get back to work.”

After his father had left, Tobias made Greta and Robert sit on the floor and got ready to do the one-armed man for them. It was one of his favorites because he could play the one-armed man and the policeman and the woman with the green necklace all by changing costumes and voice. His stepmother had taught him how to make up plays from things that happened and things he imagined, the way she had as a girl in Germany. But Tobias couldn’t imagine her as a girl: she’d been big and old forever. Since he hadn’t met his Uncle Leo, it was easy to imagine him as the boy who’d watched the play while sitting on a crate, thumb in his mouth. He was the uncle who was always supposed to visit but never arrived.

Although Tobias let his sister or brothers play an occasional part, he liked it best when they watched.
The one-armed man comes to the woman’s house. Tries to sell her shoelaces. Sometimes lipstick. Or tonic for headaches. When the woman doesn’t want to buy anything, he tears off the necklace that her husband has given her for their anniversary. Runs away. The woman calls for help. A policeman comes, chases the one-armed man. But he doesn’t catch him
. Tobias always liked the chase best. He’d seen a one-armed man once. At his grandfather’s bakery. Buying an ugly. That’s what his grandfather called the pastries he baked from leftover dough. Uglies were his specialty: twice as large as regular pastries, they were different each day because he clumped them together from leftover dough, chocolate and white, and added lots of glaze and whatever he had most of, coconut flakes or ribbons of cinnamon or chocolate sprinkles.

His grandmother had whispered it wasn’t polite to stare. When the one-armed man reached for his wallet, he angled his one elbow sideways and pulled the wallet from the back pocket on his other side with two fingers. Tobias had practiced that in the garage with
Danny, that and the way the one-armed man walked … as if stepping across new ice on the lake. “What would it feel like to just have one arm?” he’d asked Danny, who’d thought about an answer while his thumb flicked across his thin throat. “Cumbersome. Cumbersome, I believe.” Some days Danny was too busy to talk to Tobias because he was working for Tobias’ father now, helping the Wilsons take care of the building. Or because he was playing pool or cards with Stewart Robichaud, Birdie’s cousin, who was a waiter at the restaurant.

In the pile of clothes, Tobias found an indigo skirt that the one-armed man could wear as a cape. It gave off sparks when he dragged it across the carpets and swished it around. “Look at this.” He twirled. “Look.”

“It used to belong to your mother,” Greta told him.

Tobias bunched the material against his face and became very still. “If you like, I’ll have Mrs. Teichman sew you a shirt from it.” His stepmother had come up behind him.

Tobias yanked the skirt away from her. “Don’t cut it.”

“It was only a suggestion. The fabric is still good.”

“I remember her wearing it one afternoon.” Greta reached for his fingers and stroked both their hands across the creased fabric until his grip eased. “Feel how soft it is.” Her neck felt cold, and the air that came into her was thin, pale, because she could feel Tobias’ sadness at not having his own memories of his mother, felt his loneliness extending into those years when they both would be far older than their mothers had ever been.

“It was windy, that afternoon, and she was walking with me and
Vati
along Weirs Beach. She pointed to the ground and said, ‘There’s a buried treasure somewhere beneath our feet.’”

Tobias watched her without speaking, possessive of the treasure because it was his mother who’d known about it.

Greta leaned toward him, offering him her memories. “Your mother told us about the man who used to run the Old Red Store a hundred years ago. His name was William Wilcomb. He did all kinds of work.” Her glasses had slipped, and she pushed them back. “He was a weather forecaster. And a postmaster. And a
banker like my grandfather. One evening he was robbed. After that, he hid gold in his cellar. But it was never found….”

“Maybe we can go look for that treasure.”

“There are different kinds of treasures,” his stepmother said. “Like the stories your mother knew.”

When Tobias took the skirt into his room, he folded it and hid it inside his closet, feeling set apart from Greta and Robert, even more so than he usually felt set apart from other children in his class who didn’t like him because he could find facts and spell faster than any of them. That night, Stefan found him sleeping on the Persian rug in the living room, fully dressed, with the skirt draped around him like a cape, and when he carried him back to his bed, Tobias was mumbling, and Stefan touched his lips against the damp temple and drew in the child-scent of sweat and sleep.

But in the morning Tobias had no recollection of having walked in his sleep. As soon as he got up, he asked Greta questions about his mother, and she recalled for him an afternoon on the mail boat.

“We saw the Dolly Islands, and your mother told us the legend of Aunt Dolly Nichols after whom the islands were named.”

“Where was I?”

“You weren’t born yet.”

Tobias couldn’t picture his mother. Couldn’t picture himself. Only Aunt Dolly, brown and wrinkled the way his mother had described her to Greta,
maneuvering her hand-propelled ferry between Meredith Neck and Bear Island. Fishermen buy rum and hard cider from her. She rows to Weirs for a barrel of rum … carries it on her shoulders to the boat… lifts it above her head while rowing whenever she gets thirsty
. …

From Greta he found out that he and his mother had only lived together for seven days, that she’d recovered briefly after his birth, but then—as if she’d found him wanting—had died one week after his birth. Even after Greta told him all the legends his mother had written into her notebook, he waited to hear them again so that he could watch the people in those stories inside his head, waiting for the day when he’d be able to see his mother as clearly as he saw
them. And then one day it happened: images of Dolly filled in the void, and he could see his mother,
brown and wrinkled and strong, drinking rum from barrels
.

That’s how he would describe his mother to Danny Wilson. “My mother was stronger than most men,” he would tell him that winter when Danny would take him ice fishing in the bobhouse he’d built on the frozen bay with Stewart Robichaud and one of the other waiters. The two of them would sit on stools around the hole that Danny and the others had hacked into the three-foot-thick ice with axes and ice chisels. Live shiners on their hooks, they’d pull the slippery bodies of cusk and brown bullheads and yellow perch from the blue-white glow that would come from beneath them.

Miss Garland felt certain there had to be a community in the house, people who got together and entertained one another; yet, except for the Blaus’ annual tenants’ parties—Christmas and summer solstice—she was never invited. It had to be an oversight—she was sure of that. The other tenants always seemed glad to see her. Always. By the mailboxes. In the drying room. On the dock … When she went about finding out where the parties were held, Robert became her best source since his parents, of course, were usually invited.

Wearing her good navy suit with the fancy buttons or the silk poplin suit—both from Gimbel’s catalog; both perfect with her shadow lace blouse—Miss Garland began to appear at people’s doors, extending a plate or cake tin with peanut brittle that, even Homer Wilson conceded, was delicious. “I got up early this morning to make this for you,” she’d say, smiling with the certainty of being welcomed as she walked in, the bloom of excitement high in her cheeks. Invariably she would stay, the last to leave. Her visit would be followed by a gracious letter, thanking her reluctant hosts for including her and praising the sense of community in the
Wasserburg
.

Whenever Stefan saw her coming toward him, he evaded her, uneasy because she was the one person who cherished his house as
much as he did; but Pearl, who gave most of the parties, was amused by Miss Garland’s persistence.

“She keeps stopping by unannounced,” she told Helene one evening as they sat on the roof. From up here, the flowering lilac bushes looked like bouquets. “And she brings you a gift. Those sticky peanut things. Flowers she’s picked herself. Or a note thanking you for the last wonderful talk you had. And—”

“And you start each conversation out by thanking her, already in her debt.” Helene laughed and leaned back.

Above, there was nothing between her and the gray bellies of clouds, paler in their recesses as if hoarding light for tomorrow. The hills were pale green. Lately more cottages had begun to appear in that green as if carved out of the hills; and where the narrow road hugged the shoreline, it separated the boathouses from the cottages that were set high behind retaining walls built of field-stones, steps leading up to their front doors. Two more hotels had opened, providing jobs for some of the wives and daughters in town who cleaned the rooms. Quite a few of their husbands and brothers already were earning their livelihood from tourists: fishermen used their boats to ferry them to the islands, and farmers harnessed their horses to cabs that transported them from the train station to hotels or cottages. Though the townspeople welcomed the income, they didn’t welcome the hordes of strangers who crowded their town come summer to swim or boat. Some even returned in the fall when they could watch the leaves turn to brilliant shades of red and yellow, while others preferred Winnipesaukee in the winter when they could hike in the deep snow with skis or snowshoes.

“Right.” Pearl tapped the end of a cigarette against her wrist, lit it. “Then you sit there, listening to Miss Garland’s confidences. She always starts gossiping by swearing you to secrecy.”

“The things I’ve found out from her about our tenants … I have to admit that I like her gossip.”

“It’s extraordinary what she can tell just by watching what the mailman drops into people’s boxes, by the size of an envelope, an official-looking airmail letter, black-rimmed death notices….”

“She has come up in the elevator to tell me I have a letter from Germany.”

“You know what she told me about Mrs. Evans? That she’s white trash. Lived in a one-room shack in the South.”

“Alabama. She told me too.”

“Made me feel real good knowing that, considering how uppity Mrs. Evans is with me.”

“You’re lucky Mrs. Evans doesn’t like you. Otherwise she would give you those awful sweet pralines and remind you that you liked them the first time she gave them to you years ago.”

“I would have pretended to choke that day.”

“I’ve learned so much from you.”

Pearl glanced at her from the side, raised her eyebrows.

“It’s true. Unfortunately, I hadn’t met you at the time.”

Light freed itself from the clouds, slanted across the lake the way dust will when floating in a room while sun moves through it. Against that sudden brightness, the birds looked black.