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 (161 page)

“It’s a myth.” She kissed his forehead.

“I don’t think he liked her.”

“He believed he had to sacrifice her.”

“I would never feed you to a whale.”

The moving men were bigger than Uncle Danny. They wore gray overalls and smelled of sweat when they came into Stefan’s room and took the boxes with his toys and books, his clothes and the star charts his mother had drawn with him. But those charts weren’t as good as the charts of his German great-great-grandmother that were drawn on linen like the blueprints of the
Wasserburg.
When Stefan had asked if he could hang them up in his room, his mother had said that he was too young.

“You might damage them without realizing,” she’d said.

While she checked on the moving men to make sure that they, too, didn’t damage anything, Stefan hid in his closet. He always did during moves. But today it was too hot in there, and he followed the men into the elevator and pushed the button to the second floor where he and his mother would live until she would renovate that apartment too and rent it out.

So far, Stefan had lived on every floor of the
Wasserburg.
He wished he lived in a small house where he’d always have the same bedroom and the same kitchen and the same living room. His first move, so his mother had told him, had happened soon after his birth when she’d shown five vacant apartments to Miss Fitzpatrick who worked at one of the resorts. Miss Fitzpatrick hadn’t liked any, except the one where Stefan and his mother already lived. “It’s yours if you want it,” his mother had said and moved everything to the third floor. From then on they’d lived in apartments that were
difficult to rent, and once his mother had fixed those up, they’d moved again.

Beneath the moving men’s arms were dark stains. Stefan missed Uncle Danny who didn’t smell of sweat. But Uncle Danny was no longer strong enough to carry furniture. That’s why he lived in Connecticut now. Great-uncle Tobias had arrived to pick him up in his convertible, and Uncle Danny had sent his furniture along in a moving truck. But before leaving, the two of them had gone into the garage and leaned against one another by the workbench. For an instant Stefan had been afraid that Uncle Danny was keeling over. Because that’s what he’d done twice now, keeled over with a face whiter than white, and Stefan’s mother had sat on the floor with him, holding his head on her lap till the ambulance arrived.

But in the garage Uncle Danny’s face was pink and not white, and he was smiling. “Just one more where it all started,” he was saying.

“What started?” Stefan asked from behind Miss Fitzpatrick’s red Chevy.

“Hey now, Mr. Stefan Blau.” Uncle Danny laughed.

But Great-uncle Tobias did not laugh. “What are you doing there?”

“Playing.”

“Let the boy—” Uncle Danny said. “This garage has always been the best place to play, Tobias. Don’t forget that.”

“Where is your mother?”

“Upstairs.”

“Then go to her.”

Though his voice was grumpy, Stefan wasn’t scared of him. He used to be when he was little. But then Great-uncle Tobias had come into his room one day and pointed to the dresser with the green knobs. “Do you know that this piece of furniture will guard your secrets?” He’d shown Stefan how the floor of one drawer rested on alphabet blocks and lifted out to reveal an empty space. “I made that when I was a boy. When I didn’t know yet that all I ever needed to hide was already inside me. Still… maybe you can use it if you ever need to hide something.”

“Go now, boy,” Great-uncle Tobias said.

As Stefan turned to leave, he told Uncle Danny, “Don’t keel over. Okay?”

“Not today.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do.”

Stefan hesitated. “If Uncle Danny keels over,” he instructed his great-uncle, “you yell for me, and I’ll call the ambulance. And if he gets cramps in his legs—”

“Cramps?” No longer Great-uncle Tobias. But the taller of the moving men. Here with him in the elevator. Asking, “Who’s getting cramps?” Saying to the other man, “What’s the kid mumbling about?”

“Leave him alone, Pete.”

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Stefan.”

Just then the elevator stopped on the second floor, and the man said, “All right, Stefan, will you hold that door open for us?”

“Okay.”

The men wheezed as they carried furniture into the hallway. When the elevator was empty, Stefan rode it by himself. Up and down and up and down. A big box of his own where no one could see him. This morning, when the moving men had carried his mother’s bed from her room, Stefan had found the broken stem from one of his father’s pipes under the edge of the peacock rug. It was dusty, worn down at the end with tooth marks, and he’d slipped it into his pocket. The elevator was humming, and Stefan looked at the ceiling and the light with its dark specks behind the glass.
They look like dead bugs. How did they get in there? Why didn’t they find their way out? Are the other bugs in their families still searching for them?
He wished his father would come over to play bear with him. But his father only visited on Wednesdays. When he played bear with Stefan, he’d crawl through the apartment, shaking Stefan off if he tried to climb on his long back. But Stefan always got on, though it took a lot of holding on; and then his father would growl and laugh and ask him if he wasn’t getting too old for this.

The gray smell of sweat rode with Stefan, wound its way into his
nose, his mouth, and he pumped the number four button. When the elevator stopped and the door opened, he ran from it, taking a deep breath. Most of the furniture was already gone from this apartment: both beds and dressers, the china cabinet, the desk, and the lion chairs. In the hallway, the walls were bare. By tomorrow his mother would have hung the framed photos in the hallway of the next apartment. It always was one of the first things she did. But now she was scrubbing the kitchen counter for the new tenant, a pail with soapy water and a bottle of disinfectant next to her.

She glanced up when his shoes clicked against the black-and-white floor tiles. “Getting bored?” Her face was flushed, and her hands smelled of detergent when she hugged him.

“No.”

“Then why are you so gloomy?” She opened a box of animal crackers. One arm around his shoulders, she sat next to him on the corner bench that the movers hadn’t taken yet.

The stem of his father’s pipe pressed against his thigh. His mother was always repairing things that were broken, and if she found out about the pipe, she’d make him give it to her so that she could fix that too. But he was good at keeping secrets from her. He’d learned that from his grandma.

“Promise not to tell your mother,” she’d say when she took him along shopping. He loved to go to stores with his grandma because afterwards he’d get to help her hide the new clothes inside her apartment so that his mother wouldn’t make her take them back for a refund.

“Still hungry?” His mother’s hand brushed crumbs from his shirt.

He shook his head.

“You know what I could use? One of your drawings to hang on the refrigerator in our new apartment.”

While she covered the shelves in the cabinets with flowered paper from a roll, Stefan drew a picture of a boy in an elevator that went way up to the sky. He colored the boy’s pants brown like his own, his shirt yellow. His favorite color was white, and he wished he could use that for the boy’s shirt, but it wouldn’t show up against the paper. He was careful to stay within the lines. His
mother always said he was good at coloring inside the lines. But his letters never came out the way he wanted them to: they leaned together or dropped apart in ugly squiggles. Coloring was easy. He drew the door to the elevator closed so nobody could get in, but the roof was open and the boy could see the stars. Stefan drew the Big Dipper for the boy and, to the right of it, Polaris, the only star that always stayed in the same place.

Six months after the move, when Emma had restored this apartment too, she suggested to her mother, “We could rent out your apartment. It’s too big for one person anyhow.”

But Yvonne refused.

“You’d be more comfortable in a smaller place.”

“I don’t want to piece together my life the way you do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” How could she tell Emma that she felt sad for her to be clawing for love from a man who didn’t adore her? If she could wish for one thing she could have passed on to Emma—her looks or being adored by every man who met her—it would have been that adoration. Certainly not that persistence of Emma’s that was so tedious.

“Do you ever think how much easier it would be for you,” Emma asked, “to not have the responsibility for the house?”

“No.”

“See, if you deeded it over to me, I could take care of all the bills and all the repairs then, and you’d—” Emma tried to stop herself. It wasn’t decent, pushing at her mother like that.

“No, Emma.”

“To me and Caleb, I mean.”

Yvonne braced herself against her daughter’s urgency. “No.”

“You wouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

“And nothing to live on.”

“Your apartment would be free.”

“My apartment is free now.”

“I’d give you a generous amount every month to live on.”

“I write checks for what I need.”

“But the money won’t last. Don’t you see? Soon there’ll be nothing.”

“We never had those problems when your father was alive.”

“Because you had his income from the clinic. And all the apartments were rented then.”

When Emma told Justin Miles about her mother’s refusal to deed the house to her, he held her, stroked her shoulders. “I bet on some level your mother is grateful for all you’re doing.”

“I hate wastefulness. It drives me mad. And we don’t have enough for the repairs. I wish she’d let me do it right. And for that, I need her to deed the house to my brother and me.”

“You know what just occurred to me?”

“What?”

“Who your real lover is.”

She frowned at him.

“The house. Your real lover is this house. I’ll never be as important to you.”

She didn’t know how to contradict him because—though true in a way—it was not that simple. And she felt irritated that he would try to manipulate her into accepting that his attachment to her, too, was not as strong as that to his family. Abruptly, she got up. “I know we have separate lives. You don’t need to remind me of that.”

“Don’t be like that.”

She poured herself a glass of water. “You know what I wish? Do you? I wish you’d bring our son real gifts. Not the things you stuff into your pockets before leaving your office.”

“lean do that.”

She walked to the window. Laid her forehead against the glass. All she ever had was hope. Hope that eventually he would leave his wife. Why did she always have to want what belonged to others? The
Wasserburg.
This man. Who doled himself out so carefully. What mattered most to her in the world could not be hers unless she took it away from someone. She didn’t want to be in that position. With the house or with Justin. But no one looked out for her. No one made sure that she and Stefan had what they needed. If she didn’t do it, no one else would.

“Emma?”

“Does your wife ever ask you where you sleep Wednesday nights?” she surprised herself by asking.

He didn’t answer. Just watched her from the sofa in that benevolent manner of his. Usually she tried to avoid thinking too much about Laura, who had him every day, while her own weeks were only bordered by his visits. Once he left, all she had was her expectation of the following Wednesday, which—if she settled for it with the patience to which he had become accustomed with his wife—could form a succession of Wednesdays that stretched to the end of their lives like posts, supporting and marking off unshaped barriers of time. While he seemed content to be with her that one afternoon and evening each week. And he would continue to be there. For her and for Stefan. As long as they could arrange the significant events of their lives on Wednesdays.
Guest appearances.
Suddenly, angry that he expected this patience from both her and his wife, she felt a bond to Laura. Felt pity too. Because there was always the possibility that he would leave his wife.
In time.
That’s why Emma had settled in for a wait that had seemed manageable at first and was only frightening if she let herself look back at the years she had already spent waiting for him.