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 (162 page)

The spring of 1983, the people of Winnipesaukee noticed Emma Blau—followed by the son she had named after her grandfather—checking out vacant apartments in buildings throughout town. They knew why: the
Wasserburg
was only two thirds full, and she was trying to find out what new renters might be looking for.

They could have told her that renters wanted garden apartments with individual entrances to the outside. Renters wanted dishwashers. Air conditioners. Garbage disposals. And with those old, narrow pipes in the
Wasserburg,
the townspeople knew, dishwashers were not practical even if Emma Blau had been able to afford them.

But then she surprised them by working an agreement with the owner of Weber’s Hardware for a dozen air conditioners, installed, in return for one year’s rent on a large apartment for the owner’s son, Hank Weber III, who was getting married to Sybil Baxter, whose great-grandmother had lived in the
Wasserburg
as a young
woman—not in any of the fancy apartments, for sure, but in the basement with the other maids. Robichaud, her maiden name had been, Birdie Robichaud, and she used to come home with tales of how magnificent the
Wasserburg
was. But once Sybil and Hank lived there, they could only complain about it and plot their move to a modern building as soon as their year was up.

When the air conditioners were in place, Emma Blau placed ads in the newspaper, although—so the townspeople agreed—old Stefan Blau would have never approved of the boxy way in which they protruded from the windows. But one thing they had to admire about Emma Blau was that she did not give up, not even as the house was crumbling around her. And while they did not approve of her holding on to a married woman’s husband and having a child with him, they felt sorry for her because nothing came easy to her as it had to her grandfather. Still—what he’d had in luck, Emma had in perseverance. Not that Stefan Blau hadn’t shown perseverance too, but with him it had been linked with luck.

Even those too young to have met Stefan Blau had heard stories about that luck. About a certain glamour that had carried over to his house. While he’d always had a waiting list of people dreaming to live in his house, word had it that Emma Blau’s tenants were grumbling—those who had lived in the
Wasserburg
a while, and who could blame them, really?—that the first air conditioners should have gone to them. Three families threatened to move out unless she’d let them switch to apartments with air conditioners; and to keep from renting them freshly painted rooms and having to restore theirs again, Emma was then of course forced to get air conditioners for all apartments.

The townspeople didn’t envy her the struggle to keep her mother from spending funds she needed to keep the building alive. Recently, Yvonne had taken out an additional mortgage without telling Emma, who finally had to find out from the bank. Yvonne’s spending habits that might have been merely flamboyant before her husband had swallowed himself into his grave, had become embarrassing to witness. Even to just go to the store, she’d dress as if she were attending a formal reception.

To her hairdresser she complained that Emma kept at her to deed
the house to her, and several women in the beauty parlor agreed with her that it was tacky to pressure your parent for your inheritance. “It’s not Emma’s to decide over,” they’d tell her. Yet later, amongst themselves, they’d decide it was equally tacky of Yvonne Blau to try and rent anyone at the beauty parlor one of the maids’ rooms—“If you have visitors, let me know and I’ll get you a key, but don’t tell my daughter”—for seven dollars a night, cash only. The women could just imagine Emma Blau finding Vera Larch’s mother-in-law, say, in the bathtub and demanding to know who’d let her in. They couldn’t really fault Emma Blau for watching her mother so closely, reminding her to take her pills, scolding her about money. It wasn’t pleasant to watch but understandable because every month she had less to put back into the house. And it was obvious to the people of Winnipesaukee that a different sort of renters were moving in—people who were late with their checks, whose dented cars left dark stains on the ground, who let their children run about without wiping their noses.

And to think that the
Wasserburg
used to be the place to live.

The older ones among them would reminisce how Stefan Blau’s house—through its magnificent example—had changed their town and had emboldened all of them to aspire beyond what they’d believed they could do and have. Yet, in its decline, the house had become something to not emulate, a warning of what might happen if they were not vigilant because—much like a marriage that may still appear intact after all warmth has left—it had not deteriorated all at once. After judging the worth of their achievements against the
Wasserburg
for so long, the people of Winnipesaukee found it unsettling to separate themselves from its allure, even more unsettling to determine their own measures and desires. Because how could they ever match something as visible as the
Wasserburg?
Visible in its splendor. Visible in its decay that brought them up against regrets of their own, regrets about times they’d let themselves down, times when something had gotten away from them. Like a dream. A lover. A child.

Though both women were intensely aware of each other, they had not been in the same room since the day of Helene Blau’s funeral
when Emma was still a girl. But during the fourth-grade Christmas play when Emma’s son played a shepherd and Laura’s son the angel who announces Christ’s birth to the shepherds, Emma sat five rows behind Laura and Justin. She tensed up along with Laura when the angel Oliver missed a line and the shepherd Stefan had to whisper it to him. By the end of the play, she knew the gray and auburn hairs that straggled from Laura Miles’ topknot better than she knew the back of her own head.

When all the children, still in their costumes, scrambled down from the stage, Emma saw Stefan heading toward his father as if he’d forgotten that they were not at home. Quickly she moved forward to catch her son’s arm and walk him to the other end of the room, where a table with red punch and trays of Christmas cookies had been set up.

“You must be thirsty,” she said, wanting to protect him. Protect him from the knowledge of not belonging.
But you’re mine. Not enough, is it? No.
As she handed him the paper cup filled with red punch—
I wish I could do so much more for you
—she felt herself being watched. Justin’s wife. Gazing at her from across the room in her old jeans and baggy sweater that were too casual, yet made Emma feel overdressed.

Tilting her face to Justin, Laura whispered something that made him smile.

What if they’re talking about me? What has he been telling her about me?

“Mom?” Stefan’s voice.

The sleeves of Emma’s silk blouse felt tight as though her thin arms had suddenly grown heavy. Heavy with shame. With rage.

“Mom?”

“Would you like more punch?”

His mother’s hand on his shoulder, Stefan drank the sweet raspberry punch—
too sweet, much too sweet
—and watched his father near the door with Oliver Miles, who was in his class and had the same birthday every year with cupcakes and all the kids singing “Happy Birthday dear Stefan and Oliver. …” Sometimes Oliver’s name first. Sometimes Stefan’s. He still wanted to run over to his father, but it felt wrong to do that. Because of all the other people.

Because of his mother’s hand keeping him here. Because of Oliver. Because of an older girl who had the same chin and eyebrows as Oliver. The same chin and eyebrows as his father who stood there with them and with a woman whose hair was piled up on top of her head.

“Don’t,” his mother said when Stefan raised his hand to wave.

But his father didn’t even see him.

Stefan’s belly was sour. He drank another cup of red punch to make it feel better. Except it didn’t. Only made his belly worse. Because there was something about the way his father and Oliver stood with that woman and the girl. Like a—

Like a family.

That’s what they looked like. A family. Like he and his father and his mother were on Wednesdays. But only on Wednesdays. And only inside the apartment.

“Let’s go home.” His mother’s face was blotched.

But Stefan wanted to stand with his father and that woman. Wanted to
be
Oliver. His belly was burning, and he would remember that sensation of burning even years later whenever he’d think of the day he’d first understood about his father’s two families, understood clearly what deep within he had felt since before words had become attainable: that he existed at the edge of his father’s life.

Two days before Christmas, Caleb flew into Boston and rented a car, surprising his mother and sister with his visit. He hadn’t been back in two years, and he was stunned at how drawn Emma looked, how wary his mother seemed around Emma. His nephew was a rather quiet boy, observant, but shy.

Caleb tried to keep it light between them as they set up the manger in Emma’s apartment. “Most of these decorations are still from Germany,” he told Stefan. “Your great-grandmother brought them with her.”

The boy nodded, his eyes solemn.
“Oma
Helene. I know.”

“Check out this one.” Caleb handed him the wax Madonna with the melted face. “Doesn’t she look like she’s about to rob a bank?”

Stefan poked one finger at the Madonna’s flattened features.

“Like she’s wearing a stocking over her face. Like … like a Madonna-goon.”

“A goonie-Madonna.”

“What a great name for her.”

“Let’s just call her goonie from now on.”

Once the boy got silly, it was easy for Caleb to keep him going, to get his help in mixing up the manger scene, letting the Madonna boogie with a shepherd instead of watching over little Jesus, positioning the dog so it was sniffing the camel’s ass.

“You two are terrible.” Yvonne smiled and picked up the king with the red coat.

“We work at it, right Stefan?”

“Right.” Stefan laid a sheep into an angel’s outstretched arms.

“There.” Yvonne placed the red king so close to the tallest shepherds that it looked as though the two were kissing. “How’s that?”

Stefan nodded. “Like Uncle Danny and Great-uncle Tobias.”

Yvonne coughed and moved the figures apart.

Caleb winked at Emma. “I want to call them, see if I can drive to Hartford the day before my flight leaves.”

“They’ll be glad to see you. Maybe you can also meet with Aunt Greta and Uncle Noah, at least for an hour or so at the airport.” Her eyes were more intense than usual and hard to look at for long. “I want you to promise me something,” she said.

“Tell me?”

“That you’ll teach Stefan how to shave once he is ready.”

Caleb swallowed against the tears that tried to make it up. “I’ll hop on a plane the minute he develops his first fuzz.”

“You will?”

It occurred to him that it was more than a request, that it might actually be his sister’s way of letting him know she was done with her doctor friend. He certainly hoped so. She didn’t look healthy. Pared down, somehow. Functional clothes. Functional hair pulled back in a ponytail. Chapped lips. “Absolutely,” he said.